Wilhelm Canaris

Wilhelm Franz Canaris (1 January 1887 – 9 April 1945) was a German admiral and the chief of the Abwehr (the German military-intelligence service) from 1935 to 1944.

Canaris was initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler, and the Nazi regime.

Canaris was born on 1 January 1887 in Aplerbeck (now a part of Dortmund) in Westphalia, the son of Carl Canaris, a wealthy industrialist, and his wife, Auguste (née Popp).

The death of Carl Canaris in 1904 removed the only obstacle to Canaris pursuing a naval career, which he did a month after his March 1905 graduation.

Accepted at the naval academy in Kiel, Canaris began his naval education aboard SMS Stein, a training ship on which sea cadets learned basic seamanship.

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

In the autumn of 1908 he began service aboard SMS Bremen, which cruised the Atlantic near Central and South America.

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

In February 1909, Canaris received Venezuela's Order of the Liberator (Knight's Class) from President Juan Vicente Gómez.

In August 1910, he received his commission as a lieutenant.

By the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, Canaris was serving as a naval intelligence officer on board SMS Dresden (1907), a light cruiser to which he had been assigned in December 1911.

This was the only warship of Admiral Maximilian von Spee's East Asia Squadron that managed to evade the Royal Navy for a prolonged period during the Battle of the Falkland Islands in December 1914, largely because of Canaris's highly skilful tactics.

After the Battle of Más a Tierra, the immobilized Dresden anchored in Cumberland Bay, Robinson Crusoe Island and contacted Chile with regard to internment.

While in the bay, Royal Navy ships approached and shelled Dresden, and the crew scuttled the ship.

Most of the crew was interned in Chile in March 1915, but in August 1915, Canaris escaped by using his fluency in Spanish.

With the help of some German merchants he was able to return to Germany in October 1915.

On the way, he called at several ports, including Plymouth in Great Britain.

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 Canaris seemed a good fit for that role.

Eventually, he was sent to Spain, where, in Madrid, his task was to provide clandestine reconnaissance over enemy shipping movements and to establish a supply service for U-boats serving in the Mediterranean.

After being assigned to the Inspectorate of Submarines by the Naval Staff on 24 October 1916, he took up training for duty as a U-boat commander and graduated from Submarine School on 11 September 1917.

He 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.

As a result of his exploits in Spain, he was awarded the Iron Cross First Class.

Canaris was fluent in six languages, including English.

As a naval officer of the old school, he had a great respect for Britain's Royal Navy, despite the rivalry between the two nations.

During the German Revolution of 1918–19, Canaris helped organise the formation of Freikorps paramilitary units to suppress the communist revolutionary movements, which were attempting to spread the ideals of the Russian Revolution into Central European nations.

He 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.

Canaris also helped one of those convicted in the murders, Kurt Vogel, escape from prison.

Canaris himself was imprisoned for four days over this, but never prosecuted.

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

However, according to Richard Bassett, a genealogical investigation in 1938 revealed that his family was actually of Northern Italian descent, was originally Canarisi, and had lived in Germany since the 17th century.

His grandfather had converted from Catholicism to Lutheranism.

Canaris graduated from the Steinbart-Real High School in Duisburg.

From an early age, he aspired to be an officer in the Imperial Navy, but his father encouraged him to join the Imperial Army.

Following the German invasion of Poland in 1939, however, Canaris turned against Hitler and committed acts of both passive and active resistance during the war.

Being the head of Nazi Germany's military-intelligence agency, he was in a key position to participate in resistance.

As the war turned against Germany, Canaris and other military officers expanded their clandestine opposition to the leadership of Nazi Germany.

By 1945, his acts of resistance and sabotage against the Nazi regime came to light and Canaris was hanged in Flossenbürg concentration camp for high treason as the Allied forces advanced through Southern Germany.

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.

On a visit to Corfu, he was given a portrait of the Greek hero, which he always kept in his office.