Patrick Filler

Operation Mincemeat

In May of 1943, the body of a British naval officer washed onto Spanish shores. A briefcase was chained to his body and he wore a life jacket — an apparent airplane crash victim. Britain demanded his remains and the briefcase be immediately returned and the Spanish complied — but not before they allowed the Abwehr (the German Intelligence Organization) to inspect the contents of the case:

Inside the suitcase was the letter from Sir Archibald Nye, vice chief of the Imperial General Staff to Sir Harold Alexander, the British commander in North Africa, which outlined the Allies’ plans to invade Europe from Sardinia, Corsica and Greece. This vital information was rushed to Berlin.

On May 12th, Hitler sent an order: “Measures regarding Sardinia and the Peloponnese take precedence over everything else,” diverting resources away from Sicily, through which the Allied Forces eventually invaded. This was because Germans had fallen for an elaborate deception: Major Martin never existed, and was part of a ruse named, “Operation Mincemeat”.

The ruse was quite successful and had an apparently significant impact on the outcome of the war. The Wikipedia article on the operation is definitely worth a read.