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70th Anniversary: “Mincemeat Swallowed Whole”

Major William MartinSeventy years ago today, the mission of acting Major William Martin of the British Royal Marines was determined to have been a success.  The top secret operational documents on the planned Allied invasion of the Balkans and Sardinia Martin had carried with him had been intercepted and transmitted all the way up to the highest levels of the German high command and even to Adolf Hitler himself.  This seemingly disastrous outcome was a positive for the Allies because the success of Martin’s mission, Operation:  Mincemeat, hinged upon the Germans discovering and believing the documents that he carried with him to be real when in fact they actually composed a part of one of WWII’s most ambitious and elaborate misinformation campaigns.  Nothing about the documents was real: not even their carrier.

In the run-up to the invasion of Sicily (Operation:  Husky), Allied intelligence sought to deceive German and Italian forces as to the identity of their next target in hopes of diverting Axis military strength away from the location of their true objectives.  One portion of this deception campaign, Operation:  Mincemeat, called for fake documents detailing plans for an Allied invasion through Greece and Sardinia – not Sicily – to be found on the corpse of a downed British pilot, Major William Martin.  However, in order for this plan to work, William Martin would need to be invented as he did not – in fact – exist.

After weeks of fruitless searching for a suitable candidate, the body that would serve as Martin was found in the person of a homeless Welshman, Glyndwr Michael, who had recently died in London.  Michael was put on ice – literally – to stave off decomposition while members of British Naval Intelligence Division – including future James Bond creator Ian Fleming – concocted Martin’s identity, including fake letters from family, tickets to a popular show, a receipt from a recent jewelry purchase and even an angry overdraft notice from a non-existent bank manager.

When Major Martin was ‘ready,’ he was attired in the battledress of a Royal Marine, attached by chain to the briefcase carrying his secret documents and transported by the submarine HMS Seraph to just off the coast of Huelva, in southern Spain:  a town in which German intelligence agents were known to operate.

HMS Seraph

HMS Seraph

On the early morning of April 20, 1943, Glyndwr Michael as Major William Martin was pushed into the sea to be brought ashore by the incoming tide.  Discovered on the same day, Martin’s body was buried with full military honors on May 2.  Not returned until 70 years ago today, however, were the false documents.

Upon their return on May 13, 1943, British intelligence correctly deduced that the sealed papers had been opened and that ‘Mincemeat [had been] Swallowed Whole’ which was the message transmitted first to Winston Churchill and then to the United States.

German leadership in general and Hitler particularly clung to the belief in the veracity of the Mincemeat documents, failing to commit more troops to southern Italy even after the invasion of Sicily had begun while also redirecting German forces away from the Eastern Front; troops and leadership that would prove fatally absent in the Battle of Kursk.  The invasion of Sicily was likewise a success, with Allied losses likely numbering several thousand fewer than if Mincemeat had failed.  These intelligence weaknesses would be exploited again one year later in the preparation of Operation:  Overlord.

The story of Operation:  Mincemeat has understandably proven quite popular, inspiring films and documentaries, including the 1953 book and 1956 motion picture appropriately entitled The Man Who Never Was.  Glyndwr Michael as William Martin was buried in Huelva, Spain.  In 1998, the inscription GLYNDWR MICHAEL; SERVED AS MAJOR WILLIAM MARTIN, RM was added to his grave-stone by the British government.

Glyndwr Michael

This post by Collin Makamson, Red Ball Express Coordinator @ The National WWII Museum

Invasion of Attu

Attu, Aleutian Island, June 4, 1943. Soldiers hurling their trench mortar shells over a ridge into a Japanese position. Library of Congress image.

May 11, 2013, marks the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the Battle of Attu. The largest of the Near Islands of Alaska, Attu was the site of the only land battle fought on an incorporated territory of the United States during World War II.

The Japanese Northern Army had taken Attu unopposed in June 1942. Fearing that the island would be used as an airbase to launch strikes along the West Coast of North America, the United States initiated Operation SANDCRAB.

Over 1,000 miles from mainland Alaska, Attu’s bedfellow is extremely hostile weather, and the challenges confronting SANDCRAB were colossal. Turgidly confident, American commanders were convinced superior air and naval forces would rid the island of a majority of enemy forces. The day of the landing unremitting fog had enshrouded Attu, reducing the effect of air and naval strikes. American soldiers were met with violent opposition the moment their boots hit the ground.

And those boots might as well have been sandals! Soldiers of the 7th Infantry Division waded ashore clad in gear suited more for the sun-basted beaches of California than the frigid air of Attu. Commanders were aware of this, but regarded Attu as an island easily won. Days surely would not turn to weeks. The environmental forces that produce frostbite would be outgunned, outnumbered and wholly avoided by taking Attu quickly.

Unfortunately frostbite took its toll while brutal environmental forces pounded Americans already beset by entrenched Axis forces.

The advance into the interior took weeks not days, as American troops were hindered by extremely bitter weather conditions and a determined foe. The Americans did push forward and the end finally did arrive when Japanese Colonel Yasuyo Yamasaki, realizing Attu had been lost, ordered the last of his troops to conduct a banzai charge. The Colonel himself lead the ill-fated charge and was killed with sword firmly in hand.

When the bloodletting had finally ceased, 2,351 Japanese and 549 Americans were dead.

By clearing the Western Hemisphere of Japanese forces, the Western United States were free from threat and an ebullient sense of security prevailed. But the cost of human life was high, and the Aleutian Islands never factored into an American invasion plan of mainland Japan. Bored American troops stationed there spent the remainder of the war puffing on their cigarettes and kicking the dry earth beneath their feet.

Posted by Ryan Casalino, Interactive Content Intern.

Read Staff Sergeant James A. Liccione, Sr.’s personal account of the Aleutian Campaign.

May 9, 1943 – Wilmeth Sidat-Singh Dead

Syracuse University basketball and football star, Wilmeth Sidat-Singh (center), was often referred to in the press as Hindu (a term at the time used to describe someone of Indian heritage). Singh, however, was born to African American parents. After his father died, his mother remarried a man from the West Indies who adopted young Wilmeth Webb.

While he never claimed to be something he wasn’t (and often tried to clear up the error in the press to no avail), this popular misconception allowed Sidat-Singh to travel and play with teammates to a schools that did not allow African Americans to compete in sports. An article finally explaining his true ethnicity cost him the opportunity to play in a game soon after in Maryland. The star halfback, known as the Syracuse Walking Dream, sat on the sidelines as the Orangemen lost the game, powerless to assist his teammates.

After college, there were no opportunities for an African American in professional sports, so Sidat-Singh played for two barnstorming teams, the Syracuse Reds and the Harlem Renaissance.

In 1943, he answered the call to serve his country and became a member of the famed Tuskegee Airmen. On May 9, 1943, his engine failed during a training mission over Lake Huron and Sidat-Singh drowned. He was 25 years old.

May 8, 1943 – Mordechai Anielewicz Dead

On May 8, 1943, Mordechai Anielewicz, along with his girlfriend and other members of the Zionist youth movement at Warsaw, allegedly took his own life as Nazi troops closed in.

Anielewicz had been instrumental in the first act of armed resistance that prevented a major, planned deportation and set off the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

There were no eyewitnesses to his death and the whereabouts of his remains are unknown. He was 24 years old.

From the Collection: V-E Day

Large crowd in Piccadilly Circus in London, England on V-E Day. Policemen, soldiers and women dancing in street at Rainbow Corner. 8 May 1945, 2008.537.063

SS George Washington Carver launched

On 7 May 1943, seventy years ago, SS George Washington Carver was launched. The Liberty ship, sponsored by performer Lena Horne, was the second to be named for an African American. The ship’s construction by Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond, California was documented by Office of War Information photographer E.F. Joseph. The full series can be seen at the Library of Congress.




Post by Curator Kimberly Guise.

70th Anniversary – “The Jewish Quarter of Warsaw is No More!”

In May 1943, a 75-page document called the “The Jewish Quarter of Warsaw is No More!” was given to SS Chief Heinrich Himmler. The official report, written by Jürgen Stroop, commander of the forces that liquidated the Warsaw Ghetto, chronicled the SS suppression of the April 1943 uprisings. Known commonly as “The Stroop Report,” the book has become one of the most important sources in determining the extent of the death and destruction at Warsaw.

The Stroop Report looked more like a family scrapbook than it did an official government document, filled with photographs with hand-written captions of the operation and bound in black leather. The craftsmanship and attention to detail reveal a great deal about how the persecution of Jews was viewed; Stroop was proud and saw the defeat of the Polish Resistance in Warsaw as a major milestone that he believed would be celebrated for years to come. The photographs of dead bodies, burning buildings and Jews being rounded up at gunpoint were images of a Nazi triumph. The text contains boasting of how many thousands of Jews perished and what weaponry and other supplies the SS managed to secure for themselves. In the first section, which contained all communiqués sent to SS Police Leader East Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger, the burning of buildings to get Jews out is described in detail:

“Our setting the block on fire achieved the result in the course of the night that those Jews whom we had not been able to find despite all our search operations left their hideouts under the roofs, in the cellars, and elsewhere, and appeared at the outside of the buildings, trying to escape the flames. Masses of them- entire families-were already aflame and jumped from the windows or endeavored to let themselves down by means of sheets tied together or the like. Steps had been taken so that these Jews as well as the remaining ones were liquidated at once. During the whole night there were shots from buildings which were supposed to be evacuated. We had no losses in our cordoning forces. 5,300 Jews were caught for the evacuation and removed.”

Select Images from the Stroop Report:



Three copies of the Stroop Report were made, and today are housed in the National Archives in Washington D.C., the Institute of National Remembrance in Warsaw and the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz, Germany respectively. The report was used as one of the key pieces of evidence of war crimes during the Nuremberg Trials.

Stroop was captured in May 1945 in Bavaria. He was put on trial by the U.S. military Tribunal at Dachau, found guilty and sentenced to death, but was later extradited for trial in Poland before his execution was carried out. Throughout his imprisonment, Stroop remained proud of the destruction he oversaw, remembering the burning of Warsaw’s Great Synagogue as “a wonderful sight…an unforgettable allegory of the triumph over Jewry.” In 1951, the Polish court found him guilty and sentenced him to death. He was hanged outside the Mokotow prison in Warsaw, steps away from the former ghetto he destroyed.

More Resources:

Learn more at “The Holocaust at a Glance” and download a printable fact sheet.

View “When They Came for Me,” a lesson plan on collective responsibility and partisan resistance in WWII.

Posted by Gemma Birnbaum, Digital Education Coordinator at The National WWII Museum.

Fighting Fit: Restoring the Collection

Dinner with a Curator – Tom Czekanski presents “Fighting Fit: Restoring the Collection”
May 14, 2013, 6:30 – 8:30 pm
US Freedom Pavilion: The Boeing Center

Utilizing staff, volunteers and outside contractors, the Museum has undertaken a substantial number of restoration projects since opening in 2000. Restorations include several airplanes, two boats, three armored vehicles and numerous other vehicles and artillery pieces. Director of Collections and Exhibits, Tom Czekanski, will share the unique story of each of these pieces – complete with challenges and triumphs.

View the Full Menu

Purchase Tickets.

Dinner with a Curator is a seasonal series where Museum staff and guests discuss a featured topic related to World War II while enjoying a delicious three-course dinner. All dinners catered by Chef John Besh at the Museum’s American Sector restaurant. Space is limited. Reservations are required.

Photos from the Restoration of PT-305



Happy Birthday George Petty – Father of the ‘Petty Girl’

Memphis Belle

Along with Alberto Vargas, no other artist defined the boundary points of what has come to be known as the Pin-Up Girl style more clearly than George Petty.  Born on this day in 1894, in Abbeville, in Vermillion Parish, Louisiana, Petty studied first in France before settling with his family in Chicago in 1916.  There, Petty first found work as a commercial artist:  designing posters, advertisements and calendars in relative obscurity.  However, this anonymity was not to last as soon after Petty found both his forte and fame in the pages of Esquire magazine.

Initially hired as a cartoonist, though he had no experience in illustration, and using his trademark airbrush and – bizarrely enough – his own daughter Marjorie Jule as a model, Petty’s risqué work proved an overnight success:  sending sales of Esquire skyrocketing.  Before Esquire’s debut year (1933) was out, Petty’s name was forever linked to his coquettish creations as they quickly became known as Petty Girls.

Popular throughout the Depression years, Petty’s work would likely not be nearly as famous today had it – like Vargas’ ‘Varga Girls’ – not provided the inspiration for thousands of American servicemen who recreated Petty’s Girls on the noses of their aircraft and the backs of their flight jackets.  Though there were many memorable military adaptations of Petty’s style, perhaps none is more famous than that of the B-17 Flying Fortress known today by her Petty Girl illustration as ‘The Memphis Belle.’

This post by Collin Makamson, Red Ball Express Coordinator @ The National WWII Museum

The “Fighting I” Launched

USS Intrepid in early 1945, National Archives image.

After seventeen months of construction, the USS Intrepid was launched, the fifth Essex-class aircraft carrier to be launched during WWII. Her keel was laid 1 December 1941 in Newport News, Virginia. The 900-foot carrier, capable of housing nearly 3,400 men at a single time, was commissioned CV-11 in August 1943. The Intrepid earned the nickname “Fighting I” during service in the battles of the Marshall Islands, Truk, Leyte Gulf, and Okinawa. She is credited with helping to sink the Japanese battleships Musashi and Yamato. She was hit by five direct kamikaze attacks and suffered heavy casulaties.

Since 1982, the Intrepid has functioned as the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York City and is a designated National Historic Landmark.

Post by Curator Kimberly Guise.