The Venlo incident was a covert German Sicherheitsdienst operation on 9 November 1939, in the course of which two British Secret Intelligence Service agents were captured five metres (16 ft) from the German border, on the outskirts of the Dutch town of Venlo.: 14–47 The incident was later used by the German Nazi 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, a neutral country, on 10 May 1940.