[1][2]: 14–47 The incident was later used by the German government to link Britain to Georg Elser's failed assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler at the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich, on 8 November 1939, and to help justify Germany's invasion of the Netherlands (then a neutral country) on 10 May 1940.

In October, Munich lawyer Josef Müller contacted the British through the Vatican with the connivance of Colonel Hans Oster.

[citation needed] The Swedish industrialist Birger Dahlerus tried to establish peace through an early form of shuttle diplomacy, partly performed on Dutch soil.

[6] All diplomatic efforts to avoid a Second World War in Europe during the days preceding the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 had come to nothing.

[7] In early September 1939, a meeting was arranged between Fischer and the British SIS agent Captain Sigismund Payne Best.

[8] Subsequent meetings included Major Richard Henry Stevens, a less-experienced intelligence operative who was working covertly for the British SIS as the passport control officer in The Hague.

A wild shooting affray followed, and one man, believed to be a Dutchman in the Dutch car, was killed, the body being dragged back into Germany.

[10]While the British press were unaware that two British SIS agents were involved in the border incident, Sir Alexander Cadogan, Permanent Under-Secretary for Foreign Affairs, was aware, as he recorded in his diary: The covert meetings leading up to the kidnapping, as remembered by Captain S. Payne Best in his book The Venlo Incident, are summarised below.

At Düsseldorf, one of the men who had taken part in the kidnapping told Best the reason for the action was to catch some Germans plotting against the Führer, who were responsible for the attempt on his life the night earlier.

A doctor on duty recalled years later Klop was unconscious when he was admitted and died the same day from a gunshot wound to the head.

[19] Though Georg Elser, a suspect being interrogated in Munich by the Gestapo, insisted he had acted alone, Hitler recognized the propaganda value of the assassination attempt as a means to incite German public resentment against Britain.

[22] The damage inflicted on Britain's espionage network in Europe caused the new prime minister, Winston Churchill, to start his own spy and sabotage agency, the Special Operations Executive in 1940.

The incident exposed the fact that the Chamberlain government was still seeking a deal with Germany while it was exhorting the nation to a supreme war effort.

[2]: 94 In January 1941, Stevens was moved from Sachsenhausen to the bunker at Dachau concentration camp, where he remained until evacuated with Best and other protected prisoners in April 1945.