From all the crazy and unthinkable plans of the Allies to take head against the Axis powers during his years World War II, there is also a station standing between them.
A really outrageous idea that aimed to hit the enemy at its strongest point: the morale of men.
"Operation Fantasy" was said to be brilliant because it did have plenty of it.
In the aftermath of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, William Donovan himself, the "Wild Bill" as he would be known, head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the US military intelligence service that would later become the CIA, asked his agents and scholars to find ways to demoralize the Nazis and the Japanese.
And they gave him a long series of dirty tricks, such as cake with explosives, bombs tied to Bats, serums of truth to extract information from the prisoners of war, even a stinky spray that filled the space with the unpleasant smell of the toilet.
The difficult times called for desperate solutions out of the ordinary, one might say, only that even in this context the "Operation Imagination" had no equal…
"Operation Fantasy" was the intellectual child of the leader of his psychological warfare OSS, Ed Salinger. He was neither a scientist nor an agent, rather than an eccentric businessman doing business with Tokyo (import / export) before the war.
His commercial activity with the Land of the Rising Sun, however, had brought him into contact, albeit superficially, with Japanese culture.
He knew the language, was a collector of traditional Japanese art and even studied the superstitions of the people as an amateur.
And it was this last trait that convinced General Donovan to hire him and put him in charge of the psychological warfare department. And so in 1943 Salinger conceived the idea that would break the proverbial morality of Japanese.
Salinger had studied Shinto, then the dominant religion in Japan, and knew about kitsune spirits, which were considered a bad omen for everyone.
The kitsune had the form of a fox, possessed magical properties and was exactly the kind of prejudice that Donovan sought to instill fear and anxiety in soldiers and civilians.
"The basis of the proposal," Salinger wrote in the preface to the memo with his idea, "is based on the fact that modern Japan is full of superstitions, beliefs in evil spirits and supernatural manifestations that can be mobilized and sharpened ".
And so he thought… radioactive foxes that would radiate an eerie glow and terrorize the enemy, foretelling bad mantas for the outcome of the war!
Mythical spirits would come to life and all the Japanese would get the message that the gods were opposed to their war. Laying down, why not, even the weapons.
When asked how he intended to create these fake kitsune, they saw that Salinger and his team did not lack ideas, anything else. The first version launched was with radiant shaped balloons foxes to pass over villages and cities instilling terror in the inhabitants.
They even turned to a company that made whistles to make them a dummy that mimics fox sounds. Salinger had bet a lot on this idea.
He writes characteristically in his internal memoir: "These whistles can be used in battle and a sufficient number of them will create a strange sound that, we estimate, will activate Japanese bias."
And since the thing was not only serious, but also an absolute priority, the Office of Strategic Services hired another company to recreate the fox smell in the laboratory. They were looking for such plausibility for their plan.
Salinger assumed here that the Japanese would somehow recognize the smell of the fox. In the same way that the people would know the sounds that the carnivorous animal rarely makes. And so they would be scared like never before.
Despite his best efforts, however, the Office considered all of this "impractical" - balloons, whistles and odors, and was now promoting Salinger's maiden plan, which was, to say the least: catching live foxes in China and Australia and spray them with phosphorescent paint, then release them in the Japanese countryside!
But even with everyone agreeing, the plan presented a number of challenges that needed more thought and better organization. And first of all, what kind of paint would they use to paint the animals?
The answer was given here by the infamous United States Radium Corporation, which had already developed a color that glowed in the dark. Which contained radio. And everyone knew his dangers radioactive element, as already in 1917 the company was in the vortex of the cyclone.
The workers of her factories, the "Radio Girls" as they had become tragically known, were infected from work with radioactive paint (they painted the dials of clocks to look in the dark) and suffered from anemia, necrosis of parts of their bodies and many more afflictions.
By 1938, many of them had been sued for permanent health problems, and the OSS was, of course, aware of all this. And yet, even so, he considered that the purpose sanctifies the means and gave the green light to continue the "Operation Imagination".
Next reef to be climbed? How will the radioactive dye remain in the fox fur? Here Salinger enlisted the help of Harry Nimphius, a veterinarian at his zoo. Central Park of New York.
Despite his know-how, the veterinarian who became world famous when he treated a paralyzed elephant and healed a canary with a broken leg, even he admitted that he had no idea how this could be done.
And so he asked for the help of a raccoon, who was willing to lend his fur for experiments in exchange for daily treats.
The guinea pig was now kept out of sight and OSS agents guarded the lab overnight. A few days later, Nimphius had found a way to keep the dye from leaving his hair.
Everything went well, except perhaps for this embarrassing question that eventually arose: How could they be sure that these supernatural foxes would actually terrify the Japanese?
The big heads of the Office had the solution again: they would release 30 such glowing foxes in a park of Washington and would observe the reactions of the locals. If they frightened the Americans, who did not have such precautions, imagine what they would do to the superstitious Japanese!
By then we had reached 1945, but let it be. And so one summer night the OSS staff actually released the foxes into the park and the experiment showed "promising results," according to the effectiveness report.
The radiant foxes terrorized passers-by and some alerted the national park police, who wrote in their report: "Terrified residents, shocked by the sudden appearance of ghost animals, run through the dark deserts of the park screaming."
"Operation Imagination" was working and everyone involved was overjoyed. Only one more procedural gimmick would come to spoil the beautiful atmosphere: how would the foxes reach the islands of Japan?
Salinger suggested that they be thrown into the sea and that they would find their way to the shores, only that this was considered endangered for the lives of the animals. Could foxes swim long distances? Yes, Nimphius said, but Salinger had to control it.
So in the morning mist of one of the following days, they picked up plenty of them and put them on a boat bound for Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary of the river. USA. When the engines stopped, they tossed them one by one into the icy ocean to see if they would sink or swim.
And they swam, bringing joy to those who had worked for the project for so long. They were now ready to invade Japan. There were no other embankments!
But as soon as they came ashore, most of the radioactive paint had been washed away in water. Worse still, the foxes removed with their tongues what was left, erasing the smile from the staff lips.
No problem for Ed Salinger, he would throw his foxes straight to land. Even so, owning one is still beyond the reach of the average person.
How could they be sure that the animals would stay close to humans and would not prefer their quiet away from them? Especially when they would hear thunder from cannons and guns?
The fearless Salinger had the solution ready again: big numbers. "If we release many foxes, some will pass," he wrote in another of his internal memoirs.
And if the foxes eventually fail, an army of radioactive dyes raccoon, coyotes, mink and ferrets would replace them worthily.
Success was in their pocket…
If we have never heard of Operation Fantasy in World War II, it is because it never happened. As early as September 24, 1943, the head of the OSS Research and Development Department, Stanley Lovell, tore his clothes with the obvious madness of the project.
As he repeatedly stated in the group meetings, he could not understand why no one questioned the logic, expediency and efficiency of such a business.
"I suspect that this will serve as a critique for us in the field of pure logic!" He complained to his colleagues.
Even for Lovell, that is, a man with similar crazy ideas, he wanted to say let's do Hitler to lose his mustache by throwing female hormones in his vegetables (!), the radioactive foxes exceeded his resistance to irrationality.
The minutes of the last OSS meeting, near the end of the war, reveal a remarkable relief to those present for the final abandonment of the plan.
"The problem of '' Fantasy ''", they conclude, "was settled politely"…