100 books like Operation Mincemeat

In this gripping memoir, Fabian von Schlabrendorff recounts his way into the heart of the German conspiracy against Hitler. After the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, he fell under the influence of Colonel Henning von Tresckow, “a natural enemy of National-Socialism and one of the most outstanding figures in the German resistance.” Working as a team, Tresckow, Schlabrendorff, and their co-conspirators planned to kill Hitler during a visit to the eastern front in March 1943 with a bomb camouflaged as three wrapped bottles of liqueur. As recounted in Schlabrendorff’s memoirs, he and Tresckow concocted several other assassination attempts with carefully concealed bombs, suicide bombers, and sharpshooters. When the dust settled, the author was one of the only members of the inner circle who survived to tell the tale.  

Ronen Bergman’s history of Israeli targeted assassinations is a stunning piece of investigative journalism. Beginning with the chilling Talmudic dictum, “if someone comes to kill you, rise and kill first,” Bergman explains how a policy of assassinations was deemed by generations of Israeli leaders as a safe and cheap substitute to conventional warfare. From the dark basements of the Zionists undergrounds to the sophisticated joint command rooms of the IDF, the Mossad, and the Shin-Bet, the author uses his unprecedented access to secret sources to tell a breathtaking story, often pausing to ponder on the morality and usefulness of secret assassinations in the fight against terrorism. A true page-turner, I found it balanced, accurate, and fascinating, a rare feat in accounts of the Israeli-Arab conflict.

Guy Walters’ book is perhaps the best account of the Nazis who escaped after the Second World War and the attempts to hunt them down. Unlike most writers in this field, Walters relies on thorough archival research. A sharp and critical thinker, he debunks countless myths, including the story of Odessa, the supposedly global organization that helped former SS members to escape, and the inflated accounts of the Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal. After reading the first page, I could hardly lay this book down. This deep, thoughtful, and often blood-boiling series of unhappy endings leave you deeply immersed, and sometimes make you want to yell in rage over the injustice of it all. 

The life of a spy is psychologically difficult as he must keep loyalty to his own country, while secretly blending in with that of the enemy. For the Middle Eastern Jews who spied for Israel during its war of independence, the heroes of Matti Friedman’s excellent book, life was even more difficult, by upbringing and background their identity was interwoven with that of the enemy. In this book, Friedman follows these spies and covert warriors through a breathless sequence of assassinations and espionage operations against the Arab foes besieging Israel from all sides. Aside from being taken over by the plot, I love this book because it raises intriguing questions of identity during times of crisis and war, still relevant in the turbulent region of the Middle East and beyond. 

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.

Spring 1943. Before dawn off the Spanish coast, a cadaver dressed in the uniform of the Royal Marines is placed in the waves. He carries a briefcase containing details of a planned Allied invasion of Greece. The Nazis find the body and its ‘secrets’ and are convinced they have been lucky enough to foil the British plans, but nothing is what it seems. 

This remarkable story of espionage is true. It was an elaborate forensic hoax devised by British intelligence to deceive the enemy, feeding them a false story, thereby allowing troops to invade Sicily instead. It is related with charm and humour by Ewen Montagu, a key figure in the operation. Its elegant, pared-down prose reads like one of Eric Ambler’s novels as it tells how regular chaps used wit and scientific know-how to fight back against the Nazi war machine. And won. Operation Mincemeat, as it was dubbed,… show more.

Operation Mincemeat and The Man Who Never Was were just the tip of an elaborate double-cross system by the British during the Second World War. It consisted of an elaborate group of English spies operating at German agents in England and beyond, feeding false information to the Germans and gaining access to the codes and cypher work of the German Secret Service. Their work was responsible for deceiving Hitler and the German army into believing that the D-Day landings would take place at the Pas de Calais. I love just about every book I read about World War II and this was one of the best. You’ll be surprised as I was about how important their activities were.

This series of murder mysteries set along the pilgrim’s way, El Camino de Santiago ought to do for Galicia what Montalbano did for Sicily, with beautiful scenery, Galician food, intrigue, and of course, suspicious death.

The stories are interesting and clever but for me it’s the sense of place which really draws me to these books. The author writes with a love for the area which comes alive through her descriptive prose so I can see the places clearly in my mind as I read. Thankfully there are far less murders in Galicia than in A D Thorne’s books but I don’t mind a body or two when the setting is so beautiful.

This is perhaps an unusual choice in that it focuses on deception outside the sphere of countries usually covered by historians. Bendeck explores the numerous deceptions around D-Day, in a cluster of operations that were known as Plan Bodyguard. He explores the little-known, but vital, Plan Zeppelin which was the largest and most complex of the Bodyguard plans. Plan Zeppelin, in conjunction with A Force’s strategic deception plans in the Mediterranean, succeeded in convincing Hitler to hold back sixty German divisions from southern France and move them to the Balkans in time for D-Day. Focusing on the years 1943 to 1945, Bendeck illuminates how A Force, under the leadership of charismatic Dudley Clarke, orchestrated both strategic and tactical deception plans to create the illusion of military threats by the Allies to German defences and troops across the southern perimeter of Europe. Her book is a nuanced and important… show more.

Although it reads like a spy novel, this is the real-life account of a noted English journalist’s encounter with his own Stasi surveillance file. The file in question was compiled in the early 1980s by the East German secret police on Garton Ash (code name “Romeo”), then a young man living in Berlin and writing about Central European communism. Garton Ash opened his file fifteen years later, after the former German Democratic Republic made Stasi records accessible. Tracking those who tailed him, the book explores the uneasy sensation of reading one’s past life through the photographs, informant reports, surveillance notes, and speculations of those tasked with observing a target of suspicion. It’s a compelling and often chilling chronicle of the costs both of watching and being watched.