THE GREAT SECRET

A revealing history of a 1943 German bombing of Allied shipping that came with unexpected consequences.

Three months after the invasion of Italy, the southern harbor of Bari was busy and almost undefended when the Luftwaffe attacked, sinking 17 ships and producing damage and casualties comparable to Pearl Harbor. Bestselling author and historian Conant begins with a vivid description of the December 1943 raid, an event that proved to be a terrible embarrassment to the Allies, who made a partially successful effort to suppress news of the attack. They were better able to hide what happened over the next days and weeks. Victims appeared burned and blistered, yet their hair and eyebrows were unburned. Their eyes and throat were inflamed, and they often died with what seemed like pneumonia. Ultimately, about 600 were affected. Some doctors suspected that they were seeing symptoms of mustard gas exposure. Conant’s hero in this fascinating and often gruesome story is Lt. Col. Stewart Francis Alexander, the Allied physician in charge of the Chemical Warfare Service. Arriving in Bari at the request of the local doctors, he confirmed their diagnosis and, despite vigorous denials from military officials, determined the source: an American ship carrying a cargo of mustard gas bombs. The Allied high command accepted his report but classified it until long after the war. This suppression did not include results from Alexander’s meticulous research, which included autopsies, blood tests, and tissue samples. He reported that the gas killed victims’ rapidly dividing blood and lymphatic cells. Since cancer cells also divide rapidly, here was a chemical that would destroy them. Alexander returned to private practice after the war, but his findings galvanized the few medical researchers looking for drugs to fight cancer. Smoothly switching gears, Conant devotes the final third of her book to the early efforts, which were dogged by controversy and disappointment but began achieving permanent cures by the 1960s.

An impressive dual history of a military disaster and a scientific breakthrough.