Modern penicillin made by the powerful, for the powerful - Ancient penicillin, made by the humble, for the humble

Sometimes I am at one with all those TV detectives whose constant riposte is "I don't believe in coincidences".

Perhaps it all was a big coincidence that the same people who were so insistent that penicillin had first to be made in the big companies' chemical plants before it could begin saving lives, were equally insistent that wartime penicillin be preserved solely for saving the lives of the fittest 1A troops.

But I don't think so.

Just as I don't think it is a coincidence that the people who were perfectly content to use penicillin as made by the humble microbes were equally determined to see that wartime penicillin was distributed to all - particularly to the humble and to Life's 4Fs, the weak and vulnerable.

But don't you dare call these differing opinions on how to make and distribute wartime penicillin just a 'moral' battle for the soul of WWII .

Because it was much scientific as it was moral : almost all these people based their moral beliefs upon their scientific beliefs.

So that being unwilling to go to the aid of small countries unable to fight off the bigger, stronger German military was as much an erroneous science based decision ("Progress sees the bigger best the smaller") as it was an erroneous moral decision....

WWII : high moral action forsaken for high morale puffery

High morals or High morale : diverse ways to win WWII

Where Henry Dawson and a few others differed most strongly from the mainstream of civilian thought in WWII was his concern that his side could best win the war with high morals --- rather than just with high morale.

Not that some very powerful people (like FDR) didn't think that lots of public talk about high moral vales wasn't important for high morale - they just didn't want to see too much explicit talk about details and about implementing those high moral values into low level practise.

Dawson was not black, but the idea of a need for V2 was obviously a big part of his emotional DNA : (1) a domestic Victory as necessary to ensure  (2) a quicker and less bloody military Victory overseas.

Was he right ?

Well, his opponents were obviously wrong : less high talk might have been more , not less , helpful to the war effort.

Because it was the disconnect between high talk and low reality that so depressed most citizens of the Allies, the Axis and the Neutrals.

"We're pretty bad, admittedly, but not quite as bad as their lot - so we need to remain free and they need to be defeated" might have played out better in Moscow, Berlin and New York.

The problem with genuine high moral action in the Allied world was that it would have produced a hot civil war internally as opposed to a lukewarm external war.

Most people , deep down, disliked the Nazis' actions far more than their views : they simply took commonly accepted social darwinism viewpoints too far, repressed weaker peoples too much , wanted colonies too badly.

Only if and when the general population in the Allied world changed this social darwinistic viewpoint , on their own ,would it be convincing to Allies, Neutrals and Axis alike.

Very slowly and very grudgingly allowing women to work and blacks to fight didn't really convince many that the Allies' war aims were much better than that of their opponents.

But look at the diverting of giant war bombers away from bombs to delivering instead  tiny handfuls of scarce drugs half way across the continent to save the lives of even smaller babies ... from no-account families .

The record suggests these acts was truly spontaneous and unexpected enough to be seen as truly heartfelt and as unmotivated by cynical high level 'morale' considerations.

In an Allied war that looks shabbier and shabbier the more the records are researched , spontaneously diverting war material penicillin to save the lives of no-account babies still looks to be the moral high point of the war....

Gradually mass produce natural penicillin, starting in 1940, but ban all mention of the word in newspapers : half way moral approach ?

Producing enough penicillin for all Allied civilians and all Allied soldiers but keeping all word of it out of the newspapers and scientific journals might have been the best possible moral approach on its wartime use.

Yes , sick people in neutral, occupied and Axis countries would still die needlessly, but given the view held by many, many powerful people in the Allied elite, that penicillin should only be used to send lightly wounded troops back into combat, it might have been the most moral approach----- that would be politically acceptable in wartime....