Operation Mincemeat | Ben MacIntyre | 2011
Years ago I read a book entitled “The Man Who Never Was,” published in 1953, which described a clever scheme to deceive the Axis powers. The scheme unfolded prior to the invasion of Sicily in 1943 and was meant to mislead the Germans about Allied intentions.
But the 1953 account of past secret events … had secrets of its own. As it turns out, “The Man Who Never Was” revealed some of the story but by no means all of it. The reason? During the war the Allies broke into the German Enigma cipher, read secret radio traffic and had prior knowledge of much of Germany’s plans as well as their reaction to the unfolding scheme, i.e. whether they fell for the “Man Who Never Was” deception. The 1953 book was unable to discuss this part of the story because the Enigma reveal, the so-called “Ultra secret”, could not be made public until 1975, which means the original book had serious gaps.
But wait! The 2011 book “Operation Mincemeat” provides all the Enigma-related details missing from the 1953 book as well as being a more engaging read. Without revealing too much of the story, two members of British Intelligence, including Ian Fleming before he began writing spy fiction, hatched a plan to trick the Germans about Allied plans. They did this by releasing a dead body off the coast of Spain, a body that carried ingeniously crafted phony documents and a made-up history of the dead “British officer”. Much of the deception relied on elaborate prior detail work – a phony officer identity fully elaborated within Britain, phony documents carefully designed for plausibility, the location at which the body was to be released into the sea, and much more.
Over the years I’ve read many World War II books, most of which narrate history, fascinating but linear. This book describes the ingenious side of human conflict – whether the Germans would accept the body as genuine, whether they would believe the documents it carried ashore, and whether this would save lives on the south coast of Sicily a few weeks hence.
A first-rate history.