UK News 14-11-2003 Hitler`s War and Peas who: Adolf Hitler what: Hatched plan to blow up Buckingham Palace with explosive hidden in tins of peas, secret documents reveal where: LONDON when: Yesterday snippet: "A special German intelligence unit planned to blow up Buckingham Palace using exploding cans of processed peas," reports The Scotsman today following the publication of top secret MI5 papers from the National Archives. Two Germans led by a conspicuous British Indian guide waded ashore on the Irish coast in July 1940 "carrying three or four metal boxes of explosives, including a number of tins labelled: `Prepared French Peas`, containing small slabs of nitro-cellulose." "An Asian face in Co Cork was guaranteed to attract attention, particularly as he and his companions plainly had no idea where they were, and they were arrested within 24 hours," says The Telegraph. Unfortunately, nothing is known about precisely how the woefully ill-equipped Germans, who had received only two days training in handling explosives, planned to achieve their aim. There were other revelations from the Archives yesterday. The Independent reports that Diana Mosley`s son`s nanny compiled a dossier of evidence against her, claiming that the children had been taught how to give a "Heil Hitler" salute. And Lady Mosley`s own sister, the novelist Nancy Mitford, described her as "a devoted fascist admirer of Hitler" who "sincerely desires the downfall of England and democracy generally". The paper also looks into MI5 papers which reveal that former poet laureate Cecil Day-Lewis was considereed "the most dangerous literary Communist of his generation". But if the exploding tinned peas scheme sounds ludicrous, Terry Charman, a historian at the Imperial War Museum, tells The Scotsman about an even more far-fetched endeavour. "The Americans commissioned a psychiatric and psychologist report of Hitler which concluded that he was a great fan of pornography," he explains to reporter William Lyons. "A plan was drawn up to drop piles of pornography on Hitler`s residence in the hope he would have a seizure from sexual excitement." [... more]

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