36. Seeds of a Scam
In late 1942, with Allied victory in North Africa seemingly just a matter of time, the question of “what next?” arose. With Africa cleared of the Axis, the entirety of southern Europe lay open for an Allied invasion. Sicily was the most obvious target, but because it was so obvious, the Allies wanted to trick the Axis into committing defenders elsewhere in the Mediterranean, instead of concentrating them in Sicily.
As early as 1939, a British intelligence memo, thought to have been written by Ian Fleming, James Bond’s creator, contained a useful deception ruse. It called for planting misleading papers on a corpse, that would then be found by the enemy. So in early 1943, British intelligence set out to find a corpse.