By Jerry Klinger
The words together will offend someone, perhaps more than just one someone.
The Holocaust was a horror that converted millions of Jews into mincemeat.
Operation Mincemeat was an impossibly successful British military operation that saved at least a million Jews from being exterminated.
April 24, in Hackney, London, a black polished historical interpretive marker, was dedicated. The marker is sited, near to the ground, an unexpected location, on a retaining pilon adjacent to the late 19th century Hackney mortuary. The events that occurred at the mortuary changed the course of World War II.
Two unlikely secret intelligence operatives, Ewen Montagu, a British Jew and Charles Cholmondely, a British aristocrat, were tasked with putting a false Operation together that would be swallowed hook, line and sinker by the Nazis.
In 1943, the North African campaign had ended successfully with the German/Italian complete defeat. The Germans knew the next probable target for the British and American forces would be an attack on Sicily, the gateway to Italy and Europe.
Historically, invasion after invasion of Italy began first with Sicily. The Germans were excellent soldiers and knew their history.
In anticipation, the Nazis directed heavy defenses to Sicily to fend off and even destroy the coming Allied attack.
Montagu and Cholmondely had to convince the Nazis to do just the opposite. They had to convince the Nazis that the real target of the Allies was not Sicily but Greece? They had to convince the Nazis to concentrate their military power in Greece.
A vercockte, mushgenah plan was developed by the two intelligence officers. They obtained a corpse. Oddly, during wartime obtaining a corpse that had not been blown to bits was much harder than they had thought. They found the body of a vagrant who had committed suicide by ingesting rat poison, that would do nicely.
Over a few months, they transformed the corpse, kept on “ice” at the mortuary, into Major William Martin. They developed a complete story line and tidbits of personalized memorabilia like a love letter with a picture from an invented fiancé to be placed on the body in a British Military uniform. Handcuffed to his wrist was a valise with top secret false documents, signed for real by the appropriate Generals in command, indicating the Allies real invasion target was Greece.
The body was taken by submarine and released off the coast of Spain where it was washed shoreward. Martin was presumably drowned after his plane had been shot down. The body was to be discovered by the pro-Nazi Spanish. The Spanish obligingly turned over the valise with the secret documents to the Nazis. The secret documents landed on Hitler’s desk.
The Fuhrer made a command decision, convinced of the authenticity of the secret information, and ordered the bulk of German forces on Sicily to be moved to Greece. Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda, strongly advised Hitler against the decision.
After all, it takes a liar to know a liar.
Hitler knew better and overrode the concerns. He swallowed the bait hook line and sinker.
The Allied invasion of Sicily proceeded with extraordinary success. What could have been a horrific bloodbath, turned into an incredible success. It was estimated that the crazy operation put together by the Jew and the Aristocrat saved 10s of thousands of Allied casualties.
The Germans and their Italian allies were defeated on Sicily very rapidly.
There was another effect from Operation Mincemeat. Hitler stubbornly refused to believe that Greece was not the true target of the Allies.
In July 1943, the greatest tank battle of World War II raged near Kursk. 280 Miles Southwest of Moscow. The Germans were losing.
They called for their armor reinforcements being held in Greece. Hitler refused to release the desperately needed units. He remained convinced the Allies were going to invade Greece and that the invasion of Sicily was a ruse.
The German tidal wave was broken at Kursk. From there on the Russians pushed the Nazis back.
If Operation Mincemeat had not been successful, it is very likely the Germans would not have been defeated in Sicily and at Kursk. The war and the killing machines of the Nazi Holocaust would have had another year to continue the murder of the last remnants of Jews in Europe.
My mother was liberated by the British from Bergen Belsen. My father was liberated by the Americans from Buchenwald. Both near death in 1945, survived because the war ended before the Germans could have finished the job.
Martin Sugarman is the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation’s U.K. representative. Martin explained this small, seemingly insignificant historical event that occurred centered on a corpse and mortuary in Hackney, had no marker in all the U.K. telling the story. The question of funding and supporting the project was never a debate for JASHP.
On April 24, before a crowd of military personnel, including the American Embassy Military Attaché, Col. Mike Cullinane, dignitaries, the Mayor and Speaker of Hackney Michael Desmond, the National Chairman, Daniel Fox of AJEX (the Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women – U.K.) religious leaders, historians, political and community leaders, the marker was dedicated.
Nine days earlier, April 15, Warner Brothers had released a major motion picture based on the true events of Operation Mincemeat, in the U.K. The movie will be released for Netflix and to North American theaters May 11.
The text of the marker:
“In April 1943 Lieutenant Commander Ewen Montagu CBE KC RNVR, a British Jew, and Flight Lieutenant Charles Cholmondely MBE, a British aristocrat, planned Operation Mincemeat to misdirect German forces’ attention from the Allied invasion of Sicily. They brought the donated body of a man to the Hackney Mortuary where it stayed on ice for three months. Cholmondely and Montagu transformed the corpse into a fictitious officer – Major William Martin. The body was taken to Scotland, and then to a point off of southern Spain, where it was placed in the water carrying letters from senior Allied officers suggesting the Allies would invade Greece, not Sicily. When the body was found, the letters were shared with Nazi intelligence, misdirecting German forces, saving thousands of British and American soldiers’ lives during the invasion of Sicily.
“Set a watch before my mouth: and over the door of my lips” — Psalms 141:3
*
Jerry Klinger is the President of the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation (www.JASHP.org)