The Spy Who Duped Hitler | From Zero to Hero | 1

The Spy Who

Wondery

History

4.6 • 669 Ratings

🗓️ 25 March 2025

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The story of Operation Mincemeat. It’s 1943 and World War 2 hangs on a knife-edge. Everybody knows the obvious next move for the Allies is to invade Sicily. So Winston Churchill gives his spy chiefs a daunting task: create a lie so good it will fool Adolf Hitler and get Nazi Germany to move its troops elsewhere.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Wonderry Plus subscribers can binge full seasons of the Spy Who early and add free on Apple Podcasts or the Wondery app.
0:14.9	January 24th, 1943. Kings Cross, London.
0:22.6	34-year-old Glindor Michael
0:25.6	forces the door of an abandoned canal-side warehouse.
0:29.6	Inside, he sees rats scurry across the stone floor.
0:33.6	Bloody hell.
0:35.6	Michael waits by the door as his eyes adjust to the dark.
0:40.3	He's cold and hungry.
0:43.3	But in the gloom, he spots some wooden crates.
0:47.3	Maybe they contain food.
0:50.3	He searches the crates, but finds nothing.
0:59.5	Michael pulls a crate to the wall and sits on it.
1:03.8	He can sleep for a bit like this.
1:06.2	Another rat scurries out of the darkness.
1:08.7	Michael feels it brush against the bare skin exposed by the holes in his boots.
1:13.2	He makes a half-hearted attempt to shoe it away, but the rat starts nibbling his boot.
1:19.7	God help me. Michael remains still. His life's not been much better than a rat's, a poverty-stricken childhood in a Welsh mining
1:30.2	town with no coal left to mine, and all his immediate family now dead.
1:36.0	He came to London in search of something better, but even the army rejected him.
1:41.2	He's homeless, destitute, and starting to feel detached from reality.
1:46.0	What's the point?
1:48.8	No one would notice if I died.
	...

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