Been reading “Normandy ‘44: D-Day and the Epic 77-Day Battle for France” by James Holland. He mentions how penicillin gave the Americans the advantage during the war, because Germany had nothing like it.
I think this angle is found in one of the Navarone movies.
The Germans were already working with sulfa drugs. Also, Paul Ehrlich, a German physician, noted that certain chemical dyes coloured some bacterial cells but not others. He concluded that, according to this principle, it must be possible to create substances that can kill certain bacteria selectively without harming other cells. In 1909, he discovered that a chemical called arsphenamine was an effective treatment for syphilis. That was years ahead of Fleming stumbling onto Penicillin.