Abwehr - The Frau Solf Tea Party and The End of The Abwehr

The Frau Solf Tea Party and The End of The Abwehr

On 10 September 1943, the incident which eventually resulted in the dissolution of the Abwehr took place. The incident came to be known as the "Frau Solf Tea Party."

Frau Johanna (or Hanna) Solf was the widow of Dr. Wilhelm Solf, a former Colonial Minister under Kaiser Wilhelm II and ex-Ambassador to Japan. Frau Solf had long been involved in the anti-Nazi intellectual movement in Berlin. Members of her group were known as members of the "Solf Circle." At a tea party hosted by her on 10 September, a new member was included into the circle, a handsome young Swiss doctor named Reckse. It turned out that Dr. Reckse was an agent of the Secret State Police (Geheime Staatspolizei, or Gestapo), to which he reported on the tea party, providing several incriminating documents.

The members of the Solf Circle were tipped off and had to flee for their lives. But they were all rounded up on 12 January 1944. Eventually everyone who was involved in the Solf Circle, except Frau Solf and her daughter (the Countess Lagi Gräfin von Ballestrem), were executed.

One of those executed was Otto Kiep, an official in the Foreign Office, who had friends in the Abwehr, among whom were Erich Vermehren and his wife, the former Countess Elizabeth von Plettenberg, who were stationed as agents in Istanbul. Both were summoned to Berlin by the Gestapo in connection with the Kiep case. Fearing for their lives, they contacted the British and defected.

Hitler had long suspected that the Abewhr had been infiltrated by anti-Nazi defectors and Allied agents, and the defection of Vemehren after the Solf Circle arrests all but confirmed this. It was also mistakenly believed in Berlin that the Vermehrens absconded with the secret codes of the Abwehr and turned them over to the British. That proved to be the last straw for Hitler. Despite the efforts of the Abwehr to shift the blame to the SS, or even to the Foreign Ministry, Hitler had had enough of Canaris and he told Himmler so twice. He summoned the chief of the Abwehr for a final interview and accused him of allowing the Abwehr to "fall to bits". Canaris quietly agreed that it was "not surprising", as Germany was losing the war.

Hitler fired Canaris on the spot, and on February 18, 1944, Hitler signed a decree that abolished the Abwehr. Its functions were taken over by the Reich Main Security Office (Reichssicherheitshauptamt or, RSHA) and Major General of Police Walter Schellenberg replaced Canaris functionally within the RSHA. This action deprived the German Armed Forces (Wehrmacht) and the anti-Nazi conspirators of an intelligence service of its own and strengthened Himmler's control over the military.

Canaris, by this time a full admiral, was cashiered and given the empty title of Chief of the Office of Commercial and Economic Warfare. He was arrested on 23 July 1944, in the aftermath of the "July 20 Plot" against Hitler and executed shortly before the end of the war, along with Oster, his deputy. The functions of the Abwehr were then totally absorbed by Amt VI, the SD-Ausland, a sub-office of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt or RSHA, which itself was part of the Schutzstaffel or SS.