The collapse of the Third Reich and the end of the Second World War 75 years ago was met with general rejoicing, but it also represented a threat of a global pandemic. The Nazis had forcibly displaced millions of people from their homes across Europe and brought them into central Europe as prisoners and/or laborers of varying degrees of freedom (mostly none). Most of them lived in appalling conditions without adequate nutrition, shelter or sanitation. The sick did not receive anything close to adequate medical care. Diseases like typhus ran rampant among the displaced population.

But of course none of them wanted to stay in their prisons and labor camps once the Allies arrived. They wanted to go home if they could. At the least they wanted to get out of the rubble of bombed out cities to someplace with food. Each one of those millions of displaced persons who left their prison or labor camp was a possible carrier of disease.

So why wasn’t there a pandemic in 1945? It didn’t happen in large part because the Allied authorities had not forgotten the Spanish Flu that followed the First World War and killed many more people than the war itself did. The Allies knew about the prison and labor camps, although they could not begin to imagine exactly how bad it was in them.  They came prepared.

When the Allies liberated a camp they buried the dead, gave medical care to the dangerously ill, and fed and deloused those who could walk on their own. They actually dusted former prisoners with DDT powder, which makes us cringe now, but it did kill disease-bearing insects and did help prevent a pandemic. For example, a man who worked with Dutch-Paris in Paris was liberated from a concentration camp directly into an American field hospital. Unfortunately he died there a couple of weeks later, because he was already too ill to be saved when the Americans liberated the camp.

The Allies also burned down all the buildings in places like Bergen-Belsen to kill the fleas, lice and animals that can carry typhus. They also tried to keep infected people from spreading out over the countryside by setting up refugee camps with beds, food, clothes, clean water and officials who processed applications for transportation home. In the West, many displaced persons were flown to their home countries on military planes. Others traveled by military trucks. Once they returned to their home countries, they were again screened for public health issues. The sick were given a place in a rest home or hospital to recover before continuing their journeys.

Although it’s not something you hear about, the fact that there was not a pandemic in 1945 is a triumph of public health policy, planning and action.