The Venlo incident, was a covert operation carried out by the German Nazi Party's (SD) on 9 November 1939, which resulted in the capture of two British Secret Intelligence Service agents from the German border, on the outskirts of the Dutch city of Venlo. The incident was later used by the German government to link Britain to Georg Elser's failed assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler at the Bürgerbräukeller in Munich, on 8 November 1939, and to help justify Germany's invasion of the Netherlands (then a neutral country) on 10 May 1940. Background After the British declaration of war on Nazi Germany on 3 September 1939, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was still interested in seeking a compromise peace with Germany before too much blood had been spilt. The British Government was well aware of the existence of widespread opposition among the leaders of the German Army. During the autumn of 1939, the German opposition was throwing out feelers to the British government. In October, Munich lawyer Josef Müller got in touch with the British through the Vatican with the connivance of Colonel Hans Oster. Theodor Kordt, the younger brother of Erich, pursued similar objectives in Bern. The Swedish industrialist Birger Dahlerus tried to establish peace through an early form of shuttle diplomacy, partly performed on Dutch soil. And in early October the Dutch ambassador in Ankara, Philips Christiaan Visser, was communicating peace proposals on the line of the Dahlerus proposals, made by Hitler's former deputy chancellor and then ambassador to Turkey, Franz von Papen, to the British ambassador Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen. All diplomatic efforts to avoid a Second World War in Europe during the days preceding the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 had come to nothing. So when a German refugee named Fischer succeeded in winning the confidence of the exiled Catholic leader, Karl Spiecker, a British intelligence informant in the Netherlands, the British SIS became interested in the information Fischer was offering. Covert meetings In early September 1939, a meeting was arranged between Fischer and the British SIS agent Captain Sigismund Payne Best. Best was an experienced British Army intelligence officer who worked under the cover of a businessman residing in The Hague with his Dutch wife. Subsequent meetings included Major Richard Henry Stevens, a less-experienced intelligence operative who was working covertly for the British SIS as the passport control officer in The Hague. To assist Best