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Selects: Operation Mincemeat: How A Corpse Fooled the Nazis · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Hi, everybody, Happy Saturday.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: It's Chuck here, and I am picking out our select
• 0:05
  Speaker 2: for this week, and I'm going with a more recent one,
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: maybe controversial to do so, but it's our episode on
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: Operation Min's Meat. And I am picking that one because
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: I don't think we're able to record this for that episode.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: But the Broadway show Operation Min's Meat was literally inspired
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: by this episode. The one of the stars and the
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: producers was all over Variety magazine and all over the
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: place in interview saying that her brother they were searching
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: for a show to do, to write and make into
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: a Broadway show, and he said, Hey, you should check
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: out this episode of stuff. You should know Operation Min's Meat.
• 0:38
  Speaker 2: This is this really crazy story and I think there's
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: something there. And there was something there because not only
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: did they make it to a Broadway show, it's been
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: a pretty big hit and was nominated for Tony Awards
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: and I am going to get to go see it
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: in New York City next weekend, and I'm super excited
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: because I think I get to meet the cast. So anyway,
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: here we go, everyone, another little feather in our cap
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Operation mince Meat colon How a corpse Fooled the Nazis.
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 1:17
  Speaker 3: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: Charles W. Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry Rowland. This is Stuff
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: you Should Know. Chuck. Yo, I'm thirty nine years old
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: and I still can't say my own name correctly because
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: of my stupid thick tongue.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: Oh you're gonna be forty yeah soon. Crazy.
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Used to make fun of me, and now you're old.
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: Well, you're still older than me.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: I know that I can do about that.
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: It's cool though. Yeah, you're aging very well. Yeah, no,
• 1:45
  Speaker 3: you're aging really well.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: But you mean the teeth falling out, the weight gain
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: and the gray beard.
• 1:52
  Speaker 3: I still say you're aging very well.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: I appreciate it.
• 1:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, let's get your hair, take off your hat.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: I still got good hair.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: Boom, look at that the got hat head now beautiful.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Okay, people think I'm bald. Some people do? Oh?
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: Really like you're always wearing that hat, do you?
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: I don't know.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: Suspicious people, yeah, like the drummer for the Chili Peppers.
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: Anthony Keatith Flee Nope, the guy from Jane's Addiction, Nope
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: I don't know them, not.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: John for SHUNTI Chad Smith, the guy that looks like
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: Will Ferrell, He's always Will Ferrell.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: He's always got that hat on backwards.
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: And he's bald. Oh yeah, totally Brett, like Brett Michael's bald.
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: I remember he always wears a do ragh. He's super bald.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: So I get why people are suspicious.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: If you're a public figure that has a patented hat piece,
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: then it's probably because you're bald, but not in my case.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: What a weird way to start the show, especially this show,
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: Operation mince meat yep, which is a ghoulish gallows humor
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: awesomely World War two British name for this, this operation. Yeah,
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: this will live alongside our Nazi spies and Invading Florida.
• 3:05
  Speaker 3: Podcast and the History Girls covered this this very topic
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: as well. Yeah.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: Man, there's nothing I love more than little known history.
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: This is it. But this is great little known history.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and this shouldn't be middle known because it was
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: after the Trojan War, maybe the largest and most successful
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: military deception plan in history.
• 3:26
  Speaker 3: Well there was also have you seen that documentary Ghost
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: Army about Operation Fortitude. No, they used a bunch of
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: blow up tanks and planes, like inflatable tanks and planes
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: to make it look like there was a whole Allied
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: division over here. Yeah, so that we could invade Normandy moreas.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: It's like a Looney Tune cartoon.
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: Awesome, but yes, this ranks up there with literally with
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: the Trojan Horse. It's that ingenious and that wonderful.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: But so let's set the stage right, Okay, So in
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: early nineteen forty three, the war was very much undecided. Yeah,
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: it could have been anybody's. Like Europe was under the
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: control of Hitler, huge amounts of Europe. They called it
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: Fortress Europe because the Nazis were just had just overrun
• 4:11
  Speaker 3: the place, were dug in, and the Allies knew that
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: they needed to get into Europe to topple Hitler or else,
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: like they weren't going to win the war. Sure, so
• 4:22
  Speaker 3: Churchill suggested attacking Europe's under belly, which is maybe Italy,
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: Greece under Sirdinia. He called it the underbelly, not very flattering,
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: but he called it Europe's underbelly. So everybody, the Allies,
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: the Greeks, the Nazis, the Japanese, the people in Hawaii,
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: everybody knew. Yeah, they weren't American quite yet. Okay, everybody
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: knew that the Allies were going to attack somewhere in
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: that area.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, come up through the Mediterranean. Even Hitler feared this
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: the most.
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: Right, but key, right, And I mean everybody knew the
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: Allies were coming and they were going to come there.
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: But this land mass, this area of land and see
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: is large enough that you can't just be like, oh,
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: they're coming down there, we got it covered.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll cover it all.
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: You need to know kind of specifically where they were covering.
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: And there were just a few places where they could
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: have come. One was Greece, that was where Hitler always suspected, yeah,
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: one was Sardinia, right, yeah, and then another was Sicily.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: And in nineteen forty three, I think January, the Allied
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: powers met in French Morocco and held a conference, the
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: Casablanca Conference, very sexy name, yeah, it really was, and
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: they said, okay, we're going to invade Sicily this July.
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: We're going to call it Operation Husky. Now we have
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: to do everything we can to not let the Nazis
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: know that that's where we're going. And that actually hatched
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: eventually what's called Operation Mincemeat.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know what, studying the stuff and I'm not
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: a big war buff, although I'm getting more so, but
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: reading up on this stuff, like the old wars are
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: so much like the board game risk.
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that it's startling.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's literally when you look at this stuff, it's
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: like moving troops to where you think people are gonna
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: attack you, right, and rolling the dice a bit, and
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: if you're right, then great. If not, you're screwed.
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: Very much though, which is why it's such a huge
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: shift that we're seeing now moving to unconventional warfare, because.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: That's scary stuff.
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I think pretty much all war is scary. Yeah.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: Well, of course I'm not saying like Normandy was a
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: gay walker anything, because they knew what there was going on.
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: Man, I watched Stavin Private Ryan again the other day. God,
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: it's crazy. That thing's almost a snuff film. It's not
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: as bad as We Were Soldiers, which is a snuff film,
• 6:49
  Speaker 3: but it's.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: I never saw that one. The Mel Gibson w Yeah.
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: Dude, it's it's the most graphically violent mainstream movie ever made.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: Really, yes, wow.
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Like there's a part where they have a shot
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: a camera shot over this guy's shoulder, right, so his
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: helmets in the near foreground, and that guy takes a
• 7:10
  Speaker 3: hit to the head and like blood spray covers the
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: camera lens for the next like a little while. Wow,
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: his brains just cover the camera. It's disgusting.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: Did you like Saving Private Ryan again?
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: Though? Yeah, it's a great movie, but it is like
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: really like violent. That's another thing about getting older is
• 7:28
  Speaker 3: that stuff affects you more and more. The more you
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: come to terms with your own mortality, the more valuable
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: life becomes. The more valuable even a character in a
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: movie's life becomes, you know what I mean. That stuff
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: gets to.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: You, agreed. It's called growing up, my friend.
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: I'm becoming human in it grows all right.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: So on September twenty ninth, nineteen thirty nine, there was
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: a director of British Naval Intelligence named Admiral John Godfrey,
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: and he distributed something called the Trout Memo and it
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: was written by his assistant Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming. Familiar name, yeah,
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: creator of James Bond.
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: That's right, the guy.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: And I think most people know that he served at
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: this point. Yeah, but if you didn't, that's a nice
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: little factoid for you.
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: So he wrote the Trout Memo, and they called it
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: the Trout Memo because they pointed out in the intro
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: that the trout fisherman fishes very patiently, but he changes
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: venue frequently. Yeah, and he changes his bait very frequently too,
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: And so they wanted to they're charged with deception. They
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: wanted to come up with all these different ideas, all
• 8:34
  Speaker 3: this different bait and venue changes that they could come
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: up with.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and this was a time too.
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: We should point out that spying, spying is always vital,
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: but man, in World War Two, it was going on
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: all over the place in a huge, huge part.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: Of the war.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: So we need to do one on the Enigma machine,
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: by the way, at some point.
• 8:55
  Speaker 3: We do, because that's one of the unsung heroes in
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: this operation.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: Absolutely all right.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: So with the Trout Memo, Ian Fleming wrote, well, co
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: authored fifty one different operations suggestions, and number twenty eight
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: was one called a suggestion parentheses, not a very nice one.
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: The following suggestion is used in a book by Basil Thompson.
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: I'm so pleased that you said Basil instead of Basil. Yeah.
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: In fact, that was a nineteen thirty seven dollars novel
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: The Milliner's Hat Mystery.
• 9:27
  Speaker 3: And he was actually a World War One spy.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: Oh really, yeah, it's all coming together.
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: So he was a spy writer. That Ian Fleming, the
• 9:36
  Speaker 3: creator of James Bond Doug Crazy. So that's where this originates.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: So here, Oh, that's right.
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: The following suggestion is used in a book by Basil
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: Thompson Colin A corpse dressed as an airman with dispatches
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: in his pockets could be dropped on the coast, supposedly
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: from a parachute that had failed. I understand there is
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: no difficulty in obtaining corpses at the Naval hospital, but
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: of course it would have to be a fresh one.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: So the idea is, let's get a dead person, let's
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: dress him up like a soldier, give him some sensitive
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: documents that leak this invasion fraudulent, fraudulent, yeah, very important,
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: that leak the invasion of Greece, which is not really happening.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: And they're going to mount up troops there and we'll
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: actually go in sicily, they're gonna find this body. They're
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: gonna think they've stumbled upon this great happy accident, and
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: we're going to fool them.
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: So yeah, that was the That was the whole idea.
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: That was the general basis of it.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: And Churchill loved the idea because apparently he liked what
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: he called corkscrewthinkers because he knew Hitler thought in a
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: straight line. Yes, and by corkscrew thinkers, I think that
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: would be our equivalent of.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: Outside the box exactly.
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: Churchill was like, this is great, I love church Let's
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: drink some scotch and do it.
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, let's look like a bulldog while Yeah. So the
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: the well, that idea was roughly outlined by Ian Fleming,
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: and then the the Churchill's course crew thinkers, the XX
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: committee led by you and Montague and.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Chumley.
• 11:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, which is his name is not spelled Chumley?
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: No, how's it spelled?
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: Are you ready for this?
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: Charles c h O l m O n d e
• 11:26
  Speaker 3: l e y pronounced Chumley. Yeah.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: And apparently when he met people he would say, uh,
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: Lieutenant Charles Chumley c h O L m O n
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: d e l e y.
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: He would spell it out what he really Yeah?
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: Are you making fun of me? Or is that for real?
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: No?
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: No, No, he was a very quirky guy.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: And that's how he described himself as toothpaste, as if
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: it had been squeezed from the tube like he self
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: described he would go hunting with a revolver, like bird hunting.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: He's a weird guy.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: I actually watched a quickie BuzzFeed video on this, huh
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: and they pronounced it Charles Charle.
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: Did they really?
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 12:02
  Speaker 3: Nice, I'm glad we did our research. Shout out to BuzzFeed.
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: So you and Montague, right, yeah, the other guy. He
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: is noteworthy in a number of ways too. Apparently he's
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: just the greatest guy ever, most interesting man on the planet.
• 12:18
  Speaker 3: And he actually wrote the book, the first book on
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: Operation Mincemeat, because he was one of the people who
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: came up with this and implemented it.
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: The man who was never there, the man who never
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: was got right.
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: So came a movie too, Yeah, of the same name,
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: starring Montgomery Cliff, I believe, no, starring Cliff Clay Webb.
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: Cliff Claven Cliff Webb, but not Montgomery Cliff. Those two
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: are virtually interchangeable. So you and Montague was already notable
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: because at school he and his brother had created the
• 12:53
  Speaker 3: rules for ping pong.
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: No way yeah, I did not know that.
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: Among other things, and his brother, equally interesting, equally rambunctious,
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: went on to become a spy for the Soviets.
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: Oh wow, yes, so he turned yes against England, yes, wow,
• 13:12
  Speaker 2: against everybody except for the Soviets. Well, Montague was a
• 13:16
  Speaker 2: he was formerly a barrister and attorney, and this is
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: why he actually did not go serve on a ship.
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: And the other guy, Chumbley, never flew a plane. One
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: was air Force, one was a navy, And apparently Montague
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: was as an attorney, was very good at just seeing
• 13:35
  Speaker 2: all the angles.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: So they said, you, sir, are perfect for this job.
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: Nice as why.
• 13:42
  Speaker 4: Saish?
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: All right, chuck, Yes, So we have the rough outline
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: that Ian Fleming came up with the XX Committee, led
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: by you and Montague and Charles.
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: Chumley, part of I five, I believe.
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: Okay, Yeah, said we're gonna take this particular idea and
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: really run with it. And like you said, they were
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: going to. Well, the first thing they did was start
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: setting about creating a backstory.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well they had three months, so the clock is
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: ticking at this point.
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, because here's the thing. They set the invasion right
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: in January and they set the invasion for July. Now
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: you needed enough time to plant this, this corpse, this
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: fake dead courier into Nazi hands, yea, and give the
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: with enough time so that the Nazis could digest it,
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: analyze it, decide it was truthful, and then react the
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: way you wanted them to, which meant that they had
• 14:53
  Speaker 3: no later than May or else this plan was out
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: the window.
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you wanted them. The ultimate goal was to have
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: the Nazis put their troops in the wrong place, and
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: that takes time.
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: Right, So they looked around and they decided that the
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: best place to carry out this operation was Spain. And
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: Spain during World War Two was allegedly ostensibly neutral, Sure,
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: but they had a lot of Axis sympathies, a lot
• 15:17
  Speaker 3: of connections to Nazi Germany. And there was a particular
• 15:22
  Speaker 3: Nazi agent, a spy working in a port called Whoevla.
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: Whoevla right, sure, and his name was Adolf Klaus. And
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: Adolf Klaus was known to be very methodical, pretty brutal,
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: and ruthless, extremely gullible.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he was a straight line thinker. He was hitler.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: He wasn't one that could think outside the box and
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: think maybe this is an elaborate hoax.
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: That guy didn't even own a real corkscrew, you know,
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: Like they targeted this guy cut the top off of
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: wine bottles. Yeah, they specifically targeted.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: Him, which is amazing.
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: So they wanted this guy, who was fairly gullible but
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: also known as like a very respected Nazi agent in Spain,
• 16:07
  Speaker 3: to be the one who came up with this corpse
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: and cadaver. So before they ever had any corpse or
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: cadaver or anything like that, Montague and Chumley start setting
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: about creating a backstory. And they created this guy named
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: Major Martin, William Martin, that's right. And they created Major
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: William Martin, and they created this whole persona. And this
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: wasn't the first time they'd done it. They'd actually they
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: had chops with this kind of stuff. So they had
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: created a fake spy network that made Nazi Germany think
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: that they had a whole double double agent network in
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: the UK. And all of them were fictitious, not real
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: people that you and Montague and Charles Chumley had created.
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: These fake personas fed the Nazis misinformation through these people
• 17:02
  Speaker 3: that didn't really exist. So they took that understanding and
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: that thinking of what it takes to create a fake persona,
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: and they said about creating one for major William Martin.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And there's a great BBC documentary on this, and
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: they interview a lot of the players, including a lot
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: of the women who worked at mi I five in
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: the office, and they were all just so delighted that
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: they all described this as like the most exciting adventure
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: they'd ever had. I'm sure it was like something out
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: of a spine novel and they were living it right,
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: And so they all had great fun creating these characters,
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: these made up people. They wanted to give him a
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: fiance because the idea is that they find this body
• 17:41
  Speaker 2: with what not only these documents in a briefcase, the
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: important documents, but to make it believable, he had to
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: have believable what they called pocket litter or wallet litter,
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: which is, if you find any person on the street,
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: ask him to open their wallet, you're gonna be able
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: to tell a lot about them. Sure, so just stuff
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: to legitimize it. So they said, let's give them a fiance, say,
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: and all the women in the office wanted to be
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: the fiance.
• 18:03
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, so.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: They all submitted photographs. They picked this one Lady Jean
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: Leslie secretary.
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: Okay, that's the lady on the beach.
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: Yes, picture of her in a bathing suit on the beach,
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: So this was going to be planted on his body.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: They all wanted to write the love letters back and forth,
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: but they picked a woman named Hester Leggert, the head
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: secretary of m I five, and she wrote even though
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: she was a spinster, she wrote all these like heartfelt
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: love letters.
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: The first couple drafts were really dirty, and they were like,
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: you kind of tone this down a little bit.
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: You're like, is that what you think happens in a relationship.
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: He's like, no, not me, the fictitious lady.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: So everyone's really excited. In the office.
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: Chumley is wearing what would eventually be the uniform of
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: Martin every day to give it that worn in look awesome.
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: Monta Hue actually ended up having an affair with the
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: secretary who gave him the photo as the fiance. Okay,
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: they had a real life affair as Bill and Pam.
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: Pam is the made up fiance. It got a little weird, weird,
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: like they wrote each other love letters, had a real
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: life affair, calling each other Bill and Pam.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: Huh, so there was some like strange role playing going on.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: I'm sure he was married at the time. His family
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: had been shipped to America, so he was not doing
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: the right thing there, jeez, he was. He was allous
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: in that department.
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: Well, you know also Roald Dahl, the guy who wrote
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and Chocolate Factory.
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: He was a spy for the British. He was in
• 19:33
  Speaker 3: the British military and his whole job was to basically
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: bed the wives of American officials here in Washington. Really, yeah,
• 19:43
  Speaker 3: did he do so? Oh? Yeah?
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: Oh wow?
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: Oh he made his way through Washington society. Wow, apparently
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: with great zeal.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: All right, so they're cooking up this backstory.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: They get other great things for the wallet letter, like
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: theater ticket stubs and an overdraft letter from his bank,
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: and just these things that make it seem like super realistic.
• 20:03
  Speaker 3: Right, and what else? I think they gave him a
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: Saint Christopher Metal. Maybe they wanted to strongly imply that
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: he was Roman Catholic and that'll come up very It'll
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: become very important in a minute, right, yes, very much.
• 20:17
  Speaker 3: So they've got this backstory, and apparently like this. They
• 20:19
  Speaker 3: were working feverishly on this stuff, having the weirdo affair,
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: wearing the uniform, all that stuff before they'd even gotten
• 20:27
  Speaker 3: final approval, just because they didn't want to stop work
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: and then have to pick it up feverishly. They wanted
• 20:32
  Speaker 3: this to keep going. So they finally got final approval
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: from Admiral Godfrey to carry out this thing for real.
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: And when they got final approval, they said, okay, we
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: need a body, and they figured no problem they were
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: looking at first. They needed somebody who had relatives that
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: didn't care what happened to the body after death and
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: could keep their mouths shut. They needed a body that
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: was of military age, sure didn't have any signs of
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: visible trauma or right, and that that preferably they would
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: have died of pneumonia. And the reason that they wanted
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: him to die of pneumonia is because they they were
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: going to make it look like this guy had been
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: in a plane crash, but it survived the plane crash,
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: but it drowned at sea. And if he had pneumonia,
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: then his fluids would be filled with lungs, so that
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: when the Spanish conducted an autopsy on him, yes, exactly,
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: so that when the Spanish conducted their autopsy, they'd be like,
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: this is the most amazing thing I've ever seen. I've
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: never seen fluid filled with lungs, but that's how much
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: fluid there is. The problem is is they didn't get
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: their hands on a guy with pneumonia, and they didn't
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: even know exactly where to get a person at first.
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: It wasn't until they turned the guy who ran the
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: morgue at Saint Pancras Hospital, which is the worst hospital
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: name of all time. They turned him and got him
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: to assist them that they finally got their hands on
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: a body.
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: His name was Sir Bentley Purchase, which is a great name,
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: British name, and it was a He was a corner
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: of the largest mortuary at sam Pancras, terrible, and he
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: had apparently a wicked sense of humor. It was pretty
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: complicated to give directions to his office. So when he
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: gave Montahu the directions, he said, or you could just
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: get run over by a buttz nice man.
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: The British during wartime where they're having a blast, their
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: sense of humor was wonderful.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: So they got Bentley purchased and he said, I've got
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: a dude.
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: His name is Glendore Michael.
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that is not how that's spelled either. No, it
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: is g l y n d w R super Welsh. Yeah,
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: he was a Welshman born in nineteen oh nine. He
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: is the son of a coal miner. His father killed
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: himself by stabbing himself in the throat. I hadn't read that.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: That is a world man, and it didn't say like
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: your throat said, he stabbed himself in the throat, right,
• 23:02
  Speaker 2: which is weird and sad.
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: Geez.
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: So his dad died when he was a teenager, mother
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: died when he was thirty alcoholic, had a rough go
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: because of the depression, and was basically basically killed himself
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: by ingesting rat poison.
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: So that is not necessarily resolved whether it was suicide. Yeah,
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: so the Bentley purchase wrote down that he he killed himself. Yeah,
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: it was ruled a suicide, okay, But the way that
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: he ate the rat poison, it was on a crust
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: of bread, so he was hungry, they wondered. So he
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: may have been so destitute that he ate a crust
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: of bread that he found in an abandoned warehouse and
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: it was smeared with rat poison and that's what he
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: died of.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: But they found him in this cold January night in
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: nineteen forty three, in this abandoned warehouse in London, and
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: he had just eaten some rat poison. But he survived
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: for two more days. Yeah, And so Bentley purchased got
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: his hands on him and said, I think I found
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: your guy. Dudes.
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and they did.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: There were some issues, of one of which is they
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: needed a photo of the guy for an ID.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: He didn't have any photos.
• 24:12
  Speaker 3: Oh god.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: And every time they took.
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: A picture of the dead guy's face, they were like,
• 24:16
  Speaker 2: he looks like a dead guy.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, really, so they scoured his eyes up.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: So they scoured London looking for a look alike and
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: eventually found a guy at a fellow intelligence officer who
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: looked just like him. Awes, so they used his face. Awesome,
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: the ID. It's all coming together, Yes it is.
• 24:33
  Speaker 3: I'm sure. They were like, Wow, Providence is really smiling
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: on this. Yeah.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: And if you're feeling bad for Glendor, just hang tight.
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I still think you can feel bad for Glendor. Well, sure,
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: talk about a rough life, yeah, yeah, geez do you
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: remember that one Sara Night Live where Robert Duvall was
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: like super special guest who wasn't even hosting or mentioned. No,
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: he just showed up on this game show called Who's
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: More Grizzled? No Way, and he talks about like it
• 24:58
  Speaker 3: was him and uh gar Brooks, how did I miss that?
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: And he talks about how one one cole Winners, his
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: wife died and he had to keep her out in
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: the barn until the ground thowed so we could bury
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: her out back. What. Yeah, it was just weird, like
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: that wasn't even really funny. It was more just like, wow,
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: that really is hard. But the whole game show was
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: Who's More Grizzled? Any won? Of course because it's Robert duval.
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he's more grizzled than Garth Brooks or Chris.
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah even yeah, yeah, poor Garth.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: Not poor Darth Brooks. What are you talking about?
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: I'm talking about the Chris Gaines thing.
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: He chose to do it. He's a wealthy man. Yeah,
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: I don't feel too bad for.
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: Him, but I think that was evidence that he was
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: surrounded by yes men at the time.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe that was a weird thing though.
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, he faked a soul patch.
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: Oh that wasn't even real.
• 25:50
  Speaker 3: No. I mean, even if it was real, it was
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: part of his character.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: It's like, sure, I thought you meant it was sharpie.
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: Maybe Okay, the hair was definitely colored with sharpie.
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: All right, So where where are we here? We've got
• 26:03
  Speaker 2: a body. We finally got the photograph of them.
• 26:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, which is that's amazing. I didn't know that part.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: And there's another thing we found this awesome. A military
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: analysis of it.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: So that was kind of cool.
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: Somebody wrote a military analysis of this. I don't remember who,
• 26:21
  Speaker 3: so I can't give them a shout out, but we'll
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: put it on our podcast page. But they point out
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: that one of the reasons this was so successful, this
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: operation was one these guys at XCES commit XX Committee
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: just had free run to break the law, bend morality,
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: do all sorts of stuff. They just were able to
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: go do their thing. But the other thing was is
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: that they really kept this a lid on this stuff
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: and it was all disseminated on a need to know basis.
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: So when they had this guy, they had him, they
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: had They got Glenn dr kept him on ice for
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: three months as they finished his backstory. They're running up
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: against like go time, and then I think in February
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: or March April maybe I'm not sure of the date.
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: Do you know that what happened.
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: When they finally carried out Operation mince Meat.
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: Let's just say spring, because I know that they kept
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: him on ice for a few months.
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah. And they so they're up to the point where
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: the decomp is about to give away that this guy
• 27:23
  Speaker 3: didn't just recently die.
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that was a big fear that the Spanish
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: corners would be able to tell too, okay, which will
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: come up in a minute, Okay.
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: And they're also getting to the point where they're reaching
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: the end of the amount of time that they need
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: to give the Nazis to absorb this Mints information. Sure,
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: so they finally they get the guy's persona in place,
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: they have the body, and now it's time to actually
• 27:46
  Speaker 3: carry out the operation. And like I was saying, they
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: kept a lid on all this, so it was a
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: need to know basis. So they got their hands on
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: a subcommander who could keep his mouth shut, and they
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: gave him a metal cylinder with the corpse of glendor
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: Michael now Major William Martin Yeah.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: When you say subcommander, you mean submarine, Yes, not a
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: commander below regular commander.
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that submarine commander. Yeah. They gave him the cylinder
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: and they said, we're going to tell you what's in here.
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: Do not tell anybody else. So apparently the people staffing
• 28:19
  Speaker 3: this sub I thought this was some sort of weather bowy.
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was marked optical instruments. But you're right. He
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: was the only one on board supposedly that knew that
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: there was a body inside.
• 28:30
  Speaker 3: Yep. And they put a life jacket on him, stuffed
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: him in the cylinder, put him on the sub and
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: took him over to Spain under us on a submarine.
• 28:37
  Speaker 2: Well, let's back up for one second, okay, because we
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: forgot to cover the main letter in the briefcase really important.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: This was the all of operation mince Meat. It did
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: not hinge on theater ticket stubs or banked overdraft letters.
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: That's merely pocket litter.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: It hinged on a letter.
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: Hinting strongly that the invade was going to come up
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: through Greece Sardinia.
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: Right. And that was the other thing too. It wasn't
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: like official document invasion is going to come through Greece.
• 29:10
  Speaker 3: It was a letter from one general or admiral to
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: another high ranking guy, I.
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: Think General Nye.
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: They composed a bunch of different letters themselves, and finally
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: they said, why don't you write it in your own words,
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: in your own language.
• 29:24
  Speaker 3: In your own handwriting everything. So it really was written
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: by this high ranking US military official or British military
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: official who wrote this fake letter.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: And he made a joke about sardines, a terrible joke,
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: which was the little hint that was just clever enough
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: to work.
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: Right, And so in it it basically says we're coming
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: up with the you know, we're going to strike through Greece,
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: that's where the invasion of Europe's going to be. But
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: we're also going to tell everybody that Sicily is the cover. Right.
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: And this was a stroke of genius because in this
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: false letter, not only does it show that they're coming
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: through Greece, which they weren't, but it says that Sicily's
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: the cover, which would make the Nazis think that if
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: anyone ever did actually leak the real invasion plan of Sicily,
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: the Nazis would think that that was misinformation. Dude, it
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: was so ingenious, that's crazy genius. And I think about
• 30:24
  Speaker 3: here now, Chuck, we get to the point where we
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: should talk about the Enigma machine and the role it played, right.
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, basically we all know that the Enigma machine
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: was the code breaking machine invented in the UK to decipher.
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: Well, the Enigma machine wrote the code.
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: I think, oh it wrote the code. Yeah, and it
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: deciphered code though they'd gotten.
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: They deciphered it at Bletchley Park. But I think the
• 30:50
  Speaker 3: Enigma machine was the actual code writing the encrypting machine.
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: I could be wrong, but.
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: Okay, well, so we definitely need to do a podcast
• 30:58
  Speaker 2: on that, right, because we're mixed up already.
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: To get it straight.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: But at any rate, the long and short of it
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: is in Beckley Park? Was it Beckley Park?
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: I always say Bletchley?
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: Oh? It was there? An Ellen there?
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: I draw the whole ugly word out.
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: They basically had they could.
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: It was like reading the Nazis email essentially, like on
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: a daily basis, on an hourly basis, they knew exactly
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: what was going on, so they would know if they
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: were buying this whole thing as it happened in real time.
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: But even before that, they were able to craft this
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: this misinformation based on the Nazis assumption. So everybody wants
• 31:33
  Speaker 3: to hear that their assumptions that their beliefs are correct.
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: People are more apt to buy that things that confirm
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: their suspicions of their beliefs already. Right.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Hitler was worried about Sicily.
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: He was, so he already thought that Greece was going
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: to be where we invaded.
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: And then secondly he was he we knew that he
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: had heard rumors that Mussolini was going to be toppled soon,
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: so he was reticent to commit troops to Italy Sicily. Right.
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: So this this revelation that came in the form of
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: this letter, this false letter, completely supported everything that Hitler
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: and the Third Reich believed as far as this European
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: invasion was going to go. And we're able to do
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: that thanks to the smarties at Buttchley Park, right.
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and this letter too is here's another little tidbit.
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: They put a single eyelash in the fold of the letter,
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: so they would know when they eventually got this letter back,
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: if there was no eyelash, they would know that the
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: Nazi said in fact opened it. And because the idea
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: was they would open it and reseal it and act
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: like we never saw it. But there wasn't that eyelash
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: and they'd know. So rudimentary, but it worked.
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, so should we take another break. Let's take a.
• 32:49
  Speaker 4: Break as why sks?
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: Okay, So, Chuck, we are at sea aboard a submarine.
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: Chili down here and dark it is, and you're not
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: supposed to be smoking cigars. No you're not, despite Gene
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: Hackman doing it and Crimson died.
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, what a bad idea. So we're off the coast
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: of Spain. We're off the coast of Huevla. Not an
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: easy word to say, but it's important Spain. And again
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: this is where Nazi agent ate off Klaus.
• 33:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they kind of want to float the body right
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: up to this guy's backyard basically.
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: So they did. He was released from this canister. I
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: read somewhere else that the canister itself was fired on
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: with submar submachine guns on a sub so you could
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: just call the machine guns there. Yeah, and it was
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: sunk and the body drifted off toward Oh.
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: I thought they just dumped the body.
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not sure, because I found a book on
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: Google Books. It was like from two thousand and seven
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: and it was a history book, gotcha, And it made
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: it sound like the sub, the people working on the
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: sub all knew what was going on. But that's in
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: stark contrast to everything else who's seen. Yeah, so they
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: may or may not have sunk the weatherby who knows,
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: but either way, Major Martin was released into the current
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: that took him right to Huevla and he went. I
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: think he was found by a fisherman that same day.
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And at this point the Brits started sending telegrams
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: about a very important missing person frantic. Yeah, like they
• 34:43
  Speaker 2: wanted these to get intercepted obviously, and that worked as well.
• 34:47
  Speaker 2: This is all really going exactly as they had planned.
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: So they sent the British Council in Spain in Huevla,
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: or in Spain to Huevla and said, you need this
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: is really important. You need to get your hands on
• 35:00
  Speaker 3: the briefcase, find out what happened to this guy and
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: get your hands on his briefcase.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and Klaus is going briefcase right hmm.
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: As Monocle popped out and the British Council in Spain
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: didn't even know what was going on. Yeah, they thought
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: like this is like they were. They saw everything from
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: the same aspect of reality that the Nazis saw. Need
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: to know basis exactly. So the British Council are trying
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: to get this briefcase kind of frantically, and the Spaniards
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: were like, uh, you know what, we are just going
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: to keep this on lockdown for now as we investigate
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: the whole thing. But we got it covered. Remember we're neutral,
• 35:35
  Speaker 3: so your briefcase is safe. The British consul said, well, okay,
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: one thing, this is very important. Uh, this guy was
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: Roman Catholic. You can check out the metal in his pocket. Yeah,
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: so please don't dissect him. It's against Roman Catholic beliefs
• 35:50
  Speaker 3: and traditions to dissect our autopsy body. I hadn't heard before,
• 35:55
  Speaker 3: but apparently in the forties that was the case, and
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: Spain was way down with that super Roman Catholic and said, oh, yes,
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: of course we won't do that. So apparently that's how
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: they got around the fact that Glendor hadn't died of pneumonia.
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: And the other way they got around it was they
• 36:08
  Speaker 2: had a plant in the office who talked to the
• 36:13
  Speaker 2: corners and was like, guys, it's hot and this body
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: is going to start riding real soon. So how thorough
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: do you really want to make this? And they said,
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: you're right, Let's go have some wine. Some what do
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: they call it over there?
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: Wine? No, what's the fruity sangria.
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, let's go have some sangria and knock off early.
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: And that's exactly what happened thanks to the plant. So
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: this is going on. There was a small wrinkle at
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: this point. The briefcase went to Madrid. Spain wasn't going
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: to hand it over to anyone, but the Brits were
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: trying to get it in the hands of the Nazis.
• 36:49
  Speaker 2: And they're actually having trouble getting it into the hands
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: of the Nazis until a guy named Carlo Koulantal, he
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: was Hitler's most trusted guy in Spain. He got wind
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: of it and kind of took over for Klaus. Was like,
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: I'm going to get this briefcase, and he did. Nine
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: days later, after the body washed ashore, the letter ended
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: up in the hands of the German. The German, you know,
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: it worked his way.
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: Up the chain, Yeah, to Hitler himself.
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I went to Gebels first and Gebels, even in
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: his diary they found later had suspicions about it.
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, because he was a corkscrew.
• 37:25
  Speaker 2: Thinker and he was like, wait a minute, this is
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: pretty convenient. Yeah, this is really fishy here. But he
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: apparently he never said anything to Hiller.
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: He got distracted.
• 37:35
  Speaker 2: He wrote about in his diary, but the documentary said
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: his thinking was, well, if Hitler believes it, then that's
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: good enough for me.
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: Huh, that seems like bad idea.
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and.
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: Homeboy Carlo Kuhlenthal, there was always a lot of speculation
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: on why he just ran with it and didn't ask
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: more questions because that was his job. And it turns
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: out his grandmother was Jewish and he was very paranoid
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: about this being found out.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: So he thought, this is it.
• 38:04
  Speaker 2: I've come upon the greatest find of the war and
• 38:07
  Speaker 2: it's all mine. So yeah, no one will ask any
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: questions about me after this.
• 38:12
  Speaker 3: Huh. Wow, that worked out really really well.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, very convenient.
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: And thanks to the Enigma machine they knew the Brits
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: knew pretty quickly that this was working. And I guess
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: Montague and Chumley sent Admiral God for you a transmission
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: that said Operation mince Meat swallowed Rod Bline and Sinker.
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that when the it's so cool seeing these old
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: like apparently you're not supposed to say elderly anymore, by
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: the way, we got an email. I knew that or seniors.
• 38:44
  Speaker 2: You're supposed to call them older adults.
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: Seniors. I didn't know that that was the thing.
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, older adults.
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: So they're interviewing these older adults, these British ladies that
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: are in their eighties now, and they were just all
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: so still excited, they said when they because you know,
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: with the Enigma machine, they were reading their emails and
• 39:01
  Speaker 2: they were like they knew they were buying it. They're
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: buying it, and everyone was just like flipped when that
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: came through the office. It was just like party time basically.
• 39:10
  Speaker 3: So the Operation mints Me really really worked really well,
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: so much so that apparently Hitler moved a panzer division,
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: which totals about ninety thousand troops from Sicily to Greece.
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and and all the artillery and armaments and everything
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: not just soldiers, so.
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: Long Sicily were going to Greece, and then up came
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: the Allies through Sicily, one hundred and sixty thousand Allied
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: troops stormed sicily, and only seven thousand lives were lost,
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: which is still a lot of people who died. But apparently,
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: as far as military historians are concerned, and I think
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: the military at the time, that was a way fewer
• 39:53
  Speaker 3: lives lost than they expected had they had Hitler not
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: swallowed Operation mince Me.
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they expect did ten thousand casualties in the first
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: three days and three hundred boats sunk in the first
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: two days, and it ended up being fourteen hundred in
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: that first week soldiers and about a dozen ships in
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: that first week, So that's not bad.
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: And not only that, but it had another effect.
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: Big one the Soviets. Yeah. So this is not something
• 40:21
  Speaker 3: that they teach in American history classes in US high
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: schools that much. The Operation Husky, it was that penetration
• 40:31
  Speaker 3: of Europe's under belly, right, Yeah. And suddenly Hitler said,
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: I'm about to storm Russia, but I really need these
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: troops down here in Europe because I got big problems. Yeah.
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: And that allowed basically Russia to topple the Nazi regime.
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: And Mussolini get toppled by the Brits.
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: It completely changed the face of the war. Yeah, this
• 40:53
  Speaker 2: one idea cooked up by me and Fleming in part.
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: Isn't it crazy?
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: It's pretty awesome. Other stuff, there's a book called Operation
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: mince Meat by a guy named Brett McIntyre. All right,
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: it came out in twenty ten. That's a very good,
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: well cited book that we inadvertently cited here there. And
• 41:13
  Speaker 3: then there's The Man Who Never Was, which was written
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: by you and Montague, which is not just about Operation
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: mince Meat but also about basically how to carry out
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: deception plans.
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: Remember earlier when I said, don't feel too bad for Glendor, Michael, Yes,
• 41:30
  Speaker 2: even you said, well, the dude died, possibly of suicide
• 41:34
  Speaker 2: because he was penniless and going nowhere.
• 41:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so I feel bad about that.
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: But fifty years after he was buried, in nineteen ninety seven,
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: the British government added they basically buried him with military honors.
• 41:49
  Speaker 3: The Spanish did, oh this.
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he was buried in Spain, but the British it
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: came from the Brits, I think to do so.
• 41:55
  Speaker 3: His headstone came from the Brits. But the Spanish buried
• 41:58
  Speaker 3: him with like the twenty one gun salute and everything.
• 42:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, says Glendor Michael served as Major William Martin, r M.
• 42:05
  Speaker 2: Royal Marine.
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: Pretty cool.
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so this.
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: Alcoholic drifter who never served in the military, never served
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: in the military, buried with full military honors. Yeah, and
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: completely changed the face of the war thanks to being
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: a body.
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that fit the fit the bill.
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: And if you like ghoulish photos, is a very famous
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: photo of him being propped up in his life jacket
• 42:28
  Speaker 3: and uniform as they were basically loading him into the
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: cylinder that you can see by searching. I'm sure Major
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: Charles Martin, that's right, Charles Martin. No, William Martin, William Martin,
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: something like that.
• 42:41
  Speaker 2: I still want to know what was going on with
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: that weird role playing there with the dude.
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: That's odd.
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: Dyll and Pam Yeah.
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because they interviewed the lady and she was just like.
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: Oh, it was all very exciting.
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great British lady accent older person, yeah yeah,
• 42:58
  Speaker 3: older adulder adult yeah yeah, boldie. If you want to
• 43:03
  Speaker 3: get or no, if you want to know more about
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: Operation Mincemeat, just type that word into your favorite search
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: engine or go check out the stuff you missed in
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: History Class episode and I said, stuff you missed in
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: history class. It's time for listener mail.
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this bread crust.
• 43:20
  Speaker 2: We had that discussion about the crust and the n pieces,
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: So this is.
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: From a dad.
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: Dear Chuck and Josh, your discussion of the inslice of
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: bread and the body language episode brought a ridiculous grin
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: to my face as I walked around my neighborhood. Don't worry, though,
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: my neighbors have thought me to be eccentric for years. Now,
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: look at that guy smiling.
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: What a weirdo. We must be a pinko.
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: When our daughters were still tiny, my wife and I
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: realized we were doomed to eighteenish years of eating bread
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: crust pieces ourselves if we.
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: Didn't figure something out and quickly our solution.
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: We started calling those pieces the lucky piece, and boy
• 44:00
  Speaker 2: did we rook our innocent, trusting toddlers. Turns out your
• 44:03
  Speaker 2: supposition is correct, Juck. At least for children under eleven
• 44:06
  Speaker 2: years old, even if they're honor students, is mine where
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: they will fight you for the right to eat that savory,
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: oh soo desirable piece of luck.
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: Nice idea younger adults.
• 44:17
  Speaker 2: Rock on, guys, and please keep my goofy grins coming.
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: That is from Ted sEH, I n e with a little.
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: Quin a coin a coiny?
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: Is that an accent a doo? No, I don't know.
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: I didn't take French legom.
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: What do you call that a lagom accent lagom?
• 44:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah?
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: So thanks Ted, I'll just call you coin.
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thanks Ted quin que.
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: Let's say coin there. Yeah, thanks a lot, ted. Ted
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: contacted us on Twitter, so he wanted to send us
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: this email. So there you go, Ted.
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 44:54
  Speaker 3: If you want to get in touch with us, you
• 44:55
  Speaker 3: can send us an email to Stuff podcast at iHeartRadio
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,