The Nazi Reich is basically the gold standard for evil empires. Yet despite being about as evil as it gets, its still not known whether or not they were taking a crack at biological warfare. Both the Allies and Japan had biological warfare programs, but Hitler loudly proclaimed against them. Recent evidence from Dachau concentration camp, however, suggests that the Nazis were taking an awful lot of interest in malaria-carrying mosquitoes, hereafter referred to as malariasquitoes for the sake of convenience.
More specifically, researchers at Dachau’s entomological department were looking at things like how to drop mosquitoes from a plane, which species was the most durable and how to breed them. It’s worth bearing in mind that mosquito breeding, that most noble of occupations, is significantly easier in warm places. Germany isn’t one of them. Short on warm swamps and long on cold winters, Germany’s unsuitability for the insects might have kept them from ever pursuing their plans fully.
A mosquito wearing a jacket.
But despite looking like a smoking gun, or dripping proboscis, if you will, none of it actually proves that the Reich was attempting to breed an army of Nazi malariasquitoes. The problem is that researching how to defend against biological weapons is almost exactly the same as looking into how to use them. You need to know how to both to do either one properly. And the Nazis definitely had an incentive to protect themselves. Both their soldiers and their captives were getting ravaged by all kinds of pests and diseases, including malaria.
In the end, historians just can’t agree on whether or not they were going for bio-weapons. Some insist that Hitler’s orders barred such pursuits. Others point out that any evidence left behind is probably the least-incriminating and that the good stuff was most likely destroyed. One historian even suggests that the Nazis went as far as flooding regions of Italy and introducing malariasquitoes to the newly created swamps.
“Hitler wants us to do what?” *sigh* “Fine, I’ll get the hose.”
In the end we just don’t know whether the Nazis were into bioweapons. Was it a line that even Hitler didn’t want to cross, or was he just trying to cover his tracks?
Advertive 