The greatest factor in keeping Spain out of World War II was the will of Franco. He came to power in the dark days of the Civil War in July 1936 when the rebel Nationalist Commanders set up a Junta of National Defence in Burgos. As Franco was the most experienced soldier, he became the commander-in-chief. It was but a short step to becoming dictator. Franco’s rule of Spain would go through many phases, some of which were extremely brutal, but he bent to the winds of change and survived. He had basic convictions that did not change the unity of Spain. A traditional Catholic, Franco believed in the Spanish Empire and retaining what was left of it.
On 19 April 1937 the decree was published announcing that: ‘… The Caudillo will exercise absolute authority’ and he would be ‘… responsible to God and to History.’1 He soon became convinced that Spain needed to adopt the Italian Fascist model to become a strong country. But at the end of the Civil War, Spain lay exhausted. By the time the Second World War had started, Franco was frustrated in his enthusiastic wish to join the Axis. He was impressed by the German war machine, which he thought invincible, and believed that Spain owed the Axis for their support during the Civil War. This is clear from his message to Sir Samuel Hoare in 1940: ‘Why do you not end the war? You can never win it.’2
The Allied economic approach of carrot and stick did have a restraining effect. He needed British, and later Anglo-American, wheat and oil to feed and run the country. He was fully aware that joining the Axis would result in the loss of parts of the Spanish Empire. Winston Churchill wrote:
So great was the danger that for nearly two years we kept constantly at a few days’ notice an expedition of over five thousand men and their ships, ready to seize the Canary Islands, by which we could maintain air and sea control over the U-boats, and contact with Australasia round the Cape, if ever the harbour of Gibraltar was denied to us by the Spaniards.3
As the war progressed, Franco would have been aware of Allied plans like Golden Eye and Backbone if Spain were to join the Axis. Despite this, Spain was the only neutral country to send a fully equipped Division to fight with the Germans in Russia. Unlike Portugal and Turkey, Spain never supported the Allies. Turkey joined the war in February 1945, albeit too late to make a difference, and Portugal allowed the Allies to use her Atlantic islands as bases during the battle against the U-boats from October 1943.
Franco’s key personal link to the Third Reich, forged through the bloody years of the Civil War, was with Wilhelm Canaris. The Admiral had been the catalyst for German support and had remained at the centre of German-Spanish relations. Both men shared a conservative and Catholic background. Canaris had tried to restrain Franco at the end of the Civil War when he took revenge against the communists, warning him ‘that summary justice and mass executions were not consonant with Christian ethics.’4 His attempts to curb Franco’s ‘investments in terror’ had little effect and their friendship cooled as a result. The Civil War was won in April 1939 but conflict went on in the military courts, in the prisons, the concentration camps and the slavery of the labour battalions.5
Count Ciano visited Spain for ten days in July 1939. On his return he described Franco as a ‘queer fish’, who sat in the ‘Ayete palace, in the midst of his Moorish Guard, surrounded by mountains of files of prisoners condemned to death with his work schedule, he will see about three a day, because the fellow always has siesta.’6
The ‘White Terror’, as it became known, was estimated by Gabriel Jackson in his The Spanish Republic and the Civil War 1931–1939 to have cost the lives of 200,000 Spaniards who were executed or died in prison camps.7 Others estimate the death toll to have been between 150,000–400,000.8
While Franco warned Samuel Hoare of the hopeless British position, he was listening to Canaris in private who warned him that Germany under Hitler would lose the war. None of these meetings were recorded yet several people knew of the caution he advised. Samuel Hoare was not one of them for he was surprised to learn after the war ended that Canaris had been one of the leaders of the German resistance movement.9
Franco, with the Admiral’s cautionary words on his mind, made the most ‘outrageous demands’ of Germany to join the war. After one of his many emissary trips to see Franco on behalf of Hitler, General Franz Halder was told that Spain would do nothing because they had too many ‘economic problems’.10 At the Hendaye meeting, Canaris was not present, yet through his Vatican agent he sent a message to Franco delivered by Serrano Suñer: ‘to hold Spain out of the game at all costs.’11
In 1942, when Giraud escaped from Konigstein Castle, Canaris was ordered by Hitler to track him down and kill him. The hunt was code named Operation Gustov, but despite a reward of 100,000 marks for information leading to his capture, the general escaped. The Abwehr did little to try and apprehend Giraud. Canaris told General Keitel that the Abwehr were not assassins like the SD. Instead, he tried to find out through double agents where Giraud was going and whether he knew anything about the Anglo-American invasion plans. However Bletchley Park, reading Abwehr signals, were able to warn Giraud to be extremely careful with whom he was speaking. Canaris was playing a dangerous game by disobeying Hitler. When he told Keitel he had handed the matter over to the SD, he was in fact using the recent death of its leader Reinhard Heydrich as cover.12
When Hitler sent Canaris to see Franco in December 1942 to gauge the Spanish reaction to a possible Allied landing in Spain, nothing was said to him about the Ilona / Gisela operation being activated. These operations would mean a pre-emptive occupation of Spain. However, it is likely that Canaris knew about it and saw another Hitler blunder looming.13 Canaris’s friend Erwin von Lahousen, an Abwehr man, went with him. In Madrid, Canaris drafted a telegram stating that the Spanish Foreign Minister Gomez Jordana had claimed that Spain would be willing to accept a German Army on her soil only if the Eastern Front held firm. As the relief of the trapped sixth army at Stalingrad had already failed, conditions were getting more remote by the minute. Lahousen said that Canaris saw Gomez Jordana a few hours later where he showed him the draft for approval. He agreed with it without changing a word. It was duly sent to Hitler by telegram.14
The assassination of Reinhard Heydrich by SOE agents in May 1942 is considered by Paul Thummel, British agent in Prague, to be an act to protect Canaris.15 The relationship of the head of the Abwehr with the British SIS is full of blurred suggestions, but few hard facts. Two weeks before Heydrich was killed, Canaris and his wife went to stay with the Heydrich’s family in Prague. By then he was not only head of the RSHA, but had also been appointed the Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia in September 1941. They were trying to reach agreement on the roles of the various branches of German Intelligence services. Heydrich was trying to restrict the Abwehr. Canaris remained calm and friendly toward the man he had helped in the early years of his naval career when they had served together on the Berlin. He had told Canaris that he would replace ‘inept, politically unreliable’ Abwehr officers with better SS men, which may have been a reference to Canaris himself.
In the early spring of 1942 an SOE team of Czech commandos, trained in Britain, parachuted into Czechoslovakia with orders to kill Heydrich. The assassination team, code named Anthropoid, had been in Prague for some time when a heated meeting took place with local resistance leaders. A message was sent to London to request that the mission be called off, as it was likely to provoke harsh reprisals. In London there was a delay, but the mission was not cancelled. According to Colonel František Moravec, the Czech head of military intelligence, the SIS insisted that the operation go ahead without consulting him and he only learnt this was the case after the war. It was felt within the Czech resistance that Heydrich died because he was close to uncovering British agents and sympathisers within the German High Command and Canaris was known to have had links to the SIS.16 Menzies must have known of Canaris’s dilemma and he was known for not shirking from ruthless action when needed to protect his service and friends. Although Anthropoid was an SOE mission, Moravec believed it was Menzies who had insisted that the mission must go ahead.17
Whatever the motive was for Heydrich’s death, it became the only assassination of a high-ranking German official in the war. He was attacked on 27 May in his car on the way to his headquarters at Prague Castle when he was struck by grenade fragments and died of his wounds on 4 June. German reprisals were brutal, with the village of Lidice liquidated on 9 June. 198 adult males were shot, and all the women were deported to Ravensbruck concentration camp, and the children taken to Germany for adoption. Following Heydrich’s death, Himmler became chief of the RSHA and day-to-day operations became the responsibility of Ernst Kaltenbrunner.
In December 1940 Menzies had the opportunity to see Duško Popov, code named ‘Tricycle’, who was in London having flown in from Lisbon. His cover for the trip was that he was representing some Yugoslav Banks. Popov had started off as an Abwehr agent, but never had any intention of spying for the Germans. Rather he became a double agent when he was approached and recruited by the SIS in Belgrade. His control was passed to the XX Double Cross system run by MI5. He had told his Abwehr masters that he was in London to collect some intelligence from a friend at the Yugoslav legation. He even got the Germans to pay for the trip. His code name ‘Tricycle’ was apparently because of his ‘fondness for three-in-a-bed sex’.18 He would become the centre of a large network of false agents. By establishing an espionage ring in England, it enhanced Popov’s standing in the Abwehr and led to what Menzies wanted, which was information on Canaris.
Menzies invited Popov to spend the New Year weekend at Dassett near Woking. Popov described the house as: ‘a Victorian mansion set in a large park, the lawns perfectly manicured.’19
Over that New Year’s weekend Popov spent several hours speaking with Menzies in his study with: ‘Deep armchairs, a fireplace where the flames were miraculously steady, book lined walls – it was the traditional and perfect setting. What followed was not commonplace.’ Menzies said it was a regret to him that Popov was no longer an MI6 man. He thought he had the makings of a good spy, although he needed to curb his tendency to ignore orders. He told him he ‘had better learn or you will be a very dead spy’. Menzies explained that Churchill had met Canaris in 1938, and had come to the conclusion that the Admiral was a catalyst for the German resistance against Hitler. Menzies went on: ‘Eventually I may want to resume the conversation that Churchill initiated. In that event, I must be in a position to evaluate the strength of those around Canaris.’ He went on to tell Popov that any information pertaining to Canaris and his inner circle was ‘to come directly to him and not through any intermediary’.20 There is no evidence that Canaris ever met Churchill, although before he was in power in 1938 he met with one of the admiral’s trusted lieutenants Fabian von Schlabrendorff at Chartwell.21
Many writers and commentaries have said that Fleming based his character James Bond on Duško Popov. Popov also said that the 007 number came from his Uncle Milivoj Popov’s apartment phone number 26–007.22
Menzies would also protect Canaris from direct attack. In 1943 an Abwehr decrypt crossed Kim Philby’s desk that Canaris was to visit Spain: ‘He was going to drive from Madrid to Seville stopping overnight at a town called Manzanares.’ The town is about 110 miles south of Madrid. Philby knew the town from his time in Spain during the Civil War, and knew that Canaris would stay at the Parador.
So I sent Cowgill (his superior) a memo suggesting that we let SOE know about it in case they wanted to mount an operation against Canaris. From what I knew about the Parador, it would not have been difficult to have tossed a couple of grenades into his bedroom.
Cowgill approved and sent my memo on up to ‘C’. Cowgill showed me a reply a couple of days later. Menzies had written in his official green ink: ‘I want no action whatsoever taken against the admiral.’23
At the funeral of Heydrich, Schellenberg saw Canaris weep at the graveside before telling him in a voice choked with emotion: ‘After all, he was a great man. I have lost a friend in him.’24 Later, Canaris tried to obtain a meeting with Menzies with Portugal as a possible destination.
‘C’ had a good reason to go to the Iberian Peninsula with the Allied invasion of North Africa looming. Here was an opportunity to perhaps shorten the war through the German Resistance. He was willing to go but Anthony Eden, the Foreign Secretary, vetoed the idea. Eden felt that it could endanger the pact with Stalin if he heard about the meeting. Stalin might suspect the West of trying to do a deal with Germany. Unknown to them all at that time, double agent Kim Philby would have informed his masters at the NKVD if he had found out.
Hugh Trevor-Roper, who worked at MI6 in 1942, had written a study on Canaris, which concluded that a meeting with the Admiral ‘should be attempted’.25 Philby, after reading the document, wrote it was ‘speculative’.26 We now know that the real reason that the Soviets did not want the resistance to topple Hitler was because it would interfere with their plans to spread communism through central Europe.27
With Menzies in Algiers during December 1942, Eden had gone to Moscow on 7 December until the end of the month. Canaris had been sent to Madrid in December by Hitler and he was in Algeciras around New Year’s Eve. There he cooked a Turkey for his staff whilst wearing a chef’s hat and apron. He was skilled in the kitchen and was assisted by a Spanish cook he knew well, and went to some lengths to make it a party to remember.28
Frederick Winterbotham shared lunch with Menzies in Algiers on Christmas Eve. ‘C’s personal assistant Patrick Reilly told Anthony Cave Brown an odd story that at the beginning of December in 1942, ‘C’ had asked him if he would like to take some leave: ‘I was surprised at this suggestion for it was the only time he made such a suggestion. I was rather tired and I accepted gratefully.’ When Reilly left, Menzies was at his desk, and when he returned he was still there.29 Forty years later Reilly learnt that ‘C’ had been away from Winterbotham too, who wrote to him and asked him if he knew why ‘C’ had gone to Algiers. Reilly doubted ‘C’s journey to Algiers had anything to do with Darlan’s murder, although it was a coincidence that he had been there at the time. In the end, he concluded that he had been given leave so that he would not know where Menzies had been.30
The truth was that the SIS had not been involved in the murder of Darlan, and if any British service was involved it would be the SOE. Both Canaris and Menzies were in close proximity at the same time. A clandestine meeting would certainly have had its appeal. Churchill a year earlier told the SIS to test the validity of German opposition to the Nazis’ peace attempts. There were also some alarming reports which had surfaced of a possible German accommodation with Stalin. Hitler would tell the Japanese ambassador Baron Oshima confidentially that this would only happen once Germany had made a serious ‘peace proposal to Russia toward the end of 1942.’31
Eden’s visit to Moscow to find common ground with the Soviets achieved little due to the air of mutual suspicion between the nations. With Eden out of the way it is possible that Churchill endorsed a Menzies-Canaris meeting. He would likely have been eager to know about possible peace talks between Berlin and Moscow, and Canaris would have been able to shed light on the matter.
It is definitely possible that these two heads of opposing intelligence services met in Algeciras. It was only a short boat trip across the bay from Gibraltar and the Spanish town was often visited by British officers. Dances at the Hotel Reina Maria Cristina were popular and frequented by both sides, looking for a dark-eyed Spanish beauty. Would Menzies have risked such a meeting? Later in the war he paid a visit to a SIS safe house in occupied France to try and approach the British after all.32 Ian Colvin records that the SIS in Gibraltar knew Canaris was across the bay and suggested a scheme to kidnap him, which they put to higher authority. London, however, said no as ‘he was far more valuable where he was’.33
Roosevelt’s press conference at Casablanca in January 1943 scuppered any hope that Canaris had harboured of a peace deal. Roosevelt announced that peace could only come with the ‘unconditional surrender by Germany, Italy, and Japan’. He thought the Casablanca declaration was a mistake that would prolong the war. He confided to von Lahousen that Germany was guilty of starting the war but that the Allies were guilty of prolonging it: ‘I believe 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.’34
It was Walter Schellenberg who reluctantly went to arrest Canaris three days after the July 1944 plot to kill Hitler had failed. He knew exactly where he would be as he was under house arrest. Canaris’s fall from power after the Vermehren affair meant he had come under suspicion.
I received a telephone call from SS Gruppenfuhrer Mueller [Heinrich Mueller head of the Gestapo]. He and his chief Kaltenbrunner had been assigned to carry out the investigation into the plot of July 20. In a sharp voice Mueller ordered me to drive to Canaris’s home and inform him that he was under arrest – this was an official order from Kaltenbrunner. I was to take Canaris to Fuerstenberg in Mecklenburg, and not to return him to Berlin until everything had been cleared up.35
Schellenberg tried to refuse but Mueller warned him that if he did not comply he would also be arrested. After agonising for a while he came to the conclusion: ‘I might be able to be of some help to Canaris.’36
At the admiral’s house in Berlin-Schlachtensee, he found Canaris to be as calm as usual. He was to be arrested for involvement in the July plot to kill Hitler, although no evidence was ever found against him. He asked Schellenberg to arrange a meeting for him with Himmler, which Schellenberg agreed to. Schellenberg claimed that he gave Canaris the opportunity to escape but he refused: ‘No dear Schellenberg, flight is out of the question for me. And I won’t kill myself either. I am sure of my case, and have faith in the promise you have given me.’ Schellenberg says he talked to Himmler, who assured him he would speak to Canaris.37
Heinrich Himmler was Reichsfuhrer SS in 1943. He had developed the SS into an army, expanding from three regiments to thirty-eight divisions. The July plot led to an increase in his powers and authority. It was Himmler who by early 1944 felt that he had enough evidence to accuse Canaris of not having Germany’s best interests at heart and went to Hitler, who dismissed the admiral. A short time later he was put under house arrest which prevented him taking part in the July plot. Himmler kept Canaris alive, with the hope of using him in future contacts with the British. When it became clear that this was unlikely to arise, Canaris was court-martialled by the SS and sentenced to death. He was executed on 9 April 1945 in Flossenburg concentration camp. When he was led to the gallows, he was forced to be naked in order to inflict a final humiliation.38
At the Nuremberg Trials many testified to his courage in opposing Hitler. During the war he went out of his way to help those persecuted by the Nazis, and saved many Jews by getting them out of Europe via Spain, passing them off as Abwehr agents. The Chabad-Lubavitch organisation campaigned for his recognition as a Righteous Gentile. This organisation is a philosophical movement, which was started in the 19th century in Russia named after the town of Lubavitch, and is the most dynamic force in Jewish life today.
The CIA sponsored monograph The Intelligence War in 1941 held the view that, as a consequence of, the ‘Canaris Factor’, ‘Franco decided that Spain should remain, in effect, neutral.39
After Admiral Canaris’s death, his widow Erika was left destitute. With the end of the war, there came little improvement in her circumstances under the Allies, and the bank accounts of general staff officers were frozen and pensions stopped. Early in 1948, Erika Canaris was taken to Switzerland by two Spanish diplomats. From there she went to Spain, where the Spanish government gave her a generous pension for life and a villa in Barcelona. The Caudillo was paying a debt as best as he could through his friend’s widow. Canaris was the man who, more than any other, had saved Spain from the calamity of involvement in World War II.