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increasingly diffused wealth, all gave a powerful momentum to those who saw the coming twentieth century as the dawn of a new age.
    The young pupil, who was now whisked away to the classical villa and park at 110 Wörthstrasse, was only one of countiess young men who were being quietly but confidently groomed to assume responsibilities in a Germany that would offer far greater possibilities than those available to an earlier generation. These thoughts, however, would have been remote from the young man who, deposited at home, flew not to his books butto his favourite companions, his dogs. Isolated from the world beyond the walls that surrounded his family’s gardens and tennis courts, the child’s existence was relatively cut off from social interaction with his contemporaries. In the tradition of home and family, social life revolved around the hearth and a self-sufficiency that the febrile world of the late twentieth century would have regarded with astonishment.
    This comfortable childhood was considered by one writer on Canaris as a ‘silver spoon’ existence. It was certainly one in which this youngest of four and second son enjoyed in every way. Later, he would recall these days with unalloyed fondness. If he was teased at school on account of his height or, by German standards, strange name, his villa was his casde, over which the sun always shone. Born on 1 January 1887 in a small mining town near Dortmund, he may have observed the sacrifice and hardship of miners against the backdrop of well-honed German organisation, as one writer has suggested, 2 but it is far more likely that he was principally influenced by his parents and the solidly bourgeois home they had created for him, his elder brother and two sisters.
    Ironically, given later events, the cultural inspiration for such Germans came from that bastion of privilege and effortless superiority, England. English hunting prints adorned the walls of the villa. The silver tea service was English and there would have been many references to the self-discipline and values of the English ruling class. Uniformed governesses were also English and introduced the strange habit of placing lettuce in bowls at strategic places around the house to enable the children to satisfy any sudden yearning for food in the healthiest of ways.
    However, these were by no means the most important influences. The young boy who excelled at riding and tennis was (with his father frequently absent at work as manager of the local factory) the only man in the house. His elder brother, Carl, had left home early to take up an important position with Thyssen. Wilhelm’s stature and his dark skin set him apart from the more macho and athletic of his male contemporaries.The predominantly feminine environment at home also invested his character with more sensitive influences. He seemingly enjoyed the attention lavished on him by his doting sisters but was nevertheless introspective and far from transparent. His schoolfellows, when later asked about him, found him difficult to remember; so low a profile did he have, so shy was he in many ways.
    This shyness, which betrayed a sensitive nature, was disguised by a powerful sense of humour which constantiy amused his three sisters and parents. It was the mask of irony, which so many outsiders deploy in dealing with a world that seems challenging and unknown. It may partly have been his response to the most important influence on his life, his parents’ rather different personalities. His father appears to have been a gruff, overbearing, socially ambitious but capable businessman; while his mother, Auguste Amelie Popp, was a woman of more refined bearing, the daughter of a Franconian forester and a descendant of a Silesian Catholic family who had always preserved their Austrian as opposed to Prussian identity. Indeed, Catholicism had also been the Canaris family’s religion until Wilhelm’s grandfather had converted to