![]() Greenfield farm was in decline, and the family sold off part of the farm to the U.S. German Government Shows Interest in Dilger as Agentĭilger received his doctoral degree in 1912, a year after Hubert Dilger died. Later, in Washington, D.C., he applied his expertise for the opposite purpose. Ironically one of his challenges was how to prevent bacterial infections in animal tissue cultures. While studying microbiology and germ culture, he learned how to set up a tissue-culture lab. He passed the medical exam at the University of Heidelberg in 1908 and by 1909 was an assistant at the university surgical clinic while researching his doctoral dissertation. He stayed at his sister Edna’s house in Mannheim and enjoyed a comfortable life in Germany. Freidrich Tiedemann, known as the “great physiologist of Heidelberg.”Īnton’s grandfather was also a German medical doctor, so, unsurprisingly, Anton was sent, at the age of nine, to study in Germany. As a boy, Anton idolized his famous great grandfather on his mother’s side, Dr. Four of his sisters married Germans and moved back to Germany. He was also well acquainted with German culture. The Confederates won the battle but did not destroy Hooker’s army, due partly to the efforts of Captain Dilger.Īt Greenfield, Anton was taught to ride and to hunt and fish. Hubert Dilger, an expert horseman, was instrumental in saving Union forces in the fighting retreat of General Hooker’s troops during Confederate General Stonewall Jackson’s flank attack at the end of the battle. ![]() Army captain who had received the Medal of Honor for his service as a horse artillery officer at the Battle of Chancellorsville in the spring of 1863. He was the son of Hubert Dilger, a German immigrant and a U.S. (National Archives, RG 76)ĭilger was born on a horse farm, named Greenfield, near Front Royal, Virginia, on February 13, 1884. Fewer horses and mules would make moving artillery and other war materiel much more difficult it had become a strategic priority for Germany.Īnton Dilger’s Early Life Spent Around Horses, RidingĪnton Dilger’s passport photo, attached to his 1916 application. Dilger’s work was just one of many ways the Germans sought to undermine America’s ability to aid its allies. German espionage and sabotage in the United States was going on long before the United States formally entered the war in April 1917. ![]() The yellow liquid, which carried the glanders bacteria, had been cooked up in what was known as “Tony’s Lab” by an American-born German agent named Anton Dilger. After jabbing many horses in two pens, he dumped the rest of the liquid in the animal’s water basins and food troughs and threw the gloves and syringes into the river.ĭuring 1915–1916, thousands of horses and mules were killed in these horse pens. Then he jabbed the needles into the hides of as many mules that he could reach. Taking care to avoid the night watchmen, he went to the first mule corral. The dockhand, a stevedore named John Grant, checked out the hundreds of horses and mules in the British remount depot. He snapped on the gloves and removed from the package two glass syringes containing a yellow liquid. On a chilly November night in 1915, a dockhand crept silently through the darkness near the Newport News, Virginia, shipyard as he approached dockside corrals filled with horses destined to board British or French transport ships headed for Europe to aid in the Allied war effort.Īs he neared the Breeze Point wharf, he carried a brown paper package and rubber gloves. A shipment of horses at a New York City rail yard, 1918.
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