HITLER'S SPY CHIEF: The Wilhelm Canaris Mystery

by Richard Bassett

Wilhelm Canaris was appointed by Hitler to head the Abwehr (the German secret service) eighteen months after the Nazis came to power. But Canaris turned against the Fuhrer and the Nazi regime, believing that Hitler would start a war Germany could not win. In 1938 he was involved in an attempted coup, undermined by British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. In 1940 he sabotaged the German plan to invade England, and fed General Franco vital information that helped him keep Spain out of the war. For years he played a dangerous double game, desperately trying to keep one step ahead of the Gestapo. The SS chief, Heinrich Himmler became suspicious of the Abwehr and by 1944, when Abwehr personnel were involved in the attempted assassination of Hitler, he had the evidence to arrest Canaris himself. Canaris was executed a few weeks before the end of the war

Genres: History, Biography, Nonfiction, World War II, Espionage, War, Military Fiction

319 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Lewis Weinstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am reading Bassett piece by piece, corresponding to where I am in writing the sequel to A FLOOD OF EVIL. It is an excellent portrayal of a complicated man with whom my fictional character Berthold Becker has a complicated relationship. I am intrigued by the fictional possibilities for Berthold suggested by these extracts from Bassett's book ...

... Menzies (head of British intelligence) reference to the conversation Churchill ‘initiated’ suggests that a meeting between Canaris (head of German intelligence) and Churchill cannot entirely be ruled out, perhaps through Hillgarth in Spain

... If Britain was ever to break with Soviet Russia it would need Canaris and the German opposition as an ally

... the dialogue (between Menzies & Canaris) was important not only for the strategic insights it gave London. It was essential if there was to be any chance of that Anglo-German ‘understanding’, which Menzies hinted was the motivation for Canaris’ actions

These quotes are all in reference to the possibility, allegedly pursued by Canaris, of an alliance between Germany and Britain against Russia, to become effective after the overthrow of Hitler and the Nazi regime by an opposition group of which Canaris was a vital part.

[Jacob · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read a decent bit about WWII. I knew of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris and the Abwehr but really nothing of substance. In that regard this book was very interesting. I am skeptical of some of the conclusions drawn, but to Bassett's credit whenever he is connecting the dots with only circumstantial evidence at hand, he informs the reader of such.

The overall thrust of the book was that Canaris was a good Christian and a loyal patriot who, after an initial honeymoon with the Nazi regime, fought it by every means at his disposal, sometimes even overtly passing critical info to his enemies that meant the death of German soldiers.

And that is my biggest complaint about the book. No journal of Canaris survives and for that matter, very few records that give personal insight into this man's thoughts (his family fled to Spain and refused to ever talk about the Admiral or the war). Consequently I would have preferred a more neutral book regarding his motives, with the focus instead being on his actions (much how the early part of the book was with his growing up and WWI naval service). Assigning intent to one of the key figures of the Nazi regime and repeating the Mantra of a good man stuck in a bad organization may actually do more harm for the point than if the biography had just been told.

Still, if you are interested in this era, there were several insights into the lead up to, and the war itself, that are worth the read and as I mentioned the early years of his life are some of the most interesting to read about in the book. Not a spectacular biography but enjoyable nonetheless. I give it a solid three stars.

[JD · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very specific history book and the reader has to have a lot of knowledge of the Nazi regime's political and intelligence background, especially all the main characters as there are a lot of names dropped in the book. The book is also full of assumptions from all the "what ifs" during Canaris' time as head of the Abwehr. I was hoping for a good biography of Canaris, especially from his service in World War 1, but this was not the book for it.

[Chris D. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Did you ever read a book where you felt the author was talking to someone else? That you entered into the discussion without knowing all the facts and the author went right on writing for someone else. This feels like one of those books as Bassett assumes you know all the background of his subject and did not feel the need to explain.

Wilhelm Canaris was the head of Abwehr, a military intelligence unit of the Nazi Government of the 1930's and the 1940's. He apparently was a religious man who tried to temper some of the more extreme measures of Hitler and his henchmen. He also was in constant communication with spies from other countries especially the British.

This not very good biography begins strong with the early life of Canaris and his adventures in World War I however after that beginning, we learn very little of the personal life of Canaris and the book is weakened by the lack of primary sources and Bassett relies on secondary sources and lots of speculation.

I never really got a handle on this work, and even though I enjoyed many parts of it, in the end is was just okay.

[Kate Forsyth · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wilhelm Canaris was the enigmatic head of the Abwehr, the German secret service. He was executed for treason in a Bavarian concentration camp only days before the Allies’ reached the camp and liberated it. He had been involved in the failed assassination of Hitler immortalised in the movie ‘Valkyrie’, but many researchers believe that he had been working to undermine the Third Reich from before the beginning of the war. This detailed and in-depth examination of his life and work is not for the casual reader (it assumes a wide knowledge of the Nazi era and the Valkyrie plot), but it is utterly fascinating and convincingly argues that Canaris had been feeding secrets to the British for many years and was in fact protected to some extent by them.

[Olethros · Rating 3 out of 5]

-Sumergiéndose en los enigmas no siempre se logran resolver.-

Género. Biografía (más o menos).

Lo que nos cuenta. Acercamiento a la figura del Almirante Wilhelm Canaris, centrado en la época en la que llegó a la cúspide de la inteligencia militar alemana, una personalidad rodeada de misterio en cuanto a su verdadera contribución a la guerra de inteligencia y contrainteligencia que se libró, entre bastidores, durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial.

¿Quiere saber más de este libro, sin spoilers? Visite:

http://librosdeolethros.blogspot.com....

[Tim Pendry · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a book with insights but, I am afraid, too few insights to recommend it to the casual rather than the specialist reader who may be unable to see through the speculation and the implicit ideological positioning.

However, when we reach 1938, there is a subtle shift in the book from a narrative well told to yet another strike in the never-ending war betwen revisionist conservatives and the mainstream over the conduct of events after Munich.

Interestingly, given the bias, the story has the odd effect of giving some credence to the old Marxist theory of national socialism as the last refuge of a late imperial military-industrialism faced by the Bolshevik threat.

Canaris was not an aristocrat but he was part of a bourgeois class that had imbibed aristocratic values of war and duty (values that, of course, would have been completely alien to actual aristocrats at any time before the rise of the middle classes).

What we see here is an old story revisited almost by accident - one of classes who are perfectly prepared to go to war with one another as competing nation states for advantage but who rapidly collaborate internationally when a threat to their hegemony appears from 'below'.

Our current condition is not too dissimilar from this although the ruling elite is more likely to be represented by a graduate euro-socialist or bureaucrat in an international agency or NGO than an officer in the imperial navy or a landed gentleman running a ministry.

The evidence for this class interpretation lies everywhere in the first third of the book and beyond, pehaps most poignantly in the strange appearance of at least three Jews at different times as agents of German and national socialist espionage!

There is Canaris' undoubted involvement in protecting the cold blooded murder of Luxembourg and Liebknecht and there is his personal network of alliances with arms manufacturers and bankers that played a critical role in Nazi support for General Franco.

Indeed, one might reverse the usual claim that Hitler supported Franco in an ideological drive to expand international fascism into a far more realistic model where conservative nationalists inveigled the Nazi into supporting one of their own.

Whoever Canaris was by 1938, he was a ruthless player who may have pragmatically felt (like many German conservative nationalists) that the nasty little oik running the country was dragging the country to disaster but who was, equally, no stranger to criminal acts.

The revisionism that fuels the book from this point on seems to be one of the recurrent 'problems' of history where inconvenient truths have to be explained to salvage an interpretation necessary for the self image of a particular element in society.

I am confidently expecting Labour memoirs and historiography to give thoroughly revisionist perspectives in due course on the alleged unwilling complicity of senior Labour left-wingers in the Blair 'regime' and to claim their 'secret resistance'. Ho, hum!

It is true (I think Bassett demonstrates this) that Canaris was horrified by the turn of events within Germany after Kristallnacht. Canaris was not particularly anti-semitic and also understood better than his bosses that the early easy victories of Nazi aggression were not sustainable without some sort of peace with either the Reds or the Empires.

Strategically, Germany can look to the West against the East or look to the East and security and both visions have played their part in German history since Bismarck - as they do 'sotto voce' even today.

Canaris was firmly (remember the violence against the Spartakists) against the East because it was Bolshevik but he may well have had a different view had Russia been Tsarist.

Ideology infected strategy here as elsewhere. Once Germany had bitten off more than it could chew, there was a relatively short period when flexible cynics might have tried to 'do a deal' with one set of enemies in order to crush collaboratively the other.

Bassett concentrates on this 'window of opportunity' but too easily confuses the facts of the matter (the 'is' of the story) with an implied 'ought' - oh how much happier we would all have been if the generals had overthrown Hitler and a strong Germany resisted and beaten Stalin back. Ho, hum again!

Canaris was drawn to circles with a similar conservative anti-Bolshevik view in the West and this undoubtedly drew him into dialogues that any reasonable Nazi (indeed, any reasonable German in a state of war) might reasonably have called treacherous.

It is this treachery that Bassett seems at pains to justify and it is true that all spies are 'treacherous' to a degree in that part of their job is to maintain lines of communication with the enemy - whether IRA or Taliban or 'C' in London - so that deals may be struck later.

Unfortunately, this truth is spun here into something that the evidence simply does not support. Bassett speculates so that we see information that could be interpreted more reasonably in one way being interpreted in another in order to praise the man for the ideological reasons that we will come to.

It is the nature of espionage that we have very little evidence that is reliable and what evidence that we have may derive from a deliberate intent to tell a particular narrative.

Similarly, any dealings with the enemy (the separate peace feelers with London) are part of an elaborate game of maintaining options and advantage in which we simply cannot KNOW what precisely was intended.

Contacts with London could be interpreted in many ways and not all of them treacherous. The treacherous aspects do seem to have been there but it would also seem that senior Nazi figures were well aware of them and even (almost certainly in the case of Himmler) happy to take later advantage if they could.

Moreover, none of the acts that were designed to suggest the back door to London for conservative nationalists need be interpreted in quite so noble terms as Bassett implies. After all, to conservative nationalists sacrificing some of their own hoi polloi might be regarded as a perfectly reasonable price to pay for political advantage,

Similarly, like good philosophers, spies can think two or more apparently inconsistent things at the same time and can over-reach themselves in doing so.

We must remember that this was a man who not merely collaborated with Heydrich, albeit as a bureaucratic rival, but who knew him well before he became a Party figure and who lived next door to the man and spent musical evenings with him.

Canaris' knowledge of the man may have helped to create seriously defensive moral principles in his more conventional Abwehr but it might easily be interpreted that Heydrich's SD was there to 'do the dirty work' so that the old guard could keep its hands cleans.

What I cannot believe is that Canaris was so horrified by what Heydrich represented that he began to 'plot against the regime'. It really is not that simple. And whatever Canaris was, he was a highly intelligent and rational player who loved his career and being at the centre of things.

It is equally probable that, like Gehlen later, he saw the way things were going a bit earlier than most and simply wanted to hedge his bets so that he had a job later. In the end, he miscalculated. It has to be said that he accepted his fate (as far as we can understand) with enormous dignity.

In other words, the 'distance' of complicity and mentality between Canaris and Heydrich is simply not proven but is merely suggested by testimonies that owe a lot to the later need of his officer colleagues in the New Germany to distance themselves from the thugs with whom they had shared power.They are not liars but they are not telling the total truth.

I would have been more inclined to give Bassett, and so Canaris, the benefit of the doubt if there had not been the implicit ideological agenda in the Introduction to the book (and in the closing comments) and which begins to emerge in force in the account of matters after 1938.

Again, we must not go too far. My own view is that Bassett demonstrates sufficiently that Canaris did retain certain standards, did refuse to get down into the mud with his Nazi colleagues, was part of the German nationalist readiness to overthrow Hitler and did undertake a number of highly creditable acts in defiance of Nazi ideology and hegemony.

Where we seem to differ is that all this is not enough to exonerate him or his class because there is enough evidence even in this book that the conservative nationalists only started to take a serious interest in countering national socialism when it looked like defeat might bring crimes to account.

It is true that Canaris wisely saw Hitler's forward foreign policy as potentially disastrous but we should not make too much of this. After all, many loyal Party men (I have been there!) know that their party is heading for a disaster on the logic of the situation but continue to serve the party regardless.

Yes, we have evidence of private horror at Nazi behaviour but much of this is cast in almost aesthetic and cultural terms rather than in terms of the sort of 'outrage' that affects (or infects) contemporary international relations discourse.

The picture that Bassett seeks to paint is one where a noble class of conservative nationalists, implicitly transnational in their acceptance of chivalric values but proudly patriotic, are outmanouevred by a bunch of rabid gangsters and then nobly risk their lives to recover their country from the fiends' coming apocalypse.

This ideology is part of a wider European revisionism that is deeply conservative in mentality. It implies that if only the Catholic Church (Bassett is characteristically kind to the Pope), conservative gentlemen and public servants, especially the military and allied services, had retained power, then all would have been well.

The conservatism comes through even in the rather pointed (and actually true) references of the debasement of the gentlemanly breed of spies by Tony Blair and his 'dodgy dossier'.

One of Bassett's items of evidence for the defence is that Canaris, faced with a similar demand (to that demanded by New Labour) from Nazi officials (to assist the invasion of the Netherlands) simply refused. I am afraid this does not make Canaris 'good' but merely reminds us just how dreadful Blair was!

Canaris is put into the same bracket of honour as 'C' - men of 'service who stood up to politicians and served their country with as much ethical consideration as the unethical trade of espionage permits.

This is, of course, romantic tosh but very much part of the self image of a particular element in the ruling order that will talk of the Christian West around High Table and at conservative European dinner parties much as they did in the age of the Kaiser and Edward.

Now let's put away this propaganda of a revival of a Christian-aristocratic vision of Europe with the politicians firmly under the control of the subtle counsellors in the bureaucracy who rely on the Vatican for moral succour and on an 'ethic of service' to give the masses the administrative rule they require.

In fact, the German conservative nationalists of the interwar period were wholly complicit in the rise of national socialism but were simply incompetent at managing it or in understanding its true nature. Far from effective, they were serially incompetent - no less than their imperial equivalents in the British Conservative Party before 1940.

To this day, Chamberlain's naive and stupid guarantee to Poland in 1939 must rank as one of the most stupid acts in British history - it cost millions of British and imperial lives and lost Britain its already weakening global hegemony.

To have allowed war elsewhere and national feeling (which was strong) to buy time for a major national rearmament programme designed to contain Germany and then ally with the Soviet Union at the 'right time' seems not to have occurred to the confused buffoon surrounded by incompetent 'service professionals'. One thanks someone for Churchill!

As for mainland Europe, the catholics, the aristocracy and the bureaucracy were so blinded by terror of Bolshevism that they gave carte blanche to populist gangsters who would kill their own as much as their enemies and they gave this carte blanche willingly in fear of worse.

Nor were they alone. Mussolini suggested a 'way forward' with his Papal Concordat that horrified his own radical pagan supporters such as Evola. The old revolutionary socialist marched on Rome and then made himself head of the biggest protection racket in history.

Franco was treated as the 'coming man' (and was clever enough not to concede ground to the Nazis) and the Church backed vicious dictators across Eastern Europe and 'quislings' in the West as the Wehrmacht moved towards Moscow.

In one of the silliest analytical tricks of the conservative revisionists, any crime is moderated because conservative nationalists were less anti-semitic than the Nazis - basically, they simply had none of the lust for extermination of their radical cousins.

This is like the justification of the old man bonking a fifteen year old school girl that he is not to be compared with a member of a ring that abuses five year olds - true but it rather misses the point.

Even Hitler compromised with the old guard once he had shown what he was capable of in hitting out at both conservative nationalists and his own 'Left' in the Night of the Long Knives.

Though historians love to suggest that the SS slaughter in 1934 created a sense of terror amongst conservative nationalists, we must not forget that the main purpose of the event was to create an understanding with the new Wehrmacht.

Von Papen himself was held back from the slaughter as a chess piece in case of need. He did not defect and (on the evidence of Bassett) even considered it possible that he might be reappointed Prime Minister by Hitler in order (we presume) to help broker a peace deal with the West against Stalin.

In other words, the conservative nationalists were cowed perhaps in 1934 and came to understand their role as junior partners with the radical nationalist state but they never gave up hope of being senior partners again.

They were still well in play within the system and they never truly revolted except in their own class interest (beautifully recast by the identification of that class and cultural interest with that of their own nation). The self-delusion here is almost magnificent.

Only at the end, to save their own skins for the consequences, not merely of aggression but of gross atrocities unmatched in war since the seventeenth century, did they seek any means possible to counter the decisive statement from FDR that German surrender had to be 'unconditional'.

Bassett seems to dislike this commitment to 'unconditionality' because he continues to have faith in this class and to share their view that the division of Europe between Anglo-Americans and Soviets was an unalloyed disaster.

I do not - not because I like sovietism (on the contrary) but because the true disaster for Europe would have been anything less than a decisive defeat for the undemocratic instincts of the old feudal classes and an opportunity to create new parties and new constitutions for the defeated 'ab initio' and regardless of their much vaunted 'tradition'.

In the end, though much later, Eastern Europe was enabled to join this new model with its own aristocratic and religious machinery collapsed and with traditionalism only able to return as a petit-bourgeois pale simulacrum of its previous claims to power. Even the fascistic Golden Dawn is no Iron Guard.

The real danger for Europe is of a Vatican resurgent (which it has been since its effective claim to have won the Cold War in Europe for the West) backed by a sentimental 'service ethos', to which a certain sort of conservative bourgeois is attracted, in order to control the masses.

This book acts as both a flawed history of an interesting figure in twentieth century history but also as an unintended warning of the new political romanticism that might suggest that a failed ruling order still has something to offer Europe. It does not.

[Mal Warwick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most histories of World War II give the impression that the conflict was a straightforward affair. Whether recounting the story of battles (Stalingrad, Normandy, Midway) or the tales of spies and saboteurs (Britain's SOE, America's OSS, Germany's Abwehr, they tend to draw straight lines from one event to the next. Of course, human affairs are never so simple. History doesn't travel in straight lines. But only in recent years, as classified or hidden files have opened up, have we gained a clearer picture of just how complex and confusing the war was. Hitler's Spy Chief, Richard Bassett's biography of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, director of the Abwehr, makes that abundantly clear. This book reveals that, even today, there is a secret history of World War II that remains to be told.

The name Admiral Canaris is familiar to anyone with even a passing knowledge of World War II. He ran Hitler's Abwehr for a decade, from 1935 to 1944, when he was arrested for his role in the assassination attempt on the Führer and eventually executed. Although I've read a fair amount about espionage in the war, that abbreviated description of the man is most of what I'd known about him before I came across Bassett's book. And what a revelation it is!

Here's some of that secret history of World War II

Here are just a few of the mind-bending disclosures in Hitler's Spy Chief . . .

The hidden meaning of Munich

There is far more to the story about Neville Chamberlain's infamous trip to Munich than is generally known. In the weeks leading up to his meeting with Hitler, Canaris and the German general staff were actively seeking support from Britain to kidnap and imprison Adolf Hitler and head off the war they were certain would come. Their plans were well advanced. However, Hitler "was about to be saved — not by the SS or the Gestapo or Ribbentrop, who had no inkling of the conspiracy — but by the only people who did, the British." Chamberlain announced his flight to Munich, "fully aware that the German leader was almost certainly about to be deposed." The generals were then forced to quash their plan.

A separate peace between Germany and Britain?

In 1940 and again in 1943, Admiral Canaris was actively engaged in efforts to arrange a separate peace between Germany and Britain. He and his British counterpart, Sir Stewart Menzies, "C" of MI6, shared an intense anti-Communism and hoped to unite the West against the Soviet Union. There is strong circumstantial evidence that the two men even met face-to-face in Spain. However, their efforts were frustrated by Kim Philby, the NKVD's man in British intelligence. Philby held a senior position and sidetracked the paperwork that would have moved the partnership further along. As a Communist, Philby regarded the prospect of peace on the Western Front as a nightmare, as it would have freed up German troops to move eastward and threaten the Soviet Union.

Behind-the-scenes efforts for peace

In fact, almost throughout the duration of the war, Hitler and Himmler as well as Canaris were actively involved in peace initiatives. Early in the conflict, they had hoped to reach an understanding with Britain. After all, many Britons, and many in their government, were pro-Nazi. And, in fact, before Winston Churchill had fully gained control of the cabinet "in the strange spring days of May [1940], the British government came close to throwing in the towel." Much later, in 1943 following the Nazis's catastrophic defeat at Stalingrad, Hitler sought to engineer an armistice with the Soviet Union. And even later Himmler kept Canaris in place despite evidence that the admiral was a traitor because his connections with the British might allow Himmler to survive the war. On all sides, there was far more communication across enemy lines than is generally known.

Poorly written, but a well-researched and balanced account

To be sure, Hitler's Spy Chief won no literary awards and never would have. It's poorly written and slow going as a result. In part, that's the result of the author's attempt to describe reality as it unfolded. The cast of characters, already large, shifts often and abruptly. Their relationships were sometimes hard to characterize as either friend or foe; sometimes they were both. But the fundamental problem is that Richard Bassett simply can't write well. He loves long sentences. He wallows in the passive voice. And his syntax is sometimes baffling.

Still, Bassett's account of the life of Wilhelm Canaris is both well-researched and balanced. He neither condemns nor celebrates the man. In fact, he writes, "the temptation to beatify the admiral must be resisted. He was, in his own way, a ruthless exponent of all the techniques of deception, disinformation and other patterns of subterfuge without which no successful secret intelligence organization can exist. He was also for far too long a 'believer.'"

Bassett continues, "It took Canaris slightly longer than many others to see the Nazis for what they really were. But once he became convinced that they were leading his country to ruin, both physical and moral, he never wavered from a policy of systematically undermining the regime from within, and seeking an understanding with the West." And, given what Bassett reveals in his book, that about sums it all up. Hitler's Spy Chief is an excellent opening chapter in the secret history of World War II.

About the author

Here's Richard Bassett's bio on Amazon: "Richard Bassett has worked in the City [of London] for the last fifteen years advising several of Europe's largest companies. Previously he worked in Central Europe for many years, first as a professional horn player and then as a staff correspondent of the London Times in Vienna, Rome, and Warsaw, where his dispatches covered the end of the Cold War and gave early warnings of the impending disintegration of Yugoslavia. He divides his time between London and the Continent." In other words, Bassett is neither an historian nor a working journalist. But the man does have a way with research.

[Francis Drew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well I though this book was excellent. What an interesting man Canaris was, and Bassetts portrayal of him flowed easily for the reader. Outstanding, and on a par with Beevor.

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting stuff. I knew that the Nazi Germany espionage operation was almost comically bad based on a bunch of books from Ben MacIntyre, but I didn't realize that Hitler's spy chief himself was actually anti-Nazi. That's a serious personnel failure on the part of the Nazi organization.

I have often wondered why the Western espionage apparatus seemed super-competent during WWII, but then were suddenly either outclassed or at least evenly matched with the Soviet Union during the cold war. I'm wondering to what degree the disparity is down to "Germany wasn't really trying all that hard."

[Kusaimamekirai · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I die for my Fatherland. I have a clean conscience. I only did my duty for my country when I tried to oppose the criminal folly of Hitler leading Germany to destruction. Look after my wife and daughters” -Wilhelm Canaris shortly before his execution

In many respects, the story of Wilhelm Canaris is my favorite kind of history. He embodies in so many different ways the struggle men and women (powerful or not) of conscience must endure in times of war in deciding whether to keep their heads down and ensure the safety of themselves and their families, or risk their lives for a higher moral or ethical ideal.
Canaris, as the head of the most powerful German military intelligence office, chose to put the welfare of his country above his own ambitions and as a result provided countless instances of vital information to the Allied powers that may have shortened the war if they were more receptive to his outreaches, but still had a material effect on Germany’s ultimate defeat.
Even where he couldn’t have the impact he wished, he tried to do what he could (Canaris was horrified by what was being done to the Jews of Europe and where possible he hired Jews as “spies” and sent them overseas and out of the clutches of the Nazis in addition to refusing to allow his agency to take part in political or civilian assassinations which were increasingly rampant in other agencies).
Some may ask why if Canaris was such a good man he didn’t simply resign. As one of Canaris’s colleagues wrote about him:

“He felt he must remain at his post because that mattered more than his opinion of Hitler or the Third Reich. He felt it was his duty to maintain this powerful organization, the Abwher, with its thousands of agents, its network around the world, and its enormous budgetary resources which he controlled. He wanted it to be identified with a high concept of human rights, of international law and morality”

It’s difficult to think of a historical parallel to someone of Canaris’s stature doing what he did, in the era he did it. That he is a mostly forgotten figure among those who discuss WW2 today is a real tragedy in that when we look for heroes, people of moral courage who are willing to risk everything for what they believed was right, there are few better examples than Canaris.

[Joanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book attempts to piece together a very important part of the history of WWII - the activities of the spymaster of German military intelligence, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris. Canaris was a military man of the old school and despite being enthusiastic about the Nazis in their first years in the 30s, he concluded that they were doing great damage to Germany and that their victory in the war would spell total disaster for his country. In addition to personally helping Jews and others who were in danger from Hitler’s government, he opened channels of communication with the British. As early as 1938, he – along with other high ranking military – created the conditions for an agreement with Britain that would establish a peaceful relationship between the UK and a post-Nazi Germany. During the war, he kept up contacts with the German opposition in the military and among Catholics as well as with the British. At the same time, he brilliantly carried out his intelligence work on behalf of the German state benefiting Hitler’s conquests. For a variety of reasons, the British never took Canaris up on the opportunities he provided for possibly ending the war earlier. The British (and later American) vision of what kind of post-war Europe would serve their own interests could well have led to millions more dying on the killing fields of WWII and in the concentration camps. Finally, as other reviewers have noted, Bassett had to piece together a story without access to still classified British documents related to Canaris. Also, intelligence work – by its very nature – sometimes leaves very few clues. For these reasons, some of Bassetts’ conclusions must be regarded as only very intelligent deductions based a rigorous research in incomplete sources.

[Chad Berke · Rating 4 out of 5]

The book "Hitlers Spy Chief" by Richard Bassett was a good book. This book follows a bright young navy man throughout his naval career and into the ranks to become the head of Hitlers spy organization. The young navy officers name is Wilhelm Canaris.

I thought the book was very well done. However I thought that if you really weren't into WWII and the history of the Nazi's it might become boring. But I really liked the book. Wilhelm Canaris also helped Britain and I quote the abwehr was going to play the role of a most unlikely 'guardian angel' to the British empire"(183). So the whole time the good guys had a leg up on the Nazi's I like it, it was very interesting and informative. It was a nice change from all of the other Nazi books because this guy actually help save some of the Jews. It was also interesting hearing about Hitler trying to get Spain to join him. However after a meeting with Spain's prime minster Hitler Said to Canaris " he was well prepared for that" (154). I didn't realize that Hitler wanted Spain.

I believe that the theme of the book kind of had to do with the good guy vs the bad guy. The antagonist of the whole book is Hitler and the hardcore nazis. And in a was the protagonist is Wilhelm Canaris because he helped out Britain and help keep Spain out of the war and also countless Jews from the concentration camps.

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Overall, this was an entertaining story, but it does not satisfy as a work of history.

Wilhelm Canaris, the protagonist, is a fascinating individual with an impressive array of achievements. Interestingly, as chief of the German foreign intelligence service before and during WW2, there is substantial evidence that he both supported and didn’t support Germany in the war.

Some resolution of this central contradiction is essential. Yet, unfortunately, there is no substantive analysis or investigation of this contradiction in Bassett’s book. Instead it is, so to speak, “just one %}#€ing thing after another” and ultimately unenlightening. For such a fascinating biographic topic this is a real disappointment.

This review is based on the Audible recording.

[Krisley Freitas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sensacional, Richard Bassett conta detalhadamente a “guerra diplomática“ com uma narrativa envolvente que faz você acompanhar os acontecimentos como se não soubesse que Hilter não seria deposto na conspiração de 1938, que Chamberlain assinaria o Acordo de Munique, que as tentativas de assassinatos contra o Führer falhariam...

Fica clara a importância de Wilhelm Canaris tanto para os alemães como para os Aliados, suas decisivas intervenções nas várias tentativas de acordos de paz, na não invasão da Inglaterra, da neutralidade espanhola e o não controle alemão de Gibraltar, vital para o Império Britânico.

Ótimo conteúdo, pouco presente em outras publicações do gênero, peça importante em toda estante de quem gosta de ler sobre o assunto, recomendo.

[Jeff Wombold · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fascinating story about Admiral Canaris and some interesting never known facts about Hitler and Third Reich. You have to pay attention, because this book bounces around a bit and the lists of contacts is hard to keep track of! It is a pity that his plans never came to fruition, as most likely this would have changed history, but what he did was astonishing. A must read for history buffs.

[Mek · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wow book for those passionate about the hidden story of WWII.
I've always tried to read as much documentation and books about the last world war but never bumped into Canaris' real story.

Reading this book helps see things from a very different prospective, and it's mind-blowing the picture depicted about the real involvement and culpability that England had before, during and after WWII

[Dave · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was not able to complete this book. It appeared to me that the book was written for people with an in-depth understanding of the Third Reich, its government and spy organization, and at least a passing knowledge of William Canaris. I do not fit that bill. It also seemed to be written from a definite point of view. I had no way of following that point of view or judging its veracity.

[Marty Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

An amazing story very well told. Find out how WWII could have been avoided or shortened.

[Vic Lauterbach · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is both a biography of a very unusual man and an examination of the complex and conflicting relationship between the NAZDAP hierarchy and its military intelligence services. It is unlikely that the impact of Canaris' work against the regime he nomically served will ever be fully understood due to the loss of many German records and the death of almost all the key officials during the war, but this book goes a long way to dispelling the appealing myth of a monolithic German military machine intent on dominating Europe, European Russia and parts of the British Empire. That dream had little or no appeal to many officers who were either Anglophiles or traditional German Monarchists/Nationalists unimpressed with the New Age barbarity of the NAZDAP. The unceasing flood of books "revealing" how one Allied spy or one team of Allied codebreakers "won" the Second World War shows how poorly the general public understands the true economic, military and political situation facing Germany in 1933. The inevitable defeat of Germany in another major European war, much less a global conflict, was perfectly clear to men like Canaris. In 1933, Nothing had changed to alter the weak position Germany occupied in 1914. The dismemberment of Austria-Hungary and Stalin's ongoing conversion of the U.S.S.R. from a collectivist, authoritarian state into a true dictatorship completed the encirclement of Germany by hostile states. Canaris and other realists in the German military supported the Weimar Republic's policy of cooperation with the Soviet Union out of necessity. The Treaties of Rapallo (1922) and Berlin (1926) laid the foundation for German economic and military recovery while avoiding direct confrontation with the Allies over the punitive provisions of the Versailles Treaty. NAZDAP hostility to the U.S.S.R. and its unrealistic dream of Lebensraum in the East put Germany on the road to ruin. How Canaris and other officers of like minds tried to mitigate the impact of Nazi blunders and ensure the survival of Germany as it existed in 1914 was a deadly game, and they knew it. They walked a fine line between treason and bureaucratic manipulation. The best part of this book is its careful reconstruction of the tentative but continuous peace feelers put out by all sides, Allied, Axis and Neutral, from late 1942 into mid 1943. Unsurprisingly, the idea of a German-USSR peace alarmed Churchill every bit as much as a German-Allied peace alarmed Stalin. In the end, whatever mild interest Hitler had in a negotiated settlement faded, and all the work by neutrals (Spain, Sweden, Turkey and the Vatican) came to naught. Emboldened by the fall of Mussolini, Canaris shifted from clandestine support for Allied intelligence to clandestine support for deposing Hitler. By 1944, his cover was gone, and the only question that remained was whether Abwehr machinations would goad the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht into overthrowing the NAZDAP regime, or they would all die in a Nazi Ragnarök that consumed Germany and most of Europe. Mr. Bassett is careful to avoid making simplistic judgements about possible historical alternatives, but he presents his readers with an intriguing set of possibilities. After seven decades of history steeped in the mythos of the "Big Three" conferences and the wisdom of demanding unconditional surrender, it is important to fully explore the results and the unintended consequences of those decisions and the divisions they spawned. The shadow of Canaris still hides much in a world where the U.N., the crowning achievement of the victorious Allies, now panders to authoritarian regimes and promotes their Orwellian world view.

[Tyler Garrett · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the first book that I read on my kindle. While it is not the most well written book that I’ve read, the story is interesting enough to keep me intrigued until the very end- despite the fact that it reads like a textbook. The book is very well researched, however starts off slow, and is difficult to follow at times. Knowing these things, if you stick around, you won’t be disappointed. Extremely interesting story that leaves the reader thinking.

[Alex · Rating 4 out of 5]

Readable (though perhaps too sympathetic) account of Canaris' life. Good account of his early years - including his WWI exploits as an escaped internee and his time in Spain in the 1930s. Much of the question about the level of cooperation with the Allies is unanswered (and may never be answered) but the author builds a strong case of a man who sought to do his duty without becoming a Nazi stooge, which eventually cost him his life.

[Norman Smith · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting subject matter, and it appears that the author knows this material very well. It is rather dry in its presentation, and there are times that I think the author was going beyond history rather deeply into speculation, but I suppose that reflects the subtitle of the book. This is a good book for those interested in the Second World War, especially the intelligence side of it. It is not a spy thriller, though.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 Stars This book had a lot of potential. But the book has the challenge of doing the history of a spymaster where sources are hard to find, especially for someone who was executed by his own country. So much of the 2nd half of the book is about events or meetings that might have happened. I did learn a lot about the attempts at peace and his work against the Nazi regime.

[Joe Oaster · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent history of this honorable man who paid with his life next to who people I have come to respect and admire, Dietrich Bonehoeffer and Hans Oster. I have seen he camp where these men were ultimate killed for standing up to Hitler. Good story of this Great than

[Paul Below · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting insight into the incredible world of Canaris. So sad to learn he gave us the means of preventing World War 2 and later of finishing it early but our politicians frittered the opportunities away....

[Paul S · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little long but a good read

This is very detailed and seems a bit repetitive but you need that to fully understand every nuance and detail.
This is an interesting look into a way WWII could have been shortened but wasn't.

[Butch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good read

Little known facts of one of hitlers officer in the intelligence section. This was interesting in that he did not really betray Germany but at the same time helping Germany get defeated.

[Don Rouse · Rating 4 out of 5]

I depth look at Germany intelligence WW II

The historical aspect is great ! Other than a few places where the material was a little dry
I would highly recommend this book if you are a history buff of WW II.

[Anthony Bruno · Rating 5 out of 5]

Enlightening

Canaris was a German who early on, knew for certain, that Hitler would destroy Germany in his pursuit of total war. This book outlines the brave admiral's attempts to thwart Hitler and save his homeland.