Operation Mincemeat

This is one of the most tricky, macabre, and yet human deception plans in World War II. The sheer cleverness involved as an Allied team, including James Bond creator Ian Fleming, created a pretend Marine, fake invasion plans, and a non-existent crash as part of an operation to trick the Germans reads like fiction.

The gamble had real-life consequences. If the operation had failed, the invasion of Sicily would have cost many more Allied lives and probably delayed the end of the war. While there have been older accounts of the events, Ben McIntyre is a talented and credible journalist… show more.

I hope to get close to Ben Macintyre’s style, while still keeping the accuracy that my researcher background demands. Many of us know the story, and have even seen the film, of how a dead, fictitious Royal Marines officer, dropped from a submarine off the Spanish coast, fooled the Nazis into thinking Greece would be invaded instead of Sicily. But Macintyre tells it with such drama that the book is a must-read.

This is the extraordinary true story of how, in the summer of 1943, British naval intelligence deceived the Germans into believing that an Allied invasion in Southern Europe would occur off the coast of Greece rather than Sicily and Italy. This led to the Germans diverting troops to other regions of the war and diverting vital divisions towards Greece. Operation Mincemeat, as it was codenamed, was overseen by a section of Naval Intelligence, known as Section 17M, and headed by Commander Ewen Montagu. He and his team drew up elaborate and detailed plans to float the dead body of… show more.

A triumph of psychology and disinformation, the queasily-named Operation Mincemeat helped the Allied invasion of Sicily succeed. In 1943, British intelligence wanted to mislead Nazi Germany as to where the Allies would land, and they came up with a plan to disseminate false information for the enemy to discover. To manage this deception, the Brits turned the body of a homeless man into that of "Major William Martin," a supposed high-ranking officer, and chained his wrist to a briefcase crammed with top secret documents. The most fascinating part to me, though, was how he was also supplied with all the… show more.