Hitler's Spy Chief (35 page)

According to the secret state security assessments of public opinion in Germany, rumours of an imminent agreement with Moscow began to circulate in the late autumn of 1942.
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Canaris himself had instructed agents to keep contact with the Soviets and these instructions would have been read by ‘C' in his ISOS intercepts of Abwehr traffic from early December, when the Abwehr ciphers were broken. Moreover, the Swedish security service were monitoring the activities and telephone conversations of the German embassy in Stockholm and noting emissaries arriving from Keitel in Berlin.
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From May 1942, Edgar Klaus, a Rigan Jew working for the Red Cross as an Abwehr agent in Stockholm under the control of one of Canaris' officers, Werner Boening, was given standing orders to communicate with the Soviets. The admiral was adamant that Klaus must keep all lines of communication open, notably links with the Soviet ambassador in Sweden, the formidable Madame Alexandra Kolontaj, an old friend of Lenin's with whom Klaus had made contact through a mutual Slovene acquaintance.

Moreover, at the end of November 1942, Menzies would have seen from his German foreign ministry decrypts that Peter Kleist, a friend of Ribbentrop's, had been sent to Stockholm to broach the possibility of a separate peace with Moscow.

According to recent German research, this development appears to have rung alarm bells in London and had curious results. It would provoke another tangible sign of cooperation between Menzies and Canaris, for the foreign ministry in Berlin appears to have gone to some lengths to prevent the Abwehr from knowing of Kleist's mission. According to those who worked with Canaris at this time, the Admiral would be kept abreast of this mission not by the German foreign ministry but by ‘sources in London'.
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Kleist's mission was in response to a hint from Stalin in a speech delivered on 19 October 1942, interestingly around the time Churchill was voicing his views of expecting the Russians to lose. Moreover, serious differences were opening up at this time between Churchill and Roosevelt on the one side and Stalin on the other with regard to frontier questions.

Moscow continued to believe, with some justification, that while the Allies would do all they could to help prevent Russia being decisively defeated, they would do nothing to help Russia win a decisive victory.
36

By the time Kleist arrived in Stockholm on 2 December there were also signs that leading figures in the Nazi regime were moving behind the idea that hostilities needed to end. Reinhard Spitzy would recall in a letter to the Soviet journalist Lew Besymin
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that Himmler approved of peace overtures at this time. Spitzy would later write that ‘our view of the Slavs cost us the war.'

Already in November 1942, observers of the Nazi machine both in and outside the country also began to notice a softening in the language of Goebbels' propaganda. There were no longer innumerable references to the ‘Jewish–Bolsheviks' and there were noticeably fewer personal attacks
on Stalin.
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Within weeks, Klaus would be reporting his conversations with Kolontaj as taking a positive turn, quoting her saying that ‘Russia never wanted war with Germany.'
39

At the same time, the Turks in Istanbul were picking up strong hints of a possible deal between the Germans and the Russians from the Japanese ambassador. The Japanese were especially engaged in this process. Careful not to be at war with the Soviet Union, they were keen to see an agreement between their German ally and the all-too-near Russians.
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It is important to stress that at this stage these were only straws in the wind but it was clear to those who followed these developments that they were harbingers of things to come. By the end of 1942, von der Schulenburg, the former German ambassador to Moscow, would offer to have himself smuggled over the Soviet frontier to make a personal plea to Stalin for peace.

More extensive exploration of an armistice on the Eastern Front would come several weeks later after the disaster at Stalingrad, when the Germans, under Manstein's inspired leadership, had recaptured Karkov early in 1943.
41

According to Manstein's ADC, the possibility of an armistice was uppermost in Manstein's mind for several months in the run-up to the summer.
42

Manstein would write in 1968: ‘I was far more convinced that after our successful counter-offensive across the Dneiper and at Karkov in March 1943, we still had the possibility under a skilful leadership to fight for, at the very least, an armistice.'
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By April 1943 many ‘well-informed' sources in neutral Sweden would be predicting an ‘imminent Russo-German peace.'
44

Already then, at the beginning of December, sufficient evidence was beginning to build to show that Churchill's semi-permanent neurosis concerning a separate peace between Germany and Moscow was receiving ominous encouragement in the run-up to 1943. Though critical of Stalin
and callous of the Russians who would in his words ‘have to go on fighting anyway,'
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Churchill's recurring nightmare was the spectre of that armistice in the east which had cost the West so dearly in 1917.

The question that begs to be asked is whether Churchill, taking advantage of Eden's enforced absence in December 1943, would have authorised Menzies, in the light of these developments, to meet with Canaris and resume the ‘conversation'. It is unlikely that Menzies – born and bred to obey orders – would have made such a journey entirely off his own bat. If Menzies met Canaris in December 1942, it seems more than likely it would have been with Churchill's tacit consent. Churchill would certainly have seen the value of a brief parley with Canaris if only to illuminate German intentions towards a separate peace with Moscow. Of these, Canaris was well informed as he had established personal contact with Manstein through Manstein's adjutant Stahlberg.
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Churchill, in any case, was now setting off for America. If he had given an encouraging hint to Menzies, he, too, would not be personally accessible to discuss it any further. Should something go wrong, in fact, Churchill would have the perfect alibi, and he would no doubt have heaped opprobrium on Menzies in the grandest of styles, without hesitation finding a new ‘C'.

After the war, with Germany vanquished and the full extent of the horrors of the camps in the public domain, neither man would wish to admit that such conversations with the ‘inhuman' enemy had taken place. Thus if the meeting had occurred it would in modern parlance have to enjoy ‘total deniability' at all levels.

Having established possible motive and geographical proximity, it remains for us only to explore the means whereby the two men could have met. Gibraltar, separated from Algeciras by a short ride in a motor boat, was inevitably the key to this logistical problem.

Algeciras was at this point in the war frequented by countless British officers from Gibraltar. Indeed, on News Year's Eve the Abwehr officers
who had eaten Canaris' turkey could be seen after midnight rubbing shoulders with British officers on the lavish dance floor of the Hotel Reina Maria Cristina. It would not have been beyond the wit of Menzies and Canaris to meet somewhere in that town or nearby. After the Venlo experience, however, it must be assumed that Menzies would have wished to take more than just the standard precautions. Another, more remote, rendezvous, a monastery on the Spanish–Portuguese border, has also been suggested.

It also cannot be ruled out that Canaris himself, at great personal risk, would have visited an SIS safe house or even the ‘Rock'. He was, as Menzies would recall, ‘damn courageous' and would have had only Menzies' word to guarantee his safety, but this in the freemasonry of spy chiefs would have been enough. Later in the war Canaris would pay at least one visit to an SIS safe house in occupied France.

Colvin notes that there was an extensively prepared plot to kidnap Canaris in Algeciras about this time, when Mason Macfarlane, who had been military attaché in Berlin before the war, was governor. It was countermanded by London. The significance of this, however, is also that ‘C' would have known very well, had he wished, Canaris' movements and location in the town.

If the meeting had occurred it would go some way to explaining Canaris' optimism on New Year's Eve. Spitzy, who had seen the admiral a few weeks earlier, had been horrified to see him looking so depressed.
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Now the admiral seemed his old optimistic self.

Perhaps he had also been heartened by intelligence of American intentions, communicated to neutral Turkey, which stressed ‘in order to ensure that Germany is not “bolshevised” they are thinking of reaching an agreement with her against Russia before she is completely routed and of saving her economic position.'
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It is difficult to speculate on the contents of a meeting that might never have taken place. But it would almost certainly have focussed on
the possibility of bringing the war between Germany and the West to an end in 1943. Canaris was under no illusions that Germany was losing the war. He had, from the very first day, refused to believe in a German victory. The question was, at what price could the conflict be brought to a rapid conclusion? Someone who knew Menzies well at this time noted: ‘He hoped as we all did that the conflict could be brought to an end.'
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This would have required British support for an alternative government to Hitler and a deal with the opposition. It would have implied a common front against the Red Army, whose march westwards would have been arrested at Karkov, not just for a few weeks but perhaps for many years as the full force of the Wehrmacht was brought to bear on the Eastern Front and stalemate moved inexorably towards an armistice.

Both men, representatives of an older order, would also have felt an instinctive sympathy with any move which could help bring about a cessation of hostilities before Communism spread across Europe. In addition to these areas, there might also have been discussion of a topic that had preyed much on Canaris' mind since January 1938, when German scientists had announced in
Naturwissenschaft
the discovery of nuclear fission and its implications for the construction of a hugely destructive weapon.

Thanks to the efforts of the physicist Weiszäcker, son of the diplomat, and Hitler's conviction that nuclear physics was ‘Jewish alchemy',
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the German nuclear physics programme which had led the world before the war had, however, been dramatically curtailed. But unlike most of the senior generals in Germany, Canaris had long been convinced that whoever constructed this weapon would be ‘lord of the world' and was determined to help any efforts to slow down German research in this direction. He extended the protection of the Abwehr to Weiszäcker and other nuclear physicists at the Kaiser Wilhelm Insitute and shielded them from the SD. It was agreed between Canaris and Weiszäcker that with Abwehr help the nuclear physics weapons programme could be retarded.
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At the same
time, he feared its use against German cities by the Americans should they develop it before the war was over.

No doubt the two men would have also discussed the future of European Jewry, whose fate in the death camps was known to Menzies through wireless intercepts.

But as if to frustrate such a dialogue, there occurred a diplomatic event that would amount to nothing less than, at first glance, a shattering of any hopes of an ‘understanding' between Germany and England. Two weeks after the New Year celebrations which Canaris had so lovingly prepared with such good humour, the Casablanca conference opened with Churchill, Roosevelt, their staffs and De Gaulle and the fortunate Giraud in attendance.

At his final press conference on 24 January 1943 Roosevelt announced, ‘Peace can only come about with the total elimination of German and Japanese war power (which) … means unconditional surrender by Germany, Italy and Japan.'
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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER

I believe the other side have now disarmed us of the last weapon with which we could have ended the war
.

ADMIRAL CANARIS
1

The impact of the words was disastrous from a propaganda point of view as Goebbels used the phrase relentlessly to convince the German people that it was better to continue the war than suffer the horrible privations that would follow unconditional surrender to the Allies, lurid descriptions of which now daily filled the airwaves of state controlled propaganda.

Canaris' reaction, as recounted by his colleagues, bordered on near-petulant fatalism: ‘How do they think they can end the war with all this talk of Unconditional Surrender? Our generals will not swallow that.'
2

Canaris continued: ‘The students of history will not need to trouble their heads after this war as they did after the last to determine who was guilty of starting it. The case is however different when we consider guilt for prolonging the war. I believe that the other side have now disarmed us of the last weapon with which we could have ended it.'
3

Some historians have concluded that the unconditional surrender phrase was a sudden improvisation by Roosevelt. This is far from the truth. The formula is recorded in the Joint Chiefs of Staff minutes of 7 January 1943 and will therefore have been discussed as a serious policy
in Washington before Roosevelt left for Casablanca. The idea had been worked out in advance by Roosevelt for a number of reasons. These have been persuasively recounted by the diplomat Frank Roberts who was present at the conference. Roberts put it to Dick Lamb in 1988:

I think unconditional surrender was originally a Roosevelt idea … Winston felt he must agree because there were so many other issues on which he and Roosevelt were at variance.