It is difficult to imagine the famous British politician Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill without his famous cigar. However, English archives show that the Prime Minister's passion for this tobacco product gave the British secret services a lot of headaches.
Little weakness
Churchill began smoking while still at school, and after being in Havana at the age of 25, he became addicted to the products of Cuban tobacco masters forever. Since then, he has not let go of the cigar from his mouth. It seemed that the cigar supported him and helped him make the most serious decisions of national and even global importance. We can say that the British Prime Minister had cigars on a par with food and drink.
The whole world knew about Churchill's addiction to cigars, and therefore on March 27, 1941, the British Ambassador in Havana, Sir George Ogilvy Forbes, received a message that the Cuban National Tobacco Industry Survey Commission had prepared a wonderful gift for the Prime Minister “in recognition of his services in defending democracy . It was a mahogany cabinet decorated with intricate carvings, about one and a half meters high. The cabinet doors were covered with exquisite inlay, and inside, on six shelves, there were twenty-four wooden boxes with cigars of the most exclusive brands, that is, almost two and a half thousand of the best Havana cigars. Given the rather difficult political situation, Forbes told his leadership that the gift should never be refused.
Naturally, Churchill was overjoyed at the gift he had received, but one of his personal secretaries, John Colville, sadly told the Prime Minister that Scotland Yard would not recommend him to smoke these cigars in any way. The security services argued that during the manufacturing process, any harmful substance can be added to cigars, and in practice only a limited number of Samples can be subjected to chemical analysis.
Churchill’s statement was rather amused than angry, and he replied that in such matters he was free to make decisions.
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How to save the prime minister?
The gift was already rocking on the waves of the Atlantic, carefully submerged in the hold of one of the Red Cross ships, and the cabinet members and his family still could not solve the question: how to convince the stubborn prime minister not to risk his precious life for the country?
An option was voiced not to report the arrival of the gift at all. Like, he was lost somewhere, and soon Churchill will completely forget about him. But the prime minister so often and insistently asked about the time of arrival of the precious gift that it was clear that Cuban cigars meant no less to him than all British politics put together.
Soon everyone came to a unanimous opinion: it is not good to deceive the minister, but the cigars must somehow be subjected to the most thorough examination. However, here, too, a problem arose. It consisted in the fact that the poison could be in only one of a hundred cigars, that is, every single one should be checked, but at the same time any chemical analysis ruined the product - smoking a "safe" cigar was already impossible.
Finally, one of the members of the cabinet proposed a rather tough decision: while the world is in crisis and the whole of Europe is engulfed in war, it is impossible to risk the prime minister's life, but as soon as everything calms down, or Churchill himself retires, then let him smoke them for himself. health. In the meantime, the precious locker will stand for the time being somewhere in a dry, cool place under reliable protection. On that and decided.
Wasted labor
When the cigar locker arrived in Britain, Churchill ordered it to be immediately put in his office. However, the secretaries were playing for time, citing problems with customs. The fact is that gifts and luxury goods in wartime were taxed extremely high, and a gift for the country's prime minister was no exception. It ended with the fact that the Cuban embassy itself, without any pleasure, paid its sixfold price for its own gift, and the precious locker finally took its place not far from the prime minister's desk.
Churchill was told that he would not touch the cigars. Then, having selected a sufficient number of samples, they sent them for examination. What they did not do with the Cuban gift: they examined the tips of the cigars for the detection of "bacteriological and chemical anomalies", made sections, placed them in a special "broth", and then injected them into laboratory mice. Those same unfortunate mice had to inhale the smoke of cigars, thus checking for the presence of volatile toxic substances.
Several mice died, but as it turned out, not at all from the presence of poison in the studied cigars, but from banal indigestion.
The researchers did the last experiment on themselves: Gerald Roche Lynch, who headed the laboratory of chemical pathology and at the same time worked as a senior expert in the Ministry of the Interior (he was jokingly called the "royal poisoner"), hid cigar slices under his tongue. Soon he said with confidence that no poisonous substances were found in any of the samples provided to him.
No one yet knew that the entire one and a half month work of the laboratory, in fact, was myrtyshka's work. The prime minister, so principled in all matters concerning politics, long ago and easily broke his word when it came to his favorite cigars.
Risk experiment
On September 19 - the very day when the cabinet with cigars appeared in the prime minister's office - a committee meeting was held on the question: what help London can provide to the Russians. The heads of the War Ministries and the Chiefs of Staff claimed that they could not release a single cartridge without prejudice to the combat capability of the British armed forces. Churchill argued with them, arguing that there was no way to refuse the Soviet government at such a critical moment.
Finally, the discussion was deadlocked. Then the prime minister announced a break and escorted everyone present to his office, where he showed them a Cuban gift with ill-concealed pride.
Lord Balfour, then Deputy Minister of Aviation, later recalled: “Turning to the assembled ministers, he said:“Gentlemen, now I will conduct an experiment. Perhaps it will end to everyone's pleasure, or maybe the result will be sad. I want to give you all these great cigars."
He paused, and then, with a characteristic penchant for theatricality, continued: "It is likely that each of them contains a deadly poison."
However, this statement did not scare the committee members. Having smoked a cigar with delight, the ministers returned to the meeting room and, to everyone's surprise, resolved all controversial issues in half an hour.
The most interesting thing in this story is that if there really was poison in the cigars, then the country at such a critical moment would have lost not only the Prime Minister, but also members of the Defense Committee - a body consisting of ministers and representatives of the military command, which directly led the war. …
More than once, the Prime Minister received his favorite cigars from his Cuban and Brazilian fans. And each time the security service clutched at its head, watching how carelessly one of the first people of the state risked his life. But Churchill continued to enjoy his cigars all his life and lived happily to ninety years of age.
Igor SAVELIEV