According to the memoir of Gerhard Engel, Hitler’s Army ADC, it was Himmler who, in February 1942, on the initiative of Heydrich or Schellenberg, complained to Hitler about Canaris. Himmler had apparently been informed by one of his subordinates of the existence of a German agent in Tangiers who was ‘a full Jew’ under Nazi racial law. Canaris considered this agent, who supplied valuable information from the Arab world and counter-espionage material from Tangiers and Casablanca, extraordinarily reliable and thought so much of him that he met him regularly in Spain. Himmler used this information to complain to Hitler about Canaris, it being known that ‘on the basis of his positive attitude to Jewry that he used numerous Jewish liaison men and intermediaries both at home and abroad’.24 Hitler, incensed, ordered Keitel to suspend Canaris from duty immediately; Engel recalled the pathetic obedience of the OKW head in raising no word of protest. Canaris’s deputy Bürkner was ordered to take over the Abwehr and for a week Canaris attempted in vain to obtain an interview with Hitler through Keitel and Wehrmacht adjutant Schmundt, but when Engel went behind their backs with the request, he was surprised to receive Hitler’s consent. After the private meeting Canaris was restored to office and that evening he rang Engel and asked him who had arranged the interview. When Engel said that he had done it himself, Canaris related how Keitel had just visited him to offer his best wishes for Canaris’s rehabilitation. He, Keitel, had gone to terrific lengths to convince Hitler of Canaris’s innocence and had finally won the Führer’s approval to receive Canaris for a talk.25
Since the intervention of Himmler occurred at a time when Canaris and Heydrich were involved in negotiations to review the ‘Ten Commandments’, it is likely that the initiative came not from Himmler, but from Heydrich. In mid-1940, Heydrich had told Schellenberg, then head of Group IVE at RSHA, to draft a ‘Ten Point Programme’ for the coordination of the secret services and a basic reorganisation.26 On 20 December, significantly, Heydrich wrote not to Canaris’s immediate superior Keitel, but to Jodl, pointing out that the areas of jurisdiction and responsibility between Abwehr and RSHA had to be rearranged, which in Heydrich’s book meant that the Abwehr had to cede more ground to Sipo and SD.27
On 7 November 1940 Heydrich wrote to Canaris enclosing an endless list of queries which had been addressed from Abwehr staff or offices to SD or party offices on a wide range of subjects. Heydrich saw this overlapping of functions as a threat to his empire: ‘Reporting inside the Reich is, as I mentioned in my letter of 1 April 1940, the responsibility of my bureaux, SD sections and Stapo offices. The Security Service was designated by a directive of the party dated 9 June 1934 to be the sole intelligence service of the NSDAP, its branches, and its subordinate and affiliated organisations. In equal measure it is the sole intelligence service of the State in the internal political sphere.’ Since it was inappropriate, in the interests of a uniform intelligence organisation for the entire area populated by the German people, to have other independent intelligence agencies working alongside it, Heydrich said that he was ‘of course willing to abandon those intelligence activities of my offices upon which the OKW lays especial importance’. Obviously, he added, this was valid only for the Reich interior.28
Canaris waited until 7 January 1941 before answering. He made it clear that in order to do their jobs properly, those involved in intelligence duties in industry and armaments needed to be advised continuously – not just now and then – as to morale amongst the population and the ‘followers’ in the factories, otherwise the war effort might run into problems. Furthermore, as regards the use of agents, who were not only needed in counter-espionage but for preemptive measures, he saw no possibility of withdrawing his apparatus from here in favour of the SD.29 Canaris anticipated correctly that Heydrich would not let it rest at that and asked Bentivegni, in whose domain the problem area resided, to draft a statement of the Abwehr position as the basis for talks between Canaris and Heydrich. These talks were held on 12 January 194130 at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse, where Gruppenführer Müller, Gruppenführer Streckenbach and Sturmbannführer Huppenkothen, who had been head of Gruppe IVE at RSHA since the end of 1940, welcomed them; Heydrich came later.31 The conference began with Canaris and Heydrich speaking in private. Canaris said that he regretted that Heydrich had not come to him directly; even Keitel had been surprised at it and asked him to have the matter clarified, emphasising that ‘in wartime there was no question of a change in the mutual responsibilities’.32
Heydrich claimed competence for security in the civilian sector of the Reich, which meant that Sipo was responsible for counter-espionage and countersabotage in the Reich.33 Bentivegni objected, particularly with reference to industrial concerns with secret armaments projects for the Wehrmacht. Heydrich countered that the Abwehr claimed jurisdiction over gas and electricity installations, which had nothing to do with top secrets, and should be surrendered to RSHA.34 And so it went on. Finally a compromise was hammered out in which Canaris made concessions in the civilian field and counter-espionage; even the ‘Hauskapellen’ would in future transmit their suspicions both to the Abwehr and the Stapo centre.35 It fell to Huppenkothen to commit the revised ‘Ten Commandments’ to paper.
On 26 January Canaris received a paper entitled ‘Basic Principles for Cooperation Between Sipo, SD and Abwehrstellen of the Wehrmacht’,36 personally dictated by Heydrich. The same day Streckenbach brought a letter from Heydrich containing suggestions for the future control of the GFP,37 which was not well received and Müller left ‘totally depressed’, while Streckenbach was ‘really gloomy’. When Heydrich received the Abwehr counter-proposal on 2 February he was ‘bitterly disappointed and affected’;38 he wanted to transfer the GFP lock, stock and barrel in to SS-RSHA, but after speaking to Canaris by telephone he had approached Keitel and received a firm no to the idea. Heydrich finished his letter:
Faithful to our promise in private, I would like to say that I see no sense in negotiations conducted in a gentlemanly manner in which a stenographer is needed in order to arm oneself for the next discussion. Since I continue to receive my guidelines for these basic negotiations from the Reichsführer-SS, there seems to me no possibility of arriving at a satisfactory conclusion on this basis. I therefore consider it right and proper that we keep our respective distance from the time of the next discussions until the RF-SS makes his decision. I believe you will understand my position and disappointment. I remain with Heil Hitler! Your very devoted . . .39
When Canaris went with Bentivegni next day to RSHA headquarters, Huppenkothen described the rebuff: ‘Canaris said he would wait for Heydrich to return and sat for several hours in the ante-room. Then he gave up but told Bentivegni not to come back until he had spoken to Heydrich. SS-Gruppenführer Müller was then given the unpleasant task of speaking to Bentivegni, and sending him on his way.’40
Heydrich enjoyed the cheap satisfaction and wrote to Canaris the next day,
I hear that despite my letter you made the effort to visit my office. This is very distressing for me, for you could have saved yourself the trouble if you had clearly understood what my letter said; I am not in the position to have any conversations, not even of the personal kind, before seeing Reichsführer-SS at headquarters. For day-to-day business my head office and my whole staff are at your disposal now as before. It is my heartfelt request that you do not make a difficult situation any more burdensome, please, to yourself, someone years older . . .41
This was pure sarcasm, and when he answered Heydrich’s two letters of 5 and 6 February Canaris must have been hard put to reply in the vein which he did, hoping ‘that things between us both will soon return to what they were . . . for I am against making business matters personal, only then are they unbridgeable. We must both be clear that we . . . each to his own sphere . . . serve one aim. For that I ask for the same trust from you as I extend to you. Then our two offices will find it easy to resolve the questions which unsettle them.’42
This did not resolve the conflict and eventually Ke
itel had to intervene and telegraph Heydrich before he would agree to speak to Canaris again;43 previously Canaris had asked Himmler to urge Heydrich to find an acceptable solution.44 On 12 February Heydrich and Canaris met at a villa at Klein-Wannsee to work out an agreement for the basic principles. In the civilian sphere counterespionage would be handled by Sipo and SD. Abwehr would combat radio signals of enemy intelligence active in the Reich. The Hauskapellen would in future cooperate closely with the Sipo head, and this cooperation would extend to counter-espionage and sabotage in industry.45 Heydrich had not succeeded in everything, but he was a winner on points, and the principles of the compromise were issued as an OKW order on 6 April.
On 18 May 1942 at the Prague Hradshin, Canaris and Heydrich, now acting Reich-Protector for Bohemia and Moravia, presided at the ‘Joint Conference of the Leader of the Abwehrstellen of the Wehrmacht and the Leader of the Stapostellen and SD Sections Leaders’. There were 337 people present, including all RSHA departmental heads, all Einsatzgruppen leaders, active and former Einsatzkommando leaders and Sipo and SD commanders as well as senior Abwehr heads. The purpose of the conference was to reorganise cooperation between the Abwehr and Stapo/SD, to explain the revised ‘Ten Commandments’, and to allow a general exchange of experience;46 Heydrich and Canaris delivered the main addresses. Abwehr official Otto Wagner described later an argument when Abwehr members criticised the negative effects on the civilian populations of the killings in occupied territories. Heydrich reacted angrily, saying that neither he nor the RSHA had ordered these, but Hitler personally.47 There was also disagreement between Canaris and Heydrich after the latter accused the Abwehr chief of unreliability and inefficiency. Heydrich had been insistent that his rival accept the new arrangement,48 but Schellenberg spoke of a long final conversation with Canaris, who gave the impression of mild resignation. Canaris said that although there seemed to be a solution, he did not feel that Heydrich had abandoned his general attack on him.49
This must have been the meeting that Canaris described to his nephew Constantin shortly afterwards. Constantin Canaris, an NSDAP member since 1932, had entered the Stapo on Werner Best’s advice and made a career of it relatively quickly. By 1941 he was Sipo and SD attaché to the military commandant of Belgium and Northern France in Brussels before taking over the Stapo headquarters at Königsberg, and in the spring of 1942 he was promoted to SS-Obersturmbannführer as a governmental adviser.50 Constantin Canaris reported after the war that his uncle had never disclosed to him military secrets – probably to protect his nephew – but he made no secret of his attitude towards Himmler, Heydrich and the SS, for after the Hradshin conference he had apparently told Heydrich that he would continue to fight for those people who in his opinion had been arrested unjustly by the SS and SD. This would not have improved his personal standing with Heydrich.51
Nine days after the Hradshin meeting, on 27 May 1942 Heydrich left his estate for the city as usual in his open-topped Mercedes limousine; he was running ninety minutes late because he had gone for a walk in the park with his pregnant wife and then played with his children. On a sharp bend a man jumped out and aimed a machine-pistol at Heydrich, but the gun jammed and Heydrich told his chauffeur to stop so that the would-be assassin could be taken in charge. This gave a second assassin the opportunity to throw his bomb.52 Heydrich died on 4 June 1942 of internal injuries and an infected wound. Four days later, the train bearing his coffin arrived at Berlin Anhalter Station; his State funeral was held on 9 June in the Mosaic Hall at the Reich Chancellery before the carriage bearing the coffin was drawn by six black horses to the Invaliden Cemetery. Himmler’s eulogy evoked ‘the great SS family and the long battalions of SS dead’ while Hitler’s parting was more sorrowful.
Canaris was among the mourners, deeply moved. Huppenkothen remembered: ‘When I spoke to him at the reception, with tears in his eyes he expressed to me his own and the sympathy of his office, and assured me that he had valued and venerated Heydrich as a great and extraordinary person, and had lost in him a great friend.’53 Canaris wrote to Heydrich’s widow Lina: ‘Be sure, I have lost a true friend.’54 Inga Haag, former secretary to Helmuth Groscurth and later Canaris’s close colleague, recalled years later how the death of Heydrich affected Canaris; despite all the rivalry and professional disagreements their relationship had always been friendly and cordial.55 When Groscurth learned of Heydrich’s death, he wrote to Ludwig Beck from the Eastern Front: ‘The struggle for the Church, air raids and Heydrich’s death are all further causes for sorrow . . . .’56 He did not mean sorrow for Heydrich, however, but rather for the terrible revenge which would follow.
25
With His Back to the Wall
More so than the neutral capitals Berne, Stockholm or Madrid, Istanbul was the ‘capital city’ of espionage. MI5 and OSS were thick on the ground there in 1943; the German Abwehr had its representatives and as in Spain or Sweden profited from the pro-German politics of the country.
The head of the K-Organisation Istanbul office was Dr Paul Leverkühn. Born at Lübeck in 1893, his first experience of intelligence work had been at German diplomatic missions in Turkey and the Middle East during the First World War. After qualifying in law he subsequently spent several years in the United States working for the German delegation of the Mixed Claims Commission, during which time he got to know the American attorney William J Donovan, with whom he remained in contact after returning to Germany in 1930. In Berlin he set up a law practice on the Pariser Platz and spent the next nine years as a lawyer and notary. For some time Adam von Trott zu Sulz worked at the practice, and in 1938 Helmuth Graf von Moltke started work there. Throughout this period Leverkühn visited Donovan, now a Wall Street attorney, on a regular basis. In 1939 Donovan came to Germany and was introduced to Moltke and the Kreisau circle, to ambassador Dr Otto Kiep, a member of the Solf Circle, a loose association of like-minded anti-Nazis grouped around Hanna Solf, the widow of the former German ambassador to Tokyo, Dr Wilhelm Solf. That summer, a few weeks before the outbreak of war, Donovan also met Secretary of State von Weizsäcker. Whether he also had contact to Canaris has not been proven but is very probable, for ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan, who in 1942 took over the OSS, forerunner of the CIA, attempted to contact Canaris during the war. In Turkey the paths of Donovan, Leverkühn, Moltke and Trott zu Solz would cross frequently.1
In January 1943 at a press conference following the Casablanca Conference in French Morocco, Roosevelt had stated that the only terms on offer for Germany were ‘unconditional surrender’.2 This had serious consequences for German Resistance circles, since it meant that there could neither be separate peace negotiations with Germany, nor negotiated cooperation to stated conditions with a German Resistance movement that hoped for the assistance of the Allies in a planned coup d’état.
Canaris played an important role in the extension of peace feelers from the German side. At the end of January 1943 he met the US naval attaché to Istanbul, Captain George H Earle, the ex-governor, friend of Roosevelt and expert on the Balkans, who had just arrived in Turkey as an observer.3 Leverkühn had made contact with him through the former diplomat Kurt Freiherr von Lersner, who had worked at the German legation in Washington and was friendly with the German ambassador to Turkey, Fritz von Papen.
Canaris wanted to find out if there were any alternatives to unconditional surrender, perhaps an armistice in the West or common cause against Communism in the East, as the leading representatives of the National-Conservative and anti-Bolshevist opposition hoped. Earle promised to ask Roosevelt, but received a categorical denial – there was no question of withdrawing the demand for unconditional surrender.4
Nevertheless, the attempts at contact between Canaris and the Western Allies were continued. In Donovan’s papers for February and March 1943 are several telegrams from his colleague Florimond Duke to Colonel Ulius C Amoss, who was working for Donovan in Cairo. Every move Canaris made was carefully noted by the Americans in OSS files under code number 659
or ‘C’:5
26 February: C is in Berne again after he visited the Balkans last week. He registered as Dr Spitz in the St Gotthard Hotel in Berne. 5 March: A short while ago he made a trip to the Balkans and also visited Turkey. He wants to contact the American secret service. If you [Amoss] consider it advisable it might be possible to arrange his return to Cairo at a convenient time for yourself. 10 March: It will need time to fulfil C’s wish to meet you. He is at the moment in southern Spain. As soon as it is possible we will let you have further information with respect to this. 23 March: C was contacted in France. He says that at the moment he is under close watch by Himmler, who suspects him to be working for the overthrow of Hitler and the Party. Therefore C must be extremely careful.6
This caution was justified. Canaris knew that his enemies and rivals were watching his every step, waiting for a mistake.
The head of OSS at Berne, Allen Welsh Dulles, who had contact with the Abwehr man Gisevius, Eduard Waetjen and Theodor Strünk, mentioned for the first time at the beginning of April Himmler as a possible successor to Hitler; shortly afterwards he reported on Himmler’s efforts to take over the entire German secret service apparatus.7 It is noteworthy that also in Great Britain at the same time the rumours of the undermining and removal of Canaris were circulating and probably frustrated any further efforts to contact him.
Canaris Page 30