Soviet Use of Biological Weapons In The Great Patriotic War.

[DougD]

Interesting article about use of Soviet bio weapons at Stalingrad:


While he was a graduate student at the Tomsk Medical Institute (1973-75), Alibek studied Soviet wartime medical records that strongly suggested that the Red Army had used tularemia as a weapon against German troops outside Stalingrad in 1942 . Tularemia is a highly infectious disease that produces debilitating headaches, nausea and high fevers. If untreated, it can be lethal. It is also hard to extinguish, which makes it attractive to anyone trying to produce biological weapons.

Alibek discovered that the "first victims of tularemia were German panzer troops, who fell ill in such large numbers during the late summer of 1942 that the Nazi campaign in southern Russia ground to a temporary halt." In addition, he relates, thousands of Russian soldiers and civilians living in the Volga region came down with the disease within a week of the initial German outbreak. Never before had there been such a widespread outbreak of the disease in Russia.

Why had so many men first fallen sick with tularemia on the German side only? Furthermore, 70 percent of the Germans infected came down with a pneumonic form of the disease, which (Alibek reports) "could only have been caused by purposeful dissemination."

Whereas there were ten thousand cases of tularemia reported in the Soviet Union in 1941, in the year 1942 -- when the battle of Stalingrad was at its height -- the number of cases soared to more than one hundred thousand. Then, in 1943, the incidence of the disease returned to ten thousand. The battle for Stalingrad raged from September 1942 until February 2, 1943, when Friedrich von Paulus, commander of the German Sixth Army, surrendered along with 91,000 officers and men (of whom only 6,000 survived Soviet captivity).

Alibek became convinced that "Soviet troops must have sprayed tularemia at the Germans. A sudden change in the direction of the wind, or contaminated rodents passing through the lines, had infected our soldiers and the disease had then spread through the region."

To his professor, a Soviet colonel named Aksyonenko, he explained that the evidence he had found "suggests that this epidemic was caused intentionally." Aksyonenko responded with a stern warning: "Please. I want you to do me a favor and forget you ever said what you just said. I will forget it, too ... Never mention to anyone else what you just told me."

Some years later, an elderly Soviet lieutenant colonel who had worked during the war in the secret bacteriological weapons facility in Kirov told Alibek that a tularemia weapon had been developed there in 1941. He also left him "with no doubt that the weapon had been used." This same officer further suggested that an "outbreak of Q fever among German troops on leave in Crimea in 1943 was the result of another one of the [Soviet] biological warfare agents"

[Christophe]

Interesting case.
Even if I have not read Dr Alibek's book, and for our information, I have found a contradictory view on this case, published in "Military Medicine", Vol. 166, N° 10, October 2001.

This is published in the "Monterey Institute of International Studies" website :

http://cns.miis.edu/research/cbw/tula.htm

In this article, the authors clearly propose - as their view and hypothesis - that this epidemic more likely resulted from natural causes.
Here are some abstracts of the article:

"Tularemia, Biological Warfare, and the Battle for Stalingrad (1942-1943)
An editorial from Military Medicine, Vol. 166, No. 10, October 2001.
Guarantor: Eric Croddy. MA
Contributors: Eric Croddy. MA: Sarka Krcalova MA "

" (...) In a recent book, Dr. Kenneth Alibek has suggested that the Soviet Red Army used tularemia (causative agent: Francisella tularensis) as a biological weapon during the battle of Stalingrad (1942-l943). Based on past clinical cases and the nature of the pathogen we propose that an outbreak resulting from natural causes is more likely. (...)

Alibek is generally considered to be reliable, and he has briefed the U.S. intelligence community at great length regarding former Soviet BW capabilities.[3] A former deputy director of the Soviet Russian Biopreparat. Alibek claims in his book that tularemia (caused by the bacterium Francisella tularensis) was deployed against Nazi troops during the battle for Stalingrad (August 1942 to February 1943). Alibek bases his allegation on the hundreds of thousands of tularemia infections that quickly arose at the beginning of the siege and the collaborative statements of an elderly lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Red Army. (...)

Although no doubt exacerbated by wartime conditions at Stalingrad we believe that the tularemia epidemic of 1942-1943 was a natural outbreak. With regard to the high percentage of pleural involvement reported by Alibek (and others) one should note that even in the 1960s the mechanism of the disease process was not well understood nor was it certain if there was a primary pulmonary form of tularemia. (...)."

But the article also mentions :

"Interestingly, The Soviets reported that a live tularemia vaccine prepared by H.A. Gaiskii and B.Y. Elbert was tested at the Stalingrad front. (Sources conflict regarding whether or not large-scale tularemia vaccinations were administered for Soviet Red Army troops.) "

Have anyone seen or read other views and conclusions about this ?
What is actually the consensus - if any - about this case ?

Cheers.

Ch.

[DougD]

As Chris says, the section is from Ken Alibeks book (remember him on 60 minutes?). I don't have much more on it, never seen another confirmation of it, but its an nteresting place to start : )

DD

[Christophe]

This is the book :

"Biohazard: The Chilling True Story of the Largest Covert Biological Weapons Program in the World - Told from the Inside by the Man Who Ran It"
by Ken Alibek, with Stephen Handelman

319 pages. Publisher: Random House Trade; 1st edition (May 1, 1999)
ISBN: 0375502319

For the Stalingrad / Tularemia case, see pages 29-31 and 35.

Ch.