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<div>{{Short description|British intelligence officer known for his leading role in Operation Mincemeat}}<br />
'''Charles Cholmondeley''' [[OBE]] was a British intelligence officer known for his leading role in [[Operation Mincemeat]], a critical [[military deception]] operation which misdirected [[Nazi Germany|German]] forces' attention away from the [[Allied Invasion of Sicily]] in [[Operation Husky]].<ref>{{cite web | url=https://www.iwm.org.uk/history/the-war-on-paper-operation-mincemeat | title=The War on Paper: Operation Mincemeat }}</ref><br />
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==Biography==<br />
Cholmondeley was a [[flight lieutenant]] in the [[Royal Air Force]] (RAF) who had been seconded to [[MI5]], Britain's domestic [[counter-intelligence]] and security service. He had been appointed as the secretary of the [[Twenty Committee]], a small inter-service, inter-departmental intelligence team in charge of [[double agent]]s. The Twenty Committee gained its name from the [[Roman numeral]] XX (twenty), a [[visual pun]] on the phrase "[[Double Cross System|double cross]]".{{sfn|Macintyre|2010|p=13}} <br />
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In November 1942, the Twenty Committee turned down Cholmondeley's Operation Mincemeat plan as being unworkable, but thought there may have been some potential in the idea. As there was a naval connection to the plan, [[John Cecil Masterman|John Masterman]], the chairman of the committee, assigned [[Ewen Montagu]], the naval representative, to work with Cholmondeley to develop the plan further.{{sfn|Macintyre|2010|pp=19–20}}{{sfn|Smyth|2010|p=28}} Montagu – a peacetime lawyer and [[King's Counsel]] who had volunteered at the outbreak of the war – worked under Godfrey at the Naval Intelligence Division, where he ran NID 17(M), the sub-branch which handled counter-espionage work.{{sfn|Foot|2022}} Godfrey had also appointed Montagu to oversee all naval deception involving double agents.{{sfn|Macintyre|2010|p=29}} As part of his duties, Montagu had been briefed on the need for deception operations to aid the Allied war aims in a forthcoming invasion operation in the Mediterranean.{{sfn|Smyth|2010|p=28}}<br />
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== In popular culture ==<br />
* In the 2021 British [[war drama]] ''[[Operation Mincemeat (film)|Operation Mincemeat]]'', Cholmondeley is played by [[Matthew Macfadyen]].<br />
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== References ==<br />
{{Reflist|colwidth=25em|refs=}}<br />
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=== Books ===<br />
* {{cite book|last=Macintyre|first=Ben|author-link=Ben Macintyre|title=Operation Mincemeat|publisher=Bloomsbury|year=2010|location=London|isbn=978-1-4088-0921-1|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/operationminceme0000maci}}<br />
* {{cite book|last=Smyth|first=Denis|author-link=Denis Smyth|title=Deathly Deception: The Real Story of Operation Mincemeat|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2010|location=London|isbn=978-0-19-923398-4}}<br />
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=== Journals, newspapers and magazines ===<br />
* {{cite odnb|last=Foot|first=M. R. D. |authorlink=M. R. D. Foot|title=Montagu, Ewen Edward Samuel (1901–1985) |id=31458|year=2022}}<br />
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Cholmondeley, Charles}}<br />
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[[Category:Operation Mincemeat]]<br />
[[Category:British intelligence operatives]]</div>2601:400:C000:D370:E8B6:876F:99E3:8128