Hitler's Spy Chief (32 page)

Through his various channels to British intelligence, Canaris would have been perfectly capable of conveying the pressure he was under. The line of communication through Halina Szymanska
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still functioned through the German vice consul, Hans Bernd Gisevius. Information about Canaris was being distributed among a close circle of Menzies colleagues. One recalled: ‘It was about this time that we definitely registered that the baddies, that is the SD, were gunning for Canaris.'
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On 20 March Thummel was arrested for the third time. He had tried to warn Moravec but without success. The following day Moravec, on the basis of Thummel's information, was ambushed by the Gestapo at a planned rendezvous with Thummel and wounded in a gun battle lasting several minutes. Moravec had fired over fifty shots at his assailants before committing suicide. He was found with two automatics and nine empty clips of ammunition. Canaris appears to have intervened with Himmler to save Thummel's life, no doubt stressing Thummel's links with SIS,
something which would eventually be of interest to Himmler.
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Thummel, like Canaris and so many other enigmatic links with London, including Georg Elser, would be executed two weeks before the war ended.

By April 1942, therefore, Canaris knew that his organisation was facing a virtual total takeover by Heydrich. Not only that, Heydrich was making a play for the intelligence functions of the Wehrmacht in France. These demands would neutralise all Canaris' work, not least making the Abwehr's connections with the British intelligence service far more risky as the unfortunate case of Paul Thummel had shown.

In London, the thought of Heydrich taking over the Abwehr's principal functions in Europe, including possibly France and the Balkans, filled Menzies with gloom. He knew better than anyone else what Canaris was dealing with. Had he not studied every aspect of his opponent's psychological make-up? Had he not also been accused by his colleagues of knowing Canaris better than himself?
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As Canaris fenced with Heydrich, the relationship between the two became more and more charged. When, after agreeing to all Heydrich's points at one meeting, Canaris then drafted a document that omitted the key concessions, Heydrich flew into a rage, refusing to see the Abwehr chief and keeping Canaris cooling his heels for two hours outside his office. Only after Keitel intervened on Canaris' behalf did Heydrich yield to see him. As one cynic in British intelligence observed at the time: ‘It was a bit like a lovers' tiff.'
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The series of agreements that emerged, governing relations between the two agencies, was to be known again as the Ten Commandments and was to be finalised at a meeting in Prague on 18 May. This conference was to be the final negotiation preceding what Heydrich hoped would be the surrender of the Abwehr to the authority of the SD.

It began at 10.30 a.m. in the magnificent German hall in the Hradčany castle, not far from the spot where the defenestration of the Holy Roman Emperor's two councillors had marked the beginning of the terrible Thirty
Years War. On the agenda was the ‘reorganisation of cooperation between the Abwehr, the Gestapo and the SD.' Present were Canaris, Heydrich, two Gestapo chiefs, Nebe and Mueller, and the increasingly ubiquitous SD intelligence boss Schellenberg. Supporting Canaris were his lieutenants, Bentivegni and Pieckenbrock.

According to Schellenberg, Heydrich came quickly to the point: ‘The security of the Reich demands a reorganisation of the secret services on a centralised basis.' The Abwehr had displayed its ‘incapacity' and needed to be replaced by new men trained in SS centres who would be responsible to Heydrich. This démarche evinced no reaction from Canaris, who was calm and relaxed throughout the meeting as he conceded point after point, until all the agreement appeared to leave him was the chance of retaining his staff, with whom he could over the following weeks work out the new structures for incorporating the Abwehr into unified service under SD leadership. Meanwhile, over the following weeks, Heydrich would put down on paper a proposal listing the points agreed and send it to Hitler. Heydrich, having seemingly won the contest, was in no hurry to rush things. He had sent a report on the Thummel case to Hitler's HQ on the Eastern Front two days before. In accordance with standard protocol he would obviously wait for the Führer's reply before forwarding the next document with its detailed description of the agreement he had reached with the Abwehr for extending the influence of the SD.

The details of the Prague conference were kept secret, but despite the disruption caused by Thummel's arrest, the news that Canaris would be visiting Prague appears to have been known in circles close to Menzies several weeks before the meeting took place.
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Some might attribute Menzies' concern to what one writer has referred to as his ingrained sense of Edwardian chivalry – he was after all rumoured to have been an illegitimate son of Edward VII. It will be recalled that Menzies had sent his warmest regards to Canaris in 1939 via Count Schwerin.
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More likely, Menzies, a ruthless operator, would have seen the
possibility of the SD and Heydrich taking over the Abwehr as a negative development for Anglo-German intelligence relations.

Just over a year earlier, in December 1940, Menzies had opened up a new channel of communication with Canaris through the double agent Dusko Popov, a Dalmatian banker with all the charm, sexual energy and vigour which is the hallmark still of a true Ragusan squire. Popov had been recruited by the Abwehr to operate in London.

Menzies invited Popov to his house in the country for the weekend, ensuring a beautiful and vivacious Austrian girl was in the party to keep him happy. Popov recalled in his memoirs: ‘Menzies took me into a small study. Deep armchairs, a fireplace where the flames were miraculously steady, book-lined wall …' After issuing the usual mild put-down, noting that Popov had ‘too many devices' on his ‘banner' for his liking, Menzies came to the point: ‘We already have a fair amount of information about many officers of the Abwehr, including Canaris, but I want to know much more about everyone who is intimately connected with Canaris.'

By way of explanation Menzies continued: ‘It may be helpful if I explain the reasons behind this request. We know that Canaris, Dohnanyi and Oster are not dyed in the wool Nazis. They are what might be termed loyal officers or patriotic Germans. In 1938 Churchill had a conversation with Canaris … Churchill came to the opinion that Canaris is a sort of catalyst for the anti-Hitler elements in Germany. That's why I want to know more about the people he attracts. Eventually I may want to resume the conversation Churchill initiated.'

It is generally assumed that Menzies was referring to the Kleist visit, though the reference to the conversation Churchill ‘initiated' suggests that a separate meeting between Canaris and Churchill cannot entirely be ruled out, perhaps through Hillgarth in Spain.

Menzies, the ‘terrific anti-Bolshevik', would for a host of operational reasons no doubt have wanted Canaris to survive. But in the first months of 1942, there seemed very little even the head of the British secret service
could do to help keep Canaris ‘in play'. If Britain was ever to break with Soviet Russia it would need Canaris and the German opposition as an ally. Menzies' views on this were quoted, unattributably, by Colvin at the beginning of the Cold War: ‘The understanding which he (Canaris) sought in Europe against one tyranny may be achieved against another.'
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The idea of assassinating Heydrich was first bruited in October 1941 but not by SIS. According to Colonel Frantisek Moravets, the Czech head of military intelligence (and no relation to Captain Vaclav Moravec) who worked closely with SIS, there were patriotic reasons enough to justify such an action but political considerations dominated. The exiled President Benes was barely recognised by London, who it will be recalled from von Hassell's discussions with the British a few months earlier
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had no interest in reconstituting Czechoslovakia. Foreign Office policy still recognised the territorial ‘adjustments' made at Munich, more than two years into the war.

Moravets also noted how the British never ceased to reproach the Czechs with passivity under the German occupation: ‘It was alas partly true the Germans had not behaved in Czechoslovakia with the same ferocity and cruelty as in Poland, Greece and in Soviet Russia.'
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The idea of assassinating Heydrich was the solution to all these doubts. It would inject ginger into the Czech resistance, show the world that the Czechs were prepared to fight and finally perhaps help a beleaguered Benes curry favour with the Olympian mandarins at the Foreign Office. As Moravets later pointed out he could not ‘imagine' that reprisals would result in the terrible massacre at Lidice.
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Moravets worked very closely with Menzies but the planning and training of the assassination party was handled by SOE in the autumn of 1941. It was their mission, and attempts to claim that it was SIS inspired are partly undermined by the chronology. However, as we shall see, Menzies did play a role in the mission at a critical moment in May, at the height of the Abwehr's troubles with Heydrich in Prague.

The assassination team, codenamed ‘Anthropoid', had already been infiltrated into Prague but at a heated meeting between them and local resistance leaders it was agreed that the head of the parachute group, Alfed Bartos, send an urgent plea to Moravets in London imploring him to call off the mission.
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Bartos, on reflection, considered the plan to be wilfully blind to local conditions, liable to provoke harsh reprisals in the ensuing
ratissage
and bound to impede the activities of Czech intelligence, on which London placed such high value. Through an agent, a signal was sent to London protesting against the operation:

This assassination would not be of the least value to the Allies and for our nation it would have unforeseeable consequences. It would threaten not only hostages and political prisoners but also thousands of other lives. The nation would be the subject of unheard-of reprisal … Therefore we beg you to give the order through SILVER A for the assassination not to take place. Danger in delay. Give the order at once.
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The signal went on to say that if for reasons of foreign policy an assassination was necessary, another target should be chosen.

According to one account, by Prokop Drtina, Benes' secretary, Benes ordered Moravets to bow to the opinion of the home resistance whose views ‘had to be respected and that no action should be taken without the agreement of the home organisation.'
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Another account notes that Benes ordered that there be no reply to the signal.

Moravets, however, as well as showing the message to Benes, also showed it to Menzies, ‘who said nothing' and while there is no evidence (and indeed given the sensitivities towards assassination even in wartime this is hardly surprising) that Menzies pressured Moravets into disregarding the fears of the home resistance, it is clear that pressure was applied. The mission was not cancelled. In Moravets' words: ‘I learned
after the war that the British not only did not cancel the operation but continued to insist on it being carried out, though without telling me.'
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When André Brissaud asked Moravets why this had happened, he received the curious reply: ‘I cannot say. I have been told that Heydrich was on the track of important British agents and that to protect them it was necessary that Heydrich should die'.
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The most important British agent in Prague, Paul Thummel, was safely incarcerated in Theresienstadt. Though the reader must make up his own mind, this writer does not subscribe to the belief that Canaris was a British agent. The term ‘agent' implies control, and though some British circles may have hoped to convert Canaris from an ally to an agent, Canaris was a difficult candidate to control, though that did not prevent US intelligence, as we shall see, from giving Canaris the code symbol 659, implying a high level of control, or at least intimacy. Nevertheless, the destruction of Heydrich in order to ‘protect important British agents' is plausible if the all-important dialogue between Menzies and Canaris was to continue. That dialogue was important not only for the strategic insights it gave London. It was essential if the chance of that Anglo-German ‘understanding', which Menzies hinted was the motivation for Canaris' actions, and which Menzies, too, may have hoped for, was ever to take place. Canaris and his Abwehr needed to be preserved. As Menzies' decision to supply new wireless interception equipment to the Finns, knowing there was a certainty they would pass on to Canaris the intercepts of the Soviet order of battle, days before the German invasion, illustrated, the search for an ‘understanding' may not have been entirely one-sided.

When, on 27 May, the Czechs pulled off the only assassination of a high-ranking German official of the war by ambushing Heydrich in his Mercedes on the way to his office, (in fact Heydrich was only wounded, but died in hospital of his wounds on 4 June) they struck a blow for the Abwehr as much as they did for Czech freedom.

The fateful attack on Heydrich's car was carried out with a sophisticated
bomb and it was only after Heydrich had leapt from the car, firing at his assailants for a few minutes, that he realised that splinters from the bomb had penetrated his stomach and he was rushed to hospital.

There is no evidence that Canaris either wanted or called for Heydrich's death. He may have imagined, perhaps, that he could still salvage something of his Abwehr and that in some way the lines of communication with London could remain open. London, however, was unlikely to take such a sanguine view. Menzies knew Canaris' dilemma and he was, according to those who knew him well at this time, someone who would not shrink from ruthless, decisive action to help his opposite number, as well as, more importantly, further his own service's interests.
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‘Anthropoid' had not been an SIS mission but it is significant that at the moment of crisis over the future of the mission it was Menzies who Moravets sees on the British side and, if Moravets is to be believed, ensured that the mission was not called off.