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CHAPTER ONE

KIDNAPPED AT VENLO

Captain Sigismund Payne Best seems to have relished being a spy for he did not go out of his way to hide it. In his mid-fifties, tall and gaunt, his grey hair combed back, he sported a monocle and was fond of wearing tweed suits and spats. Comparisons with P.G. Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster come 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 supporting an anti-Hitler plot. All three suspects were handed over to the Gestapo and interrogated separately. Elser alone was tortured, and savagely so. He was beaten to a pulp and, on Hitler’s orders, was heavily injected with Pervertin, a stimulant then believed to be a truth serum. The top leadership of the SS and Gestapo were involved. Dr Albrecht Böhme, then in charge of Munich Kripo, the Criminal Police, described a scene he witnessed:

I happened to became witness to a brutal scene that was played out, in the presence of Nebe [Arthur Nebe, Chief of Kripo, and later also an anti-Hitler conspirator] and me, between SS Reichsfϋhrer and Chief of German Police Heinrich Himmler and the prisoner Georg Elser. Elser was bound up, and Himmler was kicking him hard with his boots and cursing wildly. Then he had a Gestapo operative unknown to me drag him into the adjoining washroom of the Munich Gestapo chief and beat him there with a whip or (I couldn’t see) some similar instrument, so that he cried out in pain. Then he was bundled, quick time, before Himmler and kicked again. But Elser, who was groaning and bleeding profusely from his mouth and nose, made no confession; he would not have been physically able to, even if he wanted to.10

From an early stage Elser confessed to the bombing, but insisted that he acted alone. He was tortured to make him identify his supposed accomplices, and to connect him to Stevens and Payne Best. Another suspected accomplice, the mastermind in Hitler’s mind, was the hated Otto Strasser, a former Nazi who had formed a leftist fascist break-away, the ‘Black Front’. Strasser was based in Switzerland at that time and it was assumed that Elser was attempting to join him there when he was arrested. Strasser, like Payne Best and Stevens, had no prior knowledge of the assassination attempt. Hitler, though, continued to believe Strasser was involved and later tasked Schellenberg with poisoning him in Lisbon, but the SS man failed to locate him. Strasser survived the war.

Elser was quite prepared to relate all the details of his workings, but he was not going to invent collaborators. Apart from truthfulness, he was proud of his work. He didn’t hide his motives; he hated Hitler, whom he deemed a warmonger and responsible for his brother’s imprisonment. The Gestapo decided to test his ability. They demanded that he replicate the time bomb after providing him with the necessary materials. He readily assembled the clock mechanism wiring, detonators and housing cabinet. This astonished his interrogators, who came to accept that he acted alone. 11 But matters had gone too far for this to be admitted. German newspapers had headlined the capture of the British agents and declared them complicit in the plot to kill Hitler. The event became world news. It was a propaganda triumph for the Nazis. There was no possibility that Stevens and Payne Best, now notoriously linked to Elser, could be exonerated. Payne Best and Stevens faced the prospect of a show trial with a predetermined outcome; their extinction. But Hitler was in no hurry; it was best left until the end of the war, when victory was secured. Then it could be demonstrated to the people of a conquered Britain that their own government was to blame for their misfortune. The event, though, had a more immediate benefit for Hitler: he later used the involvement of the unfortunate Klop as a pretext for the invasion of the Netherlands.

Sachsenhausen Prison Section, 1940–3

After weeks of interrogation in Berlin, Stevens and Payne Best were taken to the prison section of Sachsenhausen concentration camp, known as the Zellenbau (‘bunker’). The prison section was used to house prisoners under interrogation for political ‘crimes’, with execution frequently being the final stage of the process. Elser was later brought there also. They were each held in isolation cells with no natural light, permanently handcuffed, manacled to the wall at night, with SS guards continually in attendance. These discomforts were mild, though, when compared to what others suffered. Prisoners in punishment cells were regularly tortured. From the compound outside, they often heard the cries of prisoners who had been suspended on a pole, their wrists tied behind their backs and connected to a high hook so that their toes were just off the ground. Left in this position, their shoulder ligaments would tear and their joint would dislocate, causing excruciating pain.12 It soon became evident that Payne Best and Stevens were receiving comparatively favourable treatment as, over time, their conditions improved. Their shackles were removed, their food rations were adequate and they were allowed to take daily exercise. Facilitated by his fluent German, Payne Best managed to establish cordial relations with most of his guards, and from some he managed to secure cigarettes. Stevens fared less well in this regard and, according to Payne Best, he became depressed.13

Elser, recovering from his earlier torture, also began to enjoy improved conditions. He was allocated a large cell, was supplied with adequate amounts of food (although he ate little), and was provided with materials and tools to make items of furniture and musical instruments. This favourable treatment astonished the SS guards and irritated the more Hitler-adoring of them. It didn’t make sense to them that the Führer’s would-be assassin should enjoy such privileges. Then, a rumour circulated that Elser was merely a stooge of the SS; the bomb had been a Nazi plot to gain sympathy and support for Hitler and Elser was just a bit player and fall guy. Although Elser was strictly isolated, and it was forbidden for other prisoners to have any contact with him, this rumour spread among guards and prisoners in the bunker. Payne Best certainly believed it.

In his book, The Venlo Incident, Payne Best, although admitting that he never met him, claimed that Elser managed to smuggle a series of notes to him in which he gave an account of his life and his involvement in the Bürgerbräkeller plot. He says Elser told him that he had been detained in Dachau as an ‘anti-social’ before the war and, while there, he was induced by the SS to undertake a mission. The supposed scheme was to plant a bomb that would only be detonated after Hitler left and which was designed to kill some anti-Hitler plotters. According to the story Payne Best related, Elser was promised that he would be allowed to escape to Switzerland after the bomb went off, a promise that was reneged on. His comfortable billet in Sachsenhausen was less than adequate compensation. This story, and Payne Best’s description of how he learned about it from Elser, is implausible. There is no factual evidence for the assertion that Elser was detained in Dachau as an ‘anti-social’. And why would Elser lie about being complicit in a Nazi conspiracy? And if he was working for the SS, why would they torture him? How or why would he scribe his life story to a man he had never met and, given the ever-present SS guard, manage to smuggle out succeeding missives? Payne Best claims the writing was in indelible ink; how would Elser have obtained the necessary chemicals? It is likely Payne Best heard the story from the guards, with whom he was on friendly terms. The part about Elser smuggling material to him had to be invented, possibly to enhance his book’s narrative and to obscure his actual source. It is now widely accepted that Elser acted entirely alone, but at the time Payne Best was writing his book there were a number of speculative stories portraying Elser as a stooge – Payne Best may have been influenced by these accounts. Payne Best’s The Venlo Incident is the source for much of what has been written about the Prominenten. The lesson is to treat his accounts with caution.

Payne Best was detained for five years, the latter years in relative comfort. He recounts that he was visited by Himmler on one occasion during a tour of the camp in June 1942. It is plausible that Himmler would want to meet the Englishman, especially as he had been intimately involved in his case and Elser’s. Less plausible is Payne Best’s claim that he infuriated Himmler by refuting his suggestion that that British stories of German atrocities were false; Payne Best alleges that he told the Reichführer that their actions were even worse than stated.14 If he was so audacious, he didn’t suffer any consequences. He was soon put on double rations, permitted to purchase alcohol from the SS canteen, had his own electric cooker, was supplied with a typewriter and even had a small library in his cell. Following their occupation of the Netherlands, the Germans went to the trouble of retrieving his wardrobe – which included a number of tailored suits – from the Hague. In addition, he obtained a wireless set which allowed him to listen to the BBC. He could exercise outside for an hour or two daily and he grew vegetables and flowers on a patch of ground.

It began to seem that the SS were attending to his needs, more in the manner of dutiful servants than as guards. Adjacent to scenes of mass murder and barbarity, where prisoners suffered from hunger, torture, sickness and exhaustion, Payne Best was allowed to live the life of a cosseted tenant. He was not alone among the characters we will encounter that were relatively well cared for, although no other British captive – with the possible exception of his colleague Stevens – was treated with such consideration. Why was he so privileged? He himself, unconvincingly puts it down to guile on his part and to the decency of some of his SS guards. He was on quite friendly terms with the camp commandant, Anton Kaindl – ‘a good friend to me’ – and the head of the prison block, Kurt Eccarius – ‘a very decent fellow’.15 Both were regarded by most as odious and were later convicted of war crimes. Other factors were at play. It is likely there was an order to treat him well to ensure that he would be a presentable defendant, or witness, at the envisaged trial. He and Stevens are believed to have provided valuable information during interrogation.16 Could it be that he was rewarded for his good behaviour? His conditions began to improve in late 1942. By then it was becoming clear to the Germans that the war was not going as planned. The thoughts of some in the Nazi leadership turned to ways by which the British might consider a ceasefire. Perhaps an intelligence officer, one who was obviously a Germanophile, might be able to assist. The idea of using select prisoners for this purpose probably germinated about this time.

Stevens spent just over a year in Sachsenhausen. To ensure his isolation from Payne Best, he was transferred to Dachau where, as we will later discover, he also enjoyed rare privileges. Before then, another British officer had entered the bunker. John McGrath was an Irishman who had earlier been held in a special camp for Irish POWs. Although he did not meet with Payne Best or Stevens in Sachsenhausen, they were later to become acquainted in Dachau under very different circumstances.