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‘Ireland is important to the Commander in Chief of the Luftwaffe [Hermann Göring] as his base for attacks on the north-west ports of Britain, although weather conditions must be investigated. The occupation of Ireland might lead to the end of the war.’
ADOLF HITLER, Wehrmacht situation conference,
3 December 1940
This is a story of many characters, but chief among them is a humble librarian from west Limerick, whose efforts alongside his colleagues in Irish Military Intelligence helped turn the tide of the Second World War. During that destructive conflict that swept through Europe from 1939 to 1945, Nazi Germany attempted, through espionage, to penetrate the Irish Free State at every level. They did this for a variety of reasons; primarily they did it to assess the IRA’s suitability as an asset to the Nazi regime, but they were also interested in weather reports from Ireland due to the similar climate the country shared with the United Kingdom. Such information could have been used to great effect in the planning of military operations by the German forces against the Allied Powers. Ireland had never before faced such a threat to her sovereignty.
Spying missions into Ireland posed myriad problems for the Irish authorities. Foremost was the very real threat of a German invasion but there was also the possibility of a pre-emptive invasion by the Allies in order to counter the German threat. In the latter years of the war, information leakage through German agents active in the Irish Free State also posed a serious threat not only to Ireland, but to the very course of the war itself. Ireland needed the right people in the right place, to do the right thing at the right time.
Two such gentlemen were Dr Richard J. Hayes, the Director of the National Library of Ireland, and Colonel Dan Bryan, the Director of Irish Military Intelligence from 1941 to 1952. Hayes’s brilliance as a codebreaker and interrogator, and the foresight of Bryan to utilise him in this role, ensured that Germany felt they could not directly invade Ireland, while also playing a significant role in crucial Allied operations such as the Battle of the Bulge. Much of this story has been hidden in plain sight for several decades, but the story of Hayes, Ireland’s enigmatic and unassuming Nazi codebreaker, is an exceptional one. When Ireland faced her darkest hour, alone and vulnerable on the periphery of Europe, Richard Hayes was all that stood between Ireland and Nazi Germany.
Germany had long fixed her gaze on the British Isles. As early as the mid-1930s Ireland was identified as being of strategic importance to the Reich. While Ireland possessed very little in the way of natural resources, its proximity to England ensured that it would always be of interest to the German authorities. Ireland was in many ways a gateway to the Atlantic, and control of her meant control of the supply routes from the United States, on which the British relied. While the German Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine were ill-equipped to totally disrupt convoys that passed close by neutral Éire and directly into British-controlled Northern Ireland, a line of thinking soon developed that if Ireland were to be turned into a German ally it would help create a new front from which to attack the British – right on its own doorstep.
German contacts with Ireland predated the outbreak of the war in 1939. As early as the mid-1930s Germany maintained political and cultural links with Ireland, liaisons that were to draw considerable suspicions from the Irish authorities, particularly G2, the Irish Directorate of Military Intelligence. G2, which is still in existence today, is the military intelligence branch of the Defence Forces, the Irish armed forces, and the national intelligence service of Ireland. It is essentially Ireland’s version of MI5 or the CIA. G2 has responsibility for the safety and security of Irish Defence Forces personnel, and supports the national security of Ireland.
During the war years the Directorate operated domestic and foreign intelligence sections, providing intelligence to the Government of Ireland concerning threats to the security of the state and the national interest from internal and external sources. It was during this period that Military Intelligence first became known as G2, which was an American designation. It had had many different titles over the years from its genesis as the intelligence section of the IRA, led by the IRA’s Director of Intelligence, Michael Collins. But the rise of fascism was to give G2 its toughest challenge yet.
Initially Military Intelligence was concerned with assessing external threats to Ireland. This resulted in a devotion to the study of foreign armies, something which wasn’t an onerous task, as there was no foreign army posing a threat to the Irish state at that period. There was of course the United Kingdom, with which from 1921 Ireland had a very complex defence and security relationship. However there were limited resources available to intelligence, and it was pointless devoting them to the study of the British Armed Forces. But during the ‘Emergency’ G2 did build up its resources for assessing the strength of the British and American forces in Northern Ireland.
In the 1920s and 1930s G2’s main role was to deal with the internal threat of the IRA, and to assess the threat of republicans being manipulated by foreign powers. This eventually evolved into counter-intelligence, subversion and the prevention of other countries using Ireland as a base for spying, and as such Irish Military Intelligence was structured into various sections during the war. Assuming overall command was the Army Chief of Staff Lt Gen. Dan McKenna. His Assistant Chief of Staff was Liam Archer, who assumed this role in 1941, and the rest of Intelligence was subdivided into the following sections: G1, which dealt primarily with personnel; G2, which dealt with Intelligence, and which from 1941 was headed by Dan Bryan, who was headquartered in Dublin with four regional commands; G3, which dealt with operations; and G4, which handled logistics. Bryan was able to liaise through G2 with the Garda Síochána Special Branch as well as with the Garda Aliens Section, Naval Service, Coastal Service, Immigration and the Departments of Justice, Posts and Telegraphs and External Affairs. With all these powers at his disposal Dan Bryan was well placed to take on the looming Nazi threat.
Daniel Bryan, known as Dan to his friends and colleagues, was born in Dunbell, Gowran, Co. Kilkenny in 1900. From 1916 he studied medicine for two years at University College Dublin. In November 1917 he joined the Irish Volunteers to fight against British rule in Ireland, serving in C and G companies of the 4th Dublin Brigade. He entered the National Army in 1922 and was formally commissioned to the rank of Captain in the Defence Forces on 4 September 1923. Bryan was to serve most of his career at army headquarters, with the majority of it in the Intelligence section. In 1941 he was appointed as Chief Staff Officer of G2, and he held this post throughout the Emergency. He was a man of huge intellectual ability, known for his shrewdness, analytical thinking and considerable memory for facts, figures and faces – skills that were to be tested to the extreme as the darks clouds of fascism began to gather over Europe.
From the early 1930s, prior to his elevation to Director of Intelligence, Dan Bryan had been writing internal memoranda arguing that if Ireland didn’t deal with foreign powers developing relationships with the IRA, such powers that threatened countries such as Britain and France would start operating secretly in Ireland. Bryan argued that if Ireland wished to be truly neutral, a policy which had been at the heart of Irish foreign policy since independence, it could only be so by practising a very shrewd realpolitik, ensuring Ireland couldn’t be used as a base to attack British interests. Bryan’s views were quite unpopular in the army at the time, because there prevailed an attitude that if Germany went to war against Britain, Germany might help Ireland regain the lost territory of Northern Ireland.
This naïve theory was endorsed by some senior officers and prompted Bryan to courageously put his thoughts in writing. Mindful of the growing threats of National Socialism in Germany and Mussolini’s Fascist Brigades in Italy, Bryan penned a long essay entitled ‘Fundamental Factors affecting Irish Defence’ as part of his application for promotion to commandant. The 60-page document would eventually make its way to the government, where ministers were suddenly spurred into action by his writings. Bryan argued that ‘we are not relatively but totally disarmed; the big danger is not from the United Kingdom but from Britain’s enemies. The danger is Britain’s enemies will establish a link here with the IRA and that may provoke them into action against US.’ While many around him took the view that the war wasn’t Ireland’s concern, Bryan continued warning the authorities about the imminent threat, as his concern at Ireland’s vulnerability grew with each passing day.
In the course of the document Bryan anticipated what would be necessary in terms of resources and personnel if Ireland should get involved in the war. Staffing and money were problems for G2, but they had done the heavy lifting in terms of intelligence and counter-intelligence functions, mostly in terms of preventing England or Germany or the US from interfering with Ireland. Essentially Bryan wanted G2 to be able to detect foreign spies entering the country and to deal with them as quickly and quietly as possible.
While Bryan had written this paper in 1936, it wasn’t fully implemented until 1939, at the outbreak of the war. His paper had been written at the correct time, however, and politicians became slowly but surely aware of the threat posed to Ireland by the developing political situation in Europe. The British government was desperately trying to appease Hitler; however, slowly but surely, Europe was headed towards war. While Neville Chamberlain preached ‘peace in our time’, in Ireland a cabinet committee on press censorship was re-established, and groundwork was laid down for press and communication censorship based on the British experience of World War I.
Bryan and Col Liam Archer, the Director of Intelligence until 1941, were given a significant input in the formation of the government’s security policy, and debates were held in the Dáil with regard to aligning Irish neutrality with British security interests. A committee composed of the Departments of Justice, Defence and Local Government was also formed. The committee was to be chaired by the Taoiseach, and its sole brief was to coordinate all government departments in relation to national defence while a new Defence Forces bill was being drafted. Crucially, Dan Bryan had reawakened Irish defence policy as a major political interest in the nick of time.
Under the stewardship of Archer and Bryan, G2 was to concern itself with coordinating all aspects of state security. This included maintaining files on all suspects and persons of interest, as well as suspect organisations, both domestic and foreign, operating in Ireland. Part of this role was to include monitoring of the German presence in Ireland. While Ireland had quite a small German population at the outbreak of the war in 1939 (estimated at 200 known aliens), it was highly organised and respected, and posed an intelligence and security threat to the state. In order to counter this, a joint security operation between G2 and An Garda Síochána was set up to monitor potential threats.
As early as 1931 the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP), commonly known as the Nazi Party, had an overseas affiliate group known as the Auslands-Organisation operating in Dublin. While on the surface it posed as an organisation dedicated to promoting trade and cultural links with Ireland, it was in fact engaged in intelligence gathering and the recruitment of informants who would endeavour to monitor goings-on in Ireland and report them back to the German High Command in Berlin.
The Dublin branch of the Nazi Party had a very small but influential membership largely made up of aesthetes and members of the intelligentsia. While the party only had 30 members, its influence in Dublin society was extensive, particularly in the arts. The most prominent member of the group was Dr Adolf Mahr, an Austrian archaeologist who later became leader of the Dublin branch of the Nazi Party. Mahr arrived in Ireland in 1927 to work as keeper of antiquities in the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin, and in 1934 Éamon de Valera appointed Mahr Director of the museum. Mahr joined the Nazi Party in 1933, and during his spell as Nazi leader in Dublin he recruited roughly 23 Germans to his organisation. G2 monitored Mahr closely, but he was also kept under close surveillance by George Furlong, Director of the National Gallery from 1935 to 1950, who was clandestinely working as a spy for MI5 himself.
In 1939 Mahr was recalled to Germany due to a general order calling all German citizens to return home at the outbreak of the war. He had hoped to return to Ireland by late September 1939, believing that the war with Britain would be brief and would result in a decisive German victory. Events were to take a different turn, however. After the war Mahr was arrested and accused of being a Nazi spy, and for using his position as Director to plan a Nazi invasion of Ireland. It was alleged that he had escaped with maps and plans that would be of use to a potential invading army. After his release Mahr tried to return to Ireland, but he was ultimately prevented from doing so on the advice of Dan Bryan to Taoiseach Éamon de Valera.
Other high-ranking Germans and Austrians prominent in the Nazi Party in Ireland included Col Fritz Brase, who became head of the Irish Army’s School of Music; Otto Reinhard, who was Forestry Director with the Department of Lands; and Heinz Mecking, chief advisor with the Turf Development Board. This group of intelligentsia were vociferous in their sense of national pride, and proudly espoused their beliefs publicly. They were regulars in the most high-end restaurants and bars of the era. Mahr had a particular fondness for the Red Bank Restaurant on D’Olier Street and the Gresham Hotel on O’Connell Street.
In 1937, the Auslands-Organisation organised an ostentatious Christmas party in the Gresham where the party faithful wined and dined in a main hall that was festooned with swastika flags, tricolours and a large portrait of Herr Hitler. A toast was raised to salute the Führer, and Nazi salutes were given during raucous renditions of Deutschlandlied, the Nazi Party anthem. While giving the impression that he was an aesthete, Mahr was without doubt a very serious doctrinaire Nazi. He would later attend a conference in 1944 organised by the SS and Propaganda Ministry under Joseph Goebbels which sought to deal with the ‘Jewish Question’. Mahr and other members of the German community living in Ireland also successfully collected intelligence and relayed this to Berlin to be used in future invasion plans for Ireland.
The presence of this German colony posed the Irish authorities with a unique problem, in that there was a branch of the Nazi Party in Dublin in the lead-up to the outbreak of the war when Ireland was trying to operate a policy of neutrality. Eventually the problem was taken out of the government’s hands, when all members of the Auslands-Organisation were recalled to Germany at the outbreak of the war as part of a general recalling of all German citizens resident abroad. De Valera facilitated their passage via a mail boat named the Cambria, and breathed a sigh of relief to be rid of a potentially tricky diplomatic problem.
While the Auslands-Organisation was a visible presence in Dublin it had no direct links with the IRA, as had been feared by Dan Bryan. If Germany could in some way link with republicans it would lead to an unholy alliance and create an extra front from which Germany could attack the British. That all changed with the arrival into Ireland of a young language exchange student.
Helmut Clissmann first arrived into Ireland in the mid-1930s as a student with the German Academic Exchange Service, and he later studied at Trinity College Dublin. He was also an officer in the Abwehr, the German military intelligence agency during the war. Despite the fact that the Treaty of Versailles prohibited the Germans from establishing an intelligence organisation, they formed an espionage group in 1920 within the Ministry of Defence, calling it the Abwehr. The initial purpose of the Abwehr was defence against foreign espionage, and they essentially gathered domestic and foreign information about individuals who were a threat or of potential use to Germany.
When Hitler came to power he absorbed the Abwehr into the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW), essentially the German High Command. The OKW was part of the Führer’s personal working staff from June 1938, and the Abwehr became its intelligence agency under Vice Admiral Wilhelm Canaris. Its headquarters were located in an ominous-looking building at 76–78 Tirpitzufer, Berlin, where agents were briefed for spying missions. Shortly before the war the Abwehr was subdivided into three broad sections: Foreign Intelligence Collection, Sabotage and Counter-Intelligence.
Clissmann was tasked by the Abwehr to develop his knowledge of English and to assess the capacity of Irish republicanism to be an asset to Germany in the event of a conflict with the United Kingdom. On the surface he was involved in what seemed a cultural mission to promote links with Nazi Germany in Ireland. At one stage Clissmann championed the idea of an academic prize for students who came first in the German exam in the Leaving Certificate. The winner of the prize would get an all-expenses-paid trip to Nazi Germany, where they would stay in a Hitler Youth Camp; the idea was eventually rejected by de Valera.
Clissmann operated under the direction of Adolf Mahr, and was successful in making contact with senior republicans in Dublin – even if he was ultimately unsuccessful in attracting the attentions of the Abwehr to Ireland, as the organisation felt it would be more appropriate to wait for a more opportune time in the future. Clissmann was, however, encouraged to maintain contact with the IRA. In September 1939, he was recalled to Germany along with other German nationals and travelled to mainland Europe on board the Cambria. He continued his work with the German Academic Exchange Service before being called up to active service in July 1940. He was posted to the Brandenburg Regiment and assigned military missions related to Ireland. Among these was an aborted attempt to land in Sligo during the war. Despite the various underground German movements in Ireland the main threat to Ireland in the years coming up to the outbreak of the war was actually from Irish republicans, as opposed to German or Italian intelligence agents.
By the mid-1930s the IRA was an organisation in disarray, diminished by a decade-long campaign against the Irish Free State. But despite the organisation being subjected to internment and sustained scrutiny by the government, the IRA was still potent enough to provide a threat to both the British and the Irish state. The majority of republicans had sided with Fianna Fáil after the Civil War, leaving behind a rump of extremists who were determined to liberate Northern Ireland from British rule by force of arms. De Valera’s government had been particularly severe in dealing with the IRA, to the extent that they were perceived to be of no imminent threat to the security of the state.
In truth they were a faction-ridden group led by various ideologues. The ‘conservative’ wing of the group was led by Chief of Staff Maurice ‘Moss’ Twomey, with Seán MacBride serving as Adjutant General and Seán Russell as Head of Munitions. The ‘left’ wing of the group was led by Frank Ryan, editor of the IRA newspaper An Phoblacht. Ryan and others on the left took up arms in the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War in 1936. By the outbreak of World War II in 1939, it was estimated (depending on sources) that the IRA had between 5,000 and 30,000 active members, which left the organisation well placed to attack at the heart of British society.
In April 1938 an IRA General Army Convention was held and Seán Russell commanded enough support to be installed as the new Chief of Staff. Moss Twomey stood aside from the role and semi-retired to open a confectionery and newsagent’s on O’Connell Street, though he maintained links with the IRA. Russell immediately set about reorganising the IRA into a formidable threat to British interests, and appointed an Army Executive. He immediately set his sights on beginning a new bombing campaign in England, ensuring that IRA training classes in explosives were held in various secret locations across the country.
In January 1939, the IRA declared war on England, and began a bombing campaign which targeted London, Manchester, Birmingham and Alnwick. On 19 January the IRA unsuccessfully targeted Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s only son in a botched attack in Tralee, Co. Kerry, and in early February the campaign was escalated further when bombs exploded at Leicester Square and Tottenham Court Road tube stations in central London. When some young IRA volunteers were arrested in London following an intense security operation by Scotland Yard they had in their possession a document entitled the ‘S-Plan’.
The ‘S’ stood for Sabotage and it contained a detailed set of instructions for a terrorist campaign in England: acts of destruction to bring about the paralysis of all official activity in England and inflict the greatest possible destruction on British defence installations. It divided the IRA campaign into two main lines: propaganda and offensive military action. The document listed six different types of action, including the destruction of armament factories and the disruption of civil/public utilities such as transport and gasworks. Attacks were also planned against industrial plants, commercial premises and newspapers.
The IRA’S attacks were to be strictly concentrated on the island of Britain and in and around centres of population, where IRA volunteers could operate freely without drawing attention. No attacks on targets in Northern Ireland or other areas under British control were planned as part of the S-Plan. On 28 and 29 November 1938, British customs posts along the border were demolished using explosives. The only fatalities were three IRA volunteers, Jimmy Joe Reynolds from Leitrim, John James Kelly from Donegal and Charlie McCafferty from Tyrone, killed by the premature explosion of a mine at a house in Castlefin, Co. Donegal on 28 November. IRA units were expected to raise any money needed for the campaign themselves, and the men who acted within IRA teams were unpaid and expected to support themselves while on missions. Despite being not very well equipped in some respects, the IRA posed a considerable security threat, and was determined to stoke fear within the British establishment.
In an attempt to escalate the campaign, the IRA unequivocally delivered a written ultimatum to British Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax:
I have the honour to inform you that the Government of the Irish Republic, having as its first duty towards its people the establishment and maintenance of peace and order here, demand the withdrawal of all British armed forces stationed in Ireland. The occupation of our territory by troops of another nation and the persistent subvention here of activities directly against the expressed national will and in the interests of a foreign power, prevent the expansion and development of our institution in consonance with our social needs and purposes, and must cease. The Government of the Irish Republic believe that a period of four days is sufficient notice for your Government to signify its intentions in the matter of the military evacuation and for the issue of your Declaration of Abdication in respect of our country. Our Government reserves the right of appropriate action without further notice if upon the expiration of this period of grace, these conditions remain unfulfilled. –Óglaigh na h-Éireann (Irish Republican Army)
De Valera was outraged by the declaration, and in a debate in Dáil Éireann he excoriated the IRA for claiming they had any right to assume the title ‘Government of the Irish Republic’. He assured the Dáil he would bring forth strong measures to deal with the IRA and to give the government the necessary powers to uphold its authority. While Ireland and England tried desperately to deal with the ongoing crisis, a man of average build wearing a grey coat and carrying a small suitcase boarded a train for the Hook of Holland in Hamburg Central Station. His destination: Ireland.
The German passport carried by the man as he boarded the train identified him as the author Oskar Karl Pfaus, born on 30 January 1901 in Württemberg, southern Germany. He had obtained an entry visa for England, granted to him in the weeks prior by the British Consul in Hamburg. Pfaus, 38 years old, had an oval face and brown eyes and hair, and spoke with an American accent. He also insisted on using the American version of his name: Oscar C. Pfaus. He had spent a considerable amount of time in the United States, living what many would consider a colourful life. He had at various stages been a volunteer to the United States Army, a hobo and a mineral prospector in California. Pfaus had returned to Germany on a passenger liner in 1938, having been placed on a list of people of potential use to the Reich. He was soon recruited by the Abwehr in Hamburg to take on a mission that was to be kept secret at all costs.
Pfaus presented himself at the Abwehr headquarters on Knochenhauerstrasse in Hamburg. This was a sub-office of the Berlin Abwehr, whose interest in Ireland had been piqued by the IRA bombings in London and elsewhere. Pfaus was asked by the Abwehr if he would be interested in travelling to Dublin to try and establish contacts with IRA headquarters, and to try to find out whether there was an appetite for collaboration with Nazi Germany. Such was the clandestine nature of the mission entrusted to Pfaus that even the Foreign Office in Berlin was unaware of it. They had imposed a strict veto on contact with subversive elements in Ireland in order to preserve the integrity of the German diplomatic mission in Dublin and, most importantly, to avoid attracting any unnecessary attention to its headquarters on Northumberland Road.
Eager to make his mark as an elite agent and trustworthy son of the Fatherland, Pfaus arrived in Ireland via Holyhead on the morning of 2 February 1939, carrying with him his English visa and, concealed in his jacket, a .45-calibre Smith and Wesson automatic pistol which he had taken back from America. Pfaus stayed overnight in O’Neill’s boarding house on Lower Gardiner Street in Dublin’s city centre before making contact with General Eoin O’Duffy, the leader of the quasi-fascist Army Comrades Association, more commonly known in Ireland as the Blueshirts. O’Duffy had been in correspondence with Pfaus via letter, and he and some of his supporters were the only contacts the German had in Ireland.
Such was the level of trust between O’Duffy and Pfaus that he didn’t need to use his cover story that he was a journalist working for the Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper. Pfaus broached the subject of collaboration between the IRA and Germany with O’Duffy, to which the Blueshirt leader expressed his revulsion. While O’Duffy had fought in the IRA in Ulster during the War of Independence, politics had of course moved on in Ireland, meaning that Pfaus’s knowledge of what was happening on the ground was outdated.
O’Duffy was now a vehement opponent of the IRA, a group which he considered to be illegal and criminal. He had originally set up the Blueshirt movement to protect the ruling government party Cumann na nGaedheal’s meetings from attack by the IRA, and he was revolted by the thought of any sort of reconciliation with them. This posed a dilemma for Pfaus, who would have to look elsewhere in order to make contact with the IRA. The opportunity came when he was introduced to a young philology student named Joy Payne. Pfaus stayed for a time with Payne’s parents, who were O’Duffy supporters in Glenageary, and the young Joy fell head over heels in love with Pfaus. Within a few days, through contacts in the Irish Hospitals Trust, an organisation which had liaisons with the IRA, Pfaus received a message to meet a contact outside a newspaper shop on O’Connell Street on 13 February 1939, almost ten days after his arrival in Ireland.
The shopkeepers had closed up their premises by the time Pfaus arrived on O’Connell Street. After waiting some time he began to question whether anyone would come to meet him. Pfaus soon began to feel uncomfortable, and he had just decided to head home when he was greeted by a large man with a Cork accent and the build of a rugby player, who suddenly bundled him into a car. The two zigzagged across Dublin, eventually arriving, unbeknownst to Pfaus, in Clontarf. Little did the shaken German know that his chauffeur was actually Moss Twomey, the former IRA Chief of Staff. While Twomey had stood down from the position in favour of Seán Russell, he was still aiding the IRA with logistical help and target selection for the bombing campaign in England. Pfaus didn’t need to ask where he was; he knew as Twomey motioned him into the house that he would be meeting the IRA very soon.
The car pulled up to a house and Pfaus was led inside to a large, dimly lit room, where half a dozen men sat around a table. The door closed behind him as he entered, and without warning one of the men barked, ‘Who are you?’ With trepidation Pfaus asked for proof that he was standing in front of the IRA Army Council, assuring the men assembled that he could not state his mission until he was sure who they were. As Pfaus scanned the room he noticed that a number of the men were blocking the windows, doors and any other means of escape, standing menacingly with their hands in their coat pockets.
Pfaus was beginning to question the wisdom of his visit when one of the men standing at the door insisted that he disclose his identity first. Pfaus hesitantly stated his name, and one of the men demanded to know what his business with them was. Somewhat evasively, he stated that he wished to establish propaganda contacts. One of the men asked, ‘Contacts with whom?’ Pfaus explained that he simply wished to know who the men were. Two of the men present were Seán Russell and Jim O’Donovan. Unbeknownst to Pfaus, Russell was IRA Chief of Staff and O’Donovan was Head of Munitions and Chemicals, and the author of the S-Plan.
Ignoring their guest’s request for their identities, Russell began to interrogate Pfaus at length about German intentions for Ireland. Pfaus explained the idea of possible collaboration between the IRA and Nazi Germany. And any fears he may have had were proved unnecessary, as the proceedings were called to an abrupt halt. The IRA men shook Pfaus’s hand warmly as they indicated interest in his plan. All parties agreed that an IRA member would travel to Germany to further discuss the idea of cooperation between republicans and the Germans. O’Donovan took a £1 note from his pocket and tore it in half, giving half to Pfaus and keeping the other himself. The note was to act as a recognition signal for the as yet undetermined IRA contact and the Abwehr once the IRA operative reached Germany.
Pfaus left Ireland on 14 February 1939, feeling his mission had been a success given that the link between the IRA and Nazi Germany had been made. But while Pfaus was in Ireland he had disseminated propaganda materials, and his visit to Ireland didn’t go unnoticed; his movements were recorded by G2 operatives who had been secretly monitoring him since he arrived from Holyhead. They noted that he departed Ireland in a nervous and erratic state.
Following Pfaus’s return to Germany, IRA Chief Seán Russell decided that Jim O’Donovan would be sent to Berlin as the IRA’s representative. O’Donovan was a natural choice, given his role as Head of Munitions and the fact that out of all the IRA’s leadership he spoke enough German to carry out the task. Russell instructed O’Donovan to find out what military items the IRA could hope to obtain from Nazi Germany, as by the time of Pfaus’s visit munitions were running low. These would have to be replenished if the IRA were to keep its war with Britain going.
Séamus (James) O’Donovan was born in Roscommon town on 3 November 1896. Known to those close to him as Jim, he fought in the Irish War of Independence and then on the Anti-Treaty side during the Irish Civil War. O’Donovan was an explosives expert, and was imprisoned a number of times, having reputedly invented the ‘Irish War Flour’ explosive (named after the flour sacks in which it was smuggled into Dublin aboard ships). He subsequently became IRA Director of Chemicals in 1921, and in his mid-20s O’Donovan married into republican royalty when he wedded Monty Barry, the sister of IRA martyr Kevin Barry. In 1930, he became manager at ESB headquarters in Dublin, where he perfected his knowledge of electronics. O’Donovan was of slim build, with very striking features, most distinguishing of which was the fact that he was missing three fingers on one hand due to an accident involving transport of explosives while on an IRA operation in his early 20s.
O’Donovan was to visit Germany three times in 1939. On his first visit Pfaus was alarmed to answer the door of his house near Hamburg’s Central Station to find O’Donovan standing there holding his torn half of the £1 note. Pfaus ushered him inside the house and a meeting was soon arranged between O’Donovan and Abwehr agent Hauptmann Marwede where the two men discussed the role that the IRA was to play in the forthcoming war against Britain. The Germans impressed upon O’Donovan that they could not provide weapons immediately to the IRA to aid them in their bombing campaign. In reality the Germans secretly thought the S-Plan was foolhardy and provocative. The Germans also expressed scepticism about the IRA’s ability to carry out offensive operations against Northern Ireland should the war break out as expected. After three days O’Donovan returned to Ireland, but not before the Germans had given him the codename ‘Agent V-Held’.
O’Donovan and the rest of the IRA were hugely encouraged by the meeting, and O’Donovan returned on 26 April 1939 to firm up details regarding radio contact and courier routes for messages and armaments. A safe house in London was also established during the meeting. With the link adequately set up, O’Donovan returned to Ireland on 15 May, testing the route himself on his way back to Dublin. In his absence Seán Russell had decided to leave for the United States on a propaganda tour to try and raise funds from Irish-Americans for the ongoing bombing campaign. Stephen Hayes had been installed as Acting Chief of Staff in his absence; however, his appointment as head of the IRA was to later prove disastrous. While he was a committed republican, he didn’t command the same respect among his peers that Russell had due to what many perceived as his poor judgement.
Stephen Hayes was born in Enniscorthy, Co. Wexford, and during the War of Independence he was Commandant of the Wexford Brigade of the IRA’s youth wing. He took the Anti-Treaty side during the Irish Civil War, during which he was interned. As a militarist with a severe hatred of the British, Hayes sought to intensify the war against Britain, and as a result the IRA bombing campaign escalated in Russell’s absence. London and Liverpool were again targeted in violent explosions. The British estimated that during this period ‘one hundred and twenty-seven terrorist outrages’ had been committed: 57 in London and 70 in the provinces. One person had been killed and over 55 injured, while 66 persons had been arrested on terrorism-related charges. The police had seized 55 sticks of gelignite, 1,000 detonators, two tons of potassium chlorate and oxide of iron, seven gallons of sulphuric acid and 400 containers of aluminium powder.
Such was the state of alarm in the United Kingdom over the seizures that when King George VI and Queen Elizabeth visited the United States, Seán Russell was taken into custody at the behest of a Scotland Yard request to US authorities, as an assassination attempt was feared. MI5 were also aware that the IRA had plans to blow up the Houses of Parliament, and the IRA came close to blowing up Hammersmith Bridge and Southwark Power Station. Meanwhile in Ireland the security forces were stretched to their limit when violence erupted during a march for the annual Wolfe Tone republican commemoration in Bodenstown, Co. Kildare. The Nazi regime in Germany looked with disbelief at the British government’s inability to deal with the escalating situation.
In the midst of all this chaos, Jim O’Donovan made his last visits to Berlin and Hamburg in August 1939. This time he brought his wife Monty with him, primarily as cover. The two were given a hostile reception upon arrival by German customs officials, who strip-searched Monty for contraband. This incensed O’Donovan, and he vented his displeasure. The couple were eventually met by Oscar Pfaus, who was dismayed at O’Donovan’s newfound hostility towards Germany. The IRA man openly mocked the swastika flag and the brown uniforms of the SA, and questioned the fitness for war of the Wehrmacht, whom he considered ‘cadaver like in their obedience’.
Once settled, O’Donovan met with Herr Neumeister of the German Foreign Office and the Abwehr to discuss the IRA sabotage campaign in England, as well as the standard of IRA equipment, arms and ammunition. The Germans were also interested in hearing about IRA intentions towards the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland and the likely reaction of the Dublin government to any outbreak of war between Germany and Ireland. It was agreed that a radio link would be established between the IRA and the Germans, and that any transmissions should be coded for the purposes of secrecy. When the meeting concluded O’Donovan and Monty boarded a KLM flight bound for Croydon, and made their way back to Dublin.
As the couple left the meeting one of the Nazi officers had called out to them, ‘There is to be war, Mr O’Donovan. Probably in one week.’ His words were to prove prophetic, as within a few days of the O’Donovans’ arrival back into Ireland the German officer’s prediction came to pass. Following several staged incidents that German propaganda used as a pretext to claim that their forces were acting in self-defence, the first regular act of war took place on 1 September 1939, at 4:40 a.m., when the Luftwaffe attacked the Polish town of Wieluń. The German forces destroyed much of the city, killing over 1,000 people, most of them civilians. France and the United Kingdom declared war on Germany on 3 September, but failed to provide any meaningful support to the beleaguered Poles. For the second time in the 20th century the world was at war.
As O’Donovan settled back into his routine in Dublin, in Berlin the Abwehr agents he had dealt with were concerned. They had forgotten to agree on a keyword for the coded radio transmissions that would be sent from Germany to the IRA in Dublin. In an effort to rectify the situation the Germans sent a Breton national to meet O’Donovan with the code word ‘HOUSE OF PARLIAMENTS’. The key phrase contained an intentional error so as to prove the authenticity of the receiver should the code be inadvertently broken. Once O’Donovan received the keyword transmissions could begin; the first coded message between the IRA and the Abwehr was transmitted on 29 October 1939 in which O’Donovan requested the supply of weapons and other equipment begin as soon as possible.
While the radio was strong enough for transmission to Germany, the IRA had other plans. They began to use the machine to make regular anti-British, anti-de Valera and sometimes anti-Semitic illegal broadcasts from the transmitter’s operations base at Ashgrove House off Highfield Road in Rathgar. The transmissions were made on open channels and in December 1939 Gardaí raided Ashgrove House and seized the transmitter. Four IRA members were arrested, though O’Donovan escaped. Despite the fact that the transmitter was seized O’Donovan kept monitoring and transcribing the coded messages from Berlin, though his diligence at recording the messages varied. The link with Germany was temporarily severed, but it was only a matter of time before the IRA and the Germans found a way around what they considered a minor inconvenience.
On 2 September 1939, de Valera convened an emergency session of Dáil Éireann to deal with the threat posed by the British and French declarations of war against Germany. He explained to the various members gathered that in his estimation neutrality was the best policy for the country given the current situation in Europe. In this view he was almost universally supported by the Teachta Dála and the country at large, future Fine Gael leader James Dillon being a notable exception. Dillon, who felt that Ireland should take the Allied side, gave an impassioned speech in the Dáil in favour of entering the war, outlining what he felt were the moral obligations to do so.
His words fell on deaf ears, however, and the 1937 constitution was duly amended to allow for the Emergency Powers Act 1939 to be passed. The act enabled censorship of the press and mail correspondence, and in addition the government was able to take control of the economic life of the country under the new Minister of Supplies, Seán Lemass. Liberal use was made of all of these powers, along with internment of those who had committed or were about to commit a crime, which would be used extensively against the IRA and other subversive elements. Censorship was under the charge of the Minister for the Coordination of Defensive Measures, Frank Aiken. But as Ireland came to grips with the realities of neutrality, both the government and the Irish people were unaware that the war was about to come to Irish shores whether they liked it or not. In a room in Berlin, the Abwehr were secretly plotting on sending German agents to Ireland to revive the link with the IRA. The outbreak of the war had a disastrous effect on the IRA’s ability to carry out attacks in England. The German Navy’s blockade of entry points into England reduced the cash and arms flow from the United States that republicans had been relying on. In desperate need of arms and ammunition, the IRA decided to raid the Magazine Fort in Dublin’s Phoenix Park. It was an audacious plan, but if the IRA were to be successful it would further bolster their war against the British.
The Magazine Fort was built in 1735 in the west of the city, north of the River Liffey within the Phoenix Park. The building is in the south-eastern end of the park, by a wooded ridge. During the British occupation the fort had been seen as a symbol of the occupation, but by 1939 its purpose was to house the Irish Defence Force’s stocks of arms and ammunition. On 23 December 1939 the IRA targeted the arms shelter with the Acting Chief of Staff Stephen Hayes giving the go ahead for the raid. The fort was lightly guarded, and on the evening of the raid the officer responsible for the defence of the fort had little in the way of resources. He had held the post for 24 years preceding the raid, and had at his disposal one non-commissioned officer, six men armed with rifles and one Lewis automatic gun. Also stationed there during the raid were a military policeman and a fire picket.
The Magazine Fort’s guard party were briefed for duty on the evening of 22 December and given clear instructions as to their duties for the next morning. Crucially, the fort did not have its own troops; instead these were supplied from infantry units stationed in a command area. On the night of the raid the 7th Dublin Infantry Battalion, stationed at Portobello Barracks (the modern-day Cathal Brugha Barracks), was responsible for supplying the guard, while the fire picket was supplied by a unit stationed in Islandbridge Barracks. At eight o’clock the officer-in-charge left his post to go into the city.
For him to do this the guard manning the gates had to switch on the outer lights illuminating the entrance, open the inner gate, then open the outer gate. This was of course against all normal operating procedure. Once the officer had cleared the gate the guard closed both gates and went back to his post. Shortly afterward the son of the officer-in-charge appeared at the gate and was let in. Around half eight the gate bell rang again, and the guard saw a civilian who said he had a parcel to deliver to the officer-in-charge. The guard said he would take the parcel and bent down to unbolt the gate. When he stood up straight again the barrel of a revolver was pointed at his face.
The gunman shouted at the guard to open the gate fully and put his hands up. Out of the darkness IRA teams appeared from both inside and outside the fort, confiscating the weapons of the sentry and the guard. The two hostages were then forced to act as human shields for the two intruders to the guardroom, where the remaining soldiers were caught by surprise and surrendered without a fight. While this was happening, a second IRA team disarmed the fire picket troops. The troops attached to the fort and the gatekeepers were then held prisoner until around ten o’clock that evening, and with the guards neutralised the IRA began to move ammunition and weapons out in heavy trucks. The guards were locked into one of the ammunition holding areas and warned not to give away details to the authorities that could identify their capturers.
Eventually the alarm was raised at Islandbridge Barracks when one of the lorries failed to stop at a gate on the way out. At 10 minutes to 11 a party of soldiers were dispatched from Portobello Barracks to investigate what was happening at the fort. They managed to capture two of the raiders, who were seen hiding near the fort’s entrance. In the meantime the duty officer at Portobello had raised the general alarm. By midnight a new guard was ordered and posted at the Magazine Fort, while the old guard were taken into custody.
The IRA had audaciously escaped with a total of 1,084,000 rounds of ammunition, which they removed in 13 trucks. It was a huge propaganda coup for the organisation, and gave the IRA the shot in the arm it needed. Despite this, however, the arms would not fully fill the deficit that the Emergency Powers Act had on IRA munitions.
Observing all of this from a distance, the Abwehr became convinced that the IRA were a force to be reckoned with, an underground army that could be called upon to rise at the right moment and destroy the British from within. This false perception was solidified in the minds of the Abwehr by the success of the bombing campaign and the meetings in Germany with Jim O’Donovan, who did everything he could to sell the organisation as a formidable force. Having allowed the IRA carry on their campaign indefinitely without major interference, de Valera sought to clamp down on them after the raid on the Magazine Fort.
Sickened by the audacious manner in which the raid was carried out, de Valera began to see the IRA as a genuine threat to the state, and at his behest the Dáil further bolstered existing emergency powers to deal with the republican menace by ordering a round-up of known IRA members. Under the Emergency Powers Act, any offence that was deemed a threat to the security of the state was punishable by death. These included the possession of arms or explosives or being an accessory to these crimes. In reality de Valera was hoping he could crush the IRA in one fell swoop; however his measures were to prove to be too little, too late.
De Valera’s emergency legislative measures and the seizure of the transmitter had left the IRA in a state of limbo, and temporarily severed the link with the Abwehr. However in January 1940, the Irish writer Francis Stuart arrived in Berlin in an attempt to revive the link. Stuart slipped through the authorities’ radar, as he was known mainly as an artist rather than a subversive.
Francis Stuart was born in Townsville in Queensland, Australia on 29 April 1902 to Irish Protestant parents, Henry Irwin Stuart and Elizabeth Barbara Isabel Montgomery. His father was an alcoholic, and killed himself when Stuart was an infant. This prompted his mother to return to Ireland, and Stuart’s childhood was divided between his home in Ireland and England.
In 1920, at the age of 17, Stuart converted to Catholicism and married Iseult Gonne, Maud Gonne’s daughter. Iseult had lived a privileged but unsettled life. Her stepfather, Maud Gonne’s estranged husband John MacBride, had been executed in 1916 for taking part in the Easter Rising. Iseult Gonne’s own father was the right-wing French politician Lucien Millevoye, with whom Maud Gonne had had an affair between 1887 and 1899. Because of her complex family situation, Iseult was often passed off as Maud Gonne’s niece in upper-class social circles in Ireland.
Iseult grew up in Paris and London, and in her early twenties she had been proposed to by W.B. Yeats. Yeats had previously proposed to Maude Gonne, and at the time of his proposal to Iseult he was 30 years her senior. Iseult also had a brief affair with modernist poet Ezra Pound prior to meeting Stuart. Pound and Stuart both believed in the pre-eminence of the artist over the masses, and both men became interested in fascism. While Pound eventually found common cause with Mussolini’s Italian Fascist brigades, Stuart found himself drawn to Hitler’s Nazi Germany. It was a fascination which the Abwehr sought to exploit through Helmut Clissmann, who became acquainted with the Stuarts during his visits to Ireland.
Clissmann had married Elizabeth Mulcahy, a native of Co. Sligo and daughter of well-known republican Denis Mulcahy. He was eventually posted to North Africa and then captured at the end of the war and interned in the notorious Bad Nenndorf prisoner of war camp, where he was tortured by the British. The Clissmanns settled in Ireland after the war, and were instrumental in founding St Killian’s German School in Clonskeagh and the Irish section of Amnesty International. They had seven children who are today active in many prominent professions throughout Ireland. The family made a considerable living through business that was built on representing various German firms in Ireland, including the giant Schering pharmaceutical company.
In 1939, Helmut Clissmann was facilitating academic exchanges between Ireland and the Third Reich while forming connections which might be of benefit to German Intelligence. Iseult Stuart intervened with him to arrange for Francis to travel to Germany to give a series of academic lectures in conjunction with the academic exchange. Stuart travelled to Germany in April 1939, and his host there was Professor Walter F. Schirmer, the senior member of the English faculty with the Deutsche Akademie and Berlin University. He eventually visited Munich, Hamburg, Bonn and Cologne.
At the completion of his lecture tour he accepted an appointment as lecturer in English and Irish literature at Berlin University to begin in 1940, two years after Jews had been barred from German universities by the Nuremberg Laws. In July 1939, Stuart returned home to Laragh Castle in Co. Wicklow, and confirmed at the outbreak of war in September that he would still take the place in Berlin. When Stuart’s plans for travelling to Germany were finalised, he received a visit from his brother-in-law, IRA member John MacBride. This meeting followed the seizure of the IRA radio transmitter on 29 December 1939, which had been used to contact Germany.
Stuart, MacBride, Jim O’Donovan and Acting IRA Chief of Staff Stephen Hayes then met at O’Donovan’s house, Florenceville in Shankill, Co. Dublin. Stuart was told to take a message to Abwehr headquarters in Berlin. He travelled alone to Nazi Germany, something that was only possible because of Ireland’s neutrality, arriving in Berlin in January 1940. Upon arrival he delivered the IRA message, and had some discussion with the Abwehr on the conditions in Ireland and the fate of the IRA–Abwehr radio link. His travels didn’t go unnoticed by G2, who subsequently put the Stuarts’ mail under surveillance.
Based on the information supplied by Stuart and the Germans’ reading of the situation it was decided that they would send a number of Abwehr agents to Ireland to seek IRA help in the war against the British. The first of these German agents arrived on Irish soil in early 1940, having left Wilhelmshaven naval base in northern Germany on board the German U-boat U-37. His mission was to strengthen the connection with the IRA and to enlist their aid in the ongoing war.
The night of 8 February 1940 was cloudless and calm. Out of the silence a German U-boat broke the surface of the water in Killala Bay on the Sligo–Mayo border. Inside the submersible craft Abwehr agent Ernst Weber-Drohl blew up the Luftwaffe-issue rubber dinghy which he would use to reach the shore – an unusual choice for a 60-year-old who suffered from arthritis.
Weber-Drohl had spent the majority of his life working as a circus strongman and weightlifter, performing under the name ‘Atlas the Strong’. Born near Edelbach in Austria, he toured extensively in America and Ireland with the circus. His knowledge of Ireland and the English language drew the attention of the Abwehr in Nuremberg, and on this basis he was selected for a mission to Ireland. Weber-Drohl was given money and instructions from the Abwehr to Jim O’Donovan. After making contact with O’Donovan he was then to return to Germany by whatever means possible.
Inexpert in the use of the rubber dinghy, the would-be Abwehr agent capsized his vessel on the way to shore, and was eventually brought to land in a dishevelled state by his comrades before they departed. Weber-Drohl eventually made his way inland alone, and began the long march to meet O’Donovan. Along the way Weber-Drohl was met in Sligo by Stephen Hayes, who briefed him and saw to it that he could travel to meet O’Donovan undetected by the authorities. When Weber-Drohl delivered the cash and instructions to O’Donovan (who must have been shocked to answer his door to the soaked, exhausted German agent, who complained incessantly to him of swollen knees), he informed him that the Germans requested that the IRA send an operative to Berlin to discuss weapons and munitions required by the IRA, as well as financial requirements for the bombing campaign. He gave O’Donovan a total sum of $14,450, keeping $650 for himself to replace the money he had lost in his boating accident. O’Donovan put Weber-Drohl up in his home at Florenceville, and later arranged for him to stay in a room in a boarding house in Westland Row in Dublin.
But despite having been able to travel from Sligo to Dublin undetected, Weber-Drohl’s freedom was short-lived; he was arrested on 24 April 1940 for violation of the ‘Aliens Act’, and was held in Garda custody pending a hearing in the Dublin District Court. In court, Weber-Drohl pleaded his innocence, arguing that he was a victim of poor circumstance, having fallen off a Dutch steamer near Waterford, losing his passport and marriage certificate and beloved pipe in the process. He told a sob story to the court, lamenting that he, a poor arthritic man, was surely deserving of sympathy. A gullible court bought the story, and he was fined £3 and released.
While he may have fooled the court, Weber-Drohl was being closely monitored by Dan Bryan and G2, who had him arrested under the Emergency Powers Act within three days of his release from the District Court. G2 had been investigating Weber-Drohl’s cover story, and found that it was radically different from the delicate web of lies he had spun for the court.
Weber-Drohl had concocted a story where he claimed that he had two missing children from a relationship with an Irish woman, and that he had come to Ireland to try and find them. Weber-Drohl had fathered two children with a woman named Pauline Brady, and soon after the birth of the children Weber-Drohl headed for America, promising he would send for Pauline and the two children once he had set himself up there. Eventually Pauline was told by an American friend of Weber-Drohl that he was dead. The friend had pretended that he had seen his obituary in an American newspaper, a revelation that was to send Pauline into a paroxysm of despair. She was eventually placed in Grangegorman Mental Hospital, and died there in 1923, while Weber-Drohl’s children were sent to the Sacred Heart Home in Drumcondra.
Based on this evidence, G2 were able to persuade the authorities that Weber-Drohl was certainly not who he said he was, and that his story was an elaborate hoax. Weber-Drohl, furious at having his cover blown, went on hunger strike, and was released after eight days of his protest. He was subsequently rearrested and interned until the end of the war. The authorities were eager to avoid the publicity that would surround a German spy in Ireland, and it was reported in the newspapers that Weber-Drohl was being detained in relation to ‘passport difficulties’, although deportation proceedings against him were suspended until after the war. Despite G2’s best efforts, the Abwehr had struck the first blow, and soon more spies would follow Weber-Drohl to Irish shores.
While Weber-Drohl was certainly incompetent, he was still a dangerous individual. He was successful in paving away for another German spy whom he said would soon follow him to Ireland: a mysterious individual named ‘Dr Schmelzer’, who would further bolster the link between the IRA and Nazi Germany. Dan Bryan and G2 knew that the situation was becoming quite grave. They were aware the IRA had made a deal with the devil in their pact with Nazi Germany. Bryan recognised this as the threat that it was, and immediately sought to increase surveillance on any foreign subversives who might enter Ireland.
But unbeknownst to Bryan and his men, the immediate danger was closer to home. Rumours started to circulate among radio operators in listening stations set up by G2 of illegal radio transmissions being broadcast from Ireland to Berlin. It seemed someone was already communicating back to Berlin from inside Ireland. Bryan knew this would prove disastrous should the British find out. As he contemplated his next move he received a letter from London. It had been written by Cecil Liddell, the head of MI5’s counter-intelligence section dealing with Ireland.
MI5 and G2 had set up a clandestine partnership known as the ‘Dublin link’ prior to the outbreak of the war. But the liaison was soon to be tested to the extreme by events soon to unfold. Liddell had become aware of the illicit radio traffic coming from Ireland. Faced with the possibility of a pre-emptive British invasion to remove the transmitter, Bryan was left with a stark choice. He could reply to Liddell telling him that he knew about the transmitter, or he could try to buy some time by telling him he was unaware of it. His next actions would prove vital.