Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory

±1±: Now is the time Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory Order Today!

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Jun 16, 2010 05:54:05

Ben Macintyre’s Agent Zigzag was hailed as “rollicking, spellbinding” (New York Times), “wildly improbable but entirely true” (Entertainment Weekly), and, quite simply, “the best book ever written” (Boston Globe). In his new book, Operation Mincemeat, he tells an extraordinary story that will delight his legions of fans.

In 1943, from a windowless basement office in London, two brilliant intelligence officers conceived a plan that was both simple and complicated— Operation Mincemeat. The purpose? To deceive the Nazis into thinking that Allied forces were planning to attack southern Europe by way of Greece or Sardinia, rather than Sicily, as the Nazis had assumed, and the Allies ultimately chose.

Charles Cholmondeley of MI5 and the British naval intelligence officer Ewen Montagu could not have been more different. Cholmondeley was a dreamer seeking adventure. Montagu was an aristocratic, detail-oriented barrister. But together they were the perfect team and created an ingenious plan: Get a corpse, equip it with secret (but false and misleading) papers concerning the invasion, then drop it off the coast of Spain where German spies would, they hoped, take the bait. The idea was approved by British intelligence officials, including Ian Fleming (creator of James Bond). Winston Churchill believed it might ring true to the Axis and help bring victory to the Allies.

Filled with spies, double agents, rogues, fearless heroes, and one very important corpse, the story of Operation Mincemeat reads like an international thriller.

Unveiling never-before-released material, Ben Macintyre brings the reader right into the minds of intelligence officers, their moles and spies, and the German Abwehr agents who suffered the “twin frailties of wishfulness and yesmanship.” He weaves together the eccentric personalities of Cholmondeley and Montagu and their near-impossible feats into a riveting adventure that not only saved thousands of lives but paved the way for a pivotal battle in Sicily and, ultimately, Allied success in the war.

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±1±: Best Buy Operation Mincemeat tells the true story of how the British planted a dead body carrying fake war plans off the coast of Spain during World War II and how the Germans and Italians subsequently altered their defenses upon examination of the false plans, paving the way for an Allied victory in Europe.

Ben Macintyre takes the reader along from the very first inkling of the operation by Ian Fleming (yes, *that* Ian Fleming) through every stage of its planning, implementation, and aftermath. The reader learns how the British government unethically stole the body of a dead drifter for the good of the country and then created an entirely new identity for the man. As such, Glyndwr Michael, a man with no real family ties who killed himself by swallowing rat poison, became Major William Martin, a promising young officer with a new fiancé carrying battle plans to Africa detailing (fake) upcoming Allied invasions in Europe. With the blessing of Churchill and Eisenhower, the body was planted off the Spanish coast--made to look like a plane crash--in a location that the British knew was full of Nazi sympathizers. True to expectations, the Spanish retrieved the body and plans, copies of which ended up in German hands. Thanks to the dubious nature of several German operatives in Spain, whose goal was to make favorable impressions rather than to pass along all the facts, Hitler himself bought into the fake British war plans and shifted German defenses (also convincing Mussolini to do the same with Italian forces), allowing for a relatively easy British and American invasion of Sicily and ultimately contributing a large part toward the victory in Europe.

At the core of the story is Ewen Montagu, a member of British Intelligence who helped create every part of Martin's fake identity, lived the part himself with the real-life young woman who was tasked with portraying Martin's fiancé, and struggled after the operation to tell his side of the story in the midst of government censorship and increasing public awareness of Mincemeat. The book is peppered with many other people who contributed to the success of Mincemeat--other members of British Intelligence; British, Spanish, and German spies; etc.--but the story is really about Montagu and his extraordinary efforts to make the operation a success. Throughout the book, Macintyre's words read almost like a fictional spy story (in a good way). Everything is so vividly detailed and researched, but presented to the reader in an exciting way that never drags on the reader's attention. This is not a drab account of history, as some books can be; it reads like a story that Fleming himself might have created. If my above synopsis sounds like a story you'd be interested in, this book comes highly recommended. on Sale!