January 31, 2026 • 45 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. Listen to this classic episode as Josh and Chuck take you through the real life tale.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hi, everybody, Happy Saturday.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
It's Chuck here, and I am picking out our select
for this week, and I'm going with a more recent one,
maybe controversial to do so, but it's our episode on
Operation Min's Meat. And I am picking that one because
I don't think we're able to record this for that episode.
But the Broadway show Operation Min's Meat was literally inspired
by this episode. The one of the stars and the
(00:24):
producers was all over Variety magazine and all over the
place in interview saying that her brother they were searching
for a show to do, to write and make into
a Broadway show, and he said, Hey, you should check
out this episode of stuff. You should know Operation Min's Meat.
This is this really crazy story and I think there's
something there. And there was something there because not only
did they make it to a Broadway show, it's been
(00:45):
a pretty big hit and was nominated for Tony Awards
and I am going to get to go see it
in New York City next weekend, and I'm super excited
because I think I get to meet the cast. So anyway,
here we go, everyone, another little feather in our cap
Operation mince Meat colon How a corpse Fooled the Nazis.
(01:08):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Charles 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
of my stupid thick tongue.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Oh you're gonna be forty yeah soon. Crazy.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Used to make fun of me, and now you're old.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Well, you're still older than me.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
I know that I can do about that.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
It's cool though. Yeah, you're aging very well. Yeah, no,
you're aging really well.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
But you mean the teeth falling out, the weight gain
and the gray beard.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
I still say you're aging very well.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
I appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Yeah, let's get your hair, take off your hat.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
I still got good hair.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Boom, look at that the got hat head now beautiful.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Okay, people think I'm bald. Some people do? Oh?
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Really like you're always wearing that hat, do you?
Speaker 1 (02:07):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Suspicious people, yeah, like the drummer for the Chili Peppers.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Anthony Keatith Flee Nope, the guy from Jane's Addiction, Nope
I don't know them, not.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
John for SHUNTI Chad Smith, the guy that looks like
Will Ferrell, He's always Will Ferrell.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
He's always got that hat on backwards.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
And he's bald. Oh yeah, totally Brett, like Brett Michael's bald.
I remember he always wears a do ragh. He's super bald.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
So I get why people are suspicious.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
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,
Operation mince meat yep, which is a ghoulish gallows humor
awesomely World War two British name for this, this operation. Yeah,
(03:00):
this will live alongside our Nazi spies and Invading Florida.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Podcast and the History Girls covered this this very topic
as well. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Man, there's nothing I love more than little known history.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
This is it. But this is great little known history.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Yeah, 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.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Well there was also have you seen that documentary Ghost
Army about Operation Fortitude. No, they used a bunch of
blow up tanks and planes, like inflatable tanks and planes
to make it look like there was a whole Allied
division over here. Yeah, so that we could invade Normandy moreas.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
It's like a Looney Tune cartoon.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Awesome, but yes, this ranks up there with literally with
the Trojan Horse. It's that ingenious and that wonderful.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
But so let's set the stage right, Okay, So in
early nineteen forty three, the war was very much undecided. Yeah,
it could have been anybody's. Like Europe was under the
control of Hitler, huge amounts of Europe. They called it
Fortress Europe because the Nazis were just had just overrun
(04:11):
the place, were dug in, and the Allies knew that
they needed to get into Europe to topple Hitler or else,
like they weren't going to win the war. Sure, so
Churchill suggested attacking Europe's under belly, which is maybe Italy,
Greece under Sirdinia. He called it the underbelly, not very flattering,
(04:32):
but he called it Europe's underbelly. So everybody, the Allies,
the Greeks, the Nazis, the Japanese, the people in Hawaii,
everybody knew. Yeah, they weren't American quite yet. Okay, everybody
knew that the Allies were going to attack somewhere in
(04:54):
that area.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Yeah, come up through the Mediterranean. Even Hitler feared this
the most.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Right, but key, right, And I mean everybody knew the
Allies were coming and they were going to come there.
But 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.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Yeah, we'll cover it all.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
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, yeah,
one was Sardinia, right, yeah, and then another was Sicily.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
And in nineteen forty three, I think January, the Allied
powers met in French Morocco and held a conference, the
Casablanca Conference, very sexy name, yeah, it really was, and
they said, okay, we're going to invade Sicily this July.
We're going to call it Operation Husky. Now we have
to do everything we can to not let the Nazis
(05:49):
know that that's where we're going. And that actually hatched
eventually what's called Operation Mincemeat.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Yeah, you know what, studying the stuff and I'm not
a big war buff, although I'm getting more so, but
reading up on this stuff, like the old wars are
so much like the board game risk.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Yeah, that it's startling.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Yeah, it's literally when you look at this stuff, it's
like moving troops to where you think people are gonna
attack you, right, and rolling the dice a bit, and
if you're right, then great. If not, you're screwed.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
Very much though, which is why it's such a huge
shift that we're seeing now moving to unconventional warfare, because.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
That's scary stuff.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Yeah. I think pretty much all war is scary. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Well, of course I'm not saying like Normandy was a
gay walker anything, because they knew what there was going on.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
Man, I watched Stavin 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.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
I never saw that one. The Mel Gibson w Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Dude, it's it's the most graphically violent mainstream movie ever made.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Really, yes, wow.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Yeah, Like there's a part where they have a shot
a camera shot over this guy's shoulder, right, so his
helmets 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. Wow,
his brains just cover the camera. It's disgusting.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Did you like Saving Private Ryan again?
Speaker 3 (07:23):
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 character in a
movie's life becomes, you know what I mean. That stuff
gets to.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
You, agreed. It's called growing up, my friend.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
I'm becoming human in it grows all right.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
So on September twenty ninth, nineteen thirty nine, there was
a director of British Naval Intelligence named Admiral John Godfrey,
and he distributed something called the Trout Memo and it
was written by his assistant Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming. Familiar name, yeah,
creator of James Bond.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
That's right, the guy.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
And I think most people know that he served at
this point. Yeah, but if you didn't, that's a nice
little factoid for you.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
So he wrote the Trout Memo, and they called it
the Trout Memo because they pointed out in the intro
that the trout fisherman fishes very patiently, but he changes
venue frequently. Yeah, and he changes his bait very frequently too,
And so they wanted to they're charged with deception. They
wanted to come up with all these different ideas, all
(08:34):
this different bait and venue changes that they could come
up with.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Yeah, and this was a time too.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
We should point out that spying, spying is always vital,
but man, in World War Two, it was going on
all over the place in a huge, huge part.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Of the war.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
So we need to do one on the Enigma machine,
by the way, at some point.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
We do, because that's one of the unsung heroes in
this operation.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Absolutely all right.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
So with the Trout Memo, Ian Fleming wrote, well, co
authored fifty one different operations suggestions, and number twenty eight
was one called a suggestion parentheses, not a very nice one.
The following suggestion is used in a book by Basil Thompson.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
I'm so pleased that you said Basil instead of Basil. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
In fact, that was a nineteen thirty seven dollars novel
The Milliner's Hat Mystery.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
And he was actually a World War One spy.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Oh really, yeah, it's all coming together.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
So he was a spy writer. That Ian Fleming, the
creator of James Bond Doug Crazy. So that's where this originates.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
So here, Oh, that's right.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
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 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
(10:06):
dress him up like a soldier, give him some sensitive
documents that leak this invasion fraudulent, fraudulent, yeah, very important,
that leak the invasion of Greece, which is not really happening.
And they're going to mount up troops there and we'll
actually go in sicily, they're gonna find this body. They're
gonna think they've stumbled upon this great happy accident, and
(10:28):
we're going to fool them.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
So yeah, that was the That was the whole idea.
That was the general basis of it.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
And Churchill loved the idea because apparently he liked what
he called corkscrewthinkers because he knew Hitler thought in a
straight line. Yes, and by corkscrew thinkers, I think that
would be our equivalent of.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Outside the box exactly.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Churchill was like, this is great, I love church Let's
drink some scotch and do it.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
Yeah, let's look like a bulldog while Yeah. So the
the well, that idea was roughly outlined by Ian Fleming,
and then the the Churchill's course crew thinkers, the XX
committee led by you and Montague and.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Chumley.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
Yeah, which is his name is not spelled Chumley?
Speaker 1 (11:17):
No, how's it spelled?
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Are you ready for this?
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (11:22):
Charles c h O l m O n d e
l e y pronounced Chumley. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
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.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
He would spell it out what he really Yeah?
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Are you making fun of me? Or is that for real?
Speaker 2 (11:41):
No?
Speaker 1 (11:41):
No, No, he was a very quirky guy.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
And that's how he described himself as toothpaste, as if
it had been squeezed from the tube like he self
described he would go hunting with a revolver, like bird hunting.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
He's a weird guy.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
I actually watched a quickie BuzzFeed video on this, huh
and they pronounced it Charles Charle.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Did they really?
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Nice, I'm glad we did our research. Shout out to BuzzFeed.
So you and Montague, right, yeah, the other guy. He
is noteworthy in a number of ways too. Apparently he's
just the greatest guy ever, most interesting man on the planet.
And he actually wrote the book, the first book on
Operation Mincemeat, because he was one of the people who
(12:23):
came up with this and implemented it.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
The man who was never there, the man who never
was got right.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
So came a movie too, Yeah, of the same name,
starring Montgomery Cliff, I believe, no, starring Cliff Clay Webb.
Cliff Claven Cliff Webb, but not Montgomery Cliff. Those two
are virtually interchangeable. So you and Montague was already notable
(12:51):
because at school he and his brother had created the
rules for ping pong.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
No way yeah, I did not know that.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Among other things, and his brother, equally interesting, equally rambunctious,
went on to become a spy for the Soviets.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Oh wow, yes, so he turned yes against England, yes, wow,
against everybody except for the Soviets. Well, Montague was a
he was formerly a barrister and attorney, and this is
why he actually did not go serve on a ship.
And the other guy, Chumbley, never flew a plane. One
(13:26):
was air Force, one was a navy, And apparently Montague
was as an attorney, was very good at just seeing
all the angles.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
So they said, you, sir, are perfect for this job.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Nice as why.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
Saish?
Speaker 3 (14:01):
All right, chuck, Yes, So we have the rough outline
that Ian Fleming came up with the XX Committee, led
by you and Montague and Charles.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Chumley, part of I five, I believe.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Okay, Yeah, said we're gonna take this particular idea and
really run with it. And like you said, they were
going to. Well, the first thing they did was start
setting about creating a backstory.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Yeah. Well they had three months, so the clock is
ticking at this point.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
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 plant this, this corpse, this
fake dead courier into Nazi hands, yea, and give the
with enough time so that the Nazis could digest it,
(14:47):
analyze it, decide 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.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Yeah, you wanted them. The ultimate goal was to have
the Nazis put their troops in the wrong place, and
that takes time.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Right, So they looked around and they decided that the
best place to carry out this operation was Spain. And
Spain during World War Two was allegedly ostensibly neutral, Sure,
but they had a lot of Axis sympathies, a lot
of connections to Nazi Germany. And there was a particular
Nazi agent, a spy working in a port called Whoevla.
(15:30):
Whoevla right, sure, and his name was Adolf Klaus. And
Adolf Klaus was known to be very methodical, pretty brutal,
and ruthless, extremely gullible.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Yeah, he was a straight line thinker. He was hitler.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
He wasn't one that could think outside the box and
think maybe this is an elaborate hoax.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
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.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Him, which is amazing.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
So they wanted this guy, who was fairly gullible but
also known as like a very respected Nazi agent in Spain,
to be the one who came up with this corpse
and cadaver. So before they ever had any corpse or
cadaver or anything like that, Montague and Chumley start setting
(16:19):
about creating a backstory. And they created this guy named
Major Martin, William Martin, that's right. And they created Major
William Martin, and they created this whole persona. And this
wasn't the first time they'd done it. They'd actually they
had chops with this kind of stuff. So they had
(16:40):
created a fake spy network that made Nazi Germany think
that they had a whole double double agent network in
the UK. And all of them were fictitious, not real
people that you and Montague and Charles Chumley had created.
These fake personas fed the Nazis misinformation through these people
(17:02):
that didn't really exist. So they took that understanding and
that thinking of what it takes to create a fake persona,
and they said about creating one for major William Martin.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Yeah, And there's a great BBC documentary on this, and
they interview a lot of the players, including a lot
of the women who worked at mi 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,
(17:33):
these made up people. 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,
(17:54):
ask him to open their wallet, you're gonna be able
to tell a lot about them. Sure, so just stuff
to legitimize it. So they said, let's give them a fiance, say,
and all the women in the office wanted to be
the fiance.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
Oh yeah, so.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
They all submitted photographs. They picked this one Lady Jean
Leslie secretary.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Okay, that's the lady on the beach.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Yes, picture of her in a bathing suit on the beach,
So this was going to be planted on his body.
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.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
The first couple drafts were really dirty, and they were like,
you kind of tone this down a little bit.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
You're like, is that what you think happens in a relationship.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
He's like, no, not me, the fictitious lady.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
So everyone's really excited. In the office.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Chumley is wearing what would eventually be the uniform of
Martin every day to give it that worn in look awesome.
Monta Hue actually ended up having an affair with the
secretary who gave him the photo as the fiance. Okay,
they had a real life affair as Bill and Pam.
Pam is the made up fiance. It got a little weird, weird,
(19:07):
like they wrote each other love letters, had a real
life affair, calling each other Bill and Pam.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Huh, so there was some like strange role playing going on.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
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, jeez, he was. He was allous
in that department.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
Well, you know also Roald Dahl, the guy who wrote
James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and Chocolate Factory.
He was a spy for the British. He was in
the British military and his whole job was to basically
bed the wives of American officials here in Washington. Really, yeah,
did he do so? Oh? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Oh wow?
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Oh he made his way through Washington society. Wow, apparently
with great zeal.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
All right, so they're cooking up this backstory.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
They get other great things for the wallet letter, like
theater ticket stubs and an overdraft letter from his bank,
and just these things that make it seem like super realistic.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Right, and what else? I think they gave him a
Saint Christopher Metal. Maybe they wanted to strongly imply that
he was Roman Catholic and that'll come up very It'll
become very important in a minute, right, yes, very much.
So they've got this backstory, and apparently like this. They
were working feverishly on this stuff, having the weirdo affair,
(20:24):
wearing the uniform, all that stuff before they'd even gotten
final approval, just because they didn't want to stop work
and then have to pick it up feverishly. They wanted
this to keep going. So they finally got final approval
from Admiral Godfrey 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
(20:47):
looking at first. They needed somebody who had relatives that
didn't care what happened to the body after death and
could keep their mouths shut. They needed a body that
was of military age, sure didn't have any signs of
visible trauma or right, and that that preferably they would
(21:12):
have died of pneumonia. And the reason that they wanted
him to die of pneumonia is because they they were
going to make it look like this guy had been
in a plane crash, but it survived the plane crash,
but it drowned at sea. And if he had pneumonia,
then his fluids would be filled with lungs, so that
when the Spanish conducted an autopsy on him, yes, exactly,
(21:33):
so that when the Spanish conducted their autopsy, 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
morgue at Saint Pancras Hospital, which is the worst hospital
(21:56):
name of all time. They turned him and got him
to assist them that they finally got their hands on
a body.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
His name was Sir Bentley Purchase, which is a great name,
British name, and it was a He was a corner
of the largest mortuary at sam Pancras, terrible, and he
had apparently a wicked sense of humor. It was pretty
complicated to give directions to his office. So when he
gave Montahu the directions, he said, or you could just
get run over by a buttz nice man.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
The British during wartime where they're having a blast, their
sense of humor was wonderful.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
So they got Bentley purchased and he said, I've got
a dude.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
His name is Glendore Michael.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
Yeah, that 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 oh nine. He
is the son of a coal miner. His father killed
himself by stabbing himself in the throat. I hadn't read that.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
That is a world man, and it didn't say like
your throat said, he stabbed himself in the throat, right,
which is weird and sad.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
Geez.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
So his dad died when he was a teenager, mother
died when he was thirty alcoholic, had a rough go
because of the depression, and was basically basically killed himself
by ingesting rat poison.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
So that is not necessarily resolved whether it was suicide. Yeah,
so the Bentley purchase wrote down that he 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
(23:36):
may have been so destitute 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.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
But they found him in this cold January night in
nineteen forty three, in this abandoned warehouse in London, and
he had just eaten some rat poison. But he survived
for two more days. Yeah, And so Bentley purchased got
his hands on him and said, I think I found
your guy. Dudes.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Yeah, and they did.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
There were some issues, of one of which is they
needed a photo of the guy for an ID.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
He didn't have any photos.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
Oh god.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
And every time they took.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
A picture of the dead guy's face, they were like,
he looks like a dead guy.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Yeah, really, so they scoured his eyes up.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
So they scoured London looking for a look alike and
eventually found a guy at a fellow intelligence officer who
looked just like him. Awes, so they used his face. Awesome,
the ID. It's all coming together, Yes it is.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
I'm sure. They were like, Wow, Providence is really smiling
on this. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
And if you're feeling bad for Glendor, just hang tight.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
Yeah, I still think you can feel bad for Glendor. Well, sure,
talk about a rough life, yeah, yeah, geez do you
remember that one Sara Night Live where Robert Duvall was
like super special guest who wasn't even hosting or mentioned. No,
he just showed up on this game show called Who's
More Grizzled? No Way, and he talks about like it
was him and uh gar Brooks, how did I miss that?
(25:01):
And he talks about how one one cole Winners, his
wife died and he had to keep her out in
the barn until the ground thowed so we could bury
her out back. What. Yeah, it was just weird, like
that 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? Any won? Of course because it's Robert duval.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Yeah, he's more grizzled than Garth Brooks or Chris.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
Yeah even yeah, yeah, poor Garth.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Not poor Darth Brooks. What are you talking about?
Speaker 3 (25:33):
I'm talking about the Chris Gaines thing.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
He chose to do it. He's a wealthy man. Yeah,
I don't feel too bad for.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
Him, but I think that was evidence that he was
surrounded by yes men at the time.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Yeah, maybe that was a weird thing though.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Yeah, you know, he faked a soul patch.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Oh that wasn't even real.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
No. I mean, even if it was real, it was
part of his character.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
It's like, sure, I thought you meant it was sharpie.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Maybe Okay, the hair was definitely colored with sharpie.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
All right, So where where are we here? We've got
a body. We finally got the photograph of them.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
Yeah, which is that's amazing. I didn't know that part.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
And there's another thing we found this awesome. A military
analysis of it.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
So that was kind of cool.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
Somebody wrote a military analysis of this. I don't remember who,
so I can't give them 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 XCES commit XX Committee
just had free run to break the law, bend morality,
do all sorts of stuff. They just were able to
(26:42):
go do their thing. But the other thing was is
that they really kept this a 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 Glenn dr kept him on ice for
three months as they finished his backstory. They're running up
against like go time, and then I think in February
(27:04):
or March April maybe I'm not sure of the date.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Do you know that what happened.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
When they finally carried out Operation mince Meat.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Let's just say spring, because I know that they kept
him on ice for a few months.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Yeah. And they so they're up to the point where
the decomp is about to give away that this guy
didn't just recently die.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Yeah, and that was a big fear that the Spanish
corners would be able to tell too, okay, which will
come up in a minute, Okay.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
And 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 Mints information. Sure,
so they finally they get the guy's 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
(27:52):
a subcommander who could keep his mouth shut, and they
gave him a metal cylinder with the corpse of glendor
Michael now Major William Martin Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
When you say subcommander, you mean submarine, Yes, not a
commander below regular commander.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Yeah, that submarine commander. Yeah. They gave him the cylinder
and they said, we're going to tell you what's in here.
Do not tell anybody else. So apparently the people staffing
this sub I thought this was some sort of weather bowy.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
Yeah, it was marked optical instruments. But you're right. He
was the only one on board supposedly that knew that
there was a body inside.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
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 us on a submarine.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Well, let's back up for one second, okay, because we
forgot to cover the main letter in the briefcase really important.
This was the all of operation mince Meat. It did
not hinge on theater ticket stubs or banked overdraft letters.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
That's merely pocket litter.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
It hinged on a letter.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Hinting strongly that the invade was going to come up
through Greece Sardinia.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
Right. And that was the other thing too. It wasn't
like official document invasion is going to come through Greece.
It was a letter from one general or admiral to
another high ranking guy, I.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Think General Nye.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
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.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
In your own handwriting everything. So it really was written
by this high ranking US military official or British military
official who wrote this fake letter.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
And he made a joke about sardines, a terrible joke,
which was the little hint that was just clever enough
to work.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Right, And so in it it basically says we're coming
up with the you know, we're going to strike through Greece,
that's where the invasion of Europe's going to be. But
we're also going to tell everybody that Sicily is the cover. Right.
And this was a stroke of genius because in this
false letter, not only does it show that they're coming
(30:06):
through Greece, which they weren't, but it says that Sicily's
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 that that was misinformation. Dude, it
was so ingenious, that's crazy genius. And I think about
here now, Chuck, we get to the point where we
(30:26):
should talk about the Enigma machine and the role it played, right.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Yeah, Well, basically we all know that the Enigma machine
was the code breaking machine invented in the UK to decipher.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
Well, the Enigma machine wrote the code.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
I think, oh it wrote the code. Yeah, and it
deciphered code though they'd gotten.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
They deciphered it at Bletchley Park. But I think the
Enigma machine was the actual code writing the encrypting machine.
I could be wrong, but.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Okay, well, so we definitely need to do a podcast
on that, right, because we're mixed up already.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
To get it straight.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
But at any rate, the long and short of it
is in Beckley Park? Was it Beckley Park?
Speaker 3 (31:06):
I always say Bletchley?
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Oh? It was there? An Ellen there?
Speaker 3 (31:08):
I draw the whole ugly word out.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
They basically had they could.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
It was like reading the Nazis email essentially, like on
a daily basis, on an 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.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
But even before that, they were able to craft this
this misinformation based on the Nazis assumption. So everybody wants
to hear that their assumptions that their beliefs are correct.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
People are more apt to buy that things that confirm
their suspicions of their beliefs already. Right.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Yeah, Hitler was worried about Sicily.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
He was, so he already thought that Greece was going
to be where we invaded.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
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, this false letter, completely supported everything that Hitler
(32:13):
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 Buttchley Park, right.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Yeah, and this letter too is here's another little tidbit.
They put a single eyelash in the fold of the letter,
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. And because the idea
was they would open it and reseal it and act
like we never saw it. But there wasn't that eyelash
(32:42):
and they'd know. So rudimentary, but it worked.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
Oh yeah, so should we take another break. Let's take a.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
Break as why sks?
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Okay, So, Chuck, we are at sea aboard a submarine.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
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 died.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
Yeah, what a bad idea. So we're off the coast
of Spain. We're off the coast of Huevla. Not an
easy word to say, but it's important Spain. And again
this is where Nazi agent ate off Klaus.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Yeah, they kind of want to float the body right
up to this guy's backyard basically.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
So they did. He was released from this canister. I
read somewhere else that the canister itself was fired on
with submar submachine guns on a sub so you could
just call the machine guns there. Yeah, and it was
sunk and the body drifted off toward Oh.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
I thought they just dumped the body.
Speaker 3 (34:02):
Yeah, I'm not sure, because I found a book on
Google Books. It was like from two thousand and seven
and it was a history book, gotcha, And it made
it sound like the sub, the people working on the
sub all knew what was going on. But that's in
stark contrast to everything else who's seen. Yeah, so they
may or may not have sunk the weatherby who knows,
(34:23):
but either way, Major Martin was released into the current
that took him right to Huevla and he went. I
think he was found by a fisherman that same day.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
Yeah, And at this point the Brits started sending telegrams
about a very important missing person frantic. Yeah, like they
wanted these to get intercepted obviously, and that worked as well.
This is all really going exactly as they had planned.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
So they sent the British Council in Spain in Huevla,
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
get your hands on his briefcase.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Yeah, and Klaus is going briefcase right hmm.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
As Monocle popped out and the British Council in Spain
didn't even know what was going on. Yeah, they thought
like this is like they were. They saw everything from
the same aspect of reality that the Nazis saw. Need
to know basis exactly. So the British Council are trying
to get this briefcase kind of frantically, and the Spaniards
were like, uh, you know what, we are just going
(35:29):
to keep this on lockdown for now as we investigate
the whole thing. But we got it covered. Remember we're neutral,
so your briefcase is safe. The British consul said, well, okay,
one thing, this is very important. Uh, this guy was
Roman Catholic. You can check out the metal in his pocket. Yeah,
so please don't dissect him. It's against Roman Catholic beliefs
(35:50):
and traditions to dissect our autopsy body. I hadn't heard before,
but apparently in the forties that was the case, and
Spain was way down with that super Roman Catholic and said, oh, yes,
of course we won't do that. So apparently that's how
they got around the fact that Glendor hadn't died of pneumonia.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
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 riding real soon. So how thorough
do you really want to make this? And they said,
you're right, Let's go have some wine. Some what do
they call it over there?
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Wine? No, what's the fruity sangria.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Yeah, let's go have some sangria and knock off early.
And that's exactly what happened thanks to the plant. So
this is going on. There was a small wrinkle at
this point. The briefcase went to Madrid. Spain wasn't going
to hand it over to anyone, but the Brits were
trying to get it in the hands of the Nazis.
And they're actually having trouble getting it into the hands
(36:51):
of the Nazis until a guy named Carlo Koulantal, he
was Hitler's most trusted guy in Spain. He got wind
of it and kind of took over for Klaus. Was like,
I'm going to get this briefcase, and he did. Nine
days later, after the body washed ashore, the letter ended
up in the hands of the German. The German, you know,
(37:15):
it worked his way.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
Up the chain, Yeah, to Hitler himself.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Yeah, I went to Gebels first and Gebels, even in
his diary they found later had suspicions about it.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
Oh yeah, because he was a corkscrew.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Thinker and he was like, wait a minute, this is
pretty convenient. Yeah, this is really fishy here. But he
apparently he never said anything to Hiller.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
He got distracted.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
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.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
Huh, that seems like bad idea.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
Yeah, and.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Homeboy Carlo Kuhlenthal, there was always a 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.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
So he thought, this is it.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
I've come upon the greatest find of the war and
it's all mine. So yeah, no one will ask any
questions about me after this.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
Huh. Wow, that worked out really really well.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
Yeah, very convenient.
Speaker 3 (38:17):
And thanks to the Enigma machine they knew the Brits
knew pretty quickly that this was working. And I guess
Montague and Chumley sent Admiral God for you a transmission
that said Operation mince Meat swallowed Rod Bline and Sinker.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
Yeah, that when the it's so 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.
You're supposed to call them older adults.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
Seniors. I didn't know that that was the thing.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Yeah, older adults.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
So they're interviewing these older adults, these British ladies that
are in their eighties now, and they were just all
so still excited, they said when they because you know,
with the Enigma machine, they were reading their emails and
they were like they knew they were buying it. They're
buying it, and everyone was just like flipped when that
came through the office. It was just like party time basically.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
So the Operation mints Me really really worked really well,
so much so that apparently Hitler moved a panzer division,
which totals about ninety thousand troops from Sicily to Greece.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Yeah, and and all the artillery and armaments and everything
not just soldiers, so.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
Long Sicily were going to Greece, and then up came
the Allies through Sicily, one hundred and sixty thousand Allied
troops stormed sicily, and only seven thousand lives were lost,
which is still 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
(39:53):
lives lost than they expected had they had Hitler not
swallowed Operation mince Me.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
Yeah, they expect did ten thousand casualties in the first
three 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.
Speaker 3 (40:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
And not only that, but it had another effect.
Speaker 3 (40:18):
Big one the Soviets. Yeah. So this is not something
that they teach in American history classes in US high
schools that much. The Operation Husky, it was that penetration
of Europe's under belly, right, Yeah. And suddenly Hitler said,
I'm about to storm Russia, but I really need these
(40:40):
troops down here in Europe because I got big problems. Yeah.
And that allowed basically Russia to topple the Nazi regime.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
And Mussolini get toppled by the Brits.
Speaker 3 (40:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
It completely changed the face of the war. Yeah, this
one idea cooked up by me and Fleming in part.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
Isn't it crazy?
Speaker 3 (40:58):
It's pretty awesome. Other stuff, there's a book called Operation
mince Meat by a guy named Brett McIntyre. All right,
it came out in twenty ten. That's a very good,
well cited book that we inadvertently cited here there. And
then there's The Man Who Never Was, which was written
by you and Montague, which is not just about Operation
(41:19):
mince Meat but also about basically how to carry out
deception plans.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
All right.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
Remember earlier when I said, don't feel too bad for Glendor, Michael, Yes,
even you said, well, the dude died, possibly of suicide
because he was penniless and going nowhere.
Speaker 3 (41:36):
Yeah, so I feel bad about that.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
But fifty years after he was buried, in nineteen ninety seven,
the British government added they basically buried him with military honors.
Speaker 3 (41:49):
The Spanish did, oh this.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
Yeah, he was buried in Spain, but the British it
came from the Brits, I think to do so.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
His headstone came from the Brits. But the Spanish buried
him with like the twenty one gun salute and everything.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
Yeah, says Glendor Michael served as Major William Martin, r M.
Royal Marine.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
Pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
Yeah, so this.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Alcoholic drifter who never served in the military, never served
in the military, buried with full military honors. Yeah, and
completely changed the face of the war thanks to being
a body.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
Yeah, that fit the fit the bill.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
And if you like ghoulish photos, is a very famous
photo of him being propped up in his life jacket
and uniform as they were basically loading him into the
cylinder that you can see by searching. I'm sure Major
Charles Martin, that's right, Charles Martin. No, William Martin, William Martin,
something like that.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
I still want to know what was going on with
that weird role playing there with the dude.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
That's odd.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
Dyll and Pam Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
Yeah, because they interviewed the lady and she was just like.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
Oh, it was all very exciting.
Speaker 3 (42:52):
Yeah, that's a great British lady accent older person, yeah yeah,
older adulder adult yeah yeah, boldie. 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, stuff you missed in
(43:14):
history class. It's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
I'm gonna call this bread crust.
Speaker 2 (43:20):
We had that discussion about the crust and the n pieces,
So this is.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
From a dad.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
Dear Chuck and Josh, your discussion of the inslice of
bread and the body language episode brought a ridiculous grin
to my face as I walked around my neighborhood. Don't worry, though,
my neighbors have thought me to be eccentric for years. Now,
look at that guy smiling.
Speaker 3 (43:41):
What a weirdo. We must be a pinko.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
When our daughters were still tiny, my wife and I
realized we were doomed to eighteenish years of eating bread
crust pieces ourselves if we.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
Didn't figure something out and quickly our solution.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
We started calling those pieces the lucky piece, and boy
did we rook our innocent, trusting toddlers. Turns out your
supposition is correct, Juck. At least for children under eleven
years old, even if they're honor students, is mine where
they will fight you for the right to eat that savory,
oh soo desirable piece of luck.
Speaker 3 (44:15):
Nice idea younger adults.
Speaker 2 (44:17):
Rock on, guys, and please keep my goofy grins coming.
That is from Ted sEH, I n e with a little.
Speaker 3 (44:26):
Quin a coin a coiny?
Speaker 1 (44:29):
Is that an accent a doo? No, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (44:31):
I didn't take French legom.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
What do you call that a lagom accent lagom?
Speaker 4 (44:36):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (44:37):
So thanks Ted, I'll just call you coin.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
Yeah, thanks Ted quin que.
Speaker 3 (44:44):
Let's say coin there. Yeah, thanks a lot, ted. Ted
contacted us on Twitter, so he wanted to send us
this email. So there you go, Ted.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (44:54):
If you want to get in touch with us, you
can send us an email to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio
dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Hi, everybody, Happy Saturday.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
It's Chuck here, and I am picking out our select
for this week, and I'm going with a more recent one,
maybe controversial to do so, but it's our episode on
Operation Min's Meat. And I am picking that one because
I don't think we're able to record this for that episode.
But the Broadway show Operation Min's Meat was literally inspired
by this episode. The one of the stars and the
(00:24):
producers was all over Variety magazine and all over the
place in interview saying that her brother they were searching
for a show to do, to write and make into
a Broadway show, and he said, Hey, you should check
out this episode of stuff. You should know Operation Min's Meat.
This is this really crazy story and I think there's
something there. And there was something there because not only
did they make it to a Broadway show, it's been
(00:45):
a pretty big hit and was nominated for Tony Awards
and I am going to get to go see it
in New York City next weekend, and I'm super excited
because I think I get to meet the cast. So anyway,
here we go, everyone, another little feather in our cap
Operation mince Meat colon How a corpse Fooled the Nazis.
(01:08):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3 (01:17):
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
Charles 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
of my stupid thick tongue.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Oh you're gonna be forty yeah soon. Crazy.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Used to make fun of me, and now you're old.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
Well, you're still older than me.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
I know that I can do about that.
Speaker 3 (01:41):
It's cool though. Yeah, you're aging very well. Yeah, no,
you're aging really well.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
But you mean the teeth falling out, the weight gain
and the gray beard.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
I still say you're aging very well.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
I appreciate it.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Yeah, let's get your hair, take off your hat.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
I still got good hair.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Boom, look at that the got hat head now beautiful.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Okay, people think I'm bald. Some people do? Oh?
Speaker 3 (02:04):
Really like you're always wearing that hat, do you?
Speaker 1 (02:07):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Suspicious people, yeah, like the drummer for the Chili Peppers.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Anthony Keatith Flee Nope, the guy from Jane's Addiction, Nope
I don't know them, not.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
John for SHUNTI Chad Smith, the guy that looks like
Will Ferrell, He's always Will Ferrell.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
He's always got that hat on backwards.
Speaker 3 (02:26):
And he's bald. Oh yeah, totally Brett, like Brett Michael's bald.
I remember he always wears a do ragh. He's super bald.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
So I get why people are suspicious.
Speaker 2 (02:37):
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,
Operation mince meat yep, which is a ghoulish gallows humor
awesomely World War two British name for this, this operation. Yeah,
(03:00):
this will live alongside our Nazi spies and Invading Florida.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Podcast and the History Girls covered this this very topic
as well. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
Man, there's nothing I love more than little known history.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
This is it. But this is great little known history.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Yeah, 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.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
Well there was also have you seen that documentary Ghost
Army about Operation Fortitude. No, they used a bunch of
blow up tanks and planes, like inflatable tanks and planes
to make it look like there was a whole Allied
division over here. Yeah, so that we could invade Normandy moreas.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
It's like a Looney Tune cartoon.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
Awesome, but yes, this ranks up there with literally with
the Trojan Horse. It's that ingenious and that wonderful.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
But so let's set the stage right, Okay, So in
early nineteen forty three, the war was very much undecided. Yeah,
it could have been anybody's. Like Europe was under the
control of Hitler, huge amounts of Europe. They called it
Fortress Europe because the Nazis were just had just overrun
(04:11):
the place, were dug in, and the Allies knew that
they needed to get into Europe to topple Hitler or else,
like they weren't going to win the war. Sure, so
Churchill suggested attacking Europe's under belly, which is maybe Italy,
Greece under Sirdinia. He called it the underbelly, not very flattering,
(04:32):
but he called it Europe's underbelly. So everybody, the Allies,
the Greeks, the Nazis, the Japanese, the people in Hawaii,
everybody knew. Yeah, they weren't American quite yet. Okay, everybody
knew that the Allies were going to attack somewhere in
(04:54):
that area.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
Yeah, come up through the Mediterranean. Even Hitler feared this
the most.
Speaker 3 (04:59):
Right, but key, right, And I mean everybody knew the
Allies were coming and they were going to come there.
But 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.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Yeah, we'll cover it all.
Speaker 3 (05:12):
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, yeah,
one was Sardinia, right, yeah, and then another was Sicily.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:27):
And in nineteen forty three, I think January, the Allied
powers met in French Morocco and held a conference, the
Casablanca Conference, very sexy name, yeah, it really was, and
they said, okay, we're going to invade Sicily this July.
We're going to call it Operation Husky. Now we have
to do everything we can to not let the Nazis
(05:49):
know that that's where we're going. And that actually hatched
eventually what's called Operation Mincemeat.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
Yeah, you know what, studying the stuff and I'm not
a big war buff, although I'm getting more so, but
reading up on this stuff, like the old wars are
so much like the board game risk.
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Yeah, that it's startling.
Speaker 2 (06:11):
Yeah, it's literally when you look at this stuff, it's
like moving troops to where you think people are gonna
attack you, right, and rolling the dice a bit, and
if you're right, then great. If not, you're screwed.
Speaker 3 (06:23):
Very much though, which is why it's such a huge
shift that we're seeing now moving to unconventional warfare, because.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
That's scary stuff.
Speaker 3 (06:31):
Yeah. I think pretty much all war is scary. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
Well, of course I'm not saying like Normandy was a
gay walker anything, because they knew what there was going on.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
Man, I watched Stavin 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.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
I never saw that one. The Mel Gibson w Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Dude, it's it's the most graphically violent mainstream movie ever made.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
Really, yes, wow.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
Yeah, Like there's a part where they have a shot
a camera shot over this guy's shoulder, right, so his
helmets 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. Wow,
his brains just cover the camera. It's disgusting.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Did you like Saving Private Ryan again?
Speaker 3 (07:23):
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 character in a
movie's life becomes, you know what I mean. That stuff
gets to.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
You, agreed. It's called growing up, my friend.
Speaker 3 (07:42):
I'm becoming human in it grows all right.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
So on September twenty ninth, nineteen thirty nine, there was
a director of British Naval Intelligence named Admiral John Godfrey,
and he distributed something called the Trout Memo and it
was written by his assistant Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming. Familiar name, yeah,
creator of James Bond.
Speaker 3 (08:06):
That's right, the guy.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
And I think most people know that he served at
this point. Yeah, but if you didn't, that's a nice
little factoid for you.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
So he wrote the Trout Memo, and they called it
the Trout Memo because they pointed out in the intro
that the trout fisherman fishes very patiently, but he changes
venue frequently. Yeah, and he changes his bait very frequently too,
And so they wanted to they're charged with deception. They
wanted to come up with all these different ideas, all
(08:34):
this different bait and venue changes that they could come
up with.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Yeah, and this was a time too.
Speaker 2 (08:39):
We should point out that spying, spying is always vital,
but man, in World War Two, it was going on
all over the place in a huge, huge part.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
Of the war.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
So we need to do one on the Enigma machine,
by the way, at some point.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
We do, because that's one of the unsung heroes in
this operation.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Absolutely all right.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
So with the Trout Memo, Ian Fleming wrote, well, co
authored fifty one different operations suggestions, and number twenty eight
was one called a suggestion parentheses, not a very nice one.
The following suggestion is used in a book by Basil Thompson.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
I'm so pleased that you said Basil instead of Basil. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
In fact, that was a nineteen thirty seven dollars novel
The Milliner's Hat Mystery.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
And he was actually a World War One spy.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Oh really, yeah, it's all coming together.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
So he was a spy writer. That Ian Fleming, the
creator of James Bond Doug Crazy. So that's where this originates.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
So here, Oh, that's right.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
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 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
(10:06):
dress him up like a soldier, give him some sensitive
documents that leak this invasion fraudulent, fraudulent, yeah, very important,
that leak the invasion of Greece, which is not really happening.
And they're going to mount up troops there and we'll
actually go in sicily, they're gonna find this body. They're
gonna think they've stumbled upon this great happy accident, and
(10:28):
we're going to fool them.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
So yeah, that was the That was the whole idea.
That was the general basis of it.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
And Churchill loved the idea because apparently he liked what
he called corkscrewthinkers because he knew Hitler thought in a
straight line. Yes, and by corkscrew thinkers, I think that
would be our equivalent of.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Outside the box exactly.
Speaker 3 (10:47):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Churchill was like, this is great, I love church Let's
drink some scotch and do it.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
Yeah, let's look like a bulldog while Yeah. So the
the well, that idea was roughly outlined by Ian Fleming,
and then the the Churchill's course crew thinkers, the XX
committee led by you and Montague and.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Chumley.
Speaker 3 (11:14):
Yeah, which is his name is not spelled Chumley?
Speaker 1 (11:17):
No, how's it spelled?
Speaker 3 (11:20):
Are you ready for this?
Speaker 1 (11:21):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (11:22):
Charles c h O l m O n d e
l e y pronounced Chumley. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
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.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
He would spell it out what he really Yeah?
Speaker 3 (11:39):
Are you making fun of me? Or is that for real?
Speaker 2 (11:41):
No?
Speaker 1 (11:41):
No, No, he was a very quirky guy.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
And that's how he described himself as toothpaste, as if
it had been squeezed from the tube like he self
described he would go hunting with a revolver, like bird hunting.
Speaker 1 (11:52):
He's a weird guy.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
I actually watched a quickie BuzzFeed video on this, huh
and they pronounced it Charles Charle.
Speaker 3 (12:01):
Did they really?
Speaker 1 (12:02):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (12:02):
Nice, I'm glad we did our research. Shout out to BuzzFeed.
So you and Montague, right, yeah, the other guy. He
is noteworthy in a number of ways too. Apparently he's
just the greatest guy ever, most interesting man on the planet.
And he actually wrote the book, the first book on
Operation Mincemeat, because he was one of the people who
(12:23):
came up with this and implemented it.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
The man who was never there, the man who never
was got right.
Speaker 3 (12:29):
So came a movie too, Yeah, of the same name,
starring Montgomery Cliff, I believe, no, starring Cliff Clay Webb.
Cliff Claven Cliff Webb, but not Montgomery Cliff. Those two
are virtually interchangeable. So you and Montague was already notable
(12:51):
because at school he and his brother had created the
rules for ping pong.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
No way yeah, I did not know that.
Speaker 3 (12:57):
Among other things, and his brother, equally interesting, equally rambunctious,
went on to become a spy for the Soviets.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Oh wow, yes, so he turned yes against England, yes, wow,
against everybody except for the Soviets. Well, Montague was a
he was formerly a barrister and attorney, and this is
why he actually did not go serve on a ship.
And the other guy, Chumbley, never flew a plane. One
(13:26):
was air Force, one was a navy, And apparently Montague
was as an attorney, was very good at just seeing
all the angles.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
So they said, you, sir, are perfect for this job.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
Nice as why.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
Saish?
Speaker 3 (14:01):
All right, chuck, Yes, So we have the rough outline
that Ian Fleming came up with the XX Committee, led
by you and Montague and Charles.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Chumley, part of I five, I believe.
Speaker 3 (14:12):
Okay, Yeah, said we're gonna take this particular idea and
really run with it. And like you said, they were
going to. Well, the first thing they did was start
setting about creating a backstory.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Yeah. Well they had three months, so the clock is
ticking at this point.
Speaker 3 (14:25):
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 plant this, this corpse, this
fake dead courier into Nazi hands, yea, and give the
with enough time so that the Nazis could digest it,
(14:47):
analyze it, decide 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.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Yeah, you wanted them. The ultimate goal was to have
the Nazis put their troops in the wrong place, and
that takes time.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Right, So they looked around and they decided that the
best place to carry out this operation was Spain. And
Spain during World War Two was allegedly ostensibly neutral, Sure,
but they had a lot of Axis sympathies, a lot
of connections to Nazi Germany. And there was a particular
Nazi agent, a spy working in a port called Whoevla.
(15:30):
Whoevla right, sure, and his name was Adolf Klaus. And
Adolf Klaus was known to be very methodical, pretty brutal,
and ruthless, extremely gullible.
Speaker 1 (15:43):
Yeah, he was a straight line thinker. He was hitler.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
He wasn't one that could think outside the box and
think maybe this is an elaborate hoax.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
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.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Him, which is amazing.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
So they wanted this guy, who was fairly gullible but
also known as like a very respected Nazi agent in Spain,
to be the one who came up with this corpse
and cadaver. So before they ever had any corpse or
cadaver or anything like that, Montague and Chumley start setting
(16:19):
about creating a backstory. And they created this guy named
Major Martin, William Martin, that's right. And they created Major
William Martin, and they created this whole persona. And this
wasn't the first time they'd done it. They'd actually they
had chops with this kind of stuff. So they had
(16:40):
created a fake spy network that made Nazi Germany think
that they had a whole double double agent network in
the UK. And all of them were fictitious, not real
people that you and Montague and Charles Chumley had created.
These fake personas fed the Nazis misinformation through these people
(17:02):
that didn't really exist. So they took that understanding and
that thinking of what it takes to create a fake persona,
and they said about creating one for major William Martin.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
Yeah, And there's a great BBC documentary on this, and
they interview a lot of the players, including a lot
of the women who worked at mi 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,
(17:33):
these made up people. 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,
(17:54):
ask him to open their wallet, you're gonna be able
to tell a lot about them. Sure, so just stuff
to legitimize it. So they said, let's give them a fiance, say,
and all the women in the office wanted to be
the fiance.
Speaker 3 (18:03):
Oh yeah, so.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
They all submitted photographs. They picked this one Lady Jean
Leslie secretary.
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Okay, that's the lady on the beach.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Yes, picture of her in a bathing suit on the beach,
So this was going to be planted on his body.
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.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
The first couple drafts were really dirty, and they were like,
you kind of tone this down a little bit.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
You're like, is that what you think happens in a relationship.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
He's like, no, not me, the fictitious lady.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
So everyone's really excited. In the office.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Chumley is wearing what would eventually be the uniform of
Martin every day to give it that worn in look awesome.
Monta Hue actually ended up having an affair with the
secretary who gave him the photo as the fiance. Okay,
they had a real life affair as Bill and Pam.
Pam is the made up fiance. It got a little weird, weird,
(19:07):
like they wrote each other love letters, had a real
life affair, calling each other Bill and Pam.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Huh, so there was some like strange role playing going on.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
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, jeez, he was. He was allous
in that department.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
Well, you know also Roald Dahl, the guy who wrote
James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and Chocolate Factory.
He was a spy for the British. He was in
the British military and his whole job was to basically
bed the wives of American officials here in Washington. Really, yeah,
did he do so? Oh? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Oh wow?
Speaker 3 (19:45):
Oh he made his way through Washington society. Wow, apparently
with great zeal.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
All right, so they're cooking up this backstory.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
They get other great things for the wallet letter, like
theater ticket stubs and an overdraft letter from his bank,
and just these things that make it seem like super realistic.
Speaker 3 (20:03):
Right, and what else? I think they gave him a
Saint Christopher Metal. Maybe they wanted to strongly imply that
he was Roman Catholic and that'll come up very It'll
become very important in a minute, right, yes, very much.
So they've got this backstory, and apparently like this. They
were working feverishly on this stuff, having the weirdo affair,
(20:24):
wearing the uniform, all that stuff before they'd even gotten
final approval, just because they didn't want to stop work
and then have to pick it up feverishly. They wanted
this to keep going. So they finally got final approval
from Admiral Godfrey 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
(20:47):
looking at first. They needed somebody who had relatives that
didn't care what happened to the body after death and
could keep their mouths shut. They needed a body that
was of military age, sure didn't have any signs of
visible trauma or right, and that that preferably they would
(21:12):
have died of pneumonia. And the reason that they wanted
him to die of pneumonia is because they they were
going to make it look like this guy had been
in a plane crash, but it survived the plane crash,
but it drowned at sea. And if he had pneumonia,
then his fluids would be filled with lungs, so that
when the Spanish conducted an autopsy on him, yes, exactly,
(21:33):
so that when the Spanish conducted their autopsy, 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
morgue at Saint Pancras Hospital, which is the worst hospital
(21:56):
name of all time. They turned him and got him
to assist them that they finally got their hands on
a body.
Speaker 1 (22:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
His name was Sir Bentley Purchase, which is a great name,
British name, and it was a He was a corner
of the largest mortuary at sam Pancras, terrible, and he
had apparently a wicked sense of humor. It was pretty
complicated to give directions to his office. So when he
gave Montahu the directions, he said, or you could just
get run over by a buttz nice man.
Speaker 3 (22:25):
The British during wartime where they're having a blast, their
sense of humor was wonderful.
Speaker 2 (22:30):
So they got Bentley purchased and he said, I've got
a dude.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
His name is Glendore Michael.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
Yeah, that 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 oh nine. He
is the son of a coal miner. His father killed
himself by stabbing himself in the throat. I hadn't read that.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
That is a world man, and it didn't say like
your throat said, he stabbed himself in the throat, right,
which is weird and sad.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
Geez.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
So his dad died when he was a teenager, mother
died when he was thirty alcoholic, had a rough go
because of the depression, and was basically basically killed himself
by ingesting rat poison.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
So that is not necessarily resolved whether it was suicide. Yeah,
so the Bentley purchase wrote down that he 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
(23:36):
may have been so destitute 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.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
But they found him in this cold January night in
nineteen forty three, in this abandoned warehouse in London, and
he had just eaten some rat poison. But he survived
for two more days. Yeah, And so Bentley purchased got
his hands on him and said, I think I found
your guy. Dudes.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Yeah, and they did.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
There were some issues, of one of which is they
needed a photo of the guy for an ID.
Speaker 1 (24:10):
He didn't have any photos.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
Oh god.
Speaker 1 (24:13):
And every time they took.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
A picture of the dead guy's face, they were like,
he looks like a dead guy.
Speaker 1 (24:18):
Yeah, really, so they scoured his eyes up.
Speaker 2 (24:22):
So they scoured London looking for a look alike and
eventually found a guy at a fellow intelligence officer who
looked just like him. Awes, so they used his face. Awesome,
the ID. It's all coming together, Yes it is.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
I'm sure. They were like, Wow, Providence is really smiling
on this. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
And if you're feeling bad for Glendor, just hang tight.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
Yeah, I still think you can feel bad for Glendor. Well, sure,
talk about a rough life, yeah, yeah, geez do you
remember that one Sara Night Live where Robert Duvall was
like super special guest who wasn't even hosting or mentioned. No,
he just showed up on this game show called Who's
More Grizzled? No Way, and he talks about like it
was him and uh gar Brooks, how did I miss that?
(25:01):
And he talks about how one one cole Winners, his
wife died and he had to keep her out in
the barn until the ground thowed so we could bury
her out back. What. Yeah, it was just weird, like
that 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? Any won? Of course because it's Robert duval.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
Yeah, he's more grizzled than Garth Brooks or Chris.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
Yeah even yeah, yeah, poor Garth.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Not poor Darth Brooks. What are you talking about?
Speaker 3 (25:33):
I'm talking about the Chris Gaines thing.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
He chose to do it. He's a wealthy man. Yeah,
I don't feel too bad for.
Speaker 3 (25:39):
Him, but I think that was evidence that he was
surrounded by yes men at the time.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Yeah, maybe that was a weird thing though.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Yeah, you know, he faked a soul patch.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
Oh that wasn't even real.
Speaker 3 (25:50):
No. I mean, even if it was real, it was
part of his character.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
It's like, sure, I thought you meant it was sharpie.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Maybe Okay, the hair was definitely colored with sharpie.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
All right, So where where are we here? We've got
a body. We finally got the photograph of them.
Speaker 3 (26:07):
Yeah, which is that's amazing. I didn't know that part.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:10):
And there's another thing we found this awesome. A military
analysis of it.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
So that was kind of cool.
Speaker 3 (26:18):
Somebody wrote a military analysis of this. I don't remember who,
so I can't give them 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 XCES commit XX Committee
just had free run to break the law, bend morality,
do all sorts of stuff. They just were able to
(26:42):
go do their thing. But the other thing was is
that they really kept this a 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 Glenn dr kept him on ice for
three months as they finished his backstory. They're running up
against like go time, and then I think in February
(27:04):
or March April maybe I'm not sure of the date.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
Do you know that what happened.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
When they finally carried out Operation mince Meat.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Let's just say spring, because I know that they kept
him on ice for a few months.
Speaker 3 (27:17):
Yeah. And they so they're up to the point where
the decomp is about to give away that this guy
didn't just recently die.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Yeah, and that was a big fear that the Spanish
corners would be able to tell too, okay, which will
come up in a minute, Okay.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
And 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 Mints information. Sure,
so they finally they get the guy's 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
(27:52):
a subcommander who could keep his mouth shut, and they
gave him a metal cylinder with the corpse of glendor
Michael now Major William Martin Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:03):
When you say subcommander, you mean submarine, Yes, not a
commander below regular commander.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Yeah, that submarine commander. Yeah. They gave him the cylinder
and they said, we're going to tell you what's in here.
Do not tell anybody else. So apparently the people staffing
this sub I thought this was some sort of weather bowy.
Speaker 2 (28:23):
Yeah, it was marked optical instruments. But you're right. He
was the only one on board supposedly that knew that
there was a body inside.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
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 us on a submarine.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Well, let's back up for one second, okay, because we
forgot to cover the main letter in the briefcase really important.
This was the all of operation mince Meat. It did
not hinge on theater ticket stubs or banked overdraft letters.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
That's merely pocket litter.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
It hinged on a letter.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Hinting strongly that the invade was going to come up
through Greece Sardinia.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
Right. And that was the other thing too. It wasn't
like official document invasion is going to come through Greece.
It was a letter from one general or admiral to
another high ranking guy, I.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Think General Nye.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
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.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
In your own handwriting everything. So it really was written
by this high ranking US military official or British military
official who wrote this fake letter.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
And he made a joke about sardines, a terrible joke,
which was the little hint that was just clever enough
to work.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Right, And so in it it basically says we're coming
up with the you know, we're going to strike through Greece,
that's where the invasion of Europe's going to be. But
we're also going to tell everybody that Sicily is the cover. Right.
And this was a stroke of genius because in this
false letter, not only does it show that they're coming
(30:06):
through Greece, which they weren't, but it says that Sicily's
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 that that was misinformation. Dude, it
was so ingenious, that's crazy genius. And I think about
here now, Chuck, we get to the point where we
(30:26):
should talk about the Enigma machine and the role it played, right.
Speaker 2 (30:31):
Yeah, Well, basically we all know that the Enigma machine
was the code breaking machine invented in the UK to decipher.
Speaker 3 (30:41):
Well, the Enigma machine wrote the code.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
I think, oh it wrote the code. Yeah, and it
deciphered code though they'd gotten.
Speaker 3 (30:48):
They deciphered it at Bletchley Park. But I think the
Enigma machine was the actual code writing the encrypting machine.
I could be wrong, but.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
Okay, well, so we definitely need to do a podcast
on that, right, because we're mixed up already.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
To get it straight.
Speaker 1 (31:01):
But at any rate, the long and short of it
is in Beckley Park? Was it Beckley Park?
Speaker 3 (31:06):
I always say Bletchley?
Speaker 1 (31:07):
Oh? It was there? An Ellen there?
Speaker 3 (31:08):
I draw the whole ugly word out.
Speaker 1 (31:11):
They basically had they could.
Speaker 2 (31:13):
It was like reading the Nazis email essentially, like on
a daily basis, on an 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.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
But even before that, they were able to craft this
this misinformation based on the Nazis assumption. So everybody wants
to hear that their assumptions that their beliefs are correct.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:39):
People are more apt to buy that things that confirm
their suspicions of their beliefs already. Right.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
Yeah, Hitler was worried about Sicily.
Speaker 3 (31:46):
He was, so he already thought that Greece was going
to be where we invaded.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (31:52):
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, this false letter, completely supported everything that Hitler
(32:13):
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 Buttchley Park, right.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Yeah, and this letter too is here's another little tidbit.
They put a single eyelash in the fold of the letter,
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. And because the idea
was they would open it and reseal it and act
like we never saw it. But there wasn't that eyelash
(32:42):
and they'd know. So rudimentary, but it worked.
Speaker 3 (32:46):
Oh yeah, so should we take another break. Let's take a.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
Break as why sks?
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Okay, So, Chuck, we are at sea aboard a submarine.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
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 died.
Speaker 3 (33:22):
Yeah, what a bad idea. So we're off the coast
of Spain. We're off the coast of Huevla. Not an
easy word to say, but it's important Spain. And again
this is where Nazi agent ate off Klaus.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
Yeah, they kind of want to float the body right
up to this guy's backyard basically.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
So they did. He was released from this canister. I
read somewhere else that the canister itself was fired on
with submar submachine guns on a sub so you could
just call the machine guns there. Yeah, and it was
sunk and the body drifted off toward Oh.
Speaker 1 (34:00):
I thought they just dumped the body.
Speaker 3 (34:02):
Yeah, I'm not sure, because I found a book on
Google Books. It was like from two thousand and seven
and it was a history book, gotcha, And it made
it sound like the sub, the people working on the
sub all knew what was going on. But that's in
stark contrast to everything else who's seen. Yeah, so they
may or may not have sunk the weatherby who knows,
(34:23):
but either way, Major Martin was released into the current
that took him right to Huevla and he went. I
think he was found by a fisherman that same day.
Speaker 2 (34:34):
Yeah, And at this point the Brits started sending telegrams
about a very important missing person frantic. Yeah, like they
wanted these to get intercepted obviously, and that worked as well.
This is all really going exactly as they had planned.
Speaker 3 (34:49):
So they sent the British Council in Spain in Huevla,
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
get your hands on his briefcase.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Yeah, and Klaus is going briefcase right hmm.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
As Monocle popped out and the British Council in Spain
didn't even know what was going on. Yeah, they thought
like this is like they were. They saw everything from
the same aspect of reality that the Nazis saw. Need
to know basis exactly. So the British Council are trying
to get this briefcase kind of frantically, and the Spaniards
were like, uh, you know what, we are just going
(35:29):
to keep this on lockdown for now as we investigate
the whole thing. But we got it covered. Remember we're neutral,
so your briefcase is safe. The British consul said, well, okay,
one thing, this is very important. Uh, this guy was
Roman Catholic. You can check out the metal in his pocket. Yeah,
so please don't dissect him. It's against Roman Catholic beliefs
(35:50):
and traditions to dissect our autopsy body. I hadn't heard before,
but apparently in the forties that was the case, and
Spain was way down with that super Roman Catholic and said, oh, yes,
of course we won't do that. So apparently that's how
they got around the fact that Glendor hadn't died of pneumonia.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:07):
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 riding real soon. So how thorough
do you really want to make this? And they said,
you're right, Let's go have some wine. Some what do
they call it over there?
Speaker 3 (36:27):
Wine? No, what's the fruity sangria.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Yeah, let's go have some sangria and knock off early.
And that's exactly what happened thanks to the plant. So
this is going on. There was a small wrinkle at
this point. The briefcase went to Madrid. Spain wasn't going
to hand it over to anyone, but the Brits were
trying to get it in the hands of the Nazis.
And they're actually having trouble getting it into the hands
(36:51):
of the Nazis until a guy named Carlo Koulantal, he
was Hitler's most trusted guy in Spain. He got wind
of it and kind of took over for Klaus. Was like,
I'm going to get this briefcase, and he did. Nine
days later, after the body washed ashore, the letter ended
up in the hands of the German. The German, you know,
(37:15):
it worked his way.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
Up the chain, Yeah, to Hitler himself.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
Yeah, I went to Gebels first and Gebels, even in
his diary they found later had suspicions about it.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
Oh yeah, because he was a corkscrew.
Speaker 2 (37:25):
Thinker and he was like, wait a minute, this is
pretty convenient. Yeah, this is really fishy here. But he
apparently he never said anything to Hiller.
Speaker 3 (37:34):
He got distracted.
Speaker 2 (37:35):
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.
Speaker 3 (37:42):
Huh, that seems like bad idea.
Speaker 1 (37:44):
Yeah, and.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
Homeboy Carlo Kuhlenthal, there was always a 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.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
So he thought, this is it.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
I've come upon the greatest find of the war and
it's all mine. So yeah, no one will ask any
questions about me after this.
Speaker 3 (38:12):
Huh. Wow, that worked out really really well.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
Yeah, very convenient.
Speaker 3 (38:17):
And thanks to the Enigma machine they knew the Brits
knew pretty quickly that this was working. And I guess
Montague and Chumley sent Admiral God for you a transmission
that said Operation mince Meat swallowed Rod Bline and Sinker.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
Yeah, that when the it's so 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.
You're supposed to call them older adults.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
Seniors. I didn't know that that was the thing.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Yeah, older adults.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
So they're interviewing these older adults, these British ladies that
are in their eighties now, and they were just all
so still excited, they said when they because you know,
with the Enigma machine, they were reading their emails and
they were like they knew they were buying it. They're
buying it, and everyone was just like flipped when that
came through the office. It was just like party time basically.
Speaker 3 (39:10):
So the Operation mints Me really really worked really well,
so much so that apparently Hitler moved a panzer division,
which totals about ninety thousand troops from Sicily to Greece.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Yeah, and and all the artillery and armaments and everything
not just soldiers, so.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
Long Sicily were going to Greece, and then up came
the Allies through Sicily, one hundred and sixty thousand Allied
troops stormed sicily, and only seven thousand lives were lost,
which is still 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
(39:53):
lives lost than they expected had they had Hitler not
swallowed Operation mince Me.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
Yeah, they expect did ten thousand casualties in the first
three 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.
Speaker 3 (40:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
And not only that, but it had another effect.
Speaker 3 (40:18):
Big one the Soviets. Yeah. So this is not something
that they teach in American history classes in US high
schools that much. The Operation Husky, it was that penetration
of Europe's under belly, right, Yeah. And suddenly Hitler said,
I'm about to storm Russia, but I really need these
(40:40):
troops down here in Europe because I got big problems. Yeah.
And that allowed basically Russia to topple the Nazi regime.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
And Mussolini get toppled by the Brits.
Speaker 3 (40:50):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
It completely changed the face of the war. Yeah, this
one idea cooked up by me and Fleming in part.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
Isn't it crazy?
Speaker 3 (40:58):
It's pretty awesome. Other stuff, there's a book called Operation
mince Meat by a guy named Brett McIntyre. All right,
it came out in twenty ten. That's a very good,
well cited book that we inadvertently cited here there. And
then there's The Man Who Never Was, which was written
by you and Montague, which is not just about Operation
(41:19):
mince Meat but also about basically how to carry out
deception plans.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
All right.
Speaker 2 (41:24):
Remember earlier when I said, don't feel too bad for Glendor, Michael, Yes,
even you said, well, the dude died, possibly of suicide
because he was penniless and going nowhere.
Speaker 3 (41:36):
Yeah, so I feel bad about that.
Speaker 2 (41:37):
But fifty years after he was buried, in nineteen ninety seven,
the British government added they basically buried him with military honors.
Speaker 3 (41:49):
The Spanish did, oh this.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
Yeah, he was buried in Spain, but the British it
came from the Brits, I think to do so.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
His headstone came from the Brits. But the Spanish buried
him with like the twenty one gun salute and everything.
Speaker 2 (42:01):
Yeah, says Glendor Michael served as Major William Martin, r M.
Royal Marine.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
Pretty cool.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
Yeah, so this.
Speaker 2 (42:10):
Alcoholic drifter who never served in the military, never served
in the military, buried with full military honors. Yeah, and
completely changed the face of the war thanks to being
a body.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
Yeah, that fit the fit the bill.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
And if you like ghoulish photos, is a very famous
photo of him being propped up in his life jacket
and uniform as they were basically loading him into the
cylinder that you can see by searching. I'm sure Major
Charles Martin, that's right, Charles Martin. No, William Martin, William Martin,
something like that.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
I still want to know what was going on with
that weird role playing there with the dude.
Speaker 3 (42:45):
That's odd.
Speaker 1 (42:46):
Dyll and Pam Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
Yeah, because they interviewed the lady and she was just like.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
Oh, it was all very exciting.
Speaker 3 (42:52):
Yeah, that's a great British lady accent older person, yeah yeah,
older adulder adult yeah yeah, boldie. 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, stuff you missed in
(43:14):
history class. It's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
I'm gonna call this bread crust.
Speaker 2 (43:20):
We had that discussion about the crust and the n pieces,
So this is.
Speaker 1 (43:25):
From a dad.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
Dear Chuck and Josh, your discussion of the inslice of
bread and the body language episode brought a ridiculous grin
to my face as I walked around my neighborhood. Don't worry, though,
my neighbors have thought me to be eccentric for years. Now,
look at that guy smiling.
Speaker 3 (43:41):
What a weirdo. We must be a pinko.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
When our daughters were still tiny, my wife and I
realized we were doomed to eighteenish years of eating bread
crust pieces ourselves if we.
Speaker 1 (43:51):
Didn't figure something out and quickly our solution.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
We started calling those pieces the lucky piece, and boy
did we rook our innocent, trusting toddlers. Turns out your
supposition is correct, Juck. At least for children under eleven
years old, even if they're honor students, is mine where
they will fight you for the right to eat that savory,
oh soo desirable piece of luck.
Speaker 3 (44:15):
Nice idea younger adults.
Speaker 2 (44:17):
Rock on, guys, and please keep my goofy grins coming.
That is from Ted sEH, I n e with a little.
Speaker 3 (44:26):
Quin a coin a coiny?
Speaker 1 (44:29):
Is that an accent a doo? No, I don't know.
Speaker 3 (44:31):
I didn't take French legom.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
What do you call that a lagom accent lagom?
Speaker 4 (44:36):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (44:37):
So thanks Ted, I'll just call you coin.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
Yeah, thanks Ted quin que.
Speaker 3 (44:44):
Let's say coin there. Yeah, thanks a lot, ted. Ted
contacted us on Twitter, so he wanted to send us
this email. So there you go, Ted.
Speaker 1 (44:53):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (44:54):
If you want to get in touch with us, you
can send us an email to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio
dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (45:05):
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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