The need for deception was thus not a vague strategic wish. It was a specific response to a specific problem: the Germans were probably going to figure out that Sicily was the most likely target, and if they did figure it out with enough confidence and enough time, they would concentrate their defenses and make Husky dramatically more costly.
Sicily was itself a difficult target. The island’s mountainous terrain channeled Allied advance and gave defenders natural advantages. The German forces in Sicily — the Hermann Goering Division and the 15th Panzer Grenadier Division — were experienced and capable units. The Italian forces were more variable in quality but could still delay and inflict casualties. An amphibious assault against a fully alerted, fully prepared defense, with substantial reserves available for rapid response, was a serious military problem.
Mincemeat was designed to reduce that problem, not to eliminate it. The reduction it aimed for was specific and measurable: if German and Italian reserves could be kept away from Sicily, if uncertainty about the actual target could slow the movement of reinforcements after the landing, the assault force would have more time to establish itself before facing maximum resistance.
C. THE PROPOSAL AND THE PEOPLE WHO DEVELOPED IT — FULLER ACCOUNT
The idea that would eventually become Operation Mincemeat had a complicated parentage, and the question of who deserves credit for the concept has been a source of some dispute.
The earliest documented appearance of the core concept — using a dead man with planted documents as a means of strategic deception — appears in a 1939 memorandum now known as the Trout Memo. This document was written by Ian Fleming, then a naval intelligence officer, and passed to Admiral John Godfrey, the Director of Naval Intelligence. Fleming drew on a list of potential deception schemes, numbered and described briefly, and item number twenty-eight described the general idea of using a dead man with documents. The memo took its name from an analogy Fleming used: deceiving the enemy was like fly-fishing, requiring patience, skill, and the right kind of bait.