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OCR Page 1 of 25RE - MR ChAmb ERS
UNCL SSIFIEL
OIR/CPI special Papin ho. 4
June 16, 1952
TRUMAN
NATIONAL
COMMUNIST BACTERTOLOGICAL WARFARE PROPAGANDA
ARCHIVES AND
RECORDS
LIMITED
SERVICE"
GOVERNMENT
Introduction
In their latest effort to smear the reputation of the US among all
peoples, by the use of the charge that the US has resorted to bacteriolog-
ical and chemical warfare in Korea, Communist spokesmen claim to be rc-
acting to a development in US policy which threatens international peace.
The negative reaction of the Soviet Union's delegate in the United Nations,
as well as of Communist officials in Pei-p'ing and Pyongyang toward
repeated US denials of these charges and repeated proposals for impartial
investigation or for assistance to combat the epidemics which the US is
charged with spreading, is not calculated either to lend credence to the
charges or ease the international tension to which, in fact, the charges
have contributed, The charges become even more suspect when the history
of this and other "atrocity" campaigns is examined in detail. Such an
examination has revealed that the groundwork for the present campaign was
laid in 1949, that it is the third large-scale "hate America" campaign to
be unleashed by the Communists since January 1951, and that in content it
represents merely an elaboration of charges used in the 1930's to dis-
credit the potential opposition to Stalinist rule and those used in the
"atrocity" propaganda of 1950 and 1951. Even using the Geneva Protocol
to spread the impression that the USSR alone stands for the implementa-
tion of international law, genuine disarmament and humane methods of war-
fare are a familiar propaganda illusion of the USSR.
Pre-1939 Treatment of Bacterial and Chemical Warfare
The USSR began to exploit in its propaganda the Geneva Protocol of
1925 prohibiting the use in war of "asphyxiating, poisonous, or other
gases and of bacteriological methods of warfare" even before it signed
the Protocol. Article 5 of the clearly propagandist Soviet proposal for
general disarmament submitted on November 30, 1927, to the Preparatory
Committee of the International Disarmament Conference, stated that the
USSR was willing to sign the Protocol, that it "insists that the time for
ratification thereof by all states be made most short", and considered
it essential that the "Workers" be given control of the chemical indus-
tries in states where they are highly developed to ensure the ban's
implementation. The USSR signed the Protocol on December 2, 1927, and
ratified it on March 7, 1928. The Soviet Union, however, was careful to
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