Man Who Never Was: World War II's Boldest Counterintelligence Operation

By Ewen Montagu

Book Overview

As plans got under way for the Allied invasion of Sicily in June 1943, British counter-intelligence agent Ewen Montagu masterminded a scheme to mislead the Germans into thinking the next landing would occur in Greece. The innovative plot was so successful that the Germans moved some of their forces away from Sicily, and two weeks into the real invasion still expected an attack in Greece. This extraordinary operation called for a dead body, dressed as a Royal Marine officer and carrying false information about a pending Allied invasion of Greece, to wash up on a Spanish shore near the town of a known Nazi agent. Agent Montagu tells the story as only an insider could, offering fascinating details of the difficulties involved--especially in creating a persona for a man who never was--and of his profession as a spy and the risks involved in mounting such a complex operation. Failure could have had devastating results. Success, however, brought a decided change in the course of the war.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1557504482
• ISBN13: 9781557504487
• Release Date: January 2001
• Publisher: Naval Institute Press
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.58 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

Utterly Fascinating

This is one of the most fascinating books I have ever read--a true story of brilliant British Intelligence during the Second World War. I highly recommend it. Not a spy story, but a highly improbable ruse which convinced the Germans the Allies would attack an area different from their actual target! A quick read and a real page-turner!

Ingenious

It seemed like a simple plan: Leave a dead body, supposedly a British officer carrying official papers, for the Nazis to find. If they accept the phony papers as genuine, they won't anticipate the planned invasion of Sicily, and will deploy their defensive troops to Sardinia instead. Simple in concept, but extremely complicated in practice. The author, who was the British intelligence officer in charge of the scheme, had to make the deception plausible down to the last detail. It worked! Hitler himself was fooled, as captured German documents later showed. This book goes into the details in full, and it is fascinating every step of the way. The author clearly was brilliant at his work, and as a bonus he has a nice, dry wit. This true story is at least as rewarding to the reader as any work of detective fiction.

Famous case

This case is very famous. I remember reading about it in a declassified article in a Swedish book meant to teach intelligence to students of journalism at Lund University.

A MUST!!

This book captured my attention to the very end. It thoroughly describes how Intelligence agents planted false documents on a body and left it for the Nazis to "find" during World War II. It was great!