Erich Traub

He worked directly for Heinrich Himmler, head of the Schutzstaffel (SS), as the lab chief of the Nazis' leading bio-weapons facility on Riems Island.

[8] On orders from Himmler and Blome, the Deputy Reich Health Leader and head of the German biological warfare program, Traub worked on weaponizing foot-and-mouth disease virus, which has been reported to have been dispersed by aircraft onto cattle and reindeer in Russia.

[7] Months into his Operation Paperclip contract, Traub was asked to meet with US scientists from Fort Detrick, the Army's biological warfare headquarters, in Frederick, Maryland.

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

In 1972, on the occasion of the 500th anniversary of Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich Traub received an honorary doctorate degree in Veterinary Medicine for his achievements in basic and applied Virology (basic research on LCM; definition and diagnosis of type strains of FMD and their variants; development of adsorbate vaccines against fowl plague, Teschen disease of swine, and erysipelas of swine).

Germany, Japan, Britain, Russia and the U.S. all conducted experiments along these lines during the Second World War, and the Japanese used such insect-borne diseases against both soldiers and civilians in China.

This was one reason that President Franklin Roosevelt and Secretary of War Henry Stimson ordered the creation of an American biological warfare program in 1942, which was headquartered at Camp Detrick, Maryland.

This eventually grew to a very large facility with 245 buildings and a $60 million budget, including an Entomological Weapons Department that mass-produced flies, lice and mosquitoes as disease vectors.

After the war, the Army's 406th Medical General Laboratory in Japan cooperated with former scientists from Unit 731 in experimenting with many different insect vectors, including lice, flies, mosquitoes, ticks, fleas, spiders and beetles to carry a wide variety of diseases, from cholera to meningitis.

The Plum Island facility, operated by the Department of Agriculture, conducted research on foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) of cattle, one of Traub's areas of expertise.

[1][19][failed verification – see discussion] Fort Terry on Plum Island was part of the U.S. biological warfare program in 1944–46, working on veterinary testing in connection with the weaponization of brucellosis.

After the war, research on biological weapons continued at Pine Bluff in Arkansas and Fort Detrick, Maryland, while officially at least Plum Island was transferred to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.