A translation of the Oxford team's 1941 report reached Germany via Sweden the following year. Like most research in wartime Germany, research into penicillin was carried out in a fragmentary fashion with little coordination. On 6 December 1943, the Reich Health Ministry ordered the medical community to conduct research into penicillin and other antibiotics. Three vials of penicillin captured by the Afrika Korps reached Germany in 1943 and one was sent to Heinz Öppinger at Hoechst in Frankfurt, and he began conducting experiments with moulds. Penicillin was produced there in 300-litre batches, and Öppinger developed a rotating drum for a deep-tank fermentation process.
Research was also carried out by Schering in Berlin using a sample of Flemings mould, which they failed to cultivate; their efforts to determine the chemical structure of penicillin were also unsuccessful. Maria Brommelhues at IG Farbens Bacteriological Laboratory in Elberfeld catalogued different species of penicillin. Hitlers personal physician, Theodor Morell, treated Hitler with penicillin for injuries sustained in the 20 July 1944 assassination attempt. Information about penicillin research in Germany was gathered by the Manhattan Projects Alsos Mission and forwarded to Florey in the UK.
Much of Germany's penicillin came from Czechoslovakia, where research was carried out at Charles University in Prague and the Fragner Pharmaceutical Company by a team that included chemist Karel Wiesner. Work was also conducted in secret in France and at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. In 1946 and 1947, penicillin factories were established in Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, Italy and Yugoslavia with plant and expertise from Canada through the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), of which Canadian Lester B. Pearson was the head of its supply committee. UNRRA was wound up in 1948, and its penicillin responsibilities were transferred to the World Health Organization (WHO).
In Italy, Domenico Marotta negotiated with UNRRA for a penicillin plant to be built in Rome near the Sapienza University of Rome. This took longer than expected and construction did not commence until 1948. In the meantime, Chain came to the Istituto Superiore di Sanità to deliver a series of lectures on penicillin and Marotta took the opportunity to recruit him as a colleague. Chain suggested that instead of building a pilot plant, they use the UNRRA money to build an institute for research into penicillin. This became the largest of its kind in the world, with over one hundred chemists, biochemists, microbiologists and technicians, and was soon at the forefront of research into semisynthetic penicillin.