CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

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CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

by
IAN COLVIN

LONDON

VICTOR GOLLANCZ LTD
1951

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6 FOREWORD: THE INTELLIGENCE GAME

"We have a large amount of material on Admiral Canaris
all of it secret," said the Foreign Office. "We could not
contemplate allowing you to examine it yourself, and we
cannot spare the time of anyone here to look through these
papers for you. 9 *

"But," I objected, "historians are given access to a great
number of documents of recent date."

"We see your point, but we don't see our way to help you."

Was it so deep a mystery? I asked Lord Vansittart if he
could say anything of Ganaris as a friend of the British. "I
only knew of him as an efficient intelligence officer," he
answered.

By chance I met a man at lunch who had worked in the
Military Secretary's office of the War Office during the war.
We fell to talking about the German enigma and I once again
mentioned Ganaris. The name registered.

"Ah yes," said the man from the War Office, "he helped us
all he could, didn't he?" I said I thought that this was so.
"What has become of him?" my companion asked.

So the search for Admiral Ganaris went on; Germans in
remote villages, Austrians, Irishmen, Spaniards, Poles, Swiss,
each with a scrap of information to add to the strange portrait
of the man who was Hitler's Intelligence Chief and Britain's
secret contact in Germany. I had before the war collected
certain information when working as foreign correspondent of
the News Chronicle in Berlin. As correspondent of Kemsley
Newspapers in Germany since the war, I have been able to
add to that material. The German biography of Ganaris by
Dr. Karl Abshagen has also given me the broad trend of his
career and I am indebted to its author.

Members of the German Abwehr have helped me with their
own aspects of the story: General Erwin Lahousen, long his
assistant and head of Branch II, Dr. Paul Leverkuehn, his
chief in Turkey, Dr. Josef Mueller, special liaison man with the
Vatican. Close personal friends of Ganaris have helped, too, like
Otto John, who worked for him in Portugal, and Fabian von
Schlabrendorff, who was entrusted by him with high political
secrets.

I expected to be writing this book without any official as
sistance from the British and had already finished many
chapters when the telephone in my office rang, and I realised

FOREWORD: THE INTELLIGENCE GAME 7

with some astonishment that someone on our own side had a
word or two to say about Ganaris. The British Secret Service
looked further into the mind of Admiral Ganaris than his close
German associates were aware. Some of his old British op
ponents in the duel of wits have helped to correct imperfections
in my portrait with a solicitous and friendly touch.

The main records of the Admiral's secret activities, his diary,
may have been destroyed by the Gestapo, but there is no
conclusive evidence that it may not come to light when the
prisons are emptied of the remnants of the Nazis and the world
has quietened down. Therefore I have not attempted a full
biography of Ganaris or even a verdict on his strange character.

The intricate collecting of technical information and the
networks of agents and large departments that flourish in the
intelligence game are the backcloth, but not the main interest
of this book. How we deceived the enemy and rooted out his
agents in Britain is a chapter that may be told in the fullness of
time. It is the mentality of the man himself, and the web that
he wove round Hitler, that seize the imagination. The readers
will have to judge for themselves whether Admiral Wilhelm
Ganaris was a German patriot or a British spy, a European
statesman or a cosmopolitan intriguer, a double agent, an
opportunist or a seer. It will not be easy for them to make up
their minds.

I started the story with my ideas still disordered; then I
undertook a journey to Spain and scoured south Germany for
the remnants of his Intelligence Service. This was not suf
ficient Berlin and the northern provinces had to be recon
noitred. Still the picture blurred and altered. Every German
officer I met put a little more into the portrait, but each was
sceptical about the lines that his colleague had drawn. "That
can't be true or the Admiral would certainly have told me
about it." How often was I to hear that answer! How often I
saw their faces cloud with suspicion that their own idea of him
was incomplete 1

Eventually when I had visited Madrid, Berlin, Frankfurt,
Hamburg, Wiesbaden, Munich, Stuttgart, somebody in
England who appeared to know more than a little about my
subject suggested that I should visit a remote village in Holstein.
"Go and see Richard Protze," he said; "you cannot finish
your book without him." Who was he? The Admiral's

8 FOREWORD: THE INTELLIGENCE GAME

mate when he was a young submarine officer, later by odd
coincidence his Chief of Counter-Espionage. I found him at
the back of beyond on the Baltic coast, a heavy, white-haired
old man with pale-blue eyes that fixed your attention for as
long as he cared to relate and had strength to tell the story.
1 * Gaps there will always be gaps," he said, and he wound
back his mind to the time when this intelligence game began,
and held me with the eye of the ancient mariner.

14 We in England hardly know his name," I said. "Yet
some people tell me that he spoiled Hitler's destiny."

"The Germans did not know his name until the end of the
war," he said, " because he was the Chief of Military Intel
ligence. Anyone who knew his name and mentioned it openly
would be sentenced to imprisonment.

"He was an officer of the German Navy who served in the
General Staff and later in the High Command but he was not
really an officer by nature a politician rather,"

"A politician without a name," I suggested,

"Yes, if you like," and so the story began.

CONTENTS

Foreword: The Intelligence Game 5

Chapter I. At the Height of His Ambition 1 1

II. Operation Kama 21

III, The Spanish Adventure 29

IV. The Russian Knot 38
V. Operation Otto 45

VI. The Conspiracies Begin 51

VII. A Glimpse of Canaris 59

VIII. Between Peace and War 70

IX. The Great Mobilisation 78

X. The Admiral Helps a Lady 85

XI. The Double Dutchman 93

XII. Norway 106

XIII. The Abwehr in England 1 14

XIV. The Hendaye Tapestry 124
XV. In the Balkans 134

XVI. How the Admiral Got His Bad Name 144

XVII. Exit Heydrich 150

XVIII. The Plastic Bomb 156

XIX. Assassinate Churchill! 164

XX. The Rat Run 174

9

j CONTENTS

XXI.

XXIL A Unified Service 186

XXIII. 19^

XXIV. The Throw 203

XXV. 2 1 4

CHAPTER. I

AT THE HEIGHT OF HIS AMBITION

ADMIRAL WILHELM GANARIS was a shortish man
of forty-seven, his hair quite white and his face rubicund,
lined and benevolently settled, when he entered the four-
storey building plain and brown stuccoed that stood alongside
the War Ministry at number 7476 Tirpitzufer in Berlin. It
was January 1935 and the bare chestnut boughs revealed the
Landwehr Canal and the ornate facades of the Wilhelminian
period residences opposite. The room that was his. office was
small and bare s with a map of the world on the waE and
photographs of his predecessors, the Chiefs of the German
Military Intelligence Service. The Tiergarten Park where he
used to ride every morning was only two minutes' walk from
the office, the embassies and legations lay close at hand. It so
happened that when I took a flat in Berlin two years later it
was within two hundred yards of the Abwehr building. Looking
back now, I can see the significance of an incident or two that
I noticed as I walked along the chestnut avenue past these
offices.

Wilhelm Canaris had reached the height of his professional
ambition when he took over the appointment of Chief of
Intelligence. Had he been another kind of officer he might
have risen to command the North Sea Fleet,, or the new
German Navy that he had done so much to buHd up secretly.

Although he had sailed in U-boats with credit in the First
World War, and risen to command the battleship Szhhsun*
everyone who knew him with whom I have spoken agrees that
it was the intelligence game that interested Mm most of all.
He was the son of a WestphaKan industrialist with an Italian
name* long settled in Germany, who traced Ms ancestry to
Lombardy. He distinguished Mmself early in Ms naval career
when the cruiser Dresden was dodging British warships In South
American waters after the battle of the Falkland Islands. His

, 2 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

by his skill at procuring her coal and
victuals from and and

of tier His work In the

War in and for

la It him out for a

In the Yet it la i34 t! ^ at Ms last

be of Officer a

on the due of Berlin^ in a little

the summer holidays. ^

They had s " Kicker" lie was still a

lieutenant "peeper", of Ms curiosity.

with the tip-tilted nose and inquiring

the to Mm. Kleker had a passion

for he and just

as he

" 1 tell they want to and what they can pass

on to others," lie in later life and behind Ms

lay an on the matters

fee to

They not to in his own service.

of his lie worked with the

Vehm in German revolutionaries. They

bis for secret missions,, his fluent approach

to his familiarity with strange

they to be an enthusiast for

too. That a handicap in the Ger-

in 1935. Then the story of his activities

in the World War, the rumours

fee Hari to spy on the French.

It to an after being

as a lie prison chaplain

in his Dr. Ms German bio-

it, and 1 have
It to me by a German

he as a Junior intelligence

m to of revolutionaries, Karl

had been
the

5n in a he have had to

for fee giving evidence before

AT THE HEIGHT OF HIS AMBITIOH 13

the Reichstag Commission of Enquiry Into the conduct of the
war. One of Its members, Deputy Moses, hotly of

abetting the murderers of the two leaders, but

was adroit enough to point out that the Incident In
did not come within the scope of the Reichstag enquiry.

Had he not negotiated for U-boats of German to be

built in Spain, Holland and Japan during the years the

Versailles Treaty had deprived Germany of weapons?

Had he not taken part In the Kapp putsch of 1920 and for
saken the Defence Minister Noske, to whom he was A.D.G.,
when Noske fled from Berlin to south Germany?
smiled and allowed these stories to ran their course. Not one
did he ever trouble to deny, and laughed heartily when they
were seriously mentioned, relates Ms friend, Dr. von Schlabren-
dorfF.

It was a foible of Ms that Ms family had connections with
Admiral Kanaris who was a hero of the Greek wars of libera
tion In the nineteenth century. Perhaps It was not
disagreeable to him to have a number of these tales circulating.
Nobody knew which to believe. They earned him a mysterious
reputation. They made It less easy for enemies and to

Ms true measure.

What circumstances had combined to bring the rear-
admiral from Swinemilnde to this high and secret post In the
capital? Admiral Raeder had been obliged to recall Captain
Patzig from the appointment of Chief of Intelligence. Field-
Marshal von Blombexg, the War Minister, a faithful prop of the
National-Socialist regime, had criticised the uncompromising
attitude of Patzig towards the security service of the Secret
State Police. Relnhard "Butcher* 9 Heydrlch, chief of this
organisation (known as the SJX), had complained to Ms own
chief, Rcichsfuehrer of the S.S. Helnrich Himmler, that
Patzig was obstructing co-operation between the Intelligence
Service and the State Police In vital matters of security. The
Cbmmander-In-CMef of the Navy did not want to support
Patzig, but he hoped to second another naval officer to this
Important post. To lose It to the Army or the Luftwaffe would
be regrettable. Raeder did not consider that the men In
grey possessed the mental horizon to direct a secret service
with commitments all over the world.

"That is correct, but not the whole story."

l| CHIEF OF

US* 1 4, i rcl up the

* Our had Ms of with

IV.^r! in 1934. It the of enemies

jvjMvl Germany at the of an

understanding It the of partition

for the it Hitler to con-

his as the of A ^secret

in the i to

In the an of in
formation,'"

liis of

Staff but he

*" If we our work."

The a aircraft that had been

at of

cloud. It so

the War Minister was

0a a to In October 1934,

lie an

"What Is plane?"

"'Hen* is Pafzlg's. "We use It for

over Poland."

angry. His had been flatly

go. lie it at the back of Ms

with S.S., too. He
of the Navy,
lie
44 i let Canaris,"

"But witMn a short

lie to Ms decision,' * Ganaiis

10 "He he not want me*

i an he said." "The appointment

is so War Minister

let it be. he service record of

Canaris?

of Wilhelm Canarls

50 in records of the

as In the it, It was

to It was an

jobs. Dr. Heinrich

AT THE HEIGHT OF HIS AMBITION 15

Bruening, the last democratic Chancellor of Weimar

Republics tells me that Canaiis had to retire from the Navy in
the "twenties; but Protze describes him as working in Kiel as
intelligence officer, Baltic station, and fighting counter-espion
age actions with the French intelligence bureau in the Rhine-
land. To Heydrich, Himmler and Hitler the choice may have
seemed excellent. Canaiis was known to be an instinctive enemy
of Bolshevism. It was he who had suggested all the

instruments and tackle taken out of the Grand Fleet it

was sunk off Scapa Flow, seHing it abroad and using the funds
to subsidise the Free Corps against the Bolshevik armies. This
man might be an ally for Hitler in the throng of stiff-backed
Prussian militarists with their secret penchant for Russia.
Admiral Ganaris officially entered 74-76 Tirpitzufer on
January 5th, 1935, after some weeks of working Mmself in.

Known as the Abwelir, or Security Service., because the
Treaty of Versailles attempted to restrict the German armed
forces to counter-espionage as their only legitimate intelligence
activity, the Admiral's new command was then probably the
best co-ordinated apparatus of its kind in the world and it had
the advantage of being small* It was divided into three depart
ments : Abwehr I, to collect information through German and
foreign agents; Abwehr II, to manage sabotage; and Abwehr
III, to do counter-espionage work at home. One of the conces
sions made by Hitler to the Commanders-in-Cfaief when he
came to power was the absolute independence of the Abwehr.
It was answerable to the service chiefs alone, a secret state
within the state.

There was, besides, a Foreign Section of the Abwehr
(Amtsgruppe Ausland) wMch looked after foreign military
attaches in Berlin, received reports of German military attaches
abroad, and co-ordinated the military with the political in
telligence wMch the German Foreign Office gathered through
its own services. The work of digesting and exploiting military
intelligence was done by the Great General Staff itself, and
later by the High Command of the Armed Forces when Hitler
created that organ of war. The three services were thus under
one hand in intelligence matters, and there could be no inter-
service rivalries, no hoarding of vital intelligence by the Army
which the Navy wanted to see, no exclusive air intelligence.
Soldiers, sailors, airmen and civilians had to work together,

16 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

to of the Hitler gave Canaris a

to it up it an that could

of the Western Powers,

In lie office, while tils

inviolate, Admiral must
at the NIcoiai

In Ms on had

on of the civilised

the Russian Bolsheviks

in lie Tsar's the Russian

to a the achievements of

in 'forties Communism

i he into the totter-

in railway coach that passed

in October 1918. Then there was

a policy. Germany had

to to and Finland

to try the in bottle whence it

to be all Europe, Canaiis had

an He to the Guards Cavalry

In for it over internal

in for a after the Kaiser had

abdicated.

By the the had forgiven the

of to negotiate a secret

the U.S.S.R., so that they

try oat in Russia unobserved

by the Treaty of the officers of the

in that it was quite

to a the

up military agree-

lie to

at Ms above

the at the old of the and the

of out the

tic was with

the of a he and

for the A had

was to again

be the U-boats

to lay secretly in Spain

AT THE HEIGHT OF HIS AMBITION 17

and Holland would be assembled at Hamburg, Bremen and
the Baltic ports after being prefabricated at Inland factories.
There was order again In Germany and employment., cleanli
ness and efficiency; there were no strikes, no labour unrest;
and foreign powers were watching her In apprehension. Her
neighbours were being polite and willing to be friendly 3 though
still on their guard. To the eastward lay nervous Poland and,
beyond, Russia^ mistrustful and Inscrutable* France, pre
occupied with petty squabbles at home, still maintained a large
conscript army with a mass of reserves, and behind her lay
Britain wielding naval supremacy and the threat of the block
ade. The British exerted economic and financial Influence all
over Europe and the world.

Further yet lay America 5 lazy and delightful, a potential
world power but still far keener on producing prosperous
families than directing world politics. It was England* no
doubt at all, the Admiral thought 5 that by reason of her
traditions, her toughness and her far-sighted statesmanship,
would offer Germany the greatest resistance or the most solid
friendship.

Study of an operation in the early life of an officer often gives
us the clues to Ms future promise, and his service with the
cruiser Dresden in the South Atlantic and Pacific In 1914 and
1915 indicates the strong points of Canarls. I enlarge upon
this period of Ms early life as one of the few wMch Is fully
documented, seeing so much else is hearsay. He was Flag
Lieutenant and Intelligence Officer to Captain Liidecke at the
Battle of Goronel and wrote home to his mother in November
1914 in a cautious vein of optimism:

** A fine success certainly, wMch gives us breatMng space and
may have an effect on the general situation.. Let's hope we
continue In this way.* 5

On December 8th Admiral Sturdee caught the German
squadron off the Falkland Islands after false wireless signals
had deceived von Spee as to Ms enemy's position. The Dresden
was the only warsMp that escaped from Sturdee. She ran into
Punta Arenas and refuelled before slipping through the Straits
of Magellan to Mde in the steep bays and Inlets of the GMlean
coast.

According to the official British naval history of the First
World War, the British Consul In Punta Arenas^ who happened

l8 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

to have had a German partner in business, soon picked up her
whereabouts, but he was disbelieved in the Admiralty which
had received other reports. The Germans were spreading
rumours that she was in deep, uncharted culs-de-sac, which in
fact she was, but the reports were so various as to bewilder the
search and the true report was soon lost in the false. (One of
these leg-pulls said that she was in Last Hope inlet.) I fancy I
see here a technique that Ganaris developed later to perfection.
The cruisers Glasgow and Kent searched the coast for hundreds
of miles until March 1915 without finding the Dresden, though
they were very near her at times. At length they caught her in
Cumberland Bay outlined against the precipitous cliffs within
territorial waters but obviously getting up steam and prepared
for action. Captain Ltidecke had refused to land parts of his
machinery and accept internment, though the Kaiser had
signalled to him permission to do so.

Captain John Luce of the Glasgow straddled the Dresden with
his first salvo at 8,400 yards and the Kent opened fire with her
six-inch guns. The Dresden's fire control, intercom, and two of
her guns were quickly knocked out. Captain Lxidecke signalled
that he was prepared to parley, but In the confusion of battle
he had to hoist a white flag before the British cruisers ceased
fire. The Dresden? $ steam pinnance then brought a German
lieutenant alongside. His name is not mentioned in the British
official report. It was Canaris, who spoke excellent English and
had already shown his skill in various negotiations. He was to
ask for terms, but when taken to Captain Luce he first tried a
stroke of guile, declaring that the Dresden was already interned
by the Chilean authorities and could therefore not be attacked
without breach of international law. It was certainly a plausible
lie, but Luce appeared to have other information and would
not believe it. He could see that the Dresden had been getting
up steam.

Canaris tried the argument that she was in territorial waters,
but Luce was not disturbed by this either. The Dresden had
been infringing Chilean neutrality for months, he pointed out,
and he had his orders to sink her wherever he might find
her.

They then came to discuss terms.

*' Captain Luce's answer was as the tradition of the service
required," relates the official British naval history of the First

AT THE HEIGHT OF HIS AMBITION I

World War, "that he could treat on no basis but that of un
conditional surrender."

With answer Ganaris returned to the and

Liidecke thereupon decided to blow up his forward magazine
and scuttle the ship* She would not have escaped for as long
as did, his fellow officers agreed 3 had it not been for the
skilful work of Ganaris in securing supplies, gathering in
telligence, and sending out deception reports.

I imagine from some of his later reactions that his visit on
board the Glasgow left a lasting impression on Mm of the power
and determination of the British. Her officers showed him
frigid courtesy as he stepped aboard her quarter-deck, but
they spoke a language which he understood well, and when the
action was over Captain Luce sent his surgeon officers ashore to
tend the German wounded. He then demanded internment of
the crew.

Lieutenant Ganaris slipped out of internment, crossed the
Atlantic in a British ship and escaped through the blockade
with a false Chilean passport as Mr. Reed-Rosas. Still posing
as a Chilean, he worked in Madrid against the Allies during
1915 and incited Arab tribes with subsidies against France and
Britain in Morocco and West Africa.

France no doubt blamed Spanish connivance for these
activities, for France and Spain had always been rivals in
Morocco.

"He blew up nine British ships from his base in Spain," said
Protze. "Don't forget to mention that."

When Madrid became too hot for him and after he had
nearly fallen into the hands of the French on his way back to
Germany 3 Ganaris served in U-boats and his patrol reports
attracted the attention of the Kaiser. **Is this a descendant of
the national hero of the Greek War of Independence ?** the
Kaiser wrote in the margin. Perhaps it was in a subsequent
moment of vanity that Ganaris let it be thought that lie
descended from Konstantin Kanaris.

Such is the outline of his early career. An original mied,
initiative^ resourcefulness, and a high degree of cunning
personal integrity still difficult to assess.

"Promise me that you wiH look after him ! " said Patzig to the
old bloodhound, Richard Protze, as he handed over office. He
had a premonition of calamitous times ahead when the nervous,

2O CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

agile Canaris would need a Protze promised

that he would serve Mm faithfully.

It seemed to me extraordinary after following some of
Canaris's adventures in the Second World War to turn back
the pages of history and read how his personal encounter

with the British in 1915 ended with "unconditional surrender ".
These words re-echo in our story.

CHAPTER II

OPERATION KAMA

Poles take too seriously the agreement

with Germany not to spy on each other. We shall see that the
Polish Intelligence Service continued to search by the most
daring methods for the true intentions of the German Genera!
Staff. It did not relinquish its suspicion that, despite Hitler's
assurances, Germany intended to partition Poland with Russia.
But whereas the German Intelligence Service specialised on
aerial reconnaissance of terrain, in the offensive sense, the Poles
concentrated on discovering what plans were being made in
Berlin against Poland and what arms were being developed.
The activities of Captain Jurek von Sosnowski were directed
to that end. This was the first big espionage case that fell into the
hands of Canaris, half finished by the service under Patzig.

Canaris himself sat high above the police work that un
ravelled this extraordinary scandal, and his name was never
mentioned in connection with it.

His appointment was a special secret, the post was secret,
and the Third Reich with its treachery laws was a reposi

tory for secrets. The British Admiralty which had come across
the activities of young Canaris in neutral countries during
the First World War and followed his career, lost sight of
him between 1935 and 1939. It did not note a change of
appointment from SwirnmMnde. The Embassies and Lega
tions of Berlin simply knew him as a naval staff officer working
in the German Admiralty, in contact with the attache section
of the War Ministry, and his personal liking for small intelligence
missions made it difficult for those foreigners "who came into
contact with him in the course of their duties to guess that this
was the Chief of the Intelligence Service himself.

Ganaris moved his family from Swinemlinde to a little house
in the Dollestrasse, in Sudende^ and lived there the simp!e s
somewhat austere life that was traditional to the German

CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

,,s. These wooded and

an to the world of how to

a ife He discovered that

the of later CMef of the

S.S. Leader Reinhard^ Hey-

in the street as himself.

It was the Intelligence and the

of the be on calling

his daughters the Admiral

to up the on a Sunday for a game of

the We see later there were

to the of the Gestapo

the

had one of his visitors at the

to a affair that raised the

security in the Reich* He was

a to : of features, slightly

a mouth and hard,

bony, with angular shaul-

and this cold silence

It for Ms to problems on a basis

of by contrast,

a little. They were as
as outwardly polite^

other.

to for access to the files of

III, powers in Germany were

This subject of his conten-

lie gave new man no respite,

He to in Germany,

a tried in camera

i to his It concerned the Poles,

It Heydrich on the

at sea him. He remem-

the 1922, he been First

of the Heydrich a naval

no he so^ Heydrich to guess what

in liis He Heydrich's service papers

the Ms memory on the

of moral delin
quency in led to Ms from

OPERATION KAMA 23

the naval service. The papers showed him another interesting
fact: the father of Heydiich, an operatic tenor in Halle-an-der-

Saale, was a half-Jew. Ganaris gave the service records of
Heydrich to a staff officer and instructed him to keep them in
his safe. He noted of Heydrich in his diary: "a violent and
fanatical man with whom it will be impossible to work at all
closely." But he was destined in the next eight years to share
many high secrets with this violent man and the first of
was the extraordinary story of Captain von SosnowsJkL

The mlEtary men of all nations were not quite rid of the
nightmare of trench warfare. They were still impressed by the
memory of the huge burrowing armies of the First World War
and the hopeless interlocked bloodshed that even tanks and
aircraft had not broken up into a war of movement. France drew
the conclusion that she must build a defence line in concrete,
a national trench, the Maginot Line.

But in 1934 it was rumoured that Germany was following a
new theory of rapid armoured warfare and building a hard
core of three armoured divisions, a Panzer fist, that would
smash through trenches and concrete fortifications. The
Italians were highly alarmed, and General Roatta of the S-I.M.
or Italian Military Intelligence Service went to Vienna himself
to see what he could learn from Erwin Lahousen, his Austrian
colleague. Lahousen, Chief of the Austrian Military Intelligence,
was bound to work with the Italians^ because as long as Mus
solini was determined to keep Austria as the buffer state, as long
as he was prepared to send his own armour to the Brenner Pass
in a crisis as he did when Dollfiiss was murdered, as long as the
Stresa front was possible, the General Staffs of Rome and Vienna
had common interests. On intelligence matters there hap
pened to be a secret agreement between Germany and Austria
to exchange information on Central Europe and the Balkans.
This made some contact on other matters possible. Lahoiisen
understood the international freemasonry of intelligence
services and promised Roatta what help he could.

The Poles had no such opportunities. Their intelligence work
was more daring and original. Among others* Jurek von Sos-
nowsM, a man of handsome appearance and dashing tempera-
ment* was sent into Germany posing as a cashiered officer who
had ^disgraced himself by an affair with the wife of his regimental
commander. He crossed the frontier leading two horseSj as a

24 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

man starting a new life, and lie calculated that he would do best
to find women who would work for him.

"Let me tell this story," said Richard Protze, ex-Chief of
Counter-Esplonage. &i lt was I who laid Sosnowski by the

heels/'

He put his nose down to the table of the inn in Holstein where
I discovered him, like a hound taking up the scent, fixed his
formidable blue eyes on the listeners and traced out each foot
step that the Pole took.

&& There were two Polish intelligence officers in Berlin in those
days. Lieutenant GrifF-Tschaikovsky had no idea how to begin
his work, so he came to us fairly soon and confessed that he could
not do the job. He asked us to give Mm information.

fii e You shall have plenty of material, my lad/ we told him.
* Right about turn. Now you work for us/

"Probably the most interesting section of the Genera! Staff
was I.N.6, at this time under Colonel Heinz Guderian. It was an
experimental section developing armoured fighting vehicles.
It had also to be acquainted with the areas in which these
vehicles would operate and the type of warfare that was envis
aged. I.N.6, therefore, was kept informed of operational plan
ning and of Operation Kama, the secret development of for
bidden German weapons in Russia. My branch, Gounter-
Espionage III F, went to Guderian for false information to pass
on to GrifF-Tschaikovsky. He made photo-copies of it and took
them to the garden of the Polish Embassy, where there was a
dark room.

"Judge Ms astonishment and ours when one day he found
hanging up in the drying room somebody else's films* of which
he copied one off the clips and brought it to us it contained
material from Section I.N.6. After that we watched visi
tors to the Polish Embassy closely, and after hours, we also
watched the lights of the basement windows. But we still had
no idea how the Poles had got photographs' of these docu
ments.

"Jurek von Sosnowski was a handsome devil, brave and cool,
with a charming smile and cold eyes that made you shiver. He
seemed to have plenty of money, played about the world of
film and fashion, gave parties in Ms ornately decorated fiat. The
women could not resist him. He consorted openly with a society
woman of Swiss birth, Frau von Falkenheyn nee ZoMikofer,

OPERATION KAMA 25

divorced Schmidt, who became Baroness von Berg. Sosnowskl
worked in the grande couture, and these two were often seen at
the races, at theatres^ In night clubs together.

"One summer day in 1934, Jurek espied a little Hungarian
dancer, Rita Pasci, in a Budapest hotel and invited her to din
ner. When he left Hungary a few days later Rita went with
him in the car, to dance for him in Berlin, but soon Jorek
explained to her that her real work would be espionage, and
she noticed that he surrounded himself with a of

women.

"Frau, von Falkenheyn set about this work without any mis
giving.

44 * I have a friend in the War Ministry/ she said. s l will see
where she works/

"She invited Fran von Natzmer out to bathe in the Wannsce
Lake and as they lay on the beach they chattered about her
work.

" *You work with Colonel Guderian in I.N.6?* On a subse
quent bathing party Fran von Falkenheyn exclaimed:

" *Do you know that you are working for the Russians? My
Conservative friends are quite scandalised at this
I belong to a patriotic group of Germans. 9 Gradually drew
out of the widow Natzmer the business of her branch, a
map of the offices she worked in, and then she set about ob
taining the papers "of Operation Kama.

"Before long she was persuading Frau von Natzmer to bring
out documents from I.N.6 for the patriotic German group that
was working against the Bolsheviks, She paid her for them, but
immediately ran her into such debts by taking her round ex
pensive shops that she became more than ever dependent on her
friend. Then came the big shock. Benita von Falkenheyn told
her that they were both really working for a Polish intelligence
officer. If she wished to be released from this contract^ must
enlist other girls in the War Ministry who might be hard up
and work them in to replace her. Frau von Natzmer dared
go back on her bargain. She so-light out one Fratileffl von Jena
and three others whom she knew to be in need of money, Jurek
was busy, too. He found a Colonel in debt. Colonel Biedenfuhr,
started a liaison with his wife, bribed a Lieutenant RotloiF,
who also worked in the War Ministry* and within the space
of one year he had obtained 1 50 secret documents, the keys of

26 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

Colonel Guderian's safe^ and the German outline plan of attack
on Poland.

"It was then that jealous Rita Pasci went to a theatrical
agent with the complaint that she was being asked to spy on
Germany. The agent came to us and asked for the assurance of
pardon, if she did what she was told.

** *You shall have that/ we said to Rita. *But now you turn
about and work for us. Find out the names of those with whom
this Sosnowski is working/

"One day Rita Pasci rang us up and asked: *Do the names
Frau von Natzmer and Fraulein von Jena mean anything to
you?* I felt weak at the knees as I heard these names I knew
that these were War Ministry secretaries in charge of confiden
tial work.

"Sosnowski arranged a ball in the Bach Hall for the film
and fashion world of Berlin. I sent my wife to it to see who
would be there. I arranged with the S.D. to raid Sosnowski 's
fiat that same night as he was holding a supper party after the
ball in honour of Rita Pasci."

Sosnowski paid great compliments at the ball to Helena,
Richard Protze's wife,, a shrewd-looking woman with a steely
eye, whom he had never met before. She said quite truthfully
that she was working for the War Ministry.

"I hope we meet again/* he said.

" Probably this evening/* she answered with a smile.

Richard Protze sat shaking in the Abwehr offices. "We'll
catch the band tonight or never," he muttered.

Rita Pasci rang up from the flat: "Jurek is uneasy . . . he's
packing Ms bags."

The Gestapo, led by Richard Protze, knocked at the door
of Sosnowski *s fiat 3 just as the champagne supper was beginning.
Jurek in dinner jacket opened the door himself and the Gestapo
lined up hysterical women and white-faced men while they
searched the flat.

"You are a spy/* shouted the Gestapo at Jurek.

"No, no, nothing of the sort,** he replied coolly.

"Then you are a confidence agent,"

"You are quite mistaken/* said the smiling Sosnowski.

"Ftt tell you what he is/* said the quivering Protze. "You
are a Polish intelligence officer,**

OPERATION KAMA 2J

When this accusation was repeated in court some months
later, Sosnowski clicked Hs heels and sprang to attention.
There was dead silence.

"Yes, that's what I am."

The People's Court was crowded with, high party men and
the young German intelligence officers were detailed to attend
proceedings as a lesson in intelligence matters. Frau von
Falkenheyn and Fran von Natzmer were condemned to death,
Fraulein von Jena to penal servitude for life. Hitler thwarted
an attempt to marry Captain von Sosnowski and Benita von
FaJkenheyn in prison, a stratagem by which she hoped to
save her life by obtaining Polish nationality.

As she was led out of court for the last time she cried:
" I die gladly for my new Fatherland/ 3 and Jurek, deeply moved
for the first time in the proceedings, stooped to kiss her hand.
Both women died by the axe in February 1935. T^ 16 forious
Colonel Guderian broke off all social relations with the Poles,
and there was anger and consternation in Reich government
circles that such a fantastic scandal should have marred
new German-Polish treaty of friendship.

It took Richard Protze the best part of a day to relate
Sosnowski story from beginning to end, and his narrative
differed notably from the sparse accounts that have hitherto
come to light. I have therefore retold this story at some length,
because it is all part of the struggle for mastery in the Third
Reich, and also because we catch our first glimpse of Canaris
in office through a Polish diplomat.

The Polish Ambassador in Berlin, Josef Lipski, remembers
clearly how this awkward case brought him. into contact with
Canaris,

"It was about this time I was visited by an elderly, white-
haired German Admiral," Lipski related to me. "SosnowsM
was still in prison. I was struck by the soft, benevolent manner
of this Canaris. He talked as if he was enlisting my sympathy
by an especial degree of confidence. He seemed to be searching
for the most sensible course of action for us both. I never
dreamed for a moment that this was the Chief of German
Intelligence.

"He suggested that Poland should exchange a German
woman spy who was held in Warsaw for Captain Jurek von

28 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

Scsnowski. The Polish Government agreed with this suggestion
and the exchange took place.

"Subsequently I Invited Admiral Canaos to the Embassy
and he came once or twice to dinner with his wife. I still had
no Idea of his identity."

What of the 150 documents and the plan of attack on Poland?
As In so many cases of first-class esplonage 3 the General Staff
receiving the information refused to believe It. Sosnowski
on his return to Poland was kept in a fortress while the Polish
Intelligence Service tried to determine whether his documents
were genuine, whether those of Griff-Tschalkovsky were
genuine, or whether both "were false.

"We suspected that Sosnowskl had been transmitting
misleading Intelligence prepared by the Germans, 5 * Lipski told
me.

General Lahousen, head of Abwehr II, was given Sosnowskl
as one of Ms principal Intelligence targets when the Wehrmacht
attacked Poland In September 1939. "But when we reached
Warsaw," he said, "we found that he had been moved east-
\vards had fallen Into the hands of the Russians."

The unimaginative GrifT-Tschaikovsky was hanged for
treason; no particular benefit to Poland was gained from
Sosnowski's daring work, As for Rita Pasci, the Hungarian
dancer, when I last heard of her she was back in ruined
Germany dancing with a gypsy band.

CHAPTER III

THE SPANISH ADVENTURE

WHEN THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR erupted In July 1936
few people in the outside world knew what was afoot, but it was

very soon suspected in London and Paris that Germany had
been the instigator of the Generals' revolt. Now that the
archives of the German Foreign Ministry have been published
(Germary and the Spanish Civil War) 1 it is plain that every foreign
government was taken by surprise, Germany, too, but
Hitler was. quickly advised and made his decisions within a few
days. It appears also from other testimony that Canaiis urged
Hitler and Goeraig to support General Franco and acted as
personal emissary to the Gaudillo during the whole of the Civil
War.

The spark that set the land aflame on July iGth, 1936, was
the murder of the Conservative politician, Galvo Sotdo. He
was called for in Madrid by the Spanish republican police
and found dead next morning. That was the signal for civil war.

The war in Spain lasted from July 1936 until the spring of
1939* when Madrid fell. During those three years that span the
time between Hitler's march into the Rhineland and the
beginnings of his final mobilisation for war } a million Spaniards
fell in battle against each other, the airmen of four foreign
powers Germany, Italy, France and Russia were engaged,
besides technicians, volunteers and foreign contingents of all
sorts. The war correspondents of the world followed the battles
and sieges in the peninsula and the diplomatic correspondents
of all nations reported the work of the Non-Intervention
Committee, During aE this time Canaiis came and went In
Spain, sometimes under the pseudonym Guillemio, without
being discovered either by the republicans or the world press,

The part of Ganaris in deciding Hitler to act is described by
lieutenant-General Bamler, one of Ganaris's departmental

1 Documents OB German Foreign Policy 1918-1945,, wsi. Si.

29

3O CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

chiefs, and Colonel H. Renter, former German military attache

in Tangier, who asserts that Ganaris obtained Goering's support
for Franco and helped to get Italian aid for Spain,

The official documents also show that Hitler and Goering,

though taken by surprise, acted quickly and failed to exact
hard political conditions from Spain as the price of their aid.
At that moment the German General Staff was all for caution
after the move Into the RhineiancL The German Foreign
Ministry was not anxious to have Germans fighting, and its
Political Department on July 25th advised against supplying
any arms to the emissaries of the rebels. The Reich was utterly
unprepared for a general war, her western frontiers were
unfortified and remained so until late 1938, her Army was less
than half the size of the French Army. Admiral Raeder was
against intervention.

I can find no statements that any highly placed German
argued for quick and active aid to Spain except Wilhelm
Ganaris.

lieutenant-General Bamler, then a major and departmental
head of the German military security in Abwehr III, has given
in Soviet interrogation an account of what Canaris did in
July and August 1936. Bamler left his command and went
over to the Russians during the last stages of the Eastern
campaign. Pravda has printed his story, of which I give the main
points.

ts Spain interested me/* related Bamler 3 " because I had
previously been rapporteur on Spanish affairs in the third
section of the General Staff. Canaris told me that he knew
Spain particularly well. He said that he had good and wide
contacts which he trusted in Spain* Spanish Morocco, and Rio
de Oro." He maintained these contacts personally, and indeed
his closest collaborators were not informed of all his contacts.
" Canaris was sent by the German Naval Intelligence Service
to Spain in 1916 on a particularly important secret assignment.
There with the help of Germans residing in Spain, and Spanish
friends, he successfully prepared the setting up of a supply base
for German submarines; he prepared a lamified system for
observing the movements of British and French ships in
the Mediterranean, especially off Gibraltar. From Spanish
Morocco and Rio de Oro, he directed uprisings of Moroccan
and Arab tribes against the French and the British. From then

THE SPANISH ADVENTURE 3!

on 5 as Ganaris himself told me, began Ms secret collaboration
with Franco^ who at that time was serving In the Spanish Army
In Morocco In the rank of Major.

"After the Primo de Rivera Government was overthrown and
the Republican parties came to power 3 Franco (who had since
risen to become Chief of the Spanish General Staff) was sent
to the remote Canary Islands. Another friend of Canaris,
General Martinex Anido 3 who was Minister of the Interior
under Primo de Rivera, quit Spain and lived In Portugal.
Canaris had meanwhile restored Ms own Intelligence system
In Spain, maMng frequent trips for the purpose, and he kept
up Ms contact with Franco."

The narrative of Bamler, which appears correct In Its main
facts, though possibly coloured by Internment In Soviet Russia^
continues that two agents of the insurgents arrived In Berlin
to see Canaris as soon as the Civil War started. 1 Then Franco
sent to inform him that he flown from the Canary Islands to
Morocco and wanted military assistance and air transport
for his troops to subdue the Republicans in Spain.

** I myself was a witness of how Canaris brushed aside aU
other questions and spared neither time nor effort to have the
leading men of Germany and Italy interested in Ms plans.
Ganaris explained everywhere that although Franco
unknown as a politician he deserved full trust and support as
he was a tested man with whom Ganaris had worked for many
years."

* Ganaris impressed Goering with his ideas. There were
conferences in Goering's home, Karinhalij on the Spanish war
and in the offices of the Prussian Prime Minister, of

Goering^s many posts.

Ganaris asked for Junkers transport aircraft to fly the
Moroccan troops and the Spanish Foreign Legion
Straits of Gibraltar to Spain. Goering was at first dubious of
such a venture. Then, says Bamler, Ganaris went straight to
Hitler.

It is appropriate here to say something of the relationship
between Canaris and Hitler. General Jodl, when he was
by the Nuremberg tribunal whether he passed on the reports
of Ganaris to Hitler when they told unpleasant truths, replied

1 Probably Langoiheijn anil Ikxabarcit, whose names- are revealed in
and thf

32 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

that Canaris had direct access to the Fueiirer whenever lie
wished. This was so* and If In later years Canaiis failed to
report directly to him It was they had instinctively

fallen out of sympathy. At moment., In 1 936, Hitler was

still honouring his agreements with General Staff; he was
not interfering In military matters; he had not to arm

the S.S., he had not yet accepted perjured evidence against
Ms Ctommander-in-Chief, General von Fritsch.

Canaiis and Ms master had In common an Intuitive hatred
for Bolshevism and a leaning towards the British In their
political theory. They were both of strong suggestive

powers, but whereas Hitler streamed out Ms hypnotics to the
and to small audiences alike and all the time, without
breath or pause, Canaris worked upon the individual with
softness and flattery In an Infinity of degrees. During military
conferences It was noticed that lie had a curious soft eloquence
that attracted and quietened Hitler.

"You can talk to the man," he said. "He can see your point
of view, If you are careful not to irritate him. He can be reason
able."

The story of the agents from Spain is borne out in a document
of the Reich Chancellery dated July 5th, 1 939, which reveals
how the decision to intervene in Spain was taken. It recom
mends two Germans living abroad to be decorated for services
in the Spanish Civil War and states in a preamble :

"At that time (late July ig36} 1 Heir Langenheim and Herr
Bernhardt, members of the Foreign branch of the Party,
arrived in Berlin from Spain with a letter from General
Franco to the Fuehrer. . . . The first interview with the Fuehrer,
on which occasion letter was deliveredj took place in

Bayreuth . . . after the Fuehrer's return from the theatre.
Immediately afterwards the Fuehrer summoned Field-Marshal
Goering, the War Minister, General von Blomberg and an
admiral who was present at Bayreuth. That night support for
the Generalissimo was agreed to in principle, while additional
details were worked out during the course of the following
day."

It is probable that the admiral at Bayreuth. was Canaris,
Colonel Reiner's statement is also emphatic that Canaris was a

1 The German Consul in Tefuan reported on July s^tli that they were on their
way by air.

THE SPANISH ADVENTURE 33

decisive influence with the Reich Government and with Italy

in the Spanish affair. If the documents hitherto published in
Germany and the Spanish Civil War do not bear this out, that is
perhaps because the Chancellery and War Ministry cor
respondences are not included.

According to Bamler, the Fuehrer asked Ganaris for a de
tailed report on Franco. The Admiral obtained permission for
military assistance for the insurgents, and for himself special
authority to act in these secret operations with Spain. Then lie
was off to Italy to meet his Italian colleague, General Roatta,
and convince him that Mussolini must support Franco as well.
Gone were the days when Roatta peered anxiously northwards
over the Brenner Pass and asked Lahousen in Austria to find
out more about the German armoured divisions. The dispute
over Abyssinia had made Germany and Italy allies.

Ganaris was received by Mussolini to expound Ms case on
Spain and flew back to Berlin to supervise further operations.
He helped to organise Hisma and Rowak, Spanish, and German
purchasing commissions for the Spanish insurgents; Rowak had
Bemhardt at its head. It was disguised as a commercial firm
and bought arms for them in Germany, Czechoslovakia and
elsewhere.

" Ganaris did not only organise arms supplies to Franco- He
supplied them to the Spanish Republican Government, too."

This interjection came from Richard Protze of Abwehr III F,
with, whom I reviewed German participation in the Civil War.

"You won't find that in the documents, either/* lie said.
"This is how it happened. Goering as Administrator of the
Four Year Plan had charge of German arms deliveries and the
release of foreign currency for the Civil War. Someone sug
gested at one of his conferences that Germany should attempt
to provide weapons to the Spanish republicans as a means of
sabotaging their war potential. Goering liked the idea and asked
who could carry it out.

"*I can,' said Ganaris, *Fve got the man for you.*

"There was a German arms dealer, Josef Veltjens, whom
Canaris directed to buy up all the superannuated weapons
from the First World War which Canaris had helped to sell
abroad after the Treaty of Versailles. Rifles, carbines, am
munition and grenades were bought up in Czechoslovakia,
Balkan countries and elsewhere. They were brought to

34- CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

Germany, where S.S. armourers filed down the striking pins,
doctored the ammunition, reduced the grenade charges or
inserted instantaneous fuses. The consignments were then dis
tributed to international arms dealers in Poland, Finland,
Czechoslovakia and Holland and resold to the Spanish
Government for cash payment in gold. Veltjens himself owned
three cargo vessels which were used to ship the arms to Spain."

Ganaris flew many times to and from the peninsula high
over France by night in stripped-down Junkers transport
aircraft sitting among the stores and the reserve petrol cans.
Together with General Faupel, the military envoy to the
Burgos government, he set up liaison headquarters with the
Spanish Army that was to command and administer the
German Condor Legion, an air corps with anti-aircraft
batteries and observer units. The Condor Legion was highly
specialised in air attack and air defence with fighter and bomber
aircraft.

I remember meeting a Bavarian baron in the Luftwaffe,
Sigismund von Gravenreuth > who had volunteered for Spain
and earned Hitler's Spanish Cross for aerial combats. He was
diffident about the decoration because he was still under oath
of secrecy about operations in Spain. The Luftwaffe got
valuable combat experience in Spain, he said. He was shot
down in the Second World War by the R.A.F.

Britain and France were disturbed by the developments in
Spain and the Popular Front saw itself, far from becoming a
Pan-European party, being undermined by the Germans from
both north and south. Communist and Republican, arms and
volunteers passed into Spain through the Pyrenean frontier and
the Mediterranean ports.

As to German war supplies, a few telegrams went through
Foreign Ministry channels to Canaiis in the first months of the
Civil War, asking for weapons; but the whole apparatus of
German armed intervention was quickly transferred to the
High Command and run by the Abwehr as a secret operation.
Canaiis had his correspondence on military aid and foreign
intervention sent in Abwehr codes to Ms offices in Berln. For
three years he played a leading part in the Spanish affair as
wel as his general work of expanding the Abwehr and defend
ing it against the increasing demands of the S.S. He succeeded
in keeping the Condor Legion a top-secret unit, difficult to

THE SPANISH ABVENTURE 35

or penetrate even by the Spanish Army that worked
with It. Meanwhile Colonel Baron G-eyr von Schweppenburg,
military attach^ in London, had been appointed German
member of the International Non-intervention Committee
and reported to Berlin that the British who held the key to the
whole situation were evidently playing a wailing game.

* e lf you and France close the Pyrenees and enforce a proper
blockade/* the Burgos government's agents protested to the
British, "the Civil War will be over in a few months." But the
British were not certain that a speedy victory of Franco with
German support would be to their advantage. There were lively
sympathies between the British Labour Party and the Madrid
and Barcelona Republicans. Mr. Clement Attlee, leader of the
Opposition, made it plain to Mr. Chamberlain that if any
favour were shown to the insurgents the go-slow among the
engineering unions might well develop into strikes that would
retard the vital rearmament of Britain herself. The Foreign
Office comforted itself by saying that the forces of evil in Europe
were bleeding themselves in Spain. A strong military govern
ment in Spain might well form military alliances with the Axis
powers. Geyr von Schweppenburg reported to Berlin conversa
tions with British military attaches whom, he said, casually
asserted that Britain could best be served by a weak Spain.
These arguments could be heard in London in 1937 and many
responsible Englishmen were disturbed by them.

Admiral Ganaris may have attributed a farseeing cunning to
the British attitude on the Spanish Civil War. He never
entirely understood the degree to which Great Britain was
divided by its social-political disputes, and how, sitting half
way betweenyotn&TZii and wisdom, the British Government had
continually to defer to Socialist international opinion. Among
his own people he had hard work to reconcile the conservative
minds of the German Army to the Spanish adventure.

General von Fritsch, the Commander-in-Chief, and General
Ludwig Beck, the Chief of the German General Staff, disliked
it intensely. It was committing men and auxiliary weapons to a
theatre of operations with no proper lines of communications,
in face of superior naval power and hostile world opinion in a
situation which might lead to a general war. Yet C&naris got his
way and none of the strange leakages of information subsequently
noticeable in German military planning marred the campaign

3 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

in Spain, His own name did not even emerge* lie was

the principal director infiltrating the Germans in by air
sea. A strict silence fell on all German personnel selected for
the operation : it was related at the time a few who

had talked to their families about their were

guilty of treason and sentenced to death. The German air
craft flew over Spanish battlefields^ the detectors and pre
dictors were tried out, the A. A. guns of the Luftwaffe fought
Republican aircraft, Hitler's ordnance artificers toiled
sweated in Franco's service.

It needs an effort of memory today to recall how long the
Spanish Civil War dragged on until May 1939, within a
month or two of the Second World War breaking out. I have
met Spaniards who are equally vague about the latter date,
and when you talk to them of the war assume that you mean
their Civil War. When Madrid fell on March aSth, 1939,
Canaris looked back on thirty-two months of intense work
on the Spanish operation. the Civil War

shows that he received some of the first reports on the confused
fighting that broke out in July 1936^ that General Mola on the
Northern Front sent Mm urgent for arms and that

Hitler sent him to Franco in October 1936 to urge him to a
more energetic prosecution of the war- He toured the front
with Franco, heard his first tentative suggestions in April
1938 that the Condor Legion should be withdrawn from Spain,
and in April 1939 was sent to persuade Franco to announce
publicly that Spain had Joined the An ti- Comintern Pact.

Abshagen relates from conversations with his staff that it was
a constant exhilaration to Canaris to be quit of Germany and
back in Spain, tearing about the ruinous Spanish roads in a
fast car, dining at little wayside inns, away an hour or

so at Cartagena or Cadiz* savouring southern and rough

wine, chatting with Ms cronies of the Spanish Armada, looking
across from Algeciras at British warships at Gibraltar.

The dry red of Spain, its worn Sierras and mud-built

villages with their windowless churches, its beauties of Goya,
Zurbaran and Murillo, how he was to leave them, and

how his spirits rose when he was in land, Joking with

Ms head of Abwehr I, Colonel Piekenbrock, or Ms- adjutant,
and giving an exaggerated Nazi salute to a herd of sheep by
the roadside.

THE SPANISH ADVENTURE 37

"Who knows," he said with a wink to Ms adjutant as the car
spec! on. it There may be one of our high officials among them/ 9

I do not suppose for a moment that British Secret Service
was not aware that a strange and Important German was active
in the peninsula. It could not know for certain at that that

German military aid to Spain, computed at 5,000,000,000
ReiclismarkSj had been made unconditionally described by
Hitler to Giano in 1940 as "an absolute gift" to Spain and that
there was no secret military alliance between Hitler
Franco. When the Civil War was over, Germany had
Spain to become a signatory of the Anti-Comintern Pact and
had certainly strengthened her influence openly aacl sub-
versively but the proud and independent Spanish character
soon reasserted itself. When a law was passed restricting
foreign control in Spanish mining interests., the German
Ambassador hurried round to protest, but he was told by
Count Jordana that it was not customary for Spain to consult
foreign powers before passing her laws. It is noteworthy in
view of what we shall learn of Canaris during the Munich
crisis to see that his friend the Caudillo on September aSth,
1938, let it be known that Spain would remain neutral in the
event of a general conflict over Czechoslovakia. Such were the
beginnings of what can be called a policy of insubordination
in which Canaris played an important part. But in 1936, if his
hand was seen in the peninsula at all, it was for the British the
hand of a dangerous enemy* a man who was encouraging
Adolf Hitler into foreign adventures.

CHAPTER IV

THE RUSSIAN KNOT

OANARXS HELD THEIR careers in his hand, the

industrious, obedient General Staff and Abwehr who

sat stiffly round the at the Tlrpltzufer for his daily

conferences. They called "Excellency", and when he

laid a cigar on the table a dozen cigar cutters sprang from their
pockets; he continued to on and then rapidly

pierced it with his own. He half raised the cigar to Ms and
the lucifers spluttered all round him. He laid it down agaia and
went off into deep for minutes together until their

attentiveness off, and then he was lighting Ms cigar in a

twinkling before one of them could forward. That was

a trait of his character, exacting s independent, and

yet he inspired them. The of the Fuehrer and his auto

maton marshals and grand admirals faded out of the minds of
Germans, but among those who worked under Admiral Canaris
I had the strong feeling that they were still living in the past with
their chief, obeying, quarrelling, doubting, and loyal despite
everything. He disliked flattery, worked without ceasing, was
abstemious and usually drank no more than a glass of red
wine and water in the evening.

One of Ms many peculiarities was Ms demonstrative fond-
for his rough-haired dachshunds. When he travelled they
often went with Mm and on a second bed beside his own.
He was a lover of horses, who rode regularly and well. In
contrast to him* Hitler was never known to mount a horse or
even travel with outrideis. A few wolf-like Alsatian dogs
prowled in his Berchtesgaden domain. He, too* was mistrustful,
but he was harsh and suffering, whereas Canaris

was continually busy in act of compassion. One of Ms

many nicknames, behind Ms back, was Vaier &r

or father of the persecuted.

Yet despite their there was some sympathy

58

THE RUSSIAN KNOT 39

between Fuehrer and Intelligence Chief In the early days of
office.

" He is reasonable and sees your point of view, if you point
It out to him properly,** Canaris repeated to his adjutant.
* Af@n mil ihm redm. 39

It was one of the silent obsessions of Hitler that his Army had
never abandoned the policy of secret understanding with the
Russian Army that had prevailed in the Weimar republic.
Although he had denounced the secret training treaty of 1926
and argued his views with the retired Chief of General Staff,
General von Seeckt, he was still not satisfied that illicit contacts
did not exist. The two biggest armies in the world had been
forcibly separated and arranged in opposite camps by Adolf
Hitler. He and his internal system of tyranny thrived on the
military tension between these two nations. Stalin, to judge by
his subsequent behaviour, would have been willing enough to
continue a policy of understanding and prolong the 1926
military agreement.

Suppose, then, that the German and Russian generals
ever met each other secretly and complained: "We soldiers
understand each other it is these two political systems
Bolshevism and National Socialism that make our people
enemies; if the regimes were destroyed the people would have
peace.**

TMs thought must have kept Hitler awake at nights. It will
also have occurred to Stalin. So we come to the year 1936 in
which Hitler resolved to have the unconditional obedience of
the German Army.

Stalin was equally dissatisfied with some of his own generals.
Marshal Tuchachewski, deputy chief of the Cbmmissariat of
Defence, had represented Russia at the funeral of King George
V in February 1936, and subsequently he and General Putna,
the Russian military attache" in London, had secretly met
emissaries of General Miller and the White Russian emigres of
Paris. This much Stalin knew from his own spies. On his way
back to Moscow 5 Tuchachewski had stopped in Berlin for talks
with his military attache, and there a German Communist
agent named Blimiel had managed to slip into a small private
meeting between the Marshal and some of the Russian
emigres in Germany. Blimiel reported the meeting to the Soviet
Embassy in Berlin next morning. So when Tuchachewski

4-O CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

arrived back In Moscow he walked into the shadow of
suspicion. 1

He was to have returned to London in May to the coronation
of King George VI, but it was announced that the Marshal had
a chill and would not go to London. He was transferred from
the Commissariat for Defence to the Volga command,
kept under secret observation for some months, and then
arrested.

In the latter half of 1936 Heydrich went to the Tirpitzufer
to ask Ganaris for facsimiles of the expired German-Russian
military training agreement with the signatures of the generals
who had signed it, Tuchachewshi, Seeckt and Hammers tein.
He asked, besides, for the loan of handwriting experts who would
be able to forge these signatures, and. he declared that the
Fuehrer had given him charge of a most secret operation for
which this material was required. It was intended to plant false
information on the Russians. According to Abshagen, Canaris
was on the defensive and tried to find out more about the opera
tion. The Gestapo was touching delicate subjects that were
outside its scope. He refused Abwehr co-operation, and there
was an angry dispute with Heydrich.

On June I2th, 1937, it was announced in Moscow that
Marshal Tuchachewski and seven other Russian generals had
been shot for acts of high treason and espionage for a foreign
state. The blood purge of the Russian officer corps followed and
continued for the rest of 1937, thousands of suspect Russian
officers perishing, many of them innocent. General Beck,
writing an appreciation of the general military situation in
the summer of 1938, gave it as his opinion that the Russian
Army was not a factor to be reckoned with at that moment and
that the blood purge had left it temporarily without morale, an
inert machine*

Heydrich came back to the Tirpitzufer and related with
gloating satisfaction that he found other means of forging secret
correspondence between the German Army leaders and Mar
shal Tuchachewski that indicated intentions to overthrow the
Soviet regime. He claimed that this was the idea of Hitler,
that it had been planted first on the Czechoslovak General Staif
and sent from Prague to Moscow. It was this ruse that had set

1 1 have the story of Blimiel from a German professor who shared his prison cell.
My own attempts to trace Blimiel in Berlin have been without result.

THE RUSSIAN KNOT 4!

the corpses rolling^ he said, and the Russian Army would be
exhausted by this blood-letting for years ahead.

It will probably never be known what these to

tip the against Tuchachewski. The have

related in articles by Abwehr officers in the German and

in the book I Chose the In several versions it Is

that the papers were first passed to the Czechoslovak General
Staff and President Benes is said to have been deceived by
and to have approved forwarding them to Stalin.

Hitler and Heydrich convinced themselves that some truth
lay behind the forgery they had planted. On March 22nd, 19373
Heydiich arrested one of General von Seeckt*s friends,, Ernst
NieMsch, who had helped to negotiate the 1926 training agree
ment. Niekisch was a friend of the Russian journalist,, Karl
Radek, who had fallen from, favour with Stalin^ confessed
deviation and been sentenced. Heydrich arrested nineteen
other persons with Niekisch, some of whom had worked for
the Army in liaison work with Russia.

Heydrich was bent on discovering whether the General Staff
and the Abwehr still had forbidden contacts with the
General Staff. The investigation and the trial lasted till Novem
ber 1938. One of Canaris's own agents was involved, and .the
Admiral sat In the court to hear him, give evidence. When
particular hearing was finished and the Gestapo learned nothing
against him, Canaris walked forward in court, demonstratively
shook his witness by the hand and asked him to let the office
have a note of his expenses. This unusual example of civil
courage was related to me years afterwards by Abwehr officers
on whom it made a deep impression at the time. Canaris knew
which were the moments when it was right to show some
bravado. He had a solicitous care for Ms own people. Just
before the trial began one of his confidence men fV-men) passed
a report to the British press 1 with the comment that death sen
tences might be expected. This had some effect, as Niekisch
me afterwards. The President of the third senate of the Peoples*
Court thundered at the accused; **The foreign press has fore
cast death sentences, lying again as usual. The court will
sentences of imprisonment only.**

Hie Gestapo attempts to -discover a secret army policy were
carried on in camera and neither side invited any publicity

2 CHIEF OF IHTELI-I0ENCE

to this of It was a of the

of the 1 to the

of the of Abwetir

the I at the as a con-

i on the my

flat In

i away It only

off by the out of

a a lived

to me led the my

in

I In 1946, a portly,

In University, still pur-

his on with

in 1945 years

In lie to sit to Blimiel,

the Tuchachewski.

the for a

oa the 1st a factory.

He it X-ray in

a Two of tie

to the la to

His he "to use it as

a it lying on

bis well. He with a life

for Heydrich and

no Army.

lie to of the

it them

act ia a They therefore

a 'he live for long

-a of by perjured evi

dence von Fritsch,

key

la War who had

an a of reputa-

on February 4th, 1938,
of of its Important

THE RUSSIAN KNOT 43

functions that passed to a new High Command under the direct
control of Hitler.

"This was the time," nodded Richard Protzc, e when Canaris
began to turn from Hitler, He must have known more us

all about the extraordinary accusations of homosexuality that
Heydrich concocted against the Ck>mmander~in-Chief. It is well
known that Heydrich schooled a delinquent named Schmidt
to swear that he had had perverse relations with General
von Fritsch, whereas the other party to Schmidt was in fact a
Captain von Frisch, The Admiral set me the difficult at an
hour's notice of taking a photograph of this Captain von Fiisch
being spirited away from his home by S.S. men who were
of the true version of the affair becoming known. 1 managed to
get that photograph without knowledge of the S.S. and it was
produced in court by the defence. The case collapsed^ but Hitler
never reinstated Fritsch. The S.S. murdered Schmidt and most
probably Frisch s too. If you have to mark any one event as the
crisis of loyalty between Canaris and Hitler, that is it/*

The Fuehrer spoke what was in his mind in getting rid of
General von Fritsch during a visit of inspection to a military
parade at Gross Born in the summer of 1938. "I, too, would not
recoil from destroying ten thousand officers," he told his lis
teners, in reference to the Russian purges, "if they opposed
themselves to my will. What is that in a nation of eighty mil
lions? I do not want men of intelligence. 1 want men of brutal
ity." 1

This was all a little too much for the Admiral, who stood in
the midst of these affalrs s a target for maMce and suspicion. He
had thought Mmself a master of secret weapons and the Great
General Staff a force that could outride a period of national
revolution. But now he saw from the Moscow trials and
Berlin intrigue that generals in the twentieth century were no
more than puppets in uniform, helpless in face of the modem
state and its apparatus of perverted justice and police rule.
Early in 1 939 the last restraint fell from Hitler and he began to
form the S.S. into military divisions and equip them with the fell
scale of army weapons, so that he finally achieved his ambition
of a well-equipped private army.

The General Staff selected several officers to work out the
organisation and supply of these new formations, which was

1 Contemporary report made to General Ostar.

44 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

Even so s no clear

for the to for

SS., the

that (or S.S. Army)

its In the be the rest. the

S.S. on it to

for an

S.S. In the Security

or S.D., Its trade.

S.D. at regular

Army Party kept

Spain and
to the In 1945, of Department III

In the 1934-8. He the

to the an character.

In his for work, lie

a of other

la Bar, where they

on the Baoiler, a

or sat into the

at of Abwehr. 1 whether

the attaches

In red but tie in

tic his were burrowing

the of conBter-cspionage.

CHAPTER V

OPERATION OTTO

HITLER HAD CASUALLY remarked in the course of a
conference held secretly on November 5th, 1937, that he
intended to go to war sooner or later. The papers of Genera!
Beck, present as Chief of General Staff, give some account of
meeting. Hitler then said that after 1 943 he would no longer
have superiority in weapons. Lord Halifax^ the Lord President^
out to Berlin and Berchtesgaden at this time. The open
pretext given for his visit was the hunting exhibition
by Reich Huntsmaster Goering in Berlin^ but Halifax was really
taking up the enquiries made previously of Hitler by Sir John
Simon and Mr. Eden in 1936. Was an understanding between
Britain and Germany possible? Hitler assured Lord
that Germany intended to obtain a revision of her frontiers by
peaceful means. He and Gk>ering both declared that Austria
and Germany could be united without a war, and the diffi
dent and fair-minded Halifax admitted the force of their
argument that it would be difficult in that case for the Western
Allies to intervene. The American roving Ambassador, William
Buliitt, was also in Berlin in November 1937, saw Goering,
and wrote In a memorandum to the State Department; ** I
Goering if he meant that Germany was absolutely determined
to annex Austria to the Reich. He replied that this was an
absolute determination of the German Government. He was not
pressing the matter because of certain momentary
considerations, notably relations with Italy. A union of Austria*,
Hungary and Czechoslovakia would be absolutely unacceptable
to Germany such an agreement would be an immediate
belli" It -was plain that what the Nazis most a

restoration of the Habsburg Monarchy.

Abshagen notes that in the winter of i37~8 a secret
metamorphosis was taking place in Admiral Caaaris. He was in
a better position than any to know what terrible conflicts lay

45

46 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

for if in Ms of war. His

I,

on It but

of far Germany com

manded.

the that

the Sir achieve a

in an

to Fascists.

"We as a Joke,"

opinion.

the Chief of the Staff, was

at the of Austria. It would not

it In a line, a south.-

la of races,

of Bulgarians,

a Turkey*

In Ms service

a of

all of He did not the on

be he to him,

la as be to prevent

oat It at that I

my heard

Ms

Ms CMef of the Central

a in Ms

An of the old handsome,

the of the National-

lie all for the iron hot;

but the a Gradually Ms

even
von to

3no in the

a lay Ms criticisms

of the of Hie

oa over the of

the High

Ms (known

as tic O.K.W.), he as Com-

the direct

OPERATION OTTO 47

chief of Admiral Ganaris. Canaris must report to this big 5 stolid

who was terribly ignorant of the world. The O.K.W.
over prime responsibility for interpreting intelligence, plan-
and directing operations, for strategy and for higher com
mand. The General Staff was to organise, train and
the Army. Canaris now his reports to the O.K.W.

The next task that fell to Mm was to prepare plans lor
intimidation of Austria. Both Bullitt and Halifax had so

negative in their reactions to German aims that Hitler
Anschluss as a perfectly and reasonable operation.

The diary of General Jodl 3 the deputy chief of High
Commands relates this phrase of the inteligence game. Jodl
declared in Nuremberg that he supplied the Admiral with full
information on German military dispositions in February 1938,
so that he could prepare a deception plan for "Case Otto",

The Reich Government had realised the adverse effect on
morale in the Army and on world opinion if German troops
were mobilised or moved to the Austrian frontier. Hitler decided
to feint instead.

Jodl wrote in his diary on February 1 2th :

"On the evening of nth and on isth February, General
Keitel with General von Reichenaii and Air General Sperrle at
the Obersalzberg. Schuschnigg together with Guido Schmidt
are being put under heaviest political and military pressure.
At 23.00 hours Schuschnigg signs protocol.

"i3th February: In the afternoon General K. (Keitel)
Admiral d (Ganaris) and myself to come to his apartment.
He tells us that the Fuehrer's order is to the effect that military
pressure, by shamming military action,, should be kept up until
the i th. Proposals for these deceptive manoeuvres are drafted
and submitted to the Fuehrer by telephone for approval.

** 1 4th February : At 2.40 o'clock the agreement of the Fuehrer
arrives. Ganaris went to Munich to Abwehr Office VII and
initiated the different measures.

"The effect is rapid and strong. In Austria the is

created that Germany is undertaking serious military prepara
tions."

A document submitted by General Keitel, who himself
part in the deception scheme at Berchtesgaden, rattling off
fictitious troop movements to the Austrian statesmen, shows
these proposals of Canaris as approved by the Fuehrer,

4|3 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

li) To no in the Army or

No or

(2) To which may give

of Austria:

!a) V-men ( or agents) ;

(4) at frontier;
ff)

(3; be

(0} In of VII Army Corps;

(4) is In Munich, Augsburg

(ff) Muff, military attach^

in Vienna, is to for

to fee true);

{ J) OB frontier;

(<e)

in Bcrchtes-

of

me was not

by these

by of the Abwehr.

of the Berchtes-

Ms the National-

In They wear

of Ms not

the to his

to to it to Ms

in
at It to the

by a as to

it blood-

be warned

by a Union or a

of OB March

a on of Independ
ence,

OPERATION OTTO 49

"The plebiscite a majority for

Monarchists/' noted Jodi In Ms diary. "The Is

mined not to tolerate it*"

Hitler called together Ms military and the

march into Austria for the day of the He to

the news to Mussolini and told Rlbbentrop to in

London, where he sat firmly on the in No. 10 Downing

Street on the afternoon of the invasion Ms

everything would be all right.

On March loth General Keitel Admiral of the

decisions taken. There was now no for a deception

to intimidate the Austrians. The troops were concentrated,
the rolling-stock really rolled, the police were reinforced.
But now the Austrian Government was inclined not to
their own intelligence reports. Schuschnigg thooght the

game of bluff was still being played, until it too to

mobilise the Austrian Army.

Ganaris was in Vienna soon after the first German
to see what intelligence targets Ms men had captured. There
were the files of the Austrian Intelligence Service to be
He had a special detachment out known as Force ZL, to lay
hands on any documents relating to himself before
Nazis or the Reich S.S. should get them. One captured target
he surveyed with satisfaction, Colonel Erwin Lahousen, the
Austrian Chief of Intelligence, now became his
property. The Abwehr promptly swallowed the Austrian
Intelligence Service.

The Admiral, short of stature, looked up at the tall
when he reported to Mm, and asked with a mysterious frown:

"Why did you not shoot? You Austrians are to for

everything."

Lahousen was a product of the Austrian Imperial Army.
Obedience had become Ms second nature. Two men the

Reich were busy drawing others into their service,
Himmler gathered the many Austrian brownshizts,
carefully took his pick of the others. Lahousen served
devotion to the end, and when they first discussed of

Austrian intelligence officers for service in the Reich the Admiral
fixed Lahousen with his keen eye and said softly:

"Bring me real Austrians. I don't want any Austrian
Nazis."

50 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

Having of Ms

set to the Czechoslovak

set It

"1 my behaviour/* lie

me as we sat a of

In "1 I an of

I Czechs

as

Tills la Admiral's

of Ms is

He me in favour of a

of on the of an

He

his and tie

to the having

to be In by in February,, them

selves in March

a

to or the

of Service returned

10

CHAPTER VI

THE CONSPIRACIES BEGIN

EVERYTHING HAD GOME, down before Hitler Ms

party: they were nearly as powerful In Germany as
Communist Party in Russia- There was nothing that
coulci do but watch for some new means of curbing his
without revealing his own hand too far. So his regular service
life went on undisturbed with a seven-day week in the office,
a ride every morning in the Tiergarten Park s a small dinner
party now and then in his new viHa in the Dianastrasse that
rarely exceeded two guests. During his working hours he and his
deputy^ Hans Oster, kept in touch with a small number of
remarkable people, some of whom were taken into Ms
tion as soon as war broke out. Meanwhile lie was to

keep a meticulous diary of the events of Ms official life, in
his own hand and then dictated to Ms secretary and in

two copies, one of which he kept himself, while the other
put in the safe within the department.

The National-Socialist system discouraged and forbade the
free exchange of information between government officials.
There was certain strictly organised Eaison such as Heydrich
maintained with Canaris in Gestapo policy matters the

Foreign Intelligence branch 1 maintained with the Foreign
Ministry. Apart from that, Baron von WeiszScker^ the
Permanent Under-Secretary of State in the Foreign Ministry,
kept Canaris stealthily informed of events and political under
currents in the Wilhelmstrasse. The Admiral could
out what was going on in the Reich Chancellery. Colonel
Sehmundt, Hitler's Senior Adjutant after the of

Colonel Hossbach, was in contact with Canaris. A suave^
discreet, obedient soldier, he could tdl of visitors,
and intrigues, though not always able to report these events
quickly. I remember in 1938 hearing of some intimate
1 Of the Abwdar.

5 2 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

of in the the Abwehr

la the way a of the

Leader Arthur

an old

the to the It.

Then the no position, bet

by of and

working in the

The
of was Dr* Lord Mayor

had to

by as Ms He an

of in but his of

a In the fel out

of was tic

of a of

in his

was an lawyer

known as for

Joseph liis in the

of the with

in a lawyer, contacts with

the a Rclclisgericlitsrat,

or K.C., in out the complications

of the

the wide

the

the of Ewald von

of the faction, 1

It an in

of of

the very with

the of

liis ;

by his

of He

Is but he the Nazi at

his to

1 A

THE CONSPIRACIES BEGIN 53

Gestapo Security Service In tried to pick up his trail

watch his activities. This a man with whom

achieve something, but one to have In
often.

Another German Conservative, a younger man s
von Schlabrendorff, was in confidence of Canaris
up contacts for Mm with Prussian Conservatives. He
saw Hans Giscvius, political contact man to Dr. Schacht,
whom occasionally lie met personally. There came and went
a of others whose minds the Admiral to

he revealed Ms own in an infinity of degrees, according to
idea of their politics and their discretion. Even among them
selves Ms collaborators had no idea of the several to which
lie was putting them; but the broad lines of their action
discussed in smaH conferences at the Tirpitzufer, when ordinary
service work permitted.

"Don't forget!** His peculiar soft manner of speech
mimicked to me by SchlabrendorfF, who described how the
Admiral would drop his voice to a whisper when the con
versations with his close intimates were oven "We

treason only discussed the safety of the Reich."

Logically Canaris and his confederates cast for

new force against Hitler. The Civil Service had succumbed,
Army had made its peace in 1934, when a promise was
from Hitler not to arm the Brownshirts; the Protestant
Roman Catholic Churches had been squeezed out of public
life; German industry had capitulated and German
had been dominated by Nazi economists.

"Foreign allies world opinion' the governments, of
powers as Great Britain and America, must come to of

Germany if war was to be avoided,* 9

Such were the views that I heard with some
dining lengthy discussions in Berlin with, two of the German
Old-Conservative Party in the spring of 1938* Ewald
Kleist and Herbert von Bismarck; they represented
Junker opinion, which has sometimes been wrongly
with the aims of Hitler. We met one April day in
Club in Berlin and there for the first time I heard in

a whisper the name of the man who was protecting them
furthering their efforts,

"Canaris!**

54 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

to me

to the

not as of Its as

the of discovery. The

In be

of a
of
the to me a

la

of Service

Hitler.

of Service

if not

They Service

as of Abwehr, as a of power

of
action*

is gave, I

as as I In

ai l Service.," he

"for for It

be to my as I I have

It They will to

In to we can break a

Your in registers. That

is It be to activities in

the It lias my the Secret

if it is a of money, let

me tell do not if have

the not to you to me

or to my of the Service."

50
It a of out with

to or

by the with

be of a nature,

let it be fee an

of

he be 10 to the his aici

of

THE CONSPIRACIES BEGIN 55

"Now we have come to the of Czechoslovakia,"

Admiral Kleist In May. "I not at all Great

Britain will not choose to if the Fuehrer

Czechoslovakia."

They that none of

The British were aloof 9 not to sound on a
question. It a difficult to in Its

Ribbentrop through Ms diplomatic party

ence was repeatedly for private of

Englishmen. "Would Britain to

from joining the Reich?" he inquired. But that

real that the General Staff wanted to put.

Ganaiis and Oster drew Kleist early in May 1938

told Mm of the actual state of secret policy, which he
to me a few hours later.

There to be no deception plan against Czechoslovakia,
no false rumour of troop movements and, above all, no
escapades on the frontiers by the Nazi Party. The
Command had explained to Hitler that with his
frontiers unfortified, in face of a French Army
nearly twice as strong as the German Army in
of 1938, no challenge by the Western Allies could be
in the near future.

"Hitler is vulnerable in the issue of Czechoslovakia,"
Oster. "If the Allies were to warn him against or

subversive action* he would be obliged to accept the warning and
desist, even if it were given only through diplomatic channels,"

Kleist pondered this interim situation. The Reich not

strong enough for war, yet could not recoil towards peace,
unless some impulse were given. What could bring a of

the pendulum? He fancied that he saw a way.

Ganaiis brought him to General Beck, and the Chief of
German General Staff confessed to Mm that he, too,
foreign allies to overcome Hitler. He spoke with
emphasis of the scholar and philosopher. It was evident
he was not growling for Immediate action against the Nazis,
and that he looked first to the Commandcr-in-GHef for a
decision. He would* however, act independently* he said, in
a certain situation of crisis.

"England must lend us a sea anchor," said the Admiral,
"if we are to ride out tMs storm."

sjQ CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

It a of fee Germany's

by of

be

He Ms bureaucratic

In He

the in com-

If for

to It all

He the of the

Navy la the ago.

by the up-

in the twenty
He

or to

I of for

for 1 I

In day made

to I to sec Sir George

of Embassy,

a of Ms

to be wholly in sympathy with, the

Ms Sir Xevile Henderson.,

I to Sir George my

lie lay. The

In by party among

vulnerable-

to yet any

fee of

at Ms if he to

by he

to Sir me a of

fee a for on what

I

a an

In third

of 10 near the

by the Motor Gax

of

4<t On else-

da Sir the

in "1 on the

THE CONSPIRACIES BEGIH 57

Under-Secretary, Baron von Weiz&cker, to

tell me whether any truth in stories. ni

Whitehall of temporary of

Hitler's position. It as if for a the British

German Intelligence Services were working with

to Hitler out. Weizssicker

the reports to British Ambassador^ but Lord Halifax in
London, with Vansittart at his elbow, that now

to Hitler hard* Warnings were

upon wire between London Berlin.

"I most of May 2ist at the Ministry of Foreign

Affairs protests/ 9 wrote Sir Nevile. It

Hitler had no intention even to cause civil disturbances in
Czechoslovakia in the second half of May 1938. He
momentary weakness of his own position too well. There may
have plans in preparation for dangerous action at a

later date. Certainly Hitler wanted Czechoslovakia, quickly
in 1938 and he did not want to have to mobilise to get it.
He may still have played with the idea of an internal revolution
in the Sudeten area as a means of gaining his The warn

ings of May 2 ist put an end to such fancies.

Immediately after Sir Nevilc Henderson's demarche
the angry denials of Hitler and KLeitel, the European
published reports that suggested that Hitler had been obliged
to "climb down". The effect on Mm was instantaneous.
The stories of Hitler rolling on the floor and biting the carpet
date from May aist, 1938. "England, I will never forget
this/* he cried in paroxysms of rage. But lie was not
inactive. He stirnmoeed his Commander-in-Chief, General
von Brauchitsch, on May 2 8th and gave orders for West
Wall of Germany to be built immediately and for increases in
the peacetime strength of the armed forces to be put
effect,

"A damned, disgraceful, awful show/* exclaimed Sir
Nevile Henderson to me privately of the diplomatic demarches
of May aist and the press reports that ensued. Upon reflection,
he described the effect in Ms memoirs as "unfortunate**.

Such are the facts that I was able to gather about the
memorable May aist, a minor setback for Hitler wHch
have started the swing of the pendulum against him. When he

1 He was, IB fact, imtmcted limn London to make these enquiries.

S CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

It over, he to his

Wiedemann, to to whether

Ms to

I for of
lay In

very to at warned

so "Remember have never

me Osier." Kielst

be it In Ills to bis

in lie could

be of his Implacable

I to as
we In a of Club In Berlin, from the

of Kleist's Ms

1 do no the what my

HO of will

on It to me that

in Ms power

to one of

in Adolf Hi "s enemy.

CHAPTER VII

A GLIMPSE OF CANARIS

CANARIS WAS SOON Informed of the brainstorms in
Wilhdmstrasse and the determination of Hitler to have his
way over Czechoslovakia. He probed, listened and chatted
with chief, General Keitel, and went deeper Into the
ahead with Genera! von Brauchitsch, General Beck and
Under Secretary, von Weizsacker. Adjutant Schmundt helped
to complete the picture. It is customary for intelligence
services to try and place a man near the ruler, but the difficul
ties of ascertaining what Hitler thought and did should not be
underrated. Kleist came to Berlin from his Pomeranian home
soon after the turmoil had subsided and visited Canaris again.

"The situation has altered now/* Kleist told me. "There
will be an attack of some sort on Czechoslovakia year

unless Britain pledges herself openly to go to the aid of that
state whatever the form of aggression against her. M. Blum's
Foreign Minister, Yvon Delbos, spoke this word once
* quelconque * but M. Blum has been out of power since
April, We cannot expect the French to master this situation."

We waited a few weeks, but there was no further reaction
from the British and no fresh statement of policy in West
minster. The attitude remained that spoken by Mr. Neville
Chamberlain in the House of Commons on March 24th that
a conflict would be unlikely to be limited to those powers who
had treaty obligations to Czechoslovakia.

There was a German journalist in London, one Dr. Karl
Heinz Abshagen, 1 who was sending private reports to Oster
on the political situation* Oster showed them to the Admiral.
Abshagen asserted that the British would fight if a general
conflict arose over Czechoslovakia, but Ribbentxop
reporting that the Chamberlain government would on no
account fight and would even retrain France from a

firm stand.

1 Antiwar of tbe German biography of Ganar.
59

CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

Josef nervous. He reports

ills "Abshagen to report quite

or Ms with of

In tell to his

no for will be by Fuehrer In

to
life; tils at Ms

fee vanish,

-if the Third a over Czecho

slovakia-

In Branch. This

of General

the ^933.

''Do if we attack

" of

**! so," I by a at

the

"I it is true," "1 the British

fight." lie his "The

to to out. We

an to to a to give

them."

to be no Ms

Command to

for a in the autumn.

As we sat of attitude, in

the the Staff were already

oil of Case Grim, invasion

of

by in a was

to be as day. It now

its to prcpara-

not fal to be as staff

to civil

went on

10 by it played. One of Canaos*s

to news

be to

to put

news, anci

A GLIMPSE OF CANARIS 6l

it hard to digest. Colonel F. N. Mason Macfarlane

to by the Cabinet, Sir John Simon cross-

a cold August 1 5th

were no and not a of German

troop movements.

"It is difficult to explain to people that/* Colonel

Macfarlane complained afterwards^ "that what did not
happen yesterday may still occur a later."

The Cabinet was aE the more Inclined to
many rumours and to agree with Sir Nevile Henderson
it a matter of keeping calm and working for a

solution that might Indeed precede a general settlement
Germany. The ruse of the date had some effect.

General Ludwig Beck had another order of mind
Canaiis, A man with the forehead of a philosopher, thoughtful
eyes and wide, sagacious mouth that drew down at the comers
as Ms pessimism deepened, he knew by heart and quoted
Clausewitz and SchliefFen, but his desire for knowledge
beyond the military profession. He was at this time learning
English and reading the English historians. As senior officer
of the General StafF^ his military lectures sounded
like sermons, and moral and political of thought were

inextricable from his appreciations of the strategic situation.
Beck heard of a mission to London by Captain Wiedemann,
one of the Fuehrer's adjutants, who had been Hitler's
commander in the First World War. Hitler had sent Wiedemann
to sound Lord Halifax about Czechoslovakia and was
with the impressions that Wiedemann brought back.

Beck noted in his diary: "I think it is a dangerous error to
believe that Britain cannot wage a long war. The war
of Britain has always been long-term, because her lies

in the immeasurable resources of the Empire.**

"*I am convinced that Britain will decide to enter war
with France if Germany forces the Czech issue. She is forced
to stand by France through thick and thin. But if she it

will not be so much to succour Czechoslovakia as to
new 'Germany that has become a disturber of peace and a threat
to the principles of statesmanship recognised by the

'Law, Christianity, Tolerance V

Of Russia he wrote in cautious, weighing phrases in an
appreciation of the situation in the summer of 1938:

62 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

"The Army Is to a in its

by of Its of

Is to be we

by Air la of a

of la all be set very

In the

at a
to lie Ms Gronp 9 Army

not to the

for a In a Ms

at a of In

lie a In

It

of Ms part

a of Mm to a

of

In

of to

*'I to on my

I I a

set of If

he, do so at

it to in

his way-

a In the

of the

to' "the

Its here, the

If you
me

if we I an of

regime.**

lie as

fc *An to in event of

war.*'

a a of the

Its Ms

die the me on Ms

for he

for

A GLIMPSE OF CAHARIS 63

Canaris now as to how to get daagerotis

to London without apprehended cither by the

Gestapo, who to be an enemy of the regime, or by

the Service, who regard Mm

as a German spy. The situation was all more complicated

to protect him from the Gestapo, he would have to
throw himself on the mercy of the British.

Kleist for a passport. THs was a

in the Admiral delighted. He had an

attitude towards the passport system. Though now
senior, he still traveled himself with a variety of

had done so ever since he escaped from Chile in
First World War. A passport was prepared- perhaps two

and an of pound notes. Kleist walked over to the

Cavalry Club and discussed with me the precautions he
taking to conceal his journey.

"I don't want to be mistaken for a Nazi agent or for a spy,"
he explained with a twinkle in Ms keen grey eyes. "If the British
deported me, the German customs and currency control and
the Gestapo would discover that I had left Germany, and
Admiral would be compromised. I am known to be an enemy
of the regime, I would never get permission."

The Junkers 52 aircraft of the Hansa Airlines was
at Tempelhof Aerodrome on August 17th with the civilian
passengers checking through customs and currency control.
Each patient German traveller was sponsored by some Ministry
or official body, their allowances of foreign money approved
by the Reichsbank and stamped in their passports. There
were no bona fide tourists any more. It was a little like travel
from England after the war had been won. Each had to
an invitation from kind foreign friends who would bear his or
Jier expense abroad and each was noted in the Gestapo
registers as having foreign friends and being either or

suspect* or vouched for by a government department
interests abroad.

As the aircraft was filling up, a military car drove onto
runway without making any detour towards Customs
Passport Control. A German genera! in uniform alighted and
escorted a civilian to the air liner. There was no question of
interference by Customs and Police. The civilian* a small man
in a grey suit, was. evidently in considerable nervousness until

Ckf, C:HXEF OF INTELLIGENCE

off, In his a of

The over

of of An

of Hcrr von
a a

This

H. D. to a on

The a Kleist,

Ms Tempclliof to War

Ministry.

as Junkers aircraft
at of

Tbe in his

at Ms passport.

a call Informed

Service a visitor who

on

* A A is here***

"Thank we him.**

in 1938 Gzcclio-

as It to go a fell.

on Ms to Prague. London

not as as it In 1937. There were

in not to grouse.

at city, which with its

German
for

He not at the Lord

of to to in a
at

the of the Comer-

for his Lloyd,

by to reluctantly

by his his as an

to the of Sir Wilson

Sir no Kleist

a0 in French.

is Lloyd," Kleist.

**!*& arc is the

AH run

A GLIMPSE OF CANARIS 65

according to at the of September, no can

If Britain an warning to Heir Hitler."

He that it would be all more effective If

Jointly with France Russia.

Then he related the of power in Germany,

of the generals, impotence of the civil service,
of Brauchitsch, bewilderment fear of war

people, the tinpreparedness of forces, which

not be at the height of their of

J 943* If Great Britain took a firm positive with

France and Russia singled out Hitler for
in an open declaration^ there was hope that com

manding would arrest him if he persisted in his war

policy and make an end of the Nazi regime.

Lloyd, when their interview was ended ? went to Lord
Halifax^ and Kleist was gi\ r en an appointment to Sir

Robert Vansittart^ former Permanent Under-Secretary
then Foreign Adviser in the Foreign Office. They went over
same ground again. From "what 1 can gather Vanszttart
Kleist found much common ground for discussion, but
Vansittart was mistrustful. He suspected that German
out for something and might want to do a deal.

"Of all the Germans I saw," Lord Vansittart me
afterwards, ** Kleist had the stuff in him for a revolution
Hitler. But he wanted the Polish corridor, wanted to do a deal."
Kleist had sometimes emphasised to me that although Germany
had BO historical claims on Czechoslovaks a 5 revision of frontiers
with Poland was part of his policy. The brief reference to
Kleist and his mission in the British official documents
since the war do not suggest that any discussion of Poland
part of his mission in 1938, nor did he ever mention that to me.
Lord Vansittart's remarks did not to me to relate to

main problem.

Vansittart gave Kleist some hopes that Britain would
firm. That was his own policy. He promised a display of
and French naval strength in the Mediterranean that would
make Mussolini anxious to play the mediator's role, 1 He
enquired into the aims and ideas of the secret opposition that
Kleist represented. The Junker prosed for a declaration or
a letter to the Great Genera! Staff from the British Government.

1 Tfaw K^ggc*tiaB came to nothing.

88 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

to Manor,

lie by Mr*

of He could see

la lie was

in

in

his The

at of an to one

in of Germany; but Lord

to do so.

of as quietly as

he Two Government

in a It Sir

to to "the of

Europe"*

Mr. Sir Simon., Sir Robert

Sir Sir Ncvile

a away. Sir Nevile was

no In for

to lie a on

of the Hitler

to a at the of Nazi Party

at The to Sir John

to a at danger of the

of If it lie

no in Mr. Chamberlain

on

Ms at Club in on day

the 4i of

Europe", He as lie the

out the to me.

fee In the Tlrpltzufer fee

In the awaiting

his lie it.

"1 to he

The he a

" I la to

to a war,** Kleist. "I have

to a at any

Yet It to.

A GLIMPSE OF CANARIS 6j

They It is not under the British

to commit on a that not arisen."

He made Ms report and a few later he on

Admiral's a letter to Mr. Churchill

the visit to GhaxtwdL It that Great

well become involved in a war over Czechoslovakia,
and that one thing certain if were

by Germany* a war would laevitable 0r

in wMctt after a long and hard Germany be

utterly and terribly defeated. He, Kleist ?
words with. patriotic Germans as lie Jaad come to

One Englishman, at any rate* could in a

Germans understood.

Meanwhile Rlbbentrop was working on the
and Poles. How it would perplex the British if suddenly
Hungarian Government presented similar in

on behalf of its minority in Moravia! Canaris got wind
complications and was off to Budapest by air s
Admiral Hortihy, the regent, was an old friend of his.

"'Canaris used to visit me every time lie came to 1 Budapest/*
Admiral Horthy told me in 1950, in retirement in
"We were both naval officers and apart from our

was similar. He did not himself give me advice; but we
both agreed in 1939 that if America entered the war
Germany then Germany was finished."

Canaris and Ms companion, Colonel von Tippelskirch,
warned the Hungarian Government early in September 1938
that Germany might soon find herself at war with Britain if
Hitler persisted in Ms policy. Hungary should beware of
fetching the chestnuts out of the fire for Hitler. Having
put a spoke in Ribbentrop's policy, Canaris flew to

Berlin again perhaps to see what JLahousen be

to tell Mm about the Czechoslovak defences^ for it

was his private policy to prevent war, he was
with preparing it*

The Admiral was still pondering as to how lie would
best effect to the reports of KLleist when the Gestapo in
touch with Abwehr III, the Military Security Service.

fi * There has been somebody n London conducting
conversations. Find out who it is! We are already at work."

Kleist sat about the Casino Club thinking up an alibi. He

68 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

for the

the visit of to

*"You are to up enquiry," lie Mm.

41 I

be BO of He Is to

be You

Tfee to Geneva

la the of to see be to

He
oa

In Lord Halifax

did not at all. The

to of At

the In swing: brown-

the blared

the of Albredht

on
aa
to Nuremberg by

Tik into

by a on

be off If it to

by It courage.

He Runciman's solution.
He

London General
his to his deputy, General

of the had

Ms in a to his

at In the of he
to the by

to all the he

the if It to from
to to The Admiral
10 excit
able, by General von

of arrange-

to' as he
to the

1 has >tt to be

A GLIMPSE OF CANARIS 6

President of Berlin Police, was prepared to use his forces to
party leaders. General Hoeppner, in command of
Third Panzer Division of Berlin, would march on

at a from Witzleben. would go back to his

In "There can be no doubt of

of the plot at and of

to It effective/" wrote Mr. Churchill years later In The

An awful calm over

of the Did Hitler, HImmler

danger? The afternoon without Incident by

dinnertime Admiral Ganaiis knew why.

He at table with Colonel Lahousen, Plekcnbrock

Grosciirtli, when a came to him from War

Ministry. Mr. Chamberlain Intended to fly to Berchtesgaden
to a solution to the Czechoslovak sit nation.

JLafiousen remembers how the Admiral laid down his knife

fork. He had quite lost Ms appetite.

"What he visit that man!" He muttered the words
blankly at first as If he scarcely understood. Then lie
them to himself and got up from the table, about

room* He was utterly distracted and ate no more dinner. The
tension was broken, half the world was In loud relief by mid
night, and half was In deep gloom, and among who
in gloom was Hitler's Intelligence chief. The Admiral
himself to Ms heads of departments and went early to bed.
Had lie been mistaken In opening Ms hand to the British?
Perhaps he had scared them In London Into the
policy. Maybe they had not believed that Ms advice was any
thing more than mischief or deceit.

CHAFTKKL VIII

AND WAR

SOME OF THE

fcr so his on

to The Service

be to a said,

lie a his

as "the of the

Staff" by on That was.

of a bsief

Ms 25th

bis KIdst

of Hitler. It as if tad

aH

* 6 Tlic is yet over; we no solution," Canaiis

out. any a solution

at no of a revolt,

to hear from the

von Witzleben, the

of he be answerable for

if Mr. found a

to the went

to his in There

to be no to of Hitler.

to the
oa Ms to :

be a the is lucky."

a the did not to be able

to be It. visited

in out a of the

for the to approve

to at work

oa

**Bo not sec you will be too to your

BETWEEN PEACE ANB WAR 71

if you do not now?" was of Ms

in Budapest.

By Chamberlain In Bad with

by Ms Cabinet France, Hitler
in a barely to be to

**I awfully sorry, but that's no more use," he

Chamberlain plan, so Nevile
The subtle restraint that Canaiis put Hungar-

clown. They the Poles

of their upon narrow of Czecho

slovakia.

Down the Rhine Valley the Hotel Petersberg where

Chamberlain and his sat oat two September after-

German troop trains ran at the top of

with anti-aircraft defences mounted on platforms

at front and rear of each train. The S.S. on terrace,
provided by Hitler as a bodyguard for Chamberlain,
sprawled in the autumn sunshine maudlin

When on duty their exaggerated of security conveyed no

of politeness and hampered the delegation. Across
Rhine at the Hotel Dreesen, Hitler dictated a
answer to Chamberlain's letter of the 2^rd
Reich Chancellor was willing to abide by his intention to
an orderly settlement. The translator^ Schmidt, letter

and., as the hours lapsed, Hitler made a remark to his Chief of
Staff of Storm Troopers, Viktor ILfltze, which 1 heard
at the time and have seen nowhere else on record. He glanced
at his watch, it was four p.m. on the 23rd.

"I know Mr, Chamberlain/* he said. "He will give way. If
he has not sent me an ultimatum by six o'clock, affair

is won and he will get nothing at all."

Sir Horace Wilson and Sir Nevile Henderson by

ferry at 5.40 p.m. and prepared a second conference at 10.30
p.m., which drew up proposals for dismembering Czecho
slovakia. Chamberlain agreed to forward them to President
Benes, but said lie could not recommend him to accept
Then there was a desultory parting. Goeiing's Research
Office had recorded telephone conversations between
Godesberg and London and Paris and Prague that em
boldened Hitler still forther when reported to him. He
Ms ranting speech in die Berlin Sport Palace on September

~2 CHIEF OF

I Ms was

blank by the cnsis^That

the a

for the

" fe lf In of ail a is

the be France

be to to Great

by ..."

It the Home

to be ail the

had but still raved

the an Ms

on of

to
of this crisis? He has

la on the Czecit the

on the War

In the Minister, Count

to the on

1938 the given Great

tils of neutrality in the

of a conflict. There a

to Hitler,, to Intern

In 1 that uncertainty

as far as to prevent war at that

moment*

of a of for

He by the Kleist

of a in the

I the of

at as

0a to the

IB

of of

1 do not left Franco

in the ke left or lie

10 a

to say In of Ms reports

he la

to be a as she was.

It of Mr.

BETWEEN PEACE ANJD WAR 73

to Great out of a war In 1938 whatever

argument will go on for years to come.

When the Munich Parliament

set the was an

revelation.

Lord Lloyd, In the Government,

by the of Lord they not

them.

"I am sorry my friend, the Secretary of State for

Foreign Affairs, is not in his at moment,** lie

"but he that I to inform him In very

early of August of whole German plan worked

out to actual day. He knows where that counsel

from that advice from that source

should be an immediate declaration of solidarity with France
and Russia/*

Canaris might well have worried at the of

words; but he was already on his guard and words of

Lloyd did Mm no particular harm- He was, after all, a master

of embroidery and no doubt he pretended to ascribe Lloyd's

intelligence to his old enemies of the British Secret Service.

It was on October 5th, when the ink of the Munich
ment was barely dry, that EJbbeiitrop produced
He showed Hitler a report from London that Russia had
notified Britain and France on September 26th that did
wish to send armed forces to take part in a European war.
Within a short time I heard from one of Canaiis*s men that the
Fuehrer had raged that he was "surrounded by cowards
incompetents. Had I received this report at the time note
was sent I should never have invited Chamberlain to Munich
and by now we should be in the Balkans".

He had Keitd draw up a secret minute on October aist,
eleven days after the Munich settlement came into force,
enjoining the armed forces to be prepared for surprise air
attacks and to be ready to occupy Memel and the remainder
of Czechoslovakia at short notice.

For a time Admiral Canaris eschewed high politics so that
the dust might settle. No particular course of action pos
sible after the Munich conference. He had, besides, plenty to
do oi^anising Ms intelligence service for war. He was a
who, though he sometimes left Important work to his deputies

7 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

for at a

the very of and

of to

not Ms sole lay In

Ms to Hitler. "He was a

in and

so to me,

* 4 1 tell to and can repeat/"

lie the of

hU "Tapping is value," lie

a pile of of

the

on the
In the can ail day

"My not In observation,"

"As a of the Re

search to his but It

of Ms the sets were to

the is no the a great

if for. The Gestapo

were

to."

In the walls of

of the the Embassy,

1 d0 of was overheard.

to of the British

la the of an to supper

but of up a lot of not

In the came out

the

the the their

It was a ait. the Foreign

aa to

a at the Then the

for a to be In to the

a aa over-zealous

la the Abwclir a

of a They

the of alL

BETWEEN PEACE AND WAR 75

Apart from Ms system of regular in diplomatic*

and commercial the Admiral a

network of V-men or confidence whose was to

transmit and strategic tactical information. He

to pay for the of deaf mutes, not, we

suppose^ because they were more trustworthy with
secrets, but of their peculiar for lip reading. A deaf

mute with a in his lap sitting at the

of a could bring Mm a pretty fair account of

diplomat had been his companion at dinner.

The German network in United Kingdom was
It directed from the German legation in Dublin,

Lisbon,, Oslo and Hamburg, but there was a possibility of dis
covering British secrets through certain of the
Dominion offices In London. Once in the period after Munich
he showed a visitor a copy of a confidential report to

London by the British Embassy in Berlin only a week previously.
It with the condition of the Reich railways

potential in time of war. He often seemed careless in con

versations and soon the British were apprised that
photographing government documents for the Germans*

"I am told that Canaris believed he had
British Secret Service/ 9 I told Richard Protee. The old man
nodded his white head. "Not everywhere, perhaps," he
answered, "but more than you would easily suppose. It
quite simple in some cases. We had military intelligence agree
ments with the Baltic states before the war. We had merely to
say: *and we want to place agents of ours inside the
inteiBgence offices in Kovno, Reval and Tallin/ Then in The
Hague during the early part of the war, I had a daily report of
events inside the British intelligence office from an
British agent. That kind of thing is quite usual."

Ganaris was somewhat hampered in improving his in

Britain by a directive from Hitler. The miitary in

London was under strict orders not to take part in covert
intelligence work, and General Geyr von Schweppenbuxg
us in Ms memoirs that he quarrelled on this very with

Ganaris who wanted Mm to do more for the Abwchr. To the
end of the war the number of German in

small, their iofonoation unreliable and of their

municatioiis under observation. The counterespionage work of

yfj CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

M.I*5 of a order, at the German service

by
on it. Its

on his they

to to reports, with visible

if was to Mm.

are me is of the interest," he

In Germany that

the the world outside.

The in into Russia, the office

in on Mediterranean conn-

France, Hamburg with the British
Scandinavia,

It Canaiis fancied six

of lor Ms system Madrid.,

These were worth

up as a it unlikely

of be by and that

would continue to pass
go. He added to their

Vatican, a status^ Its own

all world. He listed as short

Warsaw, Sofia, Bucharest, The Hague.,

Paris, be or overrun when Germany

war, be of no further use to him and

a of Although he considered

for an system, he never-

in for rapid tactical

in of In Poland and

was made in 1939

In he picked men care-

intelligentsia. It
to be by the

lie to be in quarter

for al though

if to Gestapo Security

by 1943, of whom eight
its for that year

to or 2,600,000.

BETWEEN PEACE AND WAR 77

!\eanwhile the British were recruiting their
reserve from much the social strata men, gentle-

of leisure, bankers, stockbrokers, dons, and they

mysterious reconnaissances of large English country
where they would be able to work undisturbed by
The Germans had enough for same purpose. There

was to be in both camps overlapping and Jealousy In

of responsibility between intelligence officers, "cloak
and men", other At

rivalries between the feudal in England

so hot that they to be in Wars of the with

at odds rather than fighting the Second World War.
General Lahousen, the survivor of the other side 3

rivalries were intense within the German camp, too,
quite apart from the perpetual feed with the Gestapo.

So these two vast intelligence services with their rival
and their unlimited funds set about burrowing and counter
mining, even before the war had started. It was not to prove a
healthy occupation for sonae 3 and it often happened that
who took part in it came away with warped minds, as a

handicap in settling down in an ordinary as

of a limb- The game, while it lasted, outdid
has "been "written in fiction.

"Nothing that you have read in novels can be compared with
the real thing," a British diplomat from Ankara after

wards. "I am sure that the Germans had at least one in

each of our embassies during the wax and I daresay we had
in all theirs.* 9

CHAPTER IX

MOBILISATION

IK AGUE In March 1939 and

In or

of at As the German

lie In with

his to sec

be. He his as they went: "My

the They'll won*t

they?" But the the their

Then occupied

Ac the concern

of of these

to its of the

to on

a

it It be

Now policy of friend

ship the set against

the Minister, that

he in pay, action. Chamber-

March 3ist onwards until
the of remained in un-

by it now to a

to He Ostcr saw and

he on a but the

no it.

we to he "I'm not to

So a Bohm-Tettelbach was

in Ms to the these

He was a cultured

but less of Ms He

on Sir service and met

7

THE GREAT MOBILISATION 7

for
Great by Poland, and

she would, but of

Bofam-Tctfelbach. lie

to conclude an

In Moscow on. Was It to be

commit of for If

Germany two military In

world, to her? Ikihm-Tettelbacli

to Germany without anything. When

Army Into Germany in 1945 it

In the ruins round Dusseldorf Colonel Bohm-Tettelbach
who disconsolately related to an incredulous British Major of

Public Relations General Haider

ready to Hitler in August 1939 if lie

British were in earnest.

Such the diversity of German

that whereas nobody doubted in England any we

would fight if Poland was attacked, nobody in
Government believed it entirely aad hardly anybody

the friends of Britain In Germany s felt of

British attitude. Now the of Canaris right,

when he discovered that mobilisation finally
August aGtfa as zero day, he insisted in his reports to High
Command that this time Great Britain would certainly
The generals objected that he had been very far wrong
the Munich crisis; nevertheless he held firmly to Ms
it seemed early in August as if he might be right if
British would ratify their Polish guarantee come to

understanding with Russia then peace might be saved.

The Czechoslovak crisis had taught him that it
to sound the British on secrets and at to differ.

I am inclined to ascribe to Mm or Ms deputy Ostcr two com
munications that were made to the British Intelligence
in the second half of June 1959 that Ribbentrop
negotiating for a pact with Russia that Hitler

attack Poland soon after August 26th. I have to

with one of the German visitors who carried
was interested to hear Mm admit that he had been a
of Gaxtaris. Baron Weizsacker, involved ia very negotia

tions with Russia, also managed to send through Erich Kordt,

80 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

In a to

Sir Vazisittart. This the of

by the Allies. The
to a

he, too ? to with no

The of

1 5th, lie go

to to on

a Germany would

a of other-

but In

did not to Russia

He

In for the Nobody

say in the of for what

In be

in of con-

They a Germany in

of on there

be no for Count Glano con-

to to for Germany In June to

did he but know
It, an for Hitler,

second

In he to In fact the

it Canaris hap-

to be at on decided

to sec The Minister

at a of the naval

be in The Italians

in a lie the

to Navy.

of to Admiral

but he

to Ms as away Castle

Fuschl:

the Mg in the you and I

see the the

THE GREAT MOBILISATION 8l

A later, in pact was not

yet and be in

days), he had a
and saw that the
was less of his this

man Ms up-

bearing, of all

^ this in his diary the lost

diary for the

in By the entry for August i7th, 1939, was

the copy by It

with Colonel-Genera! 17, VIII. 1939.

^ "I report to Keitel my conversation with Jost (an S.S.
Keitel that he cannot concern himself with operation 1

as the Fuehrer has not Informed Mm of It has only Mm to

procure for Heydrich. He that I was to

inform the General He says that he not of

operations^ but that there's nothing else for it, if the
orders them. It is not up to me* he says., to ask the Fuehrer lie

imagines such an operation is to be carried out."

Such was indeed the attitude of Keitel
plan to dress German convicts in Polish

units standing by) and drive them into on terri

tory so that it would appear the

struck the first blow.

Ganaris then reported to his chief that he from

General Roatta 1 of the unwillingness of Italy to be
into a war. The diary notes that Keitel replied "that he
it would be a good thing if Mussolini told the Fuehrer
clearly that he would not fight. He, Keitei, that

would fight all the same. I replied that I considered this

would be out of the question and related to Hm the full of
the Giano-Ribbentrop meeting. Keitei that the

told Mm the opposite. I told that Count

has learned that the King of Italy has to of

Spain that he will not sign if lays a

order before Mm. Keitel remarks that it was to see

1 Secret operation **Himarfar 9 *.
His old colleague as of the Italian

attach^ in Berlin.

Chief of the Abwefar Munich Office.

82 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

tliat even a by a be quite

temperamental It to war.

it must be it to ! He con

vinced the 1 try to

opinion, say the us

and
not be as we get oil Russia- I reply

is the we

a in The will us

all in if we use

if It to 1 tell the would

In the way if

we 1 try to to

of on Germany him

we which to back. I

we ten U-boats Into the

it be to to

oil to us is I Inform of the

by the In the tel

eventua
lity, too."

on the to the

lie on or after-

the the German-Soviet non-

The first would

Its by the the of the

be He them to

on his war

the to any

lie to on August

He by all to

the to the

The be the destruction of

the of her not merely the

of a of

"1 a for the war, never

It is or ask the victor

fee the truth."

So lie on, unobtru

sively in the his the way

THE 0RBAT MOBILISATION 83

"We not be afraid of a blockade. The East will supply

us with grain, cattle, coal, lead and zinc. It is a aim that
efforts. ... 1 am only Schwein-

will offer to mediate."

The foHowing day the Soviet-German

concluded and the Fuehrer jubilantly to Ms Foreign

Minister on the Moscow line, hailing him as a second Bismark;

on the British was not what he

of allowing the still unratificd guarantee to Poland to
they it on August 2th. Hitler then Goering

lie would postpone general mobilisation by a few
while Goering trial through a Swedish mediator^
Dahlerus, to dissuade Chamberlain from fulfilling

but it was obvious that whereas a day or two
welcome to the movements and transportation officers to bring
delayed dispositions into 3ine ? this terrible monster, a
mobilisation, could not be held back for long. Even
Mussolini sent Hitler a that Italy definitely could

enter the war Hitler was not discouraged.

He gave Ms final order on August 3ist, Himmler's convicts
in PoEsh uniform carried out their futile propaganda on

Gleiwitz radio station, were shot down and
photographed. German troops emerged from merchant
in Danzig where they had lain for a week under hatches
stormed the Westerplatte fort; the Panzer
Guderian had built penetrated the Polish corridor.

On September 2nd Sir Nevile Henderson delivered
British ultimatum through Ribbentrop. It declared
Britain and Germany would be at war next day unless Germany
suspended hostilities against Poland* The face of Goering
waddling in the antechamber fell when he heard this news. " It
was like a blow with a club to us soldiers of the First World
War," commented General JodI, the Deputy Chief of the
Command. What else did they expect?

Gamaris had meanwhile sent out to Stockholm the
through -whom he hoped to keep aBve his stealthy contacts
with die British; but Kleist sat about for a few days in the Park
Hotel and achieved nothing. I received a last letter from Mm,
Before the last threads snapped, the Abwehr attempted one
final' kindness to its old rivals of the Intelligence Service. A
junior officer was sent on September 2nd to warn the British

84 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

Daly, a daylight

for 1 1 a.m. day, A accord-

In to London, "1 am

no to us in matter," Daly

me war. "The to me

risks."

to Hitler

no military

by It ao to

It The of In

at 11.15 a.m., just Mr. Chamber

lain In of Commons. It

an French in

Government
tip war

The a lay

on ao Admiral

at Admiral,

to of Hitlers

of to of Germany

be a victory of be

still! He be

the war. 1

in lie Spanish

to to stop.
** Naturally," "Germany

to victory."

at all/* Canaris.

* X. H.

CHAPTER X

THE ADMIRAL HELPS A LADY

OUR FXJEHHER WAS the that

were All along the front from the Baltic

Polish Corridor, Posnan, Galicia,

fifty-six German divisions, led by all nine Panzer divisions, had
through thirty divisions of the Polish Army, which was
still only partially mobilised and too far forward to retreat in
order. The Luftwaffe of communication,

German minority in Poland, guided by Canaris's K.O.
or war organisation and Heydrich's Security Service,
supported the offensive with acts of sabotage. The Admiral
caught up with Hitler on September 12th when the Fuehrer's
special train lay at Ilnau in with Generals Keitel

Jodl and Joachim von Ribbentrop in attendance. The
divisions, such as had not been destroyed or
near the frontiers^ had fallen back into the valley of
Vistula round Warsaw, were encircled north of Lodz and at
Radom s or were being chased over the River San ? unpro

nounceable Przemysi towards Lemberg and the of

Rumania.

It was now a question of bombarding the capital or
siege to it. The Fuehrer was in a gloating, destructive
ordered the former. M. Molotov would inform M.

Gryzbowski, the Ambassador of Poland in Warsaw,
"Russia was moving forward to take into her protection
kindred peoples of Poland**, It evident Hitler

act quickly if he wished to achieve the glory of
destruction without the aid of Ms treaty partner.

Ganaris had come furnished with information on

movements of the French. Army wMch was probing German
defences in the Saar basin. If it went ill with Germany in
East and France could seize the Saar s German war
would suffer considerably.

85

86 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

Tlicre was a in the train, Caaaiis a

lanky ILatiousen with Mm, to

Rlbbentrop.

"Immediately we had catered," he In his diary^

"Foreign Minister von Ms to me

as to how the German-Polish be politically.

In In KeltcFs coach,

as

i : The of place,

In territory of
the Narev-Vbtula-San in of the Soviet Union.

2 ; The of arc an inde

pendent a Itself to the

Fuehrer, as he the

on the of In the

cast.

3 : The of are

(a) Is Vilna

(3) the

is to the Soviet Union).

"1 to In 3b for a revolution

by Melynyk's Ukraine Movement to

Jews In Ukraine, This movement

to be to Russian

Ukraine (Great Ukraine Movement)."

the of the in

"re-educating" the the S.S. wore

the nobffity,

on the of TMs was

the of a of to on the of
!ifc s> s as lie to

"1 I of

In the the clergy particu
larly to be The in the final
Ac for that
be

the

He it to the that

THE ABMIHAL HELPS A LADY 87

if Army not to charge^ the SJSL

over, A civil governor would be

for as well as military governor. The

be of racial extermination,"

Reading over Ms version of the day*s conference,

a in pencil; "Political

cleaning."

Ganaris that the bombardment of

would have a on German in world*

"Keitel that suclb were

by Fuehrer Marshal Goeiing. T3he Fuehrer

telephone conversations with Goeiing."

"Sometimes they keep me informed," Keitel explained, "but
always."

Then Hitler suddenly appeared in the coach and
news Ganaris brought from the Western Front.

"I answered that the information to hand indicated
French were assembling troops and artillery to a

systematic and methodical offensive in the Saarbracken I

had taken measures to inform Mm shortly of the locality
direction in which this offensive would be launched.

"*I can't imagine that the French will in Saar-

brficken area,' remarked Hitler. * Our defences arc
there with A-fortifications and the French, will a

and third line of prepared positions, if anything still
than the first. I consider the Bleu forest and the Palatinate
forest as our weakest spots. Although the other side object
it is useless to attack in a wooded area, I think otherwise.

""They may risk an adventure by crossing the Rhine,
although we are prepared there, too. I do not consider an
attack through Holland and Belgium to be likely. It would be
a breach of neutrality. In any case, time is required they

can launch a big offensive against the West Wall. 1

"Keitel and Jodl agree with the Fuehrer. Jodl
France will need at least three or four weeks for artillery pre
parations before aa offensive can, be made on a large so
that an attack could not take place before October*

"*Ye% and October is pretty cold/ continued Hitler. 8 Our
men wiH be in protected concrete works, wMle the French
He in the open and attack. But even if the Frenchmen could
reach one of the weakest spots in the West Wall, we will be

83 CHIEF OF INTEL LICENCE

to up In will in

a tie

"'Therefore Is all

1 it, It is so we

be "

If we

at the of Hitler's it a

in of

as a by in

They no The

for an Ukraine on of

3 in

Wehrznacht "no

Ukrainian people". These were of

by Moscow, if when

to on to Soviet-

of

fee on i

a no Ukraines.

at
solemnly to in

Then lie to HOT von Hassell 1

in Ms

by be in Then the Admiral

off to in a of his own to hear

to of more

1 by all Britain and

no

Ms I a an

the in "I

1 an to for you,*' lie "Would

to in ** We

to a in a

me to of

a eyes, who

for a a

to us us tea I

on

In fee

THE ADMIRAL HELPS A LADY g

"If I ask you not to mention my or to tcl!

that me, It is I do not tell this

story and to tell it and done

it. My I lived in the war. We

the we contact the

Germans. I of the German In

the of oar There Luftwaffe

too, I this Canaris,

he was a man, not hard-voiced Mkc of

the the in fact, soft-voiced friendly. Of

course, 1 no who he was, nor do 1 did

else.

"When the war broke out 1 was in South Poland my

near Lublin at the home of my family. The Ukrainians
plundered us stole my handbag which contained my

Identity card money. Soon afterwards we the

Russians were advancing, so I to my family that we

best go westwards towards the Germans rather than
we were and be killed. The first German officers we met
to know who we were* and when I claimed diplomatic im
munity they wanted me to give the of as
references. I mentioned the names of an army a
general of the Luftwaffe whom I had met in Berlin. Then 1
remembered the friendly little naval officer and added: "And
Admiral Canaris.'

"I noticed that the German officer found it hard to
his astonishment when I uttered name. His whole
bearing altered. He told me that he could not give me a
to go westwards, but he ordered a military vehicle to me

on its way to Posnan."

There Madame J found herself among a great many other
fizgitivcs awaiting identification, but she did not have to wait
long. One of the Admiral's staff officers singled her out
her to go with him to the railway coach.

" Gaa he not identify me here? " she proudly, not

ing to enter a German train.

"It will be difficult for him to to you

people."

When she had mounted the Admiral's coach It
gradually clear to her that he was in some high command
special powers. She had managed to keep her composure

^0 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

as In

of
The of in

"Our she "I

not

"Bo not the

"The Utey

by do

a of You

in be

of la

west."

He lie do to

to to in Warsaw.

Ms "1 go to

Warsaw," he

He to be for

lie at the lie

"Switzerland," lie is the place."

It a or so be for

J her Then by

to an far from Berne. Her

to Join, in Warsaw,

all would

be if forwarded their

to lie In on. In

aa the of Hitler's

"Eastern" for lie

lie Ms lie Ms

if to the

in

be

to In she

la as of Free

of
of
in

reacted,

to M J In

Switzerland.

THE ADMIRAL HELPS A LABY 1

"That's a well-known for an agent/* com-

a British* diplomat to whom I of

It of to lie

a of Els own. I unsiib-

In Spain use of Mata

In World War,

I Madame J

to draw Into work^

story.

"The never me to out for

Allies, he 1 in

my own countrymen in and s

with British.

"Not I had arrived In Switzerland he a

to Berne. That was in the winter of 1 939. He the oppor

tunity of to see whether we were he

could do anything for my parents. Once he of sending

his daughter to Switzerland as had

by the atmosphere of war in Germany. During his I

could be sure that S witzerland was not to be

next, so I asked him whether I should go on to France.

"No 9 not France^ that is an uncertain place."

I Mm whether he thought Italy was safe.

"'Italy, madam, yes, I think so, until the of

year s then Switzerland is better."

"I don't suppose you could call Admiral Canaris an indis
creet man or he would not have held that high in
Germany for so long. But lie could be very outspoken. He
me that winter of 1940 that Germany would certainly
war on her treaty partner Russia sooner or later. Next
he was in Berne again 5 and when I him
troop movements in the Balkans were aimed Turkey,
he simply replied, 'No,, Russia perhaps.* During the
of the Russian campaign he visited me that would
been in October 1941 and that the German front
run fast and bogged down in Russia and that it would
reach its objectives. But he was interesting lie
talking about the tension within German and the
that was gathering against Hitler* By then 1 was to
our conversations to the British only I don't it
could otherwise have remained secret as as it did."

Q2 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

"Do you lie of your

"There

but fee very All Ms

In the of

He me

aa in. When

he it of

At In me deeply

lie of I

times 1 tell to go the very

in But

the

undiscovered."

of

of J, 1

It to fit the of

la

"He to out the Allies

me," she for a while

"And you It too lie did not give

away military Germans will

tie a spy."

CHAPTER XI

THE DOUBLE DUTCHMAN

\'"HAT WAS THERE about flat Dutch

so perturbed Admiral Canaris? He had warned his

who were conspiring Hitler that they

venture Into Holland. "1 1 have

British Secret Service," he had said. "I might receive embar-
reports from that quarter."

"Not Holland!" the of Canaris to me In 1938

when we of possible meeting-places abroad ; but

not give more precise reasons for their anxiety. As
years have passed, the true grounds have become apparent*
Agents of all sorts came and went In the Lowlands, and
of them, in the late 'thirties slipped Into a
he could watch the activities of many others. This
Diitchman 9 Walbach.

A man was skulking In a quiet avenue of one of the
of The Hague one summer evening, glancing at a
Dutch villa set back from the road. He was the day

and stumped out of the shadows, hardly taking the precaution
to conceal himself. Two men inside the villa watched him
returned from time to time to the windows. He was always
there!

On the third day a man walked out of the viHa
up to the stranger.

"If you don't clear off I will fetch the police and you

with loitering S* s

"I have no particular wish to loiter here." The Dutchman,
Walbach, sullenly returned the searching gaze of the German
agent. **It*s hardly worth the money that Svert me. I

have a family to keep,"

"Come inside!"

Walbach the loafer soon found himself in the of a

93

4 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

short, with a a

The Chief of In

Protzc, his at the Dutchman.

** Don't us. It do you no

What do the you?"

"Seven a month."

"If you a

! Your job be to work your way

Service,"

The Walbach off The

with as to His

in the of of

a to up Lowlands,

as to Germany, as

awry* to enemy.

The Walbach is In the of Dutch

his victims
to

of in West

as for recoil-

the

Line. Tfiere no of not much

Only at sea "U-boats and

at The newspaper corres-

see to say was

a "phoney war"* of the to

to The of their

There activity in the

fore-
prcpara-

for a in the West Ms

to it, at spring.

the

in the He over the

in the of a

In

the to At the of

"first Reich"

Ms to an led by

of on the S.S.

the of

THE DOUBLE B0TCHMAH 5

It the

of in the not far Warsaw

to S.S.

got to the of the of

Army in X 938- He knew

of warned

Hitler. The HeydricJh Security Service
its in the of surveillance ; bet

no of

Government. Then Ms to

if not be

be convinced by an plot.

It have a deterrent on the if

they were contemplating actually in form.

So two were in outline at

Albreclatstrasse or simultaneously, at

directly related to other. One for a

on of the Fuehrer on November , I 939 in the

Burgerbrau beer cellar in Munich during a

of the party. The other was to two of the

principal British agents in Western Europe,

The first was fairly easily arranged by of a convict,

just as sham Polish attack on Gleiwitz had carried

by German convicts In Polish, uniform, who were
on the spot or slaughtered afterwards. A Communist
Gcorg Elser, under long sentence of internment in Dachau,
was promised his liberty by S.S- if he would a

hiding-place for a time bomb in one of the of

cellar, put an infernal machine inside and then
woodwork so as to Mde all trace of it. As far as the
of the beer cellar were concerned it would be easy to
them that a microphone had to be installed in the hall. At
rate the job was done by Georg Elscr, who was evidently,
van der Lubbe, a man of subnormal mentality. 'Captain
Payne Best, who had snatches of conversation with in

concentration camp, relates Ms story fully in The
Elscr was afterwards given a of

currency and offered the chance to escape. The
connected by a wire to a detonating point outside the
exploded about ten minutes after Hitler had the
and killed several of the founder members of the party who

96 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

on Tills colour to

It "re-

the at the he

to a at a

station*

of
to a

of

for In The Hague. Walbach

by British Intelligence

its Chief was Major R. H. an

to the in The

to be of

for
S0 it
S.S.

an to fro

The to to

Ms S. a of

to

with the
In In London.

to

be on A of

0n for in Dutch at

Venloo. Hie

a set a

to as an

of in

tic in of Lord

of

not to

or to in to

to be to' German

a 10 far over

10 The

The of November

of The to to

on to a

to
so to at

THE DOUBLE DUTCHMAN 7

i-r die Dutik LLyde to

At the Cafe ao

general no proposals; instead a car an

of in

Tom Tiddler's

Captain Klup,

Ms to prevent the car

a

the Reich*
"Have a In this? Is Major Stevens?"

at Ricliard Protze lie

to to In Dusscldcrf.

** Stevens Is in Hollands" Protze.

"He Is not! He Is in Germany!" the Adin:.^I.

"If you a in will be the to p:tv/ T

"I at all about this affair," Piot/,e,

with
* 4 Ask Abwehr 1I" the Admiral, cf Li<

tell It.

quickly put Ms on to the In The

Hague received the dry "*TLc

Germans know better than we do Is."

**Canaris was not informed in advance of the S.IX
at Venloo," General Lah "Xor

Ck>mmandcrs-in-Chicf, they a per

turbed. The a the

from Stevens and the in

Germany." Canaris with as to

whether any German

by the affair. Heydrich that were no

involved, but it the loyalty of

was questionable.

The German were of the of

"bomb plot" in Munich on the Ac

Schaemmel,

sarcastic over the set let it be

by the as a of

evidence. One cie an S.S.

of the Psychiatric Clinic of the
Hospital, had the brilliant of the

the Munich beer-cellar "plot" to

8 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

see to lie

in of

on life

to of

a

He Ills

of a life the

of It

In to

get In He Ms for an S.S.

ail Ms

to

Ms

a for to

of

Dr. Ms a

a
of Ms

of the on of

at of

to of

an In Vatican,

a to Father Laiber,

to XII as

a of

ills to of St. In S 939-

la as Nuncio,

of

Ms by set off to in

of He at Vatican,

D'Aicy to

for for

to be on a for

be to a

to a of

THE n C r B L E DUTCHMAN

toouLi convince the
a the Allies.

for Lord to fly to

Ms in the Vatican. D'Arcy me

no of a to by

at time. It is the

to a to to a

We however, his at the

Lord Halifax of

The Mueller a

visit to Rome^ it to set the of

negotiations, Vatican the

46 1 considerable difficulties in my discussions," Mueller

told me. "The British their word,

ready to promise anything be later."

The draft was written out OR Vatican notepaper. One

to the Foreign Office in, London,
Mueller took back to Berlin with. to it

card of the Pope's Father on

the visiting card :

"Dr. Josef Mueller, the "bearer of these
confidence of His Holiness/*

When Mueller reached Berlin he put his in

of Dohnanyi in the of Canaris. The Admiral,

not want to appear to know business, at a

report known as "X-report" which on

Mueller negotiations it was on to

Haider, the Chief of the The X-report was

prepared by Genera! Thomas, Chief of the
ment of the War Ministry.

The conditions which It as a for a

settlement, as Mueller them ? were

(i) Germany must rid herself of all Nazis in

and make an end of
(a) A German government over Is

wiling to adhere to its
(3) A settlement could fee

Germany in of Austria

I GO CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

Lord Halifax gave some weight to these views during a
public speech on January soth, 1 940.

"The only reason why peace cannot be made tomorrow,"
he said, "is that the German Government has as yet given no
evidence of their readiness to repair the damage that they have
wrought upon their neighbours or of their capacity to convince
the world that any pledge they may subscribe to is worth more
than the paper on which it is written."

This was a clue which the German General Staff could
compare with its secret report.

General Haider examined the basic terms of peace with
General Beck, who, though retired, still maintained close
contact with his former deputy. The Vatican documents were
locked away in the safe of a Colonel Schrader, a trustworthy
staff officer at Army High Command H.Q. in Zossen. General
Thomas, the Wehrmacht Economic Chief, had combined his
knowledge that Germany could not wage a long war with
the political appreciation that Mueller had brought home
and drawn the conclusion that they must make peace. When
the X-report was shown to the Commander-in-Chief, General
von Brauchitsch said that the Fuehrer was invested with the
glory of his Polish victories; the younger officers and the
troops could not be relied upon for action against the Fuehrer.
Germany was involved in a struggle of ideologies which would
have to be fought out to the end.

During his visits to Rome Mueller discussed fully with
Laiber such matters as the Vatican methods of conducting
its diplomacy and the security that must be taken in
their negotiations. Again the anxiety of Canaris about
ciphers was discussed. He lived day and night in peril of
being mentioned by name in the codes of the Allies and neutral
powers.

"The Vatican ciphers are perfectly safe," declared Father
Laiber.

Mueller demurred and advised him to be cautious.

"So he says that the Vatican ciphers are safe," Admiral
Canaris nodded, as Mueller related his conversations in Rome.
"Show him this."

He held out a deciphered copy of a Vatican secret dispatch
to the Nuncio in Portugal. Laiber blenched when Mueller
showed it to him.

THE DOCBT. K DUTCHMAN

a

By of of

copy.

"We to in 1940,"

"when it be

Office to Its

that get a

on Line lie be

of Staff,

of 50 a

to

There a force at his
a for or

It In

as Commando Force of

for duties* But

reliable for an

were on

In war B.B.C. an

on
"The only Is Ganaris."

of

and was to follow wh.cn an

a Admiral as "man

who would lead a revolution Hitler*".

By I received a a country

of

have done.

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he remembered In a

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Heydridh, afterwards with the

IO2 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

"It seems from the foreign press that I am to start a revolution
In Germany " who could tell from the cold stare of Himmler
and their exchange of glances whether he had outfaced their
suspicions.

Events pelted so fast In these six months of false calm on the
edge of 1940 that some awkward moments were submerged
though not forgotten. The men In black uniform and the men
in field grey had to work together for all their mutual
suspicions of each other. The military situation in the West
held their attention. That winter and spring Holland grew
more and more important to both sides. Abwehr I and III
collected Information on Allied activities in the Low Countries
Hitler had asked for the sharpest surveillance, and many of
their reports were selected by the Foreign Ministry to embody
in a white book accusing the Allies of violating the neutrality of
Belgium and Holland. Both Keitel and Canaris agreed that
they would not sign the White Book when they saw the proofs
ready for publication, especially when the German Foreign
Ministry commented that Canaris *s reports were not conclusive
in proving Allied violations of Belgian and Dutch neutrality
and might have to be "touched up a little".

There was a disturbing incident when Abwehr II, the
sabotage branch, was Instructed to procure Belgian and Dutch
Customs and gendarmerie uniforms, because they were wanted
for use by shock units of the German Army. It would have
seemed more logical to get a German master tailor to pay a
visit to Belgium and size up the cut and colour of these uni
forms, because they need not be genuine, and could only be
wanted for momentary surprise the seizing of Maas and Meuse
bridges before they could be demolished. As it was, the thefts
were noticed and reported in the Dutch and Belgian press. A
Dutch newspaper published a caricature of Goering in a
Dutch tram-driver's uniform.

Abwehr II was also laying a network of inactive agents for
special use when D-day came In the West. This explains why
there was such a sudden burst of undetected activities when
the lull of the "phoney war" was over and the Germans
marched in. Bridges and road blocks were seized and held by
civilians or men in Allied uniform and curious acts of sabotage
disrupted the defence, its supplies, transport and telephone
communications.

THE DOUBLE DUTCHMAN 103

It was the task of the British Secret Service in the lull to
detect and report these agents wherever they were planted. It
watched the activities of the Abwehr and the Dutch Nazis, and
a hectic race began, each side working day and night to
demolish the net that the other side was building up. Walbach,
the stolid Walbach, slipped in and out of the German intel
ligence offices in The Hague and Amsterdam bringing vital
news from the inward parts of the British Secret Service.
"Klemmer is a British agent! The British know that Schramm
is a German agent." The Abwehr struck here and there at a
harmless-looking business man or a peasant at the frontier.
Walbach turned in one name after another. He reported also
to Commander Protze the names of those men whom the British
had discovered to be working for Germany. One after another,
the names of the German agents rolled out. As fast as the
Abwehr built up, the British knew it. Protze's nerves grew
taut.

"The British know that Admiral Ganaris has been to
Holland," reported Walbach. Here and there Walbach brought
in the names of German intelligence officers as men who were
working with the British! Protze could not sleep at night.
Nightmares of hidden traitors filled his brain, names sprang up
at him. The German spies from France had to pass through
Holland to reach Germany. The British seemed to know their
names, too, Walbach reported. Protze sat down and tried to
cool off and form his own conclusions. There must be a
highly placed Allied agent within the German Intelligence
Service.

"The British are watching for a man with a limp coming
from France to The Hague, taking the evening express for
Cologne tomorrow evening!"

So one catastrophe after another was reported by Wal
bach.

Then the bomb fell.

"There is an agent of the Allies highly placed in the German
Legation in The Hague ! "

Protze sprang to his feet. He was within an hour in the study
of Count Zech, the German Minister, and whispered his
news.

"Whom do you suspect?" asked the Count guardedly.

Protze uttered a name.

IO4 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

"Quite impossible, my dear Commander. I know him well. .
He comes of a very good family."

The minister drew out of his desk a list of security sus
pects.

"I think there are some British agents listed here/* he
said. "Let's see if one of them could have penetrated your
service." But Protze thought he knew his man. He would
wait to get him. At the end of the discussion he pledged the
Minister to secrecy and withdrew to set his snares about the
victim.

Count Zech was asked to a security conference with
German intelligence officers in Amsterdam. He mentioned it
thoughtfully to one of his secretaries on his return to The
Hague.

"They tell me/' he mused, "that there is an Allied agent in
my Legation."

The man addressed gave an imperceptible start, smiled
and nodded vacuously. But within twenty-four hours the
Minister noticed that the secretary had vanished. He made
enquiries of the Dutch police and the German intelligence
offices in Cologne. They could tell him nothing. "Perhaps he
has gone to join his regiment," suggested the Minister; "he
was always asking to."

The old sleuth, Richard Protze, was soon back in his
study, with a sorrowful expression,

"Excellency, our man has flown. He is in London. Did you
talk, Excellency?"

Admiral Canaris heard the whole story with the utmost
calm in his offices in Berlin. Richard Protze sat at his elbow.
Count Zech was not present, but over his head there hung a
charge of breach of official secrets regulations. Yet oddly
enough in this case, as in so many others, Ganaris was not
moved by rancour either against the Count, who had lost him
his prey, or the enormous treason of the vanished man him
self. Protze was astonished to find that Canaris was only
anxious to hush up the whole affair. I met the elusive secretary
in London years later.

"Canaris would have hanged me had he caught me," he
said with an uneasy laugh.

I think that he spoke the truth there, except that it would
have been Heydrich who did the job.

THE DOUBLE DUTCHMAN 1O5

When the full force of the German offensive broke in the
West on May loth, 1940, the affair of the renegade secretary
had already been buried. Walbach had somehow escaped the
suspicion of the British and even risked leaving Holland with
the other Allied fugitives who took boat for the white cliffs.
Walbach swam unnoticed with the shoal.

CHAPTER XII

NORWAY

HITHERTO EVERYTHING AGGRESSIVE that Hitler had
planned after the seizure of Austria had been reported to Great
Britain by the German opposition within the Abwehr, with
what degree of complicity on the part of the Admiral the reader
will doubtless decide in the course of this narrative. I had
myself seen how the mobilisations against Czechoslovakia and
Poland were imparted in outline with dates and subsequent
changes of dates sometimes as much as two months ahead of
D-day. The shortest warning of all had preceded the inarch
into Prague, because on this occasion Hitler had needed
relatively few divisions and had given Keitel orders that they
were to be kept at twenty-four hours' notice at the frontier to
advance before any follow-up troops had been moved. It
remained to be seen whether the Abwehr chiefs would continue
to seek to identify their interests with those of the British in
wartime. Would they communicate to the enemy information
that might lead to the loss of thousands of German lives, even
if it meant spoiling the pattern of aggression, too?

"Your friends will now have to serve their country," an
intelligence officer suggested to me shortly before the war.
There seemed to be a certain staid readiness in the minds of
the Foreign Office to abandon contact with the enemies of
Hitler. Of Ganaris, I am inclined to think that such on our side
as could observe something of his activities had not yet fully
grasped his motives and identified him still with the aims of his
department the Intelligence Service of the Wehrmacht. I had
been induced before the war to abandon journalism and join
the Foreign Office not, as I supposed at the time, to utilise
the contacts that I had already made, but in order to eliminate
an unorthodox channel of communication. The reports that
had come out of the Tirpitzufer in the two previous years had
mystified and disturbed the British conception of German unity

106

NORWAY 107

of purpose and had contributed to the sudden and energetic
decision to give the Polish guarantee in March 1939. It was a
few weeks later, after some discussion in the Foreign Office on
my activities, I was invited to join that department and spent
several months with them until the outbreak of war. There I
practically lost sight of Ganaris and his friends and often won
dered whether they had found new contacts with us and
renewed understanding. These months revealed to me the
groping and hesitant fashion in which big departments work
slowly forward on the preconceived lines of national policy
like big ships at sea with helm hard over to avoid collision that
is inevitable miles ahead.

At times advance intelligence had seemed of little use
while we were still weak and while our vital interests did not
seem to be threatened. Now, if ever, in the spring of 1940,
knowledge of enemy intentions would be perhaps decisive. The
land forces involved were numerically nearly equal, the
Luftwaffe preponderant on the one hand and the Royal Navy
on the other. Everything depended on surprise and speed,
everything immediate success, the extent and length of the
war, the fate of the belligerent nations and that of Europe itself.
Hitler started to talk of invading Norway during a conference
with Grand Admiral Raeder on October loth fifty days
before Russia invaded Finland. The threat of British and French
military aid to Finland through occupying Narvik did not
exist at the time. Jodl was initiated to the secret in the middle
of November; by December I4th Hitler decided to mount
the operation it was called "Weser-Exercise" and on
February aoth he appointed his military commander, General
von Falkenhorst, after being enraged and alarmed by the
action of February i5th when Gaptain Philip Vian with
H.M.S. Cossack seized the Altmark in Norwegian waters and
rescued three hundred British sailors captured in South
Atlantic waters by German raiders.

Accordingly Ganaris must have been apprised of Operation
Weser-Exercise in December, at the planning stage. His reports
on the dispositions of the Royal Navy will have been necessary,
as well as Abwehr reconnaissance of the harbours, fiords and
batteries of the Norwegian coast. According to the pattern,
his K.O. or war organisation would have to tackle special
targets on D-day. The secret now lay in his hands.

IO8 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

"It was a terribly weighty decision to occupy Norway/'
said Jodl. "To put it shortly, it meant gambling with the entire
German fleet. . . . The Fuehrer said in those days * To carry
out a decision of this land I must have absolutely reliable
Information with which I can justify that decision before the
world and prove that it was necessary. I cannot say that I heard
this and that from Herr Quisling.' And for this reason he kept
the Intelligence Service, In particular, very busy at this time
in order to get even more precise information."

Ganaris reported in the middle of March that the Home Fleet
had moved from Western Approaches to Scapa Flow the
nearest base to the Norwegian Goast. Here the British could
move either to the Skagerrak or athwart the iron routes from
Narvik to Germany.

"The Fuehrer's decision was made on April 2nd," said Jodl,
"on reports from the Navy of repeated firing on German
merchant ships in Norwegian and Danish territorial waters.
Secondly, a report came from Ganaris that British troops and
transports were lying in a state of readiness on the north-east
coast of England." The British Cabinet had decided on
March 1 2th to revive plans previously discussed for occupation
of Narvik and Trondheim, and later Stavanger and Bergen.
Thus under the pretext of helping the Finns by securing our
supply route to them, a German operation to seize Narvik
could have been forestalled and all her northern approaches
sealed.

Falkenhorst's troops, embarking at Hamburg and Bremen,
Stettin and Danzig, were battened under hatches, divisions in
South Sleswig were made ready to march into Denmark, and
the entire German Navy assembled in the several task forces
required for convoy duties or bombardment. German mer
chantmen set out first for Narvik with several thousand troops
below decks. They would lie there as long as was necessary like
the assault troops that stormed the Westerplatte in the previous
year.

Now there were six days left in which the Admiral might be
able to prevent this mad operation taking place. He was not
convinced that the British intended to land in Norway, but
he was sure that they were prepared to act if Hitler did so, and
the Royal Navy was even stronger hi comparison to the German
fleet than in the days when he had served in the Dresden. It was

NORWAY 109

likely enough, if the British were met in the Skagerrak again, that
the Battle of Jutland would be refought twenty-four years after
and the German Navy destroyed in such a manner as the
French and Spanish Fleet at Trafalgar, but with the additional
carnage that the corpses of tens of thousands of German
soldiers from the transports would be weltering in the Sounds.
Beyond that the discomfiture would be such for Hitler, his
prestige so shaken, that the Army could be prevailed upon to
make an end of him and propose terms of peace. Had Ganaris not
bestowed in the safe in Zossen the terms that had been worked
out in Rome through the mediation of the Pope? An end to the
massacre of the Poles, the nightly murders in the concentration
camps, the sickly and hysterical perversion of a great nation to
worship a madman. As he discussed these doubts and fears
with General Oster on April 2nd, it seemed that this might
well be the turning point of the war.

Oster found his way next day to the Dutch military attache,
Colonel J. Sas, and told him that the invasion of Norway was
imminent. Sas passed on this information to the Norwegian
Legation in Berlin, but the diplomat who received it thought
the report too incredible to be forwarded. It is my belief that
Ganaris, too, did not miss this opportunity to bring about the
crisis that he desired.

"The shortest way to defeat will be the most merciful," one
of his friends, Ewald von Kleist, had told me a year previously.
Abshagen hastens to say that "the many assertions that Ganaris
warned the Scandinavian governments a few days before
Weser-Exercise began . . . are absolutely untrue". He bases
his opinion on that of an Abwehr officer probably Lahousen
or Liedig "who never heard even a hint of the idea of warning
the Allies or the threatened countries during the early April
conferences of the Abwehr directorate". But the Admiral was
not so rash as to discuss in his office what he intended to do
perhaps not even with Oster! It was interesting to me to find
that Lahousen, for years his assistant and Chief of Abwehr II,
never heard from Ganaris of the London negotiations of 1938,
We have precedent, according to Gisevius, in the Abwehr
planting information about atrocities in Poland in foreign
newspapers in order to create an impression on Hitler. In this
case, the Swedish press was full of reports for several days before
Weser-Exercise of German troops embarking in Baltic ports.

HO CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

Abshagen finds it necessary to mention and discount the
possibility that Canaris had special contact with the Swedish
Legation in Berlin and that it served his purpose in warning
the Allies. Captain Franz Liedig, his intelligence officer
attached to Army Command XXI that planned Weser-
Exercise in detail from the O.K.W. outline plan, remembers
the Admiral saying to him that Hitler had always recoiled when
he sensed his opponent to be stronger and that if the British
Navy showed the flag in Norwegian waters Hitler would
abandon the operation. Liedig was convinced that the shipping
concentrations could not have escaped the notice of the British,
whose intelligence service in Sweden was active.

"We felt absolutely certain/' Lahousen told me, "that the
Allies had at least forty-eight hours' notice of Weser-Exercise.
Foreign Consuls had reported the movements of German
shipping and Abwehr had records of their telephone conversa
tion."

"Of course, we had full reports days ahead," a British
intelligence officer told me. "We had all the movements of
shipping as they occurred. But they did not know what to make
of them in London."

It is certain that a British official in Oslo received a firm
report on April yth that invasion was intended, and this was then
communicated first to London, though the British naval attache
in Oslo was not immediately informed one reason for the
unpreparedness of the Norwegian fleet. An air reconnaissance
on the following day the same day as British mines were laid
in Norwegian waters south of Narvik showed a force of Ger
man warships and transports steaming up the coast off Norway
and H.M. submarine Trident sank one of them, the Rio de
Janeiro. It was only on the afternoon of April 8th when the
three hundred survivors of the Rio de Janeiro, mostly soldiers
in battle order, had been interrogated that the Norwegian
Government realised that invasion was imminent. Opinion
prevailed in Whitehall that the Germans were intent on cap
turing Narvik not until April gth did it become apparent
that they meant to occupy the whole country. I have no doubt
at all that German intentions were correctly reported by one
source or other. The Norwegian Government had put the Oslo
coastal batteries and air defences at a state of prolonged alert
in the second half of March, but there were so many agencies,

NORWAY III

missions and departments receiving, reporting or collating
intelligence that it was exceedingly difficult for the correct
appreciation to prevail.

Mr. Chamberlain complained afterwards of the bewildering
diversity of reports. Mr. Churchill, then still First Lord of the
Admiralty, argued that the Home Fleet could not always be
patrolling close to the enemy routes in all weathers, easy targets
for U-boats. If in fact Admiral Canaris asked through neutral
channels, as I suspect he did, for a demonstration of British
naval strength in the days before Weser-Exercise, he must
have been overestimating the insight of the enemy into his own
mind and underestimating the power of the machine of intelli
gence and deception, his own Abwehr, that was carrying him
against his will, whither he would not go.

There is little doubt from what Abwehr officers relate that
Canaris hoped for a sharp defeat in the Norwegian adventure
that would bring a swing in public opinion against Hitler. In
point of fact, it was his own K.O. or war organisation in Oslo
that had to lead in the German warships, and the German
naval attaches who gathered the Quisling ministers and officers
together and set the German legation in a state of defence.
Although the bravery of the Norwegian Navy foiled the Ger
man warships, and airborne landing was necessary to capture
Oslo, much of the credit went to Canaris for German success in
Norway and he was promoted from Vice-Admiral to his
final rank of full Admiral.

Lest it be imagined that Canaris was squeamish or stood
aside from the attempts to thwart Hitler, let us turn the clock
on one month from April ist to May ist; Operation Gelb
(Yellow) was about to take place with breach of Dutch and
Belgian neutrality the grand offensive against the Low
Countries and France. The act itself was not more flagrant
than the attack in Norway; but the precautions that General
Oster initiated were two-fold. The case of Norway had shown
how far astray British intelligence could be in its final apprecia
tions a failing that the German intelligence developed in
measure as the situation of Germany worsened.

The persistent Dr. Josef Mueller had been served with his
passport once more and ordered to Rome on pretext of an
Abwehr mission in the last days of April. By now most of the
German Navy had been sunk piecemeal in vivid and desperate

H2 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

actions with units of the Home Fleet and submarines without
the effect hoped for by the Admiral, a repulse of the German
invasion. The extent of German naval losses was being hushed
up, the extent of their gains on land given full publicity in
Wehrmacht communiques. Now General Beck abjured Mueller
to tell the Allies unmistakably what was impending on the
Western Front. He named the date of May loth when the attack
in the West would be launched, irrespective of the fortunes of
XXI Army in Norway. This extraordinary stroke of backroom
statesmanship was necessary, he argued, if the Allies were not to
destroy Germany utterly when she was defeated. She must
prove that the forces of good were still alive in her and working
for the ultimate salvation of Europe.

Mueller did not stop long in Rome; but he met a senior
Belgian diplomat and reported to him that Germany would
attack in the West, violating Dutch and Belgian neutrality on
or about May loth.

This time the message went home as it was intended but by
cipher telegram. How the Admiral hated ciphers! Mueller
made his way back to Berlin quickly. He found time before
leaving Italy to ask the Italian frontier officials to insert an
omitted entry stamp in his passport. He gave the date as May
Is t the place of entry was Venice, where he had landed by
air. The good-natured frontier control official, so he tells me,
was willing to stamp whatever date he suggested. It is foolish
for intelligence officers and police to imagine that a passport
contains an exact record of movements. Pick up your own pass
port and see if you can read out of it your own travels over a
year or so. This horseplay with rubber stamps was the salvation
of Josef Mueller; for when he arrived back in Berlin and
reported in the Tirpitzufer the Admiral said quietly:

"Look here! The Fuehrer is foaming about this."

He held out a report of a deciphered telegram forwarded by
the Security Service to the Abwehr with the request to investi
gate it and discover the name of the officer concerned : Mueller
memorised the telegram that might be his death warrant in
approximately these terms:

From H.K THE BELGIAN MINISTER

THE HOLY SEE
To FOREIGN MINISTRY, BRUSSELS.

NORWAY 113

May ist 1940.

An officer of the German General Staff visiting Rome today,
reports that invasion of Belgium and Holland may be expected with
certainty on or soon after May roth.

As he held the deciphered intercept, his blood ran cold. The
Gestapo had the keys of the Belgian diplomatic code.

CHAPTER XIII

THE ABWEHR IN ENGLAND

BETWEEN MAY IST and May yth a mysterious message
went out also to Switzerland through a contact known as " the
Viking line ", a still secret channel of communication between
Admiral Ganaris and the Swiss General Staff. It warned the
Swiss to mobilise against an imminent threat of invasion. The
Swiss did, in fact, mobilise, but this storm passed westwards.
Did Canaris suspect that if Hitler could not penetrate through
Belgium he would thrust his left flank through Switzerland and
the Belfort gap? Or did Ganaris simply make this feint to alarm
the French and lead them to tie down strong forces unused
in the Belfort area, that might be badly needed elsewhere. The
Swiss have been puzzling about it ever since.

Nine days of calm in May! Rumours had thickened fast
since the Belgian Minister had sent his dispatch from the
Vatican. The British and French would have gladly taken
Belgium into full alliance and linked the Meuse defensive
system with the Maginot Line: but King Leopold had been
firm that Belgium must remain neutral until she was attacked.
Signs multiplied that the Germans were concentrating for an
attack in the West. The Falkenhorst army was by now advancing
north from Trondheim and the Allies had re-embarked at
Namsos though they landed a Polish force at Narvik a day
later; there had been a heated debate in the House of Commons
on the yth and 8th and the authority of Neville Chamberlain
was tottering. The Dutch increased their frontier precautions,
the Belgians suspended traffic on the Albert Canal. Nothing
was certain yet, but the Western Powers and the neutral states
sensed something in that unholy calm beyond the Rhine.

General Oster left the Tirpitzufer on the evening of May gth
for an appointment to dinner with his old friend, Colonel
G. J. Sas, the Dutch military attache. This time there was no
doubt about it. He told Sas quite openly that he could expect

114

THE ABWEHR IN ENGLAND 115

an attack on Belgium and the Netherlands at first light on the
following day.

Sas managed to get a telephone connection to The Hague
before midnight and dictated a message to the duty officer.

"The surgeon has decided to operate at 4 a.m. in the morn
ing."

He waited, appalled and helpless at his own foreknowledge
of what was apparently only a few hours distant.

About midnight the telephone rang again. It was a senior
officer in The Hague wanting to know if Sas was positive that
this meant an attack on May loth.

Colonel Sas was aware that the Gestapo was listening with
especial attention to all foreign telephone calls at this moment.
A cold perspiration broke out as he shaped his answers to give
the clearest indication without prompting the German Security
Service to break the connection. He succeeded in doing this;
but the secret was now out to the enemy that he had been
informed. The Dutch Government tried to get in touch with
Sas again in the early hours of the morning. This time all
telephone communications were cut, and invasion came soon
afterwards. The Abwehr war organisations in France and the
Lowlands sprang into activity., Germans in Allied uniforms
seized bridges and strong points, Rommel's phantom division
stormed over the Meuse on the i3th and the Fourth Army
streamed after it. If Germany had lost tactical surprise to the
Allied Intelligence Services, it was not enough to make any
difference to the fortunes of the field. They had crossed the
Maas in Holland on D-day and by May i5th the Dutch Army,
cut off from its Allies, was forced to capitulate. King Leopold
offered capitulation on May 2yth; by June 5th the Germans
had entered Dunkirk and crossed the Somme; four days later
all hostilities in Norway ceased, and on June loth, a month
after D-day, Italy entered the war.

It is obvious that Hitler, strutting in exultation and soon to
take the surrender of France in his railway coach at Gompiegne,
will have forgotten his ill-humour at the Security Service
reports on the betrayal of his plans. Not so the Gestapo itself 1
Ganaris received a report on the telephone talks with The Hague
on D-day: somebody remarked at a diplomatic reception in
Berlin that General Oster was a close friend of Sas. It seemed
that the Gestapo were on the verge of a discovery.

Il6 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

" You had better investigate this leakage in Rome," Canaris
whispered to Josef Mueller, and Mueller went with a feeling of
confidence that his chief would protect him. He did a wonder
ful job of work. He called first on the German liaison officer
with the Italian Intelligence Service, Colonel Helferrich. In the
course of conversation he made it plain that he, Mueller, was
not a General Staff officer, simply a Lieutenant of the Reserve.
The incriminating intercept had referred to a ''General Staff
officer". He was himself in Venice on May ist (as his passport
showed) and he knew of no General Staff officer who would
have been in Rome on that day. Of course, Golonel Helferrich
was a General Staff officer, but suspicion of him was out of the
question! Had they not better consider other possibilities? The
Grown Princess of Italy was a Belgian princess. Ciano had been
on friendly footing with the Crown Prince and Crown Princess.
The German Foreign Ministry had the closest contact with
Count Giano. Was it not likely that the leakage had occurred
through those channels? Within a few days Mueller had so
thoroughly tangled the investigations in Rome that on his
return to Berlin Oster remarked to him with a rueful smile :

"You have done so well in Rome that they have dropped
that line of enquiry, and are working on this end."

But Canaris covered Oster's tracks.

Mueller remained free to come and go into Italy, though
Golonel Helferrich made a private mental note to himself that
his own guess still was that Mueller had given away the secret.

The British showed themselves more receptive now to
Mueller's opinions. The last of the B.E.F. had been withdrawn
from France by June iyth, and by June 2*jth the German Army
had reached the Spanish frontier on the Atlantic coast at
Hendaye. The British were evacuating the Channel Islands,
and Hitler was considering the idea of a direct invasion of
Great Britain. It was now that the opportunities of deception
on the British side were considerable. The whole issue hung on a
fine balance of air power with neither side able to gain the
supremacy for some months at any rate. The British may have
hinted through obscure diplomatic channels that they would
not prolong the struggle indefinitely Hitler wanted to hear
such, suggestions, for he was not entirely enthusiastic about
Operation Sealion.

Mueller suggested that the British might soon abandon the

THE ABWEHR IN ENGLAND

unequal combat when he was lunching with Ganaris one
summer day of 1940 in a Munich hotel. The fortunes of the
Third Reich had never stood so high.

"I think you will find that the British will not go on," he
exclaimed to test his chief.

The good humour of Ganaris faded in an instant. He pushed
his plate away.

" Of course they will go on/* he exclaimed angrily, as if his
best friend had been insulted, and Mueller had some difficulty
in calming him down. German army officers, exulting in their
easy victories to Canaris, found him sceptical and out of
humour. "What a strange fellow we have as Chief of Intelli
gence 1" they remarked.

Hitler gave KLeitel orders on July 2nd for the outline plan of
Operation Sealion to be sent forward for detailed planning.
Preparations were to be complete by the middle of August.
Mueller slipped down to Rome and passed this information
to the British. He also asked for the written drafts of the peace
agreement to be destroyed, in case the invasion should succeed
and the archives of the Foreign Office captured.

Grand-Admiral Raeder, the driving force behind the inva
sion of Norway, had prepared an outline plan for invasion of
the British Isles in November 1939, even before Hitler had
asked for it. The Fuehrer declared in a conference at
Wolfschacht on June soth, 1940, that all bases on the Atlantic
coast must be completely at the disposal of the Germany Navy
for warfare against Britain. Raeder made a report on the types
of shipping and barges available and the areas where it was
proposed to land the troops. He asked for air supremacy as
indispensable to the operation and requested the Army to work
out a light scale of equipment for the assault divisions. Hitler
was at this time confident and expansive, talking about
demobilising the forces and settling down to a new order in
Europe, but he let the naval staff go on planning.

"The German Navy plan, of which I had some inkling in
June ..." wrote Mr. Churchill in Their Finest Hour in other
words, before the outline plan had gone forward to the Com-
mander-in-Chief for detailed planning! "Our excellent intelli
gence confirmed that Operation Sealion had been definitely
ordered by Hitler and was in active preparation. . . ." He
writes a few pages later of the second half of July: "The front

Il8 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

to be attacked was altogether different from or additional to
the east coast on which the Chiefs of Staff, the Admiralty and I,
in full agreement, still laid the major emphasis."

This intelligence evidently did not come from air recon
naissance or ground observers: for at the time that it was
received, the German forces were still in the champagne stage
of their victory over France. It could only have come from some
person in close contact with the German naval staff or the chiefs
of the High Command outside a dozen or so German senior
officers, nobody in Germany knew what Mr. Churchill knew in
June. As to the July planning of Operation Sealion, it confirmed
that "the landing operation must be a surprise crossing on a
broad front extending approximately from Ramsgate to a point
west of the Isle of Wight". The hand of Mr. Churchill seems to
have been guided at this time by somebody to whom the inner
most counsels of Hitler were revealed.

And when the great speeches of Britain's wartime leader
thundered across the Straits of Dover "let us therefore brace
ourselves so that if the British Commonwealth and Empire last
for a thousand years men will still say *This was their finest
hour ' . . . " Canaris took home the forbidden monitorings
of the full text of his speeches and read them in the evenings
to his wife.

The Admiral found something at last that he had looked
for in England for a long time; but he could not rejoice in so
late a discovery. As he laid down one of the verbatim reports
of a Churchill speech, he said despondently to Erika Canaris :

"They are lucky over there to have a statesman to lead
them, we have only a guttersnipe here who bawls across the
fence."

"I cannot believe that Canaris took home monitorings of
Churchill's speeches with him," exclaimed his adjutant,
Lieutenant Jenke, when I told him of this incident.

"Why?"

"The Admiral was always dinning it into us. Don't discuss
service matters with your wives."

I produced the letter from Frau Erika Canaris in which she
told me of his reading evenings and was interested to see how
astonished Jenke was. Everybody had his own vivid picture of
Canaris and was surprised to discover that so many others existed.

"Canaris admired your Churchill/' Richard Protze told me.

THE ABWEHR IN ENGLAND IIQ

"He had the same initials and would refer to him as 'the
great W.C.'.

" 'I am only the little W.G.' he used to say at his daily
conference when some big stroke of British statesmanship
turned the screw a little harder on Germany. 'What can / do
against the great W.G.?'"

Meanwhile the three German service chiefs were plying the
Abwehr for information about their target England.

The Navy wanted beach and port data and the probable
strength of coastal defences; the Army wanted to know how
many divisions there were in the British Isles.

Keitel had issued a top-secret instruction to the three Com
manders -in- Chief on July 2nd :

"THE WAR AGAINST ENGLAND

"The Fuehrer and Supreme Commander has decided:

"i. That a landing in England is possible, provided that air
superiority can be attained and certain other necessary conditions
fulfilled. The date of commencement is still undecided. All prepara
tions are to be begun immediately.

"2. The Commands of the three Services are to supply the
following information:

" (a) Army

(1) Estimates of the strength of the British forces, of losses,
and of the extent to which the British Army will have
been re-equipped a month or so hence.

(2) An appreciation of the operational strength of our
coastal batteries, and their capacity to provide additional
protection for our shipping against British naval forces,

" (b) Navy

(1) Survey of possible landing points for strong Army
forces (25-40 divisions), and estimated strength of
English coastal defences.

(2) Indication of sea routes over which, our forces can be
transported with the maximum safety. In selecting land
ing areas, it must be remembered that landing on a
broad front will facilitate subsequent deep penetration.

(3) Data of shipping available, with probable date on
which this could be ready.

ISO CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

" (c) Air Force

An estimate of tKe chances of attaining air supremacy,
and figures showing the relative strengths of the Luft
waffe and R.A.F.

To what extent can the landing be supported by a
parachute attack? (Highest priority to be given to the
production of transport aircraft.)

"3. The Commands of the three Services should co-operate in
evolving a plan for the transport of the maximum number of troops
with the minimum of shipping and aircraft space.

" The invading force must be highly mechanised and numerically
superior to the opposing armies.

"4. All preparations must be undertaken on the basis that the
invasion is still only a plan and has not yet been decided upon.
Knowledge of preparations must be restricted to those immediately
concerned.

(signed) KEITEL."

I have questioned Abwehr officers as to how they imagine
the British to have been so well informed about Operation
Sealion. Was it treason at the top? Perhaps not solely that. The
underground headquarters had been built at Margival, General
Speidel tells us, and fitted out for Operation Sealion. That
could not have happened without some talk. Infantry Regi
ment 9, which bore the traditions of the Prussian Guard, had
been selected for the assault task at Hastings and that will
have occasioned some gossip in the regiment. For a time every
body talked of Operation Sealion, and when it was no longer
contemplated it became Hitler's policy to have it still talked
about.

It was evident to the German naval staff that the British
were fully aware of what was afoot. The German Navy's war
diary on July 3rd noted that "the whole foreign press, in par
ticular the English press, comments that a major German attack
is expected". The reports that reached them from Ganaris
indicated that a strong defence could be expected, and as July
wore on Raeder reported to his Fuehrer that there would have
to be postponement. Preparations could not be completed by
the middle of August, indeed it would not be possible to fix
D-day until after air supremacy had been gained; then the
Army and Navy fell to quarrelling on the advantages and draw
backs of a broad and narrow landing front. More time was lost,

THE ABWEHR IN ENGLAND 121

and on August I5th the operation had to be postponed to
September I5th. The Army had won Its arguments for a broad
front, but It seems that the Navy might well reverse the decision
at the last moment, in which case the Brighton area had been
selected for the narrow front invasion. Now began the mounting
Luftwaffe offensive on S.E. England. Keitel issued a top secret
directive on September 3rd naming September soth as the
earliest day for sailing. Four days later General Paget issued
to Home Forces the code word "Cromwell" invasion
imminent. The Luftwaffe attacks Increased and so did their
losses, and still the R.A.F. held fast.

The Ganaris reports from England were tinged by a strange
uiirealism they vastly overestimated the strength of the British
defence forces, suggesting that there might be as many as
thirty-nine divisions, though only twenty might be completely
operational. In fact, there were by September no more than
sixteen to defend the invasion area.

An odd report on the British defences was forwarded to the
German Navy by the Abwehr Foreign Intelligence:

4 'Foreign Intelligence Department.

Berlin

T Q r- ^ XT 5/9/1940

10: Supreme Command, Navy,

Naval War Staff, Section 3.

Re: England. Fortifications on the South Coast.

A secret agent reported on 2 September :

"The area Tunbridge Wells to Beachy Head (especially the small
town of Rye, where there are large sandhills) and also St. Leonards
is distinguished by a special labyrinth of defences. These defences,
however, are so well camouflaged, that a superficial observer on the
sandhills, bathing spots and fields, would not discover anything
extraordinary. This area is extremely well guarded, so that it Is
almost impossible to reach it without a special pass.

"In Hastings, on the other hand, most of the defences can be
recognised quite plainly. In the town there are troops of every kind.
The presence of numerous small and heavy tanks is most striking.

"Numerous armoured cars were also seen In St. Leonards and In
a small locality where there is a famous golf-course, probably St.
Joseph.

"War Organization (Espionage) Appendix:

122 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

"The agent was not able to give a clearer account of the number
of armoured cars In the different localities, or of the regiments he
saw there.

"From the position of Beachy Head (west of Hastings) and Rye
(east of Hastings), it can be deduced that the place in question
near St. Leonards was the western villa-suburb of Hastings. Tun-
bridge, which lies on the railway line from Hastings to London,
according to the sense of the report, ought to lie on the coast, as in
the case of St. Joseph; this cannot be confirmed from the maps in
our possession."

The Admiral himself^ had he given it a moment of his atten
tion, would probably have admitted that there was a strange
smell about this report. It may have been a hoax; the people
of Tunbridge Wells and St. Leonards will find it hard to
recognise their landscape in it. But what if it smelled? It was just
such damping reports that suited the mood of the Fuehrer at
this moment. The Luftwaffe was failing in its spearhead mis
sion; Hitler was squinting over his shoulder at his frontiers in
Poland and his Soviet friends; he was also casting meaning
glances southwards at the Pyrenees and easier victories.

The Germans could put a few feathers in their caps when
smuggled copies of some of Churchill's dispatches to Roosevelt
had been passed to the Italian Embassy in London during the
early months of the war by a dishonest cipher clerk in the
American Embassy. Towards the end of the war the Abwehr
could pick up and decipher or unscramble some of the wireless
cipher messages between London and Washington and some
of the "scrambled 5 * telephone conversations between Prime
Minister and President; for all that, the Abwehr foothold in
Britain itself was precarious and unreal.

"There was no Abwehr K..O, or war organisation in Eng
land," Lahousen tells me. "The Abwehr worked on the British
Isles from Norway, Holland and Portugal." There was an
Abwehr foothold in Ireland, too, wMch was maintained by
and helped, to maintain German U-boats.

I have discussed his British service with Commander Herbert
Wichmann, the senior surviving intelligence officer of Canaris's
branch in Hamburg, which operated to the British Isles and
the Americas. He showed a marked reluctance to discuss
episodes which might compromise such of his agents as had not
yet been caught but he did claim to have known a good deal

THE ABWEHR IN ENGLAND 123

about the movements of Churchill during the war a subject
to -which we shall return in examining the attempts to assas
sinate the Prime Minister. Wichmann also claimed to have had
advance intelligence of the landings in North Africa, the
invasion of Normandy, and to have employed a spy similar
to "Cicero" who apparently also had the enviable position
of working in the British Embassy in Ankara between 1939
and 1941.

The rivals of Canaris in German intelligence Heydrich,
Himmler and Ribbentrop, with their assistants, Schellenberg
and Kaltenbrunner began to say that the Admiral's show was
inefficient and that their own organisations must be
strengthened. In London, too, where the Abwehr was being
closely studied from a professional and unpolitical point of
view, some experts were of the opinion that the Admiral was
not worth his salt. He had failed to report the terrible weakness
of the British Isles in June 1940, and even later had reported
us as stronger than we were.

Hence the word went round, and those who hoped for more
from him echoed it fervently: "Don't do anything to upset
Canaris. His outfit is so bad that it is an asset to us."

Serious minds in England were concerned with thoughts of
closer contact with the German Chief of Intelligence.

CHAPTER XIV

THE HENDAYE TAPESTRY

ON THEW-HITE cliffs of Dover, the sands of El Alamein, and
the banks of the Volga at Stalingrad there are monuments to
three turning points of the Second World War, where the flood
of Hitler's fire and steel was stemmed and turned back. But if
our grandchildren ask why it was that Hitler stopped at the
Pyrenees and how Spain remained neutral against all historical
likelihood, there is no simple answer that we can give them.
The fourth and most enigmatic turning point of the war is
practically forgotten. The English bathers at St. Jean-de~Luz,
the Americans at Biarritz, the Frenchmen lounging under the
palm trees of Hendaye, where the white fagade of the Spanish
Consulate with its pretentious wrought-iron doors (nearly
always shut) faces the Atlantic rollers, none of these gives a
thought today to the memorable October 23rd, 1940, when the
German Chief of State travelled along this coast to meet the
Spanish Caudillo at the foot of the Pyrenees. No stone will be
raised to mark what is dimly remembered as the Hendaye
Conference.

When painters and weavers were historians, they often
conveniently put several incidents of the same story on to one
canvas or tapestry. The monarchs advanced on their steeds;
the cloth of gold, the carcanets gleamed; the thickness of
spears, heads, legs and spurs lent a thronged importance to their
meeting. Another moment of time was caught in the back
ground, the vanquished lying slaughtered in an olive grove or
hurtling from a cliff, the traitor hanging incongruously from a
gibbet.

Here, then, are the figures that fill the centre of my tapestry
of Hendaye: the German conqueror In uniform with peaked
cap, bulging eyes set snakelike on the small plump Caudillo;
with them all their chivalry in grey and scarlet; the meeting
place a railway coach, the Fuehrer's own, at the end of the long

124

THE HENDAYE TAPESTRY 1135

railway from Paris and Bordeaux between the Pyrenees and
the Atlantic.

Ribbentrop is with the Fuehrer in pseudo-military uniform,
designed by himself; Marshal Keitel, Chief of the High Com
mand; Marshal von Brauchitsch, Commander-in-Chief of the
Army; Colonel-General Dollman and Lieutenant-General
Bodenschatz. There is the taU figure of Dr. von Stohrer,
German Ambassador in Madrid; Schmidt the interpreter;
General Espinosa de los Monteros, the Spanish Ambassador in
Berlin; and Ramon Serrano Suner, brother-in-law of the Cau-
dillo, newly made Spanish Foreign Minister, attending his
master with translators and secretaries, A.D.C.s and staff officers.

The German infantry band at Hendaye station it soon
created a diplomatic incident by venturing into San Sebastian
struck up military music as the two trains pulled in. The game
for high stakes began in what the official United States docu
ments describe as "Hitler's Parlour Car". Will you walk
into my parlour? . . .

In drawing up the frontiers of Vichy France, Hitler had left
himself this coastal strip of holiday resorts, the Cote d'Or,
connecting with Spain. He wanted to end the neutrality of
Spain and make more use of her possessions in Africa, Spanish
Morocco and Rio de Oro and the Spanish bases in the Canaries
from which German submarines could attack British convoys.
The game in the military coach was for the pillars of Hercules
Ceuta and Gibraltar and Melilla. How well Rommel might
have fared if the Straits of Gibraltar had been closed by German
siege guns and Stukas in 1941 !

Plans for a march into Spain and an attack on Gibraltar
existed. General Jodl explained at Nuremberg that these outline
plans were there for every contingency, though they would
not be put into detailed preparation until the political omens
were favourable.

The communiques of October 23rd did not even say where
the Chiefs of State met. Accounts of the Hendaye Conference
are sparse. Serrano Suner, now retired from politics, has not
been allowed by the Caudillo to publish a chapter about
Hendaye in his book Between the Pyrenees and Gibraltar. The
official German documents published by the United States
Department of State in 1946 break off their records of the
parlour-car conversations unfinished with the note that "the

126 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

record of this conversation is incomplete". Yet we do know
that Hitler travelled all the way to the Pyrenees to try and get
beyond them; what we have to find out is why he failed. Even
Schmidt, the interpreter, does not tell us that.

Who arranged this meeting?

Serrano Suner, brother-in-law of General Franco, and a man
with distinct leanings towards the Nazis, was sent to visit
Berlin as Minister of the Interior a month previously. He relates
in Between the Pyrenees and Gibraltar something of his preliminary
conversations with Hitler and Ribbentrop in Berlin. He speaks
of affable talks conducted in the vaguest terms, during which
he mentioned the need for artillery if Spain were to undertake
the siege of Gibraltar; but he is shown by the captured German
documents 1 to have reaffirmed an official Spanish assurance
given in strictest secrecy in Berlin in June 1940 that Spain
would in her own time cease to be neutral and enter the war
on the side of the Axis powers as arms and grain supplies from
Germany enabled her to defy the British blockade.

Suner continued that an attack on Gibraltar had been dis
cussed with German military experts and that Spain would
need ten fifteen-inch (38-0111.) guns to reduce the Rock. It is
curious that a Minister of the Interior should have been
authorised to go into such details at that stage of discussing an
"eventual entry of Spain into the war"; but we shall see later a
possible explanation for this. It is interesting to divine from
their talk, when they moved over to the map table, that Hitler
was insistent that Stukas were far more devastating against
fortifications. Obviously he was anxious to establish his Luft
waffe staff on the airfields of Spain. Once he had given artillery
to Spain he could no longer control its use; but even if Gibraltar
could not be taken with Stukas, the aircraft would be able to
attack British convoys in the Straits and would remain a
German weapon. Suner, who spoke for Franco, wanted the
guns, but he was less enthusiastic about the aircraft. Finally
Hitler was obliged to state that "it would not be possible to pro
vide the fifteen-inch guns ". This was probably true. When we
read German reports on the lack of heavy coastal artillery on
the Atlantic Wall four years later, we are tempted to suppose
that there was some inevitable bottleneck in casting German
heavy ordnance and that Franco had touched upon a weak

1 The Spanish Government and the Axis, U.S. Dept. of State, 1946.

THE HENDAYE TAPESTRY 127

spot, Suner Is convinced now that his own conciliatory firmness
helped to dupe the Hun. He writes: "I held It to be self-evident
to avoid categorical refusals to Hitler, lest he should seize
them as an excuse for violating Spanish neutrality."

No doubt many influences were working upon Franco, many
incoherent stresses were pulling him this way and that, when
he heard that the Fuehrer was going all the way to Hendaye
to meet him. If he thought of the fate of Rotterdam and Eben
Emael, no doubt he also remembered the destruction of the
French Fleet at Oran, just three months earlier.

The grimness of the British war leader may have had a
steadying Influence: the thought that, harassed and stretched
as it was, the Royal Navy with its famous system of Navicerts
still sailed between him and his American wheat and petrol.
Even so, with Britain alone and beleaguered by bombers and
U-boats, with Operation Sealion not yet cancelled, it was not
entirely easy to decide to postpone the blow at Gibraltar.

A Chief of State like Francisco Franco, a practical man and
no fanatic, will have sized up first his country's needs and
decided that neutrality was best for Spain, still exhausted from
her own terrible civil war. Secondly, he will have attempted
to divine the intentions of his German opponent and the exact
meaning of Wehrmacht troop concentrations near the coastal
road towards Hendaye. Then an old friend came quietly to
his aid, Admiral Wilhelm Ganaris.

Canaris is mentioned by the pro-Nazi Suner in describing
his Berlin conversations with Hitler in September as spreading
"confused ideas on Spanish problems".

It has taken some years to unravel the discreet allusions of
Suner. When Ramon the Zealot left Berlin, he hastened to
Rome to see what Giano thought about the determination
of Hitler to drag Spain into the war. While he was on his way,
Ganaris had discovered what was afoot and was afraid that
Hitler would bluff a way into Spain.

It was my first idea that Ganaris must have warned General
Vigon, the Chief of Spanish Military Intelligence, that Hitler
would do no more than bluff and that Franco must resist him.
But General Lahousen tells me that the wires to Spain at this
time were so loaded with inter-staff preparations for a military
alliance and the attack on Gibraltar that General Vigon
would not have understood a divergent political message if

128 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

indeed Ganaris had been so rash as to commit his views to
cipher. No, there was another means. Up popped the resource
ful Josef Mueller in Rome while Suner was still there and said
to him:

"The Admiral asks you to tell the Gaudillo to hold Spain
out of this game at all costs. It may seem to you now that our
position is the stronger it is in reality desperate, and we have
little hope of winning this war. The Caudillo may be assured
that Hitler will not use the force of arms to enter Spain."

This was a disconcerting message for Suner to carry, for he
read history with a different eye. Nevertheless I have no doubt
that he delivered Mueller's message. There were other mys
terious channels through which the Admiral could ascertain
whether he had fulfilled his request.

When Hitler exclaimed to Suner in Berlin on September
1 7th that "It would be a matter primarily of taking Gibraltar
with extraordinary speed and protecting the Straits", the
perplexed mind of Suner turned to the activities and opinions
of Admiral Canaris. "With extraordinary speed? " The Admiral
had not been so sanguine of success as his Fuehrer. Who had
advised Franco to ask for ten fifteen-inch guns for the Gibraltar
undertaking, which he was now told could not be provided?
The Admiral and General von Richthofen had been the princi
pal German officers of the military commission that examined
the Gibraltar undertaking. They should have known that the
guns were not available. "I perceived in Berlin that anything
to do with Spanish affairs was utterly confused," wrote Suner
in his memoirs. " One of the reasons for this confusion was the
somewhat singular role played by Admiral Ganaris who had
relations in Spain with persons other than the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs."

Aloud and to Hitler at the time Suner said that the report on
the vulnerability of Gibraltar given by the German experts in
Spain "had not brought their views clearly to the surface".
Strangely, no suspicion even then dawned on the mind of
Hitler. He insisted that "on the basis of the impressions of the
German military commission that had gone to Spain to examine
the question on the spot, as well as on reports formerly obtained
or sent recently by Admiral Ganaris, they had come to the
conclusion that Gibraltar could be conquered by a modern
attack with relatively modest means".

THE HENDAYE TAPESTRY

Suner begged him to put these views in writing to Franco,
as if the Gaudillo had been told something quite different. So
Hitler set about softening Franco himself. He decided that he
would have to go and see him to be sure of being properly
understood in future. He complied with the suggestion of
Suner, committed to writing his views on the vulnerability of
Gibraltar and other military problems connected with the
spreading of war to Spain, and asked for the Hendaye meeting.

"I received your letter, my dear Fuehrer," replied Franco
on September 52 2nd, "with your views and those of your General
Staff . . . which, with the exception of small details, match my
thoughts and those of my General Staff."

The letter that Hitler had written was insistent on the
Spanish affair. He had discovered that England could hardly
be defeated by direct assaults, though he did not reveal that.
Spain offered the most obvious and immediate opportunity for
a secondary success.

It was on October 23rd at Hendaye that Hitler made his
formal demand for military passage through Spain to attack
the Rock, though he may have first mentioned his target date,
January loth, when Suner visited him in Berchtesgaden in
November.

Ganaris, this fluent subtle man so passionately conversant
with the affairs of the peninsula, was the very person who
might have been expected to accompany his Fuehrer in the
parlour car and help to persuade Franco to a comradeship in
arms. Yet he was not there. His diminutive figure, white of
head with intense blue eyes and an expression of silent nervous
concentration, stands apart from the flamboyant personages
of the tapestry.

"Ribbentrop did not trust his influence and did not want
him to be there," said General Lahousen. "They knew that
he took a separate line on the Spanish problem."

The mesmeric powers of Hitler were abnormal, the bulging
eyes beneath his peaked cap as he seized the Caudillo's hand
gave forth every symptom of hypnotic effort. He sought to
overbear the Gaudillo, and during the next nine hours there
was that suffocating flow of language with which he habitually
stupefied his victim, like a boa-constrictor covering his prey
with saliva before devouring it. But the Gaudillo showed
extraordinary toughness and resilience, and took his wonted

I3O CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

leisure after the repast. The Fuehrer complained that he was
being kept waiting for above an hour, but the Gaudillo excused
himself with a message that he must invariably have his siesta.

Hitler described the bombing of London and the U-boat
war in the Atlantic, and he totted up his two hundred and
thirty divisions. The Caudillo was affable, dignified, quite un-
cowed and at moments even detached; and when he mounted
his own railway coach again to cross the Bidassoa and climb
the Pyrenees, he was fending off an insistent Fuehrer's :

"I must have your answer now."

"I will think about it. I will write to you."

There was indeed correspondence, and a to and fro of
ministers, ambassadors and generals. Hitler wrote on February
6th after his target date had come and passed and Franco
left his letter unanswered until February 2 6th, when he
replied: "Your letter of the 6th makes me wish to reply very
promptly. ..."

At Hendaye the brusque methods of Hitler against smaller
men than himself had failed for the first time, because Franco
had gone to Hendaye armed with certain knowledge. Indeed
he had vital information that deciphered the views of Hitler and
his General Staff as set forth in the Fuehrer's September letter.
The Admiral had given him the clue that while they would
welcome Spanish participation in the war, Hitler, his High
Command and his Army General Staff were agreed that, with
Russia unconquered in their rear, there could be no question
of entering Spain by force if the Spaniard resisted. The prospect
of guerilla war along the roads and railways from the Pyrenees
to Gibraltar had sobered them; they were daunted and no
wonder by the thought of having to use and maintain the
Spanish railways; they thought of the necessity, once in, for
conquering Portugal, too, if Britain were to be kept out of the
Peninsula, and the immense addition of coastline there would
be to defend. There were only the coastal road and railway to
carry their military transport into Spain, and the German
Ambassador had reported in a dispatch of the previous August:
"For long stretches between Bayonne and San Sebastian, they
can be observed and fired upon from the sea." The alternative
road over the Pyrenees through St. Jean Pied-de-Port had been
reconnoitred by a German general and found unsuitable.

When Hitler got over the first discomfiture of Hendaye ct l

THE HENDAYE TAPESTRY 131

would rather have four teeth out than go through It again," he
told Mussolini in Florence he sent Admiral Ganaris what
better man ! to see Franco in Madrid and urge him to enter the
war and give German troops the right to attack Gibraltar.
Perhaps friendly persuasion would succeed where hypnotics
and bullying had failed. Ganaris saw Franco alone with General
Vigon, Chief of Spanish Military Intelligence. Suner was not
present !

"Ganaris had subsequently to attempt to secure Spanish
intervention several times," suggests Dr. Abshagen, his German
biographer. "He hardly expected Franco to yield as the Ger
man position grew steadily worse" but who kept Franco
informed of the worsening German position but the Admiral
himself, and his good friend the Chief of Spanish Military
Intelligence, General Vigon, with whom Canaris played an
open hand? "It probably never entered Hitler's head at that
time," comments Abshagen, "that if he wished to intervene in
Spain any of his own officers should oppose it."

Canaris was discreet in his indications. Just that sarcastic
inflexion of the voice during an audience was maybe enough to
tell his Spanish intimates what were his inward thoughts. His
adjutant, Lt. Colonel Jenke, tells me that Canaris found it
appropriate to discuss the real situation of Germany and the
interests of Spain with General Martinez Campos, the Spanish
Chief of General Staff, and that "he was quite frank in advising
that Spain should remain neutral and defend her neutrality".

"Ask our Fuehrer for fifteen-inch guns," I can imagine the
Admiral's whispered counsel to Vigon or Franco at the time
when Gibraltar seemed a most tempting prize and German
pressure almost irresistible, "die kann er nicht hergeben".

When this quaint story of medieval guile is told in full and
the ornate border of the tapestry filled out with all the symbols
of war and peace, it will no doubt surprise another in the
remote background, Lord Templewood, the Ambassador in
Madrid, who was filled with anxiety by the frequent visits of
the Admiral to Spain. Upon the face of General Sir F. N.
Mason-Macfarlane ("Mason-Mac"), who took over the Rock
from Lord Gort, and had some knowledge of Ganaris from his
days as military attache in Berlin, I fancy I see a wry smile.

The border of the Hendaye tapestry is peopled with small
and busy agents (like ants, bees and crickets among the grapes,

132 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

oranges and olive branches of Spain) ; the British and Germans
watching each other; the Germans observing fleet movements
from Algeciras and La Linea; the Germans watching Spanish
troop movements both near the Pyrenees and near Gibraltar,
to discern the measure of Franco's aspirations and fears. The
high game was played over their heads. The Abwehr found no
signs of a Spanish assault force gathering against Gibraltar, but
they did notice a movement of troops towards the Pyrenees.

So the immediate danger passed and the Fuehrer swerved in
his purpose from a southward bending strategy that might have
rolled up in the Middle East through Morocco and Persia, if he
had been willing to accept the Red Army as the eastern claw
of the pincers. It seems that for a short time the secret diplo
macy of Ganaris passed unnoticed in the Reich Chancellery;
but General Munoz Grande, who led the Spanish Blue Division
to fight for Hitler on the Russian front, said openly that Ganaris
had persuaded Franco that it was not in his interest to enter the
war on the side of Germany. This came to the ears of the
Gestapo, and S.S. Group Chief Walther Huppenkothen of the
Reich Security Office noted it in a long report on Ganaris for
Himmler the affable silence of General Franco deprived the
accusation of some of its weight, but the suspicion remained.

Canaris still came and went to Spain as he pleased until late
in 1943, when it was pressure from the British that held him out
of the peninsula on one occasion for reasons that I cannot
properly guess. By then Ribbentrop and Himmler had organised
two foreign intelligence organisations that overshadowed and
absorbed some of the Abwehr service and intensified the struggle
with the Allies, who could never be certain which organisation
of the three was pitted against them.

It was not only with Franco that the Admiral pursued his
singular designs. Another old friend was Bon Daniel de Araos,
Baron de Sacrelirio, a shipping magnate and a retired officer of
the Spanish armada. The Baroness de Sacrelirio was well
known in Madrid for her Anglophile sentiments. Ganaris
regarded these friends as part of his personal intelligence circle.
Now Don Daniel was also well acquainted with the British
naval attaches in Madrid, and when the Navicerts squeezed his
cargo ships, as they often did, he would put on his uniform and
the cloak of an Armada officer and call ceremoniously at the
British Embassy. Strangely, it may seem, the British allowed

THE HENDAYE TAPESTRY 133

Don Daniel more Navicerts than some of his compatriots con
sidered fair, and they were loud in their complaints.

"Here is Don Daniel," they said, "friend of the German arch
spy Ganaris, being given favourable treatment by the British
when others are refused Navicerts!" What a conundrum for
the Gestapo !

I cannot pretend to have discovered all the contacts in
Spain and Portugal through whom it was possible for
Canaris to try and influence the British, nor would it have
been possible always to decide which indiscretions were
intentional. But since this book was first published I have
been told of another link by one of the British Intelligence
Officers who were in Tangiers during the war. Otto Kriiger,
an Abwehr officer in Tangiers, went over to the British in
1943 and after the war he asserted that there had been links
between Ganaris and the British during the war in the island
of Majorca. Kriiger, like Don Daniel, is dead. The link that
was in Majorca may still be there.

So the Admiral continued to come and go to the peninsula,
and every time his visit was reported to the British Ambassador,
Lord Templewood was seized with malaise, and no doubt the
German Ambassador groaned, too. . . . Templewood no doubt
thought of him as the Abwehr Chief whose agents nearly suc
ceeded in inserting a microphone in his embassy desk telephone
and set women to debauch his servants. As for Ganaris, it was
with a sense of relief that he turned his back on the maniacs of
the north and flew southwards. So much of what he had
schemed between London and Ankara had gone astray; but in
Spain he had achieved something lasting. He had saved this
mysterious land from prolonged torture. As his aircraft left
captive France behind, he was happy to think of the dark con
fidences of Madrid and sunned himself in the dazzling smile of
the Pyrenees.

CHAPTER XV

IN THE BALKANS

IF GANARIS HELPED to thwart Hitler in Spain, where
Germany could expect much advantage from commanding the
Straits, it seemed to me that he might pursue the same policy
elsewhere. I thought of the Balkans, where German interests
were not greatly furthered by Bulgaria and lukewarm Hungary
in her unhappy position across the marches of Europe. Did
Ganaris pursue a separate policy in these countries, too? I can
recollect the pained astonishment on the faces of some of his
subordinates, who evidently revered him deeply, when I sug
gested that the Admiral did in fact pursue his own grand policy
with such weapons as he could. Some found it a terrible sug
gestion that he could differ with his government in wartime and
perhaps undermine it. We read with enthusiasm in history
books of the doings of Henry the Lion against his emperor, of
Wallenstein and Warwick; but in our times the independent
line is regarded simply as treason against the state.

King Boris of Bulgaria, with whom Ganaris was familiar,
seemed to be in a similar position to Franco at the other end of
Europe.

Hitler's brain was teeming with ideas of wresting away from
the Balkans their precarious neutral status and striking a terrible
blow at Russia. He had directed Keitel to give the Central
Army Group at Borisov the task of outlining a plan of attack
on Russia as a staff exercise. Oddly enough, by a stealthy
selection of staff officers, a military group hostile to him was
being collected in Central Army Group Headquarters, and they
saw with amusement and wonder that Molotov was sent to
Berlin in November 1940 to prolong Russo-German colla
boration. Hitler and Ribbentrop spoke to him of a crusade
against the British Empire and promised him warm water
ports in Asia; but Molotov insisted on talking about the situa
tion in Eastern Europe and Finland, and in the Balkans. The

134

IN THE BALKANS 135

R.A.F. Interrupted their conferences at one of the most heated
moments and forced them to descend to the air-raid shelter.
Hitler waited a month after Molotov had gone home, and then
on December i8th ordered that Operation Barbarossa against
Soviet Russia should go forward for detailed planning and
organisation. In the meantime he had called King Boris to
come and see him and dispatched German troops into Rumania*

Boris, an intelligent head and a sensitive face, dark, oval, and
high of forehead, a linguist and savant, who liked to study
botany and entomology in the solitude of nature, stood between
two counsellors: Wilhelm Canaris, an old friend, and George
Earle, the American Minister In Sofia, President Roosevelt's
personal watchman in the Balkans. Ambassador Earle, a former
Governor of Pennsylvania and at one time in the running for
the Democratic nomination for the Presidency, had stood down
for his old friend Roosevelt, and Roosevelt remembered it,
sending him first as U.S. Minister to Austria and then to Sofia,
where it was hoped that his friendship for King Boris would
keep Bulgaria out of the war. Hitler was perhaps fighting the
influence of two secret advisers when he declared at Berchtes-
gaden that Bulgaria must become the ally of Germany but he
had on his side the Bulgarian General Staff, traditionally pro-
German and the national fear of Russia and Turkey.

Rumania, the smiling land of the Danube delta with its
wealth of oil in Ploesti, was falling into his hand. Ganaris had
flown to Venice early in September for a conference with the
Rumanian Chief of Secret Police, Morusov. They agreed upon
infiltration of German agents into Ploesti, to guard the oil
wells against sabotage by the British Secret Service. The danger
was not acute from that quarter in fact, the derricks, wells and
refineries of Ploesti were the main source of wealth that
Rumania possessed, and it was about as likely that she would
neglect their security or destroy them to deny them to an
aggressor as for the French to lay waste then* vineyards. But
Hitler was anxious about the oil wells and Ganaris would make
the most prestige he could of his success in placing his men in
Ploesti.

Hitler required Bulgaria, not for any resources, but for its
strategic position. Boris wavered. He could have got no backing
either at home or in Ankara for a policy of armed neutrality
with his neighbour and traditional enemy, Turkey. He had

136 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

visited London and seen Chamberlain in 1938, but what help
could Britain give him. now? So he consented on March ist
1941 that his government should join the Axis. Thus Hitler
had a small ally on the south-eastern border of Europe who
would conveniently help him if Turkey should march through
the Balkans ; his first use of Boris was to attack Greece and
Yugoslavia in the flank after the revolt against Prince Paul's
regency brought in a pro-British government in Belgrade.
Hitler angrily postponed his zero-day of May I5th against
Russia and turned the fury of the Luftwaffe on Belgrade
within ten days of the national revolution. Joszef Lipski tells
me that as Hitler was ordering the annihilating attack on
the Yugoslav capital, Canaris, who had learned of his inten
tions, passed a warning to the Yugoslav Government, which
on April 3rd declared Belgrade an open city. 1 They were
of little avail, either the warning or the declaration. The
German bombers appeared over Belgrade at 5.15 a.m. on the
6th and flew in relays from airfields in Rumania. "From roof
top height without fear of resistance/' Mr. Churchill paints the
lurid picture in his memoirs, "they blasted the city without
mercy. This was called Operation Punishment. When silence
came at last on April 8th, over seventeen thousand citizens of
Belgrade lay dead in the streets or under the debris. Out of the
nightmare of smoke and fire came the maddened animals
released from their shattered cages in the Zoological Gardens.
A stricken stork hobbled past the main hotel which was a mass
of flames. A bear, dazed and uncomprehending, shuified
through the inferno with slow and awkward gait down towards
the Danube."

Canaris, as if in expiation of his powerlessness to alter the
destructive will of his master, flew to Belgrade. He spent a day
apparently investigating intelligence targets and wandering
round the agonised city. Towards evening he returned to the
billet found for him in a suburb and collapsed in prostration at
the horrors he had seen.

"I can't see any more of this/' he cried. "We will leave
tomorrow."

"Tomorrow? Where for?" asked his adjutant.

"Spain."

1 This -was hardly likely to have been invented by a Pole about a German; the
Ambassador assured me that the Yugoslav General Staff was fully aware of
Ganaris's warning.

IN THE BALKANS 137

He could, so it appears, fly whither he would. The extra
ordinary extent to which he did travel abroad during the war
excited no unfavourable comment " simply because nobody in
the German Government really had any idea how an intelligence
service works/' Lt.-Golonel Viktor von Schweinitz suggested
to me. The High Command did not require him to seek
permission for travel abroad, and when he wanted he could
turn his aircraft towards Spain or Portugal and find solace
in these distant and ancient realms. Whether on this occasion
his solace consisted in relating to Don Daniel how the Fuehrer
had raved at the Serbs when he had been obliged to postpone
his summer offensive proper against Russia, I cannot say.

He flew in all weathers, with an utter indifference to his
safety, resigned and philosophical in his outlook. Even those
who were his close friends cannot remember the bewildering
pattern his aircraft wove over Europe, Africa and Asia Minor
in these months. Lahousen remembers that he visited Rommel
at his desert headquarters west of Derna probably to acquaint
him with the impending revolt of Rashid Ali in Iraq and the
intention of the German High Command to support Rashid
Ali with arms and aircraft, using French Syria as a stepping
stone. Dr. Paul Leverkuehn 1 found Canaris sceptical of this
revolt behind WavelTs back, and told me that the German
Minister in Baghdad, Dr. Grobba, was really the moving spirit.

When the Rashid Ali rebellion broke out in May 1941
there were pitched battles for the British air base of Habbaniyah,
but the Iraqi air force was largely destroyed and before German
assistance could reach the Iraqi rebels through Syria Wavell
had sent up a force against General Dentz that compelled him
to surrender after hard fighting.

Canaris in the oasis produced his secret dossier of Abwehr
reports on the S.S. atrocities in Europe and gave Rommel
"a lesson on the facts of life" as he described it.

"You, Rommel, of the Army, will one day be held responsible
for what is happening behind the lines."

He found Rommel hardly sympathetic and so keen on his
desert war that he had no time to be shocked.

"That's not behind my front not my concern at all,"
was his attitude. "I'm a fighting man."

Canaris visited Turkey twice during the war, though Asia

1 One of the German intelligence officers in Istanbul.

138 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

Minor was not a territory he understood well. He had paid a
fleeting visit to Baghdad before the war on the pretext of sizing
up intelligence requirements. It was a comic episode that did
not enhance his reputation as a spy. The political influence of
Great Britain in Iraq was strong. She maintained air bases
there by treaty rights and had transit facilities for her armed
forces. The Admiral therefore chose to travel with false pass
ports, taking with him his head of Abwehr II, Colonel Groscurth
responsible for subversive activities in enemy territory and
abroad. It was like something in a Marx Brothers farce in
Baghdad. First Groscurth wrote his real name in the hotel
register; then Ganaris, after angrily rebuking him, gave up a
large parcel of his linen for laundering. It came back with a
bill made out to W. Ganaris from the name tabs in his shirts
and the story goes that the package was "paged" round the
hotel by the mystified staff. A few hours later a curt message
came to him from the British Secret Service that he was to
leave Iraq forthwith.

It was odd that a man of such cunning and perspicacity
should neglect such elementary details of his profession as a
laundry mark, but carelessness often goes with high rank.

In the early spring of 1941 he was in Berne, too. Europe was
disquieted by German troop movement eastwards and south-
eastwards. He seemed indiscreet to the point of ignoring
security altogether.

"Will Germany attack Turkey?" asked Madame J after
Allied intelligence reports had showed a trend of German
armour to the south-east, as if towards Asia Minor.

"No, we won't attack Turkey," said the Admiral; "Russia
perhaps."

Mr. Churchill felt certain enough about the intentions of
Hitler by April 3rd to send Sir Stafford Ciipps to Moscow
with a personal message for Stalin that Germany had begun
to move three divisions of armour from Rumania to Southern
Poland opposite Russia. The movement had indeed been
countermanded when the Yugoslavs rose against the Axis but
it was nevertheless significant.

Josef Mueller of the Abwehr appeared once more in the
Vatican city and tells me that he told the British of the planned
date of invasion of Russia. Reliable neutral diplomats in
Berlin were getting thin on the ground as country after country

IN THE BALKANS 139

was invaded. There was, however, an Abwehr agent going to
Moscow as a business man in advance of the invasion, Nicholas
von Halem, of the Admiral's personal staff. He knew a British
resident there, but was not sure that he could safely meet him.
His own pretext for travel was simple: business men were going
from Berlin to Moscow daily to promote the economic and
political co-operation that continued between Germany and
Russia, until June 2ist, but he could not risk the N.K.V.D.
seeing him approach an Englishman's office. He searched about
his Moscow hotel till he found a postcard photograph of it,
which he marked with a cross on his bedroom window and
wrote, "I am here for a day or so and hope to have the
opportunity of seeing you." He signed himself "Keats". The
postcard went through internal postal censorship without
arousing suspicion.

** Keats" had been his nickname since early youth and it
served well. He did not have to wait long for his visitor, who
walked up to his room next day. On his way back to Berlin
von Halem related this to a friend in Central Army Group
which was waiting at Borisov for the great attack.

Russia herself was not warned by the Germans neither by
Herr von der Schulenberg, the German Ambassador in Moscow,
whose hand Stalin seized at a reception three days before the
day of the attack, asking him with a searching stare, e * I hope
that our treaty of friendship will remain honoured"; nor
apparently by Ganaris, who preferred that the political
knowledge should be laid in the hands of the British. He himself
had for years considered the Bolshevik regime to be the worst
misfortune under which the world suffered; but Hitler's attack
on Russia did not hearten him or win his approval. He knew
that his own political ideas of an independent Ukraine and an
alliance with the Russian people against their masters had no
place in the minds of Hitler, Ribbentrop and Rosenberg.
Calculated extermination would be their policy even before the
campaign had even been decided; fertilisation of the soil
with the blood of the vanquished; the Commissars were to
be shot as soon as captured, the S.S. were to drive the Jews,
dead and dying, into mass graves. Towns and villages were to
be razed and yet allegedly the object in attacking Russia
was to seize a productive hinterland for the prolonged struggle
with the British Empire. Worst of all, most of the generals

140 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

accepted Operation Barbarossa with resignation and pro
fessional elan. Now they would see how whole army groups
could be pushed forward on a wide front. They would have
freedom to manoeuvre and they could put into practice all
the theories of Cannae that they had ever studied so they
thought. Soon after midnight on June 22nd,, 194.1, the attack
on Russia began and the Soviet air force in forward areas was
surprised and destroyed on the ground.

Great Britain was planning military aid to Russia in the
autumn of 1941 ; but the Germans had got so close to Moscow
in such a rapid march that it seemed that these arms, that could
ill be spared, would come too late. The British service ministries
were loath to see them go. There was panic in Moscow as the
Germans approached, and it appeared that the capital was
about to fall. The Soviet Government and the diplomatic
missions moved four days' journey into Central Russia.

I am told that the British Intelligence Service picked up
indications that Canaris was far forward when the German
Army was thrusting at Moscow and that he was warning the
High Command that they would not reach Moscow "and
never will reach Moscow,'* a British officer quoted to me from
memory one of the Canaris reports of which we hold copies.
"He went up in exactly the same way before the Caucasus
offensive in the following year and foretold that they would not
reach their objective. But they did not believe him."

This account fits in with information from another source.
Canaris returned from the Russian front in the autumn of 1941
and went from Berlin to Berne, where he arrived at the moment
when the German lines were stretched to the utmost and the
Moscow panic at its height.

"If the Russian Army is disorganised and exhausted," he
told Madame J "so are we, too. We have outrun our supplies;
our resources in transport are wholly inadequate to maintain
such large formations so far forward. If the situation of Russia
is bad, it can hardly be worse than ours."

After the Caucasus offensive had failed in 1942, came the
winter campaign of Stalingrad, and Boris must have shivered
when he heard the news. If I leap on in time here, it is to
finish the mysterious story of the king whom Hitler summoned
to'Berchtesgaden on March 3ist, 1943, to obtain his assurance
that Bulgaria would resist a march of the Allies through Turkey.

IN THE BALKANS 141

Boris returned to Sofia and stealthily took up negotiations with
Turkey in May through his Minister in Ankara. His idea then
was a pact of armed neutrality between Turkey and Bulgaria
which would at once draw his own country out of the war and
offer Germany the apparent compensation of ensuring against
an Allied thrust from Asia Minor. These negotiations were
conducted by the Bulgarian Minister in Ankara with the
Turkish Foreign Minister, M. Menemenjoglu; but when the
Bulgarian minister went back to Sofia to discuss progress,
Herr Delius, the German Area Intelligence Chief, obtained a
complete record of his verbal report from a microphone which
his agents had managed to install in the Foreign Ministry.

"How is that possible? " I asked Dr. Leverkuehn, the Abwehr
agent in Turkey who related the incident.

"It would only be possible in Bulgaria/* he replied with a
smile, "but I had a similar report from Istanbul. The Turkish
generals had discussed the idea of a Turco-Bulgarian pact and
spoke against it. I reported that to Herr von Papen and he
forwarded my report to Berlin."

Walther Huppenkothen of the Gestapo, in his subsequent
investigation on Canaris and Abwehr political activities,
mentions that the Admiral saw Boris in August a week before
the king died; but he infers nothing from it. It appears that
Hitler had invited Boris to return to Germany to stiffen him
further in August and that Boris actually went a second time
despite rumours at the time that he declined to go. General
Antonescu was also invited to Germany to discuss the attitude
of Rumania.

The summons to Boris and Antonescu, the stamping boot
on their attempts to extricate themselves from unholy alliance,
may well have been the sequel to an intelligence report sent
by the worthy Dr. Leverkuehn from the talkative city of
Istanbul. He had some contacts on political matters with
George Earle and this gave him a chance to observe the other
activities, of the American Secret Service man and special
emissary. Just after Earle had completed a laborious intrigue
with Bulgaria, Leverkuehn nullified it with one stroke,

"Opinions (that he was a dilettante) have changed in
the British and American embassies about George Earle," he
wrote in a dispatch of May 1943 to Herr von Papen and
Colonel Hansen, his superior officers in the Abwehr. "It is

142 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

reported that he has succeeded in reaching an agreement
between the United States and Bulgaria. The negotiations
took place in Istanbul but mainly through men of Earle's in
Sofia. The basis for the agreement is that it should be recognised
that Bulgaria has acted under compulsion in her present
policy and will return to full neutrality as soon as such
compulsion no longer exists. Bulgaria would evacuate all
Greek territory that she has occupied. The American military
attache says that this agreement is due entirely to the skill of
Earle who has been in direct contact with Roosevelt. A letter
from the President to 'My dear George' has caused a stir in
the American Embassy. It has not yet been decided who will
sign for Bulgaria the king and his government are hesitating
and casting about for a suitable person. There are similar
reports about Rumania."

Small wonder, then, that Hitler should invite Boris and
Antonescu to Germany. Walther Huppenkothen of the S.S. in
his painstaking account of Abwehr activities relates that
Ganaris visited Boris in Sofia shortly before the last illness of
the king. Huppenkothen adds nothing he evidently suspected
political talks which were strictly forbidden to Ganaris. I find
it credible that Ganaris would have advised Boris to make his
peace with the Allies as and when he could, and Leverkuehn
hesitantly agreed with me that this was not out of the question.
But Boris fell suddenly ill in the third week of August. His
brother. Prince Cyril, made a brief allegation before a war
crimes court in 1945 that the king had been poisoned by the
S.S. through a defective oxygen mask used on his return flight
from Berchtesgaden; but Gyril could offer no detail of
evidence, even circumstantial, to support this. Dr. Leverkuehn
in Istanbul, who knew his Abwehr colleagues of Sofia well,
disbelieves the story of murder and tells me that Bulgarian
doctors diagnosed an embolism that mounted to the heart,
and that he was found dying one morning in his bath.
Either the hypnotic influence of Hitler was still strong, or
the king sensed that the walls of his palace were hollow, too,
and that the Abwehr men were close about him; for as he
lay helpless on his deathbed he murmured that he still had
a faith in the final victory of Adolf Hitler. His words were noted
and duly reported to Berlin; they stuck in the memory of
Leverkuehn, who repeated them to me seven years afterwards.

IN THE BALKANS 143

King Boris died on August 28th, 1943, aged forty-nine,, and
Hitler sent a message to Queen Giovanna that "the over
powering news of the death of His Majesty the King has moved
me deeply". On what evidence is available, I am inclined to
think that King Boris died, by accident, a natural death.
His son. King Simeon, aged six, reigned in his stead, under the
regency of Prince Cyril.

Two months after this an emissary of Hungary signed a
secret declaration of surrender in Sir Hugh Knatchbull-
Huguessen's yacht off Istanbul: but it was to profit Hungary
as little as Earle's scheme helped Bulgaria.

CHAPTER XVI

HOW THE ADMIRAL GOT HIS

BAD NAME

se rT'i

J-His is THE paint that the Germans paint their tanks
with."

Lieutenant- Colonel A. D. Wintle of the First Royal Dragoons
told me how he met an excited intelligence officer in the marble
corridors of the War Office shortly before the war broke out.

"What are you going to do with it?" asked the Colonel,
fixing his monocle in his eye and regarding pot and officer with
a glassy stare.

"I am going to have it analysed."

"Why?"

"We shall then know what their camouflage mixture is."

"My dear fellow, and then? " the Colonel summed up with
devastating logic. "When you have discovered how much oil,
what binding colour and spirit, and what-not gives it that dull
finish, what will you do then?"

There was a slow hiss of escaping enthusiasm.

"If," said the Colonel., "you people would make it your
business to discover what date Hitler has selected to make
war, as I have done, you would be doing the duties proper to an
intelligence officer."

In every intelligence service there was drudgery and a
certain amount of unnecessary work, while the vital operations
lay in a few hands only.

By 1942 the British Intelligence Services had multiplied in
strength many times in several departments, ancient and
modern, within the service ministries and in new ministries
formed during the war. There were practical men, shrewd
men, political men, theorists and paintpot analysts. Business
men, dons, artists, scientists, men of letters, retired officers and
gentlemen of leisure, they took up the game with alacrity and
often with overlapping terms of reference. Certainly the best

HOW THE ADMIRAL GOT HIS BAD NAME 145

work was not begun until long after Dunkirk. When France
was collapsing Wintle had the idea of dropping in at French
airfields to see what French airmen could be persuaded to
throw in their lot with ours; but his idea did not at all appeal
to his senior officer and there was a sharp quarrel, after which
Wintle was committed to a brief sojourn in the Tower of
London on charges of threatening a senior officer. He soon
emerged after conducting his own defence with some success
in a court martial and served with distinction in the Middle
East. These were the teething troubles of the new intelligence
outfits., in times when it was still easier to be committed to
the Tower for wanting to do too much than for doing too
little. The French Section of the War Office within S.O.2
(Special Operation 2) began its work with the French Resis
tance, the planners of Special Operations launched saboteurs
into Norway to wreck the power stations which had been har
nessed to produce heavy water for the German atom-bomb
research organisation. The cloak and dagger men ran their small
boats into the Gironde and sank German shipping there ; they
inflicted pinpricks on the enemy all along three thousand miles
of coast. There was intense rivalry between intelligence and
operations staffs, because the latter was apt to stir up the
hornets' nest of the Gestapo by blowing bridges, burning
factories or sinking shipping, whereas the former came and
went stealthily, leaving no sign. The one game spoiled the other.
The rivalry and dislike was so keen that at one time neither
"show" would inform the other what its activities were; once
both landed agents in the same spot on the Norway coast
within three days of each other. The S.O. or " Cloak and
Dagger-" men landed first with sub-machine guns and explosive
charges and left smoke and debris behind them. The I-men
came in stealthily afterwards into an apparently placid fishing
village and ran straight into the arms of the German Field
Police. No wonder that officers blanched, groaned and ground
their teeth at mention of the rival "show". It was policy to keep
the Boche alert and nervous on the seaboard of Europe and in
occupied countries and "tie down" his garrisons; but it made
the work of the intelligence officers far more difficult. Sabotage
was the enemy of intelligence, and yet the enslaved peoples of
Europe upon whom we depended for intelligence expected
some action, too. So did the War Cabinet.

146 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

Ganaris had laid his Intelligence organisation ahead of the
Army in the countries to be overrun. Britain prepared no
organisation to be left behind as she retreated. It was no use
improvising. Almost everything had to be built up after the
Battle of Britain. There was a desperate series of small-boat
sorties and parachute descents that helped to establish the
British Secret Service again in its proper place in Europe
adventures like those of Captain Peter Churchill and Odette
Sansom among the Maquis which Jerrard Tickell tells so
vividly. The nation which had hesitated so long before intro
ducing conscription, which had neglected its secret service
during peace, when war became earnest, did not scruple to
drop women behind the enemy lines, where as likely as not
Gestapo torture awaited them and ultimately death in the
furnaces of concentration camps.

It was oppressive to think of these valiant efforts to dint the
iron breastplate of Germany while we neglected the Achilles
heel. Within the subdued but independent brain of the German
General Staff, the Abwehr, moved similar thoughts to those
that guided the Directors of Intelligence and Operations in
London Germany could not win in the end. There would be
not total Sieg, there could not even be stalemate, there could
only be defeat. Some German officers, thinking for their troops,
suspected as much. The Abwehr knew it.

I found myself attached for a short time in 1941 to a War
Office branch that was broadcasting in German to the
Wehrmacht: when I proposed that some of our talks should
be directed towards the officers and that it was useless to try and
incite the German private soldier to mutiny or disaffection,
my Brigadier replied that although he himself preferred that
line of approach it was forbidden in his directives.

By 1942 it seemed that unless we were to have a long war
decided simply by weight and numbers, it was high time for
this secret weapon against Hitler, the German opposition, to
come into play. There must be somewhere in London an
officer of standing and power who would appreciate the
opportunity that lay at hand.

The War Office was otherwise occupied. The War Office
diagrams showed the field-grey uniform, the silver wings and
swastika emblems: "Know Your Enemy!" The Admiralty
posters showed the silhouettes of German warships and their

HOW THE ADMIRAL GOT HIS BAD NAME 147

badges of rank. The Air Ministry issued its models of the enemy
aircraft and identification posters of the bombers that were
raiding London. It was an all-time job keeping this Wehrmacht
at bay "Know Your Enemy 1". The night bombers flew over
London and dropped their loads till the glare of burning houses
was as bright as sunset. The Japanese took Singapore, Burma
and Java. Rommel stood at Alamein and glowered towards
the Delta. The war was all action and ebb and flow.

At length I came upon two intelligence officers who had
heard of Admiral Canaris. I remember well one autumn day
of 1942, chatting with an elderly Colonel in a Whitehall office.

" Ah, you have ideas. You were in Germany before the war? "

I ventured to turn the subject of conversation to the Abwehr.

"The mentality of Admiral Ganaris is singular/ 3 I suggested.

"The man is a Greek," barked the Colonel. He took no de
light, evidently, in a study of the unusual; it was his profession
to do so, but here at least was an office, reticent and unpreten
tious anjpng many that seemed far busier, in which this name
raised more than a glimmer of interest. Here it seemed that the
motion and pulses of the European capitals were registered,
and the moves of the game were understood.

The second British officer I met in wartime who evidently
knew all about the Abwehr had a more imaginative approach
to the enigma of Admiral Canaris. He was a small man with soft,
expressive hands and a quiet, sad smile. Intuitive gifts, training,
a constant flow of knowledge, secrecy and a dispassionate tem
perament all made him an exceptional intelligence officer.

"I can imagine so well what the Admiral is thinking," he
exclaimed with a movement of his small hands. "I think I know
exactly what is in his mind."

We talked of the states of Europe and the policies of nations,
of the Reich itself and its terrible destiny. He seemed to under
stand the movements of history when it was still not set in the
mould, when several great alternative vistas were open to us.

Once he startled me by saying:

"Would you like to meet Canaris? "

There was something in this question that took a great
weight off my mind. The Admiral had evidently flown his signal.

A few weeks later, in September 1942, I again met the man
with the soft voice and expressive hands. He was saddened and
depressed by a sensational report in an American newspaper

148 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

that the Admiral had been plotting against Hitler and the Nazi
regime.

" Every time we build something up/' he said, "something
like this happens and destroys what we have built."

I suggested to him that the position of Admiral Ganaris might
not be shaken by this report. It might be regarded as a malic
ious attempt to sow discord between the Wehrmacht and Party.
If a violent attack were now made on the Admiral by a British
newspaper that might work to his advantage. My acquaintance
smiled a wan smile, as if he thought that it might just be worth
while.

" I could do it myself," I said; but at that time I was a serving
officer in the Royal Marines, out of touch with newspapers, and
hardly ever saw members of the intelligence services. Someone
else, I think, was soon encouraged to write about the Admiral
in the sense I had suggested, though I thought the tone of the
subsequent articles somewhat more violent than was really
necessary. I record them here for two reasons: firstly^ to unde
ceive those English readers who may have been given a false
impression of the Admiral by what they read in contemporary
newspapers, and secondly, to convince some of his German
friends, highly indignant at the time, that there were good
intentions behind a facade of wild and impalpable abuse.

Specimen obituary notice sent to British newspapers in
December 1942:

ADMIRAL WILHEIM GANARIS Germany's Master Spy, Evil Genius
of the Reich.

"Implacable enemy of Britain, the evil genius of Hitler's Reich,
Germany's master spy and cold-blooded assassin of all who stood
in his path, are but a few of the epitaphs that can be applied to
Admiral Wilhelm Ganaris, the man who did much to bring the
Fuehrer to power, and who, in time wondered whether he ought
to regard the man as much as foe as an ally."

This script then credits Ganaris with the assassination of
General von Schleicher (whom Goering and Himmler had
murdered) , and with the killing of General von Frits ch, his old
friend (who purposely walked into a beaten zone seeking death
during the advance on Warsaw).

Other and similar articles published before and afterwards
pointed out Canaris as the trainer of Heydrich and Himmler in

HOW THE ADMIRAL GOT HIS BAD NAME 149

the arts of murder, the lover and employer of Mata Hari and
a recruiter of Quislings all over Europe. "The world will be a
cleaner and purer place without him/ 5 two commentaries con
cluded.

I thought at the time that the report of Canaris plotting
against Hitler might have been politically inspired to embarrass
him. As it became better known that there was deep opposition
to Hitler in the German General Staff, uneasiness seized some of
the men in Britain's wartime propaganda services a revolt
from above did not accord at all with their ideas of the future of
Socialist Europe. It would be fair to say also that the idea was
forming in more serious minds at this moment that the General
Staff of Germany must not be allowed to shuffle off its joint
responsibility with Hitler for the wrongs which it had been
instrumental in preparing and carrying out.

"You may understand the AdmiraPs mind," I thought, as I
took leave of the man who had grasped the essentials of things.
"You and he could work out a short way out of this prolonged
ruin and misery, but the machinery of your service and his ser
vice will keep each of you in your place until the one machine
or the other is broken."

I have related these memories of 1942, at the risk of digressing,
because they show how the Admiral got his bad name.

CHAPTER XVII

EXIT HEYDRIGH

HIMMLER AND HEYDRiCH were not satisfied that the
Abwehr was prosecuting the war whole-heartedly. It seemed to
want to treat Commando troops as ordinary prisoners of war,
whereas the Fuehrer's orders were that they should be killed on
the spot. Ganaris had objected to racial policy, to executions
and assassination, as if this war was to be fought on the same
footing as previous wars, with the survivors sitting down to
gether afterwards to make peace. The Reichsfuehrer wanted
every German to fight as if there was to be no survival for the
vanquished.

Schellenberg called on Admiral Ganaris in August 1941 at the
Tirpitzufer and took along with him Dr. Walther Huppen-
kothen, a young lawyer who had specialised in police matters
and risen to become S.S. departmental chief in the Reich
Security. So Canaris met the man who was to become his
executioner. Huppenkothen, one of these precise and polished
Germans to whom cleanliness is above godliness, eyed the
Admiral, noticed that his hair was white, that he looked worn
and hard- worked and that he was somewhat untidy in his dress.
He noted the soft voice that spoke in whispers, and wrote in a
memorandum: "Not the Prussian officer type! "

Then they all went to Horchers together for one of the fort
nightly lunches that Heydrich and Ganaris took together. S.S.
Chief Group-Leader Mueller (Gestapo Mueller) joined them,
Colonel von Bentivegni, the departmental chief of Abwehr III
(Security) 3 Canaris's deputy, Admiral Bttrckner and Colonel
Lahousen.

Horcher's food was excellent, brought in from Denmark, and
his French wines were bought with occupation francs at
controlled prices. The intimate little restaurant in West
Berlin, where Himmler and Ribbentrop had entertained the
Duke of Windsor in 1937, had been abandoned for a safer villa

150

EXIT HEYDRICH 15!

in Wannsee suburb standing among trees on a sand ridge above
the lake. Here Colonel Piekenbrock, Chief of Military Intelli
gence I, joined the party. The manager, Herr Haeckh, whose
solicitude and art in the cuisine I well remember, the placid and
faithful Haeckh, smiled and bowed to his important guests.
Canaris had helped Horchers to open their famous restaurant
in Madrid, where perhaps his deaf mutes watched the conver
sations of the diplomats. He was a powerful patron. Heydrich
was another important customer.

The gentlemen chatted so openly with each other, though the
needles in their words probed at vital secrets and closely guarded
departmental privileges. Here was "Piecki", grand seigneur,
being so friendly with the black butchers of whom he said in his
own circle:

"Keitel must eventually tell his Herr Hitler that the military
Abwehr is not an organisation of murderers like the S.S. and
S.D."

Huppenkothen noticed how friendly Canaris and Heydrich
were ; but he remembered that Reinhard Heydrich had warned
him beforehand: "Canaris is an old fox and not to be trusted."
As for the old fox, he had written in his diary of Heydrich when
he first met him: "It will hardly be possible for me to work
closely with Heydrich, because he is a brutal fanatic." There
was nothing to be seen of such antipathy during the Horcher
repast.

Hupenkothen met Canaris again in Heydrich's villa in Sch-
lachtensee and then at the Canaris villa. They seemed on very
good terms. He went to the Abwehr mess in the Army High
Command Headquarters at Zossen, south of Berlin, and then
they met in Horcher' s again.

The division of responsibility that left Canaris the field of in
telligence and counter-espionage did not answer to Gestapo
requirements, Huppenkothen discovered as he looked back.
"In practice it was obvious time and again that the terms of
reference must be revised. The question of counter-espionage
especially had to be cleared up."

It irked Himmler and Heydrich that the Wehrmacht should
run security in northern France and Belgium, Towards the end
of 1941 Heydrich wrote to General Jodl and explained that
relations between Wehrmacht Intelligence and Security Police
must be adjusted. As a matter of course the letter was passed on

152 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

to Ganaris and a conference was held Canaris, Heydrich,
S.S. Mueller, Colonel von Bentivegni and Huppenkothen.

The tall, grim Heydrich and the small agile Ganaris promised
each other that they would be absolutely frank in future on all
matters.

"But Heydrich said that if he made agreements with Canaris
now he was doing so solely because of the war situation. After
the war he must claim the whole work now being done by the
military intelligence as the proper domain of the Gestapo,"
wrote Huppenkothen in his memorandum.

Ganaris was silent. It was deep winter. The German armies
lay frozen in front of Moscow. When the war was over . . .

Heydrich insisted that the Security Police must work in future
in France and Belgium. Ganaris declared that he would be pre
pared to put a large part of his Military Police there under the
Security Police. He yielded to every demand of Heydrich. But
when Huppenkothen received back his draft of the agreement
from Bentivegni a few weeks later he was indignant to find that
it was precisely the opposite of what had been said. Canaris
explained that there was much hesitation, through no fault of
his, in transferring the Field Security Police.

Heydrich wrote in anger to Ganaris that he could see no
sense in talks that seemed to be fully agreed, if it was necessary
to have a shorthand writer present to prevent arguments
afterwards.

"He could not negotiate with Ganaris any longer and he
had proposed to the Reichsfuehrer that they should take up
contact with Keitel."

Canaris hastened round to Heydrich's office with Bentivegni.
Heydrich sent out the adjutant to tell him that he was not
there. Ganaris waited several hours in the anteroom, then he
departed, leaving Bentivegni with orders not to come away
until he had seen Heydrich. Out came S.S. Mueller and pre
vailed upon Bentivegni to go away too. Canaris went to Keitel.
Keitel rang up Heydrich, and Reinhard at length agreed to
take up negotiations again. He even suggested a luncheon at
Horcher's. In that suave atmosphere they formulated the new
terms of reference and signed them afterwards. The Gestapo
could take over in France. They would take charge of Odette
and Captain Peter Churchill two years later, they would hunt
the R.A.F. escape organisations, and break the British

EXIT HEYDRICH 153

"circuits", they would round up the canisters of arms that the
British dropped. They would liquidate the Maquis with terrible
brutalities. Was success reflected in the surface of Heydrich's
life mask? He had reason to be exultant; but it would be a year
before the agreement was worked out in detail.

Meanwhile Huppenkothen saw something more of Canaris.
The S.S. had made some play in conversation with the story
of his Greek antecedents. Oh vanity of boasting illustrious
ancestry! He may have claimed relationship with the Greek
naval hero of 1820, Admiral Konstantin Kanaris; but the
Greeks were now enemies, whereas the Italians, his real fore
bears, were allies. This confusion may have been faintly em
barrassing. One day he handed Huppenkothen a copy of his
family tree that showed that the Ganaris family originally
came from Italy.

"This will complete your dossier," he whispered.

Heydrich ranged through occupied Europe under his new
title of Commissar General for the Security of Occupied
Countries. Shoot them: senior officers, professors, communists,
Jews and Maquis alike 1 The rule of General von Falkenhausen
in Belgium was altogether too mild for him. He wanted the
blood to flow. His master was after more blood, too. General
Giraud had escaped early in 1942 from Konigstein fortress in
Saxony and somehow contrived to find his way to unoccupied
France. The Abwehr had been ordered to liquidate General
Weygand in North Africa in 1940 after Hitler had written to
Mussolini: "I am not satisfied with the choice of General
Weygand to restore order in North Africa." He feared that
Weygand would go over to the Allies. And now, Giraud. Then
it was that Piekenbrock made his drastic remark that "Keitel
must eventually be told quite clearly to report to his Heir Hitler
that we of the military Abwehr are not an organisation of
murderers like the S.S. and SJD.". The Admiral whispered
something conciliatory to Keitel, and the Field-Marshal, who
didn't like the idea of murdering generals anyway, agreed
that the Abwehr should hand over the job to the S.D. Canaris
said nothing further to anyone about it.

Heydrich had meanwhile added to his titles that of Pro
tector of Bohemia and Moravia. Stagnation of the war in
Russia made Czechoslovakia a future danger. Baron von
Neurath was too mild a ruler. Heydrich, who succeeded him,

154 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

proclaimed a "state of civil emergency in September 1941"
and passed decree laws making the death penalty applicable to
minor offences of disaffection. Within two months some 1,100
prominent Czechs had been executed. He continued to inspect
the Security Police in other occupied countries and shifted
S.S. General Oberg from Poland to France on May yth, 1942,
to cope with the swelling resistance. Then he went to The Hague
to supervise mass shootings, and in the third week of May was
back in Prague, where he told nominal leaders of the Czech
people that their young men would have to be conscripted for
military service.

The heavy boots of the senior officers of the Secret State
Police, the Criminal Police, the S.D., and the Abwehr echoed
in the stone halls of the Hradschin palace of Prague. Hiinmler
and Heydrich called a congress to announce the new order of
intelligence duties, with the S.D. taking charge of counter
espionage and Abwehr III assuming a subordinate rule. By
now Heydrich's time was nearly run.

An R.A.F. bomber flew over Bohemia one night, possibly
while the Hradschin conference was being held. It dropped
three Czech parachutists of the Czechoslovak Brigade armed
with Sten guns and grenades. A reception group hid them and
showed them a sharp bend on a road near Leiben where
Heydrich's car frequently passed. It would be obliged to slow
down to take the corner.

Two bicycles were propped up near the corner, two men
loitered on the verge. As Heydrich's car slowed down, one man
hurled a grenade. The other opened up with his Sten gun. The
driver and the S.S. orderly were killed instantly, the officer with
the silver death's-head on his field-grey cap sank back mortally
wounded. The two Czechs fled for refuge to a little church in
Lidice.

Ganaris met Huppenkothen at the funeral of Heydrich. The
intense blue eyes overbrimmed with tears, heavy tears rolled
down his cheeks.

"He offered us the condolences of his service and himself,'*
recollected Huppenkothen. "He assured me that he had lost
a great man and a true friend in Reinhard Heydrich."

Himmler spoke the oration of "this man of purest charac
ter" and pinned a medal on Heydrich's breast. The S.S.
killed some one hundred and fifty hostages and proclaimed

EXIT HEYDRICH 155

that any men of military age found without identity cards
would be summarily shot. A Czech wavered and Lidice was
betrayed to them as the village that harboured the assassins.
They surrounded the church, the parachutists died fighting.
The Gestapo extinguished all human life in Lidice before
razing every stone and planting grass over the foundations and
the roads to conceal the very place where it had stood.

Some say that Canaris lost in Heydrich a man whose measure
he had taken and could curb because he held documents
proving his Jewish parentage. Others, that he lost an intimate
colleague. If we believe Huppenkothen, we must doubt both
suggestions.

Soon the whim seized Hitler again that he must have
Giraud's blood. It was long overdue. The Abwehr must report
exactly what steps had been taken or what had been arranged
with the S.D.

"What about Operation Gustav?" Keitel, using the code
name for the murder plan, fired this question at Lahousen,
as departmental chief, when the Admiral was in France.
Lahousen hurried anxiously to Paris and met his chief in the
Hotel Lutetia. He related what Keitel had asked him. Canaris
said nothing for a while, but over a glass of wine:

"Lofty, tell me the date that Giraud fled/' muttered Canaris,
"and the date that I was ordered to murder him, and the date
that Heydrich was killed. Don't you see? We can say that we
handed over that whole business in Prague to Heydrich
personally/'

CHAPTER XVIII

THE PLASTIC BOMB

PASSED ALL that on to Heydrich" so spring and
summer 1942 went and General Giraud was still alive. The
battles in the western desert swayed to and fro and Rommel,
still looking eastwards from El Alamein and counting up the
opponents whom he had dealt with, Wavell, O'Connor,
Cunningham, Ritchie, Auchinleck, found himself pitted
against two more, Alexander and Montgomery. The German
summer offensive in Russia that had been held up at Stalingrad
developed into the death throes of the German Sixth Army,
Hitler fingered the plan of Operation Attila, but he dared not
move either to invade the rest of France or force his way into
Spain. The battle of El Alamein broke upon Rommel on
October 23rd ; by November 5th the British had pushed him a
hundred miles westwards and he was still going. Russian
counter-attacks at Stalingrad increased.

It was reported that the British were collecting a great
convoy at Gibraltar to relieve Malta. The shipping lay thick
at anchor. Canaris had an Abwehr branch in the mainland at
Algeciras and a senior officer in charge, whose duty it was to
keep a constant check on the movements of Allied and neutral
shipping. During these first days of November there was some
thing brewing, and without any doubt Canaris, if anyone,
would be able to find out what it was. He had his friends in the
Spanish armada, his Abwehr men at Algeciras and in Tangier
and Ceuta. He had himself stood many times on the Spanish
coast and looked across at the Rock and the Royal Navy in
the days when he and General von Richtofen were reporting
to Hitler on the strength of Gibraltar. He had the Mediter
ranean situation in his blood. Now was the testing time for the
chief of Intelligence.

Yet although the officers of the Spanish armada spoke
emphatically of an impending invasion of Algeria and Morocco,

156

THE PLASTIC BOMB 157

General Heusinger, the German Chief of Operations in the
Army High Command, in early November gave this official
view of the Mediterranean situation: "We are convinced that
it is an attempt by the Allies to relieve the island of Malta
which is being heavily bombarded. No landing in North Africa
is to be apprehended ; the British and Americans lack the forces
and the experience for such an enterprise." In fact the Abwehr
reports pointed to Malta as the destination of the huge Allied
convoys in the Mediterranean and Atlantic approaches to
Gibraltar. The British and U.S. forces were carried in no fewer
than five hundred ships with three hundred and fifty naval
escort vessels it is hard to imagine that Malta alone could
have been their destination. 1 On November yth the German
Ambassador, von Stohrer, and his naval attache were at dinner
with officers of the Spanish armada, who insisted that the
convoys would land on the North African coast in the rear of
Rommel. Stohrer hesitated for some hours before reporting to
his government, and then he added his own views that these
ships were destined for Malta or Alexandria. Before the tele
gram had been deciphered in Berlin, the landing of Lieutenent-
General Eisenhower's Allied forces in Morocco and Algeria had
begun. General Giraud arrived in Algeria on November gth
to assume leadership of the French in North Africa it has
always amazed me that a senior French general with one arm
could have escaped from Saxony and made his way undis
covered across Germany into France. A British submarine had
taken him on the first part of his journey from the Vichy state
safe from Hitler's Operation Gustav.

It is amazing, too, that Canaris came unscathed out of the
German inquest on Operation Torch, because this was his
peninsula and the sea was his element. Yet he had failed to
guess or failed to report what the Spanish armada knew about
the Allied convoys. I asked a senior British naval officer, well
acquainted with Spain, Captain J. Hillgarth, what he knew of
the Canaris reports from the peninsula.

CC I don't think they ever did us any particular harm," was
his reply. My friend, H. C. O'Neill (Strategicus), remembers
seeing some of the Canaris reports after WavelTs victories over
Graziani in the desert. "He vastly overrated WavelTs forces,"

1 "I reported to Berlin from Hamburg about October aGth," writes Commander
Wichman, "that the biggest convoy ever assembled was about to land Allied forces
on the North Coast of Africa.'*

158 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

Strategicus told me. "Canaris must have known exactly how
many or how few divisions we really had in the Middle
East at that time to send elsewhere. Now that you mention
to me that Canaris was working against Hitler, I can see a
possible explanation for much that has long puzzled me/*

Edward Crankshaw, an authority on Russia, who also
studied the secret reports of the Admiral in wartime, found
himself puzzled in exactly the same way. "There's something
wrong with this," was his reaction to some of them. Was
British deception so good, or were German agents so bad?
Lahousen offers a possible explanation: "Even if the Chief
doubted the reliability of an agent's report, he will have passed
it on if it agreed with his own line that of impressing Hitler
and the party with the real strength of the Allies whom they were
continually underrating." It is, however, a wide step from that
to submitting misleading reports about impending operations.

Algeciras was one of his strongest points and yet it failed
him. "He was always going down there,' 7 remarked one of the
British officers whom I questioned. I remembered the picture
given by Abshagen of Ganaris in Algeciras on the last night of
1942, dressed in a chef's cap and white apron and cooking
the New Year's dinner for the Abwehr officers at Algeciras.

"He was a first-class cook," a senior British intelligence
officer remarked to me in the course of conversation.

Some of the German officers went on from the dinner to the
Hotel Reina Maria Christina, where there was a New Year's
Ball, and danced there on the same floor as the British officers
from Gibraltar.

"Did you know that there was a British plot to kidnap
Canaris while he was staying in Algeciras?" This startling
question was put to me by a fellow journalist.

"It was in the time that General Mason-Macfarlane was
Governor of Gibraltar. The whole operation was prepared."

"What happened . . . ?"

"Gibraltar received a message from London cancelling the
operation."

"Did it say leave our man alone?"

"No, it did not say quite that: it said that he was far more
valuable where he was."

The Axis forces in North Africa were taken unaware by
<e Torch", and though German airborne troops were quickly

THE PLASTIC BOMB 159

landed in Tunisia and Hitler pressed the button for Operation
Attila and marched down the Rhone Valley, the AfHka Korps
was lost; Italy quaked for fear or hope of liberation, and France
under the Vichy police and the S.D. began to stir perilously.
The German military governor had clashes of authority with
the S.S. in their territory, as the dreaded "Night and Fog
decree" took effect and men and woman were spirited away
without trace beyond the reach of their kin.

Secret Operations Branch in London increased its weapons
deliveries to the patriots in France. Canisters were dropped by
parachute far and wide over France. Colonel Relling, Chief of
Abwehr III, working from the Hotel Lutetia in Paris, reported
in March that he had initiated Operation Grand Duke the
smashing of the French Resistance groups and the capture of
their British confederates. One of his principal agents was that
Hugo Bleicher, Serjeant- Major of Abwehr III, risen from the
Field Police, who arrested Odette and Captain Peter Churchill
in St. Torioz and so broke up an active British intelligence and
sabotage circuit in France. Bleicher had phenomenal success
in Operation Grand Duke, due to his gift for assuming the role
of the sympathetic and enlightened German who wants to make
common cause with the Allies against Hitler. So he won to his
side the more gullible of the French patriots who fell into his
hands, and, thinking Captain Churchill to be a relative of the
British Prime Minister, he tempted him with curious offers that
sounded like the mission of Rudolf Hess.

Bleicher in his heyday had broken in enough Frenchmen to
form a team who went round among the Resistance sharing
the task of collecting British arms canisters by night and
stowing away tell-tale parachutes. He used to keep a tally of
the secret weapons dumps of the Resistance and regularly
arranged for them to be raided after some incident which
might seem to have betrayed them, such as the arrest of one of
the dump watchmen.

French traitors working for him told new British agents on
arrival in Paris that their identity papers would be quickly
supplied by a den of forgers. He cites one case in which the
British agent in charge of a group, "Elie'% and his secretary,
"Denise", handed over a set of photographs of British agents
for use in false identity cards, and adds that the papers were in
fact made out for them in the Abwehr Office III in the Hotel

l6o CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

Lutetia. The photographs were copied for Gestapo and Abwehr
files. Reports on the localities where these agents were active,
and samples of the weapons and explosives dropped, were sent
to Berlin.

The Abwehr showed an almost morbid interest in the new
British plastic explosives and the silent acid capsule time fuses.
The putty-like substance could be wound round a telegraph
pole, pushed against a door lock, nudged under a rail or
squeezed into a ship's cable. The acid capsule reacted on a wire.
The time element depended on the thickness of the wire
retaining the striker pin. Canaris received reports of German
tests carried out with these materials by Abwehr II, the
Sabotage Branch.

As winter deepened, the German Sixth Army disintegrated
at Stalingrad, frozen, famished, out of fuel, cut off and attacked
without respite by the Russian armies. Thousands of corpses
strewed an area as big as East Anglia. The siege of Leningrad
was raised on January i8th. Anybody not infected by war
hysteria could see plainly that Germany was losing the war.
Like a knell from Casablanca came the words of President
Roosevelt : " Unconditional surrender." A month later Ganaris's
personal staff received a message from General von Tresckow
of the Central Army Group in Smolensk that It was "high time
to act". The Admiral set out for Smolensk in the second half
of February, accompanied by many officers of his entourage.
The occasion was a conference of army Intelligence officers. A
member of his staff carried a small package of the plastic
charges and a set of time fuses. Hans von Dohnanyi of his
personal office went Into conference at Smolensk with General
von Tresckow and Lieutenant von Schlabrendorff, his adjutant.
They agreed that an attempt should be made on the life of
Hitler when he visited the Army Group. They would engineer
an explosion in the Fuehrer's aircraft so that his death might
appear an accident. The Admiral knew what was afoot, but he
left the detail to others.

That evening there was a party In headquarters mess, at
which Canaris mentioned that he was flying to Berchtesgaden
to see Himmler next day. He smiled at the chaff of the younger
officers who asked him how he could possibly shake hands with
such people. He had In mind to ask Himmler for the release
of several Jews whom he would smuggle abroad after a pretence

THE PLASTIC BOMB l6l

of training them as Abwehr officers. Hitler had exclaimed
to Ganaris in a frantic temper after nine young Nazi sabotage
agents had been captured in America: "You should use
criminals or Jews instead." "I have express orders from the
Fuehrer to employ Jews for this work," was the argument that
Ganaris used with some success to Heydiich and Himmler.

A month later, on March i3th, 1943, the explosive charge
was placed in the aircraft of Adolf Hitler, as he left Smolensk
after a visit of inspection to Central Army Group. Lieutenant
von Schlabrendorff had disguised the bomb as a package of
brandy bottles which he entrusted to Colonel Brandt of the
entourage as a "gift" to an officer at Supreme Headquarters.
Hitler flew from Smolensk to Rastenburg in East Prussia with
the package in his plane and the acid fuse ate its way through
the retaining wire. When the wire parted, the intense cold had
rendered the detonator unserviceable and the bomb failed to
explode. The intrepid von Schlabrendorff flew to Rastenburg
and retrieved the parcel before it had been opened. In this
manner the explosives which the British dropped into Europe
for the purpose of destroying German war potential found
their way very close to the supreme target, via the man whose
organisation was fighting the British Secret Service all over
Europe. Dr. Abshagen says that Ganaris "was more than half
aware but did not want to be too much in the picture" when
this attempt on Hitler was planned and that "Ganaris knew
that Abwehr Branch II was working on the fuses" and that
"in fact he himself took fuses of this type in his aircraft when he
flew to Smolensk". Some of the drawing-room opposition to
Hitler was wont to chafe in inactivity and complain that
"Canaris never did much". For my part, if I were told that he
had a hand in the escape of General Giraud, I would not be a
bit surprised. The truth is that he had a talent for doing an
immense amount through other people so that detection was
difficult.

"I have just had a message from Admiral Ganaris."
Far away from the snows of Smolensk there was another
nervous tremor. George Earle had descended from the rank of
American Minister in Sofia to that of American naval attache
in Istanbul, since America and Bulgaria were now in the war
on opposite sides. Gedric Salter, whom I have asked to search

l62 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

his memory in this matter, recalls these facts from the
days when he was correspondent of the Dally Express in
Istanbul :

"It was early in 1943. George Earle was staying in the Pare
Hotel in which I was also staying. He had been instructed to
remain in Istanbul as a channel of communication between
King Boris of Bulgaria and President Roosevelt to whom he
reported direct and not through the State Department. Earle
was approached by many German intelligence men, some
wanting to plant false information, others convinced of
Germany's impending defeat and wanting to lay evidence that
they were anti-Nazi. Early in 1943, Earle told me that he had
had a message from Admiral Canaris. Meetings took place, of
which he did not tell me the details, but which included a
vague exploration by Ganaris of the sort of terms of peace that
America would be prepared to consider."

It would be interesting to know the exact date of these
communications from Canaris. It appears from the context in
which Salter writes that the approaches were made to Earle
about the time of the Casablanca Conference. Evidently
Roosevelt had something very much in mind when he pro
claimed Allied war aims to be "unconditional surrender".
This formula is recorded in the Joint Chiefs of Staff minutes
of January yth, 1943, and will therefore have been discussed
as a serious policy in Washington before Roosevelt left for
Casablanca. There is no clue to any message received from
Canaris in the Hopkins Papers. We have elsewhere the testi
mony of Allen Dulles that Canaris's man in Bern, Gisevius,
had been trying hard to find out what Allied peace terms
would be.

Did a revolt against Hitler no longer suit the Allies' grand
strategy? Canaris, who knew of all the soundings and the
hollow echoes that reached him from Berne, from Ankara and
from Lisbon, had reasons to be pessimistic. His bomb did not
explode, his overtures met with silence, and then the summons
for "unconditional surrender".

Mr. Churchill has given in the fourth volume of his war
memoirs his considered views on the meaning and effect of the
"unconditional surrender" declaration on the history of the
war. He tells us that the proposed peace terms, once set out in
draft, looked far more severe than mere "unconditional sur-

THE PLASTIC BOMB 163

render" did. Stalin about this time devised a more subtle
declaration of his war aims when he said in a speech that he
believed "that Germany cannot be destroyed, but that
Hitlerism can and must be destroyed".

General Eisenhower has revealed in Crusade in Europe that
the "unconditional surrender" formula was mentioned in the
Joint Chiefs of Staff minutes of January 7th, 1943, and there
fore must have been discussed as a serious policy before the
President left for Casablanca. It seemed to those who studied
the secret policy of nations that this meant that the war would
be fought to the end, that no arrangement would be sought with
the Nazis or with any other group opposed to Hitler, that the
military power of Germany would be abolished and the con
sequent dominating position of Russia in Europe accepted as a
basis for peace. A debate in the House of Lords in March 1943
shows what divergent views were held on this mighty problem
at the time.

"Canaris reckoned with the Unconditional surrender' policy
and was not surprised when it was announced," Lahousen told
me. "His mystic and pessimistic mind foresaw the end of
Germany far off and he regarded it as the deserved punishment
of destiny for the barbarities of the National-Socialist system.
Canaris was at bottom a fatalist.

" 'We will all have to pay for this, for we have all become
responsible for it!' was one of his oft-repeated remarks.

"Nevertheless he thought that the Casablanca declaration
was a calamitous mistake at the time, that could only prolong
the war. For as long as there was no complete defeat, even the
military leaders who were at heart opposed to Hitler could not
be expected to accept such terms that were incompatible with
their conception of honour. Canaris said to me after the
Casablanca Conference:

"You know, my dear Lahousen, 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. 'Unconditional
surrender', no, our generals will not swallow that. Now I
cannot see any solution."

CHAPTER XIX

ASSASSINATE CHURCHILL!

ASSASSINATE CHURCHILL! THERE Is no doubt from
what senior German intelligence officers have revealed to me
that orders to assassinate Churchill were given by Hitler about
the time of the Casablanca Conference. Whether it was his
reply to the declaration of "Unconditional surrender" is
difficult to determine, as the war diary of Abwehr II, the
Intelligence Section that dealt in sabotage and acts of
violence, has been confiscated by the Allies and will probably
not be available to historians.

It seems that there were two orders, one to assassinate him
while abroad, the other to shoot down his aircraft. Of the
Luftwaffe plans there is still something to be learned from
Lisbon.

Lisbon lay athwart the Allies' lines of communication ; from
Portugal the passage of aircraft., ships and passengers could be
observed by the Germans. It was plain from the first days of the
war that here lay great possibilities, and so Admiral Canaris
had first to test the ground with the German Ambassador,
Baron Oswald von Hoiningen-Huene, who was well aware that
he was in a country which, although neutral, was the oldest ally
of Britain. It was a severely Christian state with a bias against
both National Socialism and liberal democracy. Dr. Salazar,
the Premier, was determined that it should not be drawn into
the calamitous struggle between Germany and the Allies.

The Baron held a secret conference with Canaris in Lisbon
at the beginning of the war. "We reached an agreement that
no diversionary or sabotage actions would be undertaken by
the German military personnel in Portugal," Baron Hoiningen-
Huene told me. "Although certain German quarters envisaged
several actions with time bombs to sabotage Allied ships anchored
in Portuguese ports, Admiral Canaris and his representatives
knew how to stop these attempts to my full satisfaction.

164

ASSASSINATE CHURCHILL! 165

"Ganaris was a man of integrity and good will. I saw very
little of him when he was in Portugal. He usually came accom
panied by one of his senior officers and conversed mainly with
his own subordinates, the attaches. Colonel von Cremer-
Auerode who also worked under the name of von Karsthof,
and his deputy. Captain Fritz Cramer. I was also told nothing
of his own activities while in Portugal, but he seemed to be
seeking for links and contacts with the enemy in greatest
secrecy and in contravention of the policy of Hitler."

Plainly this inactivity in such a promising area could not be
allowed to last I Nor did it. The lull in Portugal seems to have
got on the nerves of Hitler. Keitel at a conference at the
beginning of 1942 abruptly ordered Canaris to get results on
the Air Staff plan to sabotage the New York-Lisbon Atlantic
Clipper airlines. General Lahousen was present. The Admiral
nervously turned to him and passed the command straight on.
They were apparently so disconcerted that the results were
soon forthcoming. A time bomb was placed in the American
Clipper flying boat shortly afterwards as she lay in the Tagus
estuary. "There was a complete ban on all such acts of
terrorism laid down by the Admiral and written on page 256 of
my Departmental War Diary," General Lahousen told me.
"M.I.5 has photo-copies of it. The original is in Washington."

But what use was a secret directive against murder and
assassination if peremptory orders come from above? Canaris
happened to be soon in Portugal and was told, to his consterna
tion, by his officers that the bomb was already in the Clipper.
He ordered it to be removed, and as the Clipper was delayed
by rough weather this could be successfully done. "Trevor
Roper is right when he asserts that Canaris was not always able
to prevent acts of terrorism," concluded Lahousen. "Some
times it was technically impossible. Sometimes it was a question
of personality. That he was always opposed to it is without
question."

It appears that the Germans knew of an impending meeting
between Mr. Churchill and President Roosevelt in January
1943. Commander Wichmann in his Hamburg office learned
about a week beforehand that a meeting was to take place.
There was some rumour of it in Spain, too, where an indignant
business man turned up after being ejected in advance from his
room in one of the Casablanca hotels. The opinion in Berlin

l66 C II IE 5 OF INTELJLIGJliMGE

was, however, that the meeting was to take place at the White
House and that the word "Casablanca", which had leaked
out to them, was merely a code name for the "White House ",
the Washington residence of the American President. But the
Luftwaffe was alerted, and Colonel W. Jenke 1 tells me that a
special reconnaissance aircraft used by Department I of the
German Intelligence (probably in Section LL. (Luft)) and
maintained at an airport on the peninsula for high level
photography, was ordered out to reconnoitre and spotted from
a great height a British bomber flying southwards with fighter
escort, which turned around in the vicinity of Lisbon so that
the bomber flew on alone. Was this the furnished hulk in which
Mr. Churchill describes his uncomfortable journey with Lord
Portal and others to the Casablanca Conference? Jenke
believes that it was, and that the British bomber also sighted
this German aircraft which belonged to the Rowehl recon
naissance squadron. Canaris had not organised the second
stage of this operation, he said, which would have been
fighter pursuit also from the peninsula.

**I know nothing of the air reconnaissance activities against
Churchill," said Lahousen. "As to my own department, I do
remember that after Mr. Churchill had arrived in Casablanca *
Keitel passed to me the request, probably from the Fuehrer, to
have Churchill assassinated by nationalist Arabs. Hitler was
probably thinking of some of our Spanish Moroccan agents.
Quite apart from the technical impossibility of pulling an
operation like that out of a hat, there was the Admiral's own
ban on such activities. All attempts on Churchill, as far as I
know, were ordered after his arrival in Casablanca."

I have received confirmation from Colonel of the Luftwaffe
Theo Rowehl, commander of an air intelligence squadron,
that Canaris mentioned to him in utmost secrecy the assassina
tion order.

Of course the Luftwaffe was on its mettle when the Casa
blanca Conference had ended. The Biscay squadrons ranged
far and wide. Otto John, a Lufthansa official, remembers how
one of the Lufthausa air liners was suddenly ordered about this
time to cancel its Lisbon-Madrid flight "owing to engine
trouble " and make a "test flight " instead in a wide sweep out to
sea; what the pilot was to watch for, John could not say.

1 Adjutant to Canaris.

ASSASSINATE CHURCHILL! 167

Mr. Churchill set out from England a second time five months
later this time really to the White House and returned via
Algiers after the second Washington Conference, meeting Mr.
Eden in North Africa on May 3Oth, 1943. There naturally his
presence was reported to Berlin by German agents and the
Luftwaffe alerted a second time to intercept his aircraft. It is
probably to these circumstances that we owed the loss, so he
believes, of the British Overseas Airways liner that was shot
down on June ist, 1943, out at sea by the Luftwaffe on its
return night to London. The thirteen passengers and the crew
all lost their lives and the Wehrmacht communique of the day
claimed it as a "transport aircraft". Leslie Howard and Mr.
Alfred Chenfalls, a financial expert who bore a certain re
semblance to Mr. Churchill and smoked cigars, were on board
this aircraft and lost their lives with the rest, men, women and
children. Mr. Churchill believes that Chenfalls, crossing over
to the airfield to the B.O.A.C. plane, may have been mistaken
for himself and so provided a motive for this singular crime
for the B.O.A.C. air liner carrying freight and some diplomatic
correspondence to and fro had been allowed to run unmolested
by the Luftwaffe all these years.

Soon after that Lisbon became the scene of a strange
encounter, in which Canaris himself may have met an Allied
officer.

Portugal had never accepted a Soviet ambassador or even
a Soviet consul on her soil. Salazar and his people in their deep-
rooted religious convictions saw atheistic states as their declared
enemies. Her treaty with Russia had not made Germany any
more popular in Lisbon. It followed that the Poles, because
they were attacked by two powers that had forsaken Christian
ity, were treated with consideration by the Portuguese and
allowed to maintain their Legation at Lisbon as well as certain
intelligence agents.

Colonel Jan Kowalewski was an officer of the Polish General
Staff with the deep-rooted mistrust of his nation for the Germans.
During the years when he was studying as a young officer he had
to travel to the military academies of Belgium and France and
crossed Germany many times. e ' But I never spent a night in Ger
many," he told me. "Instinctively I passed through as quickly
as I could." He served his country as military attache in Mos
cow, escaped from the defeat of the Polish armies and was sent

l68 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

by General Sikorski to Lisbon to work as representative of the
Free Poles. He kept his distance from, the Polish Legation. It was
one of his tasks to get in touch with the Polish communities of
Europe., labourers in the Todt organisation, miners in France
and Germany, and beyond, the people of enslaved Poland itself.
He must be wary of his movements, even in Lisbon; for although
British influence was strong, there were many nationalities in
Portugal Germans, Italians, Bulgarians, Rumanians, Hungar
ians, Spaniards and many more besides. Colonel Kowalewski
was a man of simple habits, stocky and solid in appearance.
With his broad face and blunt features, he could easily pass for a
peasant or a labourer rather than a highly trained staff officer.
He settled down unobtrusively in a small furnished apartment
in Lisbon, took stock of his surroundings, informed himself as to
who there might be in the diplomatic and consular services,
friends, neutrals and enemies, and took up some of the threads
that ran out of Lisbon into occupied Europe.

Colonel Kowalewski soon learned of the state of mind of the
German ambassador, and perceived that fate had struck a bad
blow at the Baron Hoiningen-Huene. Under Hitler's treaty of
friendship with Russia ail German minorities were withdrawn
from East Poland and the Baltic states which Russia had occu
pied. The ambassador thus lost his ancestral home. His old
mother was obliged to remove westwards, where a castle was
found for her in the enslaved provinces of Poland, The castle in
Lithuania was immense ; an equally large casde in Poland was
chosen, where the old lady was set down with her belongings.
She did not move about much in her new domain to begin with,
for, being over seventy, she had to overcome the fatigues of the
journey, the strangeness of her new surroundings, the wrench of
departure. After a time she set out to explore one story afiter
another of the castle in Poland and in the course of her wander
ings she suddenly encountered two ladies like herself walking
about the place. She asked them who they were and whether she
might do anything for them.

"This was our home," they answered. "The civil governor
has given us permission to stay on in two rooms until we can find
somewhere to go."

The Baroness Hoiningen-Huene realised to her amazement
that a family of the Polish nobility were being turned out of
their own castle to make room for her. This was a great shock

ASSASSINATE CHURCHILL! l6g

to an old lady who still lived by the standards of the nineteenth
century. She decided to go to Berlin and find out if people in the
government really knew what was going on. At first the officials
to whom she spoke in the Wilhelmstrasse showed some em
barrassment, then she met other officials who showed no concern
at all. This was merely part of the pattern of eliminating the
Polish intelligentsia. That prompted her to go about saying
many hard things to people in official positions, until she was
told that she had better stop agitating about the Poles or she
would be in trouble. The old lady died soon afterwards, early in
1940. The Ambassador went to Berlin for the funeral and re
turned embittered to his post at Lisbon hardly a trustworthy
servant for the Fuehrer.

It was after the German war with Russia had started
that Colonel Kowalewski, who had by then found stealthy
contact with some of the small allies of Germany, in Lisbon,
received a message from a Rumanian diplomat whom he
could trust. It told him that the German ambassador had
a confidential agent whom he wished to meet Colonel
KLowalewski.

The Colonel took every precaution before the meeting. He
rode out to the rendezvous with his Rumanian friend ; a group
of Poles followed him in a second car. As they reached it he
caught sight of a smart Buick which he instantly recognised as
the same luxuriously fitted model that was kept in a garage
near his own apartment. The man who got out of the
Buick was introduced to him. It was Captain Fritz Cramer,
the Canaris attache and military security officer of the German
Embassy.

So began a series of secret meetings that were usually held at
night in Kowalewski's rooms.

"You are Peter in Lisbon," asked Cramer.

"Yes, that is so!"

"We have arrested your man in Paris. He gave us your name.
If you are anxious to save his life, perhaps we can do something
about it."

Kowalewski was anxious to help the man in Paris and said so.
Some days elapsed and Cramer came to the nightly meeting,
bringing with him a bundle of papers. It was, he said, the re
ports of the man in Paris which he could see no harm in handing

170 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

over. Kowalewski learned more of the state of mind of Baron
von Hoiningen-Huene. Sometimes there was a little intelli
gence business to do, but he noticed that Cramer always tended
to want to discuss the general situation, the future, the issue of
the war, the frame of mind of the Allies. Kowalewski told him
with great plainness what in his view had been the capital mis
takes of the Germans. So began his secret contacts with the men
of Ganaris in Portugal.

One day, in the summer of 1943, one of the Ganaris officers
came to the appointment in a state of suppressed excitement. He
spoke of strange new weapons that Germany was busy perfecting
rockets and bombs that were being mass-produced and could be
fired at England in endless streams from bases in France. Aircraft
could not intercept them; they could be launched night and day
from bombproof concrete bases. When they were released they
would fall in hundreds and London would be devastated.
This was a full year before Hitler gave the order for the
V-weapons to be used and the first buzz-bombs droned over
Britain, though it seems that aerial reconnaissance had already
revealed to the British what was going on in Peenemunde.

It was Cramer another evening who mentioned his " chief ",
who might visit Portugal and would like to meet Colonel
Kowalewski. He would come at the time arranged for the
Canaris men's talks. "That will be Canaris," the Polish
diplomats in Lisbon told him beneath their breath. Kowalewski,
who had never heard of this man, waited at his apartment at the
time of the usual German visits. His visitor that evening was an
older man, whose hair he remembers was nearly white, his
skin sallow, who spoke rapidly and seemed to be in a high state
of nervous tension. He did not introduce himself, moved about
the room as he spoke and seemed to be a person of high
authority.

"He wanted me to repeat to him what I had previously said
to Cramer about the mistakes of Germany," Kowalewski told
me. " I explained to him that the capital mistake in strategy was
in allowing Russia in 1939 to advance westwards as far as the
Carpathians. While Russian troops sat on the Carpathians, so
close to Vienna and the Danube valley, the whole of Central
Europe was permanently unsafe. Germany could neither move
sufficient troops against England nor against Africa. Her main
forces were tied to the eastern frontier.

ASSASSINATE CHURCHILL! IJI

"He cast questions at me, brusquely, with traces of the
impatient authority that becomes a habit in some high officers,
and had a rapid grasp for my answers. He asked me why it was
not possible for Germans to get the co-operation of the countries
that they occupied. I gave him a very simple answer to that.
As long as Germany did not change her methods that was not
possible."

"Why do you think that he should go to see you? "

"To exchange ideas on these strategic matters and Germany's
mistakes."

Was this stranger Ganaris? I recalled the Ganaris conver
sations in Hitler's train at Ilnau in Silesia in September 1939,
what the British intelligence officers had told me of his reports
on the Moscow front and the Caucasus offensive. He did not
need to travel to Lisbon at a certain risk to himself to recite
the mistakes of Hitler in retrospect. Yet if it was not him it
was certainly his technique. He was acutely reasoning the
chances of finding allies among the Free Poles for a new course
in German policy. They had the most formidable underground
organisation of all. It would soon be playing havoc with the
German communications. At this time, September 1943, the
Russians were beginning to approach the frontiers of Poland.
The dismayed Polish government in London saw their ravaged
country about to become a battlefield for the second time. The
Polish Resistance movement would present Ganaris soon with
a huge problem that the S.S. would try vainly to solve with
more bloodshed. The Czechs were willing to welcome the
Russians in their territory. The Poles were appalled at the
thought. President BeneS in London and Washington was
at this time the advocate of war to the end and he
solemnly pledged himself to the American and British war
leaders that Stalin desired an understanding with the
West.

"During my work in Lisbon with these men of the German
opposition, I could sense the malevolence of the Czechs," said
Kowalewski. "I have no love for the Germans, but I could have
made policy with them."

Nine months later he was in London reporting to the Polish
Government in exile. On the night of June 1 3th- 1 4th, he looked
out of his hotel window and saw the widespread glow of fires
from the first flying bombs which the Canaris men had foretold;

CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

but the Allies had made good use of the Interval to pin-point
the V-bomb bases.

66 1 was forever making contacts with people In Lisbon
searching for peace/' Kowalewski told me. "There was a
Bulgarian who was so nervous of the city itself that he would
only meet me In quarries outside. There were many such
people. I passed them on to the British Intelligence Service and
then heard no more about them. They would transfer the talks
to another capital for security reasons say Istanbul and I
knew nothing further. It was disappointing. It made you feel
that opportunities were not being exploited."

"Do you think that it was Ganaris with whom you spoke? "
"Perhaps you could show me a photograph of him/' sug
gested Kowalewski.

I produced two or three taken of the Admiral about that time
in plain clothes.

"Yes, that may have been him/' said Kowalewski as he
stared at the pictures. "Perhaps his hair was not quite so
white as it appears here; it Is possible that this was the same
man."

Fritz Cramer, whom I traced from Lisbon to Hamburg early
In 1951, told Leverkuehn that It was not Ganaris,, and he should
know. But he did not say who his "chief" was on this occasion.
Three or four visits by Canaris to Portugal during the war
years were noticed by the Allies. His arrival caused less ap
prehension than it did in Madrid where the silent warfare of
Abwehr and the Secret Service was more Intense.

Whenever Ganaris did visit Portugal he saw Cramer and
spoke something of what was In his mind. He enjoined him
earnestly against acts of sabotage, and he never mentioned the
order of Hitler to assassinate Churchill, though he yarned a
bit to him about the British war leader.

"I used to have some contact with Churchill before the
war/' he said vaguely. "The most Important statesman of
our times after Stalin."

The star of Ganaris was waning In the peninsula. The British
Secret Service at lower grades was pressing the Abwehr hard
In Spain; his own position at home was threatened. A new
emissary appeared, a young official of the German Lufthansa
civil air lines, Otto John, who found his way to British officials
In Lisbon in the summer of 1944 and told them that a revolt

ASSASSINATE CHURCHILL!

against Hitler was imminent. Within a year of the meeting
between the stranger and Kowalewski, destiny was to set its
heel on both the secret movements that they represented. The
Polish patriots rose in Warsaw and fought their terrible battle
with the S.S., while the mistrustful Russians let the blood of
these heroic men run unsuccoured. These fighting Poles were
not the men that Stalin wanted to emerge in command. The
German revolt in Berlin about the same time was forlorn and
unspectacular by comparison and the S.S. mastered it with
one hand.

CHAPTER XX

THE RAT RUN

"OAVE us FROM the security sense of our ambassadors!"
said the security officer.

I asked him whether ambassadors were any more fallible
than ordinary people.

4 * It is not that they are worse than anyone else/* he answered,
"but the result of their rashness can be so much worse."

"Are you thinking of the case of Cicero? " I asked.

"No, not at the moment. I was thinking of the Ambas
sador's pearl necklace. Cicero was by no means the first valet
or butler to spy on a British ambassador. I cannot imagine why
we don't make English butlers obligatory in the diplomatic
service. They are the finest in the world."

"But the Ambassador's pearls?"

"Oh, yes there is one thing that makes the security of an
ambassador a difficult matter. By the time he has reached that
height he has a fair claim to know about the world and its
pitfalls; but if he has lived for so long in diplomatic society
without noticing a missing key or a document out of place he
may think that his security is in order or that if somebody else
warns him that person is being an alarmist. He may regard a
warning as a reflection on his character. That is what happened
in this case it was before the war."

"Then somebody warned the Ambassador **

"Oh yes, but he was fairly haughty about it. No matter
what arguments were used, he would not get rid of the man.
There was no proof against the valet. It was very worrying.
He refused to part with him."

"Suppose the Permanent Under-Secretary "

"Yes, but it's ticklish going over a man's head in his own
service. Something else happened."

By now I had forgotten Ankara in the story of the Ambas
sador's pearls.

174

THE RAT RUN 175

"Some people say the British Intelligence Service is very
stupid. Others say it is good. I wouldn't know. I don't suppose
they would either. I wonder if anyone does. But the Ambas
sador's daughter was going to be married and the family
pearls were brought out from England. The Ambassador kept
them in his bedroom against the day when he would bestow
them on his daughter. Do you know, they vanished out of his

bedroom ? Who could it have been? Of course, suspicion

fell upon the butler. There was not a bit of proof in the matter,
either; but this time the Ambassador was quite firm and
the butler went. There was no other servant who could be
suspected in the same degree. Oddly enough the pearls were
recovered soon afterwards in time for the wedding."

" Sounds very odd," I ventured.

"Odd is the word but the main thing is that the butler
went. . . . Yes, that was long before the days of Cicero."

"I am interested in the activities of the German espionage
in Turkey/' I said. "Can you suggest why, for instance,
Admiral Canaris should have employed deaf mutes,
particularly in Ankara? "

"Did he, eh? Poor old Knatchbull! First of all Cicero, and
then be followed around by deaf mutes. Sounds eerie, doesn't
it?"

"Not followed around, watched in restaurants. Reading his
lips a German Abwehr officer told me about it."

"Ah, yes." The security man nodded slowly. "I see some
sense in that. In Ankara there's only about three restaurants he
could go to. Not like Madrid or Istanbul 1 " Here he pulled out a
scrap of paper and began to trace out a sketch map of Ataturk's
capital.

When Kemal Ataturk moved his capital from Istanbul into
Asia Minor, he dragged the diplomatic corps after him up the
three-thousand-foot plateau on which stood Ankara, hot and
dry in the summer and severely cold in winter. It was a new
city, though the ruins of the citadel were pre-Hittite, and its
whole life went up and down the three-mile length of acacia
avenue that was called the Boulevard Ataturk. In the older
and grander embassies and legations of Istanbul, the Consuls-
General and their staffs and the naval attaches spread them
selves after the Chanceries had moved to Ankara and enjoyed
the cosmopolitan life of the Porte. The Ambassadors came

176 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

down to Istanbul in the summer months; although It was just
as hot as Ankara, there were sea breezes.

The new embassies and legations in Ankara were all grouped
round the Boulevard Ataturk. The British Embassy, then
consisting of a residence and a chancery in a sort of compound
of several acres, stood on a hill at the eastern end not far from
the President's palace. The Swiss and Czechoslovak are nearby,
the French and American Embassies set a little back from the
boulevard across the way from the Poles, the Persians, the
Chinese, the Iraquis and the Brazilians. The Italian and
German compounds lie on the south side of the boulevard
adjacent to the Soviet Embassy. Further west, on the north
side of the boulevard, the Greeks, Dutch and Belgians, and
then the only restaurants of Ankara, Soruia, or Serge's, open in
winter only, Papa Karpics, and, near the Palace Hotel, Phaia
and the Station Restaurant. Now no British ambassador could
ever dine at a place called the Station Restaurant however
good the food, so that the choice was narrowed down to three.
Papa Karpics was a favourite resort; the German diplomats and
the British both frequented it. Herr von Papen and Sir Hugh
Knatchbull-Huguessen sometimes found themselves dining
there on the same night. That is how Ankara lived, all in one
place or the other. If you stood at a window and looked out at
the Boulevard Ataturk, you would see in one day all the diplo
mats and officials who mattered in Turkey passing up and down.
So one of the diplomats christened it "The Rat Run".

Turkey lay athwart the path of Germany to the oil wells of
the Middle East and the delta. This friend and later ally of
Britain, staunch, discreet and immensely valuable even in
neutrality, was perhaps the greatest acquisition to the British
side between the two wars when we gave up the friendship of
Japan to reassure America and lost our influence in Italy. The
firm neutral attitude of Turkey deflected Hitler from the road
to Baghdad and the Persian Gulf and was a powerful factor in
bringing about the clash between Germany and Russia. Yet
Turkey watched this gigantic struggle disconsolately, because,
whichever side won, she would suffer for it. The security of
Turkey was best guaranteed if Germany and Russia were of
fairly equal strength. Such was the view that a senior British
officer in Turkey wishes to report home, and when His Excel
lency disagreed with him, he remarked: "The only reason for

THE RAT RUN 177

not sending home this telegram is that the argument is obvious. "
Turkey feared the defeat of either side and was almost tempted
to enter the war against Germany in order to save the Balkans
from Russian domination.

Mr. Churchill and President Inonu met secretly in Adana in
January 1943 and discussed the security of Tin-key and how
she might be defensively equipped from the arsenals of the
Middle East. General Sir Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial
General Staff, and Sir Alexander Cadogan were present. The
year 1943 rolled by and Allied victories mounted. Mussolini
resigned in July and was arrested; Italy surrendered in Sept
ember. President Roosevelt, Mr. Churchill and General
Chiang Kai-Shek met in Cairo on November 22nd to agree
upon future operations against Japan. The meeting with
Stalin at Teheran took place a week later. Stalin was angry and
impatient that there should be no second front yet, and he
definitely did not want such a front to start in the Balkans.
He was emphatic that there must be a direct assault in
Western Europe, and President Roosevelt was inclined to see his
arguments. To pacify him, Mr. Churchill gave a rough outline
of Operation Overlord, the invasion plan for Western Europe.
According to the Royal Institute of International Affairs'
Chronology of the War, "the approximate date of invasion of
Western Europe was decided" at Teheran.

Then the scene shifted to Cairo again, where President
Roosevelt, Mr. Churchill and President Inonu met, with
Harry Hopkins, Mr. Eden, the Turkish Foreign Minister, M.
Menemenjoglu and Sir Hugh Knatchbull-Huguessen present.
Mr. Churchill discussed with the Turkish President the pos
sibility of secretly placing 7,500 British service personnel at
Turkish airfields as a preliminary to Turkey entering the war.
It is disturbing to think that the minutes of some of these
meetings and the outline of Operation Overlord should have
fallen almost at once into the hands of the Germans. "The
results of the Teheran Conference were soon known to Hitler,
but he failed to draw the proper conclusions," writes General
Hans Speidel, Rommel's last Chief of Staff. 1 How did it happen?
An Albanian valet, named Diello, in the service of Sir Hugh
Knatchbull-Huguessen made himself known mysteriously to
the German Security Service agent in Ankara, L. C. Moyzisch.

1 Invasion 1944*

178 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

Herr von Papen thought of the code name of Cicero for him
and his services were accepted. Cicero kept the Germans
supplied with films of documents that he had extracted by night
from the Ambassador's dispatch box and photographed. From
October 1943 until April 1944 Cicero brought Moyzisch rolls
of film for which he was paid 20,000 and 15,000 a time,
mostly in counterfeit sterling banknotes. So the Foreign
Office most secret dispatches were betrayed one after another
to the Germans as fast as the cipher signals went out from
London. Moyzisch reported home to Berlin in person during
November 1943, so interested were the big men of the Third
Reich in the Cicero papers. He found Ribbentrop coldly
sceptical and unwilling to believe the contents of telegrams that
outlined the immense Anglo-American war effort and their
concerted strategy, in which his own doom was written.
Among them lay the outline of Operation Overlord mentioned
by its code name the invasion of Normandy. Ernst Kalten-
bruimer, a big scarred fellow with an evil temper, the successor
to Heydrich as Chief of the Security Service, wanted to know
all he could about this Albanian and what his motives were.
He was powerful enough to take over "Cicero" from Rib
bentrop as a "Security Service matter". Moyzisch noticed his
violent dislike for Ribbentrop, his temper; he, too, noticed his
huge hands. The fat, sallow Albanian, who nursed a grudge
against the British because an Englishman had accidentally
killed his father during a shooting party, continued to slip
away from the British compound in the evening and carry his
rolls of film down to agreed meeting places, where Moyzisch
waited for him with rolls of bank and counterfeit notes. The
Cicero documents continued to flow in until the Turks became
suspicious that Herr von Papen knew an amazing amount
about their secret understandings with the British. Then
another rat ran, in the other direction Moyzisch's own
secretary, Elizabeth Kapp, opening a diplomatic bag for him,
came upon a letter from Berlin in which Cicero was mentioned.
She was spying on Moyzisch for the British, so it seems, and
perhaps for the Americans also. The secret of Cicero became
suddenly in danger of discovery. The plump Albanian fled
from Ankara with his German forged banknotes, leaving the
British Embassy in no doubt any longer how it was that Herr
von Papen had known of the plans to infiltrate British flying

THE RAT RUN 179

personnel into Turkey, and adding up, with, consternation, the
state secrets that must have been lost this way. A new security
officer was attached to the British Embassy in Ankara. All
sorts of precautions were taken now that the rat had run.

"Ambassadors can be careless/' it was Paul Leverkuehn, the
principal German intelligence officer in Turkey, telling his
side of the story, as we sat in a Greek restaurant in London.
Nearby there hung a portrait of the old Greek hero, Admiral
Konstantin Kanaris. The waiter brought us a carafe of Spartan
wine.

"I mean von Papen this time.'* Leverkuehn, former German
assistant military attache in Istanbul, returned to his respectable
peacetime profession of the law, thought back to the days when
Herr von Papen gave away to the Turkish Foreign Minister
how much he had learned about the Turkish military agree
ments with the Allies.

"Hitler placed von Papen in Ankara so that he might
sound the Allies on a peace solution," Leverkuehn concluded.

"But he never trusted Papen and never let the entire
Papen family out of Germany at any one time," said Thomas
Marffy, one of the Hungarian diplomats in Ankara. "As for
Cicero, I believe he was really a Turkish agent making a little
on the side."

CHAPTER XXI

CONSTANTINOPLE

THE CHIEF GERMAN intelligence officer in Turkey, Dr.
Paul Leverkuehn, was a tall, studious, soft-spoken lawyer
with the polish of a German who has lived several years in
America. He was a student of Moslem countries and had
spent part of the First World War in northern Persia.
General Warlimont of the High Command picked him out in
the winter of 1939 for a special mission to Persia. Warlimont
feared that General Weygand with the French army in Syria
would strike through Asia Minor at the Russian oilfields of
Baku and destroy one of the main German sources of oil
the oil with which Stalin was buying off Hitler. Leverkuehn
travelled through Russia by rail to reach Persia, where he
remained in a consular post until German consuls were
banished from that vital transit land for lease-lend goods. He
reported to Warlimont early in 1940 that there was a real
threat to Baku the British were studying naval and air
attack, the French a land march on Baku from Syria. Soon, by
the irony of war, the Germans would be plotting to destroy
Baku, and the Canaris agent who protected the Ploesti wells
from the British, Herr Kuechler, would be ordered to plan
operations against the Russian wells.

Captain Leverkuehn was reporting one day in 1942 to a
military conference in Sofia, when he noticed that Admiral
Canaris was looking at him very intently. His report had been
uncomfortably frank and had implied criticisms of German
direction of the war. That summer Leverkuehn was in Berlin
and was ordered to report to the Chief of Intelligence.

"Very bright, animated and talkative, like a little old lady!
He had an extraordinary disregard for military conventions,"
so Leverkuehn described him. He noticed a characteristic of the
family. Canaris had thin blood and was always shivering even
in the heat of the Berlin summer of 1942. He wore a naval great
coat as they drove together through Berlin. The wide-brimmed

i So

CONSTANTINOPLE l8l

Panama hat that Leverkuehn was wearing pleased the Admiral
so much that he seized it and put it on in place of his uniform
cap. So they rode on together, the Admiral quietly enjoying the
novelty of his headgear.

"Then he asked me whom I would recommend for this or
that intelligence post quite regardless of the fact that I was a
mere captain and these were the posts of colonels and generals.
That was entirely unheard of in the German forces."

They drove to the villa in Schlachtensee for lunch, where
Leverkuehn saw a modest good taste in his style of living. He
remembered a coloured print on the office wall of Konstantin
Kanaris in flowing dress with a scimitar in his hand. In the villa
a parrot stood and chattered on a perch ; on a music stand lay a
flute. Ganaris talked at length to his dachshunds, a maddening
habit sometimes, said Leverkuehn, if you had a whole range of
subjects to discuss with him.

Ganaris asked Leverkuehn to go to Istanbul and organise
his intelligence service for Turkey. To those who imagine the
Abwehr as a thorough and efficient organisation, it will be of
interest that Leverkuehn set up his service in an empty room
of the big German Embassy building in Istanbul, without a
secretary, without register or indexes, and without a typewriter.
He did not attempt to create a system of German-born agents,
but used the material that lay to hand, emigre Austrians,
Turkish political leaders, small Moslem sects who served him
with the zeal of hatred because the British were using Levan
tines and Armenians for preference. Finally he came into
collaboration with the Turkish Intelligence Service and inter
rogated some of their Russian security suspects. What did the
Turks get out of it? They listened and noted from the sort of
questions he asked what it was that the Germans sought to
know about Russia.

"Ganaris had never spoken a word to me about peace
negotiations," said Leverkuehn, "but I have no doubt now
that he posted me to Istanbul to take up whatever threads
might be put in my hand. He knew that one of my American
friends of pre-war days was General William Donovan who
became Ghief of U.S. Strategic Services."

As Leverkuehn' s work grew more exacting, he asked for an
assistant and was sent the son of an old friend and business
associate of Hamburg, young Erich Vermehren, son of Dr.

l82 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

Kurt Vermehren. Erich came to Istanbul with his wife,
Countess Plettenberg, a woman of redoubtable intelligence and
energy with emphatic religious views. The Abwehr thought that
she would work with the Christian minorities in Turkey, just as
Leverkuehn had worked with the Moslems. This pale, rather
stolid young man with an obstinate chin and a singular,
sceptical mind had been proposed before the war for a Rhodes
scholarship and turned down on the grounds of his negative
attitude to National Socialism.

Leverkuehn does not know of any peace approaches in
Ankara or Istanbul earlier than 1943. Canaiis went to Turkey
twice during the war, and Helmuth von Moltke, one of his
assistants, also visited Turkey twice early in the war.

"Then you passed no message from Canaris to George Earle? "

"No."

"Perhaps Moltke did."

"It was about the time of the Stalingrad disaster that the
first peace feelers reached me from the Americans,*' said
Leverkuehn. "An intermediary came to me "

"From George Earle?" I asked.

"Yes, that is it. They complained that it was so hard to find
common ground with Germany. The Germans had no good
word to say for any living American. Could we not at least say
a friendly word about a dead man. I told the Ambassador
about this approach and Herr von Papen composed a little
speech for our war memorial ceremony in February.

"We have always had great esteem," said Papen, "for the
men who made history across the ocean, and created the land
of unlimited opportunity through their initiative and
dynamism. We bow to Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Mon
roe and many others. Bat we would not find it unfitting if the
Monroe doctrine were extended to Europe."

The last remarks were meant to mollify Ribbentrop, but he
was angry and mistrustful. The Kremlin listened. It was deeply
suspicious that Papen aimed at a separate peace with the West.
An attempt had already been made on the life of Papen in
Ankara on February 24th, 1942, by an obscure agent whose
defective bomb blew himself up instead. The Turkish police
discovered indication in his mangled remains that he was a
Russian, and his two Russian accomplices, Pavlov and Komi-
laiF, were sentenced to imprisonment.

CONSTANTINOPLE 183

"The next contact came from the Turkish Foreign Minister,
Numan Menemenjoglu," related Leverkuehn. "He told
Papen in March 1943 that Cardinal Spellman would visit
American churches in the Middle East as Roman Catholic
primate of America and would like to speak with Papen or a
man who possessed his confidence. Herr Moyzisch, the security
officer at the Embassy, got to hear of this offer, so Papen was
obliged to report it to Ribbentrop and suggested that I should
take up this invitation. There was a sour negative reply from
Ribbentrop that 'it was no use discussing peace' and a violent
reaction from Papen who cabled that he saw no sense in that
case in maintaining missions abroad.

"There was another message from George Earle in April
1944, that was transmitted to me in Germany. He let me know
that Allied preparations to invade Europe were technically so
complete that the invasion must succeed, but victory in the
West must also mean victory in the East and the end of Euro
pean civilisation. Was there then no possibility for another
talk about a solution? I reported this to Colonel Hansen, the
new chief of Military Intelligence, but I was not allowed to
return to Turkey. The talks were conducted with Herr von
Lersner who was living in Istanbul as President of the German
Orient Society, and I believe that Herr von Papen had talks
with Americans also."

In the meanwhile an awkward mishap had overtaken the
German Intelligence Service in Istanbul.

It was the business of the German Abwehr office in Istanbul
to pass out genuine and spurious information to the British,
to serve certain purposes and perhaps gain some goodwill.
But in this dangerous contact with the enemy inward loyalty
meant everything. Every man in the German consulate and
attache group in Istanbul watched his neighbour. Was X really
spying on the British, or was he working with them? Ver-
mehren was already known to the Gestapo for his negative
attitude to National Socialism, and when it become a question
of his returning to Germany fear for his wife and himself
seized him and he took up contact with the British with the idea
of finding refuge with the Allies.

The British Secret Service decided to spirit the Vermehrens
away, giving the affair a mysterious aspect so that the Germans
could hardly guess whether this was a "Night and Fog" action

184 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

or a simple desertion, but news of tlie scandal leaked out to the
Allied press and tactics had to be changed. The Times reported
Vermehren's defection and subsequently published extracts of a
statement by him under the sarcastic heading "A German and
his Conscience".

Vermehren had high ideas of putting his knowledge at the
service of a propaganda campaign against Hitler. "You will
not find the same understanding in London/* the British
officials warned him, "as you have found out here. You may be
disappointed." He wanted to go, nevertheless.

This was a scandal that shook Germany, not so much because
there were not other traitors stirring. The Ernst Kaltenbrunner
Security Service could afford to lose Moyzisch's secretary,
Nelly Kapp, "Elizabeth " to the Allies, without being weakened
but Ganaris and the Abwehr were in a precarious position. We
shall see how this incident of Vermehren was used by Hitler
for his own designs.

The Germans related among themselves that Vermehren
had run with the code books of the Abwehr.

"Did you take the code books with you? 9 * I asked him years
afterwards when we met at a London dinner party.

"No, I did not take the code books," he said emphatically,
and I naturally accept his word in this matter.

His wife, the Countess Elizabeth, upright, incisive, dressed
in stiff gold brocade, led the conversation.

"Ah, Canaris," she said, smiling, "him and his dogs!"

German society in Berlin talked for days of nothing else than
the defection of the Vermehrens. In gossip they ascribed it to
the religious antipathy of the Countess Vermehren towards
the Third Reich. The story circulated that the Vermehrens
had been approached by a distinguished member of the
Trinity and warned to flee from the damned state of Germany,
"but," said the Voice as they were about to leave, "do not
forget to take the code books with you."

So these two fled from Asia Minor from the city of light opera
in the intelligence war, where British and German intelligence
agents met by moonlight or lamplight and tried to guess who
was fooling whom; and Greeks, Albanians, Levantines, Turks,
Austrians, Bulgarians, Italians came and went across the
Bosphorus. The Vermehrens hoped that they would be able
to achieve some understanding and enlighten some of their own

CONSTANTINOPLE 185

people from an independent position outside Germany, but,
like many human purposes that run counter to destiny, the
effect of their striving was the opposite to what was intended.
The force within Germany that was secretly working for peace
was shaken.

"Vermehren tells me he did not take any code books," I
said to Leverkuehn when he had finished his narrative.

"Yes," replied Leverkuehn, "I have met Vermehren and
had it out with him. He had every right to save himself. They
were really in danger from the Gestapo."

"What did the Countess mean about the dogs?"

"Ah, that will be the dachshunds. You see, when he travelled,
Ganaris often used to book a double room and the dogs slept
on the other bed."

"That's not at all the German way with dogs."

"He could be quite infuriating the way he talked about
them "

"And the stories of high treason?"

"The Admiral and I became good friends, but he never even
spoke of secret peace talks to me. He may have informed
neutrals and through them the Allies of some facts that he
wanted them to know for reasons of high policy."

"The truth, in fact!"

"Oh yes, when some salutary counter-action could be hoped
for he wouldn't just give away military information like a
common spy."

"He didn't get much credit for his intentions from either
side."

"Perhaps not, but if you write about him, try to make this
clear. He saw quite clearly what he was doing and why he
was doing it. Maybe the British expected more action of him;
but violence was not in his nature. I hope you will make a true
portrait of him, because we loved him although he was the
most difficult chief in the world. He had that greatness of mind
that we cannot find today to start up a new intelligence service."

CHAPTER XXII

A UNIFIED SECRET SERVICE

THE IRRITATING RAIDS of the Mosquitoes on Berlin
gave way on the night of August 23rd~24th, 1943, to a large
bomber raid, in which 1,700 tons were dropped on the capital.
Hitler walked up and down the corridors of the shelter under
the Reich Chancellery and spoke his thoughts to Martin
Bormann. Perhaps this first big raid on Berlin brought some
thing home to him.

" I wonder how that little outfit of Admiral Canaris is doing,"
he mused. "I don't seem to have heard anything from him
for a long time."

Martin Bormann conveyed these words to the Intelligence
Service, and Colonel Jenke, the adjutant, remembers how
the Admiral exclaimed:

"You see, he wants something from me." When he had
thought again he remarked: "But what use is it really? "

The entourage had driven Ganaris away, said Jenke, because
they disliked his reports. Perhaps Hitler disliked them, too,
and Canaris knew that the entourage was really the pack of
yes-men that Hitler wanted. Hitler could not reproach him
for inadequate results. The Fuehrer made a remark in his
Reichstag speech on December nth, 1941, that if he had not
known beforehand exactly how strong the Russian Army was
on his Eastern front, since the campaign he had seen from
their offensive dispositions how justified his action was; but
when Canaris called on him with his back reports to expostu
late that he had given the exact order of battle in advance as
far back as the Urals, Hitler smiled. He said that he knew
and appreciated the Admiral's intelligence, but that he had
to make that statement for political reasons. "No nation went
to war with such complete information about the enemy as
we have had about Russia," Canaris told his own staff. Hitler
dismissed his Commander-in-Chief of the Army when he failed

186

A UNIFIED SECRET SERVICE iBj

to reach Moscow In the first year and did not replace von
Brauchitsch. In the following year Ganaris was as gloomy
about the Caucasus offensive as he had been about the attempt
to reach Moscow. He relinquished the duty of making the
situation reports on the Eastern Front to his deputy, the Chief
of the Foreign Intelligence branch (Amt Ausland Abwehr),
Vice-Admiral Biirckner, who unfortunately conformed to
Fuehrer Headquarters standards. Jenke remembers him fussing
round the intelligence map as it was being prepared for the
Fuehrer with blue flags for the German units and red flags
for the Russian saying:

"Ach, don't put so much red on the map!"
Did Hitler sense that the greater betrayal came from crea
tures of his own liking? "What is that little outfit of Admiral
Canaris up to I haven't heard from him for a long time?"
The Intelligence Headquarters moved south of Berlin to
Zossen, where lay Army High Command Headquarters. There
were two huge concrete citadels separated from each other
by a cordon they were known as Maibach I and Maibach II.
The General Staff occupied Maibach I and the Intelligence
Service was put in Maibach II. Even intelligence officers
could not pass the barrier into Maibach I without a special
pass. Each citadel had three storeys above ground and three
below, and every room had its replica below ground with a
branch telephone plug, so that when an air-raid alert sounded
the staff could remove its telephones, descend three storeys
and begin work again without interruption. A small cottage
stood in the grounds of Maibach I, the residence of the Chief
of German General Staff, Colonel-General Franz Haider. It
was known as Haider's cottage. Haider lent it to Canaris and
he lived there snugly and safely, for the S.S, was not allowed
into the Maibach complex. His adjutant noticed how Canaris
disliked leaving Haider's cottage and venturing to Berlin or
East Prussia. He felt himself perpetually watched outside the
citadel. He was afraid for his life. He forsook his abstemious
habits and his one glass of red wine and began to drink rather
more than his nervous system would stand.

The commotion about Erich Vermehren and his wife would
not by itself have upset the precarious footing of the German
Intelligence Service. A whole series of misfortunes and curious
incidents occurred throughout 1942 and 1943. The Vermehren

l88 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

affair was only the culminating blow at the authority of
Ganaris.

The adroit Josef Mueller came and went between Munich
and Rome without hindrance from September 1939 up to
December 1942. Colonel Helferrich, the intelligence liaison
officer in Rome who suspected his motives, had been moved
at the orders of Canaris. Otto John, an authority on the
German Abwehr, tells me that a cautious question from a
cleric in the entourage of the Pope about the standing of
Mueller in Germany filtered through to the Gestapo and put
them on their guard again. In December 1942 Customs
officials in Prague detained an Abwehr agent named Schmidt-
huber on suspicion that he was involved in currency offences.
Schmidthuber confessed to carrying money on behalf of the
Abwehr and explained that there was a group of generals who
were sounding the Allies through the Vatican as to peace terms.
He mentioned the names of Oster and von Dohnanyi of
Canaris's own office as being concerned in this affair. He was
himself attached to the Munich office of the Abwehr. Mueller
of the Gestapo was at once acquainted with the case. He sent a
criminal inspector to work with a Colonel Roder of the Judge
Advocate General's department. They started slowly, and it
was April 1943 before they first visited Canaris and obtained
his permission to search the office of Dohnanyi. There they
discovered a file lying about in which a Pastor Dietrich
Bonhoeffer, known to the Gestapo as an opponent of National
Socialism, was recommended for exemption from military
service because of his valuable foreign contacts. (Bonhoeffer
had secretly met the Bishop of Chichester in Stockholm and
informed him in some detail of an impending plot against the
life of Hitle^ but there was no inkling of this in the file.)
Dohnanyi and Pastor Bonhoeffer were arrested, General Oster
was removed from his appointment, and then Josef Mueller
was put under military arrest.

ee l appeared before court-martial, " he told me, "on charges
of treasonable activities and undermining the war effort. My
line of defence was that I had taken part in talks about peace,
which as an intelligence officer I was qualified to do, but that
I had not undertaken any negotiations. Now there was no
documentary evidence whatsoever in Gestapo hands to show
that there had been negotiations with the Allies. The draft

A UNIFIED SECRET SERVICE l8g

proposals that I had brought from Rome lay safely in the steel
chest of Colonel Schrader, a trusted friend of Admiral Canaris,
in Army Command Headquarters.

"I said to the court, conducting my own defence, either I
was absolutely innocent or entirely guilty and that I demanded
acquittal or the death penalty. The court acquitted me, but I
was kept in military arrest because the Gestapo would other
wise have taken me into custody for special interrogation. "

Canaris had his first official conference with Ernst Kalten-
brunner in Munich in February 1943, when these investiga
tions were still not completed. It so happened that two students,
one a girl, had just been hanged at Munich University for
making propaganda against the regime out of the Stalingrad
disaster. The Admiral found Kaltenbrunner wary and critical.
Though less cunning than his predecessor, Heydrich, he was a
grim and uncouth opponent. Ganaris sized up the broad
shoulders, massive head and thin violent eyes and was con
sternated by the size of his hand; "real murderer's paws,"
he described them to one of his officers afterwards. Kalten
brunner criticised one of Ganaris 9 s men, the Chief Intelligence
Officer of Vienna, Count Marogna-Redwitz. He asserted that
the count was in close touch with the Conservative opposition
in Hungary and was on friendly terms with suspect members
of the Hungarian Intelligence Service marked for their pro-
British attitude.

Kaltenbrunner was in fact implying that a senior member
of the German Intelligence Service was in touch with such
persons as were most likely to be themselves in touch with the
British.

His officers noticed that Canaris reacted instantly, speaking
in the rapid, persuasive manner that he showed when excited.
There were, he argued, the very best reasons for watching
Hungarians of all parties. The duties of an intelligence officer
demanded that he should have some knowledge of the activities
of all groups. It seemed as if Kaltenbrunner was partly
reassured.

"The Hungarian Intelligence Service never lost touch with
the British throughout the war," a senior Hungarian diplomat
told me when I mentioned this incident. "It is easy to under
stand the menace that Kaltenbrunner J s criticisms embodied.
Hungary kept such good contact with the British that we

CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

signed articles of surrender on board Sir Hugh Knatchbull-
Huguessen's yacht ofT Istanbul in October 1943 eighteen
months before surrender was actually possible."

Ulein-Revicky, Hungarian minister in Stockholm, who
maintained contact with the British during the latter years of
the war, has added a detail to my picture of Hungary. "The
General Staff was pro-German," he told me, "the Ministry
of the Interior was pro-British. The friends of Ganaris were in
the latter Ministry."

The contacts with the Vatican had been scented, the activities
with the Hungarians noticed, his Protestant emissary to
Stockholm had been arrested. His man in Istanbul, Dr. Paul
Leverkuehn, was in constant danger of being accused of
indiscretion or treason. Ganaris must have had nerves of quite
unusual resilience to pursue his course against Hitler.

"Oh yes, Admiral Canaris warned Switzerland again in
October 1942." August Lindt, the press attache of the Swiss
Legation in London told me. When Ribbentrop was at length
convinced that the Allies would soon be thrusting at the "soft
underbelly of the Axis," the position of neutral Switzerland
attracted his blundering attention. He sent a questionnaire to
the German Minister in Berne instructing him to report what
reserves of food and raw materials Switzerland possessed. No
doubt Ribbentrop thought of another bloodless occupation
for which the Allies could be blamed. A little advantage would
be gained by possessing this linking territory between the
Italian front and Germany. The German Minister in Berne,
Dr. Kdcher, emphasised the hardy and soldierly character of
the Swiss people and the strength of their national redoubt in
the mountains, There was contact thereupon with Canaris* s
men in Berne, and the Councillor, Dr. Theo Kordt, informed
the Intelligence Chief what was afoot. Thereupon Canaris
sent a warning to the Swiss Government. The danger may not
have been imminent. He wanted to omit nothing that would
help to shorten the war.

We have already seen that the Allies achieved surprise in
their North African landings. They achieved surprise on the
Anzio beachheads in January 1944.

"Ganaris was a bad intelligence officer," said General
Westphal, one of RommePs Staff officers, when asked for his
opinion about the Admiral. "I recollect that just before the

A UNIFIED SECRET SERVICE igi

Anzio landings I asked him where the British battleships
were.

"*We are looking after them don't you worry/ answered
the Admiral, but he gave no positive answer on their where
abouts.

"When they appeared in support of the Anzio landings
immediately afterwards, we knew where the British battle
ships were. That's why I say he was a bad intelligence
officer."

Doubtless the Admiral was genuinely unaware that Anzio
was impending. I find it hard to believe the same of North
Africa. Herbert Wichmann from Hamburg, perhaps in the
face of conflicting reports, gave him the correct destination
of the "Torch" convoys. Maybe Canaris had an idea, too, but
simply let the General Staff and the High Command draw
their own conclusions. It is positive that he knew of the
impending defection of Italy and made a point of reporting
to the S.D. in the opposite sense. It is impossible to say whether
he knew of Count Grandi's visit to Portugal to treat with the
Allies; but he was on the most friendly terms with his Italian
colleague, the Chief of Servizio Informazione MiHtare,
General Cesare Ame. It appears that Canaris was acting like
a man who is trying to demolish a condemned building by
dismantling the roof first and then the topmost stones, Bulgaria,
Italy, Hungary, so that the final collapse would be less
disastrous, whereas others were intent on keeping every stone
together so that when the foundations went the collapse would
be all the more disastrous.

Mussolini resigned and was arrested on July 25th after a
vote of censure by the Fascist Grand Council. It was then a
delicate matter for Hitler whether to believe the professions of
King Victor Emanuel and Marshal Badoglio. He could ill
afford to disarm his Italian ally while Italy was still fighting
the Allies; but he brooded over plans to kidnap the King of
Italy and the Pope and to free Mussolini. Skorzeny was able
to carry out the last of these plans for Mm. Canaris, when he
heard that such plans were in the mind of his Fuehrer, decided
that he himself could very well make a personal journey to
Italy on the pretext of assessing the will of Italy to resist, but
General Lahousen tells me that his purpose was to warn the
Italians of the Fuehrer's intentions.

CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

So he arrived at Venice in August 1943 and stayed at the
Danieli, the same hotel where he had met and persuaded the
Rumanians in 1940 to let him infiltrate Germans into Ploesti
as a guard for the oil wells. The scene had changed mightily in
those three years.

Ame, a tall blond Tyrolean type, slow of speech and more
German in appearance than Italian, brought a number of
his officers to Venice. Ganaris was accompanied by Lahousen,
who was about to leave him and go to field duties, and Colonel
von Freytag-Loringhaven, who would take over from Lahousen
Department II of the Intelligence.

Lahousen relates that there was a large and formal breakfast
at the Hotel Danieli. Canaiis and Ame went alone to the
Lido that afternoon and spent an hour and a half together.
It was during this time at the Lido that Ganaris warned his
friend of the kidnapping plans. He indicated to Lahousen on
his return that the warning had been given and that Ame for
Ms part had been equally frank with him. Capitulation was
in the air. Italy was about to change sides. Ame and Ganaris
met next day for a formal leave-taking in the presence of their
assembled staffs. The Italian loudly and clearly assured the
Germans that the brotherhood in arms was sacred and
inviolable and that Italy was determined to resist to the utmost
by the side of Germany the onslaught of the Anglo-American
powers. Ganaris heard him out with wonderful seriousness in
the presence of them all,

Back at Zossen Ganaris sat at dinner table and regaled
Ernst Kaltenbrunner and Walther Huppenkothen with his
memories of Italy* Huppenkothen remembered and noted
in his report how Ganaris emphasised that General Ame had
assured him personally that he considered it out of the question
that Italy should take independent steps to end the war.
Huppenkothen noted also that after the surrender of Italy on
September 8th, 1943, Canaris told a slightly different story
to Schellenberg, the S,S. deputy intelligence chief. He passed
Schellenberg a thick bundle of all the reports he had ever made
to Keitel on the unreliability of Italy as an ally and the intrigues
of the Italian General Staff for a separate peace. Ame? Well
yes, he had since learned that Ame had been sent to command
a division immediately after the Venice meeting. Badoglio
had returned him to field duties, but he, Ganaris, had been

A UNIFIED SECRET SERVICE 193

told that Ame disappeared on his way to his new appointment
and assumed that he had been murdered by the anti-German
party.

In what silence or with what disbelieving stares Schellenberg
heard this story, Huppenkothen does not say.

If the treachery of Italy did not come entirely as a surprise
and the S.S. was able to round up and transport to Germany
large numbers of Allied prisoners of war in Italian camps,
it was due to other information than that which Ganaris
brought back from his personal visit to Italy. The Intelligence
Division of the British Control Commission interrogated an
Abwehr specialist officer in 1947 who had been at a Wehrmacht
listening post in France on September 1943 picking up Allied
signals. The Germans had managed to master the secret of
the P.E. or scrambler telephone that blurs all conversation
to thwart " tapping" and only restores it to articulate sounds
through a special attachment at the receiving end. This is
secure enough if the line used is a telephone cable, to which
it would be unlikely that a spy could attach the bulky un
scrambling apparatus. But if the telephone conversation is
beamed by wireless, a variable "unscrambling" instrument in
enemy territory could be fairly quickly attuned to the same
frequency as the two other P.E. sets.

Thus it was that the German Abwehr in the Pas de Calais
picked up a scrambler telephone conversation between President
Roosevelt and Mr. Churchill that had been passed over the
transatlantic wireless link instead of the cable unknown to
the two war leaders. There was a guarded reference in their
conversation to arming our prisoners ".

"This made it plain to me," the Abwehr officer told the
Intelligence Division of the British Control Commission, "that
the defection of Italy was at hand; there was an S.D. man be
side me reading every word I wrote down."

As Russia advanced in the East and Kesselring fell back out
of Italy, the drawing-room Fronde in Berlin grew more vocal
and in January 1944 the Gestapo pounced on a group of dis
affected Germans. A Gestapo agent informed against Frau Solf,
widow of the former German Ambassador to Japan, after being
at a tea party in her home. There had been present among other
disaffected persons a retired diplomat, Otto Kiep, who was at
the time one of Canaris's subordinates, attached for war duties.

194 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

Count Helmut von Moltke and Ms friends were arrested as a
consequence of this. General Oster had been finally relieved of
all intelligence work and retired in December 1943. Then Kiep
was arrested. After that the Vermehrens and then two other
agents fled from Istanbul to Cairo. Yet the final rupture be
tween Hitler and Canaris did not simply arise out of a desertion
or unorthodox peace talks. He had been careful to pass on to the
High Command or to Ribbentrop reports on any new peace
soundings from unknown quarters lest by failing to do so he
should fall into a trap set for him by Kaltenbrunner. Thus in
1943, when Madame Kollontai, the Soviet Ambassador in
Stockholm, started talks with the Abwehr in the hope of dis
covering a military group that would make peace with Russia,
Canaris passed on his man's report to the angry and suspicious
Ribbentrop, who nevertheless took some further bearings on this
peace offer.

The fact that a Jew was the intermediary between Madame
Kollontai and Wagner, the German intelligence officer in
Stockholm, did not deter Ribbentrop.

Richard Protze was told by Canaris himself of the last big
storm that rose over his reports on Russia, Hitler, perhaps
primed on his defeatist views, ordered him to report on the
situation on the Russian front. Canaris arrived with a bundle of
intelligence reports and began to describe the military situation.
Hitler watched him as he spoke for some time, Hirnmler stood by.
Suddenly Hitler sprang forward, overturning the table and
seized the Admiral by the lapel.

"Are you trying to tell me that I am going to lose this war? "
he yelled.

"Mein Fuehrer, I have said nothing about losing the war. I
have tried to explain the military situation on the Russian front."

This may have been the same occasion as Canaris was over
whelmed with abuse about the desertion of Vermehren and the
peace talks of Leverkuelm. At any rate he was dismissed the
presence and told to leave his intelligence behind.

Hitler's patience was exhausted. He spoke savagely of
"typical Canaris men" in foreign posts. Kaltenbrunner and
Schellenberg closed in on the Abwehr. After conferences with
Himmler, Keitel and Jodl, the text of a Fuehrer decree was
submitted to Hitler and signed by him. Huppenkothen quotes
it as follows:

A UNIFIED SECRET SERVICE 195

(1) I order the establishment of a unified German secret intel
ligence service.

(2) I appoint the Reichsfuehrer S.S. to command the secret
service. He will agree with the Chief of High Command on
what conditions the military intelligence service is to be
incorporated in the secret service.

"Is there anything else you require ?" asked Hitler when
Kaltenbrunner showed him the scheme for the new unified
intelligence organisation, and Kaltenbrunner promptly laid
claim to the intelligence service of the Foreign Ministry. But
that would have gone against Hitler's own policy of "divide and
rule".

Canaris ceased to be Chief of Military Intelligence in
February 1944, a little more than nine years after taking up the
appointment, but to cover the real causes for his dismissal an
economic job was found for him in the Wehrmacht. Kalten
brunner took over in such haste that Canaris had no time to
make the turnover of duties required by the customs of the
service. The faithful Jenke flitted round the secretaries to
ascertain that no portions of the Admiral's diary were left
behind. The SJD. were now in the Maibach citadel, next to the
General Staff. They ordered Canaris to leave the Haider cottage
and not return to it.

He sat alone in his Schlachtensee villa, and the military
intelligence service that he had held together disintegrated
rapidly.

"When the Admiral" was no longer there/' said Richard
Protze sadly, "I no longer forwarded everything to Berlin from
my intelligence office in Holland. We had no confidence in the
service without him."

"Canaris was unprotected," said Willy Jenke. "He was afraid
for his life, and yet he would not budge. We urged him to flee
to Spain with his wife and family. General Franco would have
seen to his safety. The Military Intelligence could have put an
aircraft at his disposal; but he would not go."

Jenke shook his head as he recalled his vain arguments with
the Admiral, who was facing up to calamity, and prepared
to atone for the crimes of his countrymen.

CHAPTER XXIII

OPERATION VALKYRIE

JL HE GERMAN FRONT in Normandy was strained to
breaking point in the middle of July 1944 and the Russian
armies were lapping through Rumania and Poland towards the
Reich. At last the younger men of the German Army took action
into their own hands. Colonel von Stauffenberg, who had gone
home from the war in Africa after losing an arm, an eye and two
fingers from his remaining hand, was not the ideal man to
manage an attempt to blow up Hitler, but the Fuehrer had
withdrawn so much upon himself in the " Wolf's Lair'% the
name for his East Prussian headquarters at Rastenburg, or in his
Berchtesgaden enclave, that it was very difficult for anyone to
approach him. His own entourage had been carefully chosen by
the Personnel Office of the Army and most of them fell under
his strong hypnotic influence. The conspirators whom the course
of war had sometimes brought together and sometimes scattered
again had managed to draw up an operational plan for seizing
power in Germany which they sent out in sealed envelopes to
be opened only on receipt of the code word "Valkyrie ". It went
to the Headquarters of Military Districts from the Headquarters
of Home Forces which was commanded by General Fromm.
His Chief of Staff was this same Colonel Klaus Schenck von
StaufFenberg. 1 The conspirators had at times been very few;
but now that the situation was boiling up it became alarming
to them how many adherents came in. Everybody wanted to
bring his friend and actually quarrelled over the ministerial
posts before the coup was even ready. The conspirators tried
to widen their circle to include representatives of labour, but
the Nazis had their own spies well distributed among the
workers. Julius Leber, one of the most prominent of the Social
Democratic adherents, was arrested on July 5th, and by July

1 Not to be confused with Franz von StaufFenberg., alias Uncle Franz, who ran
the German military intelligence in Switzerland.

196

OPERATION VALKYRIE 197

1 6th the Gestapo had learned enough to issue a warrant for the
arrest of Karl Goerdeler, the political leader of the whole con
spiracy. No wonder that StaufFenberg and his friends hastened
their plan of action. It was very nearly foiled altogether.

Ganaris sat in his house in Schlachtensee and waited pessi
mistically on events. Although no more than fifty-seven, in
tensive and nervous concentration over the past nine years had
worn him physically.

Working in the heights of intelligence, though his brain was as
keen as ever, his powers of action had receded; moreover, the
soundings that he had taken with the Allies in past years seemed
to offer nothing positive to the insurgents to build upon.
He had sent his wife and two daughters to Bavaria, where they
were safe from the mass air raids, and in July he was living
alone in Berlin with his Polish cook and Mohammed, his Alger
ian servant his distractions the parrot, the rough-haired
dachshunds, occasional visits from neighbours and the work
in his new economic study group in Eriche.

StaufFenberg carried a bomb constructed of the same mater
ials as Canaris's staff had taken to Smolensk in 1 943 British
plastic charges and detonators with acid-tube time fiises. This
was concealed in the brief-case which he intended to leave in a
conference room with Hitler, Himmler and as many other Nazi
leaders present as could be found together. It was not easy to
concoct a service pretext for reporting to the Fuehrer, still less
easy to find Hitler and Himmler in one room. Once Stauffen-
berg was ready to make the attempt, but the Fuehrer did not
appear. On July I5th he managed to be present at a conference
in Berchtesgaden where Hitler and Himmler were both in the
room, but just when he was about to press the acid capsule
Hitler walked out and did not return. Twice he reported failure
and the reports ran to the British Intelligence Service in Lisbon
that there had been a postponement. Finally StaufFenberg was
given the task of reporting to Hitler on July 2Oth at Rasten-
burg on the subject of replacements out of Home Forces for
casualties on the Russian front. He flew from Berlin to Rasten-
burg with his adjutant, Lieutenant Werner von Haeften, passed
through the three security cordons and reached the citadel,
where he reported to Marshal Keitel a few minutes before the
twelve-thirty conference, clutching the brief-case in his three
sound fingers. As they walked together to the conference,

ig8 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

Stauffenberg noticed that it was to take place in a wooden hut
with its windows wide open. If it had not been such a hot day
they would have met in the concrete citadel. Hitler appeared
not to recognise Stauffenberg, so Keitel presented him. The
conference assembled, with the adjutants General Schmundt
and Colonel Brandt, the secretaries and the reporting officers.
Stauffenberg leaned his brief-case on his knee, squeezed the
acid capsule of the ten-minute fuse and then stood up the brief
case against the table within a few feet of Hitler. Colonel Brandt
found that the brief-case cramped his feet and moved it slightly
away. General Fellgiebel, the liaison officer of the conspiracy at
Supreme Headquarters, called Stauffenberg out on the pretext
of answering a telephone call. Keitel looked up and noticed that
Stauffenberg left the room. It was then a few minutes after
twelve-forty. Stauffenberg went through the security check
point to the M.T. Park and waited there. A flash, a deafening
roar, and a cloud of smoke over the shattered hut as the debris
flew in every direction. They watched men running to and fro
and stretcher-bearers hurrying up to take away the bodies.
He had no doubt that the bomb had done its work, so he argued
his way with some force past the security officer who had arrived
at the outer barrier with orders to let no one in or out, drove
to the airport and flew back to Berlin.

The conspirators in Berlin sat waiting for the first news. An
officer brought a report to Headquarters of Home Forces at the
old Defence Ministry in the Bendlerstrasse at 3.30 p.m. that
there had been an explosion at Fuehrer Headquarters and
several officers had been seriously injured. General Beck, who
had resigned from the post of Chief of German General Staff
in 1938, had taken charge at the Bendlerstrasse with those
generals who were prepared to risk everything in a revolt. He
had all the network of East West army teleprinters under his
control there. General Fromm, Commander of Home Forces,
did not know what was afoot for at least an hour after that. Beck
tried to contact the Army Group Commanders in the East and
the West personally and ordered a large withdrawal of the
exposed left flank of the German armies on the Baltic coast.
Rommel, one of his main hopes in the West, had been severely
injured by an R.A.F. fighter attack on his car three days pre
viously. Marshal von Kluge, Commander-in- Chief West, could
perhaps have asked Eisenhower for an immediate parley; but

OPERATION VALKYRIE 199

he was uncertain of himself and, after telephone conversations
with Beck, Fromm, Hoeppner and others in Berlin, he decided
to do nothing. Meanwhile the plotters sent out the code
word "Valkyrie" to Home Forces, the garrison of Berlin was
ordered out to protect the Bendlerstrasse from the S.S., the
nearest troops outside Berlin were ordered to march into the
capital and Fromm was told about 4 p.m. by General Olbricht
that Hitler was dead.

"Who has told you that? " asked General Fromm cautiously.

"The information comes from General Fellgiebel."

The wary Fromm took the precaution of demanding to speak
to Fuehrer Headquarters and immediately was connected to
Marshal Keitel.

"What is happening at headquarters? There are the wildest
rumours here in Berlin," asked Fromm.

"What do they say? Everything is in order here/' parried
Keitel.

" I have just had it reported that the Fuehrer has been assas
sinated."

"That is nonsense. An attempt has been made, but it failed.
By the way, where is your Chief of Staff, StaufFenberg? "

" Stauffenberg has not yet arrived here."

Unaware that the orders had been unsealed all over Germany
and troops set on the move, Fromm decided to take no further
action. At 4.30 p.m. Stauffenberg arrived in Berlin and reported
to the 'Bendlerstrasse to tell Fromm that he had seen Hitler
carried dead out of the wreckage. Fromm confronted him with
the words of Keitel. Stauffenberg retorted:

"Keitel is lying as usual," but he knew that Keitel had been
in the hut and that he at any rate had survived. The revolt must
go ahead cost what it might ! The plotters had to overpower the
reluctant Fromm and put him and other staff officers under
arrest.

Stauffenberg had telephoned to Canaris, probably from Staa-
ken Airport, Berlin, as soon as he arrived to say that Hitler was
dead after a bomb attempt on his life.

"Great heavens, dead?" replied the Admiral. "Who did it?
The Russians? " He was well aware that even telephone calls to
his home were noted and recorded. Within an hour of this call,
soon after 4.30 p.m., there was a second telephone call from
another of the conspirators to say that the attempt had been

2OO CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

made, but that it had failed and the Fuehrer was still alive.
Thereupon Ganaris drove to his office at Eiche and arrived just
in time to approve a staff telegram of congratulations to the
Fuehrer on his lucky escape.

Meanwhile the generals in the Bendlerstrasse had ordered the
watch regiment to seize Berlin radio hoping to prevent the news
from spreading; but Major Remer, commander of the regiment.,
became suspicious of his instructions. One of his officers sug
gested that they should ask Dr. Goebbels for confirmation of the
reports that Hitler was dead. Goebbels acted quickly, connected
Remer with Hitler himself, and the Fuehrer in that unmistak
able vibrant voice gave Remer full powers to suppress the revolt.
Two officers in the plot, arriving at the office to arrest Goebbels,
found themselves arrested in turn. It was obvious to the plotters
by 6 p.m. that Hitler was still alive. They saw copies of signals
from Fuehrer Headquarters going out direct to commands
countermanding the "Valkyrie" orders and their own com
munique. Remer turned his cordon round on the Bendlerstrasse
and would let nobody out. They were trapped. Fromm broke
out of his mild state of arrest about 10 p.m., turned the tables on
the plotters and ordered the summary execution of Stauffen-
berg, Olbricht, Colonel Merz von Quirnheim and Lieutenant
Werner von Haeften. They were shot in the glare of motor
transport headlights in the courtyard before Himmler could
intervene to forbid any more executions and demand that all
suspects should be turned over to the Gestapo. Beck attempted
to take his own life, wounded himself, and was given the coup de
grace as he lay dying. Hitler broadcast to the nation at mid
night. He said that "a miserable clique of military traitors had
attempted to annihilate him and with him the High Com
mand". That day he appointed one of his most trusted generals,
Guderian, to the post of Chief of General Staff. This was the
same Guderian who had so much bother over Sosnowski's
thefts from I.N.6 at the beginning of our story.

What had happened meanwhile at Rastenburg? Hitler had
been leaning on the map table when the bomb exploded. The
force of the plastic charge was so instantaneous that it blew the
flimsy walk of the hut apart and spent its fierceness in the open.
Had the conference taken place in the concrete citadel from
which the explosive force could not have escaped, the history of
the world would perhaps have taken another course. A cone of

OPERATION VALKYRIE 2OI

immunity remained in the centre of the hut and in it stood Adolf
Hitler leaning on the table which collapsed under him. They
were all blown flat, the Fuehrer's trousers were scorched off,
his hair singed, his shoulder badly bruised and that was all
his superficial injury. The first voice heard in the wreckage was
that of Keitel: "Where is the Fuehrer? "

Colonel Brandt was dead, one stenographer and a secretary.
Others were more or less seriously injured; but Hitler had
his wounds dressed and was quickly on the move again,
wildly exhilarated as he glided round the casualty ward beds
with the film unit behind him, touching the bandaged forms
that lay like large white mummies and squirmed despite their
cerements at his approach. He joked about having had a short
haircut, and when somebody sniggered at his painful attempt
to give the Nazi salute, Hitler did not turn on him, but merely
remarked that he could not raise his arm properly and must be
content with the bourgeois greeting. That afternoon he hurried
to the railway station to receive Mussolini and Marshal Graz-
iani, who had arrived from Italy to seek aid and counsel. There
was a tea-party at Rastenburg with Goering and Ribbentrop.
This was the famous occasion when Goering threatened the
Foreign Minister with his baton, and the inevitable reaction to
the shock of the explosion came in a violent brainstorm with the
Fuehrer raving before the appalled Italians that the German
people were unworthy of him and that he would wreak terrible
vengeance on his enemies. Then he lapsed into moody silence.

The revolt lasted altogether no more than eleven hours.
Those connected with it, if not already shot or arrested, com
mitted suicide, disappeared into hiding, or just went about their
daily work as if they were in no way implicated. Guderian and
Keitel promptly turned over all military suspects to the Gestapo.

Ganaris made no attempt to escape. Apart from a chance re
mark to an old friend "Of course you can't do things that way.
Ring me up in a few days' time " he went about his work in the
economic staff, as if he had never plotted against Hitler.

General von Tresckow, one of the chief architects of the plan
to seize power in Germany, chose the other course. He walked
out into the no-man's-land of the Central Army Group towards
the Russians, said farewell to his A.D.C. and then drew the pin
out of a hand grenade which he held against his neck so that it
blew his head off his shoulders.

2O2 CHIEF OF INTE LLI GEN GE

Himmler was not in Berlin when the Insurrection started but
he arrived in the afternoon of July soth and ordered that his
own counter-operation should begin at dawn next day. He had
plans laid to arrest all enemies of the regime, no matter how
highly placed, no matter how renowned were their names in
Germany. This operation started at dawn on July sist and
lasted for several days during which time hundreds of eminent
men were rounded up. Ewald von Kleist-Schmenzin was among
the first to be taken. The S.S. had found his name listed as future
Political Officer for Pomerania in an administrative annexe to
Operation "Valkyrie". The Gestapo went through his writing
desk at dawn and seized a letter with a foreign address on it.
They were astonished to find that it bore the signature of
Winston Churchill. It was the warning missive written at the
request of Lord Halifax in August 1938 to strengthen the move
ment for peace among the generals.

Two more days passed. Then an S.S. car drove up to the villa
of Canaris in Schlachtensee. Out got Schellenberg, Himmler's
deputy, and a few minutes later Canaris walked out of the house
in the Dianastrasse and was driven away in the car with the man
who had become his successor.

CHAPTER XXIV

THE LAST THROW

THE CELLS OF the Reich Security Office were full of
the most prominent men in Germany that winter: generals,
officers, diplomats, politicians, landowners, lawyers and clergy
men sat in the small cells men like Goerdeler, Haider, Hassell,
Oster, Schulenberg, Fromm, Popitz, and among them Schacht
trying to look, as he did later at Nuremberg, as if he did not
know his companions. Josef Mueller was taken out of military
detention and transferred to Gestapo keeping. Kaltenbrunner
gave special orders for the security of Ganaris. He was to be
kept in a lighted cell with the door permanently open and
permitted to speak to nobody. No prisoner was allowed to speak
to another, but when the air-raids alerts sounded they had all to
shuffle out to the shelters and that gave them a chance for whis
pered conversations. Their doors were left open for rounds and
then they could whisper through the hinges to each other. It
surprised his fellow prisoners and the Gestapo that Ganaris still
talked with an up-to-date knowledge of the war, although he
was cut off from all outside contact. He was thereupon forbidden
to ask his guards for the Wehrmacht communique of the day.
Yet his grasp was still amazing, as if his mind still assimilated
intelligence from the air when the threads were severed. Lieu
tenant von SchlabrendorfT was in a nearby cell and recalls the
vague and naive questions with which Canaiis tricked his
guards into giving him situation reports.

** I suppose by now we are pushing the Russians back over the
Vistula."

"Ach, what nonsense! They are approaching the Oder."
One day in midwinter a Gestapo detachment went to
fetch von SchlabrendorfF from his cell and take him to the
Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. They had suspicions
that General von Tresckow had taken his own life, and so
opened his grave. When they prised open the coffin and

203

2O4 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

examined the corpse their suspicions deepened and they decided
to cross-examine his former adjutant, Schlabrendorff, who had
been arrested on supposition of treasonable activities. Thinking
that his last day had come, he walked out of his cell.

"Put on your overcoat/' shouted the guards.

"I have no overcoat," he answered.

"Then borrow one from the nearest prisoner."

The only cell door that stood open was that of Canaris, as it
stood, day and night, with the lights on. He must have suffered
much that winter from his thin blood in a cell sometimes un-
heated, but he flung his overcoat out of the cell into the gang
way. SchlabrendorfF picked it up gratefully and put it on, and
when he had settled his hands in the pockets he found a scrap of
paper there. He read it furtively in the black maria that drove
him out to be confronted with the corpse of his general. The
note read;

"Your case comes up on the 2 3rd."

Kaltenbrunner with his security branch man, S.S. General
Mueller, and the painstaking Huppenkothen began their
search for evidence against Canaris. They sent an agent to
Switzerland to spy on the Allied military attaches. It was hard
to find anything that implicated Canaris directly. His case
baffled them. A man who had been in such a high position, a
friend of General Franco from whom they hoped perhaps still
for mediation and peace terms with the West, could hardly
be hanged on a meat hook just like those other blundering
staff officers. But Huppenkothen noticed that Colonel Schrader,
an intimate friend of Canaris., had committed suicide imme
diately after the insurrection of July soth had failed. He
interrogated his driver; the man could not think of any reason
why his master should have been implicated he lived a quiet
life and did not see many people but the driver did remember
certain files entrusted to him, for which Colonel Schrader had
enjoined him to particular care. Where were they? The S.D.
searched his home, the War Ministry offices in the Bendler-
strasse, and then the Army H.Q. citadel at Zossen. There,
after some weeks, they discovered Colonel Schrader's steel
box and broke it open.

The box contained a miscellany of papers. There were the
medical history sheets of Corporal Adolf Hitler containing the
observations of the Commandant of the military hospital at

THE LAST THROW 205

Pasewalk in Pomerania, where Hitler had lain gassed after the
First World War. The remarks referred to his symptoms of
hysterical blindness and suggested a psychiatrist's report on his
sanity. There were copies of certain service reports of Admiral
Canaris, some latter pages of his diary, a series of intelligence
papers on National-Socialist atrocities and the correspondence
on the Vatican negotiations with the proposed peace condi
tions drafted by the Pope's secretary going between Sir D'Arcy
Osborne and Josef Mueller, with the visiting card of Laiber
still attached. The Germans had not been so careful to destroy
these drafts as their adversary had been.

"I had to accept this post (the Reich Security Office) at a
time when suspicion fell on Admiral Canaris of having colla
borated with the enemy for years/* stated Ernst Kaltenbmnner
in his final plea at Nuremberg. "In a short time I ascertained
the treason of Ganaris to a most frightful extent." When he said
this he was probably thinking of Colonel Schrader's safe.

"Yet for months Ganaris baffled them with one ruse after
another," related Schlabrendorff. "His skill in acting a part,
his cunning, his imagination, the ease with which he affected
naive stupidity and then emerged into the most subtle reasoning
disarmed the security agents who interrogated him."

"It was not so much lying," said Lahousen with a chuckle,
"as the artistic distortion of the truth."

Kleist was interrogated about the letter from Winston
Churchill that had been found in his desk. "That was simply
the result of an official mission to find out whether the British
would make war on us over the Czechoslovak issue," explained
Kleist to S.S. Mueller. No doubt Canaris gave the same answer,

I have tried from the shreds of evidence on his behaviour
to work out what his replies would have been if, for instance,
the Gestapo had discovered his "Viking" line to Switzerland
and the warning of an impending threat he gave to the Swiss
in 1943. To the accusation of treason in giving the Swiss a hint
to mobilise it would have been possible for him to reply in this
manner :

"The case is entirely different. We did not warn the Swiss
of a real danger that they would be invaded. The Abwehr
had information on Allied pressure on the Swiss to cut all rail
communications between Germany and Italy, slow it down,
and allow Allied agents to blow up the St. Gothard tunneL

2O6 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

Our intention with the warning was in fact to convey a threat
and so keep our rail communications open, which in fact we
did. Nobody in their senses wanted to invade Switzerland."

I emphasise that the above is an exercise of the imagination
and that Ganaris may never have been asked that question
or have given that answer. It serves solely to show what fine
constructions can be put on any one of his actions and gives an
idea of the time and study that would be needed to disprove
such an explanation.

The peace negotiations with the Allies could also be ex
plained as attempts to size up their determination, their unity,
their war aims, their trust or mistrust of Russia and generally
soften their purpose by suggesting that Germany was not
going to prosecute war to the full. Unless Kaltenbrunner
really knew what Canaris's agents had told the Allies, he could
not say for certain that such activities were treason and
there must have been always at the back of his mind the
subconscious hope that Ganaris had in fact found what they
must all eventually seek acceptable terms.

So the months went by until, on February 3rd, 1945, the
Reich Security Office received a direct bomb hit and Himmler
decided that the prisoners must be removed to concentration
camps. He dispatched Josef Mueller on February yth to
Buchenwald and Ganaris was sent further south, to Flossen-
biirg, in the "redoubt". Since the discovery of Colonel
Schrader's safe, he had been kept in irons day and night.

Kaltenbrunner and Schellenberg, the Security Chief and
the Intelligence Chief of the new unified Secret Service, were
appalled by the odour of treason that they had found in the
papers of Admiral Canaris, but they were more than appalled.
The possibilities of survival for themselves and their whole
order peeped out of the new evidence. The foreign contacts
that Ganaris had taken up in a treasonable sense, as they sus
pected, might have to be taken up by themselves perhaps as a
legitimate task. But this process of thought was not without
some pangs of the Nazi conscience. When Count Folk Berna-
dotte of Wiborg, of the Swedish Red Gross, appeared in Berlin
on February i6th, Kaltenbrunner regarded the visit as a
suspicious omen. His obsession with the treason of Ganaris
had bitten deep into his mind. Schellenberg says that Kalten
brunner suddenly turned on him and threatened to produce

THE LAST THROW

proof that he, Schellenberg, was an agent of the British Secret
Service. Kaltenbrunner had by now got the eerie feeling that
there were secret service agents everywhere he suspected that
Ganaris was a British agent and extended his suspicions to the
Intelligence Chief.

But Schellenberg, half in the cloudland of the Third Reich,
was a sworn Nazi himself and had a practical and crafty side
to his character. Had he not invented the Venloo trap? He
suggested that he, Kaltenbrunner, might well succeed Ribben-
trop as Foreign Minister if Schellenberg could patch up peace
terms with the Western Allies through this Count Bernadotte.
It had been Kaltenbrunner 's hope that he would succeed
Ribbentrop, so he acquiesced in the secret meetings and was
later even party to Bernadotte meeting Himmler. All this
seemed to give him a hold over the biggest pieces on the
chessboard, while Martin Bormann, Hitler's palace chamber
lain, kept in touch with Kaltenbrunner and was ready at a
propitious moment to whisper "treachery" to his master.
Bernadotte told in Fall of the Curtain how he had seen General
Eisenhower in the autumn of 1944, but gives no hint of any
mission entrusted to him other than his own purpose of serving
the welfare of some Swedish women married to Germans,
whom he hoped to repatriate to Sweden. I suspect that the
Allies hoped he would disrupt the Nazi leaders. To ingratiate
himself with Himmler he bought him a gift of a book on Nordic
runes, which Himmler received with tears in his eyes. Then
began the struggle of Schellenberg to break the loyalty of
Himmler to his leader and induce him secretly to negotiate
a surrender.

"You may think it sentimental, even absurd," Himmler
confided in Bernadotte when they first met, "but I have
sworn an oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler, and as a soldier and a
German I cannot go back on my oath."

So he and Kaltenbrunner havered through March and
April, looking East and West at their torn and shrinking fronts
and watching the glowering Hitler in his Chancellery, inter
vening to no purpose in the battle and yelling his imprecations
upon his hypnotised staff. By the early days of April the
Russians were in the outskirts of Vienna, the Ruhr was en
circled, the British passed through Minden, the Americans
crossed the Weser at Hamelin. The Germans strained to hold

2O8 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

the Oder front. Hitler alternated between Insane and terrible
paroxysms of rage and strange periods of calm, when he would
walk out and engage sentries in philosophical talk interspersed
with mystic and childish remembrances of his youth, his
father Alois, his home life and early career, wandering thence
into abstract speculations on the world and eternity. Some
times between his rages and his calms he must have instructed
Kaltenbrunner to deal with the prisoners in Flossenbtirg, and
Kaltenbrunner sent Huppenkothen off to Bavaria with in
structions for a summary court.

"These men must be snuffed out, without much ceremony,"
raved Hitler after the terse pages of the Ganaris diary and
Oster's literary curios had been laid before him.

Flossenbtirg, set among woodland in a forbidden zone of Fran-
conia, contained "the prominent men", destined either to
be hostages or to await death. They did not know which.
When Ganaris arrived there after leaving Berlin on February
yth, he remained two months in a separate block, in which
the brains of the German Intelligence Service were kept apart
from the rest. General Oster was there, Josef Mueller was
brought in from Buchenwald in April with Captain Gehre,
Roland Strtinck, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, SchlabrendorfT and
other associates. Ganaris was put in a cell next to that of
Colonel Lunding, Director of the Danish Military Intelligence
Service, arrested under suspicion of working against Germany
during the occupation of his country. Destiny had brought
other victims strangely together in this extermination camp
Lieutenant-Colonel Jack Churchill, Captain Peter Churchill
thought to be a valuable hostage because the S.D. believed
Odette's story that he was related to Winston Churchill.
There was Giles Romilly, a nephew of "the Prime Minister,
captured as a War Correspondent in Narvik. "One British agent
whose real name we never knew," Josef Mueller told me,
"had been captured after an attempt to blow up the Iron
Gates and block the Danube shipping. He could not even
write home lest his name should be revealed."

Men of all European nationalities now sat in the same grim
confinement with the chief whose organisation had hunted
them all victims together of Himmler's unified secret service.

The interrogations of Canaris continued in Flossenbtirg; the
Gestapo, bringing down fresh evidence extracted from prisoners

THE LAST THROW

under torture, questioned him again and again. He still eluded
them. Lunding and he recognised each other in the corridors
and started a tapping code between their cells at night-time
while the guards were out of earshot. They used the prisoners*
system of dividing the alphabet into five groups and tapping
out the group first and then one tap for each letter in the
group. So these two chiefs of the Intelligence Service kept in
touch through the cell wall.

Colonel Lunding noticed that the Admiral still wore civilian
clothes, whereas others wore convicts* uniform. He was treated
as if his guilt had not been positively established. One day Ges
tapo Commissioner Starvitzski came down to confront Canaris
with some fresh revelations and Lunding could watch through
a chink in the door how they walked up and down together,
while Starvitzski spoke in loud and angry tones and Canaris
remonstrated and gesticulated. At the time Lunding mistook
this big Gestapo man for Kaltenbrunner.

This was the second week in April. Huppenkothen arrived
and ordered that a summary court should deal immediately
with the chiefs of the German Intelligence. Huppenkothen
admitted at his own trial six years later that a summary
court was held on April 8th with S.S. Judge Thorbeck
presiding, which found Canaris guilty of high treason, and
that he then returned to Berlin. Others assert that he
waited to see that the sentences had been executed before
leaving. Josef Mueller was sitting fettered in his cell on April
8th, when the door was flung open and an S.S. man shouted
to him to get ready to leave. Mueller tidied his cell. He was
taken out still in fetters and led away towards the gallows yard.
"Now the play is ending," shouted one of his guards. "This
is the last act. But you will be hanged a head lower than your

chief Canaris."

As he stood at the gates of the execution yard, Stavitzki

shouted to him:

"Happy journey, gallows bird."

After standing half an hour motionless, Mueller was led

away to his cell. He had not been there long before he was led

out a second time.

A second time he stood at the threshold of the gallows, as if

some authority were awaited for his execution. Then the S.S.

came to lead him away again, shouting:

210 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

* 'You've been forgotten for today."

Did the distant rumination of Himmler save him, or the
remonstrances of Mueller himself, who knew all the laws of the
Third Reich, and protested that he must have a proper trial.

Late on that same day Ganaris was brought back to his cell
from what was named a summary trial, but could have been
no more than an interrogation with torture. Colonel Lunding
in the next cell could hear him moving and then the last slow
tappings began.

"That . . . will . . . have . . . been . . . the last . . .
I think. . . . Badly mishandled, . . . Nose broken. ..."

Then as far as Lunding remembers he tapped out the words
that his gaolers had been trying to extract from him for months.
The Danish Chief of Intelligence subsequently repeated this
important message when giving evidence in court in the
Huppenkothen trial.

"I die for my Fatherland. I have a clean conscience. I only
did my duty to my country when I tried to oppose the criminal
folly of Hitler leading Germany to destruction."

He tapped out a last message to his wife, with whom he had
never shared the secrets of his most dangerous actions, then
living destitute somewhere in Bavaria with her two daughters.

By first light on April gth the S.S. were round the cells of
the Intelligence Service again.

"Out, out," they shouted. Lunding could hear the shackles
fall from Canaris's hands and feet, and heard the command:
"Clothes off." Through the chink in his door he saw the
prisoners led naked away.

Dr. Abshagen concludes that the prisoners, Admiral Ganaris,
General Oster, Dr. Strunck, Judge-Advocate-General Sack
and Captain Gehre were killed quickly in short succession. 1
I have discussed with him particularly his deductions, which
are based on the rapidity of the summons: "The next," which
showed that one was already hanged. "They met a speedy
end," he writes. This is unconvincing in face of the persisting
rumours that Admiral Canaris was hanged twice. The S.S.
had no time indeed for the finesses of a long drop they must
die in their own time. All the evidence shows that although he

1 The S.S. executioners giving evidence at the trial of Huppenkothen in Febru
ary 1951 admitted that there was room for at least six on the gallows and that
they did not wait for one to die before hanging up the next.

THE LAST THROW 211

was treated without brutality until the last few days, the amazed
hatred of the S.S. pursued Canaris as their greatest victim.

"On the loth of April a drunken S.S. guard told me that the
day before they had again been hanging some men of the
Intelligence Service/' related SchlabrendorfF in his book,
Revolt Against Hitler. "Those guards who had taken part in the
execution had received extra rations of spirit and sausage. The
victims had not been executed in accordance with a court
sentence; Himmler had ordered their liquidation by hanging
on his own responsibility. When I asked for their names, the
guard gave me those of Admiral Canaris, General Oster and
Bonhoeffer."

"My cell was not far away," SchlabrendorfF added when I
questioned him on this point. "The guards told me that same
day that Ganaris was hanged twice."

"To give you a foretaste of death" is one version of what
the S.S. said when they revived him. Did they want to extract
a last confession before they hanged him up again or merely
prolong their revenge on the man whose organisation had, so
they suspected, lost them the war. I have asked a high officer
of the British Intelligence Service for his opinion and the
British accept the version that was related by his guards on
that same morning as they returned to their breakfast.

The stoic Ewald von Kleist who had plotted with Ganaris
before the war was hanged in Berlin on April i6th.

Five years afterwards I met Dr. Josef Mueller in Munich.
He was preparing the trial of Huppenkothen.

"One of the S.S. prisoners waiting to give evidence," said
Mueller, "alleges that Ganaris was hanged in an iron collar
and took half an hour to die."

So his supreme intelligence was quelled, and the intense
blue eyes that so many witnesses remembered. To keep the act
secret, a wooden pyre was lit under the bodies not far from the
cells. Josef Mueller shuffled to and fro in his cell to keep his
feet warm while he waited his turn for execution. Then there
was some knocking on the door of his cell and a voice said :
"Do you speak English?"
"Yes."

"Are you one of those high officers who were meant to be
hanged?"

"I believe so."

212 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

"That does not seem to be so. They are being burned at this
moment."

Mueller, on the verge of hallucinations, believes that it was
Captain Peter Churchill who whispered this to him.

"No, I could not have done," Peter Churchill told me. "I
did not know about the executions. I only whispered to him
something like keep cheerful, the Allies are not far away."

Mueller sat and waited for the summons to death that had
passed him by, either because he was still a counter in
Himmler's game or because an order had gone astray. The
wooden pyre outside burned badly. Corpses are not consumed
easily in the open. The ashes of the dead floated in through the
bars of his cell and settled down all round him "and that was
the worst of all ".

What had happened in the S.S. summary Court? Did Canaris
confess? For a time Huppenkothen walked about Munich
after the war as if he had nothing on his conscience, still
wearing his uniform leather coat but with the badges removed.
After Josef Mueller had returned from a rest cure, which he
had certainly earned, Huppenkothen was apprehended and
treated to the reverse of summary justice. It was five years
before the case against him was complete.

Then S.S. Judge Thorbeck popped up from his post-war
legal practice in Nuremberg to give evidence.

"Why did you not come forward before? " asked the amazed
Judge Ackermann.

"I was never questioned about this case," replied Thorbeck.
"I found no space provided for such matters in the Allied
questionnaire. * *

When confronted with Thorbeck, Huppenkothen became
less assured in his demeanour. He admitted that he had been
mistaken as to the date of the trial and that defence counsel
had been denied to the prisoners. But he said that he knew
nothing of overheated cells, of arc lamps and other instruments
of confession.

It had been his object as prosecutor to establish that Canaris
had been connected with the revolt against Hitler. His scope
did not extend to contacts with the Allies.

All the intelligence officers tried that day with Canaris
admitted their guilt, he said. The Admiral did not. The S.S.
agreed that Canaris defended himself with remarkable skill.

THE LAST THROW 213

In that nightmare twilight of the Third Reich, words and
imposture were his last weapons. At length Judge Thorbeck,
well briefed by Huppenkothen, confronted him with his former
Chief of Staff, General Oster. By then Oster was no longer
of this world. I can imagine him standing there nonchalant
and dreamy with no denials to make. Perhaps he had been
drugged.

Thorbeck exhorted Ganaiis to confess his complicity. Oster
would say that he knew of the plots.

"Of course I had to know about such things/' parried
Ganaris. "After all, I was the Chief of Intelligence. I had to
be ready to prevent it at the critical moment."

Oster demurred, according to the S.S.

"Oster," cried the Admiral, advancing a step towards the
man whom he had so often protected, "allow me to say that
I only pretended complicity."

"I cannot say anything more than I know," was the answer
ascribed to Oster. There were times when he had kept secrets
better.

Upon that the S.S. Court passed its sentences as Hitler
had instructed it, and snuffed out the Chief of Intelligence.

CHAPTER XXV

THE POST-MORTEM

SOMETHING OF THE pathos of his death affected those
deeply who had been once his rivals, the Chiefs of the Allied
Secret Services. Although in itself an insignificant event in the
catastrophic war still raging in the world, I examined such
accounts as exist with the same sense of tragedy as I felt when
reading of the murder of Admiral Goligny in the religious wars
of France. The man himself is old and past the age of impetuous
quarrelling, but the cause he represents must be annihilated if
the tyrant is to have peace, even for a short while. At first
nobody in the Western zones of Germany came forward to
testify that he saw the body of Admiral Ganaris, and there
was some doubt about the exact manner and time of his death
until February 1951. Lunding saw him go naked to the place of
execution; but Josef Mueller described to me how he himself
was twice led to the gallows on the previous day and taken
away again "as a valuable hostage". Was the Admiral less
valuable? His guilt may have been greater, but it was less
evident than that of Mueller. So legends flourish.

I heard one myself in December 1950 when a tall old man,
spare and handsome, with light-grey hair, was shown into my
study. Willy Jenke, the adjutant of Ganaris, had come up from
Hanover to clear up some points of detail. I asked him what he
knew of the circumstances of the death of Admiral Ganaris and
he held out a typewritten letter to me. "One of my friends of
the Abwehr," he said, "has just written to me with a new
account of the matter. He has spoken with Toeppen, the
chief accountant of the Abwehr, who declares that Ganaris was
seen in Berlin about April soth under close escort and adds
that he was subsequently told that the Admiral had been shot
and buried in a bomb crater on April 23rd at a time when
Hitler was ordering some of the last executions."

It seemed possible that Ganaris stood under the gallows like
Mueller and saw his companions hanged, perhaps was even

214

THE POST-MORTEM 215

given his own "foretaste of death", and then driven to Berlin
as a last hostage. Maybe even the story of his first hanging and
revival could be reconciled with this strange version. But none
of the many witnesses whom Trevor Roper has interrogated
mentioned Admiral Ganaris in their account of the last days in
Berlin. It is, incidentally, worthy of note that Trevor Roper,
who as a British intelligence officer might have perceived
the real game of Ganaris during the war, vouchsafed him in
The Last Days of Hitler no more than a few disparaging remarks
as an inefficient intriguer, but has since revised these opinions
in his favour.

The survivors of Flossenbtirg were driven off to Dachau, as
the Americans advanced, and then taken still further south,
until the disintegrating morale of their guards and the
fortuitous arrival of German Army units saved their lives.

"We were to have been liquidated," Captain Peter Churchill
told me, "by order of Hitler himself from the bunker. But the
S.S. officer in charge of us saw that things had gone sa far by
then that he would do better to stay his hand."

Trevor Roper describes the afflicted and shaking Hitler
shouting for hostages to be shot after one of his transcendent
brainstorms. American forces freed Dachau Concentration
Gamp on April 24th and pushed on southwards. Goering had
telegrammed to Hitler from the Bavarian "redoubt" on the
previous day and offered to try and make peace. On April 28th
the Allies revealed that Himmler had been discussing peace
terms with Bernadotte, but that they were unacceptable. The
tyrants were falling apart. Mussolini, was captured and shot
on April 2 8th. Hitler married Eva Braun in the Chancellery
bunker on the morrow. She took poison. He shot himself on
April 3Oth. His guards made a pyre for them in the Chancel
lery grounds and burned his body and that of Eva Braun after
soaking them in petrol. So whatever the truth is about the
death of Admiral Canaris, the tyrant whom he had secretly
thwarted whenever he could for seven years outlived him by
twenty days at the most. I daresay that Canaris often wondered
which of them would go first.

That was the end of Kieker, "the old man" to his staff,
"father of the unfortunate ", as difficult a subject for a biography
as can be imagined, secretive, mistrustful, of high intelligence
and humane principles, yet different by a shade in his appearance

2l6 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

and mentality to everybody who knew him. Loquacious
in an appointment that seemed to demand silence, eccentric
where a steady man would have seemed more suitable, indis
creet and yet calculating. ' ' I tell them what they want to hear
and what can be repeated."

"Was he a British agent?" The grey, worn face of Jenke
reflected no astonishment as I put that direct question. "That
is a figure of speech. A British victory might have served his
purpose, but he hoped that the last catastrophe to Germany
could be averted."

"Why did the British not use Ganaris better if they knew
about him? " I asked a senior British intelligence officer. His
answer was exactly what I had always suspected :

"We would have liked to do so, but the Foreign Office was
against it. They were afraid of offending Russia. That was not
our view, but the Foreign Office view prevailed."

I remembered the answer that I had been given myself in
the Foreign Office in 1943.

"We want no problems in Europe after this war." In other
words, if the German General Staff was destroyed there would
be peace. I do not think that after January 1 943 the nature
and aims of Canaris and his friends were properly understood
by the British and American cabinets; probably they were not
fully represented to them in intelligence reports.

The inmates of Flossenburg sat together in Capri for a while,
recuperating from their ordeal. In the first days of liberation
they lived together, as Europeans should, in the comradeship
that comes from common suffering and fortitude. Then
General Eisenhower's "no fraternisation" order reached even
their remote abode and they were separated and dispersed
with dignity and regret.

Josef Mueller returned to his native Bavaria, where he became
one of the leaders of the Christian-Socialists and Minister of
Justice. The experiment of democracy was painstakingly begun
and the Allied decrees and ordinances began to rebuild what
was left of Germany and put it up in a new shape. The
Nuremberg tribunal dealt with the big survivors and suddenly
Erwin Lahousen appeared before it, discovered in a prisoner-
of-war camp, to accuse the defendants of criminal inhumanity
in the name of his dead chie Admiral Canaris. Ribbentrop,
Jodl and Kaltenbrunner, sitting in the dock, stirred uneasily.

THE POST-MORTEM

They were haunted by the thought of the German Intelligence
Service, "that he had served the enemy for years" as Jodl put
it in his last plea, while Kaltenbrunner said in his that he
"had ascertained the treason of Ganaris to a terrible degree".
The angry and defeated militarists, such men as Guderian
"and Reiner, talked in scandalised tones of the grand treason
of Ganaris, while his widow and her children and the widows
of his friends sat on the verge of starvation in a liberated land.
"You must know something about Admiral Canaris," the
junior American intelligence officers, who apparently knew
little themselves, said to his nephew Joachim Canaris, and they
interned him for a year as a good measure. What use was it to
try and explain his uncle's "European ideas"?

The Russians arrested the secretary of Ganaris, Fraulein
Schwarte, and plied her with questions about the missing diary.

A British member of Parliament tried in vain to obtain a
small pension for Erika Ganaris from the Bavarian Government.
She was deprived of all means of subsistence by Allied regula
tions that both "froze" the bank accounts of General Staff
Officers and their dependants and stopped their pensions.
American troops were billeted in the Bavarian home of the
Canaris family and plundered it thoroughly.

One day in 1948 two Spanish diplomats arrived in Munich
and arranged in utmost secrecy for Frau Canaris to go to
Switzerland. On arrival there she was invited by General
Franco to proceed to Spain as a guest of the state, where she
was given a home in Barcelona. The CaudiUo was remembering
a promise and paying a debt of gratitude.

Another old friend, Fabian von SchlabrendorfF, went to the
remote house on the Luneburger Heide where Frau Schrader
had been entrusted with the only complete diary of Admiral
Ganaris, in which he had secretly noted his acts and missions
during these terrible years. Frau Schrader declared that under
the strain of the events after July soth, 1944, fearing that the
Gestapo investigations would lead to its discovery, she had
removed the diary from its hiding place and burned it.

"I do not believe it is destroyed," Willy Jenke told me as we
talked over the closing scenes of the tragedy; but he could not
produce any argument to bear out his assertion. The S.S. at
the trial of Huppenkothen admitted to having made micro
films of such parts of the diary as they had seized in Zossen.

2l8 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

I remembered hearing a naval intelligence officer say that the
Foreign Office had possession of some diary and wondered
whether it still survived in the material about Admiral Ganaris
to which I had been refused access, but he was probably
referring to the departmental diary of Abwehr II that was
taken to Washington.

"Did Ganaris ever meet the British himself?" I asked Jenke.
"He seemed to be always expecting them to throw him a
lifeline."

"Not that I know of/' replied Jenke. "I can't vouch for his
activities abroad; but I do remember making arrangements
in 1943 for an English visitor who was to have come out to
Germany ' *

"What, to Germany in wartime?"

"So it seems, but nothing came of it. They dropped the
idea on the other side."

He nodded vaguely across the Elbe over Hamburg and the
North Sea.

"So his liking for the British was instinctive and perhaps
part of his fixation against Hitler? "

"I never heard him tell of any English friends," said Jenke.

We agreed that the head of a secret service has to be careful
whom his meets.

Finally I came to examine with some of his officers what
influence Ganaris may have had on the course of the war.
One reproach that has been held against him is that he did
not make enough use of his position to work for what he
sincerely believed to be the right course. His men sat round the
table with me and we surveyed his work. I discussed this
subject with General Lahousen, Josef Mueller, Willy Jenke,
Dr. Leverkuehn, Kumerow (Piekenbrock's principal staff
officer), Wichmann, the specialist on Britain, and Richard
Protze.

Their pictures of him all varied slightly, but all agreed that
he was a man who detested violence, disliked war and was
reluctant to act himself. It would remain an unsolved question
whether if Britain had given him a firm lead he would have
taken action against Hitler. His policy of condoning contact
with the enemy supplied the Allies with intelligence of inestim
able Value. * 4 His moderation and humanity prevented the war
from taking yet more violent forms than it did.

THE POST-MORTEM 219

" There is no doubt we could have killed Winston Churchill,"
said Jenke, "if the Admiral had carried out his orders. Mr.
Churchill gave us plenty of opportunities, being as active as
he was in the war. We could also have murdered other war
leaders, Giraud and Weygand among them."

Canaris did not manage to deter Hitler from his fatal course,
and he encouraged revolutionary movements rather than led
them. His omissions in the intelligence field helped the Allies
to achieve surprise and brought their certain victory mercifully
closer.

He warned Great Britain of the impending mobilisation
against Czechoslovakia in 1938 and advised strong action
which might have prevented war altogether. He helped to
prevent the war from spreading to Spain and Portugal and
kept silent at the crucial moment when Italy was changing
sides. His service warned Great Britain of the V-weapons
and so gave us opportunity to reduce their destructive effect.
If he did not in the course of his secret talks with Hitler pull
out a pistol and shoot the man, it was simply because that did
not lie in his nature and a man is only capable of acting
within his own capacity. But the historians who want the
flesh and blood and the spirit of this era and are not content
with the massive bones of the document centres will see his
elusive anxious figure hovering behind the brutal tragedians
and spoiling their destiny. Could any man in like position have
achieved more than that without being detected?

The German Intelligence Service was scattered by the
dissolution of the armed forces. Piekenbrock, for a long time
Chief of Department I, was captured in the field by the
Russians ; Bamler, the Spanish specialist and then Chief of III,
deserted to them from his own command; his successor, General
von Bentivegni, shot himself after the failure of the July revolt.
Lahousen spent some uncomfortable weeks in Nienburg
internment camp before he was discovered and taken out to
give evidence in Nuremberg. Then he retired to the Tirol
to live out his days in quiet. Leverkuehn found a powerful
friend again when General "Bill" Donovan of the office of
Strategic Services arrived in Germany. Leverkuehn made a
name for himself in the defence of Marshal von Manstein.
Willy Jenke withdrew to life in the country near Hanover.
Richard Protze sat down in the old inn on the Baltic coast of

22O CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

Holstein and brooded on days past. Everywhere they had to
contend with Allied lawgiving which forbade their employment
in positions of responsibility. The Western Allies, though they
had found the German military intelligence a negligible force
in its later years and in some respects an ally, nevertheless
mistrusted the organisation as such. The politicians of Western
Germany found it convenient not to employ these men. Old
Admiral Patzig, with whom our story began, put up hope
fully as a candidate for the post of Security Chief created
in 1950 in the West German Republic, but he was passed
over.

Whatever signs of friendliness the British Intelligence
Service might privily show them, it could not in the nature
of the settlement with Russia and France bestow any recogni
tion, let alone accept any commitments. The incomparable
Russian section of the Abwehr which Ganaris had built up was
unbuilt by the Soviet security police in part and what was
left either fell apart or was clumsily drawn into surviving
services.

Not long after the Treaty of Potsdam was signed, the British
and American Intelligence Services found themselves involved
in a struggle if anything more grim and pitiless than the last.
It lay in the nature of things that there would be no peace
between the secret services of the East and West, whatever
the open professions of friendship might be. The Western
Intelligence Services did stage a round-up of National
Socialists at large just before the 1 947 Moscow Conference of
Foreign Ministers, known as Operation Selection-Board; but
it roused no enthusiasm in the Kremlin and resulted in no
trials. What mattered most to the Soviet Government was to
exert its influence on the future of Western Germany and to
obtain from the Western Allies those thousands of Russians of
all ranks who had deserted to Europe during and after the war.

So the struggle went on, but instead of opponents with some
common philosophy, and some division in their own ranks,
the Western Allies found themselves dealing with the secretive
and fanatical trainees of world revolution. Beria had long been
the chief of a unified intelligence service. Hitler had made the
mistake of dividing to rule. Stalin unified first.

The German intelligence men sat by as spectators in the
front row; for the new dispute was mainly about their own

THE POST-MORTEM 221

country, which remained the key to the world situation, for
all the attempts to neutralise it. But there was no chance now
of finding an opponent who would suppress the worst orders
or warn small victims of impending aggression.

Whereas the Nazi ideology had found few adherents in the
democracies, there was a nameless fascination in the Communist
system for many in Western Europe. The opportunities for the
Soviet Intelligence Service are greater than those of Nazi
Germany, and in this modern world of interlocking minds it
is easy to imagine that Comrade Beria is well served. Conversely,
the work of the Allies beyond the Iron Curtain is hampered
by the destructive mentality of the enemy and his disregard for
the rules on which the intelligence game operated hitherto.
Well might they look back to the comparatively civilised
duelling with Admiral Canaris.

"As Colonel Nicolai says in his book on the German Secret
Service in the First World War, it is important that the head of
an organisation wielding such power should be a gentleman.
What a tragedy the death of Canaris was!"

I have saved to the end this oblique tribute to Canaris from
his chief opponent in Britain a tribute to a man who often
thought too rapidly for his opponents, even when he helped
them, who opened his mind to them to an extraordinary degree
and was not fully understood until it was too late. The under
standing which he sought in Europe against one tyranny may
be achieved against another.

The inquest was over.

We have seen little of the Canaris family in these years.
They did not go out in the gaudy society of the Third Reich,
not to Goering's hunting parties or Goebbels' island festivals.
They knew little about the work that was done by the Chief
of Intelligence, except that he was up early and home late
and often vanished to the office on Sundays. The Abwehr
was to Frau Erika Canaris a book with seven seals.

Their reticence and my desire to write an independent study
of the man were two reasons why we did not meet at the
outset of this book. His widow had first to run the gauntlet
of the war correspondents eager for the story of the master
spy and enquiring after the diary. What could she tell them?

222 CHIEF OF INTELLIGENCE

about as much as the scientist's wife might have gathered
at table about atomic fission. After seeing the whitewash brush
applied so liberally to much less worthy memories, it was
refreshing to encounter this dignified silence.

She recoiled every time she heard of new publications about
her husband, knowing how terribly hard to define he was,
even for those who knew him. She had no family papers on his
work nothing except her personal memories of him and his
personal letters. They had both been very cautious and there
was nothing in them about intelligence matters or politics.

The Abwehr had remained to her a book with seven seals,
perhaps instinctively because she knew that it was very
dangerous territory. Occasionally she picked up a thread at
table from the conversation of guests, and discussed with him
alone some imminent topic. But time and the tragedy itself
weakens memory, and she could hardly summon up any
recollections on Service matters.

She was not anxious for her husband to be discussed in books,
even if It was a question of vindicating his memory.

Yet it seems as if the truth is emerging slowly everywhere.
Our times and our generation are not capable of grasping the
situation in which they stood, and the ethical motives of those
men. Perhaps later when these things can be treated with less
prejudice, the historian will discard the sneers of their contem
poraries and see them as they were.

Canaris rendered account to no earthly tribunal for his
deeds and omissions and cared little for the approval or censure
of men. He followed what Goethe has called *the independent
conscience'. To those who knew him well, the verdict in the
Munich trial of Huppenkothen 1 was a matter of no significance.
A man like Huppenkothen had his role appointed for him by
the inexorable laws of the Greek tragedy.

I met Brigitte Ganaris, daughter of the Chief of Intelligence,
in Munich before the Huppenkothen trial and we walked
together for some time in the park of Nymphenburg castle.
A quiet, melancholy girl who had, I noticed, a hereditary
characteristic of her father in that she shivered a little even
in bright sunlit weather. The G.I.s strolled in the sun, the
gardeners trundled by, the newsvendors offered the latest from
Korea. The world looked anxiously into the future. It had

1 Three years' imprisonment.

THE POST-MORTEM 223

seen dimly the tragedy of the past, and was already beginning
to forget it. What would these strollers ever know of the deeper
story? What did she know? What question was there still to
ask? Wilhelm Canaris had done his duty according to his own
lights.

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