SBS - Hitlers Warriors (1998) Part 6 Canaris The Master Spy

Since the early 1980s popular German TV journalist and presenter Guido Knopp has unearthed a wealth of new material about the leading figures of the Third Reich. Subsequent to the successful series “Hitler - A Profile” and “Hitler's Henchmen”, Guido Knopp and his team continue this significant television analysis of the Nazi period with a series of the six most important German generals. He has spoken to countless contemporaries and eyewitnesses, relatives and friends of these men, and has been given access to documents that until now have been kept under lock and key. In this series, Guido Knopp's reassessment of Germany's guilty past, turns to the careers of six key military leaders of the Third Reich, and their relationships with Hitler. Profiling these men, the series continues to pose the question as to why it all happened. Rommel, Canaris, Keitel, Paulus, Udet and Manstein. Six careers caught in the tangle of Nazi political intrigue and ultimate disaster. What led all these officers to put their military talents at the service of a murderous dictator? To what depth was their involvement in Hitler's crimes? To what limits did their obedience lead them?

Part 6 Canaris The Master Spy

Finally, no leading figure in Hitler's dictatorship has been surrounded by more mystery than Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr, the Third Reich's foreign intelligence service. His spy apparatus was considered Hitler's miracle weapon at the invisible front of the Secret Services. Wilhelm Canaris, Head of the office Ausland - Abwehr, the counterintelligence department of the High Command of the armed forces, was a master of camouflage and double-dealing. His spies and agents discretely and efficiently prepared the way for Hitler's offensive war campaigns while he himself had long since been striving for the elimination of his highest superior. He facilitated the way for the escape of victims of political persecution and at the same time urged his subordinates to cooperate closely with the Gestapo. In view of his contacts with the July 20th conspirators close to von Stauffenberg and his subsequent murder in a concentration camp he personified the myth of military resistance against the dictator. Hanged by the SS only days before the war ended, Canaris' last words were 'I did my duty as a German.'

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