Canaris

by Mueller, Michael;

  On 23 September Hitler agreed to meet Franco’s demands, but his conversation with Mussolini on 4 October 1940 at the Brenner Pass, in which he described these demands, changed the situation. Hitler wanted bases in Morocco from where he could strike at British colonies in West Africa; Mussolini wanted Nice, Corsica, Tunis and Djibouti. As it now appeared certain that Hitler would abandon Operation Seelöwe, Mussolini was hoping, as was his Foreign Minister Ciano, to bring France in on the side of an anti-British coalition. Regarding the situation in Spain, there was agreement28 on the basis of Canaris’s advice that very little military assistance was to be expected from Spain29 and therefore Mussolini should now take over the job of manoeuvring Franco into the Berlin–Rome Axis, as Halder later confirmed.

  The Duce went on the defensive, considering that great caution was advisable, for Spain was unreliable and Franco was demanding too much; it would be best to hold back.30 The relationship between Hitler and Mussolini was harmonious at this point, but when Mussolini was surprised by a report that a German military commission was in Bucharest preparing the defence of the Romanian oilfields, he reacted by ordering the invasion of Greece at the end of the month in order to present Hitler with his own fait accompli.

  During the first fortnight of October 1940 there was increasing disquiet at Franco’s delaying tactics and the General Staff was considering an attack on Gibraltar without Spanish help. In an earlier meeting between Hitler and Suñer, Hitler had offered Spain the opportunity to extinguish the civil war debt, and in response, according to Halder, Suñer had given Hitler a sermon: ‘Suñer replied, “Such a combination of materialism and idealism is incomprehensible for the Spanish.” The Führer seemed like “a small Jew”.’31 Franco had requested a document granting his demands for Gibraltar, Morocco and Oran, but Hitler had declined to sign it, worried that if France learned of these demands, it would not defend its colonies but hand them over to Britain.

  On 12 October Operation Seelöwe was shelved and the preparations for Operation Felix accelerated.32 Halder even thought it possible that the Rock might be taken without a fight, but if that was not the case it would be costly. ‘Gibraltar is just a prestige thing. I do not rule it out that the British will abandon it when they see that we are preparing an attack, for it is less harmful to prestige to abandon something voluntarily than lose it. If they hold it, however, then we must have the whole peninsula down to the southern end in our hand, otherwise it will become an Alcazar’33 (Alcazar was the minor fortress that Franco had sworn to relieve as a debt of honour and which cost him the early capture of Madrid in 1936).

  Travelling in the Führer’s train towards the Spanish frontier and his meeting with Franco on 23 October, Hitler was already forewarned by Canaris that he would be disappointed by Franco, who was basically a hard-bitten diplomat.34 The dictatorial pair were thus well matched. Franco was intent on tightening the screw to the fullest as the price for Spain’s entry into the war, while Hitler knew that many of his leading military men placed little value on Franco because of the underlying situation in Spain.35 State Secretary von Weizsäcker wrote three days previously: ‘My vote is that Spain should be left out of the game . . . Gibraltar is not worth that much to us . . . Today Spain is starving and has a fuel shortage . . . even the entry of Spain (together with other vassal states) has no practical value.’36

  The meeting with Franco took place in Hitler’s saloon coach at the border station of Hendaye, and lasted almost nine hours. Franco wanted much, and Hitler had almost nothing to offer37 and in the end the talks were fruitless.38 As Hitler left the meeting he murmured: ‘We cannot do anything with this guy.’ Halder noted later, after hearing from Hitler’s Army adjutant Engel that in the Reich Chancellery Hitler had raged wildly about the ‘Jesuit swine’ and ‘the false pride of the Spaniard’.39 At the German border on his return he was told of the impending Italian attack on Greece, at which he erupted in rage.40 From then on, Hitler planned to solve the Gibraltar problem with Spain, cutting Italy out.

  On 2 November Canaris had several conversations with Halder, to whom he had offered the role of negotiator in the dealings with Spain.41 Halder asked him to summon his representative at Algeciras, Major Fritz Kautschke, to Berlin; Kautschke had been recruited into the Abwehr by Canaris after being required to relinquish his post with the artillery for ‘non-Aryan racial descent’. Together with Coronel Pardo, General Campos and other Spanish General Staff officers, he had made a detailed analysis of the Gibraltar area and the British defence measures, and he now presented a long report accompanied by photos, maps and sketches. He was enthusiastic, even if the situation in Spain was assessed as very bad indeed. He wrote: ‘Total collapse of the internal [apparatus of] administration: for food and fuel totally dependent on Britain, which receives ore in exchange. Difficult position for Franco who has nothing behind him and therefore cannot risk anything. His position is being weakened rather than strengthened by Suñer, who can be considered the most hated man in Spain.’42

  Of the new foreign minister it was said that his ‘arrogance and excessive sensitivity were not justified by his achievements’ and combined with ‘Franco’s stubbornness’ he was becoming a problem. Canaris was to hold himself in readiness for the preparation of further negotiations43 and to ensure that the Abwehr shielded the military survey of Gibraltar from British intelligence.

  The preparations for the actual attack proceeded to plan. As soon as the first German troops had crossed the Spanish border, the Luftwaffe would strike at the ships in Gibraltar harbour. 22.Infanteriedivision was completely fitted out, and leave restrictions had been imposed, additional troops were at readiness in order to invade Portugal if necessary and it was being calculated how quickly artillery units could be stationed on the North African coast of the Strait. Lahousen now set in motion the preparations of Abwehr II;44 the operation was codenamed ‘Felsennest’ (‘Nest on the Rock’), later changed to ‘Basta’ (Spanish: ‘Enough’). Lehrregiment Brandenburg would have 150 men ready for a commando mission shortly to start up in southern France.45

  In the first half of November, a series of secret operations began around Gibraltar. Canaris sent Kapitän Hans-Erich Voss to Algeciras to determine where best to place the heavy coastal batteries to support the German attack and Abwehr Hauptmann Hermann Menzel cooperated with K-Org chief Leissner in supplying reports for the naval intelligence on Gibraltar’s weak points. From 12 November, Canaris was in Spain,46 but when he returned to Zossen a fortnight later and informed Halder of his conversations with Vigón and other generals, it was still not known when or even whether Spain would enter the war on Germany’s side;47 Franco was still playing for time.

  The significance of having Spain in the Axis was primarily to cover the situation in the Mediterranean and North Africa against the background of the planned war in the East, and at the same time to relieve the pressure on Italy; Mussolini’s refusal to become entangled in Operation Felix was final. Meanwhile, Felix was now competing in logistics and dates with the planned operations in the Balkans and in Greece. Disguising the operation precluded a Blitzkrieg because the troops now needed thirty-eight days to move down to Gibraltar from the French border. The first advance commandos would move into the Iberian Peninsula on 6 December, the main force would attack early in 1941.48

  Canaris watched the hectic preparations in November with some concern, particularly Halder’s zealous plans calling for two numerically large advance commandos driving through France in civilian clothing in French vehicles and entering Spain under false identities; these advance commando stormtroops consisted of eleven officers for Seville in addition to sixteen artillery spotters and twelve other artillery officers for Cadiz, and sixteen supply officers. Canaris was sure that such large groups of officers were bound to be detected by British intelligence. He intervened, and at the end of November Halder’s plans were toned down.49 Halder noted: ‘The decision for Felix is firm [statement of Hitler]. Pummel every square metre of British ground.
Therefore many mortar bombs needed. Disregard quantity used. Twenty to thirty munition trains through Occupied France or by sea to Malaga.’50

  On the evening of 7 December, Canaris had an audience in Madrid with Franco to confirm his agreement to the passage of German troops through Spain,51 with Vigón taking down the notes of the meeting. Canaris conveyed Hitler’s desire to begin the attack very soon, and requested approval for the transit of German troops on 10 January, when the German aid package would also begin arriving. Franco was aware that the Luftwaffe did not have air supremacy over England and that the Italian position in the Balkans grew worse day by day, and he knew his own problems only too well. Accordingly, as he told Canaris, he could not fight a long war without the Spanish people having to make intolerable sacrifices. Vigón noted: ‘Generalissimus explained to admiral that it was impossible for Spain to enter the war on the date set for the reasons given, namely: the threat of British naval retaliation, his lack of armaments, and the supply situation did not permit an early entry into the war.’52 To Canaris’s enquiry of when the transit of German troops would be possible, the Caudillo was unable to provide a date. Canaris returned to the German embassy from where he cabled Bürkner the same night. Keitel took the telegram to Hitler, conveying Franco’s unequivocal message. His demand that Germany should make the preparations for the conquest of Gibraltar under conditions of the strictest secrecy and disguise was no more than a diplomatic smoke-screen. On 10 December, Canaris spelt it out: ‘The Caudillo has given us clearly to understand that he cannot enter the war until Britain is on the verge of defeat.’53

  Hitler reflected on the ‘extreme consequences’ resulting from this information. If Operation Felix were cancelled, so must be the next step into French Morocco, and this would make it possible for General Weygand with his army in French Morocco to set up his own government to oppose the occupation of the remainder of France.54

  The abandonment of the Gibraltar plan led the Eastern Mediterranean theatre to come into focus. Ambassador Alfieri had painted a very gloomy picture of the Italian Army’s predicament in Albania, and German preparations for Operation Marita, the occupation of Greece, continued apace. This was a prelude to the attack on the Soviet Union, for as Instruction No 20 made clear, at the conclusion of Marita the units involved would be withdrawn for other purposes.55

  There has been much speculation as to Canaris’s real role in the negotiations with Franco and the eventual rejection of the plan to attack Gibraltar. Was he the tireless intelligence officer, planner and motivating force whose purpose was to lure Spain at any cost into the Axis and the war against Britain? Although the journeys to talks seem to support it, there is nothing to suggest that in his meetings with Franco, Vigón, Campos or Suñer he was especially convincing. He conveyed the German requests, probably aware that Franco neither wanted to, nor could, meet them. Keitel concluded in his memoirs that Canaris made no serious attempt to win Franco over for Operation Felix, and may even have advised his Spanish friends against it.56 More cautiously, former Legion Condor commander von Richthofen expressed the suspicion in his diary that Canaris might have helped contribute to Franco’s negative attitude57 while State Secretary von Weizsäcker put it more boldly: ‘After consulting me Canaris would not allow himself to be misused in a fraudulent business against his Spanish friends. He advised them against it, and that had plausible reasons.’58 In a note on 12 December 1940 he added: ‘It gives little satisfaction to have seen the Spanish in their true light. They say they can only join the Axis in the last moments before victory – but what else would they be for us than guests at the table?’59 A few days later he had harsher words to say: ‘Spanish disorganisation and Franco’s inability to run a state at peace makes it our fortune not to have to drag this cripple along with us. There are people starving in Spain.’60

  This sounded like relief and corresponded completely to the strategy employed by Canaris to make Franco’s refusal palatable to Hitler and his generals. Even Ulrich von Hassell noted in October 1940 after the meeting between Hitler and Franco at Hendaye that Canaris had advised against getting too involved in Spain since the situation there was unstable and Franco was weak.61 Despite all the intelligence activity and diplomatic verve he displayed, Canaris seems to have had a foot on the brake and to have provided nothing persuasive to bring Hitler and Franco together.

  It is significant that British writers on the Abwehr have interpreted Canaris’s first report at the end of July 1940 on the poor prospect for a surprise attack on Gibraltar as ‘a masterpiece of calculated discouragement’.62 There were, however, other personalities involved in the plans for the conquest of the Rock whom Canaris would not have influenced with negative assessments. In the early months of diplomacy Canaris would not have risked warning his Spanish friends. Lahousen recalls that Canaris had not been able to warn his friend V igon because the old general would not have understood the political message at that stage of the negotiations.63 Suñer was of a different calibre; on his visit to Berlin in September 1940, he had wondered at the confused ideas of Hitler, to whom the geographical and technical difficulties of capturing Gibraltar did not seem at all clear.64

  Suñer had gone from there to Rome to hear Ciano’s opinion on Spain entering the war and – as alleged – had there met Canaris’s confidant Josef Müller, who had informed him: ‘The admiral asks you to inform the Caudillo that he would like Spain to stay out of the game. It may appear to you that we are currently in the stronger position – in reality it is hopeless, we have hardly any hope of winning the war. The Caudillo can rest assured that Hitler will not invade Spain.’65

  Apparently it was also Canaris – eventually in unison with Richthofen – who had convinced Franco to demand ten 38-cm guns for the bombardment of Gibraltar knowing that Hitler did not have them. And it was also Canaris who advised Martinez Campos quite openly to preserve and protect Spanish neutrality. Although there is only the evidence of the eye-witnesses and inferences to rely on, everything points to Canaris having been more disposed to keeping Spain out of the war than expanding it into Hitler’s bastion in southwest Europe.

  PART V

  THE TRIUMPH OF THE BARBARIANS

  23

  The War of Extermination – Act Two

  Operation Felix was finally discarded in February 1941.1 On 19 February Lahousen recorded in his service diary the first discussion with the Army General Staff on the involvement with Abwehr II in Operation Barbarossa.2 On 22 February Halder and Canaris discussed the preparations for measures in the Ukraine and Baltic States3 and as a result Canaris ordered Abwehrstelle Cracow to resume contact with the Ukrainian Nationalist leader Andrej Melnyk, which had been discontinued at the end of 1940;4 he was to provoke civil disorder once the Red Army began to crack.

  Reports were collated by Oberquartiermeister IV of the General Staff, von Tippelskirch, respecting the military situation in the Soviet Union and the strength of the Red Army. These originated primarily from the Abwehr and the attachés, both Halder and Canaris attaching special importance to the information sent by General Köstring, military attaché in Moscow,5 while the material that the Abwehr had confiscated during the attack on Poland regarding the 1939 Russo-Finnish winter war was also considered valuable. Radio transmissions in the Soviet Union were monitored at the Königsberg and Warsaw monitoring stations. The Lyck and Lancut companies sent their reports directly to the Tirpitzufer.

  Canaris and Halder realised that the shortages that afflicted the Red Army in its early operations were being overcome and obsolete equipment replaced, but its great weakness was a lack of trained officers at the intermediate and higher command levels to replace the officers murdered in Stalin’s purges of 1937–8. Although the deficiency had not yet been made good, Halder recognised that the transfer of command out of the hands of the political commissars to the military commanders had strengthened the Red Army.6

  Canaris assessed the Soviet General Staff to be

  bold in its plans and ad
equately trained technically in the leadership and deployment of large army masses . . . the Russian soldier is hard and self-sufficient, tough and unyielding on the defensive. His fighting technique is primitive to some degree, but with his obedience and natural instinct, after brief battle experience he quickly adapts to everything in which the European soldier at present has the advantage. Especially in winter warfare this toughness and primitiveness will turn the Russian soldier into a dangerous enemy.

  Canaris also recognised how crucial the time factor would be in such a war:

  In the first year of an attack on the Soviet Union, Germany will have the advantage. If Russian strength is not crushed, in the second and third years the forces on either side will be counter-balanced. From the third year onwards and by the latest in the fifth year the nationalist-fanatic masses of at least 25 million Russian soldiers will be in a position to overwhelm any army with an unstoppable impetus. An attack on the Soviet Union will therefore only succeed if one destroys the command centre for the centrally controlled Russian armed forces from the outset, or unleashes a strong freedom movement opposed to Communism. Since neither possibility exists, any war of aggression against the Soviet Union will not only terminate in defeat but turn into a deadly threat towards the attacking nation.7

  Hitler, Heinz remembered, had dismissed these assessments with contempt. This was a war of world views, at the end of which the enemy would not merely be defeated but exterminated, and what the Führer meant by that was explained in a speech to 200 senior commanders at the Reich Chancellery, lasting two and a half hours: ‘It will be a war of extermination. If we do not see it as such, then we may defeat the enemy, but in thirty years the Communists will confront us again.’ Hitler called for the ‘extermination of the Bolshevist commissars and Communist intellectuals . . . this is not a question of military courts . . . commissars and GPU personnel are criminals and must be treated as such.’ Hitler required the commanders to suppress all personal scruples: ‘In the East, ruthlessness is a lenient way to the future.’8