Hitler's Spy Chief - The Wilhelm Canaris Mystery
by Richard Bassett
Cassell, $144
'One great advantage of generally accepted truth is that it is generally accepted,' writes Richard Bassett in the preface to the paperback edition of Hitler's Spy Chief, which caused some controversy when published last year. He stands by his interpretation of German military intelligence chief Admiral Wilhelm Canaris as a professional soldier who loathed Adolf Hitler and sought to end his dictatorship. He says Canaris was shocked by the slaughter of civilians by the SS and made his intelligence organisation 'a bastion of anti-Nazi sentiment', protecting hundreds of Jews by making them agents. Bassett also says the Vatican was far more active in anti-Nazi efforts and secret peace negotiations than recent history supposes. Canaris was executed by slow strangulation just weeks before the end of the second world war. Bassett holds that his version of events is 'more plausible than any other'. One US reviewer commended Hitler's Spy Chief as 'a highly readable and entertaining account of a career officer wrestling with the conflicting demands of professionalism, patriotism and morality'.