Hitler's Spy Chief (27 page)

Canaris, having played a role in leaking the details of the plan to London, now seems to have enjoyed relaying reports of British preparations which he said indicated that a strong defence could be expected. Canaris' reports from England were consistently supportive of the idea of a well-planned British defence in depth. As the German navy and army wrangled over the pros and cons of a landing on a narrow or broad front, the invasion was repeatedly postponed. With each postponement came a report from Canaris estimating British strength in the region of thirty-nine divisions, though in fact there were no more than sixteen to defend the invasion area.

One Abwehr report, dated 5 September, has an especially picturesque flavour:

‘The area Tunbridge Wells to Beachy Head (especially the small town of Rye, where there are large sandhills) and also St. Leonard's is distinguished by a special labyrinth of defences. These defences, however, are so well camouflaged that a superficial observer on the sandhills, bathing spots and fields would not discover anything extraordinary.'
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The report went on to give a martial picture of St Leonard's and its
nearby golf courses bristling with armoured cars, a landscape which the good burghers of Sussex, even in those days, would have found very difficult to reconcile with reality.

As the Luftwaffe failed to destroy the RAF, reinforced by Polish and Czech pilots, the long-wished-for prerequisite of air superiority demanded in Keitel's and Raeder's directives of 2 July failed to materialise. Canaris' reports reinforced the mood that the invasion of the British Isles would be an expensive undertaking. Subsequently, the Abwehr's failure to report the chronic weakness of British forces in southern England would be noted and analysed in London. Sir Stewart Menzies, who remembered Canaris from joint days in Spain in the First World War, began to study his opposite number more carefully. So assiduously did he begin to examine Canaris that one of his subordinates observed: ‘He really understood the character of Canaris better than he understood himself.'
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Menzies had heard from his counterpart in Spain that the admiral was sceptical of Germany invading Britain.
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Menzies was also analysing the messages passed via Madame Szymanska in Switzerland with intense scrutiny.

The events of the next few months would deepen this interest, not least as it would focus on the country both men knew well, Spain. As has been noted earlier, Canaris knew that the key to Britain's imperial power was the Mediterranean. And the key to the Mediterranean was Gibraltar. If the Germans
could occupy Gibraltar, the entire position of the British forces in the Mediterranean would become untenable. Rommel's later campaigns might well have prospered if the Strait of Gibraltar had been closed by German siege guns. All this was transparently clear to any naval officer of any country's service.

Plans for a German entry into Spain, with an ensuing attack on Gibraltar, existed and had even been worked out in some detail. It only remained to procure the support of the Spanish. When, on 23 October, Hitler met Franco at the border railway station of Hendaye, the German conqueror imagined there would be little obstacle to his plans from the man he had helped build into a political force. Franco, after all, would never have held Spain against the Soviet-backed Republicans without German arms and men. He owed Hitler almost everything.

Contrary to many later reports,
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Franco was actually the first to arrive at Hendaye. The German diplomat, Stille, was detailed by his ambassador, Canaris' old friend von Stohrer, to accompany Franco on the train and he noted that it arrived ‘a minute early'.
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But if Franco was determined to show no discourtesy to Hitler by being unpunctual, he was not particularly accommodating in any other way.

He was well prepared for the encounter. He knew what Hitler would want and had formulated careful arguments to counter him. He knew that Hitler would try to overawe him with a sense of Germany's military superiority, in particular her plans for the invasion and occupation of Britain. Again, Franco was forewarned and forearmed. Canaris had told Serrano Suñer, Franco's foreign minister and brother-in-law what to expect in some detail. More than that, he had briefed Suñer with several pieces of information which would give Franco the edge once the conversation turned, as it inevitably would, to the concrete plans for taking Gibraltar. First Canaris warned Suñer against any operation in alliance with Germany, against Britain. When Suñer asked Canaris about the imminent invasion of England, Canaris briskly replied, ‘Tell Franco that no German soldier will ever set foot in England.'
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Canaris and General von Rintelen had both been heavily involved in drawing up the siege plans for Gibraltar. They both knew the type of siege artillery that would be required and they also knew whether it was available at that time in the German Reich. According to depositions in the Institute of Contemporary History in Munich,
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Canaris then briefed the Spanish chief of staff, General Martinez Campos, to advise Franco to ask for a particular type of heavy artillery to be deployed in the siege of Gibraltar, knowing full well that there were no weapons of this calibre available in
Germany owing to a sudden interruption in production. The admiral insisted that Franco must describe, in detail, the impoverished state of Spain after the terrible ravages of the previous years of conflict.

Franco was in any event unwilling to be compliant. His sense of dignity and sovereignty was being almost daily offended by the activities of the SD in Spain. Setting to work with their usual zeal, they were spreading rumours that plans for a partition of Spain were being drawn up in Berlin, a speculation bound to draw Spaniards together and strengthen Franco.
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Moreover, to add insult, the SD set up its own station in the Spanish post office centre, issuing Nazi censor stamps so that the correspondence of Allied embassies not travelling by diplomatic bag would be franked with the censor's stamp, complete with swastika. This was a huge irritant to the Spanish leadership, to whose attention this unhappy and impertinent intrusion was almost daily pointed out by neutral and Allied ambassadors – a chorus of complaint which culminated in some heated exchanges when Franco discovered that even some of his own mail was being franked in this way.

The SD then completed its near total demolition of amicable German–Spanish relations by importing 220 agents and attempting to assassinate one of Franco's more pro-Allied generals by a clumsily staged air crash. This was followed by an equally crude attempt to blow up General Varega. All this was accompanied by relentless pressure on the political front. Himmler even obliged Franco to remove his old comrade-in-arms Beigbeder, a former military attaché in Berlin and old friend of Canaris. This the
Caudillo
deeply resented.

The official accounts of the Hendaye conference remain sparse on details of the conversations. Serrano Suñer, who replaced Beigbeder as foreign minister, was forbidden by Franco from referring to them in his memoirs, while the official German documents later published in the US in 1946 break off with the laconic observation that ‘the record of this conversation is incomplete.'

Paul Schmidt, Hitler's genial and brilliant interpreter, gives perhaps the most lucid account of the talks, which he rightly describes as a ‘fiasco'. They show that in every detail, Franco followed Canaris' briefing. When Hitler came to the subject of Gibraltar and made Franco the offer of an alliance with Germany which would deliver the Rock to Spain ‘once and for all', his ‘trump card' in Schmidt's words, Franco said nothing. As Schmidt later wrote, ‘I really could not tell from his face whether he found the idea a complete surprise or whether he was just considering his reply.'
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Franco then gave a long lecture on the food and agricultural difficulties Spain found herself in after the years of civil war. When Hitler promised food supplies, Franco countered knowingly, with a wary smile, that he did not feel Germany was in a position to make such generous promises. Then Franco delivered the demand for at least a dozen of the heavy calibre howitzers. Hitler was dimly aware that there was a shortage of these and was taken aback by the suggestion. When Hitler suggested bomber aircraft instead, Franco went into a long monologue on the need for artillery to defend his coast against counter-attack. When Hitler questioned the English ability to launch such attacks, Franco went into another long lecture on American support for the British and how he had reliable intelligence that the Royal Navy would even be prepared,
in extremis
, to operate out of Canada. All this information came to Franco via Canaris, who had briefed General Martinez Campos on these issues.

As one close to these talks noted: ‘Canaris put nothing down on paper: no telegrams, no notes. He simply briefed Martinez Campos who passed everything onto Franco.'
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Canaris also suggested to Campos that he keep the roads of Spain in poor repair as they were a barometer of Spanish war readiness for the SD agents in Spain.

Canaris repeated the same message to Vigon, Franco's intelligence chief. If Franco held firm on artillery and grain deliveries for Spain he would call Hitler's bluff.

Above all, Canaris repeated again to Vigon, he should assure the
Caudillo
that ‘not a single German soldier will ever set foot in England'. Unsurprisingly, as one German noted, ‘Franco's position at Hendaye was totally influenced by Canaris.'
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*

When Hitler talked of a date in January for both the German and Spanish armies to take Gibraltar, Franco went into another detailed and historical discourse on the exclusive right of Spain to reclaim Gibraltar and avenge the hundreds of years of humiliation.

As Schmidt noticed, the more serene, soft and gentle (though persistent) Franco's voice became, the more emotional and impatient Hitler's arguments waxed. Eventually, Hitler withdrew, uttering the much quoted remark that it was like having teeth pulled. He left the negotiation to be continued by Ribbentrop and Suñer. But Ribbentrop, acting under the pressure of his master for an agreement, behaved less like a diplomat and more like a schoolmaster dissatisfied with his pupil's work: ‘We need an agreement on paper as a joint statement by eight o'clock tomorrow morning. Do you understand? Eight o'clock!,' he shouted at Suñer, as if giving him a detention, adding importantly ‘I have to be in France with Pétain tomorrow.'
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Suñer, like all Spaniards of his class, knew perfectly well how to deal with such types. The following morning when the sun rose, it rose without Serrano Suñer. The pupil, with or without his homework, chose not to appear. Instead, he sent his under state secretary, the ever genial Espinosa de los Monteros, whose character had been enriched by a somewhat epicurean upbringing in Vienna, whose broad and friendly dialect he spoke perfectly without a trace of Spanish accent.

Ribbentrop stared in disbelief as the friendly Spaniard apologised in his
gemütlich
, flowing, Viennese German for the delay and equally genially, as if discussing something of little more importance than a choice of menu for lunch at Sachers, promised to get the document to Germany as
soon as the
Caudillo
had come to a decision on it.
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The combination of this old Austrian charm and slow Spanish etiquette, both impervious, indeed indifferent, to Ribbentrop's mood was too much even for the German foreign minister's temper. Echoing Hitler's remarks about ‘Jesuit swine', he turned and slammed the door of his train.

Suñer would be summoned a month later to Berchtesgaden for more pressure to be applied by the Reichminister, but once again Spanish tenacity would see the Germans off, this time with claims that though Spain agreed in principle, Spain's preparations would take time. Franco knew from December, courtesy of Canaris, that if he spun the delay out to March he would be saved by simple dint of the Führer's eyes looking east: there would be no weapons available to take Gibraltar once Barbarossa reached the final planning stage.

Tempting though it might be to ascribe these remarkable exchanges entirely to Canaris, these curious events at the foot of the Pyrenees, rightly described as one of the major turning points of the war, were also invested with other factors. Canaris may well have known that Churchill, deploying a tactic long used in such circumstances, had ordered ten million dollars to be deposited in an account of the Swiss Bank Corporation in New York to the benefit of Franco and a number of his generals to ‘persuade them of the sweets of neutrality.'
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To administer the transfer of this munificence, Churchill had entrusted the colourful Commander Alan Hillgarth with this most sensitive of tasks. A former naval officer, wounded at the Dardanelles, Hillgarth had been appointed vice-consul in Majorca in 1933, where on the eve of Franco's rebellion, Churchill had met him. It seems more than likely that Churchill may have met Hillgarth's best contact on the island, Juan March, though no evidence to support this has yet come to light. March of course knew Canaris of old, and Hillgarth would also have had reason through March to know of Canaris. Once again, the name long forgotten from the First World War telegrams concerning the elusive
Dresden
would reappear in
Churchill's mind, as he discussed in Majorca the formidable activities of the German naval intelligence in the area, past and present.

In any event, Hillgarth used March as a crucial intermediary with the Spanish generals, despite Treasury and other strongly voiced objections. Churchill wrote to Admiral Godfrey ‘The fact that … he made money by devious means in no way affects his value to us at present.'
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Moreover, Hillgarth would become Churchill's most trusted intelligence adviser, to the chagrin of his other advisers, such as Cadogan, who regarded Hillgarth with great suspicion. ‘I am finding Hillgarth a great prop,' Churchill would tell Hoare after a barrage of complaints about the former naval officer.
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