title: Vivien Leigh

text: Director George Cukor described Leigh as a "consummate actress, hampered by beauty", and Laurence Olivier said that critics should "give her credit for being an actress and not go on forever letting their judgments be distorted by her great beauty." Garson Kanin shared their viewpoint and described Leigh as "a stunner whose ravishing beauty often tended to obscure her staggering achievements as an actress. Great beauties are infrequently great actresses—simply because they don't need to be. Vivien was different; ambitious, persevering, serious, often inspired."


title: Vivien Leigh

text: Leigh explained that she played "as many different parts as possible" in an attempt to learn her craft and to dispel prejudice about her abilities. She believed that comedy was more difficult to play than drama because it required more precise timing and said that more emphasis should be placed upon comedy as part of an actor's training. Nearing the end of her career, which ranged from Noël Coward comedies to Shakespearean tragedies, she observed, "It's much easier to make people cry than to make them laugh."


title: Vivien Leigh

text: Her early performances brought her immediate success in Britain, but she remained largely unknown in other parts of the world until the release of "Gone with the Wind". In December 1939, film critic Frank Nugent wrote in "The New York Times", "Miss Leigh's Scarlett has vindicated the absurd talent quest that indirectly turned her up. She is so perfectly designed for the part by art and nature that any other actress in the role would be inconceivable", and as her fame escalated, she was featured on the cover of "Time" magazine as Scarlett. In 1969, critic Andrew Sarris commented that the success of the film had been largely due to "the inspired casting" of Leigh, and in 1998, wrote that "she lives in our minds and memories as a dynamic force rather than as a static presence". Film historian and critic Leonard Maltin described the film as one of the all-time greats, writing in 1998 that Leigh "brilliantly played" her role.


title: Vivien Leigh

text: Her performance in the West End production of "A Streetcar Named Desire", described by the theatre writer Phyllis Hartnoll as "proof of greater powers as an actress than she had hitherto shown", led to a lengthy period during which she was considered one of the finest actresses in British theatre. Discussing the subsequent film version, Pauline Kael wrote that Leigh and Marlon Brando gave "two of the greatest performances ever put on film" and that Leigh's was "one of those rare performances that can truly be said to evoke both fear and pity."


title: Vivien Leigh

text: Her greatest critic was Kenneth Tynan who ridiculed Leigh's performance opposite Olivier in the 1955 production of "Titus Andronicus", commenting that she "receives the news that she is about to be ravished on her husband's corpse with little more than the mild annoyance of one who would have preferred foam rubber." He was also critical of her reinterpretation of Lady Macbeth in 1955, saying that her performance was insubstantial and lacked the necessary fury demanded of the role. After her death, however, Tynan revised his opinion, describing his earlier criticism as "one of the worst errors of judgment" he had ever made. He came to believe that Leigh's interpretation, in which Lady Macbeth uses her sexual allure to keep Macbeth enthralled, "made more sense ... than the usual battle-axe" portrayal of the character. In a survey of theatre critics conducted shortly after Leigh's death, several named her performance as Lady Macbeth as one of her greatest achievements in theatre.


title: Vivien Leigh

text: In 1969, a plaque to Leigh was placed in the Actors' Church, St Paul's, Covent Garden, London. In 1985, a portrait of her was included in a series of United Kingdom postage stamps, along with Sir Alfred Hitchcock, Sir Charlie Chaplin, Peter Sellers and David Niven to commemorate "British Film Year". In April 1996, she appeared in the Centenary of Cinema stamp issue (with Sir Laurence Olivier) and in April 2013 was again included in another series, this time celebrating the 100th anniversary of her birth. The British Library in London purchased the papers of Olivier from his estate in 1999. Known as "The Laurence Olivier Archive", the collection includes many of Leigh's personal papers, including numerous letters she wrote to Olivier. The papers of Leigh, including letters, photographs, contracts and diaries, are owned by her daughter, Mrs. Suzanne Farrington. In 1994, the National Library of Australia purchased a photograph album, monogrammed "L & V O" and believed to have belonged to the Oliviers, containing 573 photographs of the couple during their 1948 tour of Australia. It is now held as part of the record of the history of the performing arts in Australia. In 2013, an archive of Leigh's letters, diaries, photographs, annotated film and theatre scripts and her numerous awards was acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Also in 2013, Leigh was among the ten people selected by the Royal Mail for their "Great Britons" commemorative postage stamp issue.


title: Vivien Leigh

text: Leigh was portrayed by American actress Morgan Brittany in "The Day of the Locust" (1975), "Gable and Lombard" (1976) and "The Scarlett O'Hara War" (1980). Julia Ormond played Leigh in "My Week with Marilyn" (2011). Leigh was also portrayed by Katie McGuinness in the Netflix miniseries "Hollywood" (2020).


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: David Madison Cawthorn (born August 1, 1995) is an American politician who has served as the U.S. representative for North Carolina's 11th congressional district since 2021. Cawthorn is the first member of Congress born in the 1990s and describes himself as a Christian and a constitutional conservative. He is a member of the Republican Party.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: After working as a staffer for U.S. Representative Mark Meadows, Cawthorn was elected to succeed Meadows in 2020. His tenure was marked by various controversies, including allegations of insider trading, improper payments, bringing a handgun to the airport, and appearing in a leaked nude video. Cawthorn lost his reelection bid in the 2022 Republican primary to Chuck Edwards.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: Cawthorn was born on August 1, 1995, in Asheville, North Carolina, to Priscilla and Roger Cawthorn. He was home-schooled in Hendersonville, North Carolina, through 12th grade, and played football with the Asheville Saints, a league that includes home-schooled high school students. As a teenager, he worked at a Chick-fil-A restaurant.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: In 2014, at age 18, Cawthorn was seriously injured while returning from a spring-break trip to Florida. He was riding as a passenger in a BMW X3 SUV near Daytona Beach, Florida, when his friend Bradley Ledford fell asleep at the wheel. The vehicle crashed into a concrete barrier while Cawthorn's feet were on the dashboard. In a 2017 speech, he said that Ledford left him "to die in a fiery tomb", which Ledford has disputed. Ledford said in a sworn deposition for insurance litigation that he pulled an unconscious Cawthorn from the wrecked vehicle immediately after getting out himself; in Cawthorn's deposition, he stated that he had "no memory from the accident". In the same 2017 speech, Cawthorn stated that he was "declared dead on the scene" of the accident, but the official accident report listed him as "incapacitated". The injuries from the accident left Cawthorn partially paralyzed, requiring the use of a wheelchair. He said he accrued $3 million in medical debt during his recovery; he received that amount as settlement from an insurance company, as well as other payments, and as of February 2021 was seeking $30 million more.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: Rep. Meadows had nominated Cawthorn to the United States Naval Academy in December 2013, but his application was rejected. Although this happened before his injury, he claimed in advertisements for his 2020 congressional campaign that the accident "derailed" his plans to attend the Academy. Cawthorn had acknowledged in 2017 under oath that he had been turned down before the accident. When asked about the discrepancy, he said, "I never said I was appointed or accepted to the academy, I knew that I'd only been nominated at that point. I fully expected to be accepted and to be appointed, but at that point I hadn't received it."


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: During the fall 2016 semester, Cawthorn attended Patrick Henry College, studying political science, but earned mostly D grades and dropped out. He said his grades were low primarily because his injuries had interfered with his ability to learn. Cawthorn said in a deposition, "You know, suffering from a brain injury after the accident definitely I think it slowed my brain down a little bit. Made me less intelligent. And the pain also made reading and studying very difficult." He also said he withdrew due to "heartbreak" after his fiancée broke up with him.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: From January 2015 to August 2016, Cawthorn worked as a staff assistant in U.S. Representative Mark Meadows's district office. He told the "Asheville Citizen-Times" he worked there "full-time", but it was a part-time position.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: Cawthorn is the owner and CEO of SPQR Holdings, LLC, a real estate investment firm in Hendersonville. The firm was started in August 2019 and reported no income; Cawthorn is its sole employee. As of August 2020, the company had been involved in only one real estate transaction, purchasing a 6-acre property for $20,000, in a foreclosure auction.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: In the March 2020 Republican primary for North Carolina's 11th congressional district, Cawthorn finished second behind Lynda Bennett, who had been endorsed both by President Donald Trump and Meadows, who had become White House Chief of Staff. But Bennett did not receive the required 30% of the vote to avoid a runoff and Cawthorn won the June runoff overwhelmingly. He was supported by many local leaders and endorsed by Mark Walker, the vice chairman of the House Republican Conference. His victory has been called an upset. Cawthorn benefited from false and misleading claims that Bennett was a "Never-Trumper".


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: In a July 2020 event at the Texas border, Cawthorn declared, without evidence, that there was "a large group of cartels, kidnapping our American children and then taking them to sell them on a slave market, a sex slave market".


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: During the 2020 general campaign, a 2017 Cawthorn Instagram post with a picture of his visit to Adolf Hitler's vacation residence Eagle's Nest, which he said had been on his "bucket list for a while", generated criticism and allegations of far-right sympathies. He had referred to Hitler as "the "Führer"", Hitler's official title, and also called Hitler "a supreme evil". In response, Cawthorn denied being a white supremacist, calling the allegations ridiculous, and said he "completely and wholeheartedly denounce[s] any kind of white nationalism, any kind of Nazism". The Anti-Defamation League's analyst Mark Pitcavage said he did not see much merit in the accusations against Cawthorn. Some Jewish residents of his congressional district expressed concern about the incident, including Esther Manheimer, mayor of Asheville, the district's largest city. Cawthorn deleted the Instagram post on August 10.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: Cawthorn spoke on the third day of the 2020 Republican National Convention. During his election bid, Cawthorn's campaign created a website to criticize journalist Tom Fiedler, who had produced investigative pieces on Cawthorn and had written favorably about his opponent. The website accused Fiedler of leaving academia "to work for non-white males, like Cory Booker, who aims to ruin white males running for office." The sentence on the website was later modified to claim Fiedler is "an unapologetic defender of left-wing identity politics". Cawthorn released a statement saying he had intended "to condemn" such political opinion as being "dangerous and divisive" and said that he "condemned racism and identity politics throughout [his] campaign." Ben Mathis-Lilley, writing for "Slate", observed that Cawthorn's apology "convolutedly expressed regret for 'having unfairly implied I was criticizing Cory Booker,' which is notable in that it is not an apology for attacking the journalist in question, Tom Fiedler, as a traitor to his race."


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: In the November general election, Cawthorn defeated Democratic nominee Moe Davis. He took office on January 3, 2021. Upon hearing he had won, he tweeted, "cry more, lib".


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: Cawthorn is the youngest Republican and one of the youngest members ever elected to the House of Representatives. He is also the first member of Congress born in the 1990s.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: In November 2021, Cawthorn first declared his intention to run for a second term in the new 13th congressional district, which includes Cleveland County and other counties west of Charlotte. Cawthorn was registered to vote in the new 14th district; members of Congress are not required to live in the district they represent but merely in the same state. He wrote on Twitter that he was running in the 13th district because otherwise "another establishment, go-along-to-get-along Republican would prevail there." According to the "Asheville Citizen-Times", opposition to Cawthorn in his current district, including by former supporters, "appears to provide a political rationale" for his decision.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: On May 17, 2022, Cawthorn conceded to Republican primary challenger Chuck Edwards. Edwards had been supported by Senator Thom Tillis and most of the North Carolina General Assembly. Railing against "the cowardly and weak members of our own party", Cawthorn wrote, "It's time for the rise of the new right, it's time for Dark MAGA to truly take command." "Dark MAGA" references a fringe movement advocating a vengeful return of Trumpism.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: In January 2022, a group of North Carolina voters formally challenged Cawthorn's qualifications to run again, "citing his participation in a rally last January in Washington that questioned the presidential election outcome and preceded the Capitol riot." The challenge is based on the third section of the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits anyone who has "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" against the U.S. government from holding public office. Under North Carolina law, the burden is on Cawthorn to show through a preponderance of the evidence that he is not an insurrectionist. The challenge was on hold while redistricting litigation continued.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: Cawthorn filed suit in U.S. court to dismiss the challenge before the state elections board could hear it. The North Carolina attorney general's office, citing a 1919 application of the amendment to a congressman who had violated the Espionage Act, argued that the Fourteenth Amendment could apply to Cawthorn "if a state board determines he aided or encouraged the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol." In March 2022, Judge Richard Myers ruled in Cawthorn's favor based on an 1872 law that gave amnesty to Civil War insurrectionists, but on May 24, 2022, an appeals court ruled that this law applied only to people who committed "constitutionally wrongful acts" before 1872. The appeals court did not determine whether Cawthorn is eligible for office; it only determined that the 1872 law does not shield him.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: During his candidacy and time in Congress, Cawthorn has been known for incendiary rhetoric and promulgating conspiracy theories. He had said he intended to use his position to be a messenger rather than a legislator, writing to his colleagues, "I have built my staff around comms rather than legislation." Cawthorn subsequently closed all but one district office.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: In December 2020, at a Turning Point USA conference in Florida, Cawthorn said that he would try to contest the 2020 presidential election results when Congress counted the Electoral College votes in January, citing fraud, though there was no evidence that fraud affected the election results. He subsequently used conspiracy theories about fraud to run advertisements and raise money for himself. He called on the TPUSA event's attendees to "lightly threaten" their representatives.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: Cawthorn took his seat as a member of Congress at the start of the 117th Congress on January 3, 2021.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: Before Trump supporters stormed the United States Capitol on January 6, Cawthorn addressed the crowd and said, "this crowd has some fight." He voted not to certify the Electoral College results in Congress and called Republicans who voted to certify the results "spineless cowards". He repeated the false conspiracy theories that there was widespread fraud in the election. After the riots, Cawthorn denounced the violence and said, "The party as a whole should have been much more wise about their choice of words." He later attempted to blame the riots on a "Democratic machine" of "agitators strategically placed inside of this group", amid intensifying calls for his resignation for his part in stoking the riots.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: On January 20, the day of Joe Biden's inauguration, Cawthorn was one of 17 newly elected House Republicans to sign a letter congratulating him and expressing hope of bipartisan cooperation. On January 22, 2021, the government watchdog group Campaign for Accountability asked the Office of Congressional Ethics to investigate Cawthorn's role in the January 6 Capitol riot.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: On January 23, on "CNN Newsroom", Pamela Brown asked Cawthorn about his views of the election results, to which Cawthorn eventually responded that there was no voter fraud. He said, "You know, the Constitution allowed for us to be able to push back as much as we could and I did that to the amount of the constitutional limits that I had at my disposal. So now I would say that Joseph R. Biden is our president". According to "Time", Cawthorn was "trying to have it both ways. One day, he's preaching about respecting the office of the Presidency and vowing to work across the aisle with Democratic colleagues. The next, he's trumpeting dangerous conspiracies to right-wing crowds and commentators."


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: In late February 2021, Cawthorn and a dozen other Republican House members skipped votes and enlisted others to vote for them, citing the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. But he and the other members were actually attending the Conservative Political Action Conference, which was held at the same time as their absences. In response, the Campaign for Accountability, an ethics watchdog group, filed a complaint with the House Committee on Ethics and requested an investigation into Cawthorn and the other lawmakers. In July 2021, another ethics complaint was filed against Cawthorn by an aide to Representative David McKinley after Cawthorn first scolded a McKinley aide and later got into a shouting match with McKinley over being listed as a co-sponsor of McKinley's bill.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: At an August 2021 Republican Party event in Macon County, Cawthorn said: "if our election systems continue to be rigged and continue to be stolen, then it's going to lead to one place—and it's bloodshed." He then said, "as much as I am willing to defend our liberty at all costs, there is nothing that I would dread doing more than having to pick up arms against a fellow American", with the only way to prevent that being "election security".


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: In October 2021, Cawthorn said, "our culture today is trying to completely de-masculate all of the young men", because "they don't want people who are going to stand up". He issued a call to mothers, who he said are the "most vicious" conservatives: "If you are raising a young man, please raise them to be a monster". In November 2021, Cawthorn accused politicians of "trying to make everyone genderless, sexless, and just absolutely Godless", and declared that Americans "want our culture back, and if you want to stand in the way of that, we will run you over."


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: Cawthorn reacted to the not guilty verdict in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse by offering Rittenhouse an internship, saying, "You have a right to defend yourself, so be armed, be dangerous and be moral".


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Cawthorn called Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy a "thug" and said "the Ukrainian government is incredibly corrupt and is incredibly evil and has been pushing woke ideologies." Cawthorn wrote on Twitter that his comments were based on Zelenskyy's having allegedly spread misinformation directed at Americans. Alyssa Farah Griffin, for whom Cawthorn once interned, condemned his comments as based on ignorance and spreading Russian propaganda.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: In a March 2022 interview, Cawthorn talked about "the sexual perversion that goes on in Washington" and said he had been invited to an orgy by an unnamed lawmaker. He also claimed that prominent Washington figures had used cocaine in front of him. In a closed-door meeting, multiple House Republicans complained about his comments. Members of the Freedom Caucus considered ejecting Cawthorn from its membership. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Minority Whip Steve Scalise then met with Cawthorn. McCarthy later told reporters that Cawthorn had admitted his claims were exaggerated or untrue: "He changes what he tells and that's not becoming of a congressman. He did not tell the truth [and] that's unacceptable." McCarthy said he had told Cawthorn that "He's lost my trust. He's going to have to earn it back."


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: In April 2022, American Muckrakers PAC requested an ethics investigation of Cawthorn's relationship with his aide Stephen Smith, Cawthorn's second cousin. The request said that Cawthorn had provided more than $250 worth of free housing and travel to Smith, in violation of House rules, providing documents that appear to show Smith lives for free in a house owned by Cawthorn. The complaint also alleges that the two may have an inappropriate personal relationship, possibly sexual in nature, something prohibited between a lawmaker and a member of their staff.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: In May 2022, "The Daily Beast" reported that Blake Harp, Cawthorn's chief of staff, who was paid $131,278 in that position in 2021, also received $73,237 in that year from Cawthorn's campaign, despite House ethics rules that limit senior staff to earning $29,595 in outside income each year. Harp has also received payments from the campaign committee of Harp's mother, who ran unsuccessfully for Congress. Harp was Cawthorn's campaign manager in 2020, becoming chief of staff in 2021.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: On May 17, 2022, Cawthorn lost renomination to Chuck Edwards, a state senator. Edwards went on to win the general election.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: On November 16, 2022, Joel Burgess of the "Asheville Citizen-Times" wrote Cawthorn had vacated and shut down his offices two months before the end of term. He subsequently purchased a $1.1 million dollar home in Florida. Responding to the news that constituent services calls were not being handled, Edwards invited people to contact his state senate office instead.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: During his 2020 campaign, Cawthorn said that he would "like to be the face of the Republican Party when it comes to health care."


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: Cawthorn identifies as a constitutional conservative and describes his position on abortion rights as pro-life or anti-abortion. In 2021, he joined the House Freedom Caucus, a caucus of conservative House Republicans. He describes himself as "fiscally conservative", says his stance on immigration is "conservative", and supports legal gun ownership, opposing gun control legislation.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: Cawthorn supports legal same-sex marriage, but opposes gender transition treatments for minors. He also supports removing Confederate statues because they commemorate secession from the United States, though in June 2021 he voted against a bill that would remove statues of white supremacists and Confederates from the United States Capitol. In 2022, Cawthorn voted against the Respect for Marriage Act, legislation to codify same-sex marriage into federal law.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: Cawthorn falsely asserts that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent, though he backtracked on the claim during a January 2021 CNN interview with Pamela Brown.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: Cawthorn married Cristina Bayardelle, a college student and competitive CrossFit athlete, in a December 2020 civil ceremony, followed by an April 2021 outdoor ceremony. In December 2021, Cawthorn announced they were getting divorced.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: Cawthorn said that he trained in wheelchair racing for the 2020 Summer Paralympics, but never competed at a qualifying level and was not involved in a team.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: In August 2020, during Cawthorn's campaign for Congress, several women accused him of sexually aggressive behavior, sexual misconduct, and sexual assault.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: Katrina Krulikas described an incident when she was 17 and Cawthorn was 19 in which he pressured her to sit on his lap and attempted to kiss her forcibly twice, which she resisted. Cawthorn did not deny the allegations, but said, "I did try and kiss her, just very normal, just in a flirtatious way", adding, "If I did make her feel unsafe, I feel bad", but questioned the timing of her allegation. His campaign characterized Krulikas's allegations as politically motivated, which she denied.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: After Krulikas made her allegations, three other women made allegations of sexual misconduct against Cawthorn, including forcible grabbing and kissing. One woman said Cawthorn called her "just a little blonde, slutty American girl" when she rejected his sexual advances.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: On October 17, 2020, a group of Patrick Henry College alumni released a public letter accusing Cawthorn of "sexually predatory behavior" while he was a student there for a little more than one semester, as well as of vandalism and lying. The letter originally had ten signatories but the number increased to over 150 alumni in less than a week. Cawthorn claimed that most of the signers did not know him personally and his campaign posted a response letter of support for him signed by six alumni, two of whom work for Cawthorn's campaign. Cawthorn's response letter implied support by former Patrick Henry College President Michael Farris; Farris disavowed the support letter and asked that he not be associated with it.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: A February 2021 "BuzzFeed News" investigation found 20 people who said that Cawthorn had harassed his female classmates during college; the reporters spoke to four women who said he had harassed them. It was alleged that Cawthorn often recklessly drove women in his car to remote areas off campus while asking them sexual questions: he reportedly called these journeys "fun drives". Two resident assistants said they warned women to avoid Cawthorn and not to ride in his car. A male acquaintance said Cawthorn bragged about pulling a woman into his lap and putting a finger between her legs.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: On May 4, 2022, a video began circulating online that showed Cawthorn naked in bed, thrusting his genitals toward another man's face while moaning. Cawthorn said of the video, "Years ago, in this video, I was being crass with a friend, trying to be funny. We were acting foolish, and joking. That's it." He called the video "blackmail" on Twitter after he had released an eight-minute video addressing it and other controversies.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: In February 2021, Transportation Security Administration agents at the Asheville Regional Airport discovered an unloaded Glock 9mm handgun and loaded magazine in Cawthorn's carry-on bag. A spokesman for Cawthorn said the gun, magazine, and ammunition were meant to have been stowed in his checked luggage.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: In April 2022, Cawthorn was briefly detained at an airport in Charlotte, North Carolina, for attempting to board a commercial flight with a loaded handgun in his carry-on luggage. Police said he was cooperative, and he was cited for possession of a dangerous weapon on city property. Cawthorn has a trial date in Mecklenburg County on January 13, 2023, for bringing the gun to the airport in Charlotte.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: In March 2022, Cawthorn was charged with driving while his license was revoked and while two speeding tickets were pending. He faces possible time in jail. A 2017 charge of driving on a revoked license was dismissed. Cawthorn had court dates in Polk and Cleveland counties in June 2022 for speeding and driving with a revoked license.


title: Madison Cawthorn

text: In April 2022, Senator Thom Tillis called for an investigation into Cawthorn for possible violations of the STOCK Act, stating that Cawthorn's purchase of an anti-Biden "Let's Go Brandon" cryptocurrency without disclosure may have violated insider trading rules for members of Congress. By December 2022, it was reported that Cawthorn had violated the STOCK Act a total of three times that year for failing to disclose further tens of thousands of dollar sales in Let's Go Brandon coin.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: Operation Mincemeat was a successful British deception operation of the Second World War to disguise the 1943 Allied invasion of Sicily. Two members of British intelligence obtained the body of Glyndwr Michael, a tramp who died from eating rat poison, dressed him as an officer of the Royal Marines and placed personal items on him identifying him as the fictitious Captain (Acting Major) William Martin. Correspondence between two British generals that suggested that the Allies planned to invade Greece and Sardinia, with Sicily as merely the target of a feint, was also placed on the body.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: Part of the wider Operation Barclay, Mincemeat was based on the 1939 Trout memo, written by Rear Admiral John Godfrey, the Director of the Naval Intelligence Division, and his personal assistant, Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming. With the approval of the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, and the military commander in the Mediterranean, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the plan began by transporting the body to the southern coast of Spain by submarine and releasing it close to shore, where it was picked up the following morning by a Spanish fisherman. The nominally neutral Spanish government shared copies of the documents with the , the German military intelligence organisation, before returning the originals to the British. Forensic examination showed they had been read and Ultra decrypts of German messages showed that the Germans fell for the ruse. German reinforcements were shifted to Greece and Sardinia before and during the invasion of Sicily; Sicily received none.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: The full effect of Operation Mincemeat is not known, but Sicily was liberated more quickly than anticipated and losses were lower than predicted. The events were depicted in "Operation Heartbreak", a 1950 novel by the former cabinet minister Duff Cooper, before one of the intelligence officers who planned and carried out Mincemeat, Ewen Montagu, wrote a history in 1953. Montagu's work formed the basis for the 1956 British film "The Man Who Never Was". A second British film based on the events was released in 2022 under the title "Operation Mincemeat."


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: On 29 September 1939, soon after the start of the Second World War, Rear Admiral John Godfrey, the Director of Naval Intelligence, circulated the Trout memo, a paper that compared the deception of an enemy in wartime to fly fishing. The historian Ben Macintyre observes that although the paper was published under Godfrey's name, it "bore all the hallmarks of ... Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming", Godfrey's personal assistant. The memo contained a number of schemes to be considered for use against the Axis powers to lure U-boats and German surface ships towards minefields. Number 28 on the list was titled: "A Suggestion (not a very nice one)"; it was an idea to plant misleading papers on a corpse that would be found by the enemy.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: The deliberate planting of fake documents to be found by the enemy was not new; known as the Haversack Ruse, it had been practised by the British and others in the First and Second World Wars. In August 1942, before the Battle of Alam el Halfa, a corpse was placed in a blown-up scout car, in a minefield facing the German 90th Light Division. On the corpse was a map purportedly showing the locations of British minefields; the Germans used the map, and their tanks were routed to areas of soft sand where they bogged down.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: In September 1942 an aircraft flying from Britain to Gibraltar crashed off Cádiz. All aboard were killed, including Paymaster-Lieutenant James Hadden Turner – a courier carrying top secret documents – and a French agent. Turner's documents included a letter from General Mark Clark, the American Deputy Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force, to General Noel Mason-MacFarlane, British Governor and Commander in Chief of Gibraltar, informing him that General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander, would arrive in Gibraltar on the eve of Operation Torch's "target date" of 4November. Turner's body washed up on the beach near Tarifa and was recovered by the Spanish authorities. When the body was returned to the British, the letter was still on it, and technicians determined that the letter had not been opened. Other Allied intelligence sources established that the notebook carried by the French agent had been copied by the Germans, but they dismissed it as being disinformation. To British planners, it showed that some material that was obtained by the Spanish was being passed to the Germans.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: A month after the Turner crash, the British intelligence officer Charles Cholmondeley outlined his own variation of the Trout memo plan, codenamed Trojan Horse, after the Achaean deception from the Trojan War. His plan was


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: Cholmondeley was a flight lieutenant in the Royal Air Force (RAF) who had been seconded to MI5, Britain's domestic counter-intelligence and security service. He had been appointed as the secretary of the Twenty Committee, a small inter-service, inter-departmental intelligence team in charge of double agents. In November 1942 the Twenty Committee turned down Cholmondeley's plan as being unworkable, but thought there may have been some potential in the idea. As there was a naval connection to the plan, John Masterman, the chairman of the committee, assigned Ewen Montagu, the naval representative, to work with Cholmondeley to develop the plan further. Montagu – a peacetime lawyer and King's Counsel who had volunteered at the outbreak of the war – worked under Godfrey at the Naval Intelligence Division, where he ran NID 17(M), the sub-branch which handled counter-espionage work. Godfrey had also appointed Montagu to oversee all naval deception involving double agents. As part of his duties, Montagu had been briefed on the need for deception operations to aid the Allied war aims in a forthcoming invasion operation in the Mediterranean.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: In late 1942, with the Allied success in the North African campaign, military planners turned their attention to the next target. British planners considered that an invasion of France from Britain could not take place until 1944 and the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, wanted to use the Allied forces from North Africa to attack Europe's "soft underbelly". There were two possible targets for the Allies to attack. The first option was Sicily; control of the island would open the Mediterranean Sea to Allied shipping and allow the invasion of continental Europe through Italy. The second option was to go into Greece and the Balkans, to trap the German forces between the British and American invaders and the Soviets. At the Casablanca Conference in January 1943, Allied planners agreed on the selection of Sicily – codenamed Operation Husky – and decided to undertake the invasion no later than July. There was concern among the Allied planners that Sicily was an obvious choice – Churchill is reputed to have said "Everyone but a bloody fool would know that it's Sicily" – and that the build-up of resources for the invasion would be detected.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: The German leader, Adolf Hitler, was concerned about a Balkan invasion, as the area had been the source of raw materials for the German war industry, including copper, bauxite, chrome and oil. The Allies knew of Hitler's fears, and they launched Operation Barclay, a deception operation to play upon his concerns and to mislead the Germans into thinking the Balkans were the objective, diverting resources from Sicily. The deception reinforced German strategic thinking about the likely British target. To suggest the eastern Mediterranean was the target, the Allies set up a headquarters in Cairo, Egypt, for a fictional formation, the Twelfth Army, consisting of twelve divisions. Military manoeuvres were conducted in Syria, with numbers inflated by dummy tanks and armoured vehicles to deceive observers. Greek interpreters were recruited and the Allies stockpiled Greek maps and currency. False communications about troop movements were generated from the Twelfth Army headquarters, while the Allied command post in Tunis – which was to be the headquarters of the Sicily invasion – reduced radio traffic by using landlines wherever possible.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: Montagu and Cholmondeley were assisted by an MI6 representative, Major Frank Foley, as they examined the practicalities of the plan. Montagu approached the pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury to determine what kind of body they needed and what factors they would need to take into account to fool a Spanish pathologist. Spilsbury informed him that those who died in an air crash often did so from shock and not drowning; the lungs would not necessarily be filled with water. He added that "Spaniards, as Roman Catholics, were averse to post-mortems and did not hold them unless the cause of death was of great importance". Spilsbury advised that a person could have suffered one of many different causes of death, which could be misconstrued in an autopsy. Montagu later wrote


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: This meant that not only would they have a better degree of success than they previously thought, but that there would be a larger number of corpses potentially available for selection when the time came. When Montagu discussed the possibility of obtaining a corpse with Bentley Purchase, the coroner for the Northern District of London, he was told there would be practical and legal difficulties: "I should think bodies are the only commodities not in short supply at the moment [but] even with bodies all over the place, each one has to be accounted for". Purchase promised to look out for a body that was suitable, with no relatives who would claim the corpse for burial.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: On 28 January 1943 Purchase contacted Montagu with the news he had located a suitable body, probably that of Glyndwr Michael, a tramp who died from eating rat poison that contained phosphorus. Purchase informed Montagu and Cholmondeley that the small amount of poison in the system would not be identified in a body that was supposed to have been floating in the sea for several days. When Montagu commented that the under-nourished corpse did not look like a fit field officer, Purchase informed him that "he does not have to look like an officer – only a staff officer", more used to office work. Purchase agreed to keep the body in the mortuary refrigerator at a temperature of – any colder and the flesh would freeze, which would be obvious after the body defrosted. He warned Montagu and Cholmondeley that the body had to be used within three months, after which it would have decomposed past the point of usefulness.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: Montagu refused to identify the individual and only described him as "a bit of a ne'er-do-well, and that the only worthwhile thing that he ever did he did after his death". In 1996 Roger Morgan, an amateur historian from London, uncovered evidence in the Public Record Office that the identity of the corpse was Michael. An alternative theory to the corpse's identity was suggested in the history book "The Secrets of HMS Dasher" (2004) that in March 1943 there was an explosion on , which sank, killing 379 men; one of these corpses was purportedly used. The military historian Denis Smyth dismisses the suggestion and observes that the official records of the operation state that Glyndwr Michael was the body.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: Montagu selected the code name Mincemeat from a list of centrally held available possibilities. On 4 February 1943 Montagu and Cholmondeley filed their plan for the operation with the Twenty Committee; it was a re-working of Cholmondeley's Trojan Horse plan. The Mincemeat plan was to place documents on the corpse, and then float it off the coast of Spain, whose nominally neutral government was known to co-operate with the , the German military intelligence organisation. The plan was passed by the committee, who passed it up the chain of command to the senior Allied strategists; Montagu and Cholmondeley were ordered to continue with their preparations for the operation.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: Montagu and Cholmondeley began to create a "legend" – a fictitious background and character – for the body. The name and rank chosen was Captain (Acting Major) William Martin, of the Royal Marines assigned to Combined Operations Headquarters. The name "Martin" was selected because there were several men with that name of about that rank in the Royal Marines. As a Royal Marine, Major Martin came under Admiralty authority, and it would be easy to ensure that all official inquiries and messages about his death would be routed to the Naval Intelligence Division. Additionally, Royal Marines would wear battledress, which was easily obtainable and came in standard sizes. The rank of acting major made him senior enough to be entrusted with sensitive documents, but not so prominent that anyone would expect to know him.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: To reinforce the impression of Martin being a real person, Montagu and Cholmondeley provided corroborative details to be carried on his person – known in espionage circles as wallet or pocket litter. These included a photograph of an invented fiancée named Pam; the image was of an MI5 clerk, Jean Leslie. Two love letters from Pam were included in the pocket litter, as was a receipt for a diamond engagement ring costing £53 10s 6d from a Bond Street jewellery shop. Additional personal correspondence was included, consisting of a letter from the fictitious Martin's father – described by Macintyre as "pompous and pedantic as only an Edwardian father could be" – which included a note from the family solicitor, and a message from Lloyds Bank, demanding payment of an overdraft of £79 19s 2d. To ensure that the letters would remain legible after immersion in seawater, Montagu asked MI5 scientists to conduct tests on different inks to see which would last longest in the water, and they provided him with a suitable list of popular and available ink brands.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: Other items of pocket litter placed on Martin included a book of stamps, a silver cross and a St. Christopher's medallion, cigarettes, matches, a pencil stub, keys and a receipt from Gieves for a new shirt. To provide a date that Martin had been in London, ticket stubs from a London theatre and a bill for four nights' lodging at the Naval and Military Club were added. Along with the other items placed on him, an itinerary of his activity in London could be constructed from 18 to 24 April.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: Attempts were made to photograph the corpse for the naval identity card Martin would have to carry, but the results were unsatisfactory, and it was obvious that the images were of a cadaver. Montagu and Cholmondeley conducted a search for people who resembled the corpse, finding Captain Ronnie Reed of MI5; Reed agreed to be photographed for the identity card, wearing a Royal Marine uniform. As the three cards and passes needed to look not too new for a long-serving officer, they were issued as recent replacements for lost originals. Montagu spent the next few weeks rubbing all three cards on his trousers to provide a used sheen to them. To provide a used look to the uniform, it was worn by Cholmondeley, who was about the same build. The only non-issue part to the uniform was the underwear, which was in short supply in war-rationed Britain, so a pair of good-quality woollen underwear, owned by the late Herbert Fisher, the Warden of New College, Oxford, was used.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: Montagu outlined three criteria for the document that contained the details of the falsified plans to land in the Balkans. He said that the target should be casually but clearly identified, that it should name Sicily and another location as cover, and that it should be in an unofficial correspondence that would not normally be sent by diplomatic courier, or encoded signal.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: The main document was a personal letter from Lieutenant General Sir Archibald Nye, the vice chief of the Imperial General Staff – who had a deep knowledge of ongoing military operations – to General Sir Harold Alexander, commander of the Anglo-American 18th Army Group in Algeria and Tunisia under General Eisenhower. After several attempts at drafting the document did not generate something that was considered natural, it was suggested that Nye should draw up the letter himself to cover the required points. The letter covered several purportedly sensitive subjects, such as the (unwanted) award of Purple Heart medals by US forces to British servicemen serving with them and the appointment of a new commander of the Brigade of Guards. Montagu thought the result was "quite brilliant"; the key part of the letter stated that


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: The letter went on to identify Sicily and the Dodecanese as "cover targets" for the assaults, along with justifications for their selection.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: There was also a letter of introduction for Martin from his putative commanding officer, Vice-Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, the chief of Combined Operations, to Admiral of the Fleet Sir Andrew Cunningham, the commander-in-chief Mediterranean Fleet and Allied naval commander in the Mediterranean. Martin was referred to in the letter as an amphibious warfare expert on loan until "the assault is over". The document included a clumsy joke about sardines, which Montagu inserted in the hope that the Germans would see it as a reference to a planned invasion of Sardinia. A single black eyelash was placed within the letter to check if the Germans or Spanish had opened it.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: Montagu considered that there would be a possible "Roman Catholic prejudice against tampering with corpses", which could miss the documents stored in the corpse's pockets, so they added them to an official briefcase that would not be overlooked. To justify carrying documents in a briefcase, Major Martin was given two proof copies of the official pamphlet on combined operations written by the author Hilary Saunders – then on Mountbatten's staff – and a letter from Mountbatten to Eisenhower, asking him to write a brief foreword for the pamphlet's US edition. The planning team first thought of having the handle clutched in the corpse's hand, held in place by "rigor mortis", but the rigor would probably wear off and the briefcase would drift away. They therefore equipped Martin with a leather-covered chain, such as was used by bank and jewellery couriers to secure their cases against snatching. The chain unobtrusively runs down a sleeve to the case. To Montagu it seemed unlikely that the major would keep the bag secured to his wrist during the long flight from Britain, so the chain was looped around the belt of his trench coat.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: Montagu and Cholmondeley gave consideration to the location of the corpse's delivery. It had long been assumed by the pair that the western coast of Spain would be the ideal location. Early in the planning they investigated the possibility of Portuguese and French coasts, but rejected those in favour of Huelva on the coast of southern Spain, after advice was taken from the Hydrographer of the Navy regarding the tides and currents best suited to ensure the body landed where it was wanted. Montagu later outlined that the choice of Huelva was also made because "there was a very active German agent ... who had excellent contacts with certain Spaniards, both officials and others". The agent – Adolf Clauss, a member of the – was the son of the German consul, and operated under the cover of an agriculture technician; he was an efficient and effective operative. Huelva was also chosen because the British vice-consul in the city, Francis Haselden, was "a reliable and helpful man" who could be relied upon, according to Montagu.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: The body was supposed to be the victim of an aeroplane crash, and it was decided that to try to simulate the accident at sea using flares and other devices could be too risky and open to discovery. After seaplanes and surface ships were dismissed as being problematic, a submarine was chosen as the method of delivering the corpse to the region. To transport the body by submarine, it needed to be contained within the body of the boat, as any externally mounted container would have to be built with a skin so thick it would alter the level of the waterline. The canister needed to remain airtight and keep the corpse as fresh as possible through its journey. Spilsbury provided the medical requirements and Cholmondeley contacted Charles Fraser-Smith of the Ministry of Supply to produce the container, which was labelled "Handle with care: optical instruments".


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: On 13 April 1943 the committee of the Chiefs of Staff met and agreed that they thought the plan should proceed. The committee informed Colonel John Bevan – the head of London Controlling Section, which controlled the planning and co-ordination of deception operations – that he needed to obtain final approval from Churchill. Two days later Bevan met the prime minister – who was in bed, wearing a dressing gown and smoking a cigar – in his rooms at the Cabinet War offices and explained the plan. He warned Churchill that there were several aspects that could go wrong, including that the Spaniards might pass the corpse back to the British, with the papers unread. Churchill replied that "in that case we shall have to get the body back and give it another swim". Churchill gave his approval to the operation, but delegated the final confirmation to Eisenhower, the overall military commander in the Mediterranean, whose plan to invade Sicily would be affected. Bevan sent an encrypted telegram to Eisenhower's headquarters in Algeria requesting final confirmation, which was received on 17 April.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: In the early hours of 17 April 1943 the corpse of Michael was dressed as Martin, although there was one last-minute hitch: the feet had frozen. Purchase, Montagu and Cholmondeley could not put the boots on, so an electric heater was located and the feet defrosted enough to put the boots on properly. The pocket litter was placed on the body, and the briefcase attached. The body was placed in the canister, which was filled with of dry ice and sealed up. When the dry ice sublimated, it filled the canister with carbon dioxide and drove out any oxygen, thus preserving the body without refrigeration. The canister was placed in the 1937 Fordson van of an MI5 driver, St John "Jock" Horsfall, who had been a racing champion before the war. Cholmondeley and Montagu travelled in the back of the van, which drove through the night to Greenock, west Scotland, where the canister was taken on board the submarine , which was preparing for a deployment to the Mediterranean. "Seraph"s commander, Lt. Bill Jewell, and crew had previous special operations experience. Jewell told his men that the canister contained a top secret meteorological device to be deployed near Spain.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: On 19 April "Seraph" set sail and arrived just off the coast of Huelva on 29 April after having been bombed twice en route. After spending the day reconnoitring the coastline, at 4:15 am on 30 April, "Seraph" surfaced. Jewell had the canister brought up on deck, then sent all his crew below except the officers. They opened the container and lowered the body into the water. Jewell read Psalm 39 and ordered the engines to full astern; the wash from the screws pushed the corpse toward the shore. The canister was reloaded and the submarine travelled out where it surfaced and the empty container was pushed into the water. As it floated, it was riddled with machine gun fire so that it would sink. Because of the air trapped in the insulation, this effort failed, and the canister was destroyed with plastic explosives. Jewell afterwards sent a message to the Admiralty to say "Mincemeat completed", and continued on to Gibraltar.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: The body of "Major Martin" was found at around 9:30 am on 30 April 1943 by a local fisherman; it was taken to Huelva by Spanish soldiers, where it was handed over to a naval judge. Haselden, as vice-consul, was officially informed by the Spaniards; he reported back to the Admiralty that the body and briefcase had been found. A series of pre-scripted diplomatic cables were sent between Haselden and his superiors, which continued for several days. The British knew that these were being intercepted and, although they were encrypted, the Germans had broken the code; the messages played out the story that it was imperative that Haselden retrieve the briefcase because it was important.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: At midday on 1May an autopsy was undertaken on Michael's body; Haselden was present and – in order to minimise the possibilities that the two Spanish doctors identified that the body was a three-month-old corpse – Haselden asked if, in the heat of the day and smell of the corpse, the doctors should bring the post mortem to a close and have lunch. They agreed and signed a death certificate for Major William Martin for "asphyxiation through immersion in the sea"; the body was released by the Spanish and, as Major Martin, was buried in the San Marco section of Nuestra Señora cemetery in Huelva, with full military honours on 2May.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: The Spanish navy retained the briefcase and, despite pressure from Adolf Clauss and some of his agents, neither it nor its contents were handed over to the Germans. On 5May the briefcase was passed to the naval headquarters at San Fernando near Cadiz, for forwarding to Madrid. While at San Fernando the contents were photographed by German sympathisers, but the letters were not opened. Once the briefcase arrived in Madrid, its contents became the focus of attention of Karl-Erich Kühlenthal, one of the most senior agents in Spain. He asked Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the head of the , to personally intervene and persuade the Spanish to surrender the documents. Acceding to the request, the Spanish removed the still-damp paper by tightly winding it around a probe into a cylindrical shape, and then pulling it out between the envelope flap – which was still closed by a wax seal – and the envelope body. The letters were dried and photographed, then soaked in salt water for 24 hours before being re-inserted into their envelopes, without the eyelash that had been planted there. The information was passed to the Germans on 8May. This was deemed so important by the agents in Spain that Kühlenthal personally took the documents to Germany.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: On 11May the briefcase, complete with the documents, was returned to Haselden by the Spanish authorities; he forwarded it to London in the diplomatic bag. On receipt, the documents were forensically examined, and the absence of the eyelash noted. Further tests showed that the fibres in the paper had been damaged by folding more than once, which confirmed that the letters had been extracted and read. An additional test was made as the papers – still wet by the time they returned to London – were dried out: the folded paper dried into the rolled form it had when the Spaniards had extracted it from the envelope. To allay any potential German fears that their activities had been discovered, another pre-arranged encrypted but breakable cable was sent to Haselden stating that the envelopes had been examined and that they had not been opened; Haselden leaked the news to Spaniards known to be sympathetic to the Germans.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: Final proof that the Germans had been passed the information from the letters came on 14May when a German communication was decrypted by the Ultra source of signals intelligence produced by the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park. The message, which had been sent two days previously, warned that the invasion was to be in the Balkans, with a feint to the Dodecanese. A message was sent by Brigadier Leslie Hollis – the secretary to the Chiefs of Staff Committee – to Churchill, then in the United States. It read "Mincemeat swallowed rod, line and sinker by the right people and from the best information they look like acting on it."


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: Montagu continued the deception to reinforce the existence of Major Martin, and included his details in the published list of British casualties which appeared in "The Times" on 4 June. By coincidence, also published that day were the names of two other officers who had died when their plane was lost at sea, and opposite the casualty listings was a report that the film star Leslie Howard had been shot down by the Luftwaffe and died in the Bay of Biscay; both stories gave credence to the Major Martin story.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: On 14 May 1943 Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz met Hitler to discuss Dönitz's recent visit to Italy, his meeting with the Italian leader Benito Mussolini and the progress of the war. The Admiral, referring to the Mincemeat documents as the "Anglo-Saxon order", recorded


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: Hitler informed Mussolini that Greece, Sardinia and Corsica must be defended "at all costs", and that German troops would be best placed to do the job. He ordered that the experienced 1st Panzer Division be transferred from France to Salonika, Greece. The order was intercepted by GC&CS on 21 May. By the end of June, German troop strength on Sardinia had been doubled to 10,000, with fighter aircraft also based there as support. German torpedo boats were moved from Sicily to the Greek islands in preparation. Seven German divisions transferred to Greece, raising the number present to eight, and ten were posted to the Balkans, raising the number present to 18.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: On 9 July the Allies invaded Sicily in Operation Husky. German signals intercepted by GC&CS showed that even four hours after the invasion of Sicily began, twenty-one aircraft left Sicily to reinforce Sardinia. For a considerable time after the initial invasion, Hitler was still convinced that an attack on the Balkans was imminent, and in late July he sent General Erwin Rommel to Salonika to prepare the defence of the region. By the time the German high command realised the mistake, it was too late to make a difference.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: On 25 July 1943, as the battle for Sicily went against the Axis forces, the Italian Grand Council of Fascism voted to limit the power of Mussolini, and handed control of the Italian armed forces over to King Victor Emmanuel III. The following day Mussolini met the King, who dismissed him as prime minister; the former dictator was then imprisoned. A new Italian government took power and began secret negotiations with the Allies. Sicily fell on 17August after a force of 65,000 Germans held off 400,000 American and British troops long enough to allow many of the Germans to evacuate to the Italian mainland.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: The military historian Jon Latimer observes that the relative ease with which the Allies captured Sicily was not entirely because of Mincemeat, or the wider deception of Operation Barclay. Latimer identifies other factors, including Hitler's distrust of the Italians, and his unwillingness to risk German troops alongside Italian troops who may have been on the point of a general surrender. The military historian Michael Howard, while describing Mincemeat as "perhaps the most successful single deception operation of the entire war", considered Mincemeat and Barclay to have less impact on the course of the Sicily campaign than Hitler's "congenital obsession with the Balkans". Macintyre writes that the exact impact of Mincemeat is impossible to calculate. Although the British had expected 10,000 killed or wounded in the first week of fighting, only a seventh of that number became casualties; the navy expected 300 ships would be sunk in the action, but they lost 12. The predicted 90-day campaign was over in 38.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: Smyth writes that as a result of Husky, Hitler suspended the Kursk offensive on 13July. This was partly because of the performance of the Soviet army, but partly because he still assumed that the Allied landing on Sicily was a feint that preceded the invasion in the Balkans, and he wanted to have troops available for fast deployment to meet them. Smyth observes that once Hitler gave up the initiative to the Soviets, he never regained it.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: Montagu was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1944 for his part in Operation Mincemeat; for masterminding the plan, Cholmondeley was appointed a Member of the Order in 1948. Duff Cooper, a former cabinet minister who had been briefed on the operation in March 1943, published the spy novel "Operation Heartbreak" (1950), which contained the plot device of a corpse – with papers naming him as William Maryngton – being floated off the coast of Spain with false documents to deceive the Germans. The British security services decided that the best response was to publish the story of Mincemeat. Over the course of a weekend Montagu wrote "The Man Who Never Was" (1953), which sold two million copies and formed the basis for a 1956 film. The security services did not give Montagu complete freedom to reveal operational details, and he was careful not to mention the role played by signals intelligence to confirm that the operation had been successful. He was also careful to obscure "the idea of an organised programme of strategic deception ... with Mincemeat being presented as a 'wild' one-off caper". In 1977 Montagu published "Beyond Top Secret U", his wartime autobiography which gave further details of Mincemeat, among other operations. In 2010 the journalist Ben Macintyre published "Operation Mincemeat", a history of the events.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: A 1956 episode of "The Goon Show", titled "The Man Who Never Was", was set during the Second World War, and referred to a microfilm washed up on a beach inside a German boot. The play "Operation Mincemeat", written by Adrian Jackson and Farhana Sheikh, was first staged by the Cardboard Citizens theatre company in 2001. The work focused on Michael's homelessness. In his book "The Double Agents", the writer W. E. B. Griffin depicts Operation Mincemeat as an American operation run by the Office of Strategic Services. Fictional characters are blended with Ian Fleming and the actors David Niven and Peter Ustinov.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: In 2015 the Welsh theatre company Theatr na nÓg produced "" (The Man who Never Was), a musical based on the operation and Glyndwr Michael's upbringing in Aberbargoed. The musical was performed by primary school children from Caerphilly County Borough during that year's Eisteddfod yr Urdd. A musical, Operation Mincemeat, is based on the operation; it was initially staged in 2019 at the New Diorama Theatre, London. In 2022 the film "Operation Mincemeat" was released, with Colin Firth as Montagu and Matthew Macfadyen as Cholmondeley.


title: Operation Mincemeat

text: The Commonwealth War Graves Commission took responsibility for Major Martin's grave in Huelva in 1977. In 1997 the Commission added the postscript "Glyndwr Michael served as Major William Martin RM". In November 2021 the Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation, working with the Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women and the London Borough of Hackney, placed a memorial at the Hackney Mortuary.


title: Simon Pegg

text: Simon John Pegg (né Beckingham; born 14 February 1970) is an English actor, comedian, screenwriter, and producer. He came to prominence in the UK as the co-creator of the Channel 4 sitcom "Spaced" (1999–2001), directed by Edgar Wright. He and Wright co-wrote the films "Shaun of the Dead" (2004), "Hot Fuzz" (2007), and "The World's End" (2013), known collectively as the "Three Flavours Cornetto" trilogy, all of which saw Wright directing and Pegg starring alongside Nick Frost. Pegg and Frost also wrote and starred in the sci-fi comedy film "Paul" (2011).


title: Simon Pegg

text: Pegg is one of the few performers to have achieved what "Radio Times" calls the "Holy Grail of Nerd-dom", having played popular supporting characters in "Doctor Who" (2005), "Star Trek" as Montgomery "Scotty" Scott (2009–2016), and "" (2015). He currently stars as Benji Dunn in the (2006–present), and he voiced the Chamberlain in "" (2019). He is also known for providing the voice of Buck in "" (2009), "" (2016) and "The Ice Age Adventures of Buck Wild" (2022).


title: Simon Pegg

text: Pegg was born Simon John Beckingham on 14 February 1970 in Brockworth, Gloucestershire, the son of Gillian Rosemary (née Smith), a former civil servant, and John Henry Beckingham, a jazz musician and keyboard salesman. His parents divorced when he was seven, and he took on his stepfather's surname "Pegg" after his mother remarried,while his brother, Mike, still takes on Beckingham as the surname, and Mike Beckingham was involved in the 2020 film, The Host. He attended Castle Hill Primary School, Brockworth Comprehensive Secondary School, and The King's School, Gloucester.


title: Simon Pegg

text: Pegg moved to Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire when he was 16 and studied English literature and theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon College. He graduated from the University of Bristol in 1991 with a BA in Theatre, Film, and Television, titling his undergraduate thesis "A Marxist overview of popular 1970s cinema and hegemonic discourses". While there, he performed as a member of a comedy troupe called "David Icke and the Orphans of Jesus", alongside David Walliams, Dominik Diamond, and Jason Bradbury.


title: Simon Pegg

text: "When I graduated from university where I studied theater, film and television, I went into stand-up because comedy was something I enjoyed but also because it offered me a certain autonomy that I wouldn't have if I was sitting and waiting for the phone to ring as an actor. Then, I drifted into comedy acting through doing stand-up, and that was something that I really enjoyed. But, it wasn’t the only thing I ever wanted to do. There was a time when I was younger where I just wanted to be at The Royal Shakespeare Theatre."


title: Simon Pegg

text: Pegg's early appearances in TV series and films include "Six Pairs of Pants" ("Meridian" & Anglia, 1995), "Asylum", "Faith in the Future", "Big Train" and "Hippies". Between 1998 and 2004, Pegg was regularly featured on BBC Radio 4's "The 99p Challenge". Pegg's other credits include appearances in the World War II mini-series "Band of Brothers"; the television comedies "Black Books", "Brass Eye" and "I'm Alan Partridge"; and the films "The Parole Officer", "24 Hour Party People", and "Guest House Paradiso". He played various roles during the tour of Steve Coogan's 1998 live stage show "The Man Who Thinks He's It".


title: Simon Pegg

text: In 1999, he created and co-wrote the Channel 4 sitcom "Spaced" with Jessica Stevenson. The series was directed by Edgar Wright, with whom Pegg and Stevenson had previously worked on "Asylum", and Pegg wrote the character of Mike Watt specifically for his friend Nick Frost. For his performance in this series, Pegg was nominated for a British Comedy Award as Best Male Comedy Newcomer. The experience of making a "Spaced" fantasy sequence featuring zombies led to Pegg and Wright co-writing the "romantic zombie comedy" film "Shaun of the Dead", released in April 2004, in which Pegg also starred. At George A. Romero's invitation, Pegg and Wright made cameo appearances in Romero's zombie film, "Land of the Dead". In 2004, Pegg starred in a spin-off of the television show "Danger! 50,000 Volts!" called "Danger! 50,000 Zombies!", in which he played a zombie hunter named Dr. Fell.


title: Simon Pegg

text: He played mutant bounty hunter Johnny Alpha, the Strontium Dog, in a series of Big Finish Productions audio plays based on the character from British comic "2000 AD". Pegg also appeared in Big Finish Productions' "Doctor Who" audio story "Invaders From Mars" as Don Chaney, and appeared in the "Doctor Who" television series, playing the Editor in the 2005 episode "The Long Game". He also narrated the first series of the "making-of" documentary series "Doctor Who Confidential".


title: Simon Pegg

text: Upon completion of "Shaun of the Dead", Pegg was questioned as to whether he would be abandoning the British film industry for Hollywood, and he replied, "It's not like we're going to go away and do, I don't know, "Mission: Impossible III"", picking the title of an imaginary blockbuster. When the film "" was subsequently made, Pegg appeared in it as Benji Dunn, an IMF technician who assists Tom Cruise's character Ethan Hunt. He reprised the role in three further "Mission: Impossible" sequel films: "" (2011), "" (2015), and "" (2018).


title: Simon Pegg

text: In 2006, he played Gus in "Big Nothing" alongside David Schwimmer. The same year, Pegg and Wright completed their second film, "Hot Fuzz", released in February 2007. The film is a police-action movie homage and also stars Nick Frost, in which Pegg plays Nicholas Angel, a London policeman transferred to rural Sandford, a fictional village where grisly events take place. In 2007, Pegg starred in "The Good Night" (directed by Jake Paltrow) and "Run Fatboy Run" directed by David Schwimmer and co-starring Thandie Newton and Hank Azaria. In 2008, he wrote the dialogue for an English language re-release of the cult 2006 animated Norwegian film, "Free Jimmy". Pegg received screenwriting credit for this, and also voiced one of the main characters in the English-language version, which has an international range of actors including Woody Harrelson.


title: Simon Pegg

text: Pegg co-wrote the script for a film called "Paul", about two young men who encounter a comedic extraterrestrial alien during a road trip across the US. The completed script appeared on the 2008 "Brit List", a film-industry-compiled survey of the best unproduced British screenplays, inspired by the American Black List. In those films and in "Spaced", Pegg typically plays the leading hero while Frost plays the sidekick. However "Paul" reverses this dynamic. The film was released in 2011.


title: Simon Pegg

text: Pegg played engineer Montgomery "Scotty" Scott in "Star Trek", the eleventh film in the "Star Trek" film series, released 8 May 2009. He reprised the role in "Star Trek Into Darkness" (2013) and "Star Trek Beyond" (2016), also co-writing the latter. In 2010 he appeared as William Burke in "Burke & Hare", a film directed by John Landis about two Ulstermen who were notorious murderers and bodysnatchers in early 19th-century Edinburgh. His likeness was also used for the character of Wee Hughie in the comic book series "The Boys"; while this was done without Pegg's permission, he quickly became a fan of the title, and even wrote the introduction to the first bound volume. He voiced Reepicheep, the heroic mouse in "".


title: Simon Pegg

text: Pegg and Wright completed the "Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy" (the first two films being "Shaun of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz") with their 2013 film "The World's End". In July 2014, Pegg appeared on stage with Monty Python during their live show "Monty Python Live (Mostly)" held at the O Arena, London. He was the special guest in their "Blackmail" sketch. In 2015 he appeared in "" as Unkar Plutt, the Junkyard dealer on Jakku.


title: Simon Pegg

text: In 2016, Pegg spoke of having respect for Jeremy Corbyn and believing in Britain Stronger in Europe's idea of unity in regards to the EU.


title: Simon Pegg

text: In 2020, Pegg signed an open letter calling for the wealthiest in society to pay more tax in order to help fight inequality.


title: Simon Pegg

text: Pegg is an atheist. He married his long-time girlfriend, music industry publicist Maureen McCann, in Glasgow on 23 July 2005. They reside in Essendon, Hertfordshire. Nick Frost was the best man at his wedding. The couple have one child together, Matilda (born 2009).


title: Simon Pegg

text: Pegg is close friends with Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin, and appears as a violin-playing Elvis impersonator in the video for Coldplay's 2010 single "Christmas Lights". Along with Jonny Buckland, Pegg is godfather to Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow's daughter Apple. In return, Martin is godfather to Pegg's daughter. In a video interview with British "GQ" magazine in July 2018, Pegg stated that his daughter has sung backing vocals for Coldplay onstage at Glastonbury Festival. Pegg is also godfather to Joe, the son of actor and friend Martin Freeman. Pegg's parents and sister briefly appeared in "Spaced", while his mother appeared in both "Shaun of the Dead" and "Hot Fuzz".


title: Simon Pegg

text: In a July 2018 interview with "The Guardian", Pegg opened up about his battle with depression and alcoholism, and how rehab helped him recover from the latter. He stated: "When I watch "", I can see where I was then, which was fairly lost, and unhappy, and an alcoholic [...] I'm not ashamed of what happened. And I think if anyone finds any relationship to it, then it might motivate them to get well. But I am not proud of it either — I don't think it's cool, like I was Mr. Rock ’n’ Roll, blackout and all that shit. It wasn't, it was just terrible." Pegg checked into a rehab shortly before production of "". Hiding his recovery from the tabloids through court orders, some journalists went so far as to call the clinic pretending to be Pegg's mother. Pegg attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and has remained sober since.


title: 2021–22 NBA season

text: The 2021–22 NBA season was the 76th season of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The NBA returned to a full 82-game regular season in its normal mid-October to mid-April schedule for the first time since the 2018–19 NBA season, after two abbreviated seasons due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The regular season began on October 19, 2021, and ended on April 10, 2022. The 2022 NBA All-Star Game was played at Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland on February 20, 2022. The 2022 NBA playoffs began on April 16, 2022, and ended on June 16 with the Golden State Warriors defeating the Boston Celtics in the 2022 NBA Finals.


title: 2021–22 NBA season

text: On July 7, 2021, the NBA announced that it would commemorate its 75th anniversary throughout the 2021–22 season. A 75th anniversary diamond jubilee logo is featured in promotions across all NBA properties during the season, including on merchandise, digital and social media, and painted on the courts. It also announced its 75th anniversary team, honoring the greatest players in NBA history, as chosen by a panel of media, current and former players, coaches, general managers, and team executives. All NBA uniforms feature the Nike (Association, Icon, and City uniform) and Jordan Brand (Statement and Charlotte Hornets uniform) logos in a diamond embellishment, while the normal NBA logo on the back was modified to also feature diamond embellishments and the NBA mark replaced by the number 75.


title: 2021–22 NBA season

text: The City edition for this season featured uniforms incorporating various design cues from different decades, with 27 of the 30 teams wearing these uniforms. The only teams not to participate were the New Orleans Pelicans, Phoenix Suns, and Utah Jazz. The Suns and Jazz wore last season's City uniforms, while the Pelicans wore a more standard City uniform as a tribute to the city of New Orleans. The Classic edition uniform for this season would be donned by the Boston Celtics, Golden State Warriors, and New York Knicks, the NBA's three surviving franchises from its first season. Both the Celtics and Knicks wore modern-day versions of the uniforms they wore from 1946, while the Warriors wore uniforms based on the designs they wore as the Philadelphia Warriors from 1946 to 1962. The classic Nike wordmark-and-swoosh logo appears on the Classic uniforms.


title: 2021–22 NBA season

text: The NBA also unveiled a new set of awards to honor division and conference championship winners, and the MVPs of the conference finals. The division championships were named after Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton (Atlantic Division), Wayne Embry (Central Division), Earl Lloyd (Southeast Division), Willis Reed (Southwest Division), Sam Jones (Northwest Division), and Chuck Cooper (Pacific Division). The previously unnamed conference championship trophies were rebranded in honor of Bob Cousy (Eastern Conference) and Oscar Robertson (Western Conference), while the top performer of each conference finals will now receive awards named after Larry Bird (Eastern) and Magic Johnson (Western) respectively. In addition, the Larry O'Brien Championship Trophy was redesigned to feature the top circular disk engraving the first 75 NBA champions, and the bottom disk representing the next 25 champions.


title: 2021–22 NBA season

text: Free agency began on August 2, 2021; for the second consecutive year, the period for free agency was pushed back from its normal starting date in July due to COVID-19 pandemic. Notable signings included longtime Toronto Raptors guard Kyle Lowry announcing his decision to sign with the Miami Heat on a long-term deal. Lonzo Ball announced he would be signing a four-year, $85 million dollar deal with the Chicago Bulls, joining fellow free agency signing DeMar DeRozan. The Los Angeles Clippers re-signed Kawhi Leonard, and the Phoenix Suns re-signed Chris Paul. In the east, the Brooklyn Nets extended Kevin Durant to a four-year $198 million deal.


title: 2021–22 NBA season

text: As of October 2021, only the cities of Los Angeles, Toronto, New York City, and San Francisco have implemented requirements for spectators at sporting events to present proof of vaccination for COVID-19. While a majority of the league had seen its players get at least one dose of the vaccine, players in these named markets who choose not to be vaccinated would not be allowed to play home games. Moreover, the NBA has stated these players would be forced to forfeit money for the missed games. As of the announcement, the mandates were affecting the Brooklyn Nets, Golden State Warriors, Toronto Raptors, Los Angeles Clippers, Los Angeles Lakers, and New York Knicks. On January 3, 2022, an indoor vaccine mandate went into effect in Philadelphia, adding the Philadelphia 76ers to the aforementioned list. As of December 2021, 97% of NBA players are fully vaccinated against COVID-19.


title: 2021–22 NBA season

text: The preseason began on October 3, 2021, and ended on October 15. On October 5, a game between the Milwaukee Bucks and Memphis Grizzlies was suspended before the fourth quarter due to a false fire alarm.


title: 2021–22 NBA season

text: Only the top six seeds in each conference advanced to the main rounds of the 2022 NBA playoffs, while the next four seeds participated in a Page playoff system tournament from April 12–15, 2022. The 7th place team hosted the 8th place team in the double-chance round needing to win one game to advance, with the winner clinching the 7th seed in the playoffs. The 9th place team hosted the 10th place team in the elimination round that requires two wins to advance, with the loser being eliminated from playoff contention. The loser in the double-chance round hosted the elimination round game winner, with the winner clinching the 8th seed and the loser being eliminated.


title: 2021–22 NBA season

text: This is the sixth year of a nine-year deal with ABC, ESPN, TNT, and NBA TV. Beginning with this season, TNT moved its marquee Thursday doubleheaders to Tuesday nights starting with the season opener. The network will continue to air Thursday night doubleheaders, but only during opening week and beginning in January to avoid competing with Thursday Night Football. TNT aired a doubleheader on Martin Luther King Jr. Day (January 17) and the final day of the regular season (April 10).


title: 2021–22 NBA season

text: The Portland Trail Blazers signed a broadcasting deal with Root Sports Northwest, replacing NBC Sports Northwest as the team's game broadcasters.


title: Stepan Bandera

text: Stepan Andriyovych Bandera (, ; ; 1 January 1909 – 15 October 1959) was a Ukrainian far-right leader of the radical, terrorist wing of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists named OUN-B.


title: Stepan Bandera

text: Bandera was born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in Galicia, into the family of a priest of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. Involved in nationalist organizations from a young age, Bandera was sentenced to death for his involvement in the 1934 assassination of Poland's Minister of the Interior Bronisław Pieracki, commuted to life imprisonment.


title: Stepan Bandera

text: Freed from prison in 1939 following the invasion of Poland, Bandera prepared the 30 June 1941 Proclamation of Ukrainian statehood in Lviv, pledging to work with Germany after Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. The Germans disapproved the proclamation and for his refusal to rescind the decree, Bandera was arrested by the Gestapo. After the war, Bandera settled with his family in West Germany, where he remained the leader of the OUN-B and worked with several anti-communist organizations such as the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations as well as with the US and British intelligence agencies. Fourteen years after the end of the war, Bandera was assassinated in 1959 by KGB agents in Munich, West Germany.


title: Stepan Bandera

text: Bandera remains a highly controversial figure in Ukraine, with many Ukrainians hailing him as a role model hero, martyred liberation fighter, while other Ukrainians, particularly in the south and east, condemn him as a fascist Nazi collaborator who was, together with his followers, responsible for the massacres of Polish and Jewish civilians.


title: Stepan Bandera

text: On 22 January 2010, the President of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, awarded Bandera the posthumous title of Hero of Ukraine. The European Parliament condemned the award, as did Russia, Poland and Jewish politicians and organizations. President Viktor Yanukovych declared the award illegal, since Bandera was never a citizen of Ukraine, a stipulation necessary for getting the award. This announcement was confirmed by a court decision in April 2010. In January 2011, the award was officially annulled. A proposal to confer the award on Bandera was rejected by the Ukrainian parliament in August 2019.


title: Stepan Bandera

text: Stepan Bandera was born on 1 January 1909 in Staryi Uhryniv, Galicia, Austria-Hungary (officially Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, created after the first partition of Poland, now in Western Ukraine) to Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church priest Andriy Bandera (1882–1941) and Myroslava (1890–1921). Bandera had two younger brothers, Oleksandr, who would go on to earn a doctorate in political economy at the University of Rome and Vasyl who finished a degree in philosophy at the University of Lviv.


title: Stepan Bandera

text: Bandera grew up in a patriotic and religious household. He did not attend primary school due to the First World War and was taught at home by his parents. Young Bandera was undersized and slim. He sang in a choir, played guitar and mandolin, enjoyed hiking, jogging, swimming, ice skating, basketball and chess.


title: Stepan Bandera

text: After the dissolution of Austria-Hungary in the wake of World War I, Galicia briefly became a West Ukrainian People's Republic. Bandera's father, who joined Ukrainian Galician Army as a chaplain, was active in the nationalistic movement preceding the Polish–Ukrainian War which was fought between November 1918 to July 1919 and ended with Ukrainian defeat and the reintegration of the West Ukrainian People's Republic into eastern Poland. Stepan's mother, Myroslava moved with her sons to the town Yahilnytsya in Chortkiv district while her husband Andriy was away. The Chortkiv offensive in June 1919 initially saw the Ukrainian Galician Army successfully capture land in the area, but they were outnumbered about 1 to 5 and were repelled past the river Zbruch. With Poles arriving to reclaim the area and Myroslava separated from her husband, Myroslava and her sons began the almost 100-mile voyage back west to Staryi Uhryniv. Myroslava became ill on the way and never fully recovered. She died from tuberculosis at the age of 31.


title: Stepan Bandera

text: Mykola Mikhnovsky's 1900 publication, "Independent Ukraine" influenced the young Bandera greatly. After graduating from a Ukrainian high school in 1927, where he was engaged in a number of youth organizations, Bandera planned to attend the Husbandry Academy in Czechoslovakia, but he either did not get a passport or the Academy notified him that it was closed. In 1928, Bandera enrolled in the agronomy program at the Politechnika Lwowska in Lwów but never completed his studies due to his political activities and arrests.


title: Stepan Bandera

text: Stepan Bandera had met and associated himself with members of a variety of Ukrainian nationalist organizations throughout his schooling—from Plast, to the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine () and also the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN, formed in 1929 and in this period led by Yevhen Konovalets) ().


title: Stepan Bandera

text: The early 1930s would be a time of hardship and upheaval in Ukraine. During the autumn of 1930, the Pacification of Ukrainians in Eastern Galicia resulted in the destruction of property and arrests of Ukrainians in Poland. This "pacification" was a response to terrorist acts by Ukrainian nationalists.


title: Stepan Bandera

text: At the same time, Stepan Bandera was actively recruiting groups of Ukrainian nationalists in both Western and Eastern Ukraine. He was arrested six times for unlawful crossings of the Polish-Czechoslovak frontier while smuggling prohibited OUN periodicals into Poland.


title: Stepan Bandera

text: Bandera joined OUN in 1929, and quickly climbed through the ranks, becoming the chief propaganda officer in 1931, the second in command of OUN in Galicia in 1932–1933, and the head of the OUN national executive in Galicia in June 1933.


title: Stepan Bandera

text: In 1931, Polish politician Tadeusz Hołówko was assassinated by two members of the OUN. Although there is no direct implication of Bandera's involvement in his assassination, Bandera is known to have expanded the OUN's network in the borderlands between Poland and today’s Ukraine, known as Kresy, directing it against both Poland and the Soviet Union. An internal CIA report from 1946 stated that from 1932 Bandera controlled several "warrior units" in Poland in places such as the Free City of Danzig (Wolne Miasto Gdańsk), Drohobycz, Lwów, Stanisławów, Brzezany, and Truskawiec.


title: Stepan Bandera

text: To stop expropriations, Bandera turned OUN against the Polish officials who were directly responsible for anti-Ukrainian policies. Activities ranged from terrorist acts, such as attacks on post-offices, bomb-throwing at Polish exhibitions and murders of policemen to mass campaigns against Polish tobacco and alcohol monopolies and against the denationalization of Ukrainian youth. In 1934 Bandera was arrested in Lwów and tried twice: first, concerning involvement in a plot to assassinate the minister of internal affairs, Bronisław Pieracki, and second at a general trial of OUN executives. He was convicted of terrorism and sentenced to death. The death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.


title: Stepan Bandera

text: After the trials, Bandera became renowned and admired among Ukrainians in Poland as a symbol of a revolutionary who fought for Ukrainian independence. While in prison Bandera was not completely isolated from the world political discourse of the late 1930s thanks to Ukrainian and other newspaper subscriptions delivered to his cell.


title: Stepan Bandera

text: Bandera was freed from Brest (Brześć) Prison in Eastern Poland in early September of 1939, as a result of the invasion of Poland. There are differing accounts of the circumstances of his release. Soon thereafter Eastern Poland was occupied by the Soviet Union. Upon release from prison, Bandera moved to Kraków, the capital of Germany's occupational General Government in the German-occupied zone of Poland, where he established close connections with the German and . There, he also came in contact with the leader of the OUN, Andriy Atanasovych Melnyk. In 1940, the political differences and expectations between the two leaders caused the OUN to split into two factions, OUN-B and OUN-M (Banderites and Melnykites) each one claiming legitimacy.


title: Stepan Bandera

text: The OUN-M faction led by Melnyk preached a more conservative approach to nation-building, while the OUN-B faction, led by Bandera, supported a revolutionary approach, however in terms of radical nationalism, fascism, anti-semitism, xenophobia and violence both factions didn’t contradict each other. The vast majority of young OUN members joined Bandera's faction, which was devoted to the independence of Ukraine, a single-party fascist totalitarian state free of national minorities and was later responsible for the ethnic cleansing, pogroms, implicated in collaboration with Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.


title: Stepan Bandera

text: Before the independence proclamation of 30 June 1941, Bandera oversaw the formation of so-called "Mobile Groups" () which were small (5–15 members) groups of OUN-B members who would travel from General Government to Western Ukraine and, after a German advance to Eastern Ukraine, encourage support for the OUN-B and establish local authorities run by OUN-B activists.


title: Stepan Bandera

text: In total, approximately 7,000 people participated in these mobile groups, and they found followers among a wide circle of intellectuals, such as Ivan Bahriany, Vasyl Barka, Hryhorii Vashchenko and many others.


title: Stepan Bandera

text: Before World War II territory of today’s Ukraine was split between Poland, the Soviet Union, Romania and Czechoslovakia. Prior to 1939 invasion of Poland, German military intelligence recruited OUN members into Bergbauernhilfe unit, also smuggled Ukrainian nationalists into Poland in order to erode Polish defences by conducting a terror campaign directed at Polish farmers and Jews. OUN leaders Andriy Melnyk (code name Consul I) and Bandera (code name Consul II) both served as agents of the Nazi Germany military intelligence Abwehr Second Department. Their goal was to run diversion activities after Germany's attack on the Soviet Union. This information is part of the testimony that Abwehr Colonel Erwin Stolze gave on 25 December 1945 and submitted to the Nuremberg trials, with a request to be admitted as evidence.


title: Stepan Bandera

text: In the spring of 1941, Bandera held meetings with the heads of Germany's intelligence, regarding the formation of "Nachtigall" and "Roland" Battalions. In the spring of that year, the OUN received 2.5 million marks for subversive activities inside the Soviet Union. Gestapo and Abwehr officials protected Bandera's followers, as both organizations intended to use them for their own purposes.


title: Stepan Bandera

text: On June 23, 1941, one day after the German attack on the Soviet Union, Bandera sent a letter to Hitler arguing the case for an independent Ukraine. On 30 June 1941, with the arrival of Nazi troops in Ukraine, Bandera and the OUN-B unilaterally declared an independent Ukrainian state ("Act of Renewal of Ukrainian Statehood"). The proclamation pledged a cooperation of the new Ukrainian state with Nazi Germany under the leadership of Hitler with a closing note "Glory to the heroic German army and its Führer, Adolf Hitler". The declaration was accompanied by violent pogroms.


title: Stepan Bandera

text: Bandera's expectation that the Nazi regime would "post facto" recognize an independent fascist Ukraine as an Axis ally proved to be wrong. The Germans also barred Bandera from moving to newly conquered Lviv, limiting his residency to occupied Cracow. In 1941 relations between Nazi Germany and the OUN-B had soured to the point where a Nazi document dated 25 November 1941 stated that "the Bandera Movement is preparing a revolt in the which has as its ultimate aim the establishment of an independent Ukraine. All functionaries of the Bandera Movement must be arrested at once and, after thorough interrogation, are to be liquidated". On 5 July, Bandera was placed under house arrest and later, as an honorary inmate in a Berlin prison. On 12 July, the prime minister of the newly formed Ukrainian National Government, Yaroslav Stetsko, was also arrested and taken to Berlin. Although released from custody on 14 July, both were required to stay in Berlin. The Germans closed OUN-B offices in Berlin and Vienna, and on 15 September 1941 Bandera and leading OUN members were arrested by the Gestapo.


title: Stepan Bandera

text: In January 1942, Bandera was transferred to Sachsenhausen concentration camp's special prison cell building () for high-profile political prisoners such as Horia Sima, the chancellor of Austria, Kurt von Schuschnigg or Stefan Grot-Rowecki and was kept in special, comparatively comfortable detention. In April 1944, Bandera and his deputy Yaroslav Stetsko were approached by a Reich Security Main Office official to discuss plans for diversions and sabotage against the Soviet Army. In September 1944, Bandera was released by the German authorities and allowed to return to Ukraine in the hope that his partisans would unite with OUN-M and harass the Soviet troops, which by that time had handed the Germans major defeats. Germany sought to cooperate with the OUN and other Ukrainian leaders. According to Richard Breitman and Norman Goda in "Hitler's Shadow", Bandera and Stetsko refused to do this, and in December 1944 they fled Berlin, heading south.


title: Stepan Bandera

text: In February 1945, at a conference of the OUN-B in Vienna, Bandera was made the representative of the leadership of the Foreign Units of the OUN (Zakordonni Chastyny OUN or ZCh OUN). At a February meeting of the OUN in Ukraine, Bandera was re-elected as leader of the whole OUN. It was decided by the leadership that Bandera would not come back to Ukraine, but remain abroad and make propaganda for the cause of the OUN. Roman Shukhevych, another OUN nationalist, resigned as the leader of the OUN, and became the leader of OUN in Ukraine.


title: Stepan Bandera

text: According to a September 1945 report by the Office of Strategic Services Bandera had "earned a fierce reputation for conducting a 'reign of terror' during World War II". After the war, Bandera and his family moved several times around West Germany, staying close to and in Munich, where Bandera organized the ZCh OUN center. He used false identification documents that helped him to conceal his past relationship with the Nazis. Bandera was protected by the Gehlen Organization but he also received help from underground organizations of former Nazis who helped Bandera to cross borders between Allied occupation zones.


title: Stepan Bandera

text: According to Stephen Dorril, author of "MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service", Bandera re-formed the OUN-B in Munich in 1946 with the sponsorship of MI6. The organization had been receiving some support from MI6 since the 1930s. One faction of Bandera's organization, associated with Mykola Lebed, became more closely associated with the CIA.