The Cruelest Trick Ever
Though there are some sources that disagree, the cluster bomb was first used early on in World War II by the Russians and Germans. Who exactly developed and used it first is a matter of debate, a debate that really comes down to naming conventions.
The RRAB-3 was a bomb developed by the USSR, that at its simplest is a container of dozens of smaller incendiary bombs. When it was dropped from a plane, it would open up and disperse the smaller bombs around a large areas, causing fires everywhere it touched.
This was a new bomb at the time, and the devastation it caused was extraordinarily terrible and terrifying. As you might suspect, using such a horrible device, even in war, was not a popular decision.
In order to confuse the issue, the Russians claimed they weren’t actually dropping packets of bombs, but were instead dropping food packets. The Soviet Foreign Minister at the time claimed that they were dropping food to starving Finns in the region where fighting was the most intense.
Now, two things are wrong with this. The Finns were not starving, for one. Or at least they weren’t because of the war. They were instead mostly involved in fighting back, and (at least at the beginning of the Winter War) were well equipped. The second thing wrong with this was that it was so easily proven wrong. Food doesn’t cause fires when it hits the ground.
The Finns were not fooled, or at least not for long. The nicknamed the bombs the “Molotov Bread Basket,” and improvised a weapon of their own based on the concept that they used against Russian tanks. They named it the “Molotov Cocktail.” When they tossed such a device, it is said they shouted “A Drink to got with the Food!”
The “Bread Basket” name stuck around, and was the moniker used when the Germans also used cluster bombs on the British during 1940 and the rest of World War II.
Cluster Bombs are no longer used in warfare by civilized nations due to their devastating effect on people and resources. They were also banned because they were used to drop chemical weapons as well as incendiary bombs soon after their first deployment.
The Russians tried to trick the Finns into thinking they were being humanitarians, but nobody was fooled. In the end, the bombs were simply that, bombs that held great and devastating power on the inside.