Forgotten Frontlines (TV Mini Series 2022)

- In the midst of World War II,

the Allies have successfully defeated the German Army

in North Africa.

- North Africa was the proving ground

for the Allied war effort, going against Hitler's machine.

- From here, the Allies plan to launch

a second European front.

- The question is, "Where in southern Europe do we attack?"

- The Allies have to deceive the Germans

of their true invasion plans,

as German defenses are too strong.

- We're not in the position to match the enemy yet

on continental Europe in a conventional military fashion.

- Two young British intelligence agents in MI5

propose one of the most secretive

and daring missions of the Second World War.

- Espionage was a major part of World War II.

The British perfected this to a science.

Those were desperate times

and they called for desperate measures.

- If the Allies don't convince the Germans

to maximize their defenses in the wrong place,

it will be a disaster.

- If the Germans figure this out, it is mass casualties

for thousands and thousands of Allied soldiers.

It's like a chess game.

It's not the person whose queen wins the game,

it's using every piece to its best advantage.

- Just one wrong move and this mission would fail

and many lives would be lost.

In April 1943, a decomposing body in a Royal Marines uniform

is discovered off the coast of Huelva, southern Spain.

A black attache is chained to the body's wrist

containing top-secret documents

about an impending Allied invasion.

- Everyone knows what's going to happen,

just where is the invasion of Europe going to come from?

- But this is no ordinary body lost at sea.

This is part of one of the most ambitious missions

ever conducted by British intelligence, Operation Mincemeat.

- Operation Mincemeat becomes the great Trojan horse

of World War II.

It's an absolutely essential mission

that ends up saving thousands of Allied lives.

- Devised and put into motion

by Charles Cholmondeley and Ewen Montagu,

British intelligence agents working for MI5 in London.

Their unparalleled attention to detail

would be a major catalyst to the Allied victory.

- The German war machine was so overwhelming

to anyone who witnessed it

that the Allies would have to depend

on any means that they could

to get an advantage over the Germans.

- Espionage is a major part

of the British war effort.

They run a huge disinformation campaign,

feeding fake leads about the military plans to the Nazis

using double-agents.

This is part of the war

that we don't talk about very much.

We focus on the battles and the invasions,

but the war of the mind we don't talk about,

the idea of, "How do we fool the other side,

creating false information

that they think they are getting through espionage?"

So, it's the double-cross of it.

- British intelligence

had already cracked the Enigma code

that the Germans used to send messages,

deciphered by a team based in Bletchley Park,

just northwest of London.

- Interestingly, Bletchley Park isn't so much a place

that respects or promotes military stripes,

but much more, in fact, great minds.

Intelligence in this case

is meant to give the people on the ground

who are running the operation

as much forewarning and foreknowledge as possible.

- British intelligence

uses the intercepted information

to tailor upcoming espionage missions,

which are discussed in MI5 committees.

In 1942, 25-year-old Charles Christopher Cholmondeley

is the secretary for the top-secret Twenty Committee,

the group in charge of overseeing double-agents.

- And the Twenty is this incredibly fascinating

interdepartmental committee

that is responsible for managing

one of the most essential programs of World War II,

which is called the Double-Cross.

And they are responsible for managing at the top level

this program that has turned German agents

working in the United Kingdom,

keeping the Germans totally unaware

that they're now working for the Allies.

- They meet every Thursday in MI5 offices

at 58 James Street in London

to discuss the double-agent system

and explore new deception plans.

- Okay, there's a big emphasis from the get-go

in British thinking on deceiving the enemy,

that this is gonna be a long war,

it's gonna be a war that is going to require

thinking outta the box, ungentlemanly warfare, deception,

unconventional methods.

- So, in many ways, it's like a chess game.

It's not the person whose queen wins the game,

it's using every piece to its best advantage.

And the only way you do that in chess

is because you get to look down from above

and see how all the pieces on both sides are playing

to plan ahead.

When you can get to that level

with your intelligence information in warfare,

it provides you with a significant advantage,

especially if your opponent

doesn't have that same advantage.

- Cholmondeley was a flight lieutenant

in the Royal Air Force seconded to the MI5 security service.

He was very shortsighted,

so if you'd caught sight of him, very thick spectacles.

Weirdly shy, almost secretive.

He was your quintessential English eccentric.

His shortsightedness a personal tragedy for him, obviously,

he wants to be out there in a flying machine,

didn't all the boys back in the day,

is actually a great boon, of course,

for British intelligence

'cause instead they acquire his alternative secretive mind.

- At the beginning of the war,

Rear Admiral John Godfrey,

the Director of Naval Intelligence,

circulated the Trout Memo.

Although published under Godfrey's name,

it bore all the hallmarks of his assistant.

His name: Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming,

who would after the war become the famous novelist

immortalizing British intelligence operations

through the adventures of James Bond.

He knows his commander is a keen angler,

so he compares the deception of an enemy in wartime

to fly-fishing.

- One of his sort of famous analogies is, he says,

"The fly-fisherman must outsmart the trout,

"outsmart the fish," and makes the point,

"If you've been fishing in one place,

"you need to leave it a while

"because the trout's gonna know you're there.

"Let's strip this back to basic human nature.

"What can we make the enemy believe?"

- What the Trout Memo is, it's exploring types of espionage.

They develop, literally, a laundry list

of ways of duping the Nazis.

October 31st, 1942.

Charles Cholmondeley presents the idea

of a Trojan horse to the Twenty Committee,

a plan to place falsified documents

of a highly-secret nature in the hands of the enemy

using a decoy: a dead body.

- There's two aspects to this mission.

On the first point,

what you need to do is trick the Germans.

And the other very important thing

is we know that the Germans have been tricked.

- This idea that you could plant evidence on a body

is totally new, and it's actually something

that Ian Fleming says can be seen as drastic.

But in war, anything is drastic.

- Cholmondeley's audacious idea

lands on the desk of intelligence officer Ewan Montagu.

At this time, Montagu has been briefed

that this plan could be used by the Allies

to deceive the Germans

in a forthcoming operation in the Mediterranean.

- And he was an intellect, he was a judge.

He had a keen passion for yachting, which is how he ends up

in this sort of volunteer naval division

and then is promoted into Naval Intelligence.

- Montagu is teamed with Cholmondeley

to develop the Trojan horse plan further.

- For me, one of the things that I've found most interesting

was that they were able to sell this,

and not to the Germans but to their own side

to move forward with it.

I mean, it's a crazy idea.

- Cholmondeley and Montagu are a really interesting duo

because they both love to read spy novels,

they both love fiction.

This is the opportunity to do something

which would only be seen in a novel,

and they'll go to tremendous lengths to make this work.

- Where Cholmondeley was awkward but charming,

Montagu was smooth and refined.

He was highly organized and attentive to details,

the perfect complement to Cholmondeley's

unusually imaginative brain.

At this time, the British Army

is also in the heat of action.

Beginning October 23rd, 1942,