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Operation Mincemeat was a successful British deception operation of the Second World War to disguise the 1943 Allied invasion of Sicily.

Two members of British intelligence obtained the body of Glyndwr Michael, a tramp who died from eating rat poison, dressed him as an officer of the Royal Marines and placed personal items on him identifying him as the fictitious Captain (Acting Major) William Martin. Correspondence between two British generals that suggested that the Allies planned to invade Greece and Sardinia, with Sicily as merely the target of a feint, was also placed on the body. Part of the wider Operation Barclay, Mincemeat was based on the 1939 Trout memo, written by Rear Admiral John Godfrey, the director of the Naval Intelligence Division, and his personal assistant, Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming. With the approval of the British prime minister, Winston Churchill, and the American military commander in the Mediterranean, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the plan began by transporting the body to the southern coast of Spain by submarine and releasing it close to shore, where it was picked up the following morning by a Spanish fisherman. The nominally neutral Spanish government shared copies of the documents with the Abwehr, the German military intelligence organisation, before returning the originals to the British. Forensic examination showed they had been read and Ultra decrypts of German messages showed that the Germans fell for the ruse. German reinforcements were shifted to Greece and Sardinia before and during the invasion of Sicily; Sicily received none. The full effect of Operation Mincemeat is not known, but Sicily was liberated more quickly than anticipated and losses were lower than predicted. The events were depicted in Operation Heartbreak, a 1950 novel by the former cabinet minister Duff Cooper, before one of the intelligence officers who planned and carried out Mincemeat, Ewen Montagu, wrote a history in 1953. Montagu's book formed the basis for the 1956 British film The Man Who Never Was. A second British film was released in 2021, titled Operation Mincemeat.

The Allies knew of Hitler's fears, and they launched Operation Barclay, a deception operation to play upon his concerns and to mislead the Germans into thinking the Balkans were the objective, diverting resources from Sicily.

The Mincemeat plan was to place documents on the corpse, and then float it off the coast of Spain, whose nominally neutral government was known to co-operate with the Abwehr, the German military intelligence organisation.

The military historian Jon Latimer observes that the relative ease with which the Allies captured Sicily was not entirely because of Mincemeat, or the wider deception of Operation Barclay. The military historian Michael Howard, while describing Mincemeat as "perhaps the most successful single deception operation of the entire war", considered Mincemeat and Barclay to have had less impact on the course of the Sicily campaign than Hitler's "congenital obsession with the Balkans".

Montagu was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1944 for his part in Operation Mincemeat; for masterminding the plan, Cholmondeley was appointed a member of the order in 1948.

Duff Cooper, a former cabinet minister who had been briefed on the operation in March 1943, published the novel Operation Heartbreak (1950), which contained the plot device of a corpse – with papers naming him as William Maryngton – being floated off the coast of Spain with false documents to deceive the Germans. In 2010 the journalist Ben Macintyre published Operation Mincemeat, a history of the events. Griffin depicts Operation Mincemeat as an American operation run by the Office of Strategic Services. Another musical, Operation Mincemeat, is also based on the operation. In 2014 a BBC television miniseries, Fleming: The Man Who Would Be Bond, dramatised some aspects of Operation Mincemeat, and Fleming's connection to the operation. In 2022 the film Operation Mincemeat was released, with Colin Firth as Montagu and Matthew Macfadyen as Cholmondeley.

Quick Facts

• Part of the wider Operation Barclay, Mincemeat was based on the 1939 Trout memo, written by Rear Admiral John Godfrey, the director of the Naval Intelligence Division, and his personal assistant, Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming.
• A second British film was released in 2021, titled Operation Mincemeat.
• The events were depicted in Operation Heartbreak, a 1950 novel by the former cabinet minister Duff Cooper, before one of the intelligence officers who planned and carried out Mincemeat, Ewen Montagu, wrote a history in 1953.
• Another musical, Operation Mincemeat, is also based on the operation.
• Montagu was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1944 for his part in Operation Mincemeat; for masterminding the plan, Cholmondeley was appointed a member of the order in 1948.

Source material: Wikipedia - "Operation Mincemeat". Adapted and summarized for DiscoverScroll. Original contributors are credited through the linked Wikipedia article. Read original on Wikipedia. CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes were made from the original.