World War II was a cataclysm of fire and steel, but hidden in its shadows were a series of bizarre WWII covert operations—kidnap and assassination schemes that could have reshaped the world.
Bizarre WWII Plots Unveiled
10 A Chocolate Bomb For Churchill
Only the most twisted minds could turn something as innocent as chocolate into a weapon of terror. In 1943 the Nazis fabricated bombs that looked exactly like ordinary chocolate bars and plotted to slip them into the dining room where Winston Churchill and his cabinet met for their infamous war‑councils. British intelligence caught wind of the scheme, alerted Lord Victor Rothschild, and he promptly commissioned an artist to sketch the deadly sweets. Those sketches were plastered across the UK, urging citizens to report any suspicious‑looking confectionery. The plan was foiled, Churchill survived, and the Nazis were denied their sugary triumph.
9 Putting The Pope Away
Even the Vatican wasn’t safe from Nazi ambition. Pope Pius XII, who had begun to chide Hitler’s regime, found himself on the hit‑list in 1943. SS General Karl Wolff was ordered to launch Operation Rabat – a daring raid in which commandos disguised as Italian soldiers would storm the Vatican at night, seize the Pope, and then be “saved” by regular troops who would turn on the disguised assassins, killing the Pope in the ensuing chaos. If he somehow survived, the plan called for his transport to Germany under the pretext of “security.” Wolff defied the order, warned the Vatican, and the rapid Allied advance forced the Germans to abandon Rome, scrapping the plot.
8 The Plan To Stop Japan From Surrendering
A group of hot‑headed Japanese officers, led by Major Kenji Hatanaka, tried to sabotage the broadcast of Emperor Hirohito’s surrender speech in August 1945. They feared surrender would erase Japan’s identity and enslave its people. The night before the historic address, Hatanaka and his mutineers stormed the Imperial Palace, searching for the recorded speech. They hoped other officers would rally to their cause, but senior commanders had already signaled support for the Emperor’s decision. The mutineers failed to locate the tape, were persuaded to stand down, and Hatanaka committed seppuku just an hour before the speech finally aired.
7 Hijacking Hitler’s Plane
Hitler’s many assassination attempts are well‑known, but the British once dreamed of kidnapping the Fuhrer himself. In 1941 a man calling himself Kiroff, who claimed to be the brother‑in‑law of Hitler’s pilot SS officer Hans Baur, warned British officials in Sofia that Baur intended to defect and fly Hitler to the UK. The Royal Air Force readied a landing strip in Kent and set March 25, 1941 as the rendez‑vous date. The expected flight never materialised – Baur never showed up – and Hitler continued his reign of terror for another four years.
6 Rubbing Out Rommel
The Desert Fox was the target of two British sabotage missions. The first, Operation Flipper (November 1941), dispatched 28 elite SAS commandos via submarines to land on the Libyan coast near Rommel’s headquarters. The raid was a fiasco – Rommel was nowhere to be found, and only two commandos escaped alive. The second attempt, Operation Gaff (1944), sent SAS parachutists onto a villa that housed Rommel after D‑Day. By then the general had already been injured in a strafing run and was being moved to a hospital, unintentionally sparing him from the British plot.
5 A Nazi King Of England
Prince Edward, the former King Edward VII who abdicated in 1936 to marry Wallis Simpson, became a tempting pawn for Hitler. Operation Willi (1940) was the Nazi scheme to either persuade the Duke of Windsor to broker peace with Britain or, if that failed, to kidnap him and install him as a puppet monarch in a conquered UK. German planners even drafted a plan to force‑kidnap the duke. British intelligence, wary of the possibility, whisked the former king and his wife to a diplomatic posting in the Bahamas, keeping him far from any Nazi influence.
4 Murdering MacArthur
Though it unfolded after the war, the plot to kill General Douglas MacArthur in May 1946 could have sparked a new global conflict. Led by former secret police officer and kamikaze pilot Hideo Tokayama, conspirators planned to poison MacArthur at his Tokyo headquarters on May 1 and blame the act on Communists slated to rally nearby for Labor Day. The scheme unraveled when Tokayama poisoned a fellow conspirator, who survived and tipped off authorities. MacArthur, ever the picture‑perfect hero, declined extra security, but the failed attempt still sent shockwaves through a war‑torn Japan.
3 Assassinating Stalin
Stalin wasn’t immune to assassination plots either. In January 1939, Japanese agents, in collaboration with the Germans, tried to smuggle Russian‑born assassins into Stalin’s Sochi resort. The infiltrators were all killed while attempting to cross the border. Later, in 1944, Operation Zeppelin saw two German assassins parachuted behind enemy lines near Moscow with the mission to infiltrate the Kremlin and kill Stalin. Their plan collapsed when a guard at a checkpoint noticed their uniforms remained oddly dry in the rain, leading to their capture.
2 Crashing Chiang Kai‑Shek’s Plane
Allied rivalries sometimes turned deadly. General Joseph Stilwell, frustrated with Chinese leader Chiang Kai‑Shek’s perceived lack of effort against Japan, allegedly received orders to arrange Chiang’s assassination. The plan called for sabotaging a plane that Chiang and his wife would use on an Indian tour, with two unwitting American officers riding along to make the crash look accidental. For reasons never disclosed, Stilwell never received the go‑signal, and the plot was never executed.
1 Bumping Off The Big Three
Operation Long Jump allegedly aimed to assassinate the Allied “Big Three” – Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin – during the 1943 Tehran conference. Soviet intelligence claimed to have uncovered the scheme, leading to debate over its authenticity. The plot, allegedly overseen by SS commando Otto Skorzeny (who also led the rescue of Mussolini), would have required navigating a maze of 3,000 Soviet agents protecting the leaders. Skorzeny later insisted the mission was impossible due to lack of on‑the‑ground intelligence, and the operation never materialised.