Despite difficult conditions, Dresden rounded Cape Horn on 9 December, and with only 160 tonnes of coal aboard, her engines and boilers in need of urgent repair, dropped anchor in Sholl Bay, 60 miles south of Punta Arenas the next afternoon. When the Chilean naval representative arrived to advise the twenty-four-hour rule, Canaris explained to him that wood was needed to fire the boilers for the run to Punta Arenas, and a further twenty-four hours were granted.34 At Punta Arenas, Lüdecke and Canaris met Admiral Cuevas, head of Strait of Magellan Naval Station and the German consul. Fifty hours’ stay was granted, in the face of French objections, but Dresden left after only thirty-two hours.35 On 12 December the British consul cabled London, and the cruisers Glasgow and Bristol were sent south from the Falklands.36
Lüdecke had anchored in Hewett Bay, southwest of the Barbara Channel, to await a collier. Canaris kept in touch with events through the Etappendienst at Punta Arenas under Oberleutnant zur Helle. His work was difficult because the town was small and the British had their own espionage station there to watch the Germans. In Hewett Bay the Dresden crew chopped down trees for fuel, salted fish and boiled mussels to eke out the provisions while carrying out repairs. On 24 December a small coaster manned by two French spies was stopped by Dresden but later released; when the boat reappeared next day and loud wireless traffic was heard from the cruisers Carnarvon, Bristol and Glasgow,37 Lüdecke sought a more remote anchorage at Christmas Bay on the west side of Santa Ines island, where he was recoaled with 1,600 tonnes on 19 January 1915 by the collier Sierra Cordoba.
In several telegrams the Berlin Admiralty had advised Lüdecke to attempt to break back into the Atlantic and make for home,38 but he doubted that his ship was up to such a voyage and preferred ‘so long as it remains possible, to continue warfare on commerce in a sea area favourable for the ship’.39 At the beginning of February he cabled Berlin: ‘On 3 February will attempt to break out with Sierra Cordoba to South American west coast. Intend transfer to East Indies if coal allows . . . .’40 On 10 February, Berlin cabled to Punta Arenas: ‘Admiralty Staff to Dresden: recommend try return home sailing-ship route Atlantic Ocean. I will send collier to 5 degrees south, 36 degrees west.’41 Lüdecke decided he would rather search for his own coal from Allied colliers on the commerce routes and telegraphed through Punta Arenas that he needed a collier off the Chilean west coast by 5 March at the latest. He sailed before receiving a reply and on 21 February sank the barque Conway.
On 8 March Dresden was adrift in thick fog with engines stopped and unsure of her position.42 At 140ohrs, when the visibility improved suddenly, the British armoured cruiser Kent was spotted at a distance of fifteen miles.43 Neither ship had steam up,44 but Dresden reacted more quickly and in the ensuing five-hour chase eventually gave her pursuer the slip at 2030hrs.45 The run reduced the bunkers to the minimum and overtaxed the machinery. Following an inspection Lüdecke decided that he had no alternative but to intern in neutral waters. This would be a complicated proceeding, however, for he required the Chilean Government to despatch warships to protect Dresden against seizure or destruction by enemy units.
At daybreak on 9 March 1915, Dresden dropped anchor in Cumberland Bay at Mas-a-Tierra Island. The local population was about three hundred, mostly lobster fishermen. When the Chilean harbourmaster came aboard, Canaris, acting as interpreter, informed him that Dresden was no longer battleworthy by reason of engine damage and lack of coal, and therefore requested internment.46 The harbourmaster promised to request instructions and warships.47 The anxiety of the German officers that Kent would appear at any moment was unfounded; she was also short of fuel and had put into Coronel on 8 March.48
On the night of 10 March Dresden received the re-transmission of Berlin’s message: ‘His Majesty the Kaiser gives you freedom to lay-up’,49 which amounted to permission to intern. As so often before, Lüdecke kept steam up in only one boiler in order to save fuel. This meant he would not be able to sail at once should enemy warships arrive. Lüdecke had posted lookouts at the entrance to the bay and allowed three officers and the surgeon to leave the ship and attempt a return to Germany.50 He and Canaris expected that the British would intervene sooner or later and disregard the laws of neutrality.51
On Sunday 14 March 1915 at o830hrs Leutnant zur See Böker, patrolling in the steam pinnace, reported the approach of the British cruisers Kent and Glasgow. The plight of Dresden was now hopeless. Lüdecke sent all non-essential crew ashore and signalled that he was hors de combat.52 As the harbour launch flying the Chilean flag set out towards Glasgow, the British cruiser opened fire on Dresden.53 Lüdecke could not turn his ship away from broadside in the current and the afterdeck was soon aflame. Two ammunition chambers had to be flooded, dead and wounded were strewn across the deck.54 He decided that before scuttling the ship to prevent her falling into enemy hands he had to get the dead and wounded ashore. He raised the flag signal ‘Am sending negotiator’ and despatched Canaris to parley with the British captain, John Luce, but the British continued firing over the steam pinnace bearing Canaris to the Glasgow.55 In desperation Lüdecke ran up the white flag to induce the ceasefire, this was not a surrender because he had not struck the war ensign. When the British ship stopped shooting, Canaris went aboard her and protested at the bombardment of Dresden in neutral waters as a breach of international law, particularly since the ship and crew had been provisionally interned by the Chileans. Luce replied that he had his orders, diplomacy would sort out the rest.56 He could only negotiate with Dresden for an unconditional surrender. If the Germans would not agree he would resume firing.57 Britain had already informed Chile through diplomatic channels of a breach of neutrality should Dresden be found in Chilean waters.58 Luce asked Canaris whether the flag had been struck. Canaris pointed out that it still flew at the foremast59 and with that returned to the German cruiser where everything had been prepared meanwhile to scuttle the ship by opening the sea cocks and setting explosive charges. Lüdecke was the last man to leave.
From the shore the surviving crew members watched the death of their ship. After a violent explosion Dresden settled by the head, and disappeared at ni5hrs to the usual ‘Hurrah!’ for the Kaiser.60 Eight men were dead, twenty-nine wounded, fifteen seriously. For most of the crew the war was over. For Canaris, however, the loss of his ship and the associated internment was a mere interlude.
3
Agent on a Special Mission
The responsibility for the care of the Dresden crew at Mas-a-Tierra fell on Canaris’s shoulders. First Officer Nieden had been released earlier, Navigation Officer Schultz, gravely wounded, was aboard the British warship Orama and the captain was in shock and temporarily unfit to resume his duties.1 The dead were interred in the local cemetery and then, while the cruisers Glasgow and Orama patrolled offshore, the survivors held out for five days under trying conditions in the hope that another German ship would materialise to take off the survivors. Instead, two Chilean warships arrived to ship the Dresden crew to Valparaiso2 for internment aboard a Norddeutscher Lloyd passenger ship. As the result of a successful British protest to the Chilean foreign minister,3 the Dresden crew was brought to the small island of Quiriquina, north of Coronel Bay on 24 March.4 The island would be home for most of the crew for the next four years. The German colonies at nearby Talcahuano and Concepcion, together with German associations and naval clubs, catered for the internees’ material needs. German envoy Merckert reported after his visit to Quiriquina that the men were showing their best side: ‘Gardening, poultry-farming etc . . . the island was soon improved by the Germans.’5
The idea of an idyll of many years on a Chilean island did not appeal to Canaris, and he was not the only one with ideas of escape. Stoker Christian Stöckler recounted later: ‘One escape attempt after another was made. Some were successful, but most men were caught and brought back. The officers used to rant and rave about not escaping, but Chilean fishermen would take you to the mainland for 20 pesos and all the shouting in the world couldn’t
combat that.’6 Canaris was determined to get home to Germany and was confident that the spy network in Chile would assist him. Escapes were problematical because they compromised the Chilean authorities in their relations with the British.7 The escape of an officer from the island might therefore affect the conditions of internment for the remaining crew,8 and it was some time before he obtained Lüdecke’s permission while Lüdecke himself had to have the backing of the German consulate.
Canaris absconded on 5 August 1915. The next two months belong to the mythology of his life and his escapade has been exaggerated beyond reason in the absence of documentation. Many biographies have an eight-month odyssey,9 in others his disguise held so well that he is portrayed assisting the British naval and port authorities at Plymouth in their examination of his fellow steamer passengers.10
The sober words of the official file entry made on 5 October by the Admiralty Staff in Berlin give no real impression of the stress and danger Canaris underwent in those two months on the run:
Oberleutnant Canaris of SMS Dresden has reported. He absconded from the island of Quiriquina on 4 August 1915 with the consent of the commander and envoy, travelled to Osorno disguised as a peasant, from there crossed the Cordillera on horseback to Neuquen where he took the train to Buenos Aires. Arrival in Buenos Aires 21 August. Reported to attaché, shipped aboard Dutch steamer Frisia under false Chilean passport, via Montevideo, Santos, Rio, Bahia, Pernambuco, Lisbon, Vigo, Falmouth, Pile, Amsterdam. On 30 September returned home from Amsterdam.11
The dangerous journey across South America, the transit of the mountain passes over the Andes and the gruelling passage across Alpine-type highlands for the two hundred miles to Neuquen, all on horseback and in the dead of winter, a thousand miles in a local train from Neuquen to Buenos Aires via Bahia Blanca, the voyage from Argentina to Holland under a false Chilean passport in the name of Reed Rosas, a Chilean widower supposedly travelling to claim an inheritance in Holland left by his English-born mother;12 all this shows him as an intrepid wanderer and master of disguise.
On 11 November 1915 Canaris was promoted to Kapitänleutnant13 and resumed homeland duty with the Naval Inspectorate at Kiel. On 30 November he was transferred to the Intelligence Section at Admiralty Staff, his special mission being to set up the Etappe system in Spain for German U-boats and to create a network of informers to report the movements of enemy shipping there. On 4 January 1916 the Madrid embassy confirmed to Berlin that Canaris had arrived and would communicate in future under the cover-name ‘Carl’.14
Neutral Spain was a battleground for the intelligence services of the belligerents: ‘The secret invisible threads ran from the embassies and consulates and the bureaux of the military attachés not only to the luxury hotels of Madrid and Barcelona, but also into the hovels of the Spanish anarchists, conspirators and the Catalan separatists.’15 Spanish society was split between Allied sympathisers and the Germanophiles: ‘the Conservatives, the clergy, the nobility, the army, a large part of “cultured society” and, after the early German victories, the navy’, wrote Canaris.16
The military attaché responsible for German espionage was Major Kalle, a ‘young, charming and spirited cavalier’ who quickly befriended the Spanish king.17 Canaris’s direct superior was retired Korvettenkapitän Hans von Krohn, who handled naval intelligence and maintained an excellent relationship with Spanish and international society in Madrid.18 The pre-requisites for espionage were in place, and Canaris seems to have been highly successful in creating a adequate network of supply bases for German Mediterranean U-boats. After the war a British secret service agent recalled how he had often noticed the Spanish king in company with the German military attaché, probably discussing with him secrets he had learned from other military and naval attachés. He had warned of the steadily deteriorating situation in Spain because German U-boat commanders were apparently at liberty to behave as they pleased in Spanish waters and harbours.19
Only von Krohn’s closest circle knew about Canaris. Although he changed his Madrid address frequently and did most of his work from von Krohn’s house,20 enemy spies soon had scent of him. The British and French had broken the German codes and were reading the radio traffic between Berlin and the three espionage units in Madrid, Barcelona and San Sebastian.21 From this they knew that Canaris was operating against Britain from Spain and that he urgently required secret cover addresses in Holland and Scandinavia.22 Whether he actually made these foreign trips is not certain but the tempo he set with the Etappe organisations in Spain and Spanish Morocco can have left him little time for travel. By the end of January 1916 Canaris could inform his colleagues that ‘information centres’ had been installed in Santander, Seville, Cadiz and Melilla, while those at Algeciras, La Linea, Tripoli, Huelva, Tangiers, Barcelona, Vigo and Corunna were in preparation.23
A few weeks earlier, ‘Carl’ had caused tension between the German embassy in Madrid and the Admiralty Staff. Military attaché Kalle had plans to establish a network of agents in southwest France, working from offices in the Spanish Basque towns of Irun and San Sebastian, with couriers carrying the most sensitive material.24 Kalle was told by Berlin that the suggested espionage service in Bordeaux was ‘Carl’s province’.25 Kalle cabled a protest to the Admiralty chief of staff personally. ‘Kapitänleutnant C.’ had been proposed by him for the work against Britain, but as he was ‘a young officer’ C did not ‘possess the necessary qualifications for an intelligence officer’. Kalle thought that Berlin’s instruction deprecated his own work and he threatened to resign.26 A simple transmission error was responsible for the misunderstanding – a question mark had been omitted at the end of a sentence in the message to Madrid. Berlin had not ordered that Canaris should take over the Bordeaux office but had enquired if the Madrid embassy would transfer it to him.27 While that was all being smoothed over, Canaris was back in Germany, possibly with a bout of malaria,28 or perhaps because Spain was becoming too dangerous for him. British naval specialists in the Admiralty’s Room 40 were decrypting signals traffic between Berlin and Madrid, and there was a source at the embassy leaking information to the French.
On 20 February, Madrid notified the Admiralty Staff in Berlin that Canaris was leaving for Genoa the next day using a Chilean passport in the name Reed Rosas.29 After contact was lost, the Madrid embassy discovered days later that Canaris had been arrested in Genoa on 24 February. Since he held a Chilean passport, the Italians had asked the Chilean chargé d’affaires whether Canaris, or rather Reed Rosas, was a Chilean subject, which had been confirmed.30 The German Admiralty Staff expected Canaris’s early release,31 but it was not until 19 March that Madrid cabled Berlin to inform the Navy that he was back in Spain. The Italians, Britain’s ally, had refused to allow him entry into Switzerland.32 Canaris complained later about the ‘very harsh time under arrest’, which had included ‘long interrogations and foul treatment’.33
Canaris was now trapped in Spain. It seemed impossible, particularly for men of military age, to leave Spain by the overland route. In desperation the Admiralty Staff enquired if it would not be possible to bring him home through Holland, the USA or Norway,34 but decided finally to extract him secretly by U-boat.35 This operation required careful preparation and above all absolute secrecy.
On 28 April 1916, the Madrid embassy cabled Berlin with the news that French spies had received information regarding various top-secret telegrams between the embassy and Berlin. ‘The cipher and key are therefore compromised, if we accept that the information was not betrayed by embassy staff, which seems unlikely. The ambassador desires that important secret reports should be sent in naval cipher in the period before the new cipher is received.’36 After talks between the Admiralty Staff and the Foreign Ministry it was ‘considered desirable’ that the Spanish king should be aware of the activities to extract Canaris so that he could appoint an adjutant and have his confidant watch over the secret mission.37 This amounted to protection against a plot by the British and French to kidnap
Canaris.
The need for such precautions was confirmed on 2 May when the ambassador notified Berlin that Paris had the German ciphers.38 The Canaris affair now threatened to bring diplomatic developments in its wake, for the French would not hesitate to put the Spanish king under pressure by threatening to expose his secret talks with the Germans. The Germans for their part had to keep secret their knowledge that the French had their codes, for now they could mislead the French with false material.
Canaris remained bottled up in Spain. When he arranged to escape by Swedish steamer39 Berlin forbade it and ordered him to wait.40 Even when U-35, commanded by the most famous U-boat ace in the Reichsmarine, Kapitänleutnant Lothar von Arnauld de la Perière, put into Cartagena on 21 June and requested a stay of twenty-four hours, Canaris was forbidden to sneak aboard. His superior officer von Krohn considered it too dangerous because of the level of enemy surveillance. The French naval attaché and secret service chief were both staying in Cartagena, and the British ambassador had made a strong but unsuccessful protest to the Spanish prime minister at U-35 being allowed the stopover. U-35 left port protected by a Spanish warship. On 3 August the British noted in their files, ‘After leaving Cartagena, U-35 sank fifteen ships. A large bill which Spain has to pay.’41
Although Canaris was limited in his movements, he still managed to contact important circles in Spanish industry and high finance to place orders for small auxiliaries and supply ships to be built for Germany in Spanish yards. A key intermediary was the banker Ullmann, who had German ancestry, and to whom Canaris had been introduced by the German ambassador, Prince Ratibor. It was probably Ullmann who brought Canaris together with the Spanish multimillionaire and shipyard owner Horacio Echevarrieta. Both Ullmann and Echevarrieta would become close partners with Canaris once rearmament began after defeat in the First World War.42
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