Skip to main content Site map

Deathly Deception: The Real Story of Operation Mincemeat


Deathly Deception: The Real Story of Operation Mincemeat

Paperback by Smyth, Denis (Department of History, University of Toronto)

Deathly Deception: The Real Story of Operation Mincemeat

£18.99

ISBN:
9780199605989
Publication Date:
25 Aug 2011
Language:
English
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
Pages:
398 pages
Format:
Paperback
For delivery:
Estimated despatch 28 May - 2 Jun 2024
Deathly Deception: The Real Story of Operation Mincemeat

Description

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.

Contents

Prologue ; 1. Accidental Conception ; 2. Medical Consultation ; 3. Grand Stratagem ; 4. A Sea of Troubles ; 5. Loud and Clear ; 6. Tailor Made ; 7. Brief Encounter ; 8. Travel Arrangements ; 9. Mincemeat Digested ; 10. Mincemeat Dissected ; Epilogue ; Further Reading ; Index

Back

University of Salford logo