Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, There's Jerry Rowland. This is
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know. Chuck, I'm thirty nine years old
Speaker 1: and I still can't say my own name correctly because
Speaker 1: of my stupid thick tongue. You're gonna be forty crazy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I used to make fun of me, and now you're old. Well,
Speaker 1: you're still older than me. I know nothing I can
Speaker 1: do about that. That's cool though. Yeah you're aging very well. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1: you're aging really well. But you mean the teeth falling out,
Speaker 1: the weight gain, and they're the gray beard. I still
Speaker 1: say you're aging very well. I appreciate it. Let's get here.
Speaker 1: Take off your hat. I still got good hair. Boom,
Speaker 1: look at that. We got hatead now beautiful. Okay, we'll
Speaker 1: think I'm bald. Some people do, like you're always wearing
Speaker 1: that hat. Why. I don't know suspicious people. Yeah, like
Speaker 1: the drummer for the Chili Peppers, Anthony keytith Flee, Nope,
Speaker 1: the guy from Jaan's Addiction, Nope, I don't know them.
Speaker 1: Not John Percant chat Smith, the guy that looks like
Speaker 1: Will Ferrell, He's always Ferrell. He's always got that hat
Speaker 1: on backwards. And um he's baldly like Brett Um Michael's bald.
Speaker 1: Remember he always wears a do Rag's super bald. So
Speaker 1: I get why people are suspicious. If you're a public
Speaker 1: figure that has a patented hat piece, then it's probably
Speaker 1: because you're bald, but not in my case. What a
Speaker 1: weird way to start the show, especially this show, Operation Mincemeat,
Speaker 1: which is a ghoulish gallows humor awesomely World War two
Speaker 1: British name for this, this operation. Yeah, this will live
Speaker 1: alongside our our Nazi spies and Invading Florida podcast and
Speaker 1: the History Girls covered this this very topic as well. Yeah, man,
Speaker 1: there's nothing I love more than little known history. This
Speaker 1: is this is it. But this is great little known history.
Speaker 1: And this shouldn't be middle known because it was after
Speaker 1: the Trojan War, maybe the largest and most successful military
Speaker 1: deception plan in history. Well, there's also have you seen
Speaker 1: that documentary Ghost Army about Operation Fortitude. They used a
Speaker 1: bunch of blow up tanks and planes, like inflatable tanks
Speaker 1: and planes to make it look like there's a whole
Speaker 1: Allied division over here, so that we could invade Normandy
Speaker 1: more you it's like a Looney Tune cartoon. Awesome, But yes,
Speaker 1: this ranks up there with literally with the Trojan Horses.
Speaker 1: It's that ingenious and that wonderful. But so let's set
Speaker 1: the stage right. So in early nineteen UM the war
Speaker 1: was very much undecided. It could have been anybody's, like your,
Speaker 1: Europe was under the control of Hitler, huge amounts of Europe.
Speaker 1: They called it Fortress Europe because he the Nazis were
Speaker 1: just had just overrun the place, right dug in and um,
Speaker 1: the the Allies knew that they needed to get into
Speaker 1: Europe to topple Hitler or else, like they weren't going
Speaker 1: to win the war. So um Churchill suggested attacking Europe's underbelly,
Speaker 1: which is maybe Italy, Greece, Sardinia. He called it the underbelly,
Speaker 1: not very flattering, but he called it Europe's underbelly. So everybody,
Speaker 1: the Allies, the Greeks, the Nazis, the Japanese, Um, the
Speaker 1: people uh in Hawaii. Everybody knew, yeah, they weren't American
Speaker 1: quite yet. Everybody knew that the Allies were gonna attack
Speaker 1: somewhere in that area. Yeah, come up through the Mediterranean.
Speaker 1: Even Hitler feared this the most. But right, and and
Speaker 1: I mean everybody knew the Allies were coming and they
Speaker 1: were gonna come there. But this, this land mass, this
Speaker 1: area land and see is large enough that you can't
Speaker 1: just be like, oh, they're coming down there, we got
Speaker 1: it covered. You need to know kind of specifically where
Speaker 1: they were covering. And there were just a few places
Speaker 1: where they could have come. One was Greece, that was
Speaker 1: where Hitler always suspected. One was Sardinia, right, and then
Speaker 1: another was Sicily. And in ninety three, I think January,
Speaker 1: the Allied powers met in French Morocco and held um
Speaker 1: a conference, the Casablanca Conference. Yeah, it really was. And
Speaker 1: um they said, okay, we're going to invade Sicily this July.
Speaker 1: We're gonna call it Operation Husky. Now we have to
Speaker 1: do everything we can to not let the Nazis know
Speaker 1: that that's where we're going. And that actually hatched eventually
Speaker 1: what's called Operation Mincemeat. Yeah, you know what. Studying this
Speaker 1: stuff and I'm not a big war buff um, although
Speaker 1: I'm getting more so, but reading up on this stuff
Speaker 1: like the old war are so much like the board
Speaker 1: game risk that it's startling. Yeah, it's literally when you
Speaker 1: look at the stuff, it's like moving troops to where
Speaker 1: you think people are going to attack you and rolling
Speaker 1: the dice a bit, and if you're right, then great,
Speaker 1: If not, you're screwed very much though, which is why
Speaker 1: it's such a huge shift that we're seeing now in
Speaker 1: moving to unconventional warfare, because that's scary stuff. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: think pretty much all war is scary. Yeah. Well, of
Speaker 1: course I'm not saying like Normandy was a gig walk
Speaker 1: or anything, because they knew what they was going on. Man,
Speaker 1: I watched Saving Private Ryan again the other day. God,
Speaker 1: it's crazy. That thing's almost a snuff film. It's not
Speaker 1: as bad as We Were Soldiers, which is a snuff film,
Speaker 1: but it's I never saw that one, the Mel Gibson where, Yeah, dude,
Speaker 1: it's it's the most graphically violent mainstream movie ever made. Really. Yes, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like there's a part where there's there they have a
Speaker 1: shot a camera shot over this guy's shoulder, right, so
Speaker 1: his helmets in the in the near four ground and
Speaker 1: that guy takes a hit to the head and like
Speaker 1: blood spray covers the camera lens for the next like
Speaker 1: a little while his brains just cover the camera. It's disgusting.
Speaker 1: Did you like Saving Private Again? Yeah, it's it's a
Speaker 1: great movie, but it is like really like violent. That's
Speaker 1: another thing about getting older is that stuff affects you
Speaker 1: more and more. The more you come to terms with
Speaker 1: your own mortality, the more valuable life becomes. The more
Speaker 1: valuable even a character in a movie's life becomes, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean? That stuff gets to agreed, It's
Speaker 1: called growing up, my friend, I'm becoming human, isn't it
Speaker 1: grows alright? So on September twenty nine, nine nine, Uh,
Speaker 1: there was a director of British Naval Intelligence name Admiral
Speaker 1: John Godfrey, and he distributed something called the Trout Memo
Speaker 1: and um, it was written by his assistant, Lieutenant Commander
Speaker 1: Ian Fleming. Familiar name, yeah, creator of James ball Own.
Speaker 1: That's right, the guy, And uh, I think most people
Speaker 1: know that he served at this point. Yeah, but um,
Speaker 1: if you didn't, that's a nice little factoroid for you.
Speaker 1: So he he wrote the Trout Memo and they called
Speaker 1: it the Trout Memo memo because they pointed out in
Speaker 1: the intro that this that the trout fisherman fishes very patiently,
Speaker 1: but he changes venue frequently, and he changes his bait
Speaker 1: very frequently too, And so they wanted to they're charged
Speaker 1: with deception. They wanted to come up with all these
Speaker 1: different ideas, all this different bait and venue changes that
Speaker 1: they could come up with. Yeah, and this was the
Speaker 1: time too. We should point out that um spying, spying
Speaker 1: is always vital, but man of World War two, it
Speaker 1: was going on all over the place in a huge,
Speaker 1: huge part of the war. So, um, we need to
Speaker 1: do one on the Enigma machine. By the way, at
Speaker 1: some point we do because that's one of the unsung
Speaker 1: heroes in this operation. Absolutely. Um. Alright, So with the
Speaker 1: trout memo. In Flaming wrote uh Well co authored fifty
Speaker 1: one different operations suggestions, and number twenty eight was one
Speaker 1: called a suggestion parentheses not a very nice one. The
Speaker 1: following suggestion is used in a book by Basil Thompson.
Speaker 1: I'm so pleased that you said Basil instead of Basil. Uh.
Speaker 1: In fact, that was the novel The Milliner's Hat Mystery.
Speaker 1: And he was actually a World War One spy. Oh really, yea,
Speaker 1: So he was it a spy writer that Ian Fleming,
Speaker 1: the creator James Bond, Doug Crazy, So that's where this originally,
Speaker 1: so uh here I'm getting that's right. The following suggestion
Speaker 1: is used in a book by Basil Thompson Colin. A
Speaker 1: corpse dressed as an airman with dispatches in his pockets
Speaker 1: could be dropped on the coast, supposedly from a parachute
Speaker 1: that had failed. I understand there is no difficulty in
Speaker 1: obtaining corpses at the Naval hospital, but of course it
Speaker 1: would have to be a fresh one. So the idea is,
Speaker 1: let's get a dead person, let's dress him up like
Speaker 1: a soldier, given some sensitive documents that leak this invasion fraudulent, fraudulent,
Speaker 1: very important, that leak the invasion of Greece, which is
Speaker 1: not really happening, and they're gonna mount up troops there
Speaker 1: and we'll actually go in Sicily. They're gonna find this body.
Speaker 1: They're gonna think they've stumbled upon this great happy accident
Speaker 1: and we're going to fool him. So yeah, that was
Speaker 1: the That was the whole idea, That was the general
Speaker 1: basis of it. And Churchill loved the idea because apparently
Speaker 1: He liked what he called corkscrew thinkers because he knew
Speaker 1: Hitler thought in a straight line. Yes, and by corkscrew thinkers,
Speaker 1: I think that would be our equivalent of outside the box. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Churchill was like, this is great. I love church Let's
Speaker 1: drink some scotch and do it. Yeah, let's look like
Speaker 1: a bulldog. So um they the well. That idea was
Speaker 1: roughly outlined by Ian Fleming, and then the the Churchill's
Speaker 1: Court screw Thinkers, the exc committee led by Um you
Speaker 1: and Montague and um Chumley. Yeah, which is his name
Speaker 1: is not spelled Chumley? How's it spelled? Are you ready
Speaker 1: for this? Charles c h O l m O n
Speaker 1: d e l e y pronounced Chumley. Yeah, And apparently
Speaker 1: when he met people he would say, uh, Lieutenant Charles
Speaker 1: Chumley c h O l m O n d e
Speaker 1: l e y. He would spell it out, Yeah, Are
Speaker 1: you making fun of me? Or is there for no? No No? No.
Speaker 1: He was a very quirky guy, and that's how he
Speaker 1: described himself as toothpaste, as if it had been squeezed
Speaker 1: from the tube. Like he self described. He would go
Speaker 1: hunting with a revolver like bird hunting is a weird guy.
Speaker 1: I actually watched a quickie BuzzFeed video on this and
Speaker 1: they've pronounced it Charles cholmondel Did they really? Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: glad we did our research exactly shout out with the BuzzFeed.
Speaker 1: So you and Montague right, yeah, the other guy. He
Speaker 1: is noteworthy in a number of ways to apparently it's
Speaker 1: just the greatest guy ever, most interesting man on the planet. Um.
Speaker 1: And he actually wrote the book, the first book on
Speaker 1: Operation mince Meat, because he was one of the people
Speaker 1: who came up with this and implemented it. The man
Speaker 1: who was never there, the man who never was so too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of the same name starring Montgomery Cliff, I believe, no,
Speaker 1: starring Cliff Clay Web. Cliff Claven Cliff Web, but not
Speaker 1: Montgomery Clift. Those two are virtually interchangeable there, So um
Speaker 1: what you and Montague was already notable because at school
Speaker 1: he and his brother had created the rules for um
Speaker 1: ping pong I know that, among other things, and his
Speaker 1: brother equally interesting equally um rambunctious went on to become
Speaker 1: a spy for the Soviets. Wow. Yeah, so he turned
Speaker 1: yes against England, Yes against everybody? Except for the Soviets. Well,
Speaker 1: Montague was, uh, he was formerly a barrister, an attorney,
Speaker 1: and um, this is why he actually did not go
Speaker 1: serve on a ship. Um. And the other guy, Chumley,
Speaker 1: never flew a plane. One was air Force, one was
Speaker 1: a navy. Uh. And apparently Montague was as an attorney,
Speaker 1: was very good at just seeing all the angles. So
Speaker 1: they said, you, sir, are perfect for this job. And
Speaker 1: they picked wisely because these guys really pulled it off.
Speaker 1: So we'll dive into this much more in depth right
Speaker 1: after this, all right, Chucky, So we have the rough
Speaker 1: outline that Ian Fleming came up with the XX Committee,
Speaker 1: led by you and Montague and Charles Chumley, the part
Speaker 1: of m I five, I believe. Um said we're gonna
Speaker 1: take this particular idea and really run with it. Um.
Speaker 1: And like you said, they were going to, Well, the
Speaker 1: first thing they did was start setting about creating a backstory. Well,
Speaker 1: they had three months, so that the clock is ticking
Speaker 1: at this point. Yeah, because here's the thing. They set
Speaker 1: the invasion right in January, and they set the invasion
Speaker 1: for July. Now you needed enough time to um plant
Speaker 1: this this corpse, this fake dead courier um that had
Speaker 1: ended Nazi hands and give the with enough time so
Speaker 1: that the Nazis could digest it, analyze it, decided it
Speaker 1: was truthful, and then react the way you wanted them to,
Speaker 1: which meant that they had no later than May or
Speaker 1: else this plan was out the window. Yeah, you wanted them.
Speaker 1: The ultimate goal was to have the Nazis put their
Speaker 1: troops in the wrong place, and that takes time, so
Speaker 1: they they looked around and they decided that the best
Speaker 1: place to carry out this operation was Spain. And Spain
Speaker 1: during World War Two was allegedly ostensibly neutral, but they
Speaker 1: had a lot of acts as sympathies, a lot of
Speaker 1: connections to Nazi Germany. And there was a particular Nazi agent,
Speaker 1: a spy working in a port called Um Whoell Whoeverla
Speaker 1: Whoeverla right Um, and his name was Adolf Klaus. And
Speaker 1: Adolf Klaus was known to be very methodical, pretty brutal,
Speaker 1: brutal and ruthless, extremely gullible. Yeah, he was a straight
Speaker 1: line thinker. He was hitler. He wasn't one that could
Speaker 1: think outside the box and think, maybe this is an
Speaker 1: elaborate hoax that that guy didn't even own. A real corkscrew,
Speaker 1: you know, like they cut the top to off of
Speaker 1: wine bottles. Yeah, they specifically targeted, which is amazing. So
Speaker 1: they wanted this guy who was fairly gullible but also
Speaker 1: known as like a very respected Nazi agent in Spain
Speaker 1: um to be the one who came up with this
Speaker 1: corpse and could ever so before they ever had any
Speaker 1: corps or could have or anything like that, Montague and
Speaker 1: um and Chumley start setting about creating a backstory, and
Speaker 1: they created this guy named Major Um Martin, William Martin,
Speaker 1: that's right. And they created Major William Martin, and they
Speaker 1: created this whole persona and this wasn't the first time
Speaker 1: they've done it, that they had actually they had um
Speaker 1: chops with this kind of stuff. So they had created
Speaker 1: a fake spy network that made Nazi Germany think that
Speaker 1: they had a whole double double agent network in the UK.
Speaker 1: And all of them were fictitious, not real people that
Speaker 1: you and Montague and Charles Chumley had created these fake
Speaker 1: personas and had fed the Nazis misinformation through these people
Speaker 1: that didn't really exist. So they that that understanding and
Speaker 1: that thinking of what it takes to create a fake persona,
Speaker 1: and they said about creating one for Major William Martin. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and um, if you there's a great BBC documentary on this,
Speaker 1: and they interview a lot of the players, um, including
Speaker 1: a lot of the women who worked at m I
Speaker 1: five in the office, and they were all just so
Speaker 1: delighted that they all described this as like the most
Speaker 1: exciting adventure they'd ever had. It was like something out
Speaker 1: of a spine novel and they were living it. And
Speaker 1: so they all had great fun creating these characters that
Speaker 1: these made up people. Um. They wanted to give him
Speaker 1: a fiance because the idea is that they find this
Speaker 1: body with what not only these documents in a briefcase,
Speaker 1: the important documents, but to make it believable, he had
Speaker 1: to have believable what they called pocket litter or wallet litter,
Speaker 1: which is if you find any person on the street,
Speaker 1: ask them to open their wallet, you're gonna be able
Speaker 1: to tell a lot about them. So just stuff to
Speaker 1: legitimize it. So they said, let's give him a fiance,
Speaker 1: and all the women in the office wanted to be
Speaker 1: the fiance, so they all submitted photographs. They picked this one,
Speaker 1: Lady Jean Leslie, uh secretary Okay, that's the lady on
Speaker 1: the beach. Yes, picked her of her in a bathing
Speaker 1: suit on the beach, so this was going to be
Speaker 1: planted on his body. Uh. They all wanted to write
Speaker 1: the love letters back and forth, but they picked a
Speaker 1: woman named Hester Leggert, the head secretary of m I five,
Speaker 1: and she wrote even though she was a spinster, she
Speaker 1: wrote all these like heartfelt love letters. The first couple
Speaker 1: of drafts were really dirty, and they were like, you
Speaker 1: gott to tone this down a little, like, is that
Speaker 1: what you think happens in a relationship? No, not me.
Speaker 1: So everyone's really excited in the office. Um Chumley is
Speaker 1: wearing what would eventually be the uniform of Martin every
Speaker 1: day to give it that worn in look. Monta Hue
Speaker 1: actually ended up having an affair with the secretary who
Speaker 1: gave him the photo as the fiance. They had a
Speaker 1: real life affair as Bill and Pam. Pam is the
Speaker 1: made up fian say, got they got a little weird
Speaker 1: that it is a little weird, Like they wrote each
Speaker 1: other love letters, had a real life affair calling each
Speaker 1: other Bill and Pam. So there was some like strange
Speaker 1: role playing going on. I'm sure, he was married at
Speaker 1: the time. His family had been shipped to America, so
Speaker 1: he was not doing the right thing there he was
Speaker 1: he was allows in that department. Well you know also
Speaker 1: um Roll Dahl, the guy who wrote James and Giant
Speaker 1: Peach and Charlietor he was a spy for the British.
Speaker 1: He was in the British military and his whole job
Speaker 1: was to basically bed um the wives of American officials
Speaker 1: here in Washington. Really yeah, did he do so? Oh? Yeah? Wow?
Speaker 1: Oh he made his way through Washington society apparently with
Speaker 1: great zeal. Alright, so they're cooking up this backstory. Uh,
Speaker 1: they get other great things for the wallet litter, like, uh,
Speaker 1: theater ticket stubs and an overdraft letter from his bank
Speaker 1: and just these things that make it seem like super realistic.
Speaker 1: And what else they I think they gave him a
Speaker 1: st Christopher Metal. Maybe they wanted to strongly imply that
Speaker 1: he was Roman Catholic and that will come up, uh
Speaker 1: very it will become very important in a minute. Right,
Speaker 1: So they've got this backstory and apparently like this, they
Speaker 1: were working feverishly on this stuff, having the weirdo affair
Speaker 1: wearing the uniform all that stuff before they'd even gotten
Speaker 1: final approval, just because they didn't want to stop work
Speaker 1: and then had to pick it up feverishly. They wanted
Speaker 1: this to to keep going. So they finally got final
Speaker 1: approval from Admiral Godfrey um to carry out this thing
Speaker 1: for real. And when they got final approval, they said, okay,
Speaker 1: we need a body, and they figured no problem they
Speaker 1: were looking at first. They needed somebody who um, who
Speaker 1: had relatives that didn't care what happened to the body
Speaker 1: after death and could keep their mouth shut. Um. They
Speaker 1: needed a body that was of military age, didn't have
Speaker 1: any signs of visible trauma um right um, and that
Speaker 1: that preferably they would have died of pneumonia. And the
Speaker 1: reason that they wanted him to die of pneumonia is
Speaker 1: because they were going to make it look like this
Speaker 1: guy had been in a plane crash, um, but it
Speaker 1: survived the plane crash, but it drowned at sea. And
Speaker 1: if he had pneumonia, then his fluids would be filled
Speaker 1: with long so that when the Spanish conducted in autopsy
Speaker 1: on them. Yeah, so that when the Spanish conducted their autopsy,
Speaker 1: they'd be like, that's the most amazing thing I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: I've never seen fluid filled with lungs, but that's how
Speaker 1: much fluid there is. The problem is is they didn't
Speaker 1: get their hands on a guy with pneumonia, and they
Speaker 1: didn't even know exactly where to get a person at first.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until they turned the guy who ran the
Speaker 1: more g at St. Pancras Hospital, which is the worst
Speaker 1: hospital name of all time. Um, they turned him and
Speaker 1: got him to assist them that they finally got their
Speaker 1: hands on body. Yeah. His name was sir uh, Sir
Speaker 1: Bentley Purchase, which is a great name, and uh it was.
Speaker 1: He was a corner of the largest mortuary at Sat. Pancras,
Speaker 1: terrible and he had apparently a wicked sense of humor.
Speaker 1: It was pretty complicated to give directions to his office.
Speaker 1: So when he gave Montyue the directions, he said, or
Speaker 1: he could just get run over by a bus. Nice man.
Speaker 1: The British during wartime where they're having their sense of
Speaker 1: humor was wonderful. So they got Bentley Purchased and he said,
Speaker 1: I've got a dude. Um, his name is Glendor Michael.
Speaker 1: Yeah that is not how that's spelled either, No, it
Speaker 1: is g l Y n d w R Super Welsh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was a Welshman born in nineteen o nine. He
Speaker 1: was the son of a coal miner. His father killed
Speaker 1: himself by stabbing himself in the throat. I hadn't read
Speaker 1: that and it didn't say like slit your throat, said
Speaker 1: he stabbed himself in the throat, which is weird and at.
Speaker 1: So his dad died when he was a teenager. Mother
Speaker 1: died when he was thirty. Uh, alcoholic, had a rough
Speaker 1: go because of the depression and was basically basically killed
Speaker 1: himself by ingesting rat poison. So that is not necessarily
Speaker 1: resolved whether it was suicide. Yeah, so they they the
Speaker 1: Bentley purchased wrote down that he um he killed himself.
Speaker 1: It was ruled a suicide, okay. But the way that
Speaker 1: he ate the rat poison, it was on a crust
Speaker 1: of bread. He was hungry, they wondered. So he he
Speaker 1: may have been so destitute that he ate a crust
Speaker 1: of bread that he found in an abandoned warehouse and
Speaker 1: it was smeared with rat poison and that's what he
Speaker 1: died of. But they found him in this cold January
Speaker 1: night in nineteen forty three. Um, in this abandoned warehouse
Speaker 1: in London, and um, he had just eaten some rat poison.
Speaker 1: But he survived for two more days. And so Bentley
Speaker 1: purchased guy, his hands on him and said I think
Speaker 1: I found your guy. Dudes, Yeah, and they did. Um.
Speaker 1: There were some issues, of one of which is they
Speaker 1: needed a photo of the guy for an I d
Speaker 1: He didn't have any photos. And every time they took
Speaker 1: a picture of the dead guy's face, they were like,
Speaker 1: he looks like a dead guy. Yeah, really, So they scoured.
Speaker 1: You can see your fingers holding his eyes up. So
Speaker 1: they scoured London looking for a look alike and eventually
Speaker 1: found a guy at a fellow intelligence officer who looked
Speaker 1: just like him. Aweso, they used his face. Aw it's
Speaker 1: all coming together, Yes it is. I'm sure they were like, Wow,
Speaker 1: Providence is really smiling on this. Yeah. And if you're
Speaker 1: feeling bad for Glenn, do or just hang tight? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I still think you can feel bad for Glenn or
Speaker 1: talk about a rough life. Jeez, do you remember that
Speaker 1: one Sara atte Live where Robert Duval was like super
Speaker 1: special guest. He wasn't even hosting or mentioned, He just
Speaker 1: showed up on this game show called Who's More Grizzled?
Speaker 1: And he talks about like it was him and Garth Brooks.
Speaker 1: How do I miss that? And um he talks about
Speaker 1: how one one cold her his wife died and he
Speaker 1: had to keep her out in the barn until the
Speaker 1: ground thaws so we can bury her out back. What. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was just weird like that. It wasn't even really funny.
Speaker 1: It was more just like, wow, that really is hard.
Speaker 1: But the whole game show was Who's more Grizzled anyone?
Speaker 1: Of course, because Robert Duvall, Yeah, he's more grizzled than
Speaker 1: Garth Brooks even even Yeah, yeah, poor guard from Poor
Speaker 1: Garth books. What are you talking about? I'm talking about
Speaker 1: the Chris Gaines thing. He chose to do it. He's
Speaker 1: a wealthy man. Yeah, I don't feel too bad for him,
Speaker 1: but I think that was evidence that he was surrounded
Speaker 1: by yes man at the time. That was a weird thing. Though. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he faked a soul patch that wasn't even real. No,
Speaker 1: I mean, even if it was real, it was part
Speaker 1: of his character. It's like I thought you meant it
Speaker 1: was Sharpie maybe Okay, the hair was definitely colored with
Speaker 1: Sharpie all right, so where where are we here? We've
Speaker 1: got a body. We finally got the photograph of him, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is that's amazing. I didn't know that part. And um,
Speaker 1: there's another thing we found this awesome a military analysis
Speaker 1: of it. So that's kind of cool. Somebody wrote a
Speaker 1: military analysis of this. I don't remember who, so I
Speaker 1: can't come a shout out, but we'll put it on
Speaker 1: our podcast page. But they point out that one of
Speaker 1: the reasons this was so successful this operation was one
Speaker 1: these guys at Excess commit x X committee just had
Speaker 1: free run to break the law, um, bend morality, do
Speaker 1: all sorts of stuff. Um, they just were able to
Speaker 1: go do their thing. But the other thing was is
Speaker 1: that they really kept this lid on this stuff and
Speaker 1: it was all disseminated on a need to know basis.
Speaker 1: So when they had this guy, they had him, they
Speaker 1: had they got glend Doer, kept him on ice for
Speaker 1: three months as they finished his backstory. They're running up
Speaker 1: against like go time, and then I think in um
Speaker 1: February or March April maybe I'm not sure the date.
Speaker 1: Do you know that what happened when they finally um
Speaker 1: carried out Operation mincemeat. Let's just say spring because I
Speaker 1: know that they kept him on ice for a few months. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they so they're up to the point where the
Speaker 1: d comp is about to give away that this guy
Speaker 1: didn't just recently die. Yeah, and that was a big
Speaker 1: fear that the Spanish uh corners would be able to
Speaker 1: tell to which will come up in a minute, Okay,
Speaker 1: and um, they're also getting to the point where they're
Speaker 1: reaching the end of the amount of time that they
Speaker 1: need to give the Nazis to absorb this MINS information.
Speaker 1: So they finally they get the guys persona in place,
Speaker 1: they have the body, and now it's time to actually
Speaker 1: carry out the operation. And like I was saying, they
Speaker 1: kept a lid on all this, so it was a
Speaker 1: need to know basis. So they got their hands on
Speaker 1: a sub commander who could keep his mouth shut, and
Speaker 1: they gave him a metal cylinder um with the corpse
Speaker 1: of glendor Michael now Major William Martin. Yeah, when you
Speaker 1: say subcommander mean submarine. Yes, not a commander below regular commander,
Speaker 1: the submarine commander. They gave him the cylinder and they said,
Speaker 1: we're gonna tell you what's in here. Do not tell
Speaker 1: anybody else. So apparently the people uh staffing this sub um,
Speaker 1: I thought this was some sort of weather buoy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was marked optical instruments. Um. But you're right. He
Speaker 1: was the only one on board supposedly that knew there
Speaker 1: was a body inside. Yep, And they put a life
Speaker 1: jacket on him, stuffed him in the cylinder, put him
Speaker 1: on the sub and took him over to Spain under
Speaker 1: a on a submarine. Well, let's back up for one second,
Speaker 1: because we we forgot to cover the main letter in
Speaker 1: the This was the all of operation mince meat. It
Speaker 1: did not hinge on theater ticket stubs or bank overdraft letters.
Speaker 1: That's merely pocket litter. It hinged on a letter hinting
Speaker 1: strongly that the invasion was gonna come up through Greece Sardinia. Right.
Speaker 1: And that was the other thing too. It wasn't like
Speaker 1: official document invasion is going to come through Greece. It
Speaker 1: was a letter from one general or admiral to another
Speaker 1: high ranking guy, I think general Nie. Uh. They composed
Speaker 1: a bunch of different letters themselves, and finally they said,
Speaker 1: why don't you write it in your own words, in
Speaker 1: your own language, in your own handwriting. Everything so it
Speaker 1: really was written by this this um high ranking US
Speaker 1: military official or British military official, um who who who
Speaker 1: wrote this fake letter? And he made a joke about sardines,
Speaker 1: a terrible joke, which was the little hint that was
Speaker 1: just clever enough to work, right, And so in it
Speaker 1: it basically says, um, we're we're coming up with the
Speaker 1: you know, we're going to strike through Greece, that's where
Speaker 1: the invasion of Europe is going to be. Um, but
Speaker 1: we're also going to tell everybody that Sicily is the cover. Right.
Speaker 1: And this was a stroke of genius because in this
Speaker 1: this false letter, not only does it show that they're
Speaker 1: coming through Greece, which they weren't, but it says that
Speaker 1: Cecily is the cover, which would make the Nazis think
Speaker 1: that if anyone ever did actually leak the real invasion
Speaker 1: plan of Sicily, the Nazis would think that that was misinformation. Dude,
Speaker 1: it was so ingenious. That's crazy genes. And I think
Speaker 1: about here now, Chuck, we get to the point where
Speaker 1: we should talk about the Enigma machine and the role
Speaker 1: it played, right, Yeah, Well, basically we all know that
Speaker 1: the Enigma machine was the codebreaking machine invented in the
Speaker 1: UK two decipher. Uh. Well, the Enigma machine wrote the code.
Speaker 1: I think, oh it wrote the code, yeah, and then
Speaker 1: the decipher code that they had gotten they deciphered it
Speaker 1: at Bletchley Park. But I think the Enigma machine was
Speaker 1: the actual code writing the encrypting machine. I could be wrong,
Speaker 1: but okay, well, so we definitely need to do a
Speaker 1: podcast on there because we're mixed up already to get
Speaker 1: it straight. But at any rate, the long and short
Speaker 1: of it is, and Beckley Park was Beckley Park. I
Speaker 1: always say blutch ely was there an Ellen there? I
Speaker 1: draw the whole ugly word out. Uh, they basically had
Speaker 1: they could. It was like reading the Nazis email essentially
Speaker 1: on a daily basis basis, hourly basis. They knew exactly
Speaker 1: what was going on, so they would know if they
Speaker 1: were buying this whole thing as it happened in real time.
Speaker 1: But even before that they were able to craft this
Speaker 1: this misinformation based on the Nazis assumptions. So everybody wants
Speaker 1: to hear that there are assumptions that their beliefs are correct.
Speaker 1: People are more apt to buy that things that confirm
Speaker 1: their suspicions of their beliefs already, right, Hitler was worried
Speaker 1: about Sicily. He he was, so he he already thought
Speaker 1: that Greece was going to be where we invaded. And
Speaker 1: then secondly he was he we knew that he had
Speaker 1: heard rumors that Mussolini was going to be toppled soon,
Speaker 1: so he was reticent to commit troops to Italy Sicily. Right.
Speaker 1: So this, this revelation that came in the form of
Speaker 1: this letter, this false letter, completely supported everything that Hitler
Speaker 1: and the Third Reich believed as far as this European
Speaker 1: invasion was going to go. And we're able to do
Speaker 1: that thanks to the smarties at Bletchley Park, right yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, this letter too. It's um. There's another little tidbit.
Speaker 1: They put a single eyelash in the fold of the
Speaker 1: letter so they would know when they eventually got this
Speaker 1: letter back. If there was no eyelash, they would know
Speaker 1: that the Nazi said in fact opened it. Um And
Speaker 1: because the idea was they would open it and reseal
Speaker 1: it and act like we never saw it. But there
Speaker 1: wasn't that eyelash, and they'd know not so rudim entry.
Speaker 1: But it worked. Oh yeah, So, um, did you take
Speaker 1: another break. Let's take a break, all right, I'm getting excited. Okay, So, Chuck,
Speaker 1: we are at sea aboard a submarine, Jolie down here
Speaker 1: and it is and you're not supposed to be smoking cigars.
Speaker 1: No you're not, despite Gene Hackman doing it and Crimson tied. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what a bad idea. Um. So we're off the coast
Speaker 1: of Spain. We're off the coast of whoeverla not an
Speaker 1: easy word to say, but it's important Spain. And again
Speaker 1: this is where Nazi agent Aidolf Klaus. Yeah, they kind
Speaker 1: of want to float the body right up to this
Speaker 1: guy's backyard basically, so they did. He was released from
Speaker 1: this canister. I I read somewhere else that, um, the
Speaker 1: canister itself was fired on with submarine submachine guns on
Speaker 1: a sub so you could just call the machine guns there. Um,
Speaker 1: And it was sunk and the body drifted off towards
Speaker 1: Oh I thought they just dumped the body. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure, because I found a book, um on Google books.
Speaker 1: It was like from two thousand and seven, and it
Speaker 1: was a history book and it made it sound like
Speaker 1: the sub the people working on the sub all knew
Speaker 1: what was going on. But that's in start start contrast
Speaker 1: to everything else we've seen. So they may or may
Speaker 1: not have sunk the weatherbooy, who knows, but either way,
Speaker 1: Major Martin was released into the current that took him
Speaker 1: right to Huevla and he went. I think he was
Speaker 1: found by a fisherman that same day. Yeah, and at
Speaker 1: this point the um the Brits started sending telegrams about
Speaker 1: a very important missing person frantic Yeah, like they wanted
Speaker 1: these to get intercepted obviously, uh, and that worked as well.
Speaker 1: This is all really going exactly as they planned. So
Speaker 1: they sent the British Council in Spain in Huevla, um
Speaker 1: or in Spain to Huevla and said, you need this
Speaker 1: is really important. You need to get your hands on
Speaker 1: the briefcase, find out what happened to this guy and
Speaker 1: get your hands on his briefcase. And Claus was going
Speaker 1: briefcase right as Monocle popped out, and um, the British
Speaker 1: Council and Spain didn't even know what was going on.
Speaker 1: They thought like this, like they were they saw everything
Speaker 1: from the same aspect of reality that the Nazis saw exactly.
Speaker 1: So the British Council are trying to get this briefcase
Speaker 1: kind of frantically um. And the Spaniards were like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know what, we are just going to keep this
Speaker 1: on lockdown for now is we investigate the whole thing.
Speaker 1: But we got it covered, remember where neutral, so your
Speaker 1: briefcase is safe. And the British consul said, well, okay,
Speaker 1: one thing this is very important. Uh. This guy was
Speaker 1: Roman Catholic. You can check out the medal in his pocket. Um,
Speaker 1: so please don't dissect him. It's against Roman Catholic beliefs
Speaker 1: and traditions to um dissect or autopsy body. I hadn't
Speaker 1: heard before, but apparently in the forties that was the
Speaker 1: case and that super Roman Catholic and they said, oh, yes,
Speaker 1: of course we won't do that. So apparently that's how
Speaker 1: they got around the fact that Glenda her hadn't died
Speaker 1: of pneumonia. Uh yeah. And the other way they got
Speaker 1: around it was they had a plant uh in the
Speaker 1: office who talked to the corners and was like, guys,
Speaker 1: it's hot and this body is going to start riding
Speaker 1: real soon. So how thorough do you really want to
Speaker 1: make this? And they said, you're right, Let's go have
Speaker 1: some some wine. Some Uh what do they call it
Speaker 1: over there, No, it's the pretty Yeah, let's go have
Speaker 1: some sangria and knock off early. And that's exactly what
Speaker 1: happened thanks to the plans. Uh, so this is going on.
Speaker 1: There was a small wrinkle at this point. The briefcase
Speaker 1: went to Madrid, Spain wasn't gonna hand it over to anyone, um,
Speaker 1: but the Brits were trying to get it in the
Speaker 1: hands of the Nazis. And they're actually having trouble getting
Speaker 1: it into the hands of the Nazis until a guy
Speaker 1: named Carlo Coolan Tall he was Hitler's most trusted guy
Speaker 1: in Spain. Uh, he got wind of it and kind
Speaker 1: of took over for Klauss. Was like, I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: this briefcase, and he did. Nine days later after the
Speaker 1: body washed Ashore. The letter ended up in the hands
Speaker 1: of the German. The German, uh you know, it worked
Speaker 1: his way up the chain. Yeah, to Hitler himself. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I went to Gebel's first, and Gebel's even in his
Speaker 1: diary they found later had suspicions about it because he
Speaker 1: was a corkscrew thinker, and he was like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: this is pretty convenient Yeah, this is really fishy here,
Speaker 1: but he apparently never said anything to Hitler. He got distracted.
Speaker 1: He wrote about in his diary, but the documentary said
Speaker 1: his thinking was, well, if Hitler believes it, then that's
Speaker 1: good enough for me. It seems like bad idea. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and um, homeboy Carlo coolintal. There was always a lot
Speaker 1: of speculation on why he just ran with it and
Speaker 1: didn't ask more questions because that was his job. And
Speaker 1: it turns out his grandmother was Jewish and he was
Speaker 1: very paranoid about this being found out. So he thought,
Speaker 1: this is it. I've come upon the greatest find the
Speaker 1: war and it's all mine, so no one will ask
Speaker 1: any questions about me after this. Wow, that worked out
Speaker 1: really really well. Yeah, very convenient and thanks to the
Speaker 1: Enigma machine they knew. Um, the Brits knew pretty quickly
Speaker 1: that this was working. And I guess Montague and um
Speaker 1: Chumbley were uh sent and Admiral God for you transmission
Speaker 1: that said Operation mince Meat swallowed, rod blind and sinker.
Speaker 1: Yeah that when when the it's so cool seeing these
Speaker 1: old like, uh, apparently you're not supposed to be elderly anymore.
Speaker 1: By the way, we got an email. I knew that
Speaker 1: or seniors. You're supposed to call them older adults seniors.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that that was the thing. Yeah, older adults.
Speaker 1: So they're interviewing these older adults, these British ladies that
Speaker 1: are in their eighties now, and they were just also
Speaker 1: still excited, they said when they because you know, with
Speaker 1: the Enigma machine, they were basically reading their emails and
Speaker 1: they were like there, they knew they were buying it.
Speaker 1: They're buying it, and everyone was just like flipped when
Speaker 1: that came through the office. It was just like party
Speaker 1: time basically. So the operation meant me really really worked
Speaker 1: really well, so much so that apparently Hitler moved a
Speaker 1: panzer division which totals about ninety thousand troops from Sicily
Speaker 1: to Greece and and all artillery and armaments and everything, Sicily,
Speaker 1: We're going to Greece. And then up came the Allies
Speaker 1: through Sicily. Hundred and sixty thousand Allied troops storm Sicily
Speaker 1: and only seven thousand lives were lost, which is still
Speaker 1: in a lot of people who died. But apparently, as
Speaker 1: far as military historians are concerned, and I think the
Speaker 1: military at the time, that was a way fewer lives
Speaker 1: lost than they expected, had they had Hitler not swallowed
Speaker 1: Operation minced Me. Yeah, they expected, um, ten thousand casualties
Speaker 1: in the first three days and three hundred boats sunk
Speaker 1: in the first two days, and it ended up being
Speaker 1: four in that first week soldiers and about a dozen
Speaker 1: ships in that first week. So that's not bad. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And not only that, but it had another effect, big
Speaker 1: one the Soviets. Yeah. So this is not something that
Speaker 1: they teach in American history classes in US high schools
Speaker 1: that much. The the Operation Husky, Uh, well it was.
Speaker 1: It was that penetration of Europe's underbelly, right, And suddenly
Speaker 1: Hitler said, Um, I'm about to storm Russia, but I
Speaker 1: really need these troops down here in Europe because I
Speaker 1: got big problems. And that allowed basically Russia to topple
Speaker 1: the Nazi regime and Mussolini get toppled by the Brits.
Speaker 1: It completely changed the face of the war. This one
Speaker 1: idea cooked up by mean Flaming in part that crazy.
Speaker 1: It's pretty awesome. You got other stuff. Um, there's a
Speaker 1: book called Operation Mincemeat by guy named Brett McIntyre. It
Speaker 1: came out in two thousand and ten. That's a very good,
Speaker 1: well cited book, um that we inadvertently cited here there. Um.
Speaker 1: And then there's The Man Who Never Was, which was
Speaker 1: written by you and Montague, which is not just about
Speaker 1: Operation mince Meat, but also about basically how to carry
Speaker 1: out deception plans. All right, Remember earlier when I said,
Speaker 1: don't feel too bad for uh, for Glendor Michael even
Speaker 1: he said, well, the dude died possibly of suicide because
Speaker 1: he was penniless and going nowhere. He thought about that,
Speaker 1: but uh, fifty years after he was buried in uh
Speaker 1: the British government added, they basically buried him with military honors.
Speaker 1: The Spanish did. Yeah, he's buried in Spain, but the
Speaker 1: British it came from the Brits, I think to do so.
Speaker 1: His headstone, um came from the bridge, but the Spanish
Speaker 1: buried him with like the twenty one gun salute and everything. Yes,
Speaker 1: as Glendor Michael served as Major William Martin R M
Speaker 1: Royal Marine. Pretty cool. Yeah, So this alcoholic drifter who
Speaker 1: never served in the military, ever served in the military,
Speaker 1: buried with full military honors. Yeah, and completely changed the
Speaker 1: face of the war thanks to being a body yeah,
Speaker 1: that the fit the bill, and if you like ghoulish photos,
Speaker 1: is a very famous photo of him being propped up
Speaker 1: in his life checket and uniform as they were basically
Speaker 1: loading him into the cylinder um that you can see
Speaker 1: by searching. I'm sure major Charles Martin, that's right, Charles Martin. No,
Speaker 1: William Martin, William Martin, something like that. I still want
Speaker 1: to know what's going on with that weird role playing
Speaker 1: there with that dude. That's a Dylan Pam. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because they interviewed the lady and she was just like, oh,
Speaker 1: it was all very exciting. Yeah, that's a great British
Speaker 1: lady accent older person, yeah, older ad older adults, yeah, oldie.
Speaker 1: If you want to get or no, if you want
Speaker 1: to know more about Operation Mincemeat, just type that word
Speaker 1: into your favorite search engine or go check out the
Speaker 1: stuff you missed in history class episode And I said
Speaker 1: stuff you missed in history class. It's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this bread crust. We had that discussion
Speaker 1: about the crust and the in pieces. Remember, so this
Speaker 1: is from a dad uh. Dear Chuck and Josh, your
Speaker 1: discussion of the in slice of bread and the body
Speaker 1: language episode brought ridiculous grin in my face as I
Speaker 1: walked around my neighborhood. Ah, don't worry, though, my neighbors
Speaker 1: have thought me to be eccentric for years now. Look
Speaker 1: at that guy smiling. What a weirdo. We must be
Speaker 1: a pinko. When our daughters were still tiny, my wife
Speaker 1: and I realized we were doomed to eighteen ish years
Speaker 1: of eating bread crust pieces ourselves if we didn't figure
Speaker 1: something out in quickly um our solution. We started calling
Speaker 1: those pieces the lucky piece, and boy did we look
Speaker 1: our innocent, trusting toddlers. Turns out your supposition is correct.
Speaker 1: Chuck at least for children under eleven years old, even
Speaker 1: if their honor students is mine, where they will fight
Speaker 1: you for the right to eat that savory, ohso desirable
Speaker 1: piece of luck. Idea younger adults rocking on guys, and
Speaker 1: please keep my goofy grinds coming. That is from Ted
Speaker 1: c O. I n e with a little uh kin
Speaker 1: A coin, A coin I sent to do. No, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I didn't take French legom What do you
Speaker 1: call that? A lagoon accent? Lagoom? So thanks Ted, I'll
Speaker 1: just call you coin yeah quin quin an, I don't know,
Speaker 1: let's say coin there. Uh yeah, thanks a lot. Ted.
Speaker 1: Ted contacted us on Twitter so he wanted to send
Speaker 1: us this email, So there you go, Ted. Wow. Um.
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with us, you
Speaker 1: can try all the ways like Ted did. You can
Speaker 1: contact us on Twitter at s Y s K podcast.
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