Welcome to Spycraft, a podcast that tells gripping life and death spy stories and
the amazing devices and operations that made them possible. Now let's get started.
The homeless spy well kind of, it was more about the homeless decoy.
It sounds something kind of like from a Tom Clancy novel. You see,
there was a dead homeless man from Wales that became an unwitting Second World War
hero after fooling Adolf Hitler in the Army. It's the corpse of Glen d
r Michael, a homeless Welshman who unknownly took part in one of the greatest
deception operations in history. It was called Operation Mincemeat. It was conceived in
January nineteen forty three by two young officers assigned to Section seven Pmish Intelligence.
The idea was to convince the Axis powers that the Allies were planning to invade
Greece in the summer of nineteen forty three, rather than the island of Sicily.
It truly is an amazing story. Let's see a little bit about the
man himself. In nineteen forty three, aber bargoed man glendwarrgl Yn Drdwr was
found dead in the middle of London after eating rap poison. The thirty four
year old had no money, few friends and was just one of hundreds of
homeless people sadly across the city of London. At the same time, a
secret scheme was being hatched in Whitehall to hoodwink the Nazis into thinking that the
Allies planned to attack Sardinia and Greece instead of Sicily. All that was missing
from the plan was a body, and that's where glend Were came through.
You see, there was a mentistry mental illness in the family. Thomas Michael
Glendore's father attempted suicide by stabbing himself in the throat and died when yen was
fifteen. Unfortunately, the family were thrown out to the charity of the Union,
and when Glenware's mother died at the start of war, his only means
of support was gone and he ended up drifting. Three years later, the
Welshmans was found in an abandoned warehouse in the English capital before taken to a
hospital, and with Glenware leaving no trace behind, it made him the perfect
candidate for the Secret Services ploy Operation Mincemeat. Let's take a further look to
convince the abb Ware the military version of the Nazis, they needed a believable
method for passing fake classified information to Germany. Their chosen method was stunning,
both in its audacity and cleverness. British intelligence decided to deploy a cadaver off
the coast of Spain so that it could be discovered by Spanish authorities. Glenware
Michael was selected when he died in a hospital. The cadaver was dressed as
a British courier and given appropriate pocket letter including love letters and photos from a
girlfriend. A briefcase was handcuffed to his wrist with memorandums and other documents,
all pointing to an invasion of grease. The rat poison had caused Michael's lungs
to fill the fluid, adding evidence that he had died by drowning after a
plane crash in the Atlantic. Michael's body was transported to the Spanish coast by
the submarine HMS Sreth, where it was interred in the sea after the reading
of a psalm. Spanish authorities recovered Michael's body the same day was released,
and the documents in the locked briefcase were soon shared with the German military.
The result was a repositioning of German forces to meet the perceived threat to the
Balkans. By the time other evidence pointed convincingly to the pending invasion of Sicily,
it was too late for the Germans to move forces again. Cecily fell
to the Allies. Benito Mossolini was ousted and his successor entered into ciccret schalks
with the Allies. Operation Mincemeat was a complete and total success. So a
fascinating story, indeed, how they use this homeless man who may not have
thought he had a purpose in life or a goal, but in fact he
actually did, and he contributed in a very large way to defeating the Nazis.
That's it for now, Thanks for listening, everybody,