Idiom "sweat bullets"-----influence of German?

[Cohen, Gerald Leonard]

     English has an interesting idiom: "sweat bullets."  Jonathon Green's _Cassell's Dictionary of Slang_ says: "[1950s+] (U.S.) 1. to worry excessively, to be terrified. 2. to work very hard."  ---- I'm familiar only with the first meaning, although I'd prefer to substitute "exceedingly" for "excessively," and I'm not sure that "to be terrified" is entirely appropriate.  One needs time to start sweating bullets (e.g. the perpetrator of a crime waiting to be be grilled by very tough detectives.)

     What particularly interests me here, however, are the questions: Why bullets?  How does one even figuratively sweat bullets? I believe there *is* no way to figuratively sweat bullets.  But note the parallel expression in German,"Blut schwitzen"  (= to sweat blood) and its longer variant "Blut und Wasser schwitzen" (= to sweat blood and water).

    Perhaps the German expression was altered by Americans, who misinterpreted "Blut" as "bullet" (or perhaps made this alteration humorously).  If "sweat bullets" really did arise as late as the 1950s in the U.S., perhaps it was U.S. soldiers stationed in Germany who heard "Blut (und Wasser) schwitzen" and Americanized the idiom to "sweat bullets."  And, of course, as soldiers they'd very much have bullets on their mind.

     Does all this sound plausible?  Or am I overlooking a better interpretation?

Gerald Cohen
P.S. The German expression "Blut schwitzen" evidently derives from the folk belief that the hippopotamus sweats blood.

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