Thanks to the wonderful hosts of Stuff You Missed in History Class, I already knew the underlying premise to this movie about a real deception pulled off by the UK’s Military Intelligence. Mincemeat does change a couple of little things I’ll get to later.
The year is 1943 and the Allies (the US, UK, Canadians, etc.) have turned the tide against the Axis powers enough that they will open a new war front on the Nazi-occupied or allied territory, most likely in the Mediterranean. The Nazis know this too and it’s a huge problem because they’re defending the most logical area…southern Italy and Sicily. So it’s up to a small team of intelligence workers to trick the Axis into thinking the Allied force will land in Greece.
Numerous ideas are pitched and the winner is a corpse with detailed battle plans for Greece’s liberation. There was precedent for this. A real incident of this nature happened earlier in the conflict but the Nazis decided it was a ruse, giving the Allies a huge sigh of relief. If the Allies do it again, on purpose, there’s a solid chance the Nazis won’t pass up the opportunity again. With Churchill’s approval, the crack team proceeds by finding a dead person, creating fake documents and most importantly, details to make the Nazis believe the ruse corpse was an actual person with a girlfriend, hobbies, etc. What the spy craft people called “wallet litter.” Then they use a submarine to release the cadaver so it washes up on Spain’s beaches. Even though Spain is neutral in WWII, it has a Fascist regime sympathetic to the Axis Powers and the Spanish will (likely) covertly provide the Nazis copies of the false documents.
Does this plan work? Obviously it did since I’m not writing this review in German. Did it really happen? Yes. For purposes of storytelling, there were dramatic changes given the nature of movies. The corpse they used was a person who died of alcoholism, not exposure via mental illness. Not sure why this alteration. A couple additional matters I’m skipping as they’re a surprise. Remaining elements were the writers creating conflicts between the characters over ambition, jealousy, love, etc. Thankfully it isn’t boring and you don’t have to be a WWII buff to enjoy it.