Wilhelm Canaris (1 January 1887 – 9 April 1945) was the chief of the Abwehr intelligence service of Nazi Germany from 1935 to 1944. He took part in the clandestine German Resistance movement against Adolf Hitler, and he was executed on 9 April 1945 for treason.
Biography[]
Wilhelm Canaris was born on 1 January 1887 in Dortmund, Westphalia, German Empire. He claimed that he was a descendant from the Greek naval hero Constantine Kanaris of the Greek War of Independence, but his family was originally the Canarisi family of northern Italy. Canaris joined the Imperial German Navy and fought in World War I at the Battle of Coronel, Battle of the Falkland Islands, and the Battle of Mas a Tierra off South America against the United Kingdom's Royal Navy. Canaris was fluent in Spanish and was allowed to go to Chile after his ship was scuttled in March 1915, and he gained intelligence work in Spain, surviving an assassination attempt by the British. Although he had to fight the British, he had a great respect for the Royal Navy and was fluent in English. In 1917, he returned to service as a U-boat commander, credited with eighteen sinkings. At the end of the war, he helped the Freikorps in putting down communist insurgents in Germany, and he was a member of the court that acquitted the assassins of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. In 1935, Canaris was made the head of Nazi Germany's Abwehr intelligence services despite not being a member of the Nazi Party, and he was promoted to Admiral. Until 1937, he believed that Nazi Germany was the only country that could stand up to the Soviet Union and communism, but as Adolf Hitler's policies became more radical by 1938 he began to change his views.
In 1938, Canaris and General Ludwig Beck were both opposed to the invasion of Czechoslovakia, and he had communications with Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Britain at the start of World War II. Canaris had to witness war crimes such as the burning of the Bedzin synagogue, and he stated that the Abwehr had nothing to do with the persecution of Jews. Canaris helped with getting persecuted Jews into Spain to save them from the Nazis, and he foiled Hitler's plot to kidnap Pope Pius XII by passing the information on to General Cesare Ame of Fascist Italy. In February 1944, however, Heinrich Himmler had Hitler dismiss him from the Abwehr as his suspicions of Canaris' double agency grew, and after the July 20 bomb plot Georg Hansen confessed that Canaris was the spiritual leader of the conspirators. On 9 April 1945, Canaris, Hans Oster, and other German Resistance members were hanged naked at the Flossenburg concentration camp as the war drew to a close.