Batman Gambit/Real Life: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
* [[Otto von Bismarck]], Chancellor of Prussia, successfully manipulated his enemies to unify Germany, using his ally Austria to defeat Denmark, then caused Austria to declare war on Prussia, and finally manipulated France into another war, thus creating the political climate to unite the many German states into a single one. He pulled some of this off by taking advantage of pre-existing circumstances and he lured enemies (and his boss!) into traps several times. Then again, a man wearing [[Nice Hat|that formidable a hat]] is clearly working at a higher level than most.
*When famed poet [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_Alighieri Dante Alighieri] died, there was something of an argument between Florence and Ravenna over where the body should be interred. Dante was known to have a love of his home city of Florence that far exceeded his opinion the corrupt rulers of it who exiled him. (It was not without malice that ''[[The Divine Comedy]]'' - always meant by Dante to be more of a political satire than anything else - [[Take That| showed many of said rulers burning in Hell]].) Still, the ruling class of Florence had realized by now that Dante had quite a few admirers in Florence and felt he deserved a grand tomb as a monument to his works; Ravenna, however, also wanted said tomb, telling Florence, in a nutshell, “YOU are the ones who kicked the poor man out of his home town, deal with it.” Eventually, [[The Pope| Pope Leo X]] seemed to end this argument [[An Offer You Can't Refuse| by “requesting”]] Dante’s body be returned to Florence so he could be interred in a mausoleum designed by Michelangelo himself. Now, in most cases back then, what the Pope says goes (this was kind of how Dante was exiled in the first place) so the folks in Ravenna begrudgingly sent the casket. Now here’s where the Trope comes up: sometime after the funeral, some Florentines in the delegation to Ravenna were [[Understatement| a little suspicious]] and decided to break open the sealed door of the tomb and looked inside the coffin. It was empty. The Franciscan monks had pulled a fast one, taking Dante’s body from the coffin and burying it somewhere in their monastery. Florence was now in the awkward position, [[Morton's Fork| because if they called out Ravenna for doing this, they would also have to admit to breaking open the tomb]], an act of desecration that nobody, much less the Pope would approve. So they wisely just decided to keep their mouths shut about it and give up, leaving the great poet’s body in a hidden grave. Still, Dante eventually would be moved to a grand mausoleum (about 300 years later) but given Dante’s years of bad blood with the Florentine rules, it’s safe to say he’d have approved of Ravenna humiliating them with such a clever trick.
* Also during WWII, when the allies were planning to invade southern Europe from Africa, the British launched a homeless man (who died of accidentally ingesting scraps of bread laced with rat poison) from a submarine, in an area where the Spanish would recover his body. Chained to his belt was a briefcase that explained that the invasion site would NOT be Sicily, and hinted instead it would be Greece. The Spanish under Franco, being on friendly terms with the Germans, found the body and gave the evidence to the German embassy, who bought the story, leaving the invasion site nearly undefended. It may also help that the Abwehr, which asserted the authenticity of the documents, was riddled with British agents, including its head, Admiral Canaris.
** The success of this plan, [[wikipedia:Operation Mincemeat|Operation Mincemeat]], was actually what led the Germans to disregard other information they'd actually gotten. Once the invasion was complete, they realised they'd been fooled and disregarded several other actual intelligence leaks as simple repeats of Mincemeat. Due to the effectiveness of the other [[wikipedia:Operation Fortitude|major deceptive operation]] this failure included the actual landings at D-Day being ruled as a repeat of Mincemeat.
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