Operation Mincemeat: How A Corpse Fooled the Nazis

Feb 2, 2016

In World War II, a secret department of British 'corkscrew thinkers' hatched a plan to use the cadaver of an unclaimed homeless man to turn the tide of the war in the Allies' favor. It worked. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://news.iheart.com/podcast-advertisers

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at IBM problems Inspire us to push the world forward that's why so many people work with us on everything from City traffic to Ocean plastic smart loves problems IBM let's put smart to work visit ibm.com smart to learn more welcome to stuff you should know from howstuffworks.com hey and welcome to the podcast I'm Josh Clark there's Charles W

Chuck Bryant there's Jerry role in this is stuff you should know Chuck yo I'm 39 years old and I still can't say my own name correctly because of my stupid thick tongue who you're gonna be 40 yeah it's crazy yeah used to make fun of me and now you're old well you're still older than me I know nothing I can do about that it's cool though yeah you're aging very well know you're aging really well but you mean the teeth falling out the weight gain and they're getting the Gray beard

I still see your aging very well I appreciate it yeah let's continue here take off your hat I still got good here boom look at that look at that head now beautiful okay you'll think I'm bald some people do oh really like you're always wearing that hat why why why no no suspicious people yeah like the drummer for the Chili Peppers Anthony Kiedis and flea nope the guy from Jane's Addiction nope I don't know them not John Frusciante Chad Smith the guy looks like

Will Ferrell

Will Ferrell he's always got that hat on backwards and he's bald oh yeah totally but like Bret Michaels bald member he always wears a do-rag do yeah super bald so I get why people are suspicious if you're a public figure that has a patented at peace

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 mincemeat yep if there's a ghoulish Gallows humor awesomely World War II British name for this this operation yeah this will live alongside our Nazi spies and and baiting Florida yeah I'd cast and the history girls covered this this very topic as well yeah man there's nothing I love more than little-known history this is this is it

this great little known history and this shouldn't be middle known because it was us after the Trojan War may be the largest and most successful military deception plan in history well there's also have you seen that documentary ghost Army about Operation Fortitude know they used a bunch of blow up tanks and planes like inflatable tanks and planes to make it look like there's a whole Ally division over here yeah so that we could invade Normandy more ease that it's like a

Looney Tunes cartoon also but yes this ranks up there with literally with the Trojan Horse is that it's that ingenious in that wonderful yeah but so let's set the stage right okay so in early 1943 the war was very much undecided yeah it could have been anybody's like your Europe was under the control of Hitler yeah well huge amounts of Europe they called it Fortress Europe because he the Nazis were just had just overrun the place right dug in

and the the Allies knew that they needed to get into Europe to topple Hitler else like they weren't going to win the war sure so Churchill suggested attacking Europe's underbelly which is maybe Italy Greece under their Denia 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 yeah come up through the Mediterranean even Hitler feared this the most right Buzz key right and I mean everybody knew the Allies were coming and they were going to come there but this this land mass is 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 it will cover it all you need to know kind of specifically where they're recovering and there were just a few places where they could have come

one was Grease that was where Hitler always suspected yeah one was started in India right yeah and then another was Sicily yeah and in 1943 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

can to not let the Nazis know that that's where we're going and that actually hatched eventually what's called operation mincemeat 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 yeah that it's startling yeah it's literally when you look at the stuff it's like moving troops to where you think people are going to attack

right and rolling the dice a bit and if you're right then great if not you're screwed very much the which is why it's such a huge shift that we're seeing now in moving the unconventional warfare because that's scary stuff yeah I think pretty much all war is scary yeah well of course I'm not saying like Normandy was the Cakewalk or anything because they knew what they were going on but man I watch Saving Private Ryan again the other day card it's crazy that thing's almost a snuff film it is not as bad as we

Were Soldiers which is a snuff film but it's I never saw that one the Mel Gibson yeah dude it's it's the most graphically violent mainstream movie ever made really yes wow yeah like there's a part where there's there they have a shot a camera shot over this guy's shoulder right so is 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 wow

brains just cover the camera it's disgusting did you like Saving Private Ryan again them yeah it's great movie but it is like really like violet that's another thing about getting older is that stuff affects you more and more the more you come to terms yes so your own mortality the more valuable life becomes the more valuable even a character in the movies life becomes you know what I mean that stuff gets to you agreed it's called growing up my friend and becoming human in the gross all right so on

on September 29th 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 familiar name yeah creator of James Bond that's right the guy and I think most people know that he served this point yeah but if you didn't that's a nice little factoid for you so he wrote the child memo and they called it the trout man

memo because they pointed out in the intro that this that the trout fishermen fish is very patiently but he changes venue frequently yeah any changes his bait very frequently to and so they wanted to they're charged with deception they wanted to come up with all these different ideas all this different bait and venue changes that they could come up with yeah and this was a time to which you point out that spying spying is always vital but man of World War II it was going on all

all over the place and a huge huge part of the war right so we need to do one on the Enigma machine by the way at some point we do because that's one of the unsung heroes in this operation absolutely all right so with the trout memo in 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 suggestions

is used in a book by basil Thompson I'm so pleased that you said Basile should have basil yeah in fact that was in nineteen thirty seven dollars novel The milliner's Hat mystery and he was actually a World War One spy oh really yeah it's all coming together so he was it a spy writer that Ian Fleming the creator of James Bond Doug crazy so that's where this originated so here I am getting excited that's right the following suggestion is used in a book by basil Thompson: a corpse

he's 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 dress him up like a soldier yeah give him some sensitive documents that leaked this Invasion fraudulent fraudulent yeah very important that leaked the invasion of Greece right

is not really happening yeah and they're going to mount up troops there and will 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 going to fool them so yeah that was the that was the whole idea that was the General basis of it and Churchill loved the idea because apparently he liked what he called Corkscrew thinkers right because he knew Hitler thought in a straight line yes and by Corkscrew thinkers at think that would be our equivalent of outside the box

exactly yeah yeah it's a church I was like this is great I love church let's drink some scotch and do it yeah let's look like a bulldog while we do too so they the the that idea was roughly outlined by Ian Fleming and then the the Churchill's Corkscrew thinkers the XX committee led by you and Montague and

Chumlee yeah which is his name is not spelled Chumlee know how is it spelled are you ready for this yeah Charles CH o LM o ndele why pronounced Chumlee yeah and apparently when he met people he would say Lieutenant Charles Chumlee CH o LM o ndele why he would spell it out what do you really yeah are you making fun of me or is that for real no no he was a very quirky guy and I

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 this is a weird guy I actually watched a quickie Buzzfeed video on this and they pronounced it Charles cholo Mandela they really yeah nice and when we did our research exactly shout out the BuzzFeed so you and Montague right yeah the other guy he is noteworthy in a number of ways

is to 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 the man who was never there The Man Who Never Was got right so him a movie too yeah of the same name yes Ari Montgomery Clift I believe no starring Cliff clay web Cliff Clavin Cliff web

but not Montgomery Clift know those two are virtually interchangeable sir so what you and Montague was already notable because at school he and his brother had created the rules for ping-pong no way yeah I did not know that among other things and his brother equally interesting equally rambunctious went on to become a spy for the Soviets oh wow yeah so he turned yes against England

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 Chumlee never flew a plane was Air Force One was a 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 nice and they picked wisely because

because these guys really pulled it off so we'll dive into this much more in-depth right after this

your future

hey miles hey it's me Jack right here right next to you buddy next to me and just like it work hey I wanted to join with you to tell people tuned in to a very special episode Special yeah of tdz the daily Zeitgeist this is actually look I know you saw the social media sauce at the LA Auto Show you said what are these two juggernauts of podcasting doing there when Mazda calls me up and they say miles we know that you're a loyal

the owner we want to align with you because you get it yeah you know what I'm willing to answer the call and help ding ding help people understand the power of it so what we did is we actually got to record a special episode inside the new Mazda CX 30 where we talked about kind of like flow States and we're feeling alive and how we feel alive what makes us feel alive yeah it was really dope to actually record inside the car I got to press a lot of buttons and make them mad because of like please don't fumble around in here but I

adopt a child I like to explore yeah nonetheless if you actually want to check out the first-ever cx30 check it out at Mazda usa.com I heart or if you're trying to check it up IRL then pull up to the local dealership today all right Chuck yes we have the rough outline that Ian Fleming came up with the XX committee led by you and Montague

in Charles Chumley yeah the part of MI5 I believe okay yeah said we're going to take this particular idea and really run with it and like you said they were going to or well the first thing they did was start setting about creating a back story yeah well they have three months so the clock is ticking at this point yeah because here's the thing they set the invasion right in January and they set the invasion for July yeah now you needed enough time to plant this this corpse this fake dead Courier

yeah that ended Nazi hands yeah and give the with enough time so that the Nazis could digest it analyze it decided it was truthful and then react the way you wanted them to which meant that they had no later than May or else this plan was out the window yeah you wanted them the ultimate goal was to have the Nazis put their troops in the wrong place and that takes time right so they looked around and they decided that the best place to carry out this operation was

and Spain during World War Two was allegedly ostensibly neutral sure but they had a lot of access sympathies a lot of connections to Nazi Germany and there was a particular Nazi agent a spy working in a port called whoever whoever Allah who have left right sure and his name was Adolphe class yeah and Adolf Klaus was known to be very methodical yeah

yeah pretty brutal brutal and ruthless yeah extremely gullible yeah he was a straight line thinker he wasn't there he wasn't one that could think outside the box and think maybe this is an elaborate hoax that guy didn't even own a real Corkscrew yeah you know like they did our gated this guy cut the top off of wine bottles yeah they specifically targeted which is amazing so they wanted this guy who was fairly gullible but also known as like a very respected Nazi agent in Spain to be the

who came up with this corpse and cadaver that's right so before they ever had any corpse or cadaver or anything like that Montague and and Chumlee start setting about creating a backstory and they created this guy named Major Martin yeah wavern 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 yeah so they had 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 the Maze and in fed the Nazis misinformation through these people that didn't really exist so they took that that understanding that thinking of what it takes to create a fake persona and they said about

creating one for major William Martin yeah and if you 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 and the office and they were all just so delighted that they all describe this is 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 right 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 right which is if you find any person on the street ask them to open their wallet you're going to be able to tell a lot about them sure so just stuff to legitimize it so they said let's give them a fiance and all the women in the office wanted to be the fiancé oh yeah so they all submitted photographs they pick this one lady Jean

Leslie secretary okay that's the lady on the beach yes because 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 leg hurt the head Secretary of MI5 and she wrote all even though she was a spinster she wrote all these like heartfelt love letters the the first couple drafts were really dirty and they were like you gotta tone the sound a little like is that what you think happens in a relationship is like

no not me either this is lady so everyone's really excited in the office Chumley is wearing the what would eventually be the uniform of Martin every day to give it that worn in look awesome Montague actually ended up having an affair with the secretary who gave him the photo as the fiance okay that a real-life Affair as Bill and pam pam is the made-up fiance we got a little weird that is a little weird

they wrote each other love letters at a real-life Affair calling each other Bill and Pam huh so those 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 gee he was he was a louse in that department well you know also Roald Dahl the guy who wrote James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory he was a spy for the British he was in the British Military and his whole job was to basically

Lee bed the wives of American officials here in Washington really yeah did he do so oh yeah oh wow oh he made his way through Washington Society wow apparently with great Zeal all right so they're cooking up this backstory 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 right and what else that they he I think they gave us

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 yes very much so they've got this backstory and apparently like this they were working feverishly on this stuff having the weirdo Affair wearing the uniform all its up 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 yeah 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 yeah and can keep their mouths shut yeah they needed a body that was of military age sure didn't have any signs of visible trauma right or did you run over by a bus right

or that obscure be sure and that 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 it survived the plane crash but had drowned at Sea right if he had pneumonia then his fluids would be filled with long so that when the Spanish conducted an autopsy on them put the fluid yeah so that when the Spanish conducted their autopsy they be like it's the most amazing thing I've ever

I've seen I've never seen fluid filled with lungs yeah but that's how much fluid there yep the problem is is they didn't get their hands on a guy with pneumonia and they didn't even know exactly where to get a person at first it wasn't until they turned the guy who ran the more get Saint 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 yeah his name was Sir Sir Bentley

which is a great name Great British thing and it was a he was a corner of the largest Mortuary at St Pancras terrible and he had apparently wicked sense of humor it was pretty complicated to give directions to his office so when he gave Monty the directions he said or you could just get run over by a bus nice man the British during wartime where they're having a blast sense of humor was wonderful so they got a Bentley purchase and he said I've got to dude his name is Glenn door

or Michael yeah that is not how that's spelled either know it is GL y ND W are super Welsh yeah he was a Welshman born in 1909 his son of a coal miner his father killed himself by stabbing himself in the throat I hadn't read that he managed in a worthless old man and it didn't say like slit your throat said he stabbed himself in the throat right which is weird and sad she his dad died when he was a teenager mother died when he

is 30 alcoholic had a rough go because of the depression and was basically basically killed himself by ingesting rat poison so that is not necessarily resolved what whether it was suicide yeah so they the Bentley purchase wrote down that 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 he was hungry they wondered so he may have been so destitute

that he ate across the bread that he found in an abandoned warehouse and it was smeared with rat poison and that's what he died of wow 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 yeah and so Bentley purchase got his hands on him and said I think I found your guy dudes yeah and they did there were some issues of one of

which is they needed a photo of the guy for an ID he didn't have any photos oh God and every time they took a picture of the dead guy's face they were like he looks like a dead guy yeah really so they scoured see your fingers holding his eyes up so they scoured London looking for a look-alike and eventually found a guy at a fellow intelligence officer who looked just like him awesome do they use his face awesome the ID it's all coming together yes it is I'm sure they were like wow Providence is really smiling on this yeah and if you're feeling bad for

Glen door just hang tight yeah I still think you can feel bad for going door well sure talk about a rough life yeah yeah she's do you remember that one Saturday Night Live where Robert Duvall was like super special guest who wasn't even hosting or mentioned he just showed up on this game show called Who's more grizzled no way and he talks about like it was him and Garth Brooks had I miss that and he talks about how one called winners his wife died he had to keep her out

the barn until the ground thawed so we can barrier out back what yeah it's 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 Grizzly assure anyone of course because it's Robert Duvall yeah he's more grizzled and Garth Brooks or Chris get even even yeah yeah we're not poor Garth Brooks are you talking about I'm talking about the Chris Gaines thing he chose to do it he's a wealthy man

yeah I don't feel too bad for him go back think that was evidence that he was surrounded by Yes Men at the time yeah maybe that was a weird thing though yeah he faked a soul patch that wouldn't even real no I mean even if it was real was part of his character it's like sure I thought you meant with Sharpie it may be okay the hair was definitely color with Sharpie all right so where where are we here we've got a body

we finally got the photograph of them yeah which is that's amazing I didn't know that part yeah and there's another thing we found this awesome military analysis of it yeah that's kind of cool somebody wrote a military analysis of this I don't remember who so I can't give him a shout out but we'll put it on our podcast page but they point out that one of the reasons this was so successful this operation was one these guys at excess commit 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 a lid on this stuff and it was all disseminated on a need-to-know basis so when they had this guy they had them they had they got Glen door kept them on ice for three months as they finish his backstory they're running up against like go time and then I think in February or March

March or April maybe I'm not sure the date do you know that what happened when they finally carried out operation mincemeat let's just say spring because I know that they kept them on ice for a few months yeah and they so they're up to the point where the the decomp is about to give away that this guy didn't just recently died yeah and that was a big fear that the Spanish Corners would be able to tell to okay which will come up in a minute 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 sure so they finally they get the guys Persona in place they have the body and now it's time to actually carry out the operation and like I was saying the kept a lid on all this so is 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 Glendora Michael now major William Martin yeah when you say subcommander you mean

submarine yes not a commander below regular Commander yeah 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 the sub without this was some sort of weather buoy yeah it was marked Optical instruments but you're right he was only one on board supposedly that knew there was a body inside yep and they put a lifejacket on them stuffed them in the cylinder put them on the sub and took them

rid of Spain under a on a submarine well let's back up for one second okay because we forgot to cover the main letter inaudible yeah case really important this was the the all of operation mincemeat it did not hinge on theater ticket stubs or Bank overdraft letter so it's merely pocket litter it hinged on a letter hinting strongly that the invasion was going to come up through Greece Sardinia right and that was the

another thing too it wasn't like official document invasion is going to come through Greece yes it was a letter from one General yeah or Admiral to another high-ranking guy like General nie they composed a bunch of different letters themselves and finally they said why don't you write it yeah in your own words and your own language in your own handwriting everything so it really was written by this this high-ranking US military official or British military official who

who wrote this fake letter and he made a joke about sardines a terrible joke which it was the little hint right that was just clever enough to work right and so in it basically says we're coming up with the you know we're going to strike through grease that's where the invasion of Europe is going to be yeah but we're also going to tell everybody that Sicily is the cover right right and this was a stroke of Genius oh yeah because in this this false letter now

not only does it show that they're coming through Greece which they weren't yeah but it says that Sicily's the cover which would make the Nazis think that if anyone ever did actually leaked the real Invasion plan of Sicily yeah the Nazis would think that that was misinformation dude it was so ingenious that's crazy jeans and I think about here now Chuck we get to the point where we should talk about the Enigma machine and the role it played right yeah well basically we all know that the admit

Enigma machine was the code breaking machine invented in the UK to decipher well the Enigma machine wrote the code I think poet wrote the code yeah and deciphered code though they'd gotten they deciphered it at Bletchley Park but I think the Enigma machine was the actual code writing the encrypting machine okay I could be wrong but okay well so we definitely need to do a podcast on there right because we're mixed up already to get it straight but at any rate the long and short of it is and Beckley

Park is it Beckley Park I always say Bletchley oh is it was there an Ellen there I draw the whole ugly word out they basically had they could it was like reading the Nazis email essentially like on a daily basis on an hourly basis hourly basis they knew exactly what was going on so they would know if they were buying this whole thing as it happened in real time 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 yeah people are more apt to buy that things that confirm their suspicions of their beliefs already right yeah Hitler was worried about Sicily he was so he he already thought that Greece is going to be where we invaded yeah 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 yeah 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 yeah and this letter to its 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 know

he said in fact opened it right and because the idea was they would open it and reseal it and act like we never saw it right but there wasn't that eyelash and they know not so rudimentary but it worked oh yeah so we take another break let's take a break all right I'm getting excited problems it's human nature to hate problems but why is that

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okay so Chuck we are at Sea aboard a submarine that's right I'll be down here and park it is and you're not supposed to be smoking cigars no you're not despite Gene Hackman doing it in Crimson Tide yeah what a bad idea so we're off the coast of Spain we're off the coast of whoever Le not even easy words to say but it's important Spain and again this is where not the

aunt Adolf Klaus yeah they kind of want to float the body right up to this guy's backyard basically so they did he was released from this canister I read somewhere else that the canister itself was fired on with submerged submachine guns on a sub so you could just call him machine guns there yeah and it was sunk and the body drifted off toward oh really Le Oh I thought they just dump the body yeah I'm not sure because I found a book

Google Books it's like front 2007 and it was a history book that you 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 seemed yeah 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 whoever Allah and he went I think he was found by a fisherman that same day yeah and at this point the

the 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 so they sent the British Council in Spain and who a villa or in Spain to Hawaii Villa 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 ya in class is going briefcase right

Ms monocle popped out and the British Council in Spain didn't even know it was going on yeah they thought like this like they were they saw everything from the same aspect of reality that the Nazis all need-to-know basis exactly so the British counselor 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 brief

the case is safe and the British Consulate said well okay one thing that's very important this guy was Roman Catholic you can check out the metal and his pocket yeah so please don't dissect them it's against Roman Catholic beliefs and traditions to dissect her autopsy body I hadn't heard before but apparently in the 40s that was the case in Spain was way down with that super Roman Catholic and they said oh yes of course we won't do that so apparently that's how they got around the fact that Glenn door hadn't died of pneumonia

yeah and the other way they got around it was they had a plant in the office who talked to the corners and was like guys it's hot and this body is going to start riding real soon so how thorough do you really want to make this right and they said you're right let's go have some some wine some what they call over there why no what's the pretty sangria yeah let's go have some sangria yeah knock off early and that's exactly what happened thanks to the plan

so this is going on that 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 coolant all 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 worked his way up the chain yeah to Hitler himself yeah I went to gurbles First and gurbles even in his diary they found later had suspicions about it oh yeah because he was a corkscrew thinker and he was like wait a minute this is pretty convenient yeah this is really fishy here but he apparently never said anything to Hitler he got distracted he wrote about it

is Diary but kittens the documentary said his thinking was well if Hitler believes it then that's good enough for me huh I'd seems like bad idea yeah and Homeboy Car low coolant all there was always a lot of speculation on why he just ran with it and didn't ask more questions - that was his job and it turns out his grandmother was Jewish and he was very paranoid about this being found out so he thought this is it I've come upon the greatest

the war and it's all mine so yeah no one will ask any questions about me after this huh wow that worked out really really well yeah very convenient and thanks to the Enigma machine with a new the Brits knew pretty quickly that this was working and I guess Montague and Chumlee were sent and Admiral Godfrey a transmission that said operation mincemeat swallowed Rod Line & Sinker yeah that when the

it's so cool seeing these old the like apparently you're not supposed to be elderly anymore by the way we got an email I knew that for seniors because to call them older adults seniors I didn't know that that was the thing yeah older adults so they're interviewing these older adults these British ladies that are in their 80s now and they were just all so still excited they said when they because you know what the Enigma machine they were basically reading their emails right and they're like they knew they were buying it they're buying it yeah and everyone was just

like flipped when that came through the office it was just like party time basically so the the operation mincemeat really really worked really well so much so that parently Hitler moved a Panzer Division which totals about 90,000 troops yeah from Sicily to Greece yeah and and I'll artillery and armaments and everything not just soldiers so long Sicily we're going to Greece yeah and then up came the

lies through Sicily 160,000 Allied troops storm 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 lives lost than they expected yeah had they had Hitler not swallowed operation mincemeat yeah they expected 10,000 casualties in the first three days and three hundred boats sunk in the first two days

and it ended up being 1400 in that first week soldiers and about a dozen ships and that first week so that's not bad yeah and not only that but it had another effect big one the Soviets yeah so this is not something that they teach in American history classes in u.s. high schools that much no the the operation husky what it was it was that penetration of Europe's underbelly right yeah and suddenly Hitler said um

I'm about to storm Russia but I really need these troops down here in Europe because I got big problem yeah and that allowed basically Russia to topple the Nazi regime and Mussolini get toppled by the Brits yeah it completely changed the face of the war yeah this one idea cooked up by Ian Fleming in part that crazy it's pretty awesome you got other stuff there's a book called operation mincemeat by guy named Brett McIntyre all right

right the came out in 2010 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 mincemeat but also about basically how to carry out deception plans

all right remember earlier when I said don't feel too bad for for Glenn door Michael yes even you said well the dude died possibly a suicide because he was penniless and going nowhere yeah 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 this Spanish did of this yeah he's buried in Spain yeah but the British it came from the Brits

I think to do so his headstone came from the Brits but the Spanish buried in with like the 21 gun salute and everything yes it's Glenn door Michael served as major William Martin RM Royal Marine pretty cool yeah so this

alcoholic Drifter who never served in the military ever served in the military buried with full military honors yeah and completely change the face of the war thanks to being a body yeah that the fit the bill and if you like ghoulish photos is a very famous photo of him being propped up in his life jacket and uniform as there were basically loading them into the cylinder that you can see by searching I'm sure major Charles Martin that's right Charles Martin oh William Barton

William Martin something like that I still want to know what's going on with that weird role-playing there without dude that's odd Dylan Pam yeah yeah because they interviewed the lady and she was just like oh it was all very exciting yeah that's a great British lady accent older person yeah yeah older adult or adult yeah oldie if you want to get their know 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 so I said stubby missing history classes time for listener mail

I'm going to call this bread crust we had that discussion about the crust and the in pieces are so this is from a dad dear chuckling Josh your discussion of the in slice of bread and the body language episode brought ridiculous grin to my face as I walked around my neighborhood don't worry though my neighbors have fought me to be eccentric for years now look at that guy smiling what a weirdo he must be a Pinko when our daughters were still tiny my wife and I realized

we're doomed to 18 ish 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 are innocent trusting toddlers turns out your supposition is correct Chuck at least four children under 11 years old even if their honor students is mine were they will fight you for the right to eat that savory oh so desirable piece of luck

nice idea younger adults rock on guys and please keep my goofy grins coming that is from Ted COI any with a little we nail that one a coin a coin he's a center do now I don't know I didn't take French legume what you call that a legume except legumes yeah so thanks Ted I'll just call you coin yeah okay what planet quite looks like coin

yeah thanks a lot of Ted Ted contacted us on Twitter so he did you wanted to send us this email so there you go Ted wow if you want to get in touch with us you can try all the ways like Ted did you can contact us on Twitter at s Ys K podcast you can send us an email to stuff podcast at howstuffworks.com you can join us on facebook.com slash stuff you should know and you can hang out at our luxurious home on the web stuff you should know.com

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