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A Memorable History of Deception and Spy Capers

Khalid Elhassan June 7, 2020 34 min

Operation Mincemeat - World War II — Items recovered from Major Martin and his briefcase. BBC

38. The Man Who Never Was

Photo of Major Martin’s girlfriend, found among his effects. United Kingdom National Archives

Unbeknownst to the Spanish and German intelligence services, British intelligence had engineered it all. Codenamed Operation Mincemeat, the British had gone to great – and macabre – lengths, just to place the contents of Major Martin’s briefcase in German hands.

“Major Martin” was not even a British officer. The drowned corpse was that of a homeless drifter taken from a London morgue. The cadaver was gussied up, dressed in an officer’s uniform, furnished with identification papers and a briefcase secured to it by a courier’s chain, then dumped off the Spanish coast. The hope was that the corpse – and most importantly the briefcase attached to it – would be recovered by the Spanish, and shared with the Germans.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.