WI: No Admiral Canaris

What if Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the head of the German Abwehr intelligence agency, never reached this position, dies, or is otherwise not in Abwehr by the time WWII breaks out?
 
Well for starters, without Canaris, Franco probably agrees to let German troops through, thus Gibralter falls, maybe as early as 1940. This in itself is fairly big, as it allows the Kriegsmarine to start wholesale operations in the Med, and makes it that much harder to reinforce Malta (possibly no Operation Excess, Certainly nothing from Temple onwards that came from Gibraltar), plus Bismarck probably makes it back to port. In addition, there may be some damage to Force H as the Germans will undoubtedly attempt to put U-Boats in the area while conductiong operations against The Rock.

This is probably worthy of a TL.
 
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Paul MacQ

Donor
Many things Admiral Canaris was the man contributed to Spain staying out of the War when everything was going the Axis way in 1940. Would Franco have declared war some indications he came close near the fall of France when Britain looked to have been on the Ropes. But good sense won out. ( Spain was in terrible state after the Civil War but would have been in a Position of handing the Western Med to the Axis)

The Canaris Man was brilliant and supported Hitler to start but quickly changed his mind when Adolf got into power and many small things over the years to reduce Nazi influence. Many people did not realise the Canaris first claim to fame was as the Navigation officer on the Emden WW1 and his adventures getting back to Germany read as a better story than anything written by the likes of Ian Fleming.

Would love a ASB Timeline Canaris getting all the memories leading up to his Death in April 1945, Back in time to 1925.

Probably all said and done Germany would have been worse off. If this was enough to effect the speed the war ends I am not sure.
 

Cook

Banned
Many think Admiral Canaris was the man contributed to Spain staying out of the War...
It’s little more than a conspiracy theory; there’s no evidence Canaris said anything to dissuade Franco from entering the war and Franco certainly never mentioned anything to his subordinates on the subject. Canaris would have been suicidal to have done so since not only were the Ahwehr operating extensively in Spain, but so were the Reich’s civil intelligence agencies, all of who reported back to Himmler and Goering, and the Reich diplomatic corps, which reported to Ribbentrop.

Franco not entering the war can be put down to the fact that the bulk of Spanish ambitions were to be fulfilled at the expense of Vichy France, and Hitler was unwilling to upset the French regime which had already clashed with the British following Mers-el-Kebir and who Hitler hoped to entice into fully committing to the fight against Britain.
 
Probably all said and done Germany would have been worse off. If this was enough to effect the speed the war ends I am not sure.
If Germany takes Gibraltar they're unlikely to be worse off, firstly they can get warships into the Med, secondly they can use The Rock as a naval base either for U-Boats or for surface warships, making convoys to Africa that much more expensive, and Thirdly the British will only be getting into the Med via the Suez Canal, which will make reinforcing Malta a lot more difficult. Hells, Malta might just get taken if the they make a big enough nuisance of themselves.
 

Deleted member 1487

What if Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, the head of the German Abwehr intelligence agency, never reached this position, dies, or is otherwise not in Abwehr by the time WWII breaks out?

Well, we aren't exactly sure what he did do for the British during the war, which IIRC is still classified.
However we know that the Abwehr was pretty anti-Nazi and helped botch some intelligence operations, like inserting operatives into Britain. Still, there is no evidence that even without Canaris that the anti-Nazi feelings would just disappear. Hans Oster, his deputy, was just as anti-Nazi and could have just been the analogue of Canaris:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Oster
 
I don't think Franco really needed any advice that Canaris may or may not have given him - Franco knew that Spain wasn't ready to fight a war and that becoming utterly reliant on German food and oil wasn't so smart an idea.

I'm sure that he'd have jumped at the chance of getting Gibraltar, but he'd also have been fully aware that it would really have been Germany getting Gibraltar, and he'd simply be left hoping that one day Germany would hand it over to Spanish forces... just another weapon for Germany to use against Spain if necessary.
 

Cook

Banned
Franco knew that Spain wasn't ready to fight a war...
We are drifting off topic here, the thread is about Canaris not Franco, but it needs to be pointed out that it was the Germans who rejected Franco’s proposal, not the other way around.
 

iddt3

Donor
We are drifting off topic here, the thread is about Canaris not Franco, but it needs to be pointed out that it was the Germans who rejected Franco’s proposal, not the other way around.
Because Franco purposely gave them an utterly unreasonable proposal.
 

Cook

Banned
Because Franco purposely gave them an utterly unreasonable proposal.
No he didn't. In fact the request he made was only for supplies to be guaranteed in the advent that the war continued into 1941, it was not for anything up front. And far from being ‘utterly unreasonable’, was in fact smaller that the German Ambassador to Madrid considered that they would actually require. From the letter sent by the German Ambassador in Madrid to the Reich Foreign Ministry on 8 August, 1940:

‘Besides this military assistance, however, economic support of Spain will also be necessary. To this belong, above all else, the delivery of gasoline and, at the beginning of next year, delivery of grain for bread. According to a recent utterance of the Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs (of the third of this month) Spain, due to its shortage of gasoline, can wage war without our help 1 1/2 months at the most. As concerns the grain for bread, the Minister believes that Spain has sufficient supplies until about March of next year. I consider this latter supposition as too optimistic, unless a strict rationing is carried out.’

So if anything, Franco undercut his estimate to avoid having the Germans reject his request.

For some reason people keep mixing up the actions of Mussolini and Franco; it was Mussolini who in 1939 deliberately asked for a massively inflated list of requirements in order to avoid his obligations to Hitler under the Pact of Steel. And we know this because Mussolini told his inner cabinet, including Ciano, that that was what he was doing and Ciano recorded it in his diary. There is no such record for Franco, and given that he was aiding the Axis in ways that ran a very high risk of British attack right through until 1943, we can safely conclude that it was not the case.


Now getting back to Canaris, the most obvious and immediate difference his absence would make I think is that the Jewish population of Denmark would not have escaped extermination.
 
All those demands were for Spain getting actively involved though weren't they? Surely Franco would have agreed to less had they had to put in less themselves (like say, just allowing the Heer to use their railways, possibly rebuilding them a bit in the process).
 
A lot depends upon who is in his place. I think it's possible that you get butterflies that either prevent the Allies from cracking Enigma or allow the Germans to figure out that it has been compromised and thus changing their codes. Again, the results this has are heavily dependent upon how and when this aspect changes.

Honestly, even with a completely loyal intelligence branch of the wermacht, the Germans still lose the war, they probably just fare slightly better.
 
A lot depends upon who is in his place. I think it's possible that you get butterflies that either prevent the Allies from cracking Enigma or allow the Germans to figure out that it has been compromised and thus changing their codes.
They might get a bit more suspicious that the allies have somehow cracked it, but at no point was Canaris involved in the allies cracking it.
 
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