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It's our episode on Operation Mincemeat and I am picking that one because I don't think we were able to record this for that episode, but the Broadway show Operation Mincemeat was literally inspired by this episode.
One of the stars and the producers was all over Variety magazine and all over the place in interviews saying that her brother, they were searching for a show to do, to write and, you know, make into a Broadway show.
And he said, hey... you should check out this episode of Stuff You Should Know, Operation Mincemeat.
It's this really crazy story and I think there's something there.
And there was something there, because not only did they make it to a Broadway show, it's been a pretty big hit and was nominated for Tony Awards.
And I am going to get to go see it in New York City next weekend.
And I'm super excited because I think I get to meet the cast.
So anyway, here we go, everyone.
Another little feather in our cap.
Operation Mincemeat, colon, how a corpse fooled the Nazis.
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark.
There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant.
There's Jerry Rowland.
This is Stuff You Should Know chuck.
Yo, i'm 39 years old and i still can't say my own name correctly because of my stupid thick tongue.
Oh, you're gonna be 40 yeah, soon crazy.
Yeah, you used to make fun of me and now you're old.
Well, you're still older than me.
I know nothing to do about that.
That's cool, though.
Yeah, you're aging very well.
Yeah no, you're aging really well.
You mean the teeth falling out, the weight gain and the gray beard?
I still say you're aging very well.
I appreciate it.
Let's see your hair.
Take off your hat.
I still got good hair.
Boom.
Look at that.
I got hat head now.
Beautiful.
Okay.
People think I'm bald.
Some people do.
Oh, really?
Like, you're always wearing that hat.
Why don't, I don't know.
Suspicious people?
Yeah.
Like the drummer for the Chili Peppers.
Anthony Kiedis?
Flea?
Nope.
The guy from Jane's Addiction?
Nope.
I don't know them.
Not John Frusciante.
Chad Smith, the guy that looks like Will Ferrell.
I thought that was Will Ferrell.
He's always got that hat on backwards.
And he's bald?
Oh, yeah, totally.
Like Brett Michaels bald?
Remember, he always wears a do-rag because he's super bald.
So I get why people are suspicious.
If you're a public figure that has a patented hat piece, then it's probably because you're bald, But not in my case.
What a weird way to start the show.
Especially this show.
Operation Mincemeat.
Yep.
Which is a ghoulish, gallows humor, awesomely World War II British name for this operation.
Yeah, this will live alongside our Nazi spies invading Florida podcast.
And the History Girls covered this very topic as well.
Yeah, man.
There's nothing I love more than little known history.
This is it, but this is great little known history.
Yeah, and this shouldn't be middle known because it was...
After the Trojan War, maybe the largest and most successful military deception plan in history.
Well, there was also, have you seen that documentary Ghost Army about Operation Fortitude?
No.
They used a bunch of blow-up tanks and planes, like inflatable tanks and planes, to make it look like there's a whole allied division over here, so that we could invade Normandy more easily.
It's like a Looney Tunes cartoon.
Awesome.
But yes, this ranks up there with literally with the Trojan horse.
It's that ingenious and that wonderful.
Yeah.
But so let's set the stage, right?
Okay.
So in early 1943, the war was very much undecided.
Yeah.
It could have been anybody's.
Europe was under the control of Hitler.
Huge amounts of Europe.
They called it Fortress Europe because the Nazis had just overrun the place, right?
Yeah, they were dug in.
And the Allies knew that they needed to get into Europe to topple Hitler, or else they weren't going to win the war.
Sure.
So Churchill suggested attacking Europe's underbelly, which is maybe Italy, Greece, Sardinia.
He called it the underbelly.
Not very flattering, but he called it Europe's underbelly.
So everybody, the Allies, the Greeks, the Nazis, the Japanese, the people in Hawaii, everybody knew.
Yeah, they weren't American quite yet.
Okay.
Everybody knew that the Allies were going to attack somewhere in that area.
Yeah, come up through the Mediterranean.
Even Hitler feared this the most.
Right.
Which was key.
Right.
And I mean, everybody knew the Allies were coming and they were going to come there.
But this land mass, this area of land and sea, is large enough that you can't just be like oh, they're coming down there.
We got it covered.
Yeah, we'll cover it all.
You need to know kind of specifically where they were covering.
And there were just a few places where they could have come.
One was Greece.
That was where Hitler always suspected.
Yeah.
One was Sardinia.
Yeah.
Right?
Yeah.
And then another was Sicily.
Yeah.
And in 1943, I think January, the Allied powers met in French Morocco and held a conference, the Casablanca Conference.
Very sexy name.
Yeah, it really was.
And they said, OK, we're going to invade Sicily this July.
We're going to call it Operation Husky.
Now we have to do everything we can to not let the Nazis know that that's where we're going.
And that actually hatched eventually what's called Operation Mincemeat.
Yeah, you know what studying this stuff and I'm not a big war buff, although I'm getting more so, but reading up on this stuff like the old wars are so much like the board game Risk that it's startling.
Yeah.
Literally.
When you look at this stuff, it's like moving troops to where you think people are going to attack you.
Right.
And rolling the dice a bit.
And if you're right, then great.
If not, you're screwed.
Very much so, which is why it's such a huge shift that we're seeing now in moving to unconventional warfare.
Yeah, that's scary stuff.
Yeah.
I think pretty much all war is scary.
Yeah, well, of course.
I'm not saying like Normandy was a cakewalk or anything because they knew what was going on.
Man, I watched Saving Private Ryan again the other day.
God.
It's crazy.
That thing's almost a snuff film.
It's not as bad as We Were Soldiers, which is a snuff film.
I never saw that one.
The Mel Gibson one?
Yeah.
Dude, it's the most graphically violent mainstream movie ever made.
Really?
Yes.
Wow.
Yeah.
There's a part where they have a camera shot over this guy's shoulder.
So his helmet's in the near foreground and that guy takes a hit to the head and blood spray covers the camera lens for the next little while.
Wow.
His brains just cover the camera.
It's disgusting.
Did you like Saving Private Ryan again, though?
Yeah, it's a great movie, but it is really violent.
That's another thing about getting older is that stuff affects you more and more.
The more you come to terms with your own mortality, the more valuable life becomes, the more valuable even a character in a movie's life becomes.
You know what I mean?
That stuff gets to you.
Agreed.
It's called growing up, my friend.
I'm becoming human.
Isn't it gross?
Yeah.
All right.
So on September 29th 1939, there was a director of British naval intelligence named Admiral John Godfrey and he distributed something called the Trout Memo.
And it was written by his assistant, Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming.
Familiar name?
Yeah.
Creator of James Bond.
That's right.
The guy.
And I think most people know that he served at this point.
Yeah.
But if you didn't, that's a nice little factoid for you.
So he, he wrote the trout memo and they called it the trout memo because they pointed out in the intro that this that the trout fisherman fishes very patiently but he changes venue frequently yeah, and he changes his bait very frequently too.
And so they wanted to they're charged with deception they wanted to come up with all these different ideas, all this different bait and venue changes that they could come up with.
Yeah, and this was a time too, we should point out that um spying, spying is always vital but man, in world war ii it was going on all over the place in a huge, huge part of the war, right?
So um, we need to do one on the enigma machine, by the way, at some point we do, because that's one of the unsung heroes in this operation absolutely um, all right.
So with the trout memo, ian fleming uh wrote uh well co-authored, 51 different operations suggestions, and number 28 was one called A Suggestion parentheses, Not a Very Nice One.
The following suggestion is used in a book by Basil Thompson.
I'm so pleased that you said Basil.
Instead of Basil.
Yeah.
In fact, that was a 1937 novel, The Milliner's Hat Mystery.
And he was actually a World War I spy.
Oh, really?
Yeah.
It's all coming together.
So he was a spy writer that Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, dug.
Crazy.
So that's where this originates.
Sorry, I'm getting excited.
That's right.
The following suggestion is used in a book by Basil Thompson colon a corpse dressed as an airman with dispatches in his pockets could be dropped on the coast, supposedly from a parachute that had failed.
I understand there is no difficulty in obtaining corpses at the Naval Hospital, but of course it would have to be a fresh one.
So the idea is let's get a dead person, let's dress him up like a soldier, give him some sensitive documents that leak this invasion.
Fraudulent.
Fraudulent, yeah, very important, that leak the invasion of Greece, which is not really happening.
And they're going to mount up troops there, and we'll actually go in Sicily.
They're going to find this body.
They're going to think they've stumbled upon this great happy accident and we're going to fool them.
So, yeah, that was the whole idea.
That was the general basis of it.
And Churchill loved the idea.
Because apparently he liked what he called corkscrew thinkers.
Right.
Because he knew Hitler thought in a straight line.
Yes.
And by corkscrew thinkers, I think that would be our equivalent of outside the box.
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Churchill was like, this is great.
I love Churchill.
Let's drink some scotch and do it.
Yeah, let's look like a bulldog while we do too.
Yeah, so um they the, the.
That idea was roughly outlined by ian fleming and then the, the churchill's corkscrew thinkers, the xx committee led by um ewan montague and um chumley yeah, which is his name is not spelled chumley?
No uh, how's it spelled?
Are you ready for this?
Yeah.
Charles C-H-O-L-M-O-N-D-E-L-E-Y, pronounced Chumley.
Yeah, and apparently when he met people, he would say, Lieutenant Charles Chumley, C-H-O-L-M-O-N-D-E-L-E-Y.
He would spell it out.
Would he really?
Yeah.
Are you making fun of me, or is that for real?
No, no, no.
He was a very quirky guy and that's how he described himself as toothpaste if it had been squeezed from the tube.
Like, he self-described, he would go hunting with a revolver, like bird hunting.
He's a weird guy.
I actually watched a quickie BuzzFeed video on this, and they pronounced it Charles Cholomondelet.
Did they really?
Yeah.
Nice.
I'm glad we did our research.
Exactly.
Shout out to BuzzFeed.
So you and Montague, right?
Yeah, the other guy.
He is noteworthy in a number of ways, too.
Apparently, he's just the greatest guy ever.
Most interesting man on the planet.
Yeah.
And he actually wrote the book, the first book on Operation Mincemeat, because he was one of the people who came up with this and implemented it.
The man who was never there, the man who never was, got right.
So became a movie too.
Yeah, of the same name.
Yeah, starring montgomery clift, i believe.
No, starring cliff clave web cliff clavin, cliff web, but not montgomery clift.
No, those two are virtually interchangeable, sure so?
Um, Ewan Montague was already notable because at school he and his brother had created the rules for ping pong.
No way.
Yeah.
I did not know that.
Among other things.
And his brother, equally interesting, equally rambunctious, went on to become a spy for the Soviets.
Oh, wow.
Yes.
So he turned?
Yes.
Against England?
Yes.
Yes.
Wow.
Against everybody except for the Soviets.
Well, Montague was formerly a barrister, an attorney, and this is why he actually did not go serve on a ship.
And the other guy, Chumley, never flew a plane.
One was Air Force, one was Navy.
And apparently Montague, as an attorney, was very good at just seeing all the angles of.
So they said you sir, are perfect for this job.
Nice.
New year, new goals, and in this economy, a better money plan is more necessary than ever.
I am Matt.
And I'm Joel.
We are from the How to Money podcast and every week we help you to spend smarter, save more and make sense of what's going on out there.
If you want 2026 to be the year you finally feel in control of your money, we're here to give you the tools and advice to help you make it happen.
Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey there.
This is Dr Jesse Mills, director of the Men's Clinic at UCLA Health and host of the Mailroom Podcast.
Each January, guys everywhere make the same resolutions.
Get stronger, work harder, fix what's broken.
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To kick off the new year, I sat down with Dr Steve Poulter, a psychologist with over 30 years experience helping men unpack shame, anxiety and emotional pain.
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In a powerful two-part conversation, we discuss why men aren't emotionally bulletproof, why shame hides in plain sight and how real strength comes from listening to yourself and to others.
Guys are toxic.
They're immature or they've got something they just haven't resolved.
Once that gets resolved, then there comes empathy and compassion.
If you want this to be the year you stop powering through pain and start understanding what's underneath.
Listen to The Mailroom on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your favorite shows.
What if mind control is real?
If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have?
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Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you?
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This is wild.
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Do do do do do do do All right, Chuck.
Yes.
So we have the rough outline that Ian Fleming came up with.
The XX Committee, led by Ewan Montague and Charles Chumley.
Yeah, part of MI5, I believe.
Okay.
Said, we're going to take this particular idea and really run with it.
And, like you said, they were going to well.
The first thing they did was start setting about creating a backstory.
Yeah, well, they had three months, so the clock is ticking at this point.
Yeah, because here's the thing.
They set the invasion.
Right, in January.
Yeah.
And they set the invasion for July.
Yeah.
Now, you needed enough time to plant this corpse, this fake dead courier into Nazi hands.
Yeah.
And give the with enough time so that the Nazis could digest it, analyze it, decide it was truthful and then react the way you wanted them to, which meant that they had no later than May, or else this plan was out the window.
Yeah, you wanted them.
The ultimate goal was to have the Nazis put their troops in the wrong place.
And that takes time.
Right.
So they looked around and they decided that the best place to carry out this operation was Spain.
And Spain during World War II was allegedly ostensibly neutral.
Sure.
But they had a lot of Axis sympathies, a lot of connections to Nazi Germany.
And there was a particular Nazi agent, a spy, working in a port called Huevla.
Whoevla, right?
Sure.
And his name was Adolf Klaus.
Yeah.
And Adolf Klaus was known to be very methodical.
Yeah.
Pretty brutal and ruthless.
Yeah.
Extremely gullible.
Yeah.
He was a straight line thinker.
He was.
Like Hitler.
He wasn't one that could think outside the box and think, maybe this is an elaborate hoax.
That guy didn't even own a real corkscrew.
Yeah.
You know?
Like they targeted this guy.
Cut the tops off of wine bottles.
Yeah.
Yeah, they specifically targeted him.
Which is amazing.
So they wanted this guy, who was fairly gullible but also known as a very respected Nazi agent in Spain, to be the one who came up with this corpse and cadaver.
That's right.
So, before they ever had any corpse or cadaver or anything like that, Montague and Chumley start setting about creating a backstory.
And they created this guy named Major...
Yeah, William Martin.
William Martin, that's right.
And they created Major William Martin, and they created this whole persona.
And this wasn't the first time they'd done it.
They'd actually – they had chops with this kind of stuff.
Yeah.
So they had created a – fake spy network that made Nazi Germany think that they had a whole double agent network in the UK, and all of them were fictitious, not real people.
That Ewan Montague and Charles Chumley had created these fake personas and had fed the Nazis misinformation through these people that didn't really exist.
So they took that understanding and that thinking of what it takes to create a fake persona and they set about creating one for Major William Martin.
Yeah, and there's a great BBC documentary on this and they interview a lot of the players, including a lot of the women who worked at MI5 in the office.
And they were all just so delighted.
They all described this as the most exciting adventure they'd ever had.
I'm sure.
It was like something out of a spy novel, and they were living it.
Right.
And so they all had great fun creating these characters, these made-up people.
They wanted to give him a fiancé, because the idea is that they find this body with not only these documents in a briefcase, the important documents.
But to make it believable, he had to have believable what they called pocket litter or wallet litter.
Right.
Which is if you find any person on the street...
Ask them to open their wallet.
You're going to be able to tell a lot about them.
Sure.
So just stuff to legitimize it.
So they said, let's give him a fiancé.
And all the women in the office wanted to be the fiancé.
Oh, yeah?
So they all submitted photographs.
They picked this one lady, Jean Leslie, secretary.
Okay, that's the lady on the beach?
Yes, picture of her in a bathing suit on the beach.
So this was going to be planted on his body.
They all wanted to write the love letters back and forth, but they picked a woman named hester legert, the head secretary of mi5, and she wrote all.
Even though she was a spinster, she wrote all these like heartfelt love letters.
The first couple drafts were really dirty and they were like you gotta tone this down a little bit.
They're like is that what you think happens in a relationship?
She's like no, not me, the fictitious lady.
So everyone's really excited in the office.
Um Chumlee is wearing what would eventually be the uniform of Martin every day to give it that worn-in look.
Awesome.
Montague actually ended up having an affair with the secretary who gave him the photo as the fiancé.
Okay.
They had a real-life affair as Bill and Pam.
Pam is the made-up fiancé.
It got a little weird.
That is a little weird.
They wrote each other love letters... had a real-life affair calling each other Bill and Pam.
So there was some strange role-playing going on.
I'm sure.
He was married at the time.
His family had been shipped to America, so he was not doing the right thing there.
Jeez.
He was a louse in that department.
Well, you know also Roald Dahl, the guy who wrote James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
He was a spy for the British.
He was in the British military.
And his whole job was to basically bed the wives of American officials here in Washington.
Really?
Yeah.
Did he do so?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, wow.
Oh, he made his way through Washington society.
Wow.
Apparently with great zeal.
All right, so they're cooking up this back story.
They get other great things for the wallet letter, like theater ticket stubs and an overdraft letter from his bank and just these things that make it seem like super realistic.
Right, and what else?
I think they gave him a St.
Christopher medal maybe.
They wanted to strongly imply that he was Roman Catholic, and that will become very important in a minute right.
Yes, very much.
So they've got this backstory and apparently they were working feverishly on this stuff, having the weirdo affair wearing the uniform, all that stuff before they'd even gotten final approval, just because they didn't want to stop work and then have to pick it up feverishly.
They wanted this to keep going.
So they finally got final approval from Admiral Godfrey to carry out this thing for real.
And when they got final approval, they said, okay, we need a body.
Yeah.
And they figured, no problem.
They were looking at first.
They needed somebody who had relatives that didn't care what happened to the body after death and could keep their mouth shut.
They needed a body that was of military age, didn't have any signs of visible trauma.
Right.
So they couldn't have been run over by a bus.
Right.
Or died of scurvy.
But it survived the plane crash, but it drowned at sea.
And if he had pneumonia, then his fluids would be filled with lungs, so that when the Spanish conducted an autopsy on him,
Lungs would be filled with fluid?
Yeah, exactly.
So that when the Spanish conducted their autopsy, they'd be like this is the most amazing thing I've ever seen.
I've never seen fluid filled with lungs.
But that's how much fluid there is.
The problem is they didn't get their hands on a guy with pneumonia.
Yeah.
And they didn't even know exactly where to get a person at first.
It wasn't until they turned the guy who ran the morgue at St.
Pancras Hospital, which is the worst hospital name of all.
Time they turned him and got him to assist them that they finally got their hands on a body.
Yeah, his name was Sir Bentley Purchase, which is a great name.
Great British name.
And he was a coroner of the largest mortuary at St.
Pancras.
Oh yeah, terrible.
And he had apparently a wicked sense of humor.
It was pretty complicated to give directions to his office.
So when he gave montague the directions, he said or he could just get run over by a bus.
Nice man, the british during wartime were, they're having a blast.
Their sense of humor was wonderful.
So they got bentley purchase and he said i've got a dude.
Um, his name is uh, glendore michael.
Yeah, that is not how that's spelled either.
No, it is G-L-Y-N-D-W-R.
Super Welsh.
Yeah, he was a Welshman born in 1909.
He was the son of a coal miner.
His father killed himself by stabbing himself in the throat.
I hadn't read that.
That is grizzled, man.
And it didn't say, like, slit your throat.
It said he stabbed himself in the throat.
Right.
Which is weird.
And sad.
So his dad died when he was a teenager.
Mother died when he was 30.
Alcoholic.
Had a rough go because of the depression.
And was basically... basically killed himself by ingesting rat poison.
So that is not necessarily resolved.
What, whether it was suicide?
Yeah.
So the Bentley Purchase wrote down that he killed himself.
Yeah, it was ruled a suicide.
Okay.
But the way that he ate the rat poison, it was on a crust of bread.
So he was hungry?
They wondered.
Ugh.
So he may have been so destitute that he ate a crust of bread that he found in an abandoned warehouse, and it was smeared with rat poison and that's what he died of.
Wow.
But they found him in this cold January night in 1943 in this abandoned warehouse in London.
And he had just eaten some rat poison, but he survived for two more days.
Yeah.
And so Bentley purchased, got his hands on him and said, I think I found your guy, dudes.
Yeah.
Yeah, and they did.
There were some issues, one of which is they needed a photo of the guy for an ID.
He didn't have any photos.
Oh, God.
And every time they took a picture of the dead guy's face, they were like, he looks like a dead guy.
Yeah, really.
So they scoured.
I can see your fingers holding his eyes open.
So they scoured London looking for a lookalike and eventually found a guy, a fellow intelligence officer, who looked just like him.
Awesome.
So they used his face for the ID.
It's all coming together.
Yes, it is.
I'm sure they were like, wow, Providence is really smiling on this.
Yeah, and if you're feeling bad for Glendore, just hang tight.
Yeah, I still think you can feel bad for Glendore.
Well, sure.
Talk about a rough life, man.
Jeez.
Do you remember that one Saturday Night Live where Robert Duvall was like super special guest?
He wasn't even hosting or mentioned.
No.
He just showed up on this game show called Who's More Grizzled?
No way.
And he talks about, like, it was him and Garth Brooks.
Boy, how did I miss that?
And he talks about how one cold winter his wife died and he had to keep her out in the barn until the ground thawed so he could bury her out back.
What?
Yeah, it was just weird like that.
It wasn't even really funny.
It was more just like, wow, that really is hard.
But the whole game show was who's more grizzled.
Yeah, sure.
And he won.
Of course.
Because it's Robert Duvall.
Yeah, he's more grizzled than Garth Brooks or Chris Keyes.
Yeah, even, even, yeah.
Not poor Garth Brooks.
What are you talking about?
I'm talking about the Chris Gaines thing.
He chose to do it.
He's a wealthy man.
Yeah.
Don't feel too bad for him.
I think that was evidence that he was surrounded by yes men at the time.
Yeah, maybe.
That was a weird thing, though.
Yeah.
He faked a soul patch.
Oh, that wasn't even real?
No.
I mean, even if it was real, it was part of his character.
Yeah, sure.
I thought you meant it was Sharpie.
Maybe.
Okay.
The hair was definitely colored with Sharpie.
All right, so where are we here?
We've got a body.
We finally got the photograph of him.
Yeah, which is – that's amazing.
I didn't know that part.
Yeah.
And there's another thing.
We found this awesome military analysis of it.
Yeah, that's kind of cool.
Somebody wrote a military analysis of this.
I don't remember who, so I can't give them a shout-out, but we'll put it on our podcast page.
But they point out that one of the reasons this was so successful –
This operation was one.
These guys at XX Committee just had free run to break the law, bend morality, do all sorts of stuff.
They just were able to go do their thing.
But the other thing was is that they really kept a lid on this stuff.
And it was all disseminated on a need-to-know basis.
So when they had this guy, they got Glendure, kept him on ice for three months as they finished his backstory.
They're running up against, like, go time.
And then I think in February or March or April maybe, I'm not sure of the date.
Do you know?
What happened?
When they finally carried out Operation Mincemeat.
Let's just say spring, because I know that they kept him on ice for a few months.
Yeah, and so they're up to the point where the decomp is about to give away that this guy didn't just recently die.
Yeah, and that was a big fear that the Spanish coroners would be able to tell, too.
Okay.
Which will come up in a minute.
Okay.
And they're also getting to the point where they're reaching the end of the amount of time that they need to give the Nazis to absorb this misinformation.
Sure.
So they finally get the guy's persona in place.
They have the body.
And now it's time to actually carry out the operation.
And like I was saying, they kept a lid on all this.
So it was a need-to-know basis.
So they got their hands on a subcommander who could keep his mouth shut.
And they gave him a metal cylinder. with the corpse of Glendore Michael, now Major William Martin.
Yeah, when you say sub-commander, you mean submarine.
Yes.
Not a commander below.
Regular commander.
Submarine commander.
Yeah.
They gave him the cylinder and they said, we're going to tell you what's in here.
Do not tell anybody else.
So apparently the people staffing the sub thought this was some sort of weather buoy.
Yeah, it was marked optical instruments, but you're right.
He was the only one on board supposedly that knew there was a body inside.
Yep.
And they put a life jacket on him, stuffed him in the cylinder, put him on the sub and took him over to Spain on a submarine.
Well, let's back up for one second too, because we forgot to cover the main letter in the briefcase.
Oh, yeah, really important.
This was all of Operation Mincemeat.
It did not hinge on theater ticket stubs.
Or bank overdraft letters.
That's merely pocket litter.
It hinged on a letter hinting strongly that the invasion was going to come up through Greece, Sardinia.
Right.
And that was the other thing, too.
It wasn't like official document, invasion is going to come through Greece.
Yes.
It was a letter from one general or admiral to another high-ranking guy.
I think General Nye.
They composed a bunch of different letters themselves and finally they said why don't you write it in your own words, in your own language?
In your own handwriting, everything.
So it really was written by this high-ranking US military official, or British military official.
Who wrote this fake letter?
And he made a joke about sardines.
A terrible joke.
Which was the little hint that was just clever enough to work.
Right.
And so in it, it basically says we're coming up, you know, we're going to strike through Greece.
That's where the invasion of Europe is going to be.
Yeah.
But we're also going to tell everybody that Sicily is the cover.
Right?
Right.
And this was a stroke of genius.
Oh, yeah.
Because in this false letter, not only does it show that they're coming through Greece, which they weren't, but it says that Sicily's the cover, which would make the Nazis think that if anyone ever did actually leak the real invasion plan of Sicily, the Nazis would think that that was misinformation.
Dude, it was so ingenious.
That's crazy.
And I think about here.
Now Chuck, we get to the point where we should talk about the Enigma machine and the role it played.
Right.
Yeah.
Well basically, we all know that the Enigma machine was the code breaking machine invented in the UK to decipher.
Well, the Enigma machine wrote the code, I think.
Oh, it wrote the code?
Yeah.
I thought it deciphered code that they'd gotten.
They deciphered it at Bletchley Park, but I think the Enigma machine was the actual code writing, the encrypting machine.
Oh, okay.
I could be wrong, but okay.
Well, so we definitely need to do a podcast on that.
Right.
Because we're mixed up already.
To get it straight.
But at any rate, the long and short of it is in Beckley Park.
Was it Beckley Park?
I always say Bletchley.
Oh, was there an L in there?
I draw the whole ugly word out they basically had.
It was like reading the Nazis' email, essentially on a daily basis.
On an hourly basis.
Hourly basis.
They knew exactly what was going on, so they would know if they were buying this whole thing, as it happened in real time.
But even before that, they were able to craft this misinformation based on the Nazis' assumptions.
So everybody wants to hear that there are assumptions that their beliefs are correct.
People are more apt to buy that things that confirm their suspicions or their beliefs already right.
Yeah, Hitler was worried about Sicily.
He was.
So he already thought that Greece was going to be where we invaded.
Yeah.
And then secondly, we knew that he had heard rumors that Mussolini was going to be toppled soon.
So he was reticent to commit troops to Italy, Sicily, right?
So this revelation that came in the form of this letter, this false letter, completely supported everything that Hitler and the Third Reich believed as far as this European invasion was going to go.
And we were able to do that thanks to the smarties at Bletchley Park, right?
Yeah, and this letter too, here's another little tidbit.
They put a single eyelash in the fold of the letter, so they would know when they eventually got this letter back.
If there was no eyelash, they would know that the Nazis had in fact opened it.
Right. because the idea was they would open it, reseal it, and act like we never saw it.
Right.
But if there wasn't that eyelash, then they'd know.
Nice.
So rudimentary, but it worked.
Oh, yeah.
Should we take another break?
Let's take a break.
S-Y-L-Y-S-K-S-K.
New year, new goals, and in this economy, a better money plan is more necessary than ever.
I am Matt.
And I'm Joel.
We are from the How to Money podcast and every week we help you to spend smarter, save more and make sense of what's going on out there.
If you want 2026 to be the year you finally feel in control of your money, we're here to give you the tools and advice to help you make it happen.
Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Hey there.
This is Dr Jesse Mills, director of the Men's Clinic at UCLA Health and host of the Mailroom Podcast.
Each January, guys everywhere make the same resolutions.
Get stronger, work harder, fix what's broken.
But what if the real work isn't physical at all?
To kick off the new year, I sat down with Dr Steve Poulter, a psychologist with over 30 years experience helping men unpack shame, anxiety and emotional pain.
They were never taught to name.
In a powerful two-part conversation, we discuss why men aren't emotionally bulletproof, why shame hides in plain sight and how real strength comes from listening to yourself and to others.
Guys who are toxic, they're immature, or they've got something they just haven't resolved.
Once that gets resolved, then there comes empathy and compassion.
If you want this to be the year you stop powering through pain and start understanding what's underneath.
Listen to The Mailroom on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your favorite shows.
What if mind control is real?
If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have?
Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car?
When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings.
It's about engineering consciousness.
Mind Games is the story of NLP, its crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits.
He stood trial for murder and got acquitted.
The biggest mind game of all?
NLP might actually work.
This is wild.
Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Do, do, do, do, do, do, do all the stuff you should know.
Okay, so Chuck, we are at sea aboard a submarine.
That's right.
It's chilly down here and dark.
It is.
And you're not supposed to be smoking cigars.
No, you're not.
Despite Gene Hackman doing it in Crimson Tide.
Yeah, what a bad idea.
Yeah.
So we're off the coast of Spain.
We're off the coast of Huevla.
Not an easy word to say, but it's a port in Spain.
And again, this is where Nazi agent Adolf Klaus.
Yeah, they kind of want to float the body right up to this guy's backyard, basically.
So they did.
He was released from this canister.
I read somewhere else that the canister itself was fired on with submachine guns on a sub.
So you could just call them machine guns there.
Yeah.
And it was sunk and the body drifted off toward Hurevla.
Oh, I thought they just dumped the body.
Yeah, I'm not sure.
Because I found a book on Google Books.
It was from 2007, and it was a history book.
Gotcha.
And it made it sound like the people working on the sub all knew what was going on.
But that's in stark contrast to everything else we've seen.
Yeah.
So they may or may not have sunk the weather buoy.
Who knows?
But either way, Major Martin was released into the current that took him right to Huevla.
And he went, I think he was found by a fisherman that same day.
Yeah, and at this point, the Brits started sending telegrams about a very important missing person.
Frantic.
Yeah, like they wanted these to get intercepted, obviously.
Mm-hmm.
And that worked as well.
This is all really going exactly as they had planned.
So they sent the British consul in Spain in Huevla or in Spain to Huevla and said this is really important.
You need to get your hands on the briefcase.
Find out what happened to this guy and get your hands on his briefcase.
Yeah, and Klaus is going, briefcase?
Right.
His monocle popped out.
And the British Council in Spain didn't even know what was going on.
Yeah.
They thought like this, like they were, they saw everything from the same aspect of reality that the Nazis saw.
Need to know basis.
Exactly.
So the British Council are trying to get this briefcase kind of frantically.
And the Spaniards were like, you know what?
We are just going to keep this on lockdown for now as we investigate the whole thing, but we got it covered.
Remember, we're neutral, so your briefcase is safe.
And the British consulate said well okay, one thing, this is very important.
This guy was Roman Catholic.
You can check out the medal in his pocket, yeah?
So please don't dissect them.
It's against Roman Catholic beliefs and traditions to dissect or autopsy a body.
I hadn't heard before, but apparently in the 40s that was the case.
And Spain was way down with that.
Super Roman Catholic.
And they said, oh, yes, of course, we won't do that.
So apparently that's how they got around the fact that Glyndwr hadn't died of pneumonia.
Yeah, and the other way they got around it was they had a plant in the office who talked to the coroners and was like guys, it's hot and this body is going to start rotting real soon.
So how thorough do you really want to make this?
And they said, you're right, let's go have some wine, some, what do they call it over there?
Wine.
No, what's the fruity?
Sangria.
Yeah, let's go have some sangria and knock off early.
And that's exactly what happened, thanks to the plant.
So this is going on.
There was a small wrinkle at this point.
The briefcase went to Madrid.
Spain wasn't going to hand it over to anyone.
But the Brits were trying to get it in the hands of the Nazis, and they were actually having trouble getting it into the hands of the Nazis, until a guy named Carlo Kuhlenthal
He was Hitler's most trusted guy in Spain.
He got wind of it. and kind of took over for Klaus, was like, I'm going to get this briefcase.
And he did.
Nine days later, after the body washed ashore, the letter ended up in the hands of the German.
The German, you know, worked his way up the chain.
Yeah, to Hitler himself.
Yeah, it went to Goebbels first.
And Goebbels, even in his diary, they found later, had suspicions about it.
Oh, yeah?
Because he was a corkscrew thinker.
And he was like, wait a minute.
This is pretty convenient.
Yeah, this is really fishy here.
But apparently he never said anything to Hitler.
He got distracted.
He wrote about it in his diary.
By his kittens.
The documentary said that his thinking was well.
If Hitler believes it, then that's good enough for me.
Huh.
That seems like a bad idea.
Yeah.
And homeboy Carlo Kulintal.
There was always a lot of speculation on why he just ran with it and didn't ask more questions, because that was his job.
And it turns out his grandmother was Jewish and he was very paranoid about this being found out, so he thought this is it, I've come upon the greatest find of the war, and it's all mine, so no one will ask any questions about me after this.
Wow, that worked out really really well yeah, very convenient, And thanks to the Enigma machine.
They knew the Brits knew pretty quickly that this was working.
And I guess Montague and Chumley sent Admiral Godfrey a transmission that said Operation Mincemeat swallowed Rod, Lion and Sinker.
Yeah.
It's so cool seeing these old, like...
Apparently you're not supposed to say elderly anymore, by the way.
We got an email.
I knew that.
Or seniors.
You're supposed to call them older adults.
Seniors, I didn't know that that was a thing.
Yeah, older adults.
So they're interviewing these older adults, these British ladies that are in their 80s now and they were just all so still excited.
They said when they because you know, with the Enigma machine, they were basically reading their emails
Right.
And they were like, they knew they were buying it.
They're buying it.
Yeah.
And everyone was just like flipped when that came through the office.
It was just like party time, basically.
So the Operation Mincemeat really, really worked really well.
So much so that apparently Hitler moved a panzer division, which totals about 90,000 troops.
Yeah.
From Sicily to Greece.
Yeah.
And all the artillery and armaments and everything, not just soldiers.
So long, Sicily.
We're going to Greece.
And then up came the Allies through Sicily.
160000 Allied troops stormed Sicily and only 7000 lives were lost, which is still a lot of people who died.
But apparently, as far as military historians are concerned and I think the military at the time, that was way fewer lives lost than they expected.
Yeah. had Hitler not swallowed Operation Mincemeat.
Yeah, they expected 10000 casualties in the first three days and 300 boats sunk in the first two days and it ended up being 1400 in that first week soldiers and about a dozen ships in that first week.
So that's not bad.
Yeah, and not only that, but it had another effect.
Big one.
The Soviets.
The Soviets.
Yeah, so this is not something that they teach in American history classes in US high schools, that much.
No.
The Operation Husky, it was that penetration of Europe's underbelly, right?
Yeah.
And suddenly Hitler said I'm about to storm Russia, but I really need these troops down here in Europe because I got big problems.
Yeah.
And that allowed basically Russia to topple the Nazi regime.
And Mussolini get toppled by the Brits.
Yeah.
It completely changed the face of the war.
Yeah.
This one idea cooked up by Ian Fleming in part.
Isn't that crazy?
It's pretty awesome.
You got other stuff.
Um, there's a book called operation mincemeat by a guy named brett mcintyre.
All right, that came out in 2010.
That's a very good, well cited book um, that we inadvertently cited here there um, and then there's the man who never was, which was written by ewan montague, which is not just about operation mincemeat, but also about basically how to carry out deception plans.
All right, remember earlier when i said don't feel too bad for uh, For Glendore Michael.
Yes.
Even you said, well, the dude died possibly of suicide because he was penniless and going nowhere.
Yeah.
So I feel bad about that.
But 50 years after he was buried, in 1997, the British government added they basically buried him with military honors.
The Spanish did.
Oh, yeah.
He was buried in Spain.
Yeah.
But the British, it came from the Brits, I think, to do so.
His headstone came from the Brits, but the Spanish buried him with a 21-gun salute and everything.
Yeah, it says Glendore Michael served as Major William Martin, R.M., Royal Marine.
Pretty cool.
Yeah.
So this alcoholic drifter.
Who never served in the military.
Never served in the military.
Buried with full military honors.
Yeah, and completely changed the face of the war thanks to being a body.
Yeah, that fit the the fit the bill.
And if you like ghoulish photos, there's a very famous photo of him being propped up in his life jacket and uniform as they were basically loading him into the cylinder.
Um, that you can see by searching, i'm sure.
Major charles martin, that's right, charles martin no, william martin, william martin, something like that.
I still want to know what was going on with that weird role playing there with the dude.
That's odd, bill and pam.
Yeah Yeah, because they interviewed the lady and she was just like oh, it was all very exciting.
Yeah.
That's a great British lady accent.
Older person?
Yeah.
Yeah, older adult.
Older adult.
Yeah.
Oldie.
If you want to get or no.
If you want to know more about Operation Mincemeat, just type that word into your favorite search engine.
Or go check out the Stuff You Missed in History Class episode.
And as I said, Stuff You Missed in History Class, it's time for Listener Mail.
I'm going to call this Bread Crust.
We had that discussion about the crust and the end pieces.
Oh, I remember.
So this is from a dad.
Dear Chuck and Josh, your discussion of the end slice of bread in the Body Language episode brought a ridiculous grin to my face as I walked around my neighborhood.
Uh.
Don't worry, though.
My neighbors have thought me to be eccentric for years now.
Look at that guy.
He's smiling.
What a weirdo.
He must be a pinko.
When our daughters were still tiny, my wife and I realized we were doomed to 18-ish years of eating bread crust pieces ourselves if we didn't figure something out and quickly.
Our solution?
We started calling those pieces the lucky piece.
And boy, did we rook our innocent, trusting toddlers.
Turns out your supposition is correct, Chuck, at least for children under 11 years old.
Even if they're honor students, as mine were.
They will fight you for the right to eat that savory, oh-so-desirable piece of luck.
Nice idea.
Younger adults.
Rock on, guys, and please keep my goofy grins coming.
That is from Ted...
C-O-I-N-E with a little, what do you call that?
Coine.
Coine.
Coine.
Is that an accent?
No, I don't know.
I didn't take French.
Legume.
What do you call that?
A legume?
Accent legume?
Yeah.
So thanks, Ted.
I'll just call you Coine.
Yeah.
Thanks, Ted.
Coine.
Coine.
Coine.
I don't know.
Let's say coin.
Yeah, thanks a lot.
Ted contacted us on Twitter.
Oh, he did?
He wanted to send us this email.
So there you go, Ted.
Wow.
If you want to get in touch with us, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast at iheartradio.com.
Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio.
For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, it's Joel.
And Matt.
From HowToMoney.
If your New Year's resolution is to finally get your finances in shape, we've got your back.
Prices, they're still high, and the economy is all over the place.
But 2026 is the year for you to get intentional and make real progress.
Yes.
That's right.
Each week, we break down what's happening with your money, the most important issues to focus on and the small moves that make a big difference.
Kick off the year with confidence.
Listen to How to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
A new year doesn't ask us to become someone new.
It invites us back home to ourselves.
I'm Mike Della Rocha, host of Sacred Lessons, a space for men to pause, reflect, and heal.
This year we're talking honestly about mental health relationships and the patterns we're ready to release.
If you're looking for clarity, connection and healthier ways to show up in your life, Sacred Lessons is here for you.
Listen to Sacred Lessons with Mike Delaroche on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
What if mind control is real?
If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have?
Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car?
Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you?
Can you get someone to join your cult?
Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, aka neurolinguistic programming.
Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both?
Listen to Mind Games on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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