Hitler's Spy Chief (2 page)

At this moment our housekeeper noticed about five people getting up to leave the church. One of them denounced my father and he was summoned to the local police station the following day. Under intense questioning he bravely said they should ask Admiral Canaris, who was one of his parishioners, what he had said. They did go and ask the Admiral, who simply replied: ‘The Reverend Hayden would never say such a thing,' upon which all charges were dropped.

Dr. Heyden further recalled:

During the early 1940s, thirteen Jewish men who had married non-Jewish women and had been living in our Zehlendorf community were deported to different camps. Fortunately, their wives knew their whereabouts and these they communicated to my father, who compiled a list and handed it to Admiral Canaris. All of them were released, thanks to the combined efforts of Canaris and his staff. My father told us that the Admiral succeeded in organising their transport in a closed train compartment to Madrid, where they came under Franco's protection. Canaris used his connections to put up the thirteen in private homes in Madrid before some of them were flown to England. Most of these men joined the British military.

A friend of the author Dorothee Fliess described a similar scenario with a life-saving train ride from Berlin to Basel in Switzerland around 29 September 1942:

Some fourteen passengers were under great threat, and one lady among them was awaiting deportation to a concentration camp. Two of those present were half-Jewish girls who were schoolfriends of the Admiral's daughter, Brigitte. In a complex operation the Admiral persuaded the Gestapo that the passengers were part of an important group of informers for Nazi Germany.
2

Nor were these the only examples. ‘Numerous Jews or half-Jews were dressed in army uniforms on Canaris' instigation, carrying official military intelligence ID cards,'
3
wrote another eyewitness.

My attention was also drawn to Operation Aquilar (described by Winifried Meyer in her book Unternehmen Sieben) in which ‘after
tedious negotiations, six train transports of Jews numbering about five hundred were taken via Belgium and Holland into Spain and Portugal'. These were to work as ‘spies for Germany in Latin America.'

Most interesting of all was a message via a third party from some of the close friends of the last descendants of the Admiral: ‘I think that almost no writer – including no German – has managed better to recognise Canaris and his work in the Abwehr and in the military resistance as you did.'
4

For those who still believe Canaris was a ‘shadowy figure‘, these eyewitness comments and the pages which follow should leave the reader in no doubt as to the Admiral's convictions once the battle was joined.

Richard Bassett, Hampshire

1
3 November 2008

2
Dorothee Fliess: Geschichte einer Rettung, extract sent to author 14 April 2009

3
Letter S.H., 3 November 2008

4
Letter H.S., 18 September 2009

INTRODUCTION

Damned brave and … damned unlucky
.

SIR STEWART MENZIES ON CANARIS
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‘Sergeant Soltikow!' The official barked out the command as the heavy iron doors of the dark cell in the vaults of the Gestapo headquarters were thrown open. The prisoner stood up with the alertness that only imminent physical danger invests. A bucket and brush were deposited on the floor with a loud clatter. A few steps ahead of the Gestapo man, a dishevelled white-haired figure in a grey suit shuffled into the room. A brief glance of recognition passed across Soltikow's countenance. He had worked very closely with this old man for four years, since 1940. Admiral Wilhelm Canaris was no longer a prestigious naval officer in command of Hitler's intelligence machine. It was hard to recognize him now.

‘Sergeant Soltikow,' the command rang out, ‘order your fellow prisoner to clean this place up.' With that the door slammed shut and both prisoners fell to their knees.
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The events of 20 July 1944 – Stauffenberg's failed assassination attempt against Hitler – had not directly implicated Canaris but had renewed suspicion towards the admiral, long perceived to be politically unreliable. Arrest and interrogation had followed. Now in the late summer of 1944, Canaris was granted a brief respite from the proceedings against
him. Canaris, in any event, knew far too much to be allowed even the strictly controlled publicity of the People's Court. But the Gestapo were getting nowhere in pinning complicity with the July attack on the admiral. Perhaps the naval officer would betray himself in conversation with his old colleague, Count Soltikow. The two men had known each other for four years. Canaris had always considered Soltikow a ‘born intelligence agent'. As the two prisoners talked, the three Gestapo microphones in the cell were activated.

Canaris was under no illusions as to what his fate would be. Even if Allied bombing would soon kill the hated People's Court Judge, Freisler, the machinery of Nazi ‘justice' had the admiral well in its sights. ‘We will end up on the gallows', had after all, as Soltikow well knew, been one of his favourite phrases throughout the war. But if he appeared a broken man, the admiral remained as alert as ever. As Soltikow talked, Canaris pointed discreetly to the walls and made a circular movement with his finger and thumb around his ear.

Two conversations ensued, one loud and stiff for the benefit of the eavesdroppers, the other
sotto voce
and intimate for the benefit of each other.

Soltikow was a cousin of the resistance lawyer Dohnanyi, a principal conspirator in the Abwehr ring around Hitler. Canaris had made him responsible for gathering intelligence from the neutral diplomats
en poste
at Berlin, a role which Soltikow had performed with tremendous élan. Much of this intelligence had been of significant value to the Abwehr in gauging, amongst other things, the progress of the Americans in their nuclear weapons programme. Soltikow was a confirmed anti-Nazi and had a long record in the files of the Gestapo. Perhaps for that reason alone Canaris was prepared to be expansive. In any event, after a long formal discourse as to how the Gestapo must be mistaken to imagine either of them could be connected with the bomb plot, he articulated thoughts which, even if some senior members of the Abwehr had been prepared
to consider, they had never before openly ventilated. ‘Imagine, Count Soltikow,' the admiral whispered, ‘that the English contemplated breaking with the Russians and that Winston Churchill had said fight with us against the East, against the Bolsheviks. Imagine further fhat the first feelers in this direction came carefully via the Abwehr.'

‘If Germany had ever wanted to make peace with England it would have needed an organisation which London would have trusted.' Only the Abwehr, under Canaris, could have acted as such an ‘instrument', he continued, ‘precisely because Churchill knew he had nothing to fear from me and that I would never betray such a proposal to the Russians'.
3
At that stage, the irony of such comments, as British bombs rained down on Berlin over their heads, was not lost on either Soltikow or Canaris, but the older man knew that in any event history would now run its course. In a few months the war would be over; Canaris, within the sound of approaching Allied artillery, would be hanged.

The passing of the twentieth century has made the events of the 1939-45 war no less fascinating. Every month sees the publication of books that try to cast new light on the grand strategy, dramatic campaigns and increasingly, if still somewhat tentatively, the experiences of the vanquished Germans.

Despite these developments the name of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris is still surprisingly unknown. Notwithstanding a steady stream of books about Hitler's chief of intelligence up to the 1970s, the significance of Canaris' contribution to the Allied cause has seemingly not impinged on the consciousness of a later generation of historians.

Meanwhile, the generation which was in contact with Canaris both on the British and German side has all but passed away, and the name is now so obscure that a recently published and otherwise excellent study of Churchill's relationship with the intelligence world mentions Canaris only twice, and then in the most fleeting of ways.
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Churchill himself might have approved of this development, as he
was brilliantly adept at disguising intelligence and could at times even distance himself from any facts that might, even slightly, smudge the shining, seamless coat in which the story of our ‘finest hour' was dressed. In private, however, there is ample evidence that he fully acknowledged the debt England owed Canaris and that the admiral was indeed at the centre of a possible peace deal between Germany and Britain, not only in 1940 but also in 1943.

Shortly after the war, Churchill received Count Soltikow at Chartwell.
5
The discussion ranged over many topics before coming to rest on Hitler's failure to invade England in 1940. Soltikow asked if Churchill ever could be sure that Hitler would not pursue ‘Operation Sea Lion'. The statesman quietly got up, went to a bookshelf in the library and took down a copy of an early biography of Canaris. Referring to the Abwehr's significant and, from London's point of view, helpful over-estimate of the British divisions stationed in the Home Counties to repel the German invaders, Churchill left Soltikow with the impression that, as we shall see, Britain had benefited from Canaris' long-term pessimistic assessment of Nazi Germany's chances.

That Churchill might have been in touch with Canaris during the war is also underlined by his own chief of intelligence, ‘C', Sir Stewart Menzies, who after the war admitted that the possibility of a meeting with his ‘opposite number' had been discussed, though he would always say such a meeting had been ‘blocked by the Foreign Office' for fear of offending the Russians.
6

Menzies would have appreciated Canaris as they were both ‘terrific anti-Bolsheviks'. The incomparable Soviet section of the Abwehr was the best informed intelligence department in the world on the activities of Soviet Russia. Several times, even when Britain and Russia were allied, as we shall see, Menzies would gratefully receive Abwehr intelligence on the Soviet forces and the Abwehr would receive appreciations of Churchill's political intelligence from SIS.
7
In one case, Menzies – sensationally
– even supplied the Abwehr, via Finnish signals intelligence, with the latest wireless intercept equipment to compile a list of the Soviet order of battle days ahead of the German invasion.

Soviet Russia was by no means the only sphere for cooperation between the two services. It was with some relief that the admiral's remark to General Franco's intelligence chief – ‘ You can tell General Franco that no German soldier will ever set foot in England'
8
– was received by ‘C at the height of British fears of a German invasion of England. According to accounts in the Institut für Zeitgeschichte in Munich, this message was intended for export to London. Moreover, as would also have become apparent in 1940, Canaris was keen to help prevent Spain becoming embroiled in an attack on Gibraltar, the key to the Mediterranean and a potential dagger pointed at England's imperial jugular. On Churchill's orders, ‘C' had authorized no less than £13 million in gold bullion to be delivered to Franco and a group of his officers to ‘persuade them of the sweets of neutrality'.
9
The go-between was Juan March, a Mallorquin banker and old contact of Canaris from long before the war.
10

It was Canaris, however, who supplied General Franco with the key arguments he needed to outwit Hitler when the two men met at Hendaye, at the foot of the Pyrenees, for what Hitler thought would be a relatively straightforward negotiation on the merits of a joint Hispanic-German invasion of Gibraltar; after all, Germany had conquered most of Europe. But Hitler later famously described the event as comparable to having teeth pulled, so intractable and ‘surprisingly well briefed'
11
was the
Caudillo
in his unwillingness to concede the Germans any right of passage over Spanish territory. Years later, Goering would tell Ivone Kirkpatrick that Germany's ‘gravest mistake'
12
in the war had been Hitler's failure to seize Spain in 1940.

On New Year's Eve 1940, shortly after this event, Menzies had summoned the Abwehr double agent Dushko Popov, alias ‘Tricycle', to his study in the country. ‘I want to know much more about everyone who
is intimately connected with Canaris,' he said as they drank brandy in the book-lined room in front of a crackling but ‘miraculously steady' fire.
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Warming to his subject, ‘C' continued: ‘We know that Canaris, Dohnanyi and Oster are not dyed-in-the-wool Nazis. They are what might be termed loyal officers or patriotic Germans. In 1938 Churchill had a conversation with Canaris … eventually I may want to resume the conversation Churchill initiated.' As if to underline the unconventional nature of this request, Menzies continued: ‘I am handling this matter myself. All information you pick up is to come directly to me with no intermediary.' Popov, though a volatile Slav, clearly thought this encounter the climax of his career and was careful to get it right.

Such vignettes suggest that there was more than just the usual professional interest in acquiring whatever information was necessary in order to neutralize an enemy service and its leaders. Moreover, it begs the question as to how Churchill had been in contact with Canaris in the first place. In 1938, Churchill was still out of office, enjoying the coda of his wilderness years. It is not immediately apparent how he could have met even an intermediary of the head of German intelligence. Above all, the suggestion by Soltikow that London, at some later stage during the war, might have contemplated breaking with Moscow and allying herself with a non-Nazi Germany is also not easily explained, although it was nearly always at the forefront of Stalin's suspicious mind.
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