Posted on 05/21/2022 9:10:49 AM PDT by Rummyfan
The famous line that, in wartime, "the truth is so precious that it must be protected by a bodyguard of lies" is evoked in the first minutes of Operation Mincemeat, a recent war movie directed by John Madden (Shakespeare in Love, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel) and currently streaming on Netflix. Michelle Ashford's script gives it in voiceover to Ian Fleming, future spy novelist but currently a lieutenant-commander in the Royal Navy's Office of Naval Intelligence, though the actual quote belongs to Winston Churchill, spoken to none other than Joseph Stalin at the Tehran Conference in November of 1943 – four months after Ashford has Fleming type it as he kills time, anxiously waiting to hear news of the Allied invasion of Sicily.
Because in movies, the truth is so low in relative value that it must be warped, twisted, recontextualized, amended and otherwise "improved" by a tapestry of creative fictions – uncharitably known as "lies."
Operation Mincemeat is based on a true story; it takes its title from an elaborate deception played by the British on Nazi Germany, which involved floating a corpse in a Royal Marines uniform onto a beach in Spain, in the hopes that the briefcase the dead man was carrying – full of carefully crafted documents alluding to an upcoming invasion of Greece – would deceive the Axis from reinforcing Sicily, the most obvious target for an invasion.
It's an incredible story, as much because of how it came together as the fact that it actually worked. It's so incredible that it perennially inspires documentaries and YouTube videos and books, and was the subject of a whole other film – Ronald Neame's 1956 movie The Man Who Never Was, based on a book of the same name by Ewen Montagu...
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
I saw it. Let's just say it was very, very, very loosely based on a true story.
What was interesting was the story line that they suspected that Hitler’s top intel guy, who would make a final judgment on the hoax, might have been part of the anti-Hitler group. Wonder how much of that was historically accurate.
I saw both. I think the first was probably more realistic. The second one just HAD to throw in some sex intrigue along with some homo stuff....
At least they didn't manage to find a way to make Montagu and Cholmondeley homosexual lovers, so there is that to be grateful for.
If you want the real story, find a copy of the Ben Macintyre's documentary on the BBC, Operation Mincemeat.
Best-selling author and presenter Ben Macintyre introduces the extraordinary story of the greatest deception of World War Two. In April 1943, a fisherman spotted a body floating in the water off the coast of Spain. The body wore a British uniform and carried a briefcase.The fisherman believed he had found a casualty of war. In fact, he had just set in train Operation Mincemeat – a deception plan dreamed up by Ian Fleming, the creator of James Bond, which would change the course of WW2.
I found it more entertaining than the Firth-Macfadyen production.
And OBTW Operation Mincemeat didn't fool anyone who counted apart from Hitler. To a man the German High Command never doubted that the real invasion was coming through Sicily because it was the only plan that was strategically defensible (invading through Greece would have been Gallipoli Part Deux). But as luck would have it, no one counted except Hitler.
I’ve read several Ben Macintyre spy books including the one about Kim Philby and Agent Sonya about a Russian spy.
Will the corpse be ID’ed as gay, trans, black, or otherwise woke? Will we be treated to scenes of the corpse, pre-death, in hot sex with someone of the same gender (of the 732 known genders)? Will we get to see shots of other live characters in the story in similar flagrante delicto?
“the greatest deception of World War Two.”
The greatest? Not counting Patton’s plywood army in Britain; the landings at Calais?
If you are expecting that you will be disappointed.
The time ghost army video on YouTube also goes into this. There was an entire fake army in WW2 which did only this sort of stuff.
That is what the word “mis(dis)information” was created for — misleading your enemy and at the very least making him waste resources. Do it enough (like a boy crying “wolf”) and the enemy will miss the actual trick.
Color me relieved.
Your musings are slightly amusing.
Netflix?
No thanks, I’ll pass.
I’ll wait till I can watch it somewhere else.
No Netflix for me!
If you mean Canaris, it is true.
My muse, midschmooze, renews her views of your news.
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