Operation Mincemeat
Operation Mincemeat was a successful British disinformation plan during World War II. As part of Operation Barclay, the widespread deception intended to cover the invasion of Italy from North Africa, Mincemeat helped to convince the German high command that the Allies planned to invade Greece and Sardinia in 1943 instead of Sicily, the actual objective. This was accomplished by persuading the Germans that they had, by accident, intercepted "top secret" documents giving details of Allied war plans. The documents were attached to a corpse deliberately left to wash up on a beach in Punta UmbrÃa in Spain.
The story was used as the plot in Duff Cooper's 1950 novel Operation Heartbreak, but revealed as a true story in the 1953 book The Man Who Never Was. A film of the same name was made in 1956.
Read more about Operation Mincemeat: Background, Execution, "Mincemeat Swallowed Whole", Impact On Later Operations, The Man Who Never Was, Major Martin, In Popular Culture
Famous quotes containing the word operation:
“It requires a surgical operation to get a joke well into a Scotch understanding. The only idea of wit, or rather that inferior variety of the electric talent which prevails occasionally in the North, and which, under the name of “Wut,” is so infinitely distressing to people of good taste, is laughing immoderately at stated intervals.”
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845)