Roald Dahl: The Real Chocolate Spy

TRACING THE PATH PODCAST

This episode of “Tracing the Path” unveils the unexpected connections between Quakerism, the chocolate industry, World War II espionage, and the beloved author Roald Dahl.

It details how the Quakers’ abstinence from alcohol led them to dominate 19th-century English chocolate manufacturing with companies like Cadbury, and how a childhood experience taste-testing Cadbury chocolates sparked Dahl’s imagination.

The narrative then shifts to Dahl’s real-life role as a spy during WWII, working for a British organization (BSC) established by Winston Churchill to counter American isolationism, ironically led by the grandson of Quaker Oats’ founder, Robert Stewart Jr. Ultimately, this intricate web culminates in the production of the “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” film, financed by Quaker Oats, and based on Dahl’s iconic story, which itself was inspired by his early exposure to the very chocolate companies founded by Quakers.

The History of Chocolate

It’s not often that enemies on the battlefield end up helping each other afterwards. But in this story about chocolate and real life spies, the wishes of an 11-year-old would unite the rivalry. 

There are 400,000 Quakers in the world today.

The Quaker movement itself started in 1652 in England. Quakers are characterized by their plain clothes, their refusal to swear oaths, their pacifist nature and opposition to slavery, and their refusal to drink alcohol.

But they should be known for some of the ways they changed the world.

Their stance against alcohol is why the three biggest chocolate manufacturers in England in the 19th century were all started by Quakers. Cadbury, Rowntree, and Frys. 

It’s hard to fathom, but for most of history, chocolate was only consumed as a beverage. It was the perfect alternative to alcohol.

Quakers and Cadbury

It was 200 years ago in 1824 that John Cadbury opened a small store that vended tea, coffee, and hot chocolate in Birmingham.

In 1831, he started to focus a bit more on cocoa and drinking chocolates for the wealthy, the only ones who could afford cocoa.

Then in 1847, their competitor, Frys, changed everything.

They invented a chocolate bar you could eat. Frys was the first to find a way to blend cocoa powder with cocoa fat and sugar, then set it in a mold to harden. Cadbury wanted to follow this revolution, but didn’t want to copy Frys.

So, John had his son George go to Amsterdam and learn the Dutch process that the masters of cocoa production had engineered, the van Houtens. The Dutch process involved boiling and skimming the cocoa, then hydraulically pressing it, which resulted in a high quality pure cocoa that didn’t need fillers, which was the current norm.

George Cadbury bought a Dutch process machine and brought it back so Cadbury’s so they could start experimenting on creating the world’s finest chocolate.

The game changed a bit in 1850 when the government reduced the taxes on cocoa bean imports, which made chocolate more accessible, no longer just for the wealthy.

That gave liberty to Cadbury, Rowntree and Frys to pump out more and more products.

But since recipes were not able to be trademarked or legally protected, a silent war broke out between the chocolate companies with each trying to keep out the spying and learing eyes of the others.

John Cadbury’s wife died in 1855, leaving him broken and without motivation to keep Cadbury going. Because of that, Cadbury’s profits began to dip.

That’s when his son George and Richard took over, starting a new era of Cadbury. They began innovating in ways only the youth can imagine.

To start, in 1868, they introduced the heart-shaped box of assorted chocolates for Valentine’s Day. And in 1875, the Cadbury Cream Egg.

They also began to think about health and welfare of the workforce as they were upping the security to keep the competitor’s spies out.

In 1878, they decided to build a new premises outside of Birmingham in the countryside. Not only would this be able to serve the workforce even better, but moving helped lower the transportation costs of milk and cocoa.

At first, they acquired a 14.5 acre estate, but then in 1893 they added 330 acres of land close to the factory and turned it into a worker’s village. The village had over 300 residences and parks and pools and tennis courts, but no pubs and no alcohol.

It would be the first workers village of its kind. And Cadbury’s would offer half Saturday vacations every week.

Can you imagine a place where you live and make candy all day? Just fantastic.

In 1905, Cadbury would become world famous. with its dairy milk bar, the smoothest milk chocolate candy bar that is still famous today. And it was sold in the signature purple wrapper.

Which brings us to the second industry in our story after chocolate across the pond in America.

The Beginning of Quaker Oats

In America, there was another food getting some attention.

Oats.

While chocolate was traditionally consumed as a drink, getting people to try it in candy bar form wasn’t a major hurdle.

Oats, on the other hand, had a different obstacle.

In the 1850s and 60s, the only thing people did with oats was feed their horses. Getting people to eat horse food would be a challenge.

Luckily, the Civil War soldiers, to save money, were taught to boil the horse’s feed and eat it themselves. Despite it being a hurdle, Henry Parson’s Crowell in Revena, Ohio, Ferdinand Schumacher in Akron, and Robert Stewart in Iowa were up to the challenge.

They wanted to make oatmeal a household name.

Schumacher founded the German Mills American Oatmeal Company in 1870 and ran the first ever advertisement for cereal in the Akron newspaper. He had immigrated to the US in 1851 from a culture that regularly ate oats and porridge. To make oats seemed more interesting, he started selling cubed oats in glass jars with instructions on how to cook them fast and eat them.

Henry Parsons Crowell in Revena, Ohio named his company Quaker Mill after reading the traits of integrity, honesty, impurity of the Quakers. In 1887, he was the first to apply for a trademark for a breakfast cereal. He trademarked the name and the logo.

The logo he had created was a picture of what a traditional Quaker would look like. Henry had the artist base the drawing on a picture of America’s most famous Quaker, William Penn.

Like Schumacher, Henry knew that he would not make money if the oats sat on the people’s pantry shelves. So, he was the first to print recipes right on the box of oats. The first one was for oatmeal cookies and then he was also the first to put prizes in the box for consumers to find.

The two of them along with Robert Stewart in Iowa merged companies in 1888 in an effort to become a national merchant.

They launched the first magazine advertising campaign and they had children on bicycles deliver half trial sizes of oats to every home in Portland, Oregon. And then in 1901, they adopted the name Quaker Oats Company.

At that time, they were doing 16 million in sales of oats, wheat cereals, homony, cornmeal, baby food, and of course, livestock feed.

Cadbury and Quaker both grew at the start of the 1900s, but World War I would change everything. Both Quaker and Cadbury were deemed vital to the war effort.

The milk Cadbury used to make chocolate was diverted to the people of Birmingham and instead they reworked their factories into the production of dried veggies and fruit pulp and donated two buildings which were used as hospitals. 

Quaker produced oats for the Canadian expeditionary teams using their Ontario Canada facility and produced quick cook oats for the US military.

Which brings us to 1916 and the birth of Roald Dahl. That’s when our story begins to come together.

Roald Dahl

Roald Dahl was born in 1916 in Cardiff, Wales.

Though he was of Norwegian descent, his parents moved to Wales because his father wanted his kids to go to school there. Roald didn’t have the easiest upbringing, however.

At age seven, his sister died from appendicitis, and one year later, his father died from pneumonia. Fortunately, his father left the family a good bit of money.

To honor his father’s hopes and dreams for Roald’s education, his mother stayed in Wales and got Roald into a private school. Though he disliked it, he wrote his mom every day that think were going well to keep her at ease.

He also spent time reading books like Alice in Wonderland, Peter Rabbit, and Jamima Puddle Duck. Knowing Roald would love to meet the authors, she once took Roald on a 200-mile journey to meet the author of Beatrix Potter, a highlight of his childhood.

The next year, Roald was sent to boarding school in Repton, this time with a diary at the suggestion of Beatrix Potter.

He wasn’t the perfect student, though. In his first semester, he received a caning by the headmaster at school after he put a dead mouse in a jar of jawbreakers. Jawbreakers were his favorite, though they weren’t actually called jawbreakers then. They were called Gobstoppers.

He did take up photography, cricket, football, squash, and he loved literature.

In nearby Derbyshire, the Cadbury Chocolate Company had built a factory. They were always inventing new products and needed a way to determine which were good ideas and which were bad.

So, every month they brought 12 candy bars, rating cards, and note sheets to the boys at the boarding school in Repton.

The boys were to try the candy bars, rate them, and provide the reasoning for the rating.

For Roald, this monthly ritual created an avalanche of ideas and imagination. He and the other boys would wonder what it’s like inside the factory with room after room dedicated to candy inventions.

He wondered if there were chocolate waterfalls inside or crazy rooms where fully grown men played with the sticky chocolate mess.

In his diary one day, he wrote a story idea. A chocolate factory that makes fantastic and marvelous things and a crazy man who runs it. 

The Career of Roald Dahl

After schooling, he joined Shell Petroleum and spent four years in training. Then he was sent to Dar Es Saalam in Tanganica, Africa.

But the start of World War II would change Roald’s plans.

He returned to England and joined the Royal Air Force, (the RAF) as an aircraft man. Then during training, he applied and was accepted into flight training. Roald excelled at flying and was assigned to the 80th squadron in Kenya.

But Roald wasn’t a traditional pilot. He was special. He flew planes like only a couple other pilots.

He flew and fought over Africa and Europe and successfully shot down multiple enemy planes, awarding him the title of Flying Ace.

But on September 19th, 1940, he would find his plane in trouble and would crash land, causing him to fracture his skull and temporarily blind him.

Nevertheless, he was able to find the strength to pull himself out of the plane, crawling far enough away to avoid the flames, and there he lay unconscious until he was rescued.

His injuries medically grounded him from flying. He did recover and try to get back in the air, but blackouts and severe headaches made it impossible.

Instead, he returned to London where he met Under Secretary of State Harold Balfour. Harold loved his flying stories and his conversational eloquence and invited him to become the assistant to the Attaché at the British Embassy in Washington DC.

He was told his job would be to deliver lectures about his wartime exploits using his experience as a wounded fighter in hopes of gaining sympathy and drawing the Americans into the war. But Harold Balfour knew there would be a lot more to the job, which brings us to the great Winston Churchill.

In 1940, when Churchill took over from Neville Chamberlain, he had one goal, draw the United States into the war. He knew Germany’s workforce alone was greater than the entire population of the UK. And he knew they were spending five times as much on their military.

He started this plan by recruiting William Stevenson, a Canadian war hero and World War I flying Ace into his scheme. Stevenson was the perfect candidate because he was Canadian, not British, and he was the guy everyone talked about who flew the Sopwith Camel and downed 12 planes.

Stevenson’s job was to find a way to connect with important people in the United States and that turned the tide to them wanting to get involved.

Stevenson’s main contact was a friend from World War I, Gene Tunney, who was both the boxing heavyweight world champion and a personal friend of J. Edgar Hoover. J. Edga Hoover was the head of the FBI and also spoke with the president Franklin Delanor Roosevelt on a daily basis.

Gene Tunney helped set up a meeting between Hoover and Stevenson. Hoover informed Stevenson that he was headed for an uphill battle. Ever since the end of World War I, the Americans had a growing feeling of isolationism. People tied the expenses they took to help the European countries as the reason for the Great Depression.

In fact, in the 1930s, the US Congress passed a series of neutrality acts designed to keep America out of Europe’s war. And beyond those Acts was an even bigger threat to success.

The America First Committee and the BSC

A student at Yale University had started a group called America First, an anti-war propaganda group.

Who started it again?

Well, the same year Roald Dahl was born, 1916, Robert Stewart was also born.

Robert was the grandson of the president of Quaker Oats, Robert Stewart, Sr. Robert Stewart Jr.’s America First organization included future President Gerald Ford, future Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, future Peace Corps director Sergeant Shriver, and Eugene Locke. 

America First held the view that no nation could successfully attack a strong United States. And they also believed that no matter who attacked who in Europe, the United States would be fine.

Started in 1940, America First would grow to 800,000 strong and would bring Charles Lindbergh on as their spokesperson and their leader.

Robert Stewart Jr., grandson of the Quaker Roads Company president, would prove himself an effective leader.

When Churchill finally understood what he was up against, he created a new bureau that would be responsible for the mission. Its name was the nondescript British Security Coordination, the BSC.

Its goal was to spy on America to figure out who was for and who was against helping the British and finding a path to getting them to enter the war. Because the political environment was so isolationist, Stevenson found support from FDR, but not public support.

Stevenson was able to maintain communication with FDR under the guise that they were solely looking to out both German and Italian spies in America. Stevenson’s offices were set up at Rockefeller Center in New York City, and they began to build the team of agents who would support the cause.

Stevenson looked for well-connected, well-liked, and charismatic people to join the team. Two of those people were Ian Fleming and Roald Dahl. Dahl’s PR team had been preparing him for a while by having him tell the story of his crash everywhere, gaining friends and new connections.

His charm at cocktail parties in particular was invaluable. His likable personality, good looks, great stories, and hero moniker had enabled him to spend intimate time with New York and DC’s most influential women.

And on top of that, he was friendly with Eleanor Roosevelt.

Then an article in the New York Post really shot up his value. That article came to be after the famous author CS Forester showed up at Roald’s office unannounced. He’d heard a bit about the plane crash and wanted to write a full story on it.

Together they went to lunch where Raold was going to share the story and Forester was going to take notes. But in the end, they chatted with Roald promising to send him the notes later.

A few days later, however, Forester got more than the notes he expected.

Roald had written out the entire story, which Forester submitted directly to the New York Post, and when it ran, it was Roald who was surprised how easy it was to write and get a story published.

The article instantly raised Roald’s profile and gave Roald the opportunity to create relationships with people like journalists at the Baltimore Sun, where he could get his essays printed. 

The BSC put out commercials, articles, interviews, public events, and they even started a radio station to get their message out.

But that all ended when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

In gentlemanly style, Robert Stewart disbanded the America First Group and as a patriot, he himself joined the military to fight for the US. On the day the world was at war and Roald’s job done.

Roald, Bond and Chocolate

In 1943, he finally took stab at writing. 

Thinking about what to write, he took a look into his diary and found some notes from his flying days. He came across some notes he had written about gremlins.

Gremlins were the things flight crews blamed any problems on. “Another gremlin got in the engine” you would often hear them say. So he decided to write a children’s book about them and published it in 1943.

Eleanor Roosevelt heard about it and read it to her children. Her and FDR were so fond of Roald they invited him to their Hyde Park estate for a weekend to which Roald compiled a page report and sent it to Stevenson and Churchill.

Walt Disney also liked the Gremlins book and negotiated to buy the movie rights, though the film was never made.

Roald’s most fortunate meeting was with Patricia Neil, one of America’s most beloved actresses.

When they met, she had just starred in the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still.

They fell in love quickly and got married. This new power couple would go on to do more great things. Patricia would star in the movie A Face in the Crowd and Roald’s BCS friend Ian Fleming would challenge him to write a short story called Lamb to the Slaughter to which Alfred Hitchcock picked it up for his show Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Sadly, the roughest days of Roald’s life were not the days of the plane crash and skull fracture. That actually began in 1960.

That’s when Roald and Patricia’s first son was hit by a taxi while in the stroller in New York City, leaving him with a skull fracture of his own.

It was touch and go for several months, but he did survive.

But then two years later in 1962, Roald’s daughter would die suddenly from the measles, leaving Roald in a deep depression.

Patricia was luckily able to star in the movie HUD with Paul Newman on the schedule that was able to keep her mind occupied it and keep her around supportive people.

Roald, however, sat in sadness until one day he knew he needed to start a new project. He needed something to focus on.

So again, he went back to his diary and came across a note he had written long, long ago back when he was testing chocolate bars for Cadbury.

The note read, “A chocolate factory that makes fantastic and marvelous things and a crazy man who runs it.”

Which sent his mind wandering.

So in 1964, he produced a book called Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, written during the darkest days of his life. Yet the book is so full of vigor and energy.

Even though the book was an instant success, it didn’t stop the bad luck Roald was experiencing.

For one year later, Patricia suffered a brain aneurysm that put her in a coma for three months while she was pregnant. As did his son, she survived, learning to talk and walk again and giving birth to a healthy baby.

Having immense medical bills, Roald was actually looking for a financial boost when he got a call from a movie producer named Albert Broccoli.

He knew the name because Albert Broccoli had produced Ian Fleming’s James Bond movies. But Ian had passed away the year Charlie and the Czech Factory came out. 

Albert had an offer. Albert was turning another of Fleming’s books into a movie, and his normal screenplay adapter was busy. He asked Roald if he’d write the screenplay for You Only Live Twice, the next James Bond film.

Albert Broccoli knew two things about Roald. He was good friends with Ian Fleming and he wrote successful children’s books.

So he also had a second request. Ian had written a children’s book of sorts that Albert Broccoli also wanted to turn into a movie. So he asked Roald if he’d be interested in writing a screenplay for that as well.

The movie would be called Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.

Which brings us back to the beginning in what becomes an amazing twist of events.

The Enemy Becomes the Friend

Here in 1968, we start with Mel Stewart, an award-winning documentarian who had won awards for his last two documentaries. 

The first one was Four Days in November about the assassination of JFK, and his second was The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which was about World War II. Mel Stewart was also a father.

That year, 1968, his 11-year-old daughter was reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and asked her dad if he could turn it into a movie. Mel liked the idea and brought it to his boss, movie producer David Walper, at Paramount.

David had just joined Paramount after selling his production company and was looking for ideas.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory inspired him to reach out to another one of of his clients he’d been working with. They were a large food company who he knew were looking to get into the candy business.

Companies like Cadbury were making millions, and this company knew they had the audience for chocolate. So, he set up a meeting with their CEO and convinced them that financing and being part of this Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie would be an ideal way to enter the candy and chocolate market.

They agreed and offered to give $3 million to finance the film. Roald was excited about the financing and eager to work on the screenplay. Roald did need to agree to two major clauses in the contract.

• This company wanted the exclusive rights to make the candy featured in the film like Everlasting Gobstoppers, Scrumpily Dumptious bars, and Willy Wonka Chocolate. 
• And secondly, they needed the name of the movie to change as well since they were putting all their money on chocolate success. They needed the name to be Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. 

Roald didn’t like the name change since the story was supposed to be about an ethical and honest boy named Charlie, but he did. And so they agreed.

Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory was to be fully financed by none other than Quaker Oats, a large food company that wanted to get into the candy business.

But being 1968, the original founders of Quaker Oats were long gone.

A new CEO was in charge. His name was Robert Stewart, and he was the grandson of the original founder.

As a young man, as you may recall, Robert Stewart was the Yale college kid who had started the America First Campaign that prompted Church Hill to start the BSC, that turned Roald Dahl, the World War II flying ace, into an American spy.

Roald Dahl would go on to become a household name with books and movies everyone knows like James and the Giant Peach, The BFG, Matilda, and Fantastic Mr. Fox.

All because Roald was a candy bar taste tester as a kid, then Privy to the spying going on between Cadbury and Rowntree and finally becoming a spy himself.