Occasional Paper 12

A Short History of

Biological Warfare:

From Pre-History to the

21st Century 

W. Seth Carus
Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction

National Defense University

MR. CHARLES D. LUTES

Director

MR. JOHN P. CAVES, JR.

Deputy Director

Since its inception in 1994, the Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass 

Destruction (WMD Center) has been at the forefront of research on the 

implications of weapons of mass destruction for U.S. security. Originally 

focusing on threats to the military, the WMD Center now also applies its 

expertise and body of research to the challenges of homeland security. The 

Center’s mandate includes research, education, and outreach. Research 

focuses on understanding the security challenges posed by WMD and on 

fashioning effective responses thereto. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff has designated the Center as the focal point for WMD education in the 

joint professional military education system. Education programs, including its 

courses on countering WMD and consequence management, enhance 

awareness in the next generation of military and civilian leaders of the WMD 

threat as it relates to defense and homeland security policy, programs, 

technology, and operations. As a part of its broad outreach efforts, the WMD 

Center hosts annual symposia on key issues bringing together leaders and 

experts from the government and private sectors. Visit the center online at 

wmdcenter.dodlive.mil. 
A Short History of 

Biological Warfare

Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction

Occasional Paper, No. 12

National Defense University Press

Washington, D.C.

August 2017

A Short History of 

Biological Warfare:

From Pre-History to the 

21st Century

W. Seth Carus
Opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied 

within are solely those of the contributors and do not necessarily represent 

the views of the Defense Department or any other agency of the Federal 

Government. Cleared for public release; distribution unlimited.

Portions of this work may be quoted or reprinted without permission, provided that a standard source credit line is included. NDU Press 

would appreciate a courtesy copy of reprints or reviews.

First printing, August 2017
Contents

Introduction............................................................................................. 1

Early Use (through 1900) ........................................................................ 2

Prehistoric Biological Warfare................................................................ 3

Ancient BW (500 BCE to 1000 AD) ......................................................... 4

Medieval and Early Modern BW (1000 AD to 1750 AD)....................... 5

Late Modern BW (1750 AD to 1900 AD)................................................ 7

Summation ............................................................................................ 11

The Origins of Modern BW (1900–1945) ............................................. 12

Summation ............................................................................................ 27

The Cold War and Beyond (1945–Present) .......................................... 27

Summary................................................................................................ 44

Biological Warfare’s Future .................................................................. 44

Appendix 1. Additional Reading.......................................................... 46

Appendix 2. Definitions and Methodology......................................... 48

Notes...................................................................................................... 51

About the Author ................................................................................. 69

1

A Short History of Biological Warfare

Introduction

This short monograph reviews the history of biological warfare (BW) from 

prehistory to the present. It covers what we know about the practice of BW and 

briefly describes the programs that developed BW weapons based on the best 

available research. To the extent possible, it primarily draws on the work of historians who used primary sources, relying where possible on studies specifically 

focused on BW. By broadening our knowledge of BW, such studies have enabled 

us to write about the topic with more accuracy and detail than could have been 

done even a few years ago.

This is an overview, not a definitive history. Much about BW remains unknown, either because it is unknowable (due in some cases to the deliberate destruction of records) or because it is knowable only to some people (such as those 

who might have access to classified information) or because of the absence of 

academic research.1

This survey breaks the history of BW into three periods. The first section 

examines prehistory to 1900—the period before scientific advances proved that 

microorganisms were the cause of many diseases. Despite many claims to the contrary, resort to BW was exceedingly rare during this era. Readers interested only 

in BW’s modern history can skip this section.

The second section looks at the years from 1900 through 1945. This period 

saw the emergence of state BW programs, the employment of biological weapons 

in both world wars, and the use of biological agents by nonstate actors, including 

criminals. This period witnessed the most significant resort to BW. It included 

the first organized state campaign to wage BW—sabotage operations organized 

by the German government during World War I. It also saw the most extensive 

use—the Japanese attacks in China. Almost all the known victims of BW were 

Chinese, mostly civilians, who were killed in these operations. This period also saw 

the initial efforts to control BW in the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which essentially 

prohibited the first use of BW agents.

Finally, the third section, covering the period from 1945 to the present, focuses mostly on developments during the Cold War, including descriptions of 
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state BW programs as well as known uses of biological agents by states, terrorists, 

and criminals. Despite the development of highly sophisticated techniques for 

dissemination of biological agents by the United States and the Soviet Union 

during the Cold War (the two countries with the largest and most advanced BW 

programs ever organized), most of the known programs were small and possessed 

only crude dissemination capabilities. The known uses were unsophisticated as 

well, essentially no more advanced than what the Germans did during World War 

I. This era also saw the negotiation of the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons 

Convention (BWC).

This history focuses on those agents covered by the BWC, which prohibited 

weapons disseminating biological agents or toxins. Biological agents are replicating biological entities, such as bacteria. Toxins, poisons of biological origin, are 

similar to chemical warfare agents and also have been banned by the Chemical 

Weapons Convention. Definitional matters are discussed in more detail in appendix 2.

Biological agents are referred to by their scientific name. Following scientific 

practice, the name is abbreviated after the first mention. Thus, Bacillus anthracis (commonly, but incorrectly, called anthrax), which causes several diseases (including cutaneous anthrax, inhalational anthrax, and gastrointestinal anthrax), is 

hereafter called B. anthracis. Those seeking additional information about specific 

diseases should refer to specialist works that describe them in more detail.2

Readers wishing more detailed information should look at the references 

cited in the notes. Appendix 1 also provides suggested readings.

Early Use (through 1900)

Biological warfare, as we understand it today, is a modern invention. It was not 

until the middle of the 19th century that the pioneering scientific research of Louis 

Pasteur in France and Robert Koch in Germany demonstrated that microorganisms 

could cause disease. Before then, people had a limited understanding of disease causation, and what they thought they knew was often wrong. Many people ascribed 

diseases to supernatural causes. It is thus not surprising that the Romans used the 

same word, veneficium, for both “poisoning” and “practicing sorcery.”3 Even after 
3

A Short History of Biological Warfare

the emergence of scientific explanations for disease causation, there were many 

competing theories, generally partly or wholly wrong. Some emphasized environmental factors, such as the miasma theories that focused on the harmful effects of 

rotting organic matter, while others focused on supposed imbalances in the body as 

the likely cause of specific diseases.4

Further complicating matters, medical diagnosis was often poor. Before the 

widespread use of autopsies to support clinical research and the development of 

modern diagnostic techniques, medical practitioners often had difficulty differentiating between diseases with similar symptoms. For example, the symptoms 

of some diseases caused by poison can mimic those of diseases caused by microorganisms. Thus, it was difficult to differentiate between the effects of strychnine, 

a common arrow poison obtained from certain species of Strychnos plants found 

in sub-Saharan Africa, and tetanus, which is caused by the pathogen Clostridium 

tetani.

5

 Similarly, many physicians could not distinguish between different fevercausing diseases. It was not until 1837 that an American doctor described the 

differences between typhoid and typhus fevers.6 Even in the late 19th century, most 

doctors could not distinguish typhoid fever from malaria.7

Nonetheless, there is evidence that some people in past eras deliberately tried 

to spread diseases that we now know are spread by pathogens, and that those actions plausibly could have caused disease transmission. This occurred with both 

plague and smallpox, which some people thought could be transmitted by fomites (contaminated materials, such as bedding or clothes). Smallpox can be spread 

through such exposure, although the risk of transmission is relatively small.8 In 

contrast, plague is not transmitted by contaminated material; only in the late 19th

century was the flea proved to be the vector for the Yersinia pestis, the organism 

that causes plague.9

Prehistoric Biological Warfare

Biological warfare may have originated in prehistory, although that is not 

certain. Archeologists believe that poisons were used widely for fishing, hunting, 

and warfare by nomadic and primitive tribal societies, although direct evidence is 

scanty for the prehistoric period. The poisons were toxins obtained from readily 
4 

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available plants or animals.10 In some cases, however, primitive peoples contaminated arrows in ways that seemed likely to introduce pathogens. Such techniques 

were employed by tribes located in North America, South America, sub-Saharan 

Africa, and Southeast Asia.11

The methods used varied widely. Sometimes, the methods were quite simple, 

as when Melanesian tribesmen in what is now Vanuatu covered arrows with the 

contents of crab burrows and thus contaminated them with Clostridium tetani (the 

organism causing tetanus).12 Other methods were quite elaborate. The Scythians, 

a nomadic tribe that inhabited what is now Ukraine, during the era of Classical 

Greece, used an elaborate technique to produce an arrow poison that almost certainly contained some pathogens. One ancient account reports that the Scythians 

killed young vipers and allowed them to rot. At the same time, they took human 

blood, put it into a small vessel, and allowed it to decompose. They then mixed the 

liquid from the rotten vipers and the sediments from the decomposed blood and 

put it on arrowheads.13

Primitive tribes have used such methods even in the modern era. These techniques, reportedly only used in warfare and not for hunting, would have produced 

uneven results, dependent as they were on the vagaries of nature to inoculate their 

concoctions with a dangerous pathogen. Unfortunately, only a handful of scientific studies have been conducted on poisoned arrows to look for the presence of 

pathogens, and those are dated (some to the 1890s).14 For that reason, we do not 

know the extent of these practices, the likely viability of the organisms, or their 

possible effectiveness.

Ancient BW (500 BCE to 1000 AD)

Some authors assert that BW was practiced widely in the ancient world.15

Such claims should be viewed skeptically, because most of the alleged incidents 

almost certainly never occurred. Indeed, there is no reliable evidence for BW 

in the ancient world, apart from contaminated arrows such as those made by 

the Scythians.16 What is undeniable, however, is that some people did fear the 

intentional spread of disease. We are told, for example, that some Athenians 

initially but falsely thought that the Spartans poisoned their water, thus causing 
5

A Short History of Biological Warfare

the devastating 430 BCE “plague” outbreak in Athens during the Peloponnesian 

War (431–404 BCE).17

The absence of BW is surprising, given the apparent ubiquity of poisoned 

arrows among hunter-gatherer communities. The use of arrow poisons mostly disappeared in the civilizations that arose in the Mediterranean world, the TigrisEuphrates river valleys, the Indian subcontinent, China, and elsewhere. What 

seems clear is that most early civilizations developed an antipathy toward the use 

of poison in warfare. This was most explicit in ancient India, where Brahmins were 

forbidden the use of poisoned weapons. However, an Indian manual of statecraft 

from the same era, the Kautiliya Arthasastra, advised rulers on the clandestine use 

of poisons, suggesting that the prohibition may have been more theoretical than 

real.18 Some sources also claim that the Greeks of the classical world believed only 

barbarians used poisons to fight wars, but the supporting evidence is thin, and the 

topic merits more serious study.19

Unfortunately, there is no historical record to help understand why the transition from hunter-gatherer bands to ancient civilizations resulted in the abandonment of poison as a common weapon of organized violence. It may have something to do with transformed social structures or with changes in the character 

of warfare. Hunter-gatherer warfare bears little resemblance to that practiced by 

larger, settled societies. Hunter-gatherers rely on ambushes, typically finding and 

killing isolated members of other bands, or on formalistic “line battles,” ritualistic 

displays of aggression that usually resulted in few deaths.20 Whatever the cause, 

the propensity to use poison in warfare largely disappeared. 

Medieval and Early Modern BW (1000 AD to 1750 AD)

Although there are numerous allegations of BW during the medieval and early 

modern eras, the evidence supporting all but one of them is weak or nonexistent.21

The most plausible instance of BW occurred in 1346 during the Mongol siege of 

Caffa, a Genoese city located in modern Crimea. Our knowledge of this incident is 

based on one source, a Genoese chronicle written by Gabriele de’ Mussi. Although 

not an eyewitness, de’ Mussi wrote soon after the events, clearly had access to people who had been present, and is considered highly credible. He reported that the 
6 

CSWMD Occasional Paper 12

Mongols, then in control of the territory around Caffa, besieged the town in 1345 

but were forced to retreat in 1346 when their army suffered a plague outbreak. Before abandoning the siege, the Mongols catapulted “what seemed like mountains 

of dead” into Caffa, which de’ Mussi says caused an outbreak in the city. Although 

the Genoese clearly suffered heavily, they were not forced to abandon Caffa. Some 

of the survivors carried the disease with them when they left Caffa, and de’ Mussi 

attributes the further spread of the plague to the return of these people to their 

homes. This view is no longer accepted; we now know that the plague entered 

Western Europe through multiple routes. Nevertheless, his description of events 

is consistent with our modern understanding of Yersinia pestis, the organism that 

causes plague.22

The siege of Caffa is mentioned in several medieval accounts, but de’ Mussi’s 

is the only one to mention the plague outbreak. Moreover, none of our accounts 

comes from Mongol sources. Thus, even if the events occurred as described, we 

do not know for certain that the Mongols intended to spread disease. None of 

the modern accounts discuss Mongol concepts of disease causation, so we do not 

know if the Mongols believed that the bodies of dead plague victims might spread 

the plague. It also is unclear whether the Mongols would have had time to gain an 

empirical understanding of how Y. pestis spread. Although “plagues” were common 

in the ancient world, most were caused by other pathogens, and the last major 

plague outbreak tied to Y. pestis (the Plague of Justinian) occurred around 800 

years earlier. The medieval Black Death would have been something altogether 

new to the Mongols.23 Finally, fleas living on rats are the primary vectors for 

spreading the plague, not dead bodies, and they leave a corpse as the body cools 

down. Hence, unless the catapulted bodies were recently dead, it is unlikely that 

they would have been infested with fleas.24

There were few if any other examples of BW during these years, although 

some people considered using disease as a weapon. Documents in the Venetian archives suggest that they discussed the possibility when attempting (1649–1651) to 

break the Turkish siege of a town in Crete.25 Many people also feared intentional 

disease, although armies invariably lost more soldiers to disease from natural causes 

than from enemy weapons prior to the 20th century. Some Venetians believed the 
7

A Short History of Biological Warfare

Byzantines were responsible for an 1171 “plague” outbreak that erupted while 

their fleet was wintering on the island of Chios, but this seems doubtful. There was 

no explanation for how the Byzantines might have caused the outbreak.26 Perhaps 

the best-documented examples are the scapegoating that occurred during the European plague from 1348 to 1351, which was widely blamed on foreigners, Jews, 

and beggars. Scapegoating appeared again during plague outbreaks in the late 16th

and early 17th centuries. The tendency to blame disease outbreaks on intentional 

acts has varied over time.27

Late Modern BW (1750 AD to 1900 AD)

During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, several documented attempts 

were made to deliberately spread biological agents, although there were no significant advances in medicine or the biological sciences to enhance the effectiveness 

of BW. Antonie Philips van Leeuwenhoek discovered the existence of microorganisms in the 1670s, but it was not until the 1860s and 1870s that the pioneering 

research of Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch proved that microorganisms could 

cause disease in humans and animals. The first identified human pathogen was B. 

anthracis, the organism that causes anthrax, which Koch demonstrated could cause 

disease in a series of experiments he described in an 1876 article. Proof of the 

germ theory provided the scientific underpinnings for the use of biological agents 

as weapons, but it took decades for scientists to associate specific pathogens to 

specific diseases, as well as to isolate and cultivate them.28 None of the attempted 

instances of BW prior to 1900 was based on a modern scientific understanding of 

infectious disease.

The first well-documented case of BW was by the British against Native 

Americans in 1763. That year, a confederation of Native American tribes launched 

what is now called Pontiac’s Rebellion. The Indians, dissatisfied with the results 

of the French and Indian War, which ceded control of Canada to the British 

and thus led to British domination of the Great Lakes region, launched a series 

of attacks on forts and settlements along the western frontier of the northern 

tier of Britain’s American colonies. From around June 22 through August 20, the 

Delaware loosely besieged Fort Pitt, a British fortification on the site of modern 
8 

CSWMD Occasional Paper 12

Pittsburgh. On June 24, a group of Delaware parlayed with the fort’s leaders and 

tried to convince the British to abandon their post. At the end of the parlay, the 

British gave the departing Indian chiefs food and goods. Among the gifts were 

blankets and a handkerchief taken from the fort’s smallpox hospital, provided with 

the hope that they would cause a smallpox outbreak.29

This incident often is attributed to the commander of British forces in North 

America at the time, Sir Jeffery Amherst, because letters survive showing that he 

also advocated spreading smallpox among the hostile Indians. However, those letters were written in July, weeks after the contaminated material was given to the 

Delaware, and there is no evidence to suggest that Amherst’s suggestion led to any 

follow-on actions.30

Less clear are the consequences of the attack. Some recent accounts incorrectly assert that large numbers of Indians were killed due to the activities of those 

at Fort Pitt and that the outbreak broke the siege. The record does not support 

such claims. One historian argues that documentary evidence shows that only 

about 100 Indians died during this smallpox outbreak. Moreover, at least some 

historians believe that the epidemic started well before the late June encounter 

at Fort Pitt.31 Given that smallpox was circulating already among many of these 

same tribes during the French and Indian War (1756–1763), it would be surprising to discover that there were large numbers of people susceptible to the disease 

by the time of the Fort Pitt incident.32

Nor is there necessarily an association between the smallpox victims of 1763 

and what happened at Fort Pitt. There were many other contacts between Europeans and Indians during this period, and it is far more likely that the smallpox outbreak resulted from those interactions than from the transmission caused by the 

Fort Pitt material.33 Although exposure to material contaminated with smallpox 

virus can lead to infection, it is a relatively low probability route of transmission. 

Smallpox virus degrades in the environment, and over time the virus particles on 

the contaminated material would have lost infectivity and virulence.34 Hence, it 

is perhaps unsurprising that Indians identified by name as having been associated 

with the Fort Pitt incident never became sick and are known to have survived.35
9

A Short History of Biological Warfare

What is incontestable, however, is that some British soldiers deliberately tried 

to spread smallpox, that the idea of disseminating the disease was discussed at the 

highest levels of command in British North America, and that senior officers condoned the action. However, not all were convinced of the strategy. Many British 

troops and colonials were not immune, given that there was no routine smallpox 

vaccination at the time. Indeed, even some senior British officers were vulnerable 

and thus less than enthusiastic about deliberately spreading the disease.36

There are a handful of other episodes of attempted deliberate disease transmission. Although there are claims that whites routinely introduced disease into 

Native American populations during the 19th century, this was not true.37 The only 

credible allegation was made by Isaac McCoy, a prominent Baptist missionary 

who also worked for the U.S. Government as an Indian agent. He claimed to have 

obtained a firsthand account of an attempt to deliberately spread smallpox among 

the Pawnee in 1831. McCoy’s source told him that the men in charge of a trade 

caravan traveling from St. Louis to Santa Fe, angry at previous harassment by the 

Pawnee, planned to transmit smallpox to the Indians by using tobacco mixed with 

smallpox (probably from scabs) or smallpox-contaminated clothing. Allegedly, the 

attempt succeeded and caused a subsequent disease outbreak among the Pawnee, 

killing thousands. The smallpox epidemic is well documented, but no documents 

have surfaced that might confirm McCoy’s allegation.38 Even if true, it also is impossible to prove that the outbreak resulted from the contaminated material. As 

previously noted, there were many interactions between whites and Native American communities, and the disease could have been spread through other contacts.

Some historians argue that the first smallpox outbreak in Australia, which 

occurred in early 1789, just over a year after the establishment of the first British 

colony, may have been deliberate. The colony, comprising transported convicts, 

arrived in January 1788 and quickly faced numerous difficulties, including increasingly hostile relations with the nearby Aboriginal peoples. In April 1789, the British authorities discovered that a smallpox outbreak had erupted in the Aboriginal 

population. The outbreak devastated the population, and some people credited it 

with allowing the colony to survive in the face of growing Aborigine hostility. The 

origins of this outbreak mystified the British at the time, because the new colony 
10 

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was demonstrably free of smallpox, and there was no evidence of smallpox among 

the Aborigines prior to the arrival of the colonists. For that reason, it was impossible for the disease to have spread from the white settlers by natural causes.39

Several theories have been suggested to account for this mysterious outbreak, 

but two alternatives currently are favored. One theory is that the disease might 

have been introduced by Macassar fishermen from the Indonesian island of Sulawesi (once called Celebes). These fishermen regularly visited Australia’s northern 

shore to harvest sea slugs, and it is believed that they were subjected to periodic 

outbreaks of smallpox by the late 1700s. For this to have happened, smallpox 

would have had to spread from one small group of Aborigines to another, traveling the 2,000-mile distance from the northern coast to the area around the new 

colony.40

Some dissenting historians claim that the smallpox outbreak resulted from a 

deliberate introduction.41 They reject the theory that Macassar fisherman introduced the disease, arguing that it would have been difficult to sustain the chain 

of transmission such a long distance through such a sparsely inhabited area. They 

argue that the colonists had the motive and capability to use smallpox as a weapon 

against the Aborigines. At least one of the Royal Marine officers tasked to protect 

the colony had served in North America at the time of the Fort Pitt episode and 

plausibly may have known of that attack. The only known smallpox in the whole 

area was in the possession of a British physician who brought the smallpox material to inoculate the colonists should the need arise.42 This involved a technique 

called variolation to immunize people against smallpox by exposing them to material taken from smallpox victims.43 At best, this is a highly circumstantial case, 

so in the absence of new evidence, there is no way to ascertain how the smallpox 

was introduced. 

It also is possible that there were deliberate introductions of smallpox by Portuguese settlers into the indigenous population of Brazil. Claude Lévi-Strauss, the 

famed anthropologist, heard these reports and considered them credible. These 

accounts dated the practice to as far back as the 16th century and suggested that it 

continued into the 19th century.44 In contrast, there is no reason to believe allegations that the Spanish did the same.45
11

A Short History of Biological Warfare

There also were incidents of failed attempts to spread biological agents. During a 1784–1785 plague outbreak in Tunis, there was considerable tension between the local Muslims and the European Christians residing there. The Europeans isolated themselves from the rest of the city, and in reaction, some Muslims 

buried plague victims near the European enclave and tossed cloth soaked in the 

pus from plague buboes into the European sector.46 This incident is misrepresented in some sources that incorrectly claim that a besieging Muslim army catapulted 

contaminated clothing.47

Better documented is an incident during the American Civil War in which a 

Confederate physician tried to spread yellow fever in Northern cities and among 

Union troops. Although he successfully obtained clothing and bedclothes contaminated by yellow fever victims and distributed some of it in Washington, DC, 

the action produced no results. The plot probably was not authorized by the Confederate government in Richmond, but it was abetted by Confederate officials 

in Canada.48 We now know that the plan could not have worked. In the 1860s, 

many physicians believed that yellow fever could be spread through contact with 

contaminated materials, as was true for smallpox. It was not until 1900, however, 

that scientific studies demonstrated that yellow fever was spread by mosquitoes 

and could not be transmitted using contaminated material.49

Interestingly, some people claimed during and after the Civil War that the 

other side was responsible for deliberately spreading disease. Thus, on one occasion, the North repatriated some Southern prisoners of war who were sick with 

smallpox, which led some Southerners to claim that the Northerners deliberately 

sought to spread the disease. On another occasion, Southerners alleged that the 

North deliberately inoculated prisoners of war with syphilis-contaminated smallpox vaccine. Some Northerners claimed that prisoners of war in the notorious 

Andersonville Prison were similarly inoculated with contaminated vaccine. There 

is no evidence to support any of these allegations.50

Summation

Although fears of intentional disease existed before 1900, and some people 

thought about spreading disease, such intentions were rarely acted upon. It is also 
12 

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evident that such actions usually had little effect. The most catastrophic uses of 

biological agents would have targeted indigenous populations, such as the alleged 

deliberate introduction of smallpox in Australia. 

The Origins of Modern BW (1900–1945)

The first decades of the 20th century saw the creation of several BW programs, 

mostly small and unsophisticated. The Germans organized the first documented 

state program at the start of World War I (probably in late 1914 or early 1915). 

They also were the first to employ biological weapons and the first to embark on 

a BW campaign, attempting to use biological agents in multiple countries over 

the course of several years. During the period between the two world wars, it 

appears that France, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Poland, and the Soviet Union all had 

BW programs, although they varied substantially in scope. The Japanese program 

was by far the largest, possibly with more people and resources than all the others 

combined.

Views of BW varied considerably. During World War I, the Germans undertook what have been called biological sabotage operations, deliberately targeting 

animals and not people. Others thought that BW could be employed to create tactical effects on the battlefield or even mass casualties to achieve a strategic impact. 

Many people were skeptical of the utility of BW and considered its use unsavory 

or immoral, resulting in resistance to its employment.

Biological weapons were used during World War II, primarily by the Japanese. Their operations mostly were large-scale biological sabotage, although they 

did make some attacks involving aircraft release of fleas infected with the plaguecausing organism. Resistance groups in Eastern Europe also employed biological agents against the occupying Germans, also relying on crude dissemination 

means. This experience demonstrated the limitations of BW at that time.

World War I (1915–1918)

The origins of the German BW program are obscure. By 1915, however, the 

Germans began producing several animal pathogens, particularly B. anthracis and 

Pseudomonas mallei (the agent that causes glanders).51 Most armies at the time 
13

A Short History of Biological Warfare

depended on horses and mules to move supplies, and so the German BW efforts 

focused primarily on such animals. The Germans operated globally and are known 

to have attempted to spread disease in Argentina, Finland (then a part of Russia), 

France, and the United States, and possibly other countries as well.52 For example, 

stocks of Germany’s biological agents were discovered in Romania, but it is not 

known if they were used there.53 There is some evidence that the French also 

mounted biological sabotage operations in 1916.54

A great deal is known about German BW operations in the United States. 

These activities, which occurred while the United States was still a neutral country, 

were part of a larger sabotage effort. The Germans targeted the munitions that 

U.S. industry was manufacturing for the Allies, including attacks on factories, 

storage facilities, and ships. These attacks, which caused considerable loss of life, 

were controlled by the staff of the German embassy in Washington, DC.55 The 

Germans’ biological sabotage campaign initially relied on pathogens shipped to 

the United States through covert channels, but it proved difficult to ensure that 

their agents received viable organisms in this way. Accordingly, they established a 

small laboratory in the basement of a Silver Spring, Maryland, house to grow their 

biological agents. The Germans organized a network of operatives in several port 

cities to disseminate the pathogens.56

The effectiveness of these attacks is uncertain. The most careful review of the 

evidence suggests that they caused only minor results.57 The virulence of the cultures used in these attacks is unknown. Not much is known about how the attacks 

were conducted, but reliance on unskilled dockworkers raises questions about the 

frequency of the attacks and whether they were carried out in ways likely to result 

in disease.

Mark Wheelis, who conducted the most careful study of the German BW 

program, argues that it was significant in several respects. It was the first organized state BW program; it was the first BW program that relied on a scientific 

understanding of disease, based on the microbiological discoveries of the previous 

decades; it was one of only two BW campaigns mounted in wartime (the other 

was Japan’s during World War II); and it was the only substantial BW campaign 

undertaken by clandestine state agents.58
14 

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BW Arms Control: The 1925 Geneva Protocol

Some legal experts have argued that BW was prohibited under customary 

international law prior to 1925, while others have contended that it was banned by 

the prohibition against the use of poisons in the 1907 Hague Convention. However, the 1925 Geneva Protocol was the first explicit ban on the use of biological agents as weapons of war.59 The extensive employment of chemical weapons 

(CW) during World War I led to efforts—both by military leaders who opposed 

them for practical reasons and by others who had moral objections— to prevent their future use. While the focus of the agreement negotiated, the Geneva 

Protocol, was on chemical weapons, it also prohibited “the use of bacteriological 

methods of warfare.” This proscription, which was introduced at the request of the 

Polish government, subsequently was taken to cover the employment of any microorganisms, not just bacteria (viruses had not yet been discovered at the time).60

It appears that the Poles requested the inclusion of bacteriological agents due to 

their concerns that the Soviet Union had initiated a BW program.61

The scope of the protocol was limited. It only applied to conflicts between 

countries adhering to the agreement, meaning it posed no binding constraints 

on employment in internal conflicts or for use against countries that were not 

signatories. Nor did it prohibit possession of biological weapons. Many nations 

added reservations to their adherence asserting a continued right to retaliate in 

kind should they be attacked by chemical or biological agents, which transformed 

the protocol into a “no first use” agreement. Most of the major powers ratified 

the Geneva Protocol, including France, Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union, 

but China did not do so until 1952, Japan until 1970, and the United States until 

1971.62

These legal prohibitions failed to prevent further use of chemical and biological weapons. The Italians, who were a party to the protocol, extensively employed 

chemical agents during their 1935 invasion of Ethiopia, arguing that atrocities 

(unrelated to CW use) committed by their enemies justified retaliatory CW employment. The Italians were not sanctioned by the international community. The 

Japanese, who did not yet adhere to the protocol, extensively employed chemical 

and biological agents in China during World War II. Other countries did not 
15

A Short History of Biological Warfare

use chemical or biological weapons, probably because their military and political 

leaders were skeptical about the utility of such weapons or because they feared enemy retaliation. In those cases, legal restrictions accentuated other tendencies that 

militated against the employment of chemical and biological weapons.63

Japanese BW (1939–1945)

The Japanese BW program is significant for several reasons. First, the Japanese used their agents in China in the most extensively known employment of biological weapons, probably killing tens of thousands of Chinese, mostly civilians. 

Second, the Japanese program was one of the largest ever organized, exceeded in 

size only by the Cold War programs of the Soviet Union and possibly the United 

States.

The origins of the Japanese program date to 1925, during the negotiation of 

the Geneva Protocol. At that time, Ishii Shiro, an Imperial Japanese army physician, became convinced that Japan needed to develop biological weapons, believing that BW must be an effective form of warfare if the Western powers wanted 

to ban it. It was not until 1932, however, that the first biological weapons research 

facility was established at the army’s medical school in Tokyo. Another facility, 

apparently intended for human experimentation, was created the next year in Japanese-occupied Manchuria. The program was further expanded in 1936 with the 

organization of Unit 731 (known as the Kwantung Army Epidemic Prevention 

Division), along with the Kwantung Army Military Horse Epidemic Prevention 

Workshop, later known as Unit 100.64

The program was quite primitive in many ways (“amateurish” in the view 

of one BW expert).65 The Japanese developed methods for disseminating fleas 

infected with Y. pestis, the organism responsible for plague, from aircraft, as well 

as bombs that could be filled with agent slurries that would explode and generate 

infectious droplets. Although they experimented with an aircraft sprayer to spread 

biological aerosols, they abandoned the effort after only a few tests. They also appear to have dropped contaminated food from planes and used soldiers to pour 

pathogen slurries into water supplies.66
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The Japanese program is most notorious for its research activities, which included extensive human experimentation. People were exposed to different biological agents, and the course of their disease was studied. In some cases, the 

victims were dissected while still alive. It is known that thousands of people died 

in those experiments, possibly as many as 10,000.67

The Japanese employed their BW capabilities against the Soviets and Chinese on multiple occasions, although there is some uncertainty about the scope 

of their activities. A Chinese researcher has identified about 161 such operations 

during the late 1930s and 1940s, but that estimate may be too high. In any case, 

it includes many small-scale attacks in addition to a few large campaigns that 

involved extensive dissemination of biological agents. A Western historian identified seven operations from 1939 to 1942, but that list included only the most 

significant attacks.68 What seems clear is that the major attacks ended in 1942.

The Japanese tried to use biological agents during the so-called Nomonhan 

(Kahalkin-Gol) Incident, a border war fought with the Soviet Union from May to 

September 1939. The Japanese made several attempts to spread biological agents 

but did so in a crude fashion unlikely to cause casualties. According to accounts 

given many years later by soldiers who participated in the operation, the Japanese poured Salmonella typhi, the organism responsible for typhoid, into a river 

upstream of Soviet forces. There is no evidence that any Soviet personnel were 

infected (the organisms probably did not survive once in the water), but at least 

some of the Japanese soldiers involved in the operation became sick and died.69

Japanese dissemination methods could cause epidemics, but effective medical 

and public health response could limit the danger. Some of the earliest attacks 

against the Chinese occurred in Zhejiang Province. On October 27, 1940, Japanese aircraft dropped packages of rice and wheat containing fleas infected with 

Y. pestis on the Chinese port city of Ningbo. The first victim died on October 30. 

Local officials only recognized the presence of plague on November 4, although 

laboratory confirmation took until November 8. A coordinated local response was 

undertaken, which included measures to treat victims and other measures to limit 

further spread. Those who might have been exposed were isolated, contacts of 

patients were tracked, the area where the attack occurred was quarantined, steps 
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A Short History of Biological Warfare

were taken to bury the dead safely, and a rat eradication campaign was organized 

to prevent further spread and to ensure the disease did not become endemic. These 

measures were supported by an effective public communications campaign. The 

outbreak was brought under control by December 1 at the cost of 106 lives.70

In contrast, an attack on October 4 on the river town of Quzhou using the 

same techniques resulted in more deaths. The outbreak emerged far more slowly 

than the one in Ningbo. The first known case was identified 38 days after the attack. Even after 8 weeks, there were only 22 known cases (21 of the victims died). 

The outbreak extended into 1941, killing another 275 people. Effective public 

health responses probably could have reduced the number of deaths to a handful. 

The problem was an uncoordinated and slow response, poor leadership by government officials and local elites, and inept laboratories and public health organizations.71

Unfortunately, refugees took the plague with them to surrounding rural areas 

and spread the disease. More than 600 died in Yin County, which surrounded 

Ningbo. In the counties around Quzhou, it appears that another 2,000 died.72

Thus, approximately 3,000 people were killed during the outbreak. Most of these 

deaths could have been prevented through effective public health interventions.

The largest Japanese employment of biological weapons occurred during 

the Zhe-Gan (Zhejiang-Jiangxi) campaign. This operation was a response to the 

April 18, 1942, Doolittle Raid, which was the first U.S. air attack on the Japanese 

homeland. The B-25 bombers used in the Doolittle Raid flew to Zhejiang Province, the only coastal area still under Chinese control. The raid alarmed the Japanese military because its leaders feared that the United States would use newly 

improved airfields in Zhejiang to mount additional air attacks on the Japanese 

islands. Accordingly, the Japanese organized a massive incursion into Zhejiang 

intended to destroy infrastructure that could be used to support bombing raids.73

The Zhe-Gan campaign (May to September 1942) was one of the largest offensives mounted by the Japanese against the Chinese in the last 4 years of the war. 

The Japanese assigned 8 divisions and 3 separate brigades to the attack, a significant portion of the 22 divisions belonging to its China Expeditionary Army. The 
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175,000 Japanese troops confronted about 260,000 poorly equipped and trained 

Chinese troops and easily overwhelmed them.74

Spreading biological agents was an integral part of the Zhe-Gan campaign. 

In May 1942, the Japanese spread Y. pestis and other pathogens by aircraft, focusing on the Zhenjiang-Jiangxi Railway. As the Japanese began their withdrawal in 

August 1942 from the areas they had occupied, they contaminated water supplies 

with the organisms responsible for causing cholera, typhoid, and paratyphoid. 

They also spread B. anthracis in rice fields, released fleas infected with Y. pestis, and 

gave the Chinese cakes contaminated with unspecified pathogens. These activities 

were conducted under the direct control of Ishii.75 At the end of the operation, the 

Japanese reportedly infected 3,000 Chinese prisoners of war by giving them food 

contaminated with the organisms responsible for typhoid and paratyphoid. The 

prisoners were then freed to spread the disease further.76

The Japanese claimed that they lost only 1,000 dead and another 10,000 

wounded or sick from all causes while in turn causing 30,000 Chinese military 

losses.77 In addition, the Japanese killed large numbers of civilians, especially in 

communities that had assisted the U.S. Airmen involved in the Doolittle Raid. A 

senior U.S. military officer estimated that as many as 250,000 Chinese died as a 

result of the Japanese campaign.78

Spreading biological agents caused many people to become ill. A Chinese 

account claims that the BW attacks caused 1 million people to become sick, killing a “few” tens of thousands.79 It is impossible to verify this estimate; the actual 

numbers might have been far lower. The Japanese also managed to infect many of 

their own troops during the operation, causing 10,000 to become sick and killing 

1,700, according to one account.80

What were the Japanese trying to accomplish? The leaders of the BW program apparently viewed the operations as field experiments, as a test of the potential effectiveness of biological weapons. Martin Furmanski, a U.S. expert who 

has studied the action, suggests that the actions also may have been intended to 

support the campaign’s broader strategic objectives by spreading biological agents 

to prevent the Chinese from establishing airbases for U.S. strategic bombers. For 
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A Short History of Biological Warfare

that reason, this may have been the most significant BW campaign ever conducted because it was undertaken to achieve strategic and operational objectives.81

Some accounts suggest that Japan’s military leaders were unhappy with the 

number of their own soldiers who became infected during the operation.82 For 

this reason, it appears that they refused to authorize additional large-scale biological weapons employment, and there were no more major BW attacks.

The Japanese continued to conduct smaller BW operations through the end 

of the war. Although most of the attacks were aimed at China, the Japanese also 

tried to cause disease outbreaks in the Soviet Union. They sent infected individuals 

across the border, hoping that they would infect others. In addition, the Japanese 

released balloons carrying flasks filled with biological agents, spreading the agent 

in the area around the point of dissemination.83 It does not appear that these attempts had any result.

Some Chinese sources claim that the Japanese attacks killed hundreds of 

thousands of people. One study puts the number at 740,000.84 A Western expert 

who has studied the Japanese attacks in some detail, however, concluded, “The 

Japanese BW program caused a few tens of thousands of deaths overall, almost 

all Chinese civilians (if you don’t count whatever ‘blowback’ casualties occurred 

among Japanese troops).”85 At least some of the casualties probably resulted from 

epidemics that continued after the initial dissemination. In addition to person-toperson transmission, biological weapon attacks can create new enzootic reservoirs 

and thus cause outbreaks long after the initial dissemination.86 Clearly, the victims 

of such epidemics are as much BW casualties as those infected in the initial attack. Whichever figure is correct, Japan’s BW attacks in China were history’s most 

lethal uses of biological weapons. 

The Soviet Union held a war crimes trial for Japanese soldiers associated with 

their BW program. The United States refused to assist in the effort, choosing 

to view it as a politically motivated propaganda stunt. The United States never 

prosecuted anyone for their involvement in Japan’s BW program, having offered 

amnesty in return for information about what the Japanese accomplished. It is 

generally agreed that the Japanese information was incomplete and proved to have 

little value.87
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Other State BW Programs

Several other countries had BW programs during the first half of the 20th

century. Some were small or poorly organized, while others were large and well-organized. In no case, however, is there evidence of biological weapons employment.

Canada. In 1937, Sir Frederick Banting, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 

1923 for the co-discovery of insulin, began agitating for Canada to organize a BW 

program. Although his efforts met with considerable opposition, both in Canada 

and the United Kingdom, exploratory research was under way by mid-1940. During the war, the Canadians investigated several biological warfare agents, including the pathogens responsible for anthrax, brucellosis, and tularemia, and they 

produced small quantities of B. anthracis for munitions testing. Canadian facilities tested several biological weapons, including the British Mark I, a 4-pound 

bomblet filled with the agents causing brucellosis and tularemia. Botulinum toxin 

also was a part of the program; the Canadians tested a cluster munition that dispensed darts coated with the poison. The Canadian effort should be seen not as 

an independent activity but rather as a component of the larger British and U.S. 

programs. The Canadians developed no operational BW capability.88

France. The French had a small BW program during the period between the 

two world wars. They benefited from the contributions of André Trillat. One of 

the world’s leading experts on dissemination of disease through the air, he published seminal articles on the topic in 1918 and 1920. The program was active 

from 1921 to 1927 and then went dormant, but efforts resumed in 1935. Trillat 

remained a part of the program until Germany’s occupation of France in 1940 

caused its termination.89 The French program drew on the expertise of the Pasteur 

Institute, giving it access to some of the world’s leading biological scientists.90

The French effort had both defensive and offensive elements. On the one 

hand, the French were trying to understand the potential threat better. They began 

researching dissemination technologies and techniques, even to the extent of releasing microorganisms in the Paris subway to determine the degree to which they 

would disperse. They studied botulinum toxin and determined that it could survive 

the destructive forces of an exploding artillery shell. Similarly, they researched 
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A Short History of Biological Warfare

dissemination of animal diseases. They also tried to implement some defensive 

measures, including the production of anti-anthrax sera.91

In the months before the start of World War II, the French explored several different types of biological weapons, including an aircraft bomb, an artillery 

shell, and a hand grenade. The French tested some of these devices in early 1940, 

reportedly with positive results. Interestingly, it appears that the devices disseminated “bovine plague virus,” probably a reference to “cattle plague” or rinderpest.92

Rinderpest is an animal disease and does not affect people, so the objective must 

have been to attack horses used by military units (most German army units relied 

on horses for transport). 

The French program ended with their military defeat in 1940. The French 

destroyed most of their records and hid others.93 The Germans discovered some 

of their work, which affected German thinking about both BW and biodefense.94

Hungary. The Hungarians organized a small BW program. Although authorized in 1936, it was not until August 1938 that it became active. Known as the 

Health Control Station of the Hungarian Royal Defense Forces, the institution 

was based in a converted artillery warehouse in Budapest. The program reportedly 

employed only six technicians but supposedly made considerable progress before 

the facility was destroyed during a bombing raid in April 1944. The Hungarians 

researched Bacillus anthracis, Clostridium perfringens, Salmonella paratyphi, and 

Shigella dysenteriae. They also explored various dissemination techniques, including glass bombs capable of carrying 1 to 50 kilograms of a biological agent (either 

wet or dry). The Hungarians thought that these weapons were highly effective, but 

that claim is questionable. Their munitions probably could not generate effective 

aerosols.95

Italy. The Italians initiated a small BW program in 1934.96 The program reportedly was based in a military hospital in Rome. Mussolini reportedly suggested 

in February 1936 that Italy employ biological weapons against hostile forces during 

the invasion of Abyssinia. At least one of his senior commanders opposed the proposal, fearing that such attacks would undermine support from Ethiopians sympathetic toward the Italians and that any possible operational benefits would not 

outweigh the negative international repercussions.97 The Germans never discovered 
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the existence of this program.98 It seems likely that the program went moribund 

in 1940 when its director and chief advocate was given a battlefield assignment.99

Poland. The available evidence suggests that the Polish BW program was 

motivated by concerns that the Soviet Union had initiated work on biological 

weapons. The Polish program, underway by 1928, was under the authority of the 

intelligence services and operated from a dedicated military laboratory. Although 

its personnel drew on the expertise of other Polish scientists, it worked under 

intense secrecy, and the Poles probably did not interact with other BW programs. 

Polish BW scientists debated how to use their emerging capabilities best. One of 

its senior scientific managers told U.S. interrogators that the program’s primary 

military objective was the development of a capacity for conducting biological 

sabotage operations against a military force occupying Polish territory. Efforts 

were accelerated in the years immediately before the war. By 1938, 67 people were 

working in their research institute. Some of the key BW scientists fled Poland 

ahead of the invading Germans in September 1939 after destroying their military 

laboratory.100 As discussed below, the Polish resistance army conducted extensive 

biological sabotage operations against the Germans, probably drawing on skills 

developed by their prewar BW program.

The Soviet Union. The Soviet Union opened its first laboratory for conducting BW-related research in 1925, although research may have started earlier. This 

small facility did research on B. anthracis and C. botulinum to determine if it were 

possible to wage biological warfare with them. The results of those early experiments led the Soviet government to commit to the establishment of an organized 

offensive BW program by 1928.101

During the next decade, the Soviets created a substantial infrastructure to 

support its BW program. They used existing organizations, which included 35 

institutes controlled by the Ministry of Health, and created several dedicated BW 

research centers, initially concentrated around Leningrad and Moscow. In addition, testing facilities were established, which were used to conduct open-air testing of biological agents. The most important was on Vozrozhdenia Island in the 

Aral Sea. The program benefited from the already formidable talent of Russian 

biological scientists.102
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A Short History of Biological Warfare

Although the Soviet Union had an extensive BW program by the late 1930s, 

reportedly comparable in size to the one organized by the Japanese, it was disrupted by the purges of the late 1930s. A considerable number of BW scientists 

and administrators were accused of sabotage and espionage. Some were executed, 

while others were sent to prison camps for periods of time. This appears to have 

significantly hindered Soviet BW activities at that time.103

The Soviets researched numerous pathogens for use as BW agents, including B. anthracis, C. botulinum, Francisella tularensis, and Y. pestis. It appears that 

the elements of the program specifically targeted animals, which were a military 

target at the time given the dependence of most armies on horses for movement 

of supplies and transport of artillery. Foot and mouth disease virus was researched, 

as well as several zoonotic agents, such as the organism that causes glanders. The 

Soviets tested some weapons during this period, but it is unclear if any reached 

operational status. The potential effectiveness of the munitions is unknown. Information on Soviet preparedness to employ BW is scanty, but it is unlikely that the 

Soviets used biological agents except in sabotage operations.104

The Soviet military is not known to have used any BW agents during this 

period, despite claims that a 1942 outbreak of F. tularensis among German troops 

during the Battle of Stalingrad resulted from a deliberate release.105 Also unconfirmed is an allegation that the Soviets caused a 1943 outbreak of Q fever (caused 

by Coxiella burnetti) in Crimea.106

Possible links between the Soviet BW program and partisan use of biological agents in German-occupied areas of the former Soviet Union require further 

investigation.107 Recently discovered documents confirm that some Soviet intelligence operatives deliberately spread a biological agent. Reportedly, a sabotage team 

operating in German-occupied Slavuta (a town in Ukraine) infected Germans 

(including civilians, government officials, and soldiers) with Rickettsia prowazekii, 

the organism that causes typhus fever. They did this by spreading infected lice. 

Although some of the infected lice were obtained locally from typhus victims, the 

origin of the initial batches used by the team is unknown. Unconfirmed claims 

found in Soviet intelligence files indicate that more than 120 Germans were killed 

in these operations.108
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The United Kingdom. The British initiated an offensive BW program in 1940. 

Prior to the war, press reports suggesting that the Germans had an offensive BW 

program attracted high-level official attention.109 This led to some defensive efforts. It was only after the war started, however, that serious investments were 

made in offensive weapons. This was a relatively modest program, guided by a 

research laboratory with about 45 personnel.110 It was, however, staffed with talented scientists, and its director, Paul Gordon Fildes, was one of the world’s most 

respected microbiologists.111 The program focused primarily on research designed 

to understand the character of aerosol transmission of pathogens. 

The British program explored several biological weapons options but developed only a few. The focus was the Mark I, a modification of the Type F cluster 

munition originally intended for use with high explosives and chemical agents. 

Field tests demonstrated that it could disseminate B. anthracis from a liquid slurry, 

although it was highly inefficient in generating aerosols. The British were unable 

to produce the bulk agent required to fill these munitions and intended to rely on 

the United States to do so. The planned U.S. facility was not completed before 

the war ended, and the munitions were never fielded. The British did produce 

large quantities of cattle cakes impregnated with anthrax for bomber delivery. The 

intended targets were German cattle herds.112 Designed for retaliatory attacks 

should the Germans resort to BW, the effectiveness of such a weapon is unclear; 

its strategic utility was dubious.

The United States. The United States initiated a BW program in 1942, after the attack on Pearl Harbor brought the Nation into World War II, although 

serious work did not begin until the spring of 1943. By that time, it was known 

that the Japanese were using biological agents in China, although it is unclear 

whether defense planners in Washington fully understood this. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, fearing that the Germans or Japanese might employ biological 

weapons against the United States, considered the BW program as a deterrent. 

The U.S. Army organized a substantial effort, ultimately spending roughly $60 

million (about $800 million in 2016 dollars) and employing approximately 4,000 

personnel.113 This was far larger than the British program. By comparison, the 
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A Short History of Biological Warfare

United States spent about $1.9 billion (over $25 billion in 2016 dollars) on the 

Manhattan Project to produce the atomic bomb.114

The research efforts were highly successful, demonstrating that it was possible 

to transmit certain pathogens through the air in aerosol clouds. At least 18 different biological agents were studied, including some intended for use against crops 

and animals. The primary focus was on B. anthracis and botulinum toxin as antipersonnel agents.115 The program made much less progress in the development of 

biological weapons and in the mass production of biological agents. A few munitions were tested and adopted for service, although they were marginally effective 

at best. Given the perceived need to have a deterrent capability, the U.S. military 

was willing to accept weapons with known flaws. For this purpose, a modified version of the British Mark I cluster munition was adopted. The United States made 

little progress in the large-scale production of biological agents. Construction was 

started on a large-scale biological agent production facility intended to provide 

B. anthracis, but it was not completed before the end of the war. Technical challenges were never overcome, and the military abandoned the facility, which never 

produced any BW agent.116

The United States ended the war with no employable BW capability but had 

a research effort, undertaken in close collaboration with the British and Canadians, that transformed BW science and laid the foundation for future U.S. efforts 

during the Cold War. In particular, the United States learned enough about the 

transmission of disease through the air to reshape the understanding of infectious 

disease transmission in natural settings and to create conceptions of aerosol transmission for biological warfare.117

Nonstate Use (1900–1945)

The early 20th century saw efforts by criminals and terrorists to exploit pathogens for use as weapons. Some attempts to use biological agents are well documented, others less so. Documented incidents occurred in countries around the 

world, including in France, Germany, India, Japan, and the United States.

In France, Henri Girard used S. typhi to commit insurance fraud on several 

occasions starting in 1910. He would open an insurance policy in the name of 
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a victim, making either himself or a confederate the beneficiary. He killed one 

person using the pathogen but failed in several other attempts. He was caught but 

died before he was tried.118

In January 1914, a German court sentenced Karl Hopf to death for the murder of his first wife and the attempted murder of other family members, including his third wife. While most of his victims were given arsenic, he reportedly 

laced food given to his third wife with the organisms responsible for cholera and 

typhoid. It was the first case tried in Germany involving the use of pathogens to 

attempt murder.119

In 1916, a resident of New York, Arthur Warren Waite, tried to kill his inlaws by infecting them with several pathogens, but with no success. He ultimately 

murdered his father-in-law using arsenic.120 In 1935, Benoyendra Chandra Pandey and Dr. Taranath Bhatacharya conspired to kill 20-year-old Amarendra Pandey, Benoyendra’s half-brother, by infecting him with a lethal dose of Y. pestis.

121

Some resistance groups, primarily in Eastern Europe, employed biological 

agents against the Germans during World War II. There are numerous reports of 

such activity, but no comprehensive historical review has been made. The Germans 

reported 25 such incidents in 1943, mostly associated with the Polish and Soviet 

resistance.122 One incident investigated by the Germans involved the contamination of coffee with Salmonella typhi by a Czech saboteur. The investigation identified 60 examples of contamination.123 In contrast, the Germans concluded that a 

typhoid outbreak in France resulted from natural causes.124 Polish resistance forces 

made extensive use of chemical and biological agents after the Germans occupied 

their country in 1939. Prior to the war, the Polish intelligence service devised a 

program to attack enemy personnel with poisons and infectious diseases in the 

event that their country was occupied. According to Polish records, they executed 

thousands of such attacks, mainly targeting individuals, but most involved poisons 

and not pathogens. Although these attacks are known to have killed or harmed 

some Germans, the claimed results usually cannot be confirmed. The Germans 

may not have realized that some disease outbreaks resulted from deliberate attacks, 

but it is also evident that the Poles had no way to assess the effectiveness of their 
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A Short History of Biological Warfare

activities. Apparently, the Poles found it hard to culture the biological agents and 

keep them viable until used.125

Claude Lévi-Strauss, the eminent anthropologist, reported that indigenous 

peoples in Brazil were exposed to smallpox virus by landowners from 1918 to 

1935, apparently to facilitate expropriation of land for farming. These landowners spread the disease by taking clothing from smallpox victims and leaving it on 

trails frequented by the natives. Unfortunately, there is no other corroboration of 

this allegation.126

Summation

The first half of the 20th century saw the emergence of crude efforts to exploit 

the biological sciences to create weapons of war. The initial steps were hesitant. 

During World War I, the Germans focused their efforts on animals and rejected 

plans to use disease against people. In contrast, the Japanese were quite willing to 

use disease against people, mostly against noncombatants. However, the amount 

of effort Japan devoted to BW was not matched by its results. Ultimately, inadequate scientific and engineering foundations limited the effectiveness of the 

Japanese program. Although many countries organized BW programs during this 

period, it was the Western allies—the United States, the United Kingdom, and 

Canada—that undertook the research suggesting that it would be possible to employ BW in ways that could rival the atomic bomb in lethality.

The Cold War and Beyond (1945–Present)

The period since 1945 has been characterized by several key trends. First, 

massive investments by the superpowers (the Soviet Union and the United States) 

in BW science and technology converted a technique useful mostly for sabotage 

operations into one capable of inflicting mass casualties potentially equaling the 

lethality of thermonuclear weapons.127 This resulted largely from the development of methods for the effective and efficient aerosol dissemination of biological agents.128 Both the United States and the Soviet Union had programs that 

exploited these advances. Second, while other countries also had BW programs, 

most appear to have been small, and none approached the capabilities of the two 
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superpowers. Indeed, many seem to have had capabilities little more complex than 

those developed prior to World War II. Third, biological arms control and disarmament became a serious topic of discussion in the international community, 

resulting in the BWC prohibiting the possession of biological weapons. 

Most remarkably, despite the growing lethality of biological weapons and the 

investments in BW by many countries, there was no significant resort to BW. Instead, biological agent use was confined primarily to terrorists and criminals. The 

few cases of state use were limited to relatively simple, small-scale attacks. 

State BW Programs

It is difficult to definitively determine the extent of biological weapons proliferation during the Cold War era. Although several dozen countries have been 

accused of having a BW program since 1945, the supporting evidence is weak or 

even nonexistent in many cases. Some countries appear to have considered the 

acquisition of biological weapons but never organized an effective research and 

development program. In other cases, research and development programs never 

produced results, either because of poor quality research or the low priority assigned the effort.129

Open-source information, admittedly of uneven reliability, suggests that 

fewer than 20 countries had or attempted to organize programs to develop BW 

capabilities (including weapons utilizing pathogens, toxins, or both) at any time 

between 1945 and 2015. The number active in any given year was small, probably 

no more than five to eight.130

These programs differed radically in size and sophistication. The largest (organized by the Soviet Union) may have employed 60,000 scientists, engineers, 

technicians, and other personnel. The smallest (Rhodesia) had no more than six 

technically trained people (although not all may have worked on biological as 

opposed to chemical agents). Some programs relied on crude dissemination techniques, such as contamination of food and water (Israel in 1948, Rhodesia in the 

1970s, South Africa in the 1980s). Only the United States and the Soviet Union 

are known to have developed operational capabilities to disseminate biological 

agents over large areas using sophisticated aircraft and missile delivery systems.131
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A Short History of Biological Warfare

Some of these programs were initiated before or during World War II 

(Canada, France, the former Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States). Several programs were terminated before the final negotiation of the 

BWC (Canada, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States). In some 

countries, biological weapons competed poorly with nuclear weapons. Nuclear 

weapons were given priority, and resources devoted to BW development were 

transferred to nuclear weapons programs deemed strategically far more important 

(France and the United Kingdom). With a few exceptions, these programs operated independently with no intentional transfers of technology from one BW 

program to another. The sole known exception was the close collaboration starting 

in the 1940s between the United States and the United Kingdom, supported by 

the much smaller Canadian effort.132 The United States remains concerned that 

Russia never dismantled all the components of the former Soviet BW program. 

Canada. The Canadian BW program, tied closely to the efforts of the United 

States and the United Kingdom, was centered on a small but high-quality research 

establishment. Canada abandoned its own offensive program in 1958 but continued to support U.S. activities through the 1960s.133

China. Little is known about the Chinese BW program. The United States 

believed that it started in the 1950s and was still active after the Chinese acceded 

to the BWC in 1984.134 Practically nothing else is known.135

Egypt. In early 1972, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat stated, “Briefly, we 

have the instruments of biological warfare in the refrigerator and we will not use 

them unless they [the Israelis] begin to use them.” This assertion was repeated 

by another Egyptian official a few months later.136 Other reports suggest that 

the Egyptians initiated their program in the 1960s. In the late 1990s, the U.S. 

Government thought that the Egyptians retained a capability to employ BW but 

has not repeated that claim since then. In 2015, the U.S. State Department once 

again mentioned Egypt in its annual arms control compliance report but stated 

that “available information did not indicate that Egypt was engaged in activities 

prohibited to States Parties of the BWC.”137 Egypt is a signatory to the BWC but 

has never ratified it and thus has “an obligation under international law to refrain 

from acts that would defeat the object and purpose of the treaty.”138
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France. The resumption of BW research, building on the work of the prewar 

program, was authorized by the French in early 1947. This effort continued until 1956 when funding diminished as the priority shifted to the development of 

nuclear weapons. Although technically sophisticated, the BW program remained 

a research activity and did not build facilities for large-scale production of BW 

agents or conduct open-air testing. The program was smaller and less advanced 

than the British or U.S. programs.139

Iran. Although the United States and others have asserted that Iran initiated 

a BW program in the 1980s, possibly in response to Iraqi activities during their 

1981–1988 war, almost nothing is known about it.140 Much of the open-source 

reporting refers to dual-use items not necessarily associated with BW activities.141

There is insufficient information to assess the likely size or sophistication of the 

Iranian BW program.

Iraq. Despite many gaps in the available information, much is known about 

Iraq’s efforts to develop BW capabilities due primarily to the efforts of United Nations (UN) inspectors after the 1991 Gulf War and the investigations of the U.S. 

Government after 2003.142

A small program was initiated in 1974 but was disbanded in 1979 due to lack 

of progress. Its staff was dispersed, including some assigned to an intelligence activity. In the following years, the Iraqis continued to develop dual-use capabilities 

needed for a BW program but undertook little substantive work. In 1983, Saddam 

Hussein decided to restart the BW program. Over the next 3 years, a bureaucratic 

structure was put into place, and the new program was given the budget, personnel, and leadership to create biological weapons capabilities. In 1986, a 5-year 

plan for weapons development was adopted. One senior Iraqi military official told 

UN inspectors in 1998 that Iraq’s leaders organized their BW program to provide 

a strategic weapons capability until they had nuclear weapons.143 According to 

a UN assessment, the program had about 100 dedicated staff, including 25 key 

technical personnel.144

The program researched many biological agents, focusing especially on B. 

anthracis and Clostridium perfringens, a pathogen typically associated with food 

poisoning but also responsible for wound gangrene. At various times, their pro-
31

A Short History of Biological Warfare

gram investigated viral agents, including three apparently intended for use as incapacitants: camelpox virus, Enterovirus 70, and rotavirus. An anti-plant agent, 

wheat cover smut, also was researched. The greatest attention, however, was given 

to toxin agents, including aflatoxin, botulinum toxin, and ricin.145

Iraq attempted to develop a number of biological munitions, including artillery rockets, aircraft bombs, and missile warheads, typically chemical munitions 

modified to carry biological agents. The Iraqis also worked on aerial sprayers, including modification of existing drop tanks for use with their French-made Mirage F1 fighters and a helicopter system using an adapted agricultural sprayer. 

None of these sprayer systems was operational at the time of the Gulf War.146

By early 1991, when the Gulf War started, the Iraqis had a small arsenal of 

biological weapons. They had produced and weaponized B. anthracis, aflatoxin, 

and botulinum toxin.147 The Iraqis intended to fill 200 R-400A aircraft bombs 

and 25 Al Hussein missile warheads with these agents. Ultimately, lack of agent 

allowed them to field only some of these munitions. According to the Iraqis, they 

had filled 157 of the aircraft bombs (100 with B. anthracis, 50 with botulinum toxin, and 7 with aflatoxin) and 25 Al Hussein warheads (16 with botulinum toxin, 5 

with B. anthracis, and 4 with aflatoxin), but both UN and U.S. investigators were 

unable to confirm these numbers. The missile warheads were never tested. They 

were fitted with fuses that detonated on impact, meaning that the agent would be 

disseminated when the warhead hit the ground.148

Iraq never employed its biological munitions; their effectiveness was dubious. At least some senior Iraqi military officers were skeptical of their weapons’ 

military effectiveness, hoping instead that the psychological effect of a biological 

attack would have a strategic impact:

The Iraqis were well aware of the shortcomings of the Al Husayn 

missile and the R-400. Lt. Gen. Hazim, commander of the surfaceto-surface missile forces, openly admitted that the Al Husayn, with a 

BW agent filled warhead, would fulfill its purpose if after impact in 

an enemy country sufficient material survived to enable its detection 

as a BW agent. It was a weapon of terror.149
32 

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It is unlikely that they could have caused mass casualties and may have been no 

more dangerous than conventional munitions.

After Iraq’s defeat in the 1991 Gulf War, the UN Security Council required 

it to accede to the BWC and account for its past BW activity. Iraq destroyed most 

of its BW agent and associated munitions in the months after the war but attempted to keep the program a secret. Until 1995, the Iraqis apparently hoped to 

revive their previous activity and tried to prevent UN inspectors from identifying 

BW-related facilities. Even after Iraq finally admitted to having had a program 

in 1995 and began providing information to UN inspectors, it continued to hide 

information and sustained its denial and deception activities. Subsequently, some 

Iraqi BW scientists were assigned to laboratories run by the Iraqi intelligence, and 

may have been helping develop poisons and toxins for use in assassinations.150

Based on statements made by Saddam Hussein, U.S. investigators concluded that 

he hoped to create the impression that Iraq retained some weapons capability as 

a deterrent against regional neighbors, especially Iran.151 So far as is known, the 

Iraqis never employed their biological weapons. 

Israel. The Israeli BW program was initiated in the months before the establishment of the state in May 1948 and the subsequent outbreak of hostilities with 

neighboring Arab countries. As discussed below, biological agents were employed 

with limited success during 1948 against the British (who had legal authority over 

Mandatory Palestine) and the invading Arab armies. Following the end of hostilities, the Israelis created a BW program within their new Ministry of Defense. 

Although Israel created a world-class biological research establishment, it is not 

known what kinds of BW capabilities resulted.152 Given the advanced state of Israeli biology and the competence of its military industry, it is reasonable to assume 

that it could have created highly effective BW capabilities.153 However, there is no 

publicly available evidence to support such a conjecture.

North Korea. Although there is a substantial body of literature on North Korea’s BW program, hard facts are rare, and most open-source information comes 

from South Korean sources of uncertain reliability. This makes it difficult to assess 

the size, sophistication, or intended role of North Korea’s program, or even if the 

program remains active.154
33

A Short History of Biological Warfare

The U.S. Government believes that the program originated in the 1960s, and 

a 1993 Russian government report claims that the North Koreans were testing 

biological weapons on an offshore island. The Russians also mentioned that North 

Korea held stocks of smallpox, which it was supposed to have destroyed after the 

eradication of that disease.155 Other sources claim that the North Koreans have 

a large infrastructure devoted to BW activity and that they are working on numerous BW agents. It is unclear if such reports differentiate legitimate research 

from a covert BW program, especially since the allegations often refer to diseases 

endemic to the Korean Peninsula.156

Most analysts believe that North Korea is most likely to rely on covert dissemination of BW agents. North Korea operates a substantial force of special 

operations units and is thought to give particular emphasis to their use. Some 

sources doubt that they have BW missile delivery systems but speculate that they 

might have aircraft sprayers.157

Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). The white Rhodesian regime operated a small 

BW program in the 1970s run by a professor of anatomy at the University of Rhodesia. It appears that the Rhodesians tried to culture the organisms responsible 

for cholera and anthrax. They had no specialized dissemination capabilities and 

allegedly poured out a liquid slurry of the biological agents when they mounted 

an attack. The Rhodesians apparently experimented with cigarettes laced with B. 

anthracis. The Rhodesians probably were assisted by the South Africans, but the 

surviving evidence is limited.158 Rhodesia probably used biological agents, as discussed in the next section.

South Africa. South Africa developed a chemical and biological weapons 

program in the 1980s, possibly benefiting from knowledge from Rhodesia’s experience.159 The BW program operated out of a front company, Roodeplaat Research Laboratories, to hide its ties with the government. Much of its work was 

focused on the development of toxins intended for assassinations. In addition, the 

South Africans created small stocks of biological agents for use against regime 

opponents, including B. anthracis (which causes various forms of anthrax), botulinum toxin, Brucella melitensis (which causes brucellosis), Salmonella typhimurium
34 

CSWMD Occasional Paper 12

(which causes food poisoning), and Vibrio cholerae (which causes cholera). All this 

work was in violation of South Africa’s obligations as a BWC signatory.160

The South African program appears schizophrenic to the outside observer. 

Like the Rhodesian practice, the South Africans developed only rudimentary biological agent dissemination capabilities. On the other hand, the South Africans 

created Roodeplaat Research Laboratories as their primary BW research institution. It had well-equipped biological research laboratories staffed with skilled 

personnel. Nearly a fifth of the laboratories’ activities were focused on antifertility 

drugs intended for use against the country’s black population. That project never 

produced any concrete results. The program also was supported by another organization, Delta-G, which primarily focused on chemical agents but also developed 

and manufactured biochemical products. Ultimately, it also produced a considerable quantity of several types of street drugs.161

The Soviet Union and Russia. The Soviet Union operated a BW program during the entire Cold War. The best available evidence (admittedly scanty) suggests 

that it made relatively little progress from the end of World War II until the early 

1970s. However, the program was then reorganized and rejuvenated, even though 

the Soviet Union joined the BWC after playing a leading role in negotiating that 

treaty. The new effort exploited the possibilities offered by advances in biology and 

resulted in the largest and most sophisticated BW program ever organized. This 

account is based largely on the best description of Soviet BW activities, a study 

by Milton Leitenberg and Ray Zilinskas, The Soviet Biological Weapons Program.

162

A great deal is known about the scientific underpinnings of the program; much 

less is known of its military dimensions. In addition, there are whole aspects of Soviet BW development that remain largely unknown, including the anti-agriculture 

activities of the Ministry of Agriculture and the clandestine operations capabilities 

of the Soviet intelligence services, especially the KGB. The Soviets worked on biological agents for attacking both crops and animals, including organisms that infect 

wheat, rye, and rice plants and numerous viruses that affect agricultural animals.163

We do know that the KGB viewed pathogens as possible weapons for targeted killing. Documents uncovered after the collapse of the Soviet Union reveal that Joseph 

Stalin instigated a plot to assassinate Josip Broz Tito and that one of the options 
35

A Short History of Biological Warfare

was to infect him with Yersinia pestis, the organism that causes plague. Stalin died 

before the assassination plot was finalized, and it was abandoned.164

Little is known of Soviet BW efforts from 1945 until the early 1970s. The 

Soviet military continued BW research and development, but it is unclear that the 

program ever fielded militarily significant capabilities. Part of the problem was 

scientific. During the 1930s, Soviet biology was tainted by the views of Trofim Lysenko, an agricultural scientist who rejected Mendelian genetics and instead advocated an alternative holding that traits acquired through environmental exposures 

could be transmitted to offspring. Consequently, Soviet biology lagged the West. 

Another part of the problem was bureaucratic. The Soviet military establishment 

was unable to support the type of creative scientific research needed to advance 

the program.165

Convinced that the Soviet Union needed a robust BW program, the country’s 

leaders were open to the persuasions of its scientific elite. It appears that leading 

Soviet scientists successfully lobbied for the organization of a new BW research 

and development organization, Biopreparat, separate from the existing military 

laboratories. The Politburo provided generous funding to Biopreparat, also accepting Western biology and repudiating Lysenko’s views. 

During the 1970s and 1980s, the Soviet program made enormous strides, and 

by the time the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the scientific underpinnings of 

its BW program went far beyond anything accomplished by others. Although the 

research program was highly inefficient, its sheer size more than made up for the 

usual deficiencies that compromised Soviet productivity by the end of the Cold 

War. 

The Soviet BW program always was kept secret, but the intensity of its activities increased after negotiation of the BWC. The Soviets designed their new 

program knowing that it was in violation of the treaty, and hence they had to 

protect the mere fact of its existence. Some of its facilities were located in closed 

cities, communities in remote areas accessible only with special permission. Some 

of these closed cities also were unacknowledged, not even appearing on maps.166

The scope of the program is evident in a listing of facilities associated with just 

the civilian components of the program: 10 research and development institutes, 
36 

CSWMD Occasional Paper 12

14 production and mobilization plants, and 8 special weapons and facility design 

units.167 There were additional military installations, including test sites that conducted open-air testing of munitions with a live agent.168 The military and civilian 

production sites had the capacity to produce hundreds of tons of biological agent 

per year.169

The research facilities engaged in a wide range of activity, both offensive and 

defensive. Some work was devoted to enhancing traditional biological agents, but 

the Soviets also were interested in adopting emerging pathogens and creating 

novel biological agents. Biopreparat was organized mainly to develop enhanced 

pathogens resistant to antibiotics and able to evade vaccine protection. The Soviets 

explored certain emerging infectious diseases as potential BW agents, including 

the Ebola and Marburg viruses. They eventually selected Marburg virus and developed formulations that would enable its use in weapons. Finally, the Soviets were 

attempting to develop so-called chimeras, biological agents that incorporated genetic components from different pathogens to create an organism with unique 

characteristics. None of the novel agents were ready for service when the Soviet 

Union collapsed in 1991. Among the agents being developed was a strain of vaccinia, the virus used in the smallpox vaccine, incorporating genes from the Ebola 

virus. Another variant added genes that produce certain bioregulators (chemicals 

naturally present in the body) with the intent of disrupting the immune system.170

Most of the biological agents adopted by the Soviet Union were like those 

used in other BW programs, such as the smallpox virus, B. anthracis, Coxiella burnetii, and Y. pestis, all weaponized by the early 1970s. The only new agent added to 

the program by the beginning of the 1990s was the Marburg virus, but it seems 

likely that new strains of older agents replaced those previously in use.171

Because little is known about Soviet biological weapons design, concepts of 

operation, or the intended strategic role of their BW program, it is impossible to 

assess its likely effectiveness. However, the Soviets developed standardized techniques for large-scale production of pathogens and associated formulations to enhance dissemination and virulence. They certainly viewed their weapons as having 

both strategic and operational utility.172 The Soviet Union built a huge complex 

for the production of biological weapons. A former Soviet BW scientist claimed 
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A Short History of Biological Warfare

that the Soviet Union maintained a stockpile of 20 tons of smallpox virus, grown 

in eggs and constantly replenished as old stocks lost viability. It also built 3 plants 

with an annual wartime production capacity of 1,800 tons of B. anthracis.

173

It is unclear whether the Russians have entirely terminated the former Soviet 

BW development program. In 1992, Russian president Boris Yeltsin admitted 

that the Soviet Union had operated a BW program in contravention of its BWC 

obligations and promised to terminate it. Yeltsin encountered considerable opposition to his efforts, and it is unclear that all elements of the program were shut 

down. The Russian government officially admitted to some of its past activities in 

a report to the United Nations in 1992 (a document submitted as a BWC confidence-building measure), but by 1994 it had backed away from that admission.174

Since then, the U.S. Government has regularly expressed concerns about the 

lack of transparency. In 2005, for example, the U.S. State Department declared, 

“The United States judges based on all available evidence that Russia continues 

to maintain an offensive BW program in violation of the [Biological and Toxin 

Weapons] Convention.”175 The Barack Obama administration did not repeat the 

allegation that the Russians kept a BW program, but in 2016 it still reported that 

the Russians “have not satisfactorily documented whether this program was completely destroyed or diverted to peaceful purposes.”176

In 2012, Vladimir Putin called for the development of “weapons systems 

based on new principles,” including genetics.177 Subsequently, the Russian minister of defense reportedly initiated planning to implement this agenda.178 Acquisition and use of such a “genetic weapon,” whether based on new or old principles, 

is illegal under international law. As far as is known, the Soviet Union never employed its biological weapons during the Cold War.

Syria. The first references to a Syrian BW program appeared in 1990, but 

it is not known when the program started. The Syrians admitted to producing 

ricin toxin for use in weapons.179 In contrast, no evidence has emerged to support 

claims that Syria also was exploring biological agents, including B. anthracis, or 

that it developed and deployed missile warheads for their delivery.180

The United Kingdom. The efforts of the United Kingdom built on the country’s World War II experiences. Initially, efforts to develop BW capabilities had 
38 

CSWMD Occasional Paper 12

a priority equal to that assigned to the atomic bomb program. The Air Ministry 

drafted a requirement for the development and procurement of air-delivered cluster munitions for use against Soviet industrial centers. In other words, civilians 

would be the primary target. Support infrastructure was improved, including construction of a small production facility to produce quantities of biological agent. 

Open-air biological agent releases, intended initially to test biological munitions, 

were conducted in the Caribbean and off the coast of England. Among the agents 

tested were B. anthracis, Brucella suis, Brucella arbortus, and Francisella tularensis.

181

The program produced little. The weapons tests were disappointing, as the existing bomblets proved highly inefficient. In 1952, a new British military strategy 

downplayed the importance of the BW program, assigning greater importance to 

nuclear weapons, and the requirement for a near-term biological weapons capability was eliminated. Over time, even the long-term need for a biological munition disappeared, and by 1957 all offensive development activity had ended.182

Although the British retained considerable expertise in BW science and technology, supporting a technically sophisticated biodefense effort, they never had an 

operational capability to employ biological weapons.

Paul Gordon Fildes, who had led the program during World War II, ultimately concluded in 1955, “It was becoming clear that the hazards of biological 

warfare, as distinct from sabotage, were not as great as has been thought.”183 While 

British military planners accepted that North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries might need BW capabilities, they also concluded that the United Kingdom 

did not. They believed BW was not useful as a deterrent and could not identify a 

useful operational military role for it. British policy never changed, even after the 

United States demonstrated a strategic BW capability in the 1960s.

The United States. The United States almost certainly had the world’s most 

accomplished BW program during the Cold War, at least until it was canceled in 

1969. Support for the program waxed and waned, and levels of funding fluctuated 

accordingly. However, the quality of the science that supported it was excellent, 

and program leaders persistently worked to solve the many technical obstacles 

to a fully realized BW capability. In the end, the program failed because the U.S. 

national security establishment found no strategic rationale for BW.184
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A Short History of Biological Warfare

U.S. BW scientists understood the implications of agent aerosolization and 

focused efforts on the complex task of identifying agents, formulations, and dissemination systems optimized for that purpose.185 Through a series of elaborate 

field trials, the United States eventually demonstrated an ability to disseminate 

lethal biological agents over large areas. By the mid-1960s, the U.S. Air Force 

had a bomblet delivery system that allowed a single B-52 bomber sortie to affect 

10,000 square miles as well as spray tank systems for use on fighter-bombers affecting 25,000 to 50,000 square miles. It also sought to develop agents with differing characteristics, including a focus on supposedly nonlethal agents that could 

be used in limited wars. Indeed, in the late 1950s, the program invested far more 

on so-called incapacitating agents than acknowledged lethal agents.186

Considerable effort was devoted during the 1950s to develop anticrop munitions. The intended target was the agriculture of the Soviet Union and China. 

The U.S. Army acquired biological agents and associated delivery systems for use 

against rice, rye, and wheat. The requirement apparently derived from a need to 

undermine the ability of the Communist countries to fight a protracted war.187 The 

utility of these weapons was dubious in the strategic environment that emerged 

during the Cold War. The technical effectiveness of these programs also was unclear.

Despite claims that the United States employed biological weapons during 

the Korean War, the reality is that it had no capability to use biological agents in a 

militarily significant way at that time.188 There is little evidence to support claims 

that the United States used biological weapons during that conflict and considerable evidence that the allegation was not true.189

The U.S. program was terminated unilaterally in 1969 by President Richard 

M. Nixon (toxin work was not stopped until later), who concluded that biological 

weapons added little to U.S. security even as they complicated arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union.190

Biological Arms Control and Disarmament

Negotiations to prohibit biological weapons became part of the agenda of 

the international community with the organization of the United Nations. Initial 
40 

CSWMD Occasional Paper 12

discussions focused on a treaty aimed at both chemical and biological weapons, 

but little progress was made until the mid-1960s. At the insistence of the British, negotiators began to focus on a treaty limited solely to biological weapons. 

The result was the 1972 BWC, which prohibited possession of any biological and 

toxin weapons. Although the treaty does not define what constitutes a biological weapon, subsequent deliberations made clear that the agreement proscribes 

the possession of any weapon that incorporates any pathogenic microorganism or 

poison of biological origin, including those developed using science that did not 

exist at the time the treaty was negotiated.191

The Soviet Union never intended to respect the treaty. Its efforts to develop biological weapons accelerated after the BWC entered into force. Because the BWC 

lacks verification procedures, the treaty’s signatories tried to negotiate a protocol 

to provide them during the 1990s. The attempt failed. While the United States is 

often blamed, Russia and the members of the Non-Aligned Movement also undermined the negotiations. U.S. opposition reflected widely held views in Washington 

that the proposed agreement was fatally flawed, unlikely to uncover treaty violations or otherwise enhance confidence in treaty compliance.192

Despite the treaty’s flaws, it plays a central role in the delegitimization of BW. 

Review conferences, held every 5 years since the treaty entered into force, provide 

an opportunity for the international community to reaffirm its continued importance. At those meetings, the states’ parties have also concurred that the agreement 

comprehensively applies to new scientific developments. As the 2006 conference 

reported, the treaty “applies to all scientific and technological developments in 

the life sciences and in other fields of science relevant to the Convention.”193 The 

failure of the 2016 Review Conference to reach agreement has generated concerns 

about the treaty’s future.194

Preventing countries from acquiring biological weapons capabilities also is 

a part of the BW nonproliferation regime. The Australia Group, created as a response to Iraq’s use of chemical warfare agents during its war with Iran in the 

1980s, strives to harmonize export regulations among a like-minded group of 

countries. It covers biological warfare agents and equipment need to produce 

biological agents and weapons.195 In addition, United Nations Security Council 
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A Short History of Biological Warfare

Resolution 1540, originally adopted in 2004, requires all UN member states to 

prevent terrorists from obtaining access to weapons of mass destruction, including 

BW capabilities. In 2010, the resolution’s mandate was extended to 2021.196 More 

recently, scientific organizations supported by national governments have created 

codes of conduct to establish norms against the use of biology as a weapon.197

State Use

A few countries, including Israel, Rhodesia, and South Africa, made limited, 

small-scale use of biological agents. These activities were little more than biological sabotage, not too dissimilar from German BW operations during World War 

I, and had nothing in common with the sophisticated aerosol delivery techniques 

mastered by the United States and the Soviet Union. 

Israel employed biological agents on several occasions during 1948 by contaminating water supplies. Some Israeli operatives attempting to spread infectious 

agents were captured by the Egyptian army in Gaza. Allegedly, the Israelis also 

tried to attack Syrian forces. In addition, there is evidence that the Israelis targeted 

Palestinian settlements, apparently to prevent refugees from returning to their 

former homes.198 There also were allegations that a British military unit was attacked.199 These were crude attacks, less sophisticated than the ones launched by 

the Germans decades earlier.

The Rhodesian government employed biological and chemical agents during its struggle against African nationalists in the 1970s. It made extensive use of 

chemicals, usually by contaminating clothing with deadly pesticides, probably killing hundreds of guerrillas. Some reports allege that it also made a failed attempt 

to disseminate the pathogen responsible for cholera and experimented with other 

agents as well. Claims that the Rhodesians were responsible for a massive anthrax 

outbreak among cattle that led to a substantial number of cases of gastrointestinal 

anthrax, including many deaths, have never been proved.200

The South Africans admitted to mounting a few small biological attacks. Reportedly, they tried to spread cholera in a guerrilla camp, but the water treatment 

system killed the pathogens. One account claims that they also distributed sugar 
42 

CSWMD Occasional Paper 12

contaminated with B. typhimurium at a meeting of the African National Congress. 

It is doubtful that these attacks were effective.201

It also appears that officials working for the Brazilian government’s Indian 

Protective Service deliberately introduced pathogens into the aboriginal population. Mestizos, people of mixed blood, sick with smallpox, influenza, tuberculosis, 

and measles, were sent to interact with aboriginal peoples between 1957 and 1963. 

Investigators could not confirm reports that some Indians were infected with the 

smallpox virus. There is no evidence to suggest that these actions were officially 

sanctioned by the country’s leaders.202

Although there are numerous additional allegations of employing biological 

weapons during the Cold War era, most are untrue. The Soviet Union and its allies were responsible for spreading many of them, including false claims that the 

United States spread biological agents during the Korean War, that HIV originated in U.S. BW laboratories, and that the United States mounted numerous 

biological attacks on Cuba.203

Nonstate Use

During the Cold War, there was limited terrorist interest in BW.204 The only 

significant act of bioterrorism during that period was committed by a cult group, 

the Rajneeshees, in 1984. Having come into conflict with the local community, 

the leaders of the cult decided to take over the county government by suppressing 

voter turnout. This was to be accomplished by making voters too sick to cast their 

ballots on election day. They experimented with their biological agents in August 

and September by contaminating food at restaurants in the town of The Dalles, 

Oregon, with a common foodborne pathogen, Salmonella typhimurium. These attacks ultimately caused 751 people to become ill, including several dozens who 

had to be hospitalized. The plot was uncovered when internal conflicts led the 

cult’s leaders to accuse former members of conducting the biological attack.205

The Aum Shinrikyo, a Japanese cult group, created both chemical and biological weapons programs, attempting to produce both botulinum toxin and Bacillus 

anthracis. There is no evidence that the cult ever acquired strains of C. botulinum capable of producing the toxin or the virulent B. anthracis. Recent evidence suggests 
43

A Short History of Biological Warfare

that the group deliberately obtained a vaccine strain of B. anthracis, believing that it 

could employ newly developed techniques to insert the toxin-producing plasmids 

that are missing from the vaccine strain. Aum produced quantities of this supposedly lethal strain and tried to disseminate it but to no effect. In addition to lacking 

a deadly strain of the pathogen, their dissemination device was totally ineffective.206

Al Qaeda created a BW program in the late 1990s. Some evidence suggests 

that it was motivated at least in part by growing commentary in the United States 

about the dangers of bioterrorism. In any case, the program was still in the formative stage in September 2001. Although the group had made progress in constructing a laboratory in Afghanistan, there is no evidence that it ever obtained 

any biological agents. The available evidence suggests that its activities were disrupted by the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, and the program was never reconstituted.207 Other jihadi groups also have expressed interest in BW but generally 

seem to focus on capabilities easier to acquire but less likely to inflict catastrophic 

casualties.208

The last major bioterrorism event (although it might better be classified as a 

biocrime) was the anthrax letter attacks that occurred in September and October 

2001. The letters targeted three news outlets and two U.S. Senators. The B. anthracis in the last two letters sent was highly refined. While not weaponized in a 

military sense, the agent readily spread through the air when the envelopes were 

opened. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) ultimately identified the perpetrator of the attacks as Bruce Ivins, an anthrax expert at the U.S. Army Research 

Institute of Infectious Disease. Although critics have cast doubt on the FBI’s case, 

an independent psychological evaluation suggests that Ivins was capable of having 

committed the crimes.209

Finally, there were several biocrimes committed using pathogens during the 

last half of the twentieth century. Most were relatively minor. A notable case was 

the deliberate infection in the early 1990s of a woman by a Louisiana doctor with 

HIV-infected blood. In that case, the prosecutors used newly developed genetic 

tests to demonstrate that the HIV in the victim was consistent with the HIV in 

samples held by the suspect. This was the first courtroom test of the new science 

and demonstrated that judges were willing to accept such forensic evidence. The 
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CSWMD Occasional Paper 12

accused physician was convicted, and appellate courts upheld the use of the biological forensics.210

In another notable case that occurred in the late 1990s, public health investigators linked a hospital technician to an unusual outbreak of Shigella associated 

with the eating of pastries. This was the first time that law enforcement officials 

employed epidemiology as an investigative tool to support the prosecution of the 

suspect. The suspect was convicted.211

Summary

Since the end of World War II, BW science and technology has developed 

in ways that could make effectively disseminated biological weapons as deadly as 

thermonuclear weapons.212 At the same time, globalization and the widespread 

adoption of so-called dual-use technologies—those with legitimate uses for commerce, science, or medicine—have made many of the underlying scientific and 

technical capabilities required for BW programs accessible even to small groups 

and individuals.213

The growth in BW’s lethality was not matched by increased use. Indeed, there 

is no evidence of widespread use of biological agents since 1945. There were smallscale attacks, amounting to biological sabotage, but none of those exploited the 

new dissemination technologies developed by the United States and the Soviet 

Union. There was some terrorist interest in BW and a few instances of actual use. 

These attacks either failed or caused sickness but no deaths. The deadliest biological attacks have been attributed to criminals. Why has there been so little resort to 

BW since 1945? There is no clear answer to that question, but it is likely to have 

resulted from some combination of a lack of interest, countermeasures that reduce 

the attractiveness of BW for those inclined toward exploring its utility, and at least 

some good luck.214

Biological Warfare’s Future

What is the future of BW? Will there be a resurgence of BW proliferation? 

Will nonstate actors resort to bioterrorism? Will any countries or states employ 

biological agents to inflict catastrophic casualties? 
45

A Short History of Biological Warfare

As this study illustrates, biological warfare has been rare. So far as is known, 

the only significant use resulting in substantial loss of life was by Japan against the 

Chinese during the 1940s. Despite advances in BW science, the only subsequent 

uses have been sabotage operations resulting in few casualties. Why it has been so 

rare is unclear, because the simpler forms of biological sabotage have been accessible for more than 100 years. 

Some argue that continuing advances in the biological sciences, the globalization of biological skills and technology, and the growing accessibility of enabling 

technology will inevitably result in more, and more deadly, use of biological weapons. Capabilities once limited to the Soviet Union and the United States might 

be accessible even to nonstate actors in the future. Indeed, given the pace of new 

scientific discovery, capabilities not available to even the superpowers during the 

Cold War might be accessible to lone actors.215

In contrast, others are more skeptical, arguing that biological weapons are 

harder to develop and employ than many have claimed. These skeptics also contend that technical considerations may not be the most significant constraint. Tacit knowledge, which is undocumented information essential for the exploitation 

of science and technology required to make biological weapons, is known to practitioners of BW (an ever-smaller group) but not to others expert in the biological 

sciences. Additionally, there is limited evidence that states or nonstate actors will 

be attracted to BW because they or their supporters might find the use of biological weapons morally or politically repugnant.216 Some argue that ultimately there 

are strong norms against BW and that the few attempts to use it represent outliers 

unlikely to be often repeated.217

If the use of biological weapons increases in the future, it will be because some 

past constraint has disappeared. Although technological and scientific advances 

might facilitate that trend, it is most likely to result from fundamental changes in 

attitudes toward the use of disease as a weapon. 
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Appendix 1. Additional Reading

Readers unfamiliar with BW should start with a topical overview. Useful 

starting points are books by Jeanne Guillemin, Greg Koblentz, and Milton Leitenberg.218 All approach the subject in different ways, so they are not interchangeable, and each has its strengths. Dated, but still relevant, is the multivolume SIPRI 

study of chemical and biological weapons, The Problem of Chemical and Biological 

Weapons, and the BW section of an Office of Technology Assessment report, Technologies Underlying Weapons of Mass Destruction.

219 For a more technical treatment 

of biological warfare agents, the reader should review the chapters in Medical Aspects of Biological Warfare.

220

There is a growing literature on the history of BW. For those interested in 

exploring in detail, one possible starting point is this author’s review of writings 

on the history of biological agent employment.221 Readers also should look at the 

sources used in that survey. The best starting point on pre-1945 history is the collection of essays in Biological and Toxin Weapons: Research, Development, and Use 

from the Middle Ages to 1945, edited by Erhard Geissler and John van Courtland 

Moon.222 A companion volume, Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons since 1945, 

while also essential, is more uneven, reflecting the difficulties in studying more 

recent BW activities.223

Mark Wheelis has an excellent survey of the pre-1914 era, as well as the best 

review of World War I biological sabotage operations.224 Wheelis also wrote the 

best account of the alleged Mongol dissemination of plague in the 14th century.225

Essays by Elizabeth Fenn and Philip Ranlet supersede Wheelis’s review of the 

1763 Fort Pitt smallpox attack.226

There is a substantial literature on the Japanese BW program. The best overview is probably an essay by Tsuneishi Keiichi.227 The work by Sheldon Harris also 

is essential, although he was more interested in documenting the horrors of Japan’s 

laboratory research than in documenting the development, acquisition, and use of 

biological weapons.228

For French and German BW activities, the best sources are the essays by 

Olivier Lepick and Erhard Geissler in the Geissler and Moon volume.229 There 
47

A Short History of Biological Warfare

are no good English-language studies of the Italian program. Recent research by 

Robert Petersen has confirmed the extensive use of biological agents and poisons 

by the Polish resistance during World War II.230 His work supplants the earlier 

research in Geissler’s study of German BW.231

Soviet BW activities are the subject of an outstanding book by Milton Leitenberg and Raymond Zilinskas.232 It provides the best single source on this important topic, although it is admittedly not comprehensive. Leitenberg and Zilinskas give a detailed reading of the program’s scientific underpinnings, as well as a 

host of specialized topics, such as Soviet biological arms control policies and BW 

disinformation activities. Unfortunately, much remains unknown about the Soviet 

program, including the role of BW in the Soviets’ strategic thinking, their biological weapons use doctrine, and their actual weapons.

There is no study of comparable quality and depth of the U.S. biological 

weapons program, although John van Courtland Moon has published useful essays on the topic.233 The same volumes containing the Moon articles also provide 

reviews of the programs of both the United Kingdom and Canada, although they 

have been given longer treatment elsewhere as well.234

Other countries are thought to have had BW programs since 1945, but there 

are no useful histories of most of them. The main exception is Iraq’s program, 

which is extensively documented in UN and U.S. Government documents, as well 

as numerous essays and books written by researchers associated with the efforts 

to uncover Iraq’s activities.235 Avner Cohen has written the best studies of Israel’s 

BW program.236

Terrorist and criminal interest and use of biological agents are reviewed in 

Biocrimes and Bioterrorism by Seth Carus, while Maasaki Sugishima gives a more 

detailed account of Japanese biocrimes cases.237 Toxic Terror, a volume edited by 

the late Jonathan Tucker, contains several essays reviewing the bioterrorism activities of several groups, including the Minnesota Patriot’s Council, the Rajneeshees, 

and R.I.S.E.238 Aum Shinrikyo’s chemical and biological weapons programs are 

examined by Richard Danzig and his coauthors.239 A more skeptical view of Aum’s 

activities is offered by Milton Leitenberg.240
48 

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Appendix 2. Definitions and Methodology

A biological agent is a pathogen, a microorganism capable of causing disease 

in humans, animals, or plants. Conceptually, a biological agent also could be a microorganism capable of degrading materiel, such as bacteria that might attack the 

silicon on computer chips or tire rubber. Multicellular animals, such as insects, are 

not biological agents, although they can disseminate biological agents and have 

been used to deliver pathogens. 

Other substances, such as toxins and bioregulators, are sometimes treated as 

biological agents but are more like chemical warfare agents. Toxins, poisons of 

biological origin, are produced by poisonous plants and animals, but most now 

can be made synthetically. Similarly, bioregulators, chemicals that control normal 

bodily processes, also are not considered BW agents.241 There is a third category of 

substance, prions, which are infectious proteins that can replicate in their victim. 

They are chemicals, but their ability to replicate in a host gives them some similarities to pathogens. There are only two prions known to infect humans, but no 

BW program is known to have developed or employed infectious proteins, so they 

are not mentioned in this account.242

Potential biological warfare agents are not limited to some short list of pathogens but rather include all microorganisms pathogenic to humans, plants, and animals, as well as those that could be used to attack materials. According to a 2007 

survey, there were more than 1,400 human pathogens, including 541 bacteria, 189 

viruses, and 57 protozoa (the rest were parasites, such as ringworm, and fungi).243

A more recent study identified 219 pathogenic viruses and estimated that 3 to 

4 more are identified every year.244 While many of the diseases are rare and may 

cause only mild illness, nearly 350 are considered clinically significant.245

Pathogens aimed at agricultural targets, both plants and animals, also were 

adopted by several state biological weapons programs.246 There is no comprehensive list of plant and animal pathogens, although one survey identified 616 pathogens of livestock (which included cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, and horses).247 Many of 

these also affect humans: 76 percent of viruses and half of bacteria dangerous to 

humans also affect animals, usually other mammals.248 Anti-material agents have 
49

A Short History of Biological Warfare

been explored for their BW potential, but there is no evidence of their incorporation into any BW program.249

State biological weapons programs have valued certain desired characteristics 

for their anti-personnel BW agents, often related to lethality, producibility, and 

suitability for dissemination.250 For that reason, they have focused on a relatively 

small number of pathogens naturally possessing those traits. Such technically demanding selection criteria are probably not applicable to terrorists or criminals, 

who may value different criteria, such as ease of access, which can lead to the selection of organisms considered useless by a state weapons program.251

A biological weapon consists of a biological agent packaged so that the microorganism can do harm, whether to a person, animal, plant, or materiel. It consists 

of the agent and some delivery mechanism. Biological weapons can be extremely 

complex, such as a bomblet carrying a ballistic missile warhead or a cruise missile 

with spray devices. In such cases, the agent might be formulated to incorporate 

additives that enhance its survivability once released into the environment or that 

make it easier to disseminate. Biological weapons also can be extremely simple, 

such as a vial containing a fluid consisting of a biological agent and growth media 

or an envelope with a dry powdered spore. Much of the art and science of BW is 

associated with techniques intended to enhance agent dissemination and survivability.252 Some biological agents can be transmitted through contact with fomites, 

materials contaminated by exposure to a pathogen, such as clothing, bedding, or 

other items that were in direct contact with someone who had the disease.253

Biological weapons are treated as weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by 

the international community. This is sometimes a source of confusion. While biological weapons can cause mass casualties, they are not destructive (except for 

hypothetical anti-materiel agents). Moreover, while biological weapons can infect 

indiscriminately, as when aerosol clouds of a biological agent are released into the 

air, they also can be highly discriminate, as when a single individual is infected 

using a needle. It is for this reason that some WMD definitions exclude uses of 

biological agents that do not result in mass casualties.254

Biological warfare (BW) is the term traditionally used to refer to the employment of biological weapons. It originated at a time when the focus was on state use 
50 

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of biological weapons. However, three different kinds of actor have used biological 

weapons: states, terrorist groups, and criminals.255 When states employ biological 

weapons against other countries or in insurgencies, they engage in biological warfare or biowarfare. In contrast, biological terrorism, or bioterrorism, involves the 

terrorist use of biological weapons against any type of adversary. Finally, biological 

crimes, or biocrimes, are the employment of biological weapons by criminals for 

financial gain, revenge, or pathological reasons. These are distinctly different uses, 

which led one scholar to adopt the term “biological violence” to encompass all of 

them.256 However, that term has not become common.

The most difficult obstacle to writing the history of BW is separating what 

is true, or probably true, from what is undoubtedly or probably false. Published 

accounts of BW programs are relatively rare. Some programs have never been 

described, and critical information gaps remain for even the best-documented 

programs.

There are many allegations of biological weapons use that, on closer inspection, are either demonstrably false or substantiated only by flimsy evidence. Indeed, a monograph several times longer than this history could be written just 

to debunk the many false allegations of BW use. Readers interested in learning 

more about such false claims can find a discussion of them elsewhere.257 These 

false allegations arise for multiple reasons. Some come from outbreak victims who 

misinterpret natural events or who seek scapegoats for an outbreak that resulted 

from natural causes. Some allegations, however, are deliberate fabrications. The 

Soviet Union routinely spread false claims in orchestrated disinformation campaigns, such as the allegations that the United States generated HIV in supposed 

biological warfare laboratories and deliberately spread the virus.258 Finally, some 

claims result from misinterpretation of the historical record by modern authors.
51

A Short History of Biological Warfare

Notes

1 For an assessment of the gaps in our understanding of the history of biological 

agent use, see W. Seth Carus, “The History of Biological Warfare: What We Know and 

What We Don’t,” Health Security 13, no. 4 (August 2015), 219–255. 

2 A good survey of human disease organisms is Zygmunt F. Dembek, ed., Medical 

Aspects of Biological Warfare (Washington, DC: Office of the Surgeon General, U.S. Army, 

2007), available at <www.cs.amedd.army.mil/Portlet.aspx?ID=66cffe45-c1b8-4453-91e0-

9275007fd157>.

3 David B. Kaufman, “Poisons and Poisoning among the Romans,” Classical Philology

27, no. 2 (April 1932), 156–167.

4 Phyllis Allen, “Etiological Theory in America Prior to the Civil War,” Journal of the 

History of Medicine and Allied Sciences II, no. 4 (1947), 489–520.

5 Gerald F. O’Malley and Kelli D. O’Donnell, “Strychnine,” in Criminal Poisoning: 

Clinical and Forensic Perspectives, ed. Christopher P. Holstege et al. (Sudbury, MA: Jones 

and Bartlett Publishers, 2011), 159–163.

6 Allen, 489.

7 Burke A. Cunha, “Osler on Typhoid Fever: Differentiating Typhoid from Typhus 

and Malaria,” Infectious Disease Clinics of North America 18, no. 1 (March 2004), 111–125.

8 Frank Fenner et al., Smallpox and Its Eradication (Geneva: World Health Organization, 1988), 194; Andrea M. McCollum et al., “Poxvirus Viability and Signatures in 

Historical Relics,” Emerging Infectious Diseases 20, no. 2 (February 2014), 177–184.

9 Ludwik Gross, “How the Plague Bacillus and Its Transmission through Fleas Were 

Discovered: Reminiscences from My Years at the Pasteur Institute in Paris,” Proceedings 

of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 92, no. 17 (August 15, 

1995), 7609–7611.

10 Émile Perrot and Émile Vogt, “Poisons de Flèches et Poisons D’épreuve” (Paris: 

Vigot Freres, 1913); H.D. Neuwinger, “Alkaloids in Arrow Poisons,” in Alkaloids, ed. 

Margaret F. Roberts and Michael Wink (New York: Springer US, 1998), 45–84; David E. 

Jones, Poison Arrows: North American Indian Hunting and Warfare (Austin: University of 

Texas Press, 2007).

11 Perrot and Vogt; Jones; Leonard A. Cole, “The Poison Weapons Taboo: Biology, 

Culture, and Policy,” Politics and the Life Sciences 17, no. 2 (September 1998), 119–132; 

Ivan C. Hall and Richard W. Whitehead, “A Pharmaco-Bacteriologic Study of African 

Poisoned Arrows,” Journal of Infectious Diseases 41, no. 1 (1927), 51–69.

12 Le Dantec, “Origine Tellurique du Poison des Flèches des Naturels des NouvellesHébrides (Océanie),” Annales de L’Institut Pasteur 4, no. 11 (November 1890), 716–721; 

Le Dantec, “Origine Tellurique du Poison des Flèches des Nouvelles-Hébrides (Océanie),” Annales de L’Institut Pasteur 6, no. 12 (December 1892), 851–853.
52 

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13 Jonathan Barnes, The Complete Works of Aristotle: The Revised Oxford Translation

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 1294.

14 Jones; Carus, “The History of Biological Warfare,” 222–223.

15 Adrienne Mayor, Greek Fire, Poison Arrows, and Scorpion Bombs: Biological and 

Chemical Warfare in the Ancient World, 1st ed. (Woodstock: Overlook, 2003).

16 Carus, “The History of Biological Warfare,” 224–226.

17 Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian Wars, vol. 1 (New York: G.P. Putnam’s 

Sons, 1919), 343.

18 Manu, The Law Code of Manu, trans. Patrick Olivelle (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 101; R.P. Kangle, The Kautiliya Arthasastra, vol. 2 (Delhi: Motilal 

Banarsidass, 1986).

19 Mayor.

20 Keith F. Otterbein, The Anthropology of War (Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, 

2009).

21 Carus, “The History of Biological Warfare,” 227–229.

22 Mark L. Wheelis, “Biological Warfare at the 1346 Siege of Caffa,” Emerging Infectious Diseases 8, no. 9 (2002), 971–975; V.J. Derbes, “De Mussis and the Great Plague of 

1348: A Forgotten Episode of Bacteriological Warfare,” JAMA 196, no. 1 (April 4, 1966), 

59–62.

23 The Black Death was the second major Y. pestis pandemic. The previous one, the 

so-called Plague of Justinian, emerged in the Byzantine Empire around 540 AD, spread 

through the rest of Europe, and continued to recur into the 8th century. Recovery of Y. 

pestis DNA from plague victims recently confirmed the cause of the outbreak. Michaela 

Harbeck et al., “Yersinia Pestis DNA from Skeletal Remains from the 6th Century AD 

Reveals Insights into Justinianic Plague,” PLOS Pathogens 9, no. 5 (May 2, 2013).

24 Gross.

25 Eleni Thalassinou et al., “Biological Warfare Plan in the 17th Century—The Siege 

of Candia, 1648–1669,” Emerging Infectious Diseases 21, no. 12 (December 2015).

26 Thomas F. Madden, Enrico Dandolo and the Rise of Venice (Baltimore: The Johns 

Hopkins University Press, 2007), 55–56; Donald MacGillivray Nicol, Byzantium and 

Venice: A Study in Diplomatic and Cultural Relations (New York: Cambridge University 

Press, 1988), 99.

27 Samuel K. Cohn, Jr., “The Black Death and the Burning of Jews,” Past and Present, 

no. 196 (August 2007), 3–36; Samuel K. Cohn, Jr., “Pandemics: Waves of Disease, Waves 

of Hate from the Plague of Athens to AIDS,” Historical Research 85, no. 230 (November 

2012), 535–555.

28 Paul De Kruif, Microbe Hunters (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1996).

29 P. Ranlet, “The British, the Indians, and Smallpox: What Actually Happened at 

Fort Pitt in 1763?” Pennsylvania History 67, no. 3 (2000), 427–441; Elizabeth A. Fenn, 
53

A Short History of Biological Warfare

“Biological Warfare in Eighteenth-Century North America: Beyond Jeffery Amherst,” 

The Journal of American History 86, no. 4 (2000), 1552–1580.

30 Fenn; Ranlet.

31 Ranlet.

32 D. Peter MacLeod, “Microbes and Muskets: Smallpox and the Participation of 

the Amerindian Allies of New France in the Seven Years’ War,” Ethnohistory 39, no. 1 

(1992), 42–64. Smallpox spreads rapidly through groups containing large numbers of 

people without immunity to the variola virus, which accounts for the catastrophic impact 

of smallpox outbreaks in Native American populations. People who survive a smallpox 

infection gain such immunity. 

33 Fenn; Ranlet.

34 Fenner et al., 193, 1343.

35 Fenn; Ranlet.

36 Ranlet; MacLeod.

37 The reasons for skepticism about such allegations are discussed in Carus, “The History of Biological Warfare.”

38 Isaac McCoy, History of Baptist Indian Missions: Embracing Remarks on the Former 

and Present Condition of the Aboriginal Tribes and Their Settlement within the Indian Territory, and Their Future Prospects (New York: Wm. M. Morrison, 1840), 441–443; Mark 

L. Wheelis, “Biological Warfare before 1914,” in Biological and Toxin Weapons: Research, 

Development, and Use from the Middle Ages to 1945, ed. Erhard Geissler and John Ellis 

van Courtland Moon, SIPRI Chemical and Biological Warfare Studies 18 (New York: 

Oxford University Press, 1999), 8–34.

39 John Howard Lidgett Cumpston, The History of Small-Pox in Australia, 1788–1908

(Melbourne: Albert J. Mullett, Government Printer, 1914), 1–2, available at <http://

archive.org/details/39002011127157.med.yale.edu>; Judy Campbell, Invisible Invaders: 

Smallpox and Other Diseases in Aboriginal Australia, 1780–1880 (Carlton South, Victoria: 

Melbourne University Press, 2002); N.G. Butlin, “Macassans and Aboriginal Smallpox: 

The ‘1789’ and ‘1829’ Epidemics,” Historical Studies 21, no. 84 (1985), 315–335.

40 Cumpston, 1–2; Michael J. Bennett, “Smallpox and Cowpox under the Southern Cross: The Smallpox Epidemic of 1789 and the Advent of Vaccination in Colonial 

Australia,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 83, no. 1 (Spring 2009), 37–62; Christopher 

Warren, “Smallpox at Sydney Cove—Who, When, Why?” Journal of Australian Studies 38, 

no. 1 (2014), 68–86.

41 N.G. Butlin, Our Original Aggression: Aboriginal Populations of Southeastern Australia, 1788–1850 (Boston: G. Allen and Unwin, 1983); Butlin, “Macassans and Aboriginal 

Smallpox”; Warren, “Smallpox at Sydney Cove—Who, When, Why?”; Christopher 

Warren, “Could First Fleet Smallpox Infect Aborigines? A Note,” Aboriginal History 31 

(2007), 152–164; Bennett, “Smallpox and Cowpox under the Southern Cross.”
54 

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42 Bennett, “Smallpox and Cowpox under the Southern Cross,” 44–46; Cumpston, 2.

43 Fenner et al.

44 Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques, trans. John Russell (New York: Criterion 

Books, 1961); Wheelis, “Biological Warfare before 1914.”

45 Noble David Cook, Born to Die: Disease and New World Conquest, 1492–1650

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

46 Nancy Elizabeth Gallagher, Medicine and Power in Tunisia, 1780–1900 (New York: 

Cambridge University Press, 1983), 30.

47 A.G. Robertson and L.J. Robertson, “From Asps to Allegations: Biological Warfare in History,” Military Medicine 160, no. 8 (1995), 369–373.

48 Edward Steers, “Risking the Wrath of God,” North and South 3, no. 7 (2000), 

59–70; Jane Singer, The Confederate Dirty War: Arson, Bombings, Assassination, and Plots for 

Chemical and Germ Attacks on the Union ( Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Co., 2005).

49 Robert Latham Owen, Yellow Fever; a Compilation of Various Publications. Results of 

the Work of Maj. Walter Reed, Medical Corps, United States Army, and the Yellow Fever Commission (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1911).

50 Carus, “The History of Biological Warfare”; Paul E. Steiner, Disease in the Civil 

War: Natural Biological Warfare in 1861–1865 (Springfield, IL: C.C. Thomas, 1968); William B. Davis, “Report on Vaccination,” in Transactions of the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting of the Ohio Medical Society (Columbus, OH: Nevins and Myers, 1870), 131–166.

51 Mark L. Wheelis, “Biological Sabotage in World War I,” in Geissler and Moon, 

35–62.

52 Wheelis also claims Norway, but that appears to be confusion over activities that 

actually took place in Finland. See Carus, “The History of Biological Warfare.”

53 Microbe-Culture at Bukarest: Discoveries at the German Legation, from the Rumanian 

Official Documents (New York: Hodder & Stoughton, 1917).

54 Wheelis, “Biological Sabotage in World War I.”

55 Jules Witcover, Sabotage at Black Tom: Imperial Germany’s Secret War in America, 

1914–1917 (Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1989).

56 Wheelis, “Biological Sabotage in World War I”; Howard Blum, Dark Invasion: 

1915: Germany’s Secret War and the Hunt for the First Terrorist Cell in America, 1st ed. (New 

York: Harper, 2014).

57 Martin Furmanski, “Defense Against Biological Warfare in the Great War: The 

Victory of Veterinary ‘Public Health,’” PowerPoint presentation, World Association for 

the History of Veterinary Medicine, Torino, Italy, September 2004.

58 Wheelis, “Biological Sabotage in World War I,” 59–60.

59 Ann Van Wynen Thomas and A.J. Thomas, Legal Limits on the Use of Chemical and 

Biological Weapons (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1970), 49–57.
55

A Short History of Biological Warfare

60 John R. Walker, The 1925 Geneva Protocol: Export Controls, Britain, Poland and Why 

the Protocol Came to Include “Bacteriological” Warfare, Harvard Sussex Program Occasional 

Paper 05 (Harvard Sussex Program, 2016). A “1932 Special Committee on CBW” report 

to the Disarmament Conference described biological weapons as including those that 

disseminate “pathogenic microbes in whatever phase they may be (virulent or capable 

of becoming so), or of filter-passing viruses, or of infected substances.” See Stockholm 

International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), The Problem of Chemical and Biological 

Warfare: A Study of the Historical, Technical, Military, Legal and Political Aspects of CBW, and 

Possible Disarmament Measures, vol. 4: CB Disarmament Negotiations, 1920–1970 (New 

York: Humanities Press, 1971), 116–117.

61 Walker. 

62 SIPRI; John Norton Moore, “Ratification of the Geneva Protocol on Gas and 

Bacteriological Warfare: A Legal and Political Analysis,” Virginia Law Review 58, no. 3 

(1972), 420–509.

63 J.P. Perry Robinson, “Chemical Arms Control and the Assimilation of Chemical Weapons,” International Journal 36, no. 3 (Summer 1981), 515–534; Frederic Joseph 

Brown, Chemical Warfare: A Study in Restraints (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2006); John Ellis van Courtland Moon, “Chemical Weapons and Deterrence: The 

World War II Experience,” International Security 8, no. 4 (Spring 1984), 3–35; John Ellis 

van Courtland Moon, “United States Chemical Warfare Policy in World War II: A Captive of Coalition Policy?” Journal of Military History 60, no. 3 ( July 1996), 495–511; John 

Ellis van Courtland Moon, “Project SPHINX: The Question of the Use of Gas in the 

Planned Invasion of Japan,” Journal of Strategic Studies 12, no. 3 (1989), 303–323.

64 Tsuneishi Keiichi, “Unit 731 and the Japanese Imperial Army’s Biological Warfare 

Program,” in Japan’s Wartime Medical Atrocities: Comparative Inquiries in Science, History, 

and Ethics, ed. Jing-Bao Nie et al., trans. John Junkerman (London: Routledge, 2011), 

23–31.

65 Theodor Rosebury, Peace or Pestilence: Biological Warfare and How to Avoid It (New 

York: Whittlesey House, 1949).

66 Sheldon Harris, “The Japanese Biological Warfare Programme,” in Geissler and 

Moon, 142–146.

67 Xiaofang Li, Blood-weeping Accusations: Records of Anthrax Victims (Beijing: Zhong 

yang wen xian chu ban she, 2005); Sheldon H. Harris, Factories of Death: Japanese Biological Warfare, 1932–1945, and the American Cover-Up, rev. ed. (New York: Routledge, 2002); 

Keiichi. 

68 James Yin and Weiwei Fan, The Rape of Biological Warfare (San Francisco: Northpole Light Publishing House, 2000), 286; Harris, “The Japanese Biological Warfare 

Programme.”

69 Hal Gold, Unit 731 Testimony (Boston: Tuttle, 1996), 64–67; Keiichi. 
56 

CSWMD Occasional Paper 12

70 R. Keith Schoppa, In a Sea of Bitterness: Refugees during the Sino-Japanese War

(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011), 285–301.

71 Ibid. 

72 Ibid.

73 Martin Furmanski, “An Investigation of the Afflicted Area of Anthrax and Glanders Attacks by Japanese Aggressors,” in Xiaofang Li, 36–42.

74 Tohmatsu Haruo, “The Strategic Correlation between the Sino-Japanese and Pacific Wars,” in The Battle for China: Essays on the Military History of the Sino-Japanese War 

of 1937–1945, ed. Mark Peattie, Edward J. Drea, and Hans van de Ven (Stanford, CA: 

Stanford University Press, 2011), 427.

75 Materials on the Trial of Former Servicemen of the Japanese Army Charged with Manufacturing and Employing Bacteriological Weapons (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing 

House, 1950), 353–354; Yin and Fan, The Rape of Biological Warfare, 158–160.

76 Materials on the Trial of Former Servicemen of the Japanese Army Charged with 

Manufacturing and Employing Bacteriological Weapons, 354–355; Yin and Fan, The Rape of 

Biological Warfare, 160, 169, put the number at 6,000.

77 Haruo, 427.

78 Carroll V. Glines, The Doolittle Raid: America’s Daring First Strike against Japan

(New York: Orion Books, 1988), 151.

79 Yin and Fan, 160.

80 Harris, Factories of Death, 148.

81 Martin Furmanski, “E-Mail: Article on Japanese BW Report,” September 20, 

2014.

82 Keiichi, 28–29.

83 Gold, 237–238.

84 Yin and Fan, 286.

85 Martin Furmanski, “E-Mail: Article on Japanese BW Report,” October 21, 2011.

86 Leroy D. Fothergill, “The Biological Warfare Threat,” in Nonmilitary Defense: 

Chemical and Biological Defenses in Perspective, ed. ACS Applied Publications, Advances in 

Chemistry 26 (Washington, DC: American Chemical Society, 1960), 23–33.

87 Jeanne Guillemin, Biological Weapons: From the Invention of State-Sponsored Programs to Contemporary Bioterrorism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 80; 

Materials on the Trial of Former Servicemen of the Japanese Army Charged with Manufacturing and Employing Bacteriological Weapons.

88 John Bryden, Deadly Allies: Canada’s Secret War, 1937–1947 (Toronto: McClelland 

& Stewart, 1989); Donald Avery, “Canadian Biological and Toxin Warfare Research, 

Development and Planning, 1925–45,” in Geissler and Moon, 190–214.

89 Olivier Lepick, “French Activities Related to Biological Warfare, 1919–45,” in 

Geissler and Moon, 70–90.
57

A Short History of Biological Warfare

90 W.J. Cromartie, “B.W. Intelligence Report—Paris Area, European Theater of 

Operations, United States Army, ALSOS Mission,” September 18, 1944, RG 112, Entry 

295A, Records of the Office of the Surgeon General (Army), Records of the Preventive Medicine Division, Biological Warfare Specialized Files, 1941–47, Box 12, National 

Archives and Records Administration (NARA).

91 Lepick, “French Activities Related to Biological Warfare, 1919–45.”

92 Ibid., 86, 88–89.

93 Ibid., 70.

94 Erhard Geissler, “Biological Warfare Activities in Germany, 1923–45,” in Geissler 

and Moon, 96, 98.

95 Gábor Faludi, “Challenges of BW Control and Defense During Arms Reduction,” 

in Conversion of Former BTW Facilities, ed. Erhard Geissler, Lajos Gazsó, and Ernst Buder, 

NATO Science Series 21 (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 1998), 67–70; Lajos Rózsa 

and Kathryn Nixdorff, “Biological Weapons in Non-Soviet Pact Countries,” in Deadly 

Cultures: Biological Weapons since 1945, ed. Mark L. Wheelis, Lajos Rózsa, and Malcolm 

R. Dando (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), 158–160.

96 Milton Leitenberg, “Biological Weapons in the Twentieth Century: A Review and 

Analysis,” Critical Reviews in Microbiology 27, no. 4 (December 2001), 270.

97 Alberto Sbacchi, “Legacy of Bitterness: Poison Gas and Atrocities in the ItaloEthiopian War 1935–1936,” Genève-Afrique 13, no. 2 (1974), 39, note 54; Rózsa and 

Nixdorff, 159; Faludi, 69.

98 Geissler, “Biological Warfare Activities in Germany, 1923–45,” 104–105.

99 “Memorandum to the Chief, MID, War Department, Subject: Biological Warfare—Col. Ugo Reitano, Director of Italian Army Medical Services, Attn: Col. W.M. 

Adams, from Lt. Col. William S. Moore, G.S.C.,” June 29, 1944, RG 112, Entry 295A, 

Records of the Office of the Surgeon General (Army), Records of the Preventive Medicine Division, Biological Warfare Specialized Files, 1941–47, Box 12, Current Intel—Italian, NARA.

100 “Interview with Major Ludwik Kerstyn Krzewinski, Medical Corps, Polish Army, 

14 June 1946,” June 14, 1946, RG 112, Entry 295A, Records of the Office of the Surgeon 

General (Army), Records of the Preventive Medicine Division, Biological Warfare Specialized Files, 1941–47, Box 9, NARA; Andrzej Krajewski, “Broń Biologiczna W Polsce, 

Czyli Kanapka Ze Śmiercią,” Focus Historia, March 13, 2010, available at <http://historia.

focus.pl/swiat/bron-biologiczna-w-polsce-czyli-kanapka-ze-smiercia-604>.

101 Valentin Bojtzov and Erhard Geissler, “Military Biology in the USSR, 1920–45,” 

in Geissler and Moon, 153–167; Walker.

102 Ibid.

103 Milton Leitenberg, Raymond A. Zilinskas, and Jens H. Kuhn, The Soviet Biological 

Weapons Program: A History (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012).
58 

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104 Bojtzov and Geissler. 

105 Ken Alibek and Stephen Handelman, 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 (New York: Random House, 2000), 29–31; Erhard Geissler, “Alibek, Tularemia and the Battle of Stalingrad,” The CBW Conventions Bulletin, no. 69–70 (December 

2005), 10–15; Eric Croddy and Sarka Krčálová, “Tularemia, Biological Warfare, and 

the Battle for Stalingrad (1942–1943),” Military Medicine 166, no. 10 (October 2001), 

837–38.

106 Alibek and Handelman, 36.

107 Bojtzov and Geissler, 163; Alexander Gogun, Stalin’s Commandos: Ukrainian 

Partisan Forces on the Eastern Front (London: I.B. Tauris and Co. Ltd., 2015), 141–146; 

Geissler, “Biological Warfare Activities in Germany, 1923–45,” 121.

108 Gogun, 240–246.

109 Martin Hugh-Jones, “Wickham Steed and German BW,” Intelligence and National 

Security 7, no. 4 (1992), 379–402.

110 Gradon B. Carter and Graham S. Pearson, “British Biological Warfare and Biological Defence, 1925–45,” in Geissler and Moon, 168–189.

111 G.P. Gladstone, B.C.J.G. Knight, and Graham Wilson, “Paul Gordon Fildes, 

1882–1971,” Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society 19 (1973), 317–347.

112 Carter and Pearson. 

113 Barton J. Bernstein, “America’s Biological Warfare Program in the Second World 

War,” Journal of Strategic Studies 11, no. 3 (1988), 292–317.

114 “The Costs of the Manhattan Project,” The Brookings Institution, December 15, 

2016, available at <www.brookings.edu/the-costs-of-the-manhattan-project/>.

115 John Ellis van Courtland Moon, “U.S. Biological Warfare Planning and Preparedness: The Dilemmas of Policy,” in Geissler and Moon, 215–254.

116 Ibid.

117 Theodor Rosebury, Experimental Air-Borne Infection (Baltimore: Williams and 

Wilkins Co., 1947); Alexander D. Langmuir, “The Potentialities of Biological Warfare 

Against Man: An Epidemiological Appraisal,” Public Health Reports 66, no. 13 (1951), 

387–399.

118 W. Seth Carus, Bioterrorism and Biocrimes: The Illicit Use of Biological Agents Since 

1900, rev. ed. (Washington, DC: Center for Counterproliferation Research, National 

Defense University, 2001), 71–73.

119 Ibid., 71. English language newspaper accounts claimed that Hopf employed typhus, but this is probably a mistake. The German for typhoid was typhus, which may have 

confused the reporters. See Furmanski, “E-Mail: Article on Japanese BW Report.”

120 Carus, Bioterrorism and Biocrimes, 67–69.

121 Ibid., 66–67.
59

A Short History of Biological Warfare

122 Geissler, “Biological Warfare Activities in Germany, 1923–45,” 121.

123 Bojtzov and Geissler, 163.

124 Geissler, “Biological Warfare Activities in Germany, 1923–45,” 121.

125 Robert Petersen, “‘When a Nation Is Being Murdered’—The Secret Biological 

and Chemical War Against the Third Reich,” PowerPoint presentation, CBW Symposium, National Defense University, Washington, DC, January 31, 2017; Robert Petersen, 

“‘When a Nation Is Being Murdered’—The Secret Biological and Chemical War Against 

the Third Reich,” Zeszyty Naukowe Akademii Sztuki Wojennej 103, no. 2 (2016), 158–174.

126 Lévi-Strauss, 51; Wheelis, “Biological Warfare before 1914.”

127 Matthew Meselson, Martin M. Kaplan, and Mark A. Mokulsky, “Verification of 

Biological and Toxin Weapons Disarmament,” in Verification: Monitoring Disarmament, 

ed. F. Calogero, Marvin L. Goldberger, and Sergei Petrovich Kapitza (Boulder: Westview 

Press, 1991), 123–164.

128 Langmuir.

129 W. Seth Carus, “Observations on a Century of Biological Warfare Program 

Proliferation (1915–2015),” Nonproliferation Review, forthcoming. For an earlier review, 

see Milton Leitenberg, Assessing the Biological Weapons and Bioterrorism Threat (Carlisle 

Barracks, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2005). 

130 Governments in six countries have admitted to past activity, including Canada, 

France, Iraq, South Africa, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Sufficient unofficial information, although sometimes of uncertain reliability, exists to suggest that six 

other countries also actively pursued biological and toxin weapons: Egypt, Israel, North 

Korea, Rhodesia, the former Soviet Union, and Syria. Russia admitted the existence of the 

former Soviet BW program but now denies that there was such a program. Allegations 

by U.S. Government officials, repeated periodically over several administrations, suggest 

that China, Iran, and Russia (the successor state to the Soviet Union) also may have, or 

have had, programs, but there is little or no publicly available information about those 

alleged activities. At least two countries, Indonesia and Libya, were interested in acquiring 

BW, but there is no evidence that they ever succeeded in doing so. There is some evidence 

that Romania had a program during the Cold War, and Czechoslovakia may have been 

actively involved with the Soviet BW program, but more evidence is needed to substantiate such claims. In contrast, there is no publicly available information to support the 

inclusion of a long list of countries that have been mentioned as possibly possessing BW 

programs: Algeria, Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burma, Chile, Cuba, Georgia, India, Laos, 

Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Sudan, Taiwan, and Vietnam, although in some 

cases there is evidence of interest in pursuing biological weapons. Note that some of these 

countries might have had BW programs, but there is no publicly available information 

to support such a conclusion. For more information, see Carus, The Proliferation of State 

Biological Warfare Capabilities.
60 

CSWMD Occasional Paper 12

131 Ibid.

132 Mark L. Wheelis, Lajos Rózsa, and Malcolm R. Dando, eds., Deadly Cultures: 

Biological Weapons since 1945 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006).

133 Government of Canada, Confidence Building Measures, Canada: 2011 Annual 

Report of Confidence Building Measures Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, 2011; 

Donald Avery, “The Canadian Biological Weapons Program and the Tripartite Alliance,” in Wheelis, Rózsa, and Dando, 84–107; Donald Avery, Pathogens for War: Biological 

Weapons, Canadian Life Scientists, and North American Biodefence (Toronto: University of 

Toronto Press, 2013).

134 Department of State, Adherence to and Compliance with Arms Control and Nonproliferation Agreements and Commitments (Washington, DC: Department of State, 2001), 9, 

available at <www.state.gov/documents/organization/22466.pdf>; Department of State, 

Adherence to and Compliance with Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments (Washington, DC: Department of State, 2015), 14.

135 The best review of what little is known is Eric Croddy, “China’s Role in the 

Chemical and Biological Disarmament Regimes,” The Nonproliferation Review 9, no. 1 

(Spring 2002), 16–47.

136 SIPRI, The Problem of Chemical and Biological Warfare: A Study of the Historical, 

Technical, Military, Legal, and Political Aspects of CBW, and Possible Disarmament Measures, 

vol. 2: CB Weapons Today (New York: Humanities Press, 1971), 241–242.

137 Russian Federation Foreign Intelligence Service, A New Challenge After the Cold 

War: Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Proliferation Issues, JPRS-TND-93-007 

(Arlington, VA: Foreign Broadcast Information Service, 1993), 24; United States Arms 

Control and Disarmament Agency, Adherence to and Compliance with Arms Control and 

Nonproliferation Agreements and Commitments (Washington, DC: Department of State, 

1998), available at <www.state.gov/1997-2001-NOPDFS/global/arms/reports/annual/

comp98.html>; Department of State, Adherence to and Compliance with Arms Control, 

Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments (Washington, DC: Department of State, 2016), available at <www.state.gov/t/avc/rls/rpt/2016/>.

138 Department of State, Compliance Report 2016, 12.

139 Olivier Lepick, “The French Biological Weapons Program,” in Wheelis, Rózsa, 

and Dando, 108–131.

140 Department of Defense, Proliferation: Threat and Response (Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1996), 16.

141 Anthony H. Cordesman and Adam C. Seitz, Iranian Weapons of Mass Destruction: 

Biological Weapons Programs (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International 

Studies, 2008).

142 United Nations (UN) Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission, 

Compendium of Iraq’s Proscribed Weapons Programmes in the Chemical, Biological, and Missile 
61

A Short History of Biological Warfare

Areas (New York: United Nations, 2007); Charles Duelfer, Comprehensive Report of the 

Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq’s WMD (Washington, DC: Central Intelligence Agency, 

2004), available at <www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/iraq_wmd_2004/index.html>.

143 UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission, 1149.

144 Ibid., 1055.

145 Duelfer.

146 Ibid., 10, 45.

147 UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission; Commission on the 

Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, 

Report to the President of the United States (Washington, DC: Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, 2005), 

80–111; Duelfer. 

148 UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission, 956–962.

149 Duelfer, 11.

150 Ibid. 

151 Ibid., 405–408.

152 Avner Cohen, “Israel and Chemical/Biological Weapons: History, Deterrence, and 

Arms Control,” The Nonproliferation Review 8, no. 3 (2001), 27–53.

153 Graham S. Pearson, “The Threat of Deliberate Disease in the 21st Century,” in 

Biological Weapons Proliferation: Reasons for Concern, Courses of Action, Report 18 (Washington, DC: The Henry L. Stimson Center, 1998), 32.

154 Elisa D. Harris, “Threat Reduction and North Korea’s CBW Programs,” The 

Nonproliferation Review 11, no. 3 (2004), 89–91; House Armed Services Subcommittee on Intelligence, Emerging Threats and Capabilities, testimony presented by Bruce 

W. Bennett, “The Challenge of North Korean Biological Weapons,” October 11, 2013, 

Washington, DC, available at <www.rand.org/pubs/testimonies/CT401.html>; North 

Korean Security Challenges: A Net Assessment (London: International Institute for Strategic 

Studies, 2011), 161–169.

155 Department of Defense, Proliferation: Threat and Response (Washington, DC: 

Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2001), 10–11; Russian Federation Foreign Intelligence 

Service, 30.

156 Bennett, “The Challenge of North Korean Biological Weapons”; Louise Waldenström, Lena Norlander, and Gertrud Puu, North Korea’s Chemical and Biological Weapons 

Programmes in 2005: Real or Outdated Threats? (Umeå: NBC Defence, Swedish Defence 

Research Agency [NBC-skydd, Totalförsvarets forskningsinstitut] (FOI), 2005).

157 Waldenström, Norlander, and Puu, 55–56; Bennett, “The Challenge of North 

Korean Biological Weapons.”
62 

CSWMD Occasional Paper 12

158 Glenn Cross, Dirty War: Rhodesia and Chemical Biological Warfare 1975–1980 (Solihull, England: Helion and Company, 2017); Chandré Gould and Peter I. Folb, Project 

Coast: Apartheid’s Chemical and Biological Warfare Programme (Geneva: UN Institute for 

Disarmament Research Centre for Conflict Resolution, 2002); Chandré Gould and Peter 

I. Folb, “The South African Chemical and Biological Warfare Program: An Overview,” 

The Nonproliferation Review 7, no. 3 (Fall–Winter 2000), 10–23.

159 Cross, chapter 3.

160 Gould and Folb, Project Coast. 

161 Ibid., 64–65.

162 Leitenberg, Zilinskas, and Kuhn.

163 Anthony Rimmington, “Invisible Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Soviet 

Union’s BW Programme and Its Implications for Contemporary Arms Control,” The 

Journal of Slavic Military Studies 13, no. 3 (September 2000), 1–46.

164 “Stalin’s Plan to Assassinate Tito,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, 

no. 10 (March 1998), 137.

165 Raymond A Zilinskas, The Soviet Biological Weapons Program and Its Legacy in 

Today’s Russia, Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction Occasional Paper 

11 (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 2016).

166 Michael Gentile, “Former Closed Cities and Urbanisation in the FSU: An Exploration in Kazakhstan,” Europe-Asia Studies 56, no. 2 (2004), 263–278.

167 Leitenberg, Zilinskas, and Kuhn, 160–161.

168 Ibid., 121–136; A possible accident involving open air testing is described in Jonathan B. Tucker and Raymond A. Zilinskas, eds., The 1971 Smallpox Epidemic in Aralsk, 

Kazakhstan, and the Soviet Biological Warfare Program, vol. 9 (Monterey, CA: Center for 

Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies, 2002).

169 Christopher J. Davis, “Nuclear Blindness: An Overview of the Biological Weapons Programs of the Former Soviet Union and Iraq,” Emerging Infectious Diseases 5, no. 4 

(1999), 510; Leitenberg, Zilinskas, and Kuhn, 293.

170 Leitenberg, Zilinskas, and Kuhn, 178.

171 Ibid., 46, 288.

172 Davis, “Nuclear Blindness,” 511; Leitenberg, Zilinskas, and Kuhn, 282–322.

173 Alibek and Handelman, 99, 111–112.

174 Leitenberg, Zilinskas, and Kuhn, 631–678.

175 Department of State, Adherence to and Compliance with Arms Control, Nonproliferation, and Disarmament Agreements and Commitments (Washington, DC: Department of 

State, 2005), 31.

176 Department of State, Compliance Report 2016, 12–13.
63

A Short History of Biological Warfare

177 Vladimir Putin, “Being Strong: National Security Guarantees for Russia,” Rossiiskaya Gazeta, February 20, 2012, available at <http://archive.premier.gov.ru/eng/events/

news/18185//>. The full quotation is:

In the more distant future, weapons systems based on new principles (beam, geophysical, wave, genetic [emphasis added] psychophysical and other technology) will be developed. All this will, in addition to nuclear weapons, provide entirely new instruments for achieving political and strategic goals. Such hi-tech weapons systems will 

be comparable in effect to nuclear weapons but will be more “acceptable” in terms of 

political and military ideology. In this sense, the strategic balance of nuclear forces will 

play a gradually diminishing role in deterring aggression and chaos.

178 Interfax, Russia to Draft Program of Beam, Genetic, Psychophysical Weapons, 2012, 

LexisNexis.

179 Gunnar Jeremias et al., “Guest Post: Spotlight on Syria’s Biological Weapons,” 

Arms Control Wonk, February 8, 2016, available at <www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/1201010/guest-post-spotlight-on-syrias-biological-weapons/>.

180 Dany Shoham, Chemical and Biological Weapons in the Arab Countries and Iran—An 

Existential Threat to Israel? (Shaarei Tikva, Israel: The Ariel Center for Policy Research, 

2001), 35–36, 99, available at <www.acpr.org.il/publications/books/Shoham-2001.pdf>.

181 Brian Balmer, “The UK Biological Weapons Program,” in Wheelis, Rózsa, and 

Dando, 47–83.

182 United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Confidence Building 

Measure Return for 2011 (Covering Data for 2010) for the Convention on the Prohibition of 

the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons 

and Their Destruction, 10 April 1972, for submission to the UN, March 31, 2011, available 

at <www.unog.ch/80256EDD006B8954/%28httpAssets%29/009540B24174AC38C125

78930057FF00/$file/BWC_CBM_2011_United+Kingdom.pdf>.

183 Balmer, “Deadly Cultures,” 60.

184 This account draws on the following sources: John Ellis van Courtland Moon, 

“The U.S. Biological Weapons Program,” in Wheelis, Rózsa, and Dando, 9–46; Alastair 

Hay, “Simulants, Stimulants and Diseases: The Evolution of the United States Biological Warfare Programme, 1945–60,” Medicine, Conflict and Survival 15, no. 3 ( July 1999), 

198–214; Alastair Hay, “A Magic Sword or a Big Itch: An Historical Look at the United 

States Biological Weapons Programme,” Medicine, Conflict and Survival 15, no. 3 ( July 

1999), 215–234; Jonathan B. Tucker and Erin R. Mahan, President Nixon’s Decision to 

Renounce the U.S. Offensive Biological Weapons Program, Center for the Study of Weapons 

of Mass Destruction Case Study 1 (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 

2009).

185 Moon, “Deadly Cultures.”
64 

CSWMD Occasional Paper 12

186 Reid Kirby, “Evolving Role of Biological Weapons,” Army Chemical Review, no. 

PB 3-07-02 (December 1997), 22–26.

187 Simon M. Whitby, “Anticrop Biological Weapons Program,” in Wheelis, Rózsa, 

and Dando, 213–223.

188 John Ellis van Courtland Moon, “Biological Warfare Allegations: The Korean War 

Case,” in The Microbiologist and Biological Defense Research: Ethics, Politics, and International Security, ed. Raymond A. Zilinskas, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 

v. 666 (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1992), 53–83.

189 Milton Leitenberg, China’s False Allegations of the Use of Biological Weapons by 

the United States during the Korean War, CWIHP Working Paper 78 (Washington, DC: 

Wilson Center, 2016), available at <www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/chinas-false-allegations-the-use-biological-weapons-the-united-states-during-the-korean>.

190 Tucker and Mahan. 

191 Josef Goldblat, “The Biological Weapons Convention: An Overview,” International Review of the Red Cross, no. 318 (1997), 251–265.

192 Kenneth D. Ward, “The BWC Protocol Mandate for Failure,” The Nonproliferation 

Review 11, no. 2 (2004), 183–199; “The United States and the Biological Weapons Convention: An Interview with Donald Mahley,” Stanford Journal of International Relations 3, 

no. 2 (Fall–Winter 2002), available at <https://web.stanford.edu/group/sjir/3.2.04_mahley.html>.

193 “Sixth Review Conference of the States Parties to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and 

Toxin Weapons and on Their Destruction,” BWC/CONF.VI/6, (Article I, paragraphs 1 

and 2), 9, available at <www.opbw.org/>.

194 Jez Littlewood, “Looking for Trouble in All the Right Places,” December 2016.

195 “The Australia Group,” available at <www.australiagroup.net/en/>.

196 Olivia Bosch and Peter van Ham, Global Non-Proliferation and Counter-Terrorism: 

The Impact of UNSCR 1540 (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2007).

197 Elisa D. Harris, “Dual-Use Threats: The Case of Biological Technology,” in 

Governance of Dual-Use Technologies: Theory and Practice, ed. Elisa D. Harris (Cambridge: 

American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2016), 100–101.

198 Cohen, “Israel and Chemical/Biological Weapons: History, Deterrence, and Arms 

Control.”

199 Central Intelligence Agency, “Quarterly Review of Biological Warfare Intelligence: First Quarter 1949,” May 13, 1949, Harry S. Truman Library.

200 Cross; Gould and Folb, Project Coast, 24–30.

201 Gould and Folb, Project Coast, 24–30.

202 Paul L. Montgomery, “Killing of Indians Charged in Brazil: 134 Are Accused of 

Crimes Aimed at Stealing Land Killing of Brazilian Indians for Their Lands Charged to 
65

A Short History of Biological Warfare

Officials,” New York Times, March 21, 1968; Mark L. Wheelis and Masaaki Sugishima, 

“Terrorist Use of Biological Weapons,” in Wheelis, Rózsa, and Dando, 284–303.

203 Leitenberg, Zilinskas, and Kuhn, 407–422; Raymond A. Zilinskas, “Cuban Allegations of Biological Warfare by the United States: Assessing the Evidence,” Critical 

Reviews in Microbiology 25, no. 3 (1999), 173–227.

204 Jeffrey D. Simon, Terrorists and the Potential Use of Biological Weapons: A Discussion 

of Possibilities (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 1989).

205 W. Seth Carus, “The Rajneeshees (1984),” in Toxic Terror: Assessing Terrorist Use of 

Chemical and Biological Weapons, ed. Jonathan B. Tucker (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000), 

115–137.

206 Richard Danzig et al., Aum Shinrikyo: Insights into How Terrorists Develop Biological and Chemical Weapons, 2nd ed. (Washington, DC: Center for a New American Security, 

2012).

207 Leitenberg, Assessing the Biological Weapons and Bioterrorism Threat; Rolf MowattLarssen, Al Qaeda Weapons of Mass Destruction Threat: Hype or Reality? (Cambridge: Belfer 

Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, 2010).

208 Stephen Hummel, “The Islamic State and WMD: Assessing the Future Threat,” 

CTC Sentinel 9, no. 1 ( January 2016), 18–22.

209 Jeanne Guillemin, American Anthrax: Fear, Crime, and the Investigation of the Nation’s Deadliest Bioterror Attack, 1st ed. (New York: Times Books, 2011); Expert Behavioral Analysis Panel, The Amerithrax Case: Report of the Expert Behavioral Analysis Panel

(Vienna, VA: Research Strategies Network, 2011).

210 Carus, Bioterrorism and Biocrimes.

211 Ibid.

212 Meselson, Kaplan, and Mokulsky, “Verification of Biological and Toxin Weapons 

Disarmament.”

213 Committee on Advances in Technology and the Prevention of Their Application 

to Next Generation Biowarfare Threats, National Research Council, Globalization, Biosecurity, and the Future of the Life Sciences (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 

2006).

214 John P. Caves, Jr., and W. Seth Carus, The Future of Weapons of Mass Destruction: 

Their Nature and Role in 2030, Occasional Paper 10 (Washington, DC: National Defense 

University Press, 2014).

215 Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation 

and Terrorism, World at Risk: The Report of the Commission on the Prevention of WMD 

Proliferation and Terrorism (New York: Vintage Books, 2008); Committee on Advances 

in Technology and the Prevention of Their Application to Next Generation Biowarfare 

Threats, National Research Council, Globalization, Biosecurity, and the Future of the Life 

Sciences.
66 

CSWMD Occasional Paper 12

216 Leitenberg, Assessing the Biological Weapons and Bioterrorism Threat; J. Revill 

and C. Jefferson, “Tacit Knowledge and the Biological Weapons Regime,” Science and 

Public Policy, 2013; Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley and Kathleen M. Vogel, “The Social 

Context Shaping Bioweapons (Non)proliferation,” Biosecurity and Bioterrorism: Biodefense 

Strategy, Practice, and Science 8, no. 1 (March 2010), 9–24; Kathleen M. Vogel, Phantom 

Menace or Looming Danger? A New Framework for Assessing Bioweapons Threats (Baltimore: 

The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013); Sonia Ben Ouagrham-Gormley, Barriers to 

Bioweapons: The Challenges of Expertise and Organization for Weapons Development (Ithaca: 

Cornell University Press, 2014).

217 Catherine Jefferson, “The Taboo of Chemical and Biological Weapons: Nature, 

Norms and International Law,” unpublished dissertation, University of Sussex, 2009.

218 Guillemin, Biological Weapons; Gregory D. Koblentz, Living Weapons: Biological 

Warfare and International Security (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009); Leitenberg, 

Assessing the Biological Weapons and Bioterrorism Threat.

219 SIPRI, The Problem of Chemical and Biological Warfare: A Study of the Historical, 

Technical, Military, Legal and Political Aspects of CBW, and Possible Disarmament Measures, 

6 vols. (New York: Humanities Press, 1971); U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Technologies Underlying Weapons of Mass Destruction, OTA-BP-ISC-115 (Washington, DC: Office of Technology Assessment, 1993).

220 Dembek.

221 Carus, “The History of Biological Warfare.”

222 Geissler and Moon. 

223 Wheelis, Rózsa, and Dando, Deadly Cultures.

224 Wheelis, “Biological Warfare before 1914”; Wheelis, “Biological Sabotage in 

World War I.”

225 Wheelis, “Biological Warfare at the 1346 Siege of Caffa.”

226 Fenn; Ranlet.

227 Keiichi. 

228 Harris, Factories of Death; Harris, “The Japanese Biological Warfare Programme.”

229 Lepick, “French Activities Related to Biological Warfare, 1919–45”; Geissler, 

“Biological Warfare Activities in Germany, 1923–45.”

230 Petersen, “‘When a Nation Is Being Murdered’—The Secret Biological and 

Chemical War against the Third Reich.”

231 Geissler, “Biological Warfare Activities in Germany, 1923–45”; Carus, Bioterrorism 

and Biocrimes.

232 Leitenberg, Zilinskas, and Kuhn.

233 Moon, “Deadly Cultures”; Moon, “U.S. Biological Warfare Planning and Preparedness: The Dilemmas of Policy.”
67

A Short History of Biological Warfare

234 Avery, Pathogens for War; Avery, “Canadian Biological and Toxin Warfare 

Research, Development and Planning, 1925–45”; Bryden; Brian Balmer, Britain and 

Biological Warfare: Expert Advice and Science Policy, 1930–65 (Basingstoke, Hampshire: 

Palgrave, 2001); Balmer, “Deadly Cultures”; Carter and Pearson; Peter M. Hammond and 

G.B. Carter, From Biological Warfare to Healthcare: Porton Down 1940–2000 (New York: 

Palgrave, 2002).

235 Avner Cohen, “Israel: Reconstructing a Black Box,” in Biological Warfare and 

Disarmament: New Problems New Perspectives, ed. Susan Wright (Lanham, MD: Rowman 

and Littlefield, 2002), 181–212; Cohen, “Israel and Chemical/Biological Weapons.”

236 Cohen, “Israel and Chemical/Biological Weapons”; Cohen, “Israel: Reconstructing a Black Box.”

237 Carus, Bioterrorism and Biocrimes; Masaaki Sugishima, “Biocrimes in Japan,” in A 

Comprehensive Study on Bioterrorism (English Part), ed. Masaaki Sugishima (Mizuho City, 

Japan: Legal Research Institute, Asahi University, 2003), 86–121.

238 Jonathan B. Tucker, ed., Toxic Terror: Assessing Terrorist Use of Chemical and Biological Weapons (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000).

239 Danzig et al. 

240 Milton Leitenberg, “Aum Shinrikyo’s Efforts to Produce Biological Weapons: A 

Case Study in the Serial Propagation of Misinformation,” Terrorism and Political Violence

11, no. 4 (1999), 149–158.

241 These distinctions are discussed in Graham S. Pearson, New Scientific and Technological Developments of Relevance to the Fifth Review Conference, Bradford Briefing Papers, 

1st Series 3 (Bradford, UK: Bradford Project on Strengthening the Biological and Toxin 

Weapons Convention, University of Bradford, 2001), 6–7, available at <http://hdl.handle.

net/10454/708>.

242 Mark E. Woolhouse and E. Gaunt, “Ecological Origins of Novel Human Pathogens,” Critical Reviews in Microbiology 33, no. 4 (2007), 232.

243 Ibid. The list also includes 325 fungi, 285 helminths (parasitic worms), and 2 

prions.

244 Mark Woolhouse et al., “Human Viruses: Discovery and Emergence,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 367, no. 1604 (October 

19, 2012), 2864–2871.

245 Simon I. Hay et al., “Global Mapping of Infectious Disease,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences 368, no. 1614 (March 19, 2013).

no. 1614 (March 19, 2013

246 Rocco Casagrande and Nickolas Wills, “Bioterrorism Targeted at Agriculture,” in 

Encyclopedia of Bioterrorism Defense, ed. Rebecca Katz and Raymond A. Zilinskas, 2nd ed. 

(Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 130–137; Simon M. Whitby, Biological Warfare 
68 

CSWMD Occasional Paper 12

Against Crops (New York: Palgrave, 2002); Whitby, “Deadly Cultures”; Piers Millett, “Antianimal Biological Weapons Program,” in Wheelis, Rózsa, and Dando, 224–235.

247 Hay et al., “Global Mapping of Infectious Disease.”

248 L.H. Taylor, S.M. Latham, and Mark E. Woolhouse, “Risk Factors for Human 

Disease Emergence,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B: Biological 

Sciences 356, no. 1411 (2001), 983–989.

249 Margaret E. Kosal, “Anti-Materiel Agents,” in Katz and Zilinskas, 54–57.

250 U.S. Department of the Army, Military Biology and Biological Agents (Washington, 

DC: Government Printing Office, 1964), as quoted in SIPRI, The Problem of Chemical and 

Biological Warfare, vol. 2, 311.

251 Carus, Bioterrorism and Biocrimes.

252 Richard F. Pilch and Nazrin Masinova, “Delivery Methodologies,” in Katz and 

Zilinskas, 201–204.

253 G.W. Christopher et al., “Biological Warfare: A Historical Perspective,” Journal of 

the American Medical Association 278, no. 5 (August 6, 1997), 412–417.

254 W. Seth Carus, Defining “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” Occasional Paper 8, 

Revised and Updated (Washington, DC: Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass 

Destruction, National Defense University Press, January 2012).

255 Carus, Bioterrorism and Biocrimes.

256 Barry Kellman, Bioviolence: Preventing Biological Terror and Crime (New York: 

Cambridge University Press, 2007).

257 Carus, “The History of Biological Warfare.

258 Leitenberg, Zilinskas, and Kuhn, 407–422.
69

A Short History of Biological Warfare

About the Author

Dr. W. Seth Carus is a Distinguished Research Fellow at the National Defense 

University (NDU). His research focuses on issues related to biological warfare, including threat assessment, biodefense, and the role of the Department of Defense 

in responding to biological agent use. He also studies allegations of biological 

agent use and has written a working paper titled “Bioterrorism and Biocrimes: 

The Illicit Use of Biological Agents in the 20th Century” and several articles on 

that subject. He has been at NDU since 1997. From 2003 to 2013 he also served 

as the Center’s Deputy Director. From 2001 to 2003, Dr. Carus was detailed to 

the Office of the Vice President, where he was the Senior Advisor to the Vice 

President for Biodefense. Before assuming that position, he was on the staff of the 

National Preparedness Review commissioned to recommend changes in homeland security organization and supported the Office of Homeland Security while 

it was being established. Prior to joining NDU, Dr. Carus was a research analyst 

in the Center for Naval Analyses. From 1991 to 1994, he was a member of the 

Policy Planning Staff in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy. Before 

joining the government, he was a research fellow at the Washington Institute for 

Near East Policy. Dr. Carus has a Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins University in 

Baltimore, Maryland.

Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction

Occasional Paper Series

11

The Soviet Biological Weapons Program and Its

Legacy in Today’s Russia

Raymond A. Zilinskas

July 2016

10

The Future of Weapons of Mass Destruction:

Their Nature and Role in 2030

John P. Caves and W. Seth Carus

June 2014

9

Proliferation Security Initiative: Origins and Evolution

Susan J. Koch

June 2012

8

Defining “Weapons of Mass Destruction”

(Revised and Updated)

W. Seth Carus

January 2012

7

Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction: 

Looking Back, Looking Ahead 

Paul I. Bernstein, John P. Caves, Jr., and W. Seth Carus

October 2009

For additional information, including requests for publications,

please visit the Center Web site at <http://wmdcenter.ndu.edu>.