Dee takes Isla on a truly bonkers journey into wartime espionage, where the British government decided the best way to win a major strategic battle was to weaponise a dead body - with the enthusiastic help of history’s most famous forensic pathologist.

Yes, this episode is about Operation Mincemeat - the WWII intelligence plot so unhinged it involved:

• A corpse with a fake life

• Love letters, overdraft notices, and an engagement ring receipt

• A submarine

• A mildly disappointed dad

• And Bernard Spilsbury, applying forensic science not to solve a crime… but to commit the perfect lie

If you’ve listened to the podcast before, you already know Spilsbury - Dr Crippen, Brides in the Bath, forensic icon, and occasional menace.

Here, Spilsbury was asked one key question:

“Bernard, could we make a poisoned corpse look like it drowned… convincingly enough to fool the Nazis?”

Reader, he said yes.

He used forensic science, not to catch a killer, but to gaslight an entire enemy state.

Sources 

• Hektoen International – “Forensic Medicine and Sir Bernard Spilsbury” 

• NPR: Operation Mincemeat film review The National Archives 

• Imperial War Museums

• MI5

• Commonwealth War Graves Commission

• BBC History 

• History Today 

• Smithsonian Magazine