Hitler's Spy Chief (12 page)

As was pointed out by Philip Noel Baker: ‘A ceaseless propaganda … indoctrinated the French people with the view that Germany was being prepared for a war of revenge … in this way a constant anxiety was maintained in France which … facilitated the passage through the French Chamber of huge annual appropriations for the purchase of war material.'
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For Spain, these developments heralded the beginnings of a new and significant financial orientation. With the neutralisation of Constructora Naval, Spanish society from the King downwards felt liberated from what might be described as the pressure of British capital. Canaris reported that the resentment at all levels of the Spanish navy towards the British-backed company was intense, as it was felt ‘the company put its own interests ahead of those of Spain.'

The gratitude of the Spanish was, as always, immense. Lohmann was invited to Spain to demonstrate new German technology on board a German merchant ship; the high point of the demonstration being no less than a visit from the King himself, flying his standard from the German ship as he inspected a new propulsion system. As Lohmann was at pains
to point out to his superiors in Berlin, this was the first time the King of Spain had flown his colours in a foreign merchantman.

More importantly, it was noted by Lohmann how Canaris, with his fluent Spanish, had the ear of everyone of importance in Spain. ‘Our cooperation with the Spanish navy owes much to the fact that he has the confidence of Echavarrieta, naval officers and members of the court and not least the King himself.'
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This confidence was fully exploited by Canaris to lay the foundations of what would be a lasting cooperation with the important organs of the Spanish state. In 1928 he initiated a formal agreement with General Bazan, head of the secret police. Other connections were consolidated with the intelligence service and the counter-intelligence service of the Spanish navy. At the same time he made contact with the military intelligence chiefs in Spain and procured their approval for a training scheme for German air force pilots, who would join the Spanish air force and with them enjoy combat experience as Spain put down the Morrocan revolt. In this way, Canaris came to work with Colonel Alfredo Kindelan, a senior air force officer, and the colonial minister General Gomez Count Jordana. Meanwhile, he added to these contacts a plan for joint police cooperation between Germany and Spain. He later negotiated this in detail with the minister of the interior, Martinez Anido. Without exception all these men would, in ten years time, be key advisers to one young officer whom Canaris at this stage had not yet met but who would dominate his country for decades to come: Francisco Franco.

Meanwhile, commercial projects came hand in glove with military cooperation. A Spanish airline was established as a joint venture with Luft-Hansa. Banking and insurance joint ventures followed. Moreover, Canaris did not limit his activities to Spain but exploited that country's links with Latin America to push for similar ventures in Argentina – another attack on, at that time, a diminishing but still important bastion of British capital influence.
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Unsurprisingly, in this ever more successful career, Canaris made enemies who, allied to his old foes on the left of German politics, began to counter attack. In this they were helped by the spectacular bankruptcy of one of Lohmann's most adventurous business forays, the film maker Phoebus. Lohmann's health had begun to deteriorate as he failed to keep track of the finances of the many-headed monster he had created. As one shell company after another required the discipline of detailed and regular audit, Lohmann adopted the tactics of a hunted man: he kept on the move. From train to motor-car to aeroplane; dictating the odd memo to bewildered subordinates, he found the only way to deal with the labyrinth he had created was to avoid dealing with it.

Unfortunately, when Phoebus collapsed, the left wing press all too easily found evidence that it had been a pack of cards constructed on the firm but secret foundation of Admiralty funds.
Die Weltbühne
, the newspaper that had had Canaris in its sights over the Liebknecht affair, now returned to the charge. Canaris, though largely innocent in the case of Phoebus, was brought back from Spain, questioned and given a posting in Wilhelmshaven, miles away from the spotlight in Berlin. The defence minister, Gessler, was forced to resign and was replaced by General Groener, whose thorough investigation exonerated Canaris while at the same time making the awful discovery that no less than twenty-six billion marks had been lost in one way or another through Lohmann's ‘investments'.

To move from key negotiator on cutting edge naval technology with the King of Spain and other senior figures to a relatively insignificant backwater, surrounded by out of date ships of no serious strategic value, cannot have been easy. Canaris had the satisfaction of knowing that the work he had initiated in Spain would continue, and that the contacts he had begun between the German naval intelligence and the important organs of Spain would not be lost. There were, however, attempts – as some partly burnt secret documents from the German foreign ministry reveal – to bring Canaris back to Spain. On the recommendation of the
retired naval officer Captain Messerschmidt, a German secret agent in Spain, the German ambassador Welczek wrote to the Reichswehr minister, noting Canaris' good relationship with the King and the ‘great confidence he enjoys with other important personalities in Spain'. However, both Admiral Raeder, the new head of the navy, and the minister were determined ‘on account of the sensitive themes' surrounding Canaris to keep him well away from Spain.
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Raeder also knew that as far as the prying eyes of a hostile German press were concerned there was no safer place than a life on the ocean wave. There now began two years of'conventional' naval service for Canaris as first officer on board the training cruiser
Schlesien
, a ship built long before the war and indeed already obsolete by 1914.

Judging by the correspondence of the next two years, these conventional duties were not without their moments of pleasure. Though obsolete as a fighting ship, the
Schlesien
could at least show the flag and this it proceeded to do, in the best tradition of the old German navy, in a number of cruises around the Mediterranean. On one of these, a gala ball was given in Corfu by wealthy Greeks, who were so charmed by the officer with the Greek name that they gave him a picture of the Greek hero Admiral Canaris, which had pride of place in the Canaris household. The
Schlesien
also visited England, though tantalisingly there are no accounts of meetings between Canaris and his Royal Naval hosts.

By all accounts Canaris was a capable executive officer and his crew and officers found him to be a demanding but fair superior. Unsurprisingly, therefore, on 1 December 1932, Canaris was appointed captain of the
Schlesien
. The world of intelligence, secret deals and clandestine rearmament which had given Canaris so many opportunities for his unique talents must have appeared very remote. But then two months later, together with the rest of the
Schlesien
's crew, he heard that Germany had a new Chancellor. His name: Adolf Hitler.

CHAPTER FIVE

SPY CHIEF

A naval officer and therefore an intelligent man
.

CAPTAIN THOMAS TROUBRIDGE R.N., NAVAL ATTACHÉ BERLIN 1936-39
1

The German navy was at first sceptical of the little man with the lock of black hair, Chaplin moustache and thuggish supporters dressed in those ‘extraordinary brown uniforms', as one naval officer called them. The tactics of terror, anti-Jewish attacks and pagan ideology were not obviously appealing to officers brought up, like Canaris, in the imperial navy and monarchist at heart. But at the same time, the anti-Communist rhetoric rang a bell for those who had experienced the trauma of the Kiel mutiny. Moreover, in a stroke of cunning public relations, Hitler visited Wilhelmshaven and addressed an audience that many officers, dressed in mufti, attended. The rhetoric, the dramatic Austrian intonation in the voice, the rolling Rs and histrionic modulations, all played in a strangely convincing way for the north German audience.

The following day, a naval officer, Captain Schroeder, broke ranks and invited Hitler aboard his cruiser, the
Köln
. Here Hitler amazed his host by asking questions of such technical detail that it was clear he understood more about the German navy than any previous politician they had encountered. Signing the visitors' book, he confirmed the
good impression with the words: ‘In the hope that I can help with the reconstruction of a fleet worthy of the Reich.'
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For Canaris, these impressions were positive. Like millions of other Germans he saw in Hitler a saviour and an enemy of the Bolshevism that was his sworn enemy. The extreme anti-Semitism, no doubt given his later acts to save several Jews, would not have appealed to Canaris, – himself a far from Aryan-looking German – but it should be remembered that his worst antagonist in the Reichstag had been deputy Moses and the Communist left was still seen by the officer class in Germany, rightly or wrongly, as the preserve of Bolshevik Jews. Whatever his distance towards Hitler later in his life there can be little doubt that at this stage Canaris was a believer and, as shall be seen, not above playing the Nazis by appealing to their prejudices, anti-Semitism included.

However, such convictions did not avoid a spectacular gaffe when Goering visited the
Schlesien
on 23 May 1933. Goering was so frequently and violently seasick that one of Canaris' officers told him, in a serious voice, as he surfaced pale and ill in the ward room, that he had just heard that the air ace was to be appointed the chief supplier of fish feed for the North Sea and that he would have permission from now on to wear a fishnet over his immaculate white uniform. Unsurprisingly, Goering did not share the joke. He demanded disciplinary action: something Canaris felt obliged to pay some lip service to, although no charges were ever brought and once back in Berlin the Reichsmarschall appears to have forgotten the offence caused.

Irrespective of this episode of humorous if somewhat laboured interservice rivalry, Canaris was finding relations with his superiors difficult. His immediate boss, Rear Admiral Bastian, appears to have been exceptionally truculent. On one occasion he sent Canaris a signal demanding that the commander of the
Schlesien
pay ‘more attention' to the ‘personality and desires' of the admiral. A series of disputes arose on petty regulations, which further widened the gap between the two men.

Bastian complained to Admiral Raeder, navy chief since 1928. Raeder, who had never hit it off with Canaris, was happy to hasten Canaris' career into obscurity. Raeder had never appreciated Canaris' gifts and remembered all too well the difficulty he had had in prising him out of Spain in the teeth of diplomatic opposition. An old fashioned officer, familiar as a type in every navy, Raeder was a man who saw everything in black and white. Everything about Canaris displeased him. He was controversial, involved in strange twilight activities and above all kept questionable company. Canaris' past dealings with the dubious financiers of Spain did not endear him to this former head of naval archives and son of a minor government official.

On 29 September 1934 Canaris was posted to take command of the German navy's equivalent of outer Siberia, the coastal defences of Swinemiinde. Here, in the exile of the most provincial of provincial postings, Canaris could take solace only from the fact that the long stretch of deserted beach would afford many a happy hour cantering on horseback to escape the tedium of the ultimate sunset posting.

Miles away in Berlin, however, wheels were moving; indeed had been moving for some time, which would thwart Raeder's plans and bring Canaris back into the centre of events. The first major development, which was to have a profound effect on Canaris, was the appointment on 2 June 1932 of Captain Conrad Patzig to the post of Abwehr chief. This appointment was nothing short of sensational. There had never been a naval officer at the head of Germany's military intelligence, the famous section IIIB of the old imperial general staff.

Patzig's predecessor, Colonel Bredow, was, as Patzig later pointed out, ‘an ambitious man'. But as the naval officer had also shrewdly noted: ‘Such ambitious men are usually especially easy to deal with' and Bredow had come more and more to rely on Patzig, head of the important naval section (V). Poland was the principal target for counter-espionage activity and there was neither appetite nor funds for the Abwehr to undertake much
more than a watching brief on the difficult Poles, rattling their sabres fresh from the successes of the Russo-Polish war. Here the ports of Königsberg, Stettin and Danzig were the critical centres of operations and naval intelligence support was the key factor. To the horror of the army, Bredow, on being promoted to a senior position in the Reichwehr ministry, now recommended Patzig to be his successor.

Patzig proved, as his recorded comments suggest, a highly capable intelligence chief. He moved swiftly to reassure the military and earn the respect of their officers serving under him. Patzig was fully aware that German rearmament must gather momentum and that with it, inevitably, came scope for expanding intelligence activities through cooperation with foreign agencies. Thus he initiated a successful joint venture with the Lithuanian service against the USSR. He also built up relations with other agencies, though not with the Italians, despite orders from on high to become more intimate with the Italian service. Patzig, like many Germans and Austrians, never trusted the Italians and was convinced all their codes and ciphers had been broken and that they had long ago been effectively penetrated by British and French intelligence.

Nevertheless, all these activities were gingered up with the advent of National-Socialism. This was the second major event, or wheel, which began to turn for Canaris. As was well-known even at the time, Hitler was obsessed with what he considered to be the key to Britain's power, its secret service. His admiration for Britain and its world empire knew few bounds, and if his favourite film was
Bengal Lancer
, he may well have been familiar with the exploits of clubland heroes as chronicled by Buchan and others in the inter-war period. He certainly admired Kipling, though it seems unlikely that he had ever read that textbook of essential reading for all British agents,
Kim
.