Operation Mincemeat WWII Spy Deception Fact Check

Take one unclaimed cadaavver. >> Their head died at St. Steven's Hospital. A laborer of no fixed abode.

>> Give him a name, a rank, a British uniform, and false mission papers. They make him a real person

with an entire backstory >> and set him a drift where the Germans will find him.

>> Mince meat is an example of great ingenuity and just the way that the human mind can work.

>> It's so insane that it's brilliant. And so begins operation mincemeat, an incredible allied deception to divert

the Reich armies from Sicily. This is the true story of the spy who never was. The corpse that changed the

course of World War II. By the end of 1942, the Third Reich had extended its influence throughout Europe

and the Mediterranean. But on November 8th, the British, American, and Canadian troops land in

North Africa and regain control of Morocco and Algeria. Once settled in McGreb, the next step

for the Allied command is clear. Gain a foothold in southern Europe and weaken the Nazi army, already suffering heavy

losses on the Eastern front against the Russians. For this operation, code came Husky, the

Allies target a little island in the south of Italy, Sicily. Launch date, July 1943.

The stakes are high. If Operation Husky succeeds, it could turn the tide of the war, leading to victory for the Allied

forces. >> It was going to be the greatest the largest amphibious operation in history.

In other words, it was going to be the largest combined attempt by sea to land on enemy country. So it was a huge

enterprise. It was going to involve about 150,000 troops, tens of thousands of aircraft, tens of thousands of

vehicles. It was a huge operation. >> But the Allied headquarters face a major problem.

The Germans anticipate an attack in the region and have readied their defenses. The German high command was absolutely

convinced that the Allies were going to launch an attack somewhere in in the Mediterranean, and southern Europe after

their campaign in North Africa. So the Germans focus on a couple of rather logical points. First and foremost is

Greece. Other places that the Germans thought it might happen are places like Sardinia or

Corsica and then of course Italy. But the question is precisely which one are the allies going to come at?

>> For Operation Husky to succeed, the Allies must force Hitler to move his troops.

In great secrecy, Churchill assembles the London Controlling Section, an ultra secret organization of

high-ranking army and British intelligence personnel. Their mission to craft a diversion plan

to convince the Germans that the attacks will happen not in Sicily, but in Greece and Sardinia.

In Q, a suburb of London, the National Archives has preserved the documents recounting this vast military plot.

In top secret files, two names stand out. Charles Chumley and Euan Mountu, both

members of the British intelligence services. They concocted a plan worthy of the

greatest spy movies. His name operation mincemeat. This document details Montigu and

Chumli's incredible scheme. They want to drop into the sea a corpse dressed like a British officer who died in a plane

crash. The body would carry confidential documents suggesting an invasion in Sardinia and Greece.

The goal to let this false information fall into the hands of the Germans. >> The whole idea of taking a corpse and

using it as a deception tool with such a massive plan behind it, the invasion of southern Europe is absolutely crazy for

sure. On a balance of probability, if you entertain this in 1942 43, it seems ludicrous. It seems near insane. It's so

insane that it's brilliant. And it's also really really cool. It's got all the elements you could possibly imagine

for a cool story. A dead body that's disguised, really interesting players. You know, it's a fantastically

interesting story. And there's no question in my mind that the plan that unfolds the entire operation mincemeat

uh stands as one of, if not the most important uh intelligence operations of World War II.

Chumley and Montigue work relentlessly to implement this crazy plan. Each detail must be carefully prepared.

>> Creating a legendary agent as in the case of the mincemeat represents a one-off type of operation for most

intelligence services. So in that sense I don't believe there's any real template or any particular formula that

one has to follow. You are almost in every instances making it up as you go along.

>> The first step is finding the ideal corpse. But there's one essential requirement. No one should care about

it. >> The reason that British intelligence needs a body that nobody cares about is

because there's too many loose ends. If you take a corpse that has family or friends or dies in a particularly public

fashion, there are going to be lots of questions. There are going to be people that want a funeral. There are going to

be people that want to file for pension payments. There's all sorts of really, you know, mundane things in the long run

that would throw the entire intelligence operation out of the way. There's also moral and ethical

considerations. Even in the midst of World War II, people are worried about doing indignities to a body without

permission. So, they need a corpse that nobody cares about. It's a very sad, morbid occasion,

but that's precisely what they needed. No questions means a higher chance of success.

Another requirement, the body must pass as a man who drowned at sea after a plane crash. The condition of his

skeleton, his lungs, the level of decomposition. Every detail matters in case the corpse

gets autopsied. They enlist the help of a coroner and a forensic pathologist.

In these times of war, corpses are not necessarily lacking in London. And yet the search proves extremely

difficult. According to Montigu's report, after 2 months of

looking in vain, their luck finally turns. The coroner and pathologist find a potentially interesting cadaavver.

>> On the 28th of January, the head died at St. Stevens Hospital Fulham a laborer of no fixed abode. His name was Glenware

Michael and he was 34 years of age. 2 days earlier he had taken phosphorous rat poison.

>> The deceased is a young Welsh man who lost his parents and apparently lived cut off from the world. No one seems to

care about his disappearance. Did he die from accidentally eating rat poison? Was it suicide? Nobody knows.

But for the forensic pathologist, his means of death fits the storyline of operation mitzmeat.

The rat poison did have the general effect that is known to occur which is liver failure. Actually the liver

undergoes what is called necrosis which means death of the liver cells. Even under the best of circumstances,

it is rather difficult to detect rat poison phosphorus. But if you now add to that the idea that the body will begin

to undergo decomposition and putrifaction, then it is highly unlikely to even think

of rat poison or phosphorus. For Chumley, a Montigue, a death by rat poisoning provides a great opportunity.

British intelligence feels confident. With a cause of death so hard to detect, the chances of the Germans to accept the

idea of a death by drowning would be even higher. The body of the homeless man is

discreetly set aside, held at a temperature of 4° C, 39° F in the morg of St. Pancress Hospital.

According to the pathologist at the time, the body would last for about 3 months.

Euan Montigue and Charles Chumley must now construct the legend of this man so that he can accomplish his postmortem

mission. First create a credible identity. They needed to convince the Germans that

the courier that they were going to use was a man who would be expected to be holding documents like that.

So they choose a major in the Royal Marines. That's a reasonably senior rank, the sort of person that you'd

expect to be carrying documents like that. Another reason why they could choose a

Royal Marines officer is that they could use a regular British Army uniform. You don't have to bring in a specialist

tailor to measure a dead body. And therefore, if you do that, then you're putting your secrets at risk because how

can you trust the tailor that you're bringing in to keep the secrets that he's going to be seeing?

So, here he is, a corpse who's a major with the Royal Marines in his uniform and finally with a name.

The hero of Operation Mins is Major William Bill Martin, born in Cardiff in 1907.

He just needs a face. Michael was 34 when he died. So they get a guy at the same age group and

approximately the same physique in order to take a photograph. And it's one of their own MF5 officer who gives up his

own photograph and his own identity temporarily wearing the same suit that the body is found in in order to appear

that it is the same guy. But to be credible, the character must also have a story, a private life, a

personality. What spies call the legend of Major Martin?

Who was he? How did he live? Who were his friends? And what were his hobbies?

What did he do on his final days in London before leaving on his mission and crashing into the sea?

Chumley and Montigue step into the shoes of their fictitious hero. They plant clues in the pockets of his

uniform. coins, an open pack of cigarettes, matches, a pair of keys, two bus

tickets, even a photo of Pam, his fictitious fiance.

He carries two used theater tickets dated April 22nd, and a bill from the Naval and Military Club in London, where

he stayed until April 23rd. This makes it possible to date his departure.

Everything stops April 24th, the day he's meant to fly and crash.

They have made Michael, a Welsh vagrant who nobody knew and cared about, sadly. They make him a real person with an

entire backstory. And that backstory is painstaking. It's a very interesting moment where you see,

you know, the mental acuity of the planners and then you also really see how clever the operation is.

They put artifacts in his wallet and on his person that gives you a very rich tapestry.

>> The invented life of Major Martin is fully fleshed out. Now Chumley and Montigue move onto the

next step of the plan to determine the exact place to drop the body where the Germans will find it.

They know the spot in southwest Spain. >> Spain during the Second World War was a

neutral country. However, it was quite closely aligned with Nazi Germany. Franco who's in charge in Spain were had

a quite close relationship with Hitler and the reason why the allies wanted to land documents in Spain in this way was

that they felt very strongly that there was a high chance that the Spanish will actually pass the documents that come

into their possession or copies of them to the Germans. There was a man in Hueva named Adolf

Claus who was an excellent German spy and a committed Nazi. The Germans knew it but also the Brits knew it. And they

felt that if they could get this into the hands of Close, it would end up in in the right hands.

Helva is on the route from Great Britain to North Africa. Major Martin's itinerary takes shape.

Flying from London to Alers. His plane will suffer a tragic fate off the Andalusian coast where Major Martin will

drown near the beach. Now Chumley and Montigue need to find the best way to drop the body into the

sea and most of all in the perfect location to asssure it's found and brought to the Spanish coast.

Several mechanisms were considered for how to deliver the body into the sea off the west coast of Spain. One of these

was to land it by basically to drop the body from the air. But that was dismissed because the body would become

damaged once it being dropped from a height into the water. Another suggestion was to drop it by ship. But

again, the danger there was that it might be seen. It could be seen by the shore. Another idea was landing it by a

sea plane, a flying boat. But in the end, the decision was taken to drop it from a submarine. a submarine could

reach the coast quietly unseen and then it could just gently slip the body into the water and then leave without being

seen as well. So in the end they settled on the submarine option. The submarine HMS Saraf is due to leave

Scotland on April 19th, 1943 for North Africa. It's a perfect schedule providing Major

Martin's last voyage along with the documents he carries. Those crucial documents the bait in an

elaborate trap. The fictitious major is supposedly flying to the Allied headquarters in Alers.

So he carries letters intended for officers stationed in North Africa. To justify sending them by special coua,

the letters must be both personal and of the utmost importance. As with most intelligence operations,

it's not the big failures that get you, it's the small ones. The people running this operation knew absolutely that any

detail they that was checkable would be checked and it had to fit with the story they were representing and had to be not

only plausible but reasonable. What can the Germans reasonably find out about a person who would have been in Major

Martin's position? Do the British have couriers like this? Are there staff officers like this? Is there a

reasonable plausibility that a person would be carrying these papers on a flight and then somehow be killed? And

that had to appear reasonable to them. >> After many drafts, General Archie Bald Nye writes the first letter and signs it

personally. The recipient, his friend, General Harold Alexander, stationed in Tunisia.

It was agreed by the chief of staff that the fifth division should be reinforced by one brigade group for the assault on

the beach south of Cape Araos and that a similar reinforcement should be made for the 56th division at Kalawata.

Jumbo Wilson had proposed to select Sicily as cover target for Husky. The first document is absolutely key

because it's in this document that the principal target is outlined as Greece. That's the deception that the Allies

want to put over to the Germans. The letter is to suggest that the invasion code name Husky is actually going to

Greece and that the Sicily operation is actually a cover. Mentioning the word Husky in the

operation is quite interesting because that suggests that they want the Germans to believe if they ever come across that

code name Husky in other documents or or through their own spies that's a real operation, but in fact it's going

somewhere else. It might seem risky to use the real code name in an operation, but actually

there's some thought behind that. >> To complete the story, Major Martin carries two more letters.

>> The second letter is another important letter. It is written again by a very senior British officer, Mount Batton,

and it's a letter introducing Major Martin to Admiral the Fleet Cunningham, who is a very senior naval officer in

the Mediterranean. It is designed to convince the Germans that this is a real man who is on a mission. But there's

also one interesting element to the letter which is also built into the deception, and that's the final line.

Let me have him back, please. As soon as the assault is over, he might bring some sardines with him. They are on points

here. The joke about sardines is, I think, one of the most risky, but also the most

brilliant little component. It's a reference to the fact that the British were in fact possibly entertaining an

attack on Sardinia, hence sardines. Where the brilliance come in is that the British understood, the Germans

understood British humor. So it's this kind of, you know, I know what you know what you know kind of thinking.

It's interesting when you think about these guys sitting in London dreaming up these operations. And in some ways

that's even deeper than just piling up military equipment to fake an operation. This one is the ability to think your

way into the mind of the German military and into Hitler himself and to deliver those things that reinforce in instinct

what ultimately was wrong. But Chumley and Montigue have a problem. If the two letters are put in a simple

envelope in Major Martin's uniform pocket, they could slip out and be lost after several days at sea.

Losing the letters would jeopardize the entire operation. They decide to add a third letter

accompanied by a military pamphlet by Eisenhower. The pamphlet, too big for a simple

envelope, justifies the use of a government briefcase. The reason for the use of a briefcase

was that they wanted the Germans to see it. They wanted it to be found. They wanted the Spanish or whoever found the

body to find this briefcase and realize there were documents in it. >> To be sure the briefcase will not be

lost, they attached it to Major Martin with a chain. This will also reinforce the importance of the documents.

To simulate death by a plane crash, our man is decked out with a life jacket and a rubber dingy.

With every detail of the plan in place, on April 15th, 1943, the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, gives it the go-ahad.

And the good news is that Winston Churchill is an afficionado of intelligence.

He thinks it's big. He thinks it's clever. He thinks it's going to work. And of course he had hesitation like any

leader would because as he famously said anybody but a you know what a fool would believe we're coming to Italy.

But the Germans were foolish. So there's a possibility that they're going to actually buy it and move to Greece.

Churchill has just one requirement. Get approval on the American side from General Eisenhower who grants an

authorization 2 days later. Chief of Staff on behalf of General Eisenhower gives full approval. Mincemeat.

Operation Minsmeat can commence. On April 17th, 1943, Chumley and Montigue returned to the

morg one last time. According to official reports, the two men slip all the objects in Major

Martin's pockets and attach his briefcase with the confidential documents.

The corpse is then placed in a custommade steel box. But for some, especially the forensic

pathologist Dr. Peter Sp. This scenario doesn't hold. Glendora Michael's Kadaava has suffered

too many temperature changes since his death 3 months prior. In my opinion, when Montiku went to the

morg on the 17th to get the body out of the freezer, I think what really happened was, "Oh my god, we can't use

this body. What are we going to do?" He was just too badly decomposed. The stench would have been so

overwhelming, so unbearable. For Dr. SPH, there is no doubt Glendura

Michael never left London. At the last moment, Chumley and Montigue might have replaced his body with the

corpse of a young Marine who died a few days earlier in Scotland. when the aircraft carrier HMS Dasher

exploded. You only have Y and Migu's book and the documents as a source and it's

impossible to know if there was a switch. I do think you can understand why they would have preferred the

drowned body of a young British sailor. That would have been perfect. Certain things puzzle me a little bit

about Martin's B. uh using Glenda Michael I think there's room for speculation and I think there's room for

an open mind um and we have to remember that we're dealing with deception and the deception may have continued after

the war for various reasons it's difficult to know part of me says yeah it's quite

plausible because of course the British government would want to keep those that stuff secret had you employed another

body there are all sorts of moral ethical legal considerations that go into the calculation. So, I understand

why people believe that stuff and this is a world of conspiracies. Many of them turn out to be true, I suppose. So, I

get it. All that being said, the best evidence that we have from people that have spent

a lot of time researching every component is that it was in fact Lender's body. So, barring any release

of government evidence from the British in particular, we are sort of inclined to go with the official story, which is

super interesting. We may never know who boarded the submarine HMS Saraf in a sealed canister

on April 19th at 6:00, but whoever he is, he carries with him all hope for Operation Minsmeat.

11 days later, at 4:15 a.m., Bill Juel, the captain of the submarine, along with five officers who learn of the plan last

minute, surface and come out on deck. They're 1500 meters of the coast of Helva where they drop the corpse into

the open sea. Early in the morning, fishing for sardines like any other day, an

Andalucian fisherman discovers the body of the English Royal Marine. He brings him to the coast and hands him

over to Spanish authorities. But things will not go according to plan.

>> The British plan had basically hoped that Spanish fishermen or somebody in the water in Spain would find the corpse

uh turn it over immediately to the Spanish uh military or Spanish police and it would end up contents included

all of the documents in German hands. The problem is is that the Spanish authorities refused to turn over the

body and refused to turn over the documents. Even worse, the Spanish authorities

decide to conduct an autopsy. The first test of the British agents elaborate scheme.

According to Montiku, they were shocked and very concerned when they found out that the body was transported by ferry

up the river to Helva and that the medical examiner would perform an autopsy. They were assuming particularly

because they made the body to appear to be a Catholic that the body would simply be looked at. Yeah. Probably drowned and

then be buried. They had never counted on a forensic pathologist or medical examiner conducting an autopsy.

>> It was a relatively thorough examination in the sense that they did exactly what most autopsies would do. They have

questions, but they come up with answers. One of them notes that it appears to have been, you know, further

decomposed than a regular body would even after 4 or 5 days in the ocean, which is, of course, exactly what the

operation was designed to avoid in the first place. So, there's this enormous tension while the British wait to see

how this has been digested by Spanish authorities. >> As the Spanish doctors conduct the

autopsy, some other details puzzle them. One is the position of the corpse's hairline. It appears to be much further

back than in the photograph discovered on the body. Will the doctors conclude that the body they are autopsying is not

the man in the picture? The Spanish doctor says, well, you know, the receding of the hairline would be

consistent with the attrition and movement of the skin on the scalp in terms of the water and the effects of

the salt in the water in shaping the hairline. So, what the autopsy does is bring up legitimate questions as opposed

to an autopsy say, "Don't worry about it. Everything's fine." Uh, but at the same time provide answers.

Despite the questions raised by the autopsy, the Spanish authorities reached the conclusion the Allies had hoped for.

Officially, the man drowned at sea and his body remained immersed for 8 to 10 days before being found.

I think there was a real incentive to want to believe it and to overlook some of the realities around it.

I think had there been a thorough autopsy, the results may have shown something very different. But this was

all very rushed. Get it together and get it up to Berlin and score a victory, you know, with with a fury.

>> On May 2nd, William Martin is buried in Helva in the presence of British Army officials. But British intelligence now

faces another unexpected move. Instead of giving the briefcase with all the documents to the Germans, after the

autopsy, the doctors give it to Spanish Navy officials. The Navy is far less for the Germans and

Italians than is the army. Uh, and there is a kind of sense of Spanish pride and sovereignty about it, which you can

understand. And not everybody in Spain was all that loyal to Franco, let alone to the idea of Germans and and Italians

as overboards. There were quite a few people in Spain who were much fonder of the allies than of the access powers.

>> The Spanish Navy refuses to give the British major's briefcase to the Nazi officials.

On the German side, the race begins to get their hands on the documents. Adolf Klaus, the most active spy in

Helva, goes into action. But not one officer will open the envelopes for Agent Klouse.

All he receives is a detailed list of the documents and objects found on the body.

For both sides, the Spanish loyalty to the British is a catastrophe. The briefcase leaves the small port of

Fuel for Madrid to be handed over to the British authorities. But the Reich agents don't give up and they finally

get lucky. At least that's what they believe. On May 8th, 1943, pro-Nazi Spanish

officers unsealed the envelopes in Major Martin's briefcase. The operation is extremely delicate. The

British authorities cannot find out that the letters were opened by their enemies.

Once opened, the letters are given to German agents who have less than one hour to photograph them.

The Spanish officers carefully return the letters to their envelopes. They immediately send the photos to

Berlin. The FMY here, an intelligence organization of the Reich, is

responsible for verifying their authenticity. At the head of the investigation, Alexi

Fonroen, Hitler's favorite intelligence analyst. With his team, he scrupulously studies

all the elements at his disposal. But something doesn't add up. According to the Spanish forensic

pathologist, the body spent 8 to 10 days in the water before being discovered on April 30th.

But in one of Major Martin's pockets is an invitation to a party at a London cabaret club dated April 27th.

The British put this invitation with the intention of just adding to his personal items. The Germans interpreted this as

an event that he had actually attended and did the math on it and said, you know, this must have been one of the

last things he did before he left London. And then he shows up dead in Spain. And they can't square the

condition of the body based on the autopsy report with the fact that a couple of days earlier he had been at a

club in London. For the Brits, the invitation was an unimportant detail. And now it's about to jeopardize the

entire operation. In the Second World War, counterintelligence services are very good. If a counterintelligence

service suspects something, they will pull that string until they unravel everything they can.

Alexi vonroen asked Spain for more information. The local ABV office replies that there is absolutely no

doubt of the letter's authenticity. But the Germans aren't convinced. Some of those closest to Hitler, like

Gobles, remain skeptical of this seemingly godscent information. Thankfully though, within the secretive

powers of the Third Reich, only one man has the last word. >> Ultimately, it doesn't really matter

what Geros or anyone else thinks. It's what Hitler thinks. And when it ends up on Hitler's desk, he's convinced that

it's the real thing. >> In a regime like the Nazis, failure is not really an option. If you manage to

upset somebody in the chain of command, especially Hitler, chances are you end up with a bullet in your head. So no

matter how intelligent and capable German intelligence can be, it's horribly undermined by ideological and

political concerns. So all of this leads the Germans to hear what they want to hear and believe what they want to

believe. The Furer himself is convinced that the Allies are preparing an attack against

Greece and Sardinia. But meanwhile, England has no idea that the Germans finally arrived at that

conclusion. It's been days since surveillance teams have intercepted enemy communications,

and they found no messages about William Martin's letters. From the placement of the body in the

sea up for the next few weeks, there is real tension in London. I would sort of characterize it as near panic because

everything could go possibly wrong with this enterprise. And it must have been agonizing because there's pretty much

dead silence coming from either the Spanish or the Germans. So is tension, there's confusion, and

there's a lot of trepidation about what could go wrong. And again, it's not because of the body per se. It's because

there are invasion plans for southern Europe which are at stake here. and many thousands of lives are involved. So,

it's a big stakes game. >> Finally, on May 14th, 1943, 2 weeks after the body was dropped in the sea,

the long awaited signal finally arrives. The German had information from an absolutely reliable source that

largecale Allied landings were projected in the near future in both the eastern and western Mediterranean.

The allies are relieved. The ploy seems to have worked as planned, but the landing in Sicily is scheduled for July

10th, two months later. The lie has to endure. So, the Allied Secret Services take

drastic steps to misinform and maintain the enemy's illusion. The British use quite a few double

agents or agents of their own who are sending false information to Germany. For example, in the UK, you have Agent

Tricycle, and he sends the Germans fake observations of Allied movements in Scotland and the United Kingdom to

suggest that they're preparing for an invasion in Greece. In North Africa, there was also a fake

army, an entire fake army, the 12th Army with 12 divisions was invented, completely fictional. And that was using

things like inflatable tanks, inflatable trucks that could be seen from the air or from the spies who might think they

looked genuine. There were soldiers who were moving around who of course were not really going to take part in an

invasion but were part of a fake division. There were Greek currency, Greek

newsletters, Greek guide books were issued among these troops and were in circulation in North Africa to suggest

that this fictional army was actually destined for Greece. So a huge amount of effort was put in to create a

makebelieve army that never actually existed. The best way to view Operation Minsmeat

is to liken it to a jigsaw puzzle. An enormously complicated jigsaw puzzle with thousands of pieces.

One out of place could throw the entire picture down the tube. And in that sense, the intricacy, the complexity of

this program from planning everything about the body all the way up to feeding in to the German intelligence system is

unbelievably risky. It is lunacy. From the start, the plan was crazy, but it works. In early summer, Hitler orders

18,000 men from the first Panza division in France to head to Greece. They are joined by torpedo boats from

Sicily and minefields are installed along the Greek coast. In Sardinia, the Germans double their

presence and send 10 more armed divisions to protect the Balkans. The Furer's message to the Allies is

clear. We know about your plan to attack, and you will not succeed. But the Allies do attack where Hitler

least expects it. On July 10th, 1943, 160,000 men and 600 tanks arrive on

Sicilus coast. >> When the invasion came, the first lines of resistance that the Allies hit, many

of them were Italian soldiers. And it became quite clear that these were second rate, secondass soldiers. And

this, I think, is also evidence of the fact that the enemy, the Germans and Italians, did not feel that a strong

invasion was coming. So they put troops in the front line there who weren't first class troops.

The Allied assault doesn't worry the German military. On the same day that the fighting is

raging on the Sicilian beaches, 21 fighter planes leave the island to head to Sardinia.

Hitler is absolutely convinced that the invasion will come on Greece, Sardinia, and even after the invasion's taken

place, he sees this as a diversionary action, still waiting for the big attack to come in Greece.

After several weeks, the Allies finally take the city of Messina on August 17th, 1943, ending the campaign in Sicily.

For the Nazi Empire, this breach signals the beginning of the end. During the following months, the Allied forces will

regain Italy and in 1944 will land in Normandy and Province before ultimately invading Berlin in April 1945

where Hitler will commit suicide. The campaign in Italy is key to the Allies because it draws German forces

away from the Eastern Front and it draws German forces away from the Western Front after the Allies land there in

1944. So it soaks up enemy resources and that's exactly what the Allies wanted to achieve.

Today seeing the full scale of the Allied forces to liberate Europe, Operation Minsmme seems like a small

detail of World War II. And yet the scheme stranger than fiction is unprecedented in the history of

intelligence. You couldn't write a novel like this. It wouldn't be credible. But, you know, the

combination I think of the creativity but also the insight and the luck all combined to make an astonishing

operation and a consequential outcome that I think one can really admit saved tens of thousands of lives.

Mincemeat is an example of great ingenuity, inventiveness and just the way that the human mind can work and can

think can think up most extraordinary schemes. It is an operation that I think today

when we look back on it we might take it almost for granted but if you put yourself in the shoes of Chumley and

Montigue at the beginning you know it's an amazing thing to have thought up. It's a fantastic success of creative

thinking. These two men at their core are imaginative, gifted creators, if you

like. They're really no different than your Steven Spielbergs or whoever else in today's world who are so creative to

make the imagination run a little bit wild. And they were blessed to have a team and that includes high political

leaders like Eisenhower and Churchill who whether through desperation or confidence decided to put it into play.

And it works magnificently. >> Like a grain of sand in the Germans welloiled war machine, the plan crafted

by Montigue and Chumley played a crucial role in the success of the Sicily invasion and changed the course of the

war. >> There's so many things that go into World War II, right? military, political

thinking, economics. But yes, in a very real sense, this operation changes the nature of the war. It allows the Allies

to get a foothold into Italy, to throw out Mussolini, to make vulnerable the German defenses. It saves countless

numbers of lives, and it puts Germany on the defensive, even more than they already were.

So, ironically, an unknown Welsh vagrant drunk who dies of rat poisoning becomes the most important man in World War II.

Sure, I think there's some reason to suggest that's actually the case. Without having ever existed, Major

Martin contributed to the fall of the Nazi Empire. Today, his body still rests in Huela, Spain. But the British

government has added another name on the grave. Glendor Michael who died at the age of

34. The man who never was becomes the man he was at the start. A Welsh man who

without ever knowing it saved thousands of Allied lives after his death. Heat. Heat.