(1)
Can a person be a hero despite his nose, but can he play a heroic role after his death?
World War II has always had strange tales, but Michael's story is perhaps the strangest.
(2)
January 1943, things are burning more and more on the level of world war, the Nazis control the greater part of Europe, Britain is afraid of Hitler storming London, and at the same time wants to break this control through a back door, and sees that this will be available through the easiest link Which is Italy, specifically through Sicily.
Churchill and the intelligence groups think of a way to penetrate Hitler's defenses, calculating that a direct confrontation with the Nazis was not in Britain's interest, after the heavy losses suffered by the Allies.
There is agreement that Hitler must be misled and that the next British operation will be in Greece, while the British legions are moving to their desired destination, which is Sicily.
But how is that possible?
"Let us signal to the Germans that there has been information leaked from the British command that British forces are on their way to Greece," said the British command.
But again, how do we send that misleading message to the Nazi army in a clever and unsuspecting way?
(3)
St. James Street in the British capital, London, the intelligence committee known as the "Twenty Committee" is meeting to work out a plan to suggest to Hitler and his government that the British 12th Brigade will move in early July 1943 to fully invade Greece.
The truth is that there is no such thing as the 12th Brigade in the first place, and until the information becomes logical and palatable to the intelligence and military leadership in Germany, it must talk about the movement of an entire army, and it should not be limited to a military group, in order to avoid making it seem to the Germans that it is a prepared trap.
The atmosphere is fraught within the committee meeting, which agrees to stimulate the deceptive hoax by several additional means, such as radio leaks that include talk about the movement towards Greece, as well as making fake military moves that suggest this, in addition to agreeing with a group of Greek translators whose task includes providing leaks stating that Greece is apprehensive of the British move against Greece.
But the crisis that everyone is still standing in front of: that all this is not enough to move Hitler’s military corps from Sicily to be stationed in Greece and protect it from possible British aggression. Sicily is so dangerous and important that Hitler’s abandonment of it is very difficult. It is clear that he and his army and intelligence are sure that moving from Sicily towards Greece is the best option for this time of war.
One of the committee's members, Charles Cholmondele, considers relying on a plan mentioned in the Trout Memorandum, a memorandum written by the Assistant Director of British Intelligence in 1939, that includes many ways to deceive the enemy.
Plan 28 of the memorandum, known as mince meat, is submitted to the committee and involves the dumping of a corpse bearing a false plan into the sea near the shores of the enemy, to be picked up as a dead soldier.
Disagreements arose during the session, as the head of the committee believes that this type of plan is not smart enough to deceive the Germans, especially since it has been used before, and they will not be deceived, while the author of the proposal believes that the idea can be implemented in a smart way that allows its success, especially since it has succeeded several times before .
The proponent adds that it should appear as if a pilot had crashed near the Spanish coast, and the choice fell on Spain;
Because it had a wide coastline, and its administrations took a neutral stance, making it a hotbed for both British and German spies, which allowed the British to set the situation up for real.
(4)
Charles begins to move forward with the plan with one of the committee members in favor of the idea, Ewen Montagu, who oversaw the entire process, and used his connections to move faster on the plan.
The team begins to search for a suitable body suitable for a healthy young marine who died by drowning, the search is already expanding in various hospitals and mortuaries, and the approval given to the operation in the name of Churchill gives Montagu the green light to enter anywhere.
The matter became complicated when the team was unable to find a suitable body, until Montagu made up his mind to go to a forensic doctor, and presented the matter to him without providing much details, except that the body would be used in a military operation.
The coroner reluctantly agrees, offering him a body he described as "fresh";
Because its owner recently passed away, "Glyndor Michael".
And this Michael's story is strange, he was born in southwest Wales in 1909, and his father died at the age of 16, so he entered an unbalanced psychological and mental state, and continued to live with his mother even after the marriage of his sisters, until she died in 1940, and he moved in turn wandering on his face To London, to remain homeless on the streets without shelter or a normal life, until he was struck by chance when he ate a piece of bread from the street mixed with rat poison, and he was poisoned and his life ended.
(5)
The team begins to think about giving the deceased Michael a real life after his death, the one that he did not live, and they decide to give him a new name, William Martin, an officer in the US Navy. An army girl volunteers to put her picture and a sentimental letter in Officer William Martin's pocket.
The main concern of the British team becomes to ensure that all the logical information the Germans will need to look up in the records are available when they find the body, and to avoid any conflict between the information, so that the whole plan does not fall apart.
The operation obtains final approval to start its implementation from Churchill, and the team decides to throw the body at the coastal city of Huelva located in the southern Gulf of Spain, and at the same time other movements begin to leak information about the fake British attack on Greece through German spies present in Spain, without knowing that they are They obtain false information, with the aim of getting the information to "Alexis von Ron", who is Hitler's close and favorite advisor, who consults him on everything. The challenge was to pass the trick on von Ron, and if he was convinced of it, Hitler's belief in her would be a foregone conclusion.
The team agrees to put the picture of the fake girlfriend in his shirt pocket, while tickets to the restaurants he frequents with his girlfriend will be placed in the pocket of his pants, while a black bag tied with a belt will be placed inside it, a military message carrying the required trick, as well as an emotional message from his girlfriend expressing her deep sorrow for his absence in the war and her longing him, and she wanted to see him soon.
The body would be tossed through a submarine, not a plane, that's the final idea the team came up with, lest being thrown from a plane would tear his body apart from pieces by the distance and force of the fall, hitting the core of the whole process.
On the morning of April 30, in the Bay of Cadiz, near the city of Huelva, the young fisherman "José Antonio de Mare" finds a floating corpse, the features of its face are completely distorted, and a black bag is attached to it. Powers to turn it over, and here the arrow comes out of the bow.
(6)
The British have two agents in the Spanish army, inside the units at the place of arrival of the body, one works to get the documents to the police of the city of Wilva, which is actually affiliated with the Nazi police, while the other works to make a call on one of the lines of communication monitored by the Nazis deliberately with the English team in London, and the call includes a secret request by the English team to find and secretly return the documents in the possession of the sunken officer.
The trick succeeds in part by actually passing the call through the German spy offices, which sense that important papers are being sought by England and should not come out like this without falling into the hands of the German army to find out their content.
The papers arrive at the office of a Spanish brigadier general named Moreno, who is a Nazi hater within the police. The English feel that the mission has become threatened, and that the papers must be taken out of Moreno’s possession to the Nazis within the Spanish police. One of the Spanish officers who agrees with the English, known in Spain to be An agent of Berlin, to secretly communicate with one of Hitler's most important men in Spain, to tell him that he must serve Hitler by obtaining these papers, which is what actually happens.
(7)
In the early hours of July 10, 1943, British naval ships move towards Sicily, while German forces have already moved towards Greece, Allied forces enter Sicily with little resistance, and the city falls within hours in preparation for a move towards the Italian capital, Rome.
The news arrives in the morning to Mussolini, who seems to have woken up to a nightmare, to send his men direct messages to Hitler's administration, at the same time the news had begun to reach Hitler's men before Mussolini's message of the arrival of the Allied forces in Sicily, but the crisis facing all Hitler's men is Unable to tell him what had happened, they avoided his hideous wrath.
Not a few hours passed until it became impossible to hide the news from Hitler any more, so that his close men and members of the intelligence service faced a blatant storm of anger, until he came to accusing his close advisor von Ron of treason and conspiracy against him, especially since he was the one who received the reports on the trap He was the one who persuaded Hitler after being convinced of it, and in October of the same year von Rohn was sentenced to death for treason.
Churchill sent a message to the team responsible for the mission telling them that "the ground beef had been swallowed whole", which meant that the mission had succeeded, and that the Allied forces had achieved what they wanted.
This was one of the most dangerous and powerful military strikes that changed the course of the war in its final months, the fall of Italy and the collapse of its military garrison, and the fall of Mussolini later;
The breaking of one wing was dangerous in Hitler's army, while the other wing was broken by the Russian victory over the Siege of Stalin Grad due to changing climatic conditions, and Germany's loss of huge numbers of fighters, and huge amounts of supplies, made the success of the German army almost impossible, and thus Michael contributed despite his nose to this victory.