Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Vic...
One April morning in 1943, a sardine fisherman spotted the corpse of a British soldier floating in the sea off the coast of Spain and set in train ...
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Aug 12, 2011
David
rated it: 
I feel I ought to have liked this book more than I did. Lord knows, the author did his research, in commendable detail. But did he really have to include everything he learned in the final book? At some point the level of detail provided went (for me) beyond interesting and started to become stultifying. MacIntyre is a decent writer, but I think he falls into the trap that bedevils many non-fiction authors -- all the time and energy spent doing the research causes him to lose perspective. The st
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Jan 03, 2011
Nancy
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Briefly, I have to say that this is one of the most fascinating books of history I've read in a very long time. You don't even need to be a WWII buff to appreciate it -- I'm not -- but it's simply amazing. The basic story is this: it's 1943, and the Allies have plans to invade Sicily to get a foothold in Europe and defeat Hitler. But since Sicily is the most obvious place for an Allied landing, Ewen Montagu and Charles Cholmondeley (it's pronounced "Chumley") of the Naval Intelligenc
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Sep 06, 2011
Bob
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In the middle of WWII a 36 year old British citizen who is down on his luck and known to no one, has no relatives, no friends, and is not serving or fighting in the war consumes rat poison and dies an agonizing death. Yet, in death he becomes one of the oddest heroes of the allied invasion of Sicily. He is the MAN WHO NEVER WAS made famous by the book and 1956 movie. Ben Macintyre while writing his excellent book, AGENT ZIGZAG came upon declassified papers and has in OPERATION MINCEMEAT recreate
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Sep 05, 2011
Grace
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This book is amazing! It's twisty and factual and FUNNY, which is not necessarily what you'd think, given it's a story about a high-risk WWII spy plot. But I frequently laughed aloud while reading - MacIntyre's timing is impeccable, hilarious while never jarring you out of the story.
If you know the plot to the film "The Man Who Wasn't There", then you're familiar with Operation Mincemeat. It's the same operation, just fictionalized. I'm not going to go into detail because rea More...
If you know the plot to the film "The Man Who Wasn't There", then you're familiar with Operation Mincemeat. It's the same operation, just fictionalized. I'm not going to go into detail because rea More...
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Sep 02, 2011
Charles
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Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory by Ben MacIntyre
On the back cover, Malcolm Gladwell describes the book as "almost absurdly entertaining". It was a phrase I couldn't get out of my mind as I was reading it.
I already knew the story of The Man Who Never Was from a scary Saturday night film shown at prep school.
MacIntyre's sometimes exhaustingly thorough account of the successful plot to fool More...
On the back cover, Malcolm Gladwell describes the book as "almost absurdly entertaining". It was a phrase I couldn't get out of my mind as I was reading it.
I already knew the story of The Man Who Never Was from a scary Saturday night film shown at prep school.
MacIntyre's sometimes exhaustingly thorough account of the successful plot to fool More...
Aug 25, 2011
Kurt
rated it:
The rule of thumb is that if you have to explain a joke, it isn't funny. But if you do explain a joke, then I know how it works.
Operation Mincemeat was the name of an intelligence plan carried out by the British against the Germans during World War II, designed to fool them into thinking that the Allied assault from North Africa would not be going through Sicily - where all rational people assumed it would go - but instead through Sardinia and Greece, and any references to Sicily we More...
Operation Mincemeat was the name of an intelligence plan carried out by the British against the Germans during World War II, designed to fool them into thinking that the Allied assault from North Africa would not be going through Sicily - where all rational people assumed it would go - but instead through Sardinia and Greece, and any references to Sicily we More...
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Jul 31, 2011
Penny
rated it:
Tremendously fun thriller that also happens to be true. The author leads with a quote from Winston Churchill -- "Who in war will not have his laugh amid the skulls?" -- and the book is designed to give the most entertainment non-fiction can provide. MacIntyre has a great story at his disposal: a World War II British plot to plant a corpse off the coast of Spain with a briefcase of top-secret (and forged) documents chained to his wrist. The hope was that the documents would make their w
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Jun 19, 2011
Elli
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This was wonderful! Seemed to be where the novel meets non-fiction. There's something in the requirements of successfully gathering intelligence, disseminating false information with an objective in mind (and if successfully winning world war II isn't an objective, I don't know what is). Imagination is required, monitoring that information, translating what you get from how you get it, and making use of it. The British Intelligence system is the originating background (M15 & M16) for this.
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Jan 26, 2011
Darryl
rated it:
“Operation Mincemeat” by Ben Macintyre is the true account of possibly the greatest deception employed by the Allies on the Germans in WWII. In 1956 there was an enormously popular movie, “The Man Who Never Was”, starring Clifton Webb as Ewen Montagu, the British naval intelligence officer who was one of the two people who originated and saw to the execution of Operation Mincemeat, the other being Charles Cholmondeley. The movie was based on a book of the same name by Montagu. The book was on
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Dec 30, 2010
Tony
rated it: 
I like reading about espionage and World War II every once in a while, so based on some favorable review I read somewhere, I picked this up. Unfortunately, like all too many popular nonfiction books I seem to encounter these days (such as The Tiger and In the Heart of the Sea, to name the two most recent examples I read), the book is overstuffed with extraneous detail and (to my mind at least) vastly overstates the importance of the topic it covers. The title refers to a British intelligence ope
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Nov 22, 2010
Bob
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This is the story of an ingenious plan to deceive the Nazis into thinking that the southern European invasion would come in Greece rather than in Sicily, as actually happened. The plan involved floating a dead courier's body ashore in southern Spain, after which it was hoped the many pro-German spies would discover a letter between Allied Generals indicating the direction of the European invasion plans. The story is quite amazing, especially in the fact that it worked. I enjoyed hearing how the
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Nov 11, 2010
Mike
rated it:
A thrilling book about how British espionage and deception in World War II fooled Hitler and enabled the Allies to make a decisive takeover of the island of Sicily.
The author, being an author, cannot help himself from noting the influence of writers in this complicated scheme. The story begins with a top secret memo entitled “The Trout Fisher,” issued under the name of Admiral John Godfrey, who was helped along by the future James Bond novelist Ian Flemming. The memo contained 51 sug More...
The author, being an author, cannot help himself from noting the influence of writers in this complicated scheme. The story begins with a top secret memo entitled “The Trout Fisher,” issued under the name of Admiral John Godfrey, who was helped along by the future James Bond novelist Ian Flemming. The memo contained 51 sug More...
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Nov 08, 2010
Khalid
rated it:
If you are a fan of intelligence operations you will love this book. The author demonstrates intimate knowledge of his subject matter with exhaustive research and shares his enthusiasm with wit and style.
In 1943 the Allies were victorious in Africa, driving Rommel's Afrika Corps back to Italy. The next step was to invade some part of Europe, and "Operation Husky" was to take the fight to Italy. The Allies deluded the Nazis into thinking that the main attack on Sicily was just a More...
In 1943 the Allies were victorious in Africa, driving Rommel's Afrika Corps back to Italy. The next step was to invade some part of Europe, and "Operation Husky" was to take the fight to Italy. The Allies deluded the Nazis into thinking that the main attack on Sicily was just a More...
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Sep 15, 2010
Joshua
rated it:
Ben MacIntrye returns to the world of English espionage that he wrote about in his previous book (Zigzag) and delivers another extremely detailed version of a complicated ruse the military intelligence pulled on the Germans during WW2. They dropped a dead guy off the coast of Spain with fake letters regarding future island invasions and the Germans left Sicily unprotected. When the invasion came to Sicily, the Italians did little fighting before the Allies took it as a key late-war addition to s
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Aug 22, 2010
Bookmarks Magazine
rated it:
Thanks to Macintyre's meticulous research and discovery of original documents, here, finally, is the definitive version of this incredible tale, complete with an eccentric cast of characters and thrilling, suspenseful moments. Critics on both sides of the pond lavished praise on Operation Mincemeat, citing Macintyre's flair for detail and his skill in rendering the Allies' convoluted machinations into a cohesive story, which races along with a novel's momentum. The New York Times Book Review gru
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Jun 26, 2010
Converse
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In 1943 the British attempted to deceive the Germans about where the next invasion would occur in the Meditteranean. They did so by dressing up the corpse of an unfortunate Welsh drifter (he died ingesting rat poison) in a Royal Marine uniform and attaching to him a briefcase with fake documents indicating invasions in Sardinia and the Balkans. The corpse was put into the Atlantic off the coast of Spain; that portion of the coast had an active German agent. The body was duly picked up by som
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Jun 15, 2010
Judy
rated it:
The saying goes "All's fair in love and war" and this book proves just that point. In late 1942, the Allies are being pressured by Stalin to open a second front in Europe. Roosevelt and Churchill are concerned about the potential catastrophic loss of life if an allied invasion is launched prematurely. Enter the British intelligence community and their love of mystery fiction. They come up with a plan to create a "red herring" to misdirect Germany into believing that the
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Dec 03, 2010
F.R.
rated it:
The fashion for World War Two films and novels these days is to play down the derring-do and instead concentrate on what exposure to all that battle and death does to a person’s soul. (Alistair MacLean is not an author in vogue.) Exactly the same is true of the spy genre, where the duplicity these men (and, to a lesser degree, women) do whilst playing their great game eats away at their insides. And yet in Ben McIntyre’s two non-fiction books detailing strange tales of espionage in the Second Wo
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Jul 20, 2010
Manny
rated it:
The basic story is well known, but since the appearance of the first book, The Man Who Never Was, an extraordinary amount of new material has become available. Even if you've read The Man Who Never Was (I had), I can't recommend Operation Mincemeat highly enough. This is, quite simply, the most extraordinary book of its kind that I've ever come across. I couldn't put it down, and finished it in a little more than a day.
The plot in a nutshell, in case you aren't already familiar with More...
The plot in a nutshell, in case you aren't already familiar with More...
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Sep 09, 2010
Jim
rated it:
Macintyre follows Agent Zigzag, his wonderful book about a WWII double agent, with Operation Mincemeat, the story of how the British deceived the Nazis into thinking that the Allies’ Mediterranean invasion would take not take place in Sicily, causing them to divert much of their resources elsewhere. The British created a fictional officer and dropped him (actually the body of a homeless person who had committed suicide) together with a briefcase containing fake letters and other personal effects
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Sep 02, 2010
Scott
rated it:
Apparently this story is fairly common knowledge--the basis for a bestselling book and hit movie in the 1950s called The Man Who Never Was--but I had never heard really heard the details, and author Ben MacIntyre claims that much of what's in Operation Mincemeat has never before been revealed (recently declassified documents, newly discovered diary, etc.). Anyway, this is a total World War II spy story, starring lots of eccentric Englishmen, who, with a carefully placed dead body with pockets an
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Jan 10, 2012
Simon
rated it:
I love WW2 history. Usually, I focus on specific battles or campaigns, but this story was too colorful to pass up. I had long been familiar with the broad generalities of Operation Mincemeat--the dumping of a corpse, laden with false battle plans, off the coast of Spain prior to the Allied invasion of Sicily--but I never knew the gritty details.
Macintyre has done a marvelous job bringing the somewhat zany undertaking to life. The body dumped in Spanish waters was actually that of More...
Macintyre has done a marvelous job bringing the somewhat zany undertaking to life. The body dumped in Spanish waters was actually that of More...
Jul 09, 2011
Sushila
rated it:
Operation Mincemeat is a fun, quick-paced read about a glorious WWII spy-mission that is, amazingly, true! MacIntyre excels at laying out the cast of eccentric characters and succinctly drawing attention to each idiosyncrasy. There are A LOT of characters—British, Spanish, German, American—and it can be difficult to keep track of them all. Luckily, MacIntyre provides little reminders, and the pictures in the middle of the book are actually quite helpful with their descriptive captions. (It's
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May 01, 2011
Liz
rated it:
It's World War II month on The Odd Shelf. First Unbroken, now Operation Mincemeat, two very engaging, and very different, true accounts of the horrors and the intrigue of that war. (And if another book hadn't come into the library at just the right time, I'd have moved from those to The Information Officer, a mystery/spy thriller set in 1942 Malta.)
When I was a teenager and ready to graduate to adult fiction from the young adult titles I'd been devouring since fourth grade, for some re More...
When I was a teenager and ready to graduate to adult fiction from the young adult titles I'd been devouring since fourth grade, for some re More...
Jul 26, 2011
I always enjoyed Masterman's _Double Cross System_ and _The Man Who Never Was_, but now that Ultra is out of the bag and the stiff upper lip has faded a little, a more well rounded appreciation of Mincemeat is possible, including the stranger than fiction cast: Ian Fleming and his list of ""not very nice"" things to do to Nazis, Ewen Montague and his Communist spy brother the Marxist Ping Pong guru, ""the most unscrupulous man in Spain,"" a dangerously fe
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Sep 21, 2010
Joann
rated it:
a caper undertaken by British intelligence to fool the Hitler and the Nazis into thinking the Allied invasion of mainland Europe would come from through Greece and not Sicily.
It did not take long for word of the downed officer to make its way to German intelligence agents in the region. Spain was a neutral country, but much of its military was pro-German, and the Nazis found an officer in the Spanish general staff who was willing to help. A thin metal rod was inserted into the envelo More...
It did not take long for word of the downed officer to make its way to German intelligence agents in the region. Spain was a neutral country, but much of its military was pro-German, and the Nazis found an officer in the Spanish general staff who was willing to help. A thin metal rod was inserted into the envelo More...
Jul 26, 2011
Matt
rated it:
In this entertaining look at the hidden world of WWII espionage, Macintyre profiles the bizarre case of a British soldier's dead body being recovered off the south coast of Spain. The soldier was carrying top secret information about the Allies' planned invasion of Sardis. What the German agents who found these documents didn't realize was that the body belonged to a Welsh drifter who had committed suicide months before and that the Allies really planned to invade Sicily. Operation Mincemeat is
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Jan 23, 2011
Pam
rated it:
I wasn't sure what else I needed to know about The Man Who Never Lived. However, MacIntyre adds so much more of the back story about the body that washes up in 1943 Spain with documents that convinced the Germans that the Allie's invasion would be at Greece and Sardinia, and not Sicily. The ruse took months of planning and actually had germinated with Ian Fleming's boss at the beginning of the war. Unlike a memoir, this book had the added benefit of historical perspective and provided a sweep
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Oct 12, 2011
Huw
rated it:
I do like the odd History book - and this was an odd history book - and I liked it!
Firstly, you get the sense that you've read this story before, and you know the outcome. Then you remember that you read "The Man Who Never Was", and saw the film (countless times) over the years. Because "Operation Mincemeat" is pretty much this same story all over again. So like "The Titanic", you know the main parts - and you know the end. But it's the detail in between More...
Firstly, you get the sense that you've read this story before, and you know the outcome. Then you remember that you read "The Man Who Never Was", and saw the film (countless times) over the years. Because "Operation Mincemeat" is pretty much this same story all over again. So like "The Titanic", you know the main parts - and you know the end. But it's the detail in between More...
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Nov 16, 2010
Mitzi
rated it:
I love it when nonfiction reads better than fiction. Who could make this up? Borrowed from a little-known mystery story, British spies take a body and plant false documentation on it to convince the Germans they are attacking Sardinia instead of Sicily. It's amazing the amount of work it takes to make the documents and the story believeable. It's amazing how the Germans retrieved the information, and how the British were able to tell they had opened it--(ah! the importance of an eyelash!).
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