Ewen Montagu

As plans got under way for the Allied invasion of Sicily in June 1943, British counter-intelligence agent Ewen Montagu masterminded a scheme to mislead the Germans into thinking the next landing would occur in Greece. The innovative plot was so successful that the Germans moved some of their forces away from Sicily, and two weeks into the real invasion still expected an attack in Greece. This extraordinary operation called for a dead body, dressed as a Royal Marine officer and carrying false information about a pending Allied invasion of Greece, to wash up on a Spanish shore near the town of a known Nazi agent

Now the subject of a major new film starring Colin Firth as Ewen Montagu in Operation Mincemeat.In the early hours of 30 April 1943, a corpse wearing the uniform of an officer in the Royal Marines was slipped into the waters off the south-west coast of Spain. With it was a briefcase, in which were papers detailing an imminent Allied invasion of Greece.As the British had anticipated, the supposedly neutral government of Fascist Spain turned the papers over to the Nazi High Command, who swallowed the story whole. It was perhaps the most decisive bluff of all time, for the Allies had no such plan: the purpose of Operation Mincemeat was to blind the German High Command to their true objective an attack on Southern Europe through Sicily. Though officially shrouded in secrecy, the operation soon became legendary (in part owing to Churchills habit of telling the story at dinner). Ewen Montagu was the operations mastermind, and in his celebrated post-war memoir, The Man Who Never Was, he reveals the incredible true story behind Operation Mincemeat.

Now the subject of a major new film starring Colin Firth as Ewen Montagu in Operation MincemeatIn the early hours of 30 April 1943, a corpse wearing the uniform of an officer in the Royal Marines was slipped into the waters off the southwest coast of Spain. With it was a briefcase, in which were papers detailing an imminent Allied invasion of Greece. As the British had anticipated, the supposedly neutral government of Fascist Spain turned the papers over to the Nazi High Command, who swallowed the story whole. It was perhaps the most decisive bluff of all time, for the Allies had no such plan: the purpose of 'Operation Mincemeat' was to blind the German High Command to their true objective an attack on Southern Europe through Sicily. Though officially shrouded in secrecy, the operation soon became legendary (in part owing to Churchill's habit of telling the story at dinner). Ewen Montagu was the operation's mastermind, and in his celebrated postwar memoir, The Man who Never Was, he reveals the incredible true story behind 'Operation Mincemeat'.