Nazis Planned To Kill Churchill With Choco Bomb

Nazis Planned To Kill Churchill (Daily Mail)

The Nazis planned to kill Sir Winston Churchill with a bar of exploding chocolate, according to secret wartime papers exchanged between MI5 officials.

The explosive was covered in a layer of real plain chocolate and wrapped in black paper with gold lettering and was planned to be discreetly placed among trays of luxury foods frequently taken into the War Cabinet's dining room.

A blast from the chocolate bar was expected to kill anyone within several meters.

But the plot was foiled by British spies who discovered the chocolate was being made and tipped off one of MI5’s most senior intelligence chiefs, Lord Victor Rothschild.

Lord Rothschild immediately typed a letter to talented illustrator Laurence Fish, asking him to draw poster-size images of the chocolate to warn the public to be on the look-out for the bars.

His letter to Mr. Fish, dated May 4, 1943, was written from his war bunker in Parliament Street and marked "secret" in red letters.

"I wonder if you could do a drawing for me of an explosive slab of chocolate,' he wrote. 'We have received information that the enemy are using pound slabs of chocolate which are made of steel with a very thin covering of real chocolate."

He added: "I enclose a very poor sketch done by somebody who has seen one of these. It is wrapped in the usual sort of black paper with gold lettering, the variety being PETERS. Would it be possible for you to do a drawing of this?"

The letter was found by Mr Fish's wife, journalist Jean Bray, after his death in 2009. Mrs Bray, 80, said Lord Rothschild had told her husband that Churchill and his War Cabinet had been the intended targets.

Via The Daily Mail