Johan Willem van Oorschot

Johan Willem van Oorschot (born January 29, 1875 in Den Helder , † December 15, 1952 in Nijmegen ) was a Dutch officer.

Life and activity

Van Ooorschot embarked on a military career as a young man. On October 1, 1919, he was transferred to the Dutch Ministry of Defense , where he headed the legal department from 1930 to 1939.

In 1939 van Oorschot, meanwhile with the rank of major general, was appointed head of the intelligence service of the Dutch army (GdIII). In this position he worked closely with the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS).

In November 1939 van Oorschot was involved in the Venlo incident : on this occasion, he hired two British SIS agents who had arranged to meet representatives of the German secret service in the border town of Venlo, one of his agents, Dirk Klop, as a liaison officer to the side. When the meeting of British and German agents escalated through an attack by SD people , with Klop fatally injured, the close relationship between the SIS and van Oorschot became public: the resulting exposure of the Dutch government - the accusation made by German authorities The episode apparently confirmed that the role of the Dutch intelligence service would show that the country was not really neutral, but was in fact on the side of the British in the war - prompted van Oorschot to resign. Hendrik Anton Cornelis Fabius was his successor as head of the intelligence service .

After the German occupation of the Netherlands, van Oorschot was evacuated to Great Britain on May 12, 1940 on a British plane.

literature

• Glenmore S. Trenear-Harvey: Historical Dictionary of Intelligence Failures , p. 238.
• Herbert Michaelis (Ed.): Causes and consequences: From the German collapse in 1918 and 1945 to the state reorganization of Germany in the present. Biographical register: L to Z , p. 532.