Hitler's Spy Chief (24 page)

Nor was the Abwehr absent from those traditional recruiting grounds, the diplomatic and military circuits. From March 1938 until May 1941, Canaris had the services of a Sandhurst graduate, the Iraqi officer Mahomet Salman, who on account of his background and training had some access to senior British officers and was highly informed about developments in British armour. Captain Salman was studying armoured warfare at Sandhurst and other British camps with the full cooperation of the British army.
31
Salman not only had access to highly classified technical information through being attached to the top secret Mechanised Warfare Experimental Establishment, he was in constant social contact with senior British officers.

Moreover, he communicated his information to the Abwehr through the diplomatic bag in the guise of letters addressed to his brother Major General Ahmed Salman, another Abwehr agent and commander of the Iraqi air force. As the Abwehr had a resident officer in Baghdad, it was not too difficult to get the information back to the Tirpitzufer. Thanks to this information, the German panzer command was fully informed about the capabilities of British tanks and such information may have played a role in the rout of Anglo–French forces in the spring of 1940. Later, Field Marshal Rommel would also benefit from Salman's classified reports during his tank battles with the British.

Another English windfall for Canaris was Tyler Kent, a cipher clerk in the American embassy who made copies of Churchill's and Roosevelt's correspondence via the State Department's ‘grey code' from October 1939. This correspondence was highly secret, as it included details of the ‘destroyers for bases' deal whereby Churchill would offer 99 year leases on several British bases in return for 50 US navy destroyers. The telegrams also gave insights into Churchill's strategic concerns and his desires to get the US Navy to help the Royal Navy deal with German surface raiders. Kent showed
some fifty of these telegrams to an attractive Russian woman called Anna Wolkoff who passed them onto the Abwehr via the Italian embassy in London.

These cables gave Canaris every detail of the strength and disposition of British forces in France as well as thoughts on future military strategy, Anglo-American cooperation and statistics of American aid. Not without reason could it be said, ‘it was almost as if the Abwehr had an agent sitting in the War Cabinet.' By the time Kent was rumbled in May 1940, British and French forces had been routed in France and there was barely a week to go before the British Expeditionary Force was evacuated from Dunkirk.

Within a few months of Britain declaring war with Germany, the Abwehr had links to many important parts of the British establishment, assisted not least by the many English right wing organisations such as the Link and the Right Club, and unwittingly by a clutch of sincere, well-meaning pro-German Tory peers who were in close contact with Halifax and represented a highly influential part of the Conservative party (Brocket, Darnley, Londonderry, Buccleuch, etc.) and powerful ‘money interests'.
32

In addition to this intelligence network permeating the highest levels of British society, it had scored notable successes in sensitive areas. It was better informed on the progress of US–British negotiations than most of the British government. It was privy to top secret technology being developed in Britain, including radar, and was fully apprised of every political, military and strategic move London was taking with regard to getting US support. It had even shown itself capable of such striking acts of sabotage as sinking Royal naval ships in the most secure of British naval ports and blowing up well-guarded munition factories. Its web of agents had truly, at this critical moment in England's fortunes, fought its opponents to a standstill. Yet this was the same organisation which the distinguished historian, the late Hugh Trevor-Roper, would acidly describe as ‘incontestably inefficient'.
33

As if this was not enough, there was a further debacle for the British at
Venlo in Holland when two British intelligence operatives, Best and Stevens, one an MI6 officer, the other a businessman, the latter monocled and trench-coated in the best
Thirty-Nine Steps
style, were kidnapped by the SD under the command of Walter Schellenberg.

Best and Stevens had been in contact through SD agents with what they believed were influential German circles planning a move against Hitler. Richard Protze was monitoring the two Englishmen for the Abwehr and supposedly watching their every move. However, when on 9 November the curious figure of Georg Elser,
*
a watchmaker, made an attempt on Hitler's life with a home-made bomb in the Munich Brauhaus, the SS saw an easy option for linking the attack with the British by capturing Best and the philo-German Stevens.

Canaris, according to contemporary accounts, was not kept informed of this plot by the SD and mischievously asked Protze the following day, after he had heard the news: ‘What are your friends Stevens and Best up to at the moment?' When Protze replied that they were still ‘under constant surveillance in Holland,' Canaris looked daggers and angrily told Protze that they were under interrogation in the SD offices.

The SD had hijacked a straightforward Abwehr surveillance operation and used it to try to tempt from the British officers the names of German conspirators. Best, who spoke German well and had many friends among the German aristocracy, had misgivings about the calibre of the men he was dealing with and tried to warn Stewart Menzies, then SIS deputy chief who was overseeing the operation, but he was overruled by the serving intelligence officer, Stevens, who understandably monopolised the lines of communication to SIS headquarters in Broadway.

The Abwehr, which had already suffered the embarrassment of the German ambasssador's secretary, von Putlitz, defecting to the British after a tip-off from his ambassador, was wary of Dutch operations. Von Putlitz
was successfully blackmailed by SIS, on account of his homosexual tendencies, into spying on his ambassador who nevertheless, on account of Putlitz's old family lineage, then as now a bond in the German service, gave the errant attaché a chance to escape. When travelling together in the ambassadorial car he languidly observed to Putlitz: ‘I'm told that there is a spy in my office.' Putlitz disappeared in twenty-four hours.

Venlo was powerful proof – if Canaris needed it – that the SD was still trying to occupy Abwehr territory: ‘This
schweinerei
is Heydrich's doing!' he shouted. It also made him realise that Schellenberg was an up and coming man, with designs on the Abwehr.

‘He left us in no doubt that Schellenberg was a person we should be wary of having contacts with,' one of Canaris' secretaries noted.
34

Whatever the machinations behind Venlo, Best and Stevens were a huge propaganda coup for the Germans and another nail in the British intelligence coffin. There is little doubt that under interrogation, until the end of the war, despite their best efforts, they supplied considerable titbits of useful material on the British intelligence community. Schellenberg's notorious list of English citizens to be rounded up in the event of a British invasion may have been partly compiled with information gleaned from these two. Not for nothing would a well-connected politician of those times observe: ‘You cannot know what pessimism is unless you had been through 1940.'

Hand in glove with this professional penetration of the UK, the Abwehr had already begun operating behind Polish lines. Deploying members of the Brandenburg division commando units assigned to Abwehr II, preparations had been made to seize key bridges and installations. Though Poland had mobilised promptly, her forces were no match for the overwhelming strength of Guderian's armour and the Luftwaffe. Not that the campaign was uncontested. The Poles fought well and among later battle-hardened German troops the campaign was seen as short but tough.
35

Canaris arrived in Silesia on 12 September to hear first-hand reports of the
fighting from Keitel. It was on this occasion that he remonstrated with Keitel on the question of the systematic liquidation of the Polish intelligentsia, Jews and Catholic priests. Again a fragment of the diary has come to us via Lahousen: ‘I told Keitel I was aware of extensive executions planned in Poland and that the nobility and clergy particularly were to be exterminated. The Wehrmacht would in the final reckoning be held responsible for these atrocities carried out under their very noses.' Keitel was unmoved.

Canaris found the Polish experience deeply unsettling. Von Hassell, the diplomat and former ambassador in Rome, who saw him after he returned noted in his diary: ‘Canaris has come back from Poland completely broken after he had seen the results of our brutal conduct of the war.'
36

Canaris, however, had further reasons for his distress. The Abwehr was being forced to play a role in the roundups by the SD. The war had pushed the two organisations closer together. The military field police who were under Abwehr command worked hand in glove with the SD to winkle out those on Heydrich's list, and while it is clear that they did not participate, on the whole, in mass executions they were undoubtedly prepared to play a strong supporting role. Lahousen noted that a new directive was added to those Canaris had issued earlier concerning the methods to be deployed in dealing with operations involving the SD: ‘Passive conduct of Abwehr II work with apparent great show of activity,' he noted was of especial relevance now. This would still not prevent the Abwehr working hand in glove with the SD on Polish security issues.

In several cases, however, the Abwehr would actively try to undermine Gestapo activity in Poland. Paul Metternich intervened with Canaris to save a relative who was in the Polish underground. The Abwehr told the man the SD were closing in on him but the relative, a patriotic Pole, refused to take the Abwehr's offer of escape and was rounded up and executed.
37

Canaris began to compile a file on the executions, even losing his temper with his officers if they failed to bring back exact numbers and
details.
38
It was the details of these atrocities that would lead Canaris and Oster to have many an emotional outburst over the need to remove Hitler, by violence if necessary. Canaris was a changed man. Whereas before Oster had been the motor of German military conspiracy against Hitler, the generals now noticed that Canaris was taking more and more of a leading role. ‘He was whipping the whole thing up these days,' noted Halder.
39

Indeed, Canaris went from general to general with the simple message: ‘Hitler must be got rid of.' As before the war, many of the generals sympathised but, significantly, not all. Paulus, for example, later to be promoted Field Marshal on the eve of his surrender at Stalingrad, replied to Canaris: ‘The special operations, executions and roundups are absolutely necessary to deal with the military exigencies of the Polish campaign.' It was also noticeable that younger officers, who had been trained entirely during the Nazi period, were far less susceptible to the qualms of the older officers.

Canaris worked feverishly to intervene where he could to save lives. On his return to Berlin he began to arrange help for several beleaguered Poles, including – at the request of the US consul general in Berlin – a prominent Jewish rabbi of Warsaw. He enlisted everyone he could to help, including foreign military attachés such as the Spaniard, Juan Luis Rocamora.

One day in September, Canaris went to the Spanish Embassy and told Rocamora that he was needed to help evacuate half a dozen refugees from close to the Polish front. Canaris knew that all the military attachés
en poste
in Berlin were going to be invited to Poland the following week. Rocamora was to be with two cars at a particular hour at a particular place, where he would find five people with false papers to take back to Berlin. He was then to hide them in his flat. Two other attachés had been asked but had baulked. Rocamora, characteristically, agreed immediately. Canaris never told him who the refugees were but that they ‘belonged to the elite of the country' and that one was very ill. ‘The Gestapo were not to get their hands on them.'
40

Another person Canaris was to smuggle out was to have more lasting consequences for the Abwehr. Canaris was in Poznan (Posen) when a pale and distressed woman he had known from Berlin days before the war was presented to him. Madame Szymanska had been married to the Polish military attaché, Colonel Szymanski, who had grown up speaking German in Posen, had trained in the Imperial German army before the war and was a well-known and philo-German figure on the pre-war Berlin diplomatic circuit. He was well-known to the British attachés, including Captain Troubridge, who met him several times, even learning during their last meeting finally how to spell the Pole's name correctly.

Madame Szymanska had mentioned Canaris' name while being interrogated and the effect had worked like a magic charm. She later wrote: ‘I noticed that the German officer found it hard to conceal his astonishment when I uttered this name. His whole tone and bearing altered. He told me that he could not give me a pass to go westwards but he ordered a military vehicle to take me on its way to Poznan.'
41

When she arrived at Poznan, she was quickly taken to a carriage of a train under Abwehr command. Canaris gave word for her to be invited into his railway carriage but she, a proud Pole, remarked to one of the officers: ‘Can he not come here to me to identify me?' The astonished junior officer gently replied: ‘It will be difficult for him to talk to you among all these people.'

Chivalry and gallantry were second nature to anyone of Canaris' training. He comforted Madame Szymanska who, like any Pole in such a situation, was keen to know how her country's army had fought. At the back of his mind, however, was an idea whereby he could not only save this Polish lady but also use her to open up another line of communication with London at a time when so many of the channels established before the war were now being closed.