In the twentieth century, there was arguably no greater game than the shadowy chess match of conspirators and loyalists within Berlin. The Witerstand, the term for the German conspirators who plotted against Hitler, navigated this minefield of deception to risk deposing the Führer. At the center of that resistance network, of the doomed tragedy that ended weeks away from the war’s end, dangling from makeshift nooses, was Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr – Germany’s military intelligence. In the dark days of the Third Reich, there were many whose loyalties and moral standing are difficult to decipher. Between those who sheltered Jews in their attics and those who ordered them butcher en masse, there are many whose actions are much harder to define. Was the citizen who said nothing, and paid his taxes to the Nazi war regime complicit? Were those who turned over Jews to spare their own families from starvation monsters? Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, for decades, has presented such a conundrum to historians. Was the man who ran perhaps the most incompetent branch of the Nazi’s military apparatus a coward or a quiet traitor, a weak-willed fool or a subtle web-spinner? Generally, interpretations of his actions are binary: historians such as David Kahn have reflected on Canaris as a well-intentioned coward at best, or a horribly incompetent bystander at worst.
Neither of these viewpoints are correct—in understanding the myriad of resistance conspiracies that lurked in the shadows of Berlin, it is necessary to understand the central role the Abwehr and Canaris played. The blame for the Abwehr’s incompetence can be fairly assigned to Canaris, but those sorts of accusations—which have dominated the historiography of Canaris for too long—do not properly contextualize the spymaster. Canaris was a terrible Nazi, but an excellent resistor. I will address several main points of his critics’ arguments before exploring the evidence that corroborates my argument on Canaris. Firstly, I will address the standing complaints against Canaris, those of his incompetency, apathy, and unwillingness to take a stand against Adolf Hitler. Further, I will explore the delicate and nuanced situation Canaris found himself in, a situation whose context is often ignored in historical analysis, in order to better examine what resistance was possible for an individual in his circumstances. Finally, I will assess how we should interpret Canaris’ continued legacy, the ramifications of his actions, and the network of resistance that Canaris enabled and catalyzed through his careful plotting and heroic resolve.
Critics of Canaris have often lambasted him for failing to take direct action against the Nazis, for mishandling the Abwehr (and thus allowing its woeful incompetence to run havoc) and being too indecisive to take a meaningful stance, riding the fence until his execution in the twilight weeks of the Reich. These claims are substantiated upon a superficial review of the evidence presented but fall apart under closer scrutiny. A summation of Canaris’ shortcomings is given by David Kahn in the foreword to Covert Warfare: The Final Solution of the Abwehr, which explores a collection of primary source documents regarding the intelligence agency. Consider Kahn’s critique:
“This presented Canaris with an insoluble dilemma. Though he detested Hitler, he loved Germany, and working for Germany meant furthering the Führer . He never faced this but fled from it, physically and psychologically…he delegated the task of making situation reports to subordinates and avoided Hitler, declining even the undeclinable invitations to dinner. He twisted, he turned, he dodged the basic decision. His hesitancy infected the Abwehr. Just as he never betrayed information to the Allies, so he never lashed his organization into energetic activity. It became a haven for anti-Hitler resitants, for the lazy, for opportunists – and this showed in its work”
Kahn’s account is unforgiving, and he further draws upon the Allied intelligence services viewing the Abwehr’s capabilities “almost humorously.” A particularly damning Allied evaluation of all the Abwehr’s D-Day reports found that only 8% were accurate. He further notes that “[Canaris’] paralysis had destroyed his organization. What the Abwehr needed was forceful leadership and managerial flair. It needed a chief who would fight other organizations for the best men instead of allowing his own organization to become a haven for dissidents.” Kahn, in his own book, writes that “His indecision led to professional and personal disaster, one because of inaction, the other in spite of it” as well as saying “even though his secret agency afforded innumerable opportunities, he never conspired to kill Hitler, or even to depose him (at most he sheltered some resistance people).”
Kahn is not alone in his assessment—Canaris’ place in history has been decried by other historians, including Klemens von Klemperer, who said “it can hardly be said that [Canaris] was himself of the Resistance. In his conspiratorial activities he was a very cautious man, always remaining, as one of his close associates attested, ‘the man behind the scenes.’” Again and again we see Canaris labelled as overly pensive, unwilling to take direct action, and incompetent in execution when action was finally taken.
These accusations are short-sighted. They fail to consider the broader picture—and, largely, are contradicted by data from within their own sources. Understanding Canaris’ role in the resistance is difficult. As the head of an intelligence agency, there is a degree of ambiguity and plausible deniability that exists with nearly any aspect of Canaris’ life. Seldom are spymasters who are all they appear to be spymasters for very long, and spymasters who leave detailed paper trails enjoy even shorter tenures. The criticisms seen above can be distilled into several key points: that Canaris was incompetent, that Canaris was overly cautious or unwilling to commit to actual resistance, and that whatever actions Canaris did take were not effective resistance. These claims all approach Canaris from a fundamentally skewed angle and perhaps intentionally overlook evidence that paints Canaris in a far better light.
First is the issue of Canaris’ incompetency. The abject failure of the Abwehr is not something often debated within the historical community; Canaris failed to accurately predict the 1943 landing sites in Operation Torch, and the organization was the laughingstock of the international intelligence community. However, Canaris himself being woefully incompetent is only a fair criticism if one assumes that he was, in fact, trying to succeed at his nominal objectives. A preponderance of evidence suggests otherwise. If his goals were not to run an effective military intelligence service for the Nazis, but to instead hinder the German war effort and broker a favorable peace, Canaris leaves a dramatically different legacy.
Arguing this point requires an analysis of Canaris’ motives and character. Even Canaris’ harshest critics do not doubt that he held anti-Nazi sympathies. While Canaris was a conservative and even a supporter of the Nazi party early on, he quickly developed misgivings following the Canaris patriotism conflicted with his concerns regarding the Fritsch affair, the infamous Kristallnacht pogrom, and the cruelty of war crimes on the Eastern front. Instances of Canaris’ reluctance to go along with the Nazi leadership are numerous. Canaris privately found fellow dissidents and brought them into his inner circle. General Lahousen, a close associate of Canaris’ and a high-ranking officer in the Abwehr, noted after the war that “I had received instructions from Canaris not to admit to his office in Berlin any National Socialist. I was also instructed, whenever possible, not to admit any Party members or officers sympathizing with the Party to high positions in my section”. In their first meeting, when Lahousen greeted Canaris with the obligatory Hitler salute, Canaris responded by smiling silently and bringing Lahousen’s arm down. Perhaps that small interaction exemplifies starkly the difference in resistance philosophy espoused by Canaris as compared to the brasher, more dangerous (but nonetheless valiant) actions taken by other members of the resistance. When Lahousen did the same upon entering the office of Canaris’ right hand man, Hans Oster, Oster reacted more openly: he “laughed loudly and, unguarded as ever, cried, ‘No Hitler salute here, please!’” His fellow conspirators also attested to his integrity as events unfolded, rather than after the war’s end: Hassell wrote on 7 August 1939 that “Nothing is to be hoped from the generals. Let’s not even talk about Keitel; even Brauchitsch is in the hands of the Party. Only a few have kept clear heads: Halder, Canaris, Thomas”. Even before addressing his acts of direct resistance, the amount of evidence supporting Canaris as an anti-Nazi is staggering. His contemporaries almost unilaterally agree on Wilhelm Canaris’ disgust for the Nazi party and Adolf Hitler personally (even David Kahn noted that Canaris refused Hitler’s dinner invitations—an invitation that was not ever meant to be refused.)
The issue of Canaris’ incompetence then becomes murkier—willful incompetence is a fairer claim than outright ineptitude. Another key consideration is that the Abwehr did not report to Hitler, but rather to the military service chiefs. As such, Canaris was able to avoid directly obeying Hitler to some degree, and was capable of offering a refuge for anti-Hitler dissidents who were required to perform military service.Canaris’ critics acknowledge this only begrudgingly: Von Klemperer, who argues that Canaris never took a direct hand in the conspiracy, almost paradoxically notes that he served “as a shield for his younger lieutenants in the Abwehr who were of a very different temperament.” It is highly dubious that someone unskilled at spy craft could have “shielded” the Witerstand from 1938-1944 as effectively as Canaris did. Canaris earned Hitler’s ire over his failure to accurately predict the details of the Allied invasions in North Africa and Italy, but in terms of shielding the resistance movement, Canaris kept himself and other collaborators out of the death camps for years. Even after several members of the inner circle were indicted, the man investigating Canaris said he was “amiable and co-operative,” as well as “convinced of his sincerity in desiring the cases to be properly investigated.” Those who condemn Canaris for no “open resistance” seem to be arguing in bad faith, saying that Canaris was not bold enough to be anything more than a “shield,” but not acknowledging that bold leaders of assassination plots generally do not keep said plots concealed from the authorities for very long. In fact, it was only with Italy’s defection in 1943 that the investigator, Manfred Roeder, began to suspect Canaris’ true loyalties. Unless one is willing to attribute Canaris’ survival to pure luck, it seems that some degree of competence was necessary for him to remain in his position for that length of time, particularly given the number of associations the man held with known resistors. Canaris was no fool. For an individual who hamstrung the hiring of Nazis in the Abwehr while actively promoting and recruiting members of the conspiracy, charges of incompetency seem reductive, if not entirely baseless.
This is not to argue that the entire Abwehr was working towards resistance. The nuance of Canaris’ situation, facing death if he took too drastic a step and moral bankruptcy if he took no action at all, is often not explored properly by Canaris’ critics. Primary sources corroborate both the incompetency of the Abwehr and Canaris’ work towards meaningful resistance. One post-war interrogation log has a United States interrogator note that an Abwehr agent operating in Spain codenamed “FUCHS” was “one of the least efficient members of that organization. At no time were his responsibilities and field of action commensurate to his rank.” While accusations of Canaris himself as inept are incorrect, as I have argued previously, he saw no reason to create an efficient intelligence service whose operations could have been seized by the Nazi Party at any moment. Canaris also could not afford total incompetence—as mentioned earlier, his failure to predict the North African and Italian landings drew closer scrutiny from Hitler, jeopardizing the plot to depose the Reich leadership and sue for peace. A debriefing log from 1946 notes that Canaris reprimanded an Abwehr agent who failed to bring back a defected agent into the fold. Canaris knew that, at some level, he had to maintain the appearances of a loyal, efficient organization, even as he actively sought out anti-Hitler agents, including Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Other interrogation logs corroborate the idea of the Abwehr serving as a quiet haven for anti-Hitlerites: “KURRER is another of those Abwehr employees who were never sympathetic to the Nazi system”, it being apparent to Allied interrogators as early as 1946 that the Abwehr was not a bastion of Nazi loyalists. Other interrogation logs note that “Most of the agents were not patriotic; some of them became agents merely to get an easy position or to escape being sent to the front”. The Abwehr was almost inarguably the worst intelligence agency of the Second World War. However, Canaris’ critics would do well to consider his misgivings about the Nazi regime and the significant resistance elements within the Abwehr leadership before attributing the inefficiencies of his organization to his personal character.
Numerous other sources point to Canaris’ strong anti-Nazi principles, which further proves critiques of his incompetency are not looking at Canaris through an intellectually honest lens. If we judge him as a loyal Hitlerite, he was undoubtedly a terrible spymaster. As someone walking the line between active resistor, seemingly loyal servant, and conflicted patriot, these claims become much less convincing. Canaris repeatedly and demonstrably showed his moral character in resistance to the Nazi regime. After the war, Canaris’ predecessor in the Abwehr, Admiral Patzig, recalls a conversation he had with Canaris in 1937, where Canaris referred to the Nazi leadership as “all a bunch of criminals.” Canaris voiced his concerns on numerous other occasions, saying that the Kristallnacht pogrom “degraded Germans”. When he brought misgivings to his superior, Wilhelm Keitel—both moral qualms of the Einsatzgruppen and reports that a land war in Russia was likely to be unwinnable—he was repeatedly silenced, ignored, or threatened with imprisonment. Canaris once remarked that the German invasion of Poland in 1939 was the end of Germany. Behind closed doors, he told his inner circle that a German victory would be worse than a German defeat. When Patzig asked as to why he did not then abandon his post, Canaris said his leaving would cede all of Germany’s intelligence agencies to Reinhard Heydrich and Heinrich Himmler’s SS.
Canaris’ critics seem to criticize him at once for not being a loyal enough German to do his job well while also doing too little in the way of meaningful resistance. Again, these critiques of Canaris do not consider the full situation that Canaris occupied, the obstacles he faced, or the challenges of his office. Open treason against the state was not possible for Canaris. In his position, Canaris did as much as he was capable. As discussed earlier, Canaris was well aware that his dismissal would be turning over the Abwehr to Reinhard Heydrich’s SD division of the SS—which was indeed exactly what happened following the dissolution of the Abwehr and the firing of Canaris in 1944. Canaris’ dismissal from the Abwehr marked the end of the Abwehr’s ability to function as a nexus of anti-Hitler conspirators, and was the penultimate strike to the Witerstand movement before the conspirators were largely arrested. Unlike the SS, the Abwehr was nominally apolitical and did not require a loyalty oath to Hitler. Had he done nothing more than withhold the manpower and resources of the Abwehr from the SS for years, it would constitute significant and measurable resistance on its own. Had Heydrich not been forced to jockey with Canaris for the resources, manpower, and experience of the Abwehr, the ability of the Reich to coordinate its domestic and foreign intelligence, as well as to apply greater resources to the persecution of Jews, would have been drastically increased.
Beyond the threats to his personal safety that conspiring against Hitler entailed, there were strategic constraints on Canaris’ ability to act decisively against the regime. These can be distilled to three primary limitations: the necessity of staying in good graces with Hitler, the fickle cooperation of the military’s leadership, and the lack of sufficient support overseas. Numerous sources detail Hitler’s increasingly strained relationship with Canaris as the war progressed. The inefficiencies of Canaris’ agency took their political toll. It was clear that the Abwehr was not an effective organization, and Hitler was not a man known for his patient and forgiving nature. Hitler at one point physically assaulted Canaris when the admiral delivered an accurate—and therefore, defeatist—report about the progress of the war against the Soviet Union. Walter Schellenberg, a prominent SS agent, notes the following in his post-war interrogation:
“Since the failure of the Abwehr in December 1942 to give warning to the Higher Command of the imminent landings in North Africa, Canaris’ position had been one of extreme delicacy. Some nine months later, actually in September 1944, changes in the personnel in control of the Abwehr had taken place but despite this effort at re-organisation, at the end of Jan 1944 Hitler ordered the dismissal of Canaris”
To maintain his agency to resist—in both senses of the word—Canaris at times had to not exercise that agency. This is the conundrum of all double agents, although Canaris was not a double agent in the traditional sense. He maintained his loyalty to Germany, if not to the regime. Others in similar positions felt these constraints as well. A fellow collaborator noted:
“Schacht is a minister, Canaris chief of Military Intelligence. Is it not possible, from these positions, to know what’s going on? What a disconnect with reality. To be a government official, in these days, means nothing more than being relatively protected from hearsay, and for a man as suspect as Schacht, it means he will only be kept from being detained a little while longer than the rest of us.”
Any number of disgraced ministers in the regime—Hjalmar Schacht, Rudolf Hess, or even Herman Goering in the final days of 1945 could attest to the fragile and mercurial nature of their positions. No one was insulated from Hitler’s wrath or guaranteed some form of protection should the politics of their position turn awry. Canaris was keenly aware of this. Given the stakes of losing the Abwehr to Heydrich, any conspiratorial action warranted careful consideration.
The second primary limitation to Canaris’ ability to act against Hitler was the military. The military’s oath of loyalty to Hitler personally made recruiting generals into any conspiracy difficult, as it required not only treason, but to go back on their personal sworn word. Military cooperation was further dissuaded by Hitler’s early and seemingly miraculous victories, which impressed greatly upon many in the military. Gisevius, a fellow resistance member, noted at the Nuremburg Trials:
“After the fall of Paris, our group [the Witerstand] had no influence for months. Hitler’s success deluded everyone, and it took much effort on our part through all the channels open to us to try at least to prevent the bombardment of England. Here again the group made united efforts and we tried, through General Thomas and Admiral Canaris…to prevent this disaster.”