Canaris

by Mueller, Michael;

  Many Ehrhardt supporters left the Navy to join the secret organisations that succeeded the Brigade, such as the Federation of Former Ehrhardt Officers, led by Ehrhardt himself. He had gone underground in Munich under the cover-name ‘Consul Eichmann’, and the federation formed the core of the later ‘Organisation Consul’ (Org-C),8 whose members would not shrink from murder. In 1921 they murdered the centrist politician Matthias Erzberger,9 one of the signatories to the Versailles Treaty; they were involved in the plot to kill Minister-President Scheidemann, and in the assassination of Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau in June 1922.10 Canaris was at least indirectly involved in the activities of Org-C.

  On 23 August 1927 Weltbühne printed an article entitled ‘Canaris’s Secret’,11 in which the author quoted a police statement by former Rittmeister Kurt Lieder, head of Org-C in Schleswig-Holstein, who knew Canaris well. Lieder identified Canaris as the chief activist at Naval Station Baltic, supporting the ‘radical right-wing putsch movement’ there with financial and material help.12 Lieder and other prominent Org-C men such as former deck officer Werner Voss received from Canaris regular large payments to expand the Mecklenburg branch. The Gauleiter for Org-C in Holstein, Mecklenburg and Pomerania was former Kapitänleutnant Kurt Wende, whose adjutant Leutnant Erwin Kern was later convicted of the murder of Rathenau, while Voss was also implicated in Org-C killings; he was charged in the Rathenau affair but acquitted.13

  The money distributed by Canaris helped set up the Ehrhardt terror organisation, whose aim was a ‘black’ Reichswehr or Navy, to assist the rise of Hitler’s SA and his putsch of November 1923.14 Lieder alleged that Canaris supplied to him weapons, uniforms and equipment for Org-C, and Lieder even had a key to the secret, unguarded entrance into the Naval Station building.15 Canaris maintained secret stores to hoard weapons and misappropriated military equipment for Org-C under the very noses of the Allies, and Naval High Command knew and tolerated it. In 1937, Oberkommando der Marine (OKM) prepared a memorandum, ‘The Navy’s Battle Against Versailles’,16 in which it reported: ‘After the war, false accounting for firearms, to keep firearms that were required to be destroyed on the orders of the enemy alliance, was practised on a wide scale with success at all naval depots, especially at Kiel, where there was a substantial cache. This activity resulted in a real addition over and above the stock of weapons we were allowed.’17 Kapitän (Ordnance) Jung set up a secret dump at the Kiel naval arsenal for several thousand rifles, hundreds of machine guns, mines and optical equipment; money for maintenance and security was obtained by selling superfluous gunnery equipment overseas; and sales were made through Copenhagen to Finland, Sweden and even China, all the proceeds going to the Navy, less 40 per cent for transport and commissions. Everything was done above board by contract.

  By the summer of 1922 the stock of weapons was so enormous that a larger dump had to be opened in the naval installation at Kiel-Wik. The new store was betrayed to the Allied Naval Control Commission responsible for the observance of the Versailles Treaty;18 the arsenal employee who sold the information was convicted of treason and imprisoned. Although the commission subsequently became more vigilant and warned Reich President Ebert against attempts to undermine the treaty, most of the weapons had been smuggled away in time and the losses replaced.

  Another star at Kiel was former deck officer Leutnant Richard Protze, one of Canaris’s instructors when he was a sea cadet.19 Protze headed the counterespionage section at the Naval Station, to where numerous spies and informers reported on the mood amongst the crews and shipyard workers.20 The Navy, particularly the Naval Stations at Wilhelmshaven and Kiel, was closely linked to radical-right, anti-Republican organisations: ‘In the confusion of the time it was important to support those men who thought as soldiers beyond their own duties and by so doing ensured that the principle of self-reliance against all internal political forces, and resistance to enslavement by the enemy alliance, was not only maintained, but also fortified,’21 the naval bulletin explained in 1937.

  Naval Station Baltic pampered the developing ‘pro-Fatherland’ groups at Kiel – the Stahlhelm, Student Weapons-Circle and Org-C, as well as the pro-Fatherland trade unions at the naval arsenal, Germania shipyard and other Kiel technical installations. It was all probably orchestrated by Canaris, and later by Korvettenkapitän Otto Schuster.22

  The support for radical-right movements by the Kiel Naval Station, which strengthened after the Allies occupied the Ruhr in 1923, was finally revealed publicly and brought Canaris to the attention of the press three years later. On 1 December 1926 a number of Social Democrat Reichstag deputies complained to Reichswehrminister Gessler about the involvement of the military in a series of illegal activities and SPD deputy Eggerstedt accused the Kiel Naval Station of having links to pro-Fatherland groups and of implication in the attempted murder of General von Seeckt.23 A few days later, Gessler received documentary evidence assembled by the SPD and a six-page synopsis of the accusations against the Baltic station prepared by Eggerstedt.

  On 16 December 1926 in the Reichstag, Scheidemann made a violent attack against the Reichswehr and demanded a general reckoning with the military,24 mentioning in particular the links between the Reichwehr and Org-C, and its involvement in the Hitler-putsch of 1923 when it supported Org-C throughout. He named the ‘mole’, Kurt Lieder, and alleged that his successor, former Leutnant Hans-Ulrich Klintzsch, a founder member of the SA,25 was being financed now as before by Naval Command. ‘After the Hitler putsch was frustrated’, Scheidemann continued, ‘their rage was turned on General von Seeckt’, who had helped put down the putsch as Army chief. At Kiel a ‘useful man’ had been found, an Oberleutnant von Bergen, real name Günther, who with an accomplice set out to kill General Seeckt. ‘As you know, happily this assassination was not carried out. But you probably do not know that this Günther is being paid to the present day by the Naval Station at Kiel.’26 Scheidemann was thus accusing the officers at Kiel, of which Canaris was one, of having supported the failed Hitler putsch and having subsequently planned the murder of the Army commander-in-chief as a reprisal.

  Deputy Eggerstedt published his accusations in the Schleswig-Holsteinische Volkszeitung. The main witnesses were two former agents of the Kiel station – Lieder and a certain Berndorff. In their depositions they implicated a number of Kiel officers including Canaris and Loewenfeld. Accusations of high treason, illegal sale of Reich property and conspiracy to murder to Seeckt were made.27

  Naval Command ordered its own inquiry to determine whether the collaboration with radical right organisations had been ordered or approved by Kiel Station Command or if it was merely a matter of individual officers acting independently. A friend of Canaris at Kiel, Otto Schuster, had accompanied Ehrhardt during the Kapp putsch,28 and in a report to Naval High Command in November he had admitted that in the summer and autumn of 1923 the Naval Station had dealings with various right-wing organisations, amongst them Org-C, for the supply of weapons and military leaders ‘in an emergency’. Several agents had been sent on spying missions in Denmark and were remunerated out of secret ‘pots’; the counter-espionage section at Kiel Naval Station had two agents involved in the Seeckt murder plot, and Schuster thought it very likely that the Prussian police knew all this.29

  Kiel Station Command, under Admiral Raeder since 1925, was forced on the defensive. Raeder asked the Wehrmacht Department at the Reichswehr Ministry to protect the officers under investigation for fear that the police, under SPD direction, would have no regard for national security. Raeder said that although there had been collaboration with ‘formations outside the Reichswehr’, these were under Wehrmacht or naval control and strictly supervised. The Reichswehr had simply not been strong enough to handle internal unrest; weapons were available to defend the borders or for civil unrest but remained in the hands of the naval authorities. Military equipment had gone to Denmark not to be sold, but to protect it against seizure by the Allied Control. Raeder denied any complicity by Station Comma
nd in the Seeckt plot30 and when he was accused of having links to radical-right organisations after 1923, he responded by saying that such accusations could only serve ‘to undermine confidence in the reliability of the Reichswehr as the proven foundation of the State and Constitution’.31 The accusations of Deputy Eggerstedt were hearsay made public without the Navy having had the opportunity to make its case.

  In his report to Naval Command, Raeder emphasised that he did not tolerate paramilitary units in his command. That Lieder was an undercover agent he had only discovered by accident in connection with the defence measures against an anticipated Communist putsch on New Year’s Eve 1925, and he had ordered the immediate severing of all links with both Lieder and also Ehrhardt, even after the latter was awarded amnesty.32

  The official inquiry lasted into 1927; Lieder, Berndorff and others were interrogated at Leipzig. During the questioning of Schuster, Canaris’s name came up once when Schuster mentioned him about secret plans to set up a ‘Regiment Kiel’ in 1921, and again in connection with arming troops with the weapons at Wik in case of civil unrest. The plan had been dropped as being ‘unfeasible’ and Schuster had destroyed the secret files.33 Attorney Werner advised the Reichswehr Ministry that no solid evidence had been found against the naval officers and he doubted whether there was even a link between the Naval Station and Org-C. Although letters from members of the Wiking-Bund, the successor to Org-C, had been found and showed that Ehrhardt had used the Bund in an attempt to infiltrate spies into Naval High Command in Berlin and the Kiel station, the new Reichswehr minister, Groener, stated in February 1928 that he considered the internal watchdog powerful enough to combat the problem. Attorney Werner had therefore decided not to proceed with the accusations against the Kiel officers.34

  Three years before this had boiled over, Canaris had returned to sea; on 18 June 1923 he was serving aboard the training cruiser Berlin, commanded by his old friend Loewenfeld. Station Chief von Gagern had recommended Canaris in his personal file for ‘an early promotion’.35 In November 1923, at the time of the Hitler putsch in Munich, Canaris was in Norway aboard Berlin and on 1 January 1924 he was promoted to Korvettenkapitän.36 The same month, the cruiser left for a long overseas cruise, the first by a German warship since the war;37 Canaris met his future fellow-traveller and rival Reinhard Heydrich aboard, who between July 1923 and March 1924 was an officer cadet on Berlin. Heydrich led a difficult existence there; a loner and very much disliked by his colleagues, he was described as arrogant and smug, a moderate scholar but unhealthily ambitious, soft, a poor gymnast and possessed of a voice that earned him the nickname ‘Goat’. He had a reputation as a lady-killer, which was considered bad form, and although he had been a member of the anti-Jewish ‘Deutsch-Völkischer Schutz und Trutzbund’ he was suspected of having a Jewish forebear and was therefore friendless aboard Berlin.38 One thing in which he excelled was the violin, which he was wont to play in some solitary place aboard ship and Canaris, noticing this, built up a friendship with Heydrich, inviting him to his home and introducing him into Kiel society once Berlin returned to port. Erika Canaris, who seldom saw her husband, used to invite a string quartet to play at her home; the seat of second violin was vacant and Heydrich played within the group at weekends39 while Canaris was in the kitchen, cooking.40 Heydrich had been a despatch runner for Freikorps Maercker at Halle. Canaris made no secret of his own anti-Republican nationalism, and an acquaintance of Heydrich said later that Heydrich had been ‘thoroughly indoctrinated’ by Canaris.41 ‘If we finally get a respectable government, then we can make miracles,’ Canaris told him repeatedly.42 Even if such openness from the militarily correct and diplomatic Canaris seems unlikely, it summarises what he felt, and Heydrich’s decision to specialise in naval signals may have been at Canaris’s suggestion.

  Canaris’s hopes for swift political change in Germany and new military greatness were soon dashed. Hitler and the string of extreme-right officers from Ludendorff to Ehrhardt had all underestimated the Republic’s propensity for survival. The National Revolution was postponed and Org-C dissolved. On 15 January 1924, only two weeks after his promotion to Korvettenkapitän, Canaris tendered his resignation to the commanding officer of Naval Station Baltic: ‘As I no longer feel able physically to meet the demands of service in the Reichsmarine, I request my departure at the end of March . . . .’43 The certificate of a naval surgeon attesting to his unfitness was attached: ‘A state of physical exhaustion and mental lassitude’ was diagnosed, describing ‘. . . mood swings, irritable, easily excited over trivialities and exaggerates them unreasonably. Additionally lacks energy and ability to concentrate, tends to interpret minor symptoms as the onset of a serious condition . . . looks worn out, far older than his years.’ This medical opinion must have been devastating for a man of thirty-seven years. The conclusion drawn was that Canaris was ‘unfit for any kind of military service by reason of chronic, severe neurosis as a consequence of deteriorating in service’.44

  Wülfing von Ditten, Naval Station chief of Staff, wrote on Canaris’s application to resign: ‘On the basis of the attached medical certificate there is scarcely any prospect of retaining this previously valuable officer in the Service. His departure is extraordinarily regretted.’45

  With that the career of Wilhelm Canaris appeared to have come to an abrupt end, but Station Commander Freiherr von Gagern was not prepared simply to accept the resignation and medical report, and he wrote a very personal five-page letter to Canaris:

  I cannot and will not discuss with you by letter whether you are doing the right thing in your decision: it is probably an impossibility in a letter. I would first like to make two points. You believe you would be of more use to your Fatherland, and would find greater personal satisfaction, in occupation other than the Navy; I am an optimist (in contrast to you, dear Canaris) but on that point I am sceptical . . . I freely admit that the field of activity within the framework of the present Navy is not great, I admit further that Naval High Command is committed to developing its forces unduly narrowly, to clip its wings. The first will probably remain so for some time, that cannot be changed, but as regards the latter on the other hand I believe that it will change in the not-too-distant future. And the second point, quite simply, I want to retain you for the Navy, your understanding, your energy, your work . . . and for that reason I would like to ask you to reconsider your step yet again, go over it all in your mind in peace.46

  Von Gagern’s observations show that he knew exactly where Canaris’s problem lay:

  It is quite clear to me that in the last few years more has been asked of you, your abilities, your health and your self-denial than from anybody in the Navy and that it cannot – I am thinking here of our political affairs at Kiel – go on. You can be sure that I will try – and I believe that the attempt will be successful – to change that. It is clear to me that you must get away from the current circumstances, for the time being completely away, and that can be done.47

  Von Gagern explained that the ‘Russian mission’ – here he meant secret weapons and military-political cooperation with the Soviets for the purpose of the prohibited rearmament – had been postponed for political reasons, but he gave Canaris the prospect of a mission to East Asia that would become available in the summer of 1924. He closed his letter with the request ‘to consider this letter as written only for you personally, and to destroy it’.48

  Canaris did not destroy the letter, but he acceded to the request of his superior and on 22 March 1924 – probably after a personal interview with von Gagern – withdrew his resignation.49

  9

  Military-Political Secret Missions

  On 17 May 1924 Canaris shipped aboard the steamer Rheinland for Japan, on a mission connected with naval rearmament, in particular the U-boat Arm.1 Under the terms of the Versailles Treaty, Germany had been required to surrender all U-boats, lifting ships and U-boat docks, and to destroy all U-boats under construction: ‘The building and acquisition of all submarin
e craft, even those for commercial purposes, is prohibited in Germany.’2 In January 1920 Naval High Command took the first steps to get round the Treaty; with the approval of Naval High Command, the Germania shipyard at Kiel and the Vulcan yard at Hamburg sold project sketches of German U-cruisers and minelaying U-boats to Japan with the intention that they should be built there under the supervision of German naval architects. Orders for all material supplies were to be placed with German firms.3 In 1922, with the approval of Navy Commander-in-Chief Admiral Behncke, the shipyards Germania, Vulcan and Weser set up an office in The Hague known as ‘Ingenieurskantoor voor Scheepsbouw’ (IvS). Its purpose was to develop new plans for U-boats, to train crews and to organise and develop cooperation with foreign navies.4

  After the war the Naval Transport Section at Naval High Command under Kapitän zur See Walter Lohmann handled the return of prisoners of war and prize ships. This led to many overseas contacts. After the occupation of the Ruhr in the spring of 1923, the German Government budgeted ten million gold marks to the Navy, which passed directly to Kapitän Lohmann, who became the éminence grise of German secret rearmament. His eventual fall dragged down Reichswehrminister Otto Gessler and the head of the Naval High Command, Admiral Zenker, while Canaris also did not survive his proximity to Lohmann unscathed.5