The Venlo Incident: A True Story of Double-Dealing, Captivity, and a Murderous Nazi Plot

✍ Scribed by Sachsenhausen (Concentration camp);Jones, Nigel H.;Best, Sigismund Payne

• Book ID: 100655663
• Publisher: Frontline Books : Skyhorse Pub
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 579 KB
• Category: Fiction
• City: Great Britain., Germany.
• ISBN: 1473819725

✦ Synopsis

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. **

From Booklist

Starred Review Nazi plots; plots against Nazis; secret meetings; double and triple crosses; narrow escapes; capture and imprisonment; intelligence, both organized and individual—this is the stuff of spy thrillers, but it’s all here in this nonfiction account of a real-life espionage snafu during WWII. Captain S. Payne Best was a British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) agent during both world wars. This memoir, first published in 1950 but long unavailable, traces the attempts of British intelligence to contact German insiders who opposed Hitler. The plan culminated in the disastrous Venlo incident, a trap sprung by the Nazis on the British at Venlo on the Dutch-German border. Best was caught and spent the rest of the war in a concentration camp. The Nazis made propaganda hay out of his capture and what they portrayed as the failure of British intelligence. Best’s memoir is well worthy of republication for a contemporary audience. Besides giving readers an insider’s account of spy tactics, Best provides fascinating details about life in a Nazi prison and then in a concentration camp. His sketches of the people he encountered (including figures in the Nazi resistance movement) are novelistic in scope and texture, and his dissection of his reactions to imprisonment have immediacy and humor. All in all, an amazing read—nonfiction boasting the kind of plotting, sense of place, and rich characterization that one associates with le Carré. --Connie Fletcher

Review

“Starred Review. In all, an amazing read—nonfiction boasting the kind of plotting, sense of place, and rich characterization that one associates with le Carré.” ( *Booklist * )

“Lovers of espionage and war literature, fictional and nonfictional alike, should read this.” ( *Margaret Heilbrun - Library Journal * )

✦ Subjects

World War, 1939-1945 -- Secret service