Operation Mincemeat: The True Spy Story That Changed the Course of World War II - Hardcover

Macintyre, Ben

4.02

20,213 ratings by Goodreads

9780747598688: Operation Mincemeat: The True Spy Story That Changed the Course of World War II

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0747598681 ISBN 13: 9780747598688

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2010

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One April morning in 1943, a sardine fisherman spotted the corpse of a British soldier floating in the sea off the coast of Spain and set in train a course of events that would change the course of the Second World War. Operation Mincemeat was the most successful wartime deception ever attempted, and certainly the strangest. It hoodwinked the Nazi espionage chiefs, sent German troops hurtling in the wrong direction, and saved thousands of lives by deploying a secret agent who was different, in one crucial respect, from any spy before or since: he was dead. His mission: to convince the Germans that instead of attacking Sicily, the Allied armies planned to invade Greece. The brainchild of an eccentric RAF officer and a brilliant Jewish barrister, the great hoax involved an extraordinary cast of characters including a famous forensic pathologist, a gold-prospector, an inventor, a beautiful secret service secretary, a submarine captain, three novelists, a transvestite English spymaster, an irascible admiral who loved fly-fishing, and a dead Welsh tramp. Using fraud, imagination and seduction, Churchill's team of spies spun a web of deceit so elaborate and so convincing that they began to believe it themselves. The deception started in a windowless basement beneath Whitehall. It travelled from London to Scotland to Spain to Germany. And it ended up on Hitler's desk. Ben Macintyre, bestselling author of "Agent Zigzag", weaves together private documents, photographs, memories, letters and diaries, as well as newly released material from the intelligence files of MI5 and Naval Intelligence, to tell for the first time the full story of Operation Mincemeat.

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Review:

`Fascinating ...The complexities and consequences of the story that Macintyre tells in Operation Mincemeat are compelling - a tribute to his impressive abilities as a sleuth (ones that we've witnessed in his previous books) and to his capacities as a writer. He has the instincts of a novelist rather than a historian when it comes to elision , exposition, narrative and pace, and is depiction of character is vividly alive to nuance and idiosyncrasy . Like the best novelists, he understands that all people are fundamentally individual - odd and unique to themselves - and that stereotypes exist only in bad fiction, whether on the page or on screen' --William Boyd, The Times

`Ben Macintyre turns up trumps in this rollicking tale of a second world war mission to dupe the Germans by using a corpse bearing fictional military plans ... The cast of characters is irresistible, and Macintyre's enthusiasm for them richly merited ... a terrific book with exceptional photographs of everybody, including the corpse. Students of the second world war have been familiar with Mincemeat for many years, but Macintyre offers a mass of new detail, and enchanting pen portraits of the British, Spanish and German participants. His book is a rollicking read for all those who enjoy a spy story so fanciful that Ian Fleming - himself an officer in Montagu's wartime department - would never have dared to invent it'
--Max Hastings, Sunday Times

'Ben Macintyre has taken a well known story of wartime deception, embellished it, and shown that it was even more ingenious and even more risky than we had all supposed. -- Spectator, January 2010

'This true story of wartime deception is as creative and as cunning as a good spy novel.' -- Sunday Telegraph, February 2010

'Ben Macintyre skilfully breathes life into the diverse cast of characters involved in the plan, imaginatively fleshing out the colourful personalities on both sides.' -- Metro London

'Macintyre tells a 'rollicking' story with 'infectious glee'. -- The Week, February 2010

' ... they would surely applaud his skill in finally bringing all to life.'
-- Times

Book Description:

From the bestselling author of Agent Zigzag. The thrilling true story of the greatest and most successful wartime deception ever attempted

A Richard & Judy Book Club selection

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