military@att.att.com (Bill Thacker) (11/10/89)
From: military@att.att.com (Bill Thacker) Thursday, 9 November, 1939 The Venlo Incident: A spy ring in Holland, operated by British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS or MI6) officers Major H. R. Stevens and Captain S. Payne Best, is infiltrated by Gestapo counterintelligence agents, led by SS Group- Leader Walter Schellenburg. He and some SS assistants lure Stevens and Best to Venlo, near the Dutch-German border on the premise of meeting a German general and other officers who were anti-Nazis, anxious to make peace. Stevens and Best are kidnapped into Germany and heavily interrogated... The Abwehr(German equivalent of the SIS) had surveiled this ring for some time, and now gathers up all the operatives, or attempts to "turn them around". (After this ring was caught, Britain never attempted to develop another spy network in Germany during the remainder of the war.) (1) The incident raises great international consternation. Progress is made in the Russo-Finnish negotiations, as the Soviet delegation drops their demand for a mutual assistance clause. In Poznan, Poland, a statue of President Woodrow Wilson, sculpted by Gutzon Borgium, is destroyed by the occupying Germans as "an artistic eyesore." A sign left at the statue's site claims that "The American artist made the legs too short, the body too long, and the head too large." Reporter: Bob Beville ( rbeville%tekig5.pen.tek.com@RELAY.CS.NET) (1) References: Hermann G. Giskes, _Abwehr IIIF_, Amsterdam, 1948 Bruce Page, et al _THE PHILBY CONSPIRACY_ Ladislas Farago, _SPYMASTER_ (_War of Wits: The Anatomy of Espionage and Intelligence_) -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- Bill Thacker military@cbnews.att.com Send submissions for "50 Years Ago" to military-request@att.att.com "Even if the war lasts for five years, Germany will never capitulate." - Adolph Hitler