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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Erich Traub | 1/2 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Traub | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T13:12:25.381891+00:00 | kb-cron |
Erich Traub (27 June 1906 – 18 May 1985) was a German veterinarian, scientist and virologist who specialized in foot-and-mouth disease, Rinderpest and Newcastle disease. Traub was a member of the National Socialist Motor Corps (NSKK), a Nazi motorist corps, from 1938 to 1942. 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 under the direction of Kurt Blome. Both Traub and Blome were rescued from the Soviet zone of Germany after World War II and taken to the United States in 1949 under the auspices of the United States government program Operation Paperclip, meant to rescue the scientific knowledge in Germany, and protect it from the Soviet Union. Since the early XXIst century, Traub has been a common target of false and disproven conspiracy theories centred about his claimed role in the development or modification of the Lyme disease, despite Lyme disease having been present in human populations for thousands of years.
== Career ==
=== Early career and war === During the 1930s, he studied on a fellowship at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in Princeton, New Jersey mentored by Richard Shope, performing research on vaccines and viruses, including pseudorabies virus and lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCM). During his stay in the United States, Traub and his wife were listed as members of the German American Bund, a pro-Nazi German-American club thirty miles west of Plum Island in Yaphank, Long Island, from 1934 to 1935. Traub worked at the University of Giessen, Germany, from 1938 to 1942. Traub was a member of the Nazi NSKK, a motorist corps, from 1938 to 1942. The NSKK was declared a condemned, not a criminal organization at the Nuremberg trials. From 1942 to 1948, Traub worked as lab-chief at the Reich Research Institute for Virus Diseases of Animals (German: Reichsforschungsanstalt für Viruskrankheiten der Tiere) on Riems Island (German: Insel Riems), a German animal virus research institute in the Baltic Sea, now named the Friedrich Loeffler Institute. The institute was headed by Prof. Dr. Otto Waldmann from 1919 to 1948, while Traub was vice-president. The Institute at Riems Island was a dual use facility during the Second World War where at least some biological warfare experiments were conducted. It had been founded in 1909–10 to study foot-and-mouth disease in animals and by World War II employed about 20 scientists and a staff of 70–120. Hanns-Christoph Nagel, a veterinarian and biological warfare expert for the German Army, conducted experiments there, as did Traub. The institute was administered under the Innenministerium (Ministry of the Interior), which Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler took over in 1943. The chain of command was Himmler, Dr. Leonardo Conti (Reich Health Leader), Kurt Blome, Waldmann, and then Traub. Traub specialized in viral and bacterial diseases. He was assisted by Anna Bürger, who was later also brought to the United States after the war, to work with the Navy's biological warfare program. On orders from Himmler and Blome, the Deputy Reich Health Leader and head of the German biological warfare program, 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. In 1944, Blome sent Traub to pick up a strain of Rinderpest virus in Turkey; upon his return, this strain proved inactive (nonvirulent) and therefore plans for a Rinderpest product were shelved.
=== Post-war === Immediately after the war Traub was trapped in the Soviet zone of Allied occupied Germany. He was forced to work for the Soviets from his lab on Riems Island. In July 1948, the British evacuated Erich Traub from Riems Island as a "high priority Intelligence target" since it was now in the Soviet Zone and they feared that Traub was assisting in their biological warfare program. Traub denied this, however, claiming that his only interest was foot-and-mouth disease in animals. Traub was brought to the United States in 1949 under the auspices of the United States government program Operation Paperclip, meant to exploit scientific knowledge in Germany, and deny it to the Soviet Union. From 1949 to 1953, he was associated with the Naval Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland. 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. As a noted German authority on viruses he was asked to consult on their animal disease program from a Biological Warfare perspective. Traub discussed work done at the Reich Research Institute for Virus Diseases of Animals on Riems Island during World War II for the Nazis, and work done after the war there for the Russians. Traub gave a detailed explanation of the secret operation at the institute, and his activities there. This information provided the ground work for Fort Detrick's offshore germ warfare animal disease lab on Plum Island. His publicly published research from his time in the United States reports disease research not directly related to weaponization. In 1951, he published a report for the Naval Medical Research Institute on Newcastle Disease virus in chicken and mammalian blood cells. Two years later, he published a paper for the Navy on the mechanisms of immunity in chickens to Newcastle and the possible role of cellular factors. Also in 1953, he published another paper for the Navy with Worth I. Capps on the foot-and-mouth disease virus and methods for rapid adaptation. Traub served as an expert on foot-and-mouth disease for the FAO of the UN in Bogotá, Colombia, from 1951 to 1952, in Tehran, Iran, from 1963 to 1967, and in Ankara, Turkey, from 1969 to 1971.
=== Return to Germany ===