Tularemia at Stalingrad

Alert reader Cathy points us to this report on the use of bioweapons in World War II:

Ken Alibek, a former top Soviet bioweapons scientist, contends that an outbreak of tularemia among German troops during the 1942 Battle of Stalingrad resulted from the deliberate spraying of the agent by the Soviet defenders.

I had not previously been aware of this claim. There are some reasons to take it seriously, as Alibek has apparently proven reliable regarding other claims about the Soviet bioweapon program. It’s likely that the Russians would have taken any measures that they were capable of in the defense of Stalingrad, although the use of bioweapons there would run into the same problems of self-infection as anywhere else; more, in fact, do to the close quarters nature of the fighting. A deliberately inflicted epidemic would also go some distance toward explaining the truly awful mortality rate of German prisoners from the battle (90% plus).

I’m inclined to agree Eric Croddy’s assessment in Military Medicine, though. A tularemia epidemic was already in progress in the region at the time, and affected the Red Army almost as seriously as the Wehrmacht. Moreover, German controlled Stalingrad was an almost ideal disease incubator, featuring lots of people in close quarters, without food, in unsanitary conditions, and under tremendous amounts of stress.