Mechelen Incident - Belgian Reaction

Belgian Reaction

During 10 January the Belgians still doubted the authenticity of the documents, that had been quickly translated by the Deuxième Section (military intelligence) of the general staff in Brussels. Most had indeed been badly damaged by Reinberger's consecutive attempts to burn them, but the general outlines of an attack against Belgium and The Netherlands were clear from the remaining passages, although the date of the attack was not mentioned and most of the text was concerned with specific instructions to 7. Flieger-Division only. As their content conformed to earlier warnings from the Italian Count Galeazzo Ciano about a German attack to take place around 15 January, on 11 January it was concluded by General Raoul van Overstraeten that the information was basically correct. That afternoon King Leopold III of Belgium decided to inform his own Minister of Defence, General Henri Denis and the French supreme commander, Maurice Gamelin. At 17:15 the French liaison officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Hautcoeur, was given a two-page abstract of the contents, albeit without any explanation of how the information had been obtained. Lord Gort, the commander of the British Expeditionary Force, was also warned and Leopold personally telephoned the Dutch Princess Juliana and the Grand Duchess of Luxembourg Charlotte telling the former: "Be careful, the weather is dangerous" and the latter: "Beware of the flu", both predetermined code phrases indicating the Belgians considered a German attack to be imminent.