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

Episode Date: February 2, 2016

In World War II, a secret department of British 'corkscrew thinkers' hatched a plan to use the cadaver of an unclaimed homeless man to turn the tide of the war in the Allies' favor. It worked. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. ["Stuff You Should Know"] Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.

There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry Rowland. This is Stuff You Should Know. Chuck. Yo. I'm 39 years old, and I still can't say my own name correctly because of my stupid thicc tongue. Ooh, you're gonna be 40. Yeah, soon.

Crazy. Yeah. You used to make fun of me, and now you're old. Well, you're still older than me. I know. Nothing I can do about that. That's cool, though. You're aging very well.

No, you're aging really well. But you mean the teeth falling out, the weight gain, and the gray beard? I still say you're aging very well. I appreciate it. Let's see your hair. Take off your hat. I still got good hair.

Boom. Look at that. I got a hat head now. Beautiful. Okay. People think I'm bald. Some people do. Oh, really?

Like, you're always wearing that hat. Why? I don't know. Suspicious people. Yeah. Like the drummer for the chili peppers. Anthony Kitas. Flea.

Nope. The guy from James Addiction? Nope. I don't know them. Not John Prashanti. Chad Smith. The guy that looks like Will Ferrell. I thought that was Will Ferrell.

He's always got that hat on backwards, and. And he's bald? Oh, yeah, totally. Brett Michaels bald? Remember, he always wears a D-Rag because he's super bald. So I get why people are suspicious. If you're a public figure that has a patented hat piece, then it's probably because you're bald.

But not in my case. What a weird way to start the show. Especially this show. Operation Mint's Meat. Yep. Which is a ghoulish, gallows humor, awesomely World War II British name for this operation. Yeah, this will live alongside our Nazi spies

and baiting Florida podcast. And the History Girls covered this very topic as well. Yeah, man. There's nothing I love more than Little Known History. This is it, but this is great Little Known History. Yeah, and this shouldn't be Middle Known because it was after the Trojan War, maybe the largest and most successful

military deception plan in history. Well, there is also, have you seen that documentary Ghost Army about Operation Fortitude? No. They used a bunch of blow up tanks and planes, like inflatable tanks and planes to make it look like there's a whole ally division over here

so that we could invade Normandy more easily. It's like a Looney Tunes cartoon. Awesome, but yes, this ranks up there with literally with the Trojan horse. It's that ingenious and that wonderful. Yeah. But so let's set the stage, right? Okay.

So in early 1943, the war was very much undecided. Yeah. It could have been anybody. It's like Europe was under the control of Hitler. Yeah. Huge amounts of Europe. They called it Fortress Europe because the Nazis had just overrun the place, right?

Yeah, they were dug in. And the allies knew that they needed to get into Europe to topple Hitler or else they weren't gonna win the war. Sure. So Churchill suggested attacking Europe's underbelly, which is maybe Italy, Greece, Surdenia, he called it the underbelly. Not very flattering, but he called it Europe's underbelly.

So everybody, the allies, the Greeks, the Nazis, the Japanese, the people in Hawaii, everybody knew. Yeah, they weren't American quite yet. Okay. Everybody knew that the allies were gonna attack somewhere in that area. Yeah, come up through the Mediterranean. Even Hitler feared this the most, which was key.

Right. And I mean, everybody knew the allies were coming and they were gonna come there. But this land mass, this area of land and sea is large enough that you can't just be like, oh, they're coming down there. We got it covered. Yeah, we'll cover it all.

You need to know kind of specifically where they were covering. And there were just a few places where they could have come. One was Greece, that was where Hitler always suspected. Yeah. One was Sardinia, right? Yeah. And then another was Sicily.

Yeah. And in 1943, I think January, the Allied powers met in French Morocco and held a conference, the Casablanca Conference. Very sexy name. Yeah, it really was. And they said, okay, we're going to invade Sicily this July. We're gonna call it Operation Husky.

Now we have to do everything we can to not let the Nazis know that that's where we're going. Yeah. And that actually hatched eventually what's called Operation Mint's Meat. Yeah, you know what, studying this stuff, and I'm not a big war buff, although I'm getting more so. But reading up on this stuff, like the old wars,

are so much like the board game risk. Yeah. That it's startling. Yeah. It's literally, when you look at this stuff, it's like moving troops to where you think people are gonna attack you. Right.

And rolling the dice a bit. And if you're right, then great, if not, you're screwed. Very much so, which is why it's such a huge shift that we're seeing now in moving to unconventional warfare. Yeah, that's scary stuff. Yeah. I think pretty much all war is scary. Yeah, well, of course.

I'm not saying like Normandy was the cake walker or anything because they knew what was going on. Man, I watched Savin' Private Ryan again the other day. Hard. It's crazy. That thing's almost a snuff film. It's not as bad as We Were Soldiers, which is a snuff film, but it's...

I never saw that one. The Mel Gibson one? Yeah. Dude, it's the most graphically violent mainstream movie ever made. Really? Yes. Wow.

Yeah. Like there's a part where they have a shot, a camera shot over this guy's shoulder, right? So his helmet's in the near foreground. And that guy takes a hit to the head and like blood spray covers the camera lens for the next like little while. Wow.

His brains just cover the camera. Man. It's disgusting. Did you like Savin' Private Ryan again, though? Yeah, it's a great movie. But it is like really like violent. That's another thing about getting older is that stuff affects you more and more.

The more you come to terms with your own mortality, the more valuable life becomes, the more valuable even a character in a movie's life becomes. You know what I mean? That stuff gets to you. Agreed. Well, growing up, my friend.

I'm becoming human. Isn't it gross? All right. So on September 29th, 1939, there was a director of British Naval Intelligence named Admiral John Godfrey. And he distributed something called the Trout Memo. And it was written by his assistant,

Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming. Familiar name? Yeah. Creator of James Bond. That's right. The guy. I think most people know that he served at this point. Yeah.

But if you didn't, that's a nice little factoid for you. So he wrote the Trout Memo. And they called it the Trout Memo because they pointed out in the intro that the trout fisherman fishes very patiently, but he changes venue frequently. And he changes his bait very frequently too. And so they wanted to, they're charged with deception.

They wanted to come up with all these different ideas, all this different bait and venue changes that they could come up with. Yeah, and this was a time too. We should point out that spying is always vital, but man, in World War II, it was going on all over the place in a huge, huge part of the war.

Right. So we need to do one on the enigma machine, by the way, at some point. We do. Because that's one of the unsung heroes in this operation. Absolutely. All right, so with the Trout Memo,

Ian Fleming wrote, well, co-authored, 51 different operations suggestions. And number 28 was one called A Suggestion, parentheses, not a very nice one. The following suggestion is used in a book by Basil Thompson. I'm so pleased that you said Basil. Said a basil? Yeah.

In fact, that was a 1937 novel, The Milliner's Hat Mystery. And he was actually a World War I spy. Oh, really? Yeah. So he was a spy writer that Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, dug. Crazy.

So that's where this originates. So, here's, oh, that's right. The following suggestion is used in a book by Basil Thompson. Colin, a corpse dressed as an airman with dispatches in his pockets could be dropped on the coast, supposedly from a parachute that had failed.

I understand there is no difficulty in obtaining corpses at the Naval Hospital, but of course, it would have to be a fresh one. So the idea is, let's get a dead person, let's dress them up like a soldier, give them some sensitive documents that leak this invasion. Fraudulent.

Fraudulent, yeah, very important, that leak the invasion of Greece, which is not really happening, and they're gonna mount up troops there and we'll actually go in Sicily. They're gonna find this body. They're gonna think they've stumbled upon this great happy accident and we're gonna fool them.

So yeah, that was the whole idea. That was the general basis of it. And Churchill loved the idea because apparently he liked what he called corkscrew thinkers. Right. Because he knew Hitler thought in a straight line. Yes.

And by corkscrew thinkers, I think that would be our equivalent of outside the box. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. So Churchill was like, this is great. I love Churchill. Let's drink some scotch and do it. Yeah, let's look like a bulldog while we do it too.

So that idea was roughly outlined by Ian Fleming and then the Churchill's corkscrew thinkers, the XX committee led by Ewan Montague and... Chumlee. Yeah, which is, his name is not spelled Chumlee. No. How's it spelled? Are you ready for this?

Yeah. Charles, C-H-O-L-M-O-N-D-E-L-E-Y, why, pronounced Chumlee. Yeah, and apparently when he met people, he would say, Lieutenant Charles Chumlee, C-H-O-L-M-O-N-D-E-L-E-Y, he would spell it out. Would he really?

Yeah. Are you making fun of me or is that for real? No, no, no. He was a very quirky guy and that's how he described himself as toothpaste as if it had been squeezed from the tube. Like, he self described, he would go hunting with a revolver like bird hunting.

A weird guy. I actually watched a quickie BuzzFeed video on this and they pronounced it Charles Chulamun-Dele. Did they really? Yeah. Nice. I'm glad we did our research. Exactly.

Shout out to BuzzFeed. So you and Montague, right? Yeah, the other guy. He is noteworthy in a number of ways too. Apparently he's just the greatest guy ever. Most interesting man on the planet. Yeah. And he actually wrote the book,

the first book on Operation Mint's Meat because he was one of the people who came up with this and implemented it. The man who was never there? The man who never was. Got right. So... Which became a movie too.

Yeah, of the same name. Yeah. Starting Montgomery Clifft, I believe. No. Starting Cliff-Clave-Web. Cliff-Web. Cliff-Claven. Cliff-Web.

But not Montgomery Clifft. No. Those two are virtually interchangeable though. Sure. So, you and Montague was already notable because at school he and his brother had created the rules for ping pong.

No way. Yeah. I did not know that. Among other things. And his brother, equally interesting, equally rambunctious, went on to become a spy for the Soviets. Oh wow.

Yes. So he turned? Yes. Against England? Yes. Wow. Against everybody except for the Soviets. Well, Montague was formerly a barrister and attorney

and this is why he actually did not go serve on a ship. And the other guy, Chumlee, never flew a plane. One was Air Force, one was Navy. And apparently, Montague was, as an attorney, was very good at just seeing all the angles. So they said you, sir, are perfect for this job. Nice. And they picked wisely because these guys really pulled it off.

So we'll dive into this much more in depth right after this. And don't forget, you owe me your boss's picture. At least when I meet the rest, my boss will see mine, and I'll show you all the fuller that. It's hell. That's better. On the podcast, mandate.

Dude. The 90s, called David Lacher and Christine Taylor. Stars of the cult classic show, HEY! DUDE, bring you back to the days of slipdresses and choker necclises. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64?

Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper, because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it, and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing.

Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place, because I'm here to help. I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS, because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so will my husband, Michael.

Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Uh-huh. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Oh, just stop now.

If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, Chuck. Yes. The rough outline that Ian Fleming came up with, the XX committee led by Ewan Montague and Charles Chumley. Yeah, part of MI5, I believe. Okay. Yeah.

Um, said, we're going to take this particular idea and really run with it. Um, and like you said, they were going to, well, the first thing they did was start setting about creating a backstory. Yeah, well, they had three months, so the clock is ticking at this point. Yeah, because here's the thing. They set the invasion. Right, in January. Yeah. And they set the invasion for July.

Yeah. And they had enough time to plant this, this corpse, this fake dead courier. Yeah. Um, they had ended Nazi hands. Yeah. And give the, with enough time so that the Nazis could digest it, analyze it, decide it was truthful, and then react the way you wanted them to. Yeah. Which meant that they had no later than May or else this plan was out the window.

They wanted them, the ultimate goal was to have the Nazis put their troops in the wrong place and that takes time. Right. So they, they, they looked around and they decided that the best place to carry out this operation was Spain. And Spain during World War II was allegedly ostensibly neutral. Sure. But they had a lot of access sympathies, a lot of connections to Nazi Germany. And there was a particular Nazi agent, a spy, working in a port called Huevla, right? Sure.

Um, and his name was Adolf Klaus. Yeah. And Adolf Klaus was known to be very methodical. Yeah. Pretty brutal and ruthless. Yeah. Extremely gullible. Yeah.

He was a straight line thinker. He was. He wasn't one that could think outside the box and think maybe this is an elaborate hoax. That, that guy didn't even own a real corkscrew. Yeah. You know? Like they targeted this guy. Cut the top off of wine bottles.

Yeah. They specifically targeted him. Which is amazing. So they wanted this guy who was fairly gullible, but also known as like a very respected Nazi agent in Spain to be the one who came up with this corpse and cadaver. That's right. Before they ever had any corpse or cadaver or anything like that, Montague and, um, and Chumlee start setting about creating a back story. And they created this guy named Major, um, Martin. Yeah.

William Martin. William Martin. That's right. And they created Major William Martin and they created this whole persona. And this wasn't the first time they'd done it. They'd actually, they had, um, chops with this kind of stuff. Yeah. And they created a fake spy network that made Nazi Germany think that they had a whole double, double agent network in the UK.

And all of them were fictitious, not real people that you and, um, Montague and, and Charles Chumlee had created these fake personas. Amazing. And it fed the Nazis misinformation through these people that didn't really exist. So they took that, that understanding and that thinking of what it takes to create a fake persona and they said about creating one for Major William Martin. Yeah. And, um, if you, there's a great BBC documentary on this and they interview a lot of the players, um, including a lot of the women who worked at MI5 in the office. And they were all just so delighted that they all described this as like the most exciting adventure they'd ever had. I'm sure.

It was like something out of a spy novel and they were living it. Right. And they all had great fun creating these characters that these made up people. Um, they wanted to give him a fiancee, uh, because the idea is that they find this body with what not only these documents in a briefcase, the important documents, but to make it believable. He had to have believable what they called pocket litter or wallet litter. Right. Which is if you find any person on the street, ask them to open their wallet. You're going to be able to tell a lot about them.

Sure. And they'll legitimize it. So they said, let's give him a fiancee and all the women in the office wanted to be the fiancee. Oh, yeah. So they all submitted photographs. They picked this one lady, Jean Leslie, uh, secretary. Okay. That's the lady on the beach?

Yes. Okay. Picked her in a bathing suit on the beach. So this was going to be planted on his body. Uh, they all wanted to write the love letters back and forth, but they picked a woman named Hester Legert, the head secretary of MI5. And she wrote all, even though she was a spinster, she wrote all these like heartfelt love letters. The first couple drafts were really dirty and they were like, you gotta tone this down a little bit. Is that what you think happens in a relationship?

She's like, uh, no, not me, the fictitious lady. So everyone's really excited in the office. Um, Chumlee is wearing what would eventually be the uniform of Martin every day to give it that worn in look. Awesome. Uh, Montague actually ended up having an affair with the secretary who gave him the photo as a fiance. Okay. They had a real life affair as Bill and Pam. Pam is the made up fiance.

Oh, wow. They got a little weird. That is a little weird. Like they wrote each other love letters, had a real life affair, calling each other Bill and Pam. Huh. So there was some like strange role playing going on. I'm sure. He was married at the time his family had been shipped to America.

So he was not doing the right thing there. Jeez. He was, he was a louse in that department. Well, you know, also, um, Raul Dahl, the guy who wrote James and the giant peach and Charlie and chocolate factory. He was a spy for the British. He was in the British military and his whole job was to basically bed, um, the wives of American officials here in Washington. Really? Yeah.

Did he do so? Oh yeah. In Washington society. Wow. Apparently with great zeal. All right. So they're cooking up this backstory. Uh, they get other great things for the wallet litter like, uh, theater ticket stubs and an overdraft letter from his bank and just these things that make it seem like super realistic.

Right. And what else? They, he, I think they gave him a St. Christopher medal. Maybe they wanted to strongly imply that he was Roman Catholic and that'll come up, uh, very, it'll become very important in a minute. Right. Yes. Very much. So they've got this backstory and apparently like this, they were working feverishly on this stuff, having the weirdo affair, uh, wearing the uniform, all that stuff before they'd even gotten final approval just because they didn't want to stop work and then have to pick it up feverishly.

They wanted this to, to keep going. So they finally got final approval from Admiral Godfrey, um, to carry out this thing for real. And when they got final approval, they said, okay, we need a body. Yeah. And they figured no problem. They were looking at first. They, they needed somebody who, um, who had relatives that didn't care what happened to the body after death and could keep their mouths shut. Yeah.

Um, they needed a body that was of military age. Sure. Didn't have any signs of visible trauma. Right. Um, or disease run over by a bus. Right. Or a night of scurvy. Sure.

Um, and that, that preferably they would have died of pneumonia. And the reason that they wanted them to die of pneumonia is because they, they were going to make it look like this guy had been in a plane crash. Um, but it survived the plane crash, but it drowned at sea. Right. And if he had pneumonia, then his fluids would be filled with lung so that when the Spanish conducted an autopsy on him. Fill the fluid. Yeah. Yeah.

Exactly. So that when the Spanish conducted their autopsy, they'd be like, this is the most amazing thing I've ever seen. Fluid filled with lungs. Yeah. But that's how much fluid there is. Yep. The problem is, is they didn't get their hands on a guy with pneumonia and they didn't even know exactly where to get a person at first. It wasn't until they turned the guy who ran the morgue at St. Pancras hospital, which is the worst hospital name of all time.

Um, they turned him and got him to assist them that they finally got their hands on a body. Yeah. His name was Sir, uh, Sir Bentley Purchase, which is a great name. Great British name. And, uh, it was a, he was a coroner of the largest mortuary at St. Pancras. Oh, terrible. And he had apparently a wicked sense of humor. It was pretty complicated to give directions to his office. So when he gave Monti the directions, he said, or you could just get run over by a bus.

Nice. Man, the British during wartime were having a blast. Their sense of humor was wonderful. So they got Bentley Purchase and he said, I've got a dude. Um, his name is, uh, Glendor Michael. Yeah, that is not how that's spelled either. No, it is G L Y N D W R. Super Welsh. Yeah. He was a Welshman born in 1909. Uh, he was the son of a coal miner.

His father killed himself by stabbing himself in the throat. I hadn't read that. Can you imagine a worst way? And it didn't say like slit your throat. Said he stabbed himself in the throat. Right. Which is weird and sad. Jeez.

So his dad died when he was a teenager. Mother died when he was 30. Uh, alcoholic had a rough go because of the depression and was basically, basically killed himself by ingesting rat poison. So that is not necessarily resolved. What, whether it was suicide? Yeah. So they, they, they, the Bentley Purchase wrote down that he, um, he killed himself. Yeah, it was ruled a suicide. Okay. But the way that he ate the rat poison, it was on a crust of bread.

So he was hungry. They wondered. Ugh. So he, he may have been so destitute that he ate a crust of bread that he found in an abandoned warehouse and it was smeared with rat poison and that's what he died of. Wow. But they found him in this cold January night in 1943, um, in this abandoned warehouse in London. And, um, he had just eaten some rat poison, but he survived for two more days. Yeah.

And so Bentley purchased guys' hands on him and said, I think I found your guy, dudes. Yeah. And they did. Um, there were some issues, uh, one of which is they needed a photo of the guy for an ID. He didn't have any photos. Uh, and every time they took a picture of the dead guy's face, they were like, he looks like a dead guy. Yeah, really? So they scoured. You can see your fingers holding his eyes open. So they scoured London looking for a lookalike and eventually found a guy, uh, a fellow intelligence officer who looked just like him.

Awesome. So they used his face. Awesome. For the ID. It's all coming together. Yes, it is. I'm sure they were like, wow, Providence is really smiling on this. Yeah.

And if you're feeling bad for Glendor, just hang tight. Yeah. I still think you can feel bad for Glendor. Well, sure. Talk about a rough life, man. Yeah. Jeez. That one Saturday Night Live where Robert Duvall was like super special guest.

He wasn't even hosting or mentioned. No. He just showed up on this game show called Who's More Grizzled? No Way. And he talks about like, it was him and Garth Brooks. How'd I miss that? And, um, he talks about how one, one cold winter is his wife died. He had to keep her out in the barn until the ground thawed so we could bury her out back.

What? Yeah. It was just some weird like that. It wasn't even really funny. It was more just like, wow, that really is hard. But the whole game show was Who's More Grizzled? Yeah, sure. Anyone?

Of course. Because it's Robert Duvall. Yeah. He's more grizzled than Garth Brooks. Or Chris Gates. Yeah. Even, even, yeah. Yeah.

Poor Garth Brooks. Not poor Garth Brooks. What are you talking about? I'm talking about the Chris Gaines thing. He chose to do it. He's a wealthy man. Yeah. I don't feel too bad for him.

I think that was evidence that he was surrounded by yes men at the time. Yeah, maybe. That was a weird thing though. Yeah. He faked a soul patch. Oh, that wasn't even real? No. I mean, even if it was real, it was part of his character.

It's like, sure. I thought you meant it was Sharpie. Maybe. Okay. The hair was definitely colored with Sharpie. All right. So where, where are we here? We've got a body.

We finally got the photograph of them. Yeah. Which is, that's amazing. I didn't know that part. Yeah. There's another thing, we found this awesome, a military analysis of it. Yeah. That's kind of cool.

Somebody wrote a military analysis of this. I don't remember who, so I can't give them a shout out, but we'll put it on our podcast page. But they point out that one of the reasons this was so successful, this operation was, one, these guys at XS committee, just had free run to break the law, bend morality, do all sorts of stuff. They just were able to go do their thing. But the other thing was, is that they really kept this, a lid on this stuff.

And it was all disseminated on a need to know basis. So when they had this guy, they had them, they had, they got Glenduer, kept them on ice for three months as they finished his backstory. They're running up against like go time. And then I think in February or March, April, maybe, I'm not sure of the date. Do you know? What happened? When they finally carried out operation mincemeat.

Let's just say spring, because I know that they kept them on ice for a few months. Yeah. And they, so they're up to the point where the, the, the comp is about to give away that this guy didn't just recently die. Yeah. And that was a big fear that the Spanish coroners would be able to tell to, which will come up in a minute. Okay.

And they're also getting to the point where they're reaching the end of the amount of time that they need to give the Nazis to absorb this mincemeat information. Sure. So they finally, they, they get the guy's persona in place. They have the body and now it's time to actually carry out the operation. And like I was saying, they kept a lid on all this. So it was a need to know basis. So they got their hands on a sub commander who could keep his mouth shut and they gave

them a metal cylinder with the corpse of Glendur Michael, now a major William Martin. Yeah. When you say sub commander, you mean submarine. Yes. Not a commander below regular commander. Yeah. That's submarine commander. Yeah.

They gave him the cylinder and they said, we're going to tell you what's in here. Do not tell anybody else. So apparently the people staffing the sub thought this was some sort of weather buoy. Yeah. It was marked optical instruments. But you're right. He was the only one on board supposedly that knew there was a body inside. Yep.

And they put a life jacket on them, stuffed them in the cylinder, put them on the sub and took them over to Spain under a, on a submarine. Well, let's back up for one second. Okay. Because we, we forgot to cover the main letter in the case. Really important. This was the, the all of operation mincemeat. It did not hinge on theater ticket stubs or bank overdraft letters.

That's merely pocket litter. It hinged on a letter hinting strongly that the invasion was going to come up through Greece, Sardinia. Right. And that was the other thing too. It wasn't like official document. Invasion is going to come through Greece. Yes.

It was a letter from one general. Yeah. Or Admiral to another high ranking guy. I think General Nye, they, they composed a bunch of different letters themselves. And finally they said, why don't you write it? Yeah. In your own words, in your own language. In your own handwriting, everything.

Yeah. So it really was written by this, this high ranking U.S. military official or British military official who, who, who wrote this fake letter. And he made a joke about Sardines. A terrible joke. Which was the little hint. Right. That was just clever enough to work.

Right. And so in it, it basically says, we're, we're coming up with that, you know, we're going to strike through Greece. That's where the invasion of Europe is going to be. Yeah. But we're also going to tell everybody that Sicily is the cover. Right. Right.

And this was a stroke of genius. Oh yeah. Because in this, this false letter, not only does it show that they're coming through Greece, which they weren't. Yeah. But it says that Sicily's the cover, which would make the Nazis think that if anyone ever did actually leak the real invasion plan of Sicily. Yeah.

And the Nazis would think that that was misinformation. Dude, it was so ingenious. That's crazy genius. And I think about here now, Chuck, we get to the point where we should talk about the enigma machine and the role it played. Right. Yeah. Well, basically we all know that the enigma machine was the code breaking machine that

invented in the UK to decipher. Well, the enigma machine wrote the code, I think. Oh, it wrote the code? Yeah. No, they'd gotten. No, they deciphered it at Bletchley Park. But I think the enigma machine was the actual code writing, the encrypting machine. Oh, okay.

I could be wrong, but okay. Well, so we definitely need to do a podcast on that. Right. Because we're mixed up already. To get it straight. But at any rate, the long and short of it is in Beckley Park. Was it Beckley Park? I always say Bletchley.

Oh, is it? Was there an L in there? I draw the whole ugly word out. They basically had, they could, it was like reading the Nazis' email, essentially. Like on a daily basis. On an hourly basis. On an hourly basis. They knew exactly what was going on so they would know if they were buying this whole

thing as it happened in real time. But even before that, they were able to craft this misinformation based on the Nazis' assumptions. So everybody wants to hear that their assumptions, that their beliefs are correct. Yeah. People are more apt to buy that, things that confirm their suspicions or their beliefs already, right? Yeah, Hitler was worried about Sicily.

He was. So he already thought that Greece was going to be where we invaded. And then secondly, we knew that he had heard rumors that Mussolini was going to be toppled soon. So he was reticent to commit troops to Italy, Sicily, right? So this revelation that came in the form of this letter, this false letter, completely supported everything that Hitler and the Third Reich believed as far as this European invasion was going to go.

And we were able to do that thanks to the Smarties at Bletchley Park, right? Yeah. And this letter too, here's another little tidbit. They put a single eyelash in the fold of the letter so they would know when they eventually got this letter back, if there was no eyelash, they would know that the Nazis had in fact opened it. Right. Because the idea was they would open it and reseal it and act like we never saw it.

Right. But there wasn't that eyelash and they'd know. Right. So rudimentary, but it worked. Oh, yeah. So should we take another break? Let's take a break. All right.

I'm getting excited. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64?

Do you remember getting frosted tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s.

Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay. I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands

give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael.

Um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Uh-huh. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy.

You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. And so tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Okay. So, Chuck, we are at sea aboard a submarine.

That's right. It's chilly down here in dark. Oh, it is. And you're not supposed to be smoking cigars. No, you're not. Despite Gene Hackman doing it and Crimson Tide. Yeah, what a bad idea. Yeah.

Um, so we're off the coast of Spain, we're off the coast of Huevla. Yeah. Not an easy word to say, but it's a port in Spain, and again, this is where Nazi agent Adolf Klaus. Yeah, they kind of want to float the body right up to this guy's backyard, basically. So they did. He was released from this canister. I read somewhere else that the canister itself was fired on with submachine guns on a sub,

so you could just call them machine guns there, and it was sunk, and the body drifted off toward Huevla. Oh, really? Oh, I thought they just dumped the body. Yeah, I'm not sure, because I found a book on Google Books, it was like from 2007, and it was a history book. Gotcha. It made it sound like the sub, the people working on the sub all knew what was going

on, but that's a stark contrast to everything else we've seen. Yeah. So they may or may not have sunk the weather buoy, who knows. But either way, Major Martin was released into the current that took him right to Huevla, and he went, I think he was found by a fisherman that same day. Yeah, and at this point, the Brits started sending telegrams about a very important missing person. Frantic.

Yeah, like they wanted these to get intercepted, obviously. And that worked as well. This is all really going exactly as they had planned. So they sent the British Council in Spain, in Huevla, or in Spain to Huevla, and said, you need, this is really important, you need to get your hands on the briefcase. Find out what happened to this guy, and get your hands on his briefcase. Yeah, and Klaus was going, briefcase? Right.

And his monocle popped out, and the British Council in Spain didn't even know what was going on. Yeah. They thought they saw everything from the same aspect of reality that the Nazis saw. Need to know basis. Exactly. So the British Council are trying to get this briefcase kind of frantically, and the Spaniards were like, you know what, we are just going to keep this on lockdown for now as we investigate

the whole thing, but we got it covered. Remember, we're neutral, so your briefcase is safe. The British Council said, well, okay, one thing, this is very important. This guy was Roman Catholic. You can check out the metal in his pocket. So please don't dissect him. It's against Roman Catholic beliefs and traditions to dissect their autopsy body. I hadn't heard before, but apparently in the 40s that was the case.

And Spain was way down with that. Super Roman Catholic, and they said, oh, yes, of course, we won't do that. So apparently that's how they got around the fact that Glendur hadn't died of pneumonia. Yeah. And the other way they got around it was they had a plant in the office who talked to the coroners and was like, guys, it's hot, and this body is going to start rotting real soon. So how thorough do you really want to make this? And they said, you're right.

Let's go have some wine. Some what do they call it over there? Wine. No, what's the pretty? Sangria. Yeah. Sangria and knock off early. And that's exactly what happened thanks to the plant.

So this is going on. There was a small wrinkle at this point. The briefcase went to Madrid. Spain wasn't going to hand it over to anyone. But the Brits were trying to get it in the hands of the Nazis, and they were actually having trouble getting it into the hands of the Nazis until a guy named Carlo Coulenthal. He was Hitler's most trusted guy in Spain. He got wind of it and kind of took over for Klaus, was like, I'm going to get this briefcase.

And he did. Nine days later, after the body washed ashore, the letter ended up in the hands of the German. The German, you know, it worked its way up the chain. Yeah, to Hitler himself. Yeah. Went to Goebbels first, and Goebbels, even in his diary, they found later had suspicions about it. Oh, yeah.

Because he was a corkscrew thinker, and he was like, wait a minute. This is pretty convenient. Yeah, this is really fishy here, but apparently he never said anything to Hitler. He got distracted. He wrote about it in his diary, but the documentary said that his thinking was, well, if Hitler believes it, then that's good enough for me. That seems like a bad idea. And Homeboy, Carlo Coulenthal, there was always a lot of speculation on why he'd just ran

with it and didn't ask more questions because that was his job, and it turns out his grandmother was Jewish, and he was very paranoid about this being found out. So he thought, this is it. I've come upon the greatest find of the war, and it's all mine. So no one will ask any questions about me after this. Wow, that worked out really, really well. Yeah, very convenient. And thanks to the Enigma machine, they knew pretty quickly that this was working, and

I guess Montague and Chumley sent Admiral Godfrey a transmission that said, Operation Mints Meet Swallowed Rod, Blind and Sinker. Yeah, it's so cool seeing these old, apparently you're not supposed to say elderly anymore, by the way. We got an email. I knew that. Four seniors. You're supposed to call them older adults.

Seniors, I didn't know that that was the thing. Yeah, older adults. So they're interviewing these older adults, these British ladies that are in their 80s now, and they were just all so still excited. They said, when they, because you know, with the Enigma machine, they were basically reading their emails, and they were like, they knew they were buying it. They're buying it, and everyone was just like flipped when it came through the office. It was just like party time, basically.

So the Operation Mints Meet really, really worked really well, so much so that apparently Hitler moved a Panzer Division, which totals about 90,000 troops from Sicily to Greece, and all the artillery and armaments and everything, not just soldiers. So long, Sicily. We're going to Greece, and then up came the Allies through Sicily, 160,000 Allied troops storm Sicily, and only 7,000 lives were lost, which is still a lot of people who died. But apparently, as far as military historians are concerned, and I think the military at the time, that was a way fewer lives lost than they expected, had Hitler not swallowed

Operation Mints Meet. Yeah, they expected 10,000 casualties in the first three days, and 300 boats sunk in the first two days, and it ended up being 1,400 in that first week soldiers and about a dozen ships in that first week. So that's not bad. Yeah, and not only that, but it had another effect. Big one. The Soviets.

Yeah, so this is not something that they teach in American history classes in U.S. high schools that much. The Operation Husky, it was that penetration of Europe's underbelly, right? And suddenly, Hitler said, I'm about to storm Russia, but I really need these troops down here in Europe, because I got big problems. And that allowed basically Russia to topple the Nazi regime. And Mussolini get toppled by the Brits. Yeah.

It completely changed the face of the war. This one idea cooked up by me and Fleming, in part. Isn't that crazy? It's pretty awesome. You got other stuff? There's a book called Operation Mints Meet by a guy named Brett McIntyre that came out in 2010. That's a very good, well-cited book that we inadvertently cited here or there.

And then there's The Man Who Never Was, which was written by you and Monagu, which is not just about Operation Mints Meet, but also about basically how to carry out deception plans. All right. Remember earlier when I said don't feel too bad for Glendor Michael? Yes. Even you said, well, the dude died possibly of suicide because he was penniless and going nowhere?

Yeah. Yeah. But 50 years after he was buried in 1997, the British government added, they basically buried him with military honors. The Spanish did. Oh, yeah. He was buried in Spain. Yeah.

But the British, it came from the Brits, I think, to do so. His headstone came from the Brits, but the Spanish buried him with like a 21-gun salute and everything. Yeah. It says, Glendor Michael served as Major William Martin R.M. Royal Marine. Pretty cool. Yeah. So this alcoholic drifter who never served in the military, never served in the military,

buried with full military honors. Yeah. And completely changed the face of the war thanks to being a body that fit the bill. And if you like ghoulish photos, it's a very famous photo of him being propped up in his life jacket in uniform as they were basically loading him into the cylinder that you can see by searching, I'm sure, Major Charles Martin. That's right. Charles Martin.

No, William Martin. William Martin. Something like that. I still want to know what was going on with that weird role playing there with Bill and Pam. Yeah. Yeah. Because they interviewed the lady and she was just like, oh, it was all very exciting.

Yeah. That's a great British lady accent. Older person. Yeah. Yeah. Older adult. Yeah. Oldy.

So if you want to get, or no, if you want to know more about Operation Mincemeat, just type that word into your favorite search engine or go check out the Stuff You Missed in History class episode. And as I said, Stuff You Missed in History class, it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this bread crust. We had that discussion about the crust and the in pieces. Oh, I remember. So this is from a dad, a dear Chuck and Josh, your discussion of the in slice of bread and

the body language I've said brought ridiculous grin to my face as I walked around my neighborhood. Don't worry though. My neighbors have thought me to be eccentric for years now. Look at that guy smiling. What a weirdo. He must be a pinko. When our daughters were still tiny, my wife and I realized we were doomed to 18-ish years of eating bread crust pieces ourselves if we didn't figure something out in quickly.

Our solution, we started calling those pieces the lucky piece. Boy, did we rook our innocent, trusting toddlers. Turns out your supposition is correct, Chuck, at least for children under 11 years old. Even if their honor students is mine where they will fight you for the right to eat that savory oh so desirable piece of luck. Nice idea. Younger adults. Rock on, guys.

And please keep my goofy grins coming. That is from Ted C-O-I-N-E with a little, what do you call that? Coin-A. Coin-A. Coin-E. Is that an accent to do? No. I don't know. I didn't take French. Legume. What do you call that?

A legume? Accent legume? Yeah. So thanks, Ted. I'll just call you coin. Yeah. Thanks, Ted. Coin-A. Coin-A.

I don't know. Let's say coin. No. Yeah. Thanks a lot. Ted contacted us on Twitter. Oh, he did? He wanted to send us this email.

So there you go, Ted. Wow. And if you want to get in touch with us, you can try all the ways, like Ted did. You can contact us on Twitter at S-Y-S-K podcast. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.howstuffworks.com. You can join us on facebook.com slash stuffyoushouldknow. And you can hang out at our luxurious home on the web, stuffyoushouldknow.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit howstuffworks.com.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass.

Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help and a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts.