One dead body, fake letters and Hitler got fooled: In 1943, British spies tricked Germany by using an intelligence agent that never existed in reality

In World War II British intelligence came up with a strange plan to trick Adolf Hitler. They were going to use a dead body to convince Nazi Germany that the Allies were going to invade the wrong country. The operation included a fake military ID, personal belongings placed with care and secret documents that looked authentic.

Known as Operation Mincemeat, the deception plan helped protect the real Allied invasion plans and became one of the most famous intelligence operations of that war.

How a dead man became a British intelligence agent

The man at the centre of this operation was Glyndwr Michael, a homeless Welshman who died in London in January 1943 after ingesting rat poison. His body was discovered in an abandoned warehouse near King's Cross.


British intelligence officers Charles Cholmondeley and Ewen Montagu saw an opportunity to use the body in their operation. After keeping it in a mortuary for around three months, they arranged for it to be transported to the coast of southern Spain.

The corpse was given a fictional identity, Major William Martin of the Royal Marines. To make the identity believable, the officers created a personal history for him and placed items such as identification documents, ticket stubs and personal mementos among his belongings.

The most important item was a briefcase chained to his wrist. Inside were documents intended to convince German intelligence that the Allies were planning to attack Greece rather than their actual target, Sicily.

Why Britain chose Spain for the deception

Spain was officially neutral during the war, but Nazi intelligence had a presence there, and sections of the country's military were sympathetic to Germany. British planners expected that documents recovered from a supposedly drowned officer could eventually reach German intelligence.

The body was found floating off Huelva, on Spain's southern coast, in April 1943. The circumstances suggested that Major Martin had died in a plane crash while carrying confidential military papers.

Spanish authorities recovered his belongings and kept them under lock and key. German intelligence subsequently managed to obtain access to the documents.

British officers had also arranged matters to make the deception more convincing. The papers included a letter from senior British military figures suggesting that Allied forces were considering Greece and Sardinia as invasion targets. The real plan, however, was to land in Sicily.

Fake letters reached Hitler

The deception depended on more than simply planting false documents as British intelligence needed German officials to believe the papers were genuine and pass their contents up the chain of command.

According to the BBC, German intelligence eventually obtained photographs of the documents, which reached Hitler. Believing the false reports, Germany moved troops toward Greece in expectation of an Allied attack.

The British team was told that their plan had worked and they sent a telegram to Winston Churchill declaring, “Mincemeat swallowed rod, line and sinker."

The actual invasion and what happened after

The Allied invasion of Sicily began July 10, 1943. About 160,000 Allied soldiers were involved in the operation, catching German troops off guard, not expecting the actual attack, as per History.com.

Operation Mincemeat helped to distract the Germans from the invasion site, reducing the risks to the attacking forces. The plan also helped bring down the rule of Benito Mussolini in Italy, and added pressure on Hitler as Germany fought on several fronts.