Hitler's Spy Chief (22 page)

Though some have argued that the generals were ‘star-gazing',
57
there is extensive and consistent evidence from both sides that the plans for the coup were well-advanced.
58
As well as the determined military plans, the coordinated actions of Halder and Witzleben, sympathisers in other parts of the government apparatus were on the alert. In the foreign ministry, side arms were being distributed to supporters.
59

An awful calm hung over the roofs of the Bendlerstrasse on the afternoon of 14 September, the date selected to announce Operation Green, the invasion of Czechoslovakia, which would be the signal for the Generals to act. But the afternoon passed without incident and by dinner Canaris knew why. He was sitting with Lahousen, Piekenbrock and Groscurth when a message came to him from the war ministry. Chamberlain had announced he intended to fly to Berchtesgaden to discuss a solution to the Czechoslovak situation. Lahousen recalled how the Admiral quite lost his appetite and laid down his knife and fork.

At that time, as Chamberlain's secretary Lord Dunglass
60
noted ‘statesmen did not fly to meet each other.' Chamberlain had never flown before. His journey was ‘novel, daring and spectacular'. He flew with no agenda, no interpreter and no detailed brief. This strongly suggests the event of his flight being the purpose as much as the talks that followed it. The search for peace may have demanded such unconventional
behaviour, but it had also, indeed, been essential for him to fly out if the generals' plan was to be forestalled and Hitler prevented from returning to Berlin and certain arrest. Henderson had, as instructed, prepared the visit in great secrecy, not least with regard to the Foreign Office officials who would normally have been involved in the planning for such a trip and who were conspicuously left out.

These factors suggest that the kernel of Kleist's message, ‘his warning and offer', as Kleist confided to Colvin, was not an entirely negligible factor in Chamberlain's calculations. Even Wheeler-Bennett, no friend of what he called the ‘mythology' of the German opposition, notes: ‘There is evidence indeed that plans which had existed for a putsch had been abandoned at the time of Mr Chamberlain's first flight to Germany.'
61
However, he insisted that only the ‘flimsiest of evidence' offered support for the idea that Chamberlain forestalled the generals: a point of view fashionable at the time he was writing, shortly after the war, but belied by the consistent testimony of witnesses on both sides: Gisevius, Halder, Kordt, Colvin, Bartlett and others.

Certainly Vernon Bartlett, one of the newspaper men who accompanied Chamberlain to Munich, was approached by a former acquaintance on the general staff who told him that Chamberlain's decision to meet Hitler had spared the Führer and his gang from immediate arrest.
62

David Astor would later write that the failure to act on the Kleist disclosures was ‘the saddest missed opportunity of the whole hellish experience leading up to World War Two.'
63

‘What! He … visit that man?'
64
Canaris exclaimed. He rose from the table utterly distracted and ate no more dinner. Half the world may have been rejoicing, but the other half, including Hitler's intelligence chief, the Reich's leading banker Haljmar Schacht
65
and many other prominent Germans were horrified. Operation Green was postponed, and with it the opposition generals and their units in Potsdam and elsewhere had no choice but to stand down. Canaris was experiencing a sensation few spy
chiefs enjoy. He had opened his hand to the British and they had politely listened, but the result had been neither support nor cooperation but a betrayal in substance, if not in detail, of his entire stratagem. Given Henderson's almost pathological, though honourable, determination to avoid war with Germany and to see the positive side of Hitler, it is not improbable that in arranging Chamberlain's visit so rapidly and secredy he obliquely impressed on the Führer his knowledge of Hitler's vulnerability to the generals and the need to act swiftly.

Both Chamberlain's message to Hitler, noting ‘I shall be ready to travel as of tomorrow morning' and Hitler's immediate acceptance, imply a mutual understanding that the stakes on a personal plain were high. Canaris could have been forgiven if his deep knowledge and admiration of the British Empire took something of a knock that afternoon. Anglo-German intelligence cooperation had always been a desired objective, but the chief of the Abwehr had not envisaged quite such a response to the Kleist visit. He had underestimated Chamberlain's determination to do a deal with Hitler. But there were other disturbing thoughts. Did forces in Britain in some subtle way want a war with Germany? Did they fear a restoration of the monarchy and the generals who would prove no less menacing to the balance of power? Were fate and destiny, as Canaris often later remarked to his officers, not to be cheated by the sincere attempts of men of good will to save Germany and Europe from what was coming? Was some dynamic now forcing events to run out of the control of even the statesmen and spy masters? Truly the road to hell appeared paved with good intentions. Canaris' subde mind would no doubt explore every theme and variation that evening, but however he looked at it, one conclusion was inescapable: Kleist's mission to London had been a mistake. From an intelligence point of view, he had misread London's intentions, an unforgivable error. The admiral excused himself from his section chiefs and went early to bed.

*
Of some concern to Canaris would have been information linking him to other intelligence chiefs, notably in Hungary and the Baltic States, who were members of secret societies outlawed in the Third Reich. Since the eighteenth century the Austrian service had traditionally close links to such organisations and like any other service kept personality files on the intelligence officers of neighbouring countries.

*
The letter was delivered to Kleist via Fabian von Schlabrendorff, a lawyer in the Abwehr service.

*
Henderson had had a German governess and preferred speaking German to English when addressing Germans.

CHAPTER EIGHT

LINES OF COMMUNICATION

A Europe divided is a common house at odds with itself
.

LORD HALIFAX
1

Chamberlain's visit to Berchtesgaden not only deprived Germany of the chance of an ‘internal solution', it also stiffened those around Hitler who believed England would never fight for the cause of central Europe. If Canaris had misread the intentions of London, Ribbentrop had been proved all too accurate. The parvenu wine merchant, whose distorted views of England, invested with the prejudices of his wife and his own unhappy time there as ambassador, moved swiftly to reassert himself in his guise as the Führer's only ‘England expert'. Canaris, however, with his naval background of respect for England's power and strategy, was convinced that war over Czechoslovakia was inevitable.

On 28 September, Canaris outlined his fears of a conflict with France and Britain to Keitel
2
but once again Chamberlain announced his intention to fly to Germany to negotiate. It is important to remember that Chamberlain's actions had the unreserved support of the entire cabinet, including Duff Cooper.
3
The Munich agreement that followed was the natural and logical outcome of a British government determined to avoid war. Could a prime minister, responsible for his country's survival and aware of its weakness and lack of preparation, have chosen to risk an immediate war?

As Czechoslovakia was dismembered with the connivance of Britain and France, the Czech leader Benes could rightly say: ‘I would happily sacrifice my country for world peace but you have only made inevitable world war.' However, the German occupation of Prague had not caused a war. France, which together with the Soviet Union was a guarantor of Czechoslovak independence, acquiesced; Hungary, despite Canaris' warnings to Admiral Horthy, and Poland both joined the undignified scramble for Czechoslovak territory. Hitler not unnaturally hoped that these spoils would have a positive effect on the Polish government. With the fate of Czechoslovakia before it, Poland would see that its interests lay in alliance with Germany. After all, only four years earlier, Germany had proposed a joint German–Polish army to be commanded by Marshal Pilsudski to partition western Russia.
4

But the scales had fallen from Chamberlain's eyes in March 1939. With the occupation of Prague, a complete betrayal of the Munich agreement, the idea of doing a deal with Hitler was no longer a publicly acceptable strategy, although in private it remained the British government's priority. Public opinion was incensed, and as Hitler ratcheted up the pressure on the Poles over Danzig and the Polish Corridor, Chamberlain panicked and the government agreed to what would in modern diplomatic parlance be called a ‘line in the sand', offering Poland a historic and, given England's traditional reluctance to become embroiled in continental affairs, unprecedented guarantee to Warsaw in the event of her being attacked. As anyone familiar with the Polish mentality would know, this guarantee would be vigorously interpreted and amounted in Warsaw's eyes to a blank cheque. Such a move was unlikely to encourage the Poles to compromise. In turn a new momentum began to invest German diplomacy.

For some months, the Abwehr had been pursuing a ‘forward' policy in sub-Carpathian Ukraine, or Ruthenia. Ruthenia was seen by some members of Canaris' staff as the ‘Piedmont' of the Ukraine which could be
encouraged to unite a larger nation then partly in Polish hands. This view was, needless to say, encouraged by officers of the Abwehr with an imperial Austrian background, notably Colonel Eugen Konowalez, a former
k.und k. uhlan
officer. Canaris himself was, at the best of times, no great enthusiast for the Ukraine, though he realised its value as an adjunct to the mobilisation of German minorities. However, in the early spring of 1939, he became aware of another check to his department's Ruthenian enterprise, namely the sudden deference being displayed towards the interests of the Soviet Union.

In the February of 1939, Churchill was invited to lunch at his friend Leo Amery's house at 112 Eaton Square. It was a lunch
à quartre
, the other two present being Leo's son, Julian, and Count Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi, the founder of the Pan-Europa movement dedicated to the cause of European unity. Coudenhove-Kalergi was one of the most remarkable men of his time. The son of an Austrian diplomat who had married a Japanese lady-in-waiting while
en poste
in Tokyo, he was, according to Julian
5
someone who knew the ‘strings in the background' pulling the forces of history.

Leo had to leave the lunch early. As he got up from the table at the back of the house, he whispered to Julian: ‘Make sure Winston has enough to drink.' As the conversation over cigars and brandy in the darkened dining room ranged across the European situation, the mood was intense as Churchill expanded on his close relationship with the Soviet ambassador, Maisky. Through a rapidly thickening fug of Cuban tobacco-smoke, Coudenhove-Kalergi listened attentively before asking a question which stopped Churchill in his tracks.

‘You do realise, Mr Churchill, that Hitler and Stalin are just about to conclude an agreement?'

‘What?', a startled Churchill exclaimed: ‘Impossible … I see the Soviet ambassador Maisky every week. I would have known. Who told you such a thing?'

Here Coudenhove-Kalergi paused before, with a conspiratorial smile, he replied: ‘A source in the Vatican.'

This silenced Churchill. Not many things silenced him. After a few moments staring into the cigar smoke he quietly remarked: ‘The Vatican? Then it must be true.'
6

As all those around the table knew, the Vatican had and always would have a habit of being very well informed. The news was all the more surprising given the fact that Moscow was at that time in negotiations with London. In fact Coudenhove-Kalergi's source in the Vatican had been tipped off by an Abwehr contact, an Austrian, possibly even via Lahousen.
7
Canaris knew of Coudenhove-Kalergi's connections with the Vatican and his relationship with Amery.
8
At the same time he was keen to continue the ‘conversation' with Churchill initiated via Kleist during the summer of 1938. As 1939 progressed, contacts with the Vatican were developed by Canaris even more extensively; assisted by the traditional contacts of the South German Catholic aristocracy, several members of which (for example Marogna von Redewitz) had been or were being drafted into the Abwehr in a substantial recruitment drive.

Though negotiations between Hilter and Stalin were not to be concluded until 24 August there was no doubt that the traditional German ‘eastern policy' of cooperation with Moscow was a painful and disturbing anxiety for those like Churchill whose links and interests with Russia went back many decades.
9
In the coming conflict, the British Empire would need the help of the Soviet Union. Moreover, a German–Soviet rapprochement could only be directed against the West and in particular British overseas imperial interests.

If these thoughts ran through Churchill's mind that sunny but cold afternoon in Belgravia, in the Tirpitzufer on an even colder day, Canaris noted that the Abwehr's Ukrainian operations would have to be scaled down in deference to Soviet–German negotiations.

However, if the Abwehr was playing down the Ukranian card at this
stage for a brief interlude, it was in every other way preparing for the conflict which all felt was now near impossible to avoid. Its budget and manpower were dramatically increased. Its finances would grow to an annual budget, the equivalent of £2,600,000 pounds (current value £5 billion) and there would be more than 30,000 personnel on its books, of whom 8,000 were Abwehr officers.
10
At the same time, as 1939 wore on, Canaris continued to send emissaries to London. Count Schwerin lunched with Menzies and Godfrey, the Naval Intelligence director. Both men asked to be remembered warmly to the admiral.