Mechelen Incident - Initial German Reaction

Initial German Reaction

Late in the evening of 10 January news of the incident reached Berlin via press reports about a crashed German plane. In the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, the German armed forces high command, it caused a general consternation, as it was soon deduced that Reinberger must have had papers revealing parts of the attack plan with him. On 11 January an enraged Hitler fired both the commander of 2. Luftflotte, General Hellmuth Felmy, and Felmy's chief of staff Colonel Josef Kammhuber. It was nevertheless decided to proceed with the attack as originally planned, while the Luftwaffe attaché in The Hague Lieutenant-General Ralph Wenninger, and the military attaché in Brussels, Colonel Friedrich-Carl Rabe von Pappenheim, would investigate whether the plan had been fatally compromised or not. On the 12th, the day of the attachés' first meeting with Reinberger and Hoenmanns, General Alfred Jodl, the Wehrmacht's (armed forces) Chief of Operations, gave Hitler a worrying assessment of what the Belgians might have learned from it. A note in Jodl's diary on 12 January summed up what he had said to Hitler: 'If the enemy is in possession of all the files, situation catastrophic!'. However, the Germans were initially falsely reassured by Belgian deception measures.