Why was Major William Martin so crucial to the Allied victory?

Question

WW2 hero who doesn't appear in any personnel records....

Answer 1

Team Chief has got it nearly right. But not quite.

This perfect deception by British Naval Intelligence had nothing to do with the Normandy D-Day landings. It took place over a year earlier, when the Allies were planning to invade Sicily in a bid (successful) to knock Italy out of the war.

And the impostor-corpse was not floated ashore in France, but in Spain, near Huelva, on April 30th 1943. The British knew that a Nazi agent was working in that vicinity, and guessed that pro-Nazi Spanish authorities would give him access to the papers carried in "Major Martin's" briefcase.

So the papers contained plans for Allied landings in Sardinia and Greece, not Sicily. And they were indeed duly passed on to the Nazis.

There was indeed some fairly tough fighting in Sicily, but in the interior, not on the landing beaches. The deception worked. Italy surrendered.

Answer 2

He was the fictitional British Army officer whose body was allowed to wash up on the French shoreline a few months before the Normandy invasion. Planted on the body were false papers indicating that the Alllies were going to invade somewhere else. This operation was called "Mincemeat" by the Brits. The body was real, but the identity papers with it that identified the body as "Major Martin" were false. The body was actually that of an enlisted man who died of disease.

Thing is, this plot is something right out of a dime store detective novel, but it worked! The Germans fell for it, and repositioned troops from Normandy to another location.