This is the gripping true story of the Second World War deception operation by which the Allies managed to convince the Germans that the planned invasion of Sicily in 1943 was in fact a decoy and that the real invasion was to be targeted at Greece in the eastern Mediterranean and Sardinia in the western Mediterranean. The success of the operation paved the way towards the invasion of Italy, toppling Mussolini and taking that country out of the war, the first major breach in the Axis coalition. The whole story reads like a rather unlikely thriller, disguising a dead body in a Marines uniform, planting a carefully constructed series of fake documents on him, drafted and presented in such a way that they would convince the enemy of their genuineness. The key was "not merely to conceal what you are doing, but to persuade the other side that what you are doing is the reverse of what you are actually doing." To do this they had to create a whole backstory for the fictional dead Marines officer, Major William Martin, and concoct supporting evidence for the documents and other materials found in his possession that would withstand investigation by any German or other enemy agent in Britain.
The effectiveness of the plan also relied on understanding the psychology of individuals and nations, not just of the Germans, but also of the officially neutral Spaniards, juggling between those who were really pro-Axis and those (such as the Spanish navy) who were often pro-Allies. A lot of its success also depended on wishful thinking by those in the chain, wanting to believe the information, or wanting to ingratiate themselves by submitting the prized and explosive information further up the chain. It even convinced Hitler, supporting his entrenched belief that the Balkans was the soft underbelly of the Nazi Empire (ironically, Goebbels was the only leading Nazi who didn't fall for the deception).
We meet a rich and varied cast of characters from all the participating nations, including on the British side a wide variety of people who were also novelists, most famously Ian Fleming, who took the original idea for the misleading corpse from a minor novel by a former top policeman published in 1937. (That said, this connection may not be so surprising as "the greatest writers of spy fiction have, in almost every case, worked in intelligence before turning to writing [.] Somerset Maugham, John Buchan, Ian Fleming, Graham Greene, John le Carré.") We also come across the crucial role played by non-existent agents to deceive the other side and draw attention away from the activities of real agents - "Real agents tended to become truculent and demanding; they needed feeding, pampering, and paying. An imaginary agent, however, was infinitely pliable, and willing to do the bidding of his ....... handlers at once, and without question."
One of the other tensions and fine balances the Allies needed to show once the body had been discovered was that of seeming to be reasonably alarmed when the papers were lost, but without making too serious an effort to recover them, and hoping that they would not be returned unopened by a friendly Spaniard. In the author's words, "in reality if top-secret plans really had fallen into enemy hands, and the breach of security was detected, then those plans might well be abandoned, or at least substantially altered. The Germans must be made to believe that they had gained access to the documents undetected; they should be made to assume that the British believed the Spaniards had returned the documents unopened, and unread. Operation Mincemeat would only work if the Germans could be fooled into believing that the British had been fooled." Such multiple levels of motivations go to make this such a fascinating and thrilling read - if a spy novel published today had this plot it might well be dismissed as too far-fetched to be believable.
The leading instigators of the deception Ewen Montague and Charles Cholmondeley deserve great credit for their massive, but necessarily secret, contribution to ensuring the Allied victory on the European continent. After the war, the details of the deception were kept under wraps for years, partly to protect Anglo-Spanish relations, though Montagu published a partial account in 1953, and a film version was released in 1956 in which, bizarrely, Montagu played the minor role of a senior military officer, while his own role was played by an American actor. The final mystery of the real identity of the dead body - a poor and luckless Welshman, Gwyndyr Michael, who probably committed suicide through ingesting - was not revealed until the 1990s, when an inscription was added to the Spanish grave of Major William Martin, the most fictional person to make a major contribution to winning a war.
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From the Publisher
Now a major film starring Colin Firth
Deception. The Greatest Weapon In War.
1943. The Allies face an impossible challenge; protecting their troops as they plan to break the Reich's grip on occupied Europe with a direct strike on Sicily.
It falls to two remarkable intelligence officers, Ewen Montagu (Colin Firth) and Charles Cholmondeley (Matthew Macfadyen), to dream the most inspired disinformation strategy of the war, centred on the most unlikely of secret agents: a dead man.
The Sunday Times No. 1 Bestseller
"It is a tribute to Macintyre's skill that we never for a moment forget that it is actually all true" Daily Telegraph
Operation Mincemeat was the most successful wartime deception ever attempted, and the strangest. Beginning in April, 1943 with the corpse of a British soldier floating in the sea off the coast of Spain, it set off a train of events that would change the course of the Second World War.
Now a major motion picture starring Colin Firth, Matthew Macfadyen and Kelly MacDonald, Ben Macintyre's Operation Mincemeat is an astonishing true story that reads like a gripping spy thriller.
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As an 87-year old, who well remembers the successful invasion of Sicily, the first toe-hold for the Allies on Continental Europe during WWII, I can recommend this remarkable true story. Ben Macintyre is to be congratulated, for it is a Great Read.
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