Prussian Finance Minister Johannes Popitz and other members the so-called Wednesday Society. At some point Kern's willingness to work for the military success of Nazi Germany evolved into a position of opposition to the war, and he was persuaded to remain quietly in Bonn. he was never among the leaders of the anti-war movement, however. His personal life was also in crisis, as he was forced to accept that his elder daughter was incurably ill and would never be able to support herself. In 1941 Fritz and Bertha Kern were divorced. Kern remarried later that year. At around the same time his entire library was destroyed by enemy bombs. As far as can be determined, between 1941 and 1944 Fritz Kern underwent a form of self-imposed exile, trying to keep out of the way of the authorities and avoiding contact with opposition groups or anyone else of possible significance to the security services. He did not simply remain in Bonn, however, but seems to have left the Rhineland as frequently and for as long as the opportunities allowed. The late summer and autumn of 1941 he spent on the shores of the Bodensee. During the summer of 1942 he spent two months in Slovakia (which was a German puppet state through the war years). Between August and October 1943 he took an extended summer vacation near Graz where, thanks to contacts sustained through the 1930s, he was able to use a library and call upon the services of research assistants. In October 1943 he arranged for his extensive accumulation of "research materials" to be conveyed to Öblarn, a remote village in the mountains between Graz and Salzburg, and in August 1944 he joined them there. However, he subsequently arranged to have his family and surviving worldly goods sent to Kißlegg, close to the Bodensee and the frontier with Switzerland. Between 1942 and 1944 Canaris and Oster played a desperate double-game as members of the military establishment who were also in touch with British intelligence. Johannes Popitz went a step further, conducting secret talks during the summer of 1943 with Heinrich Himmler, attempting to persuade the government "minister for almost everything" to turn his back on the leader and take part in attempts to negotiate with the Americans and British in order to obtain an "acceptable peace". With the benefit of hindsight it is clear that the hopes of the Canaris