Early Life and World War I
Canaris was born in Aplerbeck (now a part of Dortmund) in Westphalia, the son of wealthy industrialist Carl Canaris and his wife Auguste (née Popp). Until 1938 Canaris believed that his family was related to the Greek admiral, freedom fighter and politician Constantine Kanaris, which influenced his decision to join the navy. While on a visit to Corfu he was given a portrait of the Greek hero, which he always kept in his office. In 1938, however, research showed that his family was of Northern Italian descent, originally called Canarisi, and had lived in Germany since the 17th century. His grandfather had converted from Catholicism to Lutheranism.
In 1905, aged seventeen, Canaris joined the German Imperial Navy and by the outbreak of World War I was serving on board the SMS Dresden as an intelligence officer. This cruiser was the only ship that managed to evade the British Fleet for a prolonged period during the Battle of the Falkland Islands in December 1914, largely due to his excellent deception tactics. Whilst anchored in Cumberland Bay, Robinson Crusoe Island, the Dresden was trapped and forced to scuttle after fighting a battle there with the British. Most of the crew became prisoners in Chile in March 1915, but Canaris escaped in August 1915, using his fluency in Spanish; with the aid of some German merchants he returned to Germany in October 1917 via, among other countries, Great Britain.
He was then given intelligence work and sent to Spain, where he survived a British assassination attempt. Returning to active service, he ended the war as a celebrated U-boat commander from late 1917 in the Mediterranean, credited with eighteen sinkings. He spoke English fluently (as well as four other foreign languages) and as a naval officer of the old school, he respected Great Britain's Royal Navy despite the rivalry between the two nations.
During the German Revolution of 1918–1919, Canaris helped organise the formation of vigilante forces in order to suppress the revolutionary movements. He was also a member of the military court that tried (and mostly acquitted) those involved in the assassination of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg. He was appointed to the adjutancy of defence minister Gustav Noske.
In 1919, Canaris married Erika Waag, also the child of an industrialist. They had two daughters, Eva and Brigitte.
Read more about this topic: Wilhelm Canaris
Famous quotes containing the words war i, early, life, world and/or war:
“War is bestowed like electroshock on the depressive nation; thousands of volts jolting the system, an artificial galvanizing, one effect of which is loss of memory. War comes at the end of the twentieth century as absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political. That a war can be represented as helping a people to “feel good” about themselves, their country, is a measure of that failure.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)
“The exclusive in fashionable life does not see that he excludes himself from enjoyment, in the attempt to appropriate it.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“All great amusements are dangerous to the Christian life; but among all those which the world has invented there is none more to be feared than the theater. It is a representation of the passions so natural and so delicate that it excites them and gives birth to them in our hearts, and, above all, to that of love.”
—Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)
“The republican is the only form of government which is not eternally at open or secret war with the rights of mankind.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)