When Feet Become Popsicles
After all the difficulties finding a suitable corpse, it should have been smooth sailing once one was located. But after three months on ice, the body didn’t feel like cooperating. Glyndwr Michael’s feet had frozen solid at right angles, which was quite unfortunate when it came time to put on his new boots. Try putting on a boot. The ankle needs to move, but frozen ankles aren’t exactly bendy. Montagu’s team came up with the idea to defrost just the ankles, slam the boots on, tie them up, and hope the feet didn’t fall off. The corpse itself was a little worse for the wear after three months in deep freeze. The eyes had sunken, and the skin had turned yellow. Glyndwr was also skinnier than any British soldier they’d ever seen. But at that point, all they could do was cross their fingers and shove the body in the canister.
Next, Montagu’s team set about creating the fake letters that would be found on the body. Montagu didn’t waste time agonizing over them. Actually, he quite enjoyed impersonating Nye. It was everyone else that objected. Montagu filled his letters with corny jokes. He found himself hilarious, but everyone else pointed out the obvious—generals don’t joke and the Germans had to believe the letter was legit.
After months of countless edits and rewrites, the team finally came up with a solution. They asked Nye himself to write the letter. One would think that a team of creative geniuses would’ve thought of that earlier, but they were probably overworked and underpaid. As everyone but Montagu suspected, Nye made no jokes. It’s probably for the best, since the Germans wouldn’t have gotten the jokes anyway.
The letter now had everything it needed including authority. As a finishing touch, the British added a body part to the letter—an eyelash, to be exact. It sounds strange, but the British included one in every letter they sent. Cliché today, but effective during WWII.
Even if the German spies managed to get their hands on a letter and open it, they wouldn’t notice the eyelash hanging out in the folds, looking as innocent as a newborn baby. The German spies would re-seal the letter and send it on, thinking they were pretty smooth. Once the Brits got their letter back, that missing eyelash would tell them everything. They’d know that the letter had been read and the information inside compromised.
Now that they had a finished letter and a well-dressed corpse, the team turned to the final problem: where to drop the body? Spain was the obvious choice. Although it was neutral during World War II, it had plenty of German sympathizers and spies that would bring the body to German authorities. The Spanish were also Roman Catholic, meaning they hated autopsies. A few cuts, and they’d be done—nothing too invasive, which was exactly what the Brits wanted.
But Ewen Montagu and his team had to be careful. Spain also had its British sympathizers. What good would it do for the corpse to be handed back to the British with nothing more than a smug grin and a “de nada, amigos”?
Finally, Montagu’s team decided to drop the body in the town of Huelva, Spain—a spider’s web of German spies and sympathizers. It helped that Germany paid members of the town quite well to keep an eye on British ships passing by on the ocean. That extra cash in the pocket made saying, “Heil Hitler!” a little easier. Thus, the plan was ready to be set into motion.
It’s a Go!
Winston Churchill gave the thumbs up, and a date for the drop was set. The Brits even let American General Dwight D. Eisenhower in on the gag, since he ran Allied operations in the Mediterranean.
Montagu’s team filled a metal canister with twenty-one pounds of dry ice and stuffed the corpse inside with a bit more dry ice for good measure. Attached to its arm, they chained a briefcase with the fake letters inside. Then, they sealed the canister and put the whole package in a submarine, the HMS Seraph. No one but the officers on board knew the canister’s actual contents. Most of the sailors thought it was meteorological equipment. A few even used the canister as a pillow. They probably had some weird dreams.
The fastest way to deliver a “present” in WWII, including corpses and torpedoes.
Secrets Revealed—Decades Later
The body of Major Martin was buried in Huelva, Spain, shortly after its discovery. For years, the identity of the corpse remained a mystery. Finally, in 1996—over fifty years after Operation Mincemeat—an amateur historian found a document with Glyndwr Michael’s name on it. To honor his contribution after death, a small note was added to Major Martin’s grave in 1997. It reads: “Glyndwr Michael served as Major William Martin.”
What else came out over fifty years later? The commanding officer on board the HMS Seraph “forgot” to mention in his report that he had to use explosives on the canister. In fact, he didn’t come clean until 1991.
Early in the morning on April 30, the submarine surfaced just outside of Huelva at the drop-off site. The officers pried opened the canister and tried not to puke at the stink. Even though it wasn’t part of the plan, they said a quick prayer over the body before pushing it into the water, where it bobbed its way to shore at 4:30 a.m. It all went off without a hitch.
The canister, on the other hand, was a different story. The soldiers needed to sink it in order to hide the evidence, but it refused to go down. Complicating matters, Spanish sardine fisherman were already out, casting their nets in the distance. If they saw a submarine poking out of the water, it would all look pretty suspicious.
The officers considered their options. The sun was coming up and time was running out. They needed to sink that canister! So, they pumped it full of bullets. When that didn’t work, they crossed their fingers, threw an explosive in the tank, and dove under water. The bomb maybe lacked finesse, but it was just enough to sink the cargo.
It didn’t take long for the body to turn up on shore. One lucky fisherman found it that morning—the explosions and gun shots from the submarine officers probably helped. The British were quickly notified of the dead soldier, but so were the Germans. Now the Brits needed to stall. They had to appear as if they wanted the body back ASAP, but what they really wanted was for the German spies to get there first.
“Mincemeat Was Swallowed Whole”
German spies scrambled to get the briefcase, but unfortunately, it ended up in the hands of the Spanish Navy—and let’s just say that the Spanish Navy wasn’t a big fan of the Germans. At first, it looked as if the plan had failed, that the Spanish Navy would hand the briefcase right back to the Brits, exactly as Montagu feared. But then, at the last minute, the Spanish government’s slow bureaucratic system saved the day—maybe the first and only time red tape was a good thing.
red tape:
Piles and piles of paperwork.
Due to all the paperwork and forms that had to be filled out for a newly recovered dead body, it took twelve days for the briefcase to get handed back to the British. That delay gave the German spies just enough time to work their magic. They pressured the Spanish to hand over the papers. They got an hour, which was all the time they needed to make copies.
Even better, the documents ended up in the right man’s hands—Major Karl-Erich Kühlenthal. Major Kühlenthal was a quarter Jewish, something that could get a man killed in Nazi Germany. So maybe he wanted to impress his Nazi bosses with his great find. Or, maybe he was just a bloody fool. Either way, he didn’t question the letters. He personally carried photocopies of everything straight to Germany, where it was just the morale boost Hitler needed after losing Africa.
See, the best way to dupe someone is to use things already in their minds—your enemy’s fears and desires. The Germans wanted to believe that they had found top-secret documents, so they did. Anyone who didn’t believe the letters kept quiet. Hitler was a dictator, meaning he could pretty much do whatever he wanted, and he wasn’t exactly a people person. Good in front of large crowds, yes, but a loose cannon one-on-one. And no one wanted to end up on the wrong end of that cannon.
Really, though, things didn’t add up and the Germans should have been a bit more skeptical. There were no other bodies found and no w
reckage. If the corpse came from a plane crash, how come nothing else had washed ashore? Plus, the body looked as if it had been dead for months, which it had. But instead of putting the pieces together, the German Intelligence explained it all away. They told themselves that the wreckage sank, that the other bodies were eaten by sharks, and that the sun’s rays accelerated the body’s decomposition. Anything to make the story make sense.
After Major Kühlenthal made copies, he had the letters expertly resealed and handed back to Spain, but with one minor oversight. There was no eyelash. When the Brits finally got their letters back, they knew that the German’s had seen their fake plans. The British authorities sent a telegram to London. It read: “Operation Mincemeat swallowed whole.”
Within a month, Hitler transferred much of his power to Greece. He stationed torpedo boats off-shore and built batteries and minefields along the coast. Then his army settled in and waited for the attack.
It never came.
Even after the Allied Powers began their invasion of Sicily, the Germans refused to budge from the Greek shore. Due to Operation Mincemeat, Hitler believed that Sicily was just a cover for an even bigger assault on Greece, and he wasn’t going to let those crumpet-loving Brits fool him!
How One Fake Spy Can Change a War
Though the invasion of Normandy on D-Day would eventually overshadow it, at the time, Sicily was the largest amphibious landing in the war to date. The Allies came out swinging, striking the enemy on their own land. And thanks to Operation Mincemeat, it went a lot better than it could have. Instead of taking ninety days, as the Allies originally thought, the offensive only took thirty-eight. Also, out of the 160,000 Allied men who went into battle, 153,000 survived. Italy surrendered in September, and its dictator, Benito Mussolini, toppled off his fascist perch.
offensive:
The Allies nicknamed this invasion Operation Husky, which has no connection to Sicily at all—just the way they wanted it.
Even better, Hitler was so embarrassed by the double-cross that he became paranoid. When his spies found real top-secret documents only a few months later, he ignored them, afraid of another Mincemeat debacle.
Of course, Operation Mincemeat didn’t single-handedly end the war, but as one well-placed nail in the coffin, it certainly helped. All it took was a real man’s name and a dead man’s body to create a fake spy who changed the course of the war.
Chapter
7
William Shakespeare
To Be . . . Or Not
Lived: Sixteenth century CE, England
Occupation: Actor, Playwright
Master? Or Monkey . . .
To be or not to be? Shakespeare probably never imagined people asking that question (and one of his most famous lines) about him, but then again, maybe he should have. Being the most famous English writer of all time comes with a price. In this case, the price is being called a fraud.
Perhaps it’s because when it comes to Shakespeare’s real life, there’s less to go on than a fake treasure map. Actually, a fake treasure map might be more helpful than what’s known about William Shakespeare’s life.
What? You thought the most brilliant playwright in history left behind stacks of plays, poems, and letters? You wish. The world doesn’t have so much as a couplet in Shakespeare’s own hand, only six shaky signatures on legal documents that look as if a trained monkey could’ve penned them.
No wonder the world’s largest literary manhunt turned into a wild goose chase long ago.
That doesn’t necessarily mean Shakespeare the playwright never existed, but you’ll have to decide for yourself. Don’t worry, there’s only about a billion books written on the subject if you really want to do some investigative journalism.
“There’s no more faith in thee than in a stewed prune!”
–“Shakespeare’s” play, Henry V
Party Like a Rock Star
Shakespeare’s story is the stuff of legends, which is maybe why it could be nothing more than one. When does a genius son of a failing glove maker morph from a country kid to a big city hot-shot? And when would he have time along the way to write the greatest plays in the English language and rubs elbows with the likes of Queen Elizabeth? Only in the story books.
So let’s start at the beginning. Will Shakespeare was born in Stratford-upon-Avon, a small town located about one hundred miles west of London.
His father was a successful merchant. He also held a number of official positions such as the town bailiff—a kind of local mayor. Things started out well for the Shakespeares. They weren’t royalty, but they weren’t starving either. Then, Will’s father got in trouble with the law. He became a dealer of the hottest Elizabethan commodity. Yes, Shakespeare Senior let all that bailiff power go to his head and got into the illegal wool trade, which was a lot riskier, and more dashing, than you’d think. At least, Shakespeare’s mom thought so, since she had six kids with Shakespeare Senior.
Shakespeare’s birth house oozes sublimity.
Getting caught was enough to sink the family’s fortunes and force Will to drop out of grammar school, probably to help his father make gloves.
grammar school:
Kids started grammar school around age seven in Elizabethan England, where they were taught to read and write, and learn dead languages like Greek and Latin by force.
At the age of eighteen, William married Anne Hathaway who was twenty-six and pregnant. Today, it could be a reality show, but back then it was just life. Around one-quarter to one-third of all women who got married during this period were already expecting a child when they said, “I do.”
Small town life didn’t suit Will, though. Instead of staying home and caring for his wife and three small children, he hitched a ride with a traveling theater company to go play dress-up. Shortly after, Will hit the big time. He produced 39 plays and 150 sonnets. He traveled between Stratford and London, managed a theater company, and was an all-around rock star. He lived the glamorous life, eating caviar and sipping champagne. He was a genius, and luckily for the world, even his poop came out in golden letters.
Eventually, he retired at a ripe old age (his late forties) and died in Stratford on his fifty-second birthday. And the world has loved him ever since.
At least, that’s the version we’ve been led to believe all these years.
Where There’s Smoke . . .
There are a lot of problems with the story we’ve been told about William Shakespeare. First of all, it doesn’t make any sense. Running away from home to become an actor was not considered okay in 1580s England.
actor:
Called a player in those days.
Today, actors are fawned over as celebrities and hounded by the paparazzi, but back then, they were about as cool as a hot steaming pile of horse poo.
Being an actor wasn’t even considered a real job. Since they wandered from town to town giving shows, their official occupation was vagrancy, and vagabonds could be arrested, whipped, and branded. This was to ensure that they kept the peace, because who knew when they might break into song and dance—the horror of it! So why would a man give up a respectable trade, like being a glove maker, to become an actor?
The second problem with this story is that it really doesn’t make sense. (Yes, that’s the same as the first reason.) Shakespeare’s works display more knowledge than C-3PO’s programming. A true Renaissance man, Shakespeare the playwright seems to have an intimate grasp of Elizabethan court life as well as life at foreign courts. His work also shows him to be a master of military terminology, astronomy, mathematics, languages, Classics, law, art, literature, medicine, music, and more.
This poses a big problem—like an eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room problem—because there’s no record of the historical William Shakespeare having attended any school let alone a university. (However, if he actually went, Elizabethan grammar school wasn’t like your middle school today. Students either learned their Latin conjugations or it was beat into th
em with a nice-sized stick.) Although it’d be weird for a bailiff’s son not to get some schooling, so most people assume he went for a little while.
So where did all the other learning come from? All that court life know-how had to come from somewhere. Proper bowing techniques and other persnickety protocol wasn’t the sort of thing Shakespeare would have been taught in grammar school, and even a genius can’t pluck that kind of stuff out of the ether.
There’s also no record of Shakespeare ever meeting the queen, living at court, or traveling the world—and this was a time of meticulous record keeping. We have records showing how many times Shakespeare evaded taxes (four times), how many times he tried to sue for petty sums of money (three times), and how many times he was caught hoarding food during a famine (once), but nothing about him meeting Queen Elizabeth. Seems kind of strange, doesn’t it?
Perhaps a lot of this could be explained away, like pointing out that Shakespeare’s vast knowledge could have come from reading books or that he didn’t have to live at court to know its rules. He just had to ask a nobleman a few haughty questions like, “You sir, how dost thou bow?” and he’d know how low to go. One could also argue that he wasn’t actually considered a rock star until after he died, so nobody ever thought to save his to-do lists to hawk on eBay.
Famous Phonies Page 7