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

Ben Macintyre

May 2010 · Sold by Crown

About this ebook

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW A NETFLIX FILM STARRING COLIN FIRTH • The “brilliant and almost absurdly entertaining” (Malcolm Gladwell, The New Yorker) true story of the most successful—and certainly the strangest—deception carried out in World War II, from the acclaimed author of The Spy and the Traitor

“Pure catnip to fans of World War II thrillers and a lot of fun for everyone else.”—Joseph Kanon, The Washington Post Book World

Near the end of World War II, two British naval officers came up with a brilliant and slightly mad scheme to mislead the Nazi armies about where the Allies would attack southern Europe. To carry out the plan, they would have to rely on the most unlikely of secret agents: a dead man.

Ben Macintyre’s dazzling, critically acclaimed bestseller chronicles the extraordinary story of what happened after British officials planted this dead body—outfitted in a British military uniform with a briefcase containing false intelligence documents—in Nazi territory, and how this secret mission fooled Hitler into changing military positioning, paving the way for the Allies’ drive to victory.

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES

Ratings and reviews

This story has already been covered beautifully in "The Man Who Never Was", which was then made into a movie by the same name. Rehashing history by offering 'new, recently discovered, never-before-printed' pages rarely if ever adds anything of value to a story as fine as this. To assume that Mr. Macintyre adds to this tale is belied by the slow pace that covers almost the first third of the book, and it really becomes painfully obvious that there's very little more that really contains value. 'The Man Who Never Was' remains a wonderful story of manipulation, and it certainly had some effect on German troop reorganization in the Med, but deserves to stand as a tale told once and left to its merits.

Fantastic! The research done here is unbelievable. Great, great book.

Grest

About the author

Ben Macintyre is a writer-at-large for The Times (U.K.) and the bestselling author of The Spy and the Traitor, A Spy Among Friends, Double Cross, Agent Zigzag, and Rogue Heroes, among other books. Macintyre has also written and presented BBC documentaries of his work.