Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm to playing a chok reboarding and I'm faired out
Speaker 1: and we are continuing on today with our discussion on
Speaker 1: Operation Mincemeat, which referred to as the most successful wartime
Speaker 1: deception ever attempted. It was essentially an elaborate World War
Speaker 1: two military hoax cooked up by British intelligence in ninety
Speaker 1: three to fool the Nazias into thinking the Allies next
Speaker 1: move was going to be an attack on Greece and
Speaker 1: Sardinia when they were actually about to invade Sicily in
Speaker 1: an offensive known as Operation Husky. So in part one
Speaker 1: of this podcast, we talked a little bit about what
Speaker 1: was going on in World War Two at the time,
Speaker 1: why Cecily was the logical next target for the Allies,
Speaker 1: and why a deception plan, or rather deception plans were
Speaker 1: really needed to throw Hitler off the sent We also
Speaker 1: laid out the basic premise for Operation mince Meat, and
Speaker 1: that was using a corpse to relay false information to
Speaker 1: the enemy by planting official looking documents on it and
Speaker 1: dropping it in an area where the enemy would be
Speaker 1: sure to find it. Ian Fleming, as we mentioned, was
Speaker 1: the first to propose this idea in a ninety nine
Speaker 1: memo called the Trout Memo, and no one did anything
Speaker 1: with it for years, probably just because it seemed so
Speaker 1: outrageous and and kind of Yeah, but by ninety three,
Speaker 1: British intelligence agents Charles Chumbley and you and Montague had
Speaker 1: caught hold of this idea, They developed it and had
Speaker 1: been given permission to kind of run with it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So when we left off, Chumley and Montague were really
Speaker 1: in the thick of giving the dead body that they've
Speaker 1: managed to obtain a whole background, a life, and a
Speaker 1: personality of everything. From the uniform that it was going
Speaker 1: to wear, they decided to make it a Royal Marines officer,
Speaker 1: to its religion and its name Captain William Martin, he
Speaker 1: was going to be Bill Martin. Friends. That's the level
Speaker 1: of details that they attended to. Essentially, they created Bill
Speaker 1: as this likable, slightly irresponsible guy. The BBC documentary that's
Speaker 1: based on the story, called Operation Minsmey, described him as
Speaker 1: brave and romantic, but disorganized and deeply in debt. He
Speaker 1: was also recently engaged. As we mentioned before, Bill's fictional
Speaker 1: fiance Pam was based on an actual young woman who
Speaker 1: worked for British counterintelligence named Jane Leslie. Montague played the
Speaker 1: role of Bill and actually flirted with and dated Jean Leslie,
Speaker 1: who went right along on it. Yeah, they would call
Speaker 1: each other Bill and Pam in these scenarios, so really
Speaker 1: just getting into this fiction that they were creating around
Speaker 1: these people. Yeah, but there was also a practical side
Speaker 1: to all the story boarding and play acting, because once
Speaker 1: they've made up a life for Bill, Martin, Chumley and
Speaker 1: Montague needed to plant evidence that really would do something
Speaker 1: put this plan into effect. And we talked about the
Speaker 1: cross and the overdraft notice and this fake letters from Pam.
Speaker 1: They also went ahead and included a bill from a
Speaker 1: jeweler for an engagement ring, but also some other stuff
Speaker 1: which arguably would make the court seem even more like
Speaker 1: a real person than stuff like letters. Things that the
Speaker 1: spies referred to as wallet litter, and those are the
Speaker 1: things that you probably have in your pocket now, Things
Speaker 1: you just absent mindedly keep in your wallet or your
Speaker 1: purse or your pockets that don't necessarily mean anything to you,
Speaker 1: but they show that you're somebody who walks around and
Speaker 1: somebody who does stuff so pocket change ticket stubs. I
Speaker 1: don't know, Toblina, you might have law terror receipts in
Speaker 1: your pocket. It could be anything like that. And you
Speaker 1: just like trash like a gum wrapper. Totally. I have
Speaker 1: so much of the stuff that I just got rid of.
Speaker 1: I just moved, so I cleaned out my purses and things,
Speaker 1: and I thought about this because I just read this,
Speaker 1: you know, I just had done this research. I was
Speaker 1: thinking about all the wallet w Yes, I have bags
Speaker 1: and bags of wallet litter. But yeah, the stuff just
Speaker 1: tells you a little bit about the person. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe nothing significant, but maybe it does tell you a
Speaker 1: little something about a person's personality. And they made sure
Speaker 1: to plant some things like this on the corpse that
Speaker 1: they were using as well. Some of the items, like
Speaker 1: I said, we're meaningless, like a partially used book of stamps.
Speaker 1: Others were less so like ticket stubs for performance on
Speaker 1: a particular date, which might convince whoever found them that
Speaker 1: Bill Martin would have had to have been traveling by
Speaker 1: plane because they have that particular date on them. So,
Speaker 1: you know, just planning things here and there that would
Speaker 1: fill out the story. A little bit in some ways
Speaker 1: help them convince the Germans that this was a real
Speaker 1: person and of course make it realistic. So that process
Speaker 1: and all the considerations that it required could probably be
Speaker 1: a little bit tedious, but it was probably lots of
Speaker 1: fun to compared to the process of creating the most
Speaker 1: important information that they were going to have to plant
Speaker 1: on the body. I mean, forget whallet litter. The most
Speaker 1: important thing was going to be the fake official military documents,
Speaker 1: which were of course vital to misleading the Access powers
Speaker 1: in the first place. They decided that the secret documents
Speaker 1: would take the form of personal letters between high ranking
Speaker 1: Allied officials that just happened to drop vital info here
Speaker 1: and there, because actual battle plans and so forth would
Speaker 1: not have been carried by a single officer in this way.
Speaker 1: Those would have been sent by diplomatic pouch something like that. Specifically,
Speaker 1: the letter that aimed to convince the Nazis that Greece
Speaker 1: was a target and that Sicily was a decoy was
Speaker 1: created as a correspondence between Lieutenant General Archibald Nye, who
Speaker 1: was the Vice Chief of the Imperial General Staff in London,
Speaker 1: and General Harold Alexander, who was the senior British officer
Speaker 1: under Eisenhower in Tunisia. These guys knew each other. They
Speaker 1: were both important enough that the Germans would instantly know
Speaker 1: who they were, and it made sense that they would
Speaker 1: be privy to this sort of information. So just three
Speaker 1: essential things that they needed to have that they'd be
Speaker 1: corresponding about something like this. So Montagu took the first
Speaker 1: stab at writing this letter. He thought he made a
Speaker 1: pretty good attempt at it. But his bosses and several
Speaker 1: other of the high ranking folks immediately started weighing in
Speaker 1: on it, and it became a real source of frustration
Speaker 1: for Montague because various officials debated about the letter for
Speaker 1: more than a month trying to decide, you know, did
Speaker 1: it strike the right tone, didn't give enough away without
Speaker 1: getting too much away, that did it seem realistic? Um?
Speaker 1: And he just thought his letter was good. He thought
Speaker 1: it was good, like stop messing with jokes in there.
Speaker 1: He was like, this is the best letter, This is
Speaker 1: totally believable. But they didn't really so much agree. They
Speaker 1: wanted to make sure that they got, like you said,
Speaker 1: a little bit of information out there, you know, you
Speaker 1: want an element of truth in it. To make it realistic.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, you don't want to give
Speaker 1: the whole thing away. You don't want to just tell
Speaker 1: them your plans by by trying to deceive them. Tell them, yes,
Speaker 1: we're going to be in Sicily. Well, and guys like
Speaker 1: that wouldn't be writing letters that gave away the whole
Speaker 1: plan anyway. Right. Well, finally the chiefs of staff just
Speaker 1: came up with a bright idea of having General Ni
Speaker 1: draft the letter himself. And when he did this, it
Speaker 1: just finally struck the right chord. I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: that's sort of the obvious answer, but nobody had really
Speaker 1: thought about it before for this more than a month
Speaker 1: that they were debating it. Nice's version of the letter
Speaker 1: hinted at this primary invasion in Greece and another elsewhere
Speaker 1: in the Mediterranean, while mentioning Sicily as a diversionary location
Speaker 1: where some smaller attacks might occur to confuse the Nazis.
Speaker 1: Of course, they were going to be doing air raids
Speaker 1: and everything anyway in preparation for their invasion, so this
Speaker 1: sort of helped them with that too. It's like, hey,
Speaker 1: if you see some mar raids happening, it's just a
Speaker 1: defasion exactly, so they had to include another letter to
Speaker 1: after this though. They were like, Okay, this sounds good,
Speaker 1: but we need in another letter to explain why this
Speaker 1: guy would be carrying a little place, right. So the
Speaker 1: second one was from the Chief of Combined Operations to
Speaker 1: Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, who was Commander in Chief in
Speaker 1: the Mediterranean, another well known figure that the Nazis would
Speaker 1: have heard of, and this letter explained what Bill Martin
Speaker 1: was doing traveling with this very important information in the
Speaker 1: first place, and also hinted that a secondary invasion would
Speaker 1: take place in Sardinia. I think they actually included kind
Speaker 1: of a PostScript or a little joke at the end
Speaker 1: of the letter that said, you know, maybe William Martin
Speaker 1: can bring back some sardines with him or something. They
Speaker 1: fit some jokes in there, didn't they did. They also
Speaker 1: tested different typewriter inc. Because they needed to find one
Speaker 1: that didn't become illegible after being in the water. They
Speaker 1: needed one that was a regular, non spy inc. That
Speaker 1: wouldn't tip anybody off, but it could still be read
Speaker 1: after all that time. And then they carefully folded and
Speaker 1: field all these important letters. They photographed the steals that
Speaker 1: they could easily tell if the letters had been tampered with,
Speaker 1: and Ben McIntyre, the author who we mentioned in the
Speaker 1: earlier episode, also described how an additional precaution was included.
Speaker 1: They put a dark eyelash in the fold of each letter,
Speaker 1: and so if the eyelash fell out, they'd know that
Speaker 1: the letter had been read. Just a back up thing
Speaker 1: to to provide even more caution than the seals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: not exactly scientific, but kind of a neat detail to include. Anyway,
Speaker 1: The letters were placed in a black government briefcase that
Speaker 1: was chained to the corpses belt, even though they knew
Speaker 1: that it seemed unlikely that Bill Martin would be carrying
Speaker 1: letters this way, because it was really the only way
Speaker 1: they could ensure that the letters wouldn't just float away
Speaker 1: and that whoever found the body would actually notice the letters.
Speaker 1: I mean, if they just kind of tucked it in
Speaker 1: his jacket pocket or something, there was always the chance,
Speaker 1: probably not, but always the chance that it would be overlooked.
Speaker 1: So they sort of needed this as safeguard. After these
Speaker 1: official letters were all complete, they sought and got final
Speaker 1: approval for Operation Mints Neat from the highest authorities necessary,
Speaker 1: Churchill and Eisenhower. So with all of these hard crafted
Speaker 1: materials finally put together and the character of their corpse
Speaker 1: career created, the British intelligence officers needed to nail down
Speaker 1: some logistics, namely where they were going to drop the
Speaker 1: body and how they were going to do it. So,
Speaker 1: as we mentioned in the last episode, Spain in general
Speaker 1: had already proven that it could be a prime location
Speaker 1: for this type of operation because there was evidence that
Speaker 1: they had passed on information to the Nazis in the past.
Speaker 1: Even though Spain was officially neutral, there were some pretty
Speaker 1: strong pro acts as sentiments prevalent in certain areas of
Speaker 1: the country, and even in the highest arenas of the
Speaker 1: government and law enforcement there were some pro access sentiments.
Speaker 1: So this was what Chumley and Montagu were counting on
Speaker 1: for the whole plan to really work. But they still
Speaker 1: needed to hone in on an exact area of the
Speaker 1: Spanish coast to drop the body because there were some
Speaker 1: pro British Spaniards as well, and if they got their
Speaker 1: hands on the body first, the documents might just be
Speaker 1: returned without ever making it into the hands of the Germans.
Speaker 1: So they consulted with the British naval attiche in Madrid,
Speaker 1: Alan Hill Garth and his assistant as well, who helped
Speaker 1: them settle on dropping the body near Velva on spain
Speaker 1: southwest coast, since it was an area where a lot
Speaker 1: of German influence was present. It was also the home
Speaker 1: base of notorious German spy Adolf Klaus, who basically bought
Speaker 1: off everyone who could in town and was responsible for
Speaker 1: helping target British ships off the Spanish coast for U boats,
Speaker 1: among other things. He had been in the service of
Speaker 1: the Nazis for a while and was considered one of
Speaker 1: their top spies. If something washed up on shore there,
Speaker 1: it was guaranteed that Adolf Klaus would make it his
Speaker 1: business to find out about it. So, with the location
Speaker 1: for the drop finally picked out, the next order of
Speaker 1: business for Operation Mincemeat Planners was to determine how they
Speaker 1: were going to drop the body. So the idea was
Speaker 1: to make it seem as if Bill Martin had died
Speaker 1: in a plane crash. You remember in the last episode
Speaker 1: they had to find a body that didn't have, you know,
Speaker 1: a telltale sign of death or a cause of death.
Speaker 1: To make this plane crash idea seem realistic, but the
Speaker 1: problem was if they actually dropped the body out of
Speaker 1: a plane, it might completely break apart, since it had
Speaker 1: already been decomposing for a couple of months in the Morgue.
Speaker 1: So they had a few other options, and one was
Speaker 1: to bring it in on a surface ship and sort
Speaker 1: of drop it close to shore, but that wouldn't work
Speaker 1: because they need to get pretty close to the shore
Speaker 1: to drop the body to make sure that it didn't
Speaker 1: float somewhere where they didn't want it to go. Another
Speaker 1: option was landing a sea plane on the water, but
Speaker 1: that seemed really complicated, really risky, and could possibly cause
Speaker 1: a real plane crash, which would defeat the purpose of
Speaker 1: the whole operation. So they finally decided that a submarine
Speaker 1: was the way to go. That way, they could make
Speaker 1: the drop at night and get pretty close to the shore,
Speaker 1: and it just so happened that a submarine with a young,
Speaker 1: well regarded commander, the HMS Sarah, was docked in Scotland
Speaker 1: getting ready to return to the Mediterranean in April, so
Speaker 1: it seemed perfect. And yet there was one little problem
Speaker 1: with even this scenario to solve, and that was how
Speaker 1: do you first of all, hide a body on a
Speaker 1: submarine without everybody finding out about it, because of course
Speaker 1: discretion was still of the most importance even among other
Speaker 1: members of the British military. And secondly, how do you
Speaker 1: keep this body fresh, so to speak, for the ride?
Speaker 1: This major issue. I think that point sort of relates
Speaker 1: to the earlier one. So Chumley found a solution to
Speaker 1: both of these problems by consulting with Charles Fraser of
Speaker 1: Q Branch, whose job was to provide the Secret Service
Speaker 1: with all kinds of nifty wartime gadgets like indivisible ink,
Speaker 1: hidden weapons, mini cameras. He worked with Ian Fleming too
Speaker 1: in case that all found sort of familiar, and he's
Speaker 1: believed to be the inspiration for Q in the James
Speaker 1: Bond movies. Uh Coincidentally, M is said to be based
Speaker 1: on Admiral John Godfrey, who was the trout memo guy.
Speaker 1: So it was Fraser Smith who helped Chumley come up
Speaker 1: with the design for a giant steel canister, which McIntyre
Speaker 1: refers to as quote the first underwater corpse transporter. It
Speaker 1: was six ft six inches long and air tight to
Speaker 1: keep oxygen out and which would help prevent the decomposition
Speaker 1: of the body. They also planned to pack it with
Speaker 1: dry ice to help with us with a body inside.
Speaker 1: This canister would weigh in at about four hundred pounds.
Speaker 1: Kind of a large can often almost so not something
Speaker 1: to z too hide, No, not at all, um So.
Speaker 1: With official approval though, and with a plan for logistics
Speaker 1: even down to this underwater corpse transporter, all Montague and
Speaker 1: Chumiley had to do at this point was put the
Speaker 1: plan into action. So the HMS Sarah set sail from
Speaker 1: Scotland on April nineteenth, and from there it would take
Speaker 1: an estimated ten or eleven days to get to Ulva.
Speaker 1: So Montague and Chumiley met up with their corner friend Bentley,
Speaker 1: purchased and on April eighteen they finished dressing Glenn Michael's
Speaker 1: body and prepared it for its journey as the fictional
Speaker 1: Bill Martin. Then they loaded it into the giant canister,
Speaker 1: put that into a customized van and headed off for Scotland,
Speaker 1: driven by Sinjin Jock horse Full, who was a famous
Speaker 1: race car driver who had turned into an m I
Speaker 1: five chauffeur. Uh it was good he was a race
Speaker 1: car driver because they were driving very fast. They drove
Speaker 1: through the wee hours of the night at very high speeds.
Speaker 1: They almost crashed a couple of times. Even because they
Speaker 1: were keeping things so secret, they didn't use headlights. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, that was the not so good part about it,
Speaker 1: I guess, is that they weren't using headlights and stngin Horsewall,
Speaker 1: I should say. I didn't have the greatest eyesight from
Speaker 1: what I understand, and he didn't wear glasses. Yes, indeed,
Speaker 1: but they made it to Scotland by the morning of
Speaker 1: the nineteenth safely, and with some help, got the canister
Speaker 1: loaded onto the submarine, which set off when it was
Speaker 1: supposed to, all without a hitch. Incidentally, the commander of
Speaker 1: this submarine was the only one on it who was
Speaker 1: fully aware of the plan. The officers were partially in
Speaker 1: the know, and the crew had been told some other
Speaker 1: cover story to explain to Canister, basically that they were
Speaker 1: carrying meteorological equipment of some sort. Yeah. Sure. McIntyre suggests
Speaker 1: that actually the crew did suspect there was a person
Speaker 1: in this six foot six canister, and they started referring
Speaker 1: to him as our pal Charlie, which I think might
Speaker 1: be the most endearing aspect of this whole story, And
Speaker 1: the Sarah reached Velva around ap planned, but they had
Speaker 1: to wait for the perfect wind conditions that could carry
Speaker 1: the body to shore, and that finally happened in the
Speaker 1: early morning hours of April, so they surfaced. They got
Speaker 1: as close to the shore as possible, closer than they
Speaker 1: thought they could get, and the officers helped the commander
Speaker 1: remove the body from the canister, inflate the life fest
Speaker 1: put the documents where they needed to be, and then
Speaker 1: put the body in the sea. And after that the
Speaker 1: Sarah headed back out to sea and sunk the canister.
Speaker 1: All right, so safe travels Bill. But we've already explained
Speaker 1: in the last episode how the body was found that
Speaker 1: morning by a Spanish fisherman who brought it back to
Speaker 1: shore all by himself. He couldn't get help from the
Speaker 1: other fisherman. And with that, at least the very first
Speaker 1: part of the plan had been accomplished, and had been
Speaker 1: accomplished successfully. But really after that things did not go
Speaker 1: smoothly at all. First of all, the local Spanish authorities
Speaker 1: picked up the body. They turned it over to the
Speaker 1: Spanish navy, which called up Francis Hasselton, who was the
Speaker 1: local British Vice consul and the body was then transported
Speaker 1: to the cemetery an autopsy was performed, you remember, not
Speaker 1: something that they wanted to happen. That's why they made
Speaker 1: the fake identity supposedly Roman Catholic. So a couple of
Speaker 1: things went wrong, so the autopsy really got things off
Speaker 1: to a bad start. The pathologists performing it noticed that
Speaker 1: the rate of decomposition was faster than they were hoping
Speaker 1: he would think it was, and estimated that the body
Speaker 1: had been in the water for about eight to ten days.
Speaker 1: So this already conflicted with some of the evidence that
Speaker 1: had been planted on the body. Hasselton managed to cut
Speaker 1: the autopsy short, though before anything else major got noticed. However,
Speaker 1: there was still a little matter of the briefcase. The
Speaker 1: Spanish navy lieutenant who was present at the autopsy had
Speaker 1: it in his possession, and he had a pretty good
Speaker 1: relationship with Hasselton, so he actually offered to hand it
Speaker 1: over right then and there. But this was exactly what
Speaker 1: the Allies did not want. The whole point, after all,
Speaker 1: was to give the Germans a chance to catch a
Speaker 1: glimpse of this stuff, so Hasselton had to kind of
Speaker 1: act like it wasn't a big deal and just request
Speaker 1: that it go through the official channels. You know. He
Speaker 1: was just kind of like, Hey, I don't want you
Speaker 1: to get in trouble with your boss. Why don't you
Speaker 1: just go ahead and pass it on. We'll get it
Speaker 1: back exactly. We'll get it back eventually. It's fine. But
Speaker 1: it probably came off to this lieutenant and anyone else
Speaker 1: who was present as a little bit strange that he
Speaker 1: would want to do this. So, at least in some respects,
Speaker 1: it seems like Castleton may have averted disaster a little bit.
Speaker 1: But once the Navy lieutenant passed on the briefcase to
Speaker 1: the superiors, the situation got worse for both the Germans
Speaker 1: and the Allies. In fact, because even though as Chumley
Speaker 1: and Montague had hoped, the German spy Adolf Klaus had
Speaker 1: caught wind of the briefcase and it's important looking contents,
Speaker 1: he couldn't manage to get his hands on it. And
Speaker 1: this was because the Spanish Navy was pro British in general,
Speaker 1: and if pretty much anyone else in town had had
Speaker 1: possession of these goods, class would have been able to
Speaker 1: get his hands on them pretty much right away. But
Speaker 1: as it was he was out of luck. He just
Speaker 1: could not find a way to get them. Yeah. So,
Speaker 1: in the process of going through official channels, though, the
Speaker 1: briefcase did finally make its way to Madrid, and in
Speaker 1: the meantime the British had to pretend like they really
Speaker 1: want this briefcase back, give it back to us. So
Speaker 1: messages are just flying back and forth between London and
Speaker 1: British officials in Spain, which have at least the positive
Speaker 1: effect of making the Germans want the briefcase even more,
Speaker 1: making the whole thing seemed more legitimate. Finally, nine days
Speaker 1: after the body washed up, the letters did find their
Speaker 1: way into the German hands, and it seemed as if
Speaker 1: the pro Nazi Spanish security chief finally made this happen.
Speaker 1: But regardless of how they got there, the letters did
Speaker 1: end up with the German empathy in the hands of
Speaker 1: Major Carl Cullin Tall, a well respected head of German
Speaker 1: intelligence in Madrid. Clentel immediately bought into the information the
Speaker 1: letters had to offer, and after seeing that they were
Speaker 1: returned to their envelopes to be returned to the British,
Speaker 1: he personally took copies of them back to German so
Speaker 1: the ball was rolling at this point, and we should
Speaker 1: take a minute here to kind of talk about how
Speaker 1: they handled these letters, so to speak, because if you're
Speaker 1: into spy stuff, it's really kind of interesting. The letters
Speaker 1: had been carefully removed from the envelopes without breaking the seals,
Speaker 1: so you almost couldn't tell that they had been tampered with.
Speaker 1: How they did this was by bending open the lower
Speaker 1: flap of the envelope and using a thin metal double
Speaker 1: prong with a blunt hook to kind of roll the
Speaker 1: paper into a cylinder. So they just made the smallest
Speaker 1: opening in a bottom flap, stuck this double prong in,
Speaker 1: and just sort of wounded around until they turned the
Speaker 1: letter into a cylinder and then pulled it out. It out,
Speaker 1: but those tell tale eyelashes were missing, and there were
Speaker 1: a few other clues that told the British later upon
Speaker 1: examination that they had been viewed, So you could tell
Speaker 1: if you really examine them closely, if you were an expert,
Speaker 1: and you can to the naked eye, they seemed like
Speaker 1: they hadn't been tampered with. Once the copies of these
Speaker 1: letters were in Germany, though, the letters were immediately scrutinized
Speaker 1: and some people were quite skeptical of them, actually, but
Speaker 1: one of Hitler's top intelligence analysts, and that was Alexis
Speaker 1: Baron von Wren, also accepted them as authentic. He seemed
Speaker 1: to believe in them, pretty much a dent. Since Hitler
Speaker 1: trusted Wren implicitly. This was a huge step forward for
Speaker 1: Operation and Mince Meat. So about two to three weeks
Speaker 1: after the body had first washed up in Huelva, the
Speaker 1: letters made it to Hitler's death and he at first
Speaker 1: was also pretty skeptical of the whole thing, but once again,
Speaker 1: once Wren vouched for the letters, Hitler was convinced, and
Speaker 1: soon word got through to London via wireless messages that
Speaker 1: were intercepted by the British that the Germans had bought
Speaker 1: into Operation Mincemeat and believed that Greece was really the
Speaker 1: primary target. And everyone, especially Chumley and Montague, of course,
Speaker 1: we're just completely overjoyed by this news, and for many
Speaker 1: people involved it was their finest moment. The good news
Speaker 1: was relayed to Winston Churchill by telegram like this mince
Speaker 1: Meat swallowed road line and sinker. That was the message.
Speaker 1: But does Operation mince Meat really deserve credit for its
Speaker 1: own success? Some point out that the plan actually had
Speaker 1: a lot of flaws, and they asked this question a lot.
Speaker 1: I mean, some of the flaws we sort of hinted at,
Speaker 1: I think when we were going through the story and
Speaker 1: the preparations for the plan. The too good to be
Speaker 1: true story of Bill Martin was one of the things
Speaker 1: Well and the whole briefcase being chained to him. It
Speaker 1: was an unavoidable part of the story, but probably the
Speaker 1: least realistic aspect of it. In his New Yorker article,
Speaker 1: which we mentioned in the previous podcast, Malcolm Gladwell points
Speaker 1: out that the British also got some help from the
Speaker 1: Germans in this situation. Major Carl Culantall, for example, he
Speaker 1: wasn't necessarily as great an intelligence officer as most Germans
Speaker 1: believed at the time. He was actually kind of a
Speaker 1: screw up. He would believe and pass on just about
Speaker 1: anything that was fed to him because he was so
Speaker 1: eager to save his own hide. He was actually a
Speaker 1: quarter Jewish and he was trying to sort of solidify
Speaker 1: his position and show how loyal he was, and you know,
Speaker 1: just shame like within the know, Yeah exactly, I'm the
Speaker 1: one who's giving you this great information. Alexis Baron von
Speaker 1: n Though we as we said, Hitler loved this guy
Speaker 1: and totally trusted him because of past predictions he had
Speaker 1: made that had indeed come to pass. Wren actually despised
Speaker 1: Hitler and his regime. He was a smart intelligence analysts,
Speaker 1: definitely better than Culental, but he probably put his stamp
Speaker 1: of approval on those faked letters because he wanted to
Speaker 1: sabotage Hitler. Regardless of why the plan worked though, or
Speaker 1: why it was believed, thanks at least in part to
Speaker 1: Operation Mincemeat, Operation Husky was considered a success and Hitler
Speaker 1: was fouled. He sent about ninety thousand troops to grief. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: a hundred and sixty thousand Allied troops invaded Sicily on
Speaker 1: July tenth, ninety three, and though they expected about ten
Speaker 1: thousand casualties from that invasion, according to the BBC documentary
Speaker 1: Operation Mincemeat, about fourteen hundred men and about a dozen
Speaker 1: ships were lost, so way fewer than they were expecting,
Speaker 1: and this set off it's chane of events that were
Speaker 1: positive for the Allies and many believe changed the entire
Speaker 1: course of the war. As for Bill Martin, that corpse
Speaker 1: that washed up on the beach in Spain. Glim Michael,
Speaker 1: as you remember, was his real name, and he was
Speaker 1: buried in Spain in a grave numbered eighteen eighty six.
Speaker 1: Eventually he was given a fake headstone that identified him
Speaker 1: as Bill Martin, and then finally in nineteen the British
Speaker 1: government had his real name put on his grave and
Speaker 1: the story has just continued to fascinate people throughout the years.
Speaker 1: Montague wrote a book himself called The Man Who Never
Speaker 1: Was and there was a nineteen fifty six movie that
Speaker 1: was based on this book. So so another movie to
Speaker 1: add to our list of history movies we need to
Speaker 1: see exactly. And I think we are back in the
Speaker 1: swing of telling spy stories now. We both have spy
Speaker 1: fever after researching this, and I think you've well come
Speaker 1: across some other stuff too that's gotten you interested. I
Speaker 1: was telling Dublina earlier that I'm on a Tinker Tailor
Speaker 1: Soldiers spy kick after I read the book, then saw
Speaker 1: the new movie, and just the other night finished watching
Speaker 1: the excellent mini Theories. So yeah, I had spies spies
Speaker 1: on the brain, although they're cold worth spies, so very
Speaker 1: different from from this kind of stuff. And if you
Speaker 1: like the story, I would really recommend researching it a
Speaker 1: little bit more, either reading Montague book or McIntyre's book,
Speaker 1: which we talked about, which is just I mean, we
Speaker 1: mentioned a lot of names in this podcast and hopefully
Speaker 1: it wasn't too confusing, but they're really just all fascinating
Speaker 1: characters in their own right, and there were something that
Speaker 1: we didn't even get a chance to mention that it
Speaker 1: could be a podcasts all on their own, I think.
Speaker 1: But if you have any podcast recommendations for us, any
Speaker 1: spy story recommendations, maybe in particular that you'd like us
Speaker 1: to do, or maybe you just want to write us
Speaker 1: and tell us what's in your wallet litter, you can
Speaker 1: certainly write us Where History Podcast at Discovery dot com,
Speaker 1: or you can look us up on Facebook or on
Speaker 1: Twitter at this in History. And if you want to
Speaker 1: learn a little bit more about the artific spining, we
Speaker 1: do have an article called how Spies Work. You can
Speaker 1: find it by searching for spies on our homepage at
Speaker 1: www dot how stuff works dot com. For more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com