Denis Smyth – författare

Operation Mincemeat retells the story of the classic World War Two intelligence plan to pass misleading strategic information to Hitler and his Generals that was immortalized in the 1956 Hollywood film The Man Who Never Was. Drawing on a wealth of recently available documentation, Denis Smyth shows how British deceptioneers solved a multitude of medical, technical, and logistical problems to implement their deceptive design. The aim of their covert plan was to persuade the German High Command that the Allies were going to attack Greece, rather than Sicily in the summer of 1943. To achieve this, they equipped a dead body with a new military identity as a Royal Marine Major, a new private personality as the fiancé of an attractive young woman named 'Pam', and a government briefcase containing deceptive documents. They then planted the corpse in south-western Spanish coastal waters via a stealthy submarine operation, and carefully monitored (through their codebreakers and spies) how the Nazi intelligence services and their warlords proceeded to 'swallow Mincemeat whole'. The result was a stunning success. The German mis-deployment of their forces to meet the notional Anglo-American threat to Greece materially contributed to the Allied victory in Sicily - which, in its turn, drove Mussolini from power in Italy and inflicted irreparable damage on the German war effort.

An analysis of Britain's diplomatic efforts to preserve the non-belligerency of Franco's Spain, during the period from late 1940 to the end of 1941. Making extensive use of recently available British and Spanish documentary records, Dr Smyth explains how Britain's uphill struggle to secure Spanish non-belligerency had been rewarded with success by December 1940. Ironically, British policy-makers were unaware of the earl), success of their efforts, so they remained alert throughout 1940-41 to the danger of sudden Spanish support for a German move across their territory to Gibraltar. The conclusion notes how continuing Spanish neutrality helped the British endure 'their finest hour' and the Franco regime to survive the destruction of its former Fascist patrons.

Spain, the EEC and NATO (1984) examines the causes and consequences of the paradoxical situation whereby NATO member states welcomed a newly-democratised Spain into their ranks in 1982, with many Spanish citizens being firm opponents to Spain’s participation in NATO defences; while Spain’s attempt to join the European Community enjoyed widespread public and political support in Spain, but aroused serious resistance within the EEC, particularly by France.