Recipe for the most brilliant ruse of World War II: Take an anonymous corpse, give him an identity as a supposed Major of the Royal Marines bearing spurious top secret messages, cast him from a submarine into the sea where he will float to the Spanish shore. Then sit back and hope that not only will the body be discovered by the Spanish and the messages turned over to the German, but that the enemy right up to the High Command will be fooled into changing their Mediterranean defense plans so that the Allies can invade Sicily with less loss of life. 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…

Foreword by Lord Ismay, GCB, CH, DSO -- Author's Note-- The Birth of an Idea -- Preliminary Enquiries -- Operation Mincemeat -- The Vital Document -- Major Martin, Royal Marines -- The Creation of a Person -- Major Martin Gets Ready for War -- The Journey North -- The Launching of the Body -- Major Martin Lands in Spain --We Tidy Up in England -- The German Intelligence Service Plays its Part -- The German High Command Gets Busy-- Envoi--Postscript -- Appendix I -- Appendix II -- Appendix III