Anton Casimir
Dilger was born on 13th February 1884 andwas a German-American physician, and
the main proponent of the German biological warfare sabotage program during
World War I. His father, Hubert Dilger, was a United States Army captain who
had received the Medal of Honor for his work as an artilleryman at the Battle
of Chancellorsville (1863) during the American Civil War.
Dilger was born in
Front Royal, Virginia, where his parents had relocated from Ohio in the decades
after the Civil War. He was educated in Germany after going there at the age of
nine. He attended Gymnasium in Bensheim and trained as a physician in
Heidelberg and Munich, later working for the Heidelberg University surgical
clinic while researching for his doctoral dissertation. His dissertation
involved growing animal cells in tissue culture, at which he was unsuccessful.
He received his doctorate summa cum laude in 1912.
Dilger was the
grandson of anatomist Friedrich Tiedemann (1781–1861). Tiedemann was the
Director of the Institute of Anatomy at Heidelberg University. He was also the
cousin of Generalmajor Hubert Lamey (1896-1981), (Lamey was the Commander of
the 118 Jager Division.) as well as General der Kavallerie, Carl-Erik Koehler
(1895–1958). (Koehler was the Commander of the 20th Army Corp.)
There are reports that
Dilger served as a surgeon in the Bulgarian Army during the Balkan War
(1912–1913), that he served in the U.S. Army Medical Corps, that he carried the
rank of colonel in the Imperial German Army Medical Corps, and that he directed
hospitals for the German Red Cross. These reports are unsubstantiated.[citation
needed]
By the time World
War I began, Dilger was in Germany, but he returned to the United States in
1915 with cultures of anthrax and glanders with the intention of biological sabotage
on behalf of the German government's biological sabotage officer Rudolf
Nadolny. The U.S. was then neutral, but Germany wanted to prevent neutral
countries from supplying Allied forces with livestock, and the fact that Dilger
had a US passport from 1908 onward made it easy for him to travel to and from
America. Along with his brother Carl, Dilger established a laboratory in the
Chevy Chase district north of Washington, DC in which cultures of the causative
agents of anthrax and glanders—Bacillus anthracis and Burkholderia mallei—were
produced. A 1941 report reveals that the bacteria were to be painted onto the
nostrils of horses.
In America,
Baltimore stevedores who were at first recruited by German officers to plant
incendiary devices among ships and wharves were eventually given bottles of
liquid culture with orders to inoculate horses near Van Cortland Park. The
stevedores claimed to have done the deed with rubber gloves and needles.
The U.S. biological
sabotage program is estimated to have ended sometime in late 1916, after which
Anton returned to Germany. Upon his return to America, Dilger found himself
under suspicion of being a German agent by the Federal Bureau of Investigation
and fled to Mexico, where he would use the surname "Delmar". The
reasons for which he fled to Mexico remain unclear but are still being
investigated by his descendants. A possible hypothesis is that he wanted to
convince the Mexican government of engaging in war with the United States.
Attributes: Agility d6, Smarts d8, Spirit d6, Strength
d6, Vigor d6
Skills: Fighting d6, Healing d8, Knowledge (Biology)
d8, Notice d6, Repair d6, Shooting d6, Stealth d6, Streetwise d8 Persuasion d6
Cha: 0; Pace: 6; Parry: 5; Toughness:
5; Sanity: 5
Hindrances: Fanatic, Vow (minor, sabotage the enemy)
Edges: Luck, College boy
Gear: Civilian clothing, false papers
No comments:
Post a Comment