page_title: Abwehr
section_title: Before World War II
hierarchical_section_title: Abwehr / Under Canaris / Before World War II
context_page_description: The Abwehr was the German military intelligence service for the Reichswehr and Wehrmacht from 1920 to 1945. Although the Treaty of Versailles totally prohibited the Germans from establishing an intelligence organization of their own, they formed an espionage group in 1920 within the Ministry of Defense, calling it the Abwehr. The initial purpose of the Abwehr was defense against foreign espionage—an organizational role which later evolved considerably. Under General Kurt von Schleicher the individual military services' intelligence units were combined and, in 1929, centralized under his Ministry of Defense, forming the foundation for the more commonly understood manifestation of the Abwehr.
  Each Abwehr station throughout Germany was based on army districts and more offices were opened in amenable neutral countries and in the occupied territories as the greater Reich expanded. The Ministry of Defense was renamed the Ministry of War in 1935 and then replaced by Adolf Hitler altogether with the new OKW. The OKW was part of the Führer's personal "working staff" from June 1938 and the Abwehr became its intelligence agency under Vice-Admiral Wilhelm Canaris.
context_section_description: Before he took over the Abwehr on 1 January 1935, the soon-to-be Admiral Canaris was warned by Patzig of attempts by Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich to take over all German intelligence organizations. Heydrich, who headed the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) from 1931, had a negative attitude towards the Abwehr—shaped in part by his belief that Germany's defeat in the First World War was primarily attributable to failures of military intelligence, and by his ambitions to control all political intelligence-gathering for Germany.
  Canaris, a master of backroom dealings, thought he knew how to deal with Heydrich and Himmler. Though he tried to maintain a cordial relationship with them, the antagonism between the Abwehr and the SS did not stop when Canaris took over. Not only was competition with Heydrich and Himmler's intelligence operations a hindrance, so too were the redundant attempts by multiple organizations to control communications intelligence (COMINT) for the Reich. For instance, Canaris's Abwehr controlled the Armed Forces Deciphering operation, while the navy maintained its own listening service, known as the B-Dienst. Further complicating COMINT matters, the Foreign Office also had its own communications security branch, the Pers Z S.
  Matters came to a head in 1937 when Hitler decided to help Joseph Stalin in the latter's purge of the Soviet military.  Hitler ordered that the German Army staff should be kept in the dark about Stalin's intentions, for fear that they would warn their Soviet counterparts due to their long-standing relations. Accordingly, special SS teams, accompanied by burglary experts from the criminal police, broke into the secret files of the General Staff and the Abwehr and removed documents related to German-Soviet collaboration. To conceal the thefts, fires were started at the break-ins, which included Abwehr headquarters.
caption: Wilhelm Canaris
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