Hitler's Spy Chief (30 page)

But Hitler's most acid words are for England and here the sense of betrayal is even more vivid than in his words about Moscow. It is as if he had still been hoping for peace with England along the lines von Hassell was discussing with British circles through Burckhardt of the Red Cross and Prince Paul. It is difficult to dispel the impression that Canaris, a confidant of von Hassell, was not also briefing Hitler about these moves with their potential for that deal with some circles in London which Hitler always appeared to long for. Given the involvement of Hess and Hoare in Spain, it has been persuasively argued by recent research that these peace-feelers had been carefully constructed with the Führer's blessing.
31

These terms, which it is implied by some authors were actually set down on paper and brought to Britain by Hess in May 1941,
32
are likely to have included the following, to which London, according to von Hassell, was interested in agreeing:
*

1. Holland and Belgium to be restored.

2. Poland minus German provinces to be restored.

3. Otherwise no special interest in the east ‘not even for Czechoslovakia'.

4. Former German colonies to be restored to Germany.

5. The British Empire otherwise to remain unshorn.'
33

The coup in Belgrade shattered these hopes at a stroke, threatening to derail all peace-feelers and reminding Hitler that he was dealing with some elements in England that were a formidable and ruthless enemy. As von der Schulenburg coolly noted: ‘Hitler observed that he was surprised
at England's ability to mislead countries and show that money and hate are more powerful than intelligence and logic.'

Hitler continued: ‘Through English promises and lies, first Poland which was offered the best conditions, then France, which never wanted a war, then Holland, Belgium, Norway and now Greece and Yugoslavia were being forced into tragedy.'
34

But Hitler, apparently basing some of his comments on Ribbentrop's conversations with Filoff, the Bulgarian prime minister, noted confidently that Stalin would never ally himself with London.
35
Filoff had reiterated to Ribbentrop that Stalin ‘could not work with Britain or France.'

This was a view shared by certain circles in London. It is significant in the context of Anglo-German dialogue preceding the March coup that Britain was gathering intelligence on the Soviet order of battle with particular intensity at this time. The SIS representative in Helsinki was supplying radio equipment to the Finns to monitor Soviet military signals.

As the Germans began their advanced planning for Barbarossa in early March 1941, British intelligence was acquiring a great deal of information on the Soviet order of battle from Finland, where it was cooperating on sigint with the Finns. Three months earlier the Russian section in Bletchley Park was receiving as many as 800 Russian naval messages and 500 Soviet military and air intercepts a day.
36

The immediate priority for Canaris was to discharge the Abwehr's duties in preparing for the attack on Yugoslavia, Operation Marita. Once again, Canaris played both tracks, exploiting the Abwehr's formidable Jupiter network in Croatia to prepare for the German invasion while at the same time warning the senior officers of the Yugoslav general staff that Belgrade would be subject to a devastating aerial attack and that it should be evacuated.

According to the pre-war Polish ambassador to Berlin, Lipski,
37
a written warning was given to senior Yugoslav officers, giving the date of the attack as Palm Sunday. This has not survived. In any event, the
plea to evacuate the city appears to have been ignored, though on 3 April the Yugoslav government declared Belgrade an ‘open city'. Three days later, on 6 April, between 10,000 and 17,000 civilians, depending on varying estimates, were killed or maimed in the attack.
*

The dynamic of war was seemingly almost capable of sustaining itself. Canaris, arriving with Pieckenbrock and Lahousen at a ruined Belgrade, felt helpless and sickened by the destruction. The ruins were still smoking and the air was heavy with the smell of burning and putrefaction. To complete the picture of dislocation, the gruesome corpses and bloodied bodies were joined by hundreds of animals, escaped from the city zoo. Canaris saw death at every street corner as they wandered along the fortifications overlooking the great confluence of the Danube and the Save.

He could do nothing to slow down the spiral of destruction. It was obvious that a terrible war was going to be unleashed against Russia. Yugoslavia would be neutralised within a few weeks and then the planning for Barbarossa would resume. The invasion of Russia, projected for April, would be postponed until June, although curiously most of Hitler's generals would observe, after the war, that they were only brought into the picture at the last moment and won over by claims of Russian preparations to attack Germany. These claims bore no relation to reality, as von Rundstedt, the most ardent opponent of the attack, soon realised once his forces totally overran unprepared Soviet positions.
38

Collapsing at the end of the day in his chair in Zemlin, a suburb of Belgrade along the Danube, Canaris simply said: ‘I can stand no more of this. We will leave tomorrow for Spain.' Some writers have seen this as the comment of a weary man, tired of life and eager to find solace in the cobbled streets of Seville or in the great cathedral of Cordoba. But the timing of the visit is significant, for at precisely the same time as Canaris reached Spain, the second week in April, Sir Samuel Hoare, the British ambassador in Madrid and ‘arch appeaser', in strict contravention of
Foreign Office instructions, absented himself for a week, travelling to Seville and Gibraltar.

Hoare, the man Harold Nicolson feared might even one day replace Churchill, was at large unchaperoned in a country crawling with German agents, several of whom, such as Otto John, the Lufthansa agent, were links between Hoare and Canaris.

A clearly suspicious Roger Makins minuted: ‘It should be set on record that the ambassador went to Gibraltar in spite of categorical instructions that he was not to do so. He did not inform us of his movements, nor has he given any explanation why it was necessary for him to spend a week at Gibraltar.'
39
The governor of Gibraltar at that time, General Mason-Macfarlane, had been military attaché in Berlin before the war and had at least a passing acquaintance with Canaris. (Hoare's discreet movements around Gibraltar at a time when Canaris was in nearby Algeciras would be echoed a year later by Menzies. See Chapter 12.)

There is of course no evidence to suggest that the two men met but it seems likely they were in touch, not least given Hohenlohe's meeting with Hoare a few weeks earlier in which an Anglo-German rapprochement was discussed. Three days later, around the weekend of the 19-20 April, a flurry of reports suggested that Hess himself would be in Spain, ostensibly (though implausibly) to attempt to browbeat Franco into submission.

After Spain would come Switzerland and another encounter with Madame Szymanka, who asked: ‘Will Germany attack Turkey?' To which Canaris replied: ‘No we won't attack Turkey. Russia perhaps.' Once again Canaris was giving the British advance knowledge of what was imminent, partly, one suspects, in the hope that it would stiffen the ‘terrific anti-Bolsheviks' in London. It has been said by Colonel Viktor von Schweinitz that Canaris was able to fly around so freely and without comment largely because ‘nobody in the German government had any idea how an intelligence service works.' However, Canaris, it should be remembered,
was simply keeping the lines of communication with London open, something Hitler himself required of him, for it was Canaris' connections with London which were the key to his position in the Nazi hierarchy.
40

Canaris, however, had a further link with his opposite number in London, which would leave London in little doubt as to German intentions.

The arrangements agreed by London with the Finns to monitor Russian intercepts involved the supply of funds and equipment to Helsinki, even though by the middle of January 1941 Menzies knew that there were 1,500 Wehrmacht personnel, including an Abwehr unit, stationed in Finland.

On 6 June, sixteen days before Barbarossa fell on the Russians, Menzies, after some reflection on ‘information we have lately received which points to increasing collaboration between the Finnish General Staff and the Germans,' sanctioned the dispatch of more radio intercept equipment to Finland.
41
Menzies must have been confident by this stage that either the Finns would be able to conceal their sigint relationship with London from the Germans or, more likely, that he could trust Canaris not to disrupt it for the simple reason that the Wermacht would also benefit from the SIS equipment. The idea of the entire Soviet order of battle being delivered to the Abwehr thanks to equipment supplied by Menzies is piquant, to say the least.

The chance of a common front with England against Bolshevism was appealing. However, it appears that Canaris was enough of a realist to see that such a move would require a gesture from Churchill, and that was unlikely to happen. When Hess flew to Britain in May, it appears now with Hitler's blessing, Canaris would have seen it for what it was: a gamble which Churchill, at that stage of the war with defeat in North Africa staring him in the face, could not have hazarded, if he was to survive politically.

Canaris' well documented admiration for Churchill would have prevented him seeing much scope for an agreement between the ‘great W. C.' and Hitler. Moreover, Canaris would have wanted little to do with any
agreement with London which left the Nazi grip on Germany intact. But both Canaris and his foreign ministry colleague Weiszäcker knew that Churchill would be delighted for Germany to turn eastwards, if only because it would relieve the pressure on the British Empire. Moreover, Churchill was confident that Russia posed a formidable obstacle even for the most successful army of the twentieth century.

Like Churchill, Canaris was sceptical that Germany would ever be able to win a war against the Soviet Union. He would have agreed with Weiszäcker who tartly commented : ‘Would one burning Russian village help sink a British destroyer?'
42

‘I am convinced that this campaign against Russia which the Führer sees as the answer to all his difficulties will only overburden Germany and destroy the few remaining chances of peace,' Canaris noted in a memorandum to the OKW.
43
Keitel patronisingly replied: ‘My dear Canaris, you may know your way about the field of intelligence but you are a sailor. Don't try to give the army lessons in military strategy.'
44

Barbarossa burst like a thunderbolt on the Soviet Union. Thanks to the Abwehr, Hitler's generals had the entire Soviet order of battle and complete surprise. Churchill's repeated warnings to Stalin were ignored, thanks to well laid deception plans by the Abwehr. Within weeks more than half a million prisoners had been taken and Manstein's tanks had reached the Dneiper.

Thanks to his files on Poland, Canaris was under no illusions as to the fate in store for the Russian population. He had, in any case, been acquainted with Hitler's decree of 31 March providing for the administration of conquered Eastern territories whereby all Communist leaders and Russian political commissars were to be ‘physically liquidated'. In the event of no SD units being available, army sections would carry out summary executions. Canaris was fully aware that it was Himmler and Heydrich's policy to involve the army where possible in these criminal acts which were of course in flagrant breach of all civilised norms of war.

Despite protests by Canaris, who noted that executions
en masse
were not only affecting army morale but were also deterring any uprising against the Russians by Ukrainians, or even small Moslem communities, whose menfolk were being wiped out by SS units mistakenly convinced they were Jews on account of their being circumcised,
45
the ‘cleansing'operations proceeded.

As Lahousen noted, the arguments ‘had no effect whatsoever'. Keitel minuted: ‘These objections are the consequence of a chivalrous idea of war. We are concerned here with the destruction of an ideology.'

A few days before Barbarossa was unleashed there occurred a poignant event which underlined to Canaris the unhappy circumstance that the old values of Germany were passing away. On 4 June the old Kaiser died. Despite stringent efforts by the regime to play the death down, many officers attended the solemn if low key funeral. Canaris went, accompanied by Oster. Both men, according to von Hassell, were deeply moved.
46

*
Regence still plies its powerful lemon vodka to spies at semi-secluded tables between dark panelling and remains a favourite haunt of diplomats, mostly consuls whose names are engraved on brass plaques at their tables.

*
See PRO FO 371 26542, C4216/324/18.

*
Some authors also note that there may have been provisions concerning the fate of European Jewry (see Padfield,
Hess;
Picknett, et al,
Double Standards)
.

*
For a good account of the bombing see Andreas Graf Razoumousky,
Kampf um Belgrad
(Munich 1982).

CHAPTER ELEVEN

DUEL TO THE DEATH

Have you heard the news? Heydrich has been murdered
.

CANARIS TO SPITZY
1

On 8 September 1941, General Reinicke issued the following instructions for dealing with Soviet combatant personnel:

The Bolshevik soldier has lost all right to be treated as an honourable adversary in accordance with the Geneva Convention. Orders must be given to react pitilessly and energetically to the least sign of insubordination … Whoever carries out these orders … with insufficient energy is liable to punishment.
2