Michael Ridpath: Shadows of War

He was still stunned by what Theo had told him. In a week’s time the Germans would launch an offensive and General Halder would arrest Hitler. Or perhaps kill him. There was hope after all that Europe wouldn’t tear itself apart again.

Conrad was looking forward to seeing Schämmel. As he had told Theo, he was prepared to fight. But much better if Theo, Schämmel and their friends could topple Hitler and sue for peace at the same time, avoiding the deaths of millions in the process. And Conrad was glad he might get to play his part in it after all.

His one regret was that he had brushed off Theo’s questioning about Anneliese, or at least not told him the whole truth. Anneliese was not ‘well’. Conrad was worried about her, very worried. He hadn’t spoken to anyone about her, but Theo was an old friend. At Oxford they had shared their feelings about everything. And Theo actually knew Anneliese, and how important she was to Conrad. Perhaps he could help; perhaps Conrad should have let him help.

As he reached the end of the Diefsteeg, Conrad realized he was heading the wrong way for the station and turned on his heel. A man was walking alone down the lane towards Conrad, hands in his coat pockets, hat tilted down over his eyes. He looked Dutch, nondescript, forty perhaps, but there was something about his nose — a little long, an upward tilt at the end — that Conrad recognized. Conrad was pretty sure that he had passed the man leaving the lobby of the Hotel Levedag an hour before.

Despite all Theo’s precautions, it looked as if someone had spotted Theo talking to Conrad after all.

Who was it? Conrad wondered.

Berlin, 8 November

‘Ah, come in, Hertenberg. Sit down.’

‘Thank you, excellency,’ said Theo as he took a seat in front of the admiral’s desk.

Admiral Canaris’s office was on the top floor of the Abwehr building on the Tirpitzufer in Berlin, overlooking the chestnut trees lining the Landwehr Canal. The admiral was a small, neat man with light blue eyes and fine white hair. He was stroking a rough-haired dachshund nestled with its eyes closed on his lap. With him was Colonel Oster, a debonair cavalry officer and the man who had recruited Theo into the Abwehr. As a trainee lawyer, Theo had been introduced to Oster by his father, under whom Colonel Oster had served. Paradoxically for a former pacifist, the Wehrmacht and the Abwehr had seemed to Theo a good alternative to joining the Nazi Party, which Theo would have had to do if he wanted to pass his final assessor’s exams. Officers in the Wehrmacht were still not required to become Party members.

Despite Canaris’s rank, Theo felt at ease. The Abwehr was a haven of safety in a very dangerous Reich. Canaris led by example: he felt spying was the preserve of gentlemen, and honour and duty were more important than ideology. He looked after his own, and Theo was very much one of his own.

‘What brings you to Berlin in such a hurry?’ Canaris asked.

‘A couple of things, excellency,’ Theo began. ‘I saw de Lancey yesterday.’

‘Ah, de Lancey,’ Canaris smiled. ‘I wondered when he would pop up again. I take it he is with the British secret service now?’

‘Not directly, I think. He said he was sent to Holland by Sir Robert Vansittart of the British Foreign Office. To meet a man called Captain Schämmel of the OKW’s Transport Division. Schämmel is supposed to be representing leaders of a plot to overthrow Hitler. I’ve never heard of him.’

‘Neither have I,’ said Canaris. ‘Tell me what you know about him.’

Theo related all that Conrad had told him about Schämmel and his generals.

Canaris listened closely. ‘And de Lancey didn’t say which general this Schämmel was representing?’

‘No.’

‘What do you think, Hans? Have you heard of this person?’

Colonel Oster shook his head. ‘Could he be one of Göring’s men?’

‘Possible,’ said Canaris. ‘I doubt it myself, but you never know.’

The senior echelons of the Nazi Party were by no means united; it was Hitler’s deliberate strategy to keep them rivals. Himmler’s SS, Heydrich’s Gestapo, and Göring’s little empire comprising the Luftwaffe and the Prussian Interior Ministry were all separate power blocks. Then there were the lesser Nazis like Ribbentrop and his Foreign Ministry, Goebbels’s Propaganda Ministry, Rudolf Hess and Alfred Rosenberg. The stormtroopers of the SA, once a force to be reckoned with, had been neutralized by Himmler in the ‘Night of the Long Knives’ back in 1934. Outside the Nazi Party were Canaris and the Abwehr, Schacht and the Finance Ministry, Admiral Raeder’s navy and, perhaps most powerful of all, the army led by Generals von Brauchitsch and Halder.

The conspiracy that Canaris, Oster and Theo had been involved in encompassed the army and Schacht, as well as one or two other politicians and some elements of the police. Göring was certainly not one of this group, but he was ambitious and powerful, and perhaps the most likely of Hitler’s friends to make a move against him.

‘Or it could be a trap,’ said Canaris.

‘A trap?’ said Oster. ‘Set by whom?’

‘The Gestapo,’ said Canaris. ‘We know they suspect something. They could be trying tease out from the British who among us has been talking to them.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘It’s what I would do. And it’s the kind of idea Heydrich would love.’

Theo was yet again impressed by the subtlety of his chief’s thought process. Not for him the simple giving and taking of orders. The admiral’s escapades in the last war when, as an intelligence officer aboard the Dresden in the South Atlantic, he had used bluff and double bluff to stay one step ahead of the Royal Navy, were legendary. A model of the ship stood on his desk.

‘I know there have been some Gestapo agents operating in Holland,’ Theo said. ‘Mörz, for one.’

‘I’ll talk to Schellenberg, see if he knows anything.’ Canaris and the new young head of the foreign-intelligence section of the Gestapo were neighbours in the Berlin suburb of Schlachtensee, and occasionally rode together in the Tiergarten. Although Canaris held the Gestapo in contempt, he had some respect for Schellenberg. Theo had never met Schellenberg and found the Gestapo’s efforts at spying frustrating.

‘If it is a trap, we don’t want de Lancey caught in it,’ said Oster. ‘He knows too much about us.’

‘De Lancey won’t talk,’ Theo said. ‘I mean, he will talk, but not about us. He has outwitted the Gestapo before.’

‘That’s true,’ said the admiral. ‘But we don’t want to rely on anyone keeping quiet once Heydrich has his hands on them. Warn de Lancey to be careful, Theo, until we are sure who exactly this Schämmel is.’

‘Certainly, your excellency.’

‘And the other matter?’

‘I have been having some very interesting conversations with Mr Bedaux…’

After the meeting, Theo followed Oster to his office.

‘Do you think Halder really will move on the fifteenth?’ Theo asked the colonel.

‘He’s trying to persuade Hitler that the weather will be too bad to launch an offensive,’ Oster said. ‘But Hitler won’t listen.’

‘So the coup will go ahead?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Oster. ‘I mean, if Halder really wanted to overthrow Hitler he would be urging that Case Yellow would go ahead.’ Case Yellow was the general staff’s plan to invade the Low Countries and attack France from the north. ‘That’s what we were all hoping for last year.’

It was true. Theo remembered how the conspirators had prayed for Hitler to order the invasion of Czechoslovakia so they could launch their coup. When he had called it off at the last minute in response to Chamberlain’s peace overtures, they had all been devastated.