May 24, 2022 • 44 mins
As World War II raged on in 1943, both Allied and Axis forces knew they were riddled with spies. In a dizzying cavalcade of undercover, double, and even triple agents, both sides of the war sought to deceive their opponents -- and ethical concerns increasingly took a back seat in these pursuits. In today's episode, Ben, Noel and Max dive into the story of Operation Mincemeat, a macabre (and, ultimately, successful) plan to plant fake intel on a corpse. Inspired by Netflix's new film, Operation Mincemeat, the guys explore the facts behind the latest adaptation.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. We have a very special
episode today, and who better to produce that than our
number one super producer, Mr Max Williams. Uh yeah, nol
Uh you're no, I'm Ben and uh you you and
(00:49):
I recently watched the film on Netflix called Operation Mincemeat. Yeah.
I I initially thought it was going to be some
sort of British baking kind of show situation, but it
turns out it was British. But there's very little baking,
precious little baking in Operation mince Meat. But you know
what mince meat is, Yeah, mince meat is a well
(01:12):
you know me, man, I'm a walking garbage can when
it comes to food. I eat all sorts of stuff. Basically,
it's like, it's weird to call it meat. It always
has been to me because it's suet. But then a
lot of dried fruit and uh spices, and I think
they distill some spirits of some sort, some kind of
(01:32):
boozy thing that cooks down and doesn't have a lot
of alcohol in it, do the cooking process, and then
you put it in like a pastry, Sue, isn't that
as like beef juice, like like like beef slime? Basically,
uh yeah, it's fat, pretty sure, And suet doesn't always
have to be beef. It can come from like lamb
(01:53):
as well. It's it's specifically I thought someone checked me
on this. I thought was kind of fat around the
loyal and the kidneys of the anoma. It's not that
far off from the consistency of aspec. You've ever had
any weird gelatinous seventies kind of dishes with things preserved
in jelly or whatever aspect is? Uh? You know, there
(02:15):
are some really good if you get like I fear
into the stuff, which I know it's controversial. There's different
ways to make it that are more humane than goose pette.
But there are different types of pette that sometimes we'll
have a layer of like a ginger kind of like
fruited aspect on top and beef. So it is not
too far from that. But we're not talking about the
actual dish, MINS mean, which would be usually served in
a pie crust of some kind of mince meat pie.
(02:37):
We are, in fact talking about an operation carried out
by British intelligence that may well have been one of
the prime movers in swinging the tide of World War two. Yeah,
absolutely correct, and funny story they came up with the
name because British intelligence at the time had kind of
(02:58):
this list of common name aims that you would pull from.
That was really interesting to me, the idea that maybe
there were a bunch of guys kind of brainstorming in
a room and they said, Okay, where are we gonna
call this next one? And someone said, you know, maybe
they skipped lunch, and someone's like, I don't call it
mince meat, you know, but they did apparently have a
list of approved names. You're right. No, this was a big,
(03:21):
big deal and it happened in utter secrecy. So we
want to talk a little bit today about the real
life events that informed the film you can see on
Netflix today. This operation was a result of intelligence agencies
always trying to fake each other out. So the British
(03:41):
invented a ghoulishly creative way of delivering fake intel in Spain,
which was neutral at this time in nine and they
wanted it to end up with the German forces, and
you know, always thinking, man, we're channeling a bit of
stuff they don't want you to know. Today another show
(04:04):
that we do, and this one is a real life
conspiracy weirdly enough, and you can go back and forth
on how far they should have leaned into this with
the film weirdly Enough, the entire idea starts with fly fishing,
not a euphemism straight up like cast in the real
(04:24):
little fake fly on there. Yeah, but it also, like
you know, it was used as a metaphor, right like
in this document called the Trout Memo I believe um
that was then presented to a committee called the twenty
Committee or the Committee of twenties. And it just shows
how deep some of these very clever British quips go
(04:45):
with some of these project names and code names, because
you know, twenty was not referring to the number of
members in the Council or whatever you wanna call it.
It was not referring to the number twenty exactly. It
was referring to the Roman numeral twenty x x, meaning
double crosses. So it was a organization, though specifically designed
to do exactly what you said, Ben to fake out
(05:07):
other intelligence agencies and governments through elaborate russ UH and
ultimately deception, and that is very much what went into
the thinking behind Operation Mincemeat. It was a way to
send faulty information to the Germans so that they would
act on that information believing that it was true, giving
(05:30):
the Americans or the Allied forces the advantage. Yeah, and
we owe a big debt to historian Ben McIntyre. Actually,
the film Operation Mincemeat is based primarily on on his work.
It's nuts. It's nuts because there's a There are parts
of the film where people are saying with all sincerity
and there's a real thing. They're saying, yes, I know
(05:53):
sow and show he thought I was a double agent
when I was a triple agent. To keep your eye
on that one. And it's like how many times do
you go with this song and dance and this weird
tango of who's who's betraying whom? Uh? This guy named
Rear Admiral John Godfrey. Here's why it starts with fly fishing.
He digs fly fishing. He's super into this trout memo
(06:15):
and it's some sun Zoo art of war stuff. Because
the metaphor is, you know, just like you said, they
love a metaphor. So the metaphor is that you can
deceive your enemy the way that someone fishing can deceive
a fish. We pulled a quote here just to give
you a sense of it. The trout fisher cast patiently
(06:38):
all day. He frequently changes his venue and his lures.
If he has frightened to fish, he may give the
water arrest for half an hour. But his main endeavors
to attract fish by something he sends out from his boot.
He's insistant, incessant. I love that. There's a great scene
(06:59):
in the movie be Where. Um, this guy presents the
trout memo to Winston Churchill. I remember the I didn't
know the actor who was playing Churchill. It's obviously like
a really you know, sought after a role of you know,
some of the best actors have portrayed Churchill, so specifically
h Gary oldman, you know, and like an unrecognizable amount
of prosthetics. Um, but this dude did a really kind
(07:21):
of not over the top. It's an easy one to
like chew the scenery with because Churchill was a real
character and known for these fiery speeches and turns of phrase.
But the guy said, he I forget who was it
was because one of I think his assistant or one
of the guys who was in this kind of cadre
of of military brass that we're walking around with Churchill
was Ian Fleming, the author of you know, the James
(07:43):
Bond novels, and he based his James Bond characters on
people that he actually knew and some of the operations
that he actually participated in. But the point is, the
guy says to uh, Churchill, have you heard of the
Trout memo? Church because I despise fish And then and
then he walks away, and then he says something like,
they're describing the Trout Memo as describing these very fantastic
(08:06):
and elaborate methods of deception, and Churchill replies, like, you know,
I'm I'm fond of the the elaborage and fantastic, much
better than the mundane. Yes, like and then he says,
but you know, in order to pull off something elaborate,
it has to be beyond fool proof. Yeah, that's the thing.
(08:27):
And this this paper, this memo, builds on this fly
fishing metaphor. It lists all in all, fifty four different
what if ways that the United Kingdom could try to
deceive their enemies. The axis forces just the same way
of fly Fisher could like they lean into it, is
what we're saying. Uh, wouldn't this have been kind of
(08:49):
an early codification of like spycraft, like in the UK,
the Great Game had been continuing a pace for a while.
I would say it's fair to call all this kind
of part of the dawn of modern tradecraft or spycraft. Yeah,
so they're they're deep in stuff there, as Corporate America says,
(09:10):
they're building the plane while they fly it. Today's story
is not about the entirety of the Trout memo. You
basically got the gist, folks. It's about the twenty eighth
suggestion in that weird paper, the idea of getting a
dead body, planting fake intel on that dead body, and
then just sort of dropping it somewhere where German intelligence
(09:34):
will find it. And they didn't make up this idea,
by the way, they got it from a novel. Because
Admiral Godfrey and Ian Fleming we're working together. Godfrey loved fishing,
Fleming loved fiction. And you know, I think about it
sometimes like general's admiral's are very very busy people the
(09:54):
top brass. So how do you communicate with someone like that,
you make it something relatable to them. So instead of saying,
instead of saying, hey, man, let's let's start using dead
bodies the trick people he opened with you know what
wars a lot like Admiral It's like fishing, and he's like, oh,
I like fishing, Yeah I can, I can. I can
(10:14):
grab my around that, I can get behind that. It's
interesting though. We were talking about this on our group
text thread. There is a kind of a running gag
in the in the movie where basically, like everyone is
a writer, everyone's working on a novel. It's pretty funny. Um,
several of the of the top brass type characters are
in fact working on novels, and it becomes this kind
(10:35):
of like fun running joke in the movie. But yeah,
it's true. They got the idea from a novel. I
don't recall which one. I don't know if that comes
up necessarily in the movie, but um, it is. Maybe
it sounds like the kind of deception you would see
as the twist and like a detective novel like Paro
or like you know, Sherlock Holmes or something like that. Right,
So think about it. The idea is to pass off
(10:57):
this body as a genuine soldier, a genuine you know,
human being who died in the um you know, course
of serving their country, and you know, planting false information
on them so that the Germans would find it in
the hopes that they would believe it to be true.
They knew that they would do an autopsy and make
(11:17):
sure that the body was in fact, you know, because
there's all this all this paranoia at the time, you know,
they would not accept anything at face value. So they
had to go about this in the most meticulous way
you could imagine, like they created a backstory for this person.
We'll get into the details of that, but first before
any of that fun stuff, which all involves like make
(11:39):
basically like writing stories. It's like a story bible. You're creating,
you know, a living, breathing human being that is actually
entirely fictionalized. You got to find a body first, a
viable specimen that isn't too old, that hasn't been mutilated
in any kind of way that like, you know, it
looks like it was someone that just went down with
their plane and drowned up, and you have to do
(12:01):
an utter secrecy. So you're playing that Goldilocks game for
the perfect perfect corpse basically, and you have to do
this without letting too many people in on the plan.
So Admiral Godfrey is pretty hot to try about this
trout memo thing because he needs a solution and fast.
(12:21):
He is aware of an upcoming plan, a different operation
called Operation Husky. The Allied forces are planning to invade
the island of Sicily, you know, off of Italy, and
they were worried that it would be tough to pull
this off. They said, Okay, we could invade Greece, we
(12:44):
could invade the Balkans. What what should we do? I
think the issue with Sicily was that it was just
a no duck kind of move right where it was
just the obvious weakness or the obvious you know, point
of entry and anyone that they said a couple of times,
like anyone with a could tell you that, so they
were going to be expected it would have been the
(13:05):
most obvious place. So that's the problem because it's like,
even if it makes the most sense, you're enemy also
knows that and they're going to act accordingly. So the
point is they they needed to figure out a way
to make the Germans believe they weren't going to do
the thing. The Germans knew they definitely were going to do.
How do you do that? Right? Right? Exactly? And that's
(13:26):
a good way to put it, man, So they already
kind of knew, and history would prove this. They already
kind of knew that Access Powers have pretty insidious intelligence capabilities.
There were tons of spies embedded in any agency you
can imagine. And they knew that if Access Powers anticipated
the obvious thing, Operation Husky, because they already did the
(13:49):
North Africa campaign, so it's not too far to for
their resources to move. They knew that if the Germans
were anticipating this, it would become a blood bath, it
would probably fail. Winston Churchill, it was basically drunk off
the success of the North African campaign. Loki possibly also
actually drunk too. Yeah, I was gonna say Loki just
(14:12):
in general kind of drunk, and he knew, he knew
in his calculus that Britain could probably not invade and
retake France at this time. They needed a more runway,
and he said, okay, look we can maybe He was
skeptical at first, but he said, we can maybe take
these North African forces through the Mediterranean into Italy, which
(14:36):
they loved, calling the soft underbelly of Europe. Like they
keep calling it that. It's weird, you know how it
is like when you're hanging with your friends and you
make up a catchphrase and everybody sort of gets into it.
Is that sort of a ding against the Italian people,
implying that they're somehow like soft and and uh and
and you know, luxuriating in their fine wines and cheeses.
(14:57):
I don't know, I'm still trying to figure that part out,
but yeah, they lead, they leaned into that as well.
So everybody's like, fly fishing is war, soft underbellies, Let's
invade Sicily and to do this. They they're not sure
if it's actually gonna happen yet. This story hinges on
three people. We're gonna introduce two of them now, military officers,
(15:20):
Charles Cholmley and you and Montague not spells. Not spells
the way it sounds Charle Mandalay reminds me of some
counties in Georgia. We've got one called Tomeless. Looks like
on paper Talia Faroh, but it's apparently pronounced Tolliver or
something like that. For the law. I mean until I
(15:41):
heard them stay in the movie. When I was reading
about this, in my mind, I'm saying out loud, Jarl Mandalay.
And then when in the movie they start calling this
dude Cholmley, and I'm like, where's Charl Mandalay? I was
right there with you. It's kind of like and and
no offense to our good friends in Massachusetts. It's kind
of like Worcester. You can't get mad at people for
(16:03):
guessing wrong on that one. But here we are the
twenty eight suggestion. Chom Lee and Montague run with it.
The lure in this case is a corpse, not too fresh,
not too stale, I guess, but Goldilocks corpse, right, And
it has to be dressed as you're kind of average
(16:24):
everyday soldier with that intel, and the originally wanted to
fake intel to just be in the guy's pockets. The
whole bit, the whole trick is their idea will be
that German intelligence in Spain finds these papers and take
them as gospel. If everything works out, enemy forces are
(16:46):
gonna find this dead guy, They're gonna act on that
secret info, and they're gonna move their forces away from
Sicily and this all takes time, right, they can't just
you know, pop back over. They're gonna move a significant
amount of the German military and access military forces away
from Sicily. Then that exposes the soft underbelly of Europe
(17:09):
and there you know, from then on it's just like
God save the Queen, great job everywhere. Oh way, I
think I get it. So there's a soft underbelly is
a point of weakness, right like in the Hobbit, you
know how like small had that one little area that
like was like what they call it, like naked as
a snail without a shell or something like that. I
(17:30):
think maybe that's what they're referring to Sicily as like
just a weak point, so a soft underbelly, implying that
like even if everything else is armored, you know that
that if that soft underbelly is exposed, and that could
be like a kill shot for all of Europe. And
did you kind of jump in here? I mean you
gotta think about this point in nine, Like Germany is
still kind of like an unstoppable machine, while like Italy
(17:53):
and all their operations are just like tripping over themselves
and faith planning and eating cheeses. Fine, cheeses and wines. Yes,
like they were not doing very well this war. No,
they were. That's that's very, very true. And this, this
fake out itself, is not a super original idea, just
the idea of faking people with bad intel. It's happened before.
(18:15):
It's happened so often in the world of intelligence that
by this point I had a street name. It was
known as the Haversack Ruse. But charm Lee and our
boy Montague they need a fresh body. And charm Lee
has his own spin on the trout memo. He calls
it the Trojan Horse. Shout out to Dennis Smith, authored
(18:37):
Deathly Deception, The Real Story of Operation Minced Meat. Thanks
to Smith, we have chom Lee's real life description of this. Noal,
I know we both love leaning into a real a
real chewy British accent. You want to give this one
a shot, man? Oh? Why not? Let's see. A body
(18:57):
is obtained from one of the London hospitals. The lungs
are filled with Walter and documents are disposed in an
inside pocket. The party is then dropped by a Coastal
Command aircraft. On being found, the supposition in the enemy's
mind may well be that one of our aircraft has
either been shot or falced down, and that this is
(19:21):
one of their passengers. Love it. All the Brits down
the audience are cringing right now, and I am here
for it. I'm here for I love all of you
so much. Yeah, and you know we would love to
We would love to do our own adaptation of Operation
Mincemeat and Maxnell. Maybe at the end we can we
(19:42):
can figure out who we're going to cast as ourselves.
Well as speaking of cast, I got I gotta stay
in point now. Um, this movie really great. Cast Charles
McFadden or mcfaddion who I think we all who plays Charmley.
I think we all know him as Tom Walms Gams
from Succession. Fabulous and he's another one of these British
actors who, like I just would never have thought was British.
(20:04):
I mean, I have no reason to worry about her,
to think about it, but he just pulls off that
American accent so well. That does not always go the
other way around when it comes to American actors doing
British voices. I would not call myself nor I think
you uh an actor per se, You've don't know you've
done more acting than I, but as evidence by our
our butchery of the of the English accent. But it's
(20:26):
really funny when you have, like you know, Kevin Costner
or something vaguely attempting to phone in the slightest of
British accents that sort of comes and goes, you know,
the first ten minutes of Robin Hood Princesses slap. I
don't really it's great. Yeah, that's dope. But yeah, I
know exactly what you're talking about. And I would also
(20:48):
say just to uh to throw a uh an olive
branch slash bone to our fellow British ridiculous historians. Yes,
we know. Americans are the ones with the accent. You
guys were there first. Everybody gets it. Even Max is
nodding solemnly. He's like, I'll allow it, okay, So I
(21:11):
want to just I just want to bait the picture here,
So Max, I want to put you on spot it.
Max thought about it when I said that, and then
lean forward towards his mike and then kind of give
a little smile like lean back like not yet, not yet. Yeah,
Sometimes I just like, am I do I have the
energy for this fight right now? Do I really have
(21:32):
the energy for this banet? And this was one of
the moments I leaned back. I was just like, no,
I don't, I don't. I will not die on this
hill today, my friends. I will live to fight another
But Ben didn't they have like a special hook up
like to get these bodies, like they had like a
body guy, right, yeah, yeah, they have a body guy eventually,
(21:53):
because first Cholmley pitches this to his buds Am I
five and it's any committee who are running all this
double agents, and they're not super convinced. It's like November
two and they essentially tell him, dude, there's absolutely no
way this will work that. I like where your heads at.
I like the way you think about things, and we
(22:17):
need to attach this, you know, keep go back to
the drawing board, keep your original idea. Let's punch it up.
And that's when you and Montague comes in. He's naval intelligence,
he's in charge of counter espionage and he's gonna work
with Chomley. They go through the details and then they
get a do date. The top brass says this invasion
(22:38):
of Sicily, Operation Husky has to happen by July of
ninety three. So TikTok, TikTok, TikTok, find us a dead body.
And uh, it's weird because everybody kind of knew that
everyone was spying on each other. They didn't even kind
of know this. This is the only way they were
(22:59):
able to pull this off. But they were trying to
figure out what Adolf Hitler thought. Adolf Hitler was never
a particularly talented strategist, and he was really really focused
not so much on Sicily, but on the Balkans because
Germany was not a resource rich country. If the war
machine that was running through Europe was to continue, then
(23:23):
they needed copper, oil, you name it, all sorts of
resources from the Balkans. Without it, their war effort would collapse.
So so the Allies go through this whole dog and
pony show. They invent another fake operation called Operation Barclay.
It's meant to convince Germany that the Allies are going
towards the Balkans. They made up a fictional military formation,
(23:46):
They did a bunch of fake operations in Syria's like really,
look at me stuff and just like you said no
the whole time, our guys chom Lee and Montague are
like the Resurrection men of the Middle Ages. They're searching
for that body. They said, okay, yeah, no, we've decided
it's fine to steal a body, dress it up, and
(24:07):
throw it somewhere. We don't have a lot of time
to wax philosophic. Let's make the corpse look convincing. You
gotta work on a back story. But also, these guys
are not experts what death looks like. And like you said,
they're not the type of guys who walk around saying, oh,
you need a body, I'll get your body. Wait, you
need it by four. They don't know, No, they don't know.
(24:30):
They end up connected with somebody at like a morgue
of some kind I believe right like they have direct
access to. So they had to make the scenario you know,
under which this person's body was found believable. So it
couldn't be like some sort of you know, grizzly death.
You know that where where there was like mingling or
mutilation of any kind needed to be a body with
(24:51):
very few marks on it would have been someone that
had gone down on a plane, presumably crashed into the
ocean in the open ocean, uh, and then drowned. And
then you know, I was wondering would they have then
you know, looked for the plane to confirm, But Max
and and then off air pointed out that which would
have been too much, too too many resources would have
been required to do that. There were other ways they
(25:12):
could have confirmed the validity of this this person's you know,
credentials and if this was a real British soldier. So
the body they got was a guy who had recently
been discovered um dead of from ingesting rat poison in
a warehouse. Um presumably a suicide. Um. There certainly are
(25:34):
scenarios or maybe it was accidents, you know, he accidentally
rat poison or would already got mixed into his rations.
Because this was a time of super austerity. I kind
of forgot about that until watching this and this film,
remembering that, like you know, the blitz was was just
over the horizon every single day, so it was like
there there was power outages, you know, people life did
(25:55):
go on. There certainly were high society things that took place,
but in general, the general pop reulation was eating like
you know, spam and like rations and like you know, um,
what do you call those things? M R E s
and stuff? Right, Yeah, food was being rationed. It was
a serious concern and a lot of people were dying.
So it's weird. Then from Cholmley and Montague's perspective, we'll
(26:19):
call him the Chomster and Monty. Yeah, okay, So so
the Chomster and Monty are in a weird situation because
they're saying, this is a huge war, their bodies everywhere.
How come, how come we have to search so so
ardently for the right one. They get helped by with
two people. One is a pathologist named Sir Bernard Spillsbury,
(26:42):
and he says, all right, here's how you make it
look like someone died the right way. He pointed out,
and I didn't know this, that people when they die
in plane crashes over water are often going to die
of shock instead of drowning, and that means their lungs
might not necessarily fill up with water. And then he
had a hot take. I'm not I'm not a pathologist myself.
(27:07):
Here's what he said. He said, you know, if we're
talking about Spanish people finding him, Spanish folks are all Catholic,
and Catholics don't like doing post mortems unless it's a
really big deal. So we can kind of get away
with a body that's died in any number of fashions,
and you know, it could be anybody's guest, especially if
(27:27):
the body has been in the ocean for a few days.
So that's what leads them to hook up with their
resurrection man, their corpsman. He's a quarter named Bentley Purchase January. Yeah,
the britishness of these names just characters and Toast of
(27:48):
London or something Bentley oh, Ray purchase. That's why Ray
bloody purchase, Bentley Purchase. If anyone is I'm sure British
listeners are instantly familiar. But the new season of Toast
is uh. He goes stateside Toast of Tinseltown and it's
just a delight with Matt Berry's one of my favorite
human beings in the world. So this His music is great.
(28:11):
He makes these very non ironic kind of mean maybe
they're a little ironic, but I would say pretty straight,
kind of like sixties psychedelic folk records that are like
super good. He's what I got one called Kill the
Wolf and another one um. And the covers are great.
They're like him posing with like a you know, so
so good. But in any case, yeah, they like to
(28:32):
your point bend. They found this corpseman who was the
corner at a medical you know, government morgue essentially, and
he's like, I got the guy for you. The dude
I was talking about, who was a not well off
person who has just suffered from some mental illness, had
been on the streets. In the film, we later see
a family member of his kind of surface. This is
(28:54):
a guy named Glendware Michael, another fabulously British and that
actually sounds almost like well doesn't glindwere with the with
the W and the R. But his body looked good.
There are some really fun macab bits in the film though,
because you do see them trying to pose this dead
body in like his military garb for like they need
(29:14):
to do like an I D. Badge photo. Uh, and
you know a corpse, A corpse doesn't really pose, you know.
And there's some one particularly amazingly Macab shot where they
try to make him smile and it just it looks great.
Whatever they did to make I don't know how they
did that exactly with the way the body moves. It
must be prosthetics, but it looked like something out of
(29:35):
Night Living Dead. Um. But it was just you know,
they're kind of just like fumbling with it, and his
head keeps flopping over and stuff. So they realized, okay,
this is a good work. We need to Now we've
found a body that fits the bill. Now we have
to find a live body that somewhat resembles this man
so we can get a photo to have, you know,
(29:55):
on him as his military idea. By the way, they
dubbed this character this creation Major William Martin. Right earlier,
I said, they're kind of three main characters of this story.
Glindware Michael, known as Major William Martin is our third man.
(30:19):
It feels like a noir reference. You can find a
photo just what you're describing on online if you wish.
Ridiculous historians, it is grizzly be warned, but it's off
to the races. They've got the documents, they've they've you know,
happiest corpuses. They have the body, and on April they
(30:40):
take action because Bentley Purchase has told them, look, I
can keep this guy on ice, but at best I
can give you three months, or else he will have
just decayed too far to be useful. So that's why
they ship him off. Then in April, and they still
got that July taking time bomb there that deadline. The
cap into a submarine called h M. S. Sarah has
(31:03):
his crew pushed this body into the sea and they
push it in the direction of the tide and they
actually used the submarines propellers to help move the body
and what they hope is the right direction. I want
to shout out the captain of that sub Lieutenant Norman Jewel,
who had the decency to stage something like a funeral service.
(31:26):
He read the thirty ninth Psalm, which begins talking about
the power of silence, and that's the only funeral that
Michael actually gets. The body washes ashore on the Spanish
coast near a city called Huilva, and this is exactly
where they wanted it to go because they knew, right
(31:46):
even though Spain was like quote unquote neutral, everybody knew
the British spies were their allied spies. German spies are there,
and they said, okay, just like preserve this so that
the papers are still legible. We can't put it in
the stud pockets. We have to put it in a briefcase.
So they attach a briefcase to him and it's what's
(32:09):
the amazing term they used for pocket trash. I think
it's like wallet litter, like, like, I really like it.
There's so many of these bespoke, little kind of like
niche terms that they throw around and in this film
that that are a lot of fun. I'm I'm serious,
you know, Just just to just to put this out there.
Netflix did not sponsor this episode. We just genuinely liked
(32:31):
the movie and thought it was worth talking about, and
it gave us a topic that we hadn't really thought
about that we hadn't done. So definitely go check out
the movie. I don't think we're spoiling too much of it.
Even if you know the story, it's still the dramatization.
There's definitely a lot of schmaltzing all this stuff up
for the purposes of of of cinema, and I honestly
they don't ever go too terribly far. A couple of
(32:53):
things made me cringe a little bit, like a bit
of a overdone love story angle, But in general, I
think we all three to enjoy the film. Jason Isaacs
is amazing. We were talking about that off air. Yeah,
and I love I love Colin first to call it
if you're hearing this, man, Great job, Great job dude.
And Jason Isaacs, you're hearing this. I love you. He's dreaming. Man.
(33:15):
Look at those big baby blues. God, you can just
swim in them. They're so piercing. As a man with
piercing blue eyes, I can appreciate piercing blue eyes. Regnize me.
There we go. Thelled it all right, Max. We're gonna
see if we can get you and Jason to hang
out together. You know. Oh. He was in the Death
of Stalin, which is another movie that I think ridiculous
(33:38):
historians would absolutely love. If you haven't seen it, that
is a cool movie and another really fun dramatization of
some really heavy historical stuff but played completely straight, where
it's like nobody has a Russian accent in the movie.
It's all just like everyone themselves and it's Steve. It's
just Steve. It's right. That's that's American acting, you know.
(34:01):
But if you were a German spy there in Spain
and you saw this, these papers, then they would look
legit because it's a very clever counterfeiting move. The people
who made the fake papers are the same people who
make the real papers, so they're making their own counterfeits.
(34:23):
You would not be able to tell the difference without
more information. A fisherman finds and retrieves quote unquote Martin's body,
and then of course it makes it to German intelligence
in the city. They look at this and they say,
holy smokes, that's where the Brits are going. They're faking
us out. You know, Sicily's too obvious. They're coming for
(34:45):
Greece and Sardinia. We gotta get moving. I mean, I
also want to make sure we give credit to the
other members of the twenty who you know, trumped up
all of this incredibly detailed backstory for this man. It
was really like, you know, writer's room. It was no
wonder the writing and you know, being novelists such a
theme in the movie because these people were responsible for
(35:06):
creating believable fictions. They gave him a love interest named
what was it, guys, Pam Pam. There's a snapshot of
his fiance on his person and they make a point
to like, no, no, no. The picture of Pam goes
in his breast pocket because he keeps it close to
his heart, you know what I mean, stuff like that.
You know, there's a love letter that he keeps on
him as well, and also I believe a receipt for
(35:29):
a wedding ring. Yeah, you know, so like it was
one of these things where it's like, i'll you know,
the love letters says that in like it was it
was such a shame that we were to meet during
the war or else would surely be married by now.
And it's all really it goes through all these revisions too,
where like you know, all of the m I six
and MY five, Churchill's Office and all of that, they
all get their hands in the pie kind of rewriting
(35:50):
and and second guessing everything. At the end of the day,
all of this stuff is found along with these documents
in this case that tell this tale right in the
most kind of obfuscating ways. It wasn't it would. It
would have taken them a minute to kind of have
to figure out what was going on. And not only that,
they then continued the ruse by using unsecured lines they
(36:14):
knew were being monitored by German intelligence and saying how
worried they were that their man had been found and
of of the sensitive nature of the papers that he
was carrying. Right, Yeah, it was. It was a huge deal.
There's a lot of acting there too, because they he
also has like a letter from his father, ticket stubs,
(36:35):
you can tell he bought a fancy shirt recently, a
hotel bill, all this stuff, and they really really really
put some work into making it plausible. And I would
argue that the communications that were, you know, being monitored.
We're probably the clincher for German forces, right because if
(36:56):
this guy was carrying secret papers he's this important, then
of course British intelligence will worry about them. If they
hadn't done that little part of the song and dance,
then Germany may have figured out the bruise. But it worked,
it seemed successful. Invasion of Sicily began on July nine.
It went until August. The German military, because they fell
(37:21):
for this con game, had already moved a big part
of their forces degrease. This would prove to be the
first foray in The Italian Campaign, also known as the
Liberation of Italy, continued till leading to the death of
Benito Mussolini, which is still kind of mystery. Historians will
debate the official narrative about that. You remember, Benito Mussolini
(37:44):
felt ridiculous historians, he was that guy who, among other things,
was super into the idea of wearing milk. I'm sorry
wearing milk, Benito Mussolini, He's the wearable milk. It was
like it was like a more sustainable kind of plastic essentially,
would like it almost was like think of craft singles
(38:05):
or something that you could, like, you know, stitch together
and cover your body with. Yes, So check out that episode.
I think we all had a blast on that one.
And at this point we have to ask what can
we learn from this? I mean, Operation Mincemeat shows us
kind of the ethical quandaries of the greater good and
also Glindware Michael had no informed consent, He didn't have
(38:30):
any say in his second posthumous identity. Yeah, and the film,
I I don't know how dramatized this was. But his
sister I don't remember how she gets wind of it
exactly because it was so hush hush, But she comes
into the office and like, you know, makes a big
fuss and says, you know, uh, I think she went
(38:51):
to the corner because you know, there's a lot of
people like who didn't understand where the body went. That
makes sense somehow she ended up in the presence of
our our main characters, you know, doing a shame on
you type situation and like how poor you know, Glendware
never had a say in this and all the you know,
because I mean, these are deeply religious people, and like,
you know, the idea of what they're doing is desecrating
a corpse, you know, like uh, I mean, there's a
(39:14):
scene in the movie when the when the the Spanish
do get ahold of the body and they do do
that autopsy. It is foul, like they're like pulling his
guts out. It looked like freaking you know, sausages. It's
a really and then like one of the reasons they
didn't go deeper into conducting the autopsy to see the
cause of death was because it was just so foul smelling.
You've got like one Spanish officer like vomiting, and the
(39:37):
scene another Macaw piece of you know, cinema. There's there's
a couple of moments like that in the movie, but
it is one of those weighing kind of situations where yeah,
they know what they're doing isn't great, but it was
it was like the only thing they thought would actually
you know, for lack of a better way of putting
it saved the world. It was World War two. And
(39:57):
you're right, Max, I mean the Nazis were killing machine.
They were a precision engineered killing machine, just like ripping
their way across Europe. And if Hitler had had his way,
he would have taken it even further than that. Yeah,
and and also you know there's so many conundrums with
this ethical philosophical conundrums. Yes, mince Meat played a role
(40:19):
in the ultimate Allied victory of World War Two, but
it's also important to remember that when the invasion of
Sicily happened successfully, Allied forces were committing war crimes against
innocent Sicilian citizens. And that's that's a story that doesn't
often get told. But what we're seeing is creativity under
(40:40):
desperate circumstances. Not for nothing is necessity called the mother
of invention. And when driven to extreme means, people who
consider themselves the good guys will do very shady things.
So check out Operation Mincemeat. We thought it was a
fantastic adaptation again, and it's based on some great work
(41:02):
by the historian Ben McIntyre. Ian Fleming plays a role
and still went on to create the James Bond novels
as you said, nol pulling a lot from real life.
This is just a wild one. I can't wait to
I can't wait to hear more about obscure weird operations completely.
And then we we sort of scratched the stores of
(41:24):
this earlier. But um, it was in fact Ian Fleming
who wrote the trout memo and the idea for you know,
the body came from you know, a detective novel like again,
we don't know exactly which one, but it was specifically
a Noirrish type detective novel where you know, this would
have been like a ruse of some kind perpetrated by
a criminal to cover their tracks, you know, or like
(41:46):
a twist in like a drawing room murder mystery. You know,
yeah it was. It was a book by a guy
named Basil Thompson. But yes, we saw fiction become fact.
This is such an nuts story. And you know, I
don't know, are you guys world War two history buffs
at all? I'm a fan. I wouldn't say I'm enough
(42:08):
to consider myself abuff, but I know enough to be dangerous,
I guess. But I definitely find it fascinating because I mean,
it was such an all encompassing conflict that really just
you know, kind of came on the tales of World
War One and so many things that connected to and uh,
it really was something that could have absolutely just changed
the course of civilization, you know. Um, so this was
(42:31):
a kind of like winner take all kind of gambit
and they won because it worked. Yeah. No, I I
consider myself a World War two fan, not abuff. I
mean most of it comes from you know, watching banda
Brothers repeat from like aged twelve to age seven, So
I'd probably say that's where my love World War two,
okay from, But to north Point, I mean it's just
(42:53):
such a I don't just massive part of history, especially
like the culmination of things before and to what we
are still going through nowadays. So I like looking at
it in that way. Totally agreed, and we hope that
you enjoyed this exploration as well. Fellow ridiculous historians. Let
us know what some of your favorite strange stories from
(43:16):
times of war are. We can't wait to hear from
you in the meantime. Thanks so much to our super producer,
Mr Max Williams. Thinks as well to Alex Williams, who
can pose this slapping Bob Christophrostodas, who actually is the
one that brought us this idea in the first place,
in niptops to this movie here in Spirit soon to
be here in the Digital Flesh. That sounds weird, that
sounds like some kinky Stephen King. It's like a nineties
(43:38):
Sci five film, exactly digital. Long live the Digital Flesh.
Who else? He's Jeff Codes, also your spirit, Miss Eves.
She's the best And thanks to you, Ben, This one
could have been a real downer, but I think we
we navigated these these choppy international waters um with with
grace and humor and terrible British accents. Yeah, man, agreed,
(44:01):
back at it, And what would this show be without
terrible accents. It certainly wouldn't be ridiculous, which is the
whole reason we started this crazy thing in the first place.
It's true and we'll see you next time. Flixed. For
(44:21):
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
so much for tuning in. We have a very special
episode today, and who better to produce that than our
number one super producer, Mr Max Williams. Uh yeah, nol
Uh you're no, I'm Ben and uh you you and
(00:49):
I recently watched the film on Netflix called Operation Mincemeat. Yeah.
I I initially thought it was going to be some
sort of British baking kind of show situation, but it
turns out it was British. But there's very little baking,
precious little baking in Operation mince Meat. But you know
what mince meat is, Yeah, mince meat is a well
(01:12):
you know me, man, I'm a walking garbage can when
it comes to food. I eat all sorts of stuff. Basically,
it's like, it's weird to call it meat. It always
has been to me because it's suet. But then a
lot of dried fruit and uh spices, and I think
they distill some spirits of some sort, some kind of
(01:32):
boozy thing that cooks down and doesn't have a lot
of alcohol in it, do the cooking process, and then
you put it in like a pastry, Sue, isn't that
as like beef juice, like like like beef slime? Basically,
uh yeah, it's fat, pretty sure, And suet doesn't always
have to be beef. It can come from like lamb
(01:53):
as well. It's it's specifically I thought someone checked me
on this. I thought was kind of fat around the
loyal and the kidneys of the anoma. It's not that
far off from the consistency of aspec. You've ever had
any weird gelatinous seventies kind of dishes with things preserved
in jelly or whatever aspect is? Uh? You know, there
(02:15):
are some really good if you get like I fear
into the stuff, which I know it's controversial. There's different
ways to make it that are more humane than goose pette.
But there are different types of pette that sometimes we'll
have a layer of like a ginger kind of like
fruited aspect on top and beef. So it is not
too far from that. But we're not talking about the
actual dish, MINS mean, which would be usually served in
a pie crust of some kind of mince meat pie.
(02:37):
We are, in fact talking about an operation carried out
by British intelligence that may well have been one of
the prime movers in swinging the tide of World War two. Yeah,
absolutely correct, and funny story they came up with the
name because British intelligence at the time had kind of
(02:58):
this list of common name aims that you would pull from.
That was really interesting to me, the idea that maybe
there were a bunch of guys kind of brainstorming in
a room and they said, Okay, where are we gonna
call this next one? And someone said, you know, maybe
they skipped lunch, and someone's like, I don't call it
mince meat, you know, but they did apparently have a
list of approved names. You're right. No, this was a big,
(03:21):
big deal and it happened in utter secrecy. So we
want to talk a little bit today about the real
life events that informed the film you can see on
Netflix today. This operation was a result of intelligence agencies
always trying to fake each other out. So the British
(03:41):
invented a ghoulishly creative way of delivering fake intel in Spain,
which was neutral at this time in nine and they
wanted it to end up with the German forces, and
you know, always thinking, man, we're channeling a bit of
stuff they don't want you to know. Today another show
(04:04):
that we do, and this one is a real life
conspiracy weirdly enough, and you can go back and forth
on how far they should have leaned into this with
the film weirdly Enough, the entire idea starts with fly fishing,
not a euphemism straight up like cast in the real
(04:24):
little fake fly on there. Yeah, but it also, like
you know, it was used as a metaphor, right like
in this document called the Trout Memo I believe um
that was then presented to a committee called the twenty
Committee or the Committee of twenties. And it just shows
how deep some of these very clever British quips go
(04:45):
with some of these project names and code names, because
you know, twenty was not referring to the number of
members in the Council or whatever you wanna call it.
It was not referring to the number twenty exactly. It
was referring to the Roman numeral twenty x x, meaning
double crosses. So it was a organization, though specifically designed
to do exactly what you said, Ben to fake out
(05:07):
other intelligence agencies and governments through elaborate russ UH and
ultimately deception, and that is very much what went into
the thinking behind Operation Mincemeat. It was a way to
send faulty information to the Germans so that they would
act on that information believing that it was true, giving
(05:30):
the Americans or the Allied forces the advantage. Yeah, and
we owe a big debt to historian Ben McIntyre. Actually,
the film Operation Mincemeat is based primarily on on his work.
It's nuts. It's nuts because there's a There are parts
of the film where people are saying with all sincerity
and there's a real thing. They're saying, yes, I know
(05:53):
sow and show he thought I was a double agent
when I was a triple agent. To keep your eye
on that one. And it's like how many times do
you go with this song and dance and this weird
tango of who's who's betraying whom? Uh? This guy named
Rear Admiral John Godfrey. Here's why it starts with fly fishing.
He digs fly fishing. He's super into this trout memo
(06:15):
and it's some sun Zoo art of war stuff. Because
the metaphor is, you know, just like you said, they
love a metaphor. So the metaphor is that you can
deceive your enemy the way that someone fishing can deceive
a fish. We pulled a quote here just to give
you a sense of it. The trout fisher cast patiently
(06:38):
all day. He frequently changes his venue and his lures.
If he has frightened to fish, he may give the
water arrest for half an hour. But his main endeavors
to attract fish by something he sends out from his boot.
He's insistant, incessant. I love that. There's a great scene
(06:59):
in the movie be Where. Um, this guy presents the
trout memo to Winston Churchill. I remember the I didn't
know the actor who was playing Churchill. It's obviously like
a really you know, sought after a role of you know,
some of the best actors have portrayed Churchill, so specifically
h Gary oldman, you know, and like an unrecognizable amount
of prosthetics. Um, but this dude did a really kind
(07:21):
of not over the top. It's an easy one to
like chew the scenery with because Churchill was a real
character and known for these fiery speeches and turns of phrase.
But the guy said, he I forget who was it
was because one of I think his assistant or one
of the guys who was in this kind of cadre
of of military brass that we're walking around with Churchill
was Ian Fleming, the author of you know, the James
(07:43):
Bond novels, and he based his James Bond characters on
people that he actually knew and some of the operations
that he actually participated in. But the point is, the
guy says to uh, Churchill, have you heard of the
Trout memo? Church because I despise fish And then and
then he walks away, and then he says something like,
they're describing the Trout Memo as describing these very fantastic
(08:06):
and elaborate methods of deception, and Churchill replies, like, you know,
I'm I'm fond of the the elaborage and fantastic, much
better than the mundane. Yes, like and then he says,
but you know, in order to pull off something elaborate,
it has to be beyond fool proof. Yeah, that's the thing.
(08:27):
And this this paper, this memo, builds on this fly
fishing metaphor. It lists all in all, fifty four different
what if ways that the United Kingdom could try to
deceive their enemies. The axis forces just the same way
of fly Fisher could like they lean into it, is
what we're saying. Uh, wouldn't this have been kind of
(08:49):
an early codification of like spycraft, like in the UK,
the Great Game had been continuing a pace for a while.
I would say it's fair to call all this kind
of part of the dawn of modern tradecraft or spycraft. Yeah,
so they're they're deep in stuff there, as Corporate America says,
(09:10):
they're building the plane while they fly it. Today's story
is not about the entirety of the Trout memo. You
basically got the gist, folks. It's about the twenty eighth
suggestion in that weird paper, the idea of getting a
dead body, planting fake intel on that dead body, and
then just sort of dropping it somewhere where German intelligence
(09:34):
will find it. And they didn't make up this idea,
by the way, they got it from a novel. Because
Admiral Godfrey and Ian Fleming we're working together. Godfrey loved fishing,
Fleming loved fiction. And you know, I think about it
sometimes like general's admiral's are very very busy people the
(09:54):
top brass. So how do you communicate with someone like that,
you make it something relatable to them. So instead of saying,
instead of saying, hey, man, let's let's start using dead
bodies the trick people he opened with you know what
wars a lot like Admiral It's like fishing, and he's like, oh,
I like fishing, Yeah I can, I can. I can
(10:14):
grab my around that, I can get behind that. It's
interesting though. We were talking about this on our group
text thread. There is a kind of a running gag
in the in the movie where basically, like everyone is
a writer, everyone's working on a novel. It's pretty funny. Um,
several of the of the top brass type characters are
in fact working on novels, and it becomes this kind
(10:35):
of like fun running joke in the movie. But yeah,
it's true. They got the idea from a novel. I
don't recall which one. I don't know if that comes
up necessarily in the movie, but um, it is. Maybe
it sounds like the kind of deception you would see
as the twist and like a detective novel like Paro
or like you know, Sherlock Holmes or something like that. Right,
So think about it. The idea is to pass off
(10:57):
this body as a genuine soldier, a genuine you know,
human being who died in the um you know, course
of serving their country, and you know, planting false information
on them so that the Germans would find it in
the hopes that they would believe it to be true.
They knew that they would do an autopsy and make
(11:17):
sure that the body was in fact, you know, because
there's all this all this paranoia at the time, you know,
they would not accept anything at face value. So they
had to go about this in the most meticulous way
you could imagine, like they created a backstory for this person.
We'll get into the details of that, but first before
any of that fun stuff, which all involves like make
(11:39):
basically like writing stories. It's like a story bible. You're creating,
you know, a living, breathing human being that is actually
entirely fictionalized. You got to find a body first, a
viable specimen that isn't too old, that hasn't been mutilated
in any kind of way that like, you know, it
looks like it was someone that just went down with
their plane and drowned up, and you have to do
(12:01):
an utter secrecy. So you're playing that Goldilocks game for
the perfect perfect corpse basically, and you have to do
this without letting too many people in on the plan.
So Admiral Godfrey is pretty hot to try about this
trout memo thing because he needs a solution and fast.
(12:21):
He is aware of an upcoming plan, a different operation
called Operation Husky. The Allied forces are planning to invade
the island of Sicily, you know, off of Italy, and
they were worried that it would be tough to pull
this off. They said, Okay, we could invade Greece, we
(12:44):
could invade the Balkans. What what should we do? I
think the issue with Sicily was that it was just
a no duck kind of move right where it was
just the obvious weakness or the obvious you know, point
of entry and anyone that they said a couple of times,
like anyone with a could tell you that, so they
were going to be expected it would have been the
(13:05):
most obvious place. So that's the problem because it's like,
even if it makes the most sense, you're enemy also
knows that and they're going to act accordingly. So the
point is they they needed to figure out a way
to make the Germans believe they weren't going to do
the thing. The Germans knew they definitely were going to do.
How do you do that? Right? Right? Exactly? And that's
(13:26):
a good way to put it, man, So they already
kind of knew, and history would prove this. They already
kind of knew that Access Powers have pretty insidious intelligence capabilities.
There were tons of spies embedded in any agency you
can imagine. And they knew that if Access Powers anticipated
the obvious thing, Operation Husky, because they already did the
(13:49):
North Africa campaign, so it's not too far to for
their resources to move. They knew that if the Germans
were anticipating this, it would become a blood bath, it
would probably fail. Winston Churchill, it was basically drunk off
the success of the North African campaign. Loki possibly also
actually drunk too. Yeah, I was gonna say Loki just
(14:12):
in general kind of drunk, and he knew, he knew
in his calculus that Britain could probably not invade and
retake France at this time. They needed a more runway,
and he said, okay, look we can maybe He was
skeptical at first, but he said, we can maybe take
these North African forces through the Mediterranean into Italy, which
(14:36):
they loved, calling the soft underbelly of Europe. Like they
keep calling it that. It's weird, you know how it
is like when you're hanging with your friends and you
make up a catchphrase and everybody sort of gets into it.
Is that sort of a ding against the Italian people,
implying that they're somehow like soft and and uh and
and you know, luxuriating in their fine wines and cheeses.
(14:57):
I don't know, I'm still trying to figure that part out,
but yeah, they lead, they leaned into that as well.
So everybody's like, fly fishing is war, soft underbellies, Let's
invade Sicily and to do this. They they're not sure
if it's actually gonna happen yet. This story hinges on
three people. We're gonna introduce two of them now, military officers,
(15:20):
Charles Cholmley and you and Montague not spells. Not spells
the way it sounds Charle Mandalay reminds me of some
counties in Georgia. We've got one called Tomeless. Looks like
on paper Talia Faroh, but it's apparently pronounced Tolliver or
something like that. For the law. I mean until I
(15:41):
heard them stay in the movie. When I was reading
about this, in my mind, I'm saying out loud, Jarl Mandalay.
And then when in the movie they start calling this
dude Cholmley, and I'm like, where's Charl Mandalay? I was
right there with you. It's kind of like and and
no offense to our good friends in Massachusetts. It's kind
of like Worcester. You can't get mad at people for
(16:03):
guessing wrong on that one. But here we are the
twenty eight suggestion. Chom Lee and Montague run with it.
The lure in this case is a corpse, not too fresh,
not too stale, I guess, but Goldilocks corpse, right, And
it has to be dressed as you're kind of average
(16:24):
everyday soldier with that intel, and the originally wanted to
fake intel to just be in the guy's pockets. The
whole bit, the whole trick is their idea will be
that German intelligence in Spain finds these papers and take
them as gospel. If everything works out, enemy forces are
(16:46):
gonna find this dead guy, They're gonna act on that
secret info, and they're gonna move their forces away from
Sicily and this all takes time, right, they can't just
you know, pop back over. They're gonna move a significant
amount of the German military and access military forces away
from Sicily. Then that exposes the soft underbelly of Europe
(17:09):
and there you know, from then on it's just like
God save the Queen, great job everywhere. Oh way, I
think I get it. So there's a soft underbelly is
a point of weakness, right like in the Hobbit, you
know how like small had that one little area that
like was like what they call it, like naked as
a snail without a shell or something like that. I
(17:30):
think maybe that's what they're referring to Sicily as like
just a weak point, so a soft underbelly, implying that
like even if everything else is armored, you know that
that if that soft underbelly is exposed, and that could
be like a kill shot for all of Europe. And
did you kind of jump in here? I mean you
gotta think about this point in nine, Like Germany is
still kind of like an unstoppable machine, while like Italy
(17:53):
and all their operations are just like tripping over themselves
and faith planning and eating cheeses. Fine, cheeses and wines. Yes,
like they were not doing very well this war. No,
they were. That's that's very, very true. And this, this
fake out itself, is not a super original idea, just
the idea of faking people with bad intel. It's happened before.
(18:15):
It's happened so often in the world of intelligence that
by this point I had a street name. It was
known as the Haversack Ruse. But charm Lee and our
boy Montague they need a fresh body. And charm Lee
has his own spin on the trout memo. He calls
it the Trojan Horse. Shout out to Dennis Smith, authored
(18:37):
Deathly Deception, The Real Story of Operation Minced Meat. Thanks
to Smith, we have chom Lee's real life description of this. Noal,
I know we both love leaning into a real a
real chewy British accent. You want to give this one
a shot, man? Oh? Why not? Let's see. A body
(18:57):
is obtained from one of the London hospitals. The lungs
are filled with Walter and documents are disposed in an
inside pocket. The party is then dropped by a Coastal
Command aircraft. On being found, the supposition in the enemy's
mind may well be that one of our aircraft has
either been shot or falced down, and that this is
(19:21):
one of their passengers. Love it. All the Brits down
the audience are cringing right now, and I am here
for it. I'm here for I love all of you
so much. Yeah, and you know we would love to
We would love to do our own adaptation of Operation
Mincemeat and Maxnell. Maybe at the end we can we
(19:42):
can figure out who we're going to cast as ourselves.
Well as speaking of cast, I got I gotta stay
in point now. Um, this movie really great. Cast Charles
McFadden or mcfaddion who I think we all who plays Charmley.
I think we all know him as Tom Walms Gams
from Succession. Fabulous and he's another one of these British
actors who, like I just would never have thought was British.
(20:04):
I mean, I have no reason to worry about her,
to think about it, but he just pulls off that
American accent so well. That does not always go the
other way around when it comes to American actors doing
British voices. I would not call myself nor I think
you uh an actor per se, You've don't know you've
done more acting than I, but as evidence by our
our butchery of the of the English accent. But it's
(20:26):
really funny when you have, like you know, Kevin Costner
or something vaguely attempting to phone in the slightest of
British accents that sort of comes and goes, you know,
the first ten minutes of Robin Hood Princesses slap. I
don't really it's great. Yeah, that's dope. But yeah, I
know exactly what you're talking about. And I would also
(20:48):
say just to uh to throw a uh an olive
branch slash bone to our fellow British ridiculous historians. Yes,
we know. Americans are the ones with the accent. You
guys were there first. Everybody gets it. Even Max is
nodding solemnly. He's like, I'll allow it, okay, So I
(21:11):
want to just I just want to bait the picture here,
So Max, I want to put you on spot it.
Max thought about it when I said that, and then
lean forward towards his mike and then kind of give
a little smile like lean back like not yet, not yet. Yeah,
Sometimes I just like, am I do I have the
energy for this fight right now? Do I really have
(21:32):
the energy for this banet? And this was one of
the moments I leaned back. I was just like, no,
I don't, I don't. I will not die on this
hill today, my friends. I will live to fight another
But Ben didn't they have like a special hook up
like to get these bodies, like they had like a
body guy, right, yeah, yeah, they have a body guy eventually,
(21:53):
because first Cholmley pitches this to his buds Am I
five and it's any committee who are running all this
double agents, and they're not super convinced. It's like November
two and they essentially tell him, dude, there's absolutely no
way this will work that. I like where your heads at.
I like the way you think about things, and we
(22:17):
need to attach this, you know, keep go back to
the drawing board, keep your original idea. Let's punch it up.
And that's when you and Montague comes in. He's naval intelligence,
he's in charge of counter espionage and he's gonna work
with Chomley. They go through the details and then they
get a do date. The top brass says this invasion
(22:38):
of Sicily, Operation Husky has to happen by July of
ninety three. So TikTok, TikTok, TikTok, find us a dead body.
And uh, it's weird because everybody kind of knew that
everyone was spying on each other. They didn't even kind
of know this. This is the only way they were
(22:59):
able to pull this off. But they were trying to
figure out what Adolf Hitler thought. Adolf Hitler was never
a particularly talented strategist, and he was really really focused
not so much on Sicily, but on the Balkans because
Germany was not a resource rich country. If the war
machine that was running through Europe was to continue, then
(23:23):
they needed copper, oil, you name it, all sorts of
resources from the Balkans. Without it, their war effort would collapse.
So so the Allies go through this whole dog and
pony show. They invent another fake operation called Operation Barclay.
It's meant to convince Germany that the Allies are going
towards the Balkans. They made up a fictional military formation,
(23:46):
They did a bunch of fake operations in Syria's like really,
look at me stuff and just like you said no
the whole time, our guys chom Lee and Montague are
like the Resurrection men of the Middle Ages. They're searching
for that body. They said, okay, yeah, no, we've decided
it's fine to steal a body, dress it up, and
(24:07):
throw it somewhere. We don't have a lot of time
to wax philosophic. Let's make the corpse look convincing. You
gotta work on a back story. But also, these guys
are not experts what death looks like. And like you said,
they're not the type of guys who walk around saying, oh,
you need a body, I'll get your body. Wait, you
need it by four. They don't know, No, they don't know.
(24:30):
They end up connected with somebody at like a morgue
of some kind I believe right like they have direct
access to. So they had to make the scenario you know,
under which this person's body was found believable. So it
couldn't be like some sort of you know, grizzly death.
You know that where where there was like mingling or
mutilation of any kind needed to be a body with
(24:51):
very few marks on it would have been someone that
had gone down on a plane, presumably crashed into the
ocean in the open ocean, uh, and then drowned. And
then you know, I was wondering would they have then
you know, looked for the plane to confirm, But Max
and and then off air pointed out that which would
have been too much, too too many resources would have
been required to do that. There were other ways they
(25:12):
could have confirmed the validity of this this person's you know,
credentials and if this was a real British soldier. So
the body they got was a guy who had recently
been discovered um dead of from ingesting rat poison in
a warehouse. Um presumably a suicide. Um. There certainly are
(25:34):
scenarios or maybe it was accidents, you know, he accidentally
rat poison or would already got mixed into his rations.
Because this was a time of super austerity. I kind
of forgot about that until watching this and this film,
remembering that, like you know, the blitz was was just
over the horizon every single day, so it was like
there there was power outages, you know, people life did
(25:55):
go on. There certainly were high society things that took place,
but in general, the general pop reulation was eating like
you know, spam and like rations and like you know, um,
what do you call those things? M R E s
and stuff? Right, Yeah, food was being rationed. It was
a serious concern and a lot of people were dying.
So it's weird. Then from Cholmley and Montague's perspective, we'll
(26:19):
call him the Chomster and Monty. Yeah, okay, So so
the Chomster and Monty are in a weird situation because
they're saying, this is a huge war, their bodies everywhere.
How come, how come we have to search so so
ardently for the right one. They get helped by with
two people. One is a pathologist named Sir Bernard Spillsbury,
(26:42):
and he says, all right, here's how you make it
look like someone died the right way. He pointed out,
and I didn't know this, that people when they die
in plane crashes over water are often going to die
of shock instead of drowning, and that means their lungs
might not necessarily fill up with water. And then he
had a hot take. I'm not I'm not a pathologist myself.
(27:07):
Here's what he said. He said, you know, if we're
talking about Spanish people finding him, Spanish folks are all Catholic,
and Catholics don't like doing post mortems unless it's a
really big deal. So we can kind of get away
with a body that's died in any number of fashions,
and you know, it could be anybody's guest, especially if
(27:27):
the body has been in the ocean for a few days.
So that's what leads them to hook up with their
resurrection man, their corpsman. He's a quarter named Bentley Purchase January. Yeah,
the britishness of these names just characters and Toast of
(27:48):
London or something Bentley oh, Ray purchase. That's why Ray
bloody purchase, Bentley Purchase. If anyone is I'm sure British
listeners are instantly familiar. But the new season of Toast
is uh. He goes stateside Toast of Tinseltown and it's
just a delight with Matt Berry's one of my favorite
human beings in the world. So this His music is great.
(28:11):
He makes these very non ironic kind of mean maybe
they're a little ironic, but I would say pretty straight,
kind of like sixties psychedelic folk records that are like
super good. He's what I got one called Kill the
Wolf and another one um. And the covers are great.
They're like him posing with like a you know, so
so good. But in any case, yeah, they like to
(28:32):
your point bend. They found this corpseman who was the
corner at a medical you know, government morgue essentially, and
he's like, I got the guy for you. The dude
I was talking about, who was a not well off
person who has just suffered from some mental illness, had
been on the streets. In the film, we later see
a family member of his kind of surface. This is
(28:54):
a guy named Glendware Michael, another fabulously British and that
actually sounds almost like well doesn't glindwere with the with
the W and the R. But his body looked good.
There are some really fun macab bits in the film though,
because you do see them trying to pose this dead
body in like his military garb for like they need
(29:14):
to do like an I D. Badge photo. Uh, and
you know a corpse, A corpse doesn't really pose, you know.
And there's some one particularly amazingly Macab shot where they
try to make him smile and it just it looks great.
Whatever they did to make I don't know how they
did that exactly with the way the body moves. It
must be prosthetics, but it looked like something out of
(29:35):
Night Living Dead. Um. But it was just you know,
they're kind of just like fumbling with it, and his
head keeps flopping over and stuff. So they realized, okay,
this is a good work. We need to Now we've
found a body that fits the bill. Now we have
to find a live body that somewhat resembles this man
so we can get a photo to have, you know,
(29:55):
on him as his military idea. By the way, they
dubbed this character this creation Major William Martin. Right earlier,
I said, they're kind of three main characters of this story.
Glindware Michael, known as Major William Martin is our third man.
(30:19):
It feels like a noir reference. You can find a
photo just what you're describing on online if you wish.
Ridiculous historians, it is grizzly be warned, but it's off
to the races. They've got the documents, they've they've you know,
happiest corpuses. They have the body, and on April they
(30:40):
take action because Bentley Purchase has told them, look, I
can keep this guy on ice, but at best I
can give you three months, or else he will have
just decayed too far to be useful. So that's why
they ship him off. Then in April, and they still
got that July taking time bomb there that deadline. The
cap into a submarine called h M. S. Sarah has
(31:03):
his crew pushed this body into the sea and they
push it in the direction of the tide and they
actually used the submarines propellers to help move the body
and what they hope is the right direction. I want
to shout out the captain of that sub Lieutenant Norman Jewel,
who had the decency to stage something like a funeral service.
(31:26):
He read the thirty ninth Psalm, which begins talking about
the power of silence, and that's the only funeral that
Michael actually gets. The body washes ashore on the Spanish
coast near a city called Huilva, and this is exactly
where they wanted it to go because they knew, right
(31:46):
even though Spain was like quote unquote neutral, everybody knew
the British spies were their allied spies. German spies are there,
and they said, okay, just like preserve this so that
the papers are still legible. We can't put it in
the stud pockets. We have to put it in a briefcase.
So they attach a briefcase to him and it's what's
(32:09):
the amazing term they used for pocket trash. I think
it's like wallet litter, like, like, I really like it.
There's so many of these bespoke, little kind of like
niche terms that they throw around and in this film
that that are a lot of fun. I'm I'm serious,
you know, Just just to just to put this out there.
Netflix did not sponsor this episode. We just genuinely liked
(32:31):
the movie and thought it was worth talking about, and
it gave us a topic that we hadn't really thought
about that we hadn't done. So definitely go check out
the movie. I don't think we're spoiling too much of it.
Even if you know the story, it's still the dramatization.
There's definitely a lot of schmaltzing all this stuff up
for the purposes of of of cinema, and I honestly
they don't ever go too terribly far. A couple of
(32:53):
things made me cringe a little bit, like a bit
of a overdone love story angle, But in general, I
think we all three to enjoy the film. Jason Isaacs
is amazing. We were talking about that off air. Yeah,
and I love I love Colin first to call it
if you're hearing this, man, Great job, Great job dude.
And Jason Isaacs, you're hearing this. I love you. He's dreaming. Man.
(33:15):
Look at those big baby blues. God, you can just
swim in them. They're so piercing. As a man with
piercing blue eyes, I can appreciate piercing blue eyes. Regnize me.
There we go. Thelled it all right, Max. We're gonna
see if we can get you and Jason to hang
out together. You know. Oh. He was in the Death
of Stalin, which is another movie that I think ridiculous
(33:38):
historians would absolutely love. If you haven't seen it, that
is a cool movie and another really fun dramatization of
some really heavy historical stuff but played completely straight, where
it's like nobody has a Russian accent in the movie.
It's all just like everyone themselves and it's Steve. It's
just Steve. It's right. That's that's American acting, you know.
(34:01):
But if you were a German spy there in Spain
and you saw this, these papers, then they would look
legit because it's a very clever counterfeiting move. The people
who made the fake papers are the same people who
make the real papers, so they're making their own counterfeits.
(34:23):
You would not be able to tell the difference without
more information. A fisherman finds and retrieves quote unquote Martin's body,
and then of course it makes it to German intelligence
in the city. They look at this and they say,
holy smokes, that's where the Brits are going. They're faking
us out. You know, Sicily's too obvious. They're coming for
(34:45):
Greece and Sardinia. We gotta get moving. I mean, I
also want to make sure we give credit to the
other members of the twenty who you know, trumped up
all of this incredibly detailed backstory for this man. It
was really like, you know, writer's room. It was no
wonder the writing and you know, being novelists such a
theme in the movie because these people were responsible for
(35:06):
creating believable fictions. They gave him a love interest named
what was it, guys, Pam Pam. There's a snapshot of
his fiance on his person and they make a point
to like, no, no, no. The picture of Pam goes
in his breast pocket because he keeps it close to
his heart, you know what I mean, stuff like that.
You know, there's a love letter that he keeps on
him as well, and also I believe a receipt for
(35:29):
a wedding ring. Yeah, you know, so like it was
one of these things where it's like, i'll you know,
the love letters says that in like it was it
was such a shame that we were to meet during
the war or else would surely be married by now.
And it's all really it goes through all these revisions too,
where like you know, all of the m I six
and MY five, Churchill's Office and all of that, they
all get their hands in the pie kind of rewriting
(35:50):
and and second guessing everything. At the end of the day,
all of this stuff is found along with these documents
in this case that tell this tale right in the
most kind of obfuscating ways. It wasn't it would. It
would have taken them a minute to kind of have
to figure out what was going on. And not only that,
they then continued the ruse by using unsecured lines they
(36:14):
knew were being monitored by German intelligence and saying how
worried they were that their man had been found and
of of the sensitive nature of the papers that he
was carrying. Right, Yeah, it was. It was a huge deal.
There's a lot of acting there too, because they he
also has like a letter from his father, ticket stubs,
(36:35):
you can tell he bought a fancy shirt recently, a
hotel bill, all this stuff, and they really really really
put some work into making it plausible. And I would
argue that the communications that were, you know, being monitored.
We're probably the clincher for German forces, right because if
(36:56):
this guy was carrying secret papers he's this important, then
of course British intelligence will worry about them. If they
hadn't done that little part of the song and dance,
then Germany may have figured out the bruise. But it worked,
it seemed successful. Invasion of Sicily began on July nine.
It went until August. The German military, because they fell
(37:21):
for this con game, had already moved a big part
of their forces degrease. This would prove to be the
first foray in The Italian Campaign, also known as the
Liberation of Italy, continued till leading to the death of
Benito Mussolini, which is still kind of mystery. Historians will
debate the official narrative about that. You remember, Benito Mussolini
(37:44):
felt ridiculous historians, he was that guy who, among other things,
was super into the idea of wearing milk. I'm sorry
wearing milk, Benito Mussolini, He's the wearable milk. It was
like it was like a more sustainable kind of plastic essentially,
would like it almost was like think of craft singles
(38:05):
or something that you could, like, you know, stitch together
and cover your body with. Yes, So check out that episode.
I think we all had a blast on that one.
And at this point we have to ask what can
we learn from this? I mean, Operation Mincemeat shows us
kind of the ethical quandaries of the greater good and
also Glindware Michael had no informed consent, He didn't have
(38:30):
any say in his second posthumous identity. Yeah, and the film,
I I don't know how dramatized this was. But his
sister I don't remember how she gets wind of it
exactly because it was so hush hush, But she comes
into the office and like, you know, makes a big
fuss and says, you know, uh, I think she went
(38:51):
to the corner because you know, there's a lot of
people like who didn't understand where the body went. That
makes sense somehow she ended up in the presence of
our our main characters, you know, doing a shame on
you type situation and like how poor you know, Glendware
never had a say in this and all the you know,
because I mean, these are deeply religious people, and like,
you know, the idea of what they're doing is desecrating
a corpse, you know, like uh, I mean, there's a
(39:14):
scene in the movie when the when the the Spanish
do get ahold of the body and they do do
that autopsy. It is foul, like they're like pulling his
guts out. It looked like freaking you know, sausages. It's
a really and then like one of the reasons they
didn't go deeper into conducting the autopsy to see the
cause of death was because it was just so foul smelling.
You've got like one Spanish officer like vomiting, and the
(39:37):
scene another Macaw piece of you know, cinema. There's there's
a couple of moments like that in the movie, but
it is one of those weighing kind of situations where yeah,
they know what they're doing isn't great, but it was
it was like the only thing they thought would actually
you know, for lack of a better way of putting
it saved the world. It was World War two. And
(39:57):
you're right, Max, I mean the Nazis were killing machine.
They were a precision engineered killing machine, just like ripping
their way across Europe. And if Hitler had had his way,
he would have taken it even further than that. Yeah,
and and also you know there's so many conundrums with
this ethical philosophical conundrums. Yes, mince Meat played a role
(40:19):
in the ultimate Allied victory of World War Two, but
it's also important to remember that when the invasion of
Sicily happened successfully, Allied forces were committing war crimes against
innocent Sicilian citizens. And that's that's a story that doesn't
often get told. But what we're seeing is creativity under
(40:40):
desperate circumstances. Not for nothing is necessity called the mother
of invention. And when driven to extreme means, people who
consider themselves the good guys will do very shady things.
So check out Operation Mincemeat. We thought it was a
fantastic adaptation again, and it's based on some great work
(41:02):
by the historian Ben McIntyre. Ian Fleming plays a role
and still went on to create the James Bond novels
as you said, nol pulling a lot from real life.
This is just a wild one. I can't wait to
I can't wait to hear more about obscure weird operations completely.
And then we we sort of scratched the stores of
(41:24):
this earlier. But um, it was in fact Ian Fleming
who wrote the trout memo and the idea for you know,
the body came from you know, a detective novel like again,
we don't know exactly which one, but it was specifically
a Noirrish type detective novel where you know, this would
have been like a ruse of some kind perpetrated by
a criminal to cover their tracks, you know, or like
(41:46):
a twist in like a drawing room murder mystery. You know,
yeah it was. It was a book by a guy
named Basil Thompson. But yes, we saw fiction become fact.
This is such an nuts story. And you know, I
don't know, are you guys world War two history buffs
at all? I'm a fan. I wouldn't say I'm enough
(42:08):
to consider myself abuff, but I know enough to be dangerous,
I guess. But I definitely find it fascinating because I mean,
it was such an all encompassing conflict that really just
you know, kind of came on the tales of World
War One and so many things that connected to and uh,
it really was something that could have absolutely just changed
the course of civilization, you know. Um, so this was
(42:31):
a kind of like winner take all kind of gambit
and they won because it worked. Yeah. No, I I
consider myself a World War two fan, not abuff. I
mean most of it comes from you know, watching banda
Brothers repeat from like aged twelve to age seven, So
I'd probably say that's where my love World War two,
okay from, But to north Point, I mean it's just
(42:53):
such a I don't just massive part of history, especially
like the culmination of things before and to what we
are still going through nowadays. So I like looking at
it in that way. Totally agreed, and we hope that
you enjoyed this exploration as well. Fellow ridiculous historians. Let
us know what some of your favorite strange stories from
(43:16):
times of war are. We can't wait to hear from
you in the meantime. Thanks so much to our super producer,
Mr Max Williams. Thinks as well to Alex Williams, who
can pose this slapping Bob Christophrostodas, who actually is the
one that brought us this idea in the first place,
in niptops to this movie here in Spirit soon to
be here in the Digital Flesh. That sounds weird, that
sounds like some kinky Stephen King. It's like a nineties
(43:38):
Sci five film, exactly digital. Long live the Digital Flesh.
Who else? He's Jeff Codes, also your spirit, Miss Eves.
She's the best And thanks to you, Ben, This one
could have been a real downer, but I think we
we navigated these these choppy international waters um with with
grace and humor and terrible British accents. Yeah, man, agreed,
(44:01):
back at it, And what would this show be without
terrible accents. It certainly wouldn't be ridiculous, which is the
whole reason we started this crazy thing in the first place.
It's true and we'll see you next time. Flixed. For
(44:21):
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
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Ben Bowlin
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