June 19, 2021 • 44 mins
In World War II, a secret department of British ‘corkscrew thinkers’ hatched a plan to use the cadaver of an unclaimed homeless man to turn the tide of the war in the Allies’ favor. It worked. Learn all about it in this classic episode.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Everybody. It's me Josh and for this week's s Y
s K Selex, I've chosen our episode on Operation Mincemeat
from February two thousand sixteen. It's a really great example
of English drollness pulling through for the rest of the
world is featuring Ian Fleming or Ian Fleming, depending on
your preference, and roll Dahl. It's just a Bonker's history
(00:23):
episode all around, so I hope you enjoy it. Welcome
to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles
(00:44):
w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry Rowland. This is Stuff you
Should Know. Chuck, Yo, I'm thirty nine years old and
I still can't say my own name correctly because in
my stupid thick tongue. Oh you're gonna be forty crazy. Yeah,
he used to make fun of me, and now you're old. Well,
you're still older than me. I know what I can
do about that. It's cool though. Yeah, you're aging very well. Yeah, no,
(01:08):
you're aging really well. What you mean the teeth falling out,
the weight gain and the gray beard. I still say
you're aging very well. I appreciate it. But let's get
your take off your hat. I still got good hair booms.
Look at that got hat head now beautiful? Okayle think
I'm bald? Some people do, like you're always wearing that hat.
(01:29):
Why do you why? I don't know suspicious people. Yeah,
like the drummer for the Chili Peppers, Anthony Keytis Flee, Nope,
the guy from Jane's Addiction, Nope, I don't know them,
Not John for Shaunty, Chad Smith, the guy that looks
like Will Ferrell. He's always Ferrell. He's always got that
hat on backwards and um he's bald. Yeah, totally like
(01:52):
Brett Um. Michael's bald. Remember he always wears a do rag.
Super bald. So I get why people are suspicious. If
you're a public figure that has a patented hat piece,
then it's probably because you're bald, but not in my case.
What a weird way to start the show, especially this show,
(02:13):
Operation mincemeat Yep, which is a ghoulish gallows humor awesomely
World War two British name for this this operation. Yeah,
this will live alongside our our Nazi spies and Invading
Florida podcast and the history Girls covered this this very
topic as well. Yeah, man, there's nothing I love more
(02:34):
than little known history. This is this is it. But
this is great little known history. And this shouldn't be
middle known because it was after the Trojan War, maybe
the largest and most successful military deception plan in history. Well,
there was also have you seen that documentary Ghost Army
about Operation Fortitude. No, they used a bunch of blow
(02:55):
up tanks and planes, like inflatable tanks and planes to
make it look like there's a whole Allied division over here,
so that we could invade Normandy More He's it's like
a Looney Tunes cartoon. Awesome. But yes, this ranks up
there with literally with the Trojan Horses. It's that ingenious
and that wonderful. But so let's set the stage right.
(03:16):
So in early nine UM, the war was very much undecided.
It could have been anybody's like your. Europe was under
the control of Hitler, huge amounts of Europe. They called
it Fortress Europe because he the Nazis were just had
just overrun the place, right dug in and um, the
(03:38):
the Allies knew that they needed to get into Europe
to topple Hitler or else like they weren't going to
win the war, so um Churchill suggested attacking Europe's underbelly,
which is maybe Italy, Greece. He called it the underbelly,
not very flattering, but he called it Europe's underbelly. So everybody,
the Allies, the Greeks, the Nazis, the Japanese, um, the
(04:05):
people uh in Hawaii. Everybody knew, yeah, they weren't American
quite yet. Everybody knew that the Allies were gonna attack
somewhere in that area. Yeah, come up through the Mediterranean.
Even Hitler feared this the most, but was key right,
And and I mean everybody knew the Allies were coming,
(04:26):
and they were going to come there. But this, this
land mass, this area of land and see is large
enough that you can't just be like, oh, they're coming
down there. We got it covered, cover it all. You
need to know kind of specifically where they were covering.
And there were just a few places where they could
have come. One was Greece, that was where Hitler always suspected.
One was Sardinia, right, and then another was Sicily. And
(04:50):
in nine I think January, the Allied powers met in
French Morocco and held um a conference, the CASA Blanket Conference,
very sexy naming. Yeah, it really was. And um, they said, okay,
we're going to invade Sicily this July. We're gonna call
it Operation Husky. Now we have to do everything we
can to not let the Nazis know that that's where
(05:14):
we're going. And that actually hatched eventually what's called Operation Mincemeat. Yeah,
you know what. The studying this stuff and I'm not
a big war buff um, although I'm getting more so,
but reading up on this stuff, like the old wars
are so much like the board game risk that it's startling. Yeah.
(05:35):
It's literally when you look at the stuff, it's like
moving troops to where you think people are going to
attack you and rolling the dice a bit and if
you're right, then great, If not, you're screwed very much though,
which is why it's such a huge shift that we're
seeing now in moving to unconventional warfare, because that's scary stuff. Yeah.
I think pretty much all war is scary. Yeah. Well,
(05:58):
of course I'm not saying like Normandy was a gig
walk or anything, because they knew what there was going on. Man,
I watched Saving Private Ryan again the other day. God,
it's crazy. That thing's almost a snuff film. It's not
as bad as We Were Soldiers, which is a snuff film,
but it's I never saw that one gie, Yeah, dude,
it's it's the most graphically violent mainstream movie ever made. Yes, yeah,
(06:22):
Like there's a part where there's there they have a shot,
a camera shot over this guy's shoulder, right, so his
helmets in the in the near foreground, and that guy
takes a hit to the head and like blood spray
covers the camera lens for the next like a little
while his brains just cover the camera. It's disgusting. Did
(06:45):
you like Saving Private Ran again? Though? Yeah, it's a
great movie, but it is like really like violent. That's
another thing about getting older is that stuff affects you
more and more. The more you come to terms with
your own mortality, the more valuable life becomes. The more
valuable even a care after in a movie's life becomes
you know what I mean? That stuff gets to agreed,
It's called growing up, my friend, I'm becoming human, isn't
(07:08):
it grows? Alright? So on September twenty nine, ninety nine, Uh,
there was a director of British Naval Intelligence name Admiral
John Godfrey, and he distributed something called the Trout Memo,
and um, it was written by his assistant Lieutenant Commander
Ian Fleming. Familiar name, Yeah, creator of James Bond. That's right,
(07:30):
the guy. And uh, I think most people know that
he served at this point. Yeah, but um, if you didn't,
that's a nice little factoid for you. So he he
wrote the Trout Memo and they called it the Trout
memo memo because they pointed out in the intro that
this that the trout fisherman fishes very patiently, but he
changes venue frequently and he changes his bait very frequently too,
(07:51):
And so they wanted to they're charged with deception. They
wanted to come up with all these different ideas, all
this different bait and venue changes that they could come
up with. Yeah, and this was a time too. We
should point out that, UM, spying, spying is always vital,
but man, in World War Two, it was going on
all over the place in a huge, huge part of
(08:13):
the war. So, um, we need to do one on
the Enigma machine. By the way, at some point we do,
because that's one of the unsung heroes in this operation. Absolutely. Um, alright,
so with the trout memo, Ian Fleming wrote, uh well,
co authored fifty one different operations suggestions, and number twenty
eight was one called a suggestion parentheses not a very
(08:37):
nice one. The following suggestion is used in a book
by Basil Thompson. I'm so pleased that you said, Basil
in staid a Basil Uh In fact, that was seven novel,
The mill Milliner's Hat Mystery. And he was actually a
World War One spy. Oh really yeah? So he was
it a spy writer that Ian Fleming the reader of
(09:00):
James Bond Doug Crazy. So that's where this originate. So uh,
here's here, that's right. The following suggestion is used in
a book by Basil Thompson Colin a corpse dressed as
an airman with dispatches in his pockets could be dropped
on the coast, supposedly from a parachute that had failed.
I understand there is no difficulty in obtaining corpses at
(09:21):
the Naval hospital, but of course it would have to
be a fresh one. So the idea is, let's get
a dead person, let's dress him up like a soldier,
give him some sensitive documents that leak this invasion fraudulent, fraudulent,
very important, that leak the invasion of Greece, which is
not really happening, and they're gonna mount up troops there
(09:43):
and we'll actually go in secily. They're gonna find this body.
They're gonna think they've stumbled upon this great happy accident
and we're going to fool him. So yeah, that was
the That was the whole idea. That was the general
basis of it. And Churchill loved the idea because apparent
he liked what he called corkscrew thinkers, because he knew
(10:04):
Hitler thought in a straight line. Yes, and by corkscrew thinkers,
I think that would be our equivalent of outside the box. Yeah. Yeah.
Churchill was like, this is great. I love Churchill. Let's
drink some scotch and do it. Yeah, let's look like
a bulldog. So um, the the the well. The idea
(10:24):
was roughly outlined by Ian Fleming and then the the
Churchill's corkscrew thinkers, the XX Committee, led by um you
and Montague and um Chumley. Yeah, which is his name
is not spelled chumbley? No, how's it spelled? Are you
ready for this? Charles C. H O l m O
(10:48):
n d e l e y pronounced Chumley. Yeah. And
apparently when he met people he would say, uh, Lieutenant
Charles Chumley c h O l m O n d
e l e y. He would spell it out, what
do you really? Yeah? Are you making fun of me?
Or is there for real? No? No, no. He was
a very quirky guy, and that's how he described himself
as toothpaste, as if it had been squeezed from the tube,
(11:11):
like he self described. He would go hunting with a
revolver like bird hunting. Is a weird guy. I actually
watched a quickie BuzzFeed video on this and they pronounced
it Charles Charlomondley. Did they really? Yeah, I'm glad we
did our research exactly, shout out with the BuzzFeed. So
you and Montague right, Yeah, the other guy. He is
(11:34):
noteworthy in a number of ways to apparently it's just
the greatest guy ever, most interesting man on the planet.
Um And he actually wrote the book, the first book
on Operation Mincemeat, because he was one of the people
who came up with this and implemented it. The man
who was never there, the man who never was got
right so became a movie too, Yeah, of the same name,
(11:55):
starring Montgomery Cliff, I believe, no starring Cliff with Cliff
Cliff web but not Montgomery Cliff. Those two are virtually
interchangeable there. So, um what you and Montague was already
notable because at school he and his brother had created
(12:16):
the rules for um ping pong. No way, I did
not know that, among other things. And his brother equally interesting,
equally um rambunctious went on to become a spy for
the Soviets. Yes, so he turned yes against England, Yes
against everybody except for the Soviets. Well, Montague was uh,
(12:39):
he was formerly a barrister, an attorney, and um, this
is why he actually did not go serve on a ship. Um.
And the other guy, Chumley, never flew a plane. One
was air Force, one was a navy. Uh. And apparently
Montague was as an attorney, was very good at just
seeing all the angles. So they say, you, sir, are
(13:01):
perfect for this job. Ask all right, Chuck. So we
(13:25):
have the rough outline that Ian Fleming came up with
the XX committee led by you and Montague and Charles Chumley.
The part of m I five, I believe. Okay, Um
said we're going to take this particular idea and really
run with it, Um, And like you said, they were
going to, Well, the first thing they did was start
setting about creating a backstory. Yeah. Well they had three months,
(13:46):
so that the clock is chicking at this point. Yeah,
because here's the thing. They set the invasion right in January,
and they set the invasion for July. Now, you needed
enough time to um plant this, this corpse, this fake
dead courier um in the Nazi hands and give the
(14:06):
with enough time so that the Nazis could digest it,
analyze it, decided it was truthful, and then react the
way you wanted them to, which meant that they had
no later than May or else this plan was out
the window. Yeah, you wanted them. The ultimate goal was
to have the Nazis put their troops in the wrong place,
and that takes time, right, So they looked around and
(14:28):
they decided that the best place to carry out this
operation was Spain, and Spain during World War Two was
allegedly ostensibly neutral, but they had a lot of access, sympathies,
a lot of connections to Nazi Germany, and there was
a particular Nazi agent, a spy working in a port
(14:49):
called Um Whoever, Whoever, La Whoever La right, Um, And
his name was Adolf Klass. And Adolph Klaus was known
to be very methodical, pretty brutal, brutal and ruthless, extremely gullible. Yeah,
he was a straight line thinker. He was hitler. He
wasn't one that could think outside the box and think,
(15:10):
maybe this is an elaborate hoax that that guy didn't
even own a real corkscrew, you know, like they targeted
this guy cut the top off of wine bottles. Yeah,
they specifically targeted, which is amazing. So they wanted this guy,
who was fairly gullible but also known as like a
very respected Nazi agent in Spain, um to be the
(15:31):
one who came up with this corpse and could ever
so before they ever had any corps or could have
or anything like that, Montague and Um and Chumbley start
setting about creating a backstory, and they created this guy
named Major Um Martin, William Martin, that's right. And they
(15:52):
created Major William Martin, and they created this whole persona.
And this wasn't the first time they've done it, that
they had actually they had um chops with this kind
of stuff. So they had created a fake spine network
that made Nazi Germany think that they had a whole
double double agent network in the UK. And all of
(16:14):
them were fictitious, not real people that you and Montague
and Charles Chumley had created these fake personas and it
fed the Nazis misinformation through these people that didn't really exist.
So they took that that understanding and that thinking of
what it takes to create a fake persona, and they
said about creating one for Major William Martin. Yeah, and um,
(16:34):
if you there's a great BBC documentary on this, and
they interview a lot of the players, um, including a
lot of the women who worked at m I five
in the office, and they were all just so delighted
that they all described this as like the most exciting
adventure they'd ever had. I'm sure it was like something
out of a spine novel and they were living it right,
And so they all had great fun creating these characters,
(16:55):
that these made up people. Um, they wanted to give
him a fiance because the idea is that they find
this body with what not only these documents in a briefcase,
the important documents. But to make it believable, he had
to have believable what they called pocket litter or wallet litter,
which is if you find any person on the street
(17:16):
asked him to open their wallet, you're gonna be able
to tell a lot about them. So just stuff to
legitimize it. So they said, let's give him a fiance,
and all the women in the office wanted to be
the fiance, so they all submitted photographs. They picked this one,
lady Jean Leslie. Uh, secretary, Okay, that's the lady on
the beach. Yes, pickture of her in a bathing suit
on the beach. So this was going to be planted
(17:38):
on his body. Uh. They all wanted to write the
love letters back and forth, but they picked a woman
named Hester Leggert, the head secretary of m I five,
and she wrote even though she was a spinster, she
wrote all these like heartfelt love letters. The first couple
of drafts were really dirty, and they were like, you
gott to tone this down a little, like is that
what you think happens in a relationships? Like, no, not me, lady.
(18:03):
So everyone's really excited in the office. Um Chumley is
wearing what would eventually be the uniform of Martin every
Day to give it that worn in look. Monte Hue
actually ended up having an affair with the secretary who
gave him the photo as the fiance. They had a
real life affair as Bill and Pam. Pam is the
(18:26):
made up fiance. It got a little weird that it
is a little weird, like they wrote each other love letters,
had a real life affair calling each other Bill and Pam.
So there was some like strange role playing going on.
I'm sure he was married at the time. His family
had been shipped to America, so he was not doing
the right thing there he was he was allows in
(18:47):
that department. Well you know also um Roll Dahl, the
guy who wrote James and the Giant Peach and Charlie Factory.
He was a spy for the British. He was in
the British military and his whole job was to basically
bed um the wives of American officials here in Washington.
Really yeah, did he do so? Oh? Yeah? Oh wow?
(19:07):
Oh he made his way through Washington society apparently with
great zeal. Alright, so they're cooking up this backstory. Uh,
they get other great things for the wallet litter like uh,
theater ticket stubs and an overdraft letter from his bank
and just these things that make it seem like super realistic.
And what else they I think they gave him a
(19:30):
st Christopher Metal. Maybe they wanted to strongly imply that
he was Roman Catholic and that will come up, uh
very it will become very important in a minute, right,
very much. So they've got this backstory and apparently like this.
They were working feverishly on this stuff, having the weirdo affair,
wearing the uniform, all that stuff before they'd even gotten
(19:50):
final approval, just because they didn't want to stop work
and then have to pick it up feverishly. They wanted
this to to keep going. So they finally got final
approval from Admiral God for um to carry out this
thing for real. And when they got final approval, they said, okay,
we need a body and they figured no problem they
were looking at first they needed somebody who um, who
(20:14):
had relatives that didn't care what happened to the body
after death and could keep their mouth shut. Um. They
needed a body that was of military age, didn't have
any signs of visible trauma um right um, and that
that preferably they would have died of pneumonia. And the
(20:37):
reason that they wanted him to die of pneumonia is
because they were going to make it look like this
guy had been in a plane crash. Um, but it
survived the plane crash, but it drowned at sea. And
if he had pneumonia, then his fluids would be filled
with long so that when the Spanish conducted an autopsy
on them. Yeah, so that when the Spanish conducted their autopsy,
(20:58):
they'd be like, this is the most amazing thing I've
ever seen. I've never seen fluid filled with lungs, but
that's how much fluid there is. The problem is is
they didn't get their hands on a guy with pneumonia,
and they didn't even know exactly where to get a
person at first. It wasn't until they turned the guy
who ran the more g at St. Pancras Hospital, which
(21:18):
is the worst hospital name of all time. Um, they
turned him and got him to assist them that they
finally got their hands on a body. Yeah. His name
was sir uh, Sir Bentley Purchase, which is a great name,
and uh it was. He was a corner of the
largest mortuary at St. Pancras terrible and he had apparently
(21:39):
a wicked sense of humor. It was pretty complicated to
give directions to his office. So when he gave Montyue
the directions, he said, or he could just get run
over by a bus. Nice man. The British during wartime
where they're having a sense of humor was wonderful. So
they got Bentley purchased and he said, I've got a dude.
Um his name is h Glenn Door Michael. Yeah, that
(22:02):
is not how that's spelled either. No, it is g
l y n d w r super Welsh. Yeah, he
was a Welshman born in nineteen o nine. He was
the son of a coal miner. His father killed himself
by stabbing himself in the throat. I hadn't read that
and it didn't say like slit your throat, said he
(22:23):
stabbed himself in the throat, which is weird and sad.
So his dad died when he was a teenager. Mother
died when he was thirty. Uh, alcoholic had a rough
go because of the depression and was basically basically killed
himself by ingesting rat poison. So that is not necessarily resolved.
What whether it was suicide yeah, so they they they
(22:45):
Bentley Purchased wrote down that he, um, he killed himself. Yeah,
it was ruled a suicide. Okay, But the way that
he ate the rat poison, it was on a crust
of bread, so he was hungry, they wondered, So he
he may have been so death. The touoth that he
ate a crust of bread that he found in an
abandoned warehouse, and it was smeared with rat poison, and
that's what he died of. But they found him in
(23:07):
this cold January night in nineteen forty three, Um, in
this abandoned warehouse in London, and um, he had just
eaten some rat poison. But he survived for two more days.
And so Bentley Purchased got his hands on him and said,
I think I found your guy. Dudes, Yeah, and they did. Um.
(23:28):
There were some issues, of one of which is they
needed a photo of the guy for an I d
He didn't have any photos. Oh, and every time they
took a picture of the dead guy's face, they were like,
he looks like a dead guy. Yeah really, So they
scoured You can see your fingers holding his eyes up.
So they scoured London looking for a look alike and
eventually found a guy at a fellow intelligence officer who
(23:50):
looked just like him. They used his face. Aw, it's
all coming together, Yes it is. I'm sure they were like, Wow,
Providence is really smiling on this. And if you're feeling
bad for glennd Or just hang tight. Yeah, I still
think you can feel bad for Glenn do or talk
about a rough life man? Sheez? Do you remember that
one Saturday Night Live where Robert Duval was like super
(24:13):
special guest. It wasn't even hosting or mentioned. He just
showed up on this game show called Who's More Grizzled?
And he talks about like it was him and Garth Brooks.
How do I miss that? And um he talks about
how when one Cold Winners, his wife died and he
had to keep her out in the barn until the
ground thaw so we can bury her out back. What. Yeah,
(24:36):
it was just weird like that. It wasn't even really funny.
It was more just like, wow, that really is hard.
But the whole game show was Who's more grizzled anyone?
Of course, because it's Robert Duval. Yeah, he's more grizzled
than Garth Brooks. Even even Yeah, yeah, poor grubber Guard,
poor Garth Brooks, what are you talking about. I'm talking
(24:57):
about the Chris Gaines thing. He chose to do it.
He's a wealthy man in Yeah, I don't feel too
bad for him, but I think that was evidence that
he was surrounded by yes men at the time. That
was a weird thing though. Yeah, he faked a soul
patch that wasn't even real. No, I mean, even if
it was real, it was part of his character. It's
like I thought you meant it was sharpie. Maybe, Okay,
(25:21):
the hair was definitely colored with sharpie. All right, So
where where are we here? We've got a body. We
finally got the photograph of him, yeah, which is that's amazing.
I didn't know that part. And um, there's another thing
we found this awesome. A military analysis of it that
was kind of cool. Somebody wrote a military analysis of this.
(25:43):
I don't remember who, so I can't come a shout out,
but we'll put it on our podcast page. But they
point out that one of the reasons this was so
successful this operation was one these guys at Excess commit
x X committee just had free run to break the law.
Um bend morality do all sorts of stuff. Um, they
(26:04):
just were able to go do their thing. But the
other thing was is that they really kept this lid
on this stuff and it was all disseminated on a
need to know basis. So when they had this guy,
they had him, they had, they got glinder, kept him
on ice for three months as they finished his backstory.
They're running up against like go time, and then I
(26:24):
think in um, February or March April maybe I'm not
sure the date. Do you know that what happened when
they finally carried out Operation Minced Meat. Let's just say spring,
because I know that they kept him on ice for
a few months. Yeah. And they so they're up to
the point where the d comp is about to give
(26:45):
away that this guy didn't just recently die. Yeah, and
that was a big fear that the Spanish uh corners
would be able to tell to which will come up
in a minute, Okay, And um, they're also getting to
the point where they're reaching the end of the amount
of time that they need to give the Nazis to
absorb this MINS information. So they finally they get the
(27:05):
guys persona in place. They have the body and now
it's time to actually carry out the operation. And like
I was saying, they kept a lid on all this,
so it was a need to know basis. So they
got their hands on a sub commander who could keep
his mouth shut, and they gave him a metal cylinder
um with the corpse of glendor Michael now Major William Martin. Yeah,
(27:26):
when you say subcommander, you mean submarine. Yes, not a
commander below regular commander, that submarine commander. They gave him
the cylinder and they said, we're gonna tell you what's
in here. Do not tell anybody else. So apparently the
people uh staffing this sub um I thought this was
some sort of weather buoy. Yeah, it was marked optical instruments. Um.
(27:49):
But you're right. He was the only one on board
supposedly that knew there was a body inside. Yep, And
they put a life jacket on him, stuffed him in
the cylinder, put him on the sub and took him
over to Spain under a on a submarine. Well, let's
back up for one second, because we we forgot to
cover the main letter in the brief. This was the
all of operation mince Meat. It did not hinge on
(28:11):
theater ticket stubs or bank overdraft letters. That's merely pocket litter.
It hinged on a letter h hinting strongly that the
invasion was going to come up through Greece Sardinia. Right.
And that was the other thing too. It wasn't like
official document invasion is going to come through Greece. It
(28:33):
was a letter from one general or admiral to another
high ranking guy, I think general nye Uh. They composed
a bunch of different letters themselves, and finally they said,
why don't you write it in your own words, in
your own language, in your own handwriting everything. So it
really was written by this this um high ranking US
military official or British military official, um who who who
(28:57):
wrote this fake letter? And he made a joke of
out sardines, a terrible joke, which was the little hint
that was just clever enough to work, right, And so
in it it basically says, um, we're we're coming up
the you know, we're going to strike through Grease that's
where the invasion of Europe is going to be. Um.
But we're also going to tell everybody that Cecily is
(29:20):
the cover. Right. And this was a stroke of genius
because in this this false letter. Not only does it
show that they're coming through Greece, which they weren't, but
it says that Cecily is the cover, which would make
the Nazis think that if anyone ever did actually leak
the real invasion plan of Sicily, the Nazis would think
(29:41):
that that was misinformation. Dude, it was so ingenious. That's
crazy genus and I think about here now, Chuck, we
get to the point where we should talk about the
Enigma machine and the role it played, right, Yeah, Well,
basically we all know that the Enigma machine was the
codebreaking machine invented uh in the UK two decipher Uh. Well,
(30:04):
the Enigma machine wrote the code, I think, oh it
wrote the code. Yeah, and then the deciphered code that
they had gotten they deciphered it at Bletchley Park. But
I think the Enigma machine was the actual code writing
the encrypting machine. Okay, I could be wrong, but okay, well,
so we definitely need to do a podcast on there, right,
because we're mixed up already to get it straight. But
at any rate, the longest short of it is in
(30:26):
Beckley Park. Was at Beckley Park, I always say Bletcherly.
It was there an Ellen. There I draw the whole
ugly word out. Uh. They basically had they could. It
was like reading the Nazis email essentially on a daily basis,
on an hourly basis, hourly basis, they knew exactly what
was going on, so they would know if they were
buying this whole thing as it happened in real time.
(30:48):
But even before that they were able to craft this
this misinformation based on the Nazis assumption. So everybody wants
to hear that there are assumptions that they're believes are correct.
People are more apt to buy that things that confirm
their suspicions of their beliefs already. Right, Yeah, Hitler was
(31:08):
worried about Sicily. He he was, so he he already
thought that Greece was going to be where we invaded.
And then secondly he was he we knew that he
had heard rumors that Mussolini was going to be toppled soon,
so he was reticent to commit troops to Italy Sicily. Right, So, this,
this revelation that came in the form of this letter,
(31:30):
this false letter, completely supported everything that Hitler and the
Third Reich believed as far as this European invasion was
going to go and we're able to do that thanks
to the smarties at at Bletchley Park, Right yeah, and uh,
this letter to it's Um here's another little tidbit. They
put a single eyelash in the fold of the letter
(31:51):
so they would know when they eventually got this letter back,
if there was no eyelash, they would know that the
Nazi said in fact opened it. Um. And because the
idea was they would open it and reseal it and
act like we never saw it. But there wasn't that
eyelashed and they'd know not so rudim entry. But it worked.
Oh yeah, so, um, should we take another break? Let's
(32:12):
take a break? Sk shouldn't? Okay? So Chuck, we are
(32:34):
at sea aboard a submarine that's right, Chili down here,
and dark it is, and you're not supposed to be
smoking cigars. No you're not, despite Gene Hackman doing it
and Crimson tied. Yeah, what a bad idea. Um. So
we're off the coast of Spain. We're off the coast
of whoever la not an easy word to say, but
(32:55):
it's important Spain. And again this is where Nazi agent Adolph. Yeah,
they kind of want to float the body right up
to this guy's backyard basically, so they did. He was
released from this canister. I read somewhere else that, um,
the canister itself was fired on with submarine submachine guns
on a sub, so you could just call the machine
(33:16):
guns there. Um, And it was sunk and the body
drifted off towards Oh. I thought they just dumped the body. Yeah,
I'm not sure because I I found a book, um
on Google Books. It was like from two thousand seven,
and it was a history book and it made it
sound like the sub the people working on the sub
(33:38):
all knew what was going on. But that's in start
start contrast to everything else we've seen. So they may
or may not have sunk the weatherbooy, who knows, but
either way, Major Martin was released into the current that
took him right to whoeverla and he went. I think
he was found by a fisherman that same day. Uh. Yeah.
And at this point the Brits started sending telegrams about
(34:02):
a very important missing person frantic Yeah, like they wanted
these to get intercepted obviously. Uh, and that worked as well.
This is all really going exactly as a planned, so
they said, the British Council in Spain in Huevla, um
Or in Spain to Huevla and said, you need this
is really important. You need to get your hands on
the briefcase. Find out what happened to this guy and
(34:24):
get your hands on his briefcase. And class is going
briefcase right as monocle popped out, and Um the British
Council and Spain didn't even know what was going on. Yeah,
they thought like this, like they were they saw everything
from the same aspect of reality that the Nazis saw exactly.
So the British Council are trying to get this briefcase
(34:45):
kind of frantically um, and the Spaniards were like, uh,
you know what we are just going to keep this
on lockdown for now is we investigate the whole thing.
But we got it covered. Remember where neutral, so your
briefcase is safe. The British Consulate said, well, okay, one
thing this is very important. Uh this guy was Roman Catholic.
(35:05):
You can check out the metal in his pocket. UM,
so please don't dissect him. It's against Roman Catholic beliefs
and traditions to um dissector autopsy body I hadn't heard before,
but apparently in the forties that was the case in
Spain was way down with that super Roman Catholic and
they said, oh, yes, of course we won't do that.
So apparently that's how they got around the fact that
(35:27):
glend Her hadn't died of pneumonia. Yeah. And the other
way they got around it was they had a plant
in the office who talked to the corners and was like, guys,
it's hot and this body is going to start riting
real soon, so health thorough, do you really want to
make this? And they said, you're right. Let's go have
some some wine, some uh what they call it over there. No,
(35:50):
what's the pretty sangria. Yeah, let's go have some sangria
and knock off early. And that's exactly what happened thanks
to the plant. Uh so this is going on. There
was a small wrinkle at this point. The briefcase went
to Madrid. Spain wasn't gonna hand it over to anyone, um,
But the Brits were trying to get it in the
(36:11):
hands of the Nazis. And they're actually having trouble getting
it into the hands of the Nazis until a guy
named Carlo Kolin Tall. He was Hitler's most trusted guy
in Spain. Uh. He got wind of it and kind
of took over for Klaus. Was like, I'm gonna get
this briefcase, and he did nine days later after the
(36:31):
body washed Ashore. The letter ended up in the hands
of the German. The German, uh, you know, it worked
his way up the chain. Yeah, to Hitler himself. Yeah,
I went to Gebel's first, and Gebel's even in his
diary they found later had suspicions about it because he
was a corkscrew thinker and he was like, wait a minute,
this is pretty convenient. Yeah, this is really fishy here.
(36:53):
But he apparently never said anything to Hiller. He got distracted.
He wrote about in his diary, but the documentary said
his thinking was, well, if Hitler believes it, then that's
good enough for me. It seems like a bad idea. Yeah,
and um, homeboy Carlo Coolin Tall. There was always a
(37:14):
lot of speculation on why he just ran with it
and didn't ask more questions because that was his job.
And it turns out his grandmother was Jewish and he
was very paranoid about this being found out, so he
thought this is it. I've come upon the greatest find
of the war and it's all mine, so no one
will ask any questions about me after this. Uh wow,
(37:36):
that worked out really really well. Yeah, very convenient and
thanks to the Enigma machine where they knew, Um, the
Brits knew pretty quickly that this was working. And I
guess Montague and um chumbley uh sent and Admiral God
for you transmission that said Operation Mints me swallowed, rod
blind and sinker. Yeah that when when the it's so
(37:59):
cool seeing these old like apparently you're not supposed to
say elderly anymore, by the way, we got an email.
I knew that or seniors. We're supposed to call them
older adults. Seniors. I didn't know that that was the thing. Yeah,
older adults. So they're interviewing these older adults, these British
ladies that are in their eighties now, and they were
just also still excited, they said when they because you know,
(38:21):
with the Enigma machine, they were basically reading their emails
and they were like they're they knew they were buying it,
they're buying it, and everyone was just like flipped when
it came through the office. It was just like party
time basically. So the operation meants me really really worked
really well, so much so that apparently Killer moved a
(38:42):
panzer division which totals about ninety troops from Sicily to
Greece and and all the artillery and armaments and everything,
not just soldiers. So long Scily, We're going to grease.
And then up came the Allies through Sicily. Hundred and
sixty thousand Allied troops storm Sicily, and only seven thousand
(39:05):
lives were lost, which is still in a lot of
people who died, but apparently, as far as military historians
are concerned, and I think the military at the time,
that was a way fewer lives lost than they expected
had they had Hitler not swallowed Operation mince Me. Yeah,
they expected um ten thousand casualties in the first three
(39:25):
days and three hundred boats sunk in the first two days,
and it ended up being fourteen hundred in that first
week soldiers and about a dozen ships in that first week.
So that's not bad. Yeah, And not only that, but
it had another effect, big one the Soviets. Yeah. So
this is not something that they teach in American history
(39:45):
classes in US high schools that much the the Operation Husky.
Uh well, it was. It was that penetration of Europe's underbelly, right,
And suddenly Hitler said, Um, I'm about to dorm Russia,
but I really need these troops down here in Europe
because I got big problems. And that allowed basically Russia
(40:07):
to topple the Nazi regime and Mussolini get toppled by
the Brits. Yeah. It completely changed the face of the war.
This one idea cooked up by me and flaming in
part that crazy. It's pretty awesome. You got other stuff. Um,
there's a book called Operation Mincemeat by guy named Brett McIntyre. Alright,
(40:29):
it came out in two thousand ten. That's a very good,
well cited book, um, that we inadvertently cited here there. Um.
And then there's The Man Who Never Was, which was
written by you and Montague, which is not just about
Operation Mincemeat, but also about basically how to carry out
deception plans. All right. Remember earlier when I said, don't
feel too bad for uh, for glennd or Michael even
(40:52):
you said, well, the dude died, possibly of suicide because
he was penniless and going nowhere. Yeah, I feel bad
about that, but uh, fifty years after he was buried
in the British government added they basically buried him with
military honors. The Spanish did, Oh, yeah, he's buried in Spain,
(41:14):
but the British it came from the Brits, I think
to do so. His headstone um came from the Brits,
but the Spanish buried him with like the twenty one
gun salute and everything. Yes, says Glendor. Michael served as
Major William Martin, r M. Royal Marine. Pretty cool. Yeah,
so this alcoholic drifter who never served in the military,
(41:36):
ever served in the military, buried with full military honors. Yeah,
and completely changed the face of the war thanks to
being a body that fit the fit the bill. And
if you like ghoulish photos, is a very famous photo
of him being propped up in his life checket and
uniform as they were basically loading him into the cylinder
um that you can see by searching. I'm sure Major
(41:59):
Charles Martin, that's right, Charles Martin. No, William Martin, William Martin,
something like that. I still want to know what's going
on with that weird role playing there with the dude.
That's odd. Dylan Pam. Yeah, yeah, because they interviewed the
lady and she was just like, oh, it was all
very exciting. Yeah, that's a great British lady accent. Older
(42:19):
person yeah yeah, older adulder adult, yeah, oldie. If you
want to get or no, if you want to know
more about Operation Mincemeat, just type that word into your
favorite search engine or go check out the stuff you
missed in history class. Episode. And I said, Steve, you
missed in history class. It's time for listener mail. I'm
(42:40):
gonna call this bread crust. We had that discussion about
the crust and the in pieces, So this is from
a dad. Uh. Dear Chuck and Josh, your discussion of
the in slice of bread and the body language episode
brought ridiculous grin to my face as I walked around
my neighborhood. Ah, don't worry, though, my neighbors have thought
me to be eccentric for years. Now. Look at that
(43:03):
guy smiling. What a weirdo. We must be a pinko.
When our daughters were still tiny, my wife and I
realized we were doomed to eighteen ish years of eating
bread crusts pieces ourselves if we didn't figure something out
in quickly um our solution. We started calling those pieces
the lucky piece, and boy did we look our innocent,
(43:23):
trusting toddlers. Turns out your supposition is correct, chuck, at
least for children under eleven years old, even if their
honor students is mine, where they will fight you for
the right to eat that savory, ohso desirable piece of luck.
Nice idea younger adults. Rock on, guys, and please keep
my goofy grands coming. That is from Ted c O
(43:45):
I n e with a little uh. We call that
a coin a a I sent to do? No, I
don't know. I didn't take French. What do you call that?
A lagoon? Accent? Lagoom? So thanks Ted, I'll just call
you coin Yeah, thanks quin quin. Don't let's say coin there?
(44:08):
Uh yeah, thanks a lot ted. Ted contacted us on
Twitter so he wanted to send us this email. So
do you go, Ted? Wow? Um. If you want to
get in touch with us, you can try all the
ways like Ted did. You can contact us on Twitter
at s Y s K podcast. You can send us
an email to Stuff Podcast at how Stuff works dot com.
You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff.
(44:29):
You Should Know, and you can hang out at our
luxurious home on the web. Stuff you Should Know dot Com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of I heart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Everybody. It's me Josh and for this week's s Y
s K Selex, I've chosen our episode on Operation Mincemeat
from February two thousand sixteen. It's a really great example
of English drollness pulling through for the rest of the
world is featuring Ian Fleming or Ian Fleming, depending on
your preference, and roll Dahl. It's just a Bonker's history
(00:23):
episode all around, so I hope you enjoy it. Welcome
to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey,
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles
(00:44):
w Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry Rowland. This is Stuff you
Should Know. Chuck, Yo, I'm thirty nine years old and
I still can't say my own name correctly because in
my stupid thick tongue. Oh you're gonna be forty crazy. Yeah,
he used to make fun of me, and now you're old. Well,
you're still older than me. I know what I can
do about that. It's cool though. Yeah, you're aging very well. Yeah, no,
(01:08):
you're aging really well. What you mean the teeth falling out,
the weight gain and the gray beard. I still say
you're aging very well. I appreciate it. But let's get
your take off your hat. I still got good hair booms.
Look at that got hat head now beautiful? Okayle think
I'm bald? Some people do, like you're always wearing that hat.
(01:29):
Why do you why? I don't know suspicious people. Yeah,
like the drummer for the Chili Peppers, Anthony Keytis Flee, Nope,
the guy from Jane's Addiction, Nope, I don't know them,
Not John for Shaunty, Chad Smith, the guy that looks
like Will Ferrell. He's always Ferrell. He's always got that
hat on backwards and um he's bald. Yeah, totally like
(01:52):
Brett Um. Michael's bald. Remember he always wears a do rag.
Super bald. So I get why people are suspicious. If
you're a public figure that has a patented hat piece,
then it's probably because you're bald, but not in my case.
What a weird way to start the show, especially this show,
(02:13):
Operation mincemeat Yep, which is a ghoulish gallows humor awesomely
World War two British name for this this operation. Yeah,
this will live alongside our our Nazi spies and Invading
Florida podcast and the history Girls covered this this very
topic as well. Yeah, man, there's nothing I love more
(02:34):
than little known history. This is this is it. But
this is great little known history. And this shouldn't be
middle known because it was after the Trojan War, maybe
the largest and most successful military deception plan in history. Well,
there was also have you seen that documentary Ghost Army
about Operation Fortitude. No, they used a bunch of blow
(02:55):
up tanks and planes, like inflatable tanks and planes to
make it look like there's a whole Allied division over here,
so that we could invade Normandy More He's it's like
a Looney Tunes cartoon. Awesome. But yes, this ranks up
there with literally with the Trojan Horses. It's that ingenious
and that wonderful. But so let's set the stage right.
(03:16):
So in early nine UM, the war was very much undecided.
It could have been anybody's like your. Europe was under
the control of Hitler, huge amounts of Europe. They called
it Fortress Europe because he the Nazis were just had
just overrun the place, right dug in and um, the
(03:38):
the Allies knew that they needed to get into Europe
to topple Hitler or else like they weren't going to
win the war, so um Churchill suggested attacking Europe's underbelly,
which is maybe Italy, Greece. He called it the underbelly,
not very flattering, but he called it Europe's underbelly. So everybody,
the Allies, the Greeks, the Nazis, the Japanese, um, the
(04:05):
people uh in Hawaii. Everybody knew, yeah, they weren't American
quite yet. Everybody knew that the Allies were gonna attack
somewhere in that area. Yeah, come up through the Mediterranean.
Even Hitler feared this the most, but was key right,
And and I mean everybody knew the Allies were coming,
(04:26):
and they were going to come there. But this, this
land mass, this area of land and see is large
enough that you can't just be like, oh, they're coming
down there. We got it covered, cover it all. You
need to know kind of specifically where they were covering.
And there were just a few places where they could
have come. One was Greece, that was where Hitler always suspected.
One was Sardinia, right, and then another was Sicily. And
(04:50):
in nine I think January, the Allied powers met in
French Morocco and held um a conference, the CASA Blanket Conference,
very sexy naming. Yeah, it really was. And um, they said, okay,
we're going to invade Sicily this July. We're gonna call
it Operation Husky. Now we have to do everything we
can to not let the Nazis know that that's where
(05:14):
we're going. And that actually hatched eventually what's called Operation Mincemeat. Yeah,
you know what. The studying this stuff and I'm not
a big war buff um, although I'm getting more so,
but reading up on this stuff, like the old wars
are so much like the board game risk that it's startling. Yeah.
(05:35):
It's literally when you look at the stuff, it's like
moving troops to where you think people are going to
attack you and rolling the dice a bit and if
you're right, then great, If not, you're screwed very much though,
which is why it's such a huge shift that we're
seeing now in moving to unconventional warfare, because that's scary stuff. Yeah.
I think pretty much all war is scary. Yeah. Well,
(05:58):
of course I'm not saying like Normandy was a gig
walk or anything, because they knew what there was going on. Man,
I watched Saving Private Ryan again the other day. God,
it's crazy. That thing's almost a snuff film. It's not
as bad as We Were Soldiers, which is a snuff film,
but it's I never saw that one gie, Yeah, dude,
it's it's the most graphically violent mainstream movie ever made. Yes, yeah,
(06:22):
Like there's a part where there's there they have a shot,
a camera shot over this guy's shoulder, right, so his
helmets in the in the near foreground, and that guy
takes a hit to the head and like blood spray
covers the camera lens for the next like a little
while his brains just cover the camera. It's disgusting. Did
(06:45):
you like Saving Private Ran again? Though? Yeah, it's a
great movie, but it is like really like violent. That's
another thing about getting older is that stuff affects you
more and more. The more you come to terms with
your own mortality, the more valuable life becomes. The more
valuable even a care after in a movie's life becomes
you know what I mean? That stuff gets to agreed,
It's called growing up, my friend, I'm becoming human, isn't
(07:08):
it grows? Alright? So on September twenty nine, ninety nine, Uh,
there was a director of British Naval Intelligence name Admiral
John Godfrey, and he distributed something called the Trout Memo,
and um, it was written by his assistant Lieutenant Commander
Ian Fleming. Familiar name, Yeah, creator of James Bond. That's right,
(07:30):
the guy. And uh, I think most people know that
he served at this point. Yeah, but um, if you didn't,
that's a nice little factoid for you. So he he
wrote the Trout Memo and they called it the Trout
memo memo because they pointed out in the intro that
this that the trout fisherman fishes very patiently, but he
changes venue frequently and he changes his bait very frequently too,
(07:51):
And so they wanted to they're charged with deception. They
wanted to come up with all these different ideas, all
this different bait and venue changes that they could come
up with. Yeah, and this was a time too. We
should point out that, UM, spying, spying is always vital,
but man, in World War Two, it was going on
all over the place in a huge, huge part of
(08:13):
the war. So, um, we need to do one on
the Enigma machine. By the way, at some point we do,
because that's one of the unsung heroes in this operation. Absolutely. Um, alright,
so with the trout memo, Ian Fleming wrote, uh well,
co authored fifty one different operations suggestions, and number twenty
eight was one called a suggestion parentheses not a very
(08:37):
nice one. The following suggestion is used in a book
by Basil Thompson. I'm so pleased that you said, Basil
in staid a Basil Uh In fact, that was seven novel,
The mill Milliner's Hat Mystery. And he was actually a
World War One spy. Oh really yeah? So he was
it a spy writer that Ian Fleming the reader of
(09:00):
James Bond Doug Crazy. So that's where this originate. So uh,
here's here, that's right. The following suggestion is used in
a book by Basil Thompson Colin a corpse dressed as
an airman with dispatches in his pockets could be dropped
on the coast, supposedly from a parachute that had failed.
I understand there is no difficulty in obtaining corpses at
(09:21):
the Naval hospital, but of course it would have to
be a fresh one. So the idea is, let's get
a dead person, let's dress him up like a soldier,
give him some sensitive documents that leak this invasion fraudulent, fraudulent,
very important, that leak the invasion of Greece, which is
not really happening, and they're gonna mount up troops there
(09:43):
and we'll actually go in secily. They're gonna find this body.
They're gonna think they've stumbled upon this great happy accident
and we're going to fool him. So yeah, that was
the That was the whole idea. That was the general
basis of it. And Churchill loved the idea because apparent
he liked what he called corkscrew thinkers, because he knew
(10:04):
Hitler thought in a straight line. Yes, and by corkscrew thinkers,
I think that would be our equivalent of outside the box. Yeah. Yeah.
Churchill was like, this is great. I love Churchill. Let's
drink some scotch and do it. Yeah, let's look like
a bulldog. So um, the the the well. The idea
(10:24):
was roughly outlined by Ian Fleming and then the the
Churchill's corkscrew thinkers, the XX Committee, led by um you
and Montague and um Chumley. Yeah, which is his name
is not spelled chumbley? No, how's it spelled? Are you
ready for this? Charles C. H O l m O
(10:48):
n d e l e y pronounced Chumley. Yeah. And
apparently when he met people he would say, uh, Lieutenant
Charles Chumley c h O l m O n d
e l e y. He would spell it out, what
do you really? Yeah? Are you making fun of me?
Or is there for real? No? No, no. He was
a very quirky guy, and that's how he described himself
as toothpaste, as if it had been squeezed from the tube,
(11:11):
like he self described. He would go hunting with a
revolver like bird hunting. Is a weird guy. I actually
watched a quickie BuzzFeed video on this and they pronounced
it Charles Charlomondley. Did they really? Yeah, I'm glad we
did our research exactly, shout out with the BuzzFeed. So
you and Montague right, Yeah, the other guy. He is
(11:34):
noteworthy in a number of ways to apparently it's just
the greatest guy ever, most interesting man on the planet.
Um And he actually wrote the book, the first book
on Operation Mincemeat, because he was one of the people
who came up with this and implemented it. The man
who was never there, the man who never was got
right so became a movie too, Yeah, of the same name,
(11:55):
starring Montgomery Cliff, I believe, no starring Cliff with Cliff
Cliff web but not Montgomery Cliff. Those two are virtually
interchangeable there. So, um what you and Montague was already
notable because at school he and his brother had created
(12:16):
the rules for um ping pong. No way, I did
not know that, among other things. And his brother equally interesting,
equally um rambunctious went on to become a spy for
the Soviets. Yes, so he turned yes against England, Yes
against everybody except for the Soviets. Well, Montague was uh,
(12:39):
he was formerly a barrister, an attorney, and um, this
is why he actually did not go serve on a ship. Um.
And the other guy, Chumley, never flew a plane. One
was air Force, one was a navy. Uh. And apparently
Montague was as an attorney, was very good at just
seeing all the angles. So they say, you, sir, are
(13:01):
perfect for this job. Ask all right, Chuck. So we
(13:25):
have the rough outline that Ian Fleming came up with
the XX committee led by you and Montague and Charles Chumley.
The part of m I five, I believe. Okay, Um
said we're going to take this particular idea and really
run with it, Um, And like you said, they were
going to, Well, the first thing they did was start
setting about creating a backstory. Yeah. Well they had three months,
(13:46):
so that the clock is chicking at this point. Yeah,
because here's the thing. They set the invasion right in January,
and they set the invasion for July. Now, you needed
enough time to um plant this, this corpse, this fake
dead courier um in the Nazi hands and give the
(14:06):
with enough time so that the Nazis could digest it,
analyze it, decided it was truthful, and then react the
way you wanted them to, which meant that they had
no later than May or else this plan was out
the window. Yeah, you wanted them. The ultimate goal was
to have the Nazis put their troops in the wrong place,
and that takes time, right, So they looked around and
(14:28):
they decided that the best place to carry out this
operation was Spain, and Spain during World War Two was
allegedly ostensibly neutral, but they had a lot of access, sympathies,
a lot of connections to Nazi Germany, and there was
a particular Nazi agent, a spy working in a port
(14:49):
called Um Whoever, Whoever, La Whoever La right, Um, And
his name was Adolf Klass. And Adolph Klaus was known
to be very methodical, pretty brutal, brutal and ruthless, extremely gullible. Yeah,
he was a straight line thinker. He was hitler. He
wasn't one that could think outside the box and think,
(15:10):
maybe this is an elaborate hoax that that guy didn't
even own a real corkscrew, you know, like they targeted
this guy cut the top off of wine bottles. Yeah,
they specifically targeted, which is amazing. So they wanted this guy,
who was fairly gullible but also known as like a
very respected Nazi agent in Spain, um to be the
(15:31):
one who came up with this corpse and could ever
so before they ever had any corps or could have
or anything like that, Montague and Um and Chumbley start
setting about creating a backstory, and they created this guy
named Major Um Martin, William Martin, that's right. And they
(15:52):
created Major William Martin, and they created this whole persona.
And this wasn't the first time they've done it, that
they had actually they had um chops with this kind
of stuff. So they had created a fake spine network
that made Nazi Germany think that they had a whole
double double agent network in the UK. And all of
(16:14):
them were fictitious, not real people that you and Montague
and Charles Chumley had created these fake personas and it
fed the Nazis misinformation through these people that didn't really exist.
So they took that that understanding and that thinking of
what it takes to create a fake persona, and they
said about creating one for Major William Martin. Yeah, and um,
(16:34):
if you there's a great BBC documentary on this, and
they interview a lot of the players, um, including a
lot of the women who worked at m I five
in the office, and they were all just so delighted
that they all described this as like the most exciting
adventure they'd ever had. I'm sure it was like something
out of a spine novel and they were living it right,
And so they all had great fun creating these characters,
(16:55):
that these made up people. Um, they wanted to give
him a fiance because the idea is that they find
this body with what not only these documents in a briefcase,
the important documents. But to make it believable, he had
to have believable what they called pocket litter or wallet litter,
which is if you find any person on the street
(17:16):
asked him to open their wallet, you're gonna be able
to tell a lot about them. So just stuff to
legitimize it. So they said, let's give him a fiance,
and all the women in the office wanted to be
the fiance, so they all submitted photographs. They picked this one,
lady Jean Leslie. Uh, secretary, Okay, that's the lady on
the beach. Yes, pickture of her in a bathing suit
on the beach. So this was going to be planted
(17:38):
on his body. Uh. They all wanted to write the
love letters back and forth, but they picked a woman
named Hester Leggert, the head secretary of m I five,
and she wrote even though she was a spinster, she
wrote all these like heartfelt love letters. The first couple
of drafts were really dirty, and they were like, you
gott to tone this down a little, like is that
what you think happens in a relationships? Like, no, not me, lady.
(18:03):
So everyone's really excited in the office. Um Chumley is
wearing what would eventually be the uniform of Martin every
Day to give it that worn in look. Monte Hue
actually ended up having an affair with the secretary who
gave him the photo as the fiance. They had a
real life affair as Bill and Pam. Pam is the
(18:26):
made up fiance. It got a little weird that it
is a little weird, like they wrote each other love letters,
had a real life affair calling each other Bill and Pam.
So there was some like strange role playing going on.
I'm sure he was married at the time. His family
had been shipped to America, so he was not doing
the right thing there he was he was allows in
(18:47):
that department. Well you know also um Roll Dahl, the
guy who wrote James and the Giant Peach and Charlie Factory.
He was a spy for the British. He was in
the British military and his whole job was to basically
bed um the wives of American officials here in Washington.
Really yeah, did he do so? Oh? Yeah? Oh wow?
(19:07):
Oh he made his way through Washington society apparently with
great zeal. Alright, so they're cooking up this backstory. Uh,
they get other great things for the wallet litter like uh,
theater ticket stubs and an overdraft letter from his bank
and just these things that make it seem like super realistic.
And what else they I think they gave him a
(19:30):
st Christopher Metal. Maybe they wanted to strongly imply that
he was Roman Catholic and that will come up, uh
very it will become very important in a minute, right,
very much. So they've got this backstory and apparently like this.
They were working feverishly on this stuff, having the weirdo affair,
wearing the uniform, all that stuff before they'd even gotten
(19:50):
final approval, just because they didn't want to stop work
and then have to pick it up feverishly. They wanted
this to to keep going. So they finally got final
approval from Admiral God for um to carry out this
thing for real. And when they got final approval, they said, okay,
we need a body and they figured no problem they
were looking at first they needed somebody who um, who
(20:14):
had relatives that didn't care what happened to the body
after death and could keep their mouth shut. Um. They
needed a body that was of military age, didn't have
any signs of visible trauma um right um, and that
that preferably they would have died of pneumonia. And the
(20:37):
reason that they wanted him to die of pneumonia is
because they were going to make it look like this
guy had been in a plane crash. Um, but it
survived the plane crash, but it drowned at sea. And
if he had pneumonia, then his fluids would be filled
with long so that when the Spanish conducted an autopsy
on them. Yeah, so that when the Spanish conducted their autopsy,
(20:58):
they'd be like, this is the most amazing thing I've
ever seen. I've never seen fluid filled with lungs, but
that's how much fluid there is. The problem is is
they didn't get their hands on a guy with pneumonia,
and they didn't even know exactly where to get a
person at first. It wasn't until they turned the guy
who ran the more g at St. Pancras Hospital, which
(21:18):
is the worst hospital name of all time. Um, they
turned him and got him to assist them that they
finally got their hands on a body. Yeah. His name
was sir uh, Sir Bentley Purchase, which is a great name,
and uh it was. He was a corner of the
largest mortuary at St. Pancras terrible and he had apparently
(21:39):
a wicked sense of humor. It was pretty complicated to
give directions to his office. So when he gave Montyue
the directions, he said, or he could just get run
over by a bus. Nice man. The British during wartime
where they're having a sense of humor was wonderful. So
they got Bentley purchased and he said, I've got a dude.
Um his name is h Glenn Door Michael. Yeah, that
(22:02):
is not how that's spelled either. No, it is g
l y n d w r super Welsh. Yeah, he
was a Welshman born in nineteen o nine. He was
the son of a coal miner. His father killed himself
by stabbing himself in the throat. I hadn't read that
and it didn't say like slit your throat, said he
(22:23):
stabbed himself in the throat, which is weird and sad.
So his dad died when he was a teenager. Mother
died when he was thirty. Uh, alcoholic had a rough
go because of the depression and was basically basically killed
himself by ingesting rat poison. So that is not necessarily resolved.
What whether it was suicide yeah, so they they they
(22:45):
Bentley Purchased wrote down that he, um, he killed himself. Yeah,
it was ruled a suicide. Okay, But the way that
he ate the rat poison, it was on a crust
of bread, so he was hungry, they wondered, So he
he may have been so death. The touoth that he
ate a crust of bread that he found in an
abandoned warehouse, and it was smeared with rat poison, and
that's what he died of. But they found him in
(23:07):
this cold January night in nineteen forty three, Um, in
this abandoned warehouse in London, and um, he had just
eaten some rat poison. But he survived for two more days.
And so Bentley Purchased got his hands on him and said,
I think I found your guy. Dudes, Yeah, and they did. Um.
(23:28):
There were some issues, of one of which is they
needed a photo of the guy for an I d
He didn't have any photos. Oh, and every time they
took a picture of the dead guy's face, they were like,
he looks like a dead guy. Yeah really, So they
scoured You can see your fingers holding his eyes up.
So they scoured London looking for a look alike and
eventually found a guy at a fellow intelligence officer who
(23:50):
looked just like him. They used his face. Aw, it's
all coming together, Yes it is. I'm sure they were like, Wow,
Providence is really smiling on this. And if you're feeling
bad for glennd Or just hang tight. Yeah, I still
think you can feel bad for Glenn do or talk
about a rough life man? Sheez? Do you remember that
one Saturday Night Live where Robert Duval was like super
(24:13):
special guest. It wasn't even hosting or mentioned. He just
showed up on this game show called Who's More Grizzled?
And he talks about like it was him and Garth Brooks.
How do I miss that? And um he talks about
how when one Cold Winners, his wife died and he
had to keep her out in the barn until the
ground thaw so we can bury her out back. What. Yeah,
(24:36):
it was just weird like that. It wasn't even really funny.
It was more just like, wow, that really is hard.
But the whole game show was Who's more grizzled anyone?
Of course, because it's Robert Duval. Yeah, he's more grizzled
than Garth Brooks. Even even Yeah, yeah, poor grubber Guard,
poor Garth Brooks, what are you talking about. I'm talking
(24:57):
about the Chris Gaines thing. He chose to do it.
He's a wealthy man in Yeah, I don't feel too
bad for him, but I think that was evidence that
he was surrounded by yes men at the time. That
was a weird thing though. Yeah, he faked a soul
patch that wasn't even real. No, I mean, even if
it was real, it was part of his character. It's
like I thought you meant it was sharpie. Maybe, Okay,
(25:21):
the hair was definitely colored with sharpie. All right, So
where where are we here? We've got a body. We
finally got the photograph of him, yeah, which is that's amazing.
I didn't know that part. And um, there's another thing
we found this awesome. A military analysis of it that
was kind of cool. Somebody wrote a military analysis of this.
(25:43):
I don't remember who, so I can't come a shout out,
but we'll put it on our podcast page. But they
point out that one of the reasons this was so
successful this operation was one these guys at Excess commit
x X committee just had free run to break the law.
Um bend morality do all sorts of stuff. Um, they
(26:04):
just were able to go do their thing. But the
other thing was is that they really kept this lid
on this stuff and it was all disseminated on a
need to know basis. So when they had this guy,
they had him, they had, they got glinder, kept him
on ice for three months as they finished his backstory.
They're running up against like go time, and then I
(26:24):
think in um, February or March April maybe I'm not
sure the date. Do you know that what happened when
they finally carried out Operation Minced Meat. Let's just say spring,
because I know that they kept him on ice for
a few months. Yeah. And they so they're up to
the point where the d comp is about to give
(26:45):
away that this guy didn't just recently die. Yeah, and
that was a big fear that the Spanish uh corners
would be able to tell to which will come up
in a minute, Okay, And um, they're also getting to
the point where they're reaching the end of the amount
of time that they need to give the Nazis to
absorb this MINS information. So they finally they get the
(27:05):
guys persona in place. They have the body and now
it's time to actually carry out the operation. And like
I was saying, they kept a lid on all this,
so it was a need to know basis. So they
got their hands on a sub commander who could keep
his mouth shut, and they gave him a metal cylinder
um with the corpse of glendor Michael now Major William Martin. Yeah,
(27:26):
when you say subcommander, you mean submarine. Yes, not a
commander below regular commander, that submarine commander. They gave him
the cylinder and they said, we're gonna tell you what's
in here. Do not tell anybody else. So apparently the
people uh staffing this sub um I thought this was
some sort of weather buoy. Yeah, it was marked optical instruments. Um.
(27:49):
But you're right. He was the only one on board
supposedly that knew there was a body inside. Yep, And
they put a life jacket on him, stuffed him in
the cylinder, put him on the sub and took him
over to Spain under a on a submarine. Well, let's
back up for one second, because we we forgot to
cover the main letter in the brief. This was the
all of operation mince Meat. It did not hinge on
(28:11):
theater ticket stubs or bank overdraft letters. That's merely pocket litter.
It hinged on a letter h hinting strongly that the
invasion was going to come up through Greece Sardinia. Right.
And that was the other thing too. It wasn't like
official document invasion is going to come through Greece. It
(28:33):
was a letter from one general or admiral to another
high ranking guy, I think general nye Uh. They composed
a bunch of different letters themselves, and finally they said,
why don't you write it in your own words, in
your own language, in your own handwriting everything. So it
really was written by this this um high ranking US
military official or British military official, um who who who
(28:57):
wrote this fake letter? And he made a joke of
out sardines, a terrible joke, which was the little hint
that was just clever enough to work, right, And so
in it it basically says, um, we're we're coming up
the you know, we're going to strike through Grease that's
where the invasion of Europe is going to be. Um.
But we're also going to tell everybody that Cecily is
(29:20):
the cover. Right. And this was a stroke of genius
because in this this false letter. Not only does it
show that they're coming through Greece, which they weren't, but
it says that Cecily is the cover, which would make
the Nazis think that if anyone ever did actually leak
the real invasion plan of Sicily, the Nazis would think
(29:41):
that that was misinformation. Dude, it was so ingenious. That's
crazy genus and I think about here now, Chuck, we
get to the point where we should talk about the
Enigma machine and the role it played, right, Yeah, Well,
basically we all know that the Enigma machine was the
codebreaking machine invented uh in the UK two decipher Uh. Well,
(30:04):
the Enigma machine wrote the code, I think, oh it
wrote the code. Yeah, and then the deciphered code that
they had gotten they deciphered it at Bletchley Park. But
I think the Enigma machine was the actual code writing
the encrypting machine. Okay, I could be wrong, but okay, well,
so we definitely need to do a podcast on there, right,
because we're mixed up already to get it straight. But
at any rate, the longest short of it is in
(30:26):
Beckley Park. Was at Beckley Park, I always say Bletcherly.
It was there an Ellen. There I draw the whole
ugly word out. Uh. They basically had they could. It
was like reading the Nazis email essentially on a daily basis,
on an hourly basis, hourly basis, they knew exactly what
was going on, so they would know if they were
buying this whole thing as it happened in real time.
(30:48):
But even before that they were able to craft this
this misinformation based on the Nazis assumption. So everybody wants
to hear that there are assumptions that they're believes are correct.
People are more apt to buy that things that confirm
their suspicions of their beliefs already. Right, Yeah, Hitler was
(31:08):
worried about Sicily. He he was, so he he already
thought that Greece was going to be where we invaded.
And then secondly he was he we knew that he
had heard rumors that Mussolini was going to be toppled soon,
so he was reticent to commit troops to Italy Sicily. Right, So, this,
this revelation that came in the form of this letter,
(31:30):
this false letter, completely supported everything that Hitler and the
Third Reich believed as far as this European invasion was
going to go and we're able to do that thanks
to the smarties at at Bletchley Park, Right yeah, and uh,
this letter to it's Um here's another little tidbit. They
put a single eyelash in the fold of the letter
(31:51):
so they would know when they eventually got this letter back,
if there was no eyelash, they would know that the
Nazi said in fact opened it. Um. And because the
idea was they would open it and reseal it and
act like we never saw it. But there wasn't that
eyelashed and they'd know not so rudim entry. But it worked.
Oh yeah, so, um, should we take another break? Let's
(32:12):
take a break? Sk shouldn't? Okay? So Chuck, we are
(32:34):
at sea aboard a submarine that's right, Chili down here,
and dark it is, and you're not supposed to be
smoking cigars. No you're not, despite Gene Hackman doing it
and Crimson tied. Yeah, what a bad idea. Um. So
we're off the coast of Spain. We're off the coast
of whoever la not an easy word to say, but
(32:55):
it's important Spain. And again this is where Nazi agent Adolph. Yeah,
they kind of want to float the body right up
to this guy's backyard basically, so they did. He was
released from this canister. I read somewhere else that, um,
the canister itself was fired on with submarine submachine guns
on a sub, so you could just call the machine
(33:16):
guns there. Um, And it was sunk and the body
drifted off towards Oh. I thought they just dumped the body. Yeah,
I'm not sure because I I found a book, um
on Google Books. It was like from two thousand seven,
and it was a history book and it made it
sound like the sub the people working on the sub
(33:38):
all knew what was going on. But that's in start
start contrast to everything else we've seen. So they may
or may not have sunk the weatherbooy, who knows, but
either way, Major Martin was released into the current that
took him right to whoeverla and he went. I think
he was found by a fisherman that same day. Uh. Yeah.
And at this point the Brits started sending telegrams about
(34:02):
a very important missing person frantic Yeah, like they wanted
these to get intercepted obviously. Uh, and that worked as well.
This is all really going exactly as a planned, so
they said, the British Council in Spain in Huevla, um
Or in Spain to Huevla and said, you need this
is really important. You need to get your hands on
the briefcase. Find out what happened to this guy and
(34:24):
get your hands on his briefcase. And class is going
briefcase right as monocle popped out, and Um the British
Council and Spain didn't even know what was going on. Yeah,
they thought like this, like they were they saw everything
from the same aspect of reality that the Nazis saw exactly.
So the British Council are trying to get this briefcase
(34:45):
kind of frantically um, and the Spaniards were like, uh,
you know what we are just going to keep this
on lockdown for now is we investigate the whole thing.
But we got it covered. Remember where neutral, so your
briefcase is safe. The British Consulate said, well, okay, one
thing this is very important. Uh this guy was Roman Catholic.
(35:05):
You can check out the metal in his pocket. UM,
so please don't dissect him. It's against Roman Catholic beliefs
and traditions to um dissector autopsy body I hadn't heard before,
but apparently in the forties that was the case in
Spain was way down with that super Roman Catholic and
they said, oh, yes, of course we won't do that.
So apparently that's how they got around the fact that
(35:27):
glend Her hadn't died of pneumonia. Yeah. And the other
way they got around it was they had a plant
in the office who talked to the corners and was like, guys,
it's hot and this body is going to start riting
real soon, so health thorough, do you really want to
make this? And they said, you're right. Let's go have
some some wine, some uh what they call it over there. No,
(35:50):
what's the pretty sangria. Yeah, let's go have some sangria
and knock off early. And that's exactly what happened thanks
to the plant. Uh so this is going on. There
was a small wrinkle at this point. The briefcase went
to Madrid. Spain wasn't gonna hand it over to anyone, um,
But the Brits were trying to get it in the
(36:11):
hands of the Nazis. And they're actually having trouble getting
it into the hands of the Nazis until a guy
named Carlo Kolin Tall. He was Hitler's most trusted guy
in Spain. Uh. He got wind of it and kind
of took over for Klaus. Was like, I'm gonna get
this briefcase, and he did nine days later after the
(36:31):
body washed Ashore. The letter ended up in the hands
of the German. The German, uh, you know, it worked
his way up the chain. Yeah, to Hitler himself. Yeah,
I went to Gebel's first, and Gebel's even in his
diary they found later had suspicions about it because he
was a corkscrew thinker and he was like, wait a minute,
this is pretty convenient. Yeah, this is really fishy here.
(36:53):
But he apparently never said anything to Hiller. He got distracted.
He wrote about in his diary, but the documentary said
his thinking was, well, if Hitler believes it, then that's
good enough for me. It seems like a bad idea. Yeah,
and um, homeboy Carlo Coolin Tall. There was always a
(37:14):
lot of speculation on why he just ran with it
and didn't ask more questions because that was his job.
And it turns out his grandmother was Jewish and he
was very paranoid about this being found out, so he
thought this is it. I've come upon the greatest find
of the war and it's all mine, so no one
will ask any questions about me after this. Uh wow,
(37:36):
that worked out really really well. Yeah, very convenient and
thanks to the Enigma machine where they knew, Um, the
Brits knew pretty quickly that this was working. And I
guess Montague and um chumbley uh sent and Admiral God
for you transmission that said Operation Mints me swallowed, rod
blind and sinker. Yeah that when when the it's so
(37:59):
cool seeing these old like apparently you're not supposed to
say elderly anymore, by the way, we got an email.
I knew that or seniors. We're supposed to call them
older adults. Seniors. I didn't know that that was the thing. Yeah,
older adults. So they're interviewing these older adults, these British
ladies that are in their eighties now, and they were
just also still excited, they said when they because you know,
(38:21):
with the Enigma machine, they were basically reading their emails
and they were like they're they knew they were buying it,
they're buying it, and everyone was just like flipped when
it came through the office. It was just like party
time basically. So the operation meants me really really worked
really well, so much so that apparently Killer moved a
(38:42):
panzer division which totals about ninety troops from Sicily to
Greece and and all the artillery and armaments and everything,
not just soldiers. So long Scily, We're going to grease.
And then up came the Allies through Sicily. Hundred and
sixty thousand Allied troops storm Sicily, and only seven thousand
(39:05):
lives were lost, which is still in a lot of
people who died, but apparently, as far as military historians
are concerned, and I think the military at the time,
that was a way fewer lives lost than they expected
had they had Hitler not swallowed Operation mince Me. Yeah,
they expected um ten thousand casualties in the first three
(39:25):
days and three hundred boats sunk in the first two days,
and it ended up being fourteen hundred in that first
week soldiers and about a dozen ships in that first week.
So that's not bad. Yeah, And not only that, but
it had another effect, big one the Soviets. Yeah. So
this is not something that they teach in American history
(39:45):
classes in US high schools that much the the Operation Husky.
Uh well, it was. It was that penetration of Europe's underbelly, right,
And suddenly Hitler said, Um, I'm about to dorm Russia,
but I really need these troops down here in Europe
because I got big problems. And that allowed basically Russia
(40:07):
to topple the Nazi regime and Mussolini get toppled by
the Brits. Yeah. It completely changed the face of the war.
This one idea cooked up by me and flaming in
part that crazy. It's pretty awesome. You got other stuff. Um,
there's a book called Operation Mincemeat by guy named Brett McIntyre. Alright,
(40:29):
it came out in two thousand ten. That's a very good,
well cited book, um, that we inadvertently cited here there. Um.
And then there's The Man Who Never Was, which was
written by you and Montague, which is not just about
Operation Mincemeat, but also about basically how to carry out
deception plans. All right. Remember earlier when I said, don't
feel too bad for uh, for glennd or Michael even
(40:52):
you said, well, the dude died, possibly of suicide because
he was penniless and going nowhere. Yeah, I feel bad
about that, but uh, fifty years after he was buried
in the British government added they basically buried him with
military honors. The Spanish did, Oh, yeah, he's buried in Spain,
(41:14):
but the British it came from the Brits, I think
to do so. His headstone um came from the Brits,
but the Spanish buried him with like the twenty one
gun salute and everything. Yes, says Glendor. Michael served as
Major William Martin, r M. Royal Marine. Pretty cool. Yeah,
so this alcoholic drifter who never served in the military,
(41:36):
ever served in the military, buried with full military honors. Yeah,
and completely changed the face of the war thanks to
being a body that fit the fit the bill. And
if you like ghoulish photos, is a very famous photo
of him being propped up in his life checket and
uniform as they were basically loading him into the cylinder
um that you can see by searching. I'm sure Major
(41:59):
Charles Martin, that's right, Charles Martin. No, William Martin, William Martin,
something like that. I still want to know what's going
on with that weird role playing there with the dude.
That's odd. Dylan Pam. Yeah, yeah, because they interviewed the
lady and she was just like, oh, it was all
very exciting. Yeah, that's a great British lady accent. Older
(42:19):
person yeah yeah, older adulder adult, yeah, oldie. If you
want to get or no, if you want to know
more about Operation Mincemeat, just type that word into your
favorite search engine or go check out the stuff you
missed in history class. Episode. And I said, Steve, you
missed in history class. It's time for listener mail. I'm
(42:40):
gonna call this bread crust. We had that discussion about
the crust and the in pieces, So this is from
a dad. Uh. Dear Chuck and Josh, your discussion of
the in slice of bread and the body language episode
brought ridiculous grin to my face as I walked around
my neighborhood. Ah, don't worry, though, my neighbors have thought
me to be eccentric for years. Now. Look at that
(43:03):
guy smiling. What a weirdo. We must be a pinko.
When our daughters were still tiny, my wife and I
realized we were doomed to eighteen ish years of eating
bread crusts pieces ourselves if we didn't figure something out
in quickly um our solution. We started calling those pieces
the lucky piece, and boy did we look our innocent,
(43:23):
trusting toddlers. Turns out your supposition is correct, chuck, at
least for children under eleven years old, even if their
honor students is mine, where they will fight you for
the right to eat that savory, ohso desirable piece of luck.
Nice idea younger adults. Rock on, guys, and please keep
my goofy grands coming. That is from Ted c O
(43:45):
I n e with a little uh. We call that
a coin a a I sent to do? No, I
don't know. I didn't take French. What do you call that?
A lagoon? Accent? Lagoom? So thanks Ted, I'll just call
you coin Yeah, thanks quin quin. Don't let's say coin there?
(44:08):
Uh yeah, thanks a lot ted. Ted contacted us on
Twitter so he wanted to send us this email. So
do you go, Ted? Wow? Um. If you want to
get in touch with us, you can try all the
ways like Ted did. You can contact us on Twitter
at s Y s K podcast. You can send us
an email to Stuff Podcast at how Stuff works dot com.
You can join us on Facebook dot com slash stuff.
(44:29):
You Should Know, and you can hang out at our
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com