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.Many think Admiral Canaris was the man contributed to Spain staying out of the War...
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.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.
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?
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.Franco knew that Spain wasn't ready to fight a war...
Because Franco purposely gave them an utterly unreasonable proposal.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.
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:Because Franco purposely gave them an utterly unreasonable proposal.
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.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.