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Nov 2020
29m 7s

Wartime Weapon Turned Medical Miracle

The HISTORY® Channel | Back Pocket Studios
About this episode

December 2, 1943. World War II is raging throughout Europe, but in the Allied port city of Bari, Italy, things have remained relatively quiet. The Allies are offloading tanks, guns and other equipment when on this night, the Nazis attack. They bomb the port, killing 2,000 soldiers and civilians, and sinking 28 Allied ships. One of those ships holds a secret cargo, a chemical weapon that leaks into the harbor where soldiers are swimming for their lives. What happened when those soldiers were exposed to this deadly toxin? And how did the investigation of this incident revolutionize the way we treat cancer?


Special thanks to Jennet Conant, author of The Great Secret: The Classified World War II Disaster that Launched the War on Cancer


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