Hitler's Spy Chief (33 page)

For his part, Canaris may well have been surprised at the swiftness with which his prayers may have been answered, but his emotions were clearly mixed. He was certainly genuinely moved at Heydrich's funeral, where several witnesses commented on his tears. But at the same time, Canaris had indeed lost his most powerful opponent. The Ten Commandments were stillborn with Heydrich's death.

He had, however, also lost someone he had undoubtedly once loved as a protégé. His thoughts would no doubt have touched on the strange fate which had brought the two together and on the terrible war which was now devouring its progenitors.

He may also have harboured in that complex mind the thought that he was indeed responsible for Heydrich's death. This would have caused him considerable personal grief even if, from a professional point of view, he could only sense relief.

When the day after Heydrich's death, the young officer and former secretary of Ribbentrop's, Reinhard Spitzy, encountered the admiral and
seeing a chance to curry favour with Heydrich's old opponent made some disparaging remark about Heydrich, Canaris gave him the dressing down of his career: ‘I bumped,' Spitzy recalled, ‘into Canaris, who said, “Have you heard the news about Heydrich? He has been murdered!”

“Good,” I replied, “thank God that swine is out of the way.” At this Canaris immediately put on his official hat and ordered me to report to his office. He stared at me sadly for a while before saying: “I don't like people using expressions like that. In the first place we are dealing here with a human being, and a dead one at that, and secondly, that is no way to address an admiral.”'
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Canaris would have wanted to put Spitzy in his place, but the intensity of the response was indicative of the emotions Heydrich's death had unleashed. His greatest protégé, linked to him over so many years, at one stage by the closest of platonic bonds, was dead.

Whether London, in the form of Menzies, felt at the last moment the need to keep the Czechs ‘on track' lest Heydrich destroy the Abwehr, will never be proved. The Foreign Office regarded the attack on Heydrich as ‘an internal Czech affair' and played down the British involvement.

What can be said with certainty, however, is that the only positive strategic result from Menzies' point of view of the assassination was that the Abwehr and Canaris continued to function for another year and a half with more or less unfettered authority, something that looked highly unlikely after 18 May. This was the only instantly positive consequence. No Czech resistance movement rose up inspired by the acts of the parachutists. Neither the great arms factories of Skoda in Pilsen to the south, nor the granaries of Olomouc to the north, were ‘set ablaze'.

The other consequences, the terrible reprisals: the razing to the ground of the village of Lidice where the parachutists took refuge, the virtual destruction of the Czech intelligence networks, are all better known. All 199 men from Lidice were summarily shot. All 184 women of the village were deported to Ravensbruck and all of the village's 88 children
were also deported, ostensibly for a ‘better upbringing'. Eighty-one of these children would be gassed in the concentration camp of Chelmno.
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The long-term unquestionable benefit to Benes and the Czechs was the gradual upgrading of relations with the Foreign Office and the subsequent British government decision to repudiate Munich and agree to support the post-war expulsion of a million and a half Germans from Bohemia and Moravia, but this was hardly a concern at that time of SIS.

As 1943 approached, the question of that ‘understanding' which Canaris sought within Europe began to become acute. It would take up the remainder of his energies and lead to more serious peace-feelers between the Allies and Berlin than at any time during the war.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE SEARCH FOR PEACE

There is a lot of talk about peace in 1940 but it seems to me that we came even closer to it in 1943
.

JULIAN AMERY
1

A few months before the dramatic and violent events in Prague, a curious encounter had taken place one windy day in London at SIS headquarters.

Broadway Buildings in the autumn of 1941 was a dreary place, despite its relative proximity to St James's Park and Buckingham Palace. The bronze grill of the lift slammed squeakily shut. The small lift operator in a dark suit pressed the button for his two passengers, both men of medium height, one young and bright eyed, the other rather older and smarter but graver of mien. When the latter, acknowledging the former's glance with a brief smile, got out on the fourth floor, the remaining passenger asked the liftman who he was. ‘Why, sir that's the chief'. Kim Philby had had his first glimpse of his boss, the head of MI6, Colonel Stewart Menzies.

Philby had left the
Times
in the summer of 1940 and had gone seamlessly into Section D of the secret service, which was at that time being incorporated into SOE, the secret organisation that Churchill famously hoped would ‘Set Europe ablaze'. Philby's knowledge of the Gestapo and Sicherheitsdienst made him a popular lecturer for the SOE agents being trained at Beaulieu, in the New Forest, for infiltration into enemy-occupied
Europe. The majority of these, in November 1940, were Dutch, who six months later, after leaving Beaulieu, would be transported to the beach by British motor torpedo boat. Fifty-five of them were caught by the Germans, who exploited them to penetrate the Dutch underground. Most were then arrested with their contacts and executed. Of the 144 Allied agents sent to Holland between May 1940 and September 1944,116 were killed.
2

According to recently released CIA reports,
3
Philby was involved in an operation against the Dutch resistance codenamed ‘North Pole', which involved attacking any attempts to prepare for a return of the House of Orange. When the prime minister designate to the Dutch government, Herman B. W. Beckman, waited at night on the beach at Schevingen for a British boat to pick him up and convey him to Queen Wilhelmina in London, Beckman was arrested by the Germans and a number of Beckman's associates were also captured, one of whom was known to Menzies because he ‘had established a secret contact between him and his German counterpart Admiral Canaris.'
4
No details exist of this contact but in the light of the preceding pages it is certainly an explanation.

It was certainly not in the Soviets' interest to have a royalist underground established in Holland but it was also, as we have seen, a key priority to ensure that links between Canaris and ‘C' were cut.
5
If ‘C' was using Holland as one of his links with Canaris, which would be logical given the geography and recent history of the country, that would be enough to cause Philby to betray the SOE cause in Holland.

The events surrounding the tragedy of SOE's agents in Holland still remain obscure, but according to the recent research produced by William E. Henhoeffer, a former CIA Soviet analyst,
6
Philby was ‘inextricably involved' in the events of 1940–1941. According to Henhoeffer, Philby had passed details of the SOE missions to his Soviet control in London, who forwarded it to Moscow, who in turn under the terms of the
intelligence-sharing agreement established by the Nazi–Soviet Pact of August 1939, passed it on to Berlin.

Menzies was fully apprised of Philby's communist past and indeed may have exploited it once Hitler attacked the Soviet Union. One of Philby's duties was ‘maintaining liaison with the Soviets'. Menzies would certainly have entertained the possibility of the Soviets even being fed some false information. If it were fed through Philby it would have a whiff of authenticity. But as Menzies later wrote to a subordinate: ‘One could not have thought him an out-and-out traitor.'
7

It is certainly unlikely that Menzies imagined he had recruited a fully committed Soviet intelligence agent who would do his best to destroy any chance of an understanding between Britain and Germany during the war. Moreover, given the importance ‘C' attached to his contact with Canaris, it is inconceivable that Menzies would have allowed the intelligence from the Abwehr and Canaris to be examined by Philby if he had thought the evaluations were going straight to Moscow, as indeed they were. Experienced intelligence officers may ask themselves whether Menzies was not deliberately leaking information to the Soviets on contacts with Canaris to keep pressure on Moscow to stay in the war on the British side. There is some evidence that Menzies' mental elasticity extended to such subterfuge.

Moscow, as Menzies must have suspected, had no illusions about Canaris. The Soviets regarded him as a deadly opponent. According to the Soviet file on the admiral he was, ‘The most dangerous intelligence man in the world; capable of manipulating international industrial and capital interests.'
8

But by the second half of 1942 Menzies felt sufficiently confident of Philby's fundamental reliability to appoint him to evaluate, with a young Oxford historian, Hugh Trevor-Roper, the information coming via various sources to ‘C' from intercepts of the Abwehr signals, whose ciphers began to be comprehensively broken from December 1942 and
forwarded in a series of ISOS (Intelligence Service Oliver Strachey) reports.

The two young officers had many things in common. They were both united by their keen intellects and powerful anti-German convictions, but even Trevor-Roper's unremitting hostility to the teuton world was tempered by some intellectual integrity. One day towards the end of 1942, Trevor-Roper was surprised at Philby's reaction to an evaluation report on Canaris he was penning.

As Trevor-Roper recalled many years later, ‘Late in 1942 my office had come to certain conclusions – which time proved to be correct – about the struggle between the Nazi party and German General Staff, as it was being fought out in the field of secret intelligence. The German Secret Service … and its leader, Admiral Canaris, were suspected by the Party not only of inefficiency but also of disloyalty, and attempts were being made by Himmler to oust the admiral and to take over his whole organisation.'
9

Trevor-Roper is about a year behind events if Menzies' conversation with Popov the previous December is to be believed.
10
Nevertheless, the date is important, for as Trevor-Roper continued:

‘Admiral Canaris, himself, at that time, was making repeated journeys to Spain and had indicated a willingness to treat with us; he would even welcome a meeting with his opposite number ‘C'.

‘These conclusions were duly formulated and the final document was submitted for security clearance to Philby.'
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Philby, who had so ruthlessly severed Canaris' Dutch connection with Menzies was, of course, hardly likely to collaborate in any further link between the two spy chiefs. December 1942, as we shall see, was the crucial month for such a link. The very thought of a meeting between Menzies and Canaris would have certainly put the fear of God even into the Godless Communists.

According to Trevor-Roper, Philby's reaction was to discount the material entirely. ‘Philby absolutely forbade' the circulation of the report, insisting that it was ‘mere speculation'. Trevor-Roper, however, need not
have been so concerned: the report had certainly been seen by ‘C', though it would only have confirmed what Menzies already knew about Canaris.

A year later, another report suggesting a German plot to assassinate Hitler was also blocked by Philby, though this time Trevor-Roper risked a court-martial to bring it to his superior's attention. With some difficulty Trevor-Roper was transferred. Menzies saved him from dismissal and a ruined career.
12

Nor were these the only signs of Canaris' readiness to talk. It will be recalled that Canaris' emissary Schwerin had, before the war, lunched with Menzies and Admiral Godfrey, the Director of Naval Intelligence.
13
There is evidence to suggest that at first, Canaris was hoping to exploit the naval connection and establish contact with Godfrey, who was in that rare but valued tradition of being an intellectual naval officer, just as Menzies was the embodiment of the glamour of the Household Cavalry. Moreover, Godfrey was a great protégé of the legendary Admiral Hall, whose personality had long impressed Canaris.

The British Naval attaché in Madrid, Commander Don Gomez-Beare, noted: ‘At that time it seemed as though Canaris was practically inviting the Naval Intelligence Division to open secret negotiations with him.' Gomez-Beare, according to one source, was actually in contact with Canaris through, needless to say, their mutual acquaintance Juan March.
14
He observed how Canaris ‘dropped hints that he might have talks with a certain naval person.' Gomez-Beare felt that the certain naval person was Ian Fleming, an assistant to Admiral Godfrey, the DNI, who was fluent in German and had long been interested in Canaris.

But these possibilities came to an abrupt end when suddenly in August 1942, for no real apparent reason, Churchill decided to sack Godfrey as DNI and move him to take command of the Royal Indian Navy (a mutiny occurred not long after he took it over). Godfrey would be the only naval officer of his rank not to be decorated at the end of the war and was dismissed for reasons which even today remain strangely obscure.
The lack of knighthood on relinquishing the post of DNI was a very public act of colossal official disapproval. Godfrey was a highly intelligent officer who had transformed the Naval Intelligence Division into a formidable machine. It is hard not to suspect that his connection with Canaris may have in some way played a role in this unprecedented and puzzling event.

Canaris, when he heard the news was, according to sources quoting Juan March who was with him at the time, visibly annoyed. ‘The Naval Intelligence Division is not as circumspect as it was in Admiral Hall's day,' Canaris said, adding curiously, ‘How can you deal with an organisation which changes its directors so frequently?'
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