Canaris

by Mueller, Michael;

  Canaris had never been a friend of parliamentary democracy, but was he a friend of National Socialism? The few indications of how he felt about Hitlerism date from a period when the Nazi State had already become established.13

  On 23 May 1932 Hitler visited Wilhelmshaven. The Völkischer Beobachter noted that ‘thousands upon thousands’ gathered on the open field in front of the Schützenhof assembly hall at Rüstringen, as it was filled to capacity, Hitler’s speech was relayed by loudspeaker to those outside. Afterwards Hitler went aboard the light cruiser Köln; he was not a naval enthusiast, and neither naval rearmament nor naval politics had any priority with Hitler or the NSDAP.14 His priority was a modern Luftwaffe, although he wanted it to be understood that his rejection of a Fleet was political and only temporary.15 Hitler’s visit aboard Köln probably resulted from Raeder’s suggestion that he make known his intention to stand as candidate for Reich Chancellor.

  To the officers of Köln, Hitler promised: ‘1. I will eliminate all treason. 2. I will expand the Fleet within the terms of the Versailles Treaty. 3. If I say that a ship displaces 10,000 tonnes, then it displaces 10,000 tonnes irrespective of how large it actually is.’16 This declaration must have been very satisfying for the officers, signalling as it did that he was planning to abide by the number of ships allowed under the Versailles Treaty, but not the size. He wrote in the guest book: ‘Hoping to assist in the rebuilding of a Fleet worthy of the Reich,’17 but enthusiasm for the new ‘Navy-friendly’ Hitler did not last very long. In October he criticised the von Papen government harshly when it demanded capital ships, a call that in Hitler’s eyes was likely to damage Anglo-German relations.18

  Meanwhile, Canaris was serving aboard the old battleship Schlesien on which he had once been first officer19 and of which he had been commander since 30 September 1932. In January 1933, Schlesien was made the flagship of Commanding Admiral Battleships, Konteradmiral Max Bastian. Canaris spent the last dramatic weeks of the Weimar democracy aboard his ship in Kiel Bay, where gunnery and torpedo practice preceded the entry of Schlesien into the Kiel yards for a refit. On 30 January 1933 Hindenburg appointed Hitler Reich Chancellor. Werner Best, senior Gestapo ideologist and later Heydrich’s representative working closely with Canaris, wrote after the war: ‘Undoubtedly Canaris stood on Third Reich ground out of conviction into the war and was – as were most naval officers – free of the doubts of certain other officer circles.’20 And again: ‘As an old nationalist, he was convinced that the new regime was far, far better than anything that had gone before, and that so far as he could see there was no other way.’21 Conrad Patzig, Canaris’s predecessor as Abwehr chief, made a statement to the effect that Canaris was recognised as an enthusiastic National Socialist.22 Even if such judgements after the event are to be treated with some caution, they do nevertheless correspond to the official assessments. Thus the Commanding Admiral Battleships, Bastian, wrote in a report of 1 November 1934: ‘I must emphasise the untiring striving of Kapitän zur See Canaris, through personal addresses, to acquaint the ship’s complement with the ideas of the national Movement and the principles of how the new Reich will be restructured.’23 Also noteworthy of Bastian’s assessments of Canaris in 1933 and 1934 is that under the formula headings ‘For Which Office Specially Suitable’, after the first recommendation – ‘Naval attaché’ – he put ‘Reichswehr Ministry (initally as section leader, Abwehr section).’24 Canaris’s superiors kept his special talents in mind and repeatedly recommended an appointment for him in the secret service.

  During the early days of radical political and social change in Germany, Canaris commanded Schlesien in the major spring naval manoeuvres. On 22 and 23 May 1933 at Kiel, Hitler, Goering and the new Reichswehrminister Werner von Blomberg arrived to observe the exercises. Goering came aboard Schlesien, but he did not like ships and was seasick, and so, pale and drawn, he made his way to the wardroom, where a junior lieutenant made a flippant remark. At this Goering left and later made an official complaint to the Admiralty, asking that the young officer be punished, but since the latter had already been reprimanded officially by Canaris, there was no second punishment. This was supposed to be the reason for Goering’s deep and abiding aversion for the Navy25 although whether any of it really happened is not certain.

  For Schlesien there followed more manoeuvres: in the North Sea, then Kiel Week, Fleet gunnery practice, and in the autumn of 1933 the 1906-built pre-Dreadnought, said to be held together by her paintwork, entered the yards for another overhaul. In 1934, after more rounds of independent and squadron manoeuvres, visits to Norway, Sweden and Heligoland, as well as a period on moorings at Kiel, Canaris’s superiors were full of praise for his nautical prowess and for his skill in binding together ship, crew and particularly the officer corps. Frequent references were made to his introversion, mood swings and irritability, however, leading to recommendations in appraisals that he would be better suited to work in the military-political environment rather than a purely military command.

  On 29 September 1934, Canaris was given command of the fortress at Swinemünde and responsibility for coastal defence in the Baltic,26 but this was merely an intermission, for three months later he was appointed to head the Abwehr section at the Reichswehr Ministry. It was the last segment of his career, and led to the gallows, but it also made Canaris a legend.

  Upon taking up the post at Swinemünde, he was forty-seven years of age. In the literature this appointment to the Baltic fortress has been identified as the end point of his career, a banishment to the provinces, because the Admiralty, and above all the commander-in-chief, Admiral Raeder, had no better idea of what to do with the politically compromised officer.27 Yet, in view of the overall outstanding assessments, the recurrent favourable comments on his political abilities and his nationalist past, none ofwhich would have been disadvantageous for him under Nazism, this interpretation seems questionable. In particular the references to Admiral Raeder’s personal dislike of Canaris are extremely vague and originate principally from Conrad Patzig, Canaris’s predecessor as Abwehr head.28 When one recalls that as early as 1933 Canaris had been suggested by Bastian, his flag admiral, as a candidate to head the Abwehr, it seems likely that he was ‘parked’ at Swinemünde until the opportunity arose for him to return to Berlin. A letter from Raeder to Canaris dated 11 October 1934, six weeks after his being drafted to Swinemünde, appears to confirm this:

  Dear Canaris, I would like to inform you as early as possible of an impending change in your service circumstances since it will soon involve your relocation. It has always been my intention to place you in the position of Abwehr head when that became possible. Unfortunately the circumstances for this were not clear before 1 October, but now they have developed in such a way that a change of head during the winter half-year, probably around 1 January, has been authorised by the minister. The minister has approved my suggestion that you should take over the position . . . I ask you to consider this information as confidential. In the hope that the new position will correspond fully to your desires, I am, with a comradely greeting, your faithful Raeder.29

  The confidential tone of the letter does not lead one to conclude – contrary to what Conrad Patzig maintained – that there was a deeply rooted aversion between Canaris and Raeder.30 In 1928 on the orders of Reichswehrminister Groener, the Abwehr group at Army High Command and the naval intelligence offices were transferred to the Abwehr section at the Reichswehr Ministry and consolidated into a single unit under Groener’s personal control. This arrangement provoked a storm of controversy, particularly from naval quarters, but in vain. More restructuring took place in 1929 when the Wehrmacht office at the Reichswehr Ministry was replaced by a ministerial office headed by Generalmajor Schleicher, now state secretary, and the Abwehr was accordingly directly responsible to him.

  Oberst Ferdinand von Bredow was appointed to head the Abwehr, but the friction between the Army and Navy groups persisted, and finally Raeder installed Fregattenkapitän Patzig to
head the naval group.31 He had no training in intelligence work and was appointed simply to give the Navy more weight in the Abwehr.32 In June 1932, Schleicher became Reichswehrminister in the von Papen Cabinet and Patzig, an absolute novice,33 was made Abwehr head. He succeeded in overcoming the opposition of the General Staff – which since 1870 had considered intelligence work its exclusive prerogative – and also in transforming the Abwehr from an internal political instrument of the Reichswehr Ministry into a truly military and therefore a political intelligence service with a foreign orientation.34

  Following Hitler’s seizure of power, there was no immediate change at the head of the Abwehr. Earlier, Reich President Hindenburg had elevated the head of the German military delegation at the Geneva International Disarmament Conference, Generaloberst Werner von Blomberg, as the new Reichswehrminister; the National Socialists had had nothing to do with this decision but probably welcomed it, for Blomberg was a long-term Nazi sympathiser. He assured Hitler of his unconditional loyalty at the first Cabinet session on 30 January 1933 and agreed that the Reichswehr would hold training courses for the SA and salute all uniformed NSDAP members (assimilated to officers) and their banners. Soldiers in civilian clothes were to salute by use of the word ‘Heil’ and on their uniforms they would wear the stylised eagle and Nazi swastika. Blomberg strove from the beginning for a clear cooperation between regime and fighting forces with the aim of elevating the Wehrmacht to a truly national body with the help of the German people.35

  In this he received the support of his former chief of Staff in East Prussia, Oberst Walther von Reichenau, one of the first and most capable officers to sympathise with National Socialism, and he exercised an intellectual influence on Blomberg from the outset. At the beginning of 1932, Reichenau took over the ministerial office at the Reichswehr Ministry. Blomberg, naive, prone to spontaneous outbursts of enthusiasm, and Reichenau, intelligent, ambitious, a man who despised ‘class-conscious aristocratic and bourgeois conservatism’, now angled the Wehrmacht along the path of National Socialism. Reichenau’s catch-phrase was: ‘Our way is ahead, which means therefore into the new State and there maintain our rightful position!’36

  At first Patzig remained head of the Abwehr. His authority was increased after Hitler took power and in the course of the rearmament programme he expanded the Abwehr structurally and increased staffing levels. In every active corps and Wehrkreis (military administration district) an Abwehr centre was set up, designated officially Ic/AO.37 Patzig noticed the efforts of the party to undermine the Reichswehr monopoly of intelligence operations by the creation of its own organisations; the Foreign Office, the NSDAP Overseas Organisation, the SD under Heydrich and Goering’s monitoring service, the so-called Research Bureau, all began to compete with the Abwehr, a situation in which, in Patzig’s view, discretion was lost, confusion reigned and amateurism triumphed. Patzig approached Blomberg to obtain from Hitler an order making the military Abwehr the only legitimate intelligence service of the Reich, but Blomberg refused Patzig his support.38

  Ernst Röhm, whose SA numbered 4.5 million men in 1934, saw the organisation as the ‘spearhead’ of the revolution and party. It was ‘the support column for the coming National Socialist State’ and stood ‘side by side with the armed forces, not as a part of them’, being an independent ‘third power factor of the State’ alongside the Reichswehr and police.39 Perceiving the revolution to be in danger, he declared that the SA and SS would not allow themselves to be betrayed ‘at the halfway house of being non-combatants’. In the course of 1933 the difficulties came to a head40 and at the beginning of 1934 Hitler found it necessary to consider action against his ‘over-powerful subordinates’.41

  In the spring the SA had bought weapons, mainly in Danzig, and had them sent to Munich. Patzig notified Army High Command, which dithered,42 while Heydrich informed the party security service, the SD. On 26 June 1934 a forged document of unknown provenance appeared on Patzig’s desk; it purported to be an order signed by Rohm,43 instructing all SA groups to arm urgently. Patzig passed the paper to Reichenau, who told Blomberg: ‘Now the time is ripe;’44 the next day Hitler had the ‘proof’ of the SA plot to revolt.

  On Hitler’s orders, between 30 June and 2 July 1934 Heydrich’s SD carried out the ‘Röhm putsch’, which claimed up to two hundred victims, including Rohm, Schleicher, Patzig’s predecessor von Bredow and other leading SA figures. On 1 July Blomberg congratulated Hitler on his ‘soldierly determination’, the Wehrmacht giving thanks ‘through devotion and loyalty’.45 The allegation46 that Blomberg demanded that Himmler sack Heydrich for his part in the ‘Night of the Long Knives’ therefore seems improbable;47 Patzig could recall nothing of the sort.48

  Army Commander-in-Chief Generaloberst von Fritsch had nothing against Patzig but the SS wanted Patzig replaced, and Blomberg obliged them,49 using as an excuse Blomberg’s discovery that the Abwehr had given orders for highaltitude reconnaissance photographs to be taken of the Maginot Line without informing him. The Reichswehrminister felt that Patzig had gone over his head, so to speak, and saw in that a disregard for the wishes of the Führer. Blomberg summoned Patzig and received him with the words: ‘I cannot use an Abwehr chief guilty of such escapades.’50 Although Fritsch accepted responsibility and stated that he had actually ordered the reconnaissance himself, Blomberg had made up his mind and Patzig was relieved of office on 31 December 1934. In a letter written in 1953, Patzig asserted that at the termination of the interview with Blomberg, he had urged the Reichswehrminister ‘to act today against the crimes of the party organisations and the SS’;51 the SS was ‘a sink of uprooted entities and criminals who would not shrink back from anything, including murder’. Blomberg retorted that the SS was ‘one of the Führer’s organisations’, and that he saw the future with great optimism.52

  According to Patzig, it was he who suggested to Raeder that Canaris should succeed him as Abwehr head to prevent control of the Abwehr devolving to the Army General Staff, and on 12 December Canaris was ordered to Berlin to ‘learn the ropes’ at the Tirpitzufer offices.53 Patzig claimed to have warned him that: ‘I attempted to play all the strings of the violin but . . . the SS is a law unto itself and will not hold back from murder if necessary.’ He hoped that Canaris would succeed in combating the excesses and not become ‘a traitor to the Wehrmacht’. ‘Today may be the beginning of your personal end,’ Patzig concluded, to which Canaris said only: ‘You can rest assured, I will soon see these boys off.’54

  12

  The Duel with Heydrich

  On з January 1934 Hitler summoned the heads of party and Wehrmacht to the State Opera House in Unter den Linden1 for a meeting behind closed doors, aimed at restoring the shattered faith of many senior officers in the Wehrmacht leadership.2 As new Abwehr head, Canaris sat in third row behind Hitler’s adjutant Friedrich Hossbach. Hitler spoke of the ‘two equally important columns’ of party and Wehrmacht, emphasising his ‘immovable will’ that ‘a strong Wehrmacht should lead Germany to new world importance and national security’, which demanded ‘unshakeable unity’;3 he appealed to party leaders for their loyalty and devotion, for only then could he rebuild Germany. The military men were impressed, and at the end of his speech Hitler received deafening applause.4

  Army Commander-in-Chief von Fritsch, who had recently complained to Patzig of a Gestapo slander campaign against himself, wrote three years later: ‘The Führer delivered an address that was a unique appeal for the loyalty of the Army and its leader, myself.5 General Kurt Liebmann reported to his commanders: ‘Probably nobody who was present will have been able to shake off the impression . . . that a trust is being placed in us which no man of honour can mistake.’6 The Wehrmacht heads of service described the event as ‘a glorious success’, as Hitler’s adjutant Hossbach later observed.7

  Ten days later, Blomberg invited Canaris to a social evening at the Kaiser Wilhelm Academy where Reichsführer-SS Himmler, whom Canaris had met at Kiel in 1932/33, spoke on the tasks of the SS
.8 Afterwards, at Blomberg’s suggestion, Canaris discussed with Himmler the future cooperation and division of work between the Abwehr, Gestapo and SD; the problem of competition between the various ‘intelligence services’, which plagued Canaris to the end of his career, was anchored structurally in the new regime.

  The totalitarianism of Nazism manifested itself especially in the expansion of the police apparatus. In Nazi ideology, the police would protect the ‘body of the Volk’ (Volk as opposed to the inhabitants of Germany as a whole) against the ‘arch enemy’, ‘parasites’, ‘offenders against moral decency’ and later also ‘asocials’ who placed themselves beyond ‘the community of the Volk’. The Reich saw itself in a permanent state of emergency, and the fight against its enemies extended beyond legal frontiers. This general empowerment was transferred to the police.