Citation Needed - Operation Mincemeat

Episode Date: November 30, 2022

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. Our theme song was written and performed by Anna Bosnick. If you’d like to support the show on a per episode basis, you can find our Patreon page here.  Be sure to check our website for more details.  

And so I said, well, I think selling me pictures of your feet is actually a very empowering activity for the Girl Scouts to learn sex work is work. Yeah, yeah, you should be in jail. That's what they said. There is some grab him. Get out. Tom, get off my bike. Sorry, Eli.

We just, we can't risk your before show shenanigans this week. This week's story has Nazis, a torpedo and a dead body. And none of those are worth the risk of what you do to them. So we're just going to have Tom hold you and keep you here until the podcast starts. Tom, did you cover your arms in large? Keeps you from biting. So this just, oh, curse my commitment to veganism. We froze your credit cards.

We canceled all your guys. We replaced your credit cards. We canceled all your guys. We replaced your cell phone with a toy one from Target. I knew Anna sounded different this morning. Damn. Okay. Well, I guess you guys got me. I guess you got me. Make sure dead.

Yep. Yep. Oh, just one thing before we start the podcast. Did you guys enjoy your steak sandwiches? The ones Tom ordered? Yeah, they were fine. Like, I didn't order any sandwiches. Wait, then who did?

Oh, I'm afraid I whipped up those bad boys myself. 100% pure Cecil clump. Don't let me sick. Why, man? Why? You forgot the key to my shenanigans gentlemen I never Google what the episodes title means damn it you monster So was there a sandwich for me or? Is there I had a light lunch is there Like, Lone, she's there. Hello and welcome to Sitation Needed, the podcast where we choose a subject for you to

single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts because this is the internet and that's how it works now. I'm no illusions, I'm going to be leading this route, but to pull it off, I'll need a few accomplices, first up, two experts in pulling it off, Cecil and he. Caliente. Oh, your Caliente, sir. Cheers, cheers, cheers to you, Cecil. Cheers to you. I'm also joining us tonight. Cheers. Cheers.

Two guys who always keep a hobo corpse handy just in case they need to throw out some Nazis Eli and Tom. Yeah, it takes forever to tweet on this thing. Let me tell you. Yes. He thwart the Nazis. That's why. Yes. Of course, before we started, I wanted to thank our patrons, Volgarity for Charity is over and it was a huge success. We, I don't know how huge a success is because we're recording this in advance, but the

point is that it's over and you can start just giving your money to us again. And if you'd like to learn how to join the ranks of people who give us money, be sure to stick around to the end of the show. And with that out of the way, tell us, Heath, what person plays think concept phenomena or event? We'll be talking about today. We're going to be talking about operation, mincemeat of World War Two. Oh, that operation mincemeat. Okay. So what was operation mincemeat? Oh, no, no, I want to do that, Tom thing. Ask me why I chose the topic.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Christ. Yeah. So why did you choose this topic, Keith? So the other day, I was ruminating on the state of humanity, staring into the middle of disdain, with oil pan, with raindrops running down that one, but it's not what I do. And I dwell upon the dark, soul-crushing, waste land of hatred and ignorance that is human society.

And that is what I do. I don't believe bereft of any semblance of great, but he has a whole life. And then I watch the movie on Netflix. It's called Operation Mince Me. And it tells the story of how some delightful British nerds found a way to trick the Germans into believing there was a plan for an allied invasion of Greece, which acted as a smoke screen for a real invasion of Italy. It's a tale of psychological tricks and double bluffing and triple bluffing and back to zero bluffing and no single bluffing. That's dumb. Obviously. Single. Plus also torpedo mummification race car, and a little bit of James Bond.

According to military historian Michael Howard, it was perhaps the most successful single deception operation of the entire war. And then at the end of this, we killed a whole bunch of Nazis. So that was fun. I really like it when we kill Nazis. So that's how I picked the story. Listen, I appreciate your effort, but unless several people freeze to death, you're not doing the Tom thing. Also, you're fogging up my gazing window. So it's, I do,

I do like a you conjured Tom is the personification of the offensive curmit meme at the beginning. No, yeah. That's good. I think that's about accurate. So the story of Operation Minsmite begins in 1939 with our connection to James Bond. Sir James Godfrey, the director of Naval Intelligence for the UK at the time, circulated a document called the Trout memo. Okay. That's very fishy. It was.

It was a list of 54 possible ways to trick the Germans and gain some kind of edge in the war. And it was called the trout memo because it compared the deception of your enemy during a war to the deception of trout when you're fly fishing. And the memo was almost certainly written by James Godfrey's assistant at the time, Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming, who went on to create James Bond in his novels. And then you shall say one martini, shake it, not dead. And the ladies should have lots of headed with theater or thick with the oil. And you'll say, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no,

no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, what, what, what, what a 40 plus of these involve exploding in pens. Do we have that? That was so.

Sturret, though, stir the martini. Don't shake it. That's dumb. It's really important. So item number 28 in the trout memo was the inspiration for Operation Mincemeat. The idea was to get a dead body and make it look like a medium level intelligence officer whose plane was shot down over the ocean and he drowned.

And the deception would happen by planting documents on the body with fake intel. If the body was discovered in the right place by the right people and the documents made their way to German intelligence, they might be fooled into believing the whole thing was a lucky accident in their favor. And they'd act on the bad information. And then when they take the plans out of his pocket, it pulls a string on a pulley. It releases a cage on the top of a building. It's going to be similar to that. Pretty fun. Uh, it appears he was killed by a boot, which tipped a bowling ball down a ramp

into a stack of books, which pulled a string and fired the anti aircraft gun justice. He was flying overhead. It all checks out. Yeah. Yeah. So this general type of tactic is called the Havorsack Ruse, which is often credited to a British officer who used it to help win a battle during World War I. He planted documents that detailed a fake battle plan inside a Havorsack, which is a type of backpack, and he let the bag fall into the hands of the Ottoman military. And this type of trick found its way into a relatively unknown book written by British author, Basil Thompson. But it wasn't so unknown that aspiring novelist Ian Fleming missed it.

Item number 28 of the trout memo actually gave credit to Basil Thompson and explained the idea. And the Allies actually used a version of the Havorsack Ruse multiple times before Operation Mincemeat. They kept doing it. This includes one time when German tanks were tricked into avoiding a fake location for an Allied minefield, but it led those tanks into a big area of quicksand. Despite that, for example, of the ruse, we used it again in mincemeat because Nazis are imbosols who get fooled by bug spawn metrics, which is why British counter attacks just I'm throwing oversized axes under German troops so they get squished by anvils. Still, they had to be psyched to die in quick sand, right? Who's just turned to their buddy just like some movies, which it's just like the movie.

Quick sand. Grab a fuck and there's no vides. What other example of the have a sack ruse actually led to the mincemeat plan. In this case, it was a lucky zero level bluff that worked out, meaning it wasn't a ruse at all, but it seemed like a ruse to the Germans. In September of 1942, an allied plane crashed off the coast of Spain, killing everyone on board. That included a courier who was carrying actual top secret documents. His body was recovered by the Spanish military, and they returned the body to the British, along with the documents which were determined to be unopened. And using intercepted radio communication, British intelligence was able to confirm that German intelligence had seen those documents, but had dismissed them as disinformation.

It also confirmed that the Spanish military was full of Nazi sympathizers who were willing to pass along evidence to German spies. So given all that information, we decided to run the Havorsack play again and we did mincemeat. Wait, they determined that the unopened documents were disinformation and the Nazis conquered how much of Europe with this bang up team of crack intelligence officers. Hey. So it and how long was your opinion, be of them, if you're response to them, thinking a real crash and real plans where fake was to assume that they would think of fake crash

with fake plans was real. That's awesome. Really low. And that's an elmer, fun, level logic. Yeah. It's amazing. So a month after the lucky break with that plane crash, a British intelligence officer named Charles Chumley brought up the idea of using plan number 28 from the trout memo

again. He immediately got yelled at for floating a dumb idea, but you know, literal Nazis were taking over the world. So we were trying anything. Chumley's boss decided to give it a chance. And he assigned Chumley to work on it with another intelligence guide named you and Montague. So they started to work up a plan to help facilitate a surprise allied invasion of Sicily.

Winston Churchill had recently described Italy as Europe's soft underbelly and he wanted to attack that key strategic hold over the Mediterranean. It might be a soft belly, but it's really, really hairy. Me, really hairy. The allies invade Sicily and are immediately overfed to death by a horde of Italian grand mothers insisting they look too thin. And then everyone took a turn on Cecil's great-grandmother happily ever after. They did too.

What's happening? Oh, but if it was a Heath choke. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Well, I did especially enjoy one of the quote from Churchill. I give it to you here. During the planning, he said, everyone but a bloody fool would know that we're going to go after Sicily. But meanwhile, Hitler was convinced that attacking Sicily was too obvious. And therefore, an invasion would more likely come through Greece and conceivable. Yeah. Everyone but a bully fool. Yeah. Everyone but a bloody fool. You got it. So there was a bunch of arguing about, you know, Hitler would want us to want him, to want us to want him to want us to attack the whichever level I'm on. I got lost in the level. We're doing Sicily

is the plan. So, Chumley and Montague tailored the plan to make Germany focus on Greece and divert forces away from Sicily. Okay. I also, I feel like Hitler fell for a lot of the, what's that on your shirt nose boobs? Yeah. Right? One dude did it with shit on his finger and the world's most famous mustache was born. But it's on your lip, my interior. Oh, I'm not following a present again, Steve. You'll got to be once. Also, what is this smell? It's very, very happy. There I go. So the overall plan to trick Hitler about Greece and Italy was called Operation Barclay. And it started with the formation of a fictional attack force called the 12th Army. To support that lie, the Allies set up a new headquarters

in Cairo and staged military maneuvers in Syria using fake tanks that were actually just jeeps with like a big wooden tank shell over the time. Like some guys driving around weird tank- power wheels in the desert. Just look, mom, a soldier. They actually used a lot of volunteers from the Salvation Army. It really worked out for the time. And we actually did this again before Normandy too. So apparently the Nazis never caught on to the wooden tank shell thing. We also ramped up a bunch of false communication about that fake 12th Army out of Cairo. And at the same time, the Allied command post in Tunis intentionally slowed down communication since Tunis would be the headquarters for the actual invasion

into Sicily. And then we went out of our way to fake higher a bunch of Greek interpreters and very publicly stopped byile Greek maps and currency. So the next step was finding the right dead body to drop off the coast of Spain. I'm welcome to Eli's world, right? Thank you. Obviously, there were plenty of dead bodies to choose from during the middle of a war, but all the details had to be just right in order for the deception to work. Chumley and Montague consulted with Bernard Spillsbury, a pathologist who actually gave

them some good news. I'm sorry to interrupt the essay. He's just super obvious. These names are made up. Chumley is going to be a Bernard Spillsbury explained that whatever Spanish pathologist might examine the body would likely be Catholic. And therefore he'd be averse to doing a full autopsy when the cause of death seemed clear

or be obvious drowning. So it turns out that stupid religion stuff helped us trick Nazis. And that makes me happy. Because the autopsy is only a sin if the medical examiner is confused. Go figure. With all of the system. Yeah. They just, they don't touch dead bodies at all for anything. It's weird. Only way to salvation army guy could do it is you put it in that slot. If it fits in the slot, they'll be able to do something. So from there, Chumley and Montague got in touch with Bentley purchase. Come on. Do you have a little bell? Is it a contest? That one was that was like Gareth Southgate.

Yeah. I was very, very British. So Bentley purchase. It's real coroner for the northern district of London. And they ask for his help in getting the actual body. And that's where they ran into a new problem. Bentley purchased explained that he had plenty of bodies, but you can't just take them because families of dead soldiers don't like that. Eventually though, purchase found the body of a Welsh guy named Glendor Michael. Come on. You guys didn't have any known living relatives.

Glendor Michael had died by ingesting rat poison. What? But Dr. Purchase assured them this wasn't blessed without a very thorough autopsy, which again, they had reason to believe was not going to happen. So they put Glendor Michael's body in the fridge and that gave him three months to carry out the operation before there was too much decomposing. Just shove him in there next to last Saturday's potato salad and that open box arm in hammer. Just

and don't forget to burp the container. If you don't burp it, it won't last. Yeah. It's important. Did somebody take my Welsh corpse again? I wrote my name on it this time. Here I got to do it. Damn it. So with the body acquired and the clock ticking, Chumley and Montague started figuring out all the details about the fake identity of the corpse they were going to make up. Yeah, because even the Nazis wouldn't believe in a guy named Glitter Michael or whatever the fuck you just did. Okay, but the point being it would all have to line up with any official records, just in case German intelligence had moles inside the British military to check on it.

For name and rank, they chose Captain acting major William Martin of the Royal Marines. The name was common enough that several men in the Royal Marines had the same name and approximate rank. From there, they constructed a backstory that would line up with all the random stuff they would plant on the body. In the world of espionage, they call this pocket litter. For William Martin, the pocket litter included a receipt for a diamond engagement ring, two letters from his invented fiance Pam and a photo of Pam that was actually a photo of MI5 clerk, Jean Leslie. Uh, Jean, get in here.

We have a weird request for you. Yeah. That's what happened. The love letters were the final result of a long process of Montague and Jean Leslie writing layers to each other back and forth in character in what may or may not have been an actual romance. Either way, their letters were super shitty and not natural and MI5 head secretary Hester Leggett, who is 75 years old or so at the time. She wrote the final versions because they were terrible. All right. Well, so the story called mincemeat

now has a corpse on ice and a budding romance. I'm getting worried about where this is going. So while I speak with Heath in the corner for a minute, we'll pause for a little apropos of nothing. Oh, it's a monkey cue! It's a monkey cue. Yes, sir. My office right now. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Oh, hey. Hey, you. I'm a monkey, you. Yes, sir. My office right now.

Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Oh, hey, Leslie. Hi. I want to talk to you about Operation Minsmite. Yes, sir. You're pocket, Luna. There's stuff that you're putting on the body.

You and Sergeant Leslie have been working on those love letters. Yes. So now, we have correct me if I'm wrong. But in the last letter to you, Sergeant Leslie wrote, I see no you know me. There is only us forever and forever my love. Right. Sound familiar? Yep.

Yeah. I think so. And in reply, you wrote right back at ya, right back at ya. Yeah. So seriously, so you see how the tone of these two daughters don't precisely match. Yeah, I get you saying maybe this guy, he's less of a talker, more than actions. That's what I was thinking. I would love to hear what he's done lately.

What are you talking about? If you don't know, I'm not going to tell you. Look, I just saw a ton, and this project goes through, you'll save thousands of allied allies, perhaps tens of thousands. We need to know that your heart is in this thing. Yeah. Okay. Fine.

Fine. All right. Better fake love letters. No, no, no, it's too late for that Leslie and I have been working on replacements for yours But but but I expect you to hear first thing in the morning at roll call for a dramatic reading of The letters in the dead guys pocket. Yes. Yes, and I expect genuine feeling. Yeah, well good luck with that Are you crying? I'm a person you and I have feelings. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey So we last left off the brits were about to win the second World War with a weekend at Bernie's style rules. So what happened next, teeth?

Okay, the next step was fabricating the naval ID card for William Martin, which had to include a photograph. They started by trying to dress up the actual corpse and somehow keep a normal smile in place while they took a picture. But yeah, that was fucking stupid. So it didn't work. They'd be about to take a picture. And then, you know, his head would move or he'd continue looking like a dead body, which a dead fucking face. And you have to put the corpse back in the fridge for a while, try again. After trying this for way too long, somebody finally pointed out that if they looked

hard enough, they might just be able to find another white guy somewhere in London, someone ideally alive and close it up in appearance. Yeah. So so eventually the entire British government caught up with the average American 19 year old trying to buy beer. That's great. That's good. But only after one of them was how hold in the guy's

head up and trying to make it smile from behind. Maybe if I reach in from in the a and S and we'll just kind of get the fingers up. You always you're solution. You and every time you look like. This is ridiculous. So they did that. They find a real person and they got a uniform and all that was left was the underwear for the corpse. What? The problem was underwear was in short supply because of war rationing. So nobody wanted to give any away. But they finally got a pair of nice woolen underwear from the recently deceased Herbert Fisher, the former warden of new college Oxford. Can't send your spy off without a briefing. Briefing. Briefing. Briefing. Nice.

As a big problem too in the boxer rebellion. Okay. Oh, I guess going commando wasn't a military term until after the war. Okay, I don't, I don't have a pun, but England has weird donor cards. Okay. All right. So now it's time to create the fake secret documents with the misleading intel. Montague and Chumley spent a bunch of time drafting a fake letter from a general named Archibald Nye to another general, but they kept getting a final product that didn't sound natural. Then someone on the team realized they could just have the actual general Nye write a goddamn letter. So they took his draft and added some disinformation details,

including an extra clumsy pun about sardines, hoping the Germans would interpret that as a badly veiled reference to an invasion of Sardinia, another spot that could take German forces away from Sicily. And as a finishing touch, they put one single black eyelash inside the sealed letter as a way of checking if the Germans or the Spanish had opened it. Yeah, they got it back. Yeah. And if a bunch of hairs were in there, they'd know the Italians had opened it.

So, perfect. So they had all the fake stuff ready to go. And now it was time to plant everything on the body, but they wanted to make sure the fake secret intel got noticed and didn't wash away out of the pockets. They also worried that the Catholic thing about tampering with corpses might prevent a pocket check. So they decided to use a briefcase to carry the really important stuff. The original plan was to have the briefcase clutched in the dead body's hand.

Unfortunately, someone pointed out that's fucking stupid. And they instead went with what it really gave me treat. He would hold on tight. Like, I don't know. They thought like rigor mortis might hold it, but as somebody was like, no, that's dumb. That's dumb. We're doing something else. They went with one of those chains, like a jewelry career might use to handcuff a case

diamonds to themselves. I see. I see. Yeah. So maybe he would have sold his hand together on the way. Didn't know what you know it never might go. Could we make a glow a little put an icon above it? Or is that just a video game?

Just a video. I have to check. I don't know until I ask. You know, I, I, I will say I get the ruse though, because if tomorrow I found a dead guy with a briefcase tethered to his fucking rest, I'd have that thing open and rooted through long before I called it. I'd have that thing open and rooted through long before I called the cops. Sure. Okay, so now it's time to actually drop off the body. They decided on a submarine

as the vehicle and they needed a way to preserve the corpse during the transport. So they went to a guy named Charles Fraser Smith at the Ministry of Supply. And yeah, yeah, that one wasn't so bad though. That was it. Charles is Chuck Smith. Yeah, no, that's what Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck, Chuck Smith at the Ministry of Supply, they told him to build a container that could hold a dead body and keep it fresh, but also look natural on a submarine.

So it's not to alert anyone who didn't need to know the secret plan. And fun fact, Fraser Smith turned out to be the inspiration for the character Q in the James Bond novels. So real life Q came up with a fake torpedo full of dry ice. As the dry ice sublimated, it filled the canister with CO2, which would preserve the body without any additional cooling. Oh, that's smart. Hey, Captain, why does this torpedo have a breeze case handcuffed to it?

Is there a reason? No, no. No, no. Doesn't fit in the human thing. Yeah, it's not. It's not. Hands down, please. Hands down.

No more questions. So they load up the fake torpedo with the body and the briefcase, and now they have to get it to a submarine base in Scotland as quickly as possible. Of course, what that means is race car driver. Yeah. They hire Singen Horsefall. I knew that. I knew that was my son coming up. Stopping me up with Franger, whatever. Yep. His name's actually Singen Horse fall. He's a driver for Aston Martin. And he shows up with his very own heavily modified speed van, like not street legal. He was ready to go. And he gets the torpedo to Scotland in record time. Record time. What was there

a prior record for driving dry ice corpse torpedoes to Scotland. Okay, but so like I'd be of all the places that could be too. Scotland is the one that would surprise me the least though. Right. Yeah. You can set a first record. We used to have race car drivers, speeden our fake dead guy torpedoes and souped up cars. And now we found out our president's a traitor because his lawyer pocket dialed the newspapers. It's dumb. It's dumb now. It's all dumb. So now it's April 19th of 1943 and the submarine headed out toward the coast of Spain.

On April 30th, 11 days later, they stop about a mile from the town of Wailva, where they know a particular German spy is located who has connections with the local Spanish military officials. The officers on the submarine tell everyone to look the other way and make a bunch of noise while they pull a dead body out of a fake torpedo and drop it into the water. And then they head back away from the coast to get rid of the canister. At first, they shoot it with a machine gun, so it would just sink to the bottom, but there's a bunch of air trapped in the insulation.

So that doesn't work. Eventually, they rig it with plastic explosives and just blow it up. No, that was part of the plan. And the commander of the submarine never mentioned any of that until 1991. We didn't want to admit that like they couldn't just sink the thing. Well, right. So they didn't want to admit that they had accounted for every contingency, except minutes continuing to happen after the drop off, right?

Right. Right. So the body gets recovered by a fisherman that morning, and he reports it to the local Spanish authorities. And we found out later that almost immediately the Germans by Adolf Klaus got word of the body as well. Three days after that initial recovery, the body was handed over to British vice console F.K. Hazelden.

The Spanish authorities also mentioned a briefcase that they had somewhere, somewhere else, but they would definitely give it back right away after they dried it off all nice for the British. So Hazelden hired a local pathologist Eduardo Del Torno, who was indeed Catholic to do a post-mortem. This is all for show as part of the ruse. Del Torno quickly declared the cause of death to be drowning and decided against a more comprehensive autopsy, especially considering that fake William Martin was wearing a silver crucifix and he had a St. Christopher plaque in his wallet and he had dog tags that were marked RC for Roman

Catholic. And he was wearing a prayer mommy t-shirt too. Yeah. So as the post mortem exam is happening, Montague and Chumley are sending a series of prescripted communication cables to Hazelden on purpose as part of the ruse. British intelligence knew the cables were being intercepted by the Germans and they knew Germany had broken this particular version of encryption. So the messages were telling Hazelden, okay, man, you have to get that briefcase before

any German spies get to see it. It would be terrible if they saw it first. And be cool about it. So the Spanish won't know the level of importance either, just so they don't give it to the German spies. This is real. I hope no Germans are reading this. Stop.

If you are German, please disregard. Stop. I think we're alone now. Stop. There doesn't seem to be any one around. Stop. Okay, Tiffany, go ahead with the secret plan. Okay. So this right here is where it gets extra ridiculous. I was waiting for the story to turn weird. Okay. Okay. Okay. It really becomes like like threes company with like ridiculous shenanigans here.

The Spanish military started bouncing the briefcase around to different offices and the German spies never quite managed to get their hands on it even though we wanted them to. So Chumly and Montague had to keep sending extra cables being like, okay, now it's in Madrid the briefcase. So definitely don't let any German spies go up to a man named Diego, a German sympathizer that we know about on the 14th floor of the consulate. That's 14th because Diego will give it to them. Super easy. PS Diego likes cocaine and meth and can be easily broad. But then it finally, finally works out on May 8th, Spanish authorities find a way to pull the documents out of the envelope without breaking the seal and they take photographs of the documents

and somebody leaks that intel to a German spy. Then they put the documents back into the envelope with the tell tale eyelash missing very crucially. And they give the documents back into the envelope with the tell tale eyelash missing very crucially. And they give it all back to the British. Yeah. The eyelash has gone into its replace by some belly lint and like three pubic hairs. So same way. So power move, power move. It's a good power move. So upon receiving the briefcase, the British had a forensics team examine the paper. In addition to noting that missing eyelash, they also tested the fibers of the paper. And it showed multiple folding beyond their original folding.

So they knew the letter was opened and probably read from there. Chumley and Montague sent another cable to Hazelton. Again, they know it's being intercepted. It says, okay, don't worry. We check the envelope at theed. It says, okay, don't worry. We checked the envelope at the seal. It's fully intact. We sure did get lucky that nobody from Germany got to look inside few. That was a close one. And then we got further confirmation that the plan had worked when British signals intelligence intercepted a message from a German spy to the

Nazi high command that warned of a definite plan for an allied invasion in Greece, not Sicily. I like how we use the term forensic analysis of the paper fibers instead of just, it looks like they folded that again, right? Like they told totally. Yeah. Well, yeah, because our freaking spy movies have programmed us to think otherwise, but every real espionage story we ever hear ends up like hinging on while everybody's a

fucking idiot though. Absolutely. You just got to be slightly less dumb than Nazis to beat Nazis and, you know, that's great. That's great. So in response to a successful operation, Minsmite Hitler moved a whole bunch of reinforcements away from other areas to protect against the fake invasion of Greece that he thought was real. This includes a large force that was otherwise fighting against Russia on that front, which

may have turned the tide in the battle against Russia over there. And then we invaded Sicily and we murdered the fuck out of some Nazis. The British were expecting about 10,000 allies killed or wounded in the first week of fighting. But we only suffered about one seventh of that. The Navy was expecting to lose about 300 ships, but it turned out to be 12. Jesus. And the prediction for the duration of the whole campaign was about 90 days, but the allies took Sicily in 38.

Overall, Allied forces had about 23,000 casualties. That's bad. But Axis forces had about 165. Wow. Wow. And less than a year later was D-Day. So big momentum shift, thanks to a fake letter in a brief case. I do a corpse and Nazis being in Bissels. Okay. Still though, it's got to be a little weird to be one of those sailors of soldiers and hear like the generals back. Whoa. Yeah. We thought way more you guys were going to die.

All right. And one last thing. And this might be my favorite part, even after the invasion of Sicily was completed, Operation Minsmite continued helping the cause by making the Germans ignore genuine documents they found later. For example, two days after D day, Germans found a landing craft in Normandy with actual top secret intel about several upcoming targets for the allies. But Hitler was like, nope, no, fool me once. And I'm a Nazi or whatever it is, I forget what it's saying is, but I'm not getting fooled again. So he didn't use that intel. And then the same thing happened again about a month later. And the German forces this time did the exact opposite of the correct strategy in response to again, genuine

secret information about the allies actual battle plan. So I love this. Basically, the entire war Hitler had exactly the right amount of paranoia to be wrong by one level on the bluffing all the time. Each time right after that, he'd switch and then lose another battle. And he'd be like, fuck, I have to get this right eventually just statistically. I have to eventually be on the right level of bluffing, but you pretty much never was. And then he died sadly in a fucking bunker or whatever. Yeah, sadly, but yeah, sadly, weird way to say, I'm saying he was sad. I'm saying he was sad. Jesus Christ. Just a weird turn of phrase. And if you had to summarize what you've learned in one sentence, what would it be? Yeah, okay, you can kill a Nazi now or wait till you get home.

It works. Any bugs, bunny trick works. Are you ready for the quiz? Let's do it. All right, Heath, what should the movie about Operation Mint Speed be called? A, now you not see me. Be. Ocean.

I didn't use that one before. I think I might have two. Oceans, one. One, okay. That's good. That's good. I see, see? Yeah. Weak't at Bernice. Bernice.

I don't get that. Why Bernice? We can't at Bern. We can't. We can't. We can't. We can't be these. I was confused. Right now. Because that's Bernice is in France? Oh, Bern, Bernays, Bernes? Yes. Which is like the sauce sauce from from, but that's from Bern. I think it's from Switzerland. Who else has sauce? It's stories not in France. So even really quick, before we go to the next question, what else was wrong with Eli's day in the last one? I don't think we have enough time. Heath, let's just go on.

Let's just move on. It's a 30 minute podcast. Yeah, we're going to the next one. Tom, all right. A question for me. Yes, I do. In fact, the Nazis were defeated by an organized disinformation campaign. What did the Nazis learn from this defeat? A, to be more careful sending signals.

B, to encode their telegrams. C, to be in the parlor, or D, to obscure the truth. Excellent. E, all of the above. They learn. It is. It is. You probably figured that out because you smelled the musk of it. I can hardly believe

this shit heath speaking of which, which is the best poop based spy movie? Fantastic. the third man. See amazing mission impassible or D. Anima at the gates. That's so hard to pick. I love anima at the gates, but no, I think you're trying to trick me attractive distractor. A, stinker tailor soldier spot. You know what? It's animate the gates. And I'm at the gate. Oh, you were so close. Oh, I was there. And then I switched out just like Hitler. Terrible. Well, rock paper scissors. It was sad.

It was sad for me. It was sad for, for Nazis that he died. But it was happy for everybody else to be clear. Again, about that thing earlier. Oh earlier. It's a good thing I don't have to say that heath one right now because that would be very hard to do. But I'm going to say I, but I know it's a Cecil is the bad one. Cecil one. Alright. I'm going to pick Tom. Yay.

I don't like Nazis. I'm going to pick Tom. I don't like Nazis. I'm going to pick Tom. I'm going to pick Tom. I'm going to pick Tom. I'm going to pick Tom. I'm going to pick Tom.

I'm going to pick Tom. I'm going to pick Tom. I'm going to pick Tom. I'm going to pick Tom. I'm going, thank you for hanging out with us tonight. We'll be back next week and bye then. Tom will be a nice part of the stuff, mouse between now and then you can hear more from Eli and Tom on D-Roll dads, more from Cecil and Tom on the kind of distance pod guests are more from Heath Eli and myself on Skating Aids, the Sceptra Grant Godolph and movies and D&D Minus and if you'd like to help keep this show going, you can be a per episode donation to patreon.com, so a citation product or leave us a five-star or review everywhere you can and if you'd like to get in touch with us, check out past episodes, get in touch with us on social media or check the show notes, be sure to check out citationpod.com. Okay, and you're sure this is all for the assignment.

You heard the commander, it's vital for the mission. It's vital for you and I to go apple picking. And have brunch with my parents. Allied lives are on the line, Mountain U. Fine, fine, we to go Apple picking. And have brunch with my parents. Allied lives are on the line, Mountain U. Ah, fine, fine. We'll go Apple picking. And have brunch with my parents. And have brunch with your parents.

Yay!