Hitler's Spy Chief (13 page)

But the mystique of a great power sustained by an all-seeing intelligence service appealed to Hitler and indeed many of his cronies. As Walter Schellenberg, SD officer and the man who would later arrest Canaris,
wrote admiringly: ‘If we really want to understand the structural essence of British Intelligence we must liberate ourselves from conventional ideas.'
(Gestapo Handbook to Britain
, 1940) German ideas of strict organisation and detail were not always appropriate for a successful spy service. The new bosses of Germany wanted someone who was not conventional to run their service. Someone, moreover, who knew, if only indirecdy, a litde about the ways British intelligence worked. At the same time, they needed someone who was well connected with the influential interface between the military industrial complex, high finance and politics.

Here the wheel was turning in Canaris' favour, for through his contacts with Juan March he had become known to Zaharoff and Hitler's first paymaster, Baron Thyssen, both of them part of the forces which would ‘save' Europe from the Bolsheviks. Given the now urgent desire to step up German rearmament, this world was also keen to deal with someone they knew and could trust. Not for nothing would Zaharoff, in 1934, bracket Canaris and Thyssen together as the only people his old friend George Mandel, Clemenceau's former head of cabinet, could work with in Germany.

In addition to these developments, a fourth, though perhaps in light of later events rather unexpected, wheel also seemed to be turning in Canaris' direction. This took the form of his former naval colleague, Heydrich, now head of the influential domestic security organisation the SD
(Sicherheitsdienst)
, which reported to the head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler.

Through relentiess card-indexing, extortion and blackmail, Heydrich had built a feared and powerful domestic spy service with access to all aspects of civilian life. He also admired the British secret service, even signing himself in the style of the SIS chief as ‘C' though the compliment of imitation may not have been appreciated in the corridors of Broadway Buildings. Heydrich wanted a service that would embrace every aspect of German life in a way he imagined the British security service, through
the English class system, dominated England. Inevitably, as he ceaselessly worked to expand the jurisdiction of the SD, he began to tread on Patzig's toes. Already, in April 1934, Goering had been forced to relinquish control of the police to the SD. One by one the provincial police forces became subject to central control. The Reichswehr minister General von Blomberg, described by Patzig as a ‘rubber lion', failed to register any meaningful protest as the SD more and more encroached on Abwehr territory.

Patzig, later commander of the famous pocket battleship
Graf Spee
(and to be a great hit at the Coronation Regatta off the Isle of Wight a few years later), was a clear-thinking figure. He quickly saw that Heydrich and the SD would be the defining threat in the long term to Germany, and in the short term to the Abwehr. This perception was reinforced by the Röehm putsch: the ‘night of the long knives' in which the tyranny and bloodletting of the SA was replaced by the tyranny and bloodletting of the SS, all with the silent acquiescence of the army. These macabre events, which saw generals murdered in their homes and countiess others shot out of hand (including two of von Papen's adjutants, shot across their office desks) only confirmed what Patzig had always suspected: that the new regime was run by gangsters. The fact that among the corpses was his predecessor von Bredow shocked all the staff of the Abwehr. One of them, Major Hans Oster, determined from that day on to work against the regime.

Patzig, meanwhile, was determined to fight a rearguard action while at the same time seeking the calmer waters of an operational appointment. His dealings with Heydrich had become ever more fractious. Heydrich demanded a list of all the armament installations in Germany, which Patzig refused on the grounds that such lists did not exist and would be a risk to national security. This fencing with the SD led to a heated exchange between Blomberg and Patzig, during which the former tried to defend the SS as ‘an organisation of the Führer', evincing the reply from Patzig: ‘Then I regret that the Führer is not aware of the pigsty he has under him.' Patzig was now isolated and his career at the Abwehr
could not last much longer. Whoever would replace Patzig, Blomberg noted, would have to build a more ‘constructive relationship' with the SD.

Although there is no evidence to suggest Heydrich may have lobbied behind the scenes for Patzig's dismissal and replacement by Canaris, it is not inconceivable that Heydrich, through Himmler, may have applied pressure to get rid of one naval officer and have him replaced by another they trusted.
3
There is certainly something guarded, if not mischievously evasive, in Patzig's post-war evidence that Canaris got the job simply ‘because I could not think of anyone more suitable.'

Canaris may have been the most suitable candidate to replace Patzig but he was not considered by anyone in the navy, with the possible exception of Patzig, as a relevant candidate. But irrespective of any lobbying on his behalf by the SS, Canaris certainly possessed, for those who chose to examine his record, relatively impeccable credentials. He had frequently outwitted British and French intelligence, he was well connected with the magic circle of financiers and industrialists associated with armaments and he even, at the very least, had had a convivial social relationship with that wolf in sheep's clothing, Heydrich. Thanks to the continuing rumours of his involvement in the Liebknecht affair, Canaris possessed good anti-Bolshevik credentials and was therefore ideologically sound. In addition to this, perhaps critically, he was a naval officer.

In the event, it was this last factor which guaranteed him the job. For as Patzig broke the news to Admiral Raeder that they should consider Canaris as his successor, the Admiral spluttered: ‘Impossible'. Raeder acidly pointed out that he had not sent Canaris to Swinemünde so that he should be considered eligible to play a future role in the German High Command. Quite the reverse; Raeder expected Canaris to retire within the next four years and bring to a discreet close his controversial, but in Raeder's view, relatively undistinguished naval career.

At this point, Patzig may have played the Heydrich card and suggested that Canaris was the only person who could find a modus vivendi with
the SD. He certainly put down his strongest suit. He pointed out that if Raeder was implacably opposed to Canaris' appointment, it would really be quite simple to find a solution. There would be no alternative but to appoint to the post of Abwehr chief someone from the army. Once again, Patzig's insight into character weaknesses proved decisive. He knew that Raeder, as a conservative naval officer, would choose the lesser of the two evils rather than surrender control of military intelligence and signals to the narrow-minded men in field grey.

Whether Canaris was the classic compromise candidate acceptable to both sides and therefore supported by both the SS and the military is difficult to prove, but it seems likely. In any event, within a few weeks of his taking over the Abwehr, relations between the SD and Abwehr had been organized along less fractious lines and a period of calm entered into the relationship, something which is highly suggestive that Canaris was indeed Heydrich's candidate. Certainly, if Inge Haag, Canaris' sole surviving secretary, is to be believed, the two men had a very convivial relationship at this stage.
4
‘Between Canaris and Heydrich there was a relationship which can best be described as intimate. Certain things were taken for granted in that naval tradition whereby they were comrades who had served together at sea and therefore enjoyed a bond denied to other officers around Canaris.'
5

Heydrich's widow described Canaris' relationship to Heydrich as ‘paternal' and even Himmler had a superstitious respect for Canaris. No doubt the tales of espionage that had enabled the two navy men to bond when Heydrich was a cadet had, in their retelling to the former chicken farmer Himmler, lost none of their excitement or plausibility. If Canaris had introduced Heydrich into the world of intelligence concepts and ideas, over the dinners he had prepared more than ten years ago, it would hardly be surprising for Heydrich not to remember his mentor.

Canaris certainly seems to have felt confident that he could work with Heydrich. Patzig had some words of advice to Canaris about how to manage
the relationship with the SD, but Canaris shrugged these off, noting that he knew how to deal with ‘these young men'. At the same time, as Canaris noted in his diary, Heydrich was ‘a brutal fanatic with whom it will be difficult to have an open and friendly cooperation'. For his part, Heydrich never trusted Canaris, always correcting colleagues who underestimated Canaris by referring to him as that ‘wily old fox'.

As Canaris well knew, all telephone lines out of the Abwehr offices were monitored by the SD.
6
This would not stop the two men later living near the Schlachtensee as close neighbours with adjoining gardens and reviving the chamber music evenings that had been part of their earlier naval days.

Thus it was on 2 January 1935 that the grey granite five-storey building of the Tirpitzufer welcomed the small, rather understated, sallow-skinned man with grey, almost white hair for the first time as its chief. Two small lifts and a divided staircase lit from above beckoned him past the small concierge's room occupied by a non-commissioned officer. One of the lifts took him to the top floor, where a tall-ceilinged room with twin doors was empty, save for a large desk and a couple of chairs. It was eight o'clock and the offices were largely deserted. Patzig, he noted, had with typical naval thoroughness taken all his furniture.

Canaris' appointment was a state secret and as has been pointed out, in a police state with draconian laws for treachery and the recent memory of summary execution of'traitors' in the Röhm Putsch vivid in everyone's minds, such secrets were not difficult to keep. The British Admiralty, which had tracked Canaris in Spain during the war, lost sight of him between 1935 and 1939. Its attachés and intelligence officers did not note the change of appointment from Swinemünde. Indeed, their senior naval attaché, Captain Troubridge, addicted to golf and sailing, despite meeting every senior naval officer Germany could offer, diligentiy recording every name in his diary, (and connected through his wife to the influential Rathenau family), never once, it seems, encountered Wilhelm Canaris.
In fact Troubridge, who would later lunch with Churchill and Bracken to give ‘first hand information' about the senior personalities of Nazi Germany, appears to have been ‘mentally quite inadequate', to coin his phrase, for intelligence work. Until his recall in 1939, he continued to believe the head of the Abwehr was General Tippelskirch, who was in fact the Quartermaster General of the German army.
7
Not without reason could one historian of that time note that the NID was ‘very poorly served in Germany in those years.'
8

Rather more alert was the Chilean naval attaché, with whom Canaris established cordial relations, partly as a result of the immense help Canaris had been given by Chileans to escape his internment camp after the
Dresden
was sunk.

When Alfredo Hoffmann, a Chilean of German descent, paid a visit to Canaris the conversation turned not unnaturally to those days:

‘I shall never forget what the Chileans did to help me. I shall do everything to help you here. How can I help you?', Canaris asked.

Hoffmann had a sensitive request: ‘May I see the Baltic fleet exercises?'

What followed was typical Canaris. Raising his voice, he blundy said: ‘Impossible. These exercises are off limits to foreign attachés.' Canaris then lowered his voice and said
sotto voce:
‘As a Chilean and a fellow naval officer, you place me in an awkward position; I have a duty to examine all the possibilities. Someone will be in touch.'

A few weeks later, just as Hoffmann had given up any hope of attending the exercise, an officer of the Abwehr appeared complete with a false German journalist's pass and for the duration of the exercise an entirely new identity for the bemused Hoffmann.
9

In this way Canaris illustrated his mental elasticity, and built for the future as well as repaying the debts of the past. From that day onwards, any intelligence of relevance gleaned by Hoffmann would be vouchsafed to the Abwehr.

Most diplomats, however, who did run into Canaris knew him as a
staff officer working in Berlin, occasionally but very rarely to be seen on the cocktail party circuit. A young English journalist ran into the name but thought him concerned with minor protocol duties.
10
Even when a spectacular spy scandal broke, involving the seduction of two war office secretaries by a Polish officer, Canaris remained in the shadows. As the Polish ambassador Lipski recalled, he never suspected for a moment that Canaris was a spy chief: ‘I was visited by an elderly white-haired Admiral. I was struck by his soft benevolent manner … I never dreamed this was the chief of German intelligence.'
11

This encounter had been provoked by the Sosnowski case. Jurek von Sosnowski, a tall, handsome ‘devil, brave and cool with a charming smile and cold eyes that make you shiver'
12
was a formidable operator. Setting up in Berlin as an impoverished former cavalry officer down on his luck, Sosnowski was literally lethal when it came to members of the fairer sex. One after another he seduced female members of the lesser nobility until he had a certain Frau von Natzmer in his sights. She worked for the staff of General Guderian, then perfecting his tactics of armoured blitzkrieg that would prove so devastating against Poland and France a few years later.