Hitler's Spy Chief by Richard Bassett Read Free Book Online

the Dresden prepared to sail back to Germany only the news from the Balkans was disturbing but as Canaris well knew, ‘Auf den Balkan ist immer etwas los.’ * The disturbing signal that, with the expiry of the ultimatum to Belgrade, the Austrians and the Russians were at war, foretold the full brutal reality of what was imminent. With war declared by all the major powers within days, orders to return to Germany were cancelled and the Dresden set off on her final journey. In a ceremony redolent of the end of the era, the ship’s crew began consigning important papers to the furnace and jettisoning all unnecessary cargo. The ship’s pianos, which had offered such pleasures to the officers in the evenings, went the same way. Memoirs noted that the disposal of the pianos afforded many tears from the more musical of the officers. The world Canaris had grown up in was about to end once and for all, and as the British Foreign Minister Grey noted: ‘We will not see its like again in our lifetimes.’ 9
    * ‘There is always something going on in the Balkans.’

CHAPTER FOUR
    FINIS GERMANIAE
    Wealth measured in billions has been blown into the air … Nothing in fact, economically, politically or socially, would ever be the same again .
    LORD HOME, LETTER TO HIS GRANDSON 1
    The end of the war saw Canaris in his submarine, surrounded by the red pennants of revolution flying from every capital ship in Kiel harbour. Imperial Germany was in ruins. The flag of Communist revolt had been raised and the days of the officer corps, once the arbiter of Germany’s destiny, appeared numbered. Canaris laconically noted in the submarine’s war diary: ‘With three hurrahs we lowered our flag.’ 2 With it, seemingly, disappeared decades of discipline. It is hard for those in countries that have enjoyed centuries of stable continuity to imagine the chaos and bitterness that attends social meltdown and revolution. Anarchy, fed by the countless masses of starved and defeated men and women, was rampant on every street corner. No authority; no discipline; the revolutionaries of that November found, as revolutionaries generally find, that it is easier to destroy an old system than to replace it.
    Around Kiel, barracks were turned into brothels or shops; thugs ruled every main thoroughfare on the lookout for anyone with officer rank or middle class appearance to intimidate, rob or indeed murder. The Imperialnavy, the pride of Germany and the Kaiser, was no more; worse, it had been the catalyst for revolution. It had been sailors who had first trained their weapons on their officers. Not the sailors who had served under Canaris in relatively small vessels such as submarines or torpedo boats, or even the cruiser Dresden , but sailors from the great Dreadnoughts where social tension was more marked. Canaris would never forget how Marxism had infiltrated the crews of these ships to wreak such destruction on the institution that had been his life. Later, in the 1920s, he would defend the navy to the hilt, rejecting any criticism of the relations between officers and sailors. For him, the mutiny had been almost entirely caused by subversive elements on shore which had infected the crews with the virus of revolt. 3 It would make him a life-long anti-Communist despite his relatively liberal views.
    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