Posted on 12/03/2010 2:33:36 PM PST by decimon
During World War II, the Nazis fell for an audacious British plot to pass off a dead tramp as an officer carrying secret documents. How - and are such tactics still in use today?
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Into his pockets went an identity card, ticket stubs and mementos from a fiancee. Chained to his wrist was a briefcase containing a letter marked "PERSONAL AND MOST SECRET", identifying Greece for invasion by Allied forces. Greece was a dummy target - the real plan was to invade Sicily.
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Michael/Martin was but a prop in Operation Mincemeat, brainchild of Ian Fleming, and put into action by Cholmondeley and Montagu, Churchill's "corkscrew thinkers" in the War Office.
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Prior to Mincemeat, they had created a network of fictitious double agents to feed misinformation to the Nazis. These imaginary spies were, like Michael/Martin, given jobs, hobbies, family, lovers and bank managers. The Germans thought they had an established spy network in the UK - in reality, they had none.
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After a tense week or so - it took the Germans several attempts to get sight of the briefcase's contents - photographs of the falsified documents made it to Hitler's desk. He was fooled, and moved an entire panzer division - 90,000 soldiers - to Greece.
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(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
An NYT book review has Ewen Montagu's brother a Soviet spy. It says that Ewen didn't know about his brother but that MI5 did.
We caught them, but they weren't doing much.
What else was going on under our noses that we didn't see?
3 Pzr divisions, an army ... eh, who counts.
(Given my screen name, that is pretty dang funny).
The article said “a panzer division, almost 90,000 men.”
That is true. They probably erred.
Hitler went right for it. I wonder if Stalin would have?
Dunno. Stalin had spies planted everywhere and the Germans still caught him flatfooted.
The genius of this operation was in the subtlety of the clues.
I can’t wait for the YouTube video after the Fuehrer finds out....
Stalin did not believe it, even after the Germans invaded. (He also ordered Russians armies stationed too far west, where they were quickly overrun. Had they allowed themselves some space east of the Germans, the Germans initial successes would not have been quite so great.)
They made a movie of it, called “The Man Who Never Was”. It was well done.
Stalin, entirely out of character for him, refused to believe Hitler would attack Russia and bought the story that the buildup on the Russian border was being done to fool the Allies and that Hitler was going to use those troops to repel any invasion. Hitler would have been much better off if he had used those troops in the West and left Russia alone.
James Bond 007, Ian Flemming.
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