to mind and a contemporary colleague regarded him as ‘an ostentatious ass, blown up with self-importance’.1
While there seems little doubt that Payne Best had an inflated opinion of himself, his upper-class twit appearance could mislead. Although quite the English country gentleman, with all the mannerisms and prejudices of his time and class, he was well travelled and spoke Dutch, French and German fluently, having been a student in Munich for a number of years. He worked for British Intelligence during the First World War before settling in Holland, where he married and established an import–export business which provided him with cover when he resumed his intelligence work before the outbreak of the Second World War.
The Hague, 9 November 1939
Payne Best was not in the best of form as he entered his office in The Hague on that fateful morning. It was still quite early and he had only had a few hours’ sleep. He wasn’t looking forward to the long drive to Venlo, which was close to the German frontier. He picked up the morning newspaper and glanced at the headline. It appeared that there had been an attempt to kill Hitler the previous day. A bomb had exploded in a beer hall where Hitler had been speaking and a number of people were killed, but not the Führer, who had left the venue beforehand. This perplexed Payne Best, who wondered if this had anything to do with the German officers he was due to meet in Venlo.2 They claimed to represent an anti-Hitler faction within the Wehrmacht and the meeting was to discuss a possible coup. However, before proceeding, they needed assurances that the British would treat with them after their accession to power. Such an assurance was required, they informed the British, before the coup could be attempted. Payne Best must have wondered, reading the newspaper, if the coup had already begun. The news added to his anxiety about the planned rendezvous.
A number of clandestine meetings had already taken place in The Hague. These involved a Major Schaemmel and another German officer, both claiming to be emissaries of senior Wehrmacht generals. Also in attendance was Major Richard Stevens, a fellow British Intelligence officer based in the Passport Control Office (PCO) of the British embassy. Less exotic in appearance than his colleague, he was, at forty-six years old, the younger man. Although his hairline was receding, his hair was suspiciously dark for a man of his age and he sported a toothbrush moustache. Before the war he had been based in India and had mastered a number of languages. The Secret Intelligence Service traditionally ran their agents from embassy PCOs. It provided them with diplomatic immunity, but made for poor cover when the practice became common knowledge. It was for this reason that Claude Dansey, the deputy chief of MI6, established a parallel foreign intelligence network, known as the ‘Z’ organisation. Payne Best was Dansey’s man in the neutral Netherlands.3
The covert contacts with the Germans convinced a doubtful Payne Best that the emissaries were genuine and Stevens shared his optimism. Following approval from London, the two Englishmen were in a position to respond positively, if cautiously, on behalf of His Majesty’s Government. They had been authorised to promise aid and support to the plotters. As evidence of this, their German contacts had been supplied with a radio transmitter with which to maintain contact with a British Secret Service station in The Hague. Schaemmel had promised that while a post-Hitler administration would restore independence to Poland, Czechoslovakia and Austria, it would seek the return of former German colonies in Africa.4
The meeting in Venlo was to finalise matters and it was anticipated that one of the leading German generals involved in the conspiracy would attend. So that he would be fresh for the planned meeting, Payne Best arranged for his trusted Dutch chauffeur to drive himself, Stevens and a Dutch Intelligence officer named Lieutenant Dirk Klop to Venlo. All four set off in Payne Best’s distinctive Lincoln Zephyr for the three-hour journey. It was only two months since the declaration of war and so far only minor skirmishes had occurred. Their discussions with the Germans raised the alluring prospect of the war ending while still in its early stages. As they journeyed towards their rendezvous the two Englishmen must have believed they were about to make history. The glittering prospect of being instrumental in ending the war seemed almost within their grasp. The Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, ever keen for a negotiated settlement, was excited about the prospect, as was Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. Payne Best was initially suspicious about the contact who had initiated the process, even writing to his superiors in London, stating that the man was most likely an agent provocateur. The report was ignored. Instead, Steward Menzies, then acting head of MI6, told Chamberlain and Halifax what they both wanted to hear: that there was a real prospect of Hitler being overthrown, of peace being restored.5 Payne Best put aside his earlier suspicion after meeting the German contacts. There were, at that time, a number of German generals plotting against Hitler, the most prominent of which was General Franz Halder, the chief of the Wehrmacht General Staff, but the people they were about to encounter were not part of this conspiracy. The British had fallen for a well-executed German intelligence sting.
When they reached the meeting place – a café close to the German frontier – they were confronted by SS troops armed with submachine guns. Their leader, ‘Schaemmel’, was in reality Walter Schellenberg, an SS protégée of Reinhard Heydrich. Klop tried to resist and was shot and fatally wounded. At gunpoint, Stevens and Payne Best were handcuffed and hustled into a car which sped across the nearby border into Germany.6 Schellenberg won plaudits for his leading role in the kidnapping and was personally congratulated by Hitler. He later became head of foreign intelligence within the SS; it was in this role that he tried to arrange for Stevens and Payne Best to be exchanged for German POWs, but this action was vetoed by Himmler.7 When we encounter him again in our story, he will be acting as Himmler’s emissary in a number of attempts to use hostages as bargaining chips near the end of the war.
The capture of the two intelligence officers was more than just an embarrassment for the British. Unaccountably, Payne Best had in his possession a list of the names and addresses of British agents and Stevens was carrying secret codes.8 Both are believed to have supplemented this material by telling the Germans all they knew about MI6 operations in continental Europe.9 As a result, a number of British agents and informers are likely to have been shot. The Venlo Incident, as it was to become known, was a disaster for British Intelligence and made the British wary of all future contacts with Germans purported to be anti-Hitlerite.
***
The bomb intended to kill Hitler was planted by an obscure young man acting alone : Georg Elser, a skilled carpenter and clock-maker from a small Swabian town. Of the many attempts to assassinate Hitler, none was as carefully planned and as skilfully executed as the time bomb he planted at the Bürgerbräkeller in Munich the day before Payne Best and Stevens were captured. Only unforeseen circumstances prevented him from altering world history.
Every year since 1933, the Nazis have commemorated the ‘Beer Hall Putsch’, a failed coup attempt in 1923 that centred on the Bürgerbräkeller, a beer hall in Munich. The finale of the commemorative event would always involve a lengthy address by Hitler to a gathering of Nazi dignitaries and Brown Shirt veterans. His speech would invariably begin at 8:30 p.m. and last for two hours. Elser had worked for months before the 1939 event to create a double-clock time bomb, which he managed to install inside a pillar where Hitler was due to make his address. The bomb was primed to explode at 9:20 p.m. when, as on all previous occasions, Hitler should be about half-way through his speech. However, on this occasion fog threatened to close Munich airport and Hitler, anxious to return to Berlin that night, started speaking earlier than planned and left at 9:07 p,m., having cut his speech short. The bomb exploded, as planned, thirteen minutes later. It killed seven people positioned near the lectern Hitler had used. Elser was arrested that night while trying to cross into Switzerland.
The Germans planned to kidnap Payne Best and Stevens months before Elser’s attempted assassination of Hitler, so any connection made between these events could only have been an afterthought. Nevertheless, it was not unreasonable for the Germans to suspect a link. It seemed inconceivable that Elser could have acted alone. The Nazis were convinced that he had had assistance and was acting under the direction of others. Now they had proof that British Intelligence were intent on
