Hitler's Spy Chief by Richard Bassett Page B

disenchanted officers were now tapped by these two. Canaris became more and more involved in groups that had no desire to see the republic survive. One of these was led by a seemingly unimportant Austrian called Adolf Hitler. There is no evidence to suggest that the two ever knew each other personally at this stage, although they both must have heard something of each other in the twilight world of right wing conspiracy.
    However, if he did not meet Hitler at this point, he was now going to encounter someone with whom his fate would be inextricably bound. In June 1923, he was posted to the cadet training ship Berlin . It so happened that his appointment coincided with the arrival of a singularly dashing, if histrionic, cadet by the name of Reinhard Heydrich.
    Canaris found many aspects of the training ship tiresome, not least the overbearing quality of some of his fellow officers, who lacked the finesse Canaris had enjoyed among his wartime naval comrades. Moreover, the isolation from the intrigues and machinations which had so marked his life in the last three years was a hard penance. Conspiracy had become an addictive drug for him, as important as family and career. His relatively junior position on a training ship seemed a sad use of his talents. Depression and melancholy set in; only interrupted by the young and sensitive cadet, Heydrich, whose highly strung nature appealed to Canaris.
    Heydrich was, perhaps to the eternal credit of the German navy, the most unpopular cadet on board. The son of an opera singer and a painter, his passionate, artistic temperament, moulded by naval discipline into arrogance and brutality, Heydrich was mocked for his high-pitched voice. His fellow cadets called him ‘the goat’. He was mercilessly teased and bullied. Canaris, who himself had known some teasing at school and had always felt, with his name, diminutive stature and sensitive nature, something of an outsider, experienced a strange rapport with Heydrich. The two met often on shore and the young cadet, who was a proficientviolinist, played duets with Canaris’ wife while the senior officer donned his chef’s cap and prepared supper.
    Whether Canaris found out at this stage that the even then staunchly anti-semitic young man was in fact partly Jewish is not recorded, though it is clear that Canaris knew this in later years but never breathed a word of it to his colleagues or friends (see chapter twelve). Problems over ancestry appear to have acted as a bond.
    The rapport that began in Kiel lasted to the end of his life, though the two were to become deadly rivals. As a later secretary of Canaris, who knew both men, recalled: ‘With Heydrich and Canaris there was always a kind of unstated understanding as if to say to the rest of the world, we have shared experiences in the Navy together which places us apart from everyone else.’ 8
    Heydrich did not last long in the navy. Cashiered for breaking off an engagement, then as in other navies an act bringing disrepute onto the honour of the service, he left for more political pastures. But it seems possible that through his relationship with Canaris he had indeed learnt perhaps a little about the world of intelligence, enough to whet his appetite and find in that world an outlet for his strange ideas and inferiority-complexed personality.
    Canaris, meanwhile, went into decline. Malaria and depression both took their toll. He had made up his mind to resign from the navy unless he was offered more stimulating duties. However, events once again took control and he was summoned to the Admiralty to discuss whether he would consider a ‘delicate’ mission overseas.
    Having survived the initial shocks of the immediate post war period, with both extreme right and extreme left for the moment exhausted, there was time for Germany’s authorities to contemplate how the country could wriggle out of the straitjacket of the Versailles conditions. Most pressing of all