| | |  | Sports and Outdoors | Home » » Operation Mincemeat | | | | | | | Description: | | Ben Macintyre’s Agent Zigzag was hailed as “rollicking, spellbinding” (New York Times), “wildly improbable but entirely true” (Entertainment Weekly), and, quite simply, “the best book ever written” (Boston Globe). In his new book, Operation Mincemeat, he tells an extraordinary story that will delight his legions of fans.
In 1943, from a windowless basement office in London, two brilliant intelligence officers 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.
Charles Cholmondeley of MI5 and the British naval intelligence officer Ewen Montagu could not have been more different. Cholmondeley was a dreamer seeking adventure. Montagu was an aristocratic, detail-oriented barrister. But together they were the perfect team and created an 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.
Filled with spies, double agents, rogues, fearless heroes, and one very important corpse, the story of Operation Mincemeat reads like an international thriller.
Unveiling never-before-released material, Ben Macintyre brings the reader right into the minds of intelligence officers, their moles and spies, and the German Abwehr agents who suffered the “twin frailties of wishfulness and yesmanship.” He weaves together the eccentric personalities of Cholmondeley and Montagu and their near-impossible feats into a riveting adventure that not only saved thousands of lives but paved the way for a pivotal battle in Sicily and, ultimately, Allied success in the war.
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51 of 57 found the following review helpful:
 Good read, not greatMay 27, 2010
By Mark B. Friedman
I read an occasional spy book for their entertainment value. This one came highly recommended. I enjoyed it, but I did not find it nearly as great as many of the other reviewers.
It is the true story of a spy caper that is credited with diverting Hitler's attention away from the Allies invading Sicily in 1943. It is the same incident that was dramatized in an earlier book called "The Man Who Never Was," which was also turned into a movie back in the 50's. The author presents some new details these 50 years on that were suppressed in the original due to security considerations at the time.
There are certainly some interesting characters involved, including some of the leading lights of the British MI5 & MI6 operation. Ian Fleming makes a brief, but pivotal appearance, as do the real life inspirations for his "M" and "Q" characters in the James Bond novels. Kim Philby and Winston Churchill also make cameo appearances.
The gist of the spy story is the British secret service dropped a dead body off the coast of Spain rigged with phony letters designed to put the German army off the scent of the upcoming invasion of Sicily. The fact that this crackpot scheme worked certainly makes a good story. As in all books of this type, the British triumph, so there's not much in the way of suspense. There was a great deal of spycraft necessary to make this work that is elaborated in great detail, and there is certainly a lot of spying going on.
One of the more interesting ideas mentioned in the book was that the gambit's success may have hinged on the willingness on the head of the German intelligence effort, someone named von Renne, to swallow this "fish" story, not because he believed the story, but because he figured it for a plant. He wanted Hitler to fail, so he may have put his stamp of approval on the intelligence gathered in Spain because he doubted its probity. If this is true, it makes for a very different story. Unfortunately, it is not possible to do more than speculate about this possibility because von Renne was rounded up, tried and executed in the aftermath of the undersuccessful attempt to assassinate Hitler known as "Operation Valkyrie." So we will never know, but it certainly seems fishy that he never asked the hard questions about the veracity of the original intelligence reports emanating from Spain, which is unusual behavior for a spymaster of his stature.
Another interesting aspect is how the British's Project Ultra that cracked the German navy's Enigma coding scheme allowed British Intelligence to monitor how well their ruse was actually working. The Ultra project gave the British access to all manner of secret military communications and was a pivotal to the success of the entire war effort. Operation Mincemeat is certainly an interesting episode, but Project Ultra was much more important and, at least, to this Reader, a more engrossing story.
13 of 13 found the following review helpful:
 So much stranger than the long-lasting mythJul 09, 2010
By Mal Warwick
Sometime in the mid-1950s, when I was in what is today called "middle school," I eagerly snapped up a book recently published in the U.S. that related an astonishing World War II British spy story. The book, The Man Who Never Was by Ewen Montagu, had been published in 1953 in the UK to great acclaim and enormous sales. It told the story of how Montagu, then a Lieutenant Commander in the British Naval Reserve engaged in planning operations to deceive Nazi Germany, had masterminded a successful plot that played a large role in the Allies' victory in World War II. I don't remember many of the books I read then, more than half a century ago, but I vividly remember The Man Who Never Was, even though I missed the Hollywood film released a couple of years later that was based on Montagu's book.
Now comes Ben McIntyre's even more astonishing book based on the same facts, told at greater length, in much greater depth, and with all the warts and official secrets revealed in the telling. Never have I seen more convincing evidence that truth is, truly, stranger than fiction. McIntyre's Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured Allied Victory is nothing short of a revelation. It's the latest, and in many ways the very best, of a torrent of books based on the gradual opening of the files of the British secret service beginning in the 1970s.
Here's just a taste of the unlikely facts and circumstances that come to light in Operation Mincemeat, contradicting the convenient untruths and obfuscations of Montagu's own account:
* It was not Montagu alone who managed the case but Montagu working with a Royal Air Force officer named Charles Cholmondeley (pronounced "Chumley"; don't you just love the English?).
* The original idea for the plot had been cooked up several years earlier by a certain Naval Commander, Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, then a Naval intelligence officer;
* The dead body washed onto the Spanish shore to launch the plot was that of a mentally unbalanced, poverty-stricken, substance-abusing Welshman who probably committed suicide, not a middle-class Scotsman who died an honorable death in a hospital, and the Welshman's family was never asked for permission to use his body;
* The famous English pathologist who assured Montagu and Cholmondeley that no one would discover the true cause of death of the man now rechristened "Major William Martin" was clearly mistaken;
* The Abwehr agent in Spain who examined the phony papers on "Major Martin's" body and declared them genuine may have done so simply because he was desperate to prove he could deliver high-value intelligence to Berlin, since he himself was one-quarter Jewish and fearful about being sent back home;
* The "German spy" sent to England to investigate the bona fides of "Major Martin" was a figment of the Nazis' imagination, because British intelligence had captured, turned, or executed every single Abwehr agent infiltrated into Britain -- a fact still a secret when Montagu wrote his book in the early 1950s; and
* The Abwehr officer in Berlin who was the ultimate authority on the authenticity of the documents and was Hitler's favorite intelligence analyst was easily able to detect the phoniness of "Martin's" papers but chose to reassure Hitler because he was a dedicated anti-Nazi and was prepared to do anything to help the Allies win the war. (He was later executed in the wake of the failed von Stauffenberg assassination plot.)
And that's just a smattering of the revelations in this wonderful book. If you have any interest in British history, World War II, espionage, or just want to read a real-world thriller, pick up a copy of Operation Mincemeat. I doubt you'll be able to put it down.
(From Mal Warwick's Blog on Books)
5 of 5 found the following review helpful:
 'The Man Who Never Was' and 'Operation Mincemeat'Jul 27, 2010
By Rea Andrew Redd
"Civil War Librarian"
Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory, Ben Macintyre, Crown Publisher, 416 pages, illustrations, maps, $25.99.
Having read and thoroughly enjoyed Ben Macintyre's account of a British double agent, 'Agent Zigzag', his second effort seemed appealing. 'Operation Mincemeat' is a thorough updating of a previous book, 'The Man Who Never Was', that I had read during junior high study halls.
'Operation Mincemeat' and 'The Man Who Never Was' reveal the elaborate British deception of the Nazis into thinking that Allied forces were planning an invasion southern Europe from Greece or Sardinia, rather than Sicily.
Ewen Montagu, author of 'The Man Who Never Was' and co-planner of Operation Mincemeat could not have been more different than Charles Cholmondeley of MI5 and British naval intelligence officer. Montagu was an aristocratic, detail-oriented barrister and Cholmondeley was an adventure seeker. Together they created an ingenious up tenuous plan: Plant a corpse on a Spanish beach and load it with false and misleading documents concerning the invasion. Approved by Ian Fleming (creator of James Bond) and other British intelligence officials the plan was present to Winston Churchill who believed it might look real to the Nazi and mislead them.
Presenting previously top secret material, Ben Macintyre brings the reader right into the minds of intelligence officers, their moles and spies, and the German Abwehr agents who suffered from wishfulness and yesmanship. He weaves together the eccentric personalities of Cholmondeley and Montagu and their near-impossible feats into a riveting adventure that not only saved thousands of lives but paved the way for a pivotal battle in Sicily and, ultimately, Allied success in the war. Most importantly, the corpse does not remain anonymous.
Macintyre's discovery of the identity of the corpse, its route into the hands of the British intelligence officers and then its delivery into the sea currents that took it ashore is astonishing and compelling. At the end of the book, the reader is conveyed to a Spanish cemetery that holds the body of an improverished and mentally disadvantaged Welshman who inadvertently committed suicide and afterward heroically served his country.
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
One of the most gripping WWII books ever written!Jan 02, 2011
By Y. Deshmukh
"Yogibear"
This is an EXTREMELY well-written, thoroughly-researched book on the greatest deception ever devised and foisted on the Nazis. Sure, there have been other books written about it, most notably Ewen Montagu's 'The Man that never was', which was written by the man who implemented the deception. That story was, however, of necessity incomplete, as it was published just a few years after World War II ended and was, by Montagu's own admission, censored to conceal many of the most important pieces of the giant puzzle.
This book is based on research of papers and other material released by the British government many decades after the War ended, and shines a light not just on the entire picture, but also details how the British could track the deception deep within German intelligence and government, all the way upto Hitler. I will warn you, though, not to start reading this book at night because you might find it impossible to put it down and go to bed without finishing it!
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
The Original Was BetterDec 02, 2011
By William Pilon
I must admit to being somewhat disappointed by this book. While it provides a fresh look at the events covered in Montagu's The Man Who Never Was, and while it is considerably more accurate, is not nearly as good a book.
Macintyre's writing is just too discursive for me. Time after time, he hares off into lengthy digressions that are only peripherally (if at all!) related to the main story. For instance, a renowned pathologist, Sir Bernard Spilsbury assisted in spec'ing out and obtaining the dead body, but we get a very lengthy introduction and exposition of Sir Bernard's career, which has little to do with the case. Similarly, Ewan Montagu's brother Ivor was a communist, and later evidence revealed was, until at least 1942, spying for the Soviets. So we get another lengthy description of Ivor's recruitment, activities and surveillance by MI-5 followed by the author's speculation that perhaps Ivor passed info about MINCEMEAT onto the Soviets. The problem here is that a) there's no evidence that Ewan ever spoke bout MINCEMEAT to Ivor and b) the much more plausible rout for transmission of such info to the Soviets was through messieurs Philby, Blunt and McLean. There are many such discursions.
There were some good bits though. First was the actual identification of the body. We now know that the actual person who "became" MAJ Martin RM, was Glyndwr Michael a 34 year old Welshman who died from phosphorous poisoning (either intentional or unintentional) in Jan of 1943. Macintyre also does a much more thorough job tracing the fake documents through the Spanish and German bureaucracies, albeit with many more unnecessary and irrelevant discursions about assorted Spanish and German officials. And there were also some good bits about Montagu's postwar machinations to get permission to write The Man Who Never Was and a decent little "what happened to them" about the key players.
At the end of the day, I'm not sure the additional information was worth the trouble it took to get it. But I am glad I now know the whole story. My advice is to get the book form the library and skim over the dross.
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