Mike Pence and The German Admiral

When German Admiral Wilhelm Canaris saw Adolph Hitler’s rise to power, he did what any aristocratic, nationalist, anti-communist German military man would do; he got on board.

He wasn’t just an early Nazi; he was all-in. “…without the Führer and his NSDAP, the restoration of German military greatness and military strength would not have been possible. The officer's duty is to be a living example of National Socialism and make the German Wehrmacht reflect the fulfillment of National Socialist ideology. That must be our grand design."

It didn’t last. He felt the first flickering of conscience in 1939 when he was an eyewitness to the crimes of the SS’s Einsatzgruppen in Poland, and as the Abwehr received multiple reports of mass murders of Pole and Jews by the SS. At Bezdin, Poland, Canaris witnessed SS troops force 200 Jews into a synagogue, which was then set ablaze.

When he objected, he was told to stand down and that the decision had come from Hitler himself.

It was all fine and good when he thought it was about the re-armament of Germany after Versailles or restoring German pride and power, but even die-hard Nazi Canaris — who was busy running German intelligence operations around the world, including against the United States — reached a moral and personal limit.

Canaris began traveling secretly to Spain sometime in 1941. After a series of dramatically clandestine meetings with British intelligence services, he wanted to know the terms for peace if, by some means, he could rid Germany of Hitler. After being told this, Churchill pondered the question for a few days and sent back a reply for Canaris’ next meeting with his handlers: "Unconditional surrender."

Canaris and the German underground of military officers who recoiled at the horror they’d enabled and unleashed realized that Adolph Hitler was the lynchpin of the evil in which they were enmeshed.

He was an inspiration and active participant in several different plots against Hitler and the SS, including the 20 July assassination attempt on the Fuhrer. Near the end of his life, Canaris was responsible for helping hundreds of Jews escape from the clutches of the Nazis. He fed intelligence to the British, the U.S., and the Vatican.

His story is dark and riveting. I recommend researching him and the broader anti-Nazi movement to anyone in these dark times. We’ll need a Canaris or ten in government if Trump returns to power.

Which brings me to Mike Pence.

I have no brief for Mike Pence. None whatsoever.

He’s not a good guy, a strong guy, or the future of any civic or political leadership I can embrace. He was an enabler, a cheerleader, a tireless advocate for Trump from 2015 until this week.

Slowly, surely, though, something woke up in Mike Pence. Something clicked. I could trivialize it and say it was just that minor little moment where Trump’s amateur-hour shock troops tried to kill Pence and his family, but I suspect it’s something deeper.

Courage is the first and highest virtue. It’s the one virtue I work on more than any other because it’s the most powerful enabling technology. You become more consequential if you’re brave enough to stand against evil, even for a moment. It gives you a legacy and a reason to be remembered.

So it had meaning when Mike Pence stood up this week, finally breaking off the shackles of the past he built to say he wouldn’t support Donald Trump in 2024. It was a small chip in the armor of Trumpism, one more moment where the MAGA movement is forced to turn on and attack one of its own.

Pence did the right thing on January 6th, 2021, and the right thing on March 15, 2024, so two cheers for late courage.

After all, he’s facing the risks any American faces now for opposing Trump and Trumpism. A political exile, living as a permanent target by the MAGA mob, and the end of his comfortable role in the conservative movement seems like a punishment, but it’s a soft landing compared to true political courage.

Carnaris was, in the end, found out.

In 1944, he was demoted, investigated, and placed under suspicion. He was tortured, starved, and abused, but he never gave up fellow members of the anti-Nazi resistance. In the end, the Gestapo discovered many of his efforts, and on a cold day in April of 1945, even as the war was winding down and the approaching Soviet and American armies encompassed Hitler’s doom, he was killed.

His deputy and closest ally in the anti-Nazi movement Hans Oster, General Karl Sack, Ludwig Gehre, famed theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and others were marched naked into a prison yard at Flossenbürg concentration camp. They were hung by meat hooks and left to die in agony.

So before we gush too much praise on Mike Pence, let’s remember the courage of real insiders in a truly authoritarian system who woke up, realized their complicity in evil, rejected it, and died for their beliefs.