Wilhelm Franz Canaris was a German admiral and the chief of the Abwehr from 1935 to 1944. Canaris was initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler, and the Nazi regime. 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.
Canaris in 1940
Canaris (second row, second from right) with other officers of the Marinekommandoamt (Naval Command Office), 1923
Canaris as a Korvettenkapitän, 1924–31
South African Minister of Defence Oswald Pirow walking in front of an honor guard during his visit to Berlin, to his left is Canaris, November 1938
The Abwehr was the German military-intelligence service for the Reichswehr and the Wehrmacht from 1920 to 1945. Although the 1919 Treaty of Versailles prohibited the Weimar Republic from establishing an intelligence organization of their own, they formed an espionage group in 1920 within the Ministry of Defence, calling it the Abwehr. The initial purpose of the Abwehr was defense against foreign espionage: an organizational role that later evolved considerably. Under General Kurt von Schleicher the individual military services' intelligence units were combined and, in 1929, centralized under Schleicher's Ministeramt within the Ministry of Defence, forming the foundation for the more commonly understood manifestation of the Abwehr.
OKW secret radio service
Wilhelm Canaris
Image: F Bredow
Image: Kapitän zur See Konrad Patzig, first commanding officer of Admiral Graf Spee
