Wilhelm Canaris (WL)

Wilhelm Canaris is a former antagonist of Warring Legends World War II. ''He was a German admiral and chief of the Abwehr, the German military intelligence service. Initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler, he had turned against the Nazis as he felt Germany would lose another major war and was among the military officers involved in the clandestine opposition to the Nazi regime.

Downfall and Execution
The evidence that Canaris was playing a double game grew, and at the insistence of Heinrich Himmler, Hitler dismissed Canaris and abolished the Abwehr in February 1944. It was replaced by the Ausland-SD, part of the Reich Security Office and led by Walter Schellenburg. Some weeks later, Canaris was put under home arrest, and was later released from house arrest to take up a post in Berlin as the head of the Special Staff for Mercantile Warfare and Economic Combat Measures, which coordinated resistance to the allied economic blockade of Germany.

Canaris was arrested on 23 July 1944 on the basis of the interrogation of his successor at Military Intelligence, Georg Hansen. Schellenberg respected Canaris and was convinced of his loyalty to the Nazi regime despite his arrest. Hansen admitted to his role in the 20 July Plot but accused Canaris of being it's "spiritual instigator". No direct evidence of his involvement in the plot was discovered but his close association with many of the plotters and certain documents written by him that were considered submersive led to the gradual assumption of his guilt. Two of the men under suspicion as conspirators who were known in Canaris' circle shot themselves which incited activity from the Gestapo to prove he was, at the very least, privy to the plan against Hitler.

Investigations dragged on inconclusively until April 1945, when orders were received to dispose of various remaining prisoners in the 20 July Plot. Canaris' personal diary was discovered and presented to Hitler, implicating him in the conspiracy. Canaris was placed on trial by an SS summary court presided over by Otto Thorbeck with Walter Huppenkothen as prosecutor. He was charged with and found guilty of treason, then sentenced to death.

Canaris was executed on 9 April 1945 by being garroted with a violin string, in a grotesque ordeal at the Flossenburg concentration camp, just weeks before the end of the war. Erwin von Lahousen and Hans Bernd Gisevius, two of Canaris' main subordinates, survived the war and testified during the Nuremberg Trials about Canaris' courge in opposing Hitler.