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Operation Mincemeat was released today on Netflix, and it chronicles the hugely successful World War II operation, which was a deception mission aimed at misleading the Nazis.
Although the movie has remained faithful to the actual incident, certain exaggerations and subplots are introduced to dramatize the whole event. Here is everything the movie got right about the incident and the things that strayed from the actual event.
Note: Spoilers ahead.
What did Operation Mincemeat get right and wrong about the actual incident?
Although there were certain embellishments to the original incident, the film proved to be a factual account of the operation for the most part.
The corpse as a decoy
To begin with, Operation Mincemeat, down to its smallest detail, was portrayed very accurately in the movie. As seen in the film, the operation was spearheaded by two members of the British intelligence services – Charles Cholmondeley and Ewen Montagu.
A dead body was obtained to be used as a decoy to trick their German adversaries, and an entire persona for the corpse was created. From dressing the body as an officer of the Royal Marines to placing personal items on the body like a letter and a photograph, the movie got all the details of the core operation correct.
The identity bestowed upon the corpse was that of Major William Martin- a fictional soldier invented for the operation. No such person by the same name and identity existed. The body was supposedly of a homeless man named Glyndwr Michael, who died at 34 after ingesting rat poison.
However, the scene in the film where Michael's sister confronts the intelligence officers about using her brother's body has been fictionalized as no known relatives of the deceased were found.
Love triangle as a subplot
One of the movie's subplots was the love triangle developed between Jean Leslie, Montagu, and Cholmondeley. The film showed the two men had fallen in love with Jean, and a very complex love triangle formed between the three as Jean harbored feelings for both but acted close to Montagu.
There is no firm evidence that this triangle existed. Still, the book from which the movie was adapted hinted that Montagu and Jean could well have developed feelings for each other over the time spent in the company of one another for the mission. There may be some truth to the love triangle, but there is no doubt the incident has been dramatized quite a bit.
Was Ewen Montagu's brother a Communist?
In the film, we see John Godfrey accuse Montagu's brother Ivor of being a Russian spy, and he even had Charles Cholmondeley spy on Ewen during the operation.
In reality, Ewan's brother Ivor, the International Table Tennis Federation founder, was indeed a communist who even worked as a Russian agent. It is also true that MI5 was deeply suspicious of Ivor and even had his phone tapped. But unlike in the film, Cholmondeley did not spy on Ewan during Operation Mincemeat.
Catch Operation Mincemeat now on Netflix to know all about the thrilling mission that changed the course of the War.
