On the morning of January 10, 1940, the Oberkommando des Heer and Hitler were firmly intent on ending the non-warlike war, also known as the "phony or strange war", by starting the offensive on January 17. The invasion plans, approved by the German High Command with Hitler, envisaged the main force passing through Belgium and the Netherlands. These plans had already caused much controversy, with Lieutenant General Erich von Manstein calling it, in his memoirs, the "Old Recipe", surprised that his generation was unable to produce something new. For his reaction, he was transferred to the 38th Army Corps, headquartered in Stettin, Pomerania, away from the operational zone. Nevertheless, he devised a new plan on his own, which would have gone unheard if not for the extraordinary coincidence of events that followed. That same morning of the 10th at 11:40, a liaison officer at an air squadron, Major Helmut Reinberger, accepted a ride from a pilot friend to Cologne, carrying with him a bundle of laundry and a leather bag containing the invasion plans. Unfortunately for him, due to bad weather, the plane was forced to make an emergency landing in Belgium. Belgian soldiers found the Major desperately trying to burn the documents he possessed behind a bush. The news reached command and angered Hitler. After consulting with Jodl and Göring, initially, it was thought to proceed with the established plans since the enemy would not have time to prepare. With increasing uncertainty on the 12th, Jodl admitted that "if the enemy has all the documents, the situation is catastrophic". Furthermore, bad weather added to Hitler's decision to postpone the operation. It was then reported that Belgium and the Netherlands were starting a partial mobilization, which definitively convinced Hitler to order a reworking of the plan, giving von Manstein the opportunity to bring to the Führer's attention what he had planned, a plan that would later take shape in what went down in history as the Third Campaign of France.