Operation Mincemeat
                                 
Director: John Madden
Year: 2021
Rating: 6.0
Also watched BBC Operation Mincemeat

The Axis powers surrendered in Africa in the middle of May 1943. Now Churchill and FDR thought it was time to take the fight to Hitler in Europe. They decided on Sicily in order to take Italy and Mussolini out of the war. But the Germans thought Sicily was the likely target as well and fortified it with numerous divisions and artillery on the beaches. The allies estimated that the landing could turn into a bloodbath with hundreds of ships sunk. Churchill was familiar with disastrous landings on the beach - Gallipoli had been under his command. So they had to deceive the Germans into thinking the invasion would be in Greece. Operation Mincemeat was the code name. All it took was a dead body and a hell of a lot of planning. And the man who thought of the idea? A young officer in Intelligence. Ian Fleming. He had 49 other ideas but this is the one they went with.



This film starring Colin Firth as Ewen Montagu and Matthew Macfadyen as Charles Cholmondeley were put in charge of the operation. I watched this first and then a one-hour documentary from BBC and it seems that all the operational aspects are right as rain. It adds some drama of a personal nature and one big scare of a tactical one - whether the documentary just didn't get into that or whether it was made up for the film I am not sure. Perhaps when I watch the 1956 film, The Man who Never Was, also about this deception, I will see.  But the personal love triangle whether real or not, just slowed the film down and wasn't needed at all. At two-hours it could easily have cut this out. The documentary is a bit flashier than needed but it interviews a few of the MI5 staff who were still living in 2010. It was nice putting a real face to the characters.



It seems simple enough. Put a dead man into the water off of Spain with fake documents pointing to Greece. But it was immensely complicated. They first had to find a dead body that fit their story of a Royal Marine who was carrying a message to Africa when his plane crashed into the water. They had to make it look like he had drowned. They found a homeless man who killed himself with rat poison. They had to keep him on ice for three months. They had to pray that the current would take him to a small village of fishermen. Spain was neutral but sympathetic to Nazi Germany. They had a profile on the Nazi agent and felt he would hear about the British man and get the papers and send them to Berlin. But the Spanish decided to play it straight and return the locked briefcase to the British. Disaster.



The invasion was planned for weeks away. They allowed the Germans to intercept messages and phone calls from British Intelligence telling their Counselor in Spain to get the papers. Most urgent. In the film the Counselor has to persuade the head of Spanish Intelligence to get the papers - pretending that he is a double agent - by giving him a hand job in the park. At another point the Counselor has to have sex with a secretary in Police Headquarters so that he can listen in on a conversation. Double duty. For King and Country. The documentary does not mention this and I can't expect he put this in his report - so sounds fishy to me. In the end it worked. Hitler bought it. Sicily was left almost undefended as they transferred the army to Greece. The most famous deception in military history. Thanks partly to Ian Fleming.  It was the beginning of the end of Hitler. The Germans had to pull troops from the Russian front. The Longest Day was a year away. There they also had to fool the Germans as to where they would land.