Operation Mincemeat
작전 민스미트
Operation Mincemeat was a British deception operation during the Second World War designed to conceal the Allied invasion of Sicily. British intelligence placed documents suggesting attacks on Greece and Sardinia on the body of a corpse presented as the fictitious officer William Martin, and German forces accepted the deception and diverted resources toward Sardinia and Greece.
In depth
Planning and execution
The operation drew on an idea in the Naval Intelligence Division's 1939 Trout memo and on Charles Cholmondeley's 1942 proposal. With support from the Twenty Committee, Cholmondeley and Ewen Montagu combined a corpse, a fictitious identity, personal effects, and letters to make the documents appear to have been exposed accidentally. In April 1943, the submarine HMS Seraph released the body off Huelva, Spain, and copies of the papers reached German military intelligence through the Spanish authorities.
Military effect
The papers suggested that Greece and Sardinia were the main objectives and that Sicily was a diversion. German leaders shifted or held reinforcements for Sardinia and Greece, while the defenses facing the Allied landings in Sicily, which began on 10 July 1943, were comparatively less reinforced. Mincemeat cannot be credited as the sole cause of every German deployment, but as a central element of the wider Allied deception plan Operation Barclay it influenced German assessments surrounding the invasion.