Although it seems that there was no further direct contact between Canaris and emissaries of the OSS, in Istanbul US naval attaché Earle, who had conferred with Canaris in January 1943, contacted Canaris’s man, Leverkühn, who – according to his own account – reported the approach at once to the Gestapo.1 At about the same time Archbishop Spellman of New York attempted to obtain an interview with ambassador von Papen, but was turned down by Ribbentrop.2 On 17 June 1943, Adam von Trott zu Sulz travelled to Istanbul immediately after the third meeting of the Kreisau circle to discuss their foreign policy outlook, to sound out the terrain for Moltke and to open channels for a possible offer by the German Resistance to the United States.3 Trott sought out Consul-General Dr Fritz von Twardowski and made contacts with German émigrés – after 1933 many university lecturers had resettled in Turkey and now taught at the University of Istanbul – and in Ankara attempted to win over von Papen to an active participation in the German Resistance. Trott also met Leverkühn, who probably used the opportunity to ask Trott’s help for a young member at K-Organisation Istanbul, lawyer Erich Vermehren, son of an old friend of Leverkühn, now a legal adviser and stenographer on his staff. Vermehren’s wife Elisabeth, the former Countess Plettenberg, was still in Germany and needed an exit visa to come to Turkey; Trott could help. It is not certain whether he suspected that the Vermehrens were talking to British intelligence at this time and planned to defect.4
On 5 July 1943 Moltke arrived in Istanbul as an Abwehr agent. His contact people to OSS Istanbul, headed by Lanning MacFarland, were the economics expert Hans Wilbrandt and the sociologist Alexander Rüstov who, using the cover names ‘Hyacinth’ and ‘Magnolia’, were part of the German Freedom Movement based in Istanbul cooperating with the US secret service. These two were also involved in the US spy ring ‘Dogwood–Cereus Circle’, so-called for the US agents ‘Dogwood’ (Alfred Schwartz) and Cereus (Archibald Coleman) active in other parts of Europe.
In the summer of 1943 all attempts to discuss peace had failed because of American lack of interest and the indifferent attitude of von Papen, who was unable to commit himself to the Resistance.5 It was probably Moltke’s efforts to convince the US Government to lift its demand for ‘unconditional surrender’ that had resulted in a refusal to talk and a ban on Moltke making contact with the US ambassador to Cairo, Alexander C Kirk, whom Moltke knew and was hoping to enlist as intermediary.
In the summer of 1943 Canaris may have attempted to contact his British counterpart Stewart Menzies. Through Baron Oswald von Hoyningen-Huene, the German ambassador in Lisbon, and another middleman, he made an offer to meet Menzies on neutral territory. Menzies himself confirmed the invitation after the war, but Foreign Minister Eden had forbidden the meeting on the grounds that if the Soviets found out they might suspect that Britain and Germany were negotiating a separate peace. Not all suggested attempts at contact with London and Washington are actually proven, but the OSS files at least show that during 1943 several serious attempts were made in this direction and were unsuccessful for one reason or another.
Moltke’s second trip to Turkey in December 1943 had Canaris’s knowledge;6 contrary to his expectations no meeting with ambassador Kirk could be arranged, but he put out feelers to various US journalists and to Wilbrandt and Rüstow. After he left, they set out his proposals in the so-called ‘Herman’ Plan that they passed to William Donovan through the agents ‘Dogwood’ and ‘Cereus’.
The primary platform of the Herman Plan was the coordination and cooperation of the German democratic opposition. The German defeat and territorial losses were declared inevitable and necessary for Germany’s future. Moltke and his friends proposed to help the Allies not only win the war, but also the peace, and to avoid an Allied invasion resembling the Italian campaign.7
Since Moltke undertook his mission with Canaris’s support, the proposals presumably coincided with Canaris’s own ideas. The Herman Plan concept of a capitulation and cooperation with the Western Powers, coupled with an unconditional resistance to the peril of a Bolshevist occupation in the East, can be traced back to Canaris, and correspond to what he had stated to military attaché Earle in January 1943, although no certain proof exists.8
Moltke had planned a third excursion to Turkey for January 1944 but was arrested by the Gestapo on 19 January, together with Otto Kiep. The latter was friendly with the Abwehr’s Erich Vermehren, whose wife had now arrived in Istanbul with the help of the German Foreign Ministry and Canaris in spite of Gestapo wishes. It may be that news of the arrests of Moltke and Kiep fortified the resolutions of the Vermehrens to change sides,9 and on 27 January 1944 both disappeared without trace.
The telegram reporting their disappearance arrived in Berlin on the night of 3 February 1944. It was assumed that they were being hidden by the British until the chance arose to smuggle them out of Turkey, or that they were already on British territory. The K-Organisation sub-branch considered the passing of military secrets unlikely to be the primary force behind the defection but rather that Elisabeth Vermehren, as a ‘Catholic activist’ had decided to take up the political struggle against the Third Reich and would make radio broadcasts for the BBC. It was feared that the affair could ‘involve wider circles’ and that – especially as regards the defection of the wife, whose emigration from Germany had caused some misgivings on the military side – ‘persons inside the Reich possibly had an interest’.
The finger of suspicion was quickly pointed at Foreign Ministry staff, who had provided Frau Vermehren with a service passport, money and a mission, and to get around the military borders the Foreign Ministry had even placed a seat at her disposal aboard a courier aircraft.10 The telegrams, now a Reich secret, made a concrete accusation against anonymous staff in the Wilhelmstrasse without mentioning the mission for which she had come to Turkey. It was agreed that OKW and principally the SD would look into the matter further.
Adam von Trott was obliged to come up with an explanation since he had been the staff member at the Foreign Ministry who had supported Leverkühn’s petition in the Vermehren case. Herr Vermehren had appeared at the Foreign Ministry in December 1943 and said that he wanted to take his wife with him to Turkey; the Abwehr was not opposed, and apparently it was very urgent. He was in Istanbul and responsible for creating connections to an ‘interesting’ American; he had good insight into the British–US internal relationship but his political reports had been for the most part of no interest to the Abwehr and therefore appeared seldom in the embassy reports sent from Turkey. This was why it was important to use Frau Vermehren, so as to procure political information for the Foreign Ministry through private channels. This pitiful explanation did nothing to help the relationship between the Abwehr and Foreign Ministry in the Vermehren case.11 Canaris was alarmed because Herr Vermehren had also had ‘good insight into the organisations and activities of the Abwehr in Turkey’ and this gave rise to the ‘danger of betrayal with all the unpleasant consequences attaching thereto’.12
Leverkühn suggested that OKW should take hostages in Germany and announce it in a radio broadcast to force the couple to surrender to the German authorities. Papen intervened against this plan, fearing further publicity and the revelation of Turkish secret service cooperation in the search for the absentees; under no circumstances must German–Turkish collaboration against Britain and the Soviet Union become apparent. Papen suspected that an Austrian resistance group supported in Turkey by the US secret service there had also had a finger in the Vermehren case, and he asked that none of the measures that the SD wanted should be implemented until his own inquiries were exhausted.13 Papen was soon under suspicion himself for procuring the entry visa into Turkey for Elisabeth Vermehren and also being related to her. Her father’s half-sister had married into a branch of Papen’s family, but this branch had separated from the line of the former Reich Chancellor two hundred years previously, a fact he found himself obliged to explain in a telegram to the Foreign Ministry.14
The Vermehren case now began to draw in those wider circles as Papen had feared.15 Together with the Vermehrens, an Abwehr agent named Hamburger, and a married couple, the Kleczkowskis, had also disappeared, the latter having been sought feverishly since 11 February. Twelve embassy staff and three other Abwehr workers were recalled for complicity in the Vermehren defection, and the entry of all new Abwehr agents into Turkey was stopped.16
The affair signalled extremely unpleasant consequences for Canaris, for in talks during the summer with the Abwehr, the Foreign Ministry had called Abwehr activities in Turkey ‘of extremely doubtful value’, and had demanded the recall of a number of staff including Hamburger and the Kleczkowskis. The Abwehr had declined to do so.17
The Abwehr had discovered that the Italian military attaché in Ankara had been ‘very pleased’ to learn on 2 February that the ‘three birds had flown’, which could only have meant the Vermehrens and an escort, and the British press agency Associated Press in London announced that ambassador von Papen had broken off his leave because an embassy official had been missing for several days.18 Papen was forced to request guidelines for his replies and was told that if ‘the enemy press or radio should discuss the matter publicly’, he should state that Vermehren ‘was not an embassy official’ but ‘a minor employee working at the consulate-general in Istanbul who had been seduced by the British and against the wishes of the Turkish authorities, and had been removed from Turkey by force’.19 A week later the Germans remained none the wiser as to the whereabouts of the Vermehrens, although they thought it might be Lisbon, since Elisabeth Vermehren’s mother was living there as a correspondent for the periodical Das Reich. All Portuguese airports were being watched by Abwehr and SD agents,20 but in fact, the Vermehrens had actually been taken to Cairo.
A Foreign Ministry report dated 20 February presumed that ‘the desertion of a married couple in high society is in the foreground for the British in their efforts for the Vermehren husband and wife, and that obtaining information about our Abwehr service plays a subordinate role’. This was wishful thinking, for the same report stated: ‘Vermehren knew our Abwehr system in Turkey, including the structuring of Abwehr representatives in the authorities of the foreign service there, also the Abwehr officers in Turkey and their cover designations as well as a large number of Abwehr agents with their cover names. He has not been instructed as to Abwehr activities in the field of counterespionage, sabotage and the Navy.’21
Vermehren had prepared a forty-page treatise on Abwehr personnel and embassy staff. Whether he could supply the British with the key to the ciphers was not known for certain, and it was hoped that the actual damage to the intelligence service would be slight. The Foreign Ministry may have thought so, but Canaris considered it substantial, and Kaltenbrunner presented Hitler with a report on 7 February from his SD attaché in Istanbul that put the matter in a dramatic light. The affair hit Canaris at a time that could scarcely have been less favourable; his position in the National Socialist power structure had been weak since the beginning of 1944, and his rivals were now arming for the decisive battle to oust him.
The exposure of a German spy ring in Argentina caused the government in Buenos Aires to sever diplomatic relations with the Reich. Moreover this scandal offered the German ambassador in Madrid, Dieckhoff, brother-inlaw of Foreign Minister Ribbentrop, the opportunity to strike against the Abwehr, whose sabotage activities in Spain had long been a thorn in his side. On 28 January he wrote to the Wilhelmstrasse: ‘The events in Argentina give me cause to take a basic stand on the whole question of using German agents in Spain.’22 The acts of sabotage against British shipping by Abwehr II and – since the defection of Italy – also against Italian ships in Spanish ports, had severely damaged diplomatic relations between Berlin and Madrid and brought the Spanish Government under pressure. Since the ‘Italian betrayal’ British intelligence had been informed of many details and was in a position to lay before the Spanish authorities ‘documentary and photographic’ evidence about the German Abwehr apparatus. One should not overestimate the durability of personal links and confidences existing since the Civil War – here Canaris was meant; he had made a friendly visit to Spain in October 1943 and a few days later the Spanish authorities had caved in to British pressure by shutting down an Abwehr post. Dieckhoff demanded that
all Abwehr posts should be removed from the service buildings of embassies and consulates as soon as possible so that in a given case we can give the assurance with some credibility that we have no knowledge of Abwehr activities . . . everything must be done to ensure that in future the remaining Abwehr staff receive only operations that are outwardly defensive . . . above all so-called active missions, as for example acts of sabotage, such as those undertaken a few weeks ago against British shipping in Spanish Mediterranean ports without sufficient camouflage or any obvious military or political purpose, will be made impossible from now on.
Ribbentrop supported his brother-in-law. The Foreign Minister wrote to Keitel and Himmler, giving his staff members Ritter and Wagner the job of contacting the SD:
In the expectation that both Keitel and Himmler will soon be issuing the instructions, it must be ensured that: (1) In Axis or neutral countries all sabotage activity ceases. If for any reason an act of sabotage is considered essential, the planning and execution can only be undertaken with the previous agreement of the Foreign Minister; and (2) that the dismantling of the Abwehr organisation, in so far as that is possible, is begun now.23
Ribbentrop wanted to control Abwehr sabotage work himself and reduce the organisation, discussing this with Himmler and ignoring Canaris; he also prepared a memorandum on this for Hitler.24 On 3 February Canaris wrote to Ribbentrop: ‘Chief OKW has forbidden all further sabotage against British shipping in Spanish ports. However, he considers desirable the continuation of sabotage attacks against Badoglio-tonnage [Italian ships] in Spanish ports, and attacks against those carrying contraband to the enemy remain viable.’25
Ribbentrop and Dieckhoff worked hand in hand. On 6 February 1944 Dieckhoff cabled to Berlin the current development in Spain; the house of Hauptmann Hummel, head of Abwehr II in Spain, had been searched, and Dieckhoff had received warnings that the Spanish were planning an operation against the entire German network of agents. The previous day the British had reported that a time-bomb of German origin had been found aboard a freighter travelling from Spain with a cargo of onions. ‘The Anglo-Saxons have reacted with a fury that the whole country is feeling today (fuel blockade),’ Dieckhoff reported.26 After speaking to Hitler, Ribbentrop informed Canaris on 8 February: ‘The Führer has stated that (1) all such acts of sabotage must cease absolutely; and (2) no acts of sabotage are to be made against Italian ships.’27 In connection with the breaking-off of diplomatic relations by Argentina, the Foreign Minister called the embassies in Ankara, Lisbon, Stockholm and Berne ‘without regard to special interests and internal German service posts’28 to determine which Abwehr and SD units were still viable and which could be recommended for dismantling.
Canaris wanted to meet Dieckhoff in Madrid29 but held back, travelling finally in company with Lahousen’s successor Freytag-Loringhoven to Biarritz to confer with the head of K-Organisation Spain, Leissner, and the Foreign Ministry representative to the Abwehr, Freiherr von Grote; Dieckhoff also sent a deputy. The conversations increased the ill-feeling between Abwehr and Foreign Ministry. Canaris was forced to make major concessions, pulling out completely from embassies and consulates, and removing ten K-Organisation employees from Spain monthly, and sabotage activity in Spain and Spanish Morocco was forbidden. Canaris was embittered that Dieckhoff had used a complaint about worthless political reporting to arrange with immediate effect restrictions that included the transmission of political reports of any kind. In the long run, apart from counter-espionage, this was the reason for the existence of the Abwehr.
The Foreign Ministry representatives Grote and Stille emphasised that ‘the rectification ordered by Admiral Canaris rests on his own decision’, the Foreign Ministry and embassy ‘had, together with a certain physical separation, considered it politic to diminish the complement of K-Organisation Spain in order to reduce the exposure to Anglo-Saxon pressures which is sure to come’.30
Unusually, Canaris allowed Grote to see his resentment and resignation both on the flight and during the talks. He felt deceived by Dieckhoff, having assured the ambassador a few months before that good and reliable cooperation existed with the Abwehr. The Foreign Ministry inclined to the view, Canaris said, that ‘every difficulty arising from the political or military development in the relationship with neutral States could be traced back to Abwehr mistakes. He had been accused of responsibility for the severing of diplomatic ties with Argentina, and now he was the scapegoat-in-waiting should the Spanish do the same.’31 Grote had contradicted him, and ‘pointed to undeniable ineptitude’. In his notes for the Foreign Minister, however, Grote wrote that he could sympathise with Canaris’s disappointment, and the admiral had asked him a number of awkward questions to which he was unable to furnish an answer.
Canaris’s complaints were obviously relayed to Dieckhoff who, in his hour of triumph, used his reply to Ribbentrop for a gloating settlement of the account with Canaris. Since taking the Madrid post in February 1943, he had been dubious about Abwehr activity and, when presenting his credentials to Franco, the Caudillo had spoken confidentially about Canaris, making clear that, as far as he was concerned, it was the ambassador, and not the admiral, who was the German partner for discussions;32 Franco had not wanted to meet Canaris on his last visit, and nobody on the Spanish side had a good word to say for him. The violent closure of Abwehrstelle Algeciras by the Spanish authorities made him doubt strongly ‘the alleged friendly understanding between Admiral Canaris and Spanish offices’. As for Canaris’s old friend and confidant Italian General Roatta, Franco hated him; irrespective of how firm the friendship between Canaris and Franco and other Spanish generals might have been during the Civil War, it could no longer be built on today.
The telegrams sent to Berlin by Canaris during his visit to Madrid in October 1943 spoke in different terms.33 The correctness of the decision to close Abwehrstelle Algeciras was disputed even in Spain since, according to information from K-Organisation, it had been ordered by the Spanish Foreign Ministry without the knowledge of the Spanish secret service.34
Dieckhoff’s offensive coincided with the political eclipse of Canaris. His conduct at Biarritz and his orders had created new enemies in the Foreign Ministry, even amongst those who were not in agreement with the suppression of the Abwehr political reports, for Spanish Foreign Ministry telegrams intercepted by K-Organisation agents were an especially important resource for the German Foreign Ministry.35 When Leissner’s negotiations with the Spanish generals fell through after the latter declared that in the current situation they had no guarantee that the Abwehr would exist in Spain beyond the German embassy, Canaris’s enemies had reached their objective.
The end of Canaris was sealed. Too much had happened in recent months: the investigations of Dohnanyi and Oster, the suspicions against Canaris himself, the complaints of Abwehr incompetence over the Allied landings in North Africa and Allied plans for offensives, the diplomatic entanglements over the sabotage activities of Abwehr II, and finally the Vermehren affair, for which Hitler blamed Canaris personally – Hitler’s patience was exhausted. At the beginning of March 1944, after his visit to Obersalzberg, Goebbels noted in his diary how much the Vermehren affair preoccupied Hitler.36 Huppenkothen reported later that after an outburst of rage over the Vermehrens, Himmler’s representative at FHQ, SS-Brigadeführer Fegelein suggested on 11 February 1944 that ‘the Führer ought to transfer the whole box of junk to the Reichsführer-SS’.37
Hitler agreed and informed Himmler immediately that Canaris was relieved of office and the entire German intelligence service was being placed in Himmler’s charge. The next day Hitler signed the following order:
1. A unified German secret service is to be created.
2. I appoint the Reichsführer-SS to head it.
3. In so far as it touches on military intelligence and Abwehr, the Reichsführer-SS and head of OKW will take the necessary measures in bilateral agreement.38
The exclusion of Canaris was now official, and the news spread quickly amongst the Military Abwehr staff. Keitel and Jodl travelled to the new Abwehr headquarters at Maybach II, Zossen, in order to inform Canaris personally that he had been relieved, and was now obliged to proceed to Burg Lauenstein in the Franconian Forest to await details as to his future employment.39 On 23 February 1944 Keitel noted that ‘the future employment of Admiral Canaris will be decided later’ and until then he would be ‘amongst the OKW officers at my disposal’.40 A little afterwards at Burg Lauenstein Canaris received a message from Grossadmiral Dönitz: ‘The commander-in-chief Kriegsmarine informed Admiral Canaris on 10 March 1944 that he will enter the Retired List with effect from 30 June. The welfare and care provisions apply. Admiral Canaris is at the disposal of the Kriegsmarine. A new appointment is not envisaged.’41
The laboratories, research equipment and workshops of the Abwehr were located at Burg Lauenstein, but how Canaris spent his time there, or received news of his enforced retirement, is not known. He was accompanied there by his chauffeur and two dachshunds, but had not been able to take leave of his family. His wife Erika had been evacuated to friends on the Ammersee to escape the bombing, his daughter Brigitte was at boarding school, and his sick daughter Eva lived in the Bodelschwingschen Institute at Bethel.42 Oberstleutnant Albrecht Focke, who ran Burg Lauenstein, was told to treat Canaris with courtesy and respect, allowing him freedom of movement there while shielding him as much as possible from the outside world. During this time his wife visited him once; Schellenberg also came, but the substance of their long conversation is unknown.
Schellenberg cooperated with Bentivegni and the head of the Wehrmacht Central Office, Generalleutnant Paul Winter, who had received full authority from Keitel, to ensure the smooth transfer of the Abwehr into the RSHA apparatus.43 Bentivegni’s efforts to retain at least a small nucleus of the military intelligence centre paid off: Abwehr-Abteilung I and II were annexed to RSHA as ‘the Military Office’ (Amt Mil or Amt M). The new head of Amt Mil, Oberst Georg Hansen, a convinced anti-Nazi, became deputy to Amt VI (SD-Ausland) Chief Schellenberg, and vice versa – Abteilung III (counter-espionage) passed mainly to the corresponding office at RSHA IV (Gestapo). The front-line reconnaissance units and the competent offices monitoring the armed forces remained under OKW control together with elements of the former Abwehr II (Sabotage against Foreign Armies); civilian sabotage units passed to RSHA.44 At a castle close to Salzburg at the beginning of May 1944, Keitel and Himmler held a conference for all senior Abwehr and RSHA officers and officials to announce the new regulations officially. Himmler praised again ‘the valuable work of the military Abwehr’.45
By an edict of 10 June 1944, Hitler discharged Admiral Canaris from active military service with effect from the end of the month ‘with permission to wear his former uniform’. Shortly afterwards he countermanded this order and appointed Canaris admiral on standby from 1 July to head the virtually insignificant Special Staff for Anti-Shipping Warfare and Economic War Measures at OKW (HWK), Potsdam-Eiche.46 What lay behind this ‘comeback’ is not known, but it may have been an idea of Himmler to hold available a man with good contacts and of international renown.
According to the British secret service expert Anthony Cave Brown, the reason was the alleged contacts Canaris had to the French intelligence chiefs Arnould and Keun in May 1944. Cave Brown refers to statements by Arnould made in an interview after the war in which Canaris had given Keun a personal message from the Resistance to the head of British Intelligence, Menzies, concerning the retraction of the demand for ‘unconditional surrender’. Canaris met Arnould at a Paris convent to receive the answer, a two-page letter,47 with the answer in the negative. This story sounds unlikely and is unproven. As head of HWK, Canaris could not have travelled to Paris at that time, but fragments that do fit the story occur in the interrogations after 20 July. Baron Kaulbars,48 Canaris’s confidant and liaison to Stockholm and Moscow, made a written statement under interrogation that he had learned in Sweden that Canaris was to be removed, and was informed of the ‘attitude of foreign circles’. Kaltenbrunner observed of this statement: ‘With the removal of the admiral, the chance of any kind of accord if Germany was ready to negotiate with the enemy powers about the possibility of a peace acceptable to both sides, evaporated. The report that the admiral had gone would be a signal to those abroad to sever whatever cooperation existed with Germany. Canaris was one of the few men with whom other countries would still deal and cooperate.’49
This contradictory report raises more questions than it answers. The German readiness to negotiate was irrelevant if the Allies refused to talk. What cooperation existed to be severed? Even the question as to who might still have been interested in peace soundings from Canaris in the summer of 1944 remains unanswered. Attention focuses finally on Himmler, who showed a complete disdain for investigating the suspicions against Canaris, but also ensured that the accusations against him in connection with the prosecution of Dohnanyi and Oster did not proceed. What was behind his attitude towards Canaris and his closest circle, which endured until the beginning of April 1945, remains one of the great mysteries.
Canaris was not personally involved in the attempted coup and assassination plot of 20 July. He was too far from the centre of events, bereft of his power base and without contact to his former staff, and so it was not until early July that he was even apprised of the basics of the planned operation by Freytag-Lovinghoven and Schrader.50 Canaris knew Graf von Stauffenburg, the leader of the plot, from meetings since the end of 1943, when he had been chief of Staff at the General Army Office at OKH, but there had been no common ground between them, and according to Huppenkothen the relationship was so bad that sometimes Canaris’s friend Judge Sack had to step in as referee.51 Nevertheless, it was supposedly Stauffenburg who informed Canaris of the assassination attempt on 20 July 1944. According to the story, Canaris was entertaining his neighbour, the pianist Helmut Maurer, a regular guest at the Schlachtensee house, and also Baron Kaulbars and Judge-General Sack when Stauffenburg told him by telephone that the Führer was dead; a bomb had killed him. Suspecting that his line was tapped, Canaris answered: ‘Dead? For God’s sake who was it then? The Russians?’52 According to Abshagen, it came to light during the interrogation by Huppenkothen that the telephone conversation between Stauffenburg and Canaris had been monitored and documented, but this is doubtful because Stauffenburg could not have called at the time of day stated by Maurer. According to Höhne, Judge-General Sack was informed by a colleague of Olbricht in the Bendlerstrasse and hurried to tell Canaris;53 when Canaris went to his office at Potsdam-Eiche afterwards, his adjutant was already composing a letter of loyalty addressed to Hitler.
Canaris was mistaken if he thought he could escape the immediate campaign of revenge. On 22 July he told a former subordinate he met on the street: ‘Yes, my dear boy, it can’t be done! Call me in a few days.’54 It would not be long before his name surfaced in the files of ‘Sonderkommission 20/7’. Canaris’s successor, Hansen, who was involved in the plot and had been taken into Gestapo custody on 22 July, made a written statement:
I see Canaris as the spiritual founder of the Resistance Movement which led to 20 July. Its beginnings are found in 1938. At that time the departure of Fritsch was used to usher in an internal revolution. Canaris himself continued substantially as the carrier of the essential contacts abroad. Canaris went to great lengths to get those people abroad who were opposed to the Nazi regime, amongst them numerous Jews, church people etc and clergy for the purpose of using them as contacts to church circles in Sweden, Switzerland or at the Vatican.55
Whatever was said in the Gestapo dungeons and how little it might have had to do with the events of 20 July 1944, nevertheless Kaltenbrunner included it all in his report to Martin Bormann on the foreign connections of the conspirators, and for Canaris it had catastrophic consequences.
On 23 July 1944 Schellenberg received orders from Gestapo Chief Müller to arrest Canaris. According to Schellenberg’s account he proceeded to Berlin Schlachtensee with an SS-Hauptsturmführer who knew Canaris, having been formerly with the Abwehr. Canaris was in the company of Baron Kaulbar and his nephew Erwin Delbrück. Canaris asked his visitors to leave the room while he spoke to Schellenberg: ‘Somehow I felt it would be you. Tell me, have they found anything in writing by that clown Oberst Hansen?’ When Schellenberg nodded and said a notebook had been discovered containing a list of those persons to be eliminated, but not about Canaris himself or his participation in a coup d’état, Canaris replied: ‘Those idiots in the General Staff cannot live without scribbling.’ If we accept Schellenberg’s account further, Canaris then made a remarkable request: ‘You must make me a promise on your word of honour to obtain for me within the next three days the opportunity for an interview with Himmler. The others – Kaltenbrunner and Müller – are no more than evil killers, out for my head.’56
Schellenberg promised and then offered to wait in the living room while Canaris did whatever he needed. He declined; he neither wanted to run for it nor shoot himself. Schellenberg then took him to the Frontier Police School Fürstenberg where twenty other senior officers suspected of complicity in the assassination attempt were being held under house arrest. Schellenberg stated that Canaris then invited him to stay for dinner and they drank a bottle of red wine while he instructed Canaris on how he should speak to Himmler. Next day, Schellenberg alleges that he spoke at length with Himmler and obtained his promise to grant Canaris an interview.57
Hans Oster was arrested on 21 July at the Schnaditz estate after a list of conspirators was discovered at the General Army Office.58 Erwin Delbrück and Karl Ludwig Freiherr von und zu Guttenberg were arrested, while Dohnanyi, Bonhoeffer and Josef Müller were transferred from Wehrmacht custody to the Gestapo. Huppenkothen led the interrogations of Canaris and Oster from the beginning of August. He was assisted by Kriminalkommissar Sonderegger, who since the ‘Cash Deposits’ case had been handling the available prosecution evidence against the Abwehr headquarters staff members involved.
It was above all due to the skill and resistance of Oster that Huppenkothen and Sonderegger at first made little progress. Oster talked and tried to say nothing; he spoke about the mental and political attitude of Canaris:
Those of us of his time had a childish passion for soldiering that led us to become officers in the monarchy. That that kind of State could ever be destroyed was unimaginable for us. There was no politics. We wore the Kaiser’s uniform and that was enough59 . . . The collapse in 1918 was a hammer-blow to us, the abolition of the Wilhelminian monarchy into an uncohesive State of political parties.
Kaltenbrunner wrote
According to Oster, the 1933 Revolution was a relief from the conflict of conscience which for them had begun in the early period of the Weimar system! The return to strong national parties, rearmament, the reintroduction of general conscription, these things were for officers a return to the earlier traditions. Whereas the soldier in the Weimar system only did what he was duty-bound to do, Oster had warmly welcomed these points of the National Socialist expansionist programme.
In a written statement Oster described the cracks which appeared in the relationship of the conservative officer towards the new regime: the murders of Schleicher and Bredow in June 1934, the Blomberg affair and Fritsch trial, the rise of the Waffen-SS to be the elite Wehrmacht branch. And it went on and on in this vein.
For a while Oster entangled his interrogators in an irrelevant political and historical analysis that had nothing to do with the criminological investigation into who was involved in the plot to kill Hitler on 20 July 1944. When he was confronted with the statements of Alexander von Pfuhlstein and Friedrich Wilhelm Heinz, in which particularly Pfuhlstein implicated Canaris, Oster came under pressure and was forced into attempting to lay on Canaris the portion of the blame that he could not shift on the dead Olbricht.60 From the interrogations of Pfuhlstein and Heinz, the impression grew that Canaris must have played a more significant role in the revolt: ‘Canaris had been, if extremely lacking in perception, totally pessimistic. He had seen the general military collapse approaching month by month, as for example Christmas 1943. Even Heinz confirmed that in the Abwehr a pronounced “tired industry” had reigned. Canaris always made on him “a melancholy impression”.’61
Although all these statements did not connect Canaris directly with the events of 20 July, they tightened the noose about his neck. He relied on denials, reinterpretations and the devaluation of his fellow-travellers’ explanations, and kept this tactic going when he was finally confronted by his accusers. His former subordinates had got it wrong, he explained; he did not implicate them, but tried to blunt the sharpness of what they said by giving their allegations a more harmless meaning. Kaltenbrunner’s report sounded slightly resigned: ‘Although Oster, Pfuhlstein and Hansen maintained their allegations when confronting Admiral Canaris, Canaris disputes the assertions of Pfuhlstein, for example that he predicted certain collapse for Christmas 1943.’62 With reference to peace discussions and the necessity ‘to remove the present government at least for a while’,63 Canaris admitted that such considerations had been uttered in conversations with Oster, but they had been ‘only incidental’ and were discussed in connection with reports received. Here Canaris played the naive man:
I placed no value on these reports and never accepted them as serious. As far as I was concerned it was just talk to pass the time. For me there was never any doubt that a change in the government during the war would be considered a stab in the back, and would destroy the Home Front. It would be a repeat of 1918, but in a much worse form.
In a comprehensive extract from a statement during interrogation, which Kaltenbrunner added to his report of 21 September 1944, he quoted Canaris as saying:
For me, one thing was clear above all else, and I explained it to the officers who discussed the point with me, that a war of such enormous dimensions was willed by Fate and could not have been prevented. Moreover I never doubted, and I often emphasised in conversation that the great sacrifices that our people have made in this war at the Front and at home under a tight uniform leadership could never have been in vain, and would still turn out well even if the war does not end favourably as the optimists think it will.64
One day after Kaltenbrunner had completed his report on the former Abwehr chief – a report which would not have sent Canaris to the gallows – certain documents were discovered at Zossen. Hitler’s revenge would now run its course, and the last chapter in the life of Wilhelm Canaris began.