Canaris

by Mueller, Michael;

  On 26 September Schulenburg advised Kordt that he should expect the coup within forty-eight hours;112 Halder had heard from Brauchitsch that he would probably take part. Kordt and Schulenburg agreed to open the doors of the Reich Chancellery to admit the stormtroopers at the given time,113 but again events intervened at the last moment.

  Groscurth learned from Canaris that Hitler had agreed to receive Daladier, Chamberlain and Mussolini in Munich; Goering had intervened with Henderson to win over the British to a negotiated settlement within the framework of a conference of the major powers. This led to the signing of the notorious Munich Agreement on the night of 30 September. War had been avoided; Hitler had won without a shot being fired. The agreement resembled the Godesberg Memorandum with a few minor changes; German troops would occupy the Sudeten German region within ten days. Hitler’s popularity reached new heights among the German public, and ironically he was now ‘the preserver of a peace he had not wanted’.114

  As for the Resistance, Chamberlain and Daladier pulled the carpet from under the conspirators’ feet. The disdain shown for them by the Western nations, and the way the classical military command structure functioned run through the story of the German Resistance movement from 1938 onwards like a red thread.115

  British ambassador Henderson wrote to Foreign Minister Halifax on 6 October that ‘by keeping the peace, we have saved Hitler and his regime . . . .’116 The frustrated plotters regrouped ‘willingly into the mechanism of the German occupation machinery’;117 Canaris, Oster and Groscurth followed the Führer into the Sudetenland, where they saw the images of ‘real freedom’ and heard ‘a sigh of relief from the people after the lifting of heavy pressure’.118

  In Horsin the Abwehr greeted Hitler’s entry: ‘The band of the SS Leibstandarte broke into the Badenweiler March when the Führer arrived. We cleared the street ourselves and waited on the outskirts of the village. When the Führer saw us, he called out, “There’s Canaris!” and ordered his chauffeur to stop the car. He spoke a few words with the Admiral, gave us a friendly wave and then drove on.’ Groscurth was annoyed that Canaris had not introduced his Staff to the Führer but the pleasant evening that followed with the Bad Elter spa manager cheered everybody up. It seemed odd how quickly yesterday’s plotters adjusted to the new situation: ‘We observed an enormous amount, had gained great and solemn impressions, but also saw that everywhere the SS and Gestapo appeared, all the crockery which could be destroyed, was destroyed.’119

  PART IV

  FINIS GERMANIAE

  17

  The Will for War

  On the morning of 22 August 1939 Canaris reported to the Bergh of just before noon. Present were Raeder, Goering and Brauchitsch, the three Wehrmacht commanders-in-chief and about fifty senior commanders of the three services.1 All wore civilian dress ‘as the conference should be kept secret as far as possible in the tense political atmosphere’,2 with Goering turning up in an old hunting suit.3 The lecture was to be delivered in the Great Hall, whose giant windows gave onto an impressive view of the Bavarian mountain range.4 At midday Hitler began his speech; his listeners were expressly forbidden to take it down in writing or make notes,5 but not all respected this injunction, and even Canaris secretly scribbled down the main points and Halder and General Boehm both copied down the speech from memory the same day.6 Its purpose was to prepare the generals for the attack on Poland.7

  Hitler mentioned Germany’s economic difficulties and gave his best analysis of the international constellation of powers before speaking of the central importance of his own person for Germany’s destiny:

  Really it depends on me, on my being, on account of my political abilities. The fact is that probably nobody but me has the confidence of the whole German people . . . but I can be eliminated at any time by a criminal, by an idiot.8 . . . We have nothing to lose, only to gain. Our economic situation is such that we can only hold out for a few years . . . All these happy circumstances will no longer exist in two to three years; nobody knows how long I have to live. Therefore the dispute is best now . . . The relationship with Poland has become intolerable . . . we must accept the risk with ruthless resolve . . . We have the harsh alternatives of either hitting, or sooner or later being annihilated for sure.9 . . . Our opponents are small worms; I saw them at Munich . . . My only fear is that at the last moment some swinehound will give me a plan for negotiation.10

  The monologue continued for ninety minutes; in response Goering, as senior officer present, thanked and assured him: ‘The Wehrmacht will do its duty. Quite obviously, if called upon, it must do its duty.’11 The company then dined on the terrace of the Bergh of12 and, upon resumption, Hitler spoke of ‘the most iron resolve amongst ourselves . . . the life and death struggle . . . a long period of peace will do us no good . . . Qualitatively, we have the better man. The destruction of Poland is in the foreground . . . the objective is to eliminate living forces, not to reach a certain line.’13 There has been much debate over whether this last sentence was put that way and so could be interpreted as a hint of the planned war of extermination in the East.14 He continued:

  I will supply a motive through propaganda to start this war, irrespective of whether it is credible; nobody will ask the victor afterwards whether he told the truth or not. At the beginning and in the execution of the war it is not about right, but about victory. Hearts closed to compassion; brutal proceedings. Eighty million people must have their rights, their existence must be guaranteed. The stronger party has right on his side, the greatest harshness.15

  What Canaris took down in hasty shorthand left nothing to be desired in terms of clarity. After the speech nobody spoke;16 even von Brauchitsch, who was most likely to raise an opinion or protest on some point, remained silent. The officers did not discuss the speech, and Generalmajor von Sodenstern noted ‘an atmosphere of suspicion’.17

  Hitler’s adjutant Nicolaus von Below summed up in his memoir: ‘We were confronted by the fact that in a few days Germany would find itself in a war which Hitler considered inevitable and desired, without having trust in his generals and which his generals considered a catastrophe, although they made no move against him.’18

  Canaris returned to Berlin the next day and informed his senior staff of the Berghof speech, and the probable date for the attack on Poland,19 reading his notes to his closest confidants. Gisevius remembered later: ‘His voice trembled; he felt he had been witness to something huge. We were both of the opinion we must preserve for the world this document and therefore we made a copy that Oster added to his document collection,’20 referring to Oster’s collection of files and documents relating to the misdeeds of the National Socialist regime.21 Groscurth noted in his diary on 24 August 1939: ‘On the 26th the war against Poland starts up. The chief spent two hours showing me his diaries and the Führer’s speech to the commanders-in-chief, which he had taken down in brief phrases. We are flabbergasted. Everything is lies and deception, nothing true. It is right to say of it, “It lacks any decent basis”.’22

  It was very probably Oster who passed the document forward; on 25 August the prominent American journalist Louis P Lochner, chief of the Associated Press office in Berlin, passed a report on Hitler’s Berghof speech to Ogilvie-Forbes, adviser to the British ambassador, who forwarded it immediately to London. Lochner received the speech from another source, as the note of an unnamed officer who had been present at the Berghof.23

  Lochner stated that he took the paper first to the American envoy Alexander C Kirk, but he refused to accept it, saying: ‘Oh, take this out of here. It is dynamite. I won’t touch it, I don’t want to get involved.’24

  This particular copy differed substantially from the text of Canaris’s stenographed version, and it seems likely that Oster doctored the text to make it more lurid.25 Daladier and Chamberlain were now the pitiful ‘little worms’ too cowardly to venture a counter-strike:

  What the weak Western European civilisation says about me is irrelevant. I have given the order
– and I will have anyone shot who says a word in criticism of it – that the war is not to reach certain lines, but the physical annihilation of the enemy. Therefore I have, initially only in the East, drawn up my SS-Death’s Head units with the order to send to their deaths, ruthlessly and without compassion, every man, woman and child of Polish extraction and mother tongue. Only in that manner will we win the living space that we need. Who talks today of the extermination of the Armenians?26

  At the Obersalzberg meeting Hitler had not said this, but it demonstrates that the presumed author of the adulterated version, Hans Oster, understood that the planned attack was linked to genocide. The document ended with Hitler’s fear that

  Chamberlain or some other such filthy swine would arrive at the last moment with suggestions and upsets. He will fall down the stairs . . . the attack and the destruction of Poland begin early Sunday morning. I am having a couple of companies in Polish uniform in Upper Silesia or in the Protectorate attacked. Whether the world believes it or not I don’t give a shit. The world believes only in success.27

  That the author of the falsified pamphlet assessed the situation correctly is proved by two details that Hitler had not mentioned in his address but which corresponded to his plans: the setting up of the SS-Death’s Head units and the provocateurs in Polish uniforms. Canaris made clear to Halder the same day that he knew, or at least suspected, this, and Halder noted in his diary that Canaris had expressed ‘his worries about the role of SS-Death’s Head units in the impending war’.28 The Abwehr had been involved for months in the preparations for ‘Fall Weiss’ – the attack on Poland – in both the operational planning and the provocations agreed by Hitler, Himmler and Heydrich as justification of the invasion for propaganda purposes.

  Despite assurances to the contrary by Hitler and Ribbentrop, OKH expected the involvement of the Western Powers and war on two fronts, and it was for this reason that the original final plan of 15 June was shelved in favour of overcoming Poland in as short a time as possible, so that the greater part of the Wehrmacht could be transferred to the Western Front at the earliest opportunity.29 The Polish Army would have to accept battle as close as possible to the German frontier since the area west of the Vistula River was home to their vital industrial centre and the base for their mainstream mobilisation. To withdraw their troops east of the Vistula in the hope of absorbing a German surprise attack and then using the tactic of trench warfare was not possible because of the tension existing between Poland and its eastern neighbour, the Soviet Union. Accordingly, the Polish plan in the case of a German invasion would be an attempt to intercept and hold the first waves quickly in order to concede the least amount of terrain possible until British and French support arrived, and to inflict upon the enemy the maximum casualties. At the same time, the Poles would have to either protect or destroy strategically important lines of communication and industrial installations before the Germans could capture them.30

  The German Army planners were aware of these considerations. Two precarious bottlenecks in the path of the Wehrmacht were the Vistula bridges at Dirschau in the operational area of Army Group North, and the Jablunka Pass in the western Beskid in the area of Army Group South. Both were strategically important transport communications points that the Poles had prepared to destroy with explosives. Lahousen (Abwehr Abteilung II) had the task of preventing the destruction and so to smooth the advance of the German invasion forces;31 both of these commando operations involved great risks since the units had to infiltrate the target area in civilian clothes ‘in peacetime’, ahead of the invasion.

  The area around the Dirschau bridges had been watched by the Abwehr for months. It was suspected that the wires to the Polish explosives ran below the carriageway but it was not known where the actual explosives were located.32 On 11 July, OKH decided that 1 Armeekorps was responsible for capturing the Dirschau bridges, and Lahousen’s Abteilung was ordered to make the necessary preparations.33

  The task of securing the two tunnels through the Jablunka Pass and the occupation of Mosty Railway Station was given to Leutnant (R) Herzner, who a year earlier had been a member of the stormtroop proposing to take the Reich Chancellery. His team would have to succeed in its objective at Jablunka a few hours before the scheduled time for the invasion, with the support of special units formed by the Abwehr, made up of street-fighters who for ideological or materialist reasons had joined one or other of the Abwehr battle or sabotage organisations. These units were trained along Abwehr lines and wore civilian clothes or enemy uniforms, and had been deployed during the Sudeten crisis to operate behind the Czech lines in the event of hostilities.34 After some forethought, Canaris had approved such K(ampf)-and S(abotage)-Organisations;35 now it would be their job to prevent the Poles denying the invasion army possession of strategically important targets well back from the Front.

  On 30 June Abwehrstelle Breslau reported a complement of two thousand men for the planned K-Organisations in the Olsa area and at Pless.36 In the majority of cases these would be Volksdeutsche – foreign nationals of German blood – and Polish Ukrainians as well as Czechs, Slovaks and Sudeten Germans;37 they had no military status, which often caused complications in matters of discipline.38

  On 10 August 1939, Canaris dined with the Ribbentrop family at Schloss Fuschl near Salzburg;39 the main topic of conversation there was the imminent war. The Reich foreign minister spoke about the ‘Pact of Steel’ signed with Italy on 22 May, the ten-year treaty that provided for regular consultations between Berlin and Rome, mutual support if threatened and an immediate alliance in the event of war, subject to a three-year opening period of peace before risking any adventure.40 Ribbentrop was confident that Italy would stand beside the Reich and deny the British access to the Mediterranean, and the following day he entertained the Italian foreign minister, Count Ciano, who had come to convince the Germans that the time for an invasion was not ripe.41 It was an icy encounter; neither exchanged a word at dinner.42

  Next morning Ciano saw Hitler at Obersalzberg. Interpreter Schmidt remembered that Ciano ‘went to the point very energetically’,43 but Hitler responded by saying that the major war against the Western Powers had to be fought while he and the Duce were still young.44 When Ciano objected that Italy was not equipped for war,45 Hitler explained that the Polish campaign would not lead to a general war, and therefore he would not need to request Italy’s military support. Ciano returned to Salzburg the same evening and discussed the matter with Italian ambassador Bernardo Attolico, who had been advising him to break with Germany even during the negotiations with Ribbentrop, but Ciano knew that Mussolini would never agree to this.46 On 13 August, after a second visit to Obersalzberg, he recognised that ‘nothing more can be done. He is determined to strike, and he will strike.’47 Ciano returned to Rome feeling deceived by the leaders of the Third Reich, and he envisaged Italy being dragged into an adventure with an uncertain outcome.48

  Hitler’s iron resolve had been fortified during the discussions with Ciano when information was received from Moscow that the Soviets were prepared to negotiate on matters, including Poland. That same day Hitler fixed the prospective date for the attack on Poland for Saturday 26 August.49

  Canaris mobilised his Italian contacts and on 11 August in Berlin he met Roatta, the military attaché at the Italian embassy, and warned him that Germany was ‘not equipped for a general war’. Many German senior commanders were convinced that in the event of war with Poland, Britain and France would not intervene, and therefore the attitude of Italy in the present situation was decisive.50 Four days later Canaris told Roatta that Hitler’s intention was not only to re-annexe Danzig, but to destroy Poland; the military operation would begin in about two weeks.

  Canaris expected the Western Powers to become involved and that a long war would result. Germany would be victorious in the East but as in 1917/18 defeated in the West, ‘and that will be the end of Germany’:51 Canaris continued that it was known that the Italian Government consider
ed the time for a European war inopportune, but this would not shift the Führer in his resolve. Perhaps Hitler would decide otherwise if the Italians declared expressly that they were against it. Roatta relayed the message at once to an envoy at the Italian embassy in Berlin, Massimo Magisatrati, and Ciano received the report by courier, Canaris having warned expressly of the danger of telephone conversations being tapped and cables being decrypted. Magistrati made a marginal note: ‘Please do not give the name of the admiral as the source of this information under any circumstances.’52

  For some time, Ernst von Weizsäcker, secretary of state at the Foreign Office, had been attempting to influence Mussolini through ambassador Attolico, and through secret channels from London, but apparently he did not mention his link to Canaris.53 Weizsäcker was kept informed of the discussions between Ribbentrop, Hitler and Ciano54 by Interpreter Schmidt and a colleague of his confidant Erich Kordt.55

  On 15 August 1939 Attolico pleaded with British ambassador Sir Neville Henderson that the British Government should approach Mussolini for a new peace initiative. Weizsäcker informed Halder of this the same day, while Theodor Kordt, an adviser to the German ambassador in London, warned the British Government.56