Ben Macintyre on the dead body that helped the Allies to victory

Ben Macintyre relates the story of Operation Mincemeat, a secret mission formulated and carried out by the British Army during the Second World War. In the build-up to Operation Barclay, the Allied invasion of Italy via Sicily, the Allies hoped to fool the Germans into thinking that the invasion would come elsewhere. The plan would involve dumping a corpse equipped with false documents indicating that the Allied invasion would happen in Greece, into the Atlantic and allowing it to wash up on the coast of Spain. The Spanish were neutral at the time, but were sympathetic to the Germans, and the British were sure the Spanish authorities would allow the German forces to examine the body - and find the false documents.

In the event, despite mistakes made by British intelligence, and perhaps thanks largely to an anti-Nazi German officer, the plan worked perfectly: German forces, including Panzer divisions, were moved from Italy to Greece, and operation Barclay was a complete success.