Die Tropen-Seuche im Eis: Deutschlands vergessene Malaria-Krise 1946

Germany, 1946: Amidst bombed-out cities, extreme hunger, and one of the coldest winters of the century, a deadly threat emerges that no one expected—a tropical epidemic. Thousands of people in northern Germany suddenly fall ill with malaria. This documentary reveals how water-filled bomb craters and destroyed dikes became perfect breeding grounds for the Anopheles mosquito, while returning prisoners of war unknowingly brought the parasite with them. We follow desperate public health officers like Professor Dr. Fritz Weyer, who, in the ruins of Emden and Berlin, had to fight against the bureaucracy of the British occupying forces to obtain life-saving DDT. Learn how the disease overwintered in overcrowded, damp cellars and why the epidemic was ultimately defeated not by medicine, but by bulldozers and concrete.