Dawn of a New Day Read Free Page A

and equipment, so that they and the German staff didn’t get infected in the process. The group began to work ten-hour days and had a meeting every night to discuss the progress they were making.
    Meanwhile, Himmler considered the most logical vehicle for delivering their gift to the American people and believed that their U-boats were the answer. Germany’s U-boat fleets were having enormous success attacking Allied supply ships and even some of its well-equipped military ships. The U-boats were able to cross the ocean separating the two countries and once the sub was close enough to the American shores, landing parties could deliver their cargoes to German intelligence agents, who were already in place and reporting from several cities throughout the United States. The agents could then target the principal cities on the East Coast, and eventually the West Coast, if the initial attacks were successful. The Americans would never know what hit them.
    Himmler and Mengele met again at Auschwitz and Himmler could see that Mengele was excited about the rapid progress his group of doctors had made. The Doctor told Himmler that they were able to obtain strains of all the needed viruses from Berlin and that, because of the previous research his team had done, they were able to quickly genetically drift the influenza, plague and rabies viruses, resulting in a new super strain of virus. Mengele went on to explain that an antigenic or genetic drift was when two or more strains of different viruses combined to form a new subtype virus, which was entirely different from the original viruses, but still maintained the original characteristics of the primary viruses. He said it was a sort of genetic mutation that would be immune to all current antidotes that normally might be effective, if employed against each individual strain of virus, but would have little effect on the new strain. He said that when the virus infected the host, the different strains would attack the cells simultaneously and that the host had little chance of fighting the infection and that the new, more dangerous strain, would in fact result in a pandemic. Mengele was confident that none of the current antibiotics would be effective in fighting the new strain and that the process of finding a new antibiotic to fight the infection would be most difficult and require months of research and development. He said that the team decided on the three different viruses for a multitude of reasons. Considering history and the staggering figures regarding both the influenza and the plague, or Black Death, the physicians were confident that the number of deaths resulting from a new super strain would even surpass the statistics of both the 1918 outbreaks of these two viruses.  The influenza would attack the victim’s respiratory systems and death would be rapid if left untreated.  The plague on the other hand caused painful swellings, sometimes as large as an apple or orange in the areas of the arms, legs, neck and groin. When the body could no longer withstand the excessive swelling, the body areas would burst open and ooze blood, fluids and pus like secretions. When the Black Death last hit mankind the incidence of death was usually within a week. The plague would also effect the lungs, which in conjunction with the effects of the influenza, would accelerate the failure of the lungs by filling them with not only fluids but with the victim’s own blood. Mengele said that they chose rabies instead of smallpox, which they originally considered, because of the extreme physical effects this disease produced. Persons exposed to the rabies virus suffered an extreme attack on their nervous systems and death was rapid if left untreated.  Advanced infection could produce violent behavior ranging from extreme aggressiveness to raging to hallucinations and ranting and raving. The infected people might even begin to attack other infected or non-infected people they encountered. Mengele