Venlo Incident
Encyclopedia
Covert operation
A covert operation is a military, intelligence or law enforcement operation that is carried clandestinely and, often, outside of official channels. Covert operations aim to fulfill their mission objectives without any parties knowing who sponsored or carried out the operation...
German Sicherheitsdienst
Sicherheitsdienst
Sicherheitsdienst , full title Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS, or SD, was the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany. The organization was the first Nazi Party intelligence organization to be established and was often considered a "sister organization" with the...
(SD-Security Service) engineered capture of two British SIS
Secret Intelligence Service
The Secret Intelligence Service is responsible for supplying the British Government with foreign intelligence. Alongside the internal Security Service , the Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence Intelligence , it operates under the formal direction of the Joint Intelligence...
(Secret Intelligence Service) agents on 9 November 1939.
The incident was used by the presiding National Socialist German Workers' Party government (for propaganda
Nazi propaganda
Propaganda, the coordinated attempt to influence public opinion through the use of media, was skillfully used by the NSDAP in the years leading up to and during Adolf Hitler's leadership of Germany...
purposes) to link the United Kingdom to Georg Elser
Georg Elser
Johann Georg Elser was a German opponent of Nazism. He is most remembered for his unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler, but he also wanted to assassinate Hermann Göring and Joseph Goebbels in 1939....
's failed assassination (time-bomb) attempt on German Chancellor Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
at the Bürgerbräukeller
Bürgerbräukeller
The Bürgerbräukeller was a large beer hall located in Munich, Germany. It was one of the large beer halls of the Bürgerliches Brauhaus company, and after Bürgerliches merged with Löwenbräu, the hall was transferred to that company. It was located on Rosenheimer Street in the neighborhood of...
in Munich
Munich
Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...
(Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
) on 8 November 1939 and to justify Germany's later invasion of the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
, a neutral country, on 10 May 1940.
History
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
border town of Venlo
Venlo
Venlo is a municipality and a city in the southeastern Netherlands, next to the German border. It is situated in the province of Limburg.In 2001, the municipalities of Belfeld and Tegelen were merged into the municipality of Venlo. Tegelen was originally part of the Duchy of Jülich centuries ago,...
following a series of covert meetings, these German Army officers communicated that they were plotting a coup d'état
Coup d'état
A coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...
against Chancellor Adolf Hitler. The initial meeting had been arranged with the British SIS beginning of September 1939 by a known German political refugee
Refugee
A refugee is a person who outside her country of origin or habitual residence because she has suffered persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, political opinion, or because she is a member of a persecuted 'social group'. Such a person may be referred to as an 'asylum seeker' until...
named Dr. Franz Fischer exiled
Exile
Exile means to be away from one's home , while either being explicitly refused permission to return and/or being threatened with imprisonment or death upon return...
in the Netherlands, but who unbeknown to the British SIS, was working covertly for the Gestapo and then Sturmbannführer
Sturmbannführer
Sturmbannführer was a paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party equivalent to major, used both in the Sturmabteilung and the Schutzstaffel...
(Major) Walter Schellenberg
Walter Schellenberg
Walther Friedrich Schellenberg was a German SS-Brigadeführer who rose through the ranks of the SS to become the head of foreign intelligence following the abolition of the Abwehr in 1944.-Biography:...
of the Foreign Intelligence (Counter-Espionage
Counter-Espionage
-Cast:* Warren William as Michael Lanyard* Eric Blore as Jamison* Hillary Brooke as Pamela Hart* Thurston Hall as Insp. Crane* Fred Kelsey as Detective Wesley Dickens* Forrest Tucker as Anton Schugg* Matthew Boulton as Inspector J...
) section of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD). This political refugee's primary task was to collect and feed false information to the British SIS in general, as part of the German Sicherheitsdienst network of intelligence operations.
The British SIS had assigned two agents to the case, Captain Sigismund Payne Best
Sigismund Payne Best
Captain Sigismund Payne Best OBE was a British Secret Intelligence Service agent during World War I and World War II...
(an experienced British Army intelligence officer and well connected businessman in the Netherlands, who at the time was residing in The Hague
The Hague
The Hague is the capital city of the province of South Holland in the Netherlands. With a population of 500,000 inhabitants , it is the third largest city of the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam...
together with his Dutch
Dutch people
The Dutch people are an ethnic group native to the Netherlands. They share a common culture and speak the Dutch language. Dutch people and their descendants are found in migrant communities worldwide, notably in Suriname, Chile, Brazil, Canada, Australia, South Africa, New Zealand, and the United...
wife) and Major Richard Henry Stevens
Richard Henry Stevens
Richard Henry Stevens was a major in the British Army and from 1939 Head of the Passport Control Office of the British Secret Intelligence Service in the Netherlands. His name is closely associated with the Venlo Incident in 1939.In 1939 Stevens was transferred to Europe from India where he was...
(a less-experienced intelligence operative working covert for the British SIS as a passport control officer in The Hague, Netherlands). In the Netherlands, they met these discontented German Army officers, including the masquerading "Hauptmann
Hauptmann
Hauptmann is a German word usually translated as captain when it is used as an officer's rank in the German, Austrian and Swiss armies. While "haupt" in contemporary German means "main", it also has the dated meaning of "head", i.e...
(Captain) Schämmel" (who was indeed Major Walter Schellenberg
Walter Schellenberg
Walther Friedrich Schellenberg was a German SS-Brigadeführer who rose through the ranks of the SS to become the head of foreign intelligence following the abolition of the Abwehr in 1944.-Biography:...
). Schellenberg, as "Hauptmann Schämmel" claimed the German High Command was concerned about high losses suffered during the invasion of Poland and intended to have Chancellor Adolf Hitler deposed from power.
Reichsführer-SS
Reichsführer-SS
was a special SS rank that existed between the years of 1925 and 1945. Reichsführer-SS was a title from 1925 to 1933 and, after 1934, the highest rank of the German Schutzstaffel .-Definition:...
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Himmler
Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was Reichsführer of the SS, a military commander, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. As Chief of the German Police and the Minister of the Interior from 1943, Himmler oversaw all internal and external police and security forces, including the Gestapo...
, who himself had only just escaped death too at the failed Bürgerbräukeller assassination attempt along with Chancellor Adolf Hitler, seized the opportunity and ordered in an enraged telephone conversation with his masquerading "Hauptmann Schämmel" to capture the two British SIS agents for interrogation
Interrogation
Interrogation is interviewing as commonly employed by officers of the police, military, and Intelligence agencies with the goal of extracting a confession or obtaining information. Subjects of interrogation are often the suspects, victims, or witnesses of a crime...
of British involvement into the Bürgerbräukeller assassination attempt. On the night of 8–9 November 1939, German SS-Sonderkommandos (SS Special Units) under the operations command of SD man Alfred Naujocks
Alfred Naujocks
Alfred Helmut Naujocks, alias Hans Müller, Alfred Bonsen, or Rudolf Möbert , was an SS-Sturmbannführer , and took part in a staged incident intended to provide the justification for the attack on Poland by Nazi Germany, which in turn provoked the Second World War in Europe.-Early life:Naujocks was...
, crossed into the Netherlands at Venlo. They were to covertly meet with the two British SIS agents in a café, Café Backus, situated just metres behind the German-Dutch border crossing post on the Netherlands side. The British SIS agents, to reinforce credibility, had been promised that they were to meet a German Army General, who was leading the intended coup d'état, and agents Best and Stevens took with them Dutch intelligence officer Lieutenant Dirk Klop
Dirk Klop
Dirk Klop was a Dutch army intelligence officer, notable for his part in the Venlo Incident.Klop was born in Nieuw-Helvoet in South Holland and lived for a time in Canada. In 1939 he was serving as a lieutenant with the Netherlands army general staff at The Hague, under Bert Sas who was the...
.
When Best and the others arrived, the awaiting German agents surrounded their car with machine-gun fire, mortally wounding Klop and forcibly dragging the two British agents along with the dying Klop over the border into Germany.
Under interrogation in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, the two captured British SIS agents revealed much to the Gestapo, though the extent of useful information pried out of them remains uncertain. In Britain, the capture of these two significant agents had destroyed much of their network operating in the Netherlands, and left London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
feeling uncertain to the extent of knowledge that had been gained by the German Security Services, fearing their entire espionage
Espionage
Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...
network throughout Western Europe
Western Europe
Western Europe is a loose term for the collection of countries in the western most region of the European continents, though this definition is context-dependent and carries cultural and political connotations. One definition describes Western Europe as a geographic entity—the region lying in the...
may be incapacitated.
This incident also subsequently made the British very suspicious of any further approach from any kind of professed German anti-Hitler resistance. Hitler used it as an excuse to claim that The Netherlands was involved with Britain and had violated its own neutrality.
Best and Stevens remained imprisoned until the end of the war.
The Venlo Incident was described in episode 1 of BBC Radio 4's "MI6: A Century in the Shadows", broadcast on Monday, 27 July, 2009.
Payne Best recalled: "I know I was standing next to Stevens when four of these men jumped off and rushed towards us. Stevens said 'Our number's up.' Last I heard of him for five-and-a-half years. Then the next moment there were two fellows in front of each of us, one holding a pistol to our heads and the other putting handcuffs on. Then the Germans shouted at us 'March!', and prodding us in the back with their pistols and calling 'Hup! Hup! Hup!', they rushed us along toward the German frontier."
Literary references
The Venlo Incident is used by William BoydWilliam Boyd (writer)
William Boyd, CBE is a Scottish novelist and screenwriter.-Biography:Of Scottish descent, Boyd spent his early life in Ghana and Nigeria, in Africa...
in his 2006 book, Restless
Restless (novel)
Restless, an espionage novel by William Boyd, was published in 2006 and won the Costa Prize for fiction.The novel depicts the tale of a young woman who discovers that her mother was recruited as a spy during World War II. Its intrigue may well be a function of the style of prose. The book...
. Venlo and Klop are renamed, respectively, Prenslo and Lt. Joos. The two SIS officers are not named. Café Backus is named.