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Witness History: The Battle of the Potato Beetles

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The Battle of the Potato Beetle

08/08/2018 GMT

The Battle of the Potato Beetles

BBC World Service - Witness History, The Battle of the Potato Beetles

Communist East Germany claimed US planes were dropping beetles on their crops

During the Cold War the communist authorities in East Germany claimed US planes were dropping beetles out of planes onto their crops.

In the summer of 1950, the East German government claimed that American planes were dropping potato beetles over their fields to try and sabotage their crops. But was this the truth.. or just a Cold War rumour? In collaboration with Germany's Memory of the Nation Association, Lucy Burns investigates for Witness.

Photo: A potato beetle. Credit: Evening Standard/Getty Images

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