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

Ben Macintyre

3.97 · Rating details · 12,632 ratings · 1,245 reviews

In 1943, from a windowless London basement office, two intelligence officers conceived a plan that was both simple & complicated—Operation Mincemeat. Purpose? To deceive the Nazis into thinking the Allies were planning to attack Europe by way of Greece or Sardinia, rather than Sicily, as the Nazis had assumed & the Allies ultimately chose. Charles Cholmondeley of M ...more

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Hardcover, 416 pages

Published May 4th 2010 by Bloomsbury

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Jul 02, 2011 David rated it liked it

Shelves: read-in-2011

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 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 story is endlessly fascinating to him, but he forgets that some pruning of the details is needed in order to shape the narrative for the reader. But pruning is something that MacIntyre seems incapable of -- even the most peripheral actor is this tale gets at least two pages of backstory, which often does little to advance the real story.

Every chapter of the book is stuffed with irrelevant detail. Ewen Montagu, one of the main protagonists, came from an extremely wealthy family, a fact which is largely irrelevant to the story, but which nonetheless gets about 8 pages of text as MacIntyre gushes on about the number of family servants, the decor in the family mansion, their glittering social contacts etc etc. Discussion of the difficulties in acquiring a cadaver that can be used to fool the Germans is expanded (bloated) by inclusion of completely irrelevant biographical information on everyone consulted in the process, what everyone ate or drank at any given meeting, the temperature of the sherry, the mood of Montagu's stepmother, a digression on the history of grave-robbing, and any other random tidbit that showed up in MacIntyre's notebooks apparently. This kind of thing will either charm you or drive you up the wall.

Operation Mincemeat was an important, and fascinating, episode from the second world war, but it surely could have been told in fewer than 400 pages. That said, the book is not a bad read, and the occasional lapses into grandiosity of the kind "that single (hotel) register entry could have changed the course of World War II" are mercifully rare.

My inner pedant finds it necessary to point out that the correct term for what MacIntyre refers to as "champagne de mousse" (the white froth around the mouth that is characteristic of drowning victims) is actually "champignon de mousse". ...more

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Jun 20, 2012 Jason Koivu rated it really liked it

Shelves: war

When a dead man becomes a highly effective spy, fools the enemy and helps win a war with the world in the balance, well, that sounds like something James Bond writer Ian Fleming would concoct. Oh wait, he did.

To be specific (and more correct), Operation Mincemeat, a plan devised by Britain's intelligence agency MI5 to convince Germany that a southern attack on Europe via the Mediterranean by Allied forces, was signed off on by Fleming, one of many in Britain's spy ring.

Though Fleming may not h ...more

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Jul 18, 2010 Manny rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history-and-biography

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 it. It's early 1 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 it. It's early 1943, and the Allies have just pushed the Germans off North Africa. The next step is use that as a springboard to invade Southern Europe. But where? A quick look at a map shows there's only one sensible target: Sicily. Any sane strategist would be expecting an invasion of Sicily, and, indeed, it's just what the Allies were planning.

On the other hand... suppose they could confuse the Germans, and make them think they were really planning to strike elsewhere, say in Greece? It seemed impossible, but a few resourceful people in Counter-Intelligence thought they could see a way to do it. They would take a dead body, attach a briefcase to it containing some papers, let it wash up on a Spanish beach (Spain was neutral) and make it look like he was a courier whose plane had crashed while he was on the way to deliver a top-secret message. If it was done right, the Germans might just swallow the bait.

They did it, and it worked. In the earlier book, written by one of the people who masterminded the operation, it was made to look comparatively easy, and he glossed over all the really interesting details. Not his fault; he wasn't allowed to reveal them. Now, 67 years after the event, most of the story can finally be told, and what an exciting story it is! The plan was on a knife-edge the whole time: it was almost impossible to find a suitable body, there were obvious holes in the cover story that the Germans could easily have spotted, the Spanish nearly didn't hand over the briefcase to the Germans, and the operation's security was compromised from the beginning. Even though you know how it's going to end, it's a white-knuckle ride.

One of the most interesting aspects is the analysis of why the plan succeeded. The author argues, very plausibly, that great pieces of deception only work when people want to be deceived. If the Abwehr had been doing its job properly, they would have spotted the ruse. An organisation, however, is only as good as its people, and the people who made the individual judgements all turned out to have reasons for wanting to believe this apparent windfall. Some of them were nervous about their jobs, and hoped it would put them in better standing with their superiors; some were just lazy and incompetent; one key analyst may well have figured out what was really going on, and knowingly passed incorrect information to the German High Command.

The author never says one word about it, but I couldn't help thinking of the greatest intelligence failure of our own time. In 2003, why did the Americans believe that Saddam Hussein was concealing weapons of mass destruction? For all of the supposedly solid evidence presented to the UN Security Council, Saddam's WMDs turned out to be as illusory as the Allies' 1943 plan to invade Greece. I still haven't seen anything approaching an explanation of how people could get it so wrong. Perhaps, in 2070, we'll get to find out what really happened.
...more

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Oct 21, 2010 Nancy Oakes rated it it was amazing

Shelves: nonfiction, espionage

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 Intelligence section of ...more

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Dec 01, 2012 Mikey B. rated it it was amazing

Shelves: world-war-ii, england

A marvellous story of intrigue of actual events during World War II. There are a host of wonderful and eclectic characters in England, Spain and Germany. The author presents all these in readable detail.

The sequence of events – and there are several – are well depicted and we are clearly presented with the logical construction of this set-up meant to deceive the Germans into believing that the Allies mean to launch a multi-pronged invasion in the Mediterranean – instead of just Sicil ...more

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Feb 26, 2012 Caroline rated it it was amazing

Shelves: history

It's a rare gem when history is unfolded for us in such a detailed and thrilling form. In 1943, Ewan Montagu of the British Naval Intelligence and Charles Cholmondeley of MI5 came together in collaboration of a complex plan of deception. The plan that was ultimately approved was to take a suitable corpse, dress it in a suitable military uniform, place certain well-planned personal items, attach to it a chained briefcase containing fake official documents and personal letters, and then drop it th It's a rare gem when history is unfolded for us in such a detailed and thrilling form. In 1943, Ewan Montagu of the British Naval Intelligence and Charles Cholmondeley of MI5 came together in collaboration of a complex plan of deception. The plan that was ultimately approved was to take a suitable corpse, dress it in a suitable military uniform, place certain well-planned personal items, attach to it a chained briefcase containing fake official documents and personal letters, and then drop it the ocean close to Huelva in Spain, where German agents and sympathizers were known to work. The objective? To deceive Hitler and his army that the Allies were going to use Sicily as a cover, but that they were going to attack Greece and Sardinia instead. If the plan was successful, Hitler would move his troops away from Sicily, thus leaving this underbelly of Italy vulnerable to the British armada and air attacks.

Sicily was identified as being the pivotal point at which a successful Allied attack could destroy Germany's hold over Italy. Secret agents and double agents were seemingly living cheek by jowl in Spain, and both Great Britain and Germany built an impressive network of spies in Spain.

What makes this a fascinating read is the attention to the cast of characters that had any part at all in this particular secret operation, both on the British side as well as on the German side. The personalities of all characters, their background before, during and after the war, and the parts they played, both in the development, and the witting and unwitting execution of Operation Mincemeat are carefully detailed. And this includes the life of the person who took the central spotlight in this play - the corpse, who never in his living days thought he'd be serving his country in such a dramatic fashion.

The unfolding of Operation Mincemeat once the corpse was released into the water was a non-stop thrill. There were so many opportunities for the plan to go pear-shaped but the way in which the British spymasters manipulated their network was sheer genius and eventually led to the successful invasion of Sicily, wrenching away Germany's control and the toppling of Mussolini.

There is a reference to a similar outline of a plan to use a corpse by Ian Fleming, and indeed it could have given the duo the idea, but credit must be given to both Cholmondeley and Montagu for crafting and thinking of all angles to this plan and then being instrumental in executing it so successfully. ...more

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Nov 25, 2016 Amy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: audio

You can't make this stuff up! Or more precisely, you can which is what makes this story of espionage and deception so much fun. It is almost hard to believe it is all true.
When I first began the book, I didn't think Ben Macintyre had enough material to make an interesting story. I presumed he would be repetitive, or worse, insert his own personal 'journey' into the narrative. I was proved decidedly wrong in both cases. So many unique, colorful characters pepper the story of Operation Mincemeat tha ...more

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Aug 27, 2015 Erik Graff rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: WWII & espionage fans

Recommended to Erik by: no one

Shelves: history

Dad was involved in the occupation of N. Africa and in the landings at Gela on the south coast of Sicily. An army cryptanalyst attached to the U.S. navy, he and his colleagues maintained ship-to-shore communications during the successful invasion. Books relevant to his experiences there and in the Pacific have long attracted my attention.

This book is an account of how the British successfully misled the Germans and Italians into believing that their European invasion plans were direc ...more

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Aug 10, 2012 Hannah rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: spies-espionage, historicals, non-fiction, 2012-reads

Rating Clarification: 4.5 Stars

From the book blurb:
"In 1943, from a windowless basement office in London, two brilliant intelligence officers (Charles Cholmondeley of MI5 and the British naval intelligence officer Ewen Montagu) 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 ult/>"In Rating Clarification: 4.5 Stars

From the book blurb:
"In 1943, from a windowless basement office in London, two brilliant intelligence officers (Charles Cholmondeley of MI5 and the British naval intelligence officer Ewen Montagu) 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.

Their 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."

The above is, once again, confirmation of why I love reading non-fiction. Because if it were fiction, I'd throw the book against the wall and scream: "that's improbable, crazy and impossible!" And yet Operation Mincemeat was so wildly improbable, so imaginatively crazy, so charged with failure at any given junction that the mere fact that the body in question made it to the attention of the Spanish & German authorities was a feat in itself. The cast of participants in this elaborate deception ranged from the pathetic: (the body of a down-trodden, mentally unstable Welshman whose sad, empty real life- and death- was replaced with a purpose-filled new "life"), to the romantic: (the dashing submarine commander), to the bizarre: (the cross-dressing British commanding officer) and finally to the brilliant: (the imaginations and talents of the counter-intelligence agents), who together pulled off this bold and audacious plan and fooled Hitler into shallowing a lie he already desperately wanted to believe.

Author Ben Macintyre lays out the operation from conception to completion, and shows how the coordinated efforts of people both larger-then-life as well as relatively obscure helped frame the most successful espionage operation of WWII. Great writing, page-turning suspense, humorous anecdotes, fully fleshed out true-life character studies, and a poignant ending make this a book that's hard to put down for the last 200 pages (and I didn't...)
...more

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Jun 18, 2011 Mahlon rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: read-2016

You may not be familiar with the names Ewen Montagu or Charles Cholmondeley but you may have heard of Operation Mincemeat, The spectacularly successful in World War II deception that they masterminded. Mincemeat was a small part of operation Barclay the deception intended to cover the invasion of Italy. Mincemeat convinced The German High Command that the allies target would be Sardinia or Greece, rather than the actual target Sicily. The ruse was accomplished by convincing the Germans that they ...more

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Feb 03, 2017 Tal rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

Seen the documentary from Ben Macintyre.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gh8D3...

Highly recommended!!!

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Oct 10, 2012 Bou rated it it was amazing

Shelves: world-war-2, downloaded, non-fiction, audio, on-ipod, favorites

This book by Ben MacIntyre is a very interesting and most of all enjoyable read. It almost reads like a novel. Ben MacIntyre leaves no stone unturned. I particularly enjoyed his description of the German reception of the fake documents and the aftermath of it. Also, the final chapters describes the fate of all participants in this high suspense operation, which is very nice to know.

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Sep 10, 2015 Dana Stabenow rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: hpl-s-15-in-16

An almost picaresque story about Royal Marine Major William Martin, who was lost at sea in an aircraft accident carrying important dispatches about future Allied plans in the Mediterranean. His body washed ashore in Spain and by nefarious means the dispatches were copied and forwarded to Abwehr, German intelligence.

Except that that major was no major and those dispatches were fake. It was all an elaborate plot cooked up by British Intelligence to deceive the enemy, and which disinformation Abwe An almost picaresque story about Royal Marine Major William Martin, who was lost at sea in an aircraft accident carrying important dispatches about future Allied plans in the Mediterranean. His body washed ashore in Spain and by nefarious means the dispatches were copied and forwarded to Abwehr, German intelligence.

Except that that major was no major and those dispatches were fake. It was all an elaborate plot cooked up by British Intelligence to deceive the enemy, and which disinformation Abwehr and Hitler himself swallowed whole, to the extent that the Germans moved a vitally significant portion of their forces from Sicily, where as Macintyre puts it anyone with an atlas knew the Allies would invade, to Greece and Sardinia, where the British hoped to fool the Germans into thinking they would. Operation Mincemeat was, to put it mildly, successful.

The British Eighth Army had expected some ten thousand casualties in the first week of the invasion; just one-seventh of that number were killed or wounded. the navy had anticipated the loss of up to three hundred ships in the first two days; barely a dozen were sunk...The Allies had expected it would take ninety days to conquer Sicily. The occupation was completed on August 17, thirty-eight days after the invasion began.

Further, Operation Mincemeat began a cascade of other events, Mussolini's downfall, Italy's surrender, the abandonment of the German siege of Kursk and pretty much the beginning of the end of the European war. Macintryre writes

The Third Reich never recovered from the failure of Operation Citadel, and from then until the end of the war, the German armies in the east would be on the defensive as the Red Army rolled, inexorably, toward Berlin.

The cast of characters has to be read to be believed. There's the British Jewish nobleman (I didn't even know there was such a thing), his unbelievable brother (I won't spoil), the submarine driver with comprehensive powers of seduction (I'm thinking of the car with the doors that wouldn't open), the crazy commando who kept refusing promotion and went on to be portrayed in film by James Garner, the undertaking brothers, one in the front lines and the other not but still part of the story, and so many more. But! One of the things I particularly love is that at least three (possibly four, I lost count) of the men engaged in kerflummoxing the Germans so completely were...writers.

A rollicking story, all the more exquisite because it's all true. Don't pick up this book until you've got a few days with nothing else to do because you won't be able to put it down. Highly recommended. ...more

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Dec 01, 2010 F.R. rated it really liked 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 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 World War, there is undoubtedly an air of derring-do and indeed larks, even with the stakes as high as they were.

Essentially retelling the tale of ‘The Man Who Wasn’t There’ (except without the redacted bits) McIntyre offers a potpourri of English eccentrics, failed (and successful) novelists, gung-ho soldiers, fanatical Nazis (as well as a Nazi spy chief who hated the cause and did everything he could to sabotage it), racing drivers, undertaker brothers and one dead Welsh tramp. It is Glyndwr Michael the story hinges on. An illiterate vagrant who died of (possibly self-administered) potassium poisoning in London, his body was preserved and then dressed in a military uniform and floated off the coast of Spain with a cache of fake documents attached to his wrist. Those papers made their way right to Hitler’s desk and changed his thinking, making sure that Sicily was sparsely defended at the very moment the Allies invaded.

Whereas McIntyre’s previous book ‘Agent ZigZag’ entertainingly followed one duplicitous spy, this one leaps around a huge cast of characters – moving from London to Spain to Germany and Italy, with diversions to Russia. As such it doesn’t quite have the neat focus of the previous work, even if many of the those involved are genuinely interesting and really well drawn. I felt the chapter detailing the battle was something of a dull spot after all the deception (even though McIntyre tries his hardest with the tea drinking Major), but this is still a well researched and amusingly written slice of history, detailing a bizarre case which hasn’t lost any of its interest.
...more

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Feb 20, 2016 Nick Davies rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2016

This thoroughly fascinating non-fiction about the British WWII plot to mislead the Axis forces (and hence allow decisive invasion of Sicily) by use of a corpse washed ashore in Spain, was well-written and made for a very interesting story. I'd heartily recommend people read this to learn more about the history of that time, especially if they have an interest in the part military intelligence forces play in the 'background' of war.

It was excellently researched and an absorbing read - ...more

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Dec 30, 2010 Tony rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction

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 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 operation designed to misdirect the German High Command into believing that the impending Allied invasion of southern Europe in 1943 would take place in Sardinia instead of Sicily, and thus lead the Germans to concentrate their forces in the wrong place. The scheme involved planting a corpse in the coast off of Spain with documents that could be interpreted to indicate the false invasion location so that the Spanish would pass the information along to the Germans.

While this was certainly a colorful ruse (so colorful indeed, that this is one of two books published this year about it: see also Deathly Deception: The Real Story of Operation Mincemeat), it's pretty well worn territory. You can learn about all you need to know from chapters in recent books such as The Deceivers: Allied Military Deception in the Second World War or Deceiving Hitler: Double Cross and Deception in World War II. Moreover, the plan's principal engineer, Ewen Montague, wrote his own self-aggrandizing account of the whole affair (The Man Who Never Was) some fifty years ago, which itself was turned into a passable film of the same title. I suppose this new book is best regarded as an updated and expanded look at the operation, but one that really seems all to intent on following every possible thread and injecting every single piece of research into the text. In short, it reads like a long magazine essay or book chapter inflated to book-length.

Of course, there's also the issue of just how important Mincemeat actually was. The author makes it out to be absolutely pivotal to all that followed and the eventual Allied victory, but other histories of the war place it as just a component in a much larger plan to misdirect the Germans over Sicily (I forget the codename for the larger plan, maybe Barclay?). Moreover, as the author recounts, it wasn't even that original -- a similar scheme had been tried before (which begs the question of why they thought a second attempt was a good idea). Indeed the whole premise of the operation's importance is somewhat confounded by the author's admission at the end that high-ranking anti-Nazi elements in German intelligence may well have seen through the ruse but chosen to look the other way in an attempt to speed up Hitler's downfall. On the whole, an interesting episode that certainly involved a lot of interesting people, but I'm not sure how many people will really find an entire book on it that fascinating. ...more

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May 27, 2013 Nigeyb rated it really liked it

Apparently, whilst writing Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal, Ben Macintyre became aware of this strange tale of espionage and deception. I read, and really enjoyed, Ben Macintyre's Agent Zigzag in April 2013, and so didn't need much convincing to read this book too. It's not as entertaining and compelling as Agent Zigzag, however, whilst not quite as gripping, it is a story of huge significance to the way the Second World War played out. It saved lives, shortened the war's duration, and quite Apparently, whilst writing Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal, Ben Macintyre became aware of this strange tale of espionage and deception. I read, and really enjoyed, Ben Macintyre's Agent Zigzag in April 2013, and so didn't need much convincing to read this book too. It's not as entertaining and compelling as Agent Zigzag, however, whilst not quite as gripping, it is a story of huge significance to the way the Second World War played out. It saved lives, shortened the war's duration, and quite possibly changed the outcome. It's well worth reading

The book is full of fascinating facts about spying and deception. Using creativity, opportunity, imagination and wish-fulfilment, a cast of characters - many bizarre, idiosyncratic and eccentric - work up a fascinating tale which they hope will deceive the Nazis. It worked, and travelled from a bunker in London, to a submarine in Scotland, to the coast of Spain, and then on to Germany, finally arriving at Hitler's desk. There are many wonderful aspects to this book, highlights for me included the psychological second guessing; the shambolic nature of Germany's spying operations; the different factions at work in wartime Spain; the delicate subterfuge required by the British in the know, to convince the Germans the documents were important, whilst trying (not too hard) to retrieve them and allowing them the opportunity to get access.

The book contains some remarkable characters too, these include a British establishment Table Tennis-loving Soviet spy, explorers and adventurers, a cross-dressing Colonel, a Jewish Nazi, a German aristocrat deliberately misleading Hitler a pompous pathologist, a Welsh tramp, a racing driver, a submarine captain, and many many more. Were there more eccentrics in those days?

Ben Macintyre is a consumate story teller, and as with Agent Zigzag, he tells this tale with skill, verve, and wit, and really brings the story to life, by weaving together private documents, photographs, memories, letters, diaries, and most significantly newly released material from the intelligence files of MI5. The story of Operation Mincemeat has been told before however this version is unquestionably definitive.

I am now inspired to continue to read more of Ben Macintyre's work. If you have any interest in the Second World War, spying and espionage, and/or history, then you should get a lot out of this book. ...more

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Sep 29, 2011 Huw Rhys rated it really liked 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 that is so absorbing here. ...more

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Aug 01, 2013 Amy Kannel rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: library-kindle, history, library-audio, worldwar2

A little difficult to get into (at least as an audiobook), with so many characters to keep track of, but I ended up enjoying this immensely. I have read/heard/watched a fair amount about WWII, but had never before thought about the influence of espionage on the outcome of the war. It was fascinating to hear about the intelligence and counter-intelligence, the way psychological maneuvers affect battles and nations and ultimate results. The author also had some really profound statements to make a ...more

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May 26, 2011 Michael Flanagan rated it liked it

Shelves: ww-2

An enjoyable read about that takes you into the world of espionage during World War II and one of the most daring deceptions of the era. It was truly breathtaking reading about the lengths that was taken to execute Operation Mincemeat.

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Jun 04, 2010 Kay rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: world_war_ii, nonfiction, credulity, espionage

Years back I read The Man Who Never Was, the first account of this famous WWII deception campaign, written by Ewan Montagu, who was one of the plan's two main architects. Like many, I was captivated by this real-life story of clever wartime deception. I have a keen interest in WWII deception campaigns, and Operation Mincemeat was certainly one of the finest: documents planted on a corpse that was strategically floated ashore in Spain, where German agents were apt to gain access to them. The document Years back I read The Man Who Never Was, the first account of this famous WWII deception campaign, written by Ewan Montagu, who was one of the plan's two main architects. Like many, I was captivated by this real-life story of clever wartime deception. I have a keen interest in WWII deception campaigns, and Operation Mincemeat was certainly one of the finest: documents planted on a corpse that was strategically floated ashore in Spain, where German agents were apt to gain access to them. The documents contained salient details on a planned Allied invasion of Greece and Sardinia. The Germans took the bait and bolstered defenses in those areas -- but of course the Allies were planning to invade Sicily instead, and when they did so the invasion went much better -- and casualties were much lower -- than would have been the case if the Germans have not been so deceived.

Then a month or so ago, I happened on a book review in the New Yorker about a new account of Operation Mincemeat by Ben MacIntyre. The article was so intriguing that I not only passed it on to friends but also ordered a copy of the book. I'd previously read several of Ben McIntyre's other books, most notably Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal and The Man Who Would Be King: The First American in Afghanistan and had enjoyed them both. (A third, earlier, book The Napoleon of Crime was, I regret to say, lackluster.) Happily Operation Mincemeat is, in my opinion, McIntyre's best to date.

Not only does McIntyre round out the earlier accounts of this well-known WWII episode with new revelations, such as the fact that Ewan McIntyre's brother, Ivor, was a Soviet agent, but he also has a novelist's eye for colorful detail. As he makes clear, it was the imagination of several novelists (including Ian Fleming) who made Mincemeat a success, so it's fitting, then, that MacIntyre brings a similar flair to this non-fictional account.

Most of the reviews here and elsewhere give the general outline of Operation Mincemeat, so rather than doing that I'd like to mention what interested me most in the book. As is mentioned in the New Yorker article, the fate of the operation ultimately rested with two Germans who were responsible for vetting -- and passing on -- the planted documents as genuine. The motivations of these two men, Major Karl-Erich Kühlenthal, an incompetent "one-man espionage disaster area," in MacIntyre's words, and Alexis Baron von Roenne, an intelligence officer whom Hitler trusted implictly, could not have been more dissimilar. Kühlenthal merely sought to bolster his status with the powers that be by passing on anything he considered valuable. In doing so, he inevitably inflated and tampered with the original material (in this case, almost disastrously, as he passed on the wrong date of death for the recovered corpse of "Major William Martin"). But it is von Roenne who had the greatest hand in assuring Mincemeat's acceptance. He, most astonishingly, hated Hitler and was doing everything within his power to undermine the Nazi war effort.

It is this revelation that makes the most sensational reading. Von Roenne not only almost certainly knew that the Mincemeat documents were planted, he inflated the Allied menace, feeding an already paranoid Hitler visions of an invasion through the Balkans. More remarkably, prior to the invasion of Normandy in 1944, the same man had a hand in passing on "every deception ruse fed to him accepted the existence of evry bogus unit regardless of evidence, and inflated forty-four divisions in Britain to an astonishing eighty-nine. Without von Roenne's willing connivance, the entire elaborate net of deception woven for D-Day might have been unraveled."

This is mind-boggling stuff. But wait! (as the infomercials say) There's more! Add to this the role of Juan Pujol García, better known as "Garbo," the most successful double agent of WWII, who ran a network of highly successful -- and completely fictitious -- spies. This elaborate network of fictitious spies fed the Germans misinformation. His role in Mincemeat was collaborative, verifying details where needed, shoring up the deception.

Add to this mix a brave submarine captain, an unflappable mortician given to sitting in his foxhole dressed in swimming trunks and a helmet, and the second mastermind of the entire ruse, Charles Cholmondeley, who refused to take credit for it and lived -- apparently quite happily -- under a self-imposed MI5 code of silence. These are but a few of the people MacIntyre brings to life in this highly readable and fascinating account.

To top it all off, McIntyre does a postmortem of Montagu's The Man Who Never Was, a chapter that makes illuminating reading for anyone who has read that 1953 classic. It seems that Montagu's account was highly edited, for not only was Cholmondeley, one of the plan's two architects, virtually eliminated from the account but the identity of the corpse -- and the way it was obtained -- were suppressed. The books ends with a final tribute to the man who "served" as Major William Martin, whose grave in Spain is faithfully maintained by a grateful British government. ...more

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Apr 16, 2017 Peter Spence rated it liked it

An intriguing rendition of an almost incredible deception operation that helped turn the course of World War II in favour of the Allies.
A real-life "James Bond" story even featuring Ian Fleming in his official WW II spy role.
I must now read Ewan Montagu's first-hand account of the operation.

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Apr 29, 2019 Amber Spencer rated it really liked it

I was both overwhelmed with all the information in this book and loved how much there was to learn about so many things from WWII, including Spain’s involvement, to some degree.
3.5 stars

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Apr 28, 2016 Jill Meyer rated it it was amazing

often do succeed. The year 1943 was a turning point in WW2. In the European theater, the Germans were being pushed back on the Russian front and the Allies had gained back much of what they had lost in North Africa to the Axis powers. Allied leaders - both political and military - had to decide where the next military push should be. All agreed the island of Sicily - off the coast of the Italian boot - was the place to begin working on the long sought invasion of the European continent. It was c often do succeed. The year 1943 was a turning point in WW2. In the European theater, the Germans were being pushed back on the Russian front and the Allies had gained back much of what they had lost in North Africa to the Axis powers. Allied leaders - both political and military - had to decide where the next military push should be. All agreed the island of Sicily - off the coast of the Italian boot - was the place to begin working on the long sought invasion of the European continent. It was considered too early, for many reason, to envision the northern France invasion that was to come in June of 1944.

The island of Sicily is often referred to as the "most invaded piece of property" in the world. I suppose it's true, because of the importance of the location Sicily holds in the middle of the Mediterranean. But if the Allies considered using Sicily as the first step on the Continent, the Germans (who were by then fighting almost alone since they thought their Italian allies almost worthless as a fighting partner) knew its value, as well. The Germans were also defending their territory in the USSR, the Causcuses, Greece, and other points in the eastern Med. Where to concentrate their troops to ward off a proposed Allied invasion?

Several British MI5 and MI6 officials, as well as those from the Army, Royal Navy, and Royal Marines, got together to concoct a plan - eventually called "Operation Mincemeat" - of dropping a dead government official off the coast of southern Spain, with all sorts of documentation which would point the Germans in the view of Greece or Sardinia as the Allied invasion area. Now, as half-baked as this plan might sound to present-day readers, you'd be best to know that Franco-led Spain was, in the 1940's, a hot-bed of spies, agents, and double and triple agents. Spain, officially "neutral" but tending towards to Germans in sentiment, was the best place for such a deception to be practiced. Upon receiving approval for the implementation of "Mincemeat", several teams of British Intelligence officers set about putting the plan to work. First step, of course, was to find a dead body of a young-ish man to be promoted to the Spanish/German intelligence as a man killed in a place crash off the coast of Spain, carrying the letters and notes to make the Germans think that Sicily was NOT the site of the proposed Allied invasion of southern Europe.

How they do this, and succeed brilliantly, is told in compelling detail by British author Ben Macintyre in his book, "Operation Mincemeat". The story, long hidden in the shrouds of "official secrecy" had been leaked out in dribs and drabs since the end of the war. Several books had been written, as well as a movie had been made, about the brilliant plan. Macintyre's new book, however, is the first to be written with cooperation from some of the participants who are still alive. It's easier to tell the full truth sixty or so years after the event, I think.

Macintyre is a very good writer and in his able hands, "Mincemeat" is a lively read. Very good book. ...more

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Jul 06, 2012 Dawn rated it really liked it

Shelves: history-european

“In 1943, two brilliant intelligence officers conceived a plan that was dubbed Operation Mincemeat. They would trick the Nazis into thinking that Allied forces were planning to attack southern Europe by way of Greece rather than Sicily… Their plan was to get a corpse, equip it with misleading papers concerning the invasion, then drop it off the coast of Spain where German spies would take the bait.”

History aside, this was a fun book just for its insight into intelligence operations. “In 1943, two brilliant intelligence officers conceived a plan that was dubbed Operation Mincemeat. They would trick the Nazis into thinking that Allied forces were planning to attack southern Europe by way of Greece rather than Sicily… Their plan was to get a corpse, equip it with misleading papers concerning the invasion, then drop it off the coast of Spain where German spies would take the bait.”

History aside, this was a fun book just for its insight into intelligence operations. I assumed government spies would be strictly military types. Instead I found the spies of MI-5 to be novelists, cartoonists, disappointed soldiers, police officers, lawyers, and teachers. Indeed, the book’s author believes the original germ of the idea for Operation Mincemeat came from Ian Fleming, who worked in British naval intelligence and went on to write the James Bond books.

These spies were among the many colorful characters MacIntyre uses to narrate his story. The author opens his book with a quote from Winston Churchill: “Who in war will not have his laugh among the skulls?” You can feel MacIntyre’s sense of humor coming through in the anecdotes he chooses to share: the race car driver who careens through the darkness to deliver the dead man, pausing to have a picture of himself drinking tea on the corpse’s coffin; the levity of an undertaker’s brother as he stormed Sicily’s beach: “Another bomb fell in the sea and splashed us with nice cool water”; and asides about the “somewhat unambitious” number of condoms issued to the invading force. The only drawback here is that, combined with other segues into engagements, family histories, table tennis, et cetera – the diversions were distracting, and the book was a little longer than it needed to be.

Initially, I found the subtitle of this book rather suspect (How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory). Holy hubris! I assumed that the author had a bet with a friend on whether his publisher would actually approve such a long-winded subtitle. Ultimately, I decided two things: one: that the subtitle, like the book, was a bit longer than necessary; and two: that, converse to my expectation of self-serving, book-selling B.S., there was some merit in this claim after all. Obviously, Operation Mincemeat did not assure an Allied Victory on its own. However, it did play a more important role than I’d imagined when I picked up the book. It was a successful operation in that it not only confused the Germans about the true target of the Allied invasion, but also caused Hitler to weaken his Sicilian defenses by redeploying his troops to the decoy locations suggested in “William Martin”’s papers.

I also later discovered that the book was originally published in Great Britain with the subtitle “The True Spy Story that Changed the Course of World War II” – so I was wrong! It must’ve been an American publisher that dreamed up the spicy-yet-unwieldy subtitle! ...more

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Aug 25, 2011 Kurt rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: history, military, world-war-ii, espionage

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 were merely decoy 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 were merely decoys. They made up some fake documents, put them in a briefcase that they handcuffed to a corpse that they found in London, threw it into the water off the Spanish coast, and hoped that (a)the corpse would be found by the Spanish (b) the locked briefcase would inspire interest (c) the Germans would find the documents, having obtained them from the Spanish and (d) the Germans would believe the documents were real.

Other reviews here note the "excess" of background information. I disagree that there is too much. MacIntyre is trying to sell this story (which is true, of course) not for its implausibility, but for its difficulty. To that end, he has to elaborate on the various individuals (i.e. characters) who were involved in the plotting, who were to carry out aspects of the mission without knowing what the mission was, who could be affected by the mission, and who had to be fooled.

If this was fiction, we'd be talking about character flaws and motivations (that the author would famously "show and not tell" to tighten up the narrative) and about the stakes. There would also be an inciting incident and a climax.

It is, however, history, and as such MacIntyre (much like with his other World War II history, Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love, and Betrayal, chooses to elaborate on each person as a historical individual. The reason I only give it 3/5 stars is because while he has settled primarily upon history, he tries to structure the story as a bit of a thriller, and in that regard the "excessive detail" slows the pacing down.

My other criticism is that, for all he is at pains to illustrate how many ways this whole plot could have gone wrong, there is an inevitability about his writing. We know that Operation Mincemeat succeeded, but its success (as a reader) never feels like it's in any doubt.

In other words, in explaining the deception we lose the thrill.

If World War II history is your thing, or if you are interested in espionage, this will probably appeal. If you like thrillers, it may appeal. ...more

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Nov 11, 2010 Mike Knox rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: history, non-fiction

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

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Nov 22, 2010 Bob Uva rated it liked it

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 ...more

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Jul 25, 2018 Julie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, own

“Operation Mincemeat was pure make-believe; and it made Hitler believe something that changed the course of history.” Dropping a dead body dressed as an officer with falsified papers off the coast of Spain in hope that they would be confiscated by German authorities to misdirect them from a planned invasion of Sicily is a plot only the British secret service could concoct. And it worked, possibly saving thousands of lives. But the entire process of getting the corpse from a morgue in London to i ...more

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Sep 25, 2012 Regina Lindsey rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction, shelfari-history, shelfari-nonfiction, history, non-fiction, shelfari-non-fiction, the-man-who-never-was, british-counterespionage, counterespionage, england

Here's an idea to use in wartime, "a corpse dressed as a an airman, with dispatches in his pockets, could be dropped on the coast, supposedly from a parachute that had failed," to trick the enemy (pg 20). Yeah, and we could do this trick the Nazis into thinking, from the dispatches, that we (the Allies) are going to attack Greece instead of Sicily! Sound like a scene from a James Bond movie? That's because it's the brainchild of Ian Fleming who would go on to write the James Bond novels. Of cour ...more

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topics	posts	views	last activity
Bright Young Things: July 2013 Operation Mincement by Ben Macintyre	26	43	Jun 05, 2017 05:58AM
Casting the film. (Note, there is no film)	1	4	Jul 07, 2015 07:27PM
Alex Baron von Roenne: the real hero?	1	10	Dec 04, 2014 07:58AM
What's the Name o...: WW II espionage & misinformation [s]	2	30	Jan 19, 2012 11:37AM

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About Ben Macintyre

Ben Macintyre

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Ben Macintyre is a writer-at-large for The Times of London and the bestselling author of A Spy Among Friends, Double Cross, Operation Mincemeat, Agent Zigzag, and Rogue Heroes, among other books. Macintyre has also written and presented BBC documentaries of his work.