World War II Database

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseKurt Blome was born in Bielefeld, Germany in 1894. During the Nazi Regime, he was the Deputy Reich Health Leader and Plenipotentiary for Cancer Research in the Reich Research Council. As early as Sep 1940, Director of the SS Ahnenerbe Institute Wolfram Sievers had directed him to expand the production of insecticides to deal with a possible Allied use of insects to spread diseases in Germany; later, in 1943, he would propose his own plan for using mosquitoes to spread malaria. He also worked on aerosol dispersants and methods of spraying nerve agents like Tabun and Sarin from aircraft. In 1942, he was placed in charge of a unit affiliated with the Central Cancer Institute at the University of Posen (now Poznan, Poland) which conducted research on the use of carcinogenic substances in military applications. By the end of the war, he was in charge of a vast research program that included physiology-biology, bacteriology and vaccines, radiology, pharmacology, cancer statistics, and tumor farming departments. He various charges received at least 2.7 million Reichsmarks in funding from the Wehrmacht and SS between 1943 and 1945. He used concentration camp prisoners for experimentation on orders of Heinrich Himmler starting in 1943. Throughout the war, Germany and Japan exchanged information on biological and chemical warfare, and there was evidence that some Blome's research programs benefited from the results of Japanese research.

ww2dbaseAs Soviet troops approached, Blome fled from Posen in Jan 1945 for another biological weapons research facility in Geraburg in Thuringia. He gave the orders to destroy the facilities, but relayed his fears to Walter Schreiber, head of the Military Medical Inspectorate, that the Soviets might still be able to identify the purpose of the facilities, and the fact that they had tested on humans. Even at this late stage of the war, he was still promising Adolf Hitler that his program would soon result in a miracle weapon that could turn the tide of the war. In Apr 1945, US troops entered Geraburg, capturing all of his records and equipment. He was arrested in Munich, Germany on 17 May 1945 by the US Counter Intelligence Corps.

ww2dbaseAfter the war, Blome was tried during the Doctors' Trial in Nuremberg, Germany on charges of practicing euthanasia and conducting human experimentation; he admitted only receiving orders to do so in 1943. He was acquitted of war crimes charges. Most historians believe that the United States government intervened on his behalf in order to gain information from his research and to gain him as an advisor on biological and chemical warfare. In 1951, he was hired by the US Army Chemical Corps for Project 63, but his visa was denied by the US Consul in Frankfurt, West Germany. He was then hired by the US Army's European Command Intelligence Center at Oberursel, West Germany to work on "Army, 1952, Project 1975", which had not been declassified by the time of this writing in late 2019. He passed away in Dortmund, West Germany in 1969.

Kurt Blome Timeline