Wilhelm Canaris

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Wilhelm Canaris

Wilhelm Franz Canaris (January 1, 1887 – April 9, 1945) was a German admiral and head of the Abwehr, the German military intelligence service, from 1935 to 1944.

Early life and World War I

Canaris was born in Aplerbeck, near Dortmund, in Westphalia, the son of wealthy industrialist Carl Canaris and his wife Auguste (née Popp). Until 1938 Canaris believed that his family was related to the Greek admiral, freedom fighter and politician Constantine Kanaris, which influenced his decision to join the Navy. While on a visit to Corfu he was given a portrait of the Greek hero, which he always kept in his office. In 1938, however, research showed that his family was of North Italian descent, originally called Canarisi, and had lived in Germany since the 17th century. His grandfather had converted from Catholicism to Lutheranism.

In 1905, aged seventeen, Canaris joined the German Imperial Navy and by the outbreak of World War I had become an officer serving on board the SMS Dresden as intelligence officer. This cruiser was the only one that managed to evade the British Fleet for a prolonged period during the Battle of the Falkland Islands in December 1914, largely due to his excellent deception tactics. The Dresden was caught later in Camberland Bay, where she was scuttled by her crew to prevent her capture. Most of them became prisoners in Chile in March 1915, but Canaris escaped in August 1915, using his perfect fluent Spanish and with the aid of some German merchants returned to Germany.

He was then given intelligence work and sent to Spain, where he survived a British assassination attempt. Returning to active service, he ended the war as a celebrated U-boat commander in the Mediterranean, credited with eighteen sinkings. By that time he was an enemy on the top of the list of the MI6 secret service in England. He spoke English fluently (as well as another four foreign languages) and as a traditional naval officer Canaris respected the British Navy, despite the rivalry of the two nations.

In 1919 Canaris married Erika Waag, also the child of an industrialist. They had two daughters.

Interwar years

Canaris remained in the military after the war, first as a member of the Freikorps and then as part of the Reichsmarine. He was promoted rapidly, becoming a Captain in 1931, the Executive Officer of the cruiser Berlin and then the Commanding Officer of the battleship Schlesien. During this time, he also recommenced intelligence work. In this period he made a series of contacts with high ranking German officers, politicians and industrialists in order to establish order in Germany's politics. During his Freikorps period he knew very well the people who were accused of political assassinations of leaders of the left, and was even accused himself, although later acquitted, of being involved in the assassinations and other crimes (such as his alleged involvement in Rosa Luxembourg's "trial"). During the 1930-33 period Canaris was following a course quite parallel to the one followed by the future Nazi party leaders although never a party member himself. Indirectly, though, he promoted the forces that later became part of the Nazi power structure.

After Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1933, Canaris was made head of the Abwehr, Germany's official military intelligence agency, on January 1 1935. Later that year, he was promoted to Rear Admiral. In the period 1935-36 he made contacts with Spain to organize a German spy network in Spain. His excellent Spanish made him the very man for the job. He was the moving force behind the decision that sided Germany with Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War, despite Hitler's initial hesitation to undertake such an adventure. In 1937 he was still a supporter of Hitler, considering him to be the only solution against communism and a hope for the revival of Germany as a nation. By 1938, however, he had realised Hitler's policies and plans would bring catastrophe to Germany and secretly began to work against the régime. His personal style as a gentleman could not tolerate the gangsterism of most of the Nazi party members. There is a letter that remained from a Spanish contact he had that confirms clearly his opinion against the Nazi regime. He tried to hinder Hitler's attempts to absorb Czechoslovakia and advised Franco not to permit German passage through Spain for the purposes of capturing Gibraltar. It has been written that all of Franco’s arguments on this stance were studied and dictated in detail by Canaris, while at the same time an important sum of money had been deposited by the British on Swiss accounts for Franco and his generals to further convince them to be neutral.

He also became involved in two abortive plots to assassinate Hitler, first in 1938 and again in 1939. His most audacious attempt was in planning, with the future Field Marshal von Kleist, to capture and eliminate Hitler and the entire Nazi party before the invasion of Austria. At this particular moment, von Kleist visited England secretly and discussed the situation with British MI6 and some high ranking politicians. There, the name of Canaris became widely known as the executive hand of von Kleist in the event of an anti-Nazi plot. The high ranking German military leaders believed that if Hitler invaded Austria, or any other country, then England would declare war on Germany. MI6 was of the same opinion. However, the British reaction to the eventual Austrian Anschluss (and Hitler's annexation of the Sudetenland) was more cautious. At a meeting with Hitler in Munich, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain chose diplomacy over war. Munich was a severe disappointment for Kleist and Canaris. It represented an important boost to Hitler's international esteem for two reasons: one, he was able to play the part of a man of reason and compromise; and two, he could boast that his predictions that England would not respond with war had proven to be correct. It is said that Canaris, extremely shocked by this 'dishonest and stupid decision' (his own words), decided to be cautious and wait for a better time to act against Hitler. Nevertheless, it appears likely that MI6 maintained contact with Canaris even after the Munich Agreement. When Winston Churchill came to power, Canaris' hopes were renewed, given the new Prime Minister's strong position against Hitler.

World War II

In the meantime, Reinhard Heydrich, previously a naval cadet who had served under Canaris and was at the time the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) leader, despite being his protegé, friend and neighbour, became his rival. It is said that the Canaris posting in Abwehr had the secret approval of the dynamic Heydrich who preferred him instead of his predecessor, Captain of the Navy Pfatz, who was not in line with the Nazi party members. Heydrich wanted a controllable Abwehr and was keeping a close eye on Canaris. Canaris appeared outwardly to side with his friend Heydrich, but only in order to give Abwehr a chance to grow and become a considerable force. In Bassett's account, Canaris was deeply frustrated by a briefing by Hitler before the attack on Poland, about a series of exterminations that were ordered and Canaris was required to take notes on. These notes, the book confirms, were sent to MI6. After the outbreak of war between Germany and Poland in 1939, Canaris visited the front and witnessed examples of the war crimes committed by the SS Einsatzgruppen. Among these were the burning of the synagogue in Będzin and the fiery death of the town's Jewish residents. He also received reports from Abwehr agents about many other incidents of mass murder throughout Poland.

Shocked by these incidents, Canaris began working more actively, at increasing risk, to overthrow Hitler's régime, although he co-operated with the SD to create a decoy. This allowed him to pose as a trusted man for some time. He was promoted to full Admiral in January 1940. With his subordinate Erwin Lahousen, he established a circle of similarly-minded Wehrmacht officers, many of whom would be executed or forced to commit suicide after the failure of the July 20 Plot. A contact with British intelligence has been speculated about during this time, despite the war between the two countries. It is thought that during the invasion of Russia Canaris received a detailed report of all the enemy positions that was known only to the British. The head of MI6 , Stewart Menzies, who shared Canaris’s strong anti-communist beliefs, praised Canaris’s courage and bravery at the end of the war. Reinhard Heydrich and Heinrich Himmler, however, investigated in detail the sources of Canaris's information on Operation Barbarossa, arriving at the conclusion that there had indeed been a contact between him and the British. After 1942 Canaris visited Spain frequently and was probably in contact with British agents from Gibraltar. In 1944 he also secretly met Allied agents in occupied France trying to find a way to end the war before the total collapse of his country.

During Heydrich's posting in Prague a serious incident occurred putting him and Canaris in open conflict. A British agent - the Czech Paul Thümmel - was arrested by Heydrich but Canaris intervened to save him, claiming he was a double agent actually working for Abwehr. Heydrich suspected that Paul Thümmel was actually Canaris's MI6 contact. There followed a meeting in which Heydrich requested that Canaris put the Abwehr under SD and SS control. Canaris appeared to retreat and handled the situation diplomatically, but there was no immediate effect on the Abwehr for the time being. In fact, Canaris had established another two links with the MI6 - one via Zurich, and the other via Spain and Gibraltar. It is also possible that Vatican contacts provided a third route to his British counterparts.

Canaris also intervened to save a number of victims of Nazi persecution, including hundreds of Jews. Many such people were given token training as Abwehr "agents" and then issued papers allowing them to leave Germany. One notable person he is said to have assisted was the then Lubavitcher Rebbe in Warsaw, Rabbi Joseph Isaac Schneersohn. The assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague, organized by MI6, was an act partially done to preserve Canaris in his important position.

Downfall and execution

Evidence of his connivances grew and due to the insistence of Heinrich Himmler who suspected him for a long time, Hitler dismissed Canaris from the Abwehr in February 1944, replacing him with Walter Schellenberg and merging most of the Abwehr with the Sicherheitsdienst (SD). Some weeks later, Canaris was put under house arrest, preventing him from taking part directly in the July 20 Plot to assassinate Hitler. However, just after the Stalingrad disaster, Canaris had already designed a 'coup' against the entire Nazi regime in which many Nazi officials would be accused for known crimes while Hitler would be arrested as an insane person based on his exposure to poison gases in World War I, then imprisoned for life. After the July 20 Plot Canaris's long-time rival, SS leader Heinrich Himmler discovered that one of the officers involved in the plot, a friend of Canaris' who committed suicide, had kept the plot details in a metal box. It also became known during the investigations that a number of other assassination plots (possibly another 10 or 15) had been activated but had failed and were covered up at the last minute. Most people who participated in these plots were people Canaris knew well. Himmler kept Canaris alive for some time because he planned to use him secretly as a future contact with the British in order to come to an agreement to end the war with himself as the leader of Germany. Hitler wanted him alive as well to be able to find more conspirators. When Himmler's plan failed to materialize, he received the approval of Hitler to send Canaris to an SS drumhead court-martial that sentenced him to death.

Together with his deputies Hans Oster, Karl Sack, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Ludwig Gehre, Canaris was humiliated and executed by slow strangulation at Flossenbürg concentration camp on April 9 1945, a few weeks before the end of the war. At the time of his execution, Canaris had been decorated with the Iron Cross First and Second Class, the Silver German Cross, the Cross of Honor and the Wehrmacht's Twelve and Twenty-Five Year Long-Service Ribbons.

Erwin Lahousen and Hans Bernd Gisevius, two of Canaris' main subordinates, survived the war and testified during the Nuremberg Trials to Canaris' courage in opposing Hitler. Lahousen recalled a conversation between Canaris and General Wilhelm Keitel in which Canaris warned Keitel that the German military would be held responsible for the atrocities in Poland. Keitel responded that they had been ordered by Hitler. Keitel, who also survived the war, was found guilty of war crimes at Nuremburg and hanged.

Trivia

Erika Waag Canaris, widow of Wilhelm enjoyed a retirement pension arranged by Allen Dulles, who held the post of CIA Director for many years.

Canaris in Popular Culture

• The 1954 movie "Canaris" is based on his biography.
• Canaris appears in the 1976 film "The Eagle Has Landed" where he is played by actor Anthony Quayle.

External links

• Canaris.dk, a website devoted to Canaris.
• Admiral Wilhelm Canaris at jewishvirtuallibrary.org.