Canaris, Admiral Wilhelm (1887–1945),head of the
Abwehr, the German military intelligence and counter-intelligence organization, who was an early conspirator against Hitler (see
Schwarze Kapelle).
The son of a wealthy industrialist, Canaris joined the German Navy in 1905. During and after the
First World War he showed a penchant for clandestine operations and secret negotiations which earned him a reputation as being something of a super-spy. In January 1935 he became head of the Abwehr, and was promoted rear admiral shortly afterwards. He soon became one of Hitler's confidants and his standing in the military hierarchy rose steadily. Between 1938 and 1940 he was promoted vice- admiral, then admiral, and the Foreign Intelligence Office (Amt Ausland/Abwehr) of the German High Command (OKW), which controlled the attachés in friendly and neutral countries as well as the Abwehr, was formed under him.
In July 1938 Canaris learned of the Führer's plans to annex the Sudetenland, and like a number of army officers he was appalled. He dabbled with the idea of joining a
coup d' état that was being planned, but it was not until he witnessed Hitler in a rage that he fully comprehended the kind of person he was serving. ‘I've just seen a madman,’ he said to his deputy,
Hans Oster. Though Canaris must have known that he was himself in indirect contact with the Allies via his mistress Halina Szymanski, an
MI6 agent who lived in Switzerland, he recoiled from the outright treachery Oster practised. Instead, he engaged in duplicity and ambivalence, his apparently genuine friendship with his arch-rival
Reinhard Heydrich being a typical example. He did what he could for the Jews, saving hundreds from extermination (see also
Final Solution)—and in February 1942 was temporarily suspended for doing so—yet he failed to curb the activities of his Secret Field Police who behaved with the same ruthlessness in Eastern Europe as the
Einsatzgruppen and
Gestapo.
He still retained some admirers in the Nazi hierarchy, but in March 1942—the same month as the Abwehr traitor
Paul Thümmel was rearrested, and shortly after the
Bruneval raid which had prompted a furious Hitler to ask how much the Abwehr knew about British
radar—he was forced to allow Heydrich's Nazi security service, the Sicherheitsdienst (see
RSHA), to appropriate some Abwehr functions. By then his influence had long been on the wane and, suffering from fits of apathy and despair, he began to make peace overtures to Allied representatives in neutral countries which served only to alert further an already suspicious Gestapo. But it was the defection of an Abwehr officer stationed in Istanbul, and an act of sabotage by the Abwehr which alienated the Spaniards, which finally led to his downfall in February 1944 and to the subordination of the Abwehr to the Sicherheitsdienst. However, he was not dismissed and in June 1944 was appointed chief of the department for economic warfare, a sinecure. After the July 1944 Bomb Plot to assassinate Hitler (see
Schwarze Kapelle), in which he was not involved, a confession by a conspirator led to his arrest. The hidden records of the 1938 coup came to light, as did his diaries, and he was arrested, imprisoned, and eventually hanged at
Flossenbürg in April 1945.
Bibliography
Höhne, H. , Canaris (London, 1976).
