Operation Mincemeat

How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory

By: Ben Macintyre

Narrated by: John Lee

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.

Fast pace detailed story

Amazing story to save lives and deceive the Nazi's. I usually like books with dialogue but this is primarily narration, but it is an excellent read (listen). I had to stop it and re-listen as it moves quickly, and I wanted to keep informed on all the details. The attention to detail in order to decieve was amazing and I applaud the author for his research. Other books have been written and even a movie on another book which I saw(The Man Who Never Was). The movie was not even close to the real story. I highly recommend this if your interests involve the war(s), and spys. It is a precursor to James Bond, as Flemming plays a role in the deception.

Better than fiction

You can get lost in this well told story of a WWII operation you, like me, probably never heard of. Well developed characters, historical context that will expand your WWII knowledge, gripping spy story intrigue of on operation that would be far fetched fiction, and it ends well.

Whats not to love!

MI5

“Operation Mincemeat” is a history of the real story of “The Man Who Never Was”, a book and movie produced in the 1950s about a British Secret Service operation to mislead the German Axis powers on the planned invasion of Italy in WWII.

Though this history is enlightening, Macintyre’s account makes the early British Secret Service look like an upper class boy’s club. The master minds of early British Secret Service espionage, MI5, are pictured as aspiring novelists from privileged, wealthy, Ivy League, English families playing in a game of war.

The author’s characterization of the early days of the British Secret Service is not particularly heroic. There are pictures of real heroes in this history but they are soldiers in a real war. Much of MI5’s depiction is of upper class rich boys playing war at their desks in blacked out offices near Piccadilly.

"Agent Zigzag" was better

The plot is pretty well encapsulated in the title. During WWII, the Allies' deception program included a plot to fool the Nazis into thinking that the Allies were going to invade the Balkans rather than Sicily.

The story is mostly about the interesting and colourful characters and their machinations to pull this trick off.

The same author and narrator presented "Agent ZIgzag" on Audible...I had listened to that one first then came over to this one. Personally, I liked Zigzag better...partly because the central character of Agent Zigzag (the title character, a/k/a Eddie Chapman) was a pretty interesting individual...the central character of Operation Mincemeat died in chapter 3 and was dead the rest of the story (in fact, his being dead was a key element of the plot, but it didn't make him interesting).

Overall, this real-life cloak-and-dagger work (which may have inspired Ian Fleming, who worked for British Naval Intelligence during the war, to invent 007) is fascinating stuff, but I think this one got a little long before it was done.

Good Story; Average Reader

Liked the story but the reading was a little bland. Overall, a very interesting story about a very clever operation.