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The notion that Operation Mincemeat did not significantly affect the…

- - - - 1) transfer forces north for impending invasion of Europe from the English Channel or
      - 2) remain in theater to strike at southern Italy, what Churchill called “the soft underbelly of Europe.”
      - Decided to press north into Italy as taking them out of the picture would not guarantee, but assure the Allies that victory would be imminent.
        
        Stepping stone would be the island of Sicily since Allies could depend on fighter cover from air bases on British Malta, 60 miles south of Sicily.
  - - - Massive assault almost cancelled due to summer storm and paratroopers suffering difficulties dropping behind enemy lines.
        
        However, storm worked to their advantage as Axis defenders thought no one would attack under those conditions
      - Lieutenant General George S. Patton commanded American ground troops and General Bernard L. Montgomery lead British ground forces.
      - Encountered light resistance as Hitler had been so deceived by “Mincemeat” that there were only two German divisions in Sicily to battle the Allied soldiers. This shows how the deceitfulness of Mincemeat outsmarted German High Command leaving them defenseless.
        
        Even though it was a diversionary maneuver, Hitler continued to warn his officers to expect the main landings at Sardinia or Corsica. He was so sure that they would attack elsewhere because of Mincemeat that Sicily never got he backup it so desperately needed.
        
        Next 5 weeks – Patton’s army moved to northwestern shore of Sicily then east towards Messina. Italian fascist regime fell rapidly into disrepute, like the Allies hoped it would.
        
        July 24, 1943 – Prime Minister Benito Mussolini was deposed and arrested. New provisional government was set up under Marshal Pietro Badoglio who always opposed alliance with the Axis powers and began secret discussions with the Allies about an armistice.
        
        July 25, first Italian troops began withdrawing from Sicily. Hitler continued to fight as U.S. and British soldiers pushed back Axis forces to northeast corner of the island.
        German and Italian armies managed to evacuate 100,000 men to Italian mainland.
        German losses had not been severe and Allies’ failure to capture fleeing Axis armies undermined the victory. March to Italian mainland took place in September taking more time and troops than anticipated.
  - - - Combined Chiefs of Staff selected operational commanders at Casablanca. General Dwight D. Eisenhower would be supreme commander. Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham – naval forces, Air Chief Marshall Sir Arthur Tedder – air forces.
      - An armada of 2,590 vessels rendezvoused in the central Mediterranean on July 9. Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay commanded the landings. Without incident, the ships reached their debarkation points. Landings were largely successful since there was almost no resistance from Italian coastal forces.
        
        Patton captured the western tip of Sicily on July 23. Then ordered to turn eastward toward Messina to help Montgomery.
        
        Sicily was a victory but there was no master plan for the conquest of Sicily beyond beachhead objectives.
- - - - Thoughts at the time: Eyes were turned to “soft underbelly of Europe” because it was clear that a cross-channel invasion of Western Europe would not be feasible that year. Allies saw this as the weakest defense of the Axis powers and had the means, via Mincemeat, to enter into the underbelly.
        
        Taking Italy out of the war was the aim and Sicily the stepping stone.To get Sicily meant to take Italy giving this operation great importance.
        
        North Africa had successful deception operations before and now another one was needed to divert German High Command Attention from Sicily toward Greece and Sardinia.
      - Plan: Make the Germans believe that they had accidently intercepted high-level private correspondence between general officers that pointed to Sardinia and Greece as Allied targets.
        
        Idea conceived by Montagu was to plant the disinformation on a corpse dressed as a Royal Marine that would be released from a submarine to float onto the Spanish coast.
        
        It would be made to look like a plane crash into the Gulf of Cadiz coast with a life boat thrown into the water with the body to create authenticity.
        
        So the assumption was if the fake documents got in the right Spanish hands, it would end up in the Germans. The dead body they would find would be named William Martin, an invented character.
        
        Abwehr (German counterespionage service) was left a free hand by Spain as long as the appearance of neutrality could be maintained.
        
        Spain was the decided location of where to send the body cause of two reasons:
        
        1) Spain’s leaning towards the Axis powers and
        
        2) there was a particular German spy operating in the area, Adolf Clauss, who had bribed every Spanish official of any note.
        
        British hoped for following course of events:
        
        Spanish secretly share the documents with the Germans
        
        Spanish then pass the body and documents to the British as if nothing happened.
        
        Body is discovered by the Spanish
        
        If the following events were to occur, Sicily would practically be defenseless if the German High Command were to shift their troops away from the real target.
        
        Man named Charles Cholmondeley, an Air Force Officer who’d been seconded to MI-5, hit the idea of using a dead body with false documents to fool the Germans. Pitched to a committee called the 20 Committee, which was ironic since 20 in Roman numerals is two X’s. He and Ewen Montagu work together on the operation., Montagu however gained more credit for the effort.
      - Ewen Montagu of the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve, a lawyer in civilian life, masterminded the Mincemeat operation when he was a Lieutenant Commander attached to MI-1 in 1942/43.
        
        His account and the official history of British intelligence in the Second World War are the chief sources of information on this topic. He details of the events showcase its significance to the efforts of the Allies and what a moral push it was for them.
      - After the Operation had approval, a corpse needed to be found that fit the following requirements:
        
        2) Fresh or only minimally decomposed
        
        3) No secrecy violations
        
        1) Permission obtainable from relatives or competent authority
        
        4) Fit the expectations of the German and Spanish authorities.
        
        Ideal body would have been a victim of drowning.
        
        Montagu went to protect the individual’s identity and didn’t want it known.
        
        Montagu was given permission to use the body and deposited it into a suitable cold storage unit.
        
        The corpse is known as “Cold Storage Man.” This body is the definition of deception as it single handily threw off the forces that resided in Sicily having most transferred elsewhere but there.
      - Despite the fact those who were involved were sworn to secrecy, Duff Cooper, a former First Lord of the Admiralty, published a book only 5 years after the end of the war, which many correctly recognized as a roman a clef titled Operation Heartbreak.
        
        It was fictionalized history and clumsily written; still considered excitement in government circles because it obviously was derived from Operation Mincemeat. Common people had no clue that this was based on the events that would change the tide of the war.
        
        To control the damage, a semiofficial version of the events was commissioned by Ewen Montagu.
        
        The sanitized account of the events was published in 1953 after approval by the Ministry of Defense, titled The Man Who Never Was.
    - - British newspaper The Daily Telegraph published in 1996 info released from the Public Records Office identifying the corpse as Glyndwr Michael
        
        Man born the illegitimate son of illiterate parents from a Welsh mining village.
        
        He died Jan. 28, 1943 at St Pancreas Hospital in London with liver failure.
        
        His death was of great importance since he helped to capture Sicily.
        
        Had lived a filthy and lonely existence as a tramp on the streets and was classified as a lunatic unfit for military service; was 34 yrs old.
        
        Based on the revelations, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission in Jan. 1998 removed the gravestone of “Major Martin” in the Catholic cemetery of Huelva to have it re-engraved adding underneath, “Glyndwr Michael served as Major William Martin, R.M.”
        
        Toronto University professor Denis Smyth – claims to firmly established the true identity of “Major William Martin.” Smyth claims to have found a secret memo between Mincemeat director Montagu and the coroner who secured the corpse. The memo, he states, conclusively proves that the body was of the homeless, mentally ill Welshman Glyndwr Michael
      - Controversy: If “Cold Storage man” had been subjected to an autopsy by a reasonably competent forensic examiner, his class distinctions would have been evident even after advanced decomposition. Although the body who made Operation Mincemeat possible was significant, the issue of who it was is under debate although the consensus is that it is Glyndwr.
        
        Argument against: Much more likely that a young healthy sailor, officer, or enlisted, who drowned during the HMS Dasher tragedy was picked for the job and that a body-snatching operation did actually occur.
        
        Dr. Eduardo Fernandez del Torno performed the postmortem. He has been a medical examiner for 22 years; had assistance his son.
        
        They concluded the soldier had fallen into the sea alive and that the death was caused by asphyxia due to drowning; body had been at sea for 8-10 days.
        
        Full report not around anymore. Destroyed in fire in 1976.
        
        Did not find any unusual liver findings-found out in interview with pathologist’s son (Eduardo Fernandez Contiososo). This is where people have problems since Glyndwr is known to have died due to liver failure, however, the record was destoryed so their is no solid proof against but rather that it is him.
        
        Second autopsy performed by Germans who took body out of the grave although it was protected.
        
        "This account opens up the strong possibility that one of the bodies from HMS Dasher occupied that crucial, if posthumous, role (of Major Martin)." Brian Wilson MP.^ June 2002
    - - Body was decomposed more than hoped for. 23 yr old fisherman Jose Antonio Rey found the body which was then transported from the beach of Portil by donkey to Punta Umbria.
      - Spanish Naval Reserve officer, the Navy Examining Magistrate, was dispatched by boat to retrieve the body. Death certificate was filled out by the physicians Eduardo Fernández dei Tomo and José Pablo Vázquez Pérez.
      - Contents of briefcase were scrutinized by Spanish and Germans which returned the case by diplomatic channels to the British with the letters seemingly unopened.
      - Autopsy - conducted the following day in the anatomy building of the municipal cemetery Nuestra Señora de la Soledad.
- - - - Allied invasion was a walkover - “perhaps the most successful single deception of the entire war.".
        
        Spain was officially neutral in the conflict, yet the military was pro-German allowing Nazis to find an officer in Madrid to help them. With other personal effects and official looking documents, they found a letter from military authorities in London to a senior British officer in Tunisia, indicating that Allied armies were preparing to cross the Mediterranean from their positions in North Africa and attack German-held Greece and Sardinia.
        
        The deception primarily worked because Montagu knew that Spain would not remain neutral outsmarting
    - - “Major Martin” was supplied with a believable history and personality; transported by submarine from western Scotland. Correctly guessed that the Spaniards would show the Germans, notwithstanding their neutrality. Great success saving many days of fighting and many lives.
      - One effect of Mincemeat was the Erwin Rommel was dispatched to Greece to arrange for the defense of the Peloponnesus.
      - Two salient elements in espionage, wishfulness – persuade the enemy to believe something they are already inclined to believe - and yesmanship – the intensely hierarchical German chain of command, if the boss believed something, then everybody else would fall into line no matter how skeptical.
        
        Both elements were used perfectly in Operation Mincemeat as they were already inclined to believe that the Allies would attack southern Europe although they didn't know where, and that the German High Command believed the documents to be real made soldiers under them also believe in them.
      - Conquest of Sicily took place at critical moment in the war in general. From there, the German army was constantly in retreat.
    - - Badoglio renewed his protestations of friendship for the Allies. All he wanted was a delay. He was obsessed with the all-pervading fear of German retaliation.
      - Rome was the crux of said fear; they couldn’t bear the Germans destroying it. Marshall Badoglio was told to lay the problem before General Eisenhower which he began to do.
      - He wanted 1) to delay the armistice announcement and 2) to withhold the planned airborne operation. He won his second point as his first was the all-important one. He retreated on his position he made the night before and announced the armistice agreement.
        
        Italy was now in it with the Allies.
        
        Mincemeat led to the spark of these events which shifted the narrative of the war.
        
        Now with Italy as an ally, the Allies had the Axis powers surrounded which climaxed in Berlin, Germany in 1945.
        
        Italy’s surrender had a price: it led to open hostilities between its Far Eastern forces and the Imperial Japanese Army. The 1943 armistice meant Italy was with the Allies, and the position of its soldiers (in China) and sailors in the Far East became precarious at best. Italian naval crews were determined to not be captured by the Japanese.
        
        Some became POWs treated like Allies by the Japanese while others stayed with the Axis powers until Germany’s surrender in 1945.
      - Mussolini’s arrest threw Allies for a surprise
- - - - To guard these vessels from the predations of enemy U-boats, escort ships -- destroyers, corvettes, and auxiliary aircraft carriers -- were needed as well.
        The invasion itself required still more ships -- ships of a quite specialized type -- to transport the invaders and their equipment across the English Channel to the landing beaches, keep them continually supplied, and evacuate the wounded and the prisoners.
        And all of this had to be accomplished while still more ships -- thousands of them -- carried out a naval war against Japan halfway around the world.
      - LST - displaced 1,625 tons when empty; could carry 20 Sherman tanks, 30 heavy trucks, or 2,100 tons of cargo in her hold, plus as many as 40 light trucks or jeeps lashed to her upper deck. Also had bunk space, 350 soldiers. Because of flat bottom, which gave the ship a draft of only 1½ feet forward when empty and 4 to 7 feet when fully loaded, she could steam right up onto a beach despite her great size and discharge her cargo through massive bow doors. This shows how the Allies were willing to put everything into their attack because they had already succeeded once, meaning they just needed the firepower for a larger target.
      - This whole process was the result of countless hours of planning which was pre-tested, in a way, in the invasion of Sicily. All of this came to fruition because of the efforts of Operation Mincemeat.
      - After all, ships were needed to maintain the lifeline of supplies from the United States to both Britain and Russia, to transport a million or more American soldiers across the ocean, and to keep them supplied with mail and cigarettes, as well as to ferry the jeeps, trucks, tanks, bombs, bullets, fuel, and all the other tools of war from the United States to England. v