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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

34. Selling Mincemeat

HMS Seraph, the submarine that dumped ‘Major William Martin’ off the Spanish coast. Ships Nostalgia

On April 19^th, 1943, a sealed canister containing the corpse of “Major Williams Martin” was loaded into a British submarine, that sailed for Spain. After surviving two bombings en route, the submarine made it to the Spanish coast. Early on the morning of April 30^th, the body, with an attached briefcase, was dumped overboard, where the tide and current would carry it to shore. The briefcase contained fake letters from British generals, identifying the Balkans as the Allies’ next invasion target, with hints of subsidiary operations targeting the island of Sardinia.

Items recovered from Major Martin and his briefcase. BBC

The Germans swallowed Operation Mincemeat’s deception, hook, line, and sinker. It helped that Hitler was already obsessed with the Balkans, and suspected that it was the Allies’ next target. The briefcase’s contents reinforced that belief. The Fuhrer wrote Mussolini, informing him that Greece and Sardinia were to be reinforced “at all costs“. Accordingly, instead of reinforcing Sicily’s defenders, Hitler ordered reinforcements sent to the Balkans and Sardinia.

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.