Wilhelm Canaris Biography

Wilhelm Franz Canaris (1 January 1887 – 9 April 1945) was a German admiral and chief of the Abwehr, the German military intelligence service, from 1935 to 1944. Initially a supporter of Adolf Hitler, by 1939 he had turned against the Nazis as he felt Germany would lose another major war. During the World War II he was among the military officers involved in the clandestine opposition to the Nazi Germany. He was executed in Flossenbürg concentration camp for high treason as the Nazi regime was collapsing.