Hitler's Spy Chief (25 page)

When she asked to be helped to go to her family in Warsaw, Canaris advised against it. Then, realising that she was fluent in different languages
and a lady of some attraction and culture, the admiral suggested neutral Switzerland. His choice of Berne, however, showed how rapidly his mind worked. The Swiss capital would be significant, for there was not only a Free Polish Mission in the city, but also an exceptionally important British intelligence station. As Nicholas Elliot, a young M16 officer who would have quite a bit to do with the Abwehr later on in the war, noted: ‘Canaris knew that anything he told this Polish lady would be reported, she being a patriotic Pole, straight to Polish intelligence who would of course pass it onto us.'
42

After the war, Ian Colvin asked her whether Canaris had ever attempted to draw her into espionage work, but she denied this: ‘The admiral never asked me to find out anything for him about the Allies, although he must have known that I was in touch with my own countrymen in Berne and through them with the British.'
43

Canaris visited Berne several times during the winter of 1939 and told the British, via Madame Szymanska, that Germany would ‘certainly make war on her treaty partner Russia sooner or later.' He also hinted strongly that the German opposition was keen to end the war against Britain by deposing Hitler. For the next few years, British intelligence would have an insight into the mind of one of the shrewdest observers of the activities of the German High Command. ‘All his talk was of high politics but you could sense from them what was imminent. He would not have told me of purely military matters – small treason such as agents deal in. When he spoke it was of the Reich and Russia and Great Britain and America.'

The Szymanska connection showed that SIS and the Abwehr could communicate with each other and even cooperate. Madame Szymanska's husband had been captured by the Soviets. Thanks to an exceptional intervention by the British, he was released and handed over to the West, an almost unheard of event for a Polish officer in Soviet hands.
44

As the Germans strengthened their grip on Europe and rolled back the French and British Expeditionary Army the following spring, this link
would preserve a source of sound intelligence about German intentions which would be of great help to an increasingly beleaguered enemy.

Throughout the war this link was never discovered and significantly, it was entirely one way, for as Madame Szymanska pointed out: ‘He never once tried to find out anything about the Allies through me.' Canaris, thanks to the Abwehr penetration of Britain, needed no help to know what was going on in London. He knew, perhaps better than most – even in England – that Britain was facing a supreme crisis, and that if she failed to rise to the challenge the civilised world would come to an end. It is this twin-track philosophy, permitting on the one hand a committed attack on the intelligence structures of the enemy, while ensuring that the subsequent victory does not destroy the enemy, which places Canaris far above the agents and spies of earlier generations. Here was a spymaster who believed that a total victory for Nazi Germany would spell disaster for the world and that a balancing act of supreme dexterity would somehow enable him to help his opponents while at the same time saving his country from the jaws of utter ruin.

Later, as Churchill experienced the dark moments of 1940 – a defeated army, an imminent invasion, a broken France, no allies, a defeatist cabinet – no one could sense the desperation of the moment as acutely as Canaris, informed by both sides of the overwhelming strength of the German forces and the pathetic weakness of the British. The Abwehr would know all too well of the peace-feelers coming out of London the following spring.

When an officer gloomily remarked to Canaris that ‘I think you will find the British will not go on,' Canaris snapped back: ‘Of course they will go on!' If there was one thread that went through his conversations that winter with his Polish friend in Berne, it was that Britain would be poorly advised to come to an agreement with Hitler. Even if Britain had no powerful allies as yet, she still had the friendship of those good Germans who would not wish to see London go down to a Nazi victory. In the person of Canaris they had someone who would now deploy all the skill and
deception that only an experienced spy chief in wartime can muster to buy time for an otherwise all but vanquished foe. London did not have an agent in Canaris, but they had, incontestably, an ally. They may have hoped, as any case officer might, that one day Canaris would become an agent, but Canaris would avoid British control as much as he would German.

Canaris busied himself on two main fronts. Internally, he stepped up his support for the plans of the conspirators against Hitler, where possible drawing up evidence that would reveal the entire naked evil of the entire Nazi edifice.

Externally, he set about constructing as many avenues of communication as possible with the British. If Madame Szymanska was one of the more exotic, she was only one of several channels opened up in neutral capitals. As Fortress Europe was built by the Germans on the back of Guderian's panzers, Canaris constructed a rabbit warren of secret communications with the enemy. In Switzerland, at the Vatican, in Spain, in Finland, the Abwehr officers were instructed to pursue a dual policy of seemingly blind obedience to the Führer while maintaining contacts – if necessary through third parties – with Britain.

As the drama of 1940 unfolded and Britain's ‘finest hour' began, the Abwehr was going to play the role of a most unlikely ‘guardian angel' to the British Empire.

*
Patzig had been presented in a ‘moving ceremony' with a relic of the German fleet scuttled at Scapa Flow after internment in 1918.

*
Elser is one of the most mysterious figures of the Second World War. The simple watchmaker was accused by the British of being in the SD's service, but the accusation of agent provocateur does not entirely ring true on closer examination of Elser's background and training (see Stern:
Der Wahre Gegner
).

CHAPTER NINE

KEEPING THE EMPIRE AFLOAT

I would rather have three or four teeth extracted than go through that again
.

HITLER
1

On 19 September 1939, Churchill had recommended to the cabinet that British forces mine Norwegian waters and examine ways of cutting off Narvik harbour, with its supplies of vital raw materials for the Germans, and occupying the area with troops. Within hours, the Abwehr was assessing these statements which, of course, infringed Norway's neutral status. Canaris immediately saw the significance of Churchill's suggestion and, most unusually, gave a lecture to the naval staff on the intelligence: something which gave it added weight in Admiral Raeder's eyes.
2

Hitler, however, was most reluctant to think of invading Norway. The general staff had never contemplated Norway as a target. The search for military intelligence material on Norway produced only a dusty 1907 guide to Norway's armed forces. Preoccupied with the plans for an offensive in the West, Hitler remained lukewarm on the idea, telling the leader of the Norwegian Fascists, Vidkun Quisling, that all he wanted was for Norway to remain neutral.
3
But Quisling gave convincing news that the British were planning to take Narvik and this, together with the successes of the Royal Navy in tracking down German pocket raiders, may have given Hitler pause for thought.

In any event, by 10 October 1939 Hitler began talking of invading Norway. With the successful conclusion of the Polish campaign, the need to secure the northern territories began to figure in Hitler's calculations. Russia was clearly preparing to invade Finland. The possibility of British aid to Finland through Narvik, even if it did not exist at that precise moment, was only a question of time. More importantly, Narvik lay astride the key routes whereby iron reached the German Reich from the iron-ore fields of Kiruna-Gallivare in Sweden. The German navy was also keen to pre-empt the Royal Navy by seizing the Norwegian bases. By 14 December, Hitler had decided to initiate the offensive, to be called Operation Weserübung, and had earmarked eight divisions for it.

‘It was a terribly weighty decision to occupy Norway,' Jodl would write. ‘It meant gambling with the entire German fleet.'
4
According to Jodl, the decision to finalise the invasion plans was taken on 2 April on the basis of ‘Canaris' reports that British troops and transports were lying in a state of readiness on the north-east coast of England.' The British cabinet's decision on 12 March to revive plans previously discussed for the occupation of Narvik and the sealing off of Germany's northern approaches were, like the discussions earlier in September, swiftly known to the Abwehr.

It has been said that Canaris was hoping for a German setback in the Skagerrak which would make Hitler vulnerable to a renewed coup. There is no doubt that the generals reckoned with the possibility of exploiting a blow to Hitler's prestige, but there is no evidence to suggest that Canaris actively betrayed details of the Narvik operation to the British.
5
Canaris wanted to avoid further hostilities. What he had seen in Poland had sickened him. His deputy, Oster, on the other hand, was more clinical. He hoped a German reverse would damage Hitler enough to give the generals the chance they needed to act. Canaris appears at this stage to have had increasingly little faith in the generals, refusing at one stage to see any of them on account of their moral ‘cowardice'.

However, he took no steps to prevent Oster making his way to the
Dutch military attaché, Colonel Gilbert Jacob Sas, to inform him that the invasion of Norway was imminent. This act of treason, for to give information to a country which could incur the loss of fellow soldiers' lives was an act of treachery, shows how desperate the conspirators had become. There is no evidence that Canaris sanctioned this move. Sas passed the warning onto the Norwegian legation in Berlin, where the diplomat who received it found it so incredible that he did not forward it to Oslo. But the German shipping activity which preceded the operation was clue enough for British consuls and other agents. ‘We had all the movements of shipping as they occurred. But they [in London] did not know what to make of them,' a British intelligence official is quoted as saying.
6

By the afternoon of 8 April the interrogation of survivors, mostly soldiers in battledress, from the
Rio de Janeiro
, torpedoed the previous day by HMS
Trident
, left the Norwegian government in no doubt that they were facing invasion. However, there was still doubt as to whether the Germans were going to try to occupy the whole country, or simply Narvik. Canaris may have wanted to help the allies, but the Abwehr nevertheless put up a very professional job of confusing the enemy. The Norwegian fleet was totally unprepared and Chamberlain would defend himself in the House of Commons by referring to the ‘bewildering diversity' of reports.

Much of the credit for the success of the Norwegian campaign would shine on Canaris, even though the German navy would suffer severe losses when the Royal Navy sank no fewer than ten destroyers, carrying many of General Dietl's mountain troops. Despite this, and the loss of the
Blücher
in the Bay of Oslo, the campaign was brought to a successful conclusion, not least on account of the brilliance with which Dietl fought a dazzling defensive campaign with his outnumbered troops when the Norwegians counter-attacked. A critical role had been played by the Abwehr in the preparations for the German invasion of Oslo. An Abwehr officer by the name of Pruck had arrived on 30 January, charged with preparing nothing
less than a forward military intelligence station in Oslo, giving comprehensive details of the disposition of the Norwegian forces several months before the attack. Pruck's office was so speedily effective that on the basis of all the intelligence he sent, a detailed invasion plan could be drawn up within weeks by the staff. This infiltration of forward intelligence centres behind potential enemy lines, ahead of an imminent conflict, was to become an Abwehr speciality. Now a standard procedure in advance of hostilities, though often as recent events in the Middle East show, varyingly successful, it was then an innovative and highly effective form of assisting an imminent attack.

Pruck's outfit was hugely helpful to the airborne troops who finally took Oslo. A few weeks later, Pruck's wife tried to bring to the attention of the SD her suspicions that the Abwehr was plotting against Hitler. Canaris, in a rare recorded act of ruthless expediency, arranged through Himmler to have her consigned to a mental institution.
7

Canaris, already gazetted for advancement on account of Pruck's preparatory work, was promoted to the rank of full admiral. Norway had vividly shown the limits of British intelligence and the skill of its opponents. Once again, the Abwehr had proved its worth.
*
As the campaign for Norway wound down, Canaris was visited by some officials of the German foreign ministry keen to acquire from Canaris' agents and officers, in advance of the planned invasion of France, ‘Case Yellow', evidence that Holland and Belgium had been abusing their neutrality status. They were compiling a document that would be officially printed as a diplomatic ‘white book' and would provide justification for the forthcoming invasion to any sceptics at home or abroad. Such a book would list the ‘sins' of the Dutch and Belgians and provide a justification for the war in the guise of an official document detailing the intelligence assessment of the threat posed to Germany by these ‘violations' of neutrality.

Despite the fact that Canaris had many friends in the foreign ministry, and despite the fact that Germany was a totalitarian state, it is surely to the admiral's credit that he refused to have anything to do with this project and instructed his section chiefs to withhold information which he feared might be manipulated and misrepresented or exaggerated.
*