Richard Henry Stevens

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Major Richard Henry Stevens (1939)

Richard Henry Stevens ( April 9, 1893 , † February 12, 1967 ) was a major in the British Army and from 1939 head of the Passport Control Office (PCO) of the British Secret Intelligence Service in the Netherlands . His name is closely linked to the Venlo incident in 1939.

In 1939 Stevens came from India, where he was an intelligence officer. He spoke excellent German, French and Russian. Greek was his second mother tongue and he was also proficient in Arabic, Hindustan and Malay. He had no specific training or experience for the secret service in Europe.

Stevens was kidnapped in November 1939 in the Venlo incident together with Captain Sigismund Payne Best to Germany. There he revealed vital secrets about the Secret Intelligence Service . The German Nazi propaganda presented Best and Stevens as alleged masterminds of Georg Elser's citizen brew attack. After more than five years of imprisonment as special prisoners in Sachsenhausen and Dachau concentration camps , Stevens and Best were released in April 1945. Stevens left the army as Lieutenant Colonel, to whom he had been promoted while in captivity. He worked as a translator, including between 1951 and 1952 for NATO in Paris and London. Stevens died of cancer in 1967.

literature

  • Best, Sigismund Payne : The Venlo Incident , London 1950
  • Brown, Anthony Cave: Bodyguard of Lies , New York 1975 (German: The invisible front, Munich 1976)
  • Deac, Wil: The Venlo Sting , World War II Magazine 1/1997, New York 1997
  • Deacon, Richard / West, Nigel: Spy! , London 1980
  • Enquêtecommissie Regeringsbeleid 1940–1945 , 8 parts 1949–56, part 2 a, b, c, The Hague 1949
  • Graaff, Bob de: The Venlo Incident , World War Investigator 13/1990, London 1990
  • Kessler, Leo: Betrayal at Venlo , London 1991
  • Meyjes, HC Posthumus: De Enquêtecommissie is van oordeel - een samenvatting van het parlementaire onderzoek naar het regeringsbeleid in de oorloogsjaren , Arnhem / Amsterdam 1958
  • Nater, Johan P .: Het Venlo incident , Rotterdam 1984
  • Peis, Günter : The Man Who Started The War , London 1960
  • Schellenberg, Walter: The Schellenberg Memoirs , London 1956 (German: Aufnehmer, München 1979)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peter Koblank: The Venlo incident , online edition Mythos Elser 2006
personal data
SURNAME Stevens, Richard Henry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Major in the British Army and from 1939 head of the Passport Control Office (PCO) of the British Secret Intelligence Service in the Netherlands
DATE OF BIRTH April 9, 1893
DATE OF DEATH February 12, 1967