Wilhelm Canaris: A Traitor to the German Nation
Admiral Wilhelm Canaris headed Adolf Hitler’s military intelligence service for nine years. He is one of the most enigmatic figures of the Third Reich. Robert Kempner, the U.S. deputy prosecutor at Nuremberg, said that Canaris had a Jekyll and Hyde split personality. Kempner wrote that Canaris was “the man who organized the National Socialist fifth column, who… introduced the murderous weapons of sabotage and surreptitious infiltration and sent German soldiers on suicide missions and who, on the other hand, permitted individual officers to conspire against the regime.” This article discusses the career of Adm. Canaris, and also attempts to uncover the motives of this extremely controversial German.