Operation Mincemeat, by Ben Macintyre
Operation Mincemeat. The story of an audacious deception plot that changed the course of the Second World War. The central premise of the trick has become infamous by now: a British soldier washes up dead in Spain, carrying crucial intelligence in his briefcase - but the information is false, the documents fake, and the soldier imaginary. The whole thing is a ruse designed to deceive Hitler. This much I knew before I started reading, but my word, there is so much more to discover. This book is a cornucopia of historical detail, and the full story is almost beyond belief. It blew my mind.
I read 'Operation Mincemeat' whilst on holiday, in three or four stints at the poolside. This meant I was reading at quite a fast pace, and in big chunks at a time, which actually turned out to be the ideal approach. This book is so teeming with details that you really need your working memory switched on to be able to keep up, especially at the beginning. In the first few chapters, Macintyre has to lay a great deal of groundwork: British Intelligence is a complex machine, and Operation Mincemeat had many collaborators. As a result, there are a lot of names, titles and roles introduced in quick succession, and it pays to read it quickly so you can hold them all in your head!
One of the first things that struck me as I started reading 'Operation Mincemeat' was its non-fiction style. Perhaps this seems a stupidly obvious observation - it's a true story made up of historical facts, of course the book is non-fiction. But the style interested me because Macintyre could very much have chosen to tell this story as a narrative. It's so twisty, so thrilling, so outlandish - it really lends itself to a narrative retelling. But Macintyre doesn't do this. He writes it up like a journalistic report. This is in fact brilliantly effective, because it reminds us at every turn that however astonishing the tale unspooling before us is, it's all absolutely true.
Macintyre has clearly investigated this stuff in great depth. He includes quotes, footnotes, diagrams, photographs - and everything is referenced in a very impressive bibliography. My edition even has an appendix detailing extra things Macintyre learnt after the first publication; people wrote to him with some glorious nuggets of fact, corroborating, complementing and even contradicting details from the original book. As such, 'Operation Mincemeat' feels extraordinarily well-researched - and it feels like a project that is continuing to unfold. It's exciting to read, and you can sense the excitement Macintyre must have felt when writing it: at times, he takes a detour from the main plot to give us a bit of backstory on a particular person, and it's in these moments you can almost feel him digging through the treasure trove of historical discovery. It's as though he's gone down a rabbit hole and found gems that he can't resist sharing.
As for the main plot, it's almost too fanciful to be real. The operation itself is mind-boggling in its planning and execution. Ewen Montagu, the mastermind behind the plot, goes to extreme lengths to make the trick as convincing as possible. From choosing an untraceable 'nobody' to be the corpse, to forging photographic ID that matches the dead man's face, and from writing a letter from a fabricated fiancée to carting a dead body halfway up the country in an airtight container, Montagu's exploits are astonishing. I kept breaking off my reading to exclaim aloud just how incredible this story was. I was also amazed to discover the amount of lying, double-crossing and sabotage happening on both sides of the war, even at the highest level of Intelligence. Some of Hitler's most trusted advisors, it turns out, were secretly anti Nazism, or even directly working for the British! It's crazy stuff.
What's most amazing of all is that Operation Mincemeat was successful. The fake letter made its way all the way up the Intelligence chain to Hitler himself, and was convincing enough to influence his strategy as Montagu and his men intended. Macintyre traces the plot all the way from its conception to its aftermath, in an extremely satisfying arc - and make no mistake, even though we know it works, the suspense is still great when you're reading.
Overall, this book was a ripping read. The story is just so good - and all the more entertaining for being true. Macintyre writes with incredibly detailed insight, and is engaging, excited and brilliantly readable all the way through. I would wholeheartedly recommend this fascinating novel to anyone with the remotest interest in British history - or anyone who fancies a thrill!
You can buy 'Operation Mincemeat' from Waterstones by following this link (I'll receive a small commission if you do):
Operation Mincemeat, Ben Macintyre - Waterstones
