damninteresting.com — The deception was simple - dump a body with highly secret documents in a place where the Germans will be party to the find. Make it so convincing that they will take the bait. It was a plan to save lives - as many allied lives as possible by reducing German resistance. And it worked - beautifully.
Mar 12, 2007 View in Crawl 4
mandeepMar 12, 2007
don't know why he was being dugg down. as much as we hate the nazis, hes right about them not being dumb. i never heard about mincemeat til now and it's really crazy what people in mi5 can come up with.
buckteriumMar 12, 2007
Question: Wouldn't the Germans consider the fact that the British will know that a person carrying sensitive documents was killed, and the Allied might possibly revise their plan because the documents regarding their attack plan went was lost with it?
alyreMar 12, 2007
@Tardmaster I'm certainly not in high school (I'm almost 30) but I'm digging you down. Following your brilliant logic nothing would ever get posted. I for one had never heard the story before, and it wasn't in any of my history text books. Not everyone knows what you do.
Closed AccountMar 13, 2007
My Dad (God rest his soul) actually worked with the man in charge of this plan Ewen Montagu, some years after the war, in the 1950's - I think it was in the British Foreign Office, though it's possible it was Reuters news agency. He remembered him well and said that Montagu was very humble and never mentioned the story, though of course everyone knew who he was. Those who perform the greatest achievements at times of war are often the most humble from what I've heard
galiean251Mar 13, 2007
@tardmasterNot only out of high school by a wide margin, but actually pretty knowledgeable in 20th century events - considering modern history textbooks contain less than a page about Pearl Harbor and even less about the Battle of Britain or the massive deceptions before Overlord/D-Day (at least here in New Jersey as of last year (the last time I flipped through one)), I think that this might be worth digging.
galiean251Mar 13, 2007
Don't forget that they were also their own worst enemies - they believed Goebbel's propaganda machine about Allied incompetence and basically thought they were smarter than everyone else combined. After all, wasn't it their destiny to be the thousand year reich? Many counter-factual scenarios for an Allied defeat in WWII begin with something like 'First, imagine that common sense had taken hold within Nazi leadership...' and that definitely included the Abwehr.
xgordoxMar 13, 2007
And if this happened yesterday, on the border of Iraq and Iran, the Democrats, ACLU, CAIR, MoveOn, Code Pink, Sean Penn, etc. would be condemning our government for this "human rights atrocity" and the article condemning the actions would be front page on Digg.Bush would be blamed for this greatest debacle in military and human rights history.Cheney would be linked to the actual death of the man. (somehow)Condi Rice would be on trial for releasing the "secret" documents.There would be a trial about whether or not the documents were "secret" or not.The Democrat Controlled Congress would be voting on tighter restrictions on covert military operations.Yadda yadda yaddablah blah blah