In 1943, North Africa had been liberated and the next planned invasion was Sicily. There was legitimate concern about how bloody that invasion could be, especially if the Germans reinforced the island. Convincing them that the invasion would occur elsewhere would greatly enhance the chances of success and greatly reduce casualties. Someone in British intelligence remembered John Godfrey’s Trout Memo. Godfrey had been the head of naval intelligence at the start of the war. The memo, written in 1939, compared counterintelligence to fool the Germans to be equivalent to fly-fishing, hence the name. Historians believe most of the memo was ideas from Ian Fleming (future James Bond creator. He based M in his Bond novels after Godfrey.) The 28th idea (out of 54) seemed the best idea for shifting focus away from Sicily. The Trojan Horse suggestion (using a dead body to fool the Germans) came from Charles Cholmondelay. Godfrey was skeptical, but turned the project over to Ewan Montagu and Cholmondelay.
Operation Mincemeat came into being as a diversion from Operation Husky (the Anglo-American invasion of Sicily). The Anglo-Americans wanted to distract Hitler away from Sicily. It was part of a larger disinformation campaign called Barclay which was designed to divert German attention to the Balkans. The original idea of using a corpse with false information was credited to an intelligence officer named Charles Cholmondeley (MI5). Ewen Montagu was assigned by Naval Intelligence to work with him. Montagu was the one who found the perfect body. Glyndwr Michael was a homeless man whose parents were dead. He had no known relatives. He had committed suicide by rat poison. The corpse was renamed Maj. William Martin. The body was to be found with “pocket litter” (things like ticket stubs, girlfriend picture, love letters, etc.) and letters from military authorities referring to an invasion of Greece. They chose the coast off Huela, Spain for the dump. Final approval came from both Churchill and Eisenhower.
On April 30, 1943, the submarine HMS Seraph completed the mission. The body was found by fishermen and soon was in the hands of the Spanish government. Spain was chosen because of its fascist friendliness toward Nazi Germany. Adm. Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr (German intelligence), made a personal request for access to the documents, which the Franco government acceded to. Fortunately for Montagu and crew, the opening of the letters caused a planted eye lash to fall out, thus proving that the letters had been read. The bait had been swallowed. But did it have the hoped for result? Hitler did shift forces to Greece and Sardinia, but he was already leaning toward those places being next up for an invasion. No doubt Operation Mincemeat worked as a self-fulfilling prophecy. The conquest of Sicily was relatively easy and this may have been partly due to the disinformation, but was mainly due to the stupidity of a leader who refused to believe an invasion would occur at the most obvious place in the history of amphibious invasions. There can be little doubt that the operation saved Allied lives and at a very small cost. It goes down as one of the greatest acts of deception in history. It’s in the top ten with the Trojan Horse still being #1.
There have been two good movies on this: “The Man Who Never Was” and “Operation Mincemeat”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mincemeat
https://www.history.co.uk/article/operation-mincemeat
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