Fighting to Lose (51 page)

24. First CSDIC(WEA) on Rudolph, 15 Nov. 1945; Correspondence between War Room and CSDIC, 3, 19, and 21 Dec. 1945; and Final report on Rudolph, 2 Apr. 1946; PRO, KV2/266. Numerous documents are missing or withdrawn from this file, one as recently as the year 2000. Stephens would have been the commandant of CSDIC(WEA) at the time.

25. H.J. Giskes,
London Calling North Pole
(London: William Kimber, 1953), 88.

26. Pieter Dourlein,
Inside North Pole: A Secret Agent’s Story
(London: William Kimber, 1953).

27. Cimperman to FBI Director, 4 Oct. 1945, enclosing Camp 020 Interim Interrogation Report on Hugo Bleicher (Appendix B), 38, NARA, RG65, IWG Box 184, File 65-56185. The identical report is in NARA, RG319, Box 331, XE003464. There is no “final” report in either place.

28. Abwehr Major Richard Heinrich (HARLEQUIN), captured during 1942 the Anglo-American invasion of North Africa, told an MI6 interrogator that the Germans knew of the impending raid and prepared for it: Testimony of Richard Heinrich, 18 Apr. 1943, PRO KV2/268. When MI6 asked for information on the defences of St. Nazaire, the Germans operating the captured Interallie wireless set recognized the significance of the request and reported it to the Abwehr in Berlin: Erich Borchers,
Abwehr Contre Resistance
(Paris: Amiot-Dumont, 1950), 179. Mathilde Carré alludes to the wireless exchange with London in
I Was ‘The Cat’
(London: Souvenir Press, 1960), 139.

29. Both Carré and Borchers refer repeatedly to being in contact with British intelligence through “Room 55” of the War Office. This was MI5’s cover address: Curry,
Security Service
, 203, 390. In
Secret War: The Story of SOE, Britain’s Wartime Sabotage Organization
(London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1992), 37–40, Nigel West says it was MI6 that was in contact with Interallié without giving a source. I have gone with Curry, Borchers, and Carré.

30. Stephens,
Camp 020
, 92.

31. Peter Day and Andrew Alderson, “Top German’s Spy Blunders Helped Britain to Win War,”
Sunday Telegraph
, 23 Apr. 2000: n.p. The document on which this article was based was not found when this author looked for it (Jan. 2012) in PRO, KV2/85–87. Day and Alderson wrote the article following the release of one of the earliest batches of MI5 files, so perhaps it was subsequently withdrawn.

32. Stephens,
Camp 020
, 364. Wichmann stuck to his story that he knew little of the day-to-day operation of Ast Hamburg and that what he had known he had forgotten. The only spy he could remember that Hamburg had on file was DER KLEINER — Arthur Owens, also known as SNOW to the British. Otherwise, the Camp 020 interrogators got nothing from him: PRO, KV2/103. One would have thought Schmidt would have made an impression.

33. “The End of the German Intelligence Service,”
Interim: British Army of the Rhine Intelligence Review
8 (24 Sep. 1945) DHH, 581.009(D2). This publication was classified SECRET and was primarily for the edification of British army intelligence officers.

1. Office of Chief of Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality: Interrogation Division, “Interrogation of General Erwin Lahousen,” comprising Canaris’s Secret Organization (Parts I and II), and Sidelights on the Development of the 20th of July (III), Sep. 1945, PRO, KV2/173. According to a covering letter, the reports were prepared by the Third U.S. Army Interrogation Center.

2. For details of Lahousen’s recruitment, see K.H. Abshagen,
Canaris
(London: Hutchinson, 1956), 87–88. Abshagan was Lahousen’s trusted deputy and had direct knowledge and experience of his anti-Nazi activities. The MI5 file on him, however, contains information only on his pre-war career as a journalist: PRO, KV2/390. The description of the morning meetings of the Abwehr department heads is from Affidavit of Leopold Buerkner, Nuremberg Trials, 22 Jan. 1946,
www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/Buerkner.htm
.

3. Abshagan,
Canaris
, 79. He says it was a print of a “demon,” which would be the impression of someone unfamiliar with Japanese woodblock art of the Edo period.

4. V/48/F8 to V.F., 15 Dec. 1945, with attached reports of Lahousen, PRO, KV2/173. The reference to Czechoslovakia is from the Lahousen interrogation report (I,1). All subsequent disclosures by Lahousen described in text are from this report unless otherwise noted.

5. “Lahousen,” I, 3. The words in parenthesis correct the grammar of the translation.

6. “Lahousen,” III, 1. He specifies 80 Tirpitzufer here. See also, Abshagan,
Canaris
, 161–2. The assertion that this plot never existed in Heinz Höhne,
Canaris
(New York: Doubleday, 1979), 377, is negated by Lahousan’s testimony. Lahousen used the word
Reichsicherheitshauptamt
for Nazi Security Service but the Nazi secret services had not yet been unified. He meant
Sicherheitsdienst.

7. “Lahousen,” II, 11. The underlined words are as in the document. Lahousen merges the 1941 and 1942/43 missions to Spain that Canaris undertook for Hitler, the first specifically about Gibraltar and the second especially about allowing German troops to cross into Spanish territory. See also, Abshagen,
Canaris
, 212–13. According to the German consul-general in Barcelona at the time, Spanish soldiers would have received a German army crossing into Spain “with open arms.” Kempner to Hoover, 13 Jun. 1946 with attached “treatise” of Hans Kroll, NARA, RG65,IWG Box 153, 65-37193. For an examination of this subject, see Leon Papeleux,
L’Admiral Canaris entre Franco et Hitler
(Tournai, Belgium: Casterman, 1977). Note that Lahousen’s interrogation was not available to him.

8. “Lahousen,” III, 12, 18. The wording in the document is “… and used these ‘confidants’ for active counter-activity.” In the original German, the word was likely
Vertrauensmann
. The use of Jewish “V men” is also reported in Abshagan,
Canaris
, 101, who notes that it was made possible because the identity of persons recruited for the Abwehr had to be kept secret and so were exempt from screening by the Gestapo. The FBI and MI5/MI6 were aware that some of the spies they had captured were Jewish but this was unlikely to have been known by the U.S. Army intelligence officers who first interrogated Lahousen.

9. “Lahousen,” III, 18. Matzky was appointed by General Franz Halder, Chief of the General Staff, who was a dedicated opponent of Hitler and already had been involved in several plans to overthrow the regime.

10. He was then chairman of the CI-War Room, the Allied agency then responsible for distributing the reports from the various interrogation centres.

11. “Lahousen,” II, 5; C.J. Masterman,
The Double-Cross System
(New Haven, CT; London: Yale University Press, 1972), 122–23, 131–32; and Curry,
Security Service
, 249. See also, F.H. Hinsley and C.A.G. Simkins,
British Intelligence in the Second World War
, Vol. IV,
Security and Counter-Intelligence
(London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office Books, 1990); and Frank Owen,
The Eddie Chapman Story
(New York: Julian Messner, 1954). There have been several books since 2000 in the same vein. Deceiving British Intelligence for decades as to his importance must have been a career high for the con man.

12. OSS X-2, V/48/F8 to VF, 15 Dec. 1945, PRO, KV2/173, Doc. 2a. This document is marked for the WR-CI, the Counter-Espionage War Room, which means it and the attached reports were seen by Colonel Robertson.

13. “Lahousen,” III, 19, PRO, KV2/173 (the typos and capitalizations are as in text). The index of the MI5 file on Canaris lists Helen Alexandre Theotoky in connection with Canaris in 1937 (date partially obscured) with mention of two further reports from her in 1941 — on 16 Jul. 1941 and 25 Oct. 1941. A note on the file ( PRO, KV3/8) indicates the actual documents were removed in 1960.

14. F.S. Penny to Director [of FBI], with attachment, 25 Jun. 1944, NARA, IWG Box 210, 65-37193-233.

15. “It appears unlikely that it will ever be possible to determine the degree to which Canaris was merely providing a refuge for kindred spirits or was consciously building an apparatus that in due time could be directed against the regime”: Harold Deutsch,
The Conspiracy Against Hitler in the Twilight War
(Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1968), 62. This is the usual assessment of Canaris’s role in the opposition against Hitler. In his public statements afterwards, Lahousen downplayed or avoided disclosing much of what he revealed at his original interrogation.

1. For an excellent overview of the tension between the SA, the SS, and the army, see Robert J. O’Neill,
The German Army and the Nazi Party
(London: Corgi Books, 1968), passim.

2. For an excellent description of how Hitler used a splintered Parliament to obtain absolute power, see William L. Shirer,
The Rise and the Fall of the Third Reich
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960), 150–200.

3. Jacques Delarue,
Histoire de la Gestapo
(Paris: Fayard, 1962), 188. This is my translation of his French translation of the original German. The description of the Roehm killings is mainly from this book.

4. Ibid., 206.

5. Nicholas Reynolds,
Treason Was No Crime: Ludwig Beck
(London: William Kimber, 1976), 52–61.

6. Conversation with Admiral Konrad Patzig, ONI Intelligence Report, 23 Feb. 1946, NARA, RG65, IWG Box 177, 66-56830. Patzig was Canaris’s immediate predecessor as head of the Abwehr, 1932–34. He was ousted because of his resistance to takeover by the SS.

7. Walter Schellenberg,
The
Labryinth: Memoirs of Walter Schellenberg
(New York: Harper & Bros., 1954), 155. Admiral Raeder would have been aware of this relationship when he nominated Canaris.

8. For two excellent contemporary expositions of Hitler’s political tactics, see Hjalmar Schacht,
Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal
, Vol. VIII, 3 May 1946–15 May 1946 (Nuremberg: International Military Tribunal,1948), n.p (testimony also online by name and date); and Franz von Papen,
Memoirs
(New York: E.P. Dutton & Company, 1955).

9. Franz Liedig, “German Intelligence Branch and 20 July,” reprinted in
Interim: British Army of the Rhine Intelligence Review
14 (Feb. 1946). DHH 581.009(2).The early date of this document and the fact that Liedig had close ties to Canaris that predated him being asked to join the Abwehr, give a great deal of weight to this testimony. It contradicts the assertion that Canaris was “under the führer’s spell” until 1937 (Höhne,
Canaris
, 211–18). Of course he had to dissemble and pretend to be an acolyte of the Nazis. How could he do otherwise? His successor, Georg Hansen, did exactly the same thing. Höhne’s evidence that he was actually in sympathy with Hitler is not credible.

10. His predecessor, Admiral Konrad Patzig, recalled talking to Canaris toward the end of 1937, when he expressed the opinion that “all of the criminals were on the best route to bring Germany to her knees.” When asked why he did not resign and return to the navy, Canaris replied that then the SS would take over the Abwehr and there would be nothing stopping them. He had resolved to “persevere to the bitter end”: Patzig, ONI Intelligence Report, 23 Feb. 1946, NARA, RG65, IWG Box 177, 66-56830.

11. The full titles are:
Nachrichtendienst, Presse und Volkstimmung
(Berlin: Mittler, 1920) and
Geheime Machte, Internationale Spionage und ihre Bekampfung im Weltkrieg and Heute
(Leipzig: K.F. Koeler, 1925). The latter was published initially in English as
The German Secret Service
(London: Stanley Paul, 1924). All are scarce, although
Geheime Macht
has been reprinted.

12. In social psychology today, it is called “enemy imaging.” It is characterized by distorted representations of an adversary.

13. William Seltzer, “Population Statistics, the Holocaust, and the Nuremberg Trials,”
Population and Development Review
24, No. 3 (September 1998).