Hacker Cinema
The Man Who Never Was
1956 · Film · 103 min
Directed by Ronald Neame
The true story of a British effort to trick the Germans into weakening Sicily's defenses before the 1943 attack. A dead soldier is dressed as a British officer and outfitted with faked papers showing that the Allies were intending to invade occupied Greece. His body is put into the sea where it will ultimately drift ashore and the papers be passed along to German Intelligence.
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4 comments on Hacker News
"The Man Who Never Was" 1956 British movie made me aware of just one of the MANY ways that Allied intelligence during World War 2 was able to fool the Nazis and potentially save many lives. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Never_Was
"The Man Who Never Was" is a great film about this episode. It adds quite a few "embellishments", including dealing with a German spy sent to London to verify William Martin, and his encounter with the MI5 clerk posing as his fiancee. One of my favourite war films.
Interestingly, it is believed that Ian Fleming played a part in its planning too. Appropriately cloak & dagger.
Ewen Montagu's own book on the operation was made into the 1956 movie The Man Who Never Was. It's actually one of the better spy movies of the period and recommended if you like older films.
Also note the original book on the subject, The Man Who Never Was by Ewen Montagu, I read it in the '70s and remember it to be a solid, basic account. Per Wikipedia:
Duff Cooper was a diplomat who had held several top level posts during the war. In 1950, he published a spy novel, Operation Heartbreak. The key plot device was floating a corpse into Spain with false documents to deceive the Germans. Cooper had come up with the idea on his own, but naturally, many of those concerned with Mincemeat (including Germans and Spaniards) became concerned and started talking. The 'flap' attracted the attention of the British press and wild rumours began to circulate. At this point, the British security services decided that the best response was to publish the story of Mincemeat, which would not compromise any other secrets. Ewen Montagu took a weekend off from his busy legal practice and wrote the book The Man Who Never Was. It was an immediate best-seller and was made into a movie of the same name two years later. The movie added some fictitious elements for drama, such as a German agent in London verifying the background of "Major Martin", with Montagu and his colleagues one step ahead of him.
In 1977, Montagu published a second book, Beyond Top Secret ULTRA, in which he recounted his secret war work. It could not be revealed earlier, as it involved both Ultra and the Double Cross System. In chapter 13, he gives a short version of the Mincemeat story, including some details not in The Man Who Never Was.
As noted/implied above, anything written about WWII prior to that point in the '70s when Ultra could be talked about has to be taken with a grain of salt/suitable adjustments.