The Group all liked this book very much and we would recommend it as a Good Read. It reads like thrilling fictional spy novel but it is all the more fascinating as it is all true.
In 1943 a Group of brilliant, but often eccentric British intelligence officers embarked upon a plan to deceive the Germans into believing that the planned invasion of Sicily would actually take place in Greece thus leading them to leave Sicily lightly defended The plan involved planting a dead body in Spanish waters; the body was to carry documents which would lead the Germans to believe that the Alliance was to invade Greece. This Book tells how this was achieved and of the many problems and obstacles they had to overcome. It is thought that this Operation was the most successful deception carried out and that it changed the course of the war; Sicily was taken with lower than anticipated casualties and loss of equipment and allowed it to become a jumping off point to take further Mediterranean targets.
Ben MacIntyre is a journalist and author of a number of non-fiction books on the subject of espionage. He came across Ewen Monague, who headed up Operation Mincemeat, whilst researching another book and became intrigued.
Although the outline of the Operation was already known to the public, as after the war Montague had written a book ‘The Man who Never was’ which was subsequently made into a film of the same name, the full story and much of the detail was not known until MacIntyre gained access to Montague’s papers. The papers were astonishing; they included papers from MI5, MI6 and the Navy Department, many marked Top Secret with full details of how the deception was planned and carried out.