Schellenberg at Venlo — Cafe Backus, 4:00 p.m.
, 29, has been an officer of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) since 1933, a lawyer by training, one of the youngest senior figures in Nazi intelligence. His mission since July 1939: to present himself, under the alias "Hauptmann Schämmel" (Captain Schämmel) of the German military opposition, as the representative of a group of Wehrmacht generals plotting against Hitler, in order to establish contact with British intelligence in the Netherlands.
Contact is made as early as August 1939 with two officers of the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) posted in The Hague: (an experienced officer) and (section head). The British believe they are in contact with a genuine German military conspiracy. Several meetings take place in Holland in the autumn of 1939. Schellenberg, accompanied by "members" of the group (in reality SD agents), provides deliberately credible information.
On the evening of 8 November 1939, Hitler narrowly escapes the Munich bomb attack organized by . Himmler wants to publicly link the attack to the German military opposition and to British intelligence, to justify domestic hardening and public criticism of Britain. The SD receives orders to seize Best and Stevens — to use them as "living proof" of British complicity with Elser. On 9 November 1939 a meeting is arranged near the Cafe Backus in Venlo, a few dozen metres from the German border. It remains for Schellenberg to decide how to proceed.
How will Schellenberg carry out the abduction?
Schellenberg applies a mixture of A and B. At 4:00 p.m. on 9 November 1939, Best and Stevens drive their car (with their Dutch agent ) toward the Cafe Backus, on the Dutch side, 100 metres from the German border. Schellenberg invites them to join him to meet "a chief general of the plot" and signals to them. As they approach, an SS commando from bursts in by car from the German side, smashes the Dutch barrier, and opens fire on the Dutch. is mortally wounded (he dies the next day). Best and Stevens are seized, hauled into Germany at gunpoint, and transferred to the Gestapo in Berlin. German propaganda immediately links the Elser attack to the "British agents" Best and Stevens. Both men are held at Sachsenhausen as special prisoners throughout the war. Stevens, under intermittent torture, provides information on SIS networks in Europe — a major blow to British intelligence. Best holds out better. Both are freed in April-May 1945 by the Americans and return to the United Kingdom traumatized. The Venlo incident paralyses SIS activity on the continent until 1943 and contributes to motivating the Netherlands' strictly neutral posture (which will not prevent the invasion of 10 May 1940). Schellenberg, brilliant, becomes head of SD-Ausland (foreign intelligence) from 1941, then head of RSHA-VI. A survivor of the war, sentenced to six years at Nuremberg (Ministries Trial, 1948), he writes his memoirs (published posthumously in 1956) and dies of cancer in 1952.
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