VI
‘I am a German officer and I demand you treat me as such. I did my work and I did it well.’
HERMANN GÖRTZ, 27 November 1941
With all their agents in prison (with the notable exception of Hermann Görtz), the Abwehr went to new lengths in their efforts to infiltrate Ireland. As German agents were being caught routinely by G2, it was felt that more success might be gained by using Irish natives to spy in Ireland, as opposed to continental Europeans. Such agents would be less conspicuous, and would be able to blend into the population with greater ease. It was this line of thinking that brought Joseph Lenihan into the frame. Lenihan was born in Lickeen near Ennistymon, Co. Clare, at the turn of the 20th century, into what would become a famous Irish political dynasty.
One of five children, his brother Patrick Lenihan, known as P.J., was an Irish Fianna Fáil politician in the early 1960s. He held the distinction of being the only parent to be elected to an Irish parliament where his son was already a member. Two of his children, Brian Lenihan Sr and Mary O’Rourke, served as Irish cabinet ministers. A third, Paddy, served as a county councillor in Roscommon, although in the later stages of his career in the 1980s he left the party to join up with Neil Blaney’s Independent Fianna Fáil party. Two of Patrick’s grandchildren, Brian Lenihan Jr and Conor Lenihan, served as Minister for Finance and Minister of State respectively in the government of Taoiseach Brian Cowen.
The young Joseph Lenihan was an able student, completing his Leaving Certificate in St Flannan’s College in Ennis and earning a scholarship to study Medicine at University College Galway. However, after early forays into the IRA he soon left his college course and took the state examination to join the Department of Customs and Excise, a career path he would follow until 1931. Lenihan travelled to the United States and returned to Ireland in 1933, shortly after Hitler seized power in Germany.
His time in the US fostered in Lenihan an anarchical nature of a sorts that was to get him into trouble on his return to the ‘aul sod’. In July 1933 he was convicted of public disorder and received a two-week sentence. Not content to change his ways, he was convicted of forgery in 1935, this time receiving a nine-month sentence. MI5 had been monitoring Lenihan during this period as a suspected subversive, noting that he was involved in gun-running for the IRA and doubled as the producer of forged travel documents, thus the severity of his sentence.
Fed up with Ireland, Lenihan left for England once his sentence was complete in 1940. From here he travelled to the Channel Islands, settling in Jersey on the eve of its invasion by Germany. Between 3 September 1939, when the United Kingdom declared war against Germany, and 9 May 1940, very little changed in the Channel Islands. Conscription did not exist, though a number of people travelled to Britain to join up as volunteers. The horticulture and tourist trades continued as normal, and the British government eased restrictions on travel between the UK and the Channel Islands in March 1940, enabling tourists from the UK to take morale-boosting holidays in traditional island resorts. Lenihan himself had travelled to Jersey in the hopes of obtaining manual work in the agricultural industry on Jersey.
On 28 June 1940 Germany sent a squadron of bombers over the islands and bombed the harbours of Guernsey and Jersey. In St Peter Port, the main town of Guernsey, trucks lined up to load tomatoes for export to England were mistaken by the reconnaissance flights for troop carriers. The subsequent attack on them left many civilians dead. A similar attack occurred in Jersey, where nine people died. In total, 44 islanders were killed in the raids. The BBC broadcast a message that the islands had been declared ‘open towns’, and later in the day reported the German bombing of the island.
Lenihan had travelled to Jersey lacking a specific destination, content to roam, but with Nazi invasion certainly not being part of his plan he decided to try and escape the island, stealing a motor boat in a rash attempt to reach England. The motor soon flooded and he was washed ashore on the Cherbourg peninsula in Normandy in the German occupied zone, where he was picked up by members of the Gestapo.
Lenihan was taken to a Gestapo headquarters in Cartaret, where he was interrogated for a number of days. News soon began to circulate about the Irish prisoner and, sensing an opportunity, two German officers approached Lenihan, offering to release him if he would work as a spy for Germany. Although far from a committed sympathiser of Nazism, Lenihan agreed. He was taken to Paris and brought to German Intelligence Headquarters at 22 Avenue de Versailles in Paris’s 16th Arrondissement. Here, Lenihan was trained in espionage, including the use of wireless transmitting equipment and ‘G-Tinten’ invisible ink.
On a rare night when Lenihan was let out by himself he was involved in a bar fight in the Normandy Hotel, and served yet another short spell in prison for his efforts. He eventually received further wireless training and was sent to various Abwehr headquarters to be briefed on his mission. He was tasked with parachuting into Ireland, where he would travel to Sligo and set up a weather-reporting station. Once the station was operational Lenihan was to contact Berlin, who would send him meteorological staff to help analyse his reports. For this he was to be paid a salary of 1,000 francs per month. His information was of huge significance to the Kriegsmarine and the Luftwaffe, who both required accurate weather information on England for military operations.
Lenihan was scheduled to be dropped in Ireland on 29 January 1941; however, his mission was to take an unfortunate turn. He took off from France in a Heinkel He111, similar to the crafts that had transported both Hermann Görtz and Günther Schütz to Ireland. But there was one crucial difference between those aeroplanes and Lenihan’s. The Heinkel that Lenihan was travelling in had a faulty heater, and when the plane climbed to 30,000 ft it gave out completely. The entire crew apart from the pilot suffered from severe frostbite as a result, and Lenihan lost several toes as well as severely damaging his hands.
He was rushed to hospital in France, where he was nursed back to health and confined to a bed until he was ready to complete his mission. Six months later he was discharged and on 18 July 1941 he was dropped into Ireland, landing in Summerhill, Co. Meath. He was given two wireless transmitters and supplied with £500 and a supply of ‘G-Tinten’ invisible ink. Lenihan was also armed with a special type of invisible ink that revealed its message when mixed with a red powder, heated to 60°c and viewed under ultraviolet light.
He had with him as well a copy of the Pan in the Parlour by Norman Lindsay for use in constructing his coded messages, as well as a typed copy of his instructions. And in case of emergency Lenihan was given two backup novels to be used as book codes: A Windjammer’s Half Deck by Shalimar and The Loot of the Lazy. He was also supplied with a Morse code device that allowed him to transform a standard FM/AM radio into a transmitter.
After his jump and when safely on the ground Lenihan hid his camouflage parachute in a ditch, and hastily made his way to Dublin to contact his family and friends. Within three days G2 became aware of the presence of an illegal parachutist in the Meath area. In a top-secret memo Dan Bryan informed his superiors that
On Monday 21st, July 1941, a parachute and harness equipment were found at Isaacstown near Summerhill in Co. Meath, under circumstances which reasonably indicated that someone had landed from a plane in this country. The parachute which had been concealed in a watercourse or a ditch was pulled out by cattle drinking.
Sensing that something was amiss, Bryan contacted coastal watch posts to see if any German aircraft had entered Irish airspace in the week leading up to the discovery of the parachute. Bryan was alarmed when the reports came back, noting, ‘An examination on the reports on aircraft revealed that a plane had come in over the south coast on the morning of the 18th, flew North to Summerhill where it turned East and Southeast and proceeded to fly out to sea over Co. Waterford.’
Bryan and G2 decided to further monitor the mysterious individual who had entered the country; however, Lenihan’s indiscretions would soon incriminate him. On the morning of 24 July the Department of Finance contacted G2 to inform them that the Ulster Bank on O’Connell Street had directed their attention to an unusual lodgement of English currency on 19 July. The manager had not been present at the time, but when the transaction was researched it was found that a man named Joseph Lenihan had made the lodgement, and had given his address as Moran’s Hotel on Talbot Street.
It was ascertained that Lenihan had only stayed the previous night in the hotel, and had then travelled to Athlone. The manager had reported the lodgement as he felt that there was something sinister about it. He was also under pressure from his head office in Belfast, who became curious as to the origin of the money. G2 now knew Lenihan’s name and his last known whereabouts, and began a widespread manhunt for him. Unaware of the furore he had caused, Lenihan arrived in Athlone at the house of his brother Patrick, who was then managing a textile plant in the town. En route Joseph visited his brother Gerald in Dublin and bought himself an assortment of new clothes with his spy money.
When he arrived at his brother’s door he concocted a bizarre story to explain his absence over the previous few years. He claimed implausibly that he had joined the merchant marine and had been torpedoed off Cadiz in Spain en route to Valparaíso in Chile. Gerald initially believed his brother, thinking it at least explained the damage done to Joseph’s feet and hands. In Athlone he told Patrick a slightly different story, which was at least somewhat rooted in the truth. He explained to his bewildered brother that he had escaped the Channel Islands with the help of a German non-commissioned officer who had taken pity on him. He had then enlisted in the merchant marine and his ship was then sunk off the Cape Verde islands, and his newfound wealth was back pay from the merchant marine.
Both Gerald and Patrick Lenihan were undoubtedly delighted to see their long-lost brother, but were somewhat wary of him. They contacted their sister Maura to discuss the situation, and she too travelled to Athlone to meet her sibling. Soon word came through to local Gardaí that Lenihan was in Athlone. The family were discreetly informed by a local Garda who rang ahead and Joseph escaped before the Gardaí raided the house to look for him. Lenihan escaped on a bicycle, making his way to Geashill, Co. Offaly. The bike, which he had taken from his sister-in-law, had recently been outfitted with a new basket for shopping, and its commandeering by Joseph caused some upset to his brother’s wife.
After leaving his family Joseph travelled to Dundalk, where he deposited a suitcase containing a wireless transmitter and his supply of invisible ink in the Lerne Hotel in the town centre. Lenihan then crossed the border into Northern Ireland, where gave himself up to the RUC, sking that he be taken at once to MI5. He was taken to Belfast and put on the next flight to London.
When he arrived in England he was detained under the Arrival from Enemy Territory Act. On 23 July he was taken to a camp for detainees of the intelligence service and was vetted for the Double-Cross system. A significant number of agents passed through the Double-Cross system. Many of these were captured, turned themselves in or simply announced themselves, and were then used by the British to broadcast mainly disinformation to their Nazi handlers back in Germany. Its operations were overseen by the Twenty Committee under the chairmanship of John Cecil Masterman; the name of the committee comes from the number 20 in Roman numerals: ‘XX’ (i.e. a double-cross).
The Double-Cross system would eventually play a huge role in ‘Operation Fortitude’, the strategic deception of Germany with regards to the location of the Normandy landings. The system coincided with the use of the Ultra intelligence programme, which derived from Alan Turing’s breaking of the Enigma and Lorenz enciphering systems at Bletchley Park. These combined strands would ultimately lead to the winning of the war for the Allies. MI5 chief of counter-espionage Cecil Liddell was somewhat perplexed by Lenihan, and convened a meeting to ascertain if he could be useful for the Double-Cross system or even for espionage in general:
We had a conference about Joseph Lenihan and we came to the conclusion that the only use we could make of him would be by impersonation. Lenihan was dropped in the Curragh with instructions to send weather reports to Sligo and to proceed to England in order to obtain information about air raid damage. He had given himself up in Northern Ireland because he had a criminal record in the south. He is wanted for unlawful assembly, presumably in connection with an IRA meeting, and he has also done some fraud. The Irish have already discovered his parachute, and his set, which has so far not been taken, is left at a house on the Eire side of the border.
Liddell approved Lenihan for work in the Double-Cross system, giving him the codename ‘BASKET’, which perhaps was a reference to the earlier theft of his sister-in-law’s bicycle. He was given an assignment sending letters to his Abwehr cover address on Plaza de Jesús in Madrid. Lenihan’s transmitters were still in the Lerne Hotel in Dundalk; however Liddell and the Irish authorities came up with a unique solution for what to do with them:
Roger Moore of the Royal Ulster Constabulary has come to an agreement with his contact in the Garda Síochána by which we are to be lent Lenihan’s wireless set for eight days. We are to lend the auxiliary one-way set to the Eire government for a similar period. Before the agreement was signed the matter was referred to Éamon de Valera.
Lenihan was given a series of coded phrases by MI5 that he could insert into normal conversations and thus communicated in this fashion. Some of the phrases included: Congratulations on the birth of a son = radio in order. Congratulations on the birth of a daughter = light damage, can be repaired. Congratulations on the birth of a child = radio inoperative. With these codes Lenihan was tasked to report by radio after 10 days.
Despite his recruitment, his entry into Ireland had a negative effect on Irish–British relations in many respects. MI5 were concerned that both the Irish and Northern Irish Observer Corps failed to pick up his aircraft in time and report it to authorities. They were also concerned that his cover story seemed to arouse little or no suspicion among his family or friends, and as a result MI5 decided to put a watch on his correspondence, along with that of all Irishmen on the continent. Copies were sent to G2, who were asked to identify and provide full particulars of any men listed. The wariness of MI5 soon extended to Lenihan’s role as an agent, and he was soon relieved of his duties, as it would have been necessary for him to broadcast from Sligo, and since he was wanted by the Irish authorities G2 would have to be included in the mission.
While Liddell felt that Bryan might cooperate with MI5, it was thought that Irish neutrality would ultimately prevent Lenihan from being able to be used. If German agents were to find out he was broadcasting from within Éire it could have caused a diplomatic incident. The Double-Cross system was founded on the principle that the agent be captured soon after arrival and his presence in the country known by as few people as possible. Lenihan’s sojourns in Athlone and Dublin certainly precluded him from any further missions; however he was allowed to remain in England after his release from duty with MI5. The RUC had complained to Liddell about Lenihan being used as a possible agent, as they suspected him of communicating important information to people in the south.
Despite these worries Lenihan was well treated while in custody, and seemed to receive special treatment compared to other German agents. In many instances such agents were jailed or even executed. At one stage Liddell considered using Lenihan as an agent on a boat between England and South America. He looked through his file in order to gauge Lenihan’s suitability, and eventually decided against it after coming to the conclusion that Lenihan had a laid-back attitude to truth. He noted that he didn’t believe his story of how he originally came to be in Ireland, and felt that the only way he could make any future use of Lenihan was to completely wipe out his past and give him a completely new identity.
However they ultimately decided against using him as an agent as they thought it would be almost impossible for him to talk to the Germans without disclosing his identity and explaining how he came into the hands of the British authorities. For the work that Lenihan carried out for MI5 he was given £250 – £50 up front and £200 to be placed in a bank account which he could access after the war on the basis that he ‘behaved himself’. He was told to report his movements to MI5 and was warned against going back to Ireland, and furthermore to never again leave England.
These orders notwithstanding, in 1942 Lenihan applied for a permit to holiday in Éire. Liddell contacted Dan Bryan through an intermediary, who replied to Liddell that he had no problem with such a visit, and that the Irish authorities would do their utmost to ‘keep him under constant supervision but cannot guarantee 100% supervision due to the man’s habit and character’. Lenihan, unhappy with this decision, took matters into his own hands, and was caught in July 1942 trying to join the crew of a fishing boat leaving Fleetwood, Hampshire to fish off the coast of Donegal. From this point on Lenihan returned to civilian life in England, and tragically had little if any contact with his family in Ireland thereafter.
He eventually moved to Manchester, where he got a job in a sorting office with Royal Mail. He seemed to have few friends, and often spent his spare time in the local library reading voraciously. In 1974 the Lenihan family received a phone call to say that he had died. They travelled to Manchester and his body was repatriated to Ireland. He was buried in Esker Cemetery in Lucan, where Professor Robert Dudley Edwards, then Professor of History at UCD, gave the graveside oration. In the years after the war he never tried to profit from his story. He was also held in good esteem by MI5, with Cecil Liddell writing in complimentary terms of Lenihan, likening him to a politician, such was his gift of the gab: ‘Though of rough appearance, he was fairly well educated, intelligent and with a phenomenal memory for facts and faces. He gave more fresh and accurate information about the Abwehr in the Netherlands and Paris than any other single agent.’
Much of the information provided by Lenihan and the transmitters that he left behind were invaluable in apprehending other German agents on the loose in Ireland. Such information was paramount in the capture of Hermann Görtz.
Görtz had in the interim grown increasingly frustrated with his situation in Ireland. While he now had a functioning transmitter, most of the messages that the Abwehr received seem to be concerned with Görtz escaping to France as soon as possible. In addition to this they were of poor quality, and frequently scrambled. On one occasion Görtz ludicrously suggested that he steal a boat and sail out to sea, where he would unfurl a swastika flag to attract the attention of the Luftwaffe, who could then bring him to safety.
Such a plan was the idea of a man acting more in desperation than with an analytical and tactical mind. In reality the Abwehr had decided to wash their hands of Görtz, having come to the conclusion that he was more trouble than he was worth. On 20 September 1941 he had tried one last time to escape, this time by motor cutter, but the attempt ended in failure. As a result the Abwehr began to develop severe doubts about Görtz’s competency, as well as his mental state. Indeed even the IRA had communicated with them to voice their anger with him.
With nobody left to turn to, Görtz attempted to turn to some of the figures that he had befriended in Irish society, many of whom visited him at a safe house he was staying in near Dalkey. Among those who visited him were Fianna Fáil senators who had once been in the ranks of the IRA with Éamon de Valera. It was even speculated that rogue elements in the Irish Army had offered to transport Görtz back to Germany; however this plan too would ultimately founder. In a final attempt to rectify his situation Görtz arranged a meeting with the new IRA leader, Pearse Paul Kelly, to see if he could persuade him to join with rogue elements in the Irish Army in an attempt to complete Plan Kathleen.
Time was running out for Görtz, however. With many of his colleagues in jail and with few options left he returned to the house of the Farrell sisters at 7 Spencer Villas in Glenageary. G2 had been monitoring the house, and on 24 September a search warrant was served on the residence. Gardaí discovered a $100 bill in the living room, and the sisters were arrested and brought in for interrogation. However, neither volunteered anything in the interviews. Detectives decided to keep an eye on the house, and the next day they returned to question the sisters once more. The authorities’ diligence paid off when they found an envelope under the front door marked ‘Doc – most important and urgent’. The Gardaí also targeted the house of Görtz’s lover, Mrs Coffey, and found a novel in Germanic script.
In November Görtz moved to the house of Patrick Claffey at 1 Blackheath Park in Clontarf. It was to be his last residence as a free man. Görtz had been moved into the house by a man named Joseph Andrews, who had some involvement in republicanism; however Andrews was an opportunist, and informed the Gardaí that Görtz was staying at the address. Despite being warned by Pearse Paul Kelly, Görtz decided to stay in the house anyway.
On 17 September Görtz began to notice strange noises, and became convinced that he was about to be captured by MI5. He left the house but returned a few weeks later, and on 27 November Görtz finally met his date with destiny. Gardaí burst into the house, and Hermann Görtz was placed under arrest and held under the Emergency Powers Act. Gardaí were actually raiding the premises next door and decided to investigate as they noticed suspicious people outside the house.
When Gardaí discovered Görtz in the sitting room he was sitting calmly in an armchair smoking a cigarette. Gardaí placed handcuffs on Görtz, who immediately became aggressive and belligerent towards the officers. He demanded he be treated as a German officer. He began shouting that he did his job in Ireland well, and as the officers hauled him out the door of the house he bellowed, ‘You are arresting the best friend Ireland has. Your government know why I’m here!’
Pearse Paul Kelly was also arrested; he had come back to the house to find Görtz, as they had planned to travel to Germany together. As Kelly knocked on the front door of the house, expecting Görtz to answer, he was instead greeted by two detectives brandishing revolvers. He, like Görtz before him, was placed under arrest and held under the Emergency Powers Act.
Before they left Clontarf Gardaí searched Görtz for any incriminating material. They couldn’t believe their luck; he had been carrying a diary, a set of keys and a Luftwaffe identity book under the alias ‘Heinz Kruse’, as well as his Wehrmacht identity card and £25. The diary contained plans for his escape as well as the addresses and contact details of many of his lovers. Gardaí brought Görtz to Arbour Hill prison, where he continued to insist he was Heinz Kruse, although eventually he admitted his true identity.
In reality G2 were well aware of who he was, as they had been tracking his movements since he had landed in Ballivor over a year previously. When Hempel heard of Görtz’s arrest he became extremely anxious, and decided that he would avoid contact with him at all costs. His caution would come to no good, and in January 1942 Görtz wrote to Hempel asking him for help. Görtz wrote, ‘I am an officer of the Luftwaffe. I ask you urgently to get in contact with me as I feel the honour of the German Wehrmacht is involved. Heil Hitler.’
News of Görtz’s arrest soon spread; it was only a matter of time before it reached Germany. The German Foreign Ministry contacted Hempel and aided him in drafting an official response to the unfortunate turn of events. Hempel was to state categorically that Görtz had been sent to Ireland to facilitate attacks on England with the help of the IRA, and that he at no stage posed any threat to Ireland, its people or its neutrality. Hempel met with Joseph Walshe of the Department of External Affairs and informed him that if Görtz had in any way involved himself politically it was of his own volition.
Hempel told Walshe that any political intrigue on Görtz’s part was probably due to his disturbed state of mind or through his clear personal anxiety and wish to return home to Germany. Within days of being caught most Irish newspapers carried stories of his arrest. The Irish Independent carried a headline that read, ‘German parachutist arrested in Dublin’, while other papers identified Görtz and linked him to the raid in Templeogue the previous year. Such was the furore caused by Görtz that his arrest was also reported in British papers.
The Abwehr were some of the last to learn of his fate; shortly afterwards they prepared an official statement claiming that ‘Captain Görtz had a mission as a German officer against England but was unfortunately delayed in Ireland en route to England.’ In truth the German authorities were not too concerned with Görtz’s arrest, and put the blame on him for getting involved with rogue elements in the Irish Army, particularly Gen. MacNeill. The sole ambition of the German authorities was now to protect Hempel’s mission in Ireland, and Görtz was now superfluous to this.
Privately Hempel was delighted that Görtz was out of the way, and that his own diplomatic mission to Ireland was not under the same stress as when he was released. Of all the German spies that came to Ireland Görtz was at liberty for the longest. Most had been detained within 48 hours of their arrival on Irish soil, but Görtz was free for over a year. There are a number of reasons why this might have been the case. The authorities may have simply repeatedly missed him each time they went to arrest him. Or G2 may have let him remain on the loose in order to arrest IRA members with whom he was acquainted. Or perhaps, most sinisterly, Görtz was allowed to remain at large by de Valera until the Taoiseach was sure what way the tide of the war would turn. Indeed Görtz would have been an extremely useful asset if it had turned in favour of the Germans.
To this day many in IRA circles claim that Görtz’s arrest was an accident, and that the authorities were actually looking for Pearse Paul Kelly. Once Görtz was arrested and the press found out about his incarceration it was impossible to release him again. Whatever the reasons for his capture, Görtz was taken to Arbour Hill, where he was interrogated by Gardaí and G2.
When news filtered through that Görtz had been captured, Dan Bryan contacted Richard Hayes and tasked him with interrogating the new prisoner. Mindful of the threat posed by information leakage from Görtz’s coded messages, Dr Hayes was eager to meet the new arrival. What followed was a game of cat and mouse between the cunning Nazi spy and the genius Irish librarian.