Wilhelm Canaris is not a name that carries the same infamy as Himmler, Göring, or Goebbels. Yet he served as Hitler's chief spy, and his story is one of the most contradictory of the Nazi era.
Canaris was a spy who worked in the shadows, and both his career and his ideology remain murky. Historians often portray figures of the Third Reich in stark black and white. Canaris, by contrast, is a figure full of gray areas.
He was skilled at hiding his secrets. No one on either side seems to have known exactly what his motives were. He held a prestigious position and wanted to keep it, while at the same time finding some of what he saw morally revolting.
To understand him, one has to start with the intelligence service he led. Canaris was head of the Abwehr, Germany's military intelligence organization. Its reach extended into military sectors around the world, making him a major player.
The Abwehr ran agents abroad and gathered military and technological secrets. It also ran counterintelligence, infiltrating enemy spy units to destroy evidence and spread disinformation. Its tools included specially designed spy radios, dropped by parachute because smuggling them in was difficult.
The radios were built like tanks and were hard to destroy. They were labeled in English to disguise their origin. If an agent was caught with one, it could be traced back to Germany.
Canaris spent time in Latin America before World War I. When the war began, he was on a ship fighting the British there. He served in the German navy, first as an intelligence officer on a cruiser and later as a submarine commander. He was captured and held on an island in Chile, but because he spoke Spanish, he escaped and made his way back to Germany.
After the war, like many German veterans, he returned to a country he no longer recognized. Germany was struggling with the aftermath of defeat, and political violence was common. Communism had emerged in Russia, and people were trying to establish a Soviet-style republic in Germany.
Canaris was an old-style monarchist. He hated the communists and feared they would seize power in 1919. He helped organize a fighting force to oppose them, part of what became known as the Freikorps.
The Freikorps were right-wing paramilitary groups of former soldiers who saw themselves as counter-revolutionaries. They used deadly force to crush the communist uprising. In January 1919, Canaris and the Freikorps themselves tried to overthrow the German government, but they failed.
This was a man unafraid to use violence to get what he wanted, and he was far from alone. The Freikorps laid the groundwork for the rise of the Nazis and their armed wings.
In March 1933, Hitler and the Nazis completed their rise to power through a brutal campaign of anti-Semitic and anti-communist propaganda and deadly violence. Canaris supported Hitler. He favored a strong leader who would eliminate what he saw as the weakness of the Weimar democracy.
Canaris became one of Hitler's loyal followers and soon positioned himself with the skills needed to serve the Third Reich. Between the world wars, he worked on secret plans to build weapons Germany had been forbidden to produce under the Treaty of Versailles. He even oversaw a secret plan to build U-boats in Japan.
In 1935, Canaris was rewarded for his long service with the post of head of the Abwehr. He was one of the few German officers who could speak Spanish, a skill that would matter greatly.
The Spanish Civil War saw fascist forces under General Franco attempt to seize power in the mid-to-late 1930s. Fighters from around the world poured into Spain, and Germany was no exception. Hitler wanted to help Franco and ensure that if anyone won, it would be a fascist, not a communist.
Canaris organized intelligence and military support from Germany and Italy for Franco. He coordinated arms deliveries to the Nationalists and worked on spying on enemy ships and supply networks. His work helped entrench Franco's repressive regime, which would hold Spain hostage for nearly 40 years.
Even as the Spanish war raged, Canaris was planning for a much larger conflict. The Duquesne spy ring was a bold plan named after its chief, Fritz Duquesne. It involved about 30 agents placed in key tactical locations across the eastern United States, including shipyards and important offices.
Their goal was to gather intelligence on the United States and military secrets and send it all to Berlin. They were tasked with identifying industrial and institutional targets vital to any American war effort and planning sabotage.
But a double agent recruited by the FBI infiltrated the network. Harry Sawyer, a naturalized American of German descent, prevented secrets from reaching Canaris. The FBI dismantled the Duquesne ring. Thirty-three people were arrested, 19 pleaded guilty, and 14 went to trial. It was an early use of secret film footage as evidence.
The attempt ultimately failed, but it showed how audacious Canaris was. The stakes in the spy game were about to rise much higher.
In 1939, the Abwehr under Canaris helped create a pretext for Hitler to invade Poland while claiming self-defense. Canaris's service provided Polish uniforms, weapons, and identity cards to SS men, who used them to attack a German radio station on the border with Poland. The Abwehr bore part of the responsibility for this false-flag attack.
The Germans claimed the raid was a Polish act of aggression, giving Germany a reason to go to war. The ruse worked. The German people gave Hitler their blessing to send their sons off to another war. The invasion also escalated Nazi actions against Jews.
Some historians have claimed Canaris was responsible for the idea of forcing Jews to wear a badge. On September 1, 1941, the Nazis issued a decree requiring all Jews over the age of six in Germany and occupied territories such as Poland to wear the yellow Star of David.
Many say Canaris proposed to Hitler that Jews be required to identify themselves with a yellow star. At the Jewish Museum in Berlin, original badges worn between 1941 and 1945 are on display. One belonged to a family living in Berlin: Georg Marcus, his mother, and his brother Erich. They had to buy the badges themselves for 10 pfennigs.
Nazi policy toward Jews was not only about stripping them of rights but also of identity. Everyone was required to wear the same yellow star on their chest. Removing a person's identity has a profound psychological effect and may have undermined their ability to resist.
There is a strange paradox in the badges. The Nazis claimed they could recognize Jews at a glance and presented them as a separate racial group. But when it came time to enforce it, Jews had to mark themselves. The yellow badges served as an introduction to deportations and as a tool of them.
It is revolting to think that Jews had to pay for what was essentially their ticket to a concentration camp. But was Canaris really the inventor of the notorious badge?
Canaris's biographer, Heiko Suhr, says the claim is not true. The story has circulated in German and British books for about 50 years and is repeated constantly, but it is not a German invention. Marking Jews with badges is a very old European custom dating back to the Middle Ages.
Forcing Jews to wear the yellow Star of David had historical precedents in medieval Europe. But there were no examples of forcing Jews to wear the yellow Star of David until the Nazis revived the practice. Someone in the party clearly did the historical work of reviving a Jewish badge. The question is who.
In 1941, the idea of introducing the Star of David for Jews in Germany was the brainchild of Goebbels himself. Joseph Goebbels was Hitler's notorious propaganda minister and perhaps his most fanatical and anti-Semitic follower. For years, Goebbels had pressured Hitler to approve a mandatory identifying mark for German Jews.
Goebbels asked his right-hand man, Leopold Gutterer, to organize a kind of conference with nearly all important institutions in Germany. Gutterer was a loyal party member since 1925. They discussed whether a Jewish star could be added, and Gutterer steered the discussion.
According to Suhr, Gutterer proposed reviving the centuries-old badge to identify Jews living in the Reich. He pushed Goebbels, and Goebbels pushed Hitler to introduce the Star of David. Gutterer survived the war, was sentenced to hard labor for his war crimes, and died in 1996.
The yellow badge later became perhaps the most famous and notorious symbol of oppression of all time. Where did the story that Canaris was responsible come from? In 1949, Gutterer stated in court that Canaris had pushed Hitler to introduce the Star of David. He successfully shifted the blame onto Canaris.
One of the most recent biographies of Canaris, written in 2006, repeated that story again. But the evidence is clear that Canaris did not introduce the Jewish star. He had nothing to do with it.
The implications are enormous. By blaming the head of the Abwehr, Gutterer misrepresented events. But why Canaris? Canaris engaged in many forms of resistance. He defied one of the main principles of Nazi policy: the extermination of the Jews.
In the late 1930s, as Hitler led Germany toward a new war in Europe, Canaris feared for the nation's future. He was a man of broad perspective, described as an enigmatic figure, and he was skeptical about the chances of war. Would Germany win?
Canaris was not alone. He was one of a number of senior Nazis with deep doubts about Hitler's increasingly aggressive stance in Europe. The situation peaked in 1938 when Hitler threatened to invade Czechoslovakia.
Canaris was in contact with people involved in coup preparations. In 1938, a secret group led by General Hans Oster, who served under Canaris in the Abwehr, planned to kill Hitler and seize power to prevent the invasion. It became known as the Oster conspiracy.
But before they could act, Hitler struck the notorious Munich Agreement with Britain and France, which allowed him to begin annexing Czechoslovakia without firing a shot. The coup plans were quietly shelved, and Canaris continued to lead the Abwehr.
To be a good spy, one must be able to assume different personalities in different situations. One must be comfortable lying and able to absorb multiple personas and remember which one applies when. Most people find this extremely difficult and exhausting. Canaris was again head of German intelligence.
Canaris opposed Hitler's drive toward war for strategic reasons. He did not believe Germany was ready to win a war. His opposition did not stem from moral concerns. It was about strategy more than anything else.
But that view would change weeks after fighting began. Shortly after the war started, Canaris visited German soldiers in Poland and saw what was happening on the ground. He witnessed the killing of Jews and other civilians, and it clearly showed him how this war would be fought.
In the city of Będzin, Canaris encountered German soldiers forcing 200 Jews into a synagogue and then setting it on fire. The experience shook him deeply. He suffered severe depression over the war crimes and became highly doubtful about Germany's future.
This pushed Canaris to intensify his efforts to undermine Hitler's plans. He engaged in many forms of resistance, ranging from subtle obstruction to networks that concealed the activities of people involved in resistance plots. He provided information to the other side, to the British.
It was never clear whether the British would act on what he told them, because they could have believed Canaris was sending false information. During the war years, Canaris lived a strange double life.
On one hand, he still plotted deadly operations against the Allies. Operation Pastorius was an Abwehr plan to recruit Germans who had lived in the United States, smuggle them in by submarine, and task them with sabotage and bombings. The plan failed. The agents were caught and tried.
At the same time, Canaris had a hand in a radically different conspiracy. He played a direct role in efforts to help Jews leave Germany in 1942 and 1943.
In the summer of 1942, Canaris helped cover up a plan, with the help of two other Abwehr officers, to rescue 14 Jews from Berlin. The Gestapo was told these Jews were needed for a secret mission to Latin America. In reality, the Abwehr worked with Swiss officials to allow these Jews to enter Switzerland and escape deportation and certain death.
Canaris, a high-ranking Nazi surrounded by fierce anti-Semites, had done something incredible. The head of Nazi military intelligence was actively saving Jews from being deported to their deaths. This must be weighed when assessing Canaris, because it challenged one of the main principles of Nazi policy: the extermination of the Jews.
Why would Canaris help Jews, the primary target of Nazi hatred? The atrocities in Poland were certainly a major factor, but there may have been others. Prominent figures of the Third Reich knew that Canaris's daughter had special needs. That is horrifying.
In 1942, he began helping Jews escape the Third Reich. He lived in Berlin's Zehlendorf neighborhood, where some of the Jews he helped flee to Switzerland were his neighbors. His home was also near that of the fearsome SS intelligence chief Reinhard Heydrich.
Heydrich was an old colleague of Canaris and was notorious even among his Nazi peers for his cruelty. Hitler himself once described Heydrich as the man with the iron heart. Canaris and Heydrich were not friends, but they had to meet socially, and their wives had to meet socially too.
It was extremely difficult for Canaris to deal with Heydrich. Canaris's daughter told Suhr that her mother, Canaris's wife, had to come to tea with Mrs. Heydrich while they both knew that Canaris's daughter had special needs. Mrs. Heydrich said, "We had to kill all people with disabilities."
It must have been terrifying for Canaris and his wife to hear that. One of the most evil men in the Nazi system was aware that they had a child with special needs. In the eyes of the Nazis, especially Heydrich and apparently his wife too, that child should have been killed.
Canaris was fully aware of the Nazi regime's policies toward the disabled, and this added a moral dimension to his growing doubts about the system. Not far from the family home was a church, another anchor of Canaris's life. He was a religious man, and his faith mattered greatly.
Faith, family, and the massacre in Poland pushed Canaris to change course. But even as he did, rumors of his subversive activities spread. In early 1944, SS chief Heinrich Himmler convinced Hitler to dissolve the Abwehr. Canaris was no longer a spy.
A few months later, a group of Nazi officers tried to assassinate Hitler with a bomb. It failed. Canaris was implicated in the plot. In fact, he could not have taken part in the assassination attempt, but it was a good pretext for Hitler to get rid of someone he had come to see as a thorn in his side. Canaris was arrested.
Wilhelm Canaris was convicted of high treason and executed at the Flossenbürg concentration camp on April 9, 1945. It seems to many that he was very brave in what he did, trying to resist and also to save lives.
Was he a heroic figure? In the view of historians, no officer of the Third Reich can be described as a hero. What is the difference between Oskar Schindler and Canaris? Schindler risked his life. Canaris did not really. He enjoyed a strong position within the Nazi state. He did not risk his life; he used the power his position gave him.
That is a compelling argument. But before a final judgment on Canaris, it is worth considering what daily life and resistance were like under Nazi rule. At the University of Munich during the Third Reich, a student resistance group known as the White Rose opposed the Nazis, mostly through intellectual means and especially by distributing leaflets.
They did not engage in armed resistance, but they tried to spread ideas opposed to the regime. The siblings Hans and Sophie Scholl placed their leaflets beside the doors here and then went up to the second level. They threw the leaflets down, and they landed on the lobby floor. Someone sympathetic to the regime saw the leaflets and reported them. Both were executed for the leaflets they distributed.
They protected perhaps a larger group of people by focusing attention on themselves, and that of course destroyed the group. It is easy today to ask why more people did not resist the Nazis, but dictatorships are extremely difficult to resist. Seven people had to pay with their lives for freedom, and there is a memorial here. It is always decorated with white roses. People bring roses with them.
That gives hope, because it is evidence that people value those killed by the Nazis and admire them. And if someone admires others, they will learn from them. It is still hard to believe they were just students trying to express free speech, distributing leaflets, and they lost their lives for it. It shows how astonishingly brave they were to resist the Nazis.
How do Canaris's acts of resistance compare with the noble heroism of the White Rose? It was time to decide where the head of Nazi intelligence belonged in Hitler's most-wanted list.
He was complicit with the regime. He did not have to do the work he did. Did he do everything he could as a committed resister in his position? The journey gave a new understanding of Canaris's many plots to destabilize the world and pave the way for World War II. It also revealed his remorse and his attempts to correct at least some of his mistakes.
Canaris's story is full of twists and turns and is hard to grasp. One has to start with the bad things he did. He was drawn to Hitler, to someone he believed embodied strong leadership and even authoritarian, educational leadership. The relationship between Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco in Spain was pivotal, and Canaris was directly involved in supplying weapons from Germany and Italy to the fascists in Spain.
How important was intelligence gathering during World War II and the role Canaris played as Hitler's chief spy? It may not be as important as a thriller writer would like. It is an exciting and fascinating part of the war, but the actions of Canaris and other intelligence chiefs did not radically change the course of the war.
He can be punished severely for his complicity with the regime. He did not have to do the work he did. No one would have executed him if he had not done the job. One thing to consider is that he was a trained spy. He was very comfortable lying and able to show whatever face was necessary for the situation.
Yet he did oppose some of the regime's worst acts and was somewhat aligned with the resistance. He was utterly disgusted by what was happening to Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland through mass shootings and the early stages of genocide.
But how effective was his resistance against Hitler? If you were one of the Jews he managed to save, you would say it was very effective. He found creative ways to save Jews given the powers available to him. Did he risk much to save Jews? Did he act in ways that might have brought him unwanted attention? Did he do everything he could as a committed resister in his position? Perhaps not.
Let us face facts. He would not be made Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem for helping save Jews during the war. But there is certainly enough sense of white in all these gray shadows around Canaris that he cannot be described as a hero, but certainly not as entirely evil either.
These shades of gray make Canaris an exceptionally difficult figure to pin down. He played an active role in igniting a war that brought misery and death to millions, but it is impossible to ignore his secret resistance campaign.
The most interesting question is whether he even deserves a place in this group of cards. Personally, one view is that he does not. There are 52 worse Nazis in the Third Reich who deserve a place on this platform. So he would not be put in this set at all.
Another view tends to agree but has enough doubts to at least rate him at the bottom of the deck, at number 45. A third view disagrees. The success of the Nationalists in Spain was a central goal of the Nazi state, and Canaris was an essential element in that success. The Franco regime lasted decades longer than the Nazi regime. So he deserves to be in this ranking, at number 52.
This was certainly the hardest one to assess. He was involved in resistance to Hitler, which may be a positive side. However, he remained part of the Nazis. There are still things he did that must be taken into account. So he should not be excluded from the card set entirely.
Number 45 is a little high, because there are certainly a number of Nazis who come before him. So the agreement lands on number 52.
Wilhelm Canaris admired Hitler and devised a deadly intelligence network that destabilized Europe. But during the war, he turned against the Nazis and actually helped Jews escape to safety. For that reason, he ranks 52nd on Hitler's most-wanted list.