Erich Traub
Encyclopedia
Erich Traub was a German veterinarian
Veterinarian
A veterinary physician, colloquially called a vet, shortened from veterinarian or veterinary surgeon , is a professional who treats disease, disorder and injury in animals....

 and scientist
Scientist
A scientist in a broad sense is one engaging in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge. In a more restricted sense, a scientist is an individual who uses the scientific method. The person may be an expert in one or more areas of science. This article focuses on the more restricted use of the word...

/virologist who specialized in foot-and-mouth disease
Foot-and-mouth disease
Foot-and-mouth disease or hoof-and-mouth disease is an infectious and sometimes fatal viral disease that affects cloven-hoofed animals, including domestic and wild bovids...

, Rinderpest
Rinderpest
Rinderpest was an infectious viral disease of cattle, domestic buffalo, and some other species of even-toed ungulates, including buffaloes, large antelopes and deer, giraffes, wildebeests and warthogs. After a global eradication campaign, the last confirmed case of rinderpest was diagnosed in 2001...

 and Newcastle disease
Newcastle disease
Newcastle disease is a contagious bird disease affecting many domestic and wild avian species. First found in Newcastle, United Kingdom in 1926, then by Burnet in 1943 in Australia in connection with laboratory infection where the virus was isolated from a ocular discharge of a patient to show the...

. Traub was a member of the National Socialist Motor Corps
National Socialist Motor Corps
The National Socialist Motor Corps , also known as the National Socialist Drivers Corps, was a paramilitary organization of the Nazi Party that existed from 1931 to 1945. The group was a successor organization to the older National Socialist Automobile Corps, which had existed since the beginning...

 (NSKK), a Nazi motorist corps, from 1938–1942. He worked directly for Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...

, head of the Schutzstaffel
Schutzstaffel
The Schutzstaffel |Sig runes]]) was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. Built upon the Nazi ideology, the SS under Heinrich Himmler's command was responsible for many of the crimes against humanity during World War II...

 (SS), as the lab chief of the Nazi's leading bio-weapons facility on Riems Island
Riems Island
Riems Island lies in the southwest of Bay of Greifswald in between the German mainland and the island of Rügen, a flat spur in the Baltic Sea. Riems belongs administratively to urban district of Hanseatic City of Greifswald, but it is an exclave. Riemserort, another district, belongs to Riems...

.

Traub was rescued from the Soviet zone of Germany after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 and brought to the United States in 1949 under the auspices of the United States government program Operation Paperclip
Operation Paperclip
Operation Paperclip was the Office of Strategic Services program used to recruit the scientists of Nazi Germany for employment by the United States in the aftermath of World War II...

, meant to exploit scientific knowledge gained during Nazi rule in Germany.

Early career and war

During the 1930s, he studied on a fel­low­ship at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in Prince­ton, New Jer­sey mentored by Richard Shope
Richard Shope
Richard Shope was an American virologist who was first to isolate an influenza virus and first to vaccinate animals against influenza. In the 1930s, Shope, a physician at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, identified the causative agent as a virus in the 1918-19 Spanish influenza...

, performing research on vaccines and viruses, including pseudorabies
Pseudorabies
Pseudorabies is a viral disease in swine that is endemic in most parts of the world. It is caused by Suid herpesvirus 1 , which is also called Pseudorabies virus and is also known as Aujeszky's disease, and in cattle as mad itch. PRV is considered to be the most economically important viral...

 virus and lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCM). During his stay in the United States, Traub and his wife were listed as mem­bers­ of the German American Bund, a pro-nazi German-American club just thirty miles west of Plum Island in Yaphank, Long Island, from 1934–1935.

Traub worked at the University of Giessen
University of Giessen
The University of Giessen is officially called the Justus Liebig University Giessen after its most famous faculty member, Justus von Liebig, the founder of modern agricultural chemistry and inventor of artificial fertiliser.-History:The University of Gießen is among the oldest institutions of...

, Germany, from 1938 to 1942. Traub was a Nazi since he was a member of the NSKK, a motorist corps and a subsidiary of the SA, from 1938–1942. The NSKK was declared a condemned, not a criminal organization at the Nuremberg trials.

From 1942 to 1948, Traub worked as lab-chief at the Reich Research Institute for Virus Diseases of Animals on Riems Island
Riems Island
Riems Island lies in the southwest of Bay of Greifswald in between the German mainland and the island of Rügen, a flat spur in the Baltic Sea. Riems belongs administratively to urban district of Hanseatic City of Greifswald, but it is an exclave. Riemserort, another district, belongs to Riems...

 , a German animal virus research institute in the Baltic sea
Baltic Sea
The Baltic Sea is a brackish mediterranean sea located in Northern Europe, from 53°N to 66°N latitude and from 20°E to 26°E longitude. It is bounded by the Scandinavian Peninsula, the mainland of Europe, and the Danish islands. It drains into the Kattegat by way of the Øresund, the Great Belt and...

, now named the Friedrich Loeffler Institute
Friedrich Loeffler Institute
The Friedrich Loeffler Institute , is the national research centre for animal health of Germany. The institute was founded in 1910 and named for its founder Friedrich Loeffler in 1952. The FLI is situated on the Isle of Riems, which belongs to the City of Greifswald...

. The institute was headed by Prof. Dr. Otto Waldmann from 1909–48, while Traub was vice-president.

The Institute at Riems Island was a dual use facility during the Second World War where at least some biological warfare experiments were conducted. It had been founded originally in 1909-10 to study foot-and-mouth disease in animals and by World War II employed about 20 scientists and a staff of 70-120. Hanns-Christoph Nagel, a veterinarian and biological warfare expert for the German Army, conducted experiments there, as did Traub.

Traub worked under Reichsführer-SS
Reichsführer-SS
was a special SS rank that existed between the years of 1925 and 1945. Reichsführer-SS was a title from 1925 to 1933 and, after 1934, the highest rank of the German Schutzstaffel .-Definition:...

 Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...

, who in 1943 took over the Innenministerium (Ministry of the Interior), and specialized in viral and bacterial diseases. The chain of command was Himmler, Dr. Leonardo Conti
Leonardo Conti
Leonardo Conti was the Reich Health Leader in Nazi Germany. He was born to a Swiss Italian father and mother in Lugano, Ticino, Switzerland; his mother later became the Reich Midwifery Leader in Nazi Germany....

 (Reich Health Leader), Kurt Blome
Kurt Blome
Kurt Blome was a high-ranking Nazi scientist before and during World War II. He was the Deputy Reich Health Leader and Plenipotentiary for Cancer Research in the Reich Research Council...

, Waldmann, and then Traub. He was assisted by Anna Burger, who was also brought to the United States after the fall of the Nazi Regime, to work with the Navy's biological warfare program.

On orders from Himmler and Blome, the Deputy Reich Health Leader and head of the German biological warfare program, he had also worked on weaponizing foot-and-mouth disease virus, which was dispersed by aircraft onto cattle and reindeer in Russia. In 1944, Blome ordered Traub to pick up a strain of Rinderpest
Rinderpest
Rinderpest was an infectious viral disease of cattle, domestic buffalo, and some other species of even-toed ungulates, including buffaloes, large antelopes and deer, giraffes, wildebeests and warthogs. After a global eradication campaign, the last confirmed case of rinderpest was diagnosed in 2001...

 virus in Turkey; upon his return, this strain proved inactive (nonvirulent) and therefore plans for a Rinderpest vaccine had to be shelved.

Post war

Immediately after the war Traub was trapped in the Soviet zone of Allied occupied Germany. He was forced to work for the Soviets from his lab on Riems Island. In July 1948, the British evacuated Erich Traub from Riems Island as a "high priority Intelligence target" since it was now in the Soviet Zone and they feared that Traub was assisting in their biological warfare program. Traub denied this, however, claiming that his only interest was foot-and-mouth disease in animals.

Traub was brought to the United States in 1949 under the auspices of the United States government program Operation Paperclip
Operation Paperclip
Operation Paperclip was the Office of Strategic Services program used to recruit the scientists of Nazi Germany for employment by the United States in the aftermath of World War II...

, meant to exploit scientific knowledge gained during Nazi rule in Germany. From 1949 - 1953 he was associated with the Naval Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, MD.

Just months into his Operation Paperclip con­tract, Traub was asked to meet with US scientists from Fort Detrick
Fort Detrick
Fort Detrick is a U.S. Army Medical Command installation located in Frederick, Maryland, USA. Historically, Fort Detrick was the center for the United States' biological weapons program ....

, the Army’s bio­log­i­cal war­fare head­quar­ters, in Fred­er­ick, Mary­land. As a noted German author­ity on viruses he was asked to consult on their ani­mal dis­ease pro­gram from a Bio­log­i­cal War­fare perspective. Traub dis­cussed work done at the Reich Research Institute for Virus Diseases of Animals on Riems Island dur­ing World War II for the Nazis, and work done after the war there for the Russians. Traub gave a detailed expla­na­tion of the secret oper­a­tion at the Institute, and his activ­i­ties there. This information provided the ground work for Fort Detrick's off­shore germ war­fare ani­mal dis­eased lab on Plum Island
Plum Island
Plum Island may refer to:*Plum Island , and island in Alaska, United States*Plum Island Bald Eagle Refuge , a bald eagle refuge in northeast Illinois*Plum Island , an island in Essex County, United States...

.

In 1951, he published a report for the Naval Medical Research Institute on Newcastle Disease virus in chicken and mammalian blood. cells Two years later, he published a paper for the Navy on the mechanisms of immunity in chickens to Newcastle and the possible role of cellular factors. Also in 1953, he published another paper for the Navy with Worth I. Capps on the foot-and-mouth disease virus and methods for rapid adaptation.

Traub served as an expert on Foot-and-mouth disease for the FAO of the UN in Bogota
Bogotá
Bogotá, Distrito Capital , from 1991 to 2000 called Santa Fé de Bogotá, is the capital, and largest city, of Colombia. It is also designated by the national constitution as the capital of the department of Cundinamarca, even though the city of Bogotá now comprises an independent Capital district...

, Colombia, from 1951–1952, in Tehran
Tehran
Tehran , sometimes spelled Teheran, is the capital of Iran and Tehran Province. With an estimated population of 8,429,807; it is also Iran's largest urban area and city, one of the largest cities in Western Asia, and is the world's 19th largest city.In the 20th century, Tehran was subject to...

, Iran, from 1963–1967, and in Ankara
Ankara
Ankara is the capital of Turkey and the country's second largest city after Istanbul. The city has a mean elevation of , and as of 2010 the metropolitan area in the entire Ankara Province had a population of 4.4 million....

, Turkey, from 1969-1971.

Return to Germany

After working on biological warfare for the Navy in the U.S. from 1949–53, Traub founded and led a new branch of the Loeffler Institut in Tübingen
Tübingen
Tübingen is a traditional university town in central Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated south of the state capital, Stuttgart, on a ridge between the Neckar and Ammer rivers.-Geography:...

, Germany, and headed it from 1953 to 1963. In 1960, Traub resigned as Tübingen’s direc­tor due to the scandal related to accusations of finan­cial embez­zle­ment. He con­tin­ued with limited lab research for three more years, but then ended his career at Tub­in­gen.

In 1964, however, Traub also did a study for the Army Biological labs in Frederick, Maryland on Eastern Equine Encephalomyeltitis (EEE) immunity in white mice and its relationship to Lymphocytic choriomeningitis (LCM), which had long been a research interest of his.

He retired from the West German civil service in 1971. In 1972, on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich
Ludwig Maximilians University of Munich
The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich , commonly known as the University of Munich or LMU, is a university in Munich, Germany...

 Traub received an honorary doctorate degree in Veterinary Medicine for his achievements in basic and applied Virology (basic research on LCM; definition and diagnosis of type strains of FMD and their variants; development of adsorbate vaccines against fowl plague, Teschner disease of swine, and erysipelas of swine).

On May 18, 1985, Traub died unex­pect­edly in his sleep in West Ger­many. He was seventy-eight years old.

Bio-weapon research

In theory, insects of all types, particularly the biting and stinging kinds, can be used as disease vectors in a biological warfare program. Germany, Japan, Britain, Russia and the U.S. all conducted experiments along these lines during the Second World War, and the Japanese used such insect-borne diseases against both soldiers and civilians in China. This was one reason that President Franklin Roosevelt and Secretary of War Henry Stimson ordered the creation of an American biological warfare program in 1942, which was headquartered at Camp Detrick, Maryland. This eventually grew to a very large facility with 245 buildings and a $60 million budget, including a Entomological Weapons Department that mass produced flies, lice and mosquitoes as disease vectors. Although the British bio-weapon facility at Porton Down
Porton Down
Porton Down is a United Kingdom government and military science park. It is situated slightly northeast of Porton near Salisbury in Wiltshire, England. To the northwest lies the MoD Boscombe Down test range facility which is operated by QinetiQ...

 concentrated on the production of anthrax bombs, it also conducted experiments on insects as vectors.

After the war, the Army's 406th Medical General Laboratory in Japan cooperated with former scientists from Unit 731 in experimenting with many different insect vectors, including lice, flies, mosquitoes, ticks, fleas, spiders and beetles to carry a wide variety of diseases, from cholera to meningitis. At Fort Detrick in the late-1940s, Theodore Rosebury also rated insect vectors very highly, and its entomological division had at least three insect-vectored weapons ready for use by 1950. Some of these were later tested at the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah, and allegedly used during the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...

 as well.

Traub visited the Plum Island Animal Disease Center
Plum Island Animal Disease Center
Plum Island Animal Disease Center is a United States federal research facility dedicated to the study of animal diseases. It is part of the DHS Directorate for Science and Technology....

 (PIADC) in New York on at least three occasions in the 1950s. The Plum Island facility, operated by the Department of Agriculture, conducted research on foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) of cattle
Foot-and-mouth disease
Foot-and-mouth disease or hoof-and-mouth disease is an infectious and sometimes fatal viral disease that affects cloven-hoofed animals, including domestic and wild bovids...

, one of Traub's areas of expertise. Traub was offered a leading position at Plum Island in 1958 which he officially declined, yet the diseases he specialized in have all compromised the surrounding area. It has been alleged that the United States performed bioweapons research on Plum Island.

Fort Terry
Fort Terry
Fort Terry was a coastal fortification on Plum Island, a small island just off Orient Point, New York, USA. This strategic position afforded it a commanding view over the Atlantic entrance to the commercially vital Long Island Sound. It was established in 1897 and used intermittently through the...

 on Plum Island was part of the U.S. biological warfare program in 1944-46, working on veterinary testing in connection with the weaponization of brucellosis
Brucellosis
Brucellosis, also called Bang's disease, Crimean fever, Gibraltar fever, Malta fever, Maltese fever, Mediterranean fever, rock fever, or undulant fever, is a highly contagious zoonosis caused by ingestion of unsterilized milk or meat from infected animals or close contact with their secretions...

. After the war, research on biological weapons continued at Pine Bluff
Pine Bluff Chemical Activity
Pine Bluff Chemical Activity is a U.S. Army agency that controlled the chemical weapon storage site located at Pine Bluff Arsenal in Pine Bluff, Arkansas. The U.S. Army stored approximately twelve percent of its original chemical weapons at the Pine Bluff Arsenal since 1942...

 in Arkansas and Fort Detrick
Fort Detrick
Fort Detrick is a U.S. Army Medical Command installation located in Frederick, Maryland, USA. Historically, Fort Detrick was the center for the United States' biological weapons program ....

, Maryland, while officially at least Plum Island was transferred to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. From 1949, Plum Island also conducted work on biological weapons against animals and livestock, such as foot-and-mouth disease, Rinderpest, Newcastle disease, African swine fever and plague and malaria in birds. Traub's biological warfare work from the Second World War onward involved at least the first three of these.

See also

  • Edgewood Arsenal
  • Project MKULTRA
    Project MKULTRA
    Project MKULTRA, or MK-ULTRA, was the code name for a covert, illegal CIA human experimentation program, run by the CIA's Office of Scientific Intelligence. This official U.S. government program began in the early 1950s, continued at least through the late 1960s, and used U.S...

  • Project MKNAOMI
    Project MKNAOMI
    MKNAOMI was the code name for a joint Department of Defense/CIA research program lasting from the 1950s through the 1970s. Unclassified information about the MKNAOMI program and the related Special Operations Division is scarce...

  • Claus Schilling
    Claus Schilling
    Claus Karl Schilling , also recorded as Klaus Schilling, was a German tropical medicine specialist, particularly remembered for his infamous participation in the Nazi human experiments at the Dachau concentration camp during World War II.Though never a member of the Nazi Party and a recognized...

  • Sigmund Rascher
    Sigmund Rascher
    Sigmund Rascher was a German SS doctor.His deadly experiments on humans, planned and executed in the Nazi concentration camp of Dachau, were judged inhumane and criminal during the Nuremberg Trials.-Early life and career:Rascher was born the third child of Hanns-August Rascher , a...

  • Eastern equine encephalitis virus
    Eastern equine encephalitis virus
    Eastern equine encephalitis virus , commonly called sleeping sickness or Triple E, is a zoonotic alphavirus and arbovirus present in North, Central and South America and the Caribbean. EEE was first recognized in Massachusetts, USA in 1831 when 75 horses died of encephalitic illness...


Further reading

  • Bernstein, Barton J.: Birth of the U.S. biological warfare program. Scientific American 256: 116 - 121, 1987.
  • Geissler, Erhard: Biologische Waffen, nicht in Hitlers Arsenalen. Biologische und Toxin-Kampfmittel in Deutschland von 1915 - 1945. LIT-Verlag, Berlin-Hamburg-Münster, 2nd ed., 1999. ISBN 3825829553.
  • Geissler, Erhard: Biological warfare activities in Germany 1923 - 1945. In: Geissler, Erhard and Moon, John Ellis van Courtland, eds., Biological warfare from the Middle Ages to 1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, ISBN 0198295790.
  • Maddrell, Paul: Spying on Science: Western Intelligence in Divided Germany 1945 - 1961. Oxford University Press, 2006, ISBN 0199267502.
  • John Rather: New York Times, February 15, 2004: Heaping more dirt on Plum I.
  • Albarelli JR., H.P.: A Terrible Mistake:The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Experiments - Trine Day LLC, 1st ed., 2009, ISBN 0977795373
  • Office of U.S. Chief of Counsel for the American Military Tribunals at Nuremberg, 1946, concerning Nazi experiments on concentration camp prisoners with hepatitis and nephritis viruses.
  • Erich Traub, "Immunity of White Mice to EEE Virus." Report No. 8, Army Biological Labs, Frederick, MD, 1964.

External links

  • http://www.mazal.org/NO-series/NO-0124-000.htm
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