Hitler's peace

The Abwehr was Germany’s oldest secret service and had existed since the time of Frederick the Great. The word Abwehr translates as “defense” but was taken to apply to military intelligence in general, and the so-called Ausland Abwehr, or foreign intelligence department (the AA) in particular. Reporting directly to the High Command of the German army, the AA had, so far, resisted absorption by Kaltenbrunner’s Reich Security Office, the RSHA; but Canaris wondered for how much longer he could maintain that independence in the face of recent failures.

The first came in 1942. An operation, code-named Pastorius, had landed eight AA spies in the United States. Things went disastrously wrong when two members of the team betrayed the others to the FBI. Six good men went to the electric chair in August 1942, and Roosevelt had not only confirmed their death sentences but reportedly joked about it, expressing his regret that the District of Columbia did not hang its capital prisoners. That disaster had been followed quickly by the AA’s failure to detect the Red Army’s buildup of troops in the Stalingrad area, and a third gross failure came when it was taken unawares by the Anglo-American landings in North Africa, in November 1942. Meanwhile, elaborate and expensive undertakings aimed at fomenting anti-British uprisings in India, South Africa, and Afghanistan, as well as anti-Soviet revolts in the Caucasus, had all come to naught. The most recent disaster came in April 1943, when two senior members of the AA were arrested by the Gestapo for malfeasance, currency offenses, and undermining the war effort. It was only thanks to Himmler (and, it was strongly rumored, the Fuhrer himself) that Admiral Canaris had managed to avoid a more serious charge and to retain control of his near discredited department.

Discredited perhaps, but the AA was not without an extensive network of spies, many of them working in the Reich’s diplomatic missions abroad as well as in von Ribbentrop’s Foreign Ministry on the Wilhelmstrasse. As a result, Canaris knew all about Agent Cicero and the forthcoming Big Three Conference in Teheran, although nothing at all of Schellenberg’s Operation Long Jump. He also knew the substantive part of a secret conversation that had taken place at the Wolfschanze more than a week before between Hitler and Himmler. This morning, he had summoned to the bunker he now treated as home only those officers from the AA and the Wehrmacht whom he regarded as above suspicion. The topic was assassination.

His office was furnished and decorated in much the same fashion as the office on Tirpitz Ufer had been: a small desk, a larger table, a few chairs, a clothes locker, and a safe; on his desk stood a model of the light cruiser Dresden, on which he had served during the Great War, and a bronze trio of three wise monkeys; on the walls were a Japanese painting of a grinning demon, Conrad Hommel’s full-length portrait of the Fuhrer-the canine-minded Canaris always thought it made Hitler look like a little dog-and a picture of General Franco. Canaris was well aware that this was an odd juxtaposition of portraits: despite Franco’s fascism and Spain’s civil war debt to Germany, he and Hitler disliked each other intensely; Canaris, on the other hand, had nothing but the greatest warmth and admiration for the people of Spain and their leader, having spent a great deal of time in the country before the war.

The admiral stood holding one of the dachshunds as the meeting convened. He was a small man, just five foot three, with silver hair, and quite round shouldered, which lent him an unmilitary bearing. Wearing a naval uniform and surrounded by much younger, taller officers, Canaris looked more like a village schoolmaster waiting for his class to settle down behind their desks.

He put his dog on the floor, took a seat at the head of the table, and immediately lit a large Gildemann cigar. Last to enter the bunker with its steep A-shaped roof (so designed so that bombs would slide off) was “Benti” von Bentivegni, an equally diminutive officer who was of Italian descent, but whose monocle and stiff manner marked him out as an almost archetypal Prussian.

“Close the door, Benti,” said Canaris, who disliked the way every time someone entered the bunker the wind blew a handful of leaves in through the steel door. Dead leaves were all over the carpet and were easily mistaken for dog turds, so that Canaris was constantly thinking that Seppel and Kasper had disgraced themselves. “And come sit down.”

Von Bentivegni sat and began fixing a cigarette into an amber holder. Canaris pressed a button underneath the table to summon the orderly. The next moment the internal door to one of the connecting tunnels opened and a corporal stepped into the room, carrying a tray bearing a coffeepot and several cups and saucers.