Operation Heartbreak/ the Man Who Never Was

Operation Heartbreak/ the Man Who Never Was by Montagu, Ewen. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9781862271876.

The extraordinary story of the elaborate and successful plan to deceive the Germans into the double bluff of believing the Allied invasion of Sicily would, in reality, take place in Greece is well known. The audacious and innovative plot successfully outwitted the Germans who moved some of their forces away from Sicily and continued to expect an attack on Greece, even after the real invasion had begun. Operation Mincemeat called for a dead body, dressed as a Royal Marine officer and presumably killed in an airplane crash to wash ashore on the coast of Spain. The body concealed false information about a pending Allied invasion of Greece which it was hoped would be fed to a known Nazi agent in the area. Lt Cmdr Ewen Montagu RNVR, the counterintelligence agent and mastermind behind the scheme, was pressured to write the factual account of this operation when the authorities learned that Duff Cooper was to publish the fictional story of Major William Martins life and his unsatisfactory love affair, culminating in his death and his body being used in Operation Mincemeat. Both these books are now gathered in one volume, providing an intriguing and fascinating contrast, giving color and insight to the full story of the most successful, thorough and enthralling deception of World War II. Duff Coopers son, Lord Norwich, has contributed a fascinating preface which explains the genesis of the combined volume and includes recent revelations about the identity of the mysterious Major Martin.