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How a small fishing village near Estepona set the stage for an MI6 operation that changed the Second World War.

The Bizarre Tale of Major Martin: How a Dead Man Fooled Hitler and Helped Win the Second World War

On April 30 1943, during the height of the Second World War, the body of Major William Martin washed up on a beach in Andalusia, three hundred kilometres West of Estepona.

Dressed in full British military uniform, his body was chained to a black leather briefcase, locked with a secret code.

This unlucky Major, a Royal Marine, was reported as the sole victim of a plane crash at sea. He’d supposedly just returned from leave in London, where he’d caught a West End show and even purchased an engagement ring for his fiancée, Pam.

The contents of his briefcase would be sitting on Hitler’s desk within days. But here’s the twist: Major William Martin never really existed.

This wasn’t just another wartime casualty. It was part of one of the boldest and most bizarre acts of deception ever attempted by British intelligence: Operation Mincemeat.

With the Allies needing to mislead Hitler about their plans to invade Europe, MI6 came up with an audacious scheme to nudge the Nazis into believing they were about to attack what Hitler himself believed to be his weakest link, Greece, not Sicily. And to sell this story, they needed a believable decoy.

Enter Major Martin, or rather, Glyndwr Michael, a homeless man from London who became a pawn in possibly the greatest wartime con job ever pulled. The extraordinary story of Operation Mincemeat is so compelling that it has even been adapted into a Netflix show and brought to London’s West End, bringing this incredible piece of history to screens worldwide.

The Birth of Operation Mincemeat

The plan was hatched by UK Secret Intelligence Service officers Charles Cholmondeley and Ewen Montagu. Faced with the problem of misleading the Germans without risking real lives, the pair drew inspiration from a wacky wartime memo penned by none other than Ian Fleming, yes, that Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond. Charmingly known as the Trout Memo, this memo compared intelligence work to fly fishing and included 51 far-fetched ideas for fooling the enemy. One of these suggestions, the now-famous Idea 28, involved planting fake documents on a dead body to trick the Germans. If it sounded mad, that’s because it quite literally was, but sometimes, mad is just what’s needed in dire circumstances.

A Body for the Cause

Finding the right corpse wasn’t as easy as one might think, but Montagu’s coroner contact soon found a candidate: Glyndwr Michael, a homeless man who died after ingesting rat poison. Whether it was a tragic accident or a desperate act, Michael’s body would soon play a starring role in a deadly game of misdirection.

The Allies needed a body that could pass as a drowned airman, and Michael’s death fit the bill. With his body starting to decompose, the pressure was on to get the plan rolling within three months. Montagu and Cholmondeley transformed him into Major William Martin of the Royal Marines, complete with a full backstory, a carefully crafted personality, and all the trappings of an officer on a top-secret mission. They made his rank senior enough that it would be plausible for him to be carrying top-secret documents but not so senior that he would be known in military circles, as this would make it easy for the Germans to spot a fake. They also chose the name, Martin, as it was a common surname, making his backstory harder for German intelligence to track.

To make Major Martin’s identity watertight, Montagu and Cholmondeley loaded him up with “pocket litter”, the everyday bits and bobs you’d expect to find in any man’s pockets. Theatre ticket stubs, an overdraft notice, hand-written love letters from his fictional fiancée Pam (courtesy of a secretary named Jean Leslie who played the role with gusto), and even a receipt for an engagement ring were all carefully placed on the body.

However, the pièce de résistance was inside the locked briefcase that was chained to Major Martin’s belt. It was a set of falsified military documents suggesting that the Allies were planning an assault on Greece, not Sicily.

MI6 knew that Hitler had long feared an attack on Greece, as he believed this to be his biggest vulnerability. All he needed was a nudge in the right direction to flock his troops there.

The Deception Began

With the body prepared and dressed in a well-worn uniform, the next challenge was getting it into German hands without arousing suspicion. They couldn’t just dump it in Germany, as this would be too obvious. Montagu and Cholmondeley decided on a bold approach: they would deposit Major Martin just off the coast of Spain, where the Spanish authorities, officially neutral but unofficially very cosy with the Nazis, would be sure to find him.

The British submarine HMS Seraph was tasked with delivering the package. So, in the early hours of April 30, the submarine surfaced near Huelva, just off the southern coast of Spain, and after a brief funeral service, Major Martin was released into the water, his fate now in the hands of the tide and the Spanish authorities.

It didn’t take long for a local fisherman to discover the body with the mysterious briefcase attached and promptly hand it over to the Spanish authorities. Here, the plan’s fate hung in the balance. Would the Spanish see through the ruse, or would they pass the information to their German contacts?

The British played their part to perfection, making just enough noise about wanting the briefcase back, over intercepted transmissions, to pique interest but not so much as to make it obvious that the whole thing was a set-up. Additionally, the Germans had been intercepting transmissions and had heard the British discussing the invasion of Sicily. So, in a strategic masterstroke, MI6 also instructed officers to drop a hint that the planned invasion of Sicily was a “hoax” to trick the German army.

As hoped, the intercepted conversations and the documents quickly made their way up the German chain of command, eventually landing on Hitler’s desk.

Fooling the Führer

The Nazis fell for it, hook, line, and sinker. Convinced that the Allies were preparing to invade Greece, the Germans shifted significant forces away from Sicily, leaving the island less defended than it would otherwise have been. The Allied invasion of Sicily, codenamed Operation Husky, launched on July 9 1943 and was a resounding success, with far fewer casualties than originally expected. Hitler had swallowed Operation Mincemeat whole, and the Allies had won a crucial foothold in Europe with relatively minimal losses.

Meanwhile, the real Glyndwr Michael was buried in Andalusia with full military honours, his role in the grand deception hidden from the public eye for years. He is currently buried at Avenida de Santa Marta, 21005 Huelva, number 46 of the San Marcos Sector, row 14, 1st category.

A Legacy

Sometimes, the wildest ideas are the most effective. That’s partly why Operation Mincemeat is now remembered as one of the greatest deception operations in military history. The operation showcased the extraordinary lengths to which the Allies were willing to go to turn the tide of the war and is a perfect example of the power of misinformation in warfare. It was a plot worthy of James Bond himself, fitting, given Ian Fleming’s hand in its conception.

Glyndwr Michael, the man who became Major Martin, might not have been a soldier in life, but in death, he played a pivotal role in saving thousands of lives and changing the course of the war. And so, a forgotten man from the streets of London became an unlikely hero, showing that in war, even the dead can serve. Now, thanks to the Netflix show about Operation Mincemeat, this incredible story of espionage and ingenuity continues to captivate audiences, proving that truth can indeed be stranger than fiction.