Volk (18 page)

So their series of dates were pleasant, and he enjoyed them. But he was for the moment satisfied that marriage was not feasible. Not until he completed his mission, and had Heydrich's leave.

•  •  •

In January 1940 reports from Abwehr I convinced Hitler that the British were planning to occupy Norway. Abwehr II was therefore charged with readying commando operations in Scandinavia. Ernst was suspicious that Colonel Oster was not in sympathy with this, and wished to warn Britain or Norway, but he had no sufficient evidence.

Ernst traveled with Johannes Dohnanyi again, because the lawyer had the necessary connections. He learned that the man was into various subversive endeavors, such as smuggling, illegal art deals and graft. But these connections were ideal for the Abwehr's purpose, because they were hidden. Dohnanyi was adept at covering his tracks. So Ernst reminded himself again that this was a little fish, not worth bothering with, and kept silent.

But the man was happy to talk about himself as they spent tedious hours on the highway. It was almost as if he were proud of the defects in his character. He was a brilliant lawyer (others had confirmed this) who at the age of thirty six had become a personal adviser to the Reich Minister of Justice during the Blomberg-Fritsch case. This had occurred while Ernst was in America, so he had not learned of it at the time. Blomberg had been accused of having relations with a prostitute, and Fritsch had been accused of something done by another man with a similar name; he had been cleared, but had lost his position by then. Since Fritsch had adamantly opposed the expansion of the SS VT, his removal had cleared the path for what it was now becoming. Otherwise there might have been no SS unit for Ernst to join. So he listened with flattering attention.

Dohnanyi had been assigned to review the case and recommend that the charged generals be tried by either a special court, which was Hitler's preference, or a court-martial, which was the military's desire. As it happened, he was an opponent of the Hitler regime, so he recommended for the military. That had brought him into contact with Admiral Canaris and Colonel Oster.

“But why did you oppose Hitler?” Ernst asked.

“I became an enemy of Hitler in 1936, when a rival in the Ministry of Justice discovered that I had a non-Arian maternal grandfather,” the man replied bitterly. “With extraordinary effort I was able to obtain a ruling from Hitler that I should receive no detriment from the doubts surrounding my grandfather's pedigree.” Ernst, listening, felt a thrill of nervous agreement; this was what Krista suffered. “That experience made me hate National Socialism. For centuries Germans have been free to have what ancestry we please. Why should some bigoted demagogue come and decide otherwise? What is wrong with being non-Arian? Are we not all the people we are? To be condemned because of nothing we have done in life, simply because an ancestor had a different belief or came from a different land—this is unconscionable.” He glanced at Ernst. “You argue the other case?”

Ernst knew better than to try to debate a lawyer. He also had doubt of his own, because of Krista and the Jew he had known in America. “I neither argue nor endorse the case.”

Dohnanyi smiled briefly. “You are smart. Why imperil your career foolishly? But I am committed; I am the one who was challenged. I began keeping a chronicle of the injustices and abuses of power which came to the attention of my office. As the list grew, I deciphered a system of corruption which I traced ultimately to one man: Adolf Hitler. Read
Mein Kampf
!”

“I have,” Ernst said.

“Then you know how he blames everything on Jews. Do you really subscribe to his logic?”

This was dangerous territory! “I prefer not to comment.”

“Smart again! Bigotry has been with us always, but he made it fashionable. Now it is institutionalized. It is not merely the Jews; Gypsies too, and others. Anyone who is not a perfectly pedigreed Arian. Is this fair? Is this sensible?”

“No comment,” Ernst repeated, thinking again of Krista. He could be getting himself into trouble by not denouncing Dohnanyi, but he had come to know the man well enough to doubt this. The man was not trying to trap him; the man was genuinely outraged. The man was also making guileful sense.

“By 1937 I was convinced that the only way to end this insidious corruption of values was to eliminate its source. I examined several possible sources of assistance for my plans before deciding that the Wehrmacht was the only force capable, and perhaps willing, to destroy Hitler's power.”

“You go too far,” Ernst said, now quite nervous. “You know I cannot give even tacit consent to such a notion.”

Dohnanyi glanced sidelong at him. “I speak merely what I once thought. I am not advocating such a thing now. You are consenting to nothing.”

Ernst was uneasily silent. Could this after all be a test? Did Canaris doubt him, and was pushing him more firmly?

“I found it difficult at first to work with the military,” Dohnanyi continued. “I believed that there were ardent soldiers and ardent civilians, and I was one of the latter. I condemned the military men for their narrow outlook and cadet-ish conceptions of honor and patriotism. I was a firm opponent of war as a means of settling disputes, but not a pacifist. I was an early advocate of assassination as a means of dealing with Hitler.”

“Assassination!” Ernst cried, shocked.

Dohnanyi smiled. “Now you can turn me in and have me executed. I have spoken treason.”

What a dangerous game this man played! “You have spoken of the way you once felt,” Ernst said carefully. “Obviously you no longer feel that way, as you are now working with the military in support of Hitler's objectives. At this moment we are on a mission to facilitate what the
Führer
desires.”

This time Dohnanyi was silent. He knew that he had gone as far as he could without forcing Ernst to report him.

The man's contacts got them into Belgium without trouble. Ernst made his notes. Then they went on to Denmark, and from there to Norway. It was a successful mission. Ernst hoped that the man's actions in facilitating Hitler's wishes belied his treasonous dialogue. That way he, Ernst, was justified in not reporting him. But it remained extremely nervous business.

•  •  •

On the first of April, Canaris was promoted to full admiral. Thereafter Oster became a general. On the ninth of that month the invasion of Denmark and Norway proceeded with great success. Abwehr II distinguished itself. Ernst's work had helped facilitate the smoothness of the operation, though he was one among many.

The pace did not abate. On the tenth of May the German armies invaded Holland, Belgium and France. Once again Abwehr II received praise for its successes. But it did receive a setback in Holland. And a more subtle, but worse one in France.

Because someone had tried to warn France of the attack. Telecommunications monitoring had discovered attempts by a German officer to betray the date of the invasion. The French had been too muddled to respond to the warning appropriately; otherwise it could have been a serious matter.

Adolf Hitler himself called upon Heydrich and Canaris to join forces and determine the traitor. Lieutenant Colonel Joachim Rohleder, head of Abwehr IIIF, which handled counter-espionage, was given command of the investigation. Admiral Canaris was visibly upset; he was either acting, or he had known nothing of the betrayal.

Ernst remained clear; he had other business to attend. But he kept track of it as well as he could, because if Canaris himself should be implicated, the Admiral would of course do his best to conceal it. Since he was active in the investigation, he could probably succeed in such concealment. So Heydrich wanted to know the truth, and he was depending on Ernst for it, not the official investigation.

The intercepted telegrams pointed to Müller, Oster's agent to the Vatican in Italy, as the possible courier of the treasonous information. However, it took Colonel Rohleder some time to run this down, and in the interim Müller returned to Rome and probably removed incriminating evidence and covered his tracks. Nevertheless, Rohleder pursued the matter competently, and did determine Müller's guilt. But that was only part of it; Müller was not one who should have known the date of invasion. Who had been the source of his information?

Rohleder was both a believer in the traditional Prusso-German military ideal, and a brilliant intelligence officer. He was appalled both by this betrayal of the German homeland, and by its amateurish execution. He satisfied himself as to the identity of the traitor, and acted in forthright fashion.

He went to Abwehr headquarters in Berlin and confronted General Oster in his office. Johannes Dohnanyi was there too. There he coldly presented his facts and gave his conclusions: Müller and Oster were the traitors. “Now I am going to present my findings to Admiral Canaris,” he announced. “I invite you to accompany me, in the interest of defending yourself.”

Oster and Dohnanyi protested, but Rohleder was firm. He did make his report to the Admiral.

But Canaris did not accept the findings. “The evidence is inconclusive,” he told Rohleder. “It is insufficient to warrant pursuing the matter further.”

“But it
is
conclusive!” Rohleder protested. “Some evidence was destroyed, but my documentation indicates—”

“It is not strong enough to allow the good name of the Abwehr to be soiled,” the Admiral said firmly. “Would you have us all suffer because of such a suspicion?”

“Sir, I insist that this is a blight on the Abwehr which must be cleansed! It is the Abwehr I am trying to protect! What is to stop this man from betraying us again?”

“I will order Müller to immediately sever all contact with the Vatican,” Canaris said. And that was it; he refused to take stronger action.

Rohleder stalked out of the office. He was incensed at this behavior, and he expressed himself freely to others in the unit. This was how Ernst learned the details. The Admiral had to call him back on another day, because there was so much talk and conjecture about the affair. It was apparent that Canaris was not going to act against his friend Oster.

But this was the last time Canaris aided Colonel Oster, and the two were no longer as close as they had been. After this affair, the Admiral became morose and fatalistic. He gave no encouragement to any opposition to Hitler, and threw himself into his duty. But he seemed to have lost his vitality.

“Oster is guilty, but not Canaris,” Ernst reported to Heydrich. “He covered for his friend, but he was severely disappointed in him, and they are friends no more. Oster betrayed him personally as well as Germany.”

“I am not sure,” Heydrich replied. “It may be that he values his reputation more than he values his Fatherland. He spared himself embarrassment by covering up.”

“Then should he not be relieved instead of depressed?” Ernst asked. “However, he
did
cover up, for whatever reason, so he is guilty too.”

“Guilt is not so readily adjudged,” Heydrich said. “I am satisfied neither that he is clean nor that he is dirty. I need a clearer indication. Stay with it.”

Ernst was glad to oblige. He had done what he had to, and made an honest report, but he liked the Admiral, and saw how the man had been hurt by his friend's betrayal. It was, technically, a crime to protect a traitor, but understandable when the traitor was a friend. The Admiral had done what he believed he had to, and was suffering grievously for it.

Ernst mused on that. It had become known that Hitler himself had halted the attack on the British troops massed at Dunkirk in northern France, allowing them to cross the channel to Britain and escape destruction. It was said that this was because Hitler had respect for the British, and wanted to spare them if he could, hoping they would later choose to join Germany. But had any other person made that disastrous decision, he would have been deemed a traitor to the Fatherland. Was Admiral Canaris different in principle?

Ernst received promotion to Captain Osterecht. He knew he owed it to Admiral Canaris. That made him feel even more guilty, ironically.

•  •  •

In July, not long after the surrender of France, a new and interesting project was initiated. It seemed that Jodl had proposed to the
Führer
that he undertake a bold new strategy, taking the rock of Gibraltar and closing the Mediterranean Sea to the British. Admiral Canaris was intrigued, for this gave him a chance to work once again in Spain, a country he loved.

On July 5 Canaris proposed that the assault on Gibraltar might be accomplished by the Brandenburg Regiment, which was an elite military commando unit within the Abwehr.

This was placed under consideration. Meanwhile, it was necessary to reconnoiter the situation. Ernst was dispatched to the Abwehr post in Algeciras, near Spain's southernmost point, near the British peninsula of Gibraltar. He traveled “civilian,” with an assumed identity. This made him three layered, as he thought of it: the lowest layer was Ernst Best, the middle was Captain Osterecht, and now the top was a vaguely Spanish civilian.

Indeed, his instructions were to evince no interest in Gibraltar. He was to conduct himself in the manner of an officer on vacation. He was not even supposed to report to Algeciras right away, as if he were routinely checking in, almost as an afterthought. But on his way he would check the route the main party was to take, and make note of any potential problems.

He called Heydrich, because this represented a change in his locale for a while and he would be out of touch until he returned to Berlin. “So I will tour the country—I will rent a car in Spain— and then be at Algeciras to help on the mission. I will report to you when I return.”

“While you are down there, you can do an incidental chore for me,” Heydrich said. “There is an operation in Spain run by foreigners. They are probably harmless, but if we are to get involved in Spain, we need to be sure there are not spies among them. They have centers in Madrid and Barcelona, and contacts with the British which predate General Franco's victory.”