''The Man Who Never Was'' is a 1953 book by
Ewen Montagu
Ewen Edward Samuel Montagu (29 March 1901 – 19 July 1985) was a British judge, Naval intelligence officer and author.
He is best known for his leading role in Operation Mincemeat, a critical military deception operation which misdirected Ger ...
about the World War II
Operation Mincemeat
Operation Mincemeat was a successful British deception operation of the Second World War to disguise the 1943 Allied invasion of Sicily. Two members of British intelligence obtained the body of Glyndwr Michael, a tramp who died from eating r ...
. Montagu played a leading role in the 1943 scheme to deceive the Germans about the planned
Allied invasion of Sicily
The Allied invasion of Sicily, also known as Operation Husky, was a major campaign of World War II in which the Allied forces invaded the island of Sicily in July 1943 and took it from the Axis powers ( Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany). It bega ...
. The scheme entailed releasing a dead body just off the coast of Spain, where strong currents caused it to drift ashore in an area where a skilled German secret agent was known to operate. The corpse was to appear to be the victim of an airplane crash, the non-existent
Royal Marine
The Corps of Royal Marines (RM), also known as the Royal Marines Commandos, are the UK's special operations capable commando force, amphibious light infantry and also one of the five fighting arms of the Royal Navy. The Corps of Royal Marine ...
Captain
Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police department, election precinct, e ...
(
Acting
Acting is an activity in which a story is told by means of its enactment by an actor or actress who adopts a character—in theatre, television, film, radio, or any other medium that makes use of the mimetic mode.
Acting involves a broad r ...
Major
Major (commandant in certain jurisdictions) is a military rank of commissioned officer status, with corresponding ranks existing in many military forces throughout the world. When used unhyphenated and in conjunction with no other indicators ...
)
William Martin, who had letters in a briefcase that hinted at a forthcoming Allied invasion of Greece and Sardinia, rather than the obvious target of Sicily.
Montagu's work formed the basis for a
1956 film by the same title.
Background
In 1950
Duff Cooper
Alfred Duff Cooper, 1st Viscount Norwich, (22 February 1890 – 1 January 1954), known as Duff Cooper, was a British Conservative Party politician and diplomat who was also a military and political historian.
First elected to Parliament in 192 ...
, a former cabinet minister who had been briefed on the operation in March 1943, published the spy novel ''Operation Heartbreak'', which contained the plot device of a corpse – with papers naming him as William Maryngton – being floated off the coast of Spain with false documents to deceive the Germans. The British security services decided that the best response was to publish the story of Mincemeat. Over the course of a weekend Montagu wrote ''The Man Who Never Was'' (1953), which sold two million copies and formed the basis
for a 1956 film. The security services did not give Montagu complete freedom to reveal operational details, and he was careful not to mention the role played by signals intelligence to confirm that the operation had been successful. He was also careful to obscure "the idea of an organised programme of strategic deception ... with Mincemeat being presented as a 'wild' one-off caper". In 1977 Montagu published ''Beyond Top Secret U'', his wartime autobiography, which gave further details of Mincemeat, among other operations.
References
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Man Who Never Was
1953 non-fiction books
Operation Mincemeat
World War II espionage
History books about World War II
Non-fiction books adapted into films