64 Facts About Wilhelm Canaris

Wilhelm Franz Canaris was a German admiral and the chief of the Abwehr from 1935 to 1944.

Wilhelm Canaris was born on 1 January 1887 in Aplerbeck in Westphalia, the son of Carl Wilhelm Canaris, a wealthy industrialist, and his wife, Auguste.

Wilhelm Canaris believed that his family was related to the 19th-century Greek admiral and politician Konstantinos Kanaris, a belief that influenced his decision to join the Imperial German Navy.

Wilhelm Canaris attained midshipman's rank in 1906, and beginning in April 1907 attended the academic course required of aspiring naval officers.

In February 1909, Wilhelm Canaris received Venezuela's Order of the Liberator from President Juan Vicente Gomez.

The circumstances are not known, but may have included Wilhelm Canaris facilitating discussions between representatives of the German government and then-Vice President Gomez in early 1908.

Wilhelm Canaris was then given intelligence work as a result of having come to the attention of German naval intelligence, possibly because of his clever escape from Chile.

German plans to establish intelligence operations in the Mediterranean were under way and Wilhelm Canaris seemed a good fit for that role.

Wilhelm Canaris ended the war as a U-boat commander from late 1917 in the Mediterranean and was credited with a number of sinkings and even came to the attention of the Kaiser.

Wilhelm Canaris was a member of the military court that tried and in many cases acquitted those involved in the murders of the leftist revolutionaries Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg for their involvement in the Spartacist uprising.

Wilhelm Canaris was appointed to the adjutancy of Defence Minister Gustav Noske.

When that project was shelved by Vice Admiral Adolf Zenker in favour of a more co-operative relationship with the British, Wilhelm Canaris began making deals.

Unfortunately for Wilhelm Canaris, he made some enemies within Germany during the course of his secret business and intelligence negotiations, partially as a consequence of the bankruptcy incurred by the film-maker Phoebus Film in his dealings with Lohmann.

From his new post, Wilhelm Canaris haplessly discovered that Lohmann's "investments" had cost upwards of 26 million marks in total losses.

At some point in 1928, Wilhelm Canaris was removed from his intelligence post and began two years of conventional naval service aboard the pre-Dreadnought battleship Schlesien and became captain of the vessel on 1 December 1932.

Wilhelm Canaris was enthused by that development and was known to give lectures about the virtues of Nazism to his crew aboard the Schlesien.

Detached from the previous government of Weimar, whose republican principles never appealed to Wilhelm Canaris, he looked to the Nazi Party to shape the future.

Hitler proselytised a return to world-power status, which for Wilhelm Canaris implied constructing a super-fleet, by the preservation of a virtuous soldier-based society, a "community under arms".

Many of his friends joined the Nazi crusade, and Wilhelm Canaris "likewise came to be regarded as an enthusiastic National Socialist".

Wilhelm Canaris's aspirations were quickly being realized, and in his zeal for his new job, Canaris paid "little heed" to the warnings from Patzig about the "fiendish" machinations of the party and its police organs.

On 1 January 1935, a little less than two years after Hitler had taken control of the German government, Wilhelm Canaris was made head of the Abwehr, Germany's official military intelligence agency.

Records suggest that Wilhelm Canaris was approved in his role as Abwehr chief as a compromise candidate since the commander-in-chief of the German navy, Admiral Erich Raeder, a staunch navy man, was initially opposed to his appointment but caved when Patzig manipulated the situation by suggesting an army officer for the post if Wilhelm Canaris was rejected.

Heydrich was suspicious of Wilhelm Canaris, referred to him as a "wily old fox" cautioned his colleagues never to underestimate the man.

Just a few weeks into his role as head of the Abwehr, Wilhelm Canaris met with Heydrich and some of his officials to parcel out intelligence operations between the Abwehr, Gestapo, and SD.

In May 1935, Wilhelm Canaris first donned the uniform of a rear admiral, a promotion that coincided with his responsibility for shielding Germany's burgeoning rearmament program from enemy counterintelligence agents, which meant a significant expansion of the Abwehr.

Between 1935 and 1937, Wilhelm Canaris expanded the Abwehr staff from a mere 150 people to nearly 1,000.

Wilhelm Canaris met Heydrich again on 21 December 1936, and the two men signed a document, which came to be known in their orbit as the "Ten Commandments".

Germany provided aid to Franco's side, with Wilhelm Canaris using his contacts at England's Vickers armaments manufacturing company to help supply the Nationalists with weapons.

One month before Hitler's annexation of Austria, known as the Anschluss, Wilhelm Canaris put the Abwehr into action and personally oversaw deception operations, which were designed to give the Austrians the impression of what appeared to be substantial German military preparations for an impending act of aggression.

At that development Wilhelm Canaris began spending more and more time in the company of Hans Oster and began formulating ways to forestall or prevent a European war.

Wilhelm Canaris absorbed as much of the Austrian intelligence service as he could into the Abwehr while he avoided those who were already Nazi converts.

Wilhelm Canaris was disturbed by Hitler's intention to absorb Czechoslovakia as were others, who feared another European war.

Wilhelm Canaris was relieved that war was averted and sought to re-establish contact with Hitler since many of the Abwehr reports submitted on the Sudeten crisis had proven to be grossly inaccurate.

In January 1939, Wilhelm Canaris manufactured the "Dutch War Scare", which gripped the British government.

All of that information was false but was intended by Wilhelm Canaris to achieve a change in British foreign policy.

Wilhelm Canaris was successful, and the "Dutch War Scare" played a major role in causing Chamberlain to make the "continental commitment" by pledging in February 1939 to send a British ground force to the defence of France in the event of war.

In 1937, Canaris created a new office of air intelligence in the Abwehr and assigned Hauptmann Nikolaus Ritter of the Luftwaffe to be the chief of I Luft.

Wilhelm Canaris instructed Ritter to contact a former spymaster living in New York whom he knew from the First World War, Fritz Joubert Duquesne.

Wilhelm Canaris provided the Abwehr a large drawing of the bomb-sight and later went to Germany to work on and finish an improved version.

Wilhelm Canaris witnessed examples of the war crimes committed by the Einsatzgruppen of the SS, including the burning of the synagogue in Bedzin with 200 Polish Jews inside.

Wilhelm Canaris visited Hitler's headquarters train on 12 September 1939, then in the Province of Silesia, to register his objection to the atrocities.

Keitel warned Wilhelm Canaris to go no further with his protest, as the detailed plan of atrocities came directly from Hitler.

Wilhelm Canaris began working more actively to overthrow Hitler's regime but he co-operated with the SD to create a decoy.

Wilhelm Canaris was promoted to the rank of full admiral in January 1940.

Keitel reminded Wilhelm Canaris that he was thinking in terms of "chivalrous war", which did not apply, since it was "a matter of destroying a world ideology".

Wilhelm Canaris worked to thwart the proposed Operation Felix, the German plan to seize Gibraltar.

The head of MI6, Stewart Menzies, who shared Wilhelm Canaris' anticommunism, praised Wilhelm Canaris' courage and bravery at the end of the war.

Conversations from the period between Franco and Wilhelm Canaris remain unknown, since none were recorded, but the Spanish government expressed gratitude to Wilhelm Canaris's widow by paying her a pension.

In June 1942, Wilhelm Canaris sent eight Abwehr agents to the East Coast of the United States as part of Operation Pastorius.

In 1943, in occupied France, Wilhelm Canaris is said to have made contact with British agents.

Wilhelm Canaris wanted to know the terms for peace if Germany got rid of Hitler.

Heydrich requested for Wilhelm Canaris to put the Abwehr under SD and SS control.

Wilhelm Canaris appeared to retreat and handled the situation diplomatically, but there was no immediate effect on the Abwehr for the time being.

Wilhelm Canaris had established another two links with MI6, one via Zurich and the other via Spain and Gibraltar.

Wilhelm Canaris intervened to save a number of victims from Nazi persecution, including Jews, by getting them out of harm's way.

Wilhelm Canaris was instrumental, for example, in getting 500 Dutch Jews to safety in May 1941.

The evidence that Wilhelm Canaris was playing a double game grew, and at the insistence of Heinrich Himmler, Hitler dismissed Wilhelm Canaris and abolished the in February 1944.

Wilhelm Canaris was released in June 1944 to take up a post in Berlin as the head of the Special Staff for Mercantile Warfare and Economic Combat Measures, which co-ordinated the resistance to the Allied economic blockade of Germany.

Wilhelm Canaris was arrested on 23 July 1944 on the basis of the interrogation of his successor at Military Intelligence, Georg Hansen.

Schellenberg respected Wilhelm Canaris and was convinced of his loyalty to the Nazi regime even though he had been arrested.

Two of the men under suspicion as conspirators who were known in Wilhelm Canaris's circle shot themselves, which incited activity from the Gestapo to prove he was at the very least privy to the plan against Hitler.

Wilhelm Canaris was placed on trial by an SS summary court, presided over by Otto Thorbeck with Walter Huppenkothen as prosecutor.

Wilhelm Canaris was charged with treason, convicted, and sentenced to death.

Together with his deputy general, Hans Oster, the military jurist General Karl Sack, the theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and military officer Ludwig Gehre, Wilhelm Canaris was humiliated before witnesses.