According to a written note sent to the Dutch military attaché in Bern by John Henry Weidner and one of his top lieutenants, there were five good reasons for fugitives to use false German documents while en route to Spain or Switzerland.

1 – So many thousands of Dutch people actually did work for German organizations in France that it would be hard to verify whether the fugitive did or not. [Quite understandably, Dutch men subject to compulsory labor preferred to build fortifications in France for the Organization Todt than work in Germany itself.]

2 – The fugitive didn’t need to speak German or French because according to his papers he was a Dutchman in German service.

3 – The fugitive didn’t need to worry about document controls by Germans in the trains because the Germans had issued so many different papers for so many different organizations that low-ranking German agents couldn’t know all the details of each kind.

4 – Belgian and French authorities accepted any papers as soon as they saw a German stamp on them.

5 – Because the Germans had Dutchmen working all over France, the fugitive could travel throughout the country without raising suspicions by being blond or speaking French badly.

Information about the German work papers came from a Dutch woman who worked as a secretary at the Ortskommandatur [Commandant] in Paris who kept up on any changes to German stamps or forms. She got the information to her friend who worked as a secretary at the Dutch Red Cross in The Hague. And she told the man in the Netherlands who issued the false documents to the Engelandvaarders before they left home for Spain.

The memo was dated one day before the Normandy Landings, so the argument was moot before the military attaché received it.  With the Allies on the Continent Engelandvaarders didn’t need to get to England anymore; they just had to get through the front lines.