Deathly Deception
The Real Story of Operation Mincemeat
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- USD 11.99
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- USD 11.99
Descripción editorial
Operation Mincemeat retells the story of the classic World War Two intelligence plan to pass misleading strategic information to Hitler and his Generals that was immortalized in the 1956 Hollywood film The Man Who Never Was.
Drawing on a wealth of recently available documentation, Denis Smyth shows how British deceptioneers solved a multitude of medical, technical, and logistical problems to implement their deceptive design. The aim of their covert plan was to persuade the German High Command that the Allies were going to attack Greece, rather than Sicily in the summer of 1943. To achieve this, they equipped a dead body with a new military identity as a Royal Marine Major, a new private personality as the fiancé of an attractive young woman named 'Pam', and a government briefcase containing deceptive documents. They then planted the corpse in south-western Spanish coastal waters via a stealthy submarine operation, and carefully monitored (through their codebreakers and spies) how the Nazi intelligence services and their warlords proceeded to 'swallow Mincemeat whole'.
The result was a stunning success. The German mis-deployment of their forces to meet the notional Anglo-American threat to Greece materially contributed to the Allied victory in Sicily - which, in its turn, drove Mussolini from power in Italy and inflicted irreparable damage on the German war effort.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Two views: a journalist and a historian recount the Allies brilliant WWII bluff.Deathly Deception: The Real Story of Operation MincemeatDenis SmythOxford Univ. (384p) Smyth, a professor of history at the University of Toronto, applies the research and analytic skills of his discipline to a subject primarily addressed by general audience writers. The story of Operation Mincemeat is familiar: it was an elaborate ruse to distract the Germans from a planned invasion of Sicily by leading them to believe Greece was the Allied target. In early 1943, British Intelligence produced a briefcase containing documents alluding to the purported Aegean campaign. They invented an officer s identity, found a body to fit, and released the corpse and briefcase from a submarine. The man who never was washed ashore in Franco s Spain, and the Nazis eventually swallowed Mincemeat whole. Smyth sacrifices none of the dramatic details of the plan s construction and implementation, down to reconfirming the identity of the man who became Major William Martin. Smyth completes the story in three ways. He presents the complex processes of the false information s evaluation by German intelligence, the high command, and Hitler himself. Second, he describes the painstaking method by which the British verified Mincemeat s progress. And third, he relates the vital achievement of Allied intelligence to convince the military commanders to undertake the deception. As a strategic success, Mincemeat has few rivals and no superiors. 8 pages of b&w photos.
