Revealed: Mailman's key role in Operation Mincemeat spy plot that helped fool ... trends now

View
comments

The Daily Mail's man in Turkey played a key role in a Second World War ploy to hoodwink the Nazis about the Allies' invasion plans, it can be revealed.

The paper's then editor Bob Prew instructed correspondent Cedric Salter to position himself near the Balkans in 1943 to mislead the enemy.

The Allies had captured North Africa and were preparing to cross the Mediterranean to take Sicily. Operation Barclay was a plot to persuade the Germans and Italians that preparations to invade Sicily were fake and that the real plan was to go via Sardinia and Greece.

A book by Robert Hutton called The Illusionist reveals the role of Dudley Clarke, the British officer who conceived the plot. Between 1940 and 1945, he built a deception operation which persuaded the Nazis of the existence of hundreds of thousands of imaginary troops, tanks, planes and ships.

The famous Operation Mincemeat – in which fake invasion plans were planted on a body – was part of the operation.