In 1942, Germany discovered a dead British officer floating off the coast of Spain, carrying important secret documents about the upcoming invasion of Europe. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll describe Operation Mincemeat, which has been called "the most imaginative and successful ruse" of World War II.

We'll also hear from our listeners about Scottish titles and mountain-climbing pussycats and puzzle over one worker's seeming unwillingness to help another.

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Sources for our feature on Operation Mincemeat:

Denis Smyth, Deathly Deception: The Real Story of Operation Mincemeat, 2010.

Richard E. Gorini, "Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory," The Army Lawyer, March 2011, 39-42.

Klaus Gottlieb, "The Mincemeat Postmortem: Forensic Aspects of World War II's Boldest Counterintelligence Operation," Military Medicine 174:1 (January 2009), 93-9.

Gerald Kloss, "'Dead Man' Trick That Fooled Hitler," Milwaukee Journal, Jan. 28, 1954.

"The Germans Fooled by False Documents," Montreal Gazette, April 30, 1954.

Ewen Montagu, "The Debt the Allies Owe to the Man Who Never Was," Sydney Morning Herald, March 15, 1953.

"Mourner for 'Man Who Never Was'", Glasgow Herald, Dec. 24, 1959.

Listener mail:

Highland Titles

"Can You Really Become a Lord of the Scottish Highlands for Less than $50.00?", HG.org (retrieved Dec. 3, 2015).

Links on mountain-climbing cats:

Peter Glaser, "Die Katze, die das Matterhorn bestieg," Neue Zürcher Zeitung, July 6, 2015 (retrieved Dec. 3, 2015).

"Hello Kitty? The Curious History of Cats Who Climb Mountains," One Hundred Mountains, Feb. 25, 2013 (retrieved Dec. 3, 2015).

This week's lateral thinking puzzle is from Edward J. Harshman's 1996 book Fantastic Lateral Thinking Puzzles.

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Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode.

If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at [email protected]. Thanks for listening!