Hitler's Spy Chief (23 page)

Intelligence operations against Britain, which had been banned by Hitler in the wake of the Anglo-German naval agreement of 1935
11
were now stepped up. Abwehr agents began to spring up all over the English social scene. One of the most engaging was Baron Robert Treeck. He bought a house and a small estate and was soon riding with the Beaufort Hunt, most of whose members were landed, wealthy and formed an almost honorary network of agents for the future head of the secret service, Sir Stewart Menzies, who was himself an MFH with the Beaufort.
12

There is some evidence to suggest that Treeck was known to Menzies as an Abwehr agent.
13
There is also some sign that in certain areas of Eastern Europe, notably the Ukraine, SIS and the Abwehr had been cooperating against the Soviets.
14
This cooperation, though formally broken off, was to survive the outbreak of hostilities, notably in Finland where the British forces sent to help the Finns against the Soviets in 1940 were actually assisted in their passage by the Germans. German air and land forces were instructed not to interfere with the progress of these British forces.
15

Meanwhile, operations against the United States had been in full flow since 1937 when developments in American military aviation technology had become a priority target for the Abwehr. These operations had been successful, notably the Abwehr's covert acquisition of the Norden bombsight in late 1937.

Another priority target for the Abwehr in the UK was the secret development of radar by the RAF. This work was conducted in the greatest secrecy and yet the Abwehr was fully informed. When Luftwaffe General Milch arrived in England for a tour of Fighter Command in early 1939, he took his hosts by surprise when he asked them ‘how we were getting on with our development of radar'. Milch caught his hosts ‘completely off balance'. As one British intelligence agent ruefully noted: ‘What I had seen of their intelligence work showed it to be marginally cleverer than ours.'
16

As the Abwehr stepped up its operations in England, these were accompanied – as is so often the case between countries facing imminent hostilities – by increased cooperation on the defence and financial fronts. As Britain rearmed, various weapons were ordered from Germany in return for significant sums of money. These deals were brokered on the German side by Abwehr agents and were to culminate with the offer of a substantial loan to Germany in the late spring of 1939. According to several German and Soviet sources,
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the loan which was negotiated between members of the Reichsbank and officials of the Bank of England was seen by many observers as an incentive to encourage Germany to wage war against the Soviet Union.

As late as 29 June, Halifax addressed an audience at Chatham House with, at least for any Germans present, the following soothing words: ‘European minds will meet across political frontiers. Truly is a divided Europe a house divided against itself. Our foreign policy must bear in mind … the more distant future.'
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The speech began with a classic formulation of Britain's policy: ‘In the past we have always stood out against the attempts by any single power to dominate Europe at the expense of the liberty of other nations. British policy is therefore only following the inevitable line of its history.' But it went on to hint at compromise: ‘If we could once be satisfied that the intentions of others were the same as our own – then I say here definitely
– we could discuss the problems. In such a new atmosphere we could examine the colonial past, raw materials …' No experienced diplomat could fail to read the subtext of Anglo–German issues here.

Gordon Etherington-Smith, then a newly-posted third secretary at the embassy in Berlin, recalled having to go to the foreign ministry with a telegram from London in the summer of 1939 asking why certain German arms which had been paid for by London had still not arrived in England. It was barely six weeks before war broke out. ‘My impeccably mannered opposite number at the German foreign ministry wryly and half-jokingly observed: “My dear fellow … you will be very lucky if you get these now: at least in the form you're expecting them.'”
19

Another aspect of this twin-track approach by both London and Berlin to the looming Polish crisis was continued contacts between British intelligence and the German navy. The links Patzig had forged at five days of parties at the Coronation Review of 1937, where he had met everyone from King George VI downwards, continued to be developed.
*
The old pre-1914 camaraderie of the German and British navies once again showed itself remarkably resilient to international tensions, no doubt assisted by the fact that both services contained officers whose families had served their navy for successive generations.

As the British agent Frederick Winterbotham put it when he encountered the German navy on a visit to Lübeck, the officers' wardroom was comprised of ‘pleasant mannered' kindred spirits far removed from the officers of the German army: ‘These young men were mainly sons and grandsons of German naval officers of the old regime, an entirely different type from the army types on deck.'
20

In this context, it is worth recalling that both the British security service and SIS were dominated almost exclusively by philo-German elements who felt the main enemy to be Communism. With the exception of the
Comintern agents who had only begun their penetration of both services in the thirties and had been largely recruited from Cambridge and Oxford, the senior officers were, in Churchill's words, ‘terrific anti-Bolsheviks.'
21
It was only after Churchill sacked Vernon Kell, the head of MI5, that the services began to reorientate themselves seriously into organisations with an anti-German ethos.
22
Even then the head of the Naval Intelligence Division, Admiral Godfrey, who had been in contact with Canaris since the days of the Spanish Civil War, remained far from intellectually closed to German aspirations.

Unsurprisingly, as German penetration of England continued, Canaris noted that his job was made easier by the low pay and conditions agents of British intelligence endured. He had already broken British ciphers and penetrated British intelligence ‘here and there.'
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His views on British intelligence were mixed. Canaris once told an officer: ‘If it is a matter of money, let me tell you, they do not reward services well, and if they have the least suspicion, they will not hesitate to betray you.'

In particular, Holland, the traditional no-man's land between German and British interests, offered the Abwehr scope for infiltration. Holland had long served as a key listening post and operations centre for British intelligence activities in Germany. It was targeted with particular success by the Abwehr. An underpaid British employee inside the MI6 Station in the Hague began supplying the Abwehr with daily reports of British intelligence activities within Germany.

Nevertheless, if the Abwehr was stepping up activities, Canaris was still taken aback when, on 17 August, he received requests for his department to procure ‘Polish uniforms' for Heydrich. Canaris' response was immediate. He went to Keitel and asked what the uniforms were needed for. Keitel explained that he assumed it was for an imminent operation behind Polish lines but was also clearly exercised by the request. The conversation is recorded in one of the few pages of Canaris' diary to have survived as it had been copied by Lahousen. Keitel, according to Canaris,
was defensive about the request and insisted that he did not care for ‘such operations' but that the request came directly through the Führer and that it was not for Keitel to question such orders. Keitel even urged Canaris to tell the SS that the ‘Abwehr have no Polish uniforms.'

The uniforms, irrespective of their provenance, were put to sinister use. Convicts were dressed in them and told to storm the German radio station on the Polish frontier at Gleiwitz as a provocation. The convicts were all shot as they attacked the radio station. Canaris was in no position to stop Heydrich's operation but as the diary fragment notes, he once again emphasised to Keitel that if it came to bloodshed, Britain would ‘fight with all means in their powers.' Keitel was equally certain, however, that Britain would not intervene.
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Given the conflicting signals coming out of London, both men could be forgiven their opposing conclusions. Three weeks earlier, despite the undertaking to Poland in March, the German trade official Wohltat could cable Berlin after talks with Sir Horace Wilson that a ‘proper Anglo–German non-aggression treaty would enable Britain to rid herself of commitments vis-à-vis Poland.'
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The Swedish businessman Dahlerus, a friend of Goering's, was also being deployed by both sides, to the intense irritation of the diplomats, to explore a peaceful solution. So seriously did Lord Halifax take this emissary that he sanctioned a prolonged and irregular correspondence which duplicated and muddied the already prolix negotiations going on through official channels.
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On 22 August, Hitler summoned his senior officers to Berchtesgaden to discuss the invasion of Poland and the ruthless measures to be deployed against the Polish intelligentsia, aristocracy, Jews and clerics. Though forbidden by Schmundt, the duty adjutant, to take notes, Canaris stood in the background against a stone column and began taking down details on a pad. Hitler's intentions were against all the norms of civilised warfare. Fired up by the imminent signature of the Pact with Stalin, Hitler refused to rein in his extreme feelings with regard to the Poles.

Canaris did not hesitate to ensure the drift of these remarks was communicated to the British. Kleist was in Stockholm and once again was in touch with British diplomats. But this intelligence, and the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact two days later, only forced the pace of appeasement and Halifax on 25 August called in the Polish ambassador to insist that ‘there must be a modification of the status of Danzig.'

The Poles, however, having secured British support – however wobbly – had no intention of backing down: especially with yet another partition of their country staring at them in the smiling faces of the German and Soviet foreign ministers. When, a few days later, Hitler demanded a Polish plenipotentiary to arrive in Berlin and the Swedish businessman Dahlerus appeared to have been, according to his own account, on the point of brokering a compromise based on a non-violent modification of Danzig's status, Henderson found his Polish colleague packing his bags. With the
suffisante
confidence which has always been one of the Polish elite's most endearing qualities, Lipski, who had been instructed by Warsaw ‘not to enter into concrete negotiations' told Henderson that ‘he had no interest in any German proposals because if war was declared the Nazis would be overthrown and the Polish Army would probably soon arrive in Berlin in triumph.'
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In this charged atmosphere, jitters expressed themselves in strange ways. On 2 September, an Abwehr source warned Colonel Denis Daly at the British embassy in Berlin that a blitz daylight attack was scheduled for the following morning on London. A report was accordingly sent in cipher to London. ‘I am convinced that there was no intention to deceive us in this matter,' Colonel Daly later recalled. ‘The man who came to bring me that message was certainly taking considerable risks.'
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It is said that Halder dissuaded Hitler from this curious isolated attack, but by then the British could not be advised that the attack had been cancelled and the sirens were famously sounded just after Chamberlain's sombre speech in the House of Commons.

Meanwhile, at the Tirpitzufer, the admiral, who had read out extracts of Hitler's speech on the Poles to Lahousen, declared that if a defeat for Germany would be a calamity, a German victory would be an even greater catastrophe. No effort should be spared to shorten the war and the Abwehr would continue to eschew all methods which offended the ethics of war.
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To another colleague, a few days later, on hearing that the German invasion of Poland had begun, he confided grimly: ‘It is the end of Germany.'

The Abwehr in September 1939, however, was rather more aggressive than its opponents. It began infiltrating Poland with units prepared for hostilities at key points. It also now began ruthlessly preparing sabotage operations against the UK mainland. If Canaris hoped for peace he was under no illusion that war with England was imminent and that his duty involved planning attacks against British interests. Lahousen, who had had some contact with the Irish Republican Army, noted that the IRA was successfully blowing up high profile targets, including Hammersmith Bridge, early in 1939. Could the Irish be persuaded to attack military targets and munitions dumps in the event of hostilities?
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Lahousen's attempts to bribe and cajole the IRA taxed even his improvisation skills and Byzantine training in the old
k. und k
. Evidenzbüro. His first problem was a religious one. Several senior IRA members were appalled at the thought of an imminent German attack on Catholic Poland. In common with Catholics throughout Europe, they saw the main enemy as godless Moscow. They would, however, now that hostilities had begun, nevertheless swallow these qualms and detonate explosives at an important arms factory in Waltham Abbey in January 1940, an act of sabotage which badly dented M15's reputation and that of Vernon Kell, whose office had had warning of the attack.

This spectacular coup, following hard on the heels of the daring U-boat raid at Scapa Flow which sank the Royal Navy's
Royal Oak
, showed all too vividly that the Abwehr's agents were alive and kicking and that
Ml5's undoubted successes in rounding up German agents were not as comprehensive as they might have wished.