WEBVTT - Thinking Sideways: Amikafer 0:00:00.240 --> 0:00:03.600 Hey guys, Steve here, you are listening to one of 0:00:03.600 --> 0:00:06.600 our original twenty six episodes. If you listen to any 0:00:06.640 --> 0:00:09.280 of our new episodes, you're gonna notice that we're sounding 0:00:09.320 --> 0:00:11.639 a little different in these ones. Yeah, there's a reason 0:00:11.680 --> 0:00:14.520 for that. There is they've been remastered. They have been 0:00:14.520 --> 0:00:18.040 remastered because they had a really annoying hum. Yeah, I 0:00:18.040 --> 0:00:21.480 mean a huge thanks to listener James for doing almost 0:00:21.520 --> 0:00:23.880 all of the legwork on this thing. They'll also notice 0:00:23.880 --> 0:00:25.880 if you had listened to what we're calling the last 0:00:25.920 --> 0:00:29.639 twenty six episodes before and you're re listening now, the 0:00:29.800 --> 0:00:33.160 music and sound effects are gone. Yes, we've we've gone 0:00:33.159 --> 0:00:35.720 back to straight audio, so be warned. We sound a 0:00:35.720 --> 0:00:38.040 little different today than we do in what you're about 0:00:38.040 --> 0:00:49.560 to listen to. Yeah, bye bye, Thinking Sideways. I don't 0:00:47.000 --> 0:00:57.120 think you never know what stories of things we simply 0:00:57.200 --> 0:01:03.160 don't know the answer too. Well. Hi there, and welcome 0:01:03.240 --> 0:01:09.759 back to Thinking Sideways the podcast. I am Steve, and we, 0:01:09.959 --> 0:01:12.039 as always are going to get into a story that 0:01:12.200 --> 0:01:14.280 doesn't quite have an answer and try and figure it 0:01:14.280 --> 0:01:17.720 out because Joe loves to solve them. Oh yeah, we'll 0:01:17.720 --> 0:01:21.520 solve this one for sure. Okay, all right, good. Well, 0:01:21.600 --> 0:01:24.360 let's let's hop right into the story. I'm not gonna 0:01:24.400 --> 0:01:26.200 tell you what it is quite yet. I want to 0:01:26.240 --> 0:01:30.880 set the stage. So it's nineteen fifty and we're in Germany. 0:01:30.920 --> 0:01:34.240 I better stop talking then. Huh no, no, it's okay, okay, 0:01:34.319 --> 0:01:39.400 uh and uh it's a nice sunny day. It's May. 0:01:39.600 --> 0:01:46.040 And wait do you hear that? Yeah? What was that? 0:01:46.040 --> 0:01:49.960 That is a US airplane flying over the field that 0:01:50.000 --> 0:01:53.960 we're standing in. Okay, okay, because we're in Germany in 0:01:54.000 --> 0:01:57.520 the nineteen fifties, which means that it is now an 0:01:57.520 --> 0:02:03.720 occupied territory. Pretty normal, pretty normal, which makes sense. Well, 0:02:03.840 --> 0:02:07.600 there's a problem though with this, and that is what 0:02:07.920 --> 0:02:13.320 happened supposedly within days of this particular plane, or any 0:02:13.360 --> 0:02:16.920 plane flying over this field, and that is the appearance 0:02:17.280 --> 0:02:23.040 of the potato beetle. Not just any potato Beetlelorado, the 0:02:23.240 --> 0:02:27.840 Colorado potatoe. You are absolutely correct, sir. So here's what 0:02:28.080 --> 0:02:31.680 the story is, ladies and gentlemen. According to the accounts, 0:02:31.680 --> 0:02:34.399 and this is one specifically, it was the twenty third 0:02:34.480 --> 0:02:39.400 of May, and a farmer by the name of Max 0:02:39.480 --> 0:02:43.840 Trevor had noticed American planes flying over his fields. He's 0:02:43.880 --> 0:02:48.080 in East Germany, and the next morning, according again to 0:02:48.160 --> 0:02:53.480 his account, he was shocked to discover that his fields 0:02:53.520 --> 0:02:57.600 of potatoes were full of potato beetles, not just any 0:02:57.600 --> 0:03:01.639 potato beetle, the Colorado potato beetle, which ladies and gentlemen, 0:03:01.680 --> 0:03:03.440 if you don't know anything about the beetle, and we'll 0:03:03.440 --> 0:03:06.480 get into some details on it, but it's pretty devastating 0:03:06.480 --> 0:03:09.480 for potato crops. So this is like the German Irish 0:03:09.560 --> 0:03:14.040 potato famine essentially. Yes, if you actually try and put 0:03:14.080 --> 0:03:16.680 that in into the Irish potato famine always comes up, 0:03:17.120 --> 0:03:19.000 which makes this difficult unless you know what to look for. 0:03:19.800 --> 0:03:23.080 So here's what's going on is, after these planes go 0:03:23.200 --> 0:03:26.120 by and all these farmers are reporting that there's Colorado 0:03:26.120 --> 0:03:31.040 potato beetles all over their fields, the East German press 0:03:31.280 --> 0:03:36.800 goes nuts with it. The politicians are making speeches. They 0:03:36.840 --> 0:03:41.440 are accusing the US of having dropped all of these 0:03:41.480 --> 0:03:46.400 potato beetles on their crops. And I'm guessing that this 0:03:46.520 --> 0:03:50.280 propaganda campaign that came from it is that they're saying, well, 0:03:50.320 --> 0:03:53.160 the Americans are trying to cut down our food supply 0:03:53.800 --> 0:03:59.040 and therefore take us over. Those imperialists yeah, I'm sure 0:03:59.040 --> 0:04:01.119 the people of East Germany were really really scared about 0:04:01.160 --> 0:04:09.440 the possibility that, you know, we spoot the Russians out. Uh. Well, 0:04:09.480 --> 0:04:11.800 like I said, there was a giant propaganda campaign that 0:04:11.840 --> 0:04:16.320 came up from this. Uh. There were posters, little leaflets, 0:04:16.520 --> 0:04:20.560 bits on the radio speeches. As I said, they were 0:04:20.600 --> 0:04:26.880 going crazy talking about this sudden infestation and how it 0:04:27.000 --> 0:04:30.640 was the fault of the Americans. They actually nicknamed the 0:04:31.360 --> 0:04:36.680 Colorado potato beetle I'm a coffer, which I understand translated 0:04:36.880 --> 0:04:40.280 is Yankee beetle. Is that correct? Yes, yes, that's correct. 0:04:40.560 --> 0:04:43.880 So what happens is children are at the end of 0:04:43.880 --> 0:04:47.080 their school days not allowed to just go home. They 0:04:47.080 --> 0:04:49.600 actually have to go out to the fields and go 0:04:49.720 --> 0:04:53.800 through the crops and try and pick up as many 0:04:54.080 --> 0:04:57.400 potato beetles as possible. That's the real tragedy from this, right, 0:04:57.640 --> 0:05:01.640 is we're losing homework time. Yeah, yeah, that's that's exactly 0:05:01.640 --> 0:05:06.520 what I was thrilled. It was the long game of Americans, right, 0:05:06.600 --> 0:05:09.800 we were trying to make the Germans stupid by like 0:05:10.120 --> 0:05:13.240 just taking out all of the homework time for you. Yeah, 0:05:14.800 --> 0:05:18.400 there are accounts that these children, some didn't really care 0:05:18.720 --> 0:05:22.560 some believed it. Girls evidently were really squeamish about touching 0:05:22.560 --> 0:05:26.279 these beetles, and from the accounts, they would get twenty 0:05:26.560 --> 0:05:29.760 beetles in afternoon each and then put them into glass 0:05:29.760 --> 0:05:32.159 bottles and they'd be shipped off to be destroyed. I 0:05:32.200 --> 0:05:35.680 read one account. It was an interview with a boy 0:05:35.720 --> 0:05:38.039 who had been going out to the fields and he said, yeah, 0:05:38.040 --> 0:05:40.640 I don't really believe that the Americans are dropping these, 0:05:41.040 --> 0:05:43.480 but you know you have to pick them off anyway, 0:05:44.640 --> 0:05:47.080 said so I got to do it. Yeah. I was like, 0:05:47.120 --> 0:05:49.039 you know, if you're living a country that doesn't have 0:05:49.080 --> 0:05:51.240 any pesticides to speak of, you know, and you've got 0:05:51.240 --> 0:05:53.599 to do something if you want to eat yea, yeah, yeah, 0:05:53.960 --> 0:05:56.520 kept having your crops destroyed. No, no, because you've gotta 0:05:56.560 --> 0:06:01.359 you gotta understand. The potato evidently was a main crop 0:06:01.600 --> 0:06:05.159 for the German people. That was a main food source, 0:06:05.920 --> 0:06:09.960 especially right after World War two. Exactly Again, you gotta 0:06:09.960 --> 0:06:13.120 remember what what the era is. There's you know, things 0:06:13.160 --> 0:06:15.920 have been destroyed. Kind of hard time Twitter a lot 0:06:15.920 --> 0:06:17.920 of people are times you're trying to get back on 0:06:18.000 --> 0:06:21.240 your feet. You you grow whatever food you can, and 0:06:21.279 --> 0:06:24.960 potatoes grow and they are hearty. They are a hearty 0:06:25.000 --> 0:06:30.800 little thing and at them too. That one might be 0:06:30.880 --> 0:06:33.719 one reason why there was such a scarcity potatoes, because 0:06:33.720 --> 0:06:37.200 there's a quote here from somebody who recalls sharing a 0:06:37.200 --> 0:06:41.040 single potato between herself and her mom and dad for breakfast. 0:06:41.600 --> 0:06:43.839 So it probably wasn't just a potato beetles. Probably was 0:06:43.839 --> 0:06:46.120 a Soviet carting away half the potato crop to make 0:06:46.160 --> 0:06:50.680 parka back. Yeah. Maybe. Well what comes out of this 0:06:51.040 --> 0:06:56.000 is that nearly half of the crops for in nineteen 0:06:56.120 --> 0:07:02.320 fifty were destroyed in East Germany by the Colorado potato beetle. Yeah. 0:07:02.400 --> 0:07:08.240 That that's a huge reduction in available food crops, which 0:07:08.279 --> 0:07:11.480 is not a good thing, especially if it's a staple. Yes, yeah, 0:07:11.520 --> 0:07:15.040 it's it's the main it's one of those main staples. Uh. So, 0:07:15.200 --> 0:07:19.360 like I said, in the beginning, the Germans were blaming 0:07:19.680 --> 0:07:23.040 the US for dropping the beetles on them. The US, 0:07:23.080 --> 0:07:25.440 of course was saying, no, we didn't do it. It 0:07:25.560 --> 0:07:28.880 wasn't us. Uh. And we're going to get into the 0:07:28.880 --> 0:07:32.440 theories about what's going on, and you know, why is 0:07:32.440 --> 0:07:36.560 this invasive species suddenly there It actually had been in 0:07:36.560 --> 0:07:39.440 the year before. Yes, yeah, And we're gonna go there. 0:07:39.480 --> 0:07:41.080 But I do want to talk about the beetle a 0:07:41.080 --> 0:07:44.400 little bit because, okay, we hear about the beetle, you 0:07:44.400 --> 0:07:46.120 don't really have a lot of context. So I just 0:07:46.120 --> 0:07:50.680 want to give some background on this particular little bug. So, 0:07:50.840 --> 0:07:55.679 the Colorado potato beetle is very prolific. A female can 0:07:55.800 --> 0:08:03.239 lay about eight hundred eggs in no, yes, insect birth 0:08:03.320 --> 0:08:10.640 things freak me out as a woman. Um, So, their 0:08:10.680 --> 0:08:14.040 eggs are only about a millimeter, they're really small. They 0:08:14.120 --> 0:08:16.800 lay them in I guess bunches of twenty to thirty 0:08:16.840 --> 0:08:18.880 at a time on the bottom of leaves, so they're 0:08:18.920 --> 0:08:21.520 not easy to spot because if you've ever seen a 0:08:21.560 --> 0:08:25.240 potato leaf, they have lots. They're just covered in them. 0:08:25.280 --> 0:08:27.560 So you can imagine every one of those covered in 0:08:27.760 --> 0:08:31.280 eggs on the bottom. That's a lot of leaves to 0:08:31.320 --> 0:08:35.640 turn over. And basically what happens is they hatch and 0:08:35.960 --> 0:08:39.160 those hatchlings immediately begin to eat the leaves. They do 0:08:39.200 --> 0:08:43.400 what's called skeletonizing, where they basically eat all of the 0:08:43.480 --> 0:08:45.880 leafy matter and you just get left with the veins 0:08:45.920 --> 0:08:48.680 of the leaf. That reminds me about every other shrub 0:08:48.679 --> 0:08:55.480 in my yard. And then eventually they go on to it. 0:08:55.640 --> 0:08:58.960 Through their life cycle, they pupate, they turn into a larva, 0:08:59.040 --> 0:09:01.439 which goes underground out and then they come back up 0:09:01.840 --> 0:09:04.360 and they're an adult, at which point they're eating again, 0:09:05.120 --> 0:09:07.880 and they're eating the leaves again and laying eggs and 0:09:08.320 --> 0:09:10.960 laying eggs. And the hard part about the larva is 0:09:11.280 --> 0:09:15.440 they will do what's called dia pause I believe it's 0:09:15.480 --> 0:09:19.520 how you pronounce it, which basically means if the conditions 0:09:19.559 --> 0:09:22.680 aren't right, they'll just stay essentially in hibernation in the 0:09:22.760 --> 0:09:26.240 ground and then wait till it's nice to come out again. 0:09:26.440 --> 0:09:29.160 That's the worst. So you're thinking it's a cold snap. Yeah, 0:09:29.240 --> 0:09:31.559 they're all gonna go away. No, they just come right back. 0:09:31.559 --> 0:09:34.680 I feel like mosquitoes do that too. Yeah. But anyway, 0:09:34.800 --> 0:09:39.079 the Colorado potato petle can go through up to three 0:09:39.080 --> 0:09:43.760 generations in a season, So that is a lot of 0:09:43.880 --> 0:09:47.720 little bugs. Yeah. Well, I certainly think that if it's 0:09:47.760 --> 0:09:49.600 possible that we rounded them all up from over here 0:09:49.640 --> 0:09:51.320 and dump them over there just to get rid of them. 0:09:53.520 --> 0:09:56.080 Uh yeah, well that could be. Yeah. Well so that's 0:09:56.120 --> 0:10:00.079 I mean, that's that's the multiplication of those is just 0:10:00.280 --> 0:10:03.320 like it's amazing, it's astounding, especially if you don't have 0:10:03.360 --> 0:10:06.439 anything that's really eating them. No natural predators in that area, 0:10:06.520 --> 0:10:09.080 no pesticides. It's the best you can do with school 0:10:09.120 --> 0:10:12.720 aged kids picking off the beetles. They can see, you know, 0:10:12.840 --> 0:10:16.120 you think of you know, you drop eight hundred right, 0:10:16.280 --> 0:10:19.040 and each you know, four hundred of those are females, 0:10:19.080 --> 0:10:24.160 and they each lay eight hundred eggs every what month? Essentially, 0:10:24.440 --> 0:10:27.360 I can't do that math in my head, but I mean, 0:10:27.400 --> 0:10:32.120 you know, easily millions really really soon. Yeah, And they're 0:10:32.240 --> 0:10:36.360 very recognizable. They they're a very distinct little beetle. They 0:10:36.440 --> 0:10:39.240 they're I believe also referred to as the ten striped 0:10:39.240 --> 0:10:43.480 beetle because they have they're kind of yellowish orange and 0:10:43.520 --> 0:10:47.079 they have ten brown stripes across the Okay, actually, yeah, 0:10:47.080 --> 0:10:49.120 I know what you're talking about. Got a decent size 0:10:49.160 --> 0:10:52.560 about all. Excuse me, AI, Yeah, they've got a little 0:10:52.559 --> 0:10:55.680 bug at all. They've got some size to them. Um. 0:10:55.760 --> 0:10:57.640 And here's just here's a couple of facts that we 0:10:57.679 --> 0:11:00.920 talked about. How many they can the eggs. The female 0:11:00.920 --> 0:11:04.880 will lay a single larva and again this is just 0:11:05.040 --> 0:11:07.439 hammering the point home on how much they can devour, 0:11:08.120 --> 0:11:12.800 will eat forty square centimeters of a leaf of leaf 0:11:12.880 --> 0:11:17.800 in a day's okay, that's a lot of area. Yeah, 0:11:18.480 --> 0:11:21.160 And the other hard part about the beetle is it 0:11:21.400 --> 0:11:27.800 is extremely resistant to insecticides, meaning that they're they're very 0:11:27.880 --> 0:11:31.400 good at adapting. So for a couple of generations or 0:11:31.400 --> 0:11:33.080 a couple of years, you might wipe them out with 0:11:33.160 --> 0:11:36.240 one poison, but then they're gonna they're gonna adapt to it, 0:11:36.320 --> 0:11:38.360 and suddenly you gotta find something else. Do they only 0:11:38.400 --> 0:11:41.400 eat the one the potato plant, the one kind of 0:11:41.400 --> 0:11:46.200 potato plant. No, they will eat potatoes, cucumbers, there's something 0:11:46.280 --> 0:11:48.040 else that I can't think of at the moment. They 0:11:48.040 --> 0:11:51.280 do several crops, but their favorite is potato. So it's 0:11:51.280 --> 0:11:53.240 not like you could just rip out this one breed 0:11:53.280 --> 0:11:55.960 of potato and plant a different kind. It's yeah, you 0:11:55.960 --> 0:11:58.200 think about it, it's not the potatoes are eating leaves, 0:11:58.960 --> 0:12:01.559 So yeah, it would be pretty hard to switch plants 0:12:01.600 --> 0:12:03.440 like that. Yeah, but I think I think they actually 0:12:03.440 --> 0:12:06.920 had some success with DDT, and then unfortunately a DDT 0:12:07.120 --> 0:12:11.240 resistance strand of the beetle turned up. Yeahs as it 0:12:11.320 --> 0:12:15.920 always does that way. Yeah, So let's go ahead and 0:12:16.040 --> 0:12:20.280 let's hop into some theories how the beetle got there 0:12:20.360 --> 0:12:22.840 or what the deal is. So we will go ahead 0:12:23.200 --> 0:12:25.360 and take the bull by the horns and we will 0:12:25.400 --> 0:12:29.440 take on the popular theory, which is that the US 0:12:29.520 --> 0:12:34.000 did it. The potato beetle is known to have made 0:12:34.000 --> 0:12:37.040 its way into Germany in the past. I believe it 0:12:37.080 --> 0:12:41.000 was in the late eighteen hundreds. There was a outbreak, 0:12:41.559 --> 0:12:44.720 but it was contained. They were all destroyed. But the 0:12:44.720 --> 0:12:48.760 potato beetle was in England. They were known to be 0:12:48.800 --> 0:12:51.080 in parts of France, so it wasn't as if it 0:12:51.080 --> 0:12:54.839 had never been on the European continent. But if we're 0:12:54.840 --> 0:12:57.880 gonna go ahead and say that the U s did it, 0:12:58.480 --> 0:13:01.160 here is some of the facts. We're saying the US 0:13:01.240 --> 0:13:04.600 intentionally did it. Yes, that that it was an intentionally 0:13:06.120 --> 0:13:10.640 essentially biological warfare is what we're looking at. But we're 0:13:10.640 --> 0:13:14.320 gonna say this is an early biological warfare program. Uh So, 0:13:14.440 --> 0:13:19.320 some things that did come up is that in that 0:13:19.440 --> 0:13:22.560 region of the world, the potato beetle normally makes its 0:13:22.679 --> 0:13:28.520 first appearance mid July about that these fully grown adults 0:13:28.760 --> 0:13:32.640 were appearing in May, in mid to late May, so 0:13:32.679 --> 0:13:36.839 that's a full two months early. There also were no 0:13:37.040 --> 0:13:40.480 signs of larva. So it was just suddenly we have 0:13:40.520 --> 0:13:44.320 a bunch of adults scrambling around, which if they were 0:13:44.320 --> 0:13:46.240 going to go through their life cycle, you would think 0:13:46.640 --> 0:13:49.080 there would have been signs of larva in the area. 0:13:49.200 --> 0:13:52.600 Don't the larva bury themselves? Well, the larva of first 0:13:52.720 --> 0:13:55.360 eat the plants and then dig down and heighten the 0:13:55.400 --> 0:13:58.960 soil to emerge as an adult. So theoretically there should 0:13:58.960 --> 0:14:02.240 have been some larga of the signs. Yeah, but there 0:14:02.280 --> 0:14:05.120 were none. Well about that when the larva emerged from 0:14:05.120 --> 0:14:09.120 the soil that they changed into beetles. At this point, yes, 0:14:09.200 --> 0:14:14.400 they go through four stages. The larva, I believe is 0:14:14.520 --> 0:14:17.439 the second stage, so there's egg larva. There's a third 0:14:17.520 --> 0:14:21.720 stage where they don't eat pupa pupais, yes, and the 0:14:23.080 --> 0:14:26.920 pupa and then a pupage, and then there's the fourth stage, 0:14:26.960 --> 0:14:32.320 which is adulthood. There are some places though at that time, 0:14:32.400 --> 0:14:35.840 the potato beetles were showing up where they shouldn't have Well, 0:14:35.920 --> 0:14:42.040 don't they always show uphere they shouldn't be. Yeah, let's see. 0:14:42.080 --> 0:14:45.840 So in sweek out the beetles were found in the 0:14:45.960 --> 0:14:49.080 square in front of the rail station, which doesn't have 0:14:49.120 --> 0:14:51.760 any potatoes. Well, maybe the Americans put them on a train, 0:14:52.160 --> 0:14:55.720 maybe at a near a damn in Sosa. They were 0:14:55.760 --> 0:15:00.880 discovered in bathtubs inside of houses. The you're kind of 0:15:01.040 --> 0:15:04.720 weird places for a beetle that normally would go after 0:15:04.760 --> 0:15:06.800 a plant to appear. Yeah, but it's also a weird 0:15:06.840 --> 0:15:09.880 place to get air dropped into. This is very train 0:15:10.160 --> 0:15:12.960 air dropping into. Yeah, there's that. And also, you know, 0:15:13.080 --> 0:15:15.720 bugs are kind of stupid that way, you know, they 0:15:16.400 --> 0:15:18.640 just show up in the darkness places. I mean it's like, uh, 0:15:19.600 --> 0:15:20.880 you know, a lot of a lot of this stuff 0:15:20.880 --> 0:15:24.040 got introduced to Europe to just shipments of food from 0:15:24.080 --> 0:15:27.120 like America Center and then and then between European countries 0:15:27.120 --> 0:15:30.360 and stuff. So if if they're infesting a shipment of 0:15:30.400 --> 0:15:32.680 food that's being shipped by rail, it wouldn't be that 0:15:32.760 --> 0:15:34.640 unusual to see one in front of a rail station. 0:15:34.720 --> 0:15:37.560 That's very plausible, absolutely, And that's the first thing I 0:15:37.600 --> 0:15:39.760 thought when I saw the rail station. But then at 0:15:39.760 --> 0:15:42.720 this damn, it seemed a little weird that they're crawling 0:15:42.720 --> 0:15:45.240 around on the firewood in the house and the tub. 0:15:45.920 --> 0:15:48.280 But then again, they might have been a swarm of 0:15:48.320 --> 0:15:50.760 them that just moved into the area. It's hard to 0:15:50.760 --> 0:15:54.680 tell a lot of comcrete facts. The railroad tracks might 0:15:54.760 --> 0:15:57.200 run right past the house and the damn. I mean, 0:15:58.040 --> 0:16:02.120 here's here's another thing that came up, and I found 0:16:02.160 --> 0:16:06.040 this in one place, so I can't say how reliable 0:16:06.040 --> 0:16:11.480 this is. But there is information that says that a 0:16:11.680 --> 0:16:18.840 leaked report from an American investigative committee was discussing the 0:16:19.080 --> 0:16:25.440 bad tactics and insufficient preparation of the toll as an 0:16:25.640 --> 0:16:30.080 entire potato beetle campaign, and they were criticizing the fact 0:16:30.200 --> 0:16:34.200 that the spreading of the beatles over the German Democratic 0:16:34.280 --> 0:16:38.760 Republic had not followed the distribution plan. Okay, this is 0:16:38.800 --> 0:16:44.200 supposedly an official leaked report from an American investigative committee. 0:16:44.240 --> 0:16:46.520 From what, I don't know. That's the hard part. I 0:16:46.760 --> 0:16:49.920 couldn't find it anywhere else. Everything I looked for when 0:16:50.120 --> 0:16:53.720 it didn't surface anywhere else, So I don't know how 0:16:53.800 --> 0:17:00.280 strong that claim is. Another bit in the Americans did 0:17:00.280 --> 0:17:05.640 it theory intentionally? Did it? Is? There is information out 0:17:05.680 --> 0:17:09.919 there about a chemical which is referred to at the 0:17:10.000 --> 0:17:14.520 time as E eight three eight, which was a new 0:17:14.680 --> 0:17:19.679 pesticide which was being marketed to take care of the 0:17:19.800 --> 0:17:23.720 potato bile. So it makes sense according to this theory 0:17:23.920 --> 0:17:26.440 that what you do is, if you want to get 0:17:26.440 --> 0:17:28.480 the German people under your thumb, and you want to 0:17:28.520 --> 0:17:31.639 make them depend on this pesticide and have to purchase 0:17:31.720 --> 0:17:35.200 it from you, go ahead and introduced the pest. Then 0:17:35.240 --> 0:17:38.160 they have no choice but to turn around and buy 0:17:38.160 --> 0:17:41.240 the product from you to protect their fields and the crops. 0:17:42.119 --> 0:17:48.640 I didn't mean, yeah, well, no, there there was giant 0:17:48.800 --> 0:17:54.159 campaigns of pesticides being put on the fields. I've watched 0:17:54.200 --> 0:17:57.159 some of the old propaganda films and they are driving 0:17:57.240 --> 0:17:59.840 up and down with tractors and guys using gas and 0:18:00.000 --> 0:18:02.720 helping into the ground and spraying it everywhere. What they're 0:18:02.760 --> 0:18:06.720 spraying I have no idea because it doesn't say obviously 0:18:06.760 --> 0:18:09.440 it's a three minute propaganda movie. It probably made the 0:18:09.440 --> 0:18:18.560 potatoes really healthy too. Yeah, I guess that might have 0:18:18.560 --> 0:18:20.560 been the trick, right, You introduced the Beatles to kill 0:18:20.600 --> 0:18:22.720 off half the supply, and then you get the Germans 0:18:22.760 --> 0:18:28.760 to poison the rest. You're just done so so in 0:18:28.800 --> 0:18:31.920 other way said under the heading of the Americans done it. 0:18:32.040 --> 0:18:35.080 There's one the American government done it, and another one 0:18:35.200 --> 0:18:39.320 is that Western capitalist companies did it. Yeah, Essentially, I'm 0:18:39.400 --> 0:18:41.920 lumping them all under the Americans, whether it's the American 0:18:42.000 --> 0:18:45.840 government or American companies or collaborations. I'm kind of just 0:18:45.880 --> 0:18:48.840 putting it all into that umbrella. You can kind of 0:18:48.840 --> 0:18:51.320 assume that, you know, at that point in time, a 0:18:51.359 --> 0:18:55.280 big enough American corporation could say, Hey, the US government, 0:18:55.800 --> 0:18:59.120 I have this idea, you're gonna that you're gonna want it. 0:19:00.040 --> 0:19:03.600 Then it could just be like there at that point. Yeah, 0:19:03.640 --> 0:19:07.640 which is easily conceivable because it did happen, and there's 0:19:07.640 --> 0:19:09.680 all kinds of antitrust things that came out in the 0:19:09.800 --> 0:19:13.040 in that era, so very easily could have happened. But 0:19:13.160 --> 0:19:15.880 another thing about it is is if you really want 0:19:15.880 --> 0:19:19.040 to push your chemical, your chemical, and you really want 0:19:19.080 --> 0:19:21.280 to make some money, you probably want to do it 0:19:21.359 --> 0:19:23.439 to a bunch of farmers in the country that actually 0:19:23.440 --> 0:19:26.520 has some money. And East Germany really didn't have any money, No, 0:19:27.119 --> 0:19:29.359 it really did. But the biggest hole in the whole 0:19:29.840 --> 0:19:33.919 idea that American warplanes dumped all these beetles is like 0:19:33.960 --> 0:19:36.840 these farmers that discovered all these beetles suddenly in their fields, 0:19:37.119 --> 0:19:41.160 wouldn't they have also found thousands of tiny little parachutes. Yeah, 0:19:41.560 --> 0:19:43.840 because after all, you can't just dumped the beat. They'll say, 0:19:43.840 --> 0:19:50.320 well the plot up to their desks. You are amazing, 0:19:51.520 --> 0:19:55.400 You're absolutely amazing. That's that's the best mental image I've 0:19:55.400 --> 0:20:02.080 had all day. Okay, we're are you here? On that note, 0:20:02.800 --> 0:20:06.560 which is that the Germans did it to themselves? Yeah, 0:20:06.760 --> 0:20:09.320 and and this is the most obvious thing because they're 0:20:09.440 --> 0:20:11.560 the communist countries. I mean, you don't really need to 0:20:11.640 --> 0:20:13.560 do any work to get them to have like crop 0:20:13.600 --> 0:20:16.080 failures and famines. They just kind of do it to themselves. 0:20:16.119 --> 0:20:19.000 I guess that. I yeah, it makes sense to me. 0:20:19.320 --> 0:20:23.200 Well here's here's there's there's actually some documentation on why 0:20:23.440 --> 0:20:25.679 this could very well be. And I kind of I 0:20:25.760 --> 0:20:27.640 kind of fall in the same campus, Joe. I kind 0:20:27.640 --> 0:20:30.320 of think that part of the problem was that they 0:20:30.320 --> 0:20:32.840 did it themselves. But yeah, I think you know, you 0:20:32.840 --> 0:20:35.639 you are in a place where you know your people 0:20:36.200 --> 0:20:39.320 kind of hate a place like the United States, but 0:20:39.640 --> 0:20:42.879 don't totally hate them yet. So maybe you self sabotage 0:20:42.880 --> 0:20:44.560 a little bit and say, look at what these horrible 0:20:44.560 --> 0:20:48.040 Americans are doing to us, or more likely and more likely, 0:20:48.119 --> 0:20:52.000 the sabotage them selves to share incompetence. Let's holl back 0:20:52.040 --> 0:20:55.120 the clock. Though, let's roll back the clock ten years. 0:20:55.840 --> 0:20:58.760 This theory, we have to step back in time even farther, 0:20:58.800 --> 0:21:03.320 so we're gonna go to nineteen forty. Germany has invaded France, 0:21:03.960 --> 0:21:08.520 so they taken over. They're investigating anything that they think 0:21:08.600 --> 0:21:13.320 is important in terms of industry, capital, you name it. Research. 0:21:13.440 --> 0:21:15.240 They want to find out what it is so that 0:21:15.760 --> 0:21:18.280 they have an idea of what all their allies are 0:21:18.359 --> 0:21:24.000 up to. Well, the German military was investigating the le 0:21:24.160 --> 0:21:30.600 Bouche research facilities. During that investigation, going through all their paperwork, 0:21:31.200 --> 0:21:36.600 they found paperwork that was linking intentions of the French 0:21:36.840 --> 0:21:40.399 and the English to go in together and basically dump 0:21:40.520 --> 0:21:44.600 potato beetles on Germany to slow down their war effort. 0:21:44.920 --> 0:21:46.960 If you think about it, you've got a giant war machine, 0:21:46.960 --> 0:21:50.119 you need tons of tons of food. That's not a 0:21:50.160 --> 0:21:54.119 bad it's not a bad idea, no, no, So obviously 0:21:54.600 --> 0:21:56.879 the Germans freak out a little bit. They're they're not 0:21:56.920 --> 0:21:58.879 happy about this because this is a problem. So they 0:21:58.880 --> 0:22:02.000 need to make sure we okay what's going to happen here. 0:22:02.480 --> 0:22:04.760 As they keep going through the records and they invade 0:22:05.119 --> 0:22:09.640 more and more France. They keep finding more stuff from 0:22:09.840 --> 0:22:14.560 this same research facility because they had taken the records 0:22:14.600 --> 0:22:20.080 elsewhere for safekeeping. Absolutely correct um, and those records gave 0:22:20.200 --> 0:22:24.119 the Germans a pretty clear picture of how a plan 0:22:24.480 --> 0:22:29.600 to drop the beetle on them could take place. Incomes 0:22:29.760 --> 0:22:36.120 Professor h. Clue, who was a bit of an esteemed researcher, 0:22:36.320 --> 0:22:41.439 and he somehow managed to get himself in with the 0:22:41.480 --> 0:22:47.600 military and get himself in charge of a secret program 0:22:47.640 --> 0:22:50.119 to look into potato beetles. That seems like a thing 0:22:50.160 --> 0:22:52.560 that wasn't so hard at the time. I imagine it wasn't. 0:22:53.800 --> 0:22:57.320 Like I said. We've got the professor here, and he 0:22:57.600 --> 0:23:02.560 and other people obviously in charge are monitoring reports of 0:23:03.320 --> 0:23:07.639 their secret agents. So we've got secret agents involved. And 0:23:07.720 --> 0:23:09.879 one of their secret agents, who happened to be in 0:23:10.000 --> 0:23:15.080 England sends back a report. Uh, and it's dated April thirtieth, 0:23:15.200 --> 0:23:20.280 nineteen forty two, and it says that the English have 0:23:20.480 --> 0:23:25.800 received from the Americans a cargo of fifteen thousand potato 0:23:25.840 --> 0:23:30.680 beatles plus an unknown number of Texas ticks. Surprisingly, the 0:23:31.560 --> 0:23:37.960 Texas ticks just disappear. Nobody hears from them again. But 0:23:38.680 --> 0:23:41.920 this puts them in a full fledged panic and they 0:23:42.040 --> 0:23:44.760 start work because they've got to get up to speed. 0:23:45.320 --> 0:23:50.000 And in nineteen forty two they the Germans established the 0:23:50.040 --> 0:23:55.520 Potato Beetle Defense Service to that in German, Joe, are 0:23:55.520 --> 0:23:59.680 you able to say that whatever copper out there, the 0:24:00.080 --> 0:24:08.000 deans to Littleffvertines, I think his house pronounced okay, And 0:24:08.080 --> 0:24:11.040 they also went ahead and they set up the Potato 0:24:11.200 --> 0:24:17.439 Beetle Research Institute. Can you give this in the taffer 0:24:17.680 --> 0:24:24.760 for schoons used to yeah, part of my cheesy accent. Yeah, 0:24:25.960 --> 0:24:28.680 you know, I think you know, just there's a little 0:24:28.840 --> 0:24:31.960 side here. It's it's uh. It's actually pretty well known 0:24:32.000 --> 0:24:36.080 that the British h Intel, British smifi've actually controlled just 0:24:36.160 --> 0:24:38.359 about all of Germany's agents, if not a percent of 0:24:38.359 --> 0:24:40.800 them in World War Two. You guys, what they would 0:24:40.800 --> 0:24:44.120 do is they would instead of compartmentalizing between agents, they 0:24:44.200 --> 0:24:46.560 sent an agent over there and they say, hey, get 0:24:46.600 --> 0:24:49.280 in touch with get in touch with agents so and so, 0:24:49.480 --> 0:24:52.840 you know Frau or whatever the guy's name isn't or France, 0:24:52.880 --> 0:24:55.720 and get in touch with France and uh, and he'll 0:24:55.760 --> 0:24:57.640 help you. He'll help you get set up and everything 0:24:57.680 --> 0:24:59.920 like that, and you know, he'll give you some handy, 0:25:00.040 --> 0:25:02.080 handy tips on how to get along in England and everything, 0:25:02.119 --> 0:25:05.240 so you can touch with Fronts, and Fronts had already 0:25:05.240 --> 0:25:08.040 been caught and turned by the Brits and so and 0:25:08.119 --> 0:25:10.439