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

Ben Macintyre can't seem to write a bad book, and he has a knack for finding unusual, quirky stories and characters or, as in the case of this book, the unusual twist/angle to a story that may already be well known to readers and movie-goers thanks to the 1950s publication and film of The Man Who Never Was. That film was an indifferent drama based on an incredible story, and Macintyre has done even better, delivering a far more complete narrative of that story, jam packed with interesting characters and coincidences.

Essentially, it's a spy story, set at the height of World War II, in the months leading up to the invasion of Sicily. Already the Allies were using all kinds of misdirection to feed inaccurate intelligence back to the Germans, but they were particularly concerned about the Sicily landings, not just as a trial run for D-Day but in their own right: if they were repulsed, there might very well never be a D-Day, just a stalemate. How to convince the Germans that the Sicilian attack was only a feint; a cover for the real attack on Sardinia or Greece? Some of the smart and very eccentric minds in the intelligence operations got pondering this, and decided to float a body, containing secret documents, onto a Spanish beach in hopes that the ostensibly neutral Spanish fascists would share the information they found with the Germans AND that the Germans would believe it. Sound incredible? This is the story of that operation, from idea all the way through to the Sicily landings, and it's quite something. Even those familiar with the story will find all kinds of quirky sidenotes -- the main protagonist, for instance, had a brother who was a Soviet spy: he was a typical ecccentric in that he founded a cheese-eating society at Cambridge, was a table-tennis nut, collected rare species of mice and, oh yes, spied for the Soviet Union. (In between producing films for Hitchcock and Eisenstein, and teaching Charlie Chaplin to swear in Russian, of course...)

If you're interested in taking a broader look at this kind of World War 2 intelligence coup, the best book of all (although not as lively or succinct a read as this one) is Churchill's Wizards: The British Genius for Deception, 1914-1945 by Nicholas Rankin, which covers Mincemeat and the various misdirection operations that surrounded D-Day itself.

Meanwhile, do hunt out Macintyre's other books, which include a book about jewel thief Adam Worth and one focusing on a little-known event in World War One that is a poignant mystery -- The Englishman's Daughter: A True Story of Love and Betrayal in World War I.

Highly recommended, and not just to military history buffs (whose ranks I would not include myself in.)Get more detail about Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory.