One of my favourite stories of ingenuity and dash to come out of the Intelligence war! A very British idea developed by some of the greatest of the minds in British Intelligence. These intelligence agents with "corkscrew minds" fooled the fuhrer and the whole of the Nazi Empire and saved thousands of lives, shortened the war and helped ensure the Allied victory. This is a great documentary and well worth a look!
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| The team of Intelligence Officers from Room 13 at the Admiralty who duped the rest of Europe. |
Operation Mincemeat, an idea developed by Ian Fleming (creator of James Bond) which was seized by British Intelligence in 1943 to deceive the Germans by fooling them into believing that the target of Allied forces poised in North Africa was Greece and not Sicily.
The corpse was dropped off the coast of Spain, wearing a British Royal Marines uniform and carrying "TOP SECRET" papers which were then intercepted by German operatives in Spain. The lie worked it's way up the chain of command and ultimately fooled Hitler himself into believing it. As a result Sicily was taken in just under a month; Italy invaded shortly after (which sapped enemy strength away from the rest of Europe and Russia) and the Axis finally defeated just over a year later.
The true identity of the man was only revealed in the 90's. His name was Glyndwr Michael, a poor, barely literate Welshman with no living relatives who committed suicide in a disused warehouse in London. He may have died unknown and unloved, but in death he served his country with great aplomb and is more than worthy of remembrance.
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