Before WWII, was there any sort of collaboration between the British MI6 and Nazi SS to prevent the spread of Communism

by _danimite

I heard about this somewhere before, and randomly spewed it out during my AP World History class. Just checking to confirm.

Aleksx000

No. The SS was not a secret intelligence service on the level of the MI6. The counterpart of the MI6 in Germany before World War II was the "Abwehr".

An overview over the out-of-the-ordinary actions of the Abwehr goes as follows:

  • Illegal aerial recon missions across Germany's borders, particularly into Poland, in order to scout potentially hostile military formations

  • Passively assist Stalin's purges by keeping the proceedings a secret even from the army leadership on the Hitler's guidance in order to not have any German army leaders warn any of their Soviet counterparts

  • Assure Spain's neutrality: Wilhelm Canaris went rogue as special envoy in Madrid and secretly pleaded Franco to stay neutral in a conflict that he thought would end disastrously. Hitler had instead ordered Canaris to convince Franco to join the war.

  • After the reorganization of 1938, the Abwehr went from a subservient of the Ministry of Defense to an allout military intelligence service on its own - something used by Canaris to promptly boost anti-Nazi conspiracy in Germany by helping the establishment of the aristocratic moderate right-wing resistance ring known to GeStaPo as "Black Orchestra".

So, no anti-communist cooperation with the British, sadly. What you randomly spewed out in class was likely a falsehood.