Some things never change

Then:

Was America deliberately dropping these beasties over the socialist East German state to sabotage its harvest and undermine its post-war reconstruction?

The East German press reported a number of other cases in which planes flying overhead had been followed by a plague of potato beetles. Politicians raged against the "six-legged ambassadors of the American invasion" and a government report described "a criminal attack by American imperialist warmongers on our people's food supply".

So the country began to mobilise against the enemy insects.

There was a huge propaganda campaign - leaflets, posters, stories in the press - depicting the potato beetles as tiny American soldiers in army boots or helmets. They were called Amikafer - Yankee beetles.

[…]

In East Germany in 1950, the Ministry of Agriculture commissioned a report to back up its allegations that the Americans were dropping beetles out of aircraft, including interviews with eyewitnesses and experts.

But the "experts" quoted in the…