In Nov 1939, 2 MI6 officers, Maj Stevens and Capt Payne Best, accompanied by a Dutch intel officer, travelled to the small border town of Venlo to meet with Maj Schaemmle, a supposed anti-Hitler Wehrmacht officer (actually SS Maj Walter Schellenberg in disguise), and were swiftly ambushed and kidnapped by an overwhelming no. of Gestapo agents then whisked back over the German border, where they were interrogated and searched. This process and the agents' own indiscretion enabled the Germans to acquire an intel goldmine, including finding a list of British operatives in Czechoslovakia which the Gestapo were able to shut down. As a result, British intelligence became much less willing thruout the course of the war to trust any purported anti-Nazi conspirators from within the Wehrmacht who claimed to be willing to mount a coup against Hitler.
But WI the Venlo incident never happened ? Say, if these 2 Brit intel officers had taken more precautions which enabled them to avoid being captured ? Could the course of the secret war during WWII have progressed differently, and would there have been better prospects for the Allies co-operating with genuine anti-Nazi resistance members within Germany's security services and armed forces ?
But WI the Venlo incident never happened ? Say, if these 2 Brit intel officers had taken more precautions which enabled them to avoid being captured ? Could the course of the secret war during WWII have progressed differently, and would there have been better prospects for the Allies co-operating with genuine anti-Nazi resistance members within Germany's security services and armed forces ?