Wilhelm Canaris
January 01, 1887 - 09.04.1945 Wilhelm Canaris joined the imperial royal navy in 1905 and was an officer in the First World War. In 1919 he married Erika Waag, with whom he had two daughters. Canaris was a member of the court martial that acquitted most of those who murdered Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, and in March 1920 he supported the attempted Kapp-Lüttwitz Putsch. He then returned to the navy as an officer in the admiralty staff and the naval command, taking charge of the Schlesien as a captain at sea in 1932.
He welcomed the National Socialists taking power in 1933, hoping for a revision of the Treaty of Versailles. In 1935 Rear Admiral Canaris was unexpectedly appointed head of the Reich War Ministry's counterintelligence department (which later became the Office for Foreign Affairs/Counterintelligence in the Armed Forces High Command). From 1938 on, he took a distanced stance toward the preparations for war, subsequently allowing opposition members of the counterintelligence service free hand but not taking an active part in their plans. In the summer of 1942, Canaris covered up the efforts of Hans Oster and Hans von Dohnanyi to enable a group of Berlin Jews threatened with deportation to escape to Switzerland. When Dohnanyi and Oster were arrested in 1943, Canaris came under increasing Gestapo observation and was removed from office in February 1944.
He was arrested three days after July 20, 1944. Incriminating documents were then found in Zossen near Berlin, revealing Canaris's support for several of those involved in the attempted coup. Only weeks before the war ended, Canaris was murdered in Flossenbürg concentration camp on Hitler's orders on April 9, 1945.
