monchino
01-29-2015, 12:28 PM
The Need for A Deception
By early 1943 the Allies, led by Britain and the USA, had taken control of the war in the deserts of North Africa and were looking for a way to attack in the rest of the Mediterranean. Their chosen target was Sicily, and then into Italy, but the German and Italian forces suspected the attack would take place there and were prepared. The allies decided that they could move Axis troops by a deception, by making the Germans believe that the Allies were building up to an attack on Greece.
The Man Who Never Was
The British response to Hitler’s expansion and World War Two involved more than readying an army strong enough to take on the Axis troops. Churchill had also assembled units of people with “corkscrew minds” to come up with all sorts of tricks and innovations, from perfectly executed fake armies to ‘The Man Who Never Was’, the spy who was going to persuade the Germans to move their troops in Operation Mincemeat. The strange thing was, however, that this man was going to be very dead.
Charles Cholmondeley and Ewen Montagu had experience in the RAF and in law, and came up with a plan: they would find a corpse, give it an entirely new identity, attach documentation ‘proving’ an Allied attack in Greece was coming, drop this body at sea in such a way as to make it look like an
accident, and have it wash up near a German spy. The idea was grand, morbid and a little bit ridiculous, but the operation was approved and a team went ahead.
The first task was to identify a suitable body. The corpse had to belong to someone who’d died in a manner which wouldn’t tip the Germans off: you couldn’t use someone who’d been shot for example, but neither could you use someone who’d died of any disease that would be suspicious. For many years the identity of the body was kept secret, and there remain competing theories, but Ben Macintrye’s probing into the strange espionage of World War Two has selected a homeless Welsh man who was obtained from a London coroner.
The next step was to create the entirely false identify of just the sort of British officer who would be carrying secret invasion plans. They produced Major William Martin of the Royal marines, and faked every possible sort of documentation he might have on him, from identity cards, through photographs, to personal letters, which involved a fleshed out dad and fiancée. Finally they created a set of documents which, when read carefully, revealed an Allied plan to invade Greece, put them in a briefcase, and chained it to the corpses arm.
Operation Mincemeat in Effect
The Allies had chosen the spy they were going to confuse, and he was Adolf Clauss, based in Heluva on the Spanish south coast. They selected him because he was just the sort of person to send this information swiftly and efficiently up the chain of command, and also because they considered him likely to believe it all.
Consequently, in April 1943 the newly dubbed Major Martin was dumped out of a British submarine, and allowed to float to the Spanish coast where he was found by a fisherman. The plans were discovered, the body was probed but believed to be genuine, and so the information went up the chain, until the German high command sent troops away from Sicily and to Greece.
When the Allies invaded Sicily they achieved total surprise, allowing a successful operation. Lives had been saved, the defeat of Italy had begun, and Mincemeat had been one of the most successful pieces of espionage of the war.
from: "About European History"
By early 1943 the Allies, led by Britain and the USA, had taken control of the war in the deserts of North Africa and were looking for a way to attack in the rest of the Mediterranean. Their chosen target was Sicily, and then into Italy, but the German and Italian forces suspected the attack would take place there and were prepared. The allies decided that they could move Axis troops by a deception, by making the Germans believe that the Allies were building up to an attack on Greece.
The Man Who Never Was
The British response to Hitler’s expansion and World War Two involved more than readying an army strong enough to take on the Axis troops. Churchill had also assembled units of people with “corkscrew minds” to come up with all sorts of tricks and innovations, from perfectly executed fake armies to ‘The Man Who Never Was’, the spy who was going to persuade the Germans to move their troops in Operation Mincemeat. The strange thing was, however, that this man was going to be very dead.
Charles Cholmondeley and Ewen Montagu had experience in the RAF and in law, and came up with a plan: they would find a corpse, give it an entirely new identity, attach documentation ‘proving’ an Allied attack in Greece was coming, drop this body at sea in such a way as to make it look like an
accident, and have it wash up near a German spy. The idea was grand, morbid and a little bit ridiculous, but the operation was approved and a team went ahead.
The first task was to identify a suitable body. The corpse had to belong to someone who’d died in a manner which wouldn’t tip the Germans off: you couldn’t use someone who’d been shot for example, but neither could you use someone who’d died of any disease that would be suspicious. For many years the identity of the body was kept secret, and there remain competing theories, but Ben Macintrye’s probing into the strange espionage of World War Two has selected a homeless Welsh man who was obtained from a London coroner.
The next step was to create the entirely false identify of just the sort of British officer who would be carrying secret invasion plans. They produced Major William Martin of the Royal marines, and faked every possible sort of documentation he might have on him, from identity cards, through photographs, to personal letters, which involved a fleshed out dad and fiancée. Finally they created a set of documents which, when read carefully, revealed an Allied plan to invade Greece, put them in a briefcase, and chained it to the corpses arm.
Operation Mincemeat in Effect
The Allies had chosen the spy they were going to confuse, and he was Adolf Clauss, based in Heluva on the Spanish south coast. They selected him because he was just the sort of person to send this information swiftly and efficiently up the chain of command, and also because they considered him likely to believe it all.
Consequently, in April 1943 the newly dubbed Major Martin was dumped out of a British submarine, and allowed to float to the Spanish coast where he was found by a fisherman. The plans were discovered, the body was probed but believed to be genuine, and so the information went up the chain, until the German high command sent troops away from Sicily and to Greece.
When the Allies invaded Sicily they achieved total surprise, allowing a successful operation. Lives had been saved, the defeat of Italy had begun, and Mincemeat had been one of the most successful pieces of espionage of the war.
from: "About European History"