Ewen Montagu (1901–1985)

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.