The Moment Of Surrender - Operation Mincemeat Part IV

00:00This is world's greatest con.

00:03I'm Brian Brushwood There's this moment It might have been waiting to find out if you got the job Might have been asking someone out on a date and waiting to hear back from it You might be defending your PhD thesis, but I am convinced that the feeling of this moment is Absolutely universal and every single one of us has had it.

00:24I call it the moment of surrender and And the one thing the only thing that's peculiar about mine is That it was broadcast on national television and you can watch it right now I'm on stage in Las Vegas Network television cameras are rolling all around me.

00:57There's a studio audience waiting on me It would be an understatement to say that there was tension thick in the air as my artistic heroes Penn & Teller are about to pass judgment on me It's that moment of surrender That's often the most telling about a long project, right?

01:17You've done all the hard work.

01:20All that's left is to find out how you did It's that moment that you go from totally in control to totally out of it in my moment pendulate leans forward somebody who I have watched since I was in second grade and He tells me that I failed And you could see it on my face I couldn't be happier to hear it If you're not familiar with Penn & Teller, they're two legendarily creative performers They're pretty much only five gods in all of magic and somehow Penn & Teller managed to be two of them I don't know how they pulled that off But they have the show where they dare the best and brightest of all of magic from all over the world To come on stage and try to fool them It's called Penn & Teller fool us and it's the highest rated show on the network television channel that it appears on When I said yes to doing this show I started a plan I Figured there were two ways you could play an appearance on fool us The first and most obvious way is to legitimately try to fool Penn & Teller with a magic trick to seriously play magic chess with two grand masters of the art and There are some magicians that try to do this.

02:38Some have even pulled it off but many many more fail This is because Penn & Teller are very very good at magic chess Without getting too far into the world of magic a trick that fools a magician tends to be dense To be charitable and that's fine for them to some magicians the distinction of fooling Penn & Teller means the world but for me I felt like a big waste of an opportunity Which brings us to the second way you can play a fool us appearance the way I played it From Austin, Texas It's not until halfway through cutting off my tongue that people realize wait a minute.

03:27It's a magic show Instead of focusing on the stated objective of the show to fool Penn & Teller you understand the real prize The real prize is the hearts and minds of the people who are watching at home again This is a very highly rated show You have to make a routine that's designed to delight and entertain to showcase the best of you not to fool Because anything you do that attempts to accomplish both is almost certainly going to do neither Yes at the end of the routine Penn's gonna tell you that he knows how your trick is done so what who cares Meanwhile, there are millions of people watching and they will remember how much fun they had with you In this moment, everybody thinks that you're focused on whether or not you fooled them the truth is You're only wondering if you've won their approval Because if you've won their approval you've won the approval of the millions who are ready to agree with them and That's where I am right here on stage completely surrendered I just want to make them smile.

04:42They're smiling right now.

04:43Well, that's the worst smile I've ever seen Looking over at Penn & Teller.

04:47I can see they've come to the end of their deliberations I'm gonna phone.

04:52I'm watching my two childhood heroes whisper to each other and Penn is about to speak waiting in that moment was agony but this This was ecstasy We are huge fans before you even came out here and the bribe did not hurt We did psychic surgery, which is what you were doing there on Conan O'Brien show and Teller did the moves to reach it and pull the stuff out of Conan's stomach and I Think you did it better We do know we do know how that's done.

05:38We also we have a pretty good idea You're waiting to hear if you got the job You're waiting for that text message that says sure with a smiley winky face.

05:47You're waiting to find out that you are a PhD It's the same moment.

05:52It's that moment of surrender and Montague and Chumlee are in that exact spot right now In our story they've sent the fictitious Bill Martin to his death in Spain the final product of months of effort and military ingenuity and now They have to wait There are no more levers to pull They're standing alone on stage That moment of surrender is Bracketed by two mountains that Canyon of waiting is Surrounded to the left on the one side.

06:28You have the moment that you have to give it up You have to let go and that other mountain where the superposition collapses and finally you have an answer You find out how well you did Now for me live on stage on a reality competition show, what is that a minute two minutes But for Chumlee and Montague They have to sit with that that discomfort for three full weeks Which has to be torture because it turns out that all of their hard work might be for nothing These documents aren't guaranteed to make it all the way to the desk of Hitler They might not fool him the tens of thousands of lives that they hope to save Might be lost despite all of their best efforts And there's nothing they can do about it Cons don't fool us because we're stupid they fool us because we're human and this This might be the world's greatest con You Remember the show that Bill Martin our fictitious war hero He was gonna go see right the one that would prove he was in London.

08:00Well tonight's the night it actually happens Now since Bill Martin is currently stuffed in a tube inside a submarine he's got some other people taking his place, right Montague and the beautiful secretary Jean Leslie arm-in-arm right up to the ticket taker Behind them Chumley and another 20 committee secretary between the four of them, they have two complete tickets and Two tickets lacking stubs because those are the ones in Bill's pocket But still they are all four going to attempt to gain entry When they do get to the ticket-taking guy He looks at this hot mess of half torn apart tickets and Montague decides to explain Oh, well, well, I can understand.

08:48This is a bizarre situation It's easily explained by the time I laid eyes upon these tickets for the show tonight Two of the tops were already ripped.

08:58It must have been some kind of mistake The ticket taker leaves to consult the manager Of course the entire story is a lie, but for this gatekeeper Montague knows he needs to put all his effort into that first impression the tableau Both Chumley and Montague are a military dress and their dates are decked to the nines I mean who's gonna step in the way of that?

09:25Ticket-taker guy and the manager they both come back.

09:28They apologize for the delay lets them in Another win for the tableau It's a rollicking show filled with singing dancing laughs After the final curtain the double date go for a nightcap at the gargoyle Club, which sounds like something I would have made up But it wasn't This is a bittersweet moment for Chumley and Montague because within a few hours Bill Martin is going to be found dead meanwhile They're sitting and having drinks at the gargoyle Club Where Bill Martin was born?

10:04Long nights at the club Was where Montague and Chumley dreamed up every element of Martin the fictitious military official destined to be discovered by the Nazis Amongst the backstory of Martin as a dashing soldier and love would be the poison pill These falsified letters between Allied high command that the laughably obvious target of Sicily was a faint and the real Offensive would come for both Greece and Sardinia on their way to the Balkans.

10:37I Mean, do you think they knew?

10:40They'd done it in this moment Or do you think they knew That it didn't matter either way their job was done.

10:50I have to assume They experienced that moment of surrender Chumley buys a round of drinks to Bill Martin And after they drink Chumley looks at his watch And says I wonder if he's afloat yet He was a plan this plan years and gestation and weeks and intense preparation was about to commence an Successful could save thousands of lives and end the war Was officially out of their hands Now what the double-daters didn't know in that moment was that this plan was working better than they'd hoped Which almost derails everything You All right Let's talk about Spain for a second during World War two Spain is technically neutral despite being under the control of a strongman dictator Franco But Italy and Germany, they're the ones that were supporting Franco during his rise to power.

12:20So while Spain is Officially not in the fight his support is tilted toward the Axis powers All right, let's break down what that means.

12:32First of all top man loves Hitler.

12:34Okay, great That means the army from which this guy came is sympathetic to the Nazis That means the rank-and-file police would be fascist friendly But not everyone in Spain loves Hitler not even within the military The plan to get Bill Martin into Spanish hands runs exactly like the 20 committee drew it up Just like we talked about the body really is found by a fisherman the fisherman really does call a doctor the doctor Recognizes by the smell alone that the man's dead, but here's where the plan works too.

13:06Well Instead of the doctor calling the cops like the 20 committee had hoped he reaches out directly to the Spanish Navy Now the Spanish Navy is by far the most pro-british part of the military This is a huge problem because the Spanish Navy will go out of their way to play fair and fair means the British get their top-secret documents back ASAP if the Nazis don't have their Sympathizers in the organization that has the body then they might not ever get their hands on the information The Very next day Bill Martin's corpse is brought to a local cemetery for the official autopsy Picture it a hot Spanish spring morning sweaty medical area under a tin roof.

13:54You got five witnesses there a British official the doctor the doctor's son who's also a doctor a Spanish Navy guy and an American pilot Who just by coincidence?

14:07happened to have crash-landed a few days earlier and Tags along just to see if he happens to recognize the body Of the five folks there our British official doesn't know the entire mincemeat plan But he does know his part get that briefcase into Spanish hands.

14:27So the Nazis could take the bait Which makes it really awkward when the Spanish official offers our guy the briefcase Hey, oh, by the way, this looks like important documents. Please take it. Go ahead.

14:44It's right there This is gonna blow the entire freaking plan if our British official does the most natural thing in the world and say, oh Well, thank you for the documents that obviously belong to us So our guy, our British official, he channels every ounce of Britishness in him and insists everyone follow proper procedure.

15:06The Spanish Navy, they should record that they found the briefcase and then return it to the British.

15:17Okay, one massive bullet dodged.

15:18Now, the autopsy, or hopefully the lack of a thorough autopsy.

15:23The glancing of the body is what I think everybody's hoping for.

15:30Because remember, they've done pretty good, but anybody who knows what they're doing will figure out that this is not a fresh body.

15:41This is a frozen, thawed corpse that is months old.

15:45And that is the last thing anyone should know.

15:50They make the first incision into the corpse of Bill Martin.

15:56And what follows is an explosion of compressed air, vile, noxious odor from a month old cadaver that was dead, frozen, transported through the entire vertical length of Europe, sunk into the water, baked in the sun, shown up on the beach side, and now ruptured.

16:17That stench fills the humid shack.

16:20Can you imagine that moment?

16:23Can you imagine almost thanking our British official when he steps in and says, upon his authority, the military for which this man just died, formally requests, stop it. No more op...

16:41Good God, can we stop this medical investigation?

16:45So if the doctor could just really quick make your judgment for the cause of death, that'd be great, because good God, ew.

16:54And the Spanish doctor does just that.

16:58According to him, Bill Martin died falling out of a plane and drowning.

17:05As far as anyone knows, from here on, that part of the story is now canon, a massive win for the 20 committee.

17:16Everyone disperses, which I believe is World War II talk for GTFOing.

17:22Later that day, Bill Martin is buried with full military honors.

17:28The anonymous death of Glendower Michael is transformed into a ceremony for a full-blown war hero.

17:38Locals come to pay their respects.

17:42Also there, our British official, who's been a little bit busy ever since the autopsy, spending his time, since Martin was found, flooding channels that he knew were monitored by the Nazis, saying that the Brits believed their mystery man found in the ocean was one of their own.

18:05And I know what you're wondering.

18:08Yes, his breadcrumbs had been followed.

18:12Also attending the funeral was Adolf Klaus, the Nazi intelligence operative known to be an Huelva.

18:20In all of the planning of the 20 committee, they were counting on Klaus being competent enough to get the information.

18:32It's a tricky situation.

18:33You don't want somebody who's bad at their job to have the information just pass right on by.

18:41You want them to recognize gold when they see it.

18:44You don't want somebody so hypervigilant because they might sniff out the ruse either.

18:48You need somebody efficient, somebody who will get the information, pass it up the chain as fast as possible. That was Klaus.

18:56Within one day, he had already alerted the head of Nazi intelligence in Spain that he was going to get whatever information he could on the body.

19:06Another day later, he had secured a list of the items found on the body, but nothing else.

19:11So it's now three days since Martin landed back in London.

19:17I got to imagine Montague and Chunley are losing their minds.

19:22I picture him chain smoking, knees bobbing, thinking about the fact that this information was supposed to be in the Nazi hands in minutes, hours, not days.

19:32They didn't really plan on the Spanish Navy being the ones in control of all of this.

19:39The one group of friends they actually had in all of Spain.

19:42Of course, they couldn't just let that team in on the ruse.

19:45Just because they're friendly doesn't mean they're leak proof.

19:48So they hit that wall and they finally make the decision.

19:52They got a goose along the process.

19:54They send a transmission to our British officer, the one in Huelva, but they send it on a channel that they knew was monitored.

20:03His orders are unambiguous.

20:05Get the documents in the briefcase because they are of a tremendous amount of value.

20:10That's the part they want the Nazis to hear.

20:14The 20 committee follows up in a back channel saying that, well, our British officials should be firm with the Navy.

20:24Don't be too demanding.

20:26Otherwise, they might actually hand it over.

20:28The Nazis got our fake message loud and clear.

20:32Klaus now has a firm target.

20:35Get whatever is in that briefcase.

20:37Moreover, his bosses knew something of value was right there in Huelva.

20:43Which only makes it all the more humiliating when, try as he might, dude fails.

20:50I mean, he gets pictures of the pocket litter, but nothing that was inside any kind of sealed envelopes, which on day four was officially transferred out of Huelva en route to Madrid, where Spanish naval intelligence was about to finally deal with it.

21:07It's weird to put it this way, but this is really bad.

21:11The 20 committee is just one step away from Operation Mincemeat being a total disaster.

21:17You can't con an honest John.

21:20Remember that we began with that.

21:23The 20 committee, they need this to fall into the hands of people who are going to do the wrong thing, leak it to the Nazis.

21:34So every mile these documents get closer to Madrid in neutral, fair hands is a potential time bomb for the 20 committee.

21:43The Spanish Navy are about to do the one thing that will ruin everything.

21:48And that's played by the rules.

21:50And that means that the only person who could rescue at this moment Operation Mincemeat is the most powerful and influential Nazi intelligence officer in all of Spain, Carl Eric Kylenthal. The problem is.

22:08He's the George Costanza of our story.

22:12Kylenthal is a dandy.

22:18He manicures his nails, rides around Madrid in a fancy car.

22:31He was well regarded in Nazi leadership, specifically Heinrich Himmler. He loved him.

22:35He thought the guy was a virtuoso, discovering every little nugget of information, bringing it back to leadership.

22:43But Kylenthal was far from the best.

22:46Now, Kylenthal did bring back a lot of information, but the problem was that a lot of it was garbage.

22:55For example, one day, random dude comes into Nazi intelligence office in Madrid, gets to sit down with Kylenthal, starts railing about how much he hates the Brits.

23:04I hate the British. I love Hitler.

23:07Well, the Nazis, they're going to destroy their enemies.

23:10Kylenthal recognizes talent when he sees it.

23:13And he agrees to send the man to England as a spy.

23:19A week after our newly minted spy leaves, Kylenthal gets a letter.

23:23The new spy says, it's me, your new spy. I'm in England.

23:27I'm ready to work.

23:28In order to ensure their communications are secure, I've already networked with someone in Lisbon, Portugal.

23:34That'll be the relay point for all the letters. That's right.

23:38All communication will come through Portugal from England.

23:41All the money in the operation should just keep on sending that money to Portugal.

23:47Dude never went to England.

23:49He went to Portugal.

23:50He just wrote a bunch of bullshit to Kylenthal in exchange for money that was being sent to keep the scoops coming.

23:58The information was garbage, which becomes a point of fascination for British intelligence who are monitoring every bit of intel coming into Kylenthal.

24:07Who is writing this nonsense?

24:09And why was Kylenthal believing it?

24:11British intelligence eventually finds the guy and they legit move him to England.

24:18Rope him in as a double agent, codenaming him Garbo, Zingretta Garbo, the actress.

24:26Not for the Garbo-age information he was doing, although that would work too.

24:32The Brits knew that Kylenthal would pass along the Minskmeet information because he was already passing on fake information.

24:40And there was a reason Kylenthal was so eager to be seen as somebody who always had the intel he needed to for survival.

24:49Kylenthal was half-Jewish, and even though he'd already gone through every official channel to have his bloodline declared pure, he was never going to be in Nazi leadership in Germany.

25:04In fact, the closer he got to Berlin, the more likely it was that the powers that be would turn against him.

25:14So he thought a safe little outpost in Spain started making himself useful.

25:18Even if his desire to be seen as a crucial link in the chain led to the propagation of completely false information.

25:27The real M from the James Bond series, John Godfrey, he once said that twin fatal flaws of a spy are wishfulness and yesmanship.

25:39Kylenthal had both in spades.

25:41Now while Kylenthal could be relied upon to pass the Minskmeet information up the chain, there was no assurances that he had the wherewithal to actually secure it.

25:59So we're at five days since Bill Martin hits the shores of Huelva.

26:15The Nazis still don't have the information laid out for him.

26:21At the 20 committee offices, Montague starting to get annoyed.

26:24He complains about little things, how low the ceilings are, how loud the office is, how overworked he is.

26:30Across the continent, Nazi intelligence, they're on fire.

26:34The acquisition of the contents of this briefcase is now a top concern and it's all hands on deck.

26:41Nazi intelligence in Portugal is called in as well as the Gestapo.

26:46If anyone has a connection to anyone in the Spanish Navy, now is the time to call in the favor.

26:52A power play is made by leveraging the head of Spanish counterintelligence.

26:56He attempts to secure the briefcase just as it's being held in San Fernando on the way to Madrid. And he fails.

27:05Only coming back with pictures of everything else in the briefcase, but crucially, none of the sealed letters.

27:14And another day goes by. And another. And another.

27:18The briefcase makes it from San Fernando to Madrid.

27:25Now this is a failure point the 20 committee didn't foresee.

27:37The Nazis need to be competent enough to secure the package. They're Nazis.

27:43The whole reason they're a problem is because they're good enough usually to be really awful and dangerous people.

27:53And now is when they're going to screw everything up and totally just fail at achieving their one goal.

27:59This is how close the whole operation came to failure.

28:02The information is in the hands of Spanish intelligence.

28:05Their next job is to hand it over to the British.

28:09On the eighth day, it's at this very last moment that Spanish intelligence walks over and hands the information to the Nazis.

28:19In Madrid, the letters were removed from the bottom of the envelopes, leaving the seals intact.

28:30Now, technically, Killenthal, he's not the head of intelligence in Spain.

28:35That title belongs to an older guy, right?

28:38And it's the older guy who first comes in contact with the intel.

28:42He spoke English, so he read the missives.

28:45He immediately was suspicious of them, specifically that they were mentioning the code name of an operation in the exact same letter where they're disclosing their targets.

28:55It was either uncharacteristically sloppy or too perfect.

28:58But all of those worries are washed away the second Killenthal gets his hands on the information.

29:06I'm certain he's thinking, dude, if the scraps that Garbo's passing me is making me a favorite, this stuff's going to make me a star.

29:17His report to German high command was explosive.

29:19He relished in every random overwrought 20 committee detail, putting a big fat Nazi rubber stamp on every piece of evidence provided.

29:29He even added stuff.

29:30Killenthal tells high commands that the pilot of the plane itself had been captured and was being interrogated, which wasn't even a true thing.

29:39The plane and the pilot never existed.

29:42Crucially, he sweetened one key detail.

29:44He said of all things, the show tickets, which technically were dated on the 22nd, were instead for a London show on the 27th.

29:56The body was found on the 30th.

30:00This made information five days more relevant, although possibly complicated the story of why the corpse looked so horrendously decomposed.

30:09Who cares, who cares?

30:10Kylenthal is summoned to Berlin personally.

30:13He's in to brief the high command on his findings.

30:17I want to make something perfectly clear here because we've been working up to this for four episodes now.

30:29The con man gets the moment of surrender.

30:38All the hard work is done, and it's up to the Mark to fool himself.

30:50The Mark gets the gut feeling, a powerful instinct honed over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution.

30:59What do we mean when we say I just had a gut feeling?

31:08I mean, this whole story began with me telling you guys about how I ignored my gut not to trust this random weirdo with a white van to buy some fake speakers that turned out to be garbage.

31:22Instead, I let the fantasy drive me to do something that I knew was a bad idea.

31:27And in the process, I got made the sucker.

31:30The human mind is this incredible, vast, fascinating, weird organ.

31:35So much of what we know is buried beyond what we can articulate.

31:42That hunch, that intuition, that gut feeling, that instinct is often the rest of our mind bubbling up around the edges of a logical process.

31:53You don't got the words, but you know it. You feel it. And it's verifiable.

31:59In 2016, Italian researchers recorded a bunch of people grabbing a water bottle.

32:04Half of them were told to drink out of it, and the other half were told to pour it into a cup.

32:14The researchers then showed a few seconds of those videos to new people, specifically, it was edited so that the clip just ended right before the first volunteers touched the bottle.

32:24The folks watching the video, they were then asked, did they drink from the bottle or did they pour it into the glass?

32:34The video watchers guessed correctly, beyond statistical chance.

32:37There was something in the movement, or the face, or in their eyes, or their intention, something that correctly guided those viewers to the right choice, even knowing they were totally guessing.

32:51And this goes even farther.

32:53In his book, The Gift of Fear, security expert Gavin DeBecker, he says that our intuition is literally designed to save our lives.

33:03Think about it, man.

33:05We ain't got long teeth.

33:07We don't have sharp claws.

33:09We don't have thick scales.

33:11We're not very fast.

33:12Honed over thousands of years of evolution, we have one thing going for us, intuition.

33:19It's the key reason why humans are the dominant species on the entire planet.

33:26And Gavin's message is if you want to avoid predators, you listen to your gut.

33:33Humans have one gift.

33:35We're very good at knowing how to stay alive.

33:40DeBecker says that the most common way we get ourselves into trouble, sometimes violent or deadly trouble, is when we ignore that gut feeling, that instinct in favor of modern sensibilities.

33:55You don't want to leave a crowded nightclub because people might think you're being rude.

34:01Trusting your intuition, that gut instinct gets you out of trouble.

34:05Ignoring it is what gets you into it.

34:07Now, statistically, our gut feelings can be as wrong as often as they're right.

34:14Gut feeling can be a breeding ground for prejudices or convenient solutions to complicated problems.

34:19Yes, they are definitely not a cure-all.

34:22Hell, we just talked about how Kylenthal's gut feeling is that every slice of information that comes his way must be totally true, and that didn't make him a better spy.

34:33But the question is, is there one moment when gut feelings are most valuable?

34:38I can already hear you smiling because, of course, the answer is yes, and it's very relevant to everything we've talked about in the last four episodes.

34:51Gut feelings can aid you in a crisis situation when data and further discussion is redundant or impossible.

34:56You don't have time to say it out loud or talk it out or Socratic dialogue, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

35:05You just know what needs to happen.

35:07And cons are reliant on manufactured crisis moments just like this.

35:11Gut intuition is something that can literally keep you ahead of the game.

35:20No matter what con job you ever hear about, there is one universal truth.

35:26Whether you're buying stolen speakers out of the back of a white van, or shaping the future of the Third Reich, it's the fact that the con man has a moment of surrender and that the mark's only protection is that gut feeling that this ain't right.

35:44Dissect what you can, but in the spur of the moment, trust your instincts.

35:50And keep all of this in mind as our lie travels to Berlin.

35:58Because you can learn a lot by keeping track of who is acting on instinct and who is overthinking it. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ Oh, boy.

36:08So far, we've narrowly avoided disaster of the autopsy.

36:11We got the information in the hands of the Nazis.

36:31This Plinko chip, when it was first dropped, it seems to have just ricocheted far away from the grand prize before reversing course.

36:41Now, despite the bizarre route, it now looks like it's going to be on a very promising path.

36:47The 20 committee failed, but in the process, made their information all the more tantalizing, all the more believable, all the more important.

36:56Kuhlenthal being excited to take full credit, that's fantastic.

37:00And as our final prize comes into focus, there's yet another reason for us to start smiling. Hitler is pissed.

37:11He's just lost one eighth of his troops, all of his troops in North Africa.

37:21He's now losing the naval battle, and that's on top of the Eastern Front being more and more of a disaster.

37:28Functionally, he's becoming more distrustful of his generals.

37:31He thinks all of them are disloyal and competent.

37:34He needs good news. Sound familiar?

37:37What's more, this good news is something he can actually use to shame his other generals.

37:45Hey, dummies, y'all are reinforcing the wrong area.

37:49Thankfully, good old Hitler, your boy, is here to tell you what to do. Heil, yeah.

37:56This is something he can believe in. Just one problem.

38:00Our last gatekeeper before Hitler himself, the guru to his Shang Tsung, Alexis Baron von Ruhner, the head of Nazi army intelligence.

38:14Von Ruhner had developed a reputation for being able to divine all the intentions of the Allies.

38:25His method involved gathering a bunch of small points of data, coming to his own conclusion, instead of believing the big truths from intelligence.

38:33Instead, he grabbed a bunch of those small truths from the origins of those findings, and from there, he made his own conclusions.

38:44Von Ruhner is in every way the opposite of Kylenthal.

38:48He's very, very good at spotting bullshit.

38:52And he might treat our information more suspiciously if Kylenthal is touting it.

38:58If there's any little flaw here, he's gonna notice it.

39:03If there's too many flourishes, he'll sniff them out.

39:08He's also Hitler's most trusted intelligence analyst.

39:12What von Ruhner says is what Hitler believes.

39:17Okay, we gotta pause here to point something out.

39:24We try our best to put the facts of a story first, and there's plenty of dramatizations of personalities, but I'm trying to keep those in the greater truth as we know it.

39:37The next bit here is nothing but a guess.

39:40It's undefined by any official documents.

39:42It is not confirmed by Ben McIntyre's book, and I sure as hell don't have any rock-solid details.

39:50But here it is.

39:51Alexis Baron von Ruhner, our last, most challenging gatekeeper between the 20 Committee and Hitler, hated Hitler and wanted to sabotage the Nazi effort and put it to a permanent end.

40:07He was a monarchist and believed the Nazis to be a bunch of thugs.

40:13If this is true, it begs a very interesting question.

40:18Why would von Ruhner be in Nazi leadership, let alone the most trusted intelligence official in Hitler's side? Who knows?

40:29We do know that during the run-up to D-Day, this guy massively over-inflated troop counts, which was something crucial to helping the Allied victory.

40:42Von Ruhner, he was not tied to that attempt to kill Hitler on July 20th, 1944, the one that inspired that 2008 movie, Valkyrie, but for the Gestapo, seemed close enough.

40:53Von Ruhner is among the 7,000 that were arrested after the plot and among the nearly 5,000 killed for it.

41:04In his final message to his wife, he decried the Nazi regime and he gets executed in public.

41:11The murder is filmed for Hitler's personal collection.

41:14But that's years from this moment.

41:16We'll never know what's going through von Ruhner's head right now, at this moment, as he pours over the documents created by Chumlee and Montague.

41:31Is he buying this?

41:32Does he chuckle when he's reading this weird soap opera subplot?

41:36Does he see this for the total con that it obviously is?

41:41And if he does think it's a hoax, and to be honest, I believe he would.

41:47Does he recognize that this is the perfect poison pill to feed Hitler?

41:53May 11th, von Ruhner does a full review of the 20 committee ruse and officially buys everything.

42:06Specifically that the Germans had two to three weeks to reinforce Greece before the British invasion.

42:16Furthermore, they're gonna fake reinforcing Sicily.

42:19Von Ruhner, the allies whisperer, even puts his stamp on his report saying, yep, definitely not a plant and should totally be regarded as super legitimate.

42:27Just one more stop.

42:29Three weeks after Bill Martin has hit the shores of Spain, the documents hit the only desk that matters.

42:57Adolf Hitler reads the report from von Ruhner, page after page after page.

43:07He finishes, closes the file, and he turns to a trusted confidant and says, I won't try to do a Hitler impression here, but some version of, couldn't this be a corpse they just deliberately planted?

43:31Let's stop one last time.

43:33From the beginning of this story, I told you, cons don't fool us because we're stupid.

43:42They fool us because we're human and there is no greater example of this.

43:48We're talking about the biggest villain in modern human history and he's asking the exact right question that he should.

43:58His gut is telling him, this sounds like a con and that's exactly what it is.

44:08Oh, I don't know though.

44:11There's all these incompetent generals and the embarrassment of the losses in Africa, possibility of the Soviet plan of fire continuing.

44:23I mean, this looks like good news, right?

44:27Why shouldn't Hitler believe it?

44:29And just like that, in that moment, the 20 committee had him.

44:38Hitler, ignoring his gut reaction, instead focusing on the narrative, the narrative that would benefit himself.

44:49We don't know what else was said during that meeting, but that same day, Hitler issued a directive that Sardinia and the Peloponnese are now the highest value targets of the Allies.

45:06This sets off a massive wave of reaction from the rest of the German intelligence community.

45:12At this point, they start a re-examination of all of the evidence that led Hitler to this whatever is happening right now.

45:21They discover Kuhlenthal's shortcuts and all of his embellishments.

45:24Kuhlenthal starts defending himself like his life depends on it. Because it does.

45:28Even famous Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels looks over the 20 committees' work and says, yeah, bro, this smells like bullshit.

45:37But what could Goebbels do?

45:39Tell Hitler that he can't have the narrative that he wanted?

45:45The one that benefited him?

45:49More than that, what if Goebbels was wrong?

45:51That'd be the end.

45:52So he kept his opinions to himself.

45:54On May 12th, the 20 committee found out that the Germans were moving troops.

46:02An explosion of emotion came over this small cramped quarters.

46:10All of this, the planning, the writing, the staging, the getting a frozen corpse foot into a boot, all of it, it worked.

46:20Did it happen because of the imagination of Fleming?

46:23The conception of Chumley?

46:25The illustration of Montague?

46:26The incompetence of Kuhlenthal?

46:28The treachery of von Runner? Sure, why not? All of those. No, wait. Hell, hell no. None of those.

46:39Some of them, all of them, who cares?

46:43Nothing could have happened without every piece of this puzzle.

46:47Something this big is beyond any single effort.

46:49What an effort it was.

46:54The Nazis, they really bought it, man.

46:58Payne Jenner, the Desert Fox, Erwin Rommel is sent from Sicily to Greece to assume command.

47:11It's hard not to laugh.

47:14The Germans transfer a group of Arrboats, those are German minesweepers and mine layers, from Sicily and they lay three additional minefields off the Greek coast.

47:28They move three panzer divisions to Greece.

47:31Get giddy even listing this stuff.

47:32All preparing for a war that would never arrive.

47:37Instead, the real Operation Husky is an unqualified success.

47:42Oh my god, it worked!

47:46Hitler just got played, just like they drew it up!

47:53In your face, Hitler! Oh god.

47:57The Allies only suffer 5,532 deaths out of their 160,000 strong offensive.

48:02They are so overwhelming that many Italian troops begin giving up their positions right there on the spot, which leads to another massive reason why Husky is known as a success.

48:25So humiliated is Italy by the invasion that its own people rise up and topple Benito Mussolini within three weeks of Allied boots hitting the ground.

48:37This disaster forces Hitler to divert forces over to Italy, where they're now an occupying force.

48:48By the end of the war, one-fifth of the entire Nazi army was in southern Europe trying to clean up the mess caused by Minsk meeting.

48:59All in that one moment.

49:00The moment when the story you want to believe overtakes what you know in your gut.

49:07What you know is right.

49:10The stakes are massive, but the game's always the same.

49:15And this time, the world's greatest villain, Adolf Hitler, fell victim to what was quite possibly the world's greatest con.

49:28This episode of World's Greatest Con was written by Justin Robert Young and me, Brian Brushwood, your humble host.

49:50Produced by Dog & Pony Show Audio.

49:57Special credit goes to Operation Mincemeat, the book by Ben McIntyre, where we got most of our information.

50:10By the way, of course, you've got questions.

50:13We want to give you answers, so send them in right now to worldsgreatestcon at gmail. com.

50:18Next episode is going to be a real special one.

50:21You're going to meet my co-creator and partner in crime.

50:26You're going to get a peek behind the curtain of exactly how all of this came together, why we selected the stories.

50:33You're going to get to hear all the little bits and pieces that didn't quite fit in, but are awesome in and of themselves.

50:40We're going to answer all the questions and comments that you guys have been sending in since we started asking for them.

50:46And most importantly, we're going to discuss where we go next.

50:49As I record this, since day one of the launch, we remain the number one top trending podcast in all of Pocket Casts.

50:56Justin and I didn't know how good this was going to be and how much you guys would love it.

51:05And we want to share with you the vision for the future.

51:11So drop us an email.

51:13And in the meantime, find one friend that you think would like this podcast and share it with them, because I have a feeling we're onto something big here.

51:22We'll see you next episode.

51:24Diamond Club hopes you have enjoyed this program.

51:26Dog & Pony Show Audio