Adeptus Ridiculous - OPERATION MINCEMEAT: HOW A CORPSE KILLED HITLER | Detective Ridiculous

Episode Date: March 31, 2023

 So get 20% Off and Free Shipping with our code ADRIC at Manscaped.com. That’s 20% off with free shipping at manscaped.com, and use our code ADRIC. Always use the right tools for the job with MANSCAPED™ https://www.patreon.com/AdeptusRidiculoushttps://www.adeptusridiculous.com/ https://twitter.com/AdRidiculous https://orchideight.com/collections/adeptus-ridiculous Operation Mincemeat was a successful British deception operation of the Second World War to disguise the 1943 Allied invasion of Sicily. Two members of British intelligence obtained the body of Glyndwr Michael, a tramp who died from eating rat poison, dressed him as an officer of the Royal Marines and placed personal items on him identifying him as the fictitious Captain (Acting Major) William Martin. Correspondence between two British generals that suggested that the Allies planned to invade Greece and Sardinia, with Sicily as merely the target of a feint, was also placed on the body. Forensic examination showed these documents had been read and Ultra decrypts of German messages showed that the Germans fell for the ruse. German reinforcements were shifted to Greece and Sardinia before and during the invasion of Sicily; Sicily received none. The full effect of Operation Mincemeat is not known, but Sicily was liberated more quickly than anticipated and losses were lower than predicted. Support the show

Welcome everybody to another episode of Detective Ridiculous, where D.K., my co-host, in reality, more so the host, if I'm being totally honest, is going to go through the only thing scarier than Warhammer, real life. Before we start, you'd like to support this podcast and all the great things we do on it. I think they're pretty great, a little biased. I don't care. Go ahead and go to patreon.com slash adeptus Ridiculous to get great content such as Discord access, bloopers, HD posters, And more. Also, don't forget to check out the merchandise site, orchidate.com. Link in the description, where you can find some posters that we reveal every single month, including the occasional detective ridiculous poster, such as the Moth Woman or The Beast, involving a possible French beast. Who knows? It looking a little endowed, don't know how I feel about it.

We know how you feel about it. No, we know how you feel about it. No, we know how you feel. We know exactly, specifically how you feel about it. You had an entire opening of an episode dedicated to feeling about it. I guess I did, didn't I? It's a good poster. You can't blame me. No, I can't. However, I actually must admit, I think the, the, the, the, the, the, Hollywood one after that is a little, I really like that one.

I'll see the great, good, good, good pose, nice colors, yeah. Yeah, I like the colors a lot. They did a great job with that. Hell, yeah. Anyway, check it out, Orchidate.com, and, uh, D.K. Sir, yes, sir. I, I'm going to take a, take a shot in the dark. So it seems like our overall detective ridiculous episodes have fallen into three categories.

Horrible violence, death, and murder. Yes, that is definitely a category. Cryptids and other folklore. And minor like internet, I'm not going to say like celebrity, but like internet's weird mystery discussion, i.e. um boots boots on my feet silver on my finger and boots on my feet always be a goat not a god damn sheep uh or the gentleman we talked about last time that faked all of his life i think that falls into horrible murder violence and true then roll that back uh laris matank would be disappearance of them you know missing and yeah that one was weird that was a weird one so

which of our three categories this one fall into. Actually, I think we're venturing into a new category today. Ooh. I'm not sure this one falls into any of those categories. Well, or maybe it falls into... Paranormal? Maybe it falls into a bunch of those categories, actually, because this is going to be some World War II stuff today.

Oh. Yeah. So I know our last episode of Detective Ridiculous was a little bit of a downer. Oh, so we're going to go to World War II then. It was, you know, it was, it was heavy, you know, that stuff with Chandler. That was heavy. A lot of people were like, man, that was, that was depressing. And I felt that when researching it and talking about it.

But today, we're actually going to be talking about some kind of cool espionage and spy shenanigans from World War II. So not really the categories we talked about. It's not an unsolved mystery. It's not a cryptids. I mean, it's World War II, so there's, like, horrible violence everywhere. But we're going to be discussing what some have called one of the most successful acts of deception since the Trojan horse. Does this have anything to do with that Benisatch Cumberdick movie? The Enigma Machine?

Was that what it was called? I thought it was called something else. The one where they literally crack the Enigma Cipher, the Nazi cipher that nobody could crack and they needed to build this giant machine in Bletchley Park for? Maybe? I mean,

it definitely makes an appearance in this episode, but that's not the focal point of this episode. No. Okay, okay, then continue. Today, we are talking about Operation Mincemeat. Oh, God. Definitely not the murder and violence one. Well, like I said, this is World War II, so I mean, there's a lot of mince meat hanging around.

So let's go ahead and set the stage for Operation Mincemeat. We're kind of in the thick of World War II in the 1940s, and the Nazis, pretty much have a stranglehold on Europe. And between June and May of 1943, there was this North African campaign. I think it's one of the earlier campaigns in World War II, where the United States had just kind of entered the war, and they're starting right out with helping in this North African campaign. So we're talking about battles that are happening around Libya, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia,

those kind of areas. I won't get too into specifics about all the battles that happened around the North African campaign, but the Allied forces win this conflict, and now they kind of have a nice little launching point in North Africa if they ever wanted to make like a serious run at the Nazis control over Europe. because once they have this North African territory, the obvious choice is to go from North Africa and make an attack on Sicily. Winston Churchill even calls Sicily

the Sof Gundabelli of Europe. I like how you just a little bit went right to your orc voice for that, which is a little fitting. Right? When you think of Winston Churchill and you look at him, you think of a scotch in one hand, cigar on the other and he's kind of hunched over the dark nation. Yeah, I think he's

got the orc hunch, you know? Yeah, he definitely does. Yeah, okay. I'm just glad that pointed that out. Cool. Yeah, yeah. So the problem with wanting to attack Sicily is that like everyone, including the Nazis, knew that if the Allied forces were going to somehow mount on offensive in Europe, then the prime target is Sicily.

Everybody knows it. And so Sicily is going to be heavily fortified, and you are not taking Sicily without just massive casualties. Another little tidbit that should be noted is that while everyone knew that Sicily is like, ooh, that's a spicy meatball, we got to take that. Hitler also had worries about another target. He was worried that the Allied forces would try to invade Greece. Apparently, Greece has just this, it was this huge source of raw materials for the Nazi war efforts. They got stuff like metals, oils, chrome, that sort of stuff. A lot of that came from Greece.

And so Hitler, for a while, was worried that if the Allies took over Greece, boy, that'd be a mega blow to his war efforts, because, boy, our resources would end up a little. And... One more time? A little... You know, get a little punch in the gut. You know, all these resources are gone. So he doesn't want to lose Sicily nor Greece,

but it's determining which is the one to defend the most. Yeah. Although most people agree that Sicily, because then I think if you have control of Sicily, then the Allied forces also have a really nice little trade route going right into Europe. So then you're like, you're kind of double Dutch, screwed if the Allies get Sicily, because now they've got a really good little, sort of little supply tunnel going right into Europe.

And it's like, you don't want that one to happen. Did you say Sicily was a spicy meatball? Oh my God, I think I did. I don't even intend it. I'm very proud of you. Thanks. You've gotten so far down into that kind of humor that it's just natural at this point. I'm a word bear.

A. Ay! Manacia! It should also be noted that I'm pretty sure at the time Mussolini wasn't exactly held in the highest regards by Hitler. Because I think it was in October of

1940 when Mussolini first tried to invade and take over Greece. But he didn't tell anyone about it. He didn't tell Hitler he was going to do it. it. He just kind of figured, ah, the Greeks can't stop me. I'll have Greece conquered in a couple of days, no problem. Very impulsive, very bad idea. And you have the same thing about Moscow. They do such a good job for him. Yeah. And basically, with the help of the British, the Greeks hold

off the invading Italian forces, and Mussolini basically has to run crying and begging, to Hitler to save the day, save me. And I've heard a couple sources say that Hitler was contemplating, just leaving them to get owned and leaving them to get overrun. But Hitler and Germany do intervene, and they seize control of Greece. I'm assuming the reason Hitler came to his aid was more because Greek would end up being such a valuable resource catch. But the long...

Oh, wait. So Hitler didn't do that out of the... Hitler didn't do that out of the kindness of his heart? Probably not. Oh, wow. I'm shook. Shocked. Yeah, I know, right?

Because I think Mussolini also took some of his forces from North Africa, because Hitler was like, man, you really, you should be focused on North Africa, pal, because the allies, I would rather they not have that territory. And I guess Mussolini was like, yeah, but what if I took Greece, though? And so, that's the long version of me telling you that Hitler, probably doesn't 100% trust Mussolini's judgment at this point in time. Anyway, so these are all details

that the Allies know about and they want to make it seem to Hitler like, dude, you've totally got the right idea and of course our target is, forget about Sicily, of course we're gonna go after Greece. Surely that's our target.

But how do they go about? making Hitler believe something that, make him believe that, maybe lighten the defenses around Sicily, you know, make him believe in a red herring, because it's not like the Allied forces can just call up Hitler and be like, sup, dude, we're going into Greece, be ready, loser. So we're going to go back to September 1939. A little time more backwards a little bit.

World War II pretty much just started, and there was this memo that was floating around. It was called the Trout Memo, so named because it likened the deception of enemy forces to fly fishing for trout. So to make a long story short, it's a memo, and it has a bunch of different numbered schemes on it that are like these espionage, spy plots that you could use to really mess up some, some, some, scumbag Nazis. That's actually quite funny because I myself have fly fish for trout quite often. Right? It's the same thing. It's exactly

the same thing. I would be a great general. I don't know about that. But it's just like fly fishing for trout. Yeah, but it's a little different. Anyway, but before we move on to the most important part of the trout memo, it was said that this

thing was written by Rear Admiral John Godfrey. But when it was observed by historians, it was said that this memo, this list of intrigue, espionage, and all manner of spyful deceit, actually seemed like it was written by the rear admiral's personal assistant, a lieutenant commander by the name of Ian Fleming. Is that the Fleming that I'm thinking of? If that name sounds familiar to you, it's the original author of all the 007. James Bond books. Really? Yes, really.

Just a cool little piece of information. The author of 007 James Bond wrote this long list of just espionage spy plots. I thought that was cool. I'm shook as hell that the, the, 007, while silly, is currently based on a man who knew what he was talking about. Yes, he absolutely knew what he was talking about. I didn't know that. That's insane. All right. But on this Trout memo, there was one specific deception that just seemed to jump off the page. It was suggestion number 28, which was titled, A Suggestion, Parentheses, not a very nice one.

End parentheses. Oh, my God. I love the simplicity of it. Yes. Essentially, essentially the idea was this. A corpse would be dressed as an airman with dispatches in his pocket, and it could be dropped off on the coast, supposedly from a parachute that has failed. I understand that there is no difficulty in obtaining corpses at the naval hospital, but of course, it would have to be a fresh one. More or less... Okay. No, no, no, no, I'm just wrapping this around.

I like how this is how it starts, and the title. specifically stated, not a very nice one. Not a very nice one. And it's not. They're right. It's not a nice. No. Well, considering all the stuff that's happening in World War II, it could be worse. It could be a whole lot worse. Oh, oh, this is, this is, yeah, no, this is quite tame compared to the atrocities committed, but it is interesting. You know what? I appreciate the tact. I mean, it's, it's that, it's that British tact, right? It's that, can I? Blimey. Can I

fucking, can I have that as our new, like, as like a trigger warning? Because that's basically what it was as an early trigger warning. That's true. It was essentially, yeah. This video is not a very nice one. Parentheses, not a very nice video. End parentheses. Yes.

Hell yeah. We should do that. But more or less, you dress up a dead body as an airman with phony attack orders on their person and you let the enemy find this absolute red herring. So, there was this 25-year-old flight lieutenant in the Royal Air Force Navy who was repositioned to work in MI-5. He would come across the Trout memo, and his name was Charles Chumley. And get a load of how this guy's name is spelled.

So his name is Charles Chumley. How would you expect his name to be spelled? C-H-U-M-L-E-Y? Oh, I would expect that. too, but no, C-H-O-L-M-O-N-D-E-L-E-Y. Is he British? Of course he's British. I hate the British.

Mm-hmm. And according to his wife, when he introduced himself to people, he would always spell out his entire name. Like he'd come up to be able to be like, oh, I'm Charles Chumley. It's C-H-O-M-O-N-D-L-E-Y. Every single time. Bob Vans. Vans, Rfrigeration. Pretty much.

And you got to understand. kind of a quirky dude. He literally described his appearance as being like toothpaste just squeezed from the tube. What does that mean? I guess it means he's kind of lanky and hunched. I don't know, man. That's how he described himself. If he was like toothpaste rolled up,

then I could imagine him being like a chubby guy, you know, like rolls up the toothpaste kind of thing. What does that mean? know how some people are kind of like skinny fat where they're kind of they're a little little little plump but they're also like like tall and lanky i don't know man i got nothing that's how he described himself i don't see it from his picture great stash though he's got a just magnificent stash dude looks like a celery stick that's how he should have described himself as a celery stick But he also liked to study the mating habits of insects, and he would regularly go hunt partridges, you know, the bird, with a revolver.

So... Oh! Yeah, he would hunt birds with a revolver. So again, Chumley, kind of a quirky dude, but also exactly the type of person that Churchill just love. Churchill loved these quote-unquote corkscrew thinkers. They didn't go with the flow. They thought outside the box. They didn't think in these straight, narrow lines like everyone else.

They were weird and innovative and came up with these outlandish ideas. So Churchill loves this kind of guy. Anyway, back to the whole Chumley getting the Trout Memo thing, which Chumley thought this thing had some serious legs to it. Like they could really use this. plot to screw over the Nazis and potentially create an opening for the Allies in Sicily. But this idea, it would need a little bit of work, because the initial suggestion, very short, very to the point, it needs a little more umph to it, and you're going to need a little more help

to really flesh this sort of Trojan horse-esque plot out. So Chumley would be joined by a man named Ewan Montague, who was all the first of the same. also sort of this tall, lanky dude. And one of his co-workers would say that one of the most defining traits about him is he had these giant feet. And apparently, you could see his feet coming long before you saw the rest of him coming. I do not understand how these descriptors have been used so heavily in the olden days. I know, British people. I guess it's because, like, you're at your desk, you're writing things, you're looking down.

And I guess the first thing you see is giant feet. I guess. And so, like, oh, excellent. Now we know? That's, that's, like, there was this BBC documentary, and like, one of his co-workers just kept saying that. Every time she talked about Montague was those, oh, so he's joint feet coming first, of course. And, I don't know. British.

All right, all right, fine, British. British. So, Ewan Montague was a naval intelligence officer that, never actually went out to sea, despite being a naval officer. Ian Montague, before joining up, before enlisting in the service, was a lawyer, whereas the British called it a barrister. But once the British Navy got wind of what his previous job was, they were like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You're not going out to sea to just get blasted away at random. Your mind is too important.

He's a lawyer, like, he's one of those analytical thinkers. can smell a lie, he can pinpoint deceptions, he could, he could probably come up with better deceptions. He is far, far too valuable to just put on some random boat and get blasted to kingdom come in World War II. And if I'm not mistaken, Chumley, who was a flight lieutenant in the Royal Air Force Navy, also never actually flew. So you have an airman

who's never flown and a seaman that's with a space in it, you have a sea man who had never been out to sea now working on a deception plot to really F over the Nazis with the MI5. And the group that was working on this sort of deceptive plot

based on this trout memo, it was like this group of maybe 12 or 15 naval counterintelligence people just this tiny That was about the size of the damn room they were working in. Tiny little room

and it was more often than not just covered in smoke because it's World War II era so of course everybody smokes so they're just they're working hard to make this Trojan horse thing happen. So sort of recap

Chumley Montague spearheading this operation to put false discise dispatch paper saying the allies are targeting Greece on a dead body, float this body into enemy hands, hope that these papers get into Nazi hands, or better yet, they get right into Hitler's hands. He believes the papers, and while the Nazis bolster up Greece, Sicily is ripe for the taking. So you say float, so they're going to drop him and just like from the sky, they just kind of hope his body washes up on shore? I mean, we'll talk about.

about exactly what they plan to do with the body. Oh, goodness gracious. Okay. Yeah. It should also be noted that an invasion of Sicily, whether or not this operation works or not, an invasion of Sicily is planned for July in 1943. So, yeah, Operation Husky, it's called. So if Chumley and Monti you were going to make the Allied Forces lives much easier,

they only had three months to get all this work done. So first things first, they obviously need a body, which, like we said, in World War II, it's really not hard to find a corpse. Problem was they couldn't just use any old corpse. It had to look a certain way, and it had to look like it died a certain way. Right, yes, they had to, as stated, be a fresh one. Yes, it did. ideally they wanted to find someone who had died of like pneumonia or maybe someone that had drowned something that would really play into the idea that this body had been lost at sea for a while

from like a plane crash or something like that and this would actually prove surprisingly difficult for them but they would enlist the help of a coroner named sir bentley purchase who worked at the St. Pancreus Hospital. I think I'm saying that wrong. I think it's supposed to be like St. Pancras, but I can't help but say St. Pancreus. Anyway. And according to a documentary done by the DBC,

by the BBC, St. Pancras actually had the largest mortuary in the country, so Sir Bentley purchased promise to not only look out for a body that fit the Bancreth, bill of what they needed, but he also needed a body that, so you can't just take a body from the mortuary. Like, these things need to be accounted for. You can't just snatch up someone's dead husband, brother, son, and expect nobody to notice that a body is now missing. So not only did it need to look the right way, not only did it need to have died the right way, you also got to make sure that this

body has no next of kin or any family that would come looking for it. And even if you found a body that looked right and it had next of kin, you're like, oh, I'll just get permission. This operation is like the most top secret. This is like above top secret level stuff. So it's not like they can just go up to the next of kin and be like, hey, let me explain to you why we need to take this corpse. So they really, really need a body that has no next of kin and is kind of just right. There's also an interesting little side note about Sir Bentley Purchase. He had that sort of grim sense of hospital humor because apparently like Montague or Chumley wanted to come visit him and discuss all these things.

So Bentley Purchase starts giving them directions and they're all very complicated and on how you get to the mortuary, turn here, turn there, turn everywhere. And after he gave them the directions, all he said was, or you can simply get hit by a bus, and they'll bring your right to me. That's not that.

That's all that grim. Was that grim for the time? I mean, I don't know. Telling someone to get hit by a bus so they'll get brought to the mortuary? It's, I mean, that's kind of dark. I mean, a little bit. It's, I don't know.

That's, that's, I don't know. I thought it was a funny thing to say. It is a funny thing to say regardless. But it's like, I mean, it's, yeah, mortuary. Yeah, like Shia said, if you want to find me, just go ahead and die. Right. Like, it's, like, he's the mortuary. It makes sense. Yeah, I guess. All right, whatever.

Now, I will say the next part is where things do get a little sad and maybe a little graphic. I mean, it's not like someone trying to use a residential fireplace for a cremation or anything, but a little warning. Okay, the way you said that, it sounded like that's exactly what they were going to do, but then I realized it was a reference to the Chandler thing, so never mind. Yes. Oh, God, that still gives me goosebumps. Anyway, Bentley Purchase actually would find a suitable body for Chumley and Montague.

The person's name was Glindor. God, I hope I'm saying that right, because it's spelled G-L-Y-N-D-W-R. I'm pretty sure it's Glendor Michael. And Glendor grew up in this kind of raggedy Welsh mining town called, oh boy, this is going to be bad. This Welsh stuff is really tough. Aberbargoed is... Yeah, it was in tight. Yeah, I know.

And in Aberbargoid, they mined coal for a living. And when Glendor was only 15, his father... would unfortunately commit suit by stabbing himself in the throat. Oh, okay. Every source I looked into specifically said he stabbed. Not sliced, not slit, stabbed. I think you got a slightly better way of getting it properly done if you just like yank that into your carotid. But, yeah, I, it's, oh, that's a damn moment.

According to that same BBC documentary, as a 15-year-old, Glendor had to sign his father's death certificate, and it would be literally the only example of his handwriting in existence, because poor Glendor was barely literate. Glendor from there would work odd jobs here and there as a gardener or just a general laborer until his mother also passed away when he was only 31 years old. Always having the time of his life. Yeah, Glendor is not having a great life so far, and it doesn't get any better. Because naturally... Wait, oh yes, I just realized where we're going with this. Yep.

Naturally, Glendor spiraled hard after that because he was homeless, he had no money, he had no friends, no family to speak of. He'd wandered his way to London and he'd start begging on the streets, sleeping on benches and in parks, and just have this really sad life. And the way he died is also really, really sad because he would ingest rat poison. And we're not sure. Wait, I'm sorry. You say this. He would ingest rat poison. Yeah.

Like, that's how he died? That is the main cause, yeah. Okay, because the way you said it, it sounded like he was like Charlie Kelly from Always Sunny in Philadelphia, who he just does that because he just, like, he just huffs glue. Like, yeah, he just, like, you were preparing. It's like, oh, yeah, he died. You see, he would often ingest rat poison. And I'm like, did that lead to the cause? So again, we're not sure if he did that on purpose or not.

Glendor might have been so hungry and so desperate for a meal that while in an abandoned warehouse, like for shelter, he found an old piece of bread, didn't really think about it, and he was just so hungry, he gobbled it down without noticing if there was anything wrong with it. And he would unintentionally eat the rat poison that was on this bread just because he was so destitute and he was so hungry that he just wolfed it down. You won't get this because it's a SpongeBob. But for everyone listening, this reminds me a great deal of when they tried to kill the health inspector, accidentally killed the health inspector because they fed him an awful, awful crabby paddy.

And so this is just what it sounds like. Yeah, I mean, it sounds similar, but yeah, that's, you know, and that's how he would die. But regardless, so I guess rat poison contains phosphorus, and that's actually the part of the rat poison, apparently, that ends up killing Glendor two days later in St. Pancras Hospital. According to Bentley purchased the phosphides and the phosphorus, apparently it reacts with the acids in your stomach. and it creates this really nasty gas inside of you that does this just awful number on your liver, and that is what Glendor specifically died from. And while all of that is, whew, terribly sad and tragic, Glendor was now the perfect body for Operation Mincemeat.

God, God, I love democracy. Which it was called Operation Mince Meat as sort of an awful sort of inside joke because they were using a dead body because it's, you know, mince meat. Oh. It's not really mince meat, though. Well, I mean, they are now. Are they? Wait, what do you mean they are now? Now they're minced meat because they're dead.

I thought minced meat is minced meat. Well, that's called Operation Mincemeet. There's no D. Just it's minced. It's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's made me assume like, oh, he is now like, wait, you, are you saying they chopped him up? No, he doesn't, he doesn't get chopped up. There's no, that was Chandler.

That was last. There's no body chopping here. I can. God. Say with all certainty, no body chopping. Uh, Bentley Purchase was also relatively. sure that if Glendor did fall into enemy hands, well, or when he falls into enemy hands, if they did an autopsy, you wouldn't be able to find the rat poison and the phosphorus and

all that, so it wouldn't really be a problem. But now that they have this dead body, they're on a time crunch, because obviously dead bodies only live. last so long. Bentley Purchase could keep it on ice, but they literally had three months before the decomposition would basically put this body into an entirely unusable state, which... Three months with it on ice. Yes, three months with it on ice. But they actually, their deadline was probably a little less than three months, because in three

months, the Allied forces are going to attack Sicily anyway. But they need to make sure that the body is ready. The Nazis get the message. The Nazis can act on the message. And then the Nazis can move all their forces in response to the message. So they need to be done like maybe a month in advance. So really, they have like maybe two months-ish in the bigger picture of things, if they want this thing to actually help out the Allied troops. Okay, so big part of Operation Mincemeat, finally taken care of. They have a body, but again, they can't

just float this body out there with like a paper staple to its chest that says, lull, grease is a cool target. needs to be a believable officer with believable dispatch papers hinting at an attack on Greece rather than Sicily. So, Glendor's name would be changed to Major William Martin, which was apparently chosen because there were so goddamn many people enlisted with the name Martin and the rank of Major that it made the lie just even more believable. They would get him all dressed up in the proper uniform, which was actually a little tricky because of how heavily rationed everything was in wartime. Like literally, underwear was rationed to the point where nobody working on this wanted to give up their rationed underwear for this ruse. They all thought it was, it's just too important, it's rationed, I'll never get this back. luckily for them

there was an Oxford warden named Hal Herbert who had just been run over by a trolley so his undergarments completely up for grabs so they were good Hey look exactly he got hit by a bus that means he was found

pretty much lucky for Chumley and Montague not so much for poor old Hal Herbert did his underwear not get like blood on it well no he he was an Oxford man he had plenty of spare underp

You know? Ah. He was good. He was an Oxford, man. Good old Oxford man. So, now our good man, Glendor, Michael, properly looked like Major William Martin,

with all of the dress, with the undergarments. But that wasn't the only difficult step. Again, this has to be as believable as possible. So they needed to... It's actually pretty smart. They needed to fill his pockets with what espionage circles called pocket litter.

It's all those little things that you take for granted in your pocket, and everyone has them. And from what I could tell, in that little smokestack room of like 12 or 15 MI5 counterintelligence people, they had such a blast coming up with like the backstory and figuring out all the little pieces of pocket litter that Major William Martin would have. Like one of the things they wanted was in his backstory, he would have a fiancé back home who was anxiously waiting for her man to come back home from the war.

So, of course, his pockets and his wallet, got to have love letters. Gotta have love letters that were sent to him. And so all of the ladies, they start working on writing out love letters to this fictitious William Martin. Did they, I see that posted a picture of a gal as well. Who was the actor for this? So this was not an actor. Because now for pocket litter, if you're going to have love letters, surely this guy's got to have a picture of his girl too. Right, right.

So all of the workers in this little room submitted photos of themselves to be put on this guy's body and act. as the wife. So this is actually a desk clerk named Gene Leslie. She gets a picture of herself that she took in a lake in a bathing suit and they're like, hey, this is perfect. This is exactly the kind of picture that a strapping young lad off to the war

would have in his pocket. So she gets picked and her picture gets put on his person. I thought it was... That's pretty great. That's pretty hilarious. They seem like they are just having so much fun. I mean, in this absolute horrible World War II time, they're just kind of writing these love letters,

looking through pictures. Anyway. On a bit of a side note, the uniform that they got for this ruse to make it seem like it had been properly worn and it had the proper wear and tear on it so it looked like a real uniform, you and Montague actually wore this year,

uniform every single day to properly fit it in. And apparently things got a little weird because, like, Montague started kind of role-playing their fictitious character of William Martin, and things got weird enough that he would, like, go on dates with Gene Leslie, the person in the picture, and he would write her love letters as William Martin. All right, that's pretty weird. Yeah, and in one of his love letters that he wrote as William Martin,

he said something to the effect of, I hope one day you meet someone worthier than me. P.S., next time try someone from the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve, which, of course, was the department that Montague was a part of. He was in the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. This guy's a...

This guy's a weirdo. They're quirky fellas, that they are. It should also be noted that while Montague was doing all this, he was married with children. Oh. Oh. Yeah, and his wife and children needed to be evacuated to America because of all the war happening so that they could be kept safe.

And if I'm not mistaken, when old wife got wind of these love letters, she came rushing back to London to make sure her lovely husband got rid of this Jean Leslie character,

and he remembered that he was indeed married with children. That's... I... Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. They also put a receipt for a wedding ring for the amount of 53 pounds. There were also some bank receipts that were angrily demanding that he pay an overdraft fee of 79 pounds. He had some letters from his father, cigarettes, St. Christopher's Medallion, Silver Cross, keys, just odd ends like that to make it really look like this dead body

had been living fairly normal, standard life in the service. there was also a problem with trying to get a proper naval identification card for William Martin. I mean, getting the actual papers was fine and easy, but they needed a photo for his ID. And it didn't take them very long to realize that no matter what you do, somehow a dead body always ends up photographing like a dead body. No matter how you prop it up, no matter how you drop it up, no matter how you take it. try and tape its eyes open, that thing's just always going to look like a cadaver.

So weekend at Bernie's was a lie? Yeah. Big huge lie. Every photo they took, they were like, this is a dead body, dude. Like, this isn't going to fool shit. So, on top of everything else they were doing, they now had to find

a look-alike to pass as William Martin for a photograph to make this ID look real. And luckily, They find someone literally in MI5 in their offices. His name was Captain Ronnie Reed, and he was a dead ringer, which is a horrible choice of words on my part,

but he was a dead ringer for Glendor and the perfect stand-in for the identification card. Montague would also take this identification card. He would rub it on his pants, and he would keep it in his pocket. So that, again, if anybody ever got hold of it, or anybody fished it out of his pocket. It's like, oh, yeah, this has the right feel. This looks legitimate like it's been worn in. Okay, so now they have the dead body with a proper false identity,

proper false papers, and a proper background story. But again, the work had just begun because they needed to make sure that the dispatch papers that William Martin had on him were obvious enough to show, show that the ally's intention was to attack Greece, but not so obvious that any old intelligence officer would be like, yes, that's the oldest trick in the book. And they tried to get a bunch of people to write out these orders. They decided they wanted to have a general, write a pretty casual letter to one of his general

friends sort of explaining war efforts and what they were doing and stuff like that. But it just, it never sounded right, never sounded official enough. It never sounded like a general. So they do the smart thing. And they get an actual lieutenant general by the name of Archibald Nye to write a personal letter to his actual general friend, Harold Alexander, detailing the goings on in the war. In the official letter, Nye would write that they noticed there were a lot of German troops reinforcing their defenses on Greece,

and if the Allied forces wanted to make a proper run at Greece, they needed to bolster and reinforce their numbers for a proper assault, obviously pointing out that, hey, we're going after Greece, we know what the enemy movements there are. and the super genius part of this letter is that in this letter they go on to say that like sicily it's just a cover you know they're going to fool the Nazis by making them think they want sicily but they really want greece and the reason that's so brilliant is because if somehow say a nazi officer found out what the allies were actually doing and that they were actually going to attack Sicily, no one would believe them. Because the letter clearly says that Sicily is a dummy target.

That's a red herring. They're not going to actually attack Sicily. That's all part of the ruse. So it's reverse, reverse psychology. Exactly. It is reverse, reverse psychology. So even if their true intention comes out, nobody believes it because they've got the secret docs.

Which is bizarre that no one would believe it, though, because you would imagine, like, that the intelligence officer would say, like, no, no, no, no, you don't get it. They're going to actually do this. They're saying they're not to trick us. Well, you know, what can you do? I guess nothing. In this letter, they also put in a really awful joke about sardines, which I haven't been able to find the joke they put in, which upsets me.

But the reason they put in a terrible pun or joke about sardines is because they were hoping the Germans would see that as sort of a sly way to suggest that the allies were also thinking about attacking Sardinia, Italy, which is, you know, a little ways away from Sicily, so, you know, it'd get their troops to move away. Another detail that was added to this letter is they added one single eyelash into the letter. And you might be asking yourself,

why would you add a singular eyelash to a letter like this? What's the point? In these crazy World War II, times. Everybody is espionaging. Everybody, it's happening everywhere. Deceptions and operations are going on like crazy. And at this time, it was a very, very real possibility that an enemy spy could retrieve the letter. Slip it out of the envelope and see what was inside, slip it back into the envelope, never having opened it, and the sender. And the sender and receiver are none the wiser.

But the Allies know that, so if this letter comes back to them and they open it and there's no eyelash, they know that the letter probably landed in the right hands and maybe they caught themselves a trout. Right, because of, it's like the piece of little piece of paper or hair. I always remember this from the Stephen King book, Misery, because he opens up her, like, book. Oh, never read it. like, it's very, very creepy. Um, she opens up, or he opens up one of those lady who's keeping him captive books.

And she has like little, I think it was little pieces of hair that were on the side of the books. So once they opened, the hair broke and was like, you're in my stuff. Uh-huh. That's exactly it. Yep. That's exactly why they did it.

So, you're probably thinking the hard part is over right now. Which not really, because there, there's no easy part to this operation. It's all, it's just, it's just progressively, hard part after hard part because now that they have the body, the letter, it's all convincing they need to make sure that this body floats right where they want it to be. So they want to make sure that William Martin washes up on the shores of Spain because at this point in the war, Spain is technically neutral, but they've been known to cooperate with German intelligence officers in the area.

Specifically, they wanted to make sure that this fake letter, which was in a briefcase, chained to Martin's arm, lands in the hands of a man named Adolf Klaus, who was a reasonably gullible but hardworking, meticulous Nazi agent in Spain. So they want him to get these papers because, you know, again, it's kind of gullible, you know, he's smart, but he's super gullible. So if he sees these documents, he's going to take them face value. He's not going to question it. He's not going to look into it.

He's going to hand it off to his superiors and be like, look at what these idiot allies are up to. I've hit the jackpot. Also, if you're wondering how the allies knew about all these German spies and where they were and what their tendencies were like, it's because this is all taking place after, as we said before, after the Enigma Machine had cracked the Enigma Cipher. So down at Bletchley Park, they are reading all manner of top secret communicates about Nazi plans, where their agents are, what the agents know, what they're sending back to Germany. This would also be a great way for the Allies to keep track of how Operation MintzMeat was going.

When it really got underway, they kept like, okay, is there anything about the plans? Is there any... And they could see just how successful this ruse was going. But we're getting a little off track here because we still need to get William Martin's body onto the shores of Spain. Specifically, they wanted to wash up on the shores of

Wellva Spain, since that's where old Adolf Klaus is hanging around. And they went through a lot of planning. Like, they were meticulously looking over what time they should do this, what the tides were like when they did this, what the water movement was right, because they, it had to wash up at just the right spot. So they decide that this body would be transported via submarine because, you know, you can't actually crash land a plane and you can't be sending off flares in the middle of the night in enemy territory, right? It's too noisy.

They're going to get detected as they're trying to do it, and it would ruin the whole damn thing. So the body of William Martin would be putting like this airtight metal tube. Obviously, it had to be airtight because the freshness date on this corpse is running out, and they need to keep it good as long as possible. So we're now on to the morning of April 17, 1943. And it is time to start transporting the corpse of Glendor Michael dressed as William Martin. And there's actually a pretty...

I don't know if famous is the right word to use for it, but there's actually a photograph of the corpse of Glendor, dressed as William Martin just before Bres. being placed into this airtight tube. It's a little graphic because it is a corpse, but that is what the body looked like before they put it into the tube. Yeah, he did. Yeah, and as you can see, you'd have a horrible time trying to take a photograph of that.

Well, I'm assuming old school forensics and stuff could not tell that he died by rat poison back in the day. Yeah, they couldn't. They were pretty sure, like I said, the, the coroner was pretty sure. sure that if an autopsy occurred, no one would be able to figure out that it was rat poison or anything like that. It would just look like he died either of drowning or from shock or from pneumonia or something like that. There was one last problem before they loaded Glendor into this airtight tube. While being kept on ice, Glendor's feet had literally frozen solid, and it made it impossible to put his dress boots on.

So they had to round up a small electrical heater to heat his feet so they could get the boots on. Oh, they burned his foot on the George Forman grill. Yeah, and I can't even begin to imagine what that must have smelled like. Because you're basically defrosting a corpse's feet. And I just, I don't know, man. From my experience, it tends to smell like burnt popcorn. Really? Burning flesh.

Well, they didn't keep it there long enough to burn his flesh, I don't think. Like, they were just kind of de-frosting it so they could properly move his feet and get the boots on. You do think this is where the foot footage, like, started from? Oh, God, I really hope it's not from cadaver feet. That would be an awful origin story. I mean, that's... Ew. Anyway.

Ewe. Anyway, everything is finally in place. And now they need to transport the canister to a submarine called the HMS, Serif. They would put the canister in the back of a van, and that van would be driven by an MI5 agent who was quite literally a championship race car driver before the war. I remember reading that the driver, I think his name is John Horsfall, he got a little excited and went a little lead-footed when transporting Montague, Chumley, and the canister.

Like at some point, he apparently missed that he was heading for a roundabout, so he just went speeding right through the middle of it. didn't care, just bump, just right over the thing. And apparently that was the closest that Chumley and Montague had ever gotten to any real danger in the war. And at some point, Chumley and Montague decided, hey, you know, while we stop for, you know, it's going to take him a while. So, you know, restroom break, stop to get something to eat. Let's take some pictures with the canister for posterity. So you can literally find pictures of Chumley and Montague sort of sitting next to the canister with an arm on it and smoking a cigarette just looking like very, very pleased with themselves.

Like guys, look, it was me. I was the one who did this body. Yeah, truly, I was the one that did this. Look at me next to this top secret, above top secret thing. Hooray. Yeah, that was one of the pictures they took. And look at that old ass van. Look at that whole. That's like a bank robber van. Things built like an ice cream sandwich. You had that metaphor raring to go. That was good. I did my best. Yeah. So when the canister was loaded onto the HMS seraph, the only person who was told what was in it and what they were supposed to do with it was the commander, Lieutenant Bill Jewel. According to Wikipedia, Jewel only told his...

crew that the canister, guys, it contains some top-secret meteorological device that we're just going to deploy near Spain. It's top-secret meteorological device. Please don't open the canister. So the seraph starts to make its way to the coast of Wellva. And the seraph actually comes under fire twice on its way to Spain. Thankfully, it escapes, it thwarts the Nazi plan. And, It escapes, and it does safely arrive to its location off the Huelva shore. Jewel has the canister brought on deck and commands everyone except a few commanding officers to leave. And once everybody's left, he opens the canister, they lower the body into the water. And after reading a few Bible passages, I think specifically Psalms 39,

they order the engines full of stern, and the reason they order it full of stern is so that they can kind of push the body in the right direction, get the tides moving in just the right direction, so the body ends up exactly where it needs to be. A little side note, something amusing is what they ended up doing with the now empty canister.

I guess they figured they shouldn't just have it hanging around because it's technically top secret evidence, I guess. So they lower this canister into the water, and they just start riddling this thing with machine gun fire. This thing fills with holes, and their hope is, well, now it's full of holes. It'll sink. It'll be fine. It's not our problem anymore. Problem is, this canister, it was insulated because it had a dead body in it that they had to keep fresh. So the thing's insulated, and it's got tons of air pockets, and it will not sink. And they literally have to go right up next to it again and use plastic explosives to blow this thing to kingdom come to finally get rid of it.

And once it's gotten rid of, and once the body is moving in the right direction, they send message back to Chumley and MI5 and Montague that simply says mince meat complete. Okay. Yep. And so far, everything's going to plan. Everything is going great. The body was found by a local fisherman named Antonio Ray Maria. According to Antonio's friend, he was a little surprised to see that this body not only had a bruise on its face that he assumed was from the body being thrown out of the window of an airplane. It was also surprised that the body had a briefcase attached to it.

You don't see that every day. So he takes it into Spain, and the body now has to go through all of these Spanish channels. You know, soldiers have to transport it, naval judges need to oversee it, and they even get the British Vice-Consul of Huelva involved, which Mr. British Vice-Consul is a very important friend to the Allied forces. His name is Francis Hasselden. Yeah? Is that, yeah? Francis Hasselden?

Yeah, that's his name? Hosseldon? Heseldon? Maybe Heseldon. That sounds better. Anyway, this guy was another prime reason that Huelva was chosen as a landing spot for the body and the fake dispatch papers. Heseldon is reliable, super reliable, very loyal to the allies. So if there are any little missteps with the body, if there are any little steps with the body, If there are any little snags, this guy is right there, and he can just immediately go to work and hopefully fix it.

So he's sort of the last resort, you know? Also, Hselden would significantly help with selling just how important the documents on that body were. because like we said before, espionage is all over the place, and the Germans have learned how to crack a few of the British secret codes. So the British know that the Germans have some of their code broken and that the Germans are intercepting and reading their messages. So they take advantage of this. And Haselden starts sending messages back and forth with British officials

where they're like, dude, there was a body that washed up there, and that briefcase is so important. Get the briefcase. Oh, my God, please, for the love of all that's holy, get the goddamn briefcase. Don't. Do not let this briefcase fall into Nazi hands. Please.

So, of course, Germany intercepts these messages, and they're like, ooh, really? Ooh, briefcase. Ooh, ooh, I need to see this. leave case, let me get it. But first, they need to do an autopsy, which took place around noon on May 1st, and it was actually a particularly hot day. And once again, Salden's aide comes in at absolute clutch, because he's overseeing this autopsy, and he kind of doesn't want them to do it, because, again, who knows what they're going to find? They're pretty sure nothing fishy is going to be found, but he's like, you know, guys, look at this corpse. You know, it's, it's so hot today.

This corpse smells. Like, do we really have to do this? Let's, hey, let's just go. Let's get an early lunch. We can clearly see this thing drowned, right? We all see it. None of us want to be in this room with this stinking corpse. Let's just, come on, come on.

And the corners are like, yeah. sure and they sign the death certificate and no one is any of the wiser. I love negligence. It's my favorite kind of gins. And no one has any clue that this is actually the three months dead body of Gwyn Dormichael. And on May 2nd, Glendor Michael, who died alone, lonely without any family or or a single friend in the world on May 2nd, he was

buried in Spain with full military honors. Hell yeah, dude. That's nice. That is nice. That's, you know, it pulls up the heartstrings a little bit, you know? And from here on out

is actually where the biggest snag of Operation Mincemeat happens. Because for some reason, the Spanish refused to hand over the briefcase to the Germans. Despite the fact that Adolf Klaus is practically frothing at the mouth and begging for it, they refuse to give him the briefcase. Klaus is doing everything he can, but the Spanish Navy, they're not cooperating.

For some reason, they're not cooperating with the Nazis the way the British expected them to. And when the British get word of this, I have to imagine they're just slamming their heads against, the death just give him the briefcase man so on may 5th the briefcase arrives in Madrid which is actually really good news for the Allies because there is this massively prominent well-respected Nazi spy there by the name of Carl Eric Kulenthal now he couldn't directly get the briefcase himself but he he had connection he had big connections and he could strong arm and convince the Spanish to at least photograph all of the documents that were in this briefcase and give him a copy. And wouldn't you know it, the Spanish

were able to extract the letter from the envelope without opening it or breaking the wax seal. They took photographs of all the documents and then put the letter back in the envelope, never noticing that the little eyelash was now missing. Which I assume also because of how long it took them to send him all the documents, he was more likely to believe what the documents said because he was already on a bit of a time crunch. So as far as Koolanthal believing what was in the documents. Well, before I get to that, so now that everybody knows that Koolanthal has the documents, right? Wulenthal gets all the photographs of the documents, and then the Spanish are like, oh, briefcase, it's really important to the Allies, we'll send it back to the British.

We'll give it to the Vice-Consul, and he'll do all the necessary stuff to get it back home to London, right? And so the British take this chance to really reinforce to the Germans that they didn't know what was going on. So Heseldon and the British start sending messages back and forth to each other. Again, knowing full well the Germans are going to see it and decode it. And so the British are like, hey, Heseldin, you know, we got the briefcase back. We examined the letter. And hey, good news. No one opened it.

We're fine. We're great. Totally. Nobody opened it. We're all good. Our secret is safe. So as far as the Germans know, oh, we got one over on those silly Brits. Oh, they have no idea that we got their documents.

Oh, we're so sneaky. God, I cannot believe that the Germans were ousted by a man who's known for his big feet. It's the first thing you see coming. So when Kulinthal sees these documents, he knew it was of the utmost importance that he personally took these orders back to Germany himself. Now, as we were saying before, like, did Koolenthal believe what was in the documents? Was he more inclined to believe them or anything like that? Some people think that maybe Koolenthal had some doubts about what were in the documents,

but he didn't want to, like, voice them. because Koolenthal, he had Jewish grandparents. And so when you're like a big, prominent Nazi spy and you kind of secretly have Jewish blood, you're going to be a little paranoid. And so he wanted to do whatever he could to please the higher ups, to show his loyalty, to prove his worth to the cause. And when this just potentially massive fish just dropped into his lap, he was like, oh, this is perfect. Nobody is ever going to doubt me.

No one's ever going to be like, oh, he's got Jewish parents. Look, I have saved the war efforts in Germany. No one is ever going to doubt me. So, as these documents are making their way through Germany, there are German intelligence officer German intelligence officers trying to like

I know I got it they're trying to verify its validity and so it's making its way through the chain everyone's like yeah these things seem legit

I think so but at some point they end up on the desk of Joseph how do you say it gerbils gurbils gerbils

gerbils gerbils Gerbils, but he is the chief propagandist for the Nazi party and really one of Hitler's closest and most devoted confidants. Yeah, I remember reading about Mr. Gerbels. I remember him being a real piece of shit. Oh, yes.

If you aren't super familiar with history, this is one of the most anti-Semitic pieces of shit you'll ever hear about. Anyway, so the documents end up on his desk, and while he does look at them, study them, and he even doubts them, he doubts them too. He still passes them up the latter. Because I guess they found one of his personal diaries where he's specifically writing to himself, and he's like, you know, most documents sound a little too good to be true. Like, all of this seems too convenient. And, you know, I got to wonder if this isn't some elaborate hoax employed by the British. But apparently he kept those doubts completely to himself, and he had the mindset of, well, if Hitler believes it, that's good enough for me.

And from all accounts, it seemed like Hitler did indeed believe that these documents were genuine. On May 14th, Bletchley Park would intercept a message that basically said it was the Germans that were like, hey, guys, you know what? There's going to be an invasion on Greece, and we need to be ready for it. At which point, I have to assume everybody at Bletchley Park just goes absolutely fucking crazy. They bought it. They're hooked. Oh, my God, we actually did it. And they send messages to Churchill and the...

United States saying mincemeat swallowed rod, line, and sinker by the right people, and from the best information, they are now acting on it. Yay, we're going back to the fly fishing trout statements. Yeah, let's go. And remember that little tidbit about Hitler, maybe having some doubts about Mussolini's judgment? Apparently one of the Nazi admirals, I think his name was Carl Dantz, Dantz, In a meeting after seeing these documents and talking to Hitler, he had this to say.

The Fuhr does not agree with Mussolini that the most likely invasion point is Sicily. Furthermore, he believes that the discovered Anglo-Saxon order confirms that the planned attack will be directed mainly against Sardinia and the Peloponnese, which is basically like southern Greece. though to be fair at this point I'm not sure anybody could change Hitler's mind like he was already like kind of paranoid that Greece had just this massive target lock on it

so once he sees these documents he's like oh see I was right I knew it I knew it all along and he already didn't like Mussolini to begin with so yeah he's already very kind of he doesn't really trust Mussolini as much as he used to so yeah

so now Hitler sends word to Mussolini and he's like look, we need to defend Sardinia and Greece no matter what and Hitler starts moving a massive amount of troops to reinforce these

faint locations. Like between moving troops, fighters, aircrafts, Panzer divisions, Hitler is moving somewhere in the ballpark of 19,000 troops to the

wrong locations. He was fortifying every single area that the Allied forces hoped he would fortify. As the kids would say, let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.

And according to Wikipedia, even four hours after the Allied forces started their invasion of Sicily, there were still fighter planes that were taking off and and going to defend Sardinia,

thinking that the Sicily thing was still just, oh, no way, they're not, no way, they're not. They're literally turning around. Like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, go back, go back, back, back. As they're leaving, they see this battle happening on their shores. I'm like, shit! And yeah, big U-turn. And as you can imagine,

Sicily was taken with relative ease from the Germans. Most sources say that the expected casualties of taking Sicily was somewhere in the ballpark of 10,000 people. They only lost about 1,400, which is still... No, no, that's substantial. Because World War II is a fucking bloodbath, so that's actually insanity. I was going to say, while that's still a sorrowful amount of casualties,

when compared to possibly 10,000, I think we can agree it as a resounding success. Was that 10,000 a with the... bait or without the bait? I think that was 10,000 without the bait. Okay. That's pretty darn good then, yeah. Yeah.

They also anticipated they were going to lose somewhere in the ballpark of 300 naval ships taking Sicily. You want to take a guess how many they actually lost? Thirteen. You're so close. They only lost a dozen. God, Baker's dozen. I still win. Sure, whatever.

and initially they thought it would take about a hundred days to take Sicily. Any guess on how long it actually took them to take Sicily? Ah, four, I'm two weeks. Little over a month. Damn, nothing but net. Nothing but net. It was just complete domination. And during this time, as it was becoming just inevitable that Sicily would fall,

Mussolini would not only be voted out of power, but he would also be imprisoned while the new regime began to secretly negotiate with allied forces for like a truce-type deal. It was like, all right, we're running on the wall. Look, we arrested the guy. Look, look, we got him. Please don't kill us. Stop killing us. This would also force Hitler to now have to somehow deal with this huge Allied front attacking him from Sicily. And specifically, he had to call off a ton of troops that were dealing with the Soviets to try to stop the bleeding.

But without any troops to really stop the Soviets, man, that red red, army cut all the way to Berlin and Germany could never do anything to stop them for like the rest of the war. It was one of the most significant deceptions and turning points in World War II and it all happened thanks to a homeless and homeless

and hopeless man who left this world with nothing and lived just this sorrowful, sad life. And even though Glendor's identity was supposed to remain a secret, it seemed that his name was actually first found out by a researcher. I think it was in like the 90s. He found out about Operation Minceme, and he was like, man, I am just, I am just in love with the idea that Britain did.

this stuff, that they were using a corpse to screw the Nazis and to fool them. And, you know, he assumed that he would never find out the name of the corpse that they used. But one day, he's going to public record, just looking through files, looking

through stuff that became public record, and he literally stumbles on a file that's like, oh yeah, Glendor Michael. That was the person that we used. Glendor Michael. And he's like, holy shit, I found it. and in 1998 the British Commonwealth

would go to the grave site of William Martin, the one that was buried with full military honors in Spain, and restore his name Glendor Michael. So now, under the plaque gravestone,

it says, you know, William Martin, blah, blah, blah. But under that, it now says Glendor Michael served as Major William Martin R.M.

And in his hometown of Aberbarjowid, there is a commemorative war memorial and plaque in Glendor's honor that says in Welsh, the man who never was. Oh, that's nice. That's good. That's a really good, like, kind of, well, I wouldn't really call it a rags to riches story at all. But you get what I'm going for. Yeah, it's definitely like a sort of feel-good moment for someone who had. just nothing. Just, just awful life. Tons of depression. And it's just, you know, it's, it's a nice ending from. I think the, I don't know if it was the funniest comment I saw about it, but someone had

like a meme where like, Glendor shows up to like the pearly gates and he looks all depressed. And he goes up to, um, he goes up to the gates and he's like, yeah, I'm not going to get let in here, am I? Because I had kind of a rough life and, uh, God kind of looks at his, papers, and they're like, it says here that you killed Hitler. And he's like, I did what? He's like, come right on in. All right. That's pretty great. I like that. I also like the idea of God in a goddamn thing of sunglasses, like, hey, pop a seat. We're going to watch this. And then they're like watching the live feed of the battle afterwards. Check out what you did. This is you. Look at how easy this is. This is simple, this is great.

And then he pulls out his rod and he's like, hey man, you ever been fly fishing? You ever fly fish for trout, pal? But that's Operation Mincemeat. And there have been countless books, movies, there's a Netflix adaptation of this. It is everywhere now. So I was almost a little word that you might have heard about it. No, I had no idea about this whole thing I always assumed that there was a whole bunch of logistics and stuff

That's like hey guess what You can't use a dead body and your war In your you know I'm pretty sure that's a war crime But of course there weren't war crimes like that yet So the war crime The definition of war crimes seemed like they came afterwards For the most part

A little different And if it's like a You know no next of kin to claim the body or anything like that. I don't know how the legalities change. If there's no next of kin and it's just a destitute body that they kind of found. I'm not up to date on my war crimes, so. Oh, that's unfortunate.

Geneva's suggestion more like. No, that was actually really interesting. That's a surprisingly feel-good story with a nice, slightly, dour twist. Yeah, yeah. After that Chandler-Halderson thing, it's nice to hear a story where Nazis get screwed over. It very much is. And it's in such a spectacularly interesting way, too.

Mm-hmm. And man, they got torched. They got torched. I enjoy how emotions came into this for a while. A lot of people don't seem to realize that a large portion of, like, a lot of tactics and stuff, and successes and failures can come from just emotional things. Like, I don't trust Mussolini. And I'm not, uh, I really don't want to do an autopsy in this body of this hot ass day.

I don't want to be in this room with this stinking corpse on this muggy hot, humid day. It's like a whole lot of that. Whole lot of that. And it's like, oh, you know, it's actually pretty all right. Like, I can, I can see, I can see the why. Yeah, it's the human element that a lot of people I was kind of forgetting, like, retelling the war stories. So it was like, oh, 10,000 people died. And it's like, well,

there's the human element. Yeah, that was a good one. That was very fun. That was very enjoyable. That is a feel-good story with a nasty twist, but in a good way. A nasty twist, but it comes back around. It's actually kind of nice. That is...

That is very cool. I am pleased. Take us home, Country Road. All right, Road. It's time. Thank you, everyone, for watching. Thanks for listening as well Interesting little story there Thank you D.K for telling it so

Concisely and Sincely And then Sicily Sicily It's so Sicily It's so spicy a meatball It's a spicy meatball Sorry, Sicily Sorry, Italian

And last but not least Get fucked Mussolini I like that ending Thank you.