Operation Mincemeat - "Mincemeat Swallowed Whole"

"Mincemeat Swallowed Whole"

When the body was found, it was reported to the Abwehr agent in Huelva, Adolf Clauss. He was the son of the German consul, and operated under the cover of an agriculture technician. Three days later, the British Naval Attaché in Spain reported the body's discovery, and the Committee was notified. The body was handed over to the British Vice-Consul F. K. Hazeldene, and Major Martin was buried in the San Marco section of Nuestra Senora cemetery in Huelva, with full military honours on 4 May.

The Vice Consul arranged for a pathologist, Eduardo Del Torno, to perform a post-mortem examination. Del Torno reported that the man had fallen into the sea while still alive and had no bruises, death was due to drowning, and the body had been in the sea between 3 and 5 days. A more comprehensive examination was not made because the pathologist took him for a Roman Catholic. Martin wore a silver crucifix and had a St. Christopher plaque in his wallet and his identity tags were marked 'RC'.

Montagu had Major Martin included in the published list of British casualties which appeared in The Times on 4 June, in case the Germans checked up there. By coincidence, the names of two other officers who had died when their plane was lost at sea were also published that day, giving credence to the Major Martin story. The issue of The Times that recorded Major William Martin's "demise" was also the same that announced that of film star Leslie Howard, shot down by Luftwaffe aircraft in the Bay of Biscay. To further the ruse, the Admiralty sent several messages to the Naval Attaché about the papers that Major Martin had been carrying. The Attaché was urgently directed to locate the papers, and, if they were in Spanish hands, to recover them at all costs, but also to avoid alerting the Spanish to their importance. The briefcase and papers had been taken up by the Spanish Navy, which had turned over the documents to the Alto Estado Mayor, the Supreme General Staff. From there, they apparently disappeared, and even the Gestapo could not locate them.

Major Karl-Erich Kuhlenthal, the Germans' most senior Abwehr agent in Spain, took a keen interest in finding the papers. He stirred up so much attention among the Spanish that Colonel José López Barrón Cerruti, Spain's most senior secret policeman and a keen fascist, took up the search for the briefcase. Word of the find reached Abwehr headquarters in Germany. Wilhelm Canaris, the head of the Abwehr, was asked by Kuhlenthal to personally intervene and persuade the Spanish to surrender the documents. Lieutenant-Colonel Ramón Pardo Suárez located the documents and arranged to make them available to the Germans. The Spanish removed the still-damp paper by tightly winding it around a probe into a cylindrical shape, and then pulling it out between the envelope flap, still closed by a wax seal, and the envelope body. Pardo took the dried contents to the German Embassy and gave Wilhelm Leissner, the Abwehr chief in Madrid, one hour to make copies. The embassy immediately radioed the text to Berlin, with the paper copies of the photos following a few days later.

The documents were re-inserted into their original envelopes, reversing the process by which they were removed, and returned to the British Attaché by the Chief of Staff of the Navy on 13 May, with the assurance that "everything was there". When the papers were examined after their return, the British analyzed the documents and confirmed they had been opened. Further confirmation from Ultra prompted a message to Churchill, then in the United States: "Mincemeat Swallowed Whole."

The effort Montagu and his team made to build up Martin's identity paid off. The Germans noted and accepted all the personal details. They noted the date on the ticket stubs, and deduced that Martin must have been flying from Britain to Gibraltar. Ironically, their report gave a wrong date (27 April instead of 22 April), and they concluded that the crash had occurred on 28 April, even though the medical evidence "showed" that Martin had been dead in the water for several days by 30 April. But the Germans missed the contradiction, canceling their own error. As a result, Adolf Hitler was so convinced of the veracity of the bogus documents that he disagreed with Benito Mussolini that Sicily would be the most likely invasion point, insisting that any incursion against the island should be regarded as a feint.

German defensive efforts were substantially redirected: reinforcements were sent to Greece, Sardinia and Corsica instead of Sicily. British commando activities had also been carried out in Greece. The renowned general Erwin Rommel was sent to Greece to assume overall command. A group of "R boats" was transferred from Sicily, and three additional minefields were laid off the Greek coast. Three panzer divisions were moved to Greece – one from France, and two from the Eastern Front. The latter was perhaps the most critical move – reducing German combat strength against the Russians in the Kursk salient (influencing events on the Eastern Front was apparently neither intended nor foreseen by the British originators of the plan, who were preoccupied with their own part of the war).

On 9 July, the Allies invaded Sicily in Operation Husky. The Germans remained convinced for two more weeks that the main attacks would be in Sardinia and Greece, and kept forces out of action there until it was too late. Only on 12 July did they order the 3rd Regiment of 1st Fallschirmjäger Division to parachute onto the island ahead of the advancing British 8th Army.

Ewen Montagu was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for his part in Operation Mincemeat. Charles Cholmondeley was made a Member (MBE) of the Order for masterminding the plan.