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00:081939. War with Germany is looming and the British know they will need every advantage
00:13to stop the Nazis. They create one in a small group of brilliant mathematicians and scholars
00:20assigned to work secretly in a quiet country home called Bletchley Park. With the help of
00:27a discovery first made by Polish intelligence officers, this team will work to break the
00:32key to the Enigma code, the encryption used for German military communications. This crucial
00:40step is the first of many in the intelligence war waged by the Allies.
00:48All wars change the world, but none of them change the world like the Second World War
00:53did. Japan's on the march, Germany's on the march. No one can imagine a nightmare they're
01:01about to unleash. The most destructive war in human history. Suddenly the world is turned
01:07upside down and all hell is let loose. The West is stunned by the speed of the advance.
01:16You get the Allies led by the big three. Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin. Men who are dealing with
01:24immensely complicated questions. It's the biggest military operation of human history.
01:31The Allies have to come together, not just militarily, but industrial scale. It's a global perspective.
01:38They have to fight in every climate from the Arctic, to the jungles of the Pacific, to the deserts of
01:44Africa,
01:45and the depths of the ocean.
01:49But there was no certainty of victory. It was going to be a horrific bloodbath.
01:56We see humans at their absolute worst, how they treat other human beings. And we see them at their absolute
02:02best,
02:02willing to give their lives that others might live. World War II was a struggle in which there could be
02:08one victor and one vanquish.
02:38In the summer of 1940, Great Britain is threatened by Nazi Germany. Adolf Hitler's armies have torn through Poland,
02:49Scandinavia, and Western Europe. Even France has fallen.
03:00Prime Minister Winston Churchill fears Britain will be next.
03:05The first few weeks of Winston Churchill's prime ministership are probably the worst and most disastrous weeks
03:11in the history of Britain. The most catastrophic defeat on the continent of Europe.
03:19Outclassed by the German Wehrmacht that left far from the skies above.
03:24Britain is facing defeat and starvation.
03:31By 1940, the British position looks practically hopeless. They've met the Wehrmacht a couple of times.
03:37And on both occasions, Norway and Dunkirk, they wound up running away, evacuating from the continent under fire.
03:46I think when you face the enormity of the challenge that Britain faced in 1940,
03:50If you're up against a stronger army, you've got to find other ways to get around them.
03:56The British have been working to crack enemy military code since the outbreak of World War I in 1914.
04:04Alistair Denniston leads the British government's Code and Cypher School, located at Bletchley Park,
04:11an old manor house in the English countryside.
04:14He served as an intelligence officer in the Royal Navy in World War I, and has spent his entire career
04:21in cryptology.
04:25Denniston predicted that accurate cryptanalysis of the Wehrmacht's codes would be an important weapon in any war with Germany.
04:35We talk about the German way of war, sometimes we say blitzkrieg or lightning war.
04:41It's about tanks, it's about aircraft, it's about mobile infantry, and of course, artillery.
04:50All working together in the greatest possible harmony.
04:59They need to be able to communicate with each other in real time.
05:03Vast technical improvements in radio in the 20s and 30s make this possible.
05:08The radio is as important to the blitzkrieg as the tank or the Stuka dive bomber.
05:13It is Alistair Denniston who realizes that this German reliance on technical means of communication is also a real Achilles
05:21heel.
05:22If someone can step into that communications loop, they can intercept German reconnaissance reports, German orders.
05:30They can intercept, in a sense, German intentions.
05:33Denniston understands that Signal's intelligence is essential to combat Germany's new mechanized tactics.
05:42If you don't have vast numbers of tanks, and you don't have the luxury of overwhelming military force,
05:47you need to find a way to win a war, and that can involve using a bit of this, intelligence.
05:55It provides an incredible force multiplier, particularly when you're outnumbered.
06:00It may give you that chance that you never thought you had before.
06:06But cracking the German ciphers is seemingly impossible.
06:10They're created by a complex device, the Enigma machine.
06:21The Enigma machine itself looks like a cross between a cash register and a typewriter.
06:26And it's an electromagnetic machine that scrambles plain text into a code.
06:35You would press the key, and that instigates an electric pulse that would run through a set of rotors.
06:43As they turn, it produces what we call ciphertext.
06:50If you press the D, it would come out as a T.
06:55If you press the D again, it would not come out as a T again, it would come out as
07:00a Z, or some other random letter.
07:04The word Hitler, for example, if used in a message, is scrambled.
07:11This version is sent using Morse code to the operator of another Enigma machine with the same settings.
07:18When the encoded word is typed in, it's possible to decipher the original message.
07:26It was a unique machine. Germany was leading the world in this.
07:31It turns every German frontline position in World War II into a veritable data and information processing center.
07:39And to make the entire process secure, there is the Enigma machine.
07:43The Germans believe their signals are secure because of the complexity hardwired into the Enigma machine.
07:52The great thing about the Enigma machine is the vast number of ways that it can be set up every
07:58day.
07:59If I've got three rotors, each rotor can have one of 26 positions.
08:04So that's 26 times 26 times 26, which is 17,500 different ways of setting that up.
08:10That sounds like a big number, but it's not.
08:13Here is where it gets fun, because on the front of the machine, the Germans have installed an extra device,
08:20which is called the plug board.
08:22If you had 10 cables, it's 150 million, million different ways to set up the plug board.
08:30So if you multiply all these different options together, you end up with 156 million, million, million different ways of
08:38setting it up,
08:39which is more, I think, than there have been seconds in the universe.
08:42The Germans figured, and I think justifiably, that it was unbreakable.
08:48But Denniston believes it's possible to crack the Enigma codes.
08:55He spends years recruiting mathematicians, linguists, and scholars from Britain's top universities.
09:02He reached out to the academic communities, to Cambridge and Oxford, and he'd go to dinner with them.
09:09And he was kind of sussing out, you know, who's good at this, who might be useful, looking especially at
09:15mathematicians.
09:16It was a professional challenge.
09:19You're a mathematician, you've got a problem, you want to solve that problem.
09:22And here's the added benefit, that you're doing it for your country and for your family, so that they don't
09:28have to grow up speaking German.
09:30A key recruit to Bletchley Park is a young academic from the University of Cambridge, an eccentric genius named Alan
09:39Turing.
09:41Let me tell you a bit about my uncle, Alan Turing.
09:44He has always been interested in everything to do with science and maths.
09:50He likes the planets, he likes chemistry, he likes genetics.
09:54But what he's really interested in is logic problems, mathematical logic.
10:01Turing is only 27 years old, but he's already a world-renowned leader in the solving of mathematical problems with
10:08the help of mechanical devices.
10:11One of the greatest contributions that Alan Turing brings to code breaking in this era is to understand that to
10:18attack the Enigma machine, the British are going to need their own machine.
10:24Turing begins by studying the critical work of Polish code breakers.
10:29Before the war, these men built a machine that could sift through the many variations of the early Enigma settings.
10:36In 1939, fearing the Nazis were about to invade their country, the Poles presented their device to the British and
10:44French intelligence services.
10:47Turing now assembles a radically upgraded British version of this machine, the bomb.
10:56It's huge. Imagine a wardrobe, maybe a bit bigger, very noisy, very clunky.
11:02The British feed intercepted German signals into the bomb.
11:06Then it rotates through the millions of possible Enigma settings.
11:12And by a process of elimination, reduces these to a smaller number that can be deciphered, revealing the original message.
11:22This is a sort of behemoth, the Leica which has never been seen before.
11:26It's got a hundred rotating drums.
11:28It's got one million soldered connections.
11:33How is this monster going to deliver?
11:36Turing and his team are in a race against time and Adolf Hitler.
11:42In August 1940, his Luftwaffe begins to attack Royal Air Force bases in the south of England.
11:50The Battle of Britain has begun.
12:14Hitler has ordered the Luftwaffe to destroy the Royal Air Force and its bases.
12:19Before he invades Great Britain by sea.
12:23The defense of the country depends on the young RAF pilots and airmen sent up to defend Britain.
12:32At Bletchley Park, Turing and his team have been working to improve the bomb.
12:38And now, they're decrypting the Luftwaffe's Enigma signals.
12:43You have got these extraordinary individuals, certainly not your carbon copy military types, who have achieved what was believed to
12:54be impossible.
12:58Turing calls his new machine victory.
13:04After decryption, teams decode the German signals, then feed the intelligence to the Royal Air Force Fighter Command.
13:13Fletchley Park is absolutely vital for the British defense in the Battle of Britain.
13:20Why? Because it reveals the Luftwaffe order of battle, so you can see who's going where when.
13:29And better still, it also reveals that the Germans have these direction-finding beams for their aircraft.
13:35And if you can intercept those beams, you know where the aircraft are going in advance, and you could therefore
13:41defend those targets far more adequately.
13:43It also reveals the true extent of German aircraft losses.
13:49Now, that's a really important piece of information for the RAF, because they know that the Germans are getting hammered.
14:00So, it is absolutely vital.
14:04The work at Bletchley Park is crucial to the RAF's victory in the Battle of Britain.
14:10Hitler indefinitely postpones the invasion.
14:13The scope and scale of the code-breaking operation expands with its success.
14:20The initial stage is the collection of the signals themselves at interception sites, dotted all around the UK and overseas.
14:30Any signals that are encrypted would be relayed via teleprinter or via dispatch rider, who would relay the material back
14:38to Bletchley Park.
14:42Now, Alan Turing's bomb machine starts the key part of your encryption process.
14:48Then, specialized teams will finalize that and decrypt that message, but it's in German now.
14:53So, now you've got translators who are working to translate the message into English.
14:57We needed linguists, we needed people who were good at clerical administrative tasks and typing, which is why the site
15:05mushroomed in terms of numbers and scale.
15:08Finally, you need to analyze the message and send it out to commanders in the field so that they can
15:14put it into use.
15:17This was to produce intelligence for all theatres of war.
15:22It wasn't just producing material for Europe.
15:25It was producing intelligence for North Africa, the Middle East, the Far East.
15:30This was a global war and it needed global intelligence.
15:35The Enigma signals intelligence generated by Bletchley Park is given a name.
15:41Ultra for Ultra Secret.
15:44Winston Churchill is its biggest champion.
15:46He has long believed that intelligence will help the Allies win the war.
15:51For a general or a politician, to be able to read the innermost thoughts of your enemy is like a
15:58superpower.
16:01Churchill would look at these intelligence reports in his bath, in his bedroom, out in the garden.
16:05He wanted to see the raw intelligence. He was fascinated by it.
16:09And Churchill could see that in Bletchley Park, he had a potentially war-winning tool.
16:13He made sure they had the resource they needed. He made sure they had access to him.
16:17He said that they could get in touch with him any hour of the day, no matter what.
16:25Churchill understands how important military intelligence can be.
16:29He was Home Secretary and led MI5, Britain's domestic intelligence service.
16:39Hitler, on the other hand, has long been skeptical of the usefulness of military intelligence.
16:46I don't think Hitler values intelligence in the same way that Churchill did.
16:51Hitler is a guy who believes in his instincts. He believes in his vision.
16:57Hitler is so caught in his own ideological thinking that he rejects out-of-hand intelligence that doesn't go along
17:06with his worldview.
17:07He doesn't rely on it all that much.
17:12German military intelligence, the Abwehr, is led by Admiral Wilhelm Canaris.
17:20Canaris has planned German espionage campaigns all over the world, including in the United States.
17:27By all accounts, Hitler is largely very impressed by him.
17:30Canaris is very sophisticated. He is really on top of his job.
17:34He is terrifically well-informed, and he has some good ideas.
17:40But Canaris is a realist, and the Abwehr's intelligence is often too candid for the Fuhrer.
17:47He keeps coming up with reports that suggest that a war with Britain would be a long, hard war, that
17:53a war with the United States would be unwinnable, that even a war with the Soviet Union would be much
17:57more difficult.
17:58Nobody wants to hear from pessimists right now, especially an invincible Hitler at the height of his power.
18:04Hitler believed predominantly in military might, the great German military machine.
18:11And to be honest, he has great reason to believe in the might of his army, because it's achieving things
18:16that have never been achieved before.
18:19In Britain, Churchill doesn't have the military resources to attack Germany on the ground.
18:25So he creates the Special Operations Executive, which launches espionage and sabotage campaigns throughout Nazi-occupied Europe.
18:39But Churchill knows that this is not enough.
18:41He needs an ally.
18:43He needs the United States.
19:02After months of Luftwaffe attacks, Prime Minister Winston Churchill is determined to persuade the United States to enter the war.
19:13Without America as an ally, he fears Hitler will defeat Great Britain and absorb the British Empire.
19:22One way for Churchill to gain American confidence and support is to share critical intelligence and information with the United
19:30States.
19:32Churchill is so desperate to get the Americans into the war that he does really anything he can to woo
19:37them.
19:37He wants the Americans to be impressed.
19:39He wants the Americans to enter this alliance, come into the war with confidence.
19:43And what could be more persuasive than showing off the Americans, telling them that you're on the way to building
19:49a pretty complete picture of everything your enemy is doing and thinking and saying in private?
19:56That's an ally you want to have.
19:59In February 1941, the first American delegation comes to Bletchley Park.
20:04Winston Churchill gives authorization.
20:06From then, the American and British partnership really started to move at pace. It blossomed.
20:15Intelligence officers from both countries worked together throughout 1941.
20:23But in December, when Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, cooperation evolves into alliance.
20:34America is now at war with Japan.
20:38And days later, with Germany.
20:41America has almost no intelligence service before we enter the war.
20:47So there's Army and Navy code breakers, but there's no equivalent of the British Foreign Intelligence Service.
20:53American intelligence is like the cottage industry.
20:56You know, it's the pre-industrial stage before Pearl Harbor occurs.
21:03Now the United States work with Britain to establish the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services.
21:12But as the Americans enter the war, the Germans still control a large portion of Soviet territory.
21:20And the Japanese continue to sweep through the Pacific and Southeast Asia.
21:24By 1942, you have an unprecedented transatlantic collaboration, intelligence sharing on every level.
21:36Americans are in every department in Bletchley Park working alongside Britain.
21:42So this is a really significant, enduring partnership.
21:47aircraftnamors'.
21:48Ultra's success gives the Allies an advantage, especially in the crucial Battle of the North Atlantic.
21:58It reveals the location of Nazi U-boats, allowing Allied navies to avoid German wolf packs
22:05and safely reroute the all-important konvoys.
22:10It has an incredible impact on the Battle of the Atlantic.
22:14As a matter of fact, it swings the entire battle in the Allies' favor.
22:20Despite this, most of the German high command still believe the Enigma codes are unbreakable.
22:27But Admiral Karl Donitz, the commander of the Nazi U-boat fleet,
22:33cannot understand how Allied ships keep sailing around his submarines.
22:39Admiral Donitz is by far the most security-obsessed military leader in the German war machine.
22:46And he sniffed out the fact that we're rerouting our convoys.
22:52Admiral Donitz orders an examination into the integrity of the Enigma codes and ciphers.
22:59His intelligence officers insist that the system is impregnable.
23:04They argue that the Allies are using radar to track U-boats.
23:16The Germans are so convinced that it is unbreakable that they don't see what's going on,
23:24even if it stares them into the face.
23:26They never try to prove that it has been broken.
23:29They always try to prove that it cannot be broken,
23:33meaning that they always end up at their preferred answer.
23:37Everything is fine.
23:45In February 1942, Donitz orders a security upgrade to the Enigma machine.
23:55A fourth rotor is added, strengthening the encryption even further.
24:03In 1942, the German U-boat flotillas changed from the M3 to the M4 Enigma,
24:10adding fourth rotor, which added a huge layer of complexity to attacking the cipher.
24:17Basically, it takes the odds of 150 million, million, million to one from the three rotor
24:22up to an unfathomable 92 septillion to one shot.
24:28This addition is a major setback for Bletchley Parker in the North Atlantic.
24:34It's almost like the light's going out on the grid of an electrical pattern.
24:38You can't find submarines anymore.
24:43Once again, German U-boats pose a grave threat to Allied shipping.
24:52Intelligence officers at Bletchley Park are no longer able to decrypt German naval signals.
24:57To utilize Ultra in the Battle of the Atlantic again,
25:00the British will attempt to seize the code books the Germans use to set their Enigma machines.
25:17The Allies are on the verge of losing the Battle of the Atlantic.
25:21The first half of 1942 is once again referred to as the Happy Time by German U-boat commanders.
25:30One thing that can help the Allies is to restart Ultra in the Atlantic,
25:35but they need to decrypt the new Enigma messages.
25:40This code material is absolutely priceless for the codebreakers at Bletchley Park.
25:45It was used to set up the machine.
25:48It shows how it's supposed to be configured for every single day of every single month.
25:54The British launch secret raids to extract any intelligence they can find on German submarines,
26:01ships, and military facilities, including Enigma code books.
26:06They call the raids Pinch Operations.
26:10Pinch is British slang for stealing.
26:13British Intelligence Officer Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming helps to coordinate Pinch Operations.
26:19Ian Fleming ends up at the Department of Naval Intelligence, almost by accident.
26:25He's got no experience in intelligence work, but he very quickly finds his feet.
26:30He has his gift for analysis and weighing up intelligence options.
26:35Fleming, who later writes the James Bond novels,
26:39plans a Pinch operation in connection with an Allied raid.
26:50Operation Jubilee will be a large amphibious landing,
26:54essentially a dress rehearsal for the expected invasion of Europe.
26:58It involves a thousand aircraft and more than 230 ships.
27:03Their target is the heavily fortified French port of Dieppe.
27:08The Allies know they're going to have to stage a landing in Western Europe
27:12in order to win the war against Hitler's Germany.
27:14It's a test to see if you can seize a port.
27:19The center of this was the Royal Marine Commando, which were a British unit.
27:22But the vast majority were Canadian infantry.
27:25And then, of course, this was the debut of the United States of America.
27:29There were 50 United States Rangers that were going to go into combat
27:33on European soil in the Second World War for the first time.
27:37Lieutenant Commander Fleming and a small team called 30 Assault Unit
27:42are part of the raiding force.
27:46They have a specific objective.
27:49With Fleming coordinating aboard ship,
27:5230 AU will attempt to enter the German Navy's regional headquarters
27:57at a nearby supply depot.
28:01Both will likely contain code books for the new Enigma machines.
28:06From a pinch perspective, what is really important about Dieppe
28:10is that they have all these code books waiting to be distributed,
28:14not only for the next month, but months in advance.
28:19But after initial success, the landing at Dieppe disintegrates.
28:25It is absolutely hell.
28:29You've got to run up this beach carrying all your kit and a rifle.
28:34And, of course, you've got German machine guns, mortars, artillery,
28:39you name it, firing at you.
28:45It becomes an absolute slaughter.
28:53Over half of the Allied forces at Dieppe are killed, wounded, or captured.
28:59Most of 30 Assault Unit's men are killed.
29:03At the end of the day, they come away with nothing,
29:06despite all the bloodshed.
29:10The raid on Dieppe is a failure from every angle.
29:17But the British still need German code books and intelligence
29:20to revive Ultra.
29:22Allied ships are ordered to make seizing German intelligence
29:26a part of every mission when possible.
29:34In the fall of 1942, HMS Petard is one of a small destroyer group
29:41sent to hunt Nazi U-boats.
29:44When they locate U-559, they launch depth charges
29:49and force it to the surface.
29:52The U-boat crew abandon their submarine.
29:55It's sinking slowly, and this gives the opportunity
29:59for the crew of HMS Petard to actually board the U-boat
30:03and try to pinch and capture the material
30:06from the sinking U-boat as it's going down.
30:11Three men rush inside.
30:13Lieutenant Tony Fasson, able seaman Colin Grazier,
30:17and a 16-year-old canteen assistant, Tommy Brown.
30:22They're down there working with flashlights,
30:25ransacking the place, looking for anything.
30:28But it's a race against time
30:30because the U-boat is starting to fill with water.
30:33The three British sailors have minutes
30:36to find useful intelligence.
30:52Three British sailors desperately search a crippled U-boat
30:55as it begins to sink.
30:59What they find could help win the war.
31:06They go down to the signals' office.
31:08Then they go into the captain's cabin
31:10and, sure enough, find the material, and a lot of it.
31:13These guys, freezing cold, petrified,
31:16are below deck, feeding crucial, rich signals intelligence,
31:21these cipher books, up the conning tower.
31:24Almost like a conveyor belt, one guy to another, to another.
31:30Suddenly, the submarine takes on this huge rush of water.
31:36The pressure of which pushes the teenager, Tommy,
31:39out of the conning tower like a cork from a bottle.
31:42But tragically, it kills the two men
31:45who have done this vital work below deck.
31:50They're actually trapped as the water starts to come in,
31:54and they give their lives to effect the pinch operation,
31:57which changes the course of the intelligence war.
32:02The courage of these three British sailors
32:04means Bletchley Park can once again
32:07decode the German Navy's Enigma messages.
32:10But now the codebreakers become victims of their own success.
32:15The number of enemy signals they intercept and decode
32:19grows so rapidly that the bomb machines
32:22can no longer handle the sheer volume of material fed into them.
32:28The Allies need to process military intelligence
32:32on an industrial scale.
32:35So Great Britain turns to its ally, the United States.
32:41We send our most precious asset the other side of the Atlantic.
32:45We send Alan Turing to America.
32:55In the winter of 1942,
32:58Turing meets Joe Desch,
33:00an electrical engineer
33:01at the National Cash Register Company in Dayton, Ohio.
33:07As a result, the bomb machines evolve into an electrical
33:11as well as a mechanical weapon against the Third Reich.
33:19Desch's machine is transformative technology.
33:23He's invented the first electronic computer memory.
33:29The new machines are six times faster
33:33and are mass-produced in the hundreds.
33:37By decrypting messages at such speed and scale,
33:41the Allies are able to access key German information
33:46and in combination with a mosaic of intelligence operations,
33:50deception, espionage, and sabotage,
33:53they can corroborate that their secret war is working.
34:03In the spring of 1943,
34:07Allied forces under the leadership of Dwight Eisenhower
34:09have forced the German and Italian armies
34:12out of North Africa.
34:15The Allies' plan is to next invade the island of Sicily.
34:20The only real problem with Sicily
34:23is that it's somewhat of an obvious target.
34:26If you're looking at a map, Sicily's the first big island.
34:29The Allies believe it's necessary
34:31to spread a little disinformation around.
34:34Make Hitler and the German planners
34:36think the landing is coming somewhere else,
34:38perhaps in the Balkan Peninsula to the east,
34:41anywhere but Sicily.
34:48In February 1943,
34:51Ian Fleming and other British intelligence officers
34:53formulate a plan.
34:56It emerges from a list of ideas known as the Trout Memo.
35:03The Trout Memo is so-called because it uses fly fishing
35:07as a kind of analogy for conducting deception operations
35:11against the Germans.
35:13Now, it's widely believed that this was largely written
35:16by Ian Fleming.
35:17It's very much in his style
35:19and it shows that very imaginative thinking
35:22for which he's later going to be absolutely renowned, of course.
35:26Most of the suggestions in it are pretty far-fetched
35:30but there's one that actually does catch the eye
35:33and that's this idea of putting false information on a corpse
35:37and then allowing it to be discovered by the enemy.
35:42Intelligence officers believe
35:44this could be a way to feed the Germans false plans
35:47for an allied invasion of the Balkans.
35:54It's a fiendish and dastardly idea
35:56if the Germans believe the false documents
35:58they will have the wrong idea
36:01of what the allies are going to get up to.
36:04The British named the plan Operation Mincemeat
36:08and present it to Eisenhower.
36:11Eisenhower's buy-in is required
36:12because Eisenhower is essentially
36:14the theater commander in the area.
36:16It's also indicative of American trust
36:19in this particular operation.
36:22With Eisenhower's approval,
36:25British intelligence moves to the next stage.
36:32They find the corpse of a homeless man in Britain
36:34and they build an entire story for him,
36:38a lifetime that he never actually enjoyed in person.
36:41They give him a uniform.
36:43They give him a career.
36:45They put identity cards in his wallet.
36:47They give him pictures of an imaginary girlfriend,
36:50the lovely Pam.
36:51He becomes Major Martin,
36:54British intelligence officer.
36:57The final step is to give Major Martin
36:59a briefcase containing fake plans
37:02for an allied invasion of the Balkans.
37:06The Allies must now get Major Martin's documents
37:09into the hands of Germany's intelligence chief,
37:13Admiral Canaris.
37:27In the early hours of April 30th, 1943,
37:31a British submarine drops a corpse
37:33dressed in the uniform of a royal marine
37:36into the sea off the west coast of Spain.
37:41A briefcase is attached to the corpse
37:43by a security chain.
37:47The British hope the documents inside the case
37:50will make their way to Adolf Hitler in Berlin.
37:55They've chosen Francisco Franco's Spain
37:58because they suspect the Spanish
38:00will pass the information to the Germans.
38:05The British know the German intelligence agencies,
38:08especially the Abwehr under Wilhelm Canaris,
38:11have a really good relationship with the Spanish.
38:14So this is a far more clever and subtle way
38:17of getting deception information into German hands
38:21rather than just dumping it off the coast of Germany.
38:25Put it off the coast of Spain
38:27and you've got a more plausible way
38:29of that information coming through the pipeline.
38:33A Spanish fisherman finds the body.
38:37Soldiers guarding the coast
38:38take it to Spanish Navy officers
38:40who tell German intelligence agents in Spain
38:44what they've found.
38:47But signals decrypted at Bletchley Park
38:49show the Germans are sceptical.
38:52The German agents in Spain
38:54simply don't take the bait back in British intelligence.
38:58There's this terrible panic
39:00that mincemeat is going to fail.
39:03You know, it's just going to be ignored.
39:07To ignite interest in Major Martin,
39:10British intelligence writes a letter
39:12to the Spanish authorities
39:14demanding the return of the briefcase
39:16and the document inside.
39:20They want to make it look
39:22as though the British are deeply worried,
39:24as though, you know,
39:24this really is a proper officer
39:26with real plans on him.
39:28This is a really daring gambit
39:31because it may seem too obvious,
39:33but actually,
39:34the British are lucky.
39:36What that does
39:37is to get the local German agents
39:40to get hold of the plans
39:42that Major Martin is carrying.
39:44They photograph them
39:46and they send those photographs
39:48back to their boss
39:49in Berlin,
39:51Wilhelm Canaris.
40:02Canaris is interested.
40:04He examines the plans for days,
40:07then hands them to Hitler.
40:10The Fuhrer already suspects
40:12the Allies will attack
40:14through the Balkans,
40:15so he's inclined
40:16to believe the information.
40:19But propaganda chief
40:20Joseph Goebbels is wary.
40:24Goebbels is smart,
40:25and Goebbels, after all,
40:26is the minister for propaganda,
40:28for lies.
40:29He knows what it means
40:30to deceive people.
40:31He thinks it's a bluff.
40:32The information Canaris gives
40:34Hitler confirms his instinct.
40:43Two days later,
40:46Bletchley Park decodes a message.
40:49The Germans are moving troops
40:51toward the Balkans.
40:55Operation Mincemeat is working.
41:00The work of Bletchley Park
41:02feeds into a deception campaign
41:03like this in a really important way.
41:05Ultra allows you to understand
41:07whether your enemy
41:08is buying the deception
41:11you're trying to sell.
41:12We can see,
41:14thanks to our Bletchley decryptions,
41:17that Hitler is pulling panzer units
41:20to the Balkans, to Greece,
41:22directly because of one dead corpse
41:26that's left floating
41:27off the shores of Spain.
41:35Two months later,
41:37the Allies land in Sicily
41:39and capture the island
41:40more quickly than anticipated.
41:45The depleted number
41:46of German defenders
41:47is a critical part
41:49of their success.
41:52This is one of the most successful
41:54intelligence operations
41:56of the Second World War.
42:02Canaris' reputation
42:03begins to suffer
42:04after Operation Mincemeat.
42:06As the war goes on after that,
42:08Canaris will be more and more
42:10disliked and distrusted
42:12by Hitler and the other elites
42:13of the regime.
42:14In 1944,
42:17the Third Reich abolishes
42:18the Abwehr
42:19and Canaris is accused
42:21of being involved
42:22in a plot to kill Hitler.
42:24A year later,
42:25he's hanged,
42:26just weeks before the end
42:28of World War II.
42:32Accurate intelligence
42:33is critical to military victory,
42:36but ultimately,
42:37the outcome is determined
42:38by combat.
42:40The decisive battle
42:41of the war
42:42against Nazi Germany
42:43is about to be fought,
42:45at terrible cost.
42:46in a strategically important
42:49Soviet city
42:50on the Volga River.
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