Epidemic Control with Zyklon

One of the most efficient methods to fight lice and thereby to contain and eliminate typhus—but also to kill other vermin like grain beetles, bugs, cockroaches, termites, mice, rats and many more—is their poisoning with highly volatile hydrogen cyanide. 

Liquid hydrogen cyanide has a short shelf life and is extremely dangerous with incorrect handling. At the end of the First World War, hydrogen cyanide was introduced onto the market in an easier to han- 

Wohlrab, Flecktyphusbekampfung im Generalgouvernement , Miinchner Medizinische Wochenschrift, 89(22) (1942), pp. 483-488. 

103 Friedrich Konrich, Uber die Sanierungsanstalten der deutschen Kriegsgefangenenlager , Gesundheits-Ingenieur, July 19, 1941, pp. 399-404. 

Zyklon B was licensed and produced by the DEGESCH108 corporation residing in Frankfurt.109 Until the end of the Second World War, it played an extraordinarily important role in the struggle against insect pests and rodents110,111 in food warehouses, large-scale means of trans- 

---