Ever reached for a bar of chocolate to ease your stress? Now imagine if instead of melting in your mouth, it exploded in your face…. That was how the Nazis once planned to kill former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill — with a bomb hidden inside a bar of chocolate.
Churchill’s love of chocolates
The story dates back to 1943, during World War II. Churchill’s love of chocolates was well known. Hence, Hitler and his men came up with this creative idea.
Legend has it that the bar was made of steel with a very thin coating of chocolate on the top. It was wrapped in black and gold paper - which made it look expensive - and was branded as “Peter’s Chocolate”.
The plot & the spies
The plot was to use German agents in Britain to smuggle the chocolate bar and some other confectionery items into the room where Churchill and his war cabinet dined. However, the plan was foiled by the British spies.
The information reached Lord Victor Rothschild, who was an important member of MI5 — Britain’s intelligence agency. Rothschild then typed a letter to an artist named Laurence Fish, asking him to draw posters of the exploding chocolate bar that could be then used to raise public awareness.
A 2009 discovery
The letter was discovered in 2009 by Fish’s widow, Jean Bray, when she was going through the possessions of her late husband. Later, her family reportedly also found drawings of bombs hidden inside matchboxes and pocket watches.
The letter read: ”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. Inside there is high explosive and some form of delay mechanism. When the piece of chocolate is pulled sharply, the canvas is also pulled and this initiates the mechanism."
The bar never reached Churchill. The plan was likely shelved. Decades later, it resurfaced as one of history’s oddest recipes for “death by chocolate”.
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