File:Amikafer.png

Summary[edit | edit source]

After World War II, nearly half of all potato fields in the Soviet-occupied zone were infested by the beetle by 1950. In East Germany in the 1950s, the insect came to be known as "Amikäfer", a neologism for "Amerikanischer Käfer" (the "American beetle"). Propaganda posters were issued that depicted the beetle marching across Germany, with its yellow and black stripes replaced by red and white ones with white stars on a blue background on the thorax.[1] Other posters showed the beetle being dropped from American planes with the caption "Kampf für den Frieden" ("The battle for peace"). 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." Children's books on the beetle were also published and "Sondersuchtage" ("Special Search Days") were organized in which everyone from young children to the elderly was expected to come out and gather the pests for destruction.[5]

The communist authorities were aware, however, that the presence of the potato beetle on socialist German soil was not an American plot. An internal report of the East German Ministry of Agriculture attributed the increase in the number of pests after the war to the favorable climate and the straightforward migration of the insect from the west.[5]

Licensing[edit | edit source]

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