Admiral Canaris

In this volume, Admiral Canaris: How Hitler’s Chief of Intelligence Betrayed the Nazis, author David Alan Johnson offers the reader an in-depth look into the life, times, and, most importantly, actions of Kriegsmarine Adm. Wilhelm Canaris, who, quite amazingly, and given his clandestine activities aimed against Adolf Hitler’s Germany, served as the Third Reich’s head of military intelligence—the Abwehr—from 1935 to early 1944, fourteen months before his execution for indirect collaboration in the 20 July 1944 assassination plot against Hitler. One of the strangest things about Canaris, given the fact he stridently worked to undermine components of the Nazi agenda, was the fact he started out as an avid supporter of Hitler. His later exploits ran the gamut from saving Jews in myriad ways to passing along vital intelligence to the Allies. Given the undeniable impact of his actions, one struggles to understand why he’s shockingly underappreciated as a member of the German resistance. As the head of German military intelligence, he possibly saved more lives than Oskar Schindler, the celebrated industrialist at the center of the 1993 Steven Spielberg Academy Award-winning movie, Schindler’s List.¹

There are two inescapable questions associated with Canaris and the dangerous game he played throughout the later years of his tenure as Abwehr chief. First, why was he allowed to stay in the position as long as he did despite repeated complaints by Hitler? Second, why have his exploits remained largely in the shadows? The answers to these questions are never directly addressed in the book’s pages, but we can infer much from what Johnson exfoliates.

As a young boy, Canaris—Willy to his family—was a loner most of the time, and this likely contributed to a certain empathy for outsiders. Not surprisingly, he read a lot. And predictably, his “bookish and precocious” ways made him unpopular with his classmates.² As a result, “he knew what it felt like to be disliked and excluded and would feel sympathy for outcasts throughout his life.”³ It was on a family trek to Greece in 1902 that he discovered a monument to Adm. Constantine Kanaris, a hero of the Greek war of independence with a stellar war record. In short, he became motivated by the daring accomplishments of his famed predecessor. Eventually, he would learn his hero was not, in fact, an ancestor. Nonetheless, a fire was lit, and he was undeterred in his quest to become a naval officer. Even after rising to the rank of admiral, Canaris would keep a picture of the other Kanaris hanging in his home and tell visitors the Greek was his grandfather.⁴

In 1905, the diminutive Canaris (he was only five feet three inches tall) embarked on his naval career and it did not take long for his acumen to be recognized. Besides being more well-read than his peers, Canaris also had a penchant for languages, which would serve him well during his duty aboard the new cruiser Dresden, which began in late 1911 and would continue through the start of World War I. When hostilities began, the Dresden’s captain, Fritz Ludecke, realized he needed fuel to prosecute unrestricted warfare against British merchant shipping. As Ludecke was unable to return to Germany for said fuel, he decided to tank up in Argentina. No doubt the Royal Navy would be hunting for him, so keeping abreast of radio traffic (friendly and potentially enemy, too) would be a necessity. He would need an intelligence officer, and quickly. He saw the young Canaris as an able candidate for the job. Henceforth, the young lieutenant had an additional duty: intelligence officer. As Ludecke knew, Canaris was the only man onboard his ship that spoke Spanish and, as such, he tasked the aspiring officer with finding reliable information on the British merchant fleet and its operations. Canaris took to the work, and the challenge, like a fish takes to water. In the process, he found he had undeniable skill at both intelligence work and subterfuge. Fate had shined on young Canaris. But fate can be a capricious thing.

Later, after a disastrous sea battle with British forces in which his ship was the only one to escape, the Dresden sped for neutral Chile. Despite having found refuge, the ship, ultimately, had to be scuttled for fear of it being taken over by the pursuing British fleet, which then had a cavalier attitude toward international protocols governing combatants harboring in neutral waters. Canaris faced the prospect of internment for the war’s duration, a fate he loathed. Leveraging his fluency in Spanish, he was shrewd enough to escape internment, and, in storied fashion, stealthily made his way to the German embassy in Santiago where he obtained a fake Chilean passport, then crossed the Andes by train and horse, making his way to Buenos Aires. From there, he sailed to Netherlands and, eventually, arrived in Berlin. Looking exhausted and malnourished, he flopped into a chair at the German admiralty’s headquarters and told them of his two-month trek back home. Impressed by his determination to remain in the fight, the command subsequently awarded him the Iron Cross and promoted him.

After a period of recuperation, Lt. Canaris was assigned as an intelligence officer in Spain, where Germany had established an outpost. His mission was to track Allied shipping in the Mediterranean and pass the information along to U-boats. In this role, Canaris excelled. Not only was he good at this type of work, but he was also quite successful in terms of his intelligence directly leading to the sinking of at least nine British ships.⁵ But despite his success, Canaris really wanted to go back to sea. He got his wish, but not an assignment to a surface vessel. Instead, he was headed to submarines, where the training was rigorous … and long. In November 1917, he was given command of a mine-laying submarine. In short order, his success there led to his assignment to other submarines where he managed to sink several Allied ships and gain the attention of none other than the Kaiser. But that success streak would hit an abrupt stop in November 1918 when Germany surrendered. What was the budding commander to do now?

In the wake of the German surrender, chaos and rebellion ensued all across the defeated nation. Ironically, during the reign of the Weimar Republic and military disarmament, Canaris’s influence grew through his connections to those now in power. Throughout this tumultuous period, Canaris consistently advocated for rebuilding and rearming the navy, albeit in secret. He was thoroughly conservative and bemoaned the upheaval gripping his war-weary nation. As such, it is not difficult to understand why he gravitated toward the National Socialists in the late 1920s. He saw in the rise of Hitler the possibility of national renewal. But that support crashed in the wake of Nazi brutality, particularly after Kristallnacht or “Night of Broken Glass” in November 1938, a pogrom against the native Jewish population. His revulsion was only exacerbated after the notable atrocities that took place following Germany’s invasion of Poland in September 1939. In these, and similar events, Johnson shows the reader how Canaris became disillusioned with the Third Reich and simultaneously committed himself to resistance. That resistance preceded the invasion of Poland, when he leaked classified details about the upcoming attack to the Allies via go-betweens. Unfortunately, his warnings were discounted by Allied leaders as likely deception or misinformation attempts. Later, he would mislead Hitler about logistical headaches associated with Operation Felix—the plan to march through Spain to capture British Gibraltar—through his overwhelmingly pessimistic assessment. He also warned Spanish dictator Francisco Franco—a personal friend—against joining the Axis, saying it was unlikely Germany would win the war. Furthermore, he encouraged Franco to make unreasonable demands for German support that Canaris knew Hitler would never meet. As a result, Operation Felix never materialized.

Amidst his other deceptions aimed at thwarting German designs, Johnson claims Canaris orchestrated the escape of hundreds of Jews and other “undesirables” from concentration camps under the guise they were Abwehr agents destined for overseas assignments. As the war steadily turned against Germany, Hitler became increasingly frustrated with lackluster performance of the Abwehr in terms of intelligence forecasting of likely Allied moves. In early 1942, as Operation Barbarossa began to sour, Hitler suspended Canaris, only to then curiously reinstate him later for unknown reasons. However, after the Abwehr failed to predict Allied landings at Anzio, and at Himmler’s insistence, Hitler had enough of the seemingly incompetent Canaris and removed him permanently in February 1944, placing him temporarily under house arrest until posting him to an ineffectual job. But before his dismissal, Canaris managed to send the Allies the German order of battle for Normandy, as well as their defenses. Himmler’s SS would subsequently subsume the Abwehr and consolidate its grasp on intelligence.

The prospects for Germany diminished as the Allies tightened the noose around its neck, and the need to eliminate Hitler was becoming more urgent; the preferred method to eliminate him was assassination. As one frustrated dissenter exclaimed, “The state is deteriorating more and more into an immoral and bankrupt existence under the leadership of an irresponsible gambler who can scarcely be called mentally normal and who is surrounded by riffraff.”⁶ Following the final, failed 20 July 1944 plot to kill Hitler (there were at least forty-two plots), known as Operation Valkyrie, Canaris came under increased suspicion and scrutiny. When the Gestapo discovered Canaris’s diaries, he was arrested despite not being directly involved, though his earlier efforts laid some of the groundwork. Despite months of interrogation and torture, Canaris did not betray fellow resistance members. After a show trial, he was executed by hanging (using piano wire) just weeks prior to Hitler’s own suicide.

Johnson is to be commended for crafting an eminently readable narrative reflecting Canaris’s duality: a conservative nationalist yet ardent saboteur. He deftly demonstrates how the admiral’s ideology, disavowal of Nazi actions, and deep convictions propelled his unlikely transformation into dogged resistor. While Johnson is not the first author to tackle the murky tale of Canaris, his volume focuses primarily on his humanitarian predisposition—his morality and rescue of Jews, not merely intelligence operations or plots.

Inevitably, questions arise as to whether Canaris was a double agent working on behalf of the Allies. The answer is no, at least not formally. Instead, he assiduously fed the Allies vital information about upcoming German military operations, modestly following his conscience as a German patriot and Christian desperately trying to save Germany from itself. Undeniably, his role is complex; he actively opposed the Nazi regime in myriad ways but was never a full-fledged collaborator. Maybe he felt this was the best possible way to not only survive but also persist in his efforts without being removed from his influential post for as long as possible. In assessing his effectiveness in the role of spoiler, one can never overlook the fact that his actions and information were often viewed as disinformation. In short, Allied caution and skepticism negated much of the impact of his dispatches. For those apt to criticize the Abwehr’s efficacy, one must remember he was actively trying to undermine Hitler’s designs, so his main attention was devoted to sinking the German ship, so to speak. The inefficiency of his office, and any corruption attached to it, were peripheral issues at best in his contorted universe. Johnson’s work examines how the Abwehr became a vessel of resistance; it only needed to be effective enough to keep suspicious inquiries at bay while undermining the German war effort. To that end, the longevity of his tenure was remarkable.

It is very difficult to fathom why Canaris remains such an enigmatic figure given his unbelievably dangerous escapades on behalf of destroying the nightmare that was Hitler’s Germany. Maybe his legacy just needs a popular movie to raise his stature? Films like Schindler’s List and Valkyrie brought concerted attention and interest to the backstories of Schindler and Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, respectively. That said, the book is a welcome addition to the military history genre, shining a much-needed spotlight on a heroic and inexplicably underappreciated figure who fought the good fight, making a principled and courageous stand against pure evil. Canaris deserves a place in the sun as another example of the fact not all Germans supported Hitler’s vicious and utterly destructive fascism.

 

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Notes

1. Oskar Schindler is credited with saving at least 1,200 Jewish workers from the grasp of Adolf Hitler’s “Final Solution,” the systematic extermination of roughly 6.5 million Jews and other “undesirables” identified by the Nazi regime.
2. David Alan Johnson, Admiral Canaris: How Hitler’s Chief of Intelligence Betrayed the Nazis (Prometheus Books, 2024), 5.
3. Johnson, Admiral Canaris, 5.
4. Johnson, Admiral Canaris, 4.
5. Johnson, Admiral Canaris, 17.
6. Ulrich von Hassell, quoted in Johnson, Admiral Canaris, 191.