Selects: Operation Mincemeat: How A Corpse Fooled the Nazis

Summary

Stuff You Should Know

Episode: Operation Mincemeat: How A Corpse Fooled the Nazis

Hosts: Josh Clark & Charles W. "Chuck" Bryant
Date: January 31, 2026
Podcast: iHeartPodcasts

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Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into Operation Mincemeat, an audacious British deception plot during World War II. Josh and Chuck unravel how the Allies used the corpse of an unknown man to mislead the Nazis about the impending Allied invasion of southern Europe, helping turn the tide of the war. Expect clever history, some dark humor, and plenty of larger-than-life characters behind one of history's greatest military hoaxes.

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1. Setting the Stage: Wartime Context

00:54–07:00

• 1943 Europe: Hitler's forces dominate Europe. The Allies need an opening to strike back.
• Churchill’s Strategy: Attack the “underbelly” (Italy, Greece, Sardinia).
  • Everyone—including the Nazis—suspects this region is the target.
• Operation Husky: Allies decide Sicily will be the real invasion point, but must convince the Nazis the assault will occur elsewhere.

"They said, okay, we're going to invade Sicily this July... Now we have to do everything we can to not let the Nazis know that's where we're going. And that actually hatched eventually what's called Operation Mincemeat."
—Josh Clark [06:40]

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2. Origin of Operation Mincemeat

07:01–13:12

• Trout Memo: British Naval Intelligence (written by Ian Fleming, creator of James Bond) suggests novel deception strategies.

• Key Proposal (#28):

  "A corpse dressed as an airman with dispatches in his pockets could be dropped on the coast..."
  —Trout Memo [10:22]

• Objective: Fool Nazis into thinking Greece (not Sicily) will be invaded.

• Leadership: The XX Committee (led by Ewen Montagu & Charles Cholmondeley).

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3. Construction of the Deception

13:13–23:13

• Montagu & Cholmondeley: Both quirky, creative, and skilled at spycraft ("corkscrew thinkers").

• Fake Identity:

  • Major William Martin, Royal Marines.
  • Elaborate backstory: fiancée ("Pam"), love letters, wallet litter (ticket stubs, bank letters), Roman Catholic medals.
  • Staff at MI5 immerse themselves—some getting weirdly invested (e.g., Montagu had an affair with the secretary who posed as Martin's fiancée) [20:25].

• Why such detail?

  "If you find any person on the street, ask him to open their wallet, you're gonna be able to tell a lot about them. So just stuff to legitimize it."
  —Chuck Bryant [19:24]

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4. Securing the Body

22:17–27:48

• Criteria: Needed a young man, unclaimed, died without visible trauma—preferably of pneumonia (to mimic death-by-drowning).
• Glyndwr Michael: Welsh drifter, possibly poisoned (rat poison on bread)—chosen for the role.
  • The coroner, Bentley Purchase, assists.
• Challenges:
  • No living photos of Michael; a lookalike provided photo for ID [25:46].
  • Body kept on ice for months as details finalized.

"Every time they took a picture of the dead guy's face, they were like, he looks like a dead guy."
—Chuck Bryant [25:46]

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5. The Drop—Executing the Ruse

29:04–38:18

• Transport: Submarine delivers the body (now "Major Martin") in a canister to the Spanish coast, near Huelva (where Nazi agent Klaus operates).

• Briefcase Details:

  • Contains fake top-secret documents, including a "hinting" letter (not an overt plan) strongly suggesting an invasion of Greece or Sardinia.
  • Ingenious touch: Also says Sicily is a "cover," so even if true info leaks, Nazis would second-guess.
  • Eyelash placed in the letter fold to test if it is ever opened [33:53].

• Body Discovery: Spanish authorities recover the body and briefcase.

  • British insist on "no autopsy" for Catholic reasons.
  • Helpful plant encourages coroner to expedite and avoid thorough examination [37:31].

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6. Did the Nazis Take the Bait?

38:19–41:46

• Nazi Intelligence Chain:
  • Briefcase reaches Hitler via high-level Nazi agents—both competent and gullible.
  • Nazi skepticism was present but overruled (Goebbels wonders if it's too convenient but lets it pass).
  • Enigma machine intercepts confirm Nazis are re-allocating troops [40:07].

"Operation Mincemeat swallowed rod, blind, and sinker."
—Transmission from Montagu & Cholmondeley to Admiral Godfrey [40:07]

• Impact:
  • Hitler moves 90,000 troops away from Sicily to Greece.
  • Actual Allied landing in Sicily meets far less resistance than predicted.
  • Soviet Union benefits, allowing further advances against Nazi Germany.

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7. Outcomes and Legacy

41:47–44:33

• Military Impact:

  • Only 7,000 Allied casualties in the invasion of Sicily (far fewer than feared).

• Long-Term Effects:

  • Operation Mincemeat's success demonstrates the power of strategic deception.
  • Soviet successes partially result from Hitler's diverted focus.

• Glyndwr Michael Honored:

  • 50 years later, Michael receives a grave marker noting his role as Major Martin.

"To this alcoholic drifter who never served in the military... buried with full military honors and completely changed the face of the war thanks to being a body that fit the bill."
—Chuck Bryant [43:54]

• Cultural Footprint:
  • Books and movies ("The Man Who Never Was") retell the operation.
  • The real-life figures' eccentricities and secret office romances add a surreal touch to the legend.

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8. Notable Quotes & Highlights

• On Churchill and deception planners:

  "Churchill loved the idea because apparently he liked what he called corkscrew thinkers. Because he knew Hitler thought in a straight line."
  —Chuck Bryant [11:36]

• Goebbels' skepticism, ultimately ignored:

  "In his diary they found later, [Goebbels] had suspicions about it…But apparently he never said anything to Hitler."
  —Chuck Bryant [38:56]

• Summary of the ruse’s effect:

  "Hitler moved a Panzer division, which totals about 90,000 troops from Sicily to Greece..."
  —Josh Clark [41:01]

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9. Key Timestamps

• Operation's WWII Context: 04:55–07:00
• Trout Memo & Ian Fleming: 09:06–11:16
• Montagu & Cholmondeley introduced: 12:15–13:12
• Creating Major Martin’s backstory: 18:00–22:17
• Finding Glyndwr Michael: 23:03–27:48
• Details of the deception letter: 30:17–33:53
• Spanish handling of the body/briefcase: 36:07–38:18
• Nazi reaction and the Enigma machine: 38:19–41:05
• Results & legacy: 41:47–44:33

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10. Memorable Moments

• Josh and Chuck’s affable banter on the absurdities of spycraft and hats.
• Discussion of MI5 women "auditioning" to be the fake fiancée.
• The morbid humor surrounding the search for the "right" corpse.
• Discovery that Roald Dahl was a real-life WWII seduction spy [21:13].
• The elaborate little touches—like the inclusion of an eyelash to prove Nazi tampering.

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11. Further Resources Mentioned

• Books:

  • "Operation Mincemeat" by Ben Macintyre (2010)
  • "The Man Who Never Was" by Ewen Montagu

• Documentary: BBC doc featuring interviews with MI5 women

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12. Final Thoughts

Operation Mincemeat stands out as a testament to wit, creativity, and moral complexity in warfare. From its James Bond origins to its nearly unbelievable execution, the episode unpacks how a single lifeless body confounded the Nazi war machine and possibly saved thousands of lives.

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For an even deeper dive:
Search for "Operation Mincemeat" or check out the related episode on Stuff You Missed In History Class.

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Summary compiled in the informative, conversational spirit of Stuff You Should Know.

Transcript

[Podcast Announcer]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Did you know Tide has been upgraded to provide an even better clean in cold water. Tide is specifically designed to fight any stain you throw at it, even in cold butter. Yep. Chocolate ice cream. Sure thing. Barbecue sauce. Tide's got you covered. You don't need to use warm water. Additionally, Tide pods let you confidently fight tough stains with new coldzyme technology. Just remember, if it's gotta be clean, it's gotta be tied.

[NBC Sports Promoter]

Friday, kick off the Winter Olympics in style with the opening ceremony from Italy. Featuring a special performance by Mariah Carey. Celebrate the greatest athletes from around the globe as they come together to go for gold. Let's see for sensational, the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics. Gilgamesh redefining this Sport. Friday at 8 Eastern, 7 Central on NBC. And Peacock.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hi, everybody. Happy Saturday. 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 Mincemeat, and I am picking that one because I don't think we were able to record this for that episode. But the Broadway show Operation Mincemeat was literally inspired by this episode. One of the stars and the producers was all over Variety magazine and all over the place in interviews saying that her brother, they were searching for a show to do, to write and, you know, make into a Broadway show. And he said, hey, you should check out this episode of Stuff youf Should Know. Operation Mincemeat. It's 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 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 Mincemeat. Colon. How a Corpse Fooled the Nazis.

[Podcast Announcer]

Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartradio.

[Josh Clark]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry Rowland. This is Stone. You should know. Chuck.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yo.

[Josh Clark]

I'm 39 years old and I still can't say my own name correctly because of my stupid thick tongue.

[Chuck Bryant]

Ooh, you're gonna be 40.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Soon.

[Chuck Bryant]

Crazy. Yeah, you used to make fun of me, and now you're old.

[Josh Clark]

Well, you're still older than me.

[Chuck Bryant]

I Know, nothing I can do about that.

[Josh Clark]

That's cool, though.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

You're aging very well. Yeah, no, you're aging really well.

[Chuck Bryant]

You mean the teeth falling out, the weight gain and the. The gray beard?

[Josh Clark]

I still say you're aging very well.

[Chuck Bryant]

I appreciate it. Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Let's do your hair. Take off your hat.

[Chuck Bryant]

I still got good hair.

[Josh Clark]

Boom. Look at that.

[Chuck Bryant]

They got hat head now.

[Josh Clark]

Beautiful. Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

People think I'm bald. Some people do.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, really?

[Chuck Bryant]

Like you're always wearing that hat. Why do you.

[Josh Clark]

Why?

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't know.

[Josh Clark]

Suspicious people.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Like the drummer for the Chili Peppers.

[Josh Clark]

Anthony Kiedis. Flea.

[Chuck Bryant]

Nope.

[Josh Clark]

The guy from Jane's Addiction.

[Chuck Bryant]

Nope.

[Josh Clark]

I don't know.

[Chuck Bryant]

Then not John Fruscianti. Chad Smith. The guy that looks like Will Ferrell.

[Josh Clark]

He's always Will Ferrell.

[Chuck Bryant]

He's always got that hat on backwards. And he's bald. Oh, yeah, totally.

[Josh Clark]

Brett. Like Brett Michaels bald. Remember, he always wears a durag. Yeah, he's super bald.

[Chuck Bryant]

So I get why people are suspicious. If you're a public figure that has a patented hat piece, then it's probably because you're bald. But not in my case. What a weird way to start the show.

[Josh Clark]

Especially this show, Operation Mincemeat.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yep.

[Josh Clark]

Which is a ghoulish gallows humor. Awesomely. World War II British name for this. This operation.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. This will live alongside our Nazi spies and invading Florida podcast.

[Josh Clark]

And the History Girls covered this very topic as well.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, man. There's nothing I love more than little known history.

[Josh Clark]

This is it. But this is great. Little known history.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

Well, there was also. Have you seen that documentary Ghost army about Operation Fortitude?

[Chuck Bryant]

No.

[Josh Clark]

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 more easily.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's like a Looney Tunes cartoon.

[Josh Clark]

Awesome. But yes. This ranks up there with literally with the Trojan horse. It's that ingenious and that wonderful.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

But so let's set the stage. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

So in early 1943, the war was very much undecided.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

It could have been anybody's. Like your Europe was under the control of Hitler.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Huge amounts of. They called it Fortress Europe because the Nazis had just overrun the place. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

They were dug in.

[Josh Clark]

And the allies knew that they needed to get into Europe to topple Hitler or else they weren't going to win the war. So Churchill suggested attacking Europe's underbelly, which is maybe Italy, Greece, Sardinia. He called it the underbelly. Not very flattering, but he called it Europe's underbelly. So everybody, the Allies, the Greeks, the Nazis, the Japanese, 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 that area.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Come up through the Mediterranean. Even Hitler feared this the most.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

That was key.

[Josh Clark]

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 sea is large enough that you can't just be like, oh, they're coming down there. We got it covered.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. We'll cover it all.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

One was Sardinia. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And then another was sicily. And in 1943, I think January, the Allied powers met in French Morocco and held a conference. The Casablanca Conference.

[Chuck Bryant]

Very sexy name.

[Josh Clark]

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 know that that's where we're going. And that actually hatched eventually. What's called Operation Mincemeat.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. You know what? Studying this 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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

That it's startling.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's literally when you look at this stuff, it's like moving troops to where you think people are gonna attack you.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And rolling the dice a bit. And if you're right, then great. If not, you're screwed.

[Josh Clark]

Very much so. Which is why it's such a huge shift that we're seeing now moving to unconventional warfare.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's scary stuff.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I think pretty much all war is scary.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Well, of course, I'm not saying, like, Normandy was a cakewalk or anything, because they knew what was going on.

[Josh Clark]

Right. Man, I watched Saving Private Ryan again the other day. God, it's crazy. That thing's almost a snuff film. It's not as bad as We Were Soldiers, which is a snuff film, but it's.

[Chuck Bryant]

I never saw that one. The Mel Gibson.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Dude. It's. It's the most graphically violent Mainstream movie ever made.

[Chuck Bryant]

Really?

[Josh Clark]

Yes.

[Chuck Bryant]

Wow.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Like, there's a part where there's. There they have a shot, a camera shot over this guy's shoulder, right. So his helmets in the. In the near foreground. And that guy takes a hit to the head and, like, blood spray covers the camera lens for the next, like, little while.

[Chuck Bryant]

Wow.

[Josh Clark]

His brains just cover the camera. It's disgusting.

[Chuck Bryant]

Did you like Saving Private Ryan again, though?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it's 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 you.

[Chuck Bryant]

Agreed. It's called growing up, my friend.

[Josh Clark]

I'm becoming human, isn't it? Gross.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so on September 29, 1939, 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.

[Josh Clark]

Familiar name.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Creator of James Bond.

[Josh Clark]

That's right.

[Chuck Bryant]

The guy. And I think most people know that he served at this point.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

But if you didn't, that's a nice little factoid for you.

[Josh Clark]

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. 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 this different bait and venue changes that they could come up with.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And this was a time, too, we should point out, that spying is always vital. But, man, in World War II, it was going on all over the place. And a huge, huge part of the war.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

So we need to do one on the Enigma machine, by the way, at some point.

[Josh Clark]

We do, because that's one of the unsung heroes in this operation.

[Chuck Bryant]

Absolutely. All right, so with the Trout Memo, Ian Fleming wrote. Well, co authored 51 different operations suggestions. And number 28 was one called a suggestion. Parentheses. Not a very nice one. The following suggestion is used in a book by Basil Thompson.

[Josh Clark]

I'm so pleased that you said Basil instead of Basil. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

In fact, that was a 1937 novel, the Milliner's Hat Mystery.

[Josh Clark]

And he was actually a World War I spy.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, really? Yeah, it's all coming together.

[Josh Clark]

So he was a spy writer that Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, dug.

[Chuck Bryant]

Crazy.

[Josh Clark]

So that's where this originates.

[Chuck Bryant]

So here I'm getting excited. That's right. The following suggestion is used in a book by Basil Thompson, Colon. 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 and 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 dress them up like a soldier, give them some sensitive documents that leak this invasion.

[Josh Clark]

Fraudulent.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 going to find this body. They're going to think they've stumbled upon this great happy accident and we're gonna fool him.

[Josh Clark]

So, yeah, that was the. That was the whole idea. That was the general basis of it.

[Chuck Bryant]

And Churchill loved the idea because apparently he liked what he called corkscrew thinkers.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Because he knew Hitler thought in a straight line.

[Josh Clark]

Yes.

[Chuck Bryant]

And by corkscrew thinkers, I think that would be our equivalent of outside the box.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Churchill was like, this is great.

[Josh Clark]

I love Churchill.

[Chuck Bryant]

Let's drink some Scotch and do it.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Let's look like a bulldog while we do, too. Yeah. So that idea was roughly outlined by Ian Fleming. And then the Churchill's corkscrew thinkers, the XX Committee, led by Ewan, Montague and.

[Chuck Bryant]

Cholmondeley.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Which is his name is not spelled Chumley.

[Chuck Bryant]

No. How's it spelled?

[Josh Clark]

Are you ready for this?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Charles C, H O L M O N D E L E, Y. Pronounced Chumley.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And apparently when he met people, he would say, Lieutenant Charles Cholmondeley. C H O L, M O, N, D E L, E, Y. He would spell it out.

[Josh Clark]

What he. Really?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Are you making fun of me or is that for real?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, no, no. He was a very quirky guy and that's how he. 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. He's a weird guy. I actually watched a Quickie buzzfeed video on this and they pronounced it Charles Cholomondele.

[Josh Clark]

Did they really?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Nice. I'm glad we did our research.

[Chuck Bryant]

Exactly.

[Josh Clark]

Shout out to buzzfeed. So you and Montague, Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

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. Yeah. And he actually wrote the book, the first book on Operation Mincemeat, because he was one of the people who came up with this and implemented it.

[Chuck Bryant]

The man who was never there, the.

[Josh Clark]

Man who never was got right.

[Chuck Bryant]

So became a movie too.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Of the same name.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Starring Montgomery Clift, I believe. No. Starring Cliff Clavin Webb. Cliff Clavin.

[Chuck Bryant]

Cliff Webb.

[Josh Clark]

But not Montgomery Clift.

[Chuck Bryant]

No.

[Josh Clark]

Those two are virtually interchangeable.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

So Ewan Montague was already notable because at school he and his brother had created the rules for ping pong.

[Chuck Bryant]

No way.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

I did not know that.

[Josh Clark]

Among other things. And his brother, equally interesting, equally rambunctious, went on to become a spy for the Soviets.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, wow.

[Josh Clark]

Yes.

[Chuck Bryant]

So he turned.

[Josh Clark]

Yes.

[Chuck Bryant]

Against England.

[Josh Clark]

Yes.

[Chuck Bryant]

Wow.

[Josh Clark]

Against everybody except for the Soviets.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, Montague was. He was formerly a barrister, an attorney, and this is why he actually did not go serve on a ship. And the other guy, Chumley, never flew a plane. One was Air Force, one was Navy, and apparently Montague was, as an attorney, was very good at just seeing all the angles. So they said, you, sir, are perfect for this job.

[Josh Clark]

Nice.

[Chuck Bryant]

S Y L Y S K S K.

[NBC Sports Promoter]

Friday, kick off the Winter Olympics in style with the opening ceremony from Italy, featuring a special performance by Mariah Carey. Celebrate the greatest athletes from around the globe as they come together to go for gold. Let's see, for sensational, the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics. Ilia Malady redefining the sport Friday at 8 Eastern, 7 Central on NBC. And Peacock.

[Josh Clark]

Stuff you should know. All right, Chuck.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes.

[Josh Clark]

So we have the rough outline that Ian Fleming came up with the XX Committee, led by Ewan Montague and Charles Chumley.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, part of MI5, I believe.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, well, they had three months, so the clock is ticking at this point. Yeah. Because here's the thing, they set the.

[Josh Clark]

Invasion right in January, and they set the invasion for July.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Now. Now you needed enough time to plant this corpse, this fake dead courier into Nazi hands with enough time so that the Nazis could digest it, 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. You wanted them. The ultimate goal was to have the Nazis put their troops in the wrong place. And that takes time Right.

[Josh Clark]

So they looked around and they decided that the best place to carry out this operation was Spain. And Spain during World War II 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 Huevla. Right, sure. And his name was Adolph Klaus.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And Adolph Klaus was known to be very methodical.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Pretty brutal and ruthless.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Extremely gullible.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. He was a straight line thinker. He was like Hitler. He wasn't one that could think outside the box and think, maybe this is an elaborate hoax.

[Josh Clark]

That guy didn't even own a real corkscrew.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. You know, like, they targeted this guy.

[Josh Clark]

Cut the top off of wine bottles.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, they specifically targeted him, which is amazing.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

So before they ever had any corpse or cadaver or anything like that, Montague and. And Chumley start setting about creating a backstory. And they created this guy named Major Martin.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, William Martin.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So they had created a fake spy network that made Nazi Germany think that they had a whole double agent network in the uk. And all of them were fictitious, not real people that Ewan Montague and Charles Cholmondeley had created these fake Personas.

[Chuck Bryant]

Amazing.

[Josh Clark]

And it fed the Nazis misinformation through these people that didn't really exist. So they took that understanding and that thinking of what it takes to create a fake Persona, and they set about creating one for Major William Martin.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 MI5 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 spy novel. And they were living it.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And so they all had great fun creating these characters, 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.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Which is if you find any person on the street, ask him to open their wallet, you're gonna be able to tell a lot about them.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

So just stuff to legitimize it. So they said, let's give him a fiance. And all the women in the office wanted to be the fiance.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

So they all submitted photographs. They picked this one lady, Jean Leslie, secretary.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. That's the lady on the beach.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 Leggart, the head Secretary of MI5. And she wrote all. Even though she was a spinster, she wrote all these, like, heartfelt love letters.

[Josh Clark]

The first couple drafts were really dirty and they were like, you gotta tone this down a little bit.

[Chuck Bryant]

Is that what you think happens in a relationship?

[Josh Clark]

She's like, no, not me. The fictitious lady.

[Chuck Bryant]

So everyone's really excited. In the office, Chumlee is wearing what would eventually be the uniform of Martin every day to give it that worn in look.

[Josh Clark]

Awesome.

[Chuck Bryant]

Montague actually ended up having an affair with the secretary who gave him the photo as the fiance.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

They had a real life affair as Bill and Pam. Pam is the made up fiance. It got a little weird.

[Josh Clark]

That is a little weird.

[Chuck Bryant]

Like, they wrote each other love letters, had a real life affair calling each other Bill and Pam.

[Josh Clark]

Huh.

[Chuck Bryant]

So there was some, like, strange role playing going on. I'm sure he was married at the time. His family had been shipped to America, so he was not doing the right thing there. Jeez, he was a louse in that department.

[Josh Clark]

Well, you know, also Roald Dahlia, 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Really?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Did he do so?

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, wow.

[Josh Clark]

Oh. He made his way through Washington society.

[Chuck Bryant]

Wow.

[Josh Clark]

Apparently with great zeal.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so they're cooking up this backstory. They get other great things for the wallet litter, like theater ticket stubs and an overdraft letter from his bank and just these things that make it seem like super realistic.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And what else? I think they gave him a St. Christopher medal. 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?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes, very much so.

[Josh Clark]

They've got this backstory, and apparently like this. They were working feverishly on this stuff. Having the weirdo affair, wearing the uniform, all that stuff, before they'd even gotten 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And they figured no problem. They were looking at first, they needed somebody who. 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, didn't have any signs of visible trauma.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. Or been run over by a bus.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Or died of scurvy.

[Josh Clark]

Sure. And that preferably, they would have died of pneumonia. 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 had survived the plane crash but had drowned at sea.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

And if he had pneumonia, then his fluids would be filled with lungs. So that when the Spanish conducted an autopsy on him. Yeah, exactly. 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 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 St. Pancras Hospital, which is the worst hospital name of all time, they turned him and got him to assist them that they finally got their hands on a body.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. His name was Sir Bentley Purchase, which is a great name, great British name. And he was a coroner of the largest mortuary at San Pancras. Terrible. And he had apparently a wicked sense of humor. It was pretty complicated to give directions to his office. So he gave Montague the directions. He said, or you could just get run over by a bus.

[Josh Clark]

Nice man. The British during wartime were.

[Chuck Bryant]

They were having a blast.

[Josh Clark]

Their sense of humor was wonderful.

[Chuck Bryant]

So they got Bentley Purchase, and he said, I've got a dude. His name is Glyndore Michael.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. That is not how that's spelled either.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, it is. G, L, Y, N, D, W, R. Super Welsh. Yeah. He was a Welshman. Born in 1909. He was the son of a coal miner. His father killed himself by Stabbing himself in the throat.

[Josh Clark]

I hadn't read that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Can you imagine a worship? And it didn't say, like, slit your throat. It said he stabbed himself in the throat.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Which is weird and sad.

[Josh Clark]

Jeez.

[Chuck Bryant]

So his dad died when he was a teenager, mother died when he was 30, alcoholic, had a rough go because of the depression, and was basically. Basically killed himself by ingesting rat poison.

[Josh Clark]

So that is not necessarily resolved.

[Chuck Bryant]

What? Whether it was suicide.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So they. The Bentley purchase wrote down that he killed himself.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. It was ruled a suicide.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. But the way that he ate the rat poison, it was on a crust of bread.

[Chuck Bryant]

So he was hungry.

[Josh Clark]

They wondered. So he 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Wow.

[Josh Clark]

But they found him in this cold January night in 1943 in this abandoned warehouse in London, and he had just eaten some rat poison. But he survived for two more days.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And so Bentley purchase got his hands on him and said, I think I found your guy, dudes.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And they did. There were some issues, one of which is they needed a photo of the guy for an id. He didn't have any photos.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, God.

[Chuck Bryant]

And every time they took a picture of the dead guy's face, they were like, he looks like a dead guy.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Really?

[Chuck Bryant]

So they scoured.

[Josh Clark]

I could see your fingers holding his eyes open.

[Chuck Bryant]

So they scoured London looking for a lookalike and eventually found a guy, a fellow intelligence officer, who looked just like him.

[Josh Clark]

Awesome.

[Chuck Bryant]

So they used his face.

[Josh Clark]

Awesome.

[Chuck Bryant]

For the id. It's all coming together.

[Josh Clark]

Yes, it is. I'm sure they were like, wow, Providence is really smiling on this.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And if you're feeling bad for Glyndor, just hang tight.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I still think you can feel bad for Glyndor.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, sure.

[Josh Clark]

Talk about a rough life, man.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Geez. Do you remember that one Saturday Night Live where Robert Duvall was, like, super special guest? He wasn't even hosting or mentioned. He just showed up on this game show called who's More Grizzled?

[Chuck Bryant]

No way.

[Josh Clark]

And he talks about, like, it was him and Garth Brooks.

[Chuck Bryant]

How did I miss that?

[Josh Clark]

And he talks about how one. One cold winter, his wife died and he had to keep her out in the barn until the ground thawed so we could bury her out back.

[Chuck Bryant]

What?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it was just weird like that. It wasn't even really funny. It was more just like, wow, that really is hard. But the whole Game show was. Who's more grizzled?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, sure.

[Josh Clark]

Anyone.

[Chuck Bryant]

Of course.

[Josh Clark]

Because it's Robert Duvall.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. He's more grizzled than Garth Brooks or Chris Gaines.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, even. Even. Yeah, yeah. Poor Garth Brooks.

[Chuck Bryant]

Not poor Garth Brooks. What are you talking about?

[Josh Clark]

I'm talking about the Chris Gaines thing.

[Chuck Bryant]

He chose to do it. He's a wealthy man. Yeah. Don't feel too bad for him.

[Josh Clark]

I think that was evidence that he was surrounded by yes men at the time.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Maybe. That was a weird thing, though.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. He faked a soul patch.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, that wasn't even real.

[Josh Clark]

No, I mean, even if it was real, it was part of his character. It's like.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, sure. I thought you meant it was Sharpie, maybe. Okay.

[Josh Clark]

The hair was definitely colored with Sharpie.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, so where. Where are we here? We've got a body. We finally got the photograph of him.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Which is. That's amazing. I didn't know that part.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And there's another thing. We found this. Awesome. A military analysis of it. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

That was kind of cool.

[Josh Clark]

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 XX Committee just had free run to break the law, bend morality, do all sorts of stuff. They just were able to go do their thing. But the other thing was, is that they really kept this lid on this stuff, and it was all disseminated on a need to know basis. So when they had this guy, they had him. They had. They got Glyndur, 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 or March or April maybe, I'm not sure of the date.

[Chuck Bryant]

Do you know what happened when they.

[Josh Clark]

Finally carried out Operation Mincemeat?

[Chuck Bryant]

Let's just say spring, because I know that they kept him on ice for a few months.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And that was a big fear that the Spanish coroners would be able to tell too.

[Josh Clark]

Okay.

[Chuck Bryant]

Which will come up in a minute.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. 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 misinformation.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

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 a sub commander who could keep his mouth shut, and they gave him a metal cylinder with the corpse of Glyndwr Michael. Now Major William Martin.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And when you say sub commander, you mean submarine.

[Josh Clark]

Yes.

[Chuck Bryant]

Not a commander below.

[Josh Clark]

Regular commander. Yeah, submarine commander. 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 thought this was some sort of weather buoy.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. It was marked optical instruments. But you're right, he was the only one on board, supposedly, that knew there was a body inside.

[Josh Clark]

Yep. And they put a life jacket on them, stuffed them in the cylinder, put them on the sub, and took them over to Spain on a submarine.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, let's back up for one second, too, because we forgot to cover the main letter in the briefcase.

[Josh Clark]

Really important.

[Chuck Bryant]

This was all of Operation Mincemeat. It did not hinge on theater ticket stubs or bank overdraft letters.

[Josh Clark]

That's merely pocket litter.

[Chuck Bryant]

It hinged on a letter hinting strongly that the invasion was going to come up through Greece, Sardinia.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And that was the other thing, too. It wasn't like official document, invasion is going to come through Greece.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes.

[Josh Clark]

It was a letter from one general or admiral to another high ranking guy.

[Chuck Bryant]

Think General Nye. They composed a bunch of different letters themselves. And finally they said, why don't you write it in your own words, in.

[Josh Clark]

Your own language, 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

And he made a joke about sardines, a terrible joke, which was the little hint that was just clever enough to work. Right.

[Josh Clark]

And so in it, it basically says, we're coming up, you know, we're going to strike through Greece. That's where the invasion of Europe is going to be.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

But we're also going to tell everybody that Sicily is the COVID Right, Right. And this was a stroke of genius.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Because in this. This false letter, not only does it show that they're coming through Greece, which they weren't.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

But it says that Sicily's the COVID which would make the Nazis think that if anyone ever did actually leak the real invasion plan of Sicily.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

The Nazis would think that that was misinformation.

[Chuck Bryant]

Dude, it was so ingenious.

[Josh Clark]

That's crazy ingenious. And I think about here now, Chuck, we get to the point where we should talk about the Enigma machine and the role it played, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Well, basically we all know that the Enigma machine was the code breaking machine invented in the UK to decipher.

[Josh Clark]

Well, the Enigma machine wrote the code, I think.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, it wrote the code.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And I thought it deciphered code that they gotten.

[Josh Clark]

They deciphered it at Bletchley park, but I think the Enigma machine was the actual code writing the encrypting machine.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

I could be wrong, but.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, well, so we definitely need to do a podcast on that.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Because we're mixed up already to get it straight. But at any rate, the long and short of it is in Beckley Park. Was it Beckley Park?

[Josh Clark]

I always say Bletchley.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, is it? Was there an L in there?

[Josh Clark]

I draw the whole ugly word out.

[Chuck Bryant]

They basically had. They could. It was like reading the Nazis email essentially, like on a daily basis.

[Josh Clark]

On an hourly basis.

[Chuck Bryant]

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.

[Josh Clark]

But even before that, they were able to craft this. This misinformation based on the Nazis assumptions. So everybody wants to hear that their assumptions that their beliefs are correct. Yeah, People are more apt to buy that. Things that confirm their suspicions or their beliefs already. Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And Hitler was worried about Sicily.

[Josh Clark]

He was. So he already thought that Greece was going to be where we invaded.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And then secondly, we knew that he had heard rumors that Mussolini was going to be toppled soon. So he was reticent that to commit troops to Italy. Sicily. Right. So this revelation that came in the form of this letter, this false letter, completely supported everything that Hitler and the Third Reich believed as far as this European invasion was going to go. And we were able to do that thanks to the Smarties at Bletchley Park. Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And this letter too. 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 Nazis had in fact opened it.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And because the idea was they would open it, reseal it and act like we never saw it.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

But there wasn't that eyelash. Then they'd know.

[Josh Clark]

Nice.

[Chuck Bryant]

So rudimentary, but it worked.

[Josh Clark]

Oh yeah. So should we take another break? Let's take a break.

[Chuck Bryant]

S Y L Y S K SK.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, so, Chuck, we are at sea aboard a submarine.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. It's chilly down here. And dark.

[Josh Clark]

It is.

[Chuck Bryant]

And you're not supposed to be smoking cigars.

[Josh Clark]

No, you're not.

[Chuck Bryant]

Despite Gene Hackman doing it in Crimson Tide.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. What a bad idea.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So we're off the coast of Spain. We're off the coast of Huevla. Not an easy word to say, but it's a port in Spain. And again, this is where Nazi agent Adolf Klaus.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, they kind of want to float the body right up to this guy's backyard, basically.

[Josh Clark]

So they did. He was released from this canister. I read somewhere else that the canister itself was fired on with submachine guns on a sub. So you could just call them machine guns there.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And it was sunk, and the body drifted off toward.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, I thought they just dumped the body.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I'm not sure because I found a book on Google books. It was, like, from 2007, and it was a history book.

[Chuck Bryant]

Gotcha.

[Josh Clark]

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 we've seen.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So they may or may not have sunk the weather buoy. Who knows? 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And at this point, the Brits started sending telegrams about a very important missing person.

[Josh Clark]

Frantic.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Like, they wanted these to get intercepted, obviously. And that worked as well. This is all really going exactly as they had planned.

[Josh Clark]

So they sent the British Council in Spain, in Huevola or in Spain to Huevola and said, 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.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And Klaus is going, briefcase.

[Josh Clark]

Right. His monocle popped out. And the British Council in Spain didn't even know what was going on. Yeah, they thought like this, where they saw everything from the same aspect of reality that the Nazis saw.

[Chuck Bryant]

Need to know basis.

[Josh Clark]

Exactly. So the British Council are trying to get this briefcase kind of frantically. And the Spaniards were like, you know what? We are just going 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. And the British Consulate said, well, okay, one thing. This is very important. This guy was Roman Catholic. You can check out the medal in his Pocket. So please don't dissect him. It's against Roman Catholic beliefs and traditions to dissect your autopsy body. I hadn't heard before, but apparently in the 40s, that was the case.

[Chuck Bryant]

Spain was way down with that super.

[Josh Clark]

Roman Catholic, and they said, oh, yes, of course, we won't do that. So apparently that's how they got around the fact that Glyndwer hadn't died of pneumonia.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And the other way they got around it was they had a plant in the office who talked to the coroners and was like, guys, it's hot and this body is gonna start rotting real soon. So how thorough do you really want to make this? And they said, you're right. Let's go have some mug, some wine, some. What do they call it over there, Wine? No. What's the fruity?

[Josh Clark]

Sangria.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, let's go have some sangria and knock off early. And that's exactly what happened, thanks to the plant.

[Josh Clark]

Great.

[Chuck Bryant]

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 of the Nazis. Until a guy named Carlo Coulenthal. 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 gonna 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, worked its way up the chain.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. To Hitler himself.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. It went to Goebbels first. And Goebbels, even in his diary they found later, had suspicions about it.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Because he was a corkscrew thinker. And he was like, wait a minute.

[Josh Clark]

This is pretty convenient.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, this is really fishy here. But apparently he never said anything to Hitler.

[Josh Clark]

He got distracted.

[Chuck Bryant]

He wrote about it in his diary like kittens. The documentary said his thinking was, well, if Hitler believes it, then that's good enough for me.

[Josh Clark]

Huh. That seems like bad idea.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And homeboy Carlo Coulenthal, 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.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And it turns out his grandmother was Jewish, and he was very paranoid about this being found out, so he thought, this is it. I've come upon the greatest find of the war and it's all mine. So, yeah. No one Will ask any questions about me after this.

[Josh Clark]

Huh. Wow. That worked out really, really well.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Very convenient.

[Josh Clark]

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 Godfrey a transmission that said, operation Mincemeat swallowed rod blind and sinker.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. It's so cool seeing these old. Like, apparently you're not supposed to say elderly anymore, by the way. We got an email.

[Josh Clark]

I knew that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Or seniors. You're supposed to call them older adults.

[Josh Clark]

Seniors. I didn't know that that was a thing.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, older adults. So they're interviewing these older adults, these British ladies that are in their 80s now, and they were just all so. Still excited, they said when they. Because, you know, with the Enigma machine, they were basically reading their emails and they were like. They knew they were buying it. They're buying it. And everyone was just, like, flipped when it came through the office. It was just like, party time, basically.

[Josh Clark]

So the Operation Mincemeat really, really worked really well. So much so that apparently Hitler moved a Panzer division, which totals about 90,000 troops from Sicily to Greece.

[Chuck Bryant]

And all artillery and armaments and everything, not just soldiers.

[Josh Clark]

So long. Sicily. We're going to Greece. And then up came the allies through Sicily. 160,000 Allied troops stormed Sicily and only 7,000 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, there was a way fewer lives lost than they expected.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Had they. Had Hitler not swallowed Operation Mincemeat?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. They expected 10,000 casualties in the first three days and 300 boats sunk in the first two days, and it ended up being 1400 in that first week. Soldiers and about a dozen ships in that first week.

[Josh Clark]

So that's not bad.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And not only that, but it had another effect.

[Josh Clark]

Big one.

[Chuck Bryant]

The Soviets.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So this is not something that they teach in American history classes in U.S. high schools that much. The. The Operation Husky, it was. It was that penetration of Europe's underbelly. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And suddenly Hitler said, I'm about to storm Russia, but I really need these troops down here in Europe because I got big problems.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And that allowed basically Russia to topple.

[Chuck Bryant]

The Nazi regime and Mussolini get toppled by the Brits.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

It completely changed the face of the war.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

This one idea, cooked up by Ian Fleming in part, isn't that crazy?

[Josh Clark]

It's pretty awesome.

[Chuck Bryant]

You got other stuff.

[Josh Clark]

There's a book called Operation Mincemeat by A guy named Brett McIntyre that came out in 2010. That's a very good, well cited book that we inadvertently cited here or there. And then there's the man who Never was, which was written by Ewan Montague, which is not just about Operation Mincemeat, but also about basically how to carry out deception plans.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right. Remember earlier when I said, don't feel too bad for Glyndor Michael.

[Josh Clark]

Yes.

[Chuck Bryant]

Even you said, well, the dude died possibly of suicide because he was penniless and going nowhere.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

So I feel bad about that. But 50 years after he was buried in 1997, the British government added. They basically buried him with military honors.

[Josh Clark]

The Spanish did.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, this? Yeah. He was buried in Spain.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

But the British. It came from the Brits, I think.

[Josh Clark]

To do so his headstone came from the Brits, but the Spanish buried him with like a 21 gun salute and everything.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. It says, glendor Michael served as Major William Martin, RM Royal Marine. Pretty cool.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

To this alcoholic drifter who never served in the military. Never served in the military.

[Josh Clark]

Buried with full military honors.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And completely changed the face of the war thanks to being a body.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

That fit the. To fit the bill.

[Josh Clark]

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.

[Chuck Bryant]

William Martin.

[Josh Clark]

Something like that.

[Chuck Bryant]

I still want to know what was going on with that weird role playing there with Dude.

[Josh Clark]

That's odd.

[Chuck Bryant]

Bill and Pam.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Because they interviewed the lady who. And she was just like, oh, it was all very exciting.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. That's a great British lady accent.

[Chuck Bryant]

Older person.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah. Older.

[Chuck Bryant]

Adulter. Adult. Yeah, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Oldie. If you want to get. Or no. If you want to know more about operation Mincemeat, just type that word into your favorite search engine or go check out the stuff you missed in history class episode. As I said, stuff you missed in history class. It's time for listener mail.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm gonna call this Brad crust. We had that discussion about the crust and the end pieces.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, I remember.

[Chuck Bryant]

So this is from a dad. Dear Chuck and Josh, your discussion of the in slice of bread in 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. He's smiling.

[Josh Clark]

What a weirdo. He must be a pinko.

[Chuck Bryant]

When our daughters were still tiny, my wife and I realized we were doomed to 18ish years of eating bread crust pieces ourselves if we didn't figure something out. And quickly our solution. We started calling those pieces the lucky piece. And boy, did we rook our innocent, trusting toddlers. Turns out your supposition is correct, Chuck. At least for children under 11 years old. Even if they're honor students, as mine were, they will fight you for the right to eat that savory, oh so desirable piece of luck.

[Josh Clark]

Nice idea, younger adults.

[Chuck Bryant]

Rock on, guys. And please keep my goofy grins coming. That is from Ted. C O I N E with a little. Is that a accent? No. I don't know.

[Josh Clark]

I didn't take French legume.

[Chuck Bryant]

What do you call that? A legume Accent Legume.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

So thanks, Ted. I'll just call you Coin.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, thanks, Ted.

[Chuck Bryant]

What? Koine? Koine.

[Josh Clark]

I don't know. Let's say Coin. Yeah. Thanks a lot. Ted contacted us on Twitter. He wanted to send us this email. So there you go, Ted.

[Chuck Bryant]

Wow.

[Josh Clark]

If you want to get in touch with us, you can send us an email to stuff [e-mail].

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