See the true story
Operation Mincemeat
Early in 1943, Allied forces were massing along the coast of North Africa, preparing to make a push across the Mediterranean. They’d settled on strategically important Sicily as a target… but they needed to convince the Germans that they were aiming somewhere else.
How did they do it? With a great deal of imagination, and the dead body of an unfortunate Welsh laborer who’d died from eating rat poison.
And it was an elaborate creation: the fictitious Major Martin was equipped with ticket stubs, keys, a religious medal, letters from an imaginary father and fiancee, and unpaid bills. Cholmondeley and Montagu thought that the more convincing his personal story was, the more likely the Germans would be to believe the ruse. And along with the personal items, he carried carefully faked letters hinting that the Allies were planning to invade Greece and Sardinia, not Sicily.
Dropped by Submarine off the coast of Spain
The Germans fell for it. “Major Martin” was picked up by a fisherman on April 30th, 1943, off the coast of Huelva, Spain. British intelligence knew that Spain, while neutral, had Axis sympathies. They hoped that Martin and his faked documents would eventually fall into German hands, which is exactly what happened.
In the end, Hitler moved entire divisions away from Sicily to guard against attacks on Greece and Sardinia -- attacks that never came. Instead, the Allies stormed through Sicily, meeting only minimal resistance, and Hitler was forced to call off assaults on the Eastern Front in order to reinforce Italy.
And the film of the same name....Operation Mincemeat.
Awesome story.
Great movie (one of the few I am familiar with):
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0049471/
“The Man Who Never Was”
There is a remarkable movie about this called The Man Who Never Was, starring Clifton Webb. Great movie!
Thanks - my Dad was there!