It is said that dead men tell no tales.
However, in 1943, the British military hoped one dead man would spin quite the yarn to German officials.
Operation Mincemeat was a British deception effort during World War II designed to draw the Axis powers’ attention from the coast of Sicily, where Allied forces hoped to launch an attack, to Greece, where they did not. To accomplish this, the Brits enlisted the services of a man already dead, whom they would pose as an officer carrying highly sensitive military plans — fictitious plans relating to an upcoming operation in Greece — and whose body would wash ashore in neutral Spain. There, Axis spies could come into possession of the documents and, hopefully, take them quite seriously.
