Hitler's Spy Chief (28 page)

Such bribes are not an unknown practice, even in peacetime, when the senior politicians of smaller countries often need to be suborned in the interests of their larger neighbours. Those who pretend otherwise have an unrealistic grip on the vagaries of human nature and are therefore unsuitable for a career at the more exalted levels of public service. In war, the practice was inevitably stepped up on both sides and the Abwehr, with its huge budget, was certainly not averse to such moves and would, of course, have anticipated similar steps being taken by its opponents.

Yet here in Spain one senses a cooperation between two sides. London had noticed that the Abwehr withheld much useful information from the OKW. Any talk among senior intelligence officers that Canaris might be an ally of the British was stamped on. A convenient rumour was started to blame the strange assessments of British defences on the ‘Abwehr losing its touch'. Yet there is plenty of evidence to suggest that important circles began to take a much more profound view of these developments and see the possibilities such cooperation opened up.

At one level, it would be reflected by the activities of Don Daniel de Araos, Baron de Sacrelirio, a shipping magnate and a retired officer of the Spanish fleet. The baron's wife was well known in Spain for her Anglophile sentiments, but both were also personal friends of Canaris. It was noticed that the baron's shipping interests flourished with British
support, even though he was well known as a friend of the admiral.

But this was an exchange of information via a third party at a relatively junior level. Above these encounters there seemed to hover a higher community of interest. Churchill's personal interest in Spain, and his use of Hillgarth, who after the war would remain one of his most trusted advisers, point to events on the Iberian peninsula being seen as absolutely critical.

It was noticed in many capitals. Above all, it was perceived with misgiving in Moscow, where the events on the Iberian peninsula were being reported by a man well aware of Canaris' influence. Kim Philby, soon to be an officer in the SIS, was keeping Moscow abreast of developments in Spain in the guise of a
Times
correspondent. It was not a coincidence that the brightest of Moscow's English recruits was focussed on events in the western Mediterranean.

Between them, Churchill and Canaris had played their respective parts in preserving Spain from the ravages of war in the years to come. Both men had sought the same aim, Spanish neutrality. Both men had used whatever weapons they had in their armament to work for the same end. Might there be other shared objectives?

With the western Mediterranean no longer a possible destination for the Wehrmacht, and with the British Isles ‘robustly fortified and defended,' the dynamic of war would now turn Hitler unavoidably in other directions. The fire that had spared Spain was still a force of terrible danger, and the spy chiefs of every country watched closely for some clue as to its direction. Blocked to the west and the north it appeared, now more than ever, to be turning towards the vast imponderable expanses of the Soviet Union.

*
Ironically, while not denting Hitler's prestige as Oster had hoped, Narvik was the final nail in the coffin of Chamberlain's career and paved the way for Churchill to assume the premiership. In that aspect, at least, Narvik achieved all that the enemies of Hitler could have hoped.

*
The comparison with more contemporary events (2003-4) in the UK is of course vivid and underlines Nicolai's oft-quoted maxim, which implies the need for the highest standards of integrity in the second oldest profession.

*
The Morgenthau Plan was conceived in 1944 by the Secretary to the Treasury in Roosevelt's wartime administration, Henry Morgenthau, and proposed the complete post-war removal of Germany's industrial capacity. He had also advocated the sterilisation of all German males under the age of forty.

*
Not all Franco's generals were pro the allied cause. One of them, General Munoz Grande, told the SD in Berlin that Canaris was responsible for keeping Franco out of the war.

CHAPTER TEN

TOTAL WAR

War has a way of leading to unexpected consequences
.

JULIAN AMERY
1

While the diplomatic game of cat and mouse was played out at one end of the Mediterranean with Castilian dignity, at the other end of the sea it was mirrored by a more subtle and strange, but increasingly relevant, drama. In the Hagia Sophia, the great mosque of Istanbul, under the vast shields imploring the faithful to remember ‘Allah is Great', a young Englishman in blazer and flannels gazed up, Baedeker in hand, at the broad shafts of light cutting across the sombre corners of Stygian Byzantium.

A few tourists wandered around and there were plenty of the faithful sitting cross-legged and lost in prayer. None seemed to notice a slight, wiry figure with high cheek bones catch the Englishman's eye and nod towards a rather disreputable and shabby looking man of thickset features in a large overcoat. The shabby man looked at the Englishman. For a second their eyes met and across the vast hushed space of blackened Byzantine masonry, a keen observer might have noticed the rather scruffy man turn towards the Englishman and bow. Ever cautious and ever suspicious, Soviet military intelligence, still in late 1940 nominally allied to Germany, was nevertheless establishing, for the first time since hostilities broke out, eye-contact with Britain's secret service.
2

Julian Amery, the young man in flannels – then a young attaché at the embassy in Istanbul – recalled these tentative steps: ‘One day in September a strange thing happened.' Over lunch in Regence,
*
a Russian restaurant much frequented by diplomats and their agents, a Czech intelligence officer who was in Istanbul organising the sabotage of essential supplies to the Germans through the Balkans, said he had been approached by an official of the Soviet consulate-general.

‘The official had asked him for advice about how to organize similar Soviet sabotage operations against the Germans.' The Czech was used as an intermediary by the British and the Soviets, still wary of meeting each other directly, though, thanks to the mosques of Istanbul, the young Amery was able to keep the discreet contact and see its implications for the future direction of the war.
3
In January 1941, at another secret meeting between the Czech and a senior officer of Soviet military intelligence (GRU) it was agreed that a Czech officer would be sent to Moscow, although the candidate for the post, Colonel Pika, was not eventually sent until April.
4

As these events played out in the former Ottoman capital, there occurred, at more or less the same time, a strange counterpoint in Berlin. It contained a bold theme and its outlines were easily recognisable. On 7 September 1940, the head of the Abwehr's Section III (counter-espionage) received a sealed envelope from Hitler's headquarters marked ‘Most Secret'. It read:

Our Eastern territories will be occupied by stronger military effectives in the next four weeks. At the end of October the dispositions shown on the attached map will have been made. These dispositions must not give Russia the impression that we
intend to attack in the East. On the other hand Russia will realise that strong and well-trained German formations in Poland and Bohemia-Moravia indicate that we are able at any moment and with strong forces, to defend our interests against a Russian attack, especially in the Balkans.
5

This memorandum, signed by General Jodl, reflected well the anxieties of the German High Command towards the Soviets. There was the fear of an imminent Russian attack on Romanian oil fields, which were vital to the German war effort. In August there had been two movements of German troops to eastern Poland in readiness for contingencies arising from a Russian attack on the oil fields. There was not, however, a formal plan to attack the Soviet Union at this stage, though of course it had been discussed countless times before the war and had been the subject of loan negotiations with London as late as the summer of 1939. Nor was Stalin in the least bit interested in taking on the Wehrmacht simply to relieve pressure on a beleaguered Britain.

But both German and Soviet intelligence officers noted the developments and began taking precautions. Moreover, the geo-political interests of both sides were forcing the dynamic of war in their direction. The Wehrmacht's need for oil and raw materials, German interests in the Ukraine, Russian interests in Finland, all were factors in cooling relations between the two countries. As noted earlier, British aid to Finland's struggle against the Soviet Union had been transported with little interference from the Germans. Moscow's suspicions were intense.

Above all, the Balkans, as Jodl's memorandum explicitly underlined, were part of the map where respective spheres of influence had still not been agreed between Germany and the Soviet Union. This was a factor of huge potential for disrupting German–Soviet relations. Just as in the run-up to the First World War, the Pan-Slav agitation, strongly supported by Britain and France, had provided the sparks to ignite the tinderbox of clashing Austrian and Russian interests, so now the British would play a decisive role in harnessing the Yugoslavs to drive a formidable wedge between Moscow and Berlin.

With the fall of France, German influence in Belgrade rapidly grew. The German legation became the most powerful foreign influence in the capital, dictating key positions in the Yugoslav media and consolidating its already formidable commercial interests. Under its pressure, the Anglophile regent Prince Paul reined in anti-German propaganda and closed down the lodges and other centres of Yugoslav patriotism. Astutely, though, he opened negotiations with Moscow by appointing an ambassador to the Soviets.

As the German legation was all too aware, the former anti-Allied leaflets of the communists in Belgrade had become, with the fall of France, increasingly anti-German. The Germans in Belgrade heard the slogans calling for the first time against ‘Fascist infiltration' of key positions.
6
This pattern was repeated in other countries, notably Bulgaria, where the Communist party – again on instruction from Moscow – had dropped its propaganda against British imperialism and was working in parallel with other opposition parties to resist German influence.

As the leader of the Bulgarian Peasant party, Obov, noted, there could be no doubt that Moscow was ‘dismayed and alarmed' at the prospect of a German occupation of the Balkans.

Significantly, at their summit in Florence in October, both Ciano and Mussolini had expressed reservations about the Soviet Union's penetration of Europe, and Hitler had reassured both men that he would not tolerate any Soviet incursion in the Balkans which might threaten Italian interests, notably the eastern Adriatic, including Albania and parts of Yugoslavia.
7

By the time Molotov arrived in Berlin on 10 November, relations between Germany and the Soviet Union, while still publicly cordial, were cooling rapidly. When Ribbentrop asked whether Moscow would like to join the tripartite pact, Molotov made cautious soundings about Finland. Ribbentrop refused to accept Russian annexation in its entirety. Ribbentrop also notified his opposite number that as a result of the difficulties the Italians were facing in Greece and the eastern Mediterranean, Germany
would have to occupy Greece. Molotov seemingly accepted this; the Greeks were after all not Slavs, but he then mentioned the difficult issue of the other parts of the Balkans and asked that Germany accept Russia's interests in Bulgaria. Bulgaria, ruled by a monarch, in this case Boris, who was a German, was even more open to German pressure than Belgrade. Ribbentrop made expansive gestures and referred to expanding Moscow's interests in the direction of the Persian Gulf. Molotov's scepticism cut the air with surgical clarity: ‘Precision,' he noted, ‘was necessary in a delimitation of spheres of influence.'
8

According to papers in the Munich Institute of Contemporary History, the issue of a joint German–Russian attack on Turkey was mentioned.
9
Molotov, in this context, also demanded Bulgaria's alliance with Moscow. Once again the Balkans were seemingly and unavoidably proving thorny ground.

As Keitel told Canaris the following day, briefing him on the conversations and Molotov's views: ‘They want to extend their influence in the Balkans and the Dardanelles. The Führer sees these projects as the beginnings of a grand plan to encircle Germany.'
10
At meetings with Hitler, Molotov's sharp manner and unyielding line on the Balkans began to confirm Keitel's misgivings. ‘The fates of Bulgaria and Romania were also of interest to the Soviet Union,' Molotov growled. Once again Yugoslavia was a topic for clarification: ‘It would further interest the Soviet Union to learn what the Axis contemplated with regard to Yugoslavia.' The tone of these comments reflected what Moscow's spies in the Balkans had been telling the Kremlin for months, namely that Germany had no desire to allow Moscow to play any significant role in Europe.

The interview with Molotov confirmed Hitler's worst suspicions that Stalin was a blackmailer and that the best way to deal with Moscow and Britain's resistance was, in the words of his Directive Number 21 of 18 December, ‘to crush Soviet Russia in a quick campaign.' It is said that at one of these meetings, shortly after Molotov had heard a long lecture on the ‘beaten and defeated British', an RAF raid began on Berlin and the
diplomats had to adjourn to a bunker. Molotov is said to have dryly remarked to his German hosts, ‘Why, if Britain is defeated, are we holding our meeting in an air raid shelter?'

The British were not the only service to make use of Czechs. The Abwehr also made use of a man with Czech connections in Istanbul and the Balkans, Paul Thummel. Thummel, a long-standing friend of Himmler's, later to be the Abwehr chief in Prague, was working for Czech Intelligence and was, like Canaris, committed to preventing where possible a Nazi domination of Europe.