The officer behind one of the greatest deceptions in history

         The story during World War II of a corpse fooling Hitler and the German High Command into thinking that an Allied landing was to take place on one beach when in actuality the landings were hundreds of miles away, is one of the most fascinating tales of the war. It’s also one of the most mistold stories of an undercover operation in history. What’s even more unbelievable was that it was the brainchild of a semi-religious Jew from the office of the British Admiralty. This is the true story of Ewen Montagu and Operation Mincemeat.

            Ewen Montagu was born in 1901 to a prominent Jewish family and was a machine gun instructor during World War I. He was educated at prestigious universities such as Cambridge and Harvard and was called to the bar in 1924. During World War II when London was bombarded with bombs coming from German planes, he had the rank of lieutenant commander in the Naval Intelligence Division of the British Admiralty.

One of the tasks given to the division was to think long term on how to protect Allied invasions. The idea to place corpses carrying falsified information wasn’t new. In August 1942, during the North African Campaign a corpse was found by the German 90^th Division showing British minefields. The mines weren’t there but the Germans went around the area and got bogged down in soft sand. In September that year, an American courier’s body washed up on the Spanish coast. He was carrying a letter that contained the names of spies as well as the dates for the American landings in North Africa (Operation Torch) but the Germans thought it was a plant and ignored it, even though this time it was real. When Montagu’s office was given the task of protecting the secret information they came up with a brilliant plan that was almost foolproof. They would also use a corpse but prepare it in a way that that it would reach the German High Command and Hitler himself.

Montagu worked closely with Flight Lieutenant Charles Cholmondeley who was the one who came up with the idea of dropping a corpse out of an airplane. There were problems with that plan so Montagu thought of the idea to launch the body out of a submarine. The corpse would have an attaché case containing highly sensitive documents outlining future operations. It would be launched off the coast of Spain near a town where the British Intelligence knew of a certain Abwehr (the German intelligence service) agent was operating.

Montagu put himself in the minds of the German counterintelligence agents and thought about what they would consider genuine and what was a plant. Therefore, in preparing the body and documents, Montagu paid attention to every detail. The body itself couldn’t be just any corpse. They searched and finally found a 34 year old man who had died of pneumonia (documents released recently reveal that he may have died of rat poison). A renowned pathologist was consulted and he said that it would appear to the Germans like the body had drowned or died of hypothermia and had washed up on the shore. The corpse was obtained from a coroner with the instructions from the family that his real name never be revealed. We now know that his name was Glyndwr Michael but he would have to be given a new identity. The division decided to make a Royal Marines so that way there would be reason for him to carry sensitive documents. However, the Royal Marines were a tight knit group and since most officers knew of one another, Montagu picked a surname that was common among the service. Thus the legacy of Major William Martin was born.

Now the team needed to outfit Major Martin. First they needed him to look like a young marine officer but important enough to be carrying vital information. He was dressed in battle uniform and not dress clothes like members of other service branches would be on this type of mission. Some of the personal effects included a snapshot of “his girlfriend” Pam (who in actuality was a clerk in the office), two love letters and ticket stubs to a London theater.

All of this stuff was easy to obtain, but his ID card was another story. Normally, navy or army personnel wouldn’t carry ID but Royal Marines did. Montagu decided to take a risk and give him a replacement card. This would show him as a bit careless and could make the Germans wonder why such a man would be given a sensitive document. However, if the Germans bought into it, then it would put a touch of reality to the situation and it would make him more believable. Then when putting together the ID card they realized they didn’t have a picture. They didn’t want to use a real picture of Michael because it would be shameful to his family. Instead, Montagu had a stroke of luck when he found someone who could have been the dead man’s twin. After putting the ID together, Montagu wanted to make it look used, so he rubbed it against his pants until it looked used.

The entire operation was put into motion to try to deceive the German into thinking that the Allied invasion was going to be at Corsica and Sardinia with another attack on Greece. The actual invasion site was the island of Sicily and the entire British team knew that just by looking on a map that it would be obvious to the Germans that it would be the site of the next invasion. Therefore, Montagu felt there was no harm to write in the deception letters that Sicily wasn’t the target. Some cautious officers in the British General Staff felt that it would tip the Allied hand even more and so the matter was brought before Prime Minister Winston Churchill. He was told that if the operation went wrong then the Germans could pinpoint Sicily to which he replied, “I don’t see that that matters. Anybody but a damn’ fool would know it is Sicily.” There was also the risk that a Spaniard would find the body and return it directly to the British instead of the Germans. Churchill was not worried about that either, “I don’t see that that matters either. We can always try again!” With the prime minister’s approval, as well as the go-ahead from American General Dwight Eisenhower who would be in charge of the invasion, the mission was put into action.

Montagu and his team prepared Major Martin for his journey and delivered the canister containing the major to the submarine HMS Seraph. The entire operation was so secret that most of the men onboard the sub were told that it was a meteorological device. The Seraph, commanded by Lieutenant Bill Jewell, left Scotland on April 19, 1943 and arrived off the coast of Huelva, Spain on April 30. With the enlisted men below deck, the officers, who knew about Major Martin, went about preparing him for launch. They fitted him with his clothing, inflated his Mae West (life preserver) and said a prayer. Gently they pushed him into the sea about a mile off the coast. The canister was sunk by machine gun fire and Jewell signaled “Mincemeat Completed”. The British had done their part and now it was in the hands of the Germans to see if the ploy had worked.

The deception plan went down like clockwork. José Antonio Rey Maria, a Spanish fisherman, found the body and soon it was reported to the local German Abwehr agent, Adolf Clauss. On May 3, the British Naval Attaché in Madrid signaled Montagu’s office that they had been informed by the Vice-Consul in Huelva that a body of a Major Martin had been found by a fisherman. The body was returned to the Vice-Consul for proper burial. Major Martin received a full military funeral in Huelva.

However, in the signal there was no mention of the briefcase which carried the deception papers. After a few inquiries that were made to sound genuine, Montagu found out that that the briefcase had been handed over to the Spanish Military and was now on its way to England intact. When it arrived and was examined it was determined that the two most important letters had been opened but were carefully replaced and resealed. After the war, it was learned that the letters had been copied and translated and made their way to the German High Command.

The question still remained; did the letters of deception do their job in fooling the Germans of the actual invasion site or did all of the effort go to waste? During the war, Montagu only found out a few facts. Operation Husky, the codename for the Sicily landings, had taken place on July 9, 1943 and it quickly discovered that the Germans had been expecting a landing on the northern coast and not on the southern beaches where they actually took place. Even if the Allies were to have landed on Sardinia and Greece they still would have needed to invade Sicily, but would have done so from the northern coasts. This clearly took the Germans by surprise, but the full effect of Mincemeat was not learned until after the war by examining captured German documents. Hitler had swallowed Mincemeat whole. He sent one of his best general, Erwin Rommel to spruce up the defenses in Greece (it’s a hot debate topic as to who was Hitler’s best and favorite general. Rommel clearly wasn’t the favorite as Hitler made him commit suicide). He also sent a squadron of R-boats, fast motor torpedo launches capable of hampering an invasion, and minelayers to the Greek coast. Panzer divisions were moved to Greece, away from the Russian front, which Stalin never fully appreciated, and far away from any fighting at the crucial moment.

Hitler and the German intelligence units were surprised when the landings took place on the southern coast of Sicily. They were so taken aback that they were so wary of another plant by the Allies that when the Allies did slip up and valuable documents reached the Germans, they weren’t believed. Mincemeat was more successful than anyone would have imagined when it was first suggested.

After the war, Ewen Montagu was the Judge Advocate of the Fleet for almost 30 years. He was also the president of the United Synagogue for several years. He wrote down this story in a book entitled “The Man Who Never Was” which was later made into a movie. An interesting side note to this story is Ewen’s brother, Ivor, who was a filmmaker and after the war was accused of spying for the Russians.