The Abwehr’s wartime performance was a decidedly mixed one.
It scored a number of important successes, notably in the invasion
of France in 1940, the Nordpol deception operation in Holland,
the detection of the Rote Kapelle, and numerous exploits involving
the Brandenburg Division. On the debit side, the Abwehr’s surveil-
lance of the Red Army prior to the 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union
proved inadequate, just as the various attempts to infiltrate Great
Britain, Canada, and the United States failed completely. By the end
of 1939, no German agents were working in Britain, and the major-
ity of those who attempted to enter the country during the war were
turned around by the Twenty Committee, the unit of British military
intelligence charged with counterespionage and deception. A plan
to use the Irish Republican Army to subvert British forces based in
Northern Ireland never came to fruition, nor did the attempt to lure
Ireland into an alliance with Germany. Major Allied invasions—
especially in North Africa in 1942 and in Italy in 1943—were like-
wise inadequately assessed beforehand.
The Abwehr also harbored a large number of conspirators against
the Nazi regime (according to Allen Dulles of the U.S. Office of
Strategic Services, at least 10 percent of Abwehr operatives were
consciously anti-Hitler). The unsuccessful attempt to overthrow the
Führer in 1938 can be traced to Abwehr personnel, among them
Oster, Groscurth, and Canaris. During the war, the conspirators oper-
ated through various secret channels to the enemy, which could be
justified, if questioned, as part of their normal undercover business.
Further complicating matters were a number of Jews engaged by the
Abwehr—a group that included Ernst Bloch, Edgar Klaus, Rich-
ard Kauder, and Ivar Lissner.
Although Heydrich had sought a unified intelligence apparatus
under SS command, it was not until February 1944 that Hitler,
enraged by Canaris’s defeatist attitude toward the war and recent
reports of his organization’s incompetence, made such a move.
Following the forced retirement of Canaris and the absorption of
the Abwehr by the Reichssicherheitshauptamt, many seasoned of-
ficers such as Hermann Giskes submitted their resignation. Georg
Hansen took charge on an interim basis but was later arrested and
executed because of involvement in the failed conspiracy of 20 July
1944.4 • ABWEHR