In 1933 an ambitious young Austrian named Adolf Hitler was quickly winning influence in Germany
and had plans for a war on a massive scale. Quickly figuring that to win a war he needed
a trusted and efficient intelligence source, one of his first port of calls was to create
an intelligence service that he envisioned to be the best in the World. He called his
new intelligence agency the Abwehr, and they turned out to be one of his biggest mistakes.
Hitler looked far and wide for a chief of the Abwehr and prided himself on being able
to read people’s strengths and weaknesses and talents and natural affinities. When he met 46
Rear Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, he immediately saw the traits that would make him a superior
spymaster. Canaris was cunning and deceptive and knew how to get results. Despite Canaris
not even being part of the Nazi Party and having a rather dull record when it came to warfare,
Hitler immediately handed him his promotion to chief of the Abwehr and Canaris happily accepted.
In the years that followed, Canaris seemed to be proving his worth in more ways than
way. He meticulously organised the Abwehr’s spy network and extended its intelligence sources
all throughout Europe. Then, in May of 1940, he furthered his credibility as chief of the
Abwehr by providing exceptional intelligence that allowed Hitler to steamroll France
and the Low countries in the Blitzkrieg. Hitler’s spy agency was working perfectly,
and he now needed Canaris to orchestrate his most important task, providing intelligence
for operation Sea Lion, the plan to conquer England and essentially all of Western Europe.
Hitler rearing to knock out England in one quick and devastating blow was
highly disappointed when Canaris informed him that the English had a far bigger army
and airforce than they had expected. Now hesitant in his plans to subdue the English,
Hitler didn’t commit a large number of troops to the operation and
quickly abandoned it after the battle of Britain, coming to trust his Abwehr chief.
In the Summer of 1941 just after Hitler had commenced operation Barbarossa to invade Russia,
General Alfred Jodl had devised an ingenious plan to use Spain as a base of operations to
invade the British-owned Island of Gibraltar so as to cut off England’s Sea routes through
the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal which would therefore cut off access to its empire
in India and point easts, amounting to a devastating blow for the British.
Hitler excited by this plan, asked Canaris for his assessment of the Situation and the
chief of the Abwehr travelled to Spain. Upon his arrival back in Germany, Hitler was once again
disappointed to find out that Canaris didn’t recommend the plan based on the fact that the
British would see their movements as soon as they landed in Spain and that the Spanish dictator,
Francisco Franco, would be quite resistant and would throw yet another spanner in the works.
Although many around Hitler believed taking Gibraltar was easily achievable
and the key to defeating England, Hitler relented after talking to
the Spanish dictator who indirectly corroborated everything Canaris had
said about him. He was difficult and made all kinds of demands.
In the coming years of the war Top Nazi officials became increasingly suspicious
of Canaris and his true intentions, however Hitler still trusted him and sent him on
some of the most top secret missions of the war, including one where he was to assess the
likelihood of Italy’s surrender from the war. Canaris convinced Hitler that they
were staunch defenders of the Nazi cause, however the country surrendered only a few
weeks after the talks and entire valuable Italian fleet was now in Allied hands.
After this fiasco and Abwehr failure, the Chief of the Foreign intelligence branch of the SS,
General Walter Schellenberg, decided to do his own investigating and found that Canaris had in
fact known of Italy’s intention to surrender, however had supplied false information. He then
brought his case forward to his superior, Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, who told his subordinate
to simply keep quiet about it. To Schellenberg’s dismay, Himmler did nothing about it.
As it turns out, one of Hitler’s biggest HR blunders was unfolding right in front of his eyes,
Chief of the Abwehr, Wilhem Canaris had been plotting against him the entire time. In a
diary uncovered by the SS shortly after Canaris retired, the truth was revealed
and Canaris had been plotting against the Nazi head from the very beginning,
even plotting to assassinate the Fuhrer in schemes that just barely misfired.
Canaris was sent to a concentration camp and was tortured and killed in 1945.
But his death wasn’t in vein. He had stopped the Nazi War machine in its path. Although he bided
his time at first and provided credible intelligence for the invasion of France,
behind the scenes, Canaris created a group of like-minded conspirators named
the Schwarze Kappelle, who would attempt to kill several times and secretly dug up
the dirtiest secrets on high-ranking Nazi’s like Himmler to gain leverage over his SS opponents.
In addition to this, after gaining Hitler’s trust through credible intelligence, Canaris butchered
operation sealion by making the British look a lot more formidable than they actually were, diverting
precious German resources that could have in actuality, crushed Britain like Hitler intended.
Furthermore, when the plan to take over Gibraltar was hatched,
Canaris sabotaged that as well by secretly telling Spain that allowing Germany to use
their country would spell unmitigated disaster, therefore leading the Spanish
dictator to be hostile toward Hitler’s demands, something Canaris had told him would happen.
And lastly, as we explained previously, he knew of Italy’s intentions to surrender all along,
however made it look like that was never a possibility and therefore
Hitler didn’t anticipate their capitulation, leading to Hitler
losing valuable Italian resources that he desperately needed at that point.
Canaris and many of the Abwehr had severely sabotaged Germany’s war effort and many
including Canaris paid the ultimate price. Without the heroic actions of these men,
it’s entirely likely that Britain would have fallen into German hands and many other things
would have gone Hitler’s way. Hitler’s sense of person was right when it came to Canaris.
He was cunning and deceptive and knew how to get results. The only thing Hitler didn’t
detect was that these valuable traits would be used against him in the most damaging of ways