War has played a key role in the history of the United States, from the nation's founding

right down to the present. War made the U.S. independent, kept it together, increased its

size, and established it as a global superpower. Understanding America's wars is essential for understanding American history.

Welcome to Key Battles of American History,

a podcast in which we discuss American history through the lens of the most important battles of America's wars.

Here is your host, James Early.

Thank you. your host, James Early. Hello and welcome to another episode of key films of World War II in Europe.

I'm your host, James Early, as always.

And of course, as always, I'm joined by my good buddy, Sean McIver. This week's

film is about an operation that the British conducted to try to fool Hitler into thinking

that the Allies were going to invade Greece in 1943 and Sardinia, rather than the actual

place that they invaded, which, of course, was Sicily, as you may have heard in our battle episode, that we talked about Operation Husky and then the invasion of Italy.

The name of the film is Operation Mincemeat.

It was released to theaters on a limited basis in 2021, and then it came out in Netflix.

It's a Netflix exclusive right now.

It came out in May of 2022. So less than a year

old, we're recording this in March of 2023. The movie is two hours and eight minutes long.

The critics on Rotten Tomatoes gave it an average positive rating of 84% or 84% of the critics

gave it a positive rating. The fans only 66% did.

And that, I'm scratching my head about that one, Sean.

Maybe we'll talk about that in a minute and theorize.

Average rating on IMDB is actually quite low.

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