Winston Churchill & the Exploding Chocolate!

A historic letter found a few years ago indicates the Nazis plan to assassinate Sir Winston Churchill with a bar of exploding chocolate.

Winston Churchill loved to eat, favouring food that was decadent and boozy.  So, in 1943, when the Nazis concocted a plan to kill the prime minister, it was no surprise that they aimed straight for his stomach.

Hitler’s henchmen drizzled a slim steel explosive with a thin layer of dark chocolate and packaged it into a fancy black-and-gold wrapper labelled ‘PETER’S’.  Breaking (or biting into) the chocolate would trigger a timer, and seven seconds later the snack would detonate.  The chocolate bar was packed with enough explosives to kill anyone within several metres.

The plan was to plant the snack into the dining room used by Churchill’s war cabinet, with the treat placed on a tray alongside other after dinner treats like whisky and cigars (which Churchill loved).

Thankfully the plot was discovered and in the letter (which also included a drawing of the chocolate bar) from intelligence chief Lord Victor Rothschild dated 4^th May 1943, he says:

“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 you break off a piece of chocolate at one end in the normal way, instead of it falling away, a piece of canvas is revealed stuck into the middle of the piece which has been broken off and a ticking into the middle of the remainder of the slab.”