Canaris

by Mueller, Michael;

  Huppenkothen and Sonderegger concur that the investigations against Oster, Dohnanyi, former Army Judge Karl Sack and Abwehr-Hauptmann Ludwig Gehre were close to completion and these persons were about to be indicted before the People’s Court almost immediately.18 Gestapo Chief Müller now ordered Huppenkothen not to mention the find to the ‘circle of comrades’ and to award it the classification of Reich top secret at ministerial level.19

  In the next three weeks Huppenkothn drafted a 160-page report, of which only four copies – one each for Hitler, Himmler, Kaltenbrunner and Müller – were prepared.20 After reading it, Hitler reserved to himself all further decisions and ordered that the People’s Court was not to be informed.21 Even when Huppenkothen considered the ‘work on the treasonous complex’22 complete, Canaris, Oster, Dohnanyi and other former Abwehr members were not indicted. Presumably the purpose envisaged was to retain the material for possible use in negotiating a separate peace with the West in the future or to stage a show trial against Canaris’s group, attributing to it responsibility for a defeat that could not be avoided.23 The clearest evidence of high treason, the betrayal of the date of the Western offensive, was not suitable as the basis for an indictment24 because it was not certain that it might not have been ‘disinformation’ by the Abwehr to deceive the enemy.

  In the weeks after the Zossen find, the RSHA dungeons received ever more occupants; on 26 September Josef Müller,25 on 8 October Dietrich Bonhoeffer, on 11 October General Thomas ‘for treasonous activities’, and in November Korvettenkapitän Liedig. Friedrich Heinz went into hiding, but his wife and half-brother were taken into custody on racial grounds.26

  The cells at Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse measured 1.5 x 2.5 metres and were furnished with a folding bed high on the wall, a small table and a stool. Morning and evening prisoners were given a mug of ersatz-coffee, two slices of bread with marmalade, and at midday a soup. At the end of the corridor was a small washroom with cold showers and toilets. There was no exercise yard, but short secret conversations were possible in the showers or in the so-called Himmler Bunker where the prisoners were taken during the frequent air raids.27 Day and night they might be brought from their cells and subjected to hours of interrogations in which they were subjected to torture and other brutalities.28

  Canaris was spared the mistreatment but together with Müller and Oster, and certain other prisoners received only a third of the usual diet. At mealtimes and when visiting the toilet they were required to wear painful handcuffs that had been deliberately roughened inside, and were forced to perform demeaning labour. Alexander von Pfuhlstein, for some time commanding officer of Abwehr Division ‘Brandenburg’, stated that when he arrived in the Gestapo dungeon he could hardly recognise the prisoners, they looked so harassed and malnourished; especially of Canaris he had the impression that it was intended to soften him up by starvation.29 Fabian von Schlabrendorff was so badly mistreated that he suffered a heart attack lying in his bloodied clothes in his cell,30 and Karl Ludwig von und zu Guttenberg, beaten by Sonderegger with fists and a cosh during his first interrogation, considered suicide.31

  The cries of those being tortured were audible in the cells. When Josef Müller arrived in the dungeons, Canaris warned him during a walk to the washroom that hell awaited him,32 but instead he received special treatment. Although it was forbidden, Sonderegger allowed him to exchange letters with his wife and receive small food parcels, the contents of which he shared with Oster and Canaris. For the starving Canaris, Müller even left a sausage discreetly in the toilet. Müller was provided by Sonderegger with information about the stage the inquiries had reached and was left alone in the interrogation room with the files, which he was able to ‘clean up’ by removing certain documents.33

  After the Zossen discovery the interrogations were intensified. Huppenkothen and Sonderegger were anxious to prove that Canaris was guilty of internal treason and was behind Müller’s Vatican activities and the betrayal of the Western offensive. Through Gisevius, Canaris had made contact with the head of the OSS in Berne, Allen Welsh Dulles, and to the Polish Government-inexile in London.34

  Canaris knew now that because of the Zossen find, his former strategy of denials no longer served a purpose and he relied henceforth on mainly explaining away his complicity on the grounds of service necessity. Accordingly, he had informed Baron Vladimir Kaulbars, a Russian emigrant whom he had known since the early 1920s,35 two weeks before the attack on the Soviet Union about Operation Barbarossa, but only because he knew that Kaulbars was an OKW spy.36 He mentioned the ‘clique of conspirators’37 involved in the 20 July plot, but even here what concerned him most was the search for the best solution for the Reich and his original basic duty of obtaining information.

  Huppenkothen and Sonderegger advanced little further in their quest for evidence, for Kaulbars’s point of view was that he had frequently voiced his doubts about German policy towards the Soviet Union in reports for the OKW, and had discussed it with Canaris. His ineffectiveness in this regard had led him to offer his resignation on several occasions.38

  Canaris was at pains to play down his role and represent himself as a secret service professional. At the same time the desperate Dohnanyi was in Sachsenhausen concentration camp trying to buy time in a situation where it was important for others that he did so, remaining faithful to the adage of Eberhard Bethges, ‘keep silent by talking and lying’.39 Meanwhile Oster confessed everything; he explained that ‘the intention to stage a putsch began with the Fritsch affair’40 and went on to describe without reservations how the intention had been at first to take out the Reichsführer-SS and Gestapo, but that from the very beginning there was a defeatist attitude to the war. ‘Finally he admitted that people were not in agreement with many National Socialist measures of internal policy, especially the handling of the Jewish Question and the Church-The treatment of the Jews and the Poles in occupied Poland was not approved in any case.’41 Similarly Dohnanyi was quoted in a report at the beginning of December: ‘Sonderführer Dohnanyi bases his rejection of National Socialism on the grounds of its having a despotic law and with the actions of National Socialism in the Jewish and Church Questions.’42

  The interrogations ofCanaris, Oster and the other Abwehr suspects continued, and at the beginning of February 1945, Canaris whispered to Josef Müller that ‘he still did not know what he was being charged with’.43 On 3 February the prisoners and accused were taken down into the Himmler Bunker and other airraid shelters. In this devastating American air raid on the city centre of Berlin, the RSHA building was severely damaged and the private Gestapo prison was no longer suitable for its purpose.44 After the all-clear, Canaris, Josef Müller and Ludwig Gehre had to scrub the prison floors. One of the guards mocked the ex-admiral: ‘I say, little sailor, I bet you never thought you would have to scrub floors again.’45

  Müller reported later in his memoirs the secret dialogue that now developed; Canaris did not react to the persistent verbal abuse of the guard, but whispered to Müller: ‘If only he knew what a favour he is doing us!’ Then he added quickly: ‘Has Dohnanyi given me away?’ Müller replied: ‘I don’t know, are they keeping documents from you?’ After he observed that everybody, including the guard, used the informal pronoun ‘Du’ to him now, Müller asked: ‘Have you been thrown out of the Wehrmacht?’ Canaris did not know, and Müller said: ‘Then you can be content. They are not putting you before the People’s Court and you are winning time.’46

  On 6 February 1945, Gestapo Chief Müller ordered Josef Müller, Bonhoeffer, Gehre, Liedig and others to be transferred to Buchenwald concentration camp. Canaris, Oster, generals Halder and Thomas, ex-Minister Schacht and the former Austrian Chancellor Schussnigg were driven the following day to Flossenbürg concentration camp in the woods on the Bavarian–Bohemian border.47 Here they were lodged under ‘Kommandantur-Arrest’ in a long cell block. On the north side of the brick barrack was an enclosed courtyard with a wooden roof at one end, and a crossways supporting beam equi
pped with hooks. It was here that most of the executions were carried out, and based on the sketches from memory of the Danish secret service officer Hans Mathiesen Lunding, there was also a place for executions by a shot to the back of the head.

  Bound hand and foot, Canaris was locked into Cell 22. Next to him in Cell 21 was Lunding, who had been there since the summer of 1944.48 The former Danish spy spoke perfect German,49 having been in the Danish espionage service since 1937, where he had set up a network to spy on Germany. After the occupation of Denmark he gathered information about German units and maintained contacts with MI5 and the British and Polish embassies in Sweden;50 he had been arrested when the Danish Army was disbanded in August 1943 and on 5 June 1944 was brought to Flossenbürg.51 Lunding and Canaris had never previously met, but he knew Canaris’s face from a photograph and a visit the Abwehr chief had made to Copenhagen. Through a crack in the cell door he could see a portion of the floor and through the window a part of the courtyard with the execution equipment. Lunding learned from an SS guard the identity of the new arrival and set out to establish contact with him. A sympathetic guard allowed him to pass Canaris a note containing a code for tapping the wall, and by this means Lunding became the witness and friend to the Abwehr chief during the final weeks of his life. They communicated almost daily but only once managed to exchange a few words face to face; Lunding reported later on the ‘disgusting treatment’ meted out to Canaris and the way he endured it.52

  Perhaps there might have been a possibility for Canaris, Oster, Dohnanyi and others to have survived the approaching defeat of Germany. Dohnanyi was still planning a desperate escape attempt in Berlin at the end of March53 when another disaster occurred. At the beginning of April 1945, when General Walter Boule was inspecting the underground bunker space allotted to Amt Ausland/ Abwehr at Maybach II, Zossen, he came across an armoured safe that until then had been overlooked, and in it the general found the diaries of Wilhelm Canaris.

  Boule sent the five bound volumes and six volumes of trip reports to SS-Brigadeführer Hans Rattenhuber, head of the Reich security service, from where they were forwarded on 4 April either to Gestapo Chief Müller or RSHA Chief Kaltenbrunner. On 5 April Kaltenbrunner showed them to Hitler; after one glance at certain highlighted paragraphs the Führer ordered ‘the immediate execution of the conspirators’.54

  It was the task of Huppenkothen next day, Friday 6 April 1945, to go to Sachsenhausen concentration camp as prosecutor in the military tribunal against Dohnanyi, whom Sonderegger was to bring from the Police Hospital in Berlin to Oranienburg. The same day Huppenkothen was appointed prosecutor in the proceedings against Canaris, Oster, Gehre, Sack and Bonhoeffer for Sunday 8 April at Flossenbürg.55

  When Sonderegger fetched Dohnanyi from the State hospital, the prisoner was under the influence of a medicinal prescription; the attending physician had given Dohnanyi a high dosage of Luminal early that morning, and it is possible that he had also been given morphine, for a number of tablets were found in his possession. He was brought – asleep or drugged – into the ‘trial room’ on a stretcher, where the theatre was acted out. There was no defence counsel, for he would have been superfluous, and no stenographer. The farce lasted several hours before Dohnanyi was sentenced to death on the evidence contained in the original Zossen find. The judge dictated the judgment to Huppenkothen’s female secretary, and then Huppenkothen returned to Berlin.56 When Dohnanyi was executed is unknown; his family was not informed.57

  Huppenkothen arrived at Flossenbürg on 7 April and the trials were held the next day. Chairman of the tribunal was SS Judge Otto Thorbek, assisted by Camp Commandant SS-Obersturmbannführer Max Koegel and another person whose identity was not revealed by Huppenkothen at his own trial after the war. At four in the afternoon General Hans Oster was brought into court. According to Huppenkothen and Thorbek at their own postwar trials, Oster made a clean breast of it and implicated unreservedly all other defendants on the basis of the Zossen files.58 He was sentenced to death by hanging, the sentence to be carried out the next morning.

  Towards eight in the evening Lunding heard the adjacent cell door being opened and the customary noise of the chains being removed from the prisoner’s ankles.59 Huppenkothen recalled that Canaris either denied all accusations or put a favourable gloss on them: ‘At the hearing he was very alive and disputed every point of the indictment in order to save his neck. We had great difficulties with him.’60 When Canaris emphasised over and again that it had been his intention to foil the coup at the last minute, and this was the reason why it appeared he had made common cause with the conspiracy, Judge Thorbek interrupted the hearing and had Oster brought into court. Allegedly Oster contradicted everything in Canaris’s defence strategy, swearing that Canaris had been involved in all the activities of the Resistance circle.

  Canaris refuted the allegation and maintained that it had all been for appearances, to which Oster responded: ‘No, that is not true. I cannot testify other than to what I know, I am not a rogue.’ When Canaris, in reply to Thorbek’s enquiry if Oster was lying, gave a resigned ‘No’, the tribunal had reached its objective. The sentence was death by hanging.61

  Canaris was returned to his cell towards ten o’clock; Lunding heard the steps, the opening of the cell door and the fitting of the leg chains. Once the cell block was quiet he communicated with Canaris by the knock code, and he was told that it was all over with, and then given the somewhat cryptic information that ‘he’ had broken his nose, or ‘someone’ had broken his nose.62 There is evidence that he received beatings during the hearing,63 but it is possible he was saying that he had fallen on his nose, meaning everything was lost.64 Canaris indicated to Lunding that he remained convinced that what he had done was right; he had done nothing wrong, he was not a traitor, and he had done his duty by Germany, and he asked: ‘If you survive, pay my respects to my wife.’65

  Towards six o’clock on the morning of 9 April 1945 Lunding awoke and heard the cell door being opened, followed by the order ‘Come with us!’ A few moments later came another order: ‘Undress!’ A little later still Lunding heard the sound of bare feet on the stone floor of the cell block and saw through the crack in the door for a brief second the white skin and grey hair of Canaris. Shortly afterwards the other cell doors were opened and the prisoners called forward.66 Josef Müller, who expected to be hanged at any moment, remarked that the execution yard had been lit all night with a pale glow, dogs were barking and camp inmates had dragged wooden planks along the path leading to the hilltop past the watchdogs.67

  Huppenkothen was present as the naked prisoners were led individually to the execution shed. The judgment of the court was read out and then they had to climb to a staging. The hangman placed a noose around the condemned man’s neck and then the staging was kicked away from under his feet.68 The Flossenbürg doctor, SS-Obersturmbannführer Hermann Fischer, said he was ‘shaken’ to see Bonhoeffer kneeling in prayer in a room near the guardhouse as he awaited his turn to die.

  Canaris was the first to go to the gallows. According to Fischer he died ‘firm and like a man’ and it was all over within seconds. This was possibly untrue; according to Stefanie Lahousen, widow of Erwin Lahousen, who spoke to Lunding after the war, he had noticed that they were preparing a specially long and painful death for Canaris.69 A few hours later the bodies were brought to the crematorium and burnt on a wood pyre; soon a foul smoke wafted into the cells of the survivors.70 When Lunding was certain that Canaris was dead, he asked an SS guard if that was how Germany always got rid of its officers. The guard replied: ‘He was no officer, he was a traitor.’71 Never for a moment of his life had Canaris wanted to be that, and he died convinced that he was not.

  Notes

  Canaris’s personal service record exists in the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, Freiburg under reference Pers. 6/105 and 2293 and in photocopy form at the Institut für Zeitgeschichte under reference 1858/56. In these notes it is referred to as Canaris-IfZ.

  PAR
T I: OFFICER OF HIS MAJESTY

  1 A Naval Cadet from the Ruhr

  1 Notification of birth, 3 January 1887 in BA-MA, N 812/1.

  2 Gebhardt, Peter von, Die Canaris, Leipzig, 1938; and Gebhardt, Peter von, Die Canaris. 1. Nachtrag: Stammtafeln und Regesten zur Genealogie der Canarisi aus Torno vom 14. bis 16. Jahrhundert, Leipzig 1939, with a foreword by Wilhelm Canaris; both works are in BA-MA, N 812/46 and 47. See also Ronge, Paul, ‘Zur Ahnentafel des Admirals Canaris’, in Genealogie. Deutsche Zeitschrift für Familienkunde, vol VI, 11/12, pp 33–6. The well-worn legend that over the centuries various branches of the family could trace links to the Greek freedom fighter and statesman Constantin Canaris, or even Napoleon, are all anecdotal, although Canaris would frequently embrace them as true. Abshagen, Karl Heinz, Canaris – Patriot und Weltbürger, Stuttgart, 1955, p 25; Höhne, Heinz, Canaris – Patriot im Zwielicht, Munich, 1976, pp 15 and 18.

  3 Ibid; Herzog, Bodo, ‘Der junge Canaris in Duisburg (1892–1905)’, in Die Nachhut 2, 1972, pp 14–21, BA-MA, MSg 3–22/1, p 16; Höhne, Canaris, p 16.