Canaris

by Mueller, Michael;

  When an advance Einsatzkommando of Einsatzgruppe IV arrived at Bromberg, it immediately started massive reprisals; the members of the civilian militia, which initially offered resistance but then surrendered after negotiations, were brutally mistreated by German soldiers and police. Next day, Wilhelm Bischoff, leading the Einsatzkommando, ordered the execution in the market place of fifty hostages selected by police units as retribution for a German lorry being fired on by snipers.45

  On 6 September OKH forwarded to 4.Armee, which was operating in the Bromberg area, an ‘instruction from the Führer’ to take the strongest measures in the occupied territory against saboteurs and insurgents. Captured partisans could be shot immediately whereas previously there had had to be some kind of legal proceeding. The shooting of hostages was allowed if there was an urgent need for it. Himmler ordered five hundred hostages to be taken immediately by the Bromberg Einsatzgruppe; the order reached the town on 10 September, by which time many brutal reprisals had already been taken.46 Even Generalmajor Walter Braemer, the competent commander of Bromberg since 8 September, was unable to estimate how many people had been murdered there, and he allowed it to continue.

  The Einsatzgruppe killed in breach of all local and international law, without reporting what they had done and without judicial hearings. In a raid ordered by Braemer in the allegedly most dangerous district of Bromberg, ‘Swedish Heights’, 120 people were shot by two Einsatzkommandos, while the nine hundred or so Poles that were in custody were taken to a wood on the outskirts of town on 12 September and shot on the orders of Einzsatzgruppe leader Lothar Beutel.

  On 7 September Heydrich informed the Gestapo, Kripo and SD heads of Hitler’s further instructions:

  The top layer of the Polish population is to be rendered harmless as far as possible. The remaining lower layers will not receive special indoctrination, but will have to be suppressed in one form or another . . . the top layer will not be permitted to remain in Poland under any circumstances, and will be brought to German concentration camps, while provisional concentration camps will be established behind the Einsatzgruppen along the border.47

  Canaris was requested to discover exactly what had been discussed at this session and how far Heydrich was prepared to go in the concrete implementation of this decision, and informed Groscurth and Oster the next day. Groscurth noted: ‘Heydrich is stirring it up in the wildest way against the Army. Everything is going ahead too slowly!!! There are two hundred executions daily. He wants to change it. People must be shot or hanged without trial immediately.’ Canaris reported Heydrich’s outburst as being: ‘We will spare the small people, but the nobility, the clergy and Jews must be killed. After we have taken Warsaw, I will agree with the Army how we will separate all these people out.’ Resignedly, Groscurth summed up the situation: ‘Keitel is completely helpless,’48 and Chief of the General Staff Halder told Groscurth: ‘The butchery of the Poles behind the front is increasing so substantially that probably they will be operating with even more energy very soon.’49 Halder confirmed that it was the intention of Hitler and Goering ‘to exterminate the Poles’; Groscurth wrote: ‘The rest cannot be written down.’50

  The events at Bromberg were the catalyst for an increasingly brutal war of extermination, about which the German administrative centres involved were only informed piecemeal, as it took place. For some time the Einsatzgruppen had been developing their own initiative and Hitler’s orders to Himmler merely gave the nod to the proceedings in the eyes of the SS and police leadership. Accordingly, during the first two weeks of war, Himmler was able greatly to extend his jurisdiction with regard to policy in the occupied sectors of Poland, at the expense of the Army.51

  At this time Canaris was occupied with other matters. The Abwehr agenda listed talks ranging from the planned operations in the West to cooperation with the IRA and the proposed forays against the British on the Afghan border. Meanwhile he also kept a close watch on Ukraine nationalists, who were poised awaiting the signal from Berlin to create havoc in Polish Galicia.

  On 12 September Canaris travelled with Lahousen to Illnau in Upper Silesia, where the Führer’s train was in sidings. Here Canaris had the opportunity to find out from Hitler and his immediate entourage of advisers how the war was progressing and the future intentions of the leadership and Wehrmacht. He spoke with Ribbentrop, Keitel, Jodl and Hitler himself, and ordered Lahousen to keep a note of everything.52

  From Ribbentrop Canaris learned of the planned formation of a legion of Ukraine nationalists to fight beside the Wehrmacht, and of possible support for a Ukrainian insurrection in Galicia, both under the direction of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists led by Ryko Jary, Andrej Melnyk and Stepan Bandera, who already had close contact with the Abwehr. Preparations for this operation, codenamed ‘Bergbauhilfe’, had been in hand for some time at Abteilung II under Lahousen, but were frequently stopped or amended by political developments and Hitler’s fluctuating instructions.53 Lahousen heard Ribbentrop tell Canaris that during the insurrection ‘all Polish villages had to go up in flames and all Jews killed’; he found on reflection that the idea of burning villages was ‘to some extent new’ since previously there had only been talk of ‘liquidating or removal of people’.54

  Keitel then supplied details of Ribbentrop’s proposals for the ‘solution’ of the Polish war. There were, he said, various options – to ‘quarter Poland’, in which the ‘region east of the Narev–Vistula–San line’ would pass to the Soviet Union; or an ‘independent remainder of Poland’ (a solution to which the Führer was sympathetic because he could then negotiate peace in the East with a ‘Polish’ Government); or Hitler could carve up the remainder of Poland so that the Vilna region would become Lithuanian and Galician, and Polish Ukraine would become independent.

  Canaris received orders to ‘make preparations with the Ukrainians’ so that ‘a revolt will break out in Galician Ukraine which has as its goal the destruction of everything Polish and the Jews’,55 but he protested against the planned ‘shootings and measures for extermination’.56 Lahousen set it down for his chief: ‘I [Canaris] made Generaloberst Keitel aware that I had received information that mass shootings were planned in Poland and that in particular the nobility and clergy were to be exterminated. For these methods the world would eventually hold the Wehrmacht responsible, since these things would have happened under their noses.’57

  Keitel pointed out ‘that this matter had already been decided by the Führer, who had made it clear to ObdH [Brauchitsch] that if the Wehrmacht wanted nothing to do with it, they would have to accept the SS and Gestapo alongside them’, and so a civilian administrator would be appointed in each military region to work in parallel with the military commandant, with the former taking care of ‘the exterminations amongst the local populace’.58 Lahousen remembered at the Nuremberg Trials after the war that Keitel used a term coined by Hitler: ‘political floor cleaning’.59 His unconditional surrender to ‘the will of the Führer’ signalled that the Wehrmacht was not likely to win the struggle against the SS and Gestapo for control and administration of the occupied territories, and probably did not really want to. Their tactics helped them to avoid doing ‘the dirty work’ themselves, but capitulating to the plans for murder had the consequence that civilian control of the occupied territories and military participation in the murdering was not excluded.60 Lahousen also noted down at Canaris’s dictation comments regarding the bombing of Warsaw: ‘To my observation about the unfavourable foreign policy consequences of this measure Generaloberst Keitel replied that these matters had already been settled directly between the Führer and Generalfeldmarschall Goering. The Führer often rang Goering. Sometimes he [Keitel] gained knowledge of the content of the conversation, but not always.’61 Canaris phrased his objections to the plans for murder and extermination in such roundabout language that Keitel asked Oberstleutnant Nikolaus von Vormann, who had been present during the discussion, what Canaris had really wanted, but Vormann could only confi
rm that he did not know either.62

  Canaris next met Hitler, accompanied by Jodl,63 to report on the situation in the West, in particular the activities of the French Army at the Westwall. Hitler was emphatic in his dismissal of the Abwehr theory that the French were planning a major offensive concentrated on Saarbrücken; Jodl was sure that such preparations would take three to four weeks, which prompted from Hitler a typically optimistic assertion:

  Yes, and in October it will already be really cold, and our people will be in their protected bunkers while the French will have to attack from the field. But even if the French were to get through some weak point in the Westwall, we will by then have transferred our divisions from the East, which will give them such a roughing-up that they will not be able to see or hear afterwards. The only route they have is through Belgium and Holland, which I do not believe, but since it is not impossible we should take care.

  Canaris had therefore received a rebuff and was also advised by Hitler ‘to keep a sharp watch on all goings-on in these neutral countries’.64

  The same day Brauchitsch issued an order that all Polish resistance was to be ‘put down ruthlessly’;65 in his service diary Groscurth noted: ‘Call of ObdH to all Poles: occupied territory is not a war area. Possession of weapons is punishable by death. Surrender of all weapons [and] ammunition within twenty-four hours to the nearest centre,’66 and Halder wrote: ‘Execution by military tribunal’.67 When Canaris voiced his doubts regarding the exterminations, Major Rudolf Langhaeuser, Army Group South Abwehr, told him that 180 civilians had been transferred from a camp at Czestochova to Einsatzgruppe II under Emanuel Schäfer,68 and were rumoured to have been shot. Next morning Langhaeuser engaged in a violent altercation with an SS-Oberstrumführer, who was demanding the hand-over of prisoners, which Langhaeuser refused and went immediately to Einsatzgruppe leader Schäfer, who explained that he had orders from the Reichsführer-SS to shoot all Polish insurgents. The commander-inchief of Army Group South, Generaloberst von Rundstedt, had no knowledge of this order, and even the Gestapa in Berlin denied knowledge of it. Heydrich’s representative Werner Best informed Krichbaum, head of GFP, by telephone that ‘orders have only been issued to act against insurgents. I will look into the matter,’69 and came back the same morning with the information that the order to shoot insurgents immediately ‘had originated from the Führer’s train to Gestapo Einsatzkommandos and Ordungspolizei commanders’.70 Whether Best was lying when he said he knew nothing about the shooting order, or if Hitler, Himmler and Heydrich issued these instructions on the spot without reference to Berlin while visiting Einsatzgruppen in Poland is not known.71

  Groscurth wrote: ‘Reichsführer-SS had given immediate instructions to all police commanders etc in the operational area to shoot all members of the Polish insurgent bands. Commanders-in-chief have no knowledge of it. Instead of an energetic investigation by ObdH, the order is being carried out.’72

  Also on 17 September, the Soviet Army began rolling into the areas of Ukraine and White Russia that had been allotted to Stalin as his spheres of interest in the secret protocol to the German–Soviet pact. German military commanders were surprised by the initial Russian move and were uninformed as to where the demarcation line was to run between the respective armies. In order to avoid fighting between German and Soviet troops, territory that had been gained at the cost of German lives had to be relinquished to the Soviets, and OKW re-called the most advanced units the same day.73 A number of officers were outraged at this development; for Halder it was ‘a day of disgrace for the political leadership’74 and Groscurth summed up: ‘German blood helped the Russians and Bolshevism in an effortless advance.’75

  Again on 17 September, Groscurth and Hauptmann Werner Fiedler of Abteilung II,76 the latter being a strongly anti-Nazi protégé of Canaris,77 dined with the family in Berlin. Canaris had just received news that his nephew Leutnant Rolf Buck, son of his sister Anna, had fallen in the field; Groscurth observed how profoundly the death affected everybody. The members of the circle present that night needed to make no secret of their personal feelings, with Canaris and Lahousen relating the ‘devastating impression’ they had obtained after their recent visit to the Führer. Groscurth noted that the admiral saw ‘everything rightly very black’ while at Zossen headquarters an ‘unjustified and frivolous optimism’ prevailed.78 This optimism was fuelled by the quick victories in Poland; by the second week the first units had reached the outer suburbs of Warsaw and the siege of the Polish capital was being prepared.79

  The murders in Poland continued unabated, and Canaris’s secret field police under Krichbaum were willing accomplices, the GFP units giving the Einsatzkommandos so many arrestees for execution that Heydrich was forced to intervene: ‘The chief of Sipo requests that the GFP be instructed to carry out their own executions.’80 Of the 764 known executions between 1 September and 26 October 1939, 311 were undertaken by the Wehrmacht, and an estimated further 20,000 persons murdered.81

  When Heydrich’s request was received, Canaris was with Piekenbrock, Lahousen and retired Rittmeister Jary with 14.Armee at Rzeszow, where Abwehr officer Major Erich Schmidt-Richberg informed him of reports of ‘unrest’ that had been ‘caused in the Army area through the, in part, illegal measures of Einsatzgruppe Woyrsch (the mass shootings, especially of Jews)’; ‘The troops are especially upset that young men, instead of fighting at the Front, have been showing their prowess against unarmed people.’82

  The growing pile of complaints, perhaps including the reports of Canaris and his staff, had at least a cosmetic effect on 22 September, when Brauchitsch and Quartermaster-General Wagner, the ‘Wehrmacht negotiator in questions relating to the Einsatzgruppen’,83 met Heydrich.84 Brauchitsch ‘wished’ that the Army might in future be informed promptly about all SS orders and that ‘economic needs would be met according to priority. Therefore no getting rid of the Jews too soon,’ and no measures ‘which would go down unfavourably abroad’.85 This meant that the murder of Jews was to be slowed down while they remained useful for stripping the country and providing the Army; deportations and resettlement should not begin until the Army had finished its work. Although this did not appreciably restrict Heydrich’s apparatus for murder, a long argument ensued, at the end of which Heydrich agreed to make known all SS orders and to rescind the orders to shoot all members of insurgent gangs without trial.

  However, during a conference with Hitler two days previously, Brauchitsch had made a concession that would have serious consequences. Courts with jurisdiction to try the illegal possession of arms had been exclusively the prerogative of the Wehrmacht, but now they would in future be presided over by the commanders of police regiments or battalions sitting with the heads of Einsatzkommandos and two members of the Army region; their judgments were to be examined only by Himmler. Therefore, before opening his discussions with Heydrich, Brauchitsch had surrendered the exclusive full powers of the military to police units and Einsatzgruppen86 and accordingly there was no reason for Heydrich to compromise; it was already out of his hands. On the planned deportations of Jews, Brauchitsch came out of his shell and insisted that these measures should be handled by the military ‘with no involvement of the civilian administration . . . so that there might be no friction’.87 Heydrich took a frosty view of the commander-in-chief’s distrust, and complained afterwards to Brauchitsch’s adjutant, Major Radke, about Brauchitsch’s attitude.88 He then made a concession to Oberst Wagner to withdraw Einsatzgruppe Woyrsch from the operational area of 14.Armee, and ordered it back to Kattowitz.89 In bad humour he complained about Brauchitsch to Canaris too, saying that he had been unfriendly; all of this had been documented.90

  The protests of the Wehrmacht heads against mass arrest, deportations and the murder of whole sections of the population remain vague and restrained, and gradually the way opened, step by step, for further radicalisation in the policies of resettlement and extermination.91 The military men were anxious to maintain their authority, and worried about
foreign reaction. They wanted the ‘political mopping up’ deferred until after they had tendered responsibility to the German civilian administration, and so prevent the Wehrmacht itself becoming involved in the mass murders.

  Upon returning from Königsberg to Berlin on 22 September, Canaris learned of the death of Generaloberst von Fritsch. After the scandal, to preserve his honour he had been rehabilitated by Hitler to command 12.Artillerie-Regt.92 That morning, in company with his ordnance officer Leutnant Rosenhagen, he was returning from a reconnaissance mission in the Warsaw suburb of Praga when he came under fire and was hit in the thigh by shrapnel. As Rosenhagen tried to apply a tourniquet, Fritsch told him: ‘Leave it.’ He bled to death within a minute.93 Rumours soon began to circulate: while some people, such as General Beck, thought he had deliberately sought a soldier’s death,94 there were others who suspected SS involvement.95 At the State funeral in Berlin ordered by Hitler for 26 September, Brauchitsch read the litany. ‘Wonderful music; Last Post and Halali; well-fired salvoes. A great experience,’ enthused Groscurth.96 But many mourners must have considered it a mockery that Goering laid Hitler’s wreath, and even Himmler was present.97

  The Wehrmacht began the assault on Warsaw on 25 September; German forces quickly broke down the Polish lines, and on the morning of 27 September the city commandant offered the unconditional surrender of Warsaw. On 2 October Hitler arrived to accept the ‘official’ march-past of the German troops that had taken part in the fighting.98

  On 28 September, the German–Soviet Treaty of Friendship was signed in Moscow. Lithuania came under Soviet influence; the Germans were granted Warsaw and Lublin. Stalin made it clear that he had no interest in what happened to the remainder of Poland, leaving the decision to Berlin.99