The Plans That Took a Wrong Turn - 10 January 1940

This article is taken from "The War Illustrated" from 2 February 1940 and describes the day the plans for the German Invasion of the West fell into Allied hands.  Despite this, which you think would have given the Allies an advantage, the Battle of France was lost in just 6 weeks later in the year.

The plane was a Messerschmitt Bf108 (liaison/communications) and Major H Reinberger and Major Dr E Hoenmann were on board.  They were unhurt and interned after the forced landing.  Major Reinberger was a communications officer on the staff of General Student and was on the way to a conference in Cologne from Munster to attend a conference at HQ 7.  The story from 1940 still gives the impression of the incompetence of the Germans and the confidence of the Western Allies.  I hope you enjoy this contemporary description.

The Plan That Took a Wrong Turn

We do not know his name, but he was a German staff-officer and an important fellow enough - and he felt more important still on that Wednesday in January (the 10th to be exact when he was handed by his chief a bulky packet of important and highly confidential documents which he was instructed to take at once to the army headquarters in Cologne.  He was to travel by train, and High Command in Berlin had had the forethought to provide him with a first-class railway pass.

The officer was all the more pleased that he had been entrusted with the commission in that only recently he had taken unto himself a wife, who was now living in Cologne.  On looking up the times of the trains he found that if he went by rail he would not be able to rejoin her that evening, but just then he learnt that a friend of his, an airman, was on the point of taking off from Tempelhof aerodrome for Cologne.  He decided to take the risk of incurring his superiors' displeasure, rushed post-haste to the aerodrome, and took his place in the plane.

As the day wore on they speeded across Germany until they drew ner to the Rhine.  Then by a most strange mischance the pilot made a big slip in his navigational reckoning and crossed the Rhine fa the North of Cologne.  Too late he discovered his error when he found himself being made the target of the Dutch anti-aircraft guns.  Turning south he hoped to get back to Germany untouched, but a few minutes later he had to make a forced landing in a field at Mechelen-Sur-Meuse, in Belgium.

Clambering out of the machine, our staff officer hailed one of the peasants who hurried up, and asked him for some matches; with these he tried to set fire to his precious documents.  Some Belgium soldiers, however, snatched them from his hand and took them and him and the pilot to the nearest military post, where they were subjected to a severe questioning.

During the interview the packet of documents was placed on the table between the questioner and the questioned, and seizing a favourable moment, the Nazi officer suddenly snatched them up and threw them into the fire.  Before they could be consumed, however, or even charred, a Belgian officer was able to recover them.  In a short time they were passed into the custody of the Belgian Intelligence, who perused them once and twice and yet again with ever deepening interest.  For these documents were, so it appeared, nothing less than the plans, detailed and minutely particularized, for the invasion of Belgium by the Germans within the next few days!

So extraordinary was the chance which had led to their coming into Belgium hands that it was at once suspected that the plans were a "plant", part of the "war of nerves" waged by Hitler against the neutral states.

But this view, however reasonable it might appear at the outset, was dispelled when news came to hand from the Belgian Intelligence of German troop movements beyond the frontier which were exactly in accordance with those foreshadowed in the document.

Another factor which pointed to their genuineness was that section of the dossier which gave notes on the character and psychological make-up of each of the generals commanding the Belgian Army corps which would have had to bear the brunt of the German invasion.  Thus, one of these officers was described as "hard" and another as "soft"; one was characterised as "having swift reactions", another as possessing a "defensive temperament", while one was said to be "hesitant"' and another "endowed with great initiative".  Moreover, the positions of the Army headquarters and of many of the units were exactly indicated, and there was also something in the nature of a survey of the weak points in the Belgian defences - those points on which the weight of the German onslaught might be expected to fall.

On reflection it seemed hardly probable that the German High Command would deliberately allow the Belgians to realise  that they were so intimately acquainted with their defences; and thus there was every reason to believe that the Low Countries did indeed escape invasion on January 13 because ........