Canaris and the Order to Take Gibraltar
Admiral heads the Abwehr, the German military intelligence service. A Spanish-speaker and fine connoisseur of Spain, where he wove networks during the Great War, he is the Reich's natural interlocutor with Franco. Officially a zealous servant of the regime, he in reality harbours, and has long harboured, deep reservations about Hitler's conduct and about the outcome of the war.
Hitler wants to drive the British out of the western Mediterranean by seizing Gibraltar. The plan, codenamed Operation Felix, calls for two army corps to cross Spain by way of the Pyrenees to assault the Rock. Everything rests on Franco's agreement — and on the technical assessment of Canaris, sent as early as July 1940 to sound out Madrid.
On 12 November 1940, Hitler signs Directive No. 18: Felix becomes an official objective and Canaris is the emissary charged with persuading Franco to let the German troops through. But the Caudillo proves reluctant, and the admiral alone judges what tone to give his mission in Madrid. Torn between the Führer's order and his own convictions, Canaris holds in his hands the future of an operation that could lock down the Mediterranean.
Should Canaris loyally push Operation Felix as Hitler demands, or quietly sabotage it by dissuading Franco?
Canaris chose C: he dissuaded Franco, repeating to him that it would be absurd to join the losing side and slipping to the Caudillo that he did not believe in a German victory, while feeding Berlin pessimistic reports — Gibraltar would be impregnable without assault guns that could not be found, and the British would land at once in Morocco. At the decisive audience of 7 December 1940 in Madrid, Franco refused once and for all the transit of the troops; on Canaris's report, Hitler gave up Felix. The Rock stayed British, the lock of the Mediterranean for the whole war. General Muñoz Grandes openly accused Canaris of having pushed Franco to remain neutral; the Gestapo passed its suspicions to Himmler, but the admiral survived. Unmasked after the July 1944 plot, he would be hanged at Flossenbürg in April 1945.
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