For educational purposes<br /><br />Finally, no leading figure in Hitler's dictatorship has been surrounded by more mystery than Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, head of the Abwehr, the Third Reich's foreign intelligence service. <br /><br />His spy apparatus was considered Hitler's miracle weapon at the invisible front of the Secret Services. <br /><br />Wilhelm Canaris, Head of the office Ausland - Abwehr, the counterintelligence department of the High Command of the armed forces, was a master of camouflage and double-dealing. <br /><br />His spies and agents discretely and efficiently prepared the way for Hitler's offensive war campaigns while he himself had long since been striving for the elimination of his highest superior. <br /><br />He facilitated the way for the escape of victims of political persecution and at the same time urged his subordinates to cooperate closely with the Gestapo. <br /><br />In view of his contacts with the July 20th conspirators close to von Stauffenberg and his subsequent murder in a concentration camp he personified the myth of military resistance against the dictator. <br /><br />Hanged by the SS only days before the war ended, Canaris' last words were: 'I did my duty as a German.'
