The Economic Times

In 1950, amid the Cold War, a tiny beetle from the US was destroying potato crops across East Germany. Then began one of history's strangest propaganda campaigns

In 1950, a striped potato beetle became the centre of one of the Cold War's most unusual propaganda campaigns after East Germany accused the United States of dropping the insects from aircraft to destroy socialist food supplies. While farmers battled real crop damage, governments turned the infestation into a political story.