Comments by "David Himmelsbach" (@davidhimmelsbach557) on "TIK Q&A | WW2, Atomic Bomb, Rommel, Sturmgeschütz and Treaty of Versailles" video.

ALL Penicillin came from the the USA. Absolutely no-one else manufactured it, not even Britain, where the original research was performed. It's production used up too much food for wartime Britain. Penicillin was fed corn by products by the ton. The demand was greater than the supply, so the USSR would've been lucky to get any.
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As for rarity, see The Third Man (1949)
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The vast bulk of the war plant workers came from France, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Hungary etc. The Nazis looted those nations of their blue collar and white collar talent. Soviet citizens were set off to work German farms, to replace quite literally draft horses. Peasants make for very poor factory workers. Soviets were used for every other manner of drudge work... especially construction. The cumulative total of DPs from Western Europe is astounding. The Nazis were impressing 200,000 Frenchmen at a crack, over and over. It got to the point that you couldn't find an electrician, plumber....
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@PORRRIDGE_GUN The process used corn products by the ton. And these were only available via the Corn Products Co. wet milling process. ( Today they're best remembered by their mayonnaise, corn oil and peanut butter lines. ) Previously, this stuff was used to feed hogs. (!) The manufacture of the drug used astounding amounts of stainless steel -- and imported Canadian nickel. It also proved necessary to fed these beasties pure oxygen. This really ramped up their growth tempo. The bean counters have gauged its manufacture as expensive as the atom bomb or the B-29 -- some 20% of America's entire war output! The growth machines, first generation, were re-dedicated ice cream making machines. The aeration action of ice creaming was just the ticket for the microbe. The power bill for all of these early machines was frightful. Even after the war, penicillin was still so hard to come by that films like "The Third Man" made perfect sense. As time has gone by, ever more effective strains have been discovered. This happened even during WWII. One strain of note came out of the Southwest Pacific. It was these later strains that really boosted drug production. The research boys were as hyper-active as the production teams. With today's genetic engineering, the sky's the limit.
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@stephaniewilson3955 And the ultimate irony was that the key man hated the British. He was still carrying a grudge from 1775. Heh. But then, he had a rep for being difficult, generally.
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