by Nigel Jones
The Venlo Incident had many long-term consequences, all of them malign. Firstly, it placed two of MI6’s European spymasters, with all their inside knowledge of the service’s agents and secrets, in Nazi hands. Best carefully skirts the issue, but it seems certain that they, especially the weak and susceptible Stevens, must have given away valuable information under sustained pressure from their captors. The damage thus inflicted to Britain’s espionage network in Europe was immense. Not for nothing did Churchill start his own rival spy and sabotage agency, SOE, from scratch when he succeeded Chamberlain as Prime Minister in 1940. The second malign consequence was that Venlo permanently inoculated the British, especially Churchill, who had been suspicious of the contacts with the Germans in Holland from the outset, against having any truck with the German opposition to Hider for the rest of the war. When the military, Christian and conservative resistance planning the July 1944 plot on Hitler’s life sought support from Whitehall, they were firmly rebuffed.
Another highly embarrassing result of Venlo was that it exposed the fact that the Chamberlain government was still seeking to do a deal with Germany, albeit an anti-Hitler Germany, at the same time as it was exhorting the nation to bend every sinew for the war effort. Governments always keep the public in the dark as far as they can, and their private policies often differ radically from their public rhetoric. The Venlo Incident brutally exposed this contradiction at a time of supreme crisis for Britain. No wonder that the official records of the incident are still under lock and key at Kew – where Britain’s National Archives are kept - and we will have to wait another five years, until 2015, before they become available.
Best and Stevens had to endure a five-year wait after Venlo, too. But at the end of the war, the two men, a pair of embarrassing spectres at the feast of victory, emerged from their long night of Nazi captivity, bewildered, emaciated, traumatised – but alive. Doubtless their survival was not entirely welcome to their former MI6 employers. They were walking reminders of Britain’s greatest single intelligence disaster of the entire war. They were also, Best in particular, men with a justified grievance. They had been sacrificed in the pursuit of an illusory peace policy that Best had cautioned was highly dubious. But his warnings had been discounted. The men chiefly responsible, Dansey and Menzies, had also survived the war and now did what they could to stifle discussion about their mistakes, silence the survivors, and generally airbrush the whole painful episode from history.
Stevens, the more conventional, less intelligent and more deeply compromised of the two Venlo victims, never breathed a word in public about his experiences until the day he died of cancer in a Brighton hospital in 1968. Best outlived him by a decade. Naujocks, after quarrelling with Heydrich, fell into British hands, and no doubt his co-operation and silence were ensured. He died forgotten: a Hamburg nightclub bouncer. Schellenberg himself, the clever young lawyer who had directed the whole operation in the field, prospered mightily in the war, rising to become head of Germany’s foreign intelligence service. He gave evidence against his erstwhile comrades at Nuremberg, and was jailed for six years – during which time he wrote his memoirs. He was released in 1951 on health grounds. Schellenberg died in 1952 of liver cancer, though some suspect he was poisoned.
Best, the wily old fox, at least profited from his suffering. Dissatisfied with his MI6 pension, he apparently squeezed more cash from Stewart Menzies after a lunch at Whites, Menzies’ London club, by threatening to spill embarrassing beans. He supplemented the pension by writing the book you are holding which, despite the discretion of a lifelong professional intelligence officer constrained by the Official Secrets Act, is still a remarkably revealing document: perhaps the most hair-raising memoir every penned by a spy. For obvious reasons it is unique: very few people survived abduction by the SS and prolonged imprisonment in the notorious Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps. Best’s final ordeal was a perilous odyssey through the Alps in the dying days of the war, in the company of other V IP Nazi prisoners. Their lives became gambling chips played for by the still murderous SS threatening to kill them at any moment; and army officers who saw their captives as passports to survival in a post-Hitler Germany.
Published now for the first time since its original appearance in 1950 , Payne Best’s account of his unenviable experiences deserved its bestseller status. It is at once a classic of true spy literature; a gruelling account of prolonged captivity in a Nazi concentration camp; and a nail-biting human story of survival against very long odds. Its author deserves our sympathy – and our respect.
NIGEL JONES, 2009
The Venlo Incident
CHAPTER I
AT the outbreak of war our Intelligence Service had reliable information that Hitler was faced with the opposition of many men holding the highest appointments in his armed forces and civil service. The German General Staff had welcomed and gladly accepted rearmament at his hands, but did not believe that Germany was strong enough to wage a successful war. They rightly feared that Hitler was steering the country towards disaster. According to our information this opposition movement had assumed such proportions that it might even have led to revolt and the downfall of the Nazis. That this supposition was justified has been amply shown by what we have learned since the end of hostilities about the many plots forged against Hitler and how narrow was the margin which saved him time and again.
Once we were at war it was obviously of paramount importance to investigate these matters, and to find out whether there was any hope that internal dissensions might create conditions favourable to a quick end to the war. Although many vague rumours had reached me in Holland, so far, I had failed to get hold of anything definite and—something had to be done about it.
For reasons of secrecy and security I had hitherto kept very much in the background, maintaining a number of links between myself and my agents in Germany, and restricting my own direct contacts to a few chief assistants. No one was supposed to know the identities of any others than the person from whom he received his instructions and those working directly under him. I now decided to break with this practice and attempt myself to establish direct relations with the opposition leaders in Germany.
Through a German refugee in Holland named Dr. Franz, we had for some time past received reliable and often valuable information from a major in the Luftwaffe, named Solms. This man had frequently indicated, that if he could be absolutely certain that Dr. Franz had made contact with the British Intelligence Service, he had some most important news to give. He was particularly insistent that a meeting between him and a responsible British officer should be arranged, and he refused to give any further details to Dr. Franz. When I came to know the latter, I could very well understand this reluctance for, although Dr. Franz was a likeable little man, he was most excitable and very far from a model of discretion.
I met Dr. Franz one day at the beginning of September 1939, and after a long talk I expressed to him my readiness to meet his friend if it were possible for him to come to Holland for this purpose. At first it was intended that our meeting should take place at The Hague or Amsterdam. This proved to be impossible as he could only make a flying visit of a few hours. He could, however, come to Venlo, as Germans living near the frontier were still allowed to cross the border to shop in neighbouring towns in Holland. We therefore arranged to meet at a small hotel there.
Major Solms was a big, bluff, self-confident fellow, a Bavarian, and inclined to talk as big as he looked. I very soon discovered that he was not nearly as knowledgeable as he pretended, and came to the conclusion that he was little more than an errand boy for more important people in the background. Indeed, he eventually admitted that he could not say much until he had reported to his chief about our meeting. It was then arranged that we should meet again in a week’s time.
At our second meeting he impressed me much more favourably; he was calmer, less boastful, and seemed to be acting under definite instructions. Whereas at our first meeting he had ra
nted a good bit about his honour as a German officer, and had asked me whether I thought he would be a traitor to his country, on this occasion he was quite co-operative. He answered one or two questions on technical air force matters which I put to him and, in the end, told me that there was a big conspiracy to remove Hitler from power in which some of the highest ranking army officers were involved. He could give me no details, as the ringleaders would only deal with me direct. We therefore made some arrangements to facilitate future communication and agreed upon a code message by which his friends could identify themselves. Sure enough, some days later, Dr. Franz received a telephone call from Berlin and a German officer, whom he knew well, gave him the code message.
A day or two later a letter from the same man reached us through the channel which I had fixed up with Major Solms. In this I was told that a certain German general would like to meet me, but to make absolutely sure that I was indeed a British agent I was asked to arrange that a certain news item, the text of which was enclosed, should be broadcast in the German News Bulletin of the B.B.C. This was easily arranged, and the paragraph was broadcast twice on the 11th October. About the same time too, I received a last message from Major Solms in which he told me that he was afraid that he was being watched by the Gestapo and would therefore have to lie low for a time.
These latest developments seemed to indicate that I might be on to quite a big thing and, as I feared that the job might prove to be more than I could manage alone, I asked Major R. H. Stevens, a British official at The Hague, whether he would be willing to lend me a hand. He agreed to this without demur and from that time on we worked together as partners.
Although it sounds quite simple to speak of arranging to meet some Germans in neutral Holland, actually many difficulties had first to be overcome. By this time the Dutch Army had been mobilized and the entire frontier zone organized to repel invasion. To reach the German border numerous road blocks and military posts had to be passed, and at each travellers had to establish their identity. Under such conditions any secret meeting with our friends seemed to be out of the question.
After some discussion, Stevens and I decided that our only hope lay in placing our difficulties before the Chief of the Dutch Military Intelligence, Major General van Oorschot, in the hope that he might be willing and able to help. General van Oorschot was one of a comparatively small number of men in Holland who from the very first recognized the probability that his country would be invaded and overrun by Germany. He was, too, a man who never feared to shoulder responsibility nor hesitated to take prompt action where such was necessary. We put our case before him in broad lines and he immediately consented to help us by sending one of his officers with us with authority to pass us through the Dutch military cordon and to assist the Germans to enter Holland. The only stipulations which he made were that this officer should be present at our interviews with the Germans, and that we would ourselves refrain from putting forward any proposals which might endanger Dutch neutrality. Considerable criticism has been levelled in Holland against General van Oorschot, especially since the Nazis attempted later to justify their invasion by citing his action as a breach of Dutch neutrality. His action may have been ultra vires, and indeed, it was immediately disowned by his Government, but had our enterprise proved successful, there is but little doubt that he would have deserved and received the gratitude of everyone engaged in the fight against Hitler. It was a time of crisis which called for action even at the danger of doing the right thing in the wrong way.
On the 19th October we heard that the Germans would be at a small village on the frontier called Dinxperlo at ten o’clock next morning. This was some 120 miles from The Hague and so we had to set off bright and early. Our party consisted of Major Stevens, Dr. Franz, and the Dutch officer who had been detailed by General van Oorschot to look after us. This officer, Lieutenant Klop, was an exceedingly nice, upstanding young fellow whom we soon came to look upon as a good friend. As he spoke English perfectly, we decided to pass him off as a British officer and Stevens gave him the name of Captain Coppens.
I drove, and we made quite good time. We reached Zutphen, a small town in Gelderland, at eight o’clock and Stevens and I decided to wait at a café there whilst Klop and Franz went by taxi to fetch our visitors from the frontier some twenty miles away. We had breakfast and then Stevens and I hung about the café for hour after hour with no word nor sign from the rest of our party. We held the fort with numerous cups of coffee until, about noon, Klop rang up to say that he too had been waiting all the time at the frontier without a sign of the Germans. Two men had, however, now turned up and he was bringing them back right away.
When he reached us he had with him, instead of the general we had expected and of whom we had a good description, two men in the early thirties whom Dr. Franz introduced as Captain von Seidlitz and Lieutenant Grosch. He said that he knew them both well and that they would tell us themselves why the general had failed to come himself. The men seemed very nervous and at first were reluctant even to get out of the car. My intention had been to take them to Amsterdam where I had arranged for a quiet place for our talk, but they declared that this was impossible as they must be back again in Germany before eight that evening without fail. This put me in rather a quandary. Stevens and I had been hanging about that café for so long that we felt the waiters were beginning to eye us suspiciously. They had heard us talking English together and I felt sure that if we now came in with two Huns they would certainly report us to the police. Remember that this was near the German frontier and people were inclined to see spies everywhere.
I packed the whole party into my car and drove a little way into the country-side until we came to an isolated roadside café where I decided that we might stop for lunch. Dr. Franz, who had been quite normal on the drive down, had become terribly excited which we attributed to joy at meeting his friends. He was really quite a nuisance as he kept running round the table from one to another of us, making all sorts of absurd remarks and interrupting our attempts to interrogate our guests. A couple of Dutch soldiers came into the café and I noticed that they were eyeing us very attentively and apparently trying to listen in to our conversation. We were still in the frontier zone and I did not want any trouble with the military. As soon, therefore, as we had finished our lunch I telephoned to some friends in Arnhem, which was about ten miles farther on, and asked whether I might come to their house as I had some people with me with whom I wanted to talk undisturbed. ‘Certainly,’ was the answer and when we got there, the dining-room was placed at our disposal and we settled down for a roundtable conference.
The Germans would not, or could not, tell us anything beyond admitting that they were connected with a revolutionary movement. They said that their chief had been afraid of being held up at the frontier, or that we might fail to keep the appointment. He had therefore sent them to see how the land lay. They made rather a joke of the fact that generals tend to leave sticky jobs to others, but said that when he heard from them how easily they had got through, he would certainly venture to pay us a visit next time himself.
We had scarcely started our talk when my friend came in, and in some agitation, told us that the house was surrounded by police and that there were two men at the door asking about some Germans. Klop and I went out and sure enough the street seemed full of side-car combinations and men of the Dutch gendarmerie. We learned that after we left the café the soldiers, who thought us very suspicious characters, had rung up headquarters and the police and then traced us through my trunk call to Arnhem. Klop had some difficulty in preventing the police from bursting into the house and arresting the lot of us, but after some argument they agreed to take him to their barracks where he quickly allayed the suspicions of the officer in command.
Whilst all this was going on the two Germans were in an absolute panic, and Stevens had the greatest difficulty in preventing them from jumping out of the window and trying to escape. Franz, too, became white as a sheet and seeme
d on the point of passing out. When Klop, by his return, brought some semblance of calm, we tried to get down to business again. The two Huns still seemed to be scared out of their wits and it was very difficult to get anything out of them except that they wanted to go home. They were certain that they would be late and this would ruin them. We did manage to get some further confirmation about the conspiracy and had a little general conversation on possible allied peace terms, but as it did not seem likely that we should get much further with these men, we asked Klop to take them back to the frontier. Dr. Franz was complaining that he felt very ill (he often suffered from gall-stones) so we packed him off to The Hague by train.
During the next few days we received several more communications from Germany. A fresh meeting was fixed for the 25th October and then postponed until the 30th. Again, a rendezvous was given at Dinxperlo, but this time only Klop went to fetch the men and Stevens and I awaited them at The Hague. We did not want another experience like the last, which might have compromised us seriously; so, if the Germans wished to see us, they would have to do what we thought best.
