Real-Life Spies Behind Bond: Is the New Movie Telling the Truth? Shocking Facts Revealed!

Be aware: The following includes details from “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare” that may reveal plot points.

Despite the wealth of knowledge about World War II, new information still surfaces. Recently, documents were unveiled about an essential mission named Operation Postmaster, organized by the British War Office. This mission, carried out by the Special Operations Executive (SOE), is the unexpected focus of Guy Ritchie’s new movie, “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.”

The film, which is currently showing in theaters, was penned by Paul Tamasy, Eric Johnson, Arash Amel, and Ritchie. Based on the 2014 book by Damien Lewis titled “Churchill’s Secret Warriors: The Explosive True Story of the Special Forces Desperadoes of WWII,” the movie takes creative liberties in its representation of events.

“The story and its components are factual,” states Amel, adding that some characters are combinations to fit the two-hour narrative. “It’s a history that had not been told before, about men on a near-impossible mission who became the predecessors of James Bond. This was a collaboration of multicultural misfits, not just the typical British versus Germans narrative.”

Operation Postmaster involved a team of special operatives, led by Gus March-Phillipps (played by Henry Cavill), tasked with the destruction of ships supplying German U-boats that were wreaking havoc in British waters. The team members — Anders Lassen (Alan Ritchson), Geoffrey Appleyard (Alex Pettyfer), Henry Hayes (Hero Fiennes Tiffin), and Freddy Alvarez (Henry Golding) — are based on real individuals. Other characters, like Nazi leader Heinrich Luhr (Til Schweiger), are purely fictional.

Ritchie brought his own unique touch to the story (including his fondness for improvisation), but the portrayal of the mission itself is more or less accurate.

“It was remarkable to discover a mission like this, which was essentially a suicide mission on paper,” Cavill remarks. “It fundamentally altered the course of the war as it effectively shut down the treacherous U-boat fleet in the Atlantic. Without this, significantly fewer supplies could have reached the Allies in Europe, and the Americans might not have joined the war.”

“One can learn from this historical tale and think, ‘Incredible,’” adds Eiza González, who portrays an agent named Marjorie Stewart. “Because it truly is an incredible story. But you also have to feel for these people and understand their personalities.”

The following evaluates the truth and dramatizations in “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.”

The objective of the mission

In 1942, Winston Churchill gathered a team of operatives to infiltrate the West African port city of Fernando Po (now Bioko) to seize three Italian and German ships, including the Duchessa d’Aosta, which supplied the German U-boats. In the movie, the characters plan to destroy and sink the ships, but the plan is thwarted when they discover the Duchessa’s hull has been reinforced. In actuality, the mission was to steal the ships and pretend to find them in international waters — which is what the team accomplished.

“Churchill supported the mission against many of his senior advisors, who believed the risks were too high,” says Lewis. “But he felt the potential success of stealing three ships was too significant to pass up.”

Operation Postmaster was the inaugural mission for the group, known as No. 62 Commando. Ritchson highlights that, although many elements “led to the fall of the Allied forces… this group was a critical piece of the puzzle.”

In real life, the operatives sailed two ships from Britain to Fernando Po. One was a fishing vessel, the Maid of Honour, commanded by March-Phillipps, the other a transport ship led by Appleyard. In the movie, the action is limited to the Maid of Honour, and the mission team is reduced to five agents, including Appleyard.

In the film, March-Phillipps orchestrates a bloody assault on an enemy camp to free Appleyard on the way to Fernando Po. “There were certainly many attacks like that,” Lewis confirms. “But Appleyard was not a prisoner at that time.” Amel verifies that the film’s raid is based on the group’s second real-life mission, Operation Dryad, but the violence is “a nod to the mayhem and murder of subsequent missions” as no shots were actually fired.

In Fernando Po, two agents, Marjorie Stewart (González) and Mr. Heron (Babs Olusanmokun), create a diversion on the ground by hosting two parties for the Nazi officers and soldiers, as well as the Spanish harbor crew. Those scenes in the movie are based on fact, although Mr. Heron is a composite of real-life agents.

“All of that is more or less how it happened,” says Lewis. “The wild party at the end — that’s exactly what the agent did on the ground. They even had a trial party to ensure it would work. And the destruction of the electricity station — all of that occurred.”

The James Bond element

In the movie, as in reality, Ian Fleming worked for the British government and was involved with the SOE during World War II. Years later, he was inspired to write the James Bond novels, starting with 1953’s “Casino Royale.” Lewis explains that Bond is a “photographic composite” of several actual agents.

“March-Phillipps is one of the key characters, and there are two or three others — all individuals that Fleming worked with,” he elaborates. “Fleming was directly involved with Operation Postmaster. That’s completely true. But he also worked closely with an incredible character named Wilfred ‘Biffy’ Dunderdale. He was a high-born bon vivant, just like James Bond, and he was the secret intelligence spymaster in France prior to the war.”

March-Phillipps, who died during the next mission he undertook, wrote a spy novel himself, which Cavill found “in a very small article somewhere in the dark corners of the internet.”

“Had he not died during the war he might have beaten Ian Fleming to the punch,” Cavill adds.

The Danish hammer

One of the most captivating characters in the film is Lassen, a real-life spy who participated in numerous missions throughout the war and was a deadly fighter known as “the Danish hammer.” Ritchson portrays him as “the most badass character in the movie and in real life” despite the fact that Lassen looks nothing like the muscular “Reacher” actor.

“What’s so impressive about Anders is that he was a very slight man,” Ritchson points out. “He didn’t resemble a superhero. He was a brilliant tactician [and] a brilliant strategist. He was incredibly inventive and creative in his mission to dominate or deceive the enemy, or in his outright savagery.”

In the movie, Lassen is a vicious killer, using a bow and arrow to eliminate Nazi after Nazi. He was indeed a skilled archer and even campaigned for the bow and arrow to be recognized as an official weapon of war in Britain. Ritchson trained with an Olympic archery coach to accurately portray the character’s physicality.

Like March-Phillipps, Lassen died during a subsequent mission, only two months before the war ended. His death is documented in Lewis’ book, which describes numerous missions after Operation Postmaster.

“Readers of the book say they are brought to tears because you really come to understand this individual and he is this incredible, legendary, free-spirited maverick,” Lewis comments. “Alan captures his essence, as have all the actors.”

The body count

The film depicts March-Phillipps and his team killing dozens, perhaps hundreds, of enemies. The action sequences do reflect real fighting techniques used by the British forces, but the number of dead Nazis during Operation Postmaster has been significantly inflated.

“There is considerably more gunfire than in the real mission,” Cavill observes. “I think during the actual operation not a single shot was fired, except when [the team] blasted the anchor chain in the harbor and the Germans thought it was a bombing raid so they started firing antiaircraft guns into the sky. But they didn’t realize a group of secret agents was stealing their boats.”

Ritchson and his stunt double Ryan Tarran helped to devise several of the brutal fight scenes, including when Anders storms one of the ships and takes down multiple crew members with an ax. Ritchson recalls asking for 18 extras to kill in the scene even though Ritchie said he could only have 10.

“The crazier it is, the better,” Ritchson declares. “I wanted everything to have life-and-death stakes, but I didn’t want it to take itself so seriously that the audience couldn’t enjoy it. The cake is the reality of this saga and the men behind it, but the icing is how much fun we can make it.”

Cavill adds that while the body count is exaggerated, it encapsulates the work these operatives did throughout the war. “What made these men and women exceptional is that they made a lot of this stuff look easy,” he says.

The real Marjorie Stewart

Marjorie Stewart was a spy and did work for the SOE, but she was not part of the Fernando Po team. And while Lewis confirms that there was a female agent on the ground, he notes that she was not, like the movie’s Marjorie, tasked with seducing Nazis. That said, seduction was certainly a tactic employed during the real-life operation.

“When they organized the party, they organized ladies to be there for the same reason,” Lewis shares. “That was part of the draw — drink, food, and women.”

Amel points out that Stewart, who was also an actress, was an “extraordinary person in real life.” He wanted to include her not only because she married March-Phillipps, but because she could represent all of the female spies who never received their recognition.

“If we didn’t include Marjorie, we’d be forgetting all of the women that were there and the work that she did specifically on all the different missions,” Amel adds. “That’s where it’s acceptable, for me, to deviate from a strict commitment to history because contributions get forgotten.”

In the film, Marjorie distracts Heinrich with a performance reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe. The song was added on set when Ritchie discovered that González could sing and is not based on historical records. González did learn about Stewart’s life and work, as well as other women in the SOE, including Virginia Hall, Nancy Wake, and Mata Hari.

“I was simply amazed by their capabilities,” González says. “Women were crucial in these missions, and they were necessary because there were a lot of things that men couldn’t infiltrate. I strongly encourage anyone who is intrigued by this story to read more about it. We hear a lot about the men who made a difference, but not much about the women who made a difference, and there are quite remarkable stories out there.”