January, 1940
A
Bf 108 'Taifun' made a forced landing under foggy conditions near
Mechelen-aan-de-Maas in the Belgian Province of Limburg starting what
became known as the Mechelen Incident. Piloted by Major Eric Hönmanns,
the liaison aircraft also held a passenger, Major Helmuth Reinberger,
Adjutant to Colonel Bassenge, Commanding Officer of Dienststelle
Fliegerführer 22O, 7. Flieger Division. Reinberger was responsible for
organizing the supplying of the unit that was to land paratroopers
behind the Belgian lines at Namur on the day of the coming attack. Soon
after the crash the two men were arrested by the Belgian Gendarmerie.
Reinberger was carrying top-secret documents divulging the invasion
plans for the Low Countries. Reinberger attempted several times during
his arrest to destroy the documents, however without success.
News
of the Mechelen Incident reached Berlin via press reports about a
crashed German plane. In the OKW it caused a general consternation, as
it was soon deduced that Reinberger must have had the attack plan with
him.The
Belgians have the documents recovered in the Mechelen Incident quickly
translated by the Deuxième Section (military intelligence) of the
general staff in Brussels. Most had indeed been badly damaged by Major
Helmuth Reinberger's consecutive attempts to burn them, but the general
outlines of an attack against Belgium and The Netherlands were clear
from the remaining passages, though the date of the attack was not
mentioned.Enraged
by the Mechelen Incident Hitler fired both the commander of 2.
Luftflotte, General Helmuth Frey, and the latter's chief of staff
Colonel Josef Kammhuber. It was nevertheless decided to proceed with the
German attack on the Low Countries as originally planned, while the
Luftwaffe attaché in The Hague Lieutenant-General Ralph Wenninger, and
the military attaché in Brussels, Colonel Friedrich Carl Rabe von
Pappenheim, would investigate whether the plan had been fatally
compromised or not.The
contents of the translated document fragments recovered in the Mechelen
Incident confirm earlier warnings from the Italian Count Galeazzo Ciano
about a German attack to take place around 15 January. It was concluded
by one of King Leopold III of Belgium’s key advisors, General Raoul van
Overstraeten, that the information was basically correct. That afternoon
King Leopold III decided to inform his own Minister of Defense General
Henri Denis and the French supreme commander Maurice Gamelin. At 5:15
p.m. the French liaison officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Hautcoeur, was given
a two page abstract of the contents without any explanation of how the
information had been obtained. Lord Gort, the commander of the British
Expeditionary Force, was warned and Leopold personally phoned the Dutch
Princess Juliana and the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg Charlotte telling
the first: "Be careful, the weather is dangerous" and the second:
"Beware of the flu", predetermined code phrases indicating the Belgians
considered a German attack to be imminent.General
Alfred Jodl, the Wehrmacht's Chief of Operations, gave Hitler an
assessment of what the Belgians might have learned from documents
recovered in the Mechelen Incident. A note in Jodl's diary summed up
what he had said to Hitler: “If the enemy is in possession of all the
files, situation catastrophic.” The Germans would at first be falsely
reassured by Belgian deception measures.Reinberger
and Hönmanns meet the German Air and Army Attachés to Belgium, Wenninger
and Rabe von Pappenheim, while their conversations were secretly
recorded. During this meeting Reinberger informed Wenninger that he had
managed to burn the papers enough to make them unreadable.French
supreme commander Maurice Gamelin held a meeting with the highest French
operational army commanders and the Chief of Military Intelligence
Colonel Louis Rivet. Rivet was skeptical of the warning but Gamelin
considered that, even if it all were a false alarm, this would be an
excellent opportunity to pressure the Belgians into allowing a French
advance into their country. Both to intensify the crisis and to be ready
for any occasion that presented itself, Gamelin ordered 1st Army Group
and the adjoining Third Army to march toward the Belgian frontier.Dutch
Queen Wilhelmina and her government are alarmed when notified by the
Belgians of the contents recovered in the Mechelen Incident. Dutch
supreme commander Izaak H. Reijnders was skeptical of the information.
When the Belgian military attaché in The Hague, Lieutenant-Colonel
Pierre Diepenrijckx, handed him a personal memorandum from Van
Overstraeten, he reacted: "Do you believe in these messages yourself? I
don't believe in them at all." The Dutch were not informed of the
precise source and the Belgians hid the fact that the Germans only
intended a partial occupation of The Netherlands, without the Dutch
National Redoubt, the Vesting Holland.Vicco
von Bülow-Schwante, Germany's ambassador in Belgium, telegraphed to his
superiors concerning the Mechelen Incident: “Major Reinberger has
confirmed that he burnt the documents except for some pieces which are
the size of the palm of his hand. Reinberger confirms that most of the
documents which could not be destroyed appear to be unimportant.” This
appears to have convinced General Jodl. His diary for January 13, 1940
included the entry: “Report on conversation of Luftwaffe Attaché with
the two airmen who made forced landing. Result: dispatch case burnt for
certain.”The
Belgians receive a message from Colonel Georges Goethals, Belgium's
Military Attaché in Berlin, included: "Were there tactical orders or
parts of them on the Malines plane? A sincere informer, whose
credibility may be contested, claims that this plane was carrying plans
from Berlin to Cologne in relation to the attack on the West. Because
these plans have fallen into Belgian hands, the attack will happen
tomorrow to preempt countermeasures. I make explicit reservations about
this message, that I do not consider reliable, but which it is my duty
to report." The "sincere informer" was the Dutch Military Attaché in
Berlin Gijsbertus Sas who spoke with Goethals around 5 p.m. Sas’
information had to be carefully considered because he was in contact
with a German intelligence officer who was an opponent of the Nazi
regime, Colonel Hans Oster.Informed
of Goethals’ message, General Van Overstraeten was astonished that the
informant appeared to know about the capture of the plans. Van
Overstraeten altered the warning that the Belgian Chief of the General
Staff Lieutenant-General Edouard van den Bergen had drafted which was
about to be sent to all Belgian Army commanders that an attack on the
next morning “quasi-certain.”.Van
den Bergen, who had secretly promised French supreme commander Maurice
Gamelin to bring Belgium to the allied side decided to broadcast on the
popular current affairs radio program that night an immediately recall
to their units of all 80,000 Belgian soldiers on leave to ensure that
these would be at full strength at the moment of the German attack. Van
den Bergen also ordered the barriers to be moved aside on the southern
border with France so the French and British troops could march in
swiftly when they were called in, in response to the German attack. Both
actions were made without the knowledge of the King or Van Overstraeten.
If the Germans had indeed attacked on the January 14th, Van den Bergen
would probably have been congratulated for his decisions. However, Van
den Bergen fell in disgrace for acting in this way without the King's
permission, as King Leopold was the Supreme Commander of all the Belgian
armed forces. Van den Bergen was rebuked so harshly by Von Overstraeten
that the Belgian Chief of Staff's reputation never recovered, and at the
end of January he resigned.General
Alfred Jodl called off plans to execute the attack on the Low Countries
three days early on January 14 and postponed them to January 15 or 16,
to be decided as the circumstances demanded. That evening he received
news that the Belgian and Dutch troops had been put on alert. This was
attributed to the Mechelen Incident and the obvious approach of the
Sixth Army.King
Leopold III of Belgium sent a message to Britain’s First Lord of the
Admiralty, Winston Churchill, via Admiral Sir Roger Keyes, a friend of
the King’s who had established himself as the secret link man to the
British Government, asking for certain guarantees. The guarantees
included assuring that the Allies would not open negotiations for a
settlement of any conflict without Belgium's agreement. Keyes added a
rider that he believed Leopold might be able to persuade his government
to call the Allies immediately if the guarantees were forthcoming.
This
was of interest to the Allies because both Britain and France had been
trying to persuade Belgium to let their troops in ever since the war had
started.The
French are informed of King Leopold III of Belgium’s message to Britain,
although there was no reference to the fact that Keyes was only giving
his opinion about the calling in of the allies. The French record stated
that 'the King would ask his Government to ask the Allied armies to
occupy defensive positions inside Belgium immediately', if the Belgians
received satisfaction in related guarantees. Edouard Daladier, the
French President, quickly told the British Government that,
as far as France was concerned, the guarantees could be given. The
French believed that the Belgians would receive a satisfactory response
from the British Government in relation to the guarantees, and would
then immediately invite the Allied Armies to march in.At
3:50 p.m. Daladier informed Gamelin that the Belgians had in principle
agreed to a French advance and asked whether he was ready to execute it.
Gamelin was very pleased, responding that due to heavy snowfall at the
Belgian-German border the Germans would be themselves be unable to
advance quickly, that a German invasion was therefore unlikely and that
this posed an ideal situation for a French entrenchment, adding "We must
now seize the occasion". Gamelin ordered that the Allied troops under
his control during the night of January 14-15 should make their approach march to cross the Franco-Belgian
border so that they would be ready to enter at a moment's notice.In
reaction to the Belgian alert concerning information received from Dutch
Military Attaché in Berlin Gijsbertus Sas’ the previous evening, Dutch
supreme commander Izaak H. Reijnders ordered that no leave was to be
granted to any soldier and to close the strategic bridges while fuses
should be placed within their explosive charges. In the afternoon the
population became worried by the radio broadcast about the leave
cancellation as it was feared that the Germans would take advantage of
the severe cold to cross the now frozen New Hollandic Water Line.At 8
a.m. Gamelin saw the British response to the guarantees: they were
offering a watered down version that was most unlikely to be acceptable
to the Belgians. At the same time he received messages from the
advancing forces that the Belgian border troops had stopped removing the
border obstacles and had not been ordered to allow them entrance into
their country. Three hours later Daladier, prompted by Gamelin who
insisted that the premier should make the Belgian government "face up to
its responsibilities", told Pol le Tellier, Belgium's Ambassador in
Paris, that unless the French had an invitation to enter Belgium by 8
p.m. that evening, they would not only withdraw all British and French
troops from the border but would refuse to carry out similar maneuvers
during further alerts until after the Germans had invaded.The
Belgian cabinet was unable to come to a positive decision about the
French invitation to have the Allies enter Belgium. The invasion that
had been predicted for the January 14 had failed to materialize. Heavy
snowfall continued on the eastern border, making an immediate German
attack unlikely. The King and his key advisor General Raoul van
Overstraeten, both staunch neutralists, hoped a diplomatic solution
could be reached to end the war and had no intention to involve their
country unless it were absolutely necessary. Around 12 p.m. Van
Overstraeten ordered the Belgian border troops to rebuild the barriers
and reminded them of the standing order to "repulse by force any foreign
unit of whatever nationality which violated Belgian territory". At 6
p.m. Daladier told a disappointed Gamelin he "could not take the
responsibility of authorizing us to penetrate preventively into
Belgium."With
the element of surprise lost due to the Mechelen Incident, the poor road
conditions due to snowfall, and the bleak weather prospects, General
Alfred Jodl advised Hitler to call off the invasion of the Low Countries
indefinitely.At
7 p.m. Hitler, in response to the Mechelen Incident, concurred with the
advice from the previous day of General Alfred Jodl, the Wehrmacht's
Chief of Operations, to call off the invasion of the Low Countries
indefinitely.The objective of WW2Timelines.com is to provide a day by day account of the events that lead up to and were part of the greatest conflict known to mankind. There are accounts for the activities of each particular day and timelines for subjects and personalities. It is the of this website intent to provide an unbiased account of the war. Analysis, effects caused by an event, or prior or subsequent pertinent events are presented separately and indicated as text that is italicized.
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