Penicillin Diplomacy comes to Cuba November 12 1943

Batista wooed by PENICILLIN

An American warplane flies south throughout the night in November 1943, all in an effort to deliver scarce American government penicillin to save the life of a small son of Cuban lawyer Angel Diaz Soto.

The effort is widely reported in all the semi-official American media such the New York Times, media that were read all around the world by government elites seeking to discern the attitudes of the largest member of the rising Allied powers of World War Two.

This particular tea leaf wasn't hard to read : penicillin was no longer to be a secret weapon of war, just for American soldiers ; but now was to be an instrument of peace , open to all the nations of the world willing to take up the yoke of defeating the evil Nazis.


Look, this effort said in effect, can you picture the Nazis giving something like life-saving penicillin to the child of an unknown civilian in small little forgotten bit of the world ?

Dawson Diplomacy

Call it Penicillin Diplomacy or Dawson Diplomacy, it doesn' really matter : what matters it that it became more and more widely practised in the last months of the war as penicillin became an evergrowing potent symbol of hope after Hitler was defeated.....