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How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory
Harmony
May 2010
On Sale: May 4, 2010
416 pages
ISBN: 0307453278
EAN: 9780307453273
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction History
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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