Richard Henry Stevens (9 April 1893 – 12 February 1967) was a
major
Major most commonly refers to:
* Major (rank), a military rank
* Academic major, an academic discipline to which an undergraduate student formally commits
* People named Major, including given names, surnames, nicknames
* Major and minor in musi ...
in the
British Indian Army
The Indian Army was the force of British Raj, British India, until Indian Independence Act 1947, national independence in 1947. Formed in 1895 by uniting the three Presidency armies, it was responsible for the defence of both British India and ...
and from 1939 Head of the Passport Control Office (PCO) of the British
Secret Intelligence Service
The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 (MI numbers, Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of Human i ...
in the
Netherlands
, Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...
. His name is closely associated with the
Venlo Incident in 1939.
Richard Henry Stevens
', www.venlo-zwischenfall.de
Background and earlier life
Stevens mastered
Arabic
Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...
,
Hindustani, and
Malay, and until 1939 worked as an intelligence officer in India. That year he was transferred to Europe and put in charge of the SIS station in
The Hague
The Hague ( ) is the capital city of the South Holland province of the Netherlands. With a population of over half a million, it is the third-largest city in the Netherlands. Situated on the west coast facing the North Sea, The Hague is the c ...
.
[D. Cameron Watt, ‘ Best, Sigismund Payne (1885–1978)’, ]Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
The ''Dictionary of National Biography'' (''DNB'') is a standard work of reference on notable figures from History of the British Isles, British history, published since 1885. The updated ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (''ODNB'') ...
, Oxford University Press, 2004 His second language was Greek and he also spoke excellent German, French and Russian but he had no specific training or experience of intelligence gathering in Europe.
Abduction at the Venlo Incident
In November 1939 he was abducted to Germany in the
Venlo Incident with Captain
Sigismund Payne Best. It has been suggested that he may then have revealed vital secrets about the Secret Intelligence Service under interrogation. In any event, the inexperienced Stevens was carrying on his person a plain-text list of SIS agents when he was abducted.
The two officers were imprisoned for over five years in
Sachsenhausen and
Dachau
Dachau (, ; , ; ) was one of the first concentration camps built by Nazi Germany and the longest-running one, opening on 22 March 1933. The camp was initially intended to intern Hitler's political opponents, which consisted of communists, s ...
concentration camps before their release in April 1945. Nazi propaganda portrayed Best and Stevens as the alleged masterminds of the
Beer Hall
A beer hall or beer palace () refers to a type of establishment that gained significant popularity in the 19th century, particularly across Central Europe. These venues were pivotal to the social and cultural life of cities renowned for their bre ...
attempt to assassinate
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...
by
Georg Elser
Johann Georg Elser (; 4 January 1903 – 9 April 1945) was a German carpenter who planned and carried out an elaborate assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler and other high-ranking Nazi leaders on 8 November 1939 at the Bürgerbräukeller ...
.
Later life
Stevens retired from the Indian army as a
lieutenant-colonel on the 26 February 1946, having been promoted to that rank during his captivity.
[London Gazette 12 April 1946, page 1864] He then worked as a translator at
NATO
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO ; , OTAN), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental organization, intergovernmental Transnationalism, transnational military alliance of 32 Member states of NATO, member s ...
in Paris and London between 1951 and 1952. He died of cancer in 1967.
See also
*
Sigismund Payne Best#Second World War intelligence work
Notes
References
*Best, Sigismund Payne : ''The Venlo Incident'', London 1950
*Brown, Anthony Cave: ''Bodyguard of Lies'', New York 1975 (Deutsch: ''Die unsichtbare Front'', München 1976) (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
*Haag 1949 ''Enquêtecommissie Regeringsbeleid 1940-1945'', 8 parts of 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
*Nater, Johan P.: ''Het Venlo incident'', Rotterdam 1984
*Peis, Günter : ''The Man Who Started The War'', London 1960
*Posthumus Meyjes, Herman C.: ''De Enquêtecommissie is van oordeel - een Samenvatting van het onderzoek naar het parlementaire de regeringsbeleid in oorloogsjaren'', Arnhem / Amsterdam 1958
*Schellenberg, Walter: ''The Schellenberg Memoirs'', London 1956 (German Records, Munich 1979)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stevens, Richard, Henry
1893 births
1967 deaths
World War II espionage
MI6 personnel
British Indian Army officers
Sachsenhausen concentration camp survivors
Dachau concentration camp survivors
British World War II prisoners of war
World War II prisoners of war held by Germany
Indian Army personnel of World War I
Indian Army personnel of World War II