(no subject)

[skygiants]

I feel like I spent so much time cackling to people in person after I read Operation Mincemeat that I completely forgot I hadn't actually written it up on here, like, no, self, describing the contents of the book to at least ten separate people is not in fact the same AT ALL as putting it on the internet. For those who are reading this entry rather than having to put up with me giggling at them in person, rest assured, you are getting a much better bargain.

Anyway: Operation Mincemeat! The amazing true story of one REALLY DETAILED hoax perpetrated by the British upon the Germans. The initial idea seems to have gone basically like this:

Step 1: Obtain corpse
Step 2: Cover corpse with fake British war plans for the Germans to find and be confused by
Step 3: FALL OVER LAUGHING AND ALSO PROFIT

Then more and more in-between steps began to proliferate, such as

Step 7: Figure out how long it is safe to keep corpse on ice before corpse is too gross to use in cunning ruse
Step 13: Obtain real, used, appropriately classy British underwear to dress corpse in, lest Germans be made suspicious by unconvincing undergarments
Step 18: Go on fake dates with corpse's fake girlfriend to obtain real ticket stubs to put in corpse's pocket, for verisimilitude
Step 21: Write forged letter from real admiral
Step 21.5: Fight with superior officers on how many jokes it is allowable to include in a forged letter from a real admiral

...and on and on. All this before the corpse and its TOP SECRET BRIEFCASE even land on the Spanish coast, at which point the British have to play this hilarious game of trying really hard to make it look to the Spanish authorities like they DESPERATELY want the TOP SECRET BRIEFCASE returned before the Germans see it while at the same time making absolutely sure that the Spanish authorities absolutely do not return the TOP SECRET BRIEFCASE before the Germans see it, leading to a lot of "Shit! SHIT. THE SPANISH AUTHORITIES ARE BEING TOO HELPFUL AND ACCOMMODATING. WHAT DO WE DO NOW."

(Spanish official: Hey, British official, we found a corpse with a top secret briefcase! Why don't you just take it back now and save us all time?
British official: Um ... I have ... a deathly allergy ... to briefcases SORRY GOTTA GO)

It seems inevitable that I'm going to keep reading Ben Macintyre books until run out, or until I get tired of laughing about OH, THAT WACKY BRITISH INTELLIGENCE. Which ... may be never? It may very well be never.

(My other favorite anecdote from the book, only tangentially related to Operation Mincemeat: that time the Allies had to rescue a famous French general who hated the British so much that he refused to be rescued by anyone except the Americans. Unfortunately all American submarines were busy at that point or something, so the British sent a sub with STRICT ORDERS to run around faking American accents, waving American flags and shouting "America, heck yeah!" until the end of the mission. They acquired the general, but whether he actually fell for this clever ruse is not on the historical record.)

Comments

[sapote]

This is entirely delightful. I can only imagine what a WWII-era fake American accent sounded like - it probably puts the extras on Doctor Who to shame.

[rymenhild]

So. Um. Important spoiler request. Did it work?

[skygiants]

SPOILER:





IT TOTALLY DID. Though, as with many British deceptions, it's unclear whether it worked because the Germans were really that gullible, or because the Germans at that point just kind of did not care.

[skygiants]

I desperately want to have been a time-traveling fly on the wall!

[rymenhild]

HA.

*glancing over Amazon sample*

Do you realize that in the exact same months that the RAF and British Intelligence were working this plan out, Julie Beaufort-Stuart was confusing Germans as Eva Seiler and preparing for her journey to Ormaie?

where is the Machiavellian British Intelligence agent who likes to play God, that's all I want to know

[skygiants]

...in fact, I did not realize that.

However reading through Ben MacIntyre's collected works does allow for an excellent sample selection of Machiavellian British Intelligence officers. >:D

[rymenhild]

Good to know. In the alternate universe where I have time to set up a character journal at DW: codenameverity I will read them all.

[ladysingsthe]

lfjsdfljslkdfj this is EVERYTHING

[skygiants]

I KNOW RIGHT. I really wish more James Bond-type stories were about all this junk instead of ... what James Bond plots usually are. "I'm Special Agent 007, and I'm here to claim your dead husband's underwear for king and country."

[ladysingsthe]

If this is not what Agent Carter is about at least in part, I will be super disappointed

[skygiants]

OH MY GOD I'm going to be so mad if there isn't at least one episode inspired by these shenanigans now. SO MAD.

[amoama]

This was sounding so familiar and then I realised it is also the plot of the film The Man Who Never Was which is also based on Operation Mincemeat and is also GLORIOUS. Did you see it? It has added German Spy sent to London to get to the bottom of whether the corpse is real or not, including hanging with the corpse's fake girlfriend. Is that in the Macintyre version?

[vass]

LOLOLOL I think I remember hearing this on Stuff You Missed In History. It is AMAZING.

[lacewood]

ADDING TO THE LIST. Some days I wonder why I seem to read so much WW2 Britain-centric non-fiction but clearly the reason is that WW2 Britain was apparently A BOTTOMLESS ABYSS of madness and also HIJINKS.

[skygiants]

In that extremely hypothetical alternate universe, I recommend Double Cross to begin with, which is all about double agents and their Machiavellian British handlers.

[skygiants]

Yes! The book mentioned the movie and I SUPER want to see it now. As far as anybody knows no German spies actually came to London to check up on the corpse in real life, but everyone involved in the plot was TERRIFIED that they were going to and kept running around, like, falsifying hotel records etc. JUST IN CASE.

[skygiants]

Genius plans! .... legitimately, actually inspired by bad mediocre suspense novels!

[skygiants]

RIGHT? Every time I think there can't possibly be MORE hijinks to be had, I am proven totally, gloriously wrong.

[sashajwolf]

There's a rather excellent BBC documentary about Operation Mincemeat, released last year IIRC, in which they interview (amongst others) the fake girlfriend. Highly recommended.

[brownbetty]

Like, was she engaged by the war effort to go around looking glum and sobbing into handkerchiefs?

[sally_maria]

Lurker butting in to say that if you get the chance to read the original book, also titled "The Man Who Never Was" by Ewen Montagu, it's well worth it. He's very readable, and looking back it's interesting to see him writing around things like the Enigma intelligence, which were still top secret when the book was published.

[nenya_kanadka]

I need this book in my life. (Possibly also the fake Americans.)

[nny]

you read all the best books

[nextian]

I was going to wait until I was done with it to comment, but I just got to von Roenne, and I just-- I fucking love this book. Wow. This is spectacular. I am always appalled and amused by how much of government runs on "The Machine that Won the War" principles.

[nextian]

Rym, it's better than that, there's an intelligence report from a real-life potentially-using-a-code-name-but-real-person-really-talking agent P. Wimsey in the book from the correct period. (Frankly if some weirdo on the Soviet counterintelligence circuit decided to use P. Wimsey as his codename for some reason that's utterly amazing in its own right.)

Also all kinds of very Julie small mistakes. Oh, boy.

[skygiants]

I CAN'T BELIEVE I FORGOT TO MENTION P. WIMSEY. Oh my god. This is my greatest failure.

[skygiants]

Like, nowhere in the historical record, to be fair, does it state for a certainty that their fake accents were terrible. BUT I FEEL PRETTY ASSURED THEY WERE TERRIBLE.

[skygiants]

But your country has all the best-worst genius plans for winning wars!

[skygiants]

Right?! SO MUCH. It's the #overlyhonestmethods of governance.

[nenya_kanadka]

LOL. The likelihood of ypu being correct approaches 100%.

[aurumcalendula]

This reminds me I need to reread this book - I remember it being a fascinating read (especially in comparison to the intentionally incomplete/ misleading official version in Montagu's The Man Who Never Was)