Operation Mincemeat:
How A Dead Man And A Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis And Assured An Allied
Victory
By Ben Macintyre
Published in the U.S. by Broadway Paperbacks, an
imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.
In 1943, two British naval officers devised an improbable
plan to fool Adolph Hitler and the Nazis, a plan so bold and audacious that it
could never get approved, let alone pulled off.
Except the plan was approved by Winston
Churchill and General Dwight Eisenhower and, against all odds, it succeeded
beyond the wildest expectations of many. It's widely believed that the
implementation of this ingenious plan succeeded in altering the course of World
War Two.
The true story of how the British and
Americans deceived the Germans is told in Ben Macintyre's thrilling book,
"Operation Mincemeat" (an earlier book about the events, The Man Who Never Was, was
published in 1954 and it quickly became a best seller; a movie of the same name
was released in 1956).
The plan was to create a fake identity
of a purported British airman and arrange for the body to wash ashore in
neutral Spain. The dead body would contain official documents confirming Allied
plans to launch a surprise attack on Greece, when the actual attack would take
place in Sicily. If the Germans believed that an attack on Greece was imminent,
it would strengthen its resources in that area and leave southern Italy
relatively exposed. At this point in the war, the Axis powers held an iron grip
on Europe; the Allies needed a weakly-defended entry point in which to launch
an assault, which would aid them in eventually liberating Europe.
For the plan to work, an extraordinary
degree of luck and good fortune had to play into the Allied hands. In Spain,
the Nazis had a vast network of spies and informants working in that country,
and many of these agents needed to believe the ruse and pass false information
up the chain of command. The opportunities for error were enormous. It's
interesting to note the various forms of communication that were employed in
fabricating this ingenious hoax - including letters, memos, diaries,
newspapers, and good old-fashioned rumour and gossip.
Macintyre describes the lives,
backgrounds and motivations of all participants with a superb sense of pacing
and detail. At times, Operation Mincemeat reads like a thriller with sudden
plot twists and mounting suspense. No detail is overlooked, from the intricate
planning and choosing of a body to creating a fake identity and transporting
the body to the coast of Spain. It's no accident that Ian Fleming (creator of
the James Bond series) and Alan Hillgarth (an adventure novelist) were among the officers who took part
in the ploy.
Here, Macintyre sums up how a single,
simple idea took shape and wound up changing the course of history:
"Amateur, unpublished novelists, the framers of Operation Mincemeat, dreamed up the most unlikely concatenation of events, rendered them believable, and sent them off to war, changing reality throughout lateral thinking and proving that it is possible to win a battle fought in the mind, from behind a desk, and from beyond the grave."
"OperationMincemeat"
is an incredible story about an incredible chapter in the history of World War
Two, and I give it two thumbs up.
