Operation Mincemeat

'Operation Mincemeat' tells the improbable yet largely true story of a British intelligence operation that used a corpse to defeat the Germans.

So, yes, people were going to the movies and dancing away at private clubs like the one in our movie, the Gargoyle Club.” If anything, Madden says, the real story had to be simplified in order to keep the pace of his movie flowing. Decades would go by before war-era secrets were declassified and the body was revealed to be that of Glyndwr Michael. In 1997, British officials added a postscript to his grave that revealed all: “Glyndwr Michael served as Major William Martin RM.” In his post-war book “The Man Who Never Was,” Montagu described the dead man as a vagrant who died of rat poisoning. “In wartime, you’re dealing with a world where people are thrust together with extreme emotional stakes,” he says, explaining the decision to amplify that triangle. “Fleming was a decade away from his first Bond novel at that point, but he was a budding writer,” says Madden, who chose to have the Fleming character be the movie’s narrator.

Starring Colin Firth, Operation Mincemeat mixes an unbelievable WWII mission with the equally entrancing lives of the people behind it.

But the audience’s sympathy almost entirely lies with Cholmondeley and Leslie. Macfayden clearly wants love and honor, but is willing to put others’ needs ahead of his own. His intentions with Leslie are always suspect, as his wife has moved to America during the war, and MI6’s uncertainty about whether Montagu’s brother (Mark Gatiss) is a community spy, makes Montagu a fascinating character to try and figure out. Operation Mincemeat proves this to be true with the almost unbelievable story of a World War II espionage operation that not only explores the audacity of this remarkable scenario, but the equally enthralling lives of those who made this undertaking a reality. With this triangle of sorts, we see the crippling loneliness that war can create, how even without being in battle, war can tear people apart, separate, and leave scars that never heal. This includes giving the man a believable love story that will further flesh out who this person was, helping sell the deception even more. Montagu, Cholmondeley, and their entire team have to turn a long-dead body into Major William Martin, a man with intelligence on the Allies’ plans, but also, make him into a believable human being, with loves, wants, desires, and dreams.

Read about the Operation Mincemeat true story, the Colin Firth Netflix movie based on real-life British officer Ewen Montagu.

“And so I began to look into the MI5 files, and they really are the most extraordinary cornucopia of detail because they’re written by and for people who never expected them to be made public. Though most of the Netflix film is based on the true story laid out in Macintyre’s book, some liberties were taken while making the movie version. In order to carry out this plan, two British officers—Montagu and Charles Cholmondeley (played by Matthew Macfadyen)— obtained the dead body of a homeless man who died of rat poison and created a fictional identity for him: Captain (Acting Major) William Martin. Decryptions of coded German messages later showed that the plan worked, and the Germans fell for it. Read on to get a briefing on the Operation Mincemeat true story, and to see how accurate Netflix’s Operation Mincemeat is. That makes Netflix’s Operation Mincemeat the second movie to be made about this morbidly fascinating true story.

It might sound like the title for a gory, straight-to-video action movie, but Operation Mincemeat was a real World War II strategy – a secret Allied scheme ...

In Madden's version of the story, the committee selects the corpse of a vagrant (portrayed in flashback by Lorne MacFadyen) who drank himself to death on rat poison. Madden and cinematographer Sebastian Blenkov ( Their Finest) shoot in anamorphic wide-screen for that old-school feel, delivering the kind of war movie your grandpa would love (that's a compliment, especially in an era where too many films resemble over-lit television shows). The corpse drop is the brainchild of Firth's intelligence officer Ewen Montagu, a middle-aged judge who family and friends believe to be serving as a naval commander. The answer, of course, is obvious. A romantic triangle between Macfadyen, Firth and Macdonald, meanwhile, doesn't catch fire despite the actors' charms – and Firth, reliable as ever, and Macdonald, a long-underrated trouper, are both very good here. Allied forces are plotting a crucial invasion of Sicily, but in order to divert attention from the operation and give their troops the best chance at success, they're determined to leak information to Nazi intelligence about a bogus campaign launching in Greece.

In this World War II drama from Netflix, a team of spies uses a vagrant's corpse to outwit the Nazis.

But “Operation Mincemeat” is overall light on remorse and far more interested in intrigue, both political and romantic. Colin Firth plays Ewen Montagu, a former barrister who teams up with Charles Cholmondeley, played by Matthew Macfadyen, after hearing his plan to deceive Hitler by using forged papers attached to a corpse. In this bizarrely celebratory tale, the titular “mincemeat” is a troubling figure, weighing heavy on the conscience as the men who’ve enlisted him engage in petty infighting.

He sits down with a bunch of pale important men to discuss British war strategy. The German fascists have a stronghold in Italy. The Brits want to pretend to ...

There are moments when the film lists a bit under the weight of a needless subplot or two (the my-brother-might-be-a-Russian-spy one, for example) at the expense of further quietly delightful interactions between Macdonald (showing complex character shades) and Firth (in a role Michael Caine might’ve played 25 years ago). And visually, it’s Just Fine, maybe making one wish for the vibrant indulgences of a Joe Wright endeavor. The film’s keenest irony is how it underscores the madness of the deception plan – which makes putting a message in a bottle and tossing it in the ocean a viable alternative – with British decorum, which all but demands that no one raise their voice or unbutton a collar despite the mighty, sweaty-bollocks tension of a situation. – for the sake of believability, and plan a series of maneuvers to get him into the hands of the murderous bastards who are their enemy, we learn about how sad our three principals are: Montagu’s strained marriage finds him taking a shine to the widow Leslie, although Cholmondeley is also interested in her, and single, and therefore the more viable romantic candidate despite his being an utter dorkwad. But none are more complicated than the wargames here – getting the Nazis to swallow their little corpse scheme, then hoping that they’re not onto the scheme and counterscheming with their own phony intelligence, and therefore only pretending to avert forces to Greece while actually remaining fortified in Sicily. And it’s even more complicated than that, believe it or not. It drops something in the water as battleships ready themselves for the thing that’s the first part of that compound word. A solemn Firth voiceover goes on about the seen and hidden battles of wartime, and he’s one who fights on a “battleground in shades of gray.” We see a submarine surface at nighttime.

In Netflix's new movie, Colin Firth dresses up a corpse to fool the Nazis. Here's what really happened.

The film also invents a sister who eventually appears to claim his body and stand up for a brother whose body was exploited without his permission. Some refuse to believe that Glyndwr Michael actually played the role of Maj. Martin, believing, instead, that the conspirators used a more recently deceased corpse of a Royal Navy drowning victim. Sometimes the film’s characters suggest the “fate of the world” hung in the balance, but we can read that as saying the “fate of the world” depended on the Allies’ ultimate success in the invasion of Europe. True enough. Von Roenne was, in fact, one of the July 20 Plotters who fomented a plan to blow up Hitler—but none of those men actually wanted Germany defeated. Historians disagree, but Ivor was probably an informant and sometime-recruiter for Soviet intelligence, though it’s not clear he had access to great secrets, even his brother’s. Ivor was married and did not live with Ewen, as depicted in the film. The real Cholmondeley had a brother who died in the retreat to Dunkirk in spring 1940, adding to a sense that he had been cursed by fate to be left on the sidelines in this war. Isaacs’ Adm. Godfrey plays the role of a foil in the film, but there’s little evidence for the character’s opposition to the Mincemeat idea, and none for his machinations to stop it, in the historical record. He was hardly a newbie in the world of intelligence when attending his first Twenty Committee meeting, as was depicted in the film. That, in turn, gives Godfrey-Isaacs a bargaining chip—he can pull any string and get the remains home—with which to tempt Cholmondeley to spy on Ewen Montagu, a perfectly fictional part of the film. He was a filmmaker and critic, a champion table tennis player, a conservationist, and a philanthropist. Operation Mincemeat, available on Netflix as of Wednesday, tells the story of the most successful trick Britain played during World War II. The context for this story begins in January 1943, even before the Allies had fully driven the Germans from North Africa, when Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt met in Casablanca, Morocco, to plan the invasion of Europe. The Soviets had withstood the nearly undivided might of the German war machine for a year and a half. This idea morphed into “Operation Mincemeat,” which was, like all mission names, randomly drawn from a list of meaningless operation titles and not, as the film implies, picked because of its gruesome nature.

“Operation Mincemeat” looks like a proper British spy drama and for the most part, well, it is. It's based on the true story of wartime daring and heroism, ...

And mistrust begins to bubble up among everyone on the team as deceptions within the deception emerge. At times, you may wish Madden had taken the same kind of chances as the masterminds behind Operation Mincemeat, but his film is still sufficiently rousing. But while the film as a whole may seem dense and restrained, the performances and attention to detail consistently bring it to life. Firth’s Ewen Montagu and Macfadyen’s Charles Cholmondeley lead the scheme to secure a body, dress it in a military uniform and dump it off the coast of Spain in the hope that it will wash ashore with a briefcase full of fake documents intact. Macdonald and Firth have a sweet and easy chemistry tinged with the slightest sadness and world-weariness. “Operation Mincemeat” looks like a proper British spy drama and for the most part, well, it is.

Find out how you can watch the WWII drama film Operation Mincemeat, starring Colin Firth, Kelly Macdonald, Matthew Macfadyen, and more.

A war drama thriller, Operation Mincemeat is essentially about the real Operation Mincemeat conducted by MI5 and other Allied Forces during World War II. In 1943, the Allies planned an attack on Sicily, with the aim of minimizing Hitler’s hold on Europe. But the German troops had already anticipated that. Each of them tries to unravel a Nazi conspiracy that would affect the course of World War II. Directed by Christian Schwochow, the film stars Jeremy Irons, George MacKay, and Jannis Niewöhner in leading roles. The Resistance Banker: Directed by Joram Lürsen, this Dutch World War II period drama is based on the real events in the life of banker Walraven van Hall, who created a system to finance the Dutch resistance during the war. The official trailer, released by Netflix in April 2022, shows that Operation Mincemeat looks like a gripping story, to say the least. Based on the eponymous book by British author, historian, and columnist, Ben Macintyre, the plot of Operation Mincemeat follows the events that led to the original war operation conducted in 1943. An all-new World War II drama, Operation Mincemeat is a fictional retelling of the real-life events surrounding MI5’s Operation Mincemeat, where the Allied armies deceived the Germans to keep their attack on Sicily a secret.

We examine with director John Madden the real World War II history that inspired Netflix's Operation Mincemeat.

As with the routes taken by the film’s many double and triple agents, this is a path shrouded in shadow and ambiguity. Otherwise, in the grander scheme of Operation Mincemeat, their story is done after the body of “William Martin” is jettisoned out of a submarine and washes up on a Spanish beach. It’s true that Hitler was intensely paranoid at that point because the war machine had been completely built on materials he was getting from the Balkans, and obviously having no idea how long that conflict was going to last, that was a very, very essential factor to him. It’s true [the British] were pushing on an open door with the idea that the attack was going to come through Greece and Sardinia. And the cover plan of that supposed attack was Sicily, which is a lovely inversion. “Once you’re into this part of the story, there are a number of theories, and you’ll find different ones,” says Madden. But what is inarguable is varying heads of German military intelligence and the army at large participated in the July 20, 1944 assassination attempt on Hitler’s life. That was something that was not known and didn’t become clear until [after the war]. Unsurprisingly, it was not in the first account of the story!” Inevitably, if you’re going to follow the story where it goes, then you’re going to somehow end up in the Abwehr, and that’s obviously a very difficult shape for the story.” Von Witzleben was Hitler’s most trusted confidant on military matters, according to Madden, “and for his betrayal he was hung on a meat hook and left to die in that state for three days or something like that. Indeed, Ivor Goldsmid Samuel Montagu was born the younger brother to Ewen and was a well-known British filmmaker, critic, and, strangely enough, ping-pong player after his time at Cambridge. All of which—including the then-foreign game of ping-pong—made him a person of interest to MI5 following his outspoken sympathies for communism in the 1930s. “[Montagu] invented a complete fiction of how they arrived at the body,” Madden says of the 1956 film. Says Madden, “When Ben came to approach the material, he benefited from the fact that in the mid-1990s, the Mincemeat files alongside dozens of others from wartime intelligence were declassified… Says Madden, “The interesting breakthrough for [screenwriter Michelle Ashford] and I was the idea of framing the story around a novel Fleming had not yet written.

The film centers around Ewen Montagu and Charles Cholmondeley, members of the Twenty Committee, a small group of British intelligence agents in charge of double ...

But Cerruti was able to convince Admiral Moreno to hand over the documents to Kühlenthal. The letter had reached the Germans, and the briefcase was handed to the British Embassy. The team waited for news as the British troupe was on their way to Sicily. While intelligence indicated that the Germans were moving toward Greece and did buy into their story, they were still not entirely convinced, especially after the Teddy incident. While the rest of the team rejoiced in the fact that their plan had worked, Jean had to face an unexpected revelation. Jean Leslie married a soldier who was among the first wave of the Sicilian invasion, a year after the war. Adolf Clauss, the German agent and member of Abwehr, requested the Spanish officials for the documents, but it was too late since the briefcase had already traveled to Madrid. After Clauss failed to procure it, the senior agent of the Abwehr, Karl-Erich Kühlenthal, made attempts to get hold of the letter; they were convinced that it had information that would expose the British invasion plan. The body was submerged on April 29th and was recovered by the Spanish fisherman on April 30th. Along with that, they also had to keep in mind to keep the letter from Sir Nye in a briefcase to attract more attention. It was this factor that brought Jean closer to the case and Ewen. Along with the picture, they wrote a love letter that could be used as a part of the pocket litter. While there was no dearth of bodies, it was important to find one that was unclaimed. The corpse was the primary element that they had to find to execute the operation. His wife was not in favor of this separation, but he had no other way to deal with the crisis. They were half Jewish, and he knew that if they lost the war, his family would have to face the consequences.

There's a great cast including Colin Firth, Matthew Macfadyen, Kelly Macdonald, Johnny Flynn, Jason Isaacs and Penelope Wilton, who all deliver solid, ...

Everyone does the job they were hired for and the audience is rewarded for their faith with a compelling story told well. Even though there are grave stakes at hand, they’re having fun, and in turn, so are we. It never feels burdensome and that’s not something you can say about many, many war dramas.

Operation Mincemeat features a young Ian Fleming drafting James Bond, but the inspiration behind the spy story goes far beyond the call of duty.

However, arguably his most surprising achievement is the fact he created the Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang story! However, the film goes further into hinting about how the allied ruse inspired various aspects of the Bond series. Yes, the name of (debatably) the best James Bond movie was originally an operation created by author Ian Fleming during World War 2…it also became the name of his Jamaican home where he wrote most of the Bond novels. Within the first couple of minutes of the Operation Mincemeat movie, the characters talk about how Godfrey (Fleming’s boss at the time) was known as M. This was because Godfrey is the only person who is as terrifying as his mother and eventually, ‘M’ became famous in its own right as being the name as James Bond’s boss from the notorious espionage series. One of the members of the Twenty Committee who organised Operation Mincemeat was none other than the legendary British author Ian Fleming, who is best known for creating the James Bond series and at the time, was working as Rear Admiral John Godfrey’s personal assistant. With tens of thousands of soldiers’ lives on the line, as well as the fate of occupied Europe, Operation Mincemeat shines the light on countless heroes that have until now, remained mostly in the shadows…including James Bond author, Ian Fleming.