The British Faked an Invasion Plan With a Borrowed Corpse

Glyndwr Michael was a homeless Welshman who died in London early in 1943 after eating rat poison. The coroner Bentley Purchase signed off on the body on 28 January and quietly handed it over to British intelligence. For three months it sat in a refrigerator while two officers built a man around it.

The officers were Charles Cholmondeley of MI5 and Ewen Montagu of Naval Intelligence. They named their corpse "Captain (Acting Major) William Martin, Royal Marines, Combined Operations Headquarters," and dressed him for the part. Into his pockets and briefcase went a forged identity card, a St Christopher medallion, theatre stubs from a recent West End show, four nights of bills from the Navy and Military Club, an overdraft notice from Lloyds for £79 19s 2d, a receipt for a £53 10s 6d diamond ring, two love letters from a fiancée named "Pam" (photograph borrowed from a real MI5 clerk, Jean Leslie), and — the entire point — a sealed letter from a British general implying that the upcoming Allied invasion was aimed at Greece and Sardinia. Sicily, it suggested, was just a feint.

At 4:15 a.m. on 30 April 1943 the submarine HMS Seraph released the body off Huelva, on Spain's southern coast. A local fisherman pulled it ashore the same morning. Spain was officially neutral but rotten with German agents; within weeks copies of the planted documents were on a desk in Berlin.

German intelligence judged the find authentic. By late June, Hitler had ordered the 1st Panzer Division shifted from France to Salonika, doubled the garrison on Sardinia, and moved seven divisions to Greece and ten more to the Balkans. The Allies landed on Sicily on 10 July. The island fell in 38 days, against thinner defenses than the planners had counted on, and Glyndwr Michael was buried in Huelva under his cover name.