Could the 1918 epidemic have been part of an attempt at biological warfare by the Central Powers in WWI?
They were desperate, clutching at straws, and searching for a weapon that would help them survive. They started using poison gas,
as one alternative. Did they consider using plague?
The outbreak began in the American army; it might have decimated that army worse than any battle, and rendered it unable to come to the battlefield until after the Germans had taken Paris and rendered American assistance irrelevant.
But the plague might have gotten out of control, and all records of its use been lost/destroyed.
(Just food for thought. . . )
The science did not exist to use viruses in bio-warfare at the time of WWI.
That was my first impression too. It wouldn't have been too farfetched for the 1918 bird flu to be bioterrorism. Everything that the Germans were doing in WWI to find horrible ways to kill people, wouldn't surprise me at all.