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Ewen Montagu (1901–1985)

Författare till The Man Who Never Was

8+ verk 668 medlemmar 17 recensioner

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Verk av Ewen Montagu

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Great World War II Stories: 50th Anniversary Collection (1989) — Bidragsgivare — 29 exemplar

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Montagu, Ewen Edward Samuel
Födelsedag
1901-03-19
Avled
1985-07-19
Kön
male
Nationalitet
UK
Födelseort
London, England, UK
Dödsort
London, England, UK
Bostadsorter
London, England, UK
Utbildning
Westminster School, London
Cambridge University (Trinity College)
Harvard University
Yrken
Intelligence Officer
Judge
author
Relationer
Montagu, Ivor (brother)
Montagu, Jennifer (daughter)
Montagu, Jeremy (son)
Organisationer
United Synagogue
Anglo-Jewish Association
Priser och utmärkelser
Order of the British Empire (Commander)
QC
Kort biografi
Ewen Montagu was born in London, England. His parents were Gladys (née Goldsmid) and Louis Samuel Montagu, 2nd Baron and Baroness Swaythling, and he had three siblings, Stuart, Ivor, and Joyce Montagu. He was educated at Westminster School. During World War I, while still a teenager, Montagu served as a machine gun instructor at a U.S. Naval Air Station. After the war, he attended Cambridge University and Harvard University. He studied law and was admitted to the Middle Temple in 1920 and called to the Bar in 1924. In 1923, he married Iris Solomon, with whom he had a son, Jeremy, who became an authority on musical instruments, and a daughter, Jennifer, who became an art historian. Montagu was a keen yachtsman, and enlisted in the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve in 1938. During World War II, he was assigned to the Royal Navy's East Yorkshire headquarters at Hull as an assistant staff officer in intelligence. He served in the Naval Intelligence Division (NID) of the British Admiralty, rising to the rank of Lieutenant Commander. He became the Naval Representative on the Twenty Committee, which oversaw the running of double agents. While he was Commanding Officer of NID 17M, Montagu and Squadron Leader Charles Cholmondeley of the RAF conceived Operation Mincemeat, a major operation to deceive the Nazis about Allied plans for the invasion of Europe. Montagu had the idea of arranging for a corpse -- later identified as Glyndwr Michael -- dressed as a British officer to wash ashore in Spain, carrying faked papers revealing plans for an invasion of Greece (the real target was Sicily). Pro-German Spanish officials were sure to show these papers to local German agents. Montagu manufactured a detailed false identity for "Major William Martin" made up of artifacts stored in his pockets, including his military ID, theater ticket stubs, love letters, a photo of his fiancée, and bills from his tailor and jeweler. The intelligence team even followed the wartime procedure of listing dead or missing officers in the obituary column of The Times, with "Major Martin" appearing in the edition of June 4, 1943. German documents found after the war showed that the Nazis were fooled completely by the ruse. The false information went all the way to Hitler's headquarters, and led to German forces being diverted to Greece. The Allied invasion of Sicily was a success. For his role in Operation Mincemeat, Montagu was appointed to the Order of the British Empire. From 1945 to 1973, he held the position of Judge Advocate of the Fleet. Before the Courts Act of 1971, he was Chairman of the Quarter Sessions for the Middlesex area of Greater London and recorder in the County of Hampshire. He was appointed Deputy Lieutenant of the County of Southampton. He served as president of the United Synagogue from 1954 to 1962, and was president of the Anglo-Jewish Association for many years from 1949. Montagu wrote The Man Who Never Was (1953), a book about Operation Mincemeat that was adapted into a film three years later. He appeared in the film, playing an Air-Vice Marshal questioning the Ewen Montagu character in a briefing. He also wrote Beyond Top Secret Ultra, focused on the information technology and espionage tactics used in World War II.

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Recensioner

Published in 1953, this is the account of Operation Mincemeat by a man involved in the deception from the very beginning, when a chat between two colleagues threw up the wild idea of misleading the German High Command about the Allied invasion of Sicily by planting fake documents on a dead body. The same story was covered in Ben MacIntyre's breathlessly dramatic Operation Mincemeat, but because Montagu is an insider this book has a different slant and we're with him as he wades through the operational difficulties, from finding a suitable body, through dealing with the conflicting opinions of his superiors, establishing a background for the pretend Major Martin and ultimately delivering the Major to the coast of Spain. All the way through, Montagu can barely believe that the plan is working.… (mer)
 
Flaggad
pamelad | 8 andra recensioner | Sep 27, 2022 |
Not nearly as interesting as some of the other books I have read on the topic of the breaking of the German code Enigma in WWII and our author, albeit brilliant though he may be, has a bit of an attitude problem that was annoying from time to time.
 
Flaggad
PattyLee | Dec 14, 2021 |

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Statistik

Verk
8
Även av
1
Medlemmar
668
Popularitet
#37,771
Betyg
4.0
Recensioner
17
ISBN
34
Språk
3

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