Hi Steve, could you elaborate on what part of the 1950's essay (slightly updated in 1968) by Trevor-Roper you consider absolutely proves recent suggestions of contact as "poppy-cock"? Bearing in mind I believe both Bletchley Park and the Double-Cross system were kept under wraps until the 1970s.
Re the final resting place of Canaris' diaries, Trevor-Roper seems to be saying they didn't fall into Soviet hands.
What was the crime for which Canaris perished? At Nuremberg his ghost appeared and through the lips of a series of witnesses gave in that still incredulous court-house. One by one, witnesses on both sides found themselves referring to Canaris. Whenever the opposition to Hitler, 'the other Germany', was mentioned, Canaris seemed to be the directing brain behind it. The angry defenders of Nazism denounced him as the traitor who, from his central position, had stabbed in the back a system which might otherwise have conquered the world. A wraith-like figure the from concentration-camp, Erwin Lahousen, himself a former member of the Abwher (and of the imperial Habsburg Secret Service before it), described Canaris as 'a pure intellectual', the secret genius of opposition, and 'the Canaris inner circle' as the very cabinet of resistence. And yet, however insistently that ghost hovered in the court-room, it remained very ghostly. What had this genius of opposition done? Whenever that question was asked the phantom slid away, leaving no evidence that it was not an illusion. He had written diaries, it was explained - a vast and conclusive indictment of the regime specially prepared for posterity. But even these diareis have proved as elusive as his personality. There is no doubt that they existed, but intelligence officers and historians have vainly sought them. Most of them had already been found by the Gestapo and burnt to cinders in a Tyrolean castle; the rest, it seems, were buried, no one now knows where, in a deserted spot on the Lueneburg Heath [Along with the remains of Himmler???? LGR]
Given H T-R was subjected to the official secrets act we can't be sure that he would have revealed the capture of the diaries so for all we know "burnt to cinders" might be code for "buried deep with the MI6 archive". Anyone both Tyrol and Lueneburg Heath I think were in the Allied zone.
Trevor Roper adds this interesting commentary.
Canaris failed. He did not provide Hitler with the exotic Secret Service that he demanded. Indeed, he came to hate Hitler and to hope for his ruin; but with all the opportunities of his position, he failed in that also. His failure was thus complete
Can we be absolutely confident that the "opportunities of his position" is not a veiled nod towards the failure of the assassination plots against Hitler?
This passage might also be hinting at contacts with the British in Spain [ostensibly about pressuring Franco]:
By the beginning of 1944 Canaris judged that another personal visit was necessary to save the situation. It would be easy, he assured himself; he had done it so often before; a visit to Madrid, a talk with his friends [ahhhh the ambiguity from the Jesuitical Trevor-Roper - LGR], and all would be well....But this time an extraordinary thing happened. Unconcernedly, under his usual alias, Canaris set off on his journey, only to be told from Madrid that this time he might not come to Madrid. He might not even cross the Spanish frontier. He never even saw his Spanish friends - for General Martinez Campos declined an invitation to meet him in Biarritz. Herr Abshagen does not mention this significant incident. Perhaps he does not know about it. But it is what convinced those of us who could appreciate it at the time that the fall of Canaris, already overdue, would now no longer be delayed.
This is not the only place where Trever-Roper makes arch comment about Canaris' frequent trips to Spain.
Apparently Stauffenberg phoned him on the afternoon of 20 July to tell Canaris that Hitler was dead.
