Operation Mincemeat
What was the purpose of Operation Mincemeat?
Who inspired the idea for Operation Mincemeat?
How did the Allies execute Operation Mincemeat?
What was the outcome of Operation Mincemeat?
What was the legacy of Operation Mincemeat?
Operation Mincemeat, covert operation by British intelligence in 1943, designed to mislead Nazi Germany about the Allied powersâ plans to invade Sicily during World War II. The operation involved secret documents placed on a dead body; the fake documents successfully misled the Axis powers into thinking Sicily was not a primary invasion target and led to the Allied invasion and occupation of Sicily.
Background
With the conclusion of the North Africa campaigns in May 1943, the victorious Allies had ejected the Axis powers from an entire theater of warfare. Italy was then identified as the landing point for taking over Axis-controlled Europe, using an attack launched from North Africa. Sicily, though well-garrisoned, was the logical target because of its many airfields, excellent ferry connections with mainland Italy, and strategic location that allowed control of Mediterranean shipping.
âI understand there is no difficulty in obtaining corpses at the Naval Hospital, but, of course, it would have to be a fresh one.â âthe Trout Memo
Operation Mincemeatâs conception began with the so-called âTrout Memoâ issued by Rear Adm. John Godfrey of the British Navyâs Naval Intelligence Department (NID) in 1939. But the memo was most likely written by naval intelligence officer Ian Fleming, Godfreyâs assistant, who would go on to write the James Bond novels after the war. The memo detailed 54 schemes, including a plan to trick the Germans by letting them âdiscoverâ a corpse with false plans in its pockets. Flemingâs idea was inspired by a 1937 crime novel by Basil Thompson titled The Millinerâs Hat Mystery, in which a corpse holding false intelligence information is planted in enemy waters. Fleming described his idea as âa suggestion (not a very nice one).â
Development and execution
The plan was given further shape by Royal Air Force officer Charles Cholmondeley, who had been assigned to MI5, and intelligence officer Ewen Montagu, an NID agent. The success of the operation depended on procuring a dead body and dropping it in the ocean. The âagentâ chosen for the mission was not a military hospital corpse, as Fleming had suggested, but the body of a 34-year-old homeless Welshman named Glyndwr Michael, who had died in London after either purposefully or accidentally eating rat poison and had no known relatives searching for him. Michael, morbidly, became the operationâs titular âmincemeat.â In his 1953 memoir of the operation, The Man Who Never Was, Montagu wrote of the choice: âMy sense of humor having by this time become somewhat macabreâŠOperation Mincemeat it became.â
Michaelâs body was put on ice while his new identity was createdâthat of Capt. (Acting Maj.) William Martin, a uniformed Royal Marines officer. His pockets held âlitterâ alluding to his character and included an identification card, a photograph of his fiancĂ©e, a theater ticket, keys, cigarettes, matches, and a receipt for an engagement ring. Among these personal artifacts, in a briefcase handcuffed to Michaelâs wrist, lay the Alliesâ trap: a fake top-secret document addressed to the highest-ranking British general in North Africa that described a planned Allied attack on Greece and Crete while also indicating that an attack on Sicily would be used as a diversion. Another letter addressed to the commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean fleet described recently failed amphibious landings and included a joke about sardines that was meant to imply an upcoming invasion of Sardinia.
The plan was put into action in April 1943. Michaelâs body was prepared and taken to Scotland on April 17, and it was loaded onto the submarine HMS Seraph on April 19. The submarine took another 10 days to reach the Spanish coast. On April 29 the body was released near the small Spanish town of Huelva. Early the next morning it was discovered washed up on a beach by a fisherman and reported to local authorities. Though Spain was ostensibly a neutral party in the war, Nazi sympathizers were common enough in Francisco Francoâs government that the Allies could reasonably hope that the false information carried by âMartinâ would be passed along to the Axis powers.
That was exactly what happened. The Spanish passed the documents to their German contacts, even as the British put in a plea to the Spanish to quickly return the âhighly secretâ briefcase. The briefcase was returned to the local British consul on May 11, and British code breakers noted that the Germans had received the planted information. Within a few days Adolf Hitler was convinced that Greece, the Balkans, and Sardinia were the targets, and he moved German troops to these locations, leaving Sicily relatively unprotected. On July 9 the Allies attacked Sicily with more than 150,000 ground troops, 3,000 ships, and 4,000 aircraft arriving in three days. Operation Mincemeat was such a successful ruse that even after the Alliesâ arrival, German forces continued to leave Sicily for Greece or Sardinia, still certain that Sicily was just a diversion.
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Aftermath and legacy
Sicilyâs coastal defenses, largely manned by Sicilians unhappy with their home being turned into a battlefield, collapsed quickly. The British cleared the southeastern part of the island in three days. From there, they proceeded toward Messina, taking a circuitous route around Mount Etna as American forces drove eastward, overtaking Palermo by July 22.
When Benito Mussolini revealed to the Fascist Grand Council that the Germans were thinking of evacuating the southern half of Italy because of the Allied invasion, the majority of the council voted for a resolution against him. Mussolini resigned, and on July 25 King Victor Emmanuel III ordered his arrest. The new government entered into secret negotiations with the Allies, despite the presence of sizable German forces in Italy. A few days after the fall of Mussolini, the Axis powers evacuated Sicily, paving the way for further Allied incursions into mainland Italy. The island fell to the Allies in just 38 days, far fewer than the originally predicted 90 days.
The fake âWilliam Martinâ was buried with full military honors in Huelva in 1943, the day after his autopsy. Glyndwr Michaelâs identity was not disclosed until 1997, when his name was added to the grave by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
Montaguâs 1953 memoir was a bestseller, though it suppressed many details related to the operation, and it was adapted into a 1956 film of the same name. A book titled Operation Mincemeat: The True Spy Story That Changed the Course of World War II (2010) by well-known British author Ben Macintyre was adapted into an eponymous 2021 Netflix film starring Colin Firth and Matthew Macfadyen.