Mechelen incident

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Bf 108 B Typhoon of the Messerschmitt Foundation

The Mechelen incident describes the emergency landing of a German aircraft northeast of the Belgian city ​​of Maasmechelen (Vucht district) on January 10, 1940. As a result, parts of the German attack plans for the western campaign first became known to the Belgian general staff and later to other circles in the west.

Development and Consequences

On January 10, 1940, Adolf Hitler had set a new date for the offensive (" Fall Gelb "): It was to begin on January 17, 15 minutes before sunrise.

Major Helmut Reinberger, an Air Force officer who was responsible for supplies to the 7th Air Division , was supposed to bring the offensive-related orders from Munster to his staff in Cologne . The winter of 1939/40 was very cold and the road conditions were wintry. In order not to have to take the night train , he took the offer from the air base manager Major, contrary to orders - the Commander in Chief of the Air Force Hermann Göring had forbidden the transport of secret orders by plane. Erich Hoenmanns suggested to fly him to Cologne with a Messerschmitt Bf 108 from the Münster- Loddenheide air base . When visibility was poor, the Hoenmanns accidentally flew over the Rhine , which was otherwise used for orientation to Cologne, and flew westward until it reached the Maas . Then the engine cut out and forced an emergency landing in neutral Belgium. After landing, Reinberger revealed to the unsuspecting Hoenmanns the explosiveness of the papers. Both tried to burn the papers. The Belgian corporal Gerard Rubens, who had rushed to the landing site by bike, prevented this. The two Germans were brought to Maasmechelen for interrogation. Here Reinberger tried to put the papers in a burning coal stove; Commander Rodrique took them out again. These two incidents indicated that the papers were highly sensitive. From the German embassy in Brussels , Reinberger nevertheless informed the air force staff that he had torn up the documents "into unusable scraps the size of a palm."

Hitler made serious reproaches to Goering, Goering was worried and had experiments made with a similar amount of paper. The results, however, were so uncertain that - at his wife's suggestion - he consulted several clairvoyants who said that nothing was left of the documents. Hitler was not convinced of this and assumed that the plan had fallen into the hands of "the enemy". Initially, in a fit of rage, he considered bringing the attack forward to January 14, 1940 in order to forestall possible countermeasures; then he postponed the order to march one more time.

The Belgians, who could infer from the remains of the documents that an offensive was planned in disregard of Belgian and Dutch neutrality , passed their results on to the British , French and Dutch , where they initially met with suspicion.

As a result, the Belgian policy towards Germany changed, which in turn reconsidered the strategy of attack. Hitler finally adopted the sickle-cut plan developed by Erich von Manstein . This was based on a surprise attack through the Ardennes .

monument

A memorial (a small wall with a commemorative plaque) was inaugurated at the site of the event in the 1950s. The old memorial wall was demolished on December 6, 2005, and a pillar nearby was inaugurated on December 13, 2005.

  • Memorial in August 2017

  • Text of the plaque

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ rhein-magazin-duesseldorf.de ;
    chroniknet.de temperature chart .
  2. ↑ De eerste Duitse adelaar much te Vucht. Flor Vanloffeld ( ia802709.us.archive.org PDF).
  3. ^ John Toland : Adolf Hitler. Sieg im Westen (September 3, 1939 to June 25, 1940), Gondrom Verlag, Bindlach, 1989, p. 769.
  4. ↑ hss.ulb.uni-bonn.de and footnote 347.
  5. ^ John Toland : Adolf Hitler , Sieg im Westen (September 3, 1939 to June 25, 1940), Gondrom Verlag, Bindlach, 1989, p. 770.
  6. ^ Mechelen incident. In: Encyclopedia of National Socialism . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1997, p. 580.
  7. ↑ at the winter dike of the Meuse, at the end of the "Invasiestraat" (invasion road). A small procession of thanksgiving to the memorial takes place on June 10th every year.
  8. ↑ the sculpture "Water Event" by the artist Rik Blumen is an approx. 3.3 m high column. News from the local newspapers and the history of the Bf 108 are walled into it. A concrete foundation in the shape of the airplane was poured at the place of the emergency landing.

Coordinates: 50 ° 58 ′ 22.5 "  N , 5 ° 42 ′ 56.9"  E