Speaker 1: Hey guys, Steve here, you are listening to one of
Speaker 1: our original twenty six episodes. If you listen to any
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Speaker 1: think you never know what stories of things we simply
Speaker 1: don't know the answer too. Well. Hi there, and welcome
Speaker 1: back to Thinking Sideways the podcast. I am Steve, and we,
Speaker 1: as always are going to get into a story that
Speaker 1: doesn't quite have an answer and try and figure it
Speaker 1: out because Joe loves to solve them. Oh yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: solve this one for sure. Okay, all right, good. Well,
Speaker 1: let's let's hop right into the story. I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: tell you what it is quite yet. I want to
Speaker 1: set the stage. So it's nineteen fifty and we're in Germany.
Speaker 1: I better stop talking then. Huh no, no, it's okay, okay,
Speaker 1: uh and uh it's a nice sunny day. It's May.
Speaker 1: And wait do you hear that? Yeah? What was that?
Speaker 1: That is a US airplane flying over the field that
Speaker 1: we're standing in. Okay, okay, because we're in Germany in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties, which means that it is now an
Speaker 1: occupied territory. Pretty normal, pretty normal, which makes sense. Well,
Speaker 1: there's a problem though with this, and that is what
Speaker 1: happened supposedly within days of this particular plane, or any
Speaker 1: plane flying over this field, and that is the appearance
Speaker 1: of the potato beetle. Not just any potato Beetlelorado, the
Speaker 1: Colorado potatoe. You are absolutely correct, sir. So here's what
Speaker 1: the story is, ladies and gentlemen. According to the accounts,
Speaker 1: and this is one specifically, it was the twenty third
Speaker 1: of May, and a farmer by the name of Max
Speaker 1: Trevor had noticed American planes flying over his fields. He's
Speaker 1: in East Germany, and the next morning, according again to
Speaker 1: his account, he was shocked to discover that his fields
Speaker 1: of potatoes were full of potato beetles, not just any
Speaker 1: potato beetle, the Colorado potato beetle, which ladies and gentlemen,
Speaker 1: if you don't know anything about the beetle, and we'll
Speaker 1: get into some details on it, but it's pretty devastating
Speaker 1: for potato crops. So this is like the German Irish
Speaker 1: potato famine essentially. Yes, if you actually try and put
Speaker 1: that in into the Irish potato famine always comes up,
Speaker 1: which makes this difficult unless you know what to look for.
Speaker 1: So here's what's going on is, after these planes go
Speaker 1: by and all these farmers are reporting that there's Colorado
Speaker 1: potato beetles all over their fields, the East German press
Speaker 1: goes nuts with it. The politicians are making speeches. They
Speaker 1: are accusing the US of having dropped all of these
Speaker 1: potato beetles on their crops. And I'm guessing that this
Speaker 1: propaganda campaign that came from it is that they're saying, well,
Speaker 1: the Americans are trying to cut down our food supply
Speaker 1: and therefore take us over. Those imperialists yeah, I'm sure
Speaker 1: the people of East Germany were really really scared about
Speaker 1: the possibility that, you know, we spoot the Russians out. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: like I said, there was a giant propaganda campaign that
Speaker 1: came up from this. Uh. There were posters, little leaflets,
Speaker 1: bits on the radio speeches. As I said, they were
Speaker 1: going crazy talking about this sudden infestation and how it
Speaker 1: was the fault of the Americans. They actually nicknamed the
Speaker 1: Colorado potato beetle I'm a coffer, which I understand translated
Speaker 1: is Yankee beetle. Is that correct? Yes, yes, that's correct.
Speaker 1: So what happens is children are at the end of
Speaker 1: their school days not allowed to just go home. They
Speaker 1: actually have to go out to the fields and go
Speaker 1: through the crops and try and pick up as many
Speaker 1: potato beetles as possible. That's the real tragedy from this, right,
Speaker 1: is we're losing homework time. Yeah, yeah, that's that's exactly
Speaker 1: what I was thrilled. It was the long game of Americans, right,
Speaker 1: we were trying to make the Germans stupid by like
Speaker 1: just taking out all of the homework time for you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there are accounts that these children, some didn't really care
Speaker 1: some believed it. Girls evidently were really squeamish about touching
Speaker 1: these beetles, and from the accounts, they would get twenty
Speaker 1: beetles in afternoon each and then put them into glass
Speaker 1: bottles and they'd be shipped off to be destroyed. I
Speaker 1: read one account. It was an interview with a boy
Speaker 1: who had been going out to the fields and he said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't really believe that the Americans are dropping these,
Speaker 1: but you know you have to pick them off anyway,
Speaker 1: said so I got to do it. Yeah. I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, if you're living a country that doesn't have
Speaker 1: any pesticides to speak of, you know, and you've got
Speaker 1: to do something if you want to eat yea, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: kept having your crops destroyed. No, no, because you've gotta
Speaker 1: you gotta understand. The potato evidently was a main crop
Speaker 1: for the German people. That was a main food source,
Speaker 1: especially right after World War two. Exactly Again, you gotta
Speaker 1: remember what what the era is. There's you know, things
Speaker 1: have been destroyed. Kind of hard time Twitter a lot
Speaker 1: of people are times you're trying to get back on
Speaker 1: your feet. You you grow whatever food you can, and
Speaker 1: potatoes grow and they are hearty. They are a hearty
Speaker 1: little thing and at them too. That one might be
Speaker 1: one reason why there was such a scarcity potatoes, because
Speaker 1: there's a quote here from somebody who recalls sharing a
Speaker 1: single potato between herself and her mom and dad for breakfast.
Speaker 1: So it probably wasn't just a potato beetles. Probably was
Speaker 1: a Soviet carting away half the potato crop to make
Speaker 1: parka back. Yeah. Maybe. Well what comes out of this
Speaker 1: is that nearly half of the crops for in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty were destroyed in East Germany by the Colorado potato beetle. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That that's a huge reduction in available food crops, which
Speaker 1: is not a good thing, especially if it's a staple. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's the main it's one of those main staples. Uh. So,
Speaker 1: like I said, in the beginning, the Germans were blaming
Speaker 1: the US for dropping the beetles on them. The US,
Speaker 1: of course was saying, no, we didn't do it. It
Speaker 1: wasn't us. Uh. And we're going to get into the
Speaker 1: theories about what's going on, and you know, why is
Speaker 1: this invasive species suddenly there It actually had been in
Speaker 1: the year before. Yes, yeah, And we're gonna go there.
Speaker 1: But I do want to talk about the beetle a
Speaker 1: little bit because, okay, we hear about the beetle, you
Speaker 1: don't really have a lot of context. So I just
Speaker 1: want to give some background on this particular little bug. So,
Speaker 1: the Colorado potato beetle is very prolific. A female can
Speaker 1: lay about eight hundred eggs in no, yes, insect birth
Speaker 1: things freak me out as a woman. Um, So, their
Speaker 1: eggs are only about a millimeter, they're really small. They
Speaker 1: lay them in I guess bunches of twenty to thirty
Speaker 1: at a time on the bottom of leaves, so they're
Speaker 1: not easy to spot because if you've ever seen a
Speaker 1: potato leaf, they have lots. They're just covered in them.
Speaker 1: So you can imagine every one of those covered in
Speaker 1: eggs on the bottom. That's a lot of leaves to
Speaker 1: turn over. And basically what happens is they hatch and
Speaker 1: those hatchlings immediately begin to eat the leaves. They do
Speaker 1: what's called skeletonizing, where they basically eat all of the
Speaker 1: leafy matter and you just get left with the veins
Speaker 1: of the leaf. That reminds me about every other shrub
Speaker 1: in my yard. And then eventually they go on to it.
Speaker 1: Through their life cycle, they pupate, they turn into a larva,
Speaker 1: which goes underground out and then they come back up
Speaker 1: and they're an adult, at which point they're eating again,
Speaker 1: and they're eating the leaves again and laying eggs and
Speaker 1: laying eggs. And the hard part about the larva is
Speaker 1: they will do what's called dia pause I believe it's
Speaker 1: how you pronounce it, which basically means if the conditions
Speaker 1: aren't right, they'll just stay essentially in hibernation in the
Speaker 1: ground and then wait till it's nice to come out again.
Speaker 1: That's the worst. So you're thinking it's a cold snap. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're all gonna go away. No, they just come right back.
Speaker 1: I feel like mosquitoes do that too. Yeah. But anyway,
Speaker 1: the Colorado potato petle can go through up to three
Speaker 1: generations in a season, So that is a lot of
Speaker 1: little bugs. Yeah. Well, I certainly think that if it's
Speaker 1: possible that we rounded them all up from over here
Speaker 1: and dump them over there just to get rid of them.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, well that could be. Yeah. Well so that's
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's the multiplication of those is just
Speaker 1: like it's amazing, it's astounding, especially if you don't have
Speaker 1: anything that's really eating them. No natural predators in that area,
Speaker 1: no pesticides. It's the best you can do with school
Speaker 1: aged kids picking off the beetles. They can see, you know,
Speaker 1: you think of you know, you drop eight hundred right,
Speaker 1: and each you know, four hundred of those are females,
Speaker 1: and they each lay eight hundred eggs every what month? Essentially,
Speaker 1: I can't do that math in my head, but I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, easily millions really really soon. Yeah, And they're
Speaker 1: very recognizable. They they're a very distinct little beetle. They
Speaker 1: they're I believe also referred to as the ten striped
Speaker 1: beetle because they have they're kind of yellowish orange and
Speaker 1: they have ten brown stripes across the Okay, actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know what you're talking about. Got a decent size
Speaker 1: about all. Excuse me, AI, Yeah, they've got a little
Speaker 1: bug at all. They've got some size to them. Um.
Speaker 1: And here's just here's a couple of facts that we
Speaker 1: talked about. How many they can the eggs. The female
Speaker 1: will lay a single larva and again this is just
Speaker 1: hammering the point home on how much they can devour,
Speaker 1: will eat forty square centimeters of a leaf of leaf
Speaker 1: in a day's okay, that's a lot of area. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And the other hard part about the beetle is it
Speaker 1: is extremely resistant to insecticides, meaning that they're they're very
Speaker 1: good at adapting. So for a couple of generations or
Speaker 1: a couple of years, you might wipe them out with
Speaker 1: one poison, but then they're gonna they're gonna adapt to it,
Speaker 1: and suddenly you gotta find something else. Do they only
Speaker 1: eat the one the potato plant, the one kind of
Speaker 1: potato plant. No, they will eat potatoes, cucumbers, there's something
Speaker 1: else that I can't think of at the moment. They
Speaker 1: do several crops, but their favorite is potato. So it's
Speaker 1: not like you could just rip out this one breed
Speaker 1: of potato and plant a different kind. It's yeah, you
Speaker 1: think about it, it's not the potatoes are eating leaves,
Speaker 1: So yeah, it would be pretty hard to switch plants
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, but I think I think they actually
Speaker 1: had some success with DDT, and then unfortunately a DDT
Speaker 1: resistance strand of the beetle turned up. Yeahs as it
Speaker 1: always does that way. Yeah, So let's go ahead and
Speaker 1: let's hop into some theories how the beetle got there
Speaker 1: or what the deal is. So we will go ahead
Speaker 1: and take the bull by the horns and we will
Speaker 1: take on the popular theory, which is that the US
Speaker 1: did it. The potato beetle is known to have made
Speaker 1: its way into Germany in the past. I believe it
Speaker 1: was in the late eighteen hundreds. There was a outbreak,
Speaker 1: but it was contained. They were all destroyed. But the
Speaker 1: potato beetle was in England. They were known to be
Speaker 1: in parts of France, so it wasn't as if it
Speaker 1: had never been on the European continent. But if we're
Speaker 1: gonna go ahead and say that the U s did it,
Speaker 1: here is some of the facts. We're saying the US
Speaker 1: intentionally did it. Yes, that that it was an intentionally
Speaker 1: essentially biological warfare is what we're looking at. But we're
Speaker 1: gonna say this is an early biological warfare program. Uh So,
Speaker 1: some things that did come up is that in that
Speaker 1: region of the world, the potato beetle normally makes its
Speaker 1: first appearance mid July about that these fully grown adults
Speaker 1: were appearing in May, in mid to late May, so
Speaker 1: that's a full two months early. There also were no
Speaker 1: signs of larva. So it was just suddenly we have
Speaker 1: a bunch of adults scrambling around, which if they were
Speaker 1: going to go through their life cycle, you would think
Speaker 1: there would have been signs of larva in the area.
Speaker 1: Don't the larva bury themselves? Well, the larva of first
Speaker 1: eat the plants and then dig down and heighten the
Speaker 1: soil to emerge as an adult. So theoretically there should
Speaker 1: have been some larga of the signs. Yeah, but there
Speaker 1: were none. Well about that when the larva emerged from
Speaker 1: the soil that they changed into beetles. At this point, yes,
Speaker 1: they go through four stages. The larva, I believe is
Speaker 1: the second stage, so there's egg larva. There's a third
Speaker 1: stage where they don't eat pupa pupais, yes, and the
Speaker 1: pupa and then a pupage, and then there's the fourth stage,
Speaker 1: which is adulthood. There are some places though at that time,
Speaker 1: the potato beetles were showing up where they shouldn't have Well,
Speaker 1: don't they always show uphere they shouldn't be. Yeah, let's see.
Speaker 1: So in sweek out the beetles were found in the
Speaker 1: square in front of the rail station, which doesn't have
Speaker 1: any potatoes. Well, maybe the Americans put them on a train,
Speaker 1: maybe at a near a damn in Sosa. They were
Speaker 1: discovered in bathtubs inside of houses. The you're kind of
Speaker 1: weird places for a beetle that normally would go after
Speaker 1: a plant to appear. Yeah, but it's also a weird
Speaker 1: place to get air dropped into. This is very train
Speaker 1: air dropping into. Yeah, there's that. And also, you know,
Speaker 1: bugs are kind of stupid that way, you know, they
Speaker 1: just show up in the darkness places. I mean it's like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, a lot of a lot of this stuff
Speaker 1: got introduced to Europe to just shipments of food from
Speaker 1: like America Center and then and then between European countries
Speaker 1: and stuff. So if if they're infesting a shipment of
Speaker 1: food that's being shipped by rail, it wouldn't be that
Speaker 1: unusual to see one in front of a rail station.
Speaker 1: That's very plausible, absolutely, And that's the first thing I
Speaker 1: thought when I saw the rail station. But then at
Speaker 1: this damn, it seemed a little weird that they're crawling
Speaker 1: around on the firewood in the house and the tub.
Speaker 1: But then again, they might have been a swarm of
Speaker 1: them that just moved into the area. It's hard to
Speaker 1: tell a lot of comcrete facts. The railroad tracks might
Speaker 1: run right past the house and the damn. I mean,
Speaker 1: here's here's another thing that came up, and I found
Speaker 1: this in one place, so I can't say how reliable
Speaker 1: this is. But there is information that says that a
Speaker 1: leaked report from an American investigative committee was discussing the
Speaker 1: bad tactics and insufficient preparation of the toll as an
Speaker 1: entire potato beetle campaign, and they were criticizing the fact
Speaker 1: that the spreading of the beatles over the German Democratic
Speaker 1: Republic had not followed the distribution plan. Okay, this is
Speaker 1: supposedly an official leaked report from an American investigative committee.
Speaker 1: From what, I don't know. That's the hard part. I
Speaker 1: couldn't find it anywhere else. Everything I looked for when
Speaker 1: it didn't surface anywhere else, So I don't know how
Speaker 1: strong that claim is. Another bit in the Americans did
Speaker 1: it theory intentionally? Did it? Is? There is information out
Speaker 1: there about a chemical which is referred to at the
Speaker 1: time as E eight three eight, which was a new
Speaker 1: pesticide which was being marketed to take care of the
Speaker 1: potato bile. So it makes sense according to this theory
Speaker 1: that what you do is, if you want to get
Speaker 1: the German people under your thumb, and you want to
Speaker 1: make them depend on this pesticide and have to purchase
Speaker 1: it from you, go ahead and introduced the pest. Then
Speaker 1: they have no choice but to turn around and buy
Speaker 1: the product from you to protect their fields and the crops.
Speaker 1: I didn't mean, yeah, well, no, there there was giant
Speaker 1: campaigns of pesticides being put on the fields. I've watched
Speaker 1: some of the old propaganda films and they are driving
Speaker 1: up and down with tractors and guys using gas and
Speaker 1: helping into the ground and spraying it everywhere. What they're
Speaker 1: spraying I have no idea because it doesn't say obviously
Speaker 1: it's a three minute propaganda movie. It probably made the
Speaker 1: potatoes really healthy too. Yeah, I guess that might have
Speaker 1: been the trick, right, You introduced the Beatles to kill
Speaker 1: off half the supply, and then you get the Germans
Speaker 1: to poison the rest. You're just done so so in
Speaker 1: other way said under the heading of the Americans done it.
Speaker 1: There's one the American government done it, and another one
Speaker 1: is that Western capitalist companies did it. Yeah, Essentially, I'm
Speaker 1: lumping them all under the Americans, whether it's the American
Speaker 1: government or American companies or collaborations. I'm kind of just
Speaker 1: putting it all into that umbrella. You can kind of
Speaker 1: assume that, you know, at that point in time, a
Speaker 1: big enough American corporation could say, Hey, the US government,
Speaker 1: I have this idea, you're gonna that you're gonna want it.
Speaker 1: Then it could just be like there at that point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is easily conceivable because it did happen, and there's
Speaker 1: all kinds of antitrust things that came out in the
Speaker 1: in that era, so very easily could have happened. But
Speaker 1: another thing about it is is if you really want
Speaker 1: to push your chemical, your chemical, and you really want
Speaker 1: to make some money, you probably want to do it
Speaker 1: to a bunch of farmers in the country that actually
Speaker 1: has some money. And East Germany really didn't have any money, No,
Speaker 1: it really did. But the biggest hole in the whole
Speaker 1: idea that American warplanes dumped all these beetles is like
Speaker 1: these farmers that discovered all these beetles suddenly in their fields,
Speaker 1: wouldn't they have also found thousands of tiny little parachutes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because after all, you can't just dumped the beat. They'll say,
Speaker 1: well the plot up to their desks. You are amazing,
Speaker 1: You're absolutely amazing. That's that's the best mental image I've
Speaker 1: had all day. Okay, we're are you here? On that note,
Speaker 1: which is that the Germans did it to themselves? Yeah,
Speaker 1: and and this is the most obvious thing because they're
Speaker 1: the communist countries. I mean, you don't really need to
Speaker 1: do any work to get them to have like crop
Speaker 1: failures and famines. They just kind of do it to themselves.
Speaker 1: I guess that. I yeah, it makes sense to me.
Speaker 1: Well here's here's there's there's actually some documentation on why
Speaker 1: this could very well be. And I kind of I
Speaker 1: kind of fall in the same campus, Joe. I kind
Speaker 1: of think that part of the problem was that they
Speaker 1: did it themselves. But yeah, I think you know, you
Speaker 1: you are in a place where you know your people
Speaker 1: kind of hate a place like the United States, but
Speaker 1: don't totally hate them yet. So maybe you self sabotage
Speaker 1: a little bit and say, look at what these horrible
Speaker 1: Americans are doing to us, or more likely and more likely,
Speaker 1: the sabotage them selves to share incompetence. Let's holl back
Speaker 1: the clock. Though, let's roll back the clock ten years.
Speaker 1: This theory, we have to step back in time even farther,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna go to nineteen forty. Germany has invaded France,
Speaker 1: so they taken over. They're investigating anything that they think
Speaker 1: is important in terms of industry, capital, you name it. Research.
Speaker 1: They want to find out what it is so that
Speaker 1: they have an idea of what all their allies are
Speaker 1: up to. Well, the German military was investigating the le
Speaker 1: Bouche research facilities. During that investigation, going through all their paperwork,
Speaker 1: they found paperwork that was linking intentions of the French
Speaker 1: and the English to go in together and basically dump
Speaker 1: potato beetles on Germany to slow down their war effort.
Speaker 1: If you think about it, you've got a giant war machine,
Speaker 1: you need tons of tons of food. That's not a
Speaker 1: bad it's not a bad idea, no, no, So obviously
Speaker 1: the Germans freak out a little bit. They're they're not
Speaker 1: happy about this because this is a problem. So they
Speaker 1: need to make sure we okay what's going to happen here.
Speaker 1: As they keep going through the records and they invade
Speaker 1: more and more France. They keep finding more stuff from
Speaker 1: this same research facility because they had taken the records
Speaker 1: elsewhere for safekeeping. Absolutely correct um, and those records gave
Speaker 1: the Germans a pretty clear picture of how a plan
Speaker 1: to drop the beetle on them could take place. Incomes
Speaker 1: Professor h. Clue, who was a bit of an esteemed researcher,
Speaker 1: and he somehow managed to get himself in with the
Speaker 1: military and get himself in charge of a secret program
Speaker 1: to look into potato beetles. That seems like a thing
Speaker 1: that wasn't so hard at the time. I imagine it wasn't.
Speaker 1: Like I said. We've got the professor here, and he
Speaker 1: and other people obviously in charge are monitoring reports of
Speaker 1: their secret agents. So we've got secret agents involved. And
Speaker 1: one of their secret agents, who happened to be in
Speaker 1: England sends back a report. Uh, and it's dated April thirtieth,
Speaker 1: nineteen forty two, and it says that the English have
Speaker 1: received from the Americans a cargo of fifteen thousand potato
Speaker 1: beatles plus an unknown number of Texas ticks. Surprisingly, the
Speaker 1: Texas ticks just disappear. Nobody hears from them again. But
Speaker 1: this puts them in a full fledged panic and they
Speaker 1: start work because they've got to get up to speed.
Speaker 1: And in nineteen forty two they the Germans established the
Speaker 1: Potato Beetle Defense Service to that in German, Joe, are
Speaker 1: you able to say that whatever copper out there, the
Speaker 1: deans to Littleffvertines, I think his house pronounced okay, And
Speaker 1: they also went ahead and they set up the Potato
Speaker 1: Beetle Research Institute. Can you give this in the taffer
Speaker 1: for schoons used to yeah, part of my cheesy accent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I think you know, just there's a little
Speaker 1: side here. It's it's uh. It's actually pretty well known
Speaker 1: that the British h Intel, British smifi've actually controlled just
Speaker 1: about all of Germany's agents, if not a percent of
Speaker 1: them in World War Two. You guys, what they would
Speaker 1: do is they would instead of compartmentalizing between agents, they
Speaker 1: sent an agent over there and they say, hey, get
Speaker 1: in touch with get in touch with agents so and so,
Speaker 1: you know Frau or whatever the guy's name isn't or France,
Speaker 1: and get in touch with France and uh, and he'll
Speaker 1: help you. He'll help you get set up and everything
Speaker 1: like that, and you know, he'll give you some handy,
Speaker 1: handy tips on how to get along in England and everything,
Speaker 1: so you can touch with Fronts, and Fronts had already
Speaker 1: been caught and turned by the Brits and so and
Speaker 1: so they kept rounding up agents like this, and they
Speaker 1: essentially control the entire German intelligence network inside of England.
Speaker 1: So it's very possible that this report was a complete
Speaker 1: total this information. Yes, yes, yeah, I was gonna say.
Speaker 1: So what we're saying here is that the English were like,
Speaker 1: all right, what's the most outrageous thing we can try
Speaker 1: and convince the Germans of? Right now? Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean one of the things you do is, you know,
Speaker 1: you try to get them to waste resources at all
Speaker 1: possible to get them there, like, you know, instead of
Speaker 1: it's going to worry about stuff that you're not even
Speaker 1: remotely pursuing, you know, and so that they won't depend
Speaker 1: themselves against the stuff that you actually are pursuing, and
Speaker 1: just get them to waste their time and to waste resources.
Speaker 1: Is perfect example of that, because here's what happened. So
Speaker 1: the Potato Beetle Research Institute and Defense Service, both of them,
Speaker 1: got together and in October nineteen they took forty those
Speaker 1: and live potato beetles and they via a plane released
Speaker 1: them over a field in spires that I say that spire.
Speaker 1: The beatles were painted so that they were easier to see,
Speaker 1: so that the troops in the field could find them. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: they camouflage. They managed to recover one hundred beatles. They
Speaker 1: did it again with fourteen thousand beetles this time, and
Speaker 1: they only got fifty seven of them back. They then went, okay,
Speaker 1: well maybe we should stop using the real thing, and
Speaker 1: they started using fake wooden beetles, and they didn't do
Speaker 1: any better. They were covering the same number of them
Speaker 1: in the field, just inanimate painted beetles. They couldn't find
Speaker 1: the little wooden pieces that they just dropped that were painted,
Speaker 1: and they could only find fifty some odd out of
Speaker 1: food shot back, kind of shot themselves in the foot there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, you know, actually the little wouldn't beatles. It
Speaker 1: might be that the living beatles tried to mate with them,
Speaker 1: and so and so we might have actually interrupted the
Speaker 1: breeding side. Yeah, you might know, you don't so that
Speaker 1: that's what the Germans did. Why would they Why did
Speaker 1: they release these beetles exactly what's the point They were
Speaker 1: planning on turning the tides and using them against the British.
Speaker 1: Their idea was, well, we'll go ahead and if you
Speaker 1: want to do it to us, we're going to do
Speaker 1: it to you, and we'll just spread them all over England,
Speaker 1: which obviously they couldn't gauge how well it worked. But
Speaker 1: they still reported in nine or excuse me, in forty
Speaker 1: four to the High Command that they were ready to
Speaker 1: put out any an operation of a massive potato beetle
Speaker 1: infestation and all they needed was to have the word
Speaker 1: and they would drop them. Obviously they were because even
Speaker 1: they couldn't find them. Obviously they knew that like the
Speaker 1: English people weren't going to be find their beat Yeah.
Speaker 1: The problem they have with getting them in there, it's like,
Speaker 1: how are they going to get them over there? They
Speaker 1: would have to like blitz Creek for a couple of hours.
Speaker 1: They could survived. It's pretty good at shooting the bombers,
Speaker 1: I mean most of their I mean, so that may
Speaker 1: be possible. So they shoot down a bomber and the
Speaker 1: bomber crashes and the right yes, okay, well that that
Speaker 1: is the end of the Germans did it themselves. We've
Speaker 1: got so you're saying, is that these ones that they
Speaker 1: released because this happened. Well to me, it seems like, okay, well,
Speaker 1: if you've received released, we're in these two accounts fifty
Speaker 1: five basically fifty thousand beetles onto your own soil. Chances
Speaker 1: are they're going to get a foothold and they're gonna
Speaker 1: start spreading. And if it's during the war, it may
Speaker 1: not be noticed. And right after the war, people really
Speaker 1: aren't reporting what's going on. So if a crop fails,
Speaker 1: it fails. I guess the other question is is that, um,
Speaker 1: you said that they do that like a little hibernation
Speaker 1: thing if the weather isn't right or whatever. So I
Speaker 1: guess the other question is what what kind of weather
Speaker 1: was happening then, because if they dropped all those beetles right,
Speaker 1: people would have noticed those beetles. And then if they
Speaker 1: had all the larva, and the larva were in their
Speaker 1: little like pause period because the conditions weren't good for
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know how long they can survive,
Speaker 1: but you know, if they could survive for you know,
Speaker 1: eight years or whatever, which I don't I don't know
Speaker 1: that they survived that long, but I imagine there would
Speaker 1: be enough of them around that it's still foody. They
Speaker 1: would just go through their regular life cycle, just like always.
Speaker 1: So to say, But let's move on to theory number three,
Speaker 1: which is a very simple one. The Germans didn't have
Speaker 1: enough pesticides and they weren't using them. It's a very
Speaker 1: very simple theory that post war, you're broke, you have
Speaker 1: no money, nobody's giving you much aid in terms of
Speaker 1: ad cultural supplies. So you do what you can and
Speaker 1: that's all you can do. And if you aren't spreading
Speaker 1: insecticides on your fields on a regular basis to keep
Speaker 1: down just all manner of pest, go figure Suddenly they
Speaker 1: just bounce right back and take over. Yeah, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: I want to think about it. I mean that something
Speaker 1: like a factory that that would produce the sexicides would
Speaker 1: be a pretty popular wartime target for Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: if they had any pesticide factories at all, that it
Speaker 1: was probably pretty inadequate supply. Well, and that's exactly it.
Speaker 1: So it makes sense that they could have just already
Speaker 1: been there and normally we're controlled with whatever pesticides were used.
Speaker 1: But let's move on to our our last theory here,
Speaker 1: which is just another case. So they accidentally got spread
Speaker 1: there by people, because we do this all the time,
Speaker 1: these things everywhere. Like I said before, the bell had
Speaker 1: made it to German soil in the late eighteen eighties
Speaker 1: and it had been controlled. According to again a couple
Speaker 1: of different sites, there are reports that at a US
Speaker 1: military base in Bordeaux, the Colorado potato beetle began to
Speaker 1: infect the area. I'm guessing because as you said earlier, Joe,
Speaker 1: they came in on food stuffs and then just got
Speaker 1: loose and got a foothold, and according to these reports,
Speaker 1: they then spread. Uh. During World War Two they went
Speaker 1: to Belgium, the Netherlands, and Spain, which all kind of
Speaker 1: a right near Germany. So it makes sense that they're
Speaker 1: naturally would have just progressed into that country because they
Speaker 1: don't really care where the border is. All they care
Speaker 1: about is where the food is. I was gonna ask
Speaker 1: if there's any kind of record of big wind storms
Speaker 1: or anything like that happened around this time. If the
Speaker 1: you know, the Beatles were just trying to fly to
Speaker 1: another field or something and got blown by a big
Speaker 1: gust of wind, kind of like the Wizard of Oz. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like we're not in Kansas anymore, We're in Spain anymore.
Speaker 1: He sucks. I don't know if you know, because they do.
Speaker 1: I assume they fly. They can fly, so I don't
Speaker 1: know how they travel from one field to another. I
Speaker 1: would assume they fly, they would fly. And if they
Speaker 1: don't know how far they travel or anything like that.
Speaker 1: But you know, that could help explain why the people
Speaker 1: weren't seeing signs of larva or eggs or anything like that,
Speaker 1: just full form beetles. I think we've talked about another
Speaker 1: stories in the past about there's a giant windstorm and
Speaker 1: everything up and carts at fifty or a hundred miles
Speaker 1: and then just drops it all. Well, the other thing
Speaker 1: is that you know that's recalled the Germans. Thousands of
Speaker 1: these things onto a field and we're able to find
Speaker 1: any of them, which means these things could be like
Speaker 1: spreading all throughout your your fields and your whole region,
Speaker 1: and until that it reached a certain you would not
Speaker 1: even notice. And so they apparably these little guys are
Speaker 1: hard to see. You have been painted. Yeah, so that
Speaker 1: I mean, that's exactly right. So it's it's one of
Speaker 1: those stories that there's all kinds of ways. I personally
Speaker 1: think that there's no one theory that's right. I don't
Speaker 1: think that the U S didn't intentionally, yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: think the Germans did it all on their own. I
Speaker 1: think that it's everybody involved in this story is probably
Speaker 1: a little guilty. Yeah, but we don't know exactly what
Speaker 1: cost it. Yeah. I mean, if you're gonna look for
Speaker 1: like historical precedent, usually you know, governments that are incompetence,
Speaker 1: you know, and they have things like you know, crop
Speaker 1: failures in famine, they want to blame somebody else. Of course,
Speaker 1: these Germans want to stay yeah. Yeah, So so that's
Speaker 1: kind of my thing. And yeah, and I think you
Speaker 1: were you were saying before when we were talking about
Speaker 1: this previously before we started recording, is that Berlin is
Speaker 1: is in East Germany, right, So there's going to be
Speaker 1: airplanes that are from the US the time, all the time.
Speaker 1: So it's not as if this was an uncommon thing
Speaker 1: to have US planes going overhead. I mean, I'm sure
Speaker 1: that American and British and French planes were flying from
Speaker 1: all points of the compass, or at least from the west,
Speaker 1: because West Germany kind of in semi encircles East Germany,
Speaker 1: or did it's not not anymore. And then with Berlin
Speaker 1: right here in the smack in the middle, so you
Speaker 1: could have planes approaching from the southwest and northwest the
Speaker 1: west and didn't go up for another ten years. Other
Speaker 1: could be planes that were coming from the other direction
Speaker 1: to before it became a no fly zone. Yeah, and so,
Speaker 1: uh and so. And I don't really see the motive
Speaker 1: right right, to be honest with you, for us to
Speaker 1: do that, because especially especially given that this is post war,
Speaker 1: it wasn't definitively established that that Germany was going to
Speaker 1: be sort of semi permanently divided this point in time.
Speaker 1: It was still a state of tension between the Soviets
Speaker 1: and the Allies and forces, and it's still it still
Speaker 1: hadn't really crystallized into the forum that I finally took
Speaker 1: with the building of the Wall ten years later, and
Speaker 1: and then many many more years of oppression in Germany
Speaker 1: and all that that, and but it wasn't set in stone.
Speaker 1: As of nineteen fifty and plus, Europe was still recovering
Speaker 1: from the war, and so the idea of deliberately and
Speaker 1: there was already been a lot of food shortages and
Speaker 1: famines in Europe because of the war, and so the
Speaker 1: idea that we would want to go out there and
Speaker 1: just you know, make things worse, well it doesn't make
Speaker 1: it less. Kind of we're kind of trying to like,
Speaker 1: you know, get the continent to recover, you know. So
Speaker 1: that's one of yet another reason why I think it
Speaker 1: was probably just it happened, and these Germans just didn't
Speaker 1: want to shoulder any of the blame themselves, so funny
Speaker 1: to figure at the ax. Indeed, well, that having been said,
Speaker 1: that's the end of our theories, ladies and gentlemen. As always,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go ahead and put up some of the
Speaker 1: links to this story on our website, so if you
Speaker 1: want to check them out, you're more than welcome to
Speaker 1: That website is Thinking Sideways podcast dot com. We're always
Speaker 1: looking to hear from our listeners, So if you've got
Speaker 1: some thoughts on the story that you want to share,
Speaker 1: or you disagree with something that we said, let us
Speaker 1: know if you are, if you are a East German
Speaker 1: potato beetle, we want to hear from it. Yes, indeed,
Speaker 1: you can always go ahead and send us an email.
Speaker 1: That email address is Thinking Sideways podcast at gmail dot com.
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