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Soviet, Chinese, and North Korean False Allegations of Biological Weapons Use during the Korean War

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The Korean War began on the morning of June 25, 1950, and ended a full three years later with an armistice on July 27, 1953. It was an incredibly destructive war, with as many as 4.75 million people, civilians and military, dying during the war. The level of destruction both in the North and the South was enormous.

The historiography regarding the war is also quite large. One seemingly small aspect of the war now seems quite esoteric and insignificant in the overall story, but that was not the case during the war. The USSR, China, and North Korea accused the United States of using biological weapons quite extensively over both China and North Korea. The accusations were probably the most prominent aspect of Soviet bloc propaganda used to oppose the war. Millions of people in both West European and East European capitals joined demonstrations demanding that the United States “Stop the Biological War.”


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