The British were, without a doubt, the class pranksters of the Second World War,
using various forms of deception (such as dummy parachutists and dummy tanks) and vexation
(such asitching powder and laxatives) to confuse and whittle down their enemies.
While the outcomes of some British pranks were a little more pronounced,
it's a little unclear how one of of the more disturbing deceptions of the war affected
its outcome. In this video, we take a look at Operation Mincemeat and The Man Who Never Was.
From October 1940 to April 1941, Hitler did what Mussolini could not, and captured Greece.
The German occupation was brutal, resulting in the deaths of tens of thousands of Greeks
and the ruination of Greece's economy. In 1943, the Allies geared up to invade the Italian island
of Sardinia, Greece, and the Balkans — but not really. What they really wanted to do was take
Sicily, but Hitler and Mussolini didn't need to know this. In fact, the Allies made it
their mission to trick Axis into thinking Allied invasions of Sardinia, Greece, and the Balkans
were on their way. On a whole, this deception was known as Operation Barclay, and while the
Allies undertook a variety of other ruses under Operation Barclay, the British ruse known as
Operation Mincemeat is what where focusing on today. But just what was Operation Mincemeat?
In 1939, British Royal Navy Rear Admiral John Godfrey, Director of Naval Intelligence,
wrote a paper which likened wartime deception to, of all things, fly fishing. But this very paper,
deemed the Trout memo, may have been a deception in of itself, having possibly been written by
Godfrey's assistant Ian Fleming instead, with Godfrey taking the credit. If the name Ian Fleming
sounds familiar to you, it's very likely because Fleming was the bloke wrote the James Bond series.
Within the Trout memo, Godfrey or Fleming — who even knows? — made one rather grim
yet clever suggestion. While by no means an original concept,
suggestion number 28 of the Trout memo stated, "[...] [A] corpse dressed as an airman,
with despatches in his pockets, could be dropped on the coast, supposedly from a
parachute that has failed. [...] [O]f course, it would have to be a fresh [...] [corpse]."
Taking inspiration from suggestion 28, as well as from similar occurrences in the Great War
and World War II, a British MI5 intelligence officer by the name of Charles Cholmondeley
conceived a plan. He would dress a corpse up a British officer,
fill his pockets with documents pertaining to fictitious Allied invasions of Sardinia, Greece,
and the Balkans, and dump him somewhere where he'd end up in Axis hands — all to divert Hitler
and Mussolini from the true invasion site, which was Sicily. Comprehending the plan's potential,
the Royal Navy assigned naval intelligence officer Ewen Montagu — who had worked with our buddy
Godfrey before — to Cholmondeley, and together they ironed out the kinks. Basically, they had to
figure out whose corpse they would use, whom they would make the corpse out to be, which documents
they would stuff in the corpse's pockets, and how and where they would dump the corpse.
This is when it got a little disturbing, if a little sad. The corpse they selected had belonged
to a Welsh homeless man named Glyndwr Michael, who, after both his parents were dead, became a
homeless man on the streets of London. Starving, or possibly in an attempt to take his own life,
Michael ate rat poison in an abandoned warehouse at age 34 and died in hospital two days later.
While that was bad news for Michael, it was good news for the Allies. Cholmondeley
and Montagu put their minds to creating an entirely fictitious identity for the corpse.
Seemingly overnight, a homeless Welshman became William Martin of the Royal Marines — The Man
Who Never Was. Martin was placed in a battledress, and various effects were attached to his person.
These included but were not limited to a naval identity card, a photo of and love
letters from his fictitious fiancé, and a pass from a nightclub in London. While those items
reinforced Martin's identity, there were, of course, the false military documents themselves.
Several important deception documents were placed in a briefcase attached to Martin with a chain,
one being a letter from British General Archibald Nye to British General Harold
Alexander. Rather than just stating, "We gonna hit up Greece and totally not Sicily,
lol," our prankster duo made use of their wit, alluding to the fictitious invasion
in a less direct manner. A portion of the letter read,
"We have recent information that the [...] [the Germans] have been reinforcing
and strengthening their defences in Greece and Crete and [...] [Chief of the Imperial
General Staff] felt that our forces for the assault were insufficient."
Another fictitious letter, addressed to British Admiral Andrew Cunningham from
British Vice-Admiral Louis Mountbatten, hinted at an Allied invasion of Sardinia,
while also putting it out there that Martin was an expert on amphibious warfare.
All Cholmondeley and Montagu had to figure out now was how and where to dump Martin.
It was decided they would make it seem as if he had been the victim of a plane crash,
and they intended for him to wash up on the shore of Huelva in southern Spain, where
the the tides and currents were predictable, and where they knew a German Abwehr agent was active.
Instead of actually crashing a plane with Martin inside of it, or instead of dumping
him from a *moving* plane, they put him in a sealed canister inside the Royal Navy sub
HMS *Seraph*, which was bombed twice on its way to the delivery point.
When HMS *Seraph* finally (and safely) arrived off the Spanish coast on the 29th of April 1943,
Martin was pushed into the water. The success of Operation Mincemeat was now in fate's hands.
A day later, a Spanish fisherman spotted something strange on the coastline. After the fisherman
notified the authorities, the corpse and its effects ended up with the Spanish military,
though a British vice-consul living in the city was able to notify the British that their package
had arrived as planned. The vice-consul even attended the autopsy, at which William Martin
of the Royal Marines was deemed to have died at sea. He was buried in Huelva, but his personal
effects ended up in Madrid. The Spanish military held on tightly to the briefcase for a while,
but was ultimately persuaded to let German Abwehr agents operating in the area open it and see its
contents. The information reached Germany on the 8th of May 1943, soon after which,
Allied command received a message which read, "Mincemeat swallowed rod, line and sinker by the
right people and [...] they look like [they're] acting on it." And act on it, the Germans did.
On the 14th of May, German Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz wrote, "The Führer does not
agree with [...] [Mussolini] that the most likely invasion point is Sicily. [...] [H]e
believes that the discovered [...] British order confirms the assumption that the
planned attacks will be directed mainly against [...] [Greece.]" In preparation,
Hitler bolstered his forces in the Mediterranean, doubling his infantry might in Sardinia to 10,000,
transferring fighter aircraft from Sicily to Sardinia, transferring seven infantry divisions
to Greece, relocating torpedo boats from Sicily to Greece, and relocating ten infantry divisions and
two panzer divisions to the Balkans. On the 9th of July 1943, the Allies invaded Sicily. By the
17th of August, the island was in Allied control. Mussolini's regime was history. Though, while the
Allies had dealt Axis a defeat, it's unclear exactly how much Operation Mincemeat influenced
Hitler's decision to bolster Sardinia, Greece, and the Balkans. Hitler had feared an invasion of the
Balkans prior to Mincemeat, and he wasn't all too trusting in Mussolini and Italy's ability at this
point in the war anyway. What we can say for sure is that the Allies copped a whole lot less hurt
than they had expected to, with a campaign they expected to last 90 days taking just 38 days in
reality. In the words of British historian Ben Macintyre, "Of the 160,000 [Allied] soldiers who
took part in the invasion and conquest of Sicily, more than 153,000 were still alive at the end.
That so many survived was due, in no small measure, to a man who died seven months earlier."
"Of the 160,000 [Allied] soldiers who took part in the invasion and conquest
of Sicily, more than 153,000 were still alive at the end. That
so many survived was due, in no small measure, to a man who died seven months earlier."