Hitler's Spy Chief (29 page)

It is highly unlikely that Thummel, whose British intelligence code symbol was A-54, was carrying out his activities without Canaris' knowledge. Far more likely is it that Thummel was being used by Canaris as yet another of his routes into London. Thummel also was in contact with the Soviet consulate in Prague and was therefore a slender but increasingly important link between British and Soviet intelligence.

A list of all the peace-feelers London had received from Germany between the outbreak of war and April 1941 was compiled by the Foreign Office.
*
They do not, understandably, include several of the clandestine contacts outlined here above.

In any event, Thummel arrived in Canaris' office on 19 December, shortly after the Directive for the invasion of Russia was issued. Thummel found the chief preoccupied but all Canaris said was, ‘I am going to Turkey and I will take you with me.' It is not known what Canaris and Thummel were up to in Turkey together but it seems likely that it was in connection with Hitler's Directive
11
and a sudden urgent need to acquaint themselves with the activities of Soviet and British intentions in the Balkans. The German High Command certainly believed that London was pinning its hopes on Moscow entering the war.
12
At the same time, however, on the ground in Istanbul, as Amery testifies, the Russians and British still regarded each other with intense suspicion. Canaris, the sworn enemy of
Communism, would have seen the greatest peril in any rapprochement between Britain and the Soviet Union. Part of him may have yearned for a German annihilation of the Communist hordes, but the stronger part of him knew all too well what a war on two fronts would mean. Germany's destruction would come sooner, as Canaris was fully aware. What had defeated the military genius of Napoleon could not but succeed against the Wehrmacht led by an Austrian corporal.

For Canaris, the only advantage in a conflict with the Soviet Union would be the possibility it opened to resurrect with London the old policy of a coalition against Communism. But events in the Balkans began to move with unerring swiftness to undermine such a development.

Prince Paul, the Oxford-educated and most Anglophile of European sovereigns, certainly enjoyed the best of relations with the British embassy in Belgrade. He forbade his security service to monitor the embassy's telephones and he personally warned the British ambassador that his traffic was being read by the Italians in Rome, who had broken a number of Foreign Office ciphers.
13
Such extravagant generosity was not to be reciprocated.

As Moscow saw the need to cooperate with elements of the British secret service against Paul, a plot was laid that would appeal to many dissatisfied circles in the Yugoslav military and church. The young Julian Amery had been on holiday on the Dalmatian coast when war broke out. Thanks to his father's influence, he was able to proceed to Belgrade and become an honorary attaché at the British legation.

In the early months of 1940 he immersed himself in the problems of the region and developed close ties with leading figures in the Yugoslav opposition. His mentor, a brilliant Marxist by the name of Jakob Altmeier, sometime correspondent of the
Manchester Guardian
and the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
, opened every door he could for him. Amery soon heard from many sources, but especially from members of the patriotic societies, the Orthodox Church and the military, that Britain was wrong to put its faith in Prince Paul. Paul was neither a soldier nor a Serb. He was a white
Russian and an intellectual. Serbia's honour was more valuable than peace or economic prosperity. What value was material prosperity if the country lost its honour?

The official British view, as articulated by the Foreign Office and to a certain extent by SIS, was unmoved by such sentiments. Prince Paul was a friend and a very useful one at that. However, for the newly created SOE, with which young Amery was in touch, such considerations were outweighed by the harsh realities of war.

From Amery's and SOE's point of view there was little to be lost by inveigling the Serbs into rebellion. If Yugoslavia was seen to stand up to Germany, some pressure might be relieved from the preparations to invade Britain. Moreover, as anyone with a sense of history and knowledge of the Balkans would realise, it would inevitably provoke a strong reaction from Berlin which would decisively rupture relations between Russia and Germany. As Amery noted, ‘There was just a chance Russia might be drawn into the war. At the very worst it meant that the Germans would have to fight for the Balkans, instead of picking them up for nothing; and war has a way of leading to unexpected consequences.'
14

Canaris and the Abwehr were not blind to the danger some of these officers in Belgrade posed, but they were heavily reliant on information from Croatia and few Germans possessed the mental elasticity to imagine that Prince Paul, an Oxford graduate and relation of the British royal family, and the most Anglophile monarch in the Balkans, could be undermined by factions within the British secret service. SIS policy under Menzies, who never reconciled himself to SOE, which he regarded as ‘crassly amateur', making the life of his agents more rather than less difficult, was not in favour of the coup. Canaris, therefore, would have found little intelligence from his sources in that quarter to warn him of impending events.

It seems more than likely that Canaris was, for once, taken by surprise that a country could commit what would amount to collective
suicide rather than submit to increasing pressure from Germany. Von Hassell's diary for 27 March, the day of the coup, notes quizzically: ‘The affair is still obscure. A plot with the English?' The question mark suggests that Von Hassell, who had seen Paul only a few days before staunchly defending British morale, simply could not imagine he could be deposed by the British,
15
not least as Paul was in such close touch with London.

The Abwehr diary
16
shows an increasing focus on Yugoslavia from February 1941 and notes on 4 March that key strategic positions were being given increased protection; but otherwise there is no reference to any dissent among the Yugoslav officer corps to Belgrade's compliance with Berlin's demands.

While the young Julian Amery had worked hard to build a coalition of forces to move against the Prince, he had had the full backing of his father, a former
Times
correspondent in the Balkans. Though now stationed in Istanbul, (the British ambassador in Belgrade had correctly divined his motives and banned him from returning ), the young Amery continued to encourage from afar the forces of ‘progress' in the Yugoslav capital. At the same time he involved his father in the plans for a coup. A number of documents in the Amery archive point to his father's involvement with senior intelligence advisers with regard to the events of 26 March.
17

On the evening of 26 March, the day after the Yugoslav government had signed the Tripartite Pact, Leo Amery broadcast a strong and impassioned plea to the Yugoslavs to remember that on the field of Kosovo King Lazar had chosen the heavenly crown rather than the earthly one of subjection to Ottoman rule. It was as if a long awaited signal had been given. A
coup d'état
spearheaded by a group of air force and army officers, many with links with Moscow as well as certain sections of the British embassy, deposed Prince Paul within hours. Leo Amery wrote in his diary the following day: ‘Various other people like Rab Butler … good humouredly attributed [the coup] to my broadcast. It is at any rate possible that my
appeal may have influenced some waverers … I imagine Julian's share in originally working up the Opposition movement months ago was really greater … Home to celebrate Julian's birthday.'
18

Between them, the two Amerys had helped to throw perhaps the most spectacular political hand grenade of the war into the already charged powder keg of German–Soviet relations. It would almost certainly guarantee an arctic frost descending over the few flickers of well-intentioned activity, notably by the German ambassador in Moscow, von der Schulenburg, trying to avoid a war between Moscow and Berlin. More, while achieving this fundamental purpose it would at the same time, in the event of such aggression taking place, delay it significantly until Yugoslavia was subdued. As Karl Ritter, the German foreign office liaison officer with the OKW, later summed up the consequences of the postponement of Barbarossa by five weeks: ‘The delay cost the Germans the winter battle for Moscow and it was there the war was lost.'
19

The Belgrade coup, however, had a further effect which, perhaps, was only apparent to a few men in England and Germany, but certainly would not have been lost on Canaris. Prince Paul, as von Hassell's diaries make clear, was actively trying to help peace-feelers that were still emanating from certain circles in London,
20
and of which von Hassell himself was apprised.
21
These particular feelers (not listed in the foreign office document quoted above) involved Hitler's deputy Hess, Sir Samuel Hoare, then British ambassador to Spain, and Canaris' old family friend Prince Hohenlohe, and it seems were issued with Hitler's blessing.
22

Canaris had long used the Lufthansa agent, Otto John, as a go-between with Samuel Hoare
23
and as the month of March gathered momentum it saw rumours of Hess imminently visiting Spain and Churchill being replaced ‘by some appeaser like Hoare'.
24
On 5 March Hoare had met Hohenlohe and the conversation, according to the Italian ambassador, ranged over Hoare becoming Prime Minister instead of Churchill and Rab Butler replacing Eden at the Foreign Office.
25

‘In this connection,' wrote von Hassell in his diary, ‘the idea was broached that perhaps a German conflict with Russia might constitute a bridge towards an understanding with the West.' Such thinking would, of course, strike a chord of sympathy with Canaris in touch with the ‘terrific anti-bolsheviks' around Menzies in the British Secret Service. But such thinking would also provoke a reaction, especially when it became known.
26
Of course, von Hassell, who was in contact with senior members of the British aristocracy and members of the royal family, was articulating a view commonly held in influential circles in both Germany and England and which had indeed been British policy before the war.
27

The news of the coup falling out of a clear blue sky was shattering. Though the Tripartite Pact which the Yugoslav government had been pressured into signing on 25 March at the Belvedere Palace in Vienna (built for Prinz Eugen who ‘boldly by battery besieged Belgrade') had caused the Abwehr to begin to note some signs of discontent in the Serbian military, even the rough treatment accorded to the returning Yugoslavs in Belgrade, where an angry crowd jeered and spat at them, seemed to have passed more or less unnoticed by the High Command. No one in Berlin was expecting any dramatic developments. After a while the lazy, temperamental Serbs would settle down, for as a Bulgarian diplomat had observed a few weeks earlier: ‘I should like to know which country in the Balkans would risk an encounter with the best equipped and best led army in the world.'
28

Hitler was incensed. On 28 March, barely hours after the coup, he noted that the ‘clique' which organized it was ‘lunatic in its analysis of the military situation' which was correct in as far as the Yugoslav military equation was concerned.

But those like Amery who had gambled on it being a decisive intervention, destined to destroy the ever more plausible chances of a flawed compromise peace, gambled correctly. Hitler's temper and lust for revenge now moved inexorably eastwards.

Less than a month later, as Russia offered support in the form of a pact to Belgrade, Hitler began to register, in a conversation with his ambassador to Moscow, von der Schulenburg, the full significance of what was happening. To this day the heat and passion of Hitler's feelings leap off the page of the rather formal minutes taken by the ambassador:

Hitler asked me what devil the Russians were riding by agreeing to support Yugoslavia … I said this was to register Russian interest in the Balkans. It was also an attempt to organize a peace.

Hitler was still not clear who was the organising genius behind the putsch but he believed England rather than Russia was responsible, though the Balkan people felt that Russia was to blame … I told him there was no shred of evidence to suggest official Russian involvement.
29

Here the ambassador is drawing a distinction similar to that much analysed point in the diplomatic ‘books' following the First World War, as to whether the Serbian secret service through the ‘Black Hand' organized the assassination of the Austrian Archduke in 1914 without the knowledge of the Serbian cabinet. Schulenburg is implying a difference between governments and their secret services. As Stalin, toasting the British secret service, remarked to a protesting Churchill after the British prime minister had denied British government involvement in luring Hess to Britain: ‘The Russian intelligence service often did not inform the Soviet government of their intentions until their work was completed.'
30

That Hitler was discussing a month later the possible causes of the coup is evidence of his bewildered anger. It implies moreover the fact that the Abwehr and Canaris were clearly caught napping and that there had been hopes of Prince Paul acting as a bridge between Germany and Britain. Canaris, it appears from these minutes, had come up with either an unwelcome or an incoherent answer.

During the rest of the conversation Hitler dwelt on the Russians'
‘unreliability', noting the concentration of Russian divisions building up in the Balkans. Significantly, however, he repeated on two separate occasions his conviction that Russia would not attack Germany, though he noted: ‘there are powerful hateful emotions there.'