Foreword
Ifirst came across the story of Dr Richard Hayes in an article in the Irish Times property section in early 2016. The piece dealt with the sale of a house at 245 Templeogue Road and had been shown to me by a teaching colleague who quipped, ‘There’s a story there’, as I read through it. The house had been known colloquially as the ‘Nazi house’ and its story was local lore in Dublin 6. It was erroneously said that the Art Deco house looked like a swastika in aerial photographs.
Truth, however, is always stranger than fiction. In 1940, it was used as an IRA safe house and a man named Hermann Görtz had stayed there on an ill-fated mission to Ireland to spy for the Third Reich. Given my interest in history I decided to investigate the matter further.
After much research, I came across the name of Dr Richard Hayes. He had interrogated Görtz during his incarceration in Arbour Hill prison and subsequently broke the communication code he was using. A similar cipher had baffled staff in Bletchley Park, and such was its importance, MI5 had an entire hut with 16 staff working on breaking it. In addition to this, Hayes’s code-cracking expertise was to have a direct impact on various Allied engagements such as the Battle of the Bulge. He was also the first person in the world to break the German microdot encryption method.
Astonishingly, Hayes wasn’t a military man at all. He had been seconded to Irish Military Intelligence for his obvious intellect. He spoke several languages, including fluent German, and was also a highly skilled mathematician. He uniquely possessed all the talents needed for the job that was at hand.
I was fascinated that a man such as Hayes was virtually unheard of in Ireland, given his achievements in the field of cryptanalysis and his contribution to the Allied war effort. The striking thing was that the more I read about Hayes, the more it became apparent how unassuming he was. He cycled to work every day in the library and after work he cycled to McKee Barracks near Phoenix Park to work on the German codes that had been intercepted during the day.
Often he would take messages home to work on while simultaneously raising his young family. In his spare time, he compiled a bibliography of Irish manuscripts that is still being used today. Despite Hayes’s obvious achievements, finding written material on him was a difficult task. He was merely a footnote in the more ‘interesting’ stories of others from that period. A good starting point was the pioneering research into this period of Irish history by Prof. Eunan O’Halpin, Dr Mark Hull and authors James Scannell and Enno Stefan. It is on the shoulders of that work that this book stands.
Despite Richard Hayes’s name being not widely known, his contribution to Irish history is immeasurable. He masterminded the Irish counter-intelligence programme during World War II and helped ensure that Germany felt it could not directly invade Ireland.
It is my hope that now, 42 years after the death of Richard Hayes, the story of his life reignites public debate on how we commemorate World War II in Ireland and that he and other Irishmen who played such a crucial role in the Allied victory are suitably commemorated.
Marc Mc Menamin
Ballyshannon
June 2018
Dr Richard J. Hayes – Director of the National Library of Ireland during World War II. He was seconded to the Irish Defence Forces, where he headed the cryptography unit. He became Ireland’s most prolific and brilliant codebreaker as well as a formidable interrogator of captured German spies.
Hermann Görtz – The most formidable German spy sent to Ireland during World War II, he remained at large for over a year. Görtz was a German spy in Britain and Ireland before and during the war.
Politicians and Civil Servants:
Frederick Boland – Assistant Secretary of the Department of External Affairs from 1939 to 1946 prior becoming the Secretary, a post he held until 1950.
Admiral Wilhelm Franz Canaris – a German admiral and chief of the Abwehr, the German military intelligence service, from 1935 to 1944.
Winston Churchill – British politician, army officer and writer, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1940 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1955.
Éamon de Valera – Irish political leader in 20th-century Ireland. His political career spanned over half a century from 1917 to 1973; he served several terms as head of government and head of state. Served as Taoiseach and Minster for External Affairs during World War II.
Herman Göring – a German political and military leader as well as one of the most powerful figures in the Nazi Party that ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945. A veteran World War I fighter pilot, he was a recipient of the Pour le Mérite and leader of the German Air Force, the Luftwaffe.
Adolf Hitler – German politician who was the leader of the Nazi Party, Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945 and Führer of Nazi Germany from 1934 to 1945.
Franklin D. Roosevelt – American statesman and political leader who served as the 32nd President of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945.
Joseph (Joe) Walshe – Secretary of the Department of External Affairs of the Irish Free State from 1923 to 1946.
Joachim von Ribbentrop – Foreign Minister of Nazi Germany from 1938 until 1945.
The Irish Defence Forces:
Col Liam Archer – The Director of Irish Military Intelligence (G2) from the outbreak of the war until his promotion to Deputy Chief of Staff in 1941.
Col Dan Bryan – Director of Irish Military Intelligence from 1941 until 1952. Bryan was responsible for recruiting Dr Hayes as a codebreaker and formulating Irish defence policy in the late 1930s.
Commandant Éamon De Buitléar – worked for G2 alongside Dr Hayes as an interrogator and cryptographer.
Capt. Joseph Healy – Professor of Spanish at University College Cork, seconded into G2 during World War II where he worked as a codebreaker and interrogator.
Lt. General Dan McKenna – Chief of Staff of the Irish Defence Forces during World War II.
General Hugo MacNeill – Irish general who became involved in political intrigue with German spy Hermann Görtz.
General Eoin O’Duffy – an Irish nationalist, political activist, soldier and police commissioner. He was leader of the quasi-fascist Army Comrades Association, commonly known as the Blueshirts.
Captain John Patrick O’Sullivan – Irish Army Signals Officer who monitored the German Legation from listening stations in Collins Barracks and his home in Chapelizod.
The Irish Republican Army:
Stephen Hayes – a member and leader of the Irish Republican Army from April 1939 to June 1941. Served as Acting Chief of Staff while Séan Russell was abroad.
Stephen Carroll Held – an IRA member who visited Germany in 1940 as an emissary of the IRA to discuss Plan Kathleen, the projected German takeover of Ireland.
Pearse Paul Kelly – IRA man who was arrested along with Hermann Görtz at 1 Blackheath Park, Clontarf, in 1943.
Patrick Mc Neela – IRA man who picked up Hermann Görtz from Jim O’Donovan’s house Florenceville in Shankill, Co. Dublin.
James ‘Jim’ O’Donovan – a leading volunteer in the Irish Republican Army where he acted as Head of Munitions and Chemicals. Travelled to Germany to set up the link with the Nazi Party.
Séan Russell – an Irish republican who held senior positions in the IRA until the end of the Irish War of Independence. From 1922 until his death on board a Kriegsmarine U-Boat in 1940 he remained a senior member and chief of staff of the IRA, while it divided and was outlawed by the Irish state.
Frank Ryan – an Irish politician, journalist, intelligence agent and paramilitary activist. A prominent figure on the left in the IRA.
Maurice ‘Moss’ Twomey – an Irish republican and former chief of staff of the Irish Republican Army. Used mainly as a hard man in his later years.
German Spies:
Dieter Gärtner and Herbert Tributh – South African nationals who were sent by the Abwehr to Ireland carrying explosives.
Walter Simon – trained at the Abwehr branch in Hamburg, which was responsible for subversive activities against the United Kingdom.
Henry Obéd – An Indian native who accompanied Gärtner and Tributh.
Wilhelm Preetz – the first German agent to be captured in Ireland. Married to an Irish woman from Tuam, Co. Galway.
Günther Schütz – a German citizen who performed a mission for German intelligence to Ireland. Arrived in Wexford using a state-of-the-art system of microdots for encrypting messages.
Werner Unland – A German sleeper agent who had arrived in Dublin with his wife prior to the war. Used his home on Merrion Square as a base for spying.
Jan van Loon – A Dutch sailor and opportunist who volunteered his services as a spy to the German Legation.
Ernst Weber-Drohl – a professional wrestler, strongman performer and German Abwehr agent during World War II.
German/IRA Intermediaries:
Helmut Clissman – the best-informed German about Ireland and the IRA during World War II. The Nazis twice failed to smuggle him into Ireland to act as an intelligence agent and link with the outlawed IRA. Mr Clissmann first came to Ireland as a young Trinity College student in the 1930s.
Oscar C. Pfaus – German intelligence agent with the Abwehr. In 1939 the Abwehr sent Pfaus to Ireland to set up a link with the IRA for the forthcoming war with Britain.
Native Irish German Spies:
John Codd – an Irish national who, after being captured as a British Army corporal during World War II, went on to serve in the German intelligence service and SS intelligence.
John Kenny – Amateur radio operator who accompanied John Francis O’Reilly on his mission to Ireland.
Joseph Lenihan – Member of the Lenihan political family, recruited by the Abwehr in the Channel Islands and later selected for the Double-Cross system by MI5.
John Francis O’Reilly – An opportunist who was recruited by the Abwehr and sent to Ireland on a spy mission.
James O’Neill – Trained by the Abwehr as an agent and unsuccessfully sent to Ireland via Spain.
Irish German Conspirators:
Joseph Gerard Andrews – An opportunist who became involved with Görtz and continued using his code after Görtz’s arrest.
Caitlín Brugha – an Irish Sinn Féin politician. Sheltered Hermann Görtz and Günther Schütz while they were on the run.
Anthony Deery – IRA member and Hermann Görtz’s radio operator.
Christopher Eastwood – A chef on board the SS Edenvale who passed messages to Portugal for Andrews using Görtz’s code.
Mary and Bridie Farrell – Sisters who sheltered Görtz at their home in 7 Spencer Villas, Glenageary. The sisters campaigned for Görtz’s deportation to be reversed.
Liam Gaynor – Author of Plan Kathleen, the blueprint for the German invasion of Northern Ireland.
Maud Gonne MacBride – Widow of 1916 leader Major John MacBride and mother of Iseult Stuart.
Charles ‘Nomad’ Mc Guinness – An Irish adventurer, author and sailor supposed to have been involved in a myriad of acts of patriotism and nomadic adventures. A friend and confidant of Hermann Görtz.
Helena Moloney – A prominent Irish republican, feminist and labour activist. She fought in the 1916 Easter Rising and later became the second female president of the Irish Trade Union Congress. She harboured and aided Hermann Görtz while he was on the run.
Francis Stuart – Irish writer and Nazi sympathiser. Travelled to Germany to liaise with the Abwehr. Offered his home at Laragh Castle, Co. Wicklow, as refuge to Hermann Görtz.
Iseult Stuart – the daughter of Maud Gonne and Lucien Millevoye, and the wife of the novelist Francis Stuart. Had a romantic relationship with Hermann Görtz during his stay at her home in Laragh, Co. Wicklow.
Foreign Diplomats posted to Ireland during World War Two:
David Gray, United States – an American playwright and novelist who served as the United States minister to Ireland from 1940 to 1947.
Dr Eduard Hempel, Germany – the Nazi German Minister to Ireland between 1937 and 1945 in the build-up to and during the Emergency.
John Maffey, 1st Baron Rugby, United Kingdom – At Churchill’s request he became the first United Kingdom representative to Ireland in 1939 and served in the role until the end of the war.
MI5:
Cecil Liddell – Older brother of Guy and head of MI5’s Irish section which worked in conjunction with Col Dan Bryan in the Dublin Link. Visited Ireland to be shown the Görtz coding system by Dr Hayes.
Guy Liddell – MI5’s Director of Counter-Espionage during World War II.
United States Army:
General Lucius D. Clay – a senior officer of the United States Army who was known for his administration of occupied Germany after World War II.