he had incontrovertible proof that the British Secret Service was behind the Munich bombing and that two British agents had been arrested near the Dutch border. The next day, German newspapers carried the story. The front page of the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung had pictures of the conspirators named as Georg Elser, 'Kaptain Stevens' and 'Mr Best'. Aftermath The Nazi press reported that the Gestapo had tricked the British Secret Service into carrying on radio contact for 21 days after Best and Stevens were abducted using the radio transmitter given to them. Himmler is accredited to quipping, 'After a while it became boring to converse with such arrogant and foolish people'. The British Foreign Office believed that Himmler was involved in the secret Anglo-German contact of autumn 1939, and that the discussions, involving prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, and the foreign secretary, Lord Halifax, were bona fide'' peace negotiations. Historian Callum MacDonald shared this view. The damage inflicted on Britain's espionage network in Europe caused the new prime minister, Winston Churchill, to start his own spy and sabotage agency, the Special Operations Executive in 1940. The incident exposed the fact that the Chamberlain government was still seeking a deal with Germany while it was exhorting the nation to a supreme war effort. That outraged Churchill to the extent that he was against providing support to German opposition to Hitler for the rest of the war. Hitler used the incident to claim that the Netherlands had violated its own neutrality. The presence of Klop, a Dutch agent, whose signature on his personal papers was gratefully misused by the Germans, provided sufficient "proof of cooperation between British and Dutch secret services, and justify an invasion of The Netherlands by Germany in May, 1940". Naujocks was awarded the Iron Cross by Hitler the day after the kidnapping. Schellenberg gave evidence against other Nazis at the Nuremberg Trials. He died in 1952, at age 42. Fate of British agents After interrogation at the Gestapo Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse headquarters in Berlin, Best and Stevens were sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Both were held in isolation in the T-shaped building reserved for protected prisoners of the Gestapo. While at Sachsenhausen, Best claimed he corresponded by secret letters with another protected prisoner, Georg Elser. In January 1941, Stevens was moved from Sachsenhausen to the bunker at Dachau concentration camp, where he remained until evacuated with Best and other protected prisoners in