What if Admiral Wilhelm Canaris(very interesting man), head of the Abwehr and in 1944 executed for treason was instead executed much earlier in mid-1939, for treason as well(they find out about his involvement in attempts of assassinating Hitler, or him leaking info to the British) even before the war started?
Lets just point out first that the "dutch scare" still has occured, giving some sign that the Abwehr could be usefull for Germany/Hitler during the war.
I would guess Canaris death in this time will put the abwehr under full control of Reinhard Heydrich unfortunately. Under Heydrich though, would the abwehr(as a small branch of the SD) be a succesful spy network, instead of only working against Nazism? Would Hitler actually take the reports from it seriously?
What about MI6? Canaris's reports where quite usefull to the British i would assume, though i don't know exactly how much(if someone can give me a good book or site where the effects German intelligence and German double agents, or British double agents during WWII upon the countries are told in detail i would greatly appreciate it.). Without Canaris to give them intelligence and the abwehr much further out of reach to the British, perhaps even a threat, what will that do to the MI6's abilities?
Imagine though, that, since the "Dutch Scare" went so well Hitler decides to keep the abwehr a seperate branch with a different leader(no SS or SD), one that actually sends spies into the UK and USA that do their job properly. Though, Canaris had some people in the USA very early that did do some succesfull sabotage missions. But i'm talking more concrete operations of sabotage, intelligence and assassinations. I can see actual Germans spies in MI6, the manhattan project, RAF, etc.
Would Canaris's absence do anything with Operation Felix or Tannenbaum? Canaris was a great opposer of those operations and made sure they didn't happen.
Any thoughts, concerns, remarks?