Venlo incident

The Venlo Incident was a covert German Sicherheitsdienst (SD-Security Service) operation, in the course of which two British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) agents were abducted on the outskirts of the town of Venlo, the Netherlands, on 9 November 1939. The incident was later used by the German Nazi government to link Britain to Georg Elser's failed assassination attempt on German Chancellor Adolf Hitler at the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich, Germany, on 8 November 1939 and to help justify Germany's invasion of the Netherlands, while a neutral country, on 10 May 1940.

Even after the British declaration of war on Nazi Germany on 3 September 1939, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was still interested in seeking a compromise peace with Germany before too much blood had been spilt.

The British government were well aware of the existence of widespread opposition among the leaders of the German Army. During the autumn of 1939 the German opposition was throwing out feelers to the British government. In October the Munich lawyer Josef Müller got in touch with the British through the Vatican with the connivance of Colonel Hans Oster. Theodor Kordt, the younger brother of Erich, pursued similar objectives in Bern. The Swedish industrialist Birger Dahlerus tried to establish peace through an early form of shuttle diplomacy, partly performed on Dutch soil. And in early October the Dutch minister in Ankara, Philipp C. Visser, was communicating peace proposals on the line of the Dahlerus proposals, made by Hitler's former Deputy Chancellor and then ambassador to Turkey, Franz von Papen, to the British ambassador Sir Hugh KnatchbuIl-Hugessen.

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