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Sunday, March 2, 2014

Operation Mincemeat by Ben Macintyre, 400 pages

The entire title is "Operation Mincemeat: How a Dead Man and a Bizarre Plan Fooled the Nazis and Assured an Allied Victory."  I listened to this book and enjoyed every single minute of it.
What a story!  Operation Mincemeat was a plan created in 1943 by two British intelligence officers, Charles Cholmondeley and Ewen Montagu.  Basically, they had a corpse wash up on a Spanish shore with false papers that made the Nazis think that the Allies were NOT going to land in Sicily, but rather in Greece or Sardinia.
You may have heard about this story before.  Ewen Montagu published a book in the 50's and there was a movie made by the same name in 1956, "The Man Who Never Was."  However, this is the whole story, not the politically correct version issued in the 1950s.
The book jacket says this reads like an international thriller and it does.  Operation Mincemeat was successful, but it took skill, luck and help from lots of people including a high ranking Nazi who actually worked against Hitler throughout the war.  If you like a good adventure, add this non-fiction tale to your list of must-reads.

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