Publisher's Weekly Review
Smyth, a professor of history at the University of Toronto, applies the research and analytic skills of his discipline to a subject primarily addressed by general audience writers. The story of Operation Mincemeat is familiar: it was an elaborate ruse to distract the Germans from a planned invasion of Sicily by leading them to believe Greece was the Allied target. In early 1943, British Intelligence produced a briefcase containing documents alluding to the purported Aegean campaign. They invented an officer's identity, found a body to fit, and released the corpse and briefcase from a submarine. "The man who never was" washed ashore in Franco's Spain, and the Nazis eventually swallowed Mincemeat whole. Smyth sacrifices none of the dramatic details of the plan's construction and implementation, down to reconfirming the identity of the man who became "Major William Martin." Smyth completes the story in three ways. He presents the complex processes of the false information's evaluation by German intelligence, the high command, and Hitler himself. Second, he describes the painstaking method by which the British verified Mincemeat's progress. And third, he relates the vital achievement of Allied intelligence to convince the military commanders to undertake the deception. As a strategic success, Mincemeat has few rivals and no superiors. 8 pages of b&w photos. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* This superlative and almost unexpurgated account of Operation Mincemeat will enthrall serious students of WWII. Ewen Montague told the tale first in The Man Who Never Was (1953), the classic account of planting deceptive documents on a dead body and releasing it off the Spanish coast in 1943 so they would fall into German hands and mislead them about the planned invasion of Sicily. He appears here as a vital creative and coordinating force, but he was not the only vital member of a large cast, all portrayed with a novelist's skill and a narrative historian's eye for the context of their roles. We find RAF officers, submarine captains, forensic pathologists, coroners, two female intelligence officers simulating the deceased's fiancée, a racing driver who carried the body across Britain, and higher-ups including Lord Mountbatten and the vice chief of the Imperial General Staff. Then there is the whole network of British agents and diplomats in Spain, who steered the documents around pro-Allied elements in the Spanish navy into hands that would pass them along to Hitler. After that come British and Greek saboteurs, who made sure that German troops deployed to Greece to meet the imagined invasion stayed there! Finally, there is the indigent Welshman, whose body was presented as Major William Martin. Readers are likely to find this book impossible to put down once started and impossible to forget once finished.--Green, Roland Copyright 2010 Booklist
Library Journal Review
When the Allies decided to invade Sicily in summer 1943, they floated the body of a British military officer ashore in German-friendly Spain with the hope that the documents he carried would influence the Germans to believe that the Greek islands or Sardinia would be the Allies' actual target-and the ruse appeared to work. First told in Ewen Montagu's The Man Who Never Was, which was made into a film, Smyth's (history & international relations, Univ. of Toronto; Diplomacy and Strategy of Survival) new account is a veritable administrative history of both sides. Recently declassified records provide many new details about this deadly brain game between skilled opponents; the book also benefits from amusing profiles of the brilliant but eccentric personalities involved. What comes through is how important chance can be for intelligence activities and how one can quietly work to improve the odds. Smyth identifies the man whose body was used for "Major Martin" and thoroughly documents this work with endnotes and a bibliography. VERDICT This fascinating story is told with new thoroughness. Recommended for all studying World War II intelligence activities. Ben McIntyre's Operation Mincemeat is oriented more for popular readers, and both books identify the same man as the corpse. (Index and photos not seen.)-Daniel K. Blewett, Coll. of DuPage Lib., Glen Ellyn, IL (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
