01x09 - Secrets And Lies

[bunniefuu]

[dramatic music]

♪



and the British know they will need
every advantage to stop the Nazis.

They create one in a small group

of brilliant mathematicians
and scholars

assigned to work secretly
in a quiet country home

called Bletchley Park.

With the help of a discovery first made

by Polish intelligence officers,

this team will work to break the key

to the Enigma code,

the encryption used for German
military communications.

This crucial step is the first of many

in the intelligence w*r
waged by the Allies.

♪

All wars change the world,

but none of them changed the world

like the Second World w*r did.

Japan is on the march.

Germany is on the march.

No one can imagine the nightmare

they're about to unleash...

the most destructive w*r
in human history.

Suddenly, the world
is turned upside down,

and all hell is let loose.

♪

The West is stunned
by the speed of the advance.

You get the Allies,
led by the big three...

Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin...

men who are dealing

with immensely complicated questions.

It's the biggest military
operation of human history.

The Allies have to come together

not just militarily,

but industrial scale

it's a global perspective.

They have to fight in every climate

from the Arctic
to the jungles of the Pacific

to the deserts of Africa
and the depths of the ocean.

♪

But there was no certainty of victory.

It was going to be
a horrific bloodbath.

We see humans at their absolute worst,

how they treat other human beings.

And we see them at their absolute best,

willing to give their lives
that others might live.

World w*r II was a struggle in which
there could be one victor...

and one vanquished.

[expl*si*n, air-raid siren blaring]

♪

[bells tolling]

♪

In the summer of 1940,

Great Britain is threatened
by n*zi Germany.

♪

Adolf Hitler's armies

have torn through Poland,

Scandinavia, and Western Europe.

♪

Even France has fallen.

♪

Prime Minister Winston Churchill fears

Britain will be next.

The first few weeks
of Winston Churchill's

prime ministership
are probably the worst

and most disastrous weeks
in the history of Britain...

the most catastrophic defeat
on the continent of Europe.

Outclassed by the German Wehrmacht

the Luftwaffe in the skies above...

♪

Britain is facing defeat
and starvation.

[explosions]

By 1940, the British position

looks practically hopeless.

They've met the Wehrmacht
a couple of times,

and on both occasions...
Norway and Dunkirk...

they wound up running away,

evacuating from the continent
under fire.

[air-raid siren blaring]

I think when you face
the enormity of the challenge

that Britain faced in 1940,

if you're up against a stronger army,

you've got to find other ways
to get round them.

The British have been working to crack

enemy military codes since the outbreak

of World w*r I in 1914.

Alastair Denniston

leads the British government's
code and cipher school,

located at Bletchley Park...

an old manor house
in the English countryside.

He served as an intelligence
officer in the Royal Navy

in World w*r I

and has spent his entire
career in cryptology.

♪

Denniston predicted
that accurate cryptanalysis

of the Wehrmacht's codes
would be an important weapon

in any w*r with Germany.

[expl*si*n]

We talk about the German way of w*r.

Sometimes we say blitzkrieg
or lightning w*r.

It's about tanks. It's about aircraft.

It's about mobile infantry,
and, of course, a*tillery...

♪

All working together in
the greatest possible harmony.

[g*nf*re]

♪

They need to be able to communicate

with each other in real time.

Vast technical improvements
in radio in the '20s and '30s

make this possible.

The radio is as important
to the blitzkrieg

as the tank or the Stuka dive b*mber.

It is Alastair Denniston who realizes

that this German reliance

on technical means of communication

is also a real Achilles' heel.

If someone can step
into that communications loop,

they can intercept German reconnaissance
reports, German orders.

They can intercept, in a sense,

German intentions.

Denniston understands

that signals intelligence is essential

to combat Germany's
new mechanized tactics.

If you don't have vast numbers of tanks

and you don't have the luxury
of overwhelming military force,

you need to find a way to win a w*r.

And that can involve using
a bit of this... intelligence.

It provides an incredible
force multiplier,

particularly when you're outnumbered,

that may give you that chance

that you never thought you had before.

♪

But cracking the German ciphers

is seemingly impossible.

They're created by a complex device...

♪

The Enigma machine.

♪

The Enigma machine itself

looks like a cross between a
cash register and a typewriter.

And it's an electromagnetic machine

that scrambles plaintext into a code.

♪

You press the key,

and that instigates an electric pulse

that would run through a set of rotors.

As they turn, it produces
what we call ciphertext.

♪

If you press the D...

it will come out as a T.

♪

If you press the D again,

it would not come out as a T again.

It would come out as a Z...

or some other random letter.

The word "Hitler," for example,

if used in a message, is scrambled.

♪

This version is sent using Morse code

to the operator
of another Enigma machine

with the same settings.

When the encoded word is typed in,

it's possible to decipher
the original message.

♪

It's a unique machine.

Germany was leading the world in this.

♪

It turns every German front
line position in World w*r II

into a veritable data- and
information-processing center.

And to make the entire process secure,

there is the Enigma machine.

The Germans believe
their signals are secure

because of the complexity hardwired

into the Enigma machine.

♪

The great thing about
the Enigma machine is

the vast number of ways that
it can be set up every day.

If I've got three rotors,

each rotor can have one
of 26 positions.

So that's 26 times 26 times 26,

which is 17,500 different ways
of setting that up.

That sounds like a big number,
but it's not.

Here is where it gets fun,

because on the front of the machine,

the Germans have installed
an extra device,

which is called the plugboard.

If you had 10 cables,

it's 150 million million different ways

to set up the plugboard.

So, if you multiply all these
different options together,

you end up with 156 million
million million different ways

of setting it up,
which is more, I think,

than there have been seconds
in the universe.

The Germans figured,
and I think justifiably,

that it was unbreakable.

♪

But Denniston believes it's possible

to crack the Enigma codes.

♪

He spends years
recruiting mathematicians,

linguists, and scholars

from Britain's top universities.

He reached out
to the academic communities,

to Cambridge and Oxford,

and he'd go to dinner with them.

And he was kind of
sussing out, you know,

who's good at this,
who might be useful,

looking especially at mathematicians.

It was a professional challenge.

You're a mathematician.
You've got a problem.

You want to solve that problem.

And here's the added benefit that
you're doing it for your country

and for your family so that they don't
have to grow up speaking German.

♪

A key recruit to Bletchley Park

is a young academic from
the University of Cambridge,

an eccentric genius named Alan Turing.

Let me tell you a bit
about my uncle Alan Turing.

He has always been interested

in everything to do
with science and maths.

He likes the planets.
He likes chemistry.

He likes genetics.

But what he's really interested in

is logic problems, mathematical logic.

Turing is only 27 years old,

but he's already
a world-renowned leader

in the solving of mathematical problems

with the help of mechanical devices.

One of the greatest contributions

that Alan Turing brings
to code breaking in this era

is to understand that
to attack the Enigma machine,

the British are going
to need their own machine.

♪

Turing begins by studying
the critical work

of Polish code breakers.

Before the w*r,
these men built a machine

that could sift
through the many variations

of the early Enigma settings.

In 1939,

fearing the Nazis were about
to invade their country,

the Poles presented their device

to the British and French
intelligence services.

♪

Turing now assembles

a radically upgraded British version

of this machine, the Bombe.

♪

It's huge.

Imagine a wardrobe,
maybe a bit bigger...

very noisy, very clunky.

The British feed intercepted
German signals into the Bombe.

Then it rotates through the millions

of possible Enigma settings...

♪

And, by a process of elimination,

reduces these to a smaller number

that can be deciphered,

revealing the original message.

♪

This is a sort of behemoth,

the like of which
has never been seen before.

It's got 100 rotating drums.

It's got one million
soldered connections.

♪

How is this monster going to deliver?

Turing and his team
are in a race against time

and Adolf Hitler.

In August, 1940,

his Luftwaffe begins to attack

Royal Air Force bases
in the south of England.

The Battle of Britain has begun.

♪

♪

[air-raid siren blaring]

Hitler has ordered the Luftwaffe

to destroy the Royal Air Force
and its bases

before he invades Great Britain by sea.

♪

The defense of the country

depends on the young
RAF pilots and airmen

sent up to defend Britain.

[g*nf*re]

At Bletchley Park, Turing and his team

have been working to improve the Bombe.

And now they're decrypting

the Luftwaffe's Enigma signals.

♪

You have got these
extraordinary individuals,

certainly not your carbon-copy
military types,

who have achieved

what was believed to be impossible.

♪

Turing calls his new machine Victory.

♪

After decryption,

teams decode the German signals,

then feed the intelligence

to the Royal Air Force fighter command.

Bletchley Park is absolutely vital

for the British defense
in the Battle of Britain.

♪

Why? Because it reveals
the Luftwaffe order of battle,

so you can see who's going where when.

♪

And better still, it also
reveals that the Germans

have these direction-finding
beams for their aircraft.

And if you can intercept those beams,

you know where the aircraft
are going in advance,

and you can therefore
defend those targets

far more adequately.

It also reveals the true extent
of German aircraft losses.

Now, that's a really important
piece of information

for the RAF because they know

that the Germans are getting hammered.

♪

So it is absolutely vital.

The work at Bletchley Park is crucial

to the RAF's victory
in the Battle of Britain.

Hitler indefinitely postpones
the invasion.

The scope and scale
of the code-breaking operation

expands with its success.

The initial stage is the collection

of the signals themselves

at interception sites

dotted all around the UK and overseas.

Any signals that are encrypted
would be relayed

via teleprinter or via dispatch rider,

who would relay the material
back to Bletchley Park.

♪

Now Alan Turing's Bombe machine

starts the key part
of your encryption process.

Then specialized teams
will finalize that

and decrypt that message.

But it's in German now,
so now you've got translators

who are working to translate
the message into English.

We needed linguists.
We needed people who...

were good at clerical, administrative
tasks and typing,

which is why the site mushroomed

in terms of numbers and scale.

Finally, you need
to analyze the message

and send it out
to commanders in the field

so that they can put it into use.

[cannons blasting]

This was to produce intelligence

for all theaters of w*r.

♪

It wasn't just producing
material for Europe,

it was producing intelligence
from North Africa,

the Middle East, the Far East.

This was a global w*r,

and it needed global intelligence.

The Enigma signals intelligence

generated by Bletchley Park
is given a name...

Ultra, for ultra secret.

Winston Churchill
is its biggest champion.

He has long believed that intelligence

will help the Allies win the w*r.

For a general or a politician,

to be able to read
the innermost thoughts

of your enemy is like a superpower.

Churchill would look
at these intelligence reports

in his bath, in his bedroom,
out in the garden.

He wanted to see the raw intelligence.

He was fascinated by it.

And Churchill could see
that in Bletchley Park,

he had a potentially w*r-winning tool.

He made sure they had
the resources they needed.

He made sure they had access to him.

He said that they could get
in touch with him any hour

of the day, no matter what.

♪

Churchill understands

how important
military intelligence can be.

He was Home Secretary and led MI5...

Britain's domestic
intelligence service.

[speaking German]

[all speaking German]

Hitler, on the other hand,
has long been skeptical

of the usefulness
of military intelligence.

I don't think
Hitler values intelligence

in the same way that Churchill did.

Hitler is a guy who believes
in his instincts.

He believes in his vision.

Hitler is so caught in his
own ideological thinking

that he rejects out of hand
intelligence

that doesn't go along
with his worldview.

He doesn't rely on it all that much.

♪

German military
intelligence, the Abwehr,

is led by Admiral Wilhelm Canaris.

Canaris has planned
German espionage campaigns

all over the world,

including in the United States.

By all accounts, Hitler is
largely very impressed by him.

Canaris is very sophisticated.

He is really on top of his job.

He is terrifically well-informed.

And he has some good ideas.

♪

But Canaris is a realist.

And the Abwehr's intelligence

is often too candid for the fuehrer.

♪

He keeps coming up
with reports that suggest

that a w*r with Britain
would be a long, hard w*r,

that a w*r with the United States
would be unwinnable,

that even a w*r with the Soviet Union

would be much more difficult.

Nobody wants to hear
from pessimists right now,

especially an invincible Hitler

at the height of his power.

Hitler believed predominantly
in military might,

the great German military machine.

And to be honest, he has great reason

to believe in the might of his army,

because it's achieving things

that have never been achieved before.

In Britain,

Churchill doesn't have
the military resources

to attack Germany on the ground,

so he creates

the Special Operations Executive,

which launches espionage
and sabotage campaigns

throughout n*zi-occupied Europe.

♪

But Churchill knows
that this is not enough.

He needs an ally.

He needs the United States.

♪

After months of Luftwaffe attacks,

Prime Minister Winston Churchill

is determined to persuade
the United States

to enter the w*r.

[crowd cheering]

Without America as an ally,

he fears Hitler will
defeat Great Britain

and absorb the British Empire.

♪

One way for Churchill

to gain American confidence and support

is to share critical
intelligence and information

with the United States.

Churchill is so desperate to
get the Americans into the w*r

that he does really
anything he can to woo them.

He wants the Americans to be impressed.

He wants the Americans
to enter this alliance,

come into the w*r with confidence.

And what could be more persuasive

than showing off for the Americans,

telling them that you're on the way

to building a pretty complete picture

of everything your enemy
is doing and thinking

and saying in private?

That's an ally you want to have.

♪

In February, 1941,

the first American delegation

comes to Bletchley Park.

Winston Churchill gives authorization.

From then, the American
and British partnership

really started to move at pace.

It blossomed.

Intelligence officers
from both countries

work together throughout 1941.

[airplane engines roaring]

But in December,

when Japan attacks Pearl Harbor...

cooperation evolves into alliance.

♪

America is now at w*r with Japan...

and, days later, with Germany.

America has almost
no intelligence service

before we enter the w*r.

So there's army and navy code breakers,

but there's no equivalent

of the British
Foreign Intelligence Service.

American intelligence is
like a cottage industry.

You know, it's the preindustrial stage

before Pearl Harbor occurs.

♪

Now the United States work with Britain

to establish the OSS...

the Office of Strategic Services.

♪

But as the Americans enter the w*r,

the Germans still control

a large portion of Soviet territory.

♪

And the Japanese continue
to sweep through the Pacific

and Southeast Asia.

By 1942, you have an unprecedented

transatlantic collaboration...

intelligence sharing on every level.

Americans are in every
department in Bletchley Park,

working alongside Britain.

So this is a really significant,

enduring partnership.

♪

Ultra's success gives
the Allies an advantage,

especially in the crucial
Battle of the North Atlantic.

♪

It reveals the location
of n*zi U-boats,

allowing Allied navies
to avoid German wolfpacks

and safely reroute
the all-important convoys.

♪

It has an incredible impact
on the Battle of the Atlantic.

As a matter of fact,
it swings the entire battle

in the Allies' favor.

♪

Despite this,

most of the German high command
still believe

the Enigma codes are unbreakable.

♪

But Admiral Karl Donitz,

the commander of the n*zi U-boat fleet,

cannot understand
how Allied ships keep sailing

around his submarines.

♪

Admiral Donitz is by far

the most security-obsessed
military leader

in the German w*r machine.

And he sniffed out

the fact that we're rerouting
our convoys.

Admiral Donitz orders an examination

into the integrity

of the Enigma codes and ciphers.

His intelligence officers insist

that the system is impregnable.

They argue that the Allies are
using radar to track U-boats

or that there are spies
in the German navy.

They launch investigations
to identify possible traitors.

♪

The Germans are so convinced
that it is unbreakable

that they don't see what's going on,

even if it stares them into the face.

They never try to prove
that it has been broken.

They always try to prove
that it cannot be broken,

meaning that they always end up
at their preferred answer...

everything is fine.

♪

In February, 1942,

Donitz orders a security upgrade

to the Enigma machine.

♪

A fourth rotor is added,

strengthening the encryption
even further.

♪

In 1942, the German U-boat flotillas

changed from the M3 to the M4 Enigma,

adding a fourth rotor,

which added a huge layer of complexity

to attacking the cipher.

Basically, it takes the odds

of 150 million million million to 1

from the 3 rotor

up to an unfathomable


This addition is a major
setback for Bletchley Park

in the North Atlantic.

♪

It's almost like the lights going out

on a grid of an electrical pattern.

You can't find submarines anymore.

♪

Once again, German U-boats

pose a grave threat to Allied shipping.

♪

Intelligence officers at Bletchley Park

are no longer able to decrypt
German naval signals.

To utilize Ultra in the
Battle of the Atlantic again,

the British will attempt to seize the
codebooks the Germans use

to set their Enigma machines.

♪

♪

The Allies are on the verge of losing

the Battle of the Atlantic.

The first half of 1942
is once again referred to

as the "Happy Time"
by German U-boat commanders.

♪

One thing that can help the Allies

is to restart Ultra in the Atlantic.

But they need to decrypt
the new Enigma messages.

This code material
is absolutely priceless

for the code breakers
at Bletchley Park.

It was used to set up the machine.

It shows how it's supposed
to be configured

for every single day
of every single month.

♪

The British launch secret raids

to extract any intelligence
they can find

on German submarines, ships,
and military facilities,

including Enigma codebooks.

They call the raids "pinch operations."

"Pinch" is British slang
for "stealing."

British intelligence officer

Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming

helps to coordinate pinch operations.

Ian Fleming ends up

at the Department of Naval Intelligence

almost by accident.

He's got no experience
in intelligence work,

but he very quickly finds his feet.

He has this gift for analysis

and weighing up intelligence options.

Fleming, who later writes
the James Bond novels,

plans a pinch operation

in connection with an allied raid.

♪

Operation Jubilee will be
a large amphibious landing,

essentially a dress rehearsal

for the expected invasion of Europe.

It involves 1,000 aircraft
and more than 230 ships.

♪

Their target is the heavily fortified

French port of Dieppe.

The Allies know
they're going to have to stage

a landing in Western Europe

in order to win the w*r
against Hitler's Germany.

It's a test to see
if you can seize a port.

At the center of this was
the Royal Marine Commando,

which were a British unit,

but the vast majority
were Canadian infantry.

And then, of course, this was the debut

of the United States of America.

They were 50 United States Rangers

that were going to go
into combat on European soil

in the Second World w*r
for the first time.

Lieutenant Commander Fleming

and a small team called 30 as*ault Unit

are part of the raiding force.

♪

They have a specific objective.

♪

With Fleming coordinating aboard ship,



the German navy's regional headquarters

and a nearby supply depot.

♪

Both will likely contain codebooks

for the new Enigma machines.

From a pinch perspective,

what is really important about Dieppe

is that they have all these codebooks

waiting to be distributed,

not only for the next month
but months in advance.

♪

But after initial success,

the landing at Dieppe disintegrates.

♪

It is absolutely hell.

♪

You've got to run up this beach,

carrying all your kit and a r*fle.

♪

And, of course, you've got
German machine g*ns,

mortars, a*tillery,
you name it firing at you.

[cannon blasting]

♪

It becomes an absolute slaughter.

♪

Over half
of the Allied forces at Dieppe

are k*lled, wounded, or captured.

Most of 30 as*ault Unit's men
are k*lled.

At the end of the day,
they come away with nothing,

despite all the bloodshed.

♪

The raid on Dieppe is
a failure from every angle.

♪

But the British still need
German codebooks

and intelligence to revive Ultra.

Allied ships are ordered

to make seizing German intelligence

a part of every mission when possible.

♪

In the fall of 1942,

HMS "Petard" is one
of a small destroyer group

sent to hunt n*zi U-boats.

♪

When they locate U-559,

they launch depth charges

and force it to the surface.

The U-boat crew abandoned
their submarine.

It's sinking slowly.

And this gives the opportunity
for the crew of HMS "Petard"

to actually board the U-boat

and try to pinch
and capture the material

from the sinking U-boat
as it's going down.

♪

Three men rush inside...

Lieutenant Tony Fasson,

Able Seaman Colin Grazier,

and a 16-year-old canteen
assistant, Tommy Brown.

♪

They're down there
working with flashlights,

ransacking the place,
looking for anything.

But it's a race against time

because the U-boat is starting
to fill with water.

The three British sailors

have minutes to find
useful intelligence.

♪

♪

Three British sailors
desperately search

a crippled U-boat as it begins to sink.

♪

What they find could help win the w*r.

♪

They go down to the signals office.

Then they go into the captain's cabin

and, sure enough, find
the material and a lot of it.

These guys...
freezing cold, petrified...

are below deck,

feeding crucial,
rich signals intelligence,

these cipher books,
up the conning tower.

Almost like a conveyor belt...
one guy to another to another.

Suddenly, the submarine

takes on this huge rush of water...

♪

The pressure of which
pushes the teenager, Tommy,

out of the conning tower
like a cork from a bottle.

But, tragically, it kills the two men

who have done
this vital work below deck.

♪

They're actually trapped

as the water starts to come in.

And they give their lives

to affect the pinch operation,

which changes the course
of the intelligence w*r.

♪

The courage
of these three British sailors

means Bletchley Park can
once again decode

the German Navy's Enigma messages.

But now the code breakers
become victims

of their own success.

The number of enemy signals
they intercept and decode

grows so rapidly
that the Bombe machines

can no longer handle

the sheer volume
of material fed into them.

♪

The Allies need to process
military intelligence

on an industrial scale...

so Great Britain turns to its ally,

the United States.

♪

We send our most precious asset

the other side of the Atlantic.

We send Alan Turing to America.

♪

[car horn honks]

In the winter of 1942,
Turing meets Joe Desch,

an electrical engineer

at the National Cash Register
Company in Dayton, Ohio.

♪

As a result, the Bombe machines

evolve into an electrical,

as well as a mechanical weapon

against the Third Reich.

♪

Desch's machine is
transformative technology.

He's invented the first
electronic computer memory.

♪

The new machines are six times faster

and are mass-produced in the hundreds.

♪

By decrypting messages
at such speed and scale,

the Allies are able to access
key German information.

And in combination

with a mosaic
of intelligence operations,

deception, espionage, and sabotage,

they can corroborate

that their secret w*r is working.

♪

In the spring of 1943,

Allied forces, under the leadership
of Dwight Eisenhower,

have forced the German
and Italian armies

out of North Africa.

The Allies' plan is to next invade

the island of Sicily.

The only real problem with Sicily

is that it's somewhat
of an obvious target.

If you're looking at a map,
Sicily is the first big island.

The Allies believe it's necessary

to spread a little
disinformation around,

make Hitler and the German planners

think the landing
is coming somewhere else,

perhaps in the Balkan
Peninsula to the east,

anywhere but Sicily.

♪

In February, 1943,

Ian Fleming and other
British intelligence officers

formulate a plan.

♪

It emerges from a list of ideas

known as the Trout memo.

♪

The Trout memo is so-called
because it uses fly fishing

as a kind of analogy for
conducting deception operations

against the Germans.

Now, it's widely believed
that this was largely written

by Ian Fleming.

It's very much in his style.

And it shows
that very imaginative thinking

for which he's later going
to be absolutely renowned,

of course.

Most of the suggestions in it
are pretty far-fetched.

But there's one that
actually does catch the eye.

And that's this idea of putting
false information on a corpse

and then allowing it
to be discovered by the enemy.

♪

Intelligence officers
believe this could be a way

to feed the Germans false plans

for an Allied invasion of the Balkans.

♪

It's a fiendish and dastardly idea.

If the Germans believe
the false documents,

they will have the wrong idea

of what the Allies are
going to get up to.

♪

The British name the plan
Operation Mincemeat

and present it to Eisenhower.

Eisenhower's buy-in is required

because Eisenhower is essentially

the theater commander in the area.

It's also indicative of American trust

in this particular operation.

♪

With Eisenhower's approval,

British intelligence moves
to the next stage.

♪

They find the corpse
of a homeless man in Britain,

and they build
an entire story for him...

a lifetime that he never
actually enjoyed in person.

They give him a uniform.

They give him a career.

They put identity cards in his wallet.

They give him pictures
of an imaginary girlfriend...

the lovely Pam.

He becomes Major Martin,
British intelligence officer.

♪

The final step is to give Major Martin

a briefcase containing fake plans

for an Allied invasion of the Balkans.

♪

The Allies must now get
Major Martin's documents

into the hands of Germany's
intelligence chief...

Admiral Canaris.

♪

In the early hours of April 30, 1943,

a British submarine drops a corpse

dressed in the uniform
of a Royal Marine

into the sea
off the west coast of Spain.

♪

A briefcase is attached to the corpse

by a security chain.

♪

The British hope
the documents inside the case

will make their way
to Adolf Hitler in Berlin.

♪

They've chosen Francisco Franco's Spain

because they suspect the Spanish

will pass the information
to the Germans.

♪

The British know the German
intelligence agencies,

especially the Abwehr
under Wilhelm Canaris,

have a really good relationship
with the Spanish.

So this is a far more clever
and subtle way of getting

deception information into German hands.

Rather than just dumping it
off the coast of Germany,

put it off the coast of Spain,

and you've got a more plausible way

of that information
coming through the pipeline.

♪

A Spanish fisherman finds the body.

Soldiers guarding the coast

take it to Spanish navy officers,

who tell German
intelligence agents in Spain

what they found.

♪

But signals decrypted at Bletchley Park

show the Germans are skeptical.

The German agents in Spain
simply don't take the bait.

Back in British intelligence,

there's this terrible panic

that Mincemeat is going to fail.

You know,
it's just going to be ignored.

♪

To ignite interest in Major Martin,

British intelligence...

writes a letter to
the Spanish authorities

demanding the return of the briefcase

and the document inside.

♪

They want to make it look as though

the British are deeply worried,
as though, you know,

this really is a proper
officer with real plans on him.

This is a really daring gambit

because it may seem too obvious.

But, actually, the British are lucky.

What that does is to get
the local German agents

to get hold of the plans that
"Major Martin" is carrying.

They photograph them.

And they send those photographs

back to their boss in Berlin,
Wilhelm Canaris.

♪

Canaris is interested.

♪

He examines the plans for days,

then hands them to Hitler.

The fuehrer already suspects
the Allies will attack

through the Balkans,

so he's inclined to believe
the information.

But propaganda chief
Joseph Goebbels is wary.

Goebbels is smart.

And Goebbels, after all, is, you know,

the minister for propaganda, for lies.

He knows what it means
to deceive people.

He thinks it's a bluff.

The information Canaris gives Hitler

confirms his instinct.

[telegraph beeping]

♪

Two days later,

Bletchley Park decodes a message.

The Germans are moving troops
toward the Balkans.

♪

Operation Mincemeat is working.

♪

The work of Bletchley Park

feeds into a deception campaign
like this

in a really important way.

Ultra allows you to understand
whether your enemy is

buying the deception
you're trying to sell.

We can see, thanks to our
Bletchley decryptions,

that Hitler is pulling Panzer units

to the Balkans, to Greece,

directly because of one dead corpse

that's left floating
off the shores of Spain.

♪

[cannons blasting]

Two months later,
the Allies land in Sicily

and capture the island
more quickly than anticipated.

♪

The depleted number of German defenders

is a critical part of their success.

♪

This is one of the most successful

intelligence operations
of the Second World w*r.

♪

Canaris's reputation begins to suffer

after Operation Mincemeat.

As the w*r goes on after that,

Canaris will be

more and more disliked
and distrusted by Hitler

and the other elites of the regime.

In 1944, the Third Reich
abolishes the Abwehr,

and Canaris is accused
of being involved in a plot

to k*ll Hitler.

A year later, he is hanged,

just weeks before
the end of World w*r II.

♪

Accurate intelligence is
critical to military victory.

But, ultimately, the outcome
is determined by combat.

The decisive battle of the w*r
against n*zi Germany

is about to be fought

at terrible cost

in a strategically important
Soviet city on the Volga River.