Show menu

The Dead Man Who Fooled Hitler

Thanks! Share it with your friends!

You disliked this video. Thanks for the feedback!

Added by
1 Views
April 30, 1943. A fisherman off the coast of Spain finds a British officer floating in the sea, a briefcase chained to his body. Inside are secret letters revealing where the Allies will invade Europe. Within weeks, Hitler is moving his armies.

The officer never existed.

On The Backtrace we start at the crash and trace it back to the bug. Here: Operation Mincemeat, the Trout Memo, Glyndwr Michael, the pocket litter that sold the lie, and why the Germans believed it.

Chapters
0:00 April 30, 1943
0:57 The obvious target
1:41 The Trout Memo
2:46 Finding a body
3:47 Building Major Martin
4:45 The letters
5:16 The delivery
6:13 Everything could fall apart
7:21 They had been read
8:03 Sicily
8:36 The grave in Huelva
9:06 Root cause

Churchill's line is as reported, not documented. The telegram is quoted from its opening words. On-screen document cards are recreations unless marked as archive.

Sources
Ben Macintyre, Operation Mincemeat (2010)
Ewen Montagu, The Man Who Never Was (1953)
The National Archives (UK), Operation Mincemeat files
Imperial War Museums photo archive

Archive images: Wikimedia Commons (public domain, IWM, US Navy, UK National Archives). Headstone photo: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.
Other scenes are AI-generated illustrations.

Next frame: nine hikers, a tent cut open from the inside, and an answer that took sixty years to find.

#history #ww2 #operationmincemeat
Category
Fly Fishing
Tags
ewen montagu, glyndwr michael, history explained

Post your comment