Anton Dilger (* 1884 in front Royal, Virginia; "† 17 October 1918 in Madrid) was a German-American physician and one of the most important proponents of the use of biological agents in the First World War.

Career/development

Anton Dilger was born as a son of German parents in the USA, sent however at the age from 9 years to Germany. It visited the High School in Bensheim, studied in Heidelberg and Munich medicine and worked thereafter in Heidelberg on the surgical university clinic. Its doctor work over the development of animal cells in Gewebekulturen was evaluated 1912 with summa cum laude.

At the beginning of the First World War was Dilger in Germany, after he was to have been allegedly during the Balkans war as a surgeon in the Bulgarian army active before. 1915 it returned to the USA and led thereby on behalf the German realm Reich spleen fire and Rotz cultures with itself, which should be used as biological weapon. So the supply at living animals for the allied armed forces should be impaired.

Together with its brother Carl furnished Anton Dilger a laboratory in Washington (D.C.), in whom the bacteria Bacillus were increased anthracis and Burkholderia mallei. A report from the year 1941 revealed that the pathogens were intended for it, on the by horses to be lubricated, which were still numerous in the First World War in use. Actually protected enlisted stowers are to have injected solutions with the bacteria of an unknown number of horses in the port by Baltimore, with rubber gloves, by German officers.

These German act of sabotage ions were broken off at the end of of 1916, when Anton Dilger temporarily returned to Germany. To be suspected after a renewed entry into the USA it, a German feeler gauge, so that it fled later first to Mexico and to Spain, where it lived under the pseudonym Alberto Dondo and 1918 became ironically a victim of the Spanish in such a way specified flu. Its activities became only later from German documents admit.

The effects of the sabotage attempts are today unknown until. No reports are obviously present, in which from relevant disease outbreaks under animals the speech is. Also it is not well-known whether the cell cultures were at all infectious. It is furthermore remarkable that the regulations did not contain defaults for disarmament in Germany after the First World War concerning biological agents. From this it can be derived that these sabotage attempts were still unknown to the allied one at that time or that they could not recognize serious threat in them.

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In a study of biological weapons confirmed Erhard Geissler 1999 due to the analysis from German cross-examining minutes the early 1920er-Jahren in the principle the activities of the brothers Dilger in the USA, came however to the result that possibly Carl Dilger was to be attributed a substantial role.

Literature

• Erhard Geissler: '' Biological weapons - not in Hitler's arsenals. Biological one and Toxin weapon in Germany from 1915 to 1945. Lit publishing house, 1999

see also

• Discussion: Anton Dilger
• Bio terrorism

Articles in category "Anton Dilger"

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