Karl Liebknecht no relation Rosa Luxemburg
Interwar years
During the German Revolution of 1918–19, Canaris helped organise the formation of Freikorps paramilitary units to suppress the communist revolutionary movements, which were attempting to spread the ideals of the Russian Revolution into Central European nations. He was a member of the military court that tried and in many cases acquitted those involved in the murders of the leftist revolutionaries Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg for their involvement in the Spartacist uprising. He was also appointed to the adjutancy of Defence Minister Gustav Noske.In 1919, he married Erika Waag, also the child of an industrialist, with whom he had two children.In the spring of 1924, Canaris was sent to Osaka, Japan, to supervise a secret U-boat construction program in direct violation of the Treaty of Versailles. When that project was shelved by Vice Admiral Adolf Zenker in favour of a more co-operative relationship with the British, Canaris began making deals. Aided by the son of a powerful German shipping magnate, Captain Walter Lohmann, they negotiated with Spanish merchants, German industrialists, some Argentinian venture capitalists and the Spanish Navy so the Germans could continue their clandestine naval activities.Unfortunately for Canaris, he made some enemies within Germany during the course of his secret business and intelligence negotiations, partially as a consequence of the bankruptcy incurred by the film-maker Phoebus Film in his dealings with Lohmann. Suddenly, the former involvement with the "Liebknecht affair" re-emerged and placed Canaris in an unfavourable light, which ended up costing him his position in Spain. Instead, he was sent to Wilhelmshaven.
From his new post, Canaris haplessly discovered that Lohmann's "investments" had cost upwards of 26 million marks in total losses. At some point in 1928, Canaris was removed from his intelligence post and began two years of conventional naval service aboard the pre-Dreadnought battleship Schlesien and became captain of the vessel on 1 December 1932. Just two months later, Adolf Hitler became Germany's new chancellor. Canaris was enthused by that development and was known to give lectures about the virtues of Nazism to his crew aboard the Schlesien.Detached from the previous government of Weimar, whose republican principles never appealed to Canaris, he looked to the Nazi Party to shape the future. Two things stood out for Canaris about the Nazis; they represented a return to state-centered authoritarian government led by a charismatic leader, which he supported, and they were determined to throw off the shackles of the Treaty of Versailles. Hitler proselytised a return to world-power status, which for Canaris implied constructing a super-fleet, by the preservation of a virtuous soldier-based society, a "community under arms". It is worth recalling that the turmoil after the First World War in Germany, while the Weimar government was fledgling, Canaris helped establish home guard units in contravention of the treaty, sympathised with the Freikorps movement and participated in the Kapp Putsch.Another aspect of the Nazis that attracted Canaris was their anticommunism. Many of his friends joined the Nazi crusade, and Canaris "likewise came to be regarded as an enthusiastic National Socialist". A former SS general, Werner Best, once described Canaris as an "inveterate nationalist" and correspondingly asserted that Canaris felt the Nazis were much better "than anything that had gone before". Even after the Night of the Long Knives, Canaris "preached wholehearted cooperation with the new regime". Canaris once said, "we officers... should always recognize that without the Führer and his NSDAP, the restoration of German military greatness and military strength would not have been possible... the officer's duty is to be a living example of National Socialism and make the German Wehrmacht (armed forces) reflect the fulfillment of National Socialist ideology. That must be our grand design".