War against the potato beetle

Communist propaganda of the time claimed that the insect was being dropped from parachutes and balloons, with the intent of immiserating the populations of these countries, causing famines, and facilitating an economic crisis.

The latter were affected especially severely, since in the USSR the private small farmers and gardeners lacked access to officially distributed effective pesticides, so the beetle, their eggs, and larvae had to be collected by hand - often a chore assigned to children.

A letter was issued to "the people of the world", stating that "the beetles are smaller than the atomic bomb... but they are also a weapon of the US imperialists in the fight against the peace-loving workers and peasants of East Germany."

The official organ of the ruling communist Polish United Workers' Party Trybuna Ludu ("People's Tribune") reported that after being dropped on the Baltic Sea by American planes, the beetle emerged onto land and began to wage "sabotage and diversionary actions aimed at socialist Poland".

A Naczelny Nadzwyczajny Komisarz ("General Special Commissar") was appointed to oversee the assault on the beetles, the country was divided into strategic sectors, and battle maps indicating enemy positions were drawn up.

Simultaneously, instructions were issued to farmers describing simple and effective ways of eradicating the pest if pesticides were not available; for instance drowning specimens in water with a small admixture of kerosene.

"[7] In a 1951 book published by the Polish Ministry of Defense, Zofia Kowalska wrote that American planes dropped beetles, "violating sovereign airspace", on the night of 24 May in East Germany, in the Zwickauer Land of Saxony.

[5] In August 1950, at the suggestion of the CIA, the West German authorities printed postcard-sized cardboard replicas of the potato beetle and stamped these with political slogans and the letter "F" for "Freiheit" ("Freedom").

[9] In the European Union, the beetle remains a regulated (quarantine) pest for the Republic of Ireland, the Balearic Islands, Cyprus, Malta and southern parts of Sweden and Finland, along with the non-EU member states of the United Kingdom and Norway.