The Venlo Incident

Download or read book The Venlo Incident written by Nigel Jones and published by Frontline Books. This book was released on 2009-10-30 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In November 1939, the Nazis used the so-called Venlo Incident as a pretext for invading the Netherlands. Following orders from Himmler, two British intelligence officers, Sigismund Payne Best and Richard Stevens, were captured from the Café Backus in the town of Venlo. Best had been trying to contact German officers plotting against Hitler. The Netherlands had been an ideal ground for operations, because of its proximity to Germany and the fact that Dutch Intelligence was badly funded. When Best met the three agents – including Walter Schellenberg – he was carrying with him a list of British agents who were working in Europe. hen he arrived at the café, which was just over the Dutch border, he realised he had walked into a trap. A Dutch intelligence officer who accompanied them, Dirk Klop, was fatally wounded. Best and Stevens were taken into Germany. After their Berlin interrogation and torture they were taken to the notorious Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Hitler used the incident – together with the Elser bomb plot – as an excuse for war with the Netherlands, claiming their involvement with Britain violated their neutrality. As Nigel Jones explains, the incident was crucial in making the British suspicious of dealings with anti-Hitler resistance.

Download or read book The Venlo Incident written by S. Payne Best and published by . This book was released on 1951 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book MI6: British Secret Intelligence Service Operations, 1909–1945 written by Nigel West and published by Pen and Sword. This book was released on 2020-01-19 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of GCHG describes covert missions that “are worthy of spy fiction, but the entire book is utterly fascinating and informative. Brilliant!” (Books Monthly) Written by the renowned expert Nigel West, this book exposes the operations of Britain’s overseas intelligence-gathering organization, the famed Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, and traces its origins back to its inception in 1909. In this meticulously researched account, its activities and structure are described in detail, using original secret service documents. The main body of the book concerns MI6’s operations during the Second World War, and includes some remarkable successes and failures, including how MI6 financed a glamorous confidant of the German secret service; how a suspected French traitor was murdered by mistake; how Franco’s military advisors were bribed to keep Spain out of the war; how members of the Swedish secret police were blackmailed into helping the British war effort; how a sabotage operation in neutral Tangiers enabled the Allied landings in North Africa to proceed undetected; and how Britain’s generals ignored the first ULTRA decrypts because MI6 said that the information had come from “a well-placed source called BONIFACE.” In this new edition, operations undertaken by almost all of MI6’s overseas stations are recounted in extraordinary detail. They will fascinate both the professional intelligence officer and the general reader. The book includes organizational charts to illustrate MI6’s internal structure and its wartime network of overseas stations. Backed by numerous interviews with intelligence officers and their agents, this engaging inside story throws light on many wartime incidents that had previously remained unexplained. “[An] extraordinary book.” —The Daily Telegraph “Fascinating reading.” —Firetrench

Download or read book Himmler's Secret War written by Martin A. Allen and published by Robson Books Limited. This book was released on 2005 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "With a combination of personal interviews including several with leading Nazis and with Himmler's daughter, Gudrun Burwitz, and the use of previously unseen documents, Allen presents the whole Nazi high command in a fresh light, demonstrating how Hitler was often manipulated and sometimes sidelined. But perhaps of equal interest is the inside story of secret operations conducted by the Political Warfare Executive, empowered by Churchill to fight a war with weapons of destabilisation and misinformation in support of the oven military campaigns. Allen portrays Himmler's ever more desperate efforts to secretly negotiate his political survival with the Allies, as Hitler's war machine collapses. This book has one more revelation to make, as Allen rewrites history with his account of the true circumstances of Himmler's dramatic death."--BOOK JACKET.

Download or read book The Venlo Sting written by Norman Ridley and published by Casemate. This book was released on 2022-12-01 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "I would recommend the book to intelligence practitioners, scholars, and other persons interested in World War II intelligence history." —Michael Nady, American Intelligence Journal On 9 November 1939, two unsuspecting British agents of the Special Intelligence Services walked into a trap set by German Spymaster Reinhard Heydrich. Believing that they were meeting a dissident German general for talks about helping German military opposition to bring down Hitler and end the war, they were instead taken captive in the Dutch village of Venlo and whisked away to Germany for interrogation by the Gestapo. The incident was a huge embarrassment for the Dutch government and provided the Germans with significant intelligence about SIS operations throughout Europe. The incident itself was an intelligence catastrophe but it also acts as a prism through which a number of other important narrative strands pass. Fundamental to the subterfuge perpetrated at Venlo were unsubstantiated but insistent rumours of high-ranking German generals plotting to overthrow the Nazi regime from within. After the humiliation suffered when Hitler tore up the Munich Agreement, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was anxious to see just how much truth there was in these stories; keen to rehabilitate his reputation through one last effort to find a peaceful rapprochement with Germany. When Franz Fischer, a small-time petty crook and agent provocateur, persuaded British SIS operatives in the Netherlands that he could act as a go-between for the British government with disaffected German generals, the German Security chief Reinhard Heydrich stepped in and quietly took control of the operation. Heydrich’s boss, head of the Gestapo Heinrich Himmler, was anxious to explore the possibility of peace negotiations with Britain and saw an opportunity to exploit the situation for his personal benefit. On the day before a crucial meeting of conspirators and British agents on the Dutch-German border, a bomb exploded in the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich in the exact spot where Hitler had stood to deliver a speech only minutes earlier. The perpetrator was quickly arrested, and Hitler demanded that Himmler find evidence to show that the two events were intimately connected—the British agents were snatched hours later. While the world was coming to terms with the fearsome power of German military might the British intelligence capability in northern Europe was consigned to the dustbin in the sleepy Dutch town of Venlo. This first full account of the Venlo incident explores the wider context of this German intelligence coup, and its consequences.

Download or read book Historical Review of Developments Relating to Aggression written by United Nations and published by United Nations Publications. This book was released on 2003 with total page 460 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report was prepared for the Working Group on the Crime of Aggression at the 8th session of Preparatory Commission, held in September-October 2001. The paper consists of four parts relating to: the Nuremberg tribunal; tribunals establish pursuant to Control Council Law number 10; the Tokyo tribunal; and the United Nations. Annexes contain tables regarding aggression by a State and individual responsibility for crimes against peace. The paper seeks to provide an objective, analytical overview of the history and major developments relating to aggression, both before and after the adoption of the UN Charter.

Download or read book The Third Reich's Intelligence Services written by Katrin Paehler and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-24 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gaining a foothold -- Rising star -- Intelligence man -- Office VI and its forerunner -- Competing visions: Office VI and the Abwehr -- Doing intelligence: Italy as an example -- Alternative universes: Office VI and the Auswärtige Amt -- Schellenberg, Himmler, and the quest for "peace"--Postwar