Canaris not picked as head of the Abwehr

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Define 'real'. He was transmitting back intel and traveling freely to scope out what he was asked to. According to one intelligence historian his information was likely used in Luftwaffe raids in 1940-41 and for post-bombing damage assessment.

Fair enough, but it’s low-level stuff isn’t it? Hardly like he penetrated Whitehall. I meant ‘real’ as in penetrating the enemy’s intelligence network (Zigzag), deciphering the enemy’s high-level code (Enigma), carrying off a large-scale deception (Mincemeat) or massive signal intercepts (Venona).

Do you have any info about that? I haven't seen anything about that, rather the reverse as a number of Soviet spies were eventually rolled up in Germany. Schellenberg in his book, though to be taken with some caution, wrote about several instances of Soviet penetration of Germany before the invasion, including a number of failures to catch them before they exfiltrated back to the USSR.

Nothing concrete, but as it happens I’m reading Operation Mincemeat by Ben Macintyre. In it he mentions that the Abwehr had “agents in Soviet Intelligence”, I kind of went from there. I have no full details, I’m afraid.

But, if it turns out they didn’t, it’s one more thing that the Abwehr were terrible at.
 
The real problem doesn't lie with Canaris but the whole German army ethos. The officers all wanted to be either fighting or on the General Staff and intelligence worked was looked down on. Thus their intelligence services got the lesser people. The only two officers who seem to be worth a damn are Reinhard Gehlen and Walter Schellenberg.

David Kahn's "Hitler's Spies" is well worth reading.
 

Deleted member 1487

Fair enough, but it’s low-level stuff isn’t it? Hardly like he penetrated Whitehall. I meant ‘real’ as in penetrating the enemy’s intelligence network (Zigzag), deciphering the enemy’s high-level code (Enigma), carrying off a large-scale deception (Mincemeat) or massive signal intercepts (Venona).
'Real' spying IS the low level stuff. The high level penetrations are generally people who are already inside and approach the other side for whatever reason or are seduced by a spymaster to turn traitor. It is rare to infiltrate an agent into an enemy intel organization from the start like with the Cambridge 5.
'Zigzag' (I assume you mean Eddie Chapman) was just someone who volunteered to the Germans to get out of prison without any intention of being a spy. That wasn't penetrating the enemy's network as much as extreme luck for the Brits that the Abwehr was desperate enough to employ the guy and that the guy was willing to defect ASAP to Britain's intel service. Even then that was a radio playback operation, which the Germans did too, most infamously but not limited to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Englandspiel

SigInt (i.e. Ultra) isn't spying, it's code breaking (that is unless a spy steals some codes like the Italians did with the US diplomatic codes) and was handled by another organization entirely. And the Germans also did that:
http://chris-intel-corner.blogspot.com/search/label/German codebreakers
https://www.amazon.com/Third-Reich-Listening-codebreaking-1939-45/dp/1472829506
In fact they had important successes against both the Soviet and French codes, the latter probably doomed France:
http://chris-intel-corner.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-french-war-ministrys-fld-code.html
http://chris-intel-corner.blogspot.com/2011/07/german-signals-intelligence-and-battle.html

As to Mincemeat it is very possible that the Abwehr were in on it, since they were the ones to report it and immediately labelled all the 'intelligence' as 'above reproach'. Plus the impact was not nearly as important as the Brits claimed, James Hayward, the author I mentioned in the OP, lists all the units transferred and makes the case that the broad spectrum of deception efforts running at the same time were what was responsible, not any one operation.

Nothing concrete, but as it happens I’m reading Operation Mincemeat by Ben Macintyre. In it he mentions that the Abwehr had “agents in Soviet Intelligence”, I kind of went from there. I have no full details, I’m afraid.

But, if it turns out they didn’t, it’s one more thing that the Abwehr were terrible at.
The Germans claimed they did, but they seem to have fallen prey to Soviet 'radio playback' efforts that were every bit if not even more successful than Double Cross. Post-war analysis by the Allies seems to confirm the Soviet claims, though to some extent they might be exaggerated; it also doesn't help that part of the story has never been confirmed by the Soviets and later Russians, while the Soviet intelligence archives are still locked. Perhaps there were some successful double agents, but we may never know so long as the Soviet archives are locked and that's assuming it was even known to them and/or records were even made after the fact about it assuming they were eventually caught.

Everyone had serious problems penetrating the Soviet intelligence services until later on during the Cold War, when KGB agents started to flip because of dissatisfaction with the system/regime. There were NKVD defections, apparently nearly all to avoid the purges in the 1930s-40s, but none that stayed to spy.
 

Deleted member 1487

The real problem doesn't lie with Canaris but the whole German army ethos. The officers all wanted to be either fighting or on the General Staff and intelligence worked was looked down on. Thus their intelligence services got the lesser people. The only two officers who seem to be worth a damn are Reinhard Gehlen and Walter Schellenberg.

David Kahn's "Hitler's Spies" is well worth reading.
Kahn's book is really dated and a lot of info is pretty obsolete thanks to more recent archival/research revelations.

I think you're overstating the case about German military culture, from what I can tell it was primarily a Luftwaffe problem, the latest service and because the one the Nazis, specifically Goering, had the most influence on. Intel was still seen a vital otherwise the Abwehr wouldn't have become an organization of thousands from a starting staff of 150 personnel from 1935-39, and it wouldn't have had the intelligence successes it did throughout the early part of the war, which were quite substantial until they either overran the countries with the most spies or had their networks rolled up by bad luck and/or betrayal.

Schellenberg ran SS counterintel and did well there, but apparently did not so nearly so well in foreign intel after being promoted later in the war; of course by then it was probably impossible for anyone to do well in that at that point.

Gehlen was better than his predecessor, but not nearly as much as he thought or claimed. Of course country managed to successfully penetrate the USSR with agents for anything beyond tactical info at that point AFAIK. It was only later when KGB agents started to get fed up with the system that the West got any agents.
 
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