Hitler's Spy Chief (10 page)

In this moment of twilight the officer corps rallied. In Kiel, a naval officer by the name of von Loewenfeld began secretly gathering officers into a network of self-protection which could, when the moment arrived, restore discipline in the navy. This movement, which included distinguished submariners with whom Canaris was on close terms, inevitably attracted him. At the same time, however, Canaris also found himself in touch with the social-democrat Gustav Noske, whose aim was to draw the teeth of the Communist insurgents and establish a more moderate, albeit socialist, authority. Bearded and belligerent, Noske had a natural grasp of the equation of power and was determined to consolidate his position by exploiting his links with the military. This he could do only with the help of officers who knew how to handle the unruly ‘people's naval units', nominally under his command. Canaris, aware that order could only be restored by a strong personality, was impressed by Noske and, after a meeting, offered some support.

Meanwhile, in early January, a Communist putsch led by Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg – revolutionaries known as Spartakists – had once again exploited mutinous sailors, this time to pave the way for
a Soviet-style republic. The sailors from the so-called ‘People's Naval Division' had occupied the Wilhelmstrasse and broken into the Chancellery. In many streets Spartakists had set up barricades with machine guns. A few weeks earlier the first Soviet congress, perhaps inspired by its temporary refuge in the imperial stables, had demanded the abolition of Germany's armed forces. This was a radical step and a challenge to the traditional elite of Germany; but it was not all the two agitators wanted. Liebknecht, in a pamphlet, had attacked the arms industry, placing all society's ills at the feet of the merchants of death. He was in favour of entirely disbanding Germany's arms trade which, he maintained, was part of an international arms trade ring dominated by a handful of powerful capitalist figures, whose only driving force was profit rather than patriotism. This rang alarm bells in many quarters, not least among the great German industrialists for whom the spectre of Communism taking over their factories had, a few months earlier, been a factor in ending the war.

The army, however, was not going to comply with its extinction so easily. The terrified socialist chancellor, Friedrich Ebert, had turned to the army as the only credible force to support his administration. In return for this support, the civil administration would impose order and outlaw anarchy. The army now called for this agreement to be honoured. Ebert looked for a man the officer corps trusted and found a minister of national defence in the guise of Noske.

To add to this combustible mix, a figure from Canaris' past in Spain had chosen to arrive in Germany a few weeks earlier. This smartly dressed gentleman, wearing the buttonhole ribbon of the Légion d'honneur, was Basil Zaharoff.
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Appalled at the apparent success of Communism in Germany, a country where he had maintained substantial armament interests, and no less concerned by the direction of Liebknecht's agitation, he found Noske and Canaris in Berlin. No record of his conversation with Canaris has survived, but an aide-memoire, which Zaharoff addressed to a colleague of Canaris', noted:

‘The immediate problem is to counteract the Bolshevik propaganda, which deliberately seeks to make mischief so that all forms of arms trade are controlled or disbanded. Speak to Canaris about Liebknecht; the latter should be in no position to talk further by the end of the year.'
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Zaharoff's wishes appear to have been conveyed at a most opportune moment and his relationship with Canaris, begun in Spain a few years earlier, seems to have consolidated. Noske's
Freikorps
(Free Corps) of officers and volunteers, supported by the army, dealt with the insurgents vigorously, storming the stables and arresting Liebknecht and Luxemburg on the night of 15 January. They were taken to the Eden Hotel, where the headquarters of the Guards Cavalry Division had been established under General von Hoffmann, and operations against the rebels were being directed by Captain Waldemar Pabst. Canaris was appointed liaison between the Guards Cavalry and the navy. Pabst and Canaris hit it off, the former later calling the latter ‘My best man'. Canaris returned the compliment, describing his time in the Frei Korps as ‘those wonderful days'.

For Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, however, time was running out. For Pabst, as for most of the officer class, these two were the human expression of all they detested in Communism. Luxemburg's shrill and harsh voice, which it was said had even caused members of the Soviet Politburo to wince, was, as one officer described it, a ‘perpetual insult to civilised Germans.'
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The two were subversive, foreign (Luxemburg was a Jewish Pole), rootless and fanatic. Pabst was determined to liquidate them as soon as possible. A guard was detailed to escort them to the Moabit prison and shoot them on the way when ‘they tried to escape'. There are several versions of what happened next. An official statement declared ‘Karl Liebknecht was shot while trying to escape and Rosa Luxemburg was killed by an unknown person while being taken to prison.'

In fact, Liebknecht, already suffering from wounds inflicted by the crowd near the Hotel Eden, was shot by his escort, Horst Pflugk-Hartung after the car stopped for ‘a repair'. Luxemburg was shot earlier, near the
hotel, but Vogel, the soldier commanding her car, lost his nerve and dumped the body in the Landwehrkanal, where it was not found until May. With these macabre and brutal moves in the cold January night air, Pabst's and Zaharoff's aims had been realised.

Canaris, meanwhile, was ordered to Bavaria to compile a report on civil defence movements that were being organized there. At least three writers on Canaris (Abshagen, Buchheit, Brissaud) put this trip to Bavaria before the murders of Luxemburg and Liebknecht. Canaris himself always denied any complicity in the crime but, at that stage in his life, it is hard to imagine he would have felt regret at the death of the two. His relationship with Noske would have depended on a ruthless approach to them. Noske, later questioned on the murders by his anxious comrades, replied: ‘You are like old women. War is War! You were not even there.'

Moreover, Canaris – thanks to his time in Spain – had become a willing if junior partner in the international arms ring that Liebknecht had denounced. His brother Carl, now with the armaments firm of Thyssen, would later become director of Krauss-Maffei, the manufacturer of German tanks to this day. Canaris could scarcely have operated so effectively in Spain without it, and this ring, as Zaharoff's career so vividly illustrated, operated on the basis of more complex loyalties.

It is beyond any doubt that Canaris knew the two were murdered, not least because the officer who ordered his journey to Bavaria was his old friend and comrade, Pflugk-Hartung, the main protagonist of the events of the night of 15 January. It is hard not to see Canaris' trip to Bavaria as an attempt to distance him from the murders, though as will be seen they would cast a long shadow over his future career. Canaris' exact involvement may never be fully explained, but he was an accomplice and his right wing anti-Communist credentials were vividly forged by his connection, however shadowy, with this event.

For the next few months, however, his life was one of careful and constructive alliances. As liaison officer with the Guards-Cavalry, as a
significant voice at the Admiralty, above all as the confidant of Noske, he enjoyed insights that gradually made him a key observer of that most important fault-line in post-war Germany, the interface between politics and the military. At the same time, he managed to find time to track down his love of three years earlier, Erika Waag, in Pforzheim, and within two days the couple were engaged. With all the passion that romance against the backdrop of political unrest can engender, this must have been an absorbing time, but Canaris' sense of his own mission, then as later, never allowed him to be ruled by matters of the heart.

His mission in Bavaria completed, he returned to Berlin to find his friend Pabst under investigation by a military tribunal looking into the deaths of Liebknecht and Luxemburg. Vogel, who had driven Luxemburg, had been arrested; while shortly afterwards, his accomplice Pflugk-Hartung was also placed under arrest. A full trial now appeared inevitable.

Canaris visited the prisoners and briefed them on their defence, rehearsing with them every detail so that no clue could be traced to his friend Pabst. Canaris also explored the possibility of helping the officers escape abroad with the help of money and false papers. Already at this stage, Canaris was a versatile exponent of the art of subterfuge and deception.

In the event the officers were acquitted, except for Vogel, who was sentenced to two years for ‘failure of discipline and abuse of power.' But he did not remain in prison for long. On the afternoon of 17 May, a young lieutenant, announcing himself as Oberleutnant Lindemann, arrived at the guard room of the Moabit Prison with instructions, signed by the highest judicial authority, to transfer the convict to another prison. In a few minutes both men had disappeared. Both the documentation and the Oberleutnant Lindemann were fakes. In a few hours, Vogel was safely over the frontier in Holland. ‘Lindemann' meanwhile, if Pabst is to be believed, reverted to his real identity: Canaris.

The removal of a prisoner, by one German officer impersonating
another, equipped with a forged release order signed by the chief military prosecutor, was even by the standards of the time a highly unconventional event. Unsurprisingly, the authorities demanded an explanation and a new inquiry was established to work out how Vogel could have escaped. Arrests were made of suspects within his immediate circle and one of those was Canaris. But after eight days in custody, he was brought before a military tribunal consisting of several officers, most of whom had, in some way, been themselves involved in instigating the entire affair. Canaris was released, his reputation among the military higher than at any time hitherto. Here was the man whom right-wing politicians and soldiers could trust for missions involving subtlety and subterfuge. Now thirty-three years of age and shortly to be married, he was the man whose name would be discreetly mentioned when officers gathered to discuss how they could restore Germany to her former glory by ‘breaking the rules'.
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Unsurprisingly, it was perhaps only a question of time before another political intrigue enveloped him. This time the intrigue came firmly from the ranks of the right and would set him against his old patron, Noske. The punitive terms of the Treaty of Versailles were rejected by the officer corps and the desire of the government to sign inevitably led to friction. Into this explosive atmosphere the Allies threw a grenade, in the form of a list of 800 ‘war criminals' whom they demanded to be handed over. As the list included members of the German royal family, Admiral Tirpitz, Ludendorff and Hindenburg and practically every important leader in German public life during the war, the note provoked outrage.

Supported by Ludendorff (in the shadows), Wolfgang Kapp, a pale bureaucrat from East Prussia, surrounded by a motley group of officers, staged a putsch aimed at restoring Germany to her former feudal glory and repudiating the Versailles treaty.

Faced with the choice of supporting his fellow officers or Noske, Canaris chose the former, but a general strike called by Noske paralysed the
rebels and much of the Reichswehr remained aloof. Expecting a heroes' welcome, but greeted with hostility, the Kappists quickly crumbled. Kapp himself crept out of the Chancellery he had arrived at three days earlier in top hat and tails, wearing a trenchcoat and trilby. Most of the leaders went into exile in a wave of similar low-key and furtive departures.

Within two days the dream was over and Canaris found himself once again under arrest. He had, however, played both sides in the drama well, even if he had miscalculated the finale. This time, a spirit of consensus -remarkable for the times – prevailed. The government saw little point in being vindictive, as it would need the support of the officer class. On their side, the officers realised that they could achieve far more by working through the republic rather than against it. Thus, there were no courts-martial or firing-squads. Noske was replaced as minister by Otto Gessler, and the rounded-up conspirators were released, though each one was now subject to judicial investigation for their role in the coup. Canaris, however, as a relatively junior officer, escaped any serious censure. Moreover, Gessler needed help with the navy which once again had shown itself to be bitterly divided at the time of the putsch, with ratings and noncommissioned officers disarming the officers and taking over command with alarming ease.

Posted to Kiel on 23 July, Canaris was given the task of assisting in some restoration of normality to what had become a demoralised, and in many ways paralysed, naval station. With the sinking or handing over of many ships to the Allies, naval personnel were now mostiy based on land. Unsurprisingly, discipline had collapsed, important installations were abandoned or under the slightest of guard; naval stores, including munitions, plundered and lost. Every ship, meanwhile, had to be approved by the terms of the Versailles treaty, while the loss of the Bay of Danzig to Poland, together with that country's imminent creation of a navy, reinforced the sense of hopelessness that prevailed. If the Ost See station was to play the important role of linking the thousands of Germans stranded
in East Prussia by the terms of the Versailles treaty with the rest of Germany huge progress would have to be made

Canaris and his fellow officers were undaunted by the task. Gradually discipline was restored and the natural talent of the Germans for organisation was harnessed to restore order and regulation. Each week, Canaris would lecture the ratings, detailing the progress made and how everyone in the service had a role to play in rebuilding the navy. This was unconventional by the standards of the times, and progressive. Also, with his undoubted talent for persuasion, Canaris was able to put his experience to good use to secure ample provisioning in adverse circumstances. By March the following year, the Ost See Squadron was a functioning entity made up of four capital ships and nearly a dozen torpedo boats.