WAR ON FILM – Operation Mincemeat

This article is from Military History Matters issue 128

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The newly released, star-studded British movie Operation Mincemeat is, on one level, about the invasion of Sicily in July 1943. On another, more profound level, it is about how people deceive one another. In its opening commentary, the film announces that ‘in every story there is what is seen… and what is hidden.’ And the film tells one of the most extraordinary deception stories of the Second World War. A story, as the commentary relates, of ‘a wilderness of mirrors… in which the truth is protected by a mirror of lies.’

The intention of the operation was to deceive the Germans into believing that, after the fall of North Africa in spring 1943, the next Allied operation would not be the obvious one, to invade Sicily, but would instead be an invasion of Greece. The hope was that battle-hardened German troops would be withdrawn from Sicily and transferred to Greece.

Operation Mincemeat is not the first time this remarkable story has been told. In 1956, Ronald Neame directed one of the finest of British 1950s war films, The Man Who Never Was (see MHM September 2013). It starred Clifton Webb as Lieutenant Commander Ewen Montagu, who, in this telling of the story, was the central figure in the deception.

Unlike most British movies of the decade, it was not made in black and white but in lavish colour in one of the widescreen formats of the day, Cinemascope. The Man Who Never Was is a tense and gripping tale, based on the book about the operation by Ewen Montagu, and adapted for the screen by thriller writer Nigel Balchin.

Tremendously exciting though the 1956 movie was, it was only a partial telling of the story. In the early 1950s, British Intelligence still wanted to keep many elements of the deception secret.

Daring plan

The story of the Operation Mincemeat deception is that a dead body was left at sea in a strong current, off the Spanish Andalusian port of Huelva, where it was known it would wash up on the coast. The body was supposedly that of a Royal Marine major, whose plane had crashed in Spanish waters. On his person were a series of private documents and mementos that created a false identity for the major. And handcuffed to his arm was a briefcase containing fake letters to commanders in North Africa telling them about plans to invade Greece.

Although Spain was neutral during the war, Huelva had been selected because it was known that an efficient German agent operated there. It was hoped that he would get hold of the briefcase and pass on the details of its letters to his chief in Madrid, who would then inform the Abwehr, the German Military Intelligence, in Berlin.