The German military-intelligence service from 1920 to 1945, the Abwehr (“Counterintelligence”), was initially formed under the Weimar Republic. Nazi Germany adopted the name and infrastructure for its own spy program. In 1938, the program was restructured under the Nazis, and the Abwehr arm of the intelligence service existed exclusively for spying.

The Abwehr was led by Wilhelm Canaris beginning in 1935. Canaris never saw eye-to-eye with Heinrich Himmler or Hitler. Canaris and many of his devoted Abwehr agents didn’t think Germany would win the war. The Abwehr were complicit in and abetted many of Germany’s atrocities, yet the organization’s enthusiasm for the Nazi party was much more variable than in the SS ranks.

Hostility, prejudice, or bias toward Jewish people as an ethnic and religious group, antisemitism has a long and complex history in Europe. Before the late 19th and early 20th century, anti-Jewish bias was strictly religious in nature and was common throughout Europe under the Church. For example, during the Spanish Inquisition, anti-Jewish hatred extended only to religious practices: Once Jewish people converted to Christianity and held to its traditions, the Inquisition ceased persecuting them. Nazi race pseudoscience claimed that inherent, unalterable differences existed between ethnicities. A belief from Nazi race pseudoscience that still lingers today is that people from Africa and people from Europe are inherently different on a moral, psychological, and intellectual level.