The Plan to Feminize the Führer

The CIA had some pretty crazy ideas, such as trying to create their own Hello  Kitty by embedding a wiretap mechanism in a cat. The problem was they couldn't control Hello Kitty's behavior. Another one of their brilliant plans involved contaminated cigars treated with a chemical intended to make Castro's beard fall out.

But, it's the British who came up with the best hare-brained schemes of all: feed the Führer female sex hormones.

The oestrogen plan is outlined in a new book Prof Ford has written called Secret Weapons: Technology, Science And The Race To Win World War II.

He said the idea was just one of many strange attempts to bring a swifter end to the war.

Other possibilities included dropping glue on Nazi troops in an attempt to stick them to the ground and disguising bombs in tins of fruit being imported to Germany.

They also considered dropping boxes of poisonous snakes on enemy troops.

However, he said a plan for a giant water-borne Catherine wheel full of explosives - dubbed the Great Panjandrum - for an assault on the Normandy coast was the oddest of the lot.

"It couldn't have worked yet they spent what, in modern parlance £1 million on the idea, testing it over the waters of Cardiff and Western Super Mare."

Developed in top secret, it was nonetheless paraded on the waterfront at Westward Ho! in north Devon.

Prof Ford unearthed details of the hare-brained schemes by looking through stacks of recently declassified files.