🎧 Operation Mincemeat
Archive of Dan Snow's History Hit 🎧
•
36m
Dan explains Operation Mincemeat; one of the most audacious deception operations of WWII. On the 30th of April, 1943, the corpse of a 'Major Martin' washed up near the Spanish city of Huelva. On his body, Spanish officials found secret documents detailing an upcoming Allied invasion of Greece. This was the moment that the Axis powers had been waiting for, and the Germans began redirecting much-needed divisions to Greece and the Balkans. They would discover only too late that this was all an elaborate feint, conceived by British Intelligence to obscure the Allies' real target - Sicily. By mid-July, the Allies had landed in southern Italy and the liberation of Nazi-occupied Europe was well underway.
So how exactly did its architects create this complex web of misdirection and misinformation? And can it really be true that the success of the Sicily invasion came down to this one act of deception? In this Explainer episode, Dan takes us through the twists and turns of this audacious and unorthodox act of subterfuge.
Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.
Up Next in Archive of Dan Snow's History Hit 🎧
-
🎧 The North Pole Scandal: Frederick C...
In the autumn of 1909, the American explorer Frederick Cook arrived in Copenhagen, claiming to have become the first person to reach the North Pole. His dramatic return had been eagerly anticipated, but one young journalist was skeptical. Philip Gibbs contested Cook's version of events, calling h...
-
🎧 How To Dress in the Middle Ages
What clothes would you have worn in the Middle Ages? What were the most fashionable hairstyles? How did your clothing denote social status? How did you wash your clothes?
In this episode of Gone Medieval, Matt Lewis puts these questions to Sarah Grace Heller, associate professor in Medieval Frenc... -
🎧 The Lighthouse of Alexandria
The last monument to be added to the list of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Lighthouse of Alexandria (also known as the Pharos), was one of the tallest man-made structures in ancient history. Serving as the only guiding beacon along 900km of Mediterranean coast, it played a vital rol...
