The Dead Man Who Fooled Hitler | Operation Mincemeat

In 1943, British intelligence needed Nazi Germany to believe the Allies were planning to invade somewhere other than Sicily. Their solution was perfectly reasonable: find a corpse, dress him as a Royal Marines officer, give him a girlfriend, some overdue bills and a briefcase full of lies, then drop him off the coast of Spain. This is the story of Operation Mincemeat, one of the strangest operations of the Second World War, and the extraordinary amount of effort required to give one dead man a fake identity. Featuring forged letters, pocket litter, romantic correspondence, sardine jokes, questionable bureaucracy and a man named William Martin who never actually existed. Welcome to Past Behaviour, the channel dedicated to investigating how many people had to approve this before it became history. Sources and further reading are listed below: 📚Ben Macintyre, Operation Mincemeat: The True Spy Story That Changed the Course of World War II (2010). 📚Ewen Montagu, The Man Who Never Was (1953). 📚Ewen Montagu, Beyond Top Secret U (1977). 📚Michael Howard, British Intelligence in the Second World War, Vol. 5: Strategic Deception (1990). 📚Christopher Andrew, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 (2009/2010). 📚Thaddeus Holt, The Deceivers: Allied Military Deception in the Second World War (2004). 📚The National Archives (UK), Admiralty / Naval Intelligence records relating to Operation Mincemeat, including ADM 223 material. 📚Imperial War Museums Archives, Operation Mincemeat and Second World War intelligence collections. 📚Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, German wartime intelligence and military records. 📚N. L. A. Jewell, Secret Mission Submarine: Action Report of the HMS Seraph (1944). #OperationMincemeat #WWII #History #BritishHistory #MilitaryHistory #PastBehaviour #animatedhistory #history #weirdhistory #crazyhistory #worldwar2 #worldwartwo