rise-and-fall-of-the-third-reich-william-shirer-pdf

SITZKRIEG IN THE WEST 587to linger over their beers and reminisce with old party comrades about the earlyputsch.The next morning Hitler’s own paper, the Voelkischer Beobachter, alone carriedthe story of the attempt on the Fuehrer’s life. It blamed the ”British SecretService” and even Chamberlain for the foul deed. ”The attempted ’assassination,’” I wrote that evening in my diary, ”undoubtedly will buck up publicopinion behind Hitler and stir up hatred of England ... Most of us think itsmells of another Reichstag fire.”What connection could the British secret service have with it, outside ofGoebbel’s feverish mind? An attempt was made at once to connect them. Anhour or two after the bomb went off in Munich, Heinrich Himmler, chief ofthe S.S. and the Gestapo, telephoned to one of his rising young S.S. subordinates,Walter Schellenberg, at Duesseldorf and ordered him by command of theFuehrer, to cross the border into Holland the next day and kidnap two Britishsecret-service agents with whom Schellenberg had been in contact.Himmler’s order led to one of the most bizarre incidents of the war. For morethan a month Schellenberg, who, like Alfred Naujocks, was a university-educatedintellectual gangster, had been seeing in Holland two British intelligence officers.Captain S. Payne Best and Major R. H. Stevens. To them he posed as ”MajorSchaemmel,” an anti-Nazi officer in OKW (Schellenberg took the name froma living major) and gave a convincing story of how the German generals weredetermined to overthrow Hitler. What they wanted from the British, he said,were assurances that the London government would deal fairly with the newanti-Nazi regime. Since the British had heard from other sources (as we haveseen) of a German military conspiracy, whose members wanted the same kind ofassurances, London was interested in developing further contacts with ”MajorSchaemmel.” Best and Stevens provided him with a small radio transmitter andreceiving set; there were numerous ensuing communications over the wirelessand further meetings in various Dutch towns. By November 7, when the twoparties met at Venlo, a Dutch town on the German frontier, the British agentswere able to give ”Schaemmel” a rather vague message from London to theleaders of the German resistance stating in general terms the basis for a justpeace with an anti-Nazi regime. It was agreed that ”Schaemmel” should bringone of these leaders, a German general, to Venlo the next day, to begin definitivenegotiations. This meeting was put off to the ninth.Up to this moment the objectives of the two sides were clear. The Britishwere trying to establish direct contact with the German military putschists inorder to encourage and aid them. Himmler was attempting to find out throughthe British who the German plotters were and what their connection was withthe enemy secret service. That Himmler and Hitler were already suspicious ofsome of the generals as well as of men like Oster and Canaris of the Abwehr isclear. But now on the night of November 8, Hitler and Himmler found need ofa new objective: Kidnap Best and Stevens and blame these two British secretserviceagents for the Buergerbrau bombing!A familiar character now entered the scene. Alfred Naujocks, who had stagedthe ”Polish attack” on the German radio station at Gleiwitz, showed up incommand of a dozen Security Service (S.D.) toughs to help Schellenberg carryout the kidnaping. The deed came off nicely. At 4 P.M. on November 9, whileSchellenberg sipped an aperitif on the terrace of a cafe at Venlo, waiting fora rendezvous with Best and Stevens, the two British agents drove up in their