VENLO INCIDENT. The abduction of two British intelligence of-
ficers by members of the Gestapo in the Netherlands, the Venlo
Incident had it origins in a deception operation conceived by Walter
Schellenberg, chief of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD; Security Service).
To capture British operatives who had been making contact with the
German resistance, he lured them with the prospect of meeting with
disgruntled Wehrmacht officers who supposedly wanted to see Adolf
Hitler arrested because of heavy losses in the recent Polish campaign.
Initial contact was made through Johannes Travaglio, a former oper-
atic tenor posing as an adjutant to a Luftwaffe general, while Schel-
lenberg assumed the role of Major Schämmel, a presumed member
of the General Staff. With the approval of Prime Minister Neville
Chamberlain and officials at MI6, the opportunity was seized, and
two British officers—Sigismund Best and Richard Stevens—had
several meetings with members of the German contingent in late
October 1939 near the Dutch-German border.
The operation took an unexpected turn on 8 November, when a
powerful bomb exploded during the anniversary celebration of the
1923 Beer Hall Putsch in Munich. While Hitler remained unscathed
due to his early departure from the Bürgerbräukeller, Heinrich
Himmler immediately ordered Schellenberg to undertake reprisals
against the British secret service, which, according to the Nazi lead-
ership, bore prime responsibility (the actual perpetrator was Georg
Elser, an obscure cabinetmaker and communist sympathizer). At a
meeting with the two British officers near Venlo, a Dutch city a few
miles from the German border, an SS detachment of 12 men under
the command of Alfred Naujocks was also in attendance. On the
arrival of Best and Stevens at the designated café, submachine-gun
fire suddenly erupted, and both men surrendered. Dirk Klop, a Dutch
intelligence officer who had accompanied them, attempted to escape
but was seriously wounded. All three were abducted across the bor-
der by the SS within a matter of minutes.
Whereas Klop later died in a Düsseldorf hospital, Best and Stevens
underwent a rigorous interrogation in Berlin, revealing details about
SIS operations in the Netherlands as well as elsewhere in Europe.
They spent the remainder of the war in several Nazi concentration
camps until their liberation by the U.S. Army in April 1945. Best’s
memoir The Venlo Incident appeared in 1950, though only a small
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