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Hull discusses the attempt by two agencies of German intelligence to use neutral Ireland as a base for wartime espionage directed against Great Britain in World War II. However, German mistakes and effective Irish counterintelligence agents hopelessly compromised the German plan.
Abstract
The article concerns the attempt by two agencies of German intelligence (the Abwehr and the SD) to use neutral Ireland as a base for wartime espionage directed against Great Britain. Though eleven agents were dispatched during a four-year period, a host of home-grown problems in the German system all but insured failure, and a brilliantly effective Irish army counterintelligence system mathematically eliminated any chance of German success. Because of the intelligence debacle in Ireland, German operations directed against England-including Operation Sea Lion-were hopelessly compromised.
DURING the Second World War, the German intelligence services dispatched a total of twelve agents to neutral Ireland. While not remarkable for the quality of their intelligence gathering, its Irish missions and personnel provide a unique insight into the story of German intelligence in the confines of a controlled environment. Though German espionage in Ireland also was connected to activities in Germany itself involving a host of other characters, this study focuses exclusively on agents who actually arrived in Ireland on covert missions. Recent studies in the field have focused on the technological breakthroughs (e.g., decipherment of the Enigma signals) or active counterintelligence operations (e.g. "Double-Cross") which enabled the Allies to dominate the espionage war, but the individual examination of the intelligence missions to Ireland paints a picture of an organization so organically flawed that outside interference was almost incidental to its global ineffectiveness.1 Both the Abwehr (the German military intelligence service) and the SD (the Sicherheitsdienst, the intelligence service of the SS) sent agents to Ireland. Germany failed in almost every aspect of intelligence planning as it pertained to Ireland: from hazy military intelligence objectives, flawed local and political information, questionable personnel selection, to sloppy execution.
This new look at the subject is made possible by the release of previously unavailable documentation from a number of sources, most notably the Irish Military Archives (the primary custodian for material relating to the Irish counterintelligence campaign, and for investigative and interrogation summaries of the various agents) and the Public Record Office in England. As part of an ongoing process of declassification of selected intelligence service (MIS) records, the British contribution to counterintelligence warfare in Ireland is gradually becoming clearer. Likewise, interviews with the surviving participants have sharpened the focus, and allowed for a more exact and accurate treatment of this opaque historical subject.
Historiography
Since the end of the war, only a few historians have specifically focused on the topic of German intelligence operations in Ireland. German author Enno Stephan introduced the topic to the reading public in 1960 with the publication of Geheimauftrag Inland (later translated into English as Spies in Ireland), which revealed a previously hidden side of wartime Ireland.2 Stephan worked in an era before the general availability of archival sources in Ireland, Britain, and Germany, but had the foresight to interview as many surviving participants as possible and produced a valuable account. His book was followed by American author Carolle Carter's work, The Shamrock and the Swastika. Carter was able to consult many primary documents from the German Foreign Office and likewise interview several survivors, including some in Irish Military Intelligence (G2). Though her work is problematic in a number of areas, it did bring new information to light.3 It is only within the last few years, however, with almost unlimited access to primary documentary sources, that the story can be comprehensively examined, and mistakes or understandable omissions of previous authors addressed. This archival glasnost has been used admirably by historians such as Eunan O'Halpin in his comprehensive work on the security policy of the Irish State.4 Ironically, as written sources have multiplied, many eyewitnesses are now beyond the historian's reach. Only two German agent-internees in wartime Ireland remain alive, and both have been interviewed in connection with the present research.5
Prewar Resources
Prior to the outbreak of the war, Germany had identified several Irish resources that might be of use in the event of war with Great Britain. Since achieving a measure of independence following the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty, Ireland had adopted the trappings of nationhood, including quasi-independent foreign relations with Nazi Germany after 1932. German firms and engineers came in significant numbers to work on hydroelectric and turf production projects; a branch of the Auslandsorganisation (the overseas branch of the Nazi Party) was alive and well in Dublin; and numerous German nationals decided to live and work in Ireland in a host of occupations-among which was active service in the Irish Army.6 By 1933, the Blueshirts, a fledgling Irish version of Hitler's brown-shirted stormtroopers (Sturmabteilungen or SA), were a persuasive political force. Though this proto-Fascist organization had a limited life, it played on the anti-Communist themes already advanced by the Roman Catholic Church, and would eventually send a seven-hundred-- man force to fight with Francisco Franco's Nationalist army in the Spanish Civil War. In addition, cultural organizations such as the Deutsche Akademischer Austauschdienst (German Academic Exchange Service) provided a vehicle for German scholars to gather information (both political and topographic) under the guise of academic work.7 The presence of the German Legation in Dublin also provided a potential base for support and a source for political information.
The rise of Adolf Hitler in 1933 brought many changes to the German military intelligence service (the Abwehr). Its new head, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, was given an almost impossible task: to resurrect a global spy empire without the benefit of continuity from the lessons learned in World War.8 This mission was further compromised by political restrictions: Hitler, believing that an alliance with England was only a matter of time, prohibited active operations against Great Britain (and, by extension, Ireland) from 1935 to 1937-the optimum prewar window for placement of assets.9 Germany would never again have the opportunity to make good this mistake. Abwehr headquarters was at the Tirpitzufer in Berlin, but its operations were carried out and managed by Abwehr installations in a few major cities. By default, the operations that would eventually be directed against England and Ireland were mounted by the Hamburg Abwehrstelle (or Ast).
Agents might be either civilian or military personnel, and Irish operations used an equal mix of both. The Abwehr employed freelance recruiters whose quality was open to question. In most cases, the recruits spoke only passable English, but might have actually visited Ireland in the prewar period. In one instance (Wilhelm Preetz), the applicant had managed to obtain illegally an Irish passport in the name of Patrick Mitchell-a benefit that was deemed to outweigh other negative aspects of the agent's character. None of the agents could have passed for a native English speaker, let alone have hoped to survive for long in a country where such differences immediately become suspect. Depending on the nature of the particular mission, Abwehr agents took a basic course in radio procedure at the Hamburg-Wohldorf facility (including practice in sending and receiving transmissions, code procedures, aerial use, and emergency repairs), learned basic-and often erroneous-facts about the target country, and worked on memorizing their "legend." The military personnel slated for a demolitions mission were put through a course with the Abwehr's Brandenburg Regiment. Though several men were parachuted into Ireland, airborne training was not part of the curriculum, to the later regret of several agents.10
By 1938, tensions with England had increased, causing the Abwehr to reassess its earlier evaluation of Ireland's potential. German sources in Ireland (with the notable exception of the German Minister Dr. Eduard Hempel in Dublin) advocated a liaison with the dissident Irish Republican Army (IRA). Unfortunately for the Abwehr, its analysis of the IRA was not as thorough as it might have been. While the Irish organization was certainly a militant opponent of England and working to achieve a reunification of Ireland and Northern Ireland under a Republican banner, it was also hopelessly amateurish, poorly financed, ill-led, and devoted to uncoordinated acts of terror and mayhem11 Contact between the IIA and the Abwehr can be dated to 1937, when two members of the German Academic Exchange Service made contact with the IRA Chief of Staff, Tom Barry, and his Director of Intelligence, Sean MacBride. At the time, the IRA was planning a comprehensive bombing campaign (called the S-Plan) to terrorize England. Germany wanted the IRA to concentrate on intelligence gathering in the North and hold the sabotage in abeyance, at least until the inevitable start of war between Germany and Great Britain. Ultimately, the IRA Army Council rejected the Barry initiative, preferring instead the gratification of immediate action.12
German contact was re-established in February 1939 with the departure of one Oscar Pfaus from Hamburg to Dublin. Officially representing the Frankfurter Zeitung newspaper, Pfaus was sent by Abwehr II (the intelligence branch responsible for sabotage operations and contact with discontented foreign minorities) to make contact with the IRA and to suggest the establishment of an Abwehr-IRA liaison. Though Pfaus had never been to Ireland before, he had extensive experience in the United States, where he lived for over ten years. Before getting the nod for his espionage mission, Pfaus was working with a semiprivate propaganda organization, the Deutsche Fichte-Bund, spreading "warning material" to interested individuals overseas on the dangers of the "JewishBolshevik" menace.13 In addition to recruiting a few new Irish subscribers for the Fichte-Bund newsletter, Pfaus eventually made contact with the IRA Chief of Staff, Sean Russell. Russell, in desperate need of funding, weapons, and explosives, readily agreed to a relationship with the Abwehr and to sending an Irish representative to Berlin for further talks. A torn one pound note was to be the recognition signal for their man in Berlin.
Russell selected James O'Donovan, his "Director of Chemicals," to go to Germany. O'Donovan was an obvious choice: he spoke some German and had extensive experience with explosives-as was obvious from the missing three fingers on his right hand.14 O'Donovan made three trips to Germany in 1939 to meet with the Abwehr, the last one occurring only a week before the outbreak of World War II. By this time, the IRA was equipped with a suitable radio for transmission to Germany and the basic coding system for messages. However, in an incident that would foreshadow Abwehr difficulties in Ireland, the Germans realized that O'Donovan had left without the keyword necessary to encipher and decipher the coded messages. That key, "House of Parliaments"-the misspelling was a security check-was immediately dispatched by a courier in the twilight period between Germany's invasion of Poland on I September and the British/French declaration of war on 3 September 1939. 15 In the event, the IRA-Abwehr link did not live up to the expectations of the German intelligence people: once operational, the IRA used the radio for internal propaganda broadcasts, not realizing that the transmission source could be detected by the Irish police (Garda) and Irish Military Intelligence (G2). This process was made considerably easier since the IRA announced their broadcast times in advance. The result was predictable: the transmitter and four IRA men were seized on 24 December 1939, cutting the only link between the Abwehr and its new Irish affiliate.16
Agent Activities 1940-41
The necessity to establish another radio link with the IRA, as well as to deliver promised cash, caused Abwehr to revisit its overall plan and forced the insertion of a German agent into Ireland. The agent selected was one of the most unusual individuals ever sent on a spying mission. At age sixty, Ernst Weber-Drohl was a former professional wrestler and circus strongman. He was arthritic, not too bright, and spoke passable English. However, he had an established connection to Ireland that the Nurnberg Ast thought would be an asset: among his five illegitimate children, two were from a union with an Irish girl in 1907-8, and it was decided that the search for his "lost" children was the appropriate basis for a workable "legend."17 With some misgivings, the German Navy agreed to transport Weber-Drohl to a site on the western Irish coast and provide him with an inflatable rubber boat to make his way to the shore.18 No sooner had he left the submarine U-37 on 31 January 1940, than Weber-Drohl capsized the dinghy, sending the Abwehr transmitter to the bottom of Sligo Bay. With help from the submarine crew, the waterlogged spy eventually made it ashore and finally reached the home of Jim O'Donovan. The German agent delivered most of the money he carried (keeping part of it to replace the cash he said he lost when the boat capsized) and wrote out his instructions in broken English for the IRA's benefit. Weber-Drohl noted that another German would soon follow, a man identified as "Dr. Schmeltzer." Irish police soon discovered Weber-Drohl's unauthorized presence and arrested him on the charge of making an illegal landing. Amazingly, his contradictory account of his arrival was accepted by the Irish District Court and he was fined three pounds and released-only to be subsequently arrested by Irish Intelligence and detained under the Emergency Powers legislation.19 Though later freed for over a year by a sympathetic Irish Department of Justice, Weber-Drohl was incarcerated until 1946, spending most his time in confinement writing poetry to the German Minister in Dublin, threatening suicide by hunger strike, or whining about his physical condition.20
Uncertain as to why no contact had been made with the IRA, Abwehr II decided to try again and sent another agent with yet another radio. The choice of Dr. Hermann Gortz proved to be an error in personnel selection. A veteran of World War I, Gortz was a failed lawyer under threat of bankruptcy when he was hired, as a civilian, to go to England in 1935. His previous applications to rejoin the new Luftwaffe had been rejected when it was discovered he had omitted derogatory information in his supporting documents.21 Although Hitler's ban on intelligence gathering in England was clear, the Abwehr decided that Gortz was sufficiently deniable to take the risk. The forty-four-year old (married) Girtz set off for England accompanied by a nineteen-year-old female companion, euphemistically referred to as his "niece." They stayed at bed and breakfast inns coincidentally located near Royal Air Force (RAF) airfields. Gortz took photographs, while Marianne Emig-his girlfriend-attempted to pick up information from servicemen using other, less technical means. Gortz temporarily left England after several months to accompany Emig back to Germany, leaving his personal possessions in a Kent rooming house. Ile sent a postcard to his landlady, promising to return. When the date came and went, Mrs. Henderson decided to have a look at her guest's belongings, and discovered a miniature camera, sketches of RAF sites, a diary detailing the German's travel itinerary, letters, and applications to join the German intelligence service. MI 5 was notified and a security alert was issued for Gortz and Emig, in the unlikely event that they should try to return. Gortz obliged by landing at Harwich on 8 August and was promptly arrested for violation of the Official Secrets Act. Ile did a less-than-spectacular job defending himself at his trial in the Old Bailey, and was sentenced to four years imprisonment. In addition, G6rtz made international headlines-largely due to the tale of bungling incompetence that emerged from the Crown's evidence.22
It remains a mystery why the Abwehr decided to send Gortz to Ireland in 1940, given the fact that more physically and mentally fit soldiers were available to German intelligence. Whatever the reason, the fiftyyear-old Gortz jumped from a He-111 and landed near Ballivor, County Meath, on 5 May 1940. Gortz carried a radio-transmitter to replace the one lost with Weber-Drohl. Unfortunately, the radio, along with his food and shovel (to bury the white RZ-series parachute), was attached to a separate chute. Upon landing in the darkness, Gortz was unable to locate the other parachute. Additionally, for reasons known only to Gortz, he was wearing a Luftwaffe dress uniform (complete with ribbon bar and his World War I decorations) and riding boots. The German agent carried an incomplete Luftwaffe Soldbuch (paybook) falsely listing his name as Reserve 2LT Heinz Kruse-but in which he had inexplicably signed his name as "Dr. Hermann Kruse." Gortz soon realized that he had landed about seventy miles from the nearest safehouse. Before leaving for Germany, Irish expatriate writer Francis Stuart had given him an address in County Wicklow, and Gortz made his way there in a series of nighttime marches. This journey was not without incident: while swimming the Boyne River he forgot about the supply of secret ink in his shoulder pads, discovering after the fact that it was water soluble. Having only vague directions to the house at Laragh, Gortz even stopped at the police station at Poulaphouca to ask directions.23
Gortz's adventures in Ireland were just beginning. Reaching the safehouse, he was subsequently shuttled to another house in Dublin, which was soon the target of a police raid. Twenty thousand dollars in cash, G6rtz's Luftwaffe hat, his ribbon bar and medals, and the details of a projected German invasion of Northern Ireland were seized, alerting Irish security authorities to the presence of a German agent active in their country. For the next eighteen months, the authorities dogged Gortz as he moved from one site to another in the IRA support system. Along the way, he had several romantic liaisons, but never came close to fulfilling his own liaison mission of coordinating IRA activity in concert with an overall plan to benefit the German war effort. Soon realizing that his chances of success were negligible, Gortz attempted to flee by boat on two occasions. In the first, his IRA crew and boat were apprehended before departure, and in the second attempt, his small motorboat was flooded and he was forced to return to the Irish coast. Gortz was likewise unsuccessful in establishing radio contact with Germany, having lost the intended transmitter upon landing. The IRA purchased several radios in an attempt to assist this process, only to discover, after trying for several months, that the range was limited to fifteen miles. After over a year on the run, Gortz had a more suitable radio built by an IRA supporter, but his transmissions were garbled and incomplete, mostly dealing with his increasingly fantastic efforts to return to Germany.24
The extended separation from his command had an unfortunate effect on Hermann Gortz, who became increasingly unstable and often involved in IRA plans and political activity that had no bearing on his assignment. When a shake-up occurred in the IRA leadership in 1941, he imagined himself as the head of the IRA, leading the movement to a national reunification.25 Gortz also initiated contact with extreme elements in the Irish Army, and, while Germany was militarily ascendant in the 1940-41 period, took it upon himself to meet secretly with Irish political figures who were anxious to stay on the good side of a victorious Nazi Germany.26 By doing so, he disregarded his primary Abwehr mission and abandoned any remaining sense of rationality he possessed. According to some observers, Irish G2 knew of Gortz's whereabouts for some time, but used him as a convenient lightning rod for extreme Republican elements-arresting and interning IRA elements as Gortz moved from place to place. However, Gortz's sojourn came to an end on 27 November 1941, when he was arrested at a home in the Dublin suburb of Clontarf. Gortz spent the next six years in prison, but he continued his unintentional help to Irish Intelligence. Gortz contrived to communicate in code with his supporters on the outside, but was not aware that Dr. Richard Hayes, the director of the Irish National Library and amateur codebreaking genius, had broken his coding system. G2 successfully intercepted almost all of the Gortz messages, learning more by this means than was ever revealed in formal interrogations. Pretending to be the German high command, G2 asked for-and received-an eighty-page report from Gortz which outlined his activities and contacts since arriving in Ireland. The Irish felt so confident in the subtlety of their deception system that they unofficially promoted Hermann Gortz to the rank of major-something he never received from his own country.27 Even today, more than fifty years after his death, Gortz's gravestone lists this false rank. Data collected from Gortz and other prisoners was passed on to MIA under a secret security arrangement that dated from 1938.28
Gortz was finally released from custody in late 1946 and went to live with some of the Irish women who supported him earlier. He developed paranoia about being sent back to Germany-though Irish, British, and American officials attempted to assure him that he was hardly in danger, and gave formal assurances of safe conduct.29 When he was re-arrested pending deportation to Germany, Gortz committed suicide by means of a cyanide capsule on 23 May 1947. lie was given a public funeral, which included a swastika flag draped over his coffin, and the accompaniment of Irish mourners, a few of whom had their hands raised in the Nazi salute.30
The German interest in Ireland did not vanish with the ineffective mission of Hermann Gortz. Other agents, likewise useless, were sent as well. On the night of 12-13 .lune 1940, Walter Simon was landed by submarine on the Dingle coast. His mission was to set up a weather reporting station and monitor British shipping in the channel between England and Ireland. Simon had been sent on three missions to prewar Britain, and his cover had been blown when he was arrested for violating the Aliens Registration Act in 1938, though he was subsequently released after three months' imprisonment. His landing in Ireland did not go any better than the previous ones. Equipped with an obsolete map, he asked workmen at the Dingle railway station about the time of the next train to Dublin. The workers laughed and said that he would have a long wait, as the last train along that track had run fourteen years previously. While waiting for a bus to take him to his destination, Simon got drunk at a local pub and continued drinking on the bus. When he boarded the train for Dublin at Tralee, he sauntered up to two men, asking them if they knew anyone in the IRA. The two turned out to be plain-clothes detectives, who phoned ahead to Dublin for a police escort when Simon disembarked. In a brown paper bag, police discovered several thousand English pounds and a quantity of American dollars. Simon was imprisoned for the duration.31
Walter Simon was followed by Wilhelm Preetz, who landed by U-boat in June 1940. A merchant seaman and member of the Nazi Party, Preetz had married an Irish girl from Galway and was somewhat familiar with the country, in addition to possessing an Irish passport in the name of Patrick Mitchell. Preetz's mission was identical to Simon's, but he actually managed to escape immediate detection and make his way to Dublin, where he met up with Irish national Joseph Donohue. The two rented an apartment in a rooming house and proceeded to set up a wireless station for transmissions to Germany. However, their energies were not exclusively focused on the business of espionage. Preetz initiated an affair with the nineteen-year-old sister of his wife, who was in Germany, in addition to numerous encounters with girls from the Dublin area. Preetz and Donohue both contracted venereal disease while ostensibly serving Fuhrer and Fatherland. During his month of relative freedom, Preetz purchased a new Chrysler automobile-something that drew the attention of his neighbors-while managing to transmit only a couple of messages to the Abwehr, all of them complaining about interference with his radio reception. The possibility that his transmission problems resulted from his location in the middle of the largest city in Ireland did not seem to occur to him, but in any event, he did not want to move, which would negatively affect the quality of his newfound social life. An Irish Army signal unit intercepted Preetz and Donohue's transmissions, and their discovery was only a matter of time. Both men were arrested in August 1940.32 Preetz was added to the growing collection of German internees, but Donohue was freed by virtue of his connections to Fianna Fail, the majority party in Irish politics.33
The summer of 1940 also saw the landing of a trio of Abwehr agents in County Cork. Though the weight of evidence suggests that Hitler did not seriously contemplate airborne and amphibious invasions of England, the Abwehr was assigned an intelligence gathering mission in support of Operation Sea Lion. An additional plan, codenamed Gr-un (Green), was a diversionary exercise that envisioned the possible invasion of Ireland.34 The Abwehr support of Sea Lion was codenamed Lena, and the actual operations carried out in July, August, and September-- as the feasibility for the invasion receded with each passing day-were designated Hummer (Lobster). By a variety of means, the Abwehr intended to insert retroactively agents who were inexplicably not positioned before the war. A powered French sailboat was requisitioned to land agents Herbert Tributh, Dieter Gartner, and Henry Obed in Ireland on 7 July 1940 as a transit point to their eventual destination in England. Tributh (age twenty-two) and Gartner (age nineteen) were enlisted soldiers assigned to the Brandenburg Regiment and were to undertake sabotage operations in support of Sea Lion. They carried a considerable supply of explosives concealed in their luggage and were trained to manufacture additional supplies out of locally available materials.35 Henry Obed, their guide for the expedition, was a dark-skinned Muslim from Lucknow, India. Though he had never been in Ireland before, Obed was to act as the group guide on the strength of his prewar occupation as an importer/exporter of zoo animals. He had the name of a friend who was thought to live in Ireland as a traveling peddler-the friend had since moved, unknown to Obed-and it was thought that his familiarity with British customs would make up for the language deficiencies of his German comrades. The Tributh, Gartner, and Obed trio were active as Abwehr agents for about two hours.
Shortly after landing near Skibberean, County Cork, the group managed to get a lift in a truck en route to the bus station at Drimoleague. The local Garda officer took one look at Obed and knew that something was definitely out of place. The spies had told the truck driver that they were off a boat at Baltimore, and a quick check with the harbor authorities exposed the lie. The three were apprehended when the bus reached Cork, and a search of their persons and luggage revealed the true nature of their visit to Ireland. All three were charged with possession of explosives and found guilty.36 They were interned with their colleagues at the Athlone military prison. Obed was murdered by his German-born wife in 1952, Tributh died in Germany in 1996, and Dieter Gartner currently lives in Namibia (formerly German South West Africa).37
After the decision had been made to cancel Operation Sea Lion, the Abwehr continued to risk agents in Irish operations. Increasingly, the priority was no longer intelligence gathering in support of military operations, but the collection of weather data. The data was critical to the German Navy and Luftwaffe in support of operations against the Allied Atlantic convoys; German weather stations were too distant to accurately predict the mercurial Atlantic weather. On 13 March 1941, another lIe111 circled the skies over Ireland. On board was Wachtmeistcr (Sergeant) Guinther Schutz. A prewar spy in England while officially attending the German Commercial College in Ealing, Schitz was relatively young and intelligent. His training included the usual course in radio procedures, with an added component in weather analysis and reporting. For his mission, the Abwehr included a new element: microdots. Schiltz's entire mission portfolio was concealed in a series of innocuous newspaper clippings. His instructions included his transmission times and frequencies, a list of intelligence priorities, the addresses of two "sleeper" agents in Ireland, and an abbreviated list of operational codes that he was to use.38 Before departure, Schutz had obtained a South African passport from a childhood friend, which was then doctored by the Abwehr to show his photograph with genuine-looking raised seals.
Schitz landed without incident, buried his parachute and helmet, and set off on his way to Dublin. He did not realize at the time that his landing had already gone amiss: instead of the intended drop zone between Naas and Dublin, he was over a hundred miles to the south, in County Wexford. His "legend" included a cover story to use if he was stopped on route to Dublin: he was to say that his car had broken down between Naas and Dublin and that he was walking home. Schiltz eventually discovered where he was-much to his chagrin-and started the long trek to safety. His presence on the road, a stranger carrying a large suitcase, was noticed by a passing bicyclist who notified the police. When two officers saw him emerging from a field, they stopped and questioned him. Though he knew better, Schutz panicked and told them about breaking down between Naas and Dublin-a clearly impossible story, given the geography. One of the officers asked to see inside his suitcase, and, unable to refuse, Schutz opened the case and stood there with the police looking down at his Abwehr transmitter, a bottle of cognac, a partially eaten sausage, and a relatively large microscope. Schlitz was put under arrest. When later asked about the microscope, Schutz unconvincingly said he was a keen student of botany.39 By that time, Irish Intelligence had possession of the curious newspaper clippings and was certainly capable of adding two and two. The German's only real success was in convincing G2 that his real name was Hans Marschner, the name given on his forged passport. Schlitz was taken to Mountjoy Prison but succeeded in escaping in 1942, wearing female clothing that he had purchased while in prison and using curtain material to fashion a rope. Schlitz remained free for almost six weeks, and was hidden by the IRA support system. Just when he was about to leave in a boat for occupied France, his safehouse was raided and he was rearrested, later being imprisoned in Athlone with the other German agents.40 Schutz was returned to Germany in 1947 but later moved back to Ireland and started his own business. Ile died there in 1990.
Schutz's arrest presented another German agent with a serious problem. In his wallet, Schutz carried the photograph of a middle-aged, balding man and his operational instructions included the entry "Werner Unland, 46 Merrion Square." The photograph and the entry referred to the same person, a man already under surveillance by Irish police and G2. Unland and his English wife had arrived in Ireland on the eve of World War II, having already attracted the attention of British security personnel. For several years, Unland ran a notional company in London called Ferrum Stock Services, but was actually a paid agent of the Abwehr.41 Almost immediately upon his arrival in Ireland, Unland started sending a series of letters to several known Abwehr live letter drops in Denmark. Since G2 intercepted and read his correspondence, the Irish could follow the pattern of his activity. He referred constantly to "soap quotations," or such ambiguous phrases as "our clients in Northern Ireland are clamouring for the prices for the repeats for the machine tools"; "Belfast and Northern Ireland clients could give us further orders for all kinds of machine tools." Using what was known as a 14 jargon code," Unland was seemingly acting as an Abwehr cut-out for Republican dissidents. G2 determined that "contracts" meant reports, that "my family" referred to the British, that "US Head Office" was the German Legation in Dublin, and that "our friends at 11. Office" indicated the Abwehrstelle in Hamburg.42
Most of the correspondence concerned Unland's repeated requests for his monthly payments, which usually took the form of money orders for L24.15s.10d, mailed from such places as London, Sweden, and Amsterdam. The problem for the Abwehr was that, like Unland's business in London, his Irish "contacts" were wholly imaginary; Unland was running a scam on German military intelligence. G2 concluded that
It would appear that Unland is an elderly pagan, extremely fond of himself, who adventured in his younger days, but came to live in Ireland mainly to save his own skin ... he speaks of "trips" when it is known from Garda reports that he has not left his rooms, and "friends" when from the same source it appears that he has no acquaintances whatsoever. lie has all the average German's contempt for and impatience with Ireland.43
Though Unland rented a post box for his Abwehr correspondence, he was simultaneously carrying out a series of romantic relationships with a number of women in foreign countries by mail, without, needless to say, the knowledge of Mrs. Unland.
While the Unland postal surveillance and the material seized from Schutz were amply sufficient to prove Unland's guilt, G2 made another fortuitous discovery. Schutz had carried a piece of ordinary paper marked with lipstick. The observant head of G2, Colonel Dan Bryan, noticed that the paper was of the same unusual type used by Unland in his correspondence with his Abwehr controller, Gunther Schutz. Bryan theorized, correctly, that it was intended as a recognition sign between the controller and his agent, and that Hans Marschner was really Gunther Schutz.44
The next agent insertion occurred in July 1941, and this time there was a significant difference in personnel. Joseph Lenihan, an Irishman, had been captured by German forces while working as a potato picker on the Channel Island of Jersey. Lenihan worked his way up the collaboration ladder, eventually volunteering for service with the Abwehr. Trained in Paris and The Hague, he was supposed to set up a human weather station in Sligo, but things did not happen that way. Successfully parachuting into County Meath on 18 July, Lenihan went on a spending spree and had a brief reunion with his brothers and sister in Dublin before traveling to Northern Ireland and turning himself in to the Royal Ulster Constabulary.45 He was quickly funnelled to M15, given the codename Basket, and considered for participation in Britain's brilliant counter-espionage game, Double-Cross. The idea of Double-Cross was for "turned" German agents to pass along scripted information to the Abwehr, making German intelligence think that their agents were "live" and not suspecting that they were under the control of M15. Ultimately, Lenihan was not considered viable-to make the scam work he would have to operate from Ireland, something that De Valera's government would not permit.46 Incredibly, Lenihan was not even imprisoned for the duration of the war. In a quirky series of telegrams between British and Irish security officials, the Irish gave approval for Lenihan to visit the country on a vacation, observing "No objection to Lenihan coming for a short visit. The authorities concerned will do their best to keep him under constant observation but they hesitate to guarantee a 100% foolproof check on his doings owing to the man's habits and character."47 Lenihan remained in England after the war, dying in 1971.
The chain of German and Irish Abwehr agents was broken in September 1941 when the Irish police made another arrest on the basis of electronic surveillance. Since the start of the war (or the "Emergency," as it was euphemistically called in Ireland), postal, electronic, and visual surveillance had been carried out on the key diplomatic legations in Ireland, including the United States Legation. On the night of 14 September 1941, the telephone tap revealed that a caller wanted to speak to the German minister on a matter of importance and was told to visit the next day between eleven and twelve o'clock. Irish police witnessed a young man enter the Legation at precisely eleven and emerge about twenty minutes later. He was followed through Dublin and finally apprehended trying to make a telephone call. The man was a Dutch national named Jan van Loon. A search of his possessions revealed a notebook with the dates of convoys and a Dublin map marked with the site of the German Legation. The Dutchman carried a British National Identity card in the name of Daniel Dunne. Subsequent interrogation revealed that van Loon had been a serving member of the Dutch Navy and had escaped in his ship when the Germans overran Holland. Attached to the British Navy and, unknown to his superiors, a member of the Dutch National Socialist party, van Loon was dissatisfied serving with the Allies and after the German invasion of Russia in June 1941, decided to do something about it. Van Loon maintains to this day that he was only trying to get German help to return to occupied Holland and that he was refused.48 G2's theory was that van Loon was trying to sell or trade information about British convoys to the Germans in exchange for purposes unknown.49 The result was probably going to be the same no matter which motive was correct: Jan van Loon was interned for the duration with the other German agents. He participated in Gunther Schutz's escape in 1942 from Mountjoy prison, but was injured and did not manage to get over the wall. Van Loon remained in Ireland after the war (he was subject to execution if he returned to Holland) and continues to live there in retirement.
Agent Activities-1943
The final two players in the Germany's Irish espionage saga were not members of the Abwehr at all, but rather volunteers to the rival SS intelligence service, the Sicherheitsdienst, or SD.50 By 1943, the tactical picture had changed irrevocably. Germany was losing the war on the eastern front; Allied forces had broken Field Marshal Erwin Rommel at El Alamein and were slowly forcing him back across the expanses of the North African desert; American forces were building in England and the invasion of Hitler's Fortress Europe was only a matter of time. From a small beginning in the early 1930s, the SD had grown into a massive security apparatus, and was one of the principal arms of the larger SS security system, the RSHA. While Abwehr power diminished following several well-publicized failures, the influence of the SD rose in proportion to and at the expense of its rival.
Like Joseph Lenihan, John Francis O'Reilly had the luck to be on Jersey when the German Army captured it in June 1940. Finding that working for the occupation forces was more profitable than seasonal employment picking potatoes and tomatoes, he began as a quasi-interpreter between the Germans and the locals. O'Reilly received a bounty for recruiting Irish nationals to work at the Hermann Goring steel works at Watenstedt and accompanied the rowdy group across occupied Europe, earning the displeasure of German officials by becoming loudly drunk, throwing bottles from the moving train, and pulling the emergency cables. O'Reilly eventually abandoned his Irish friends and accepted a position with the Irish language service of German radio, the Irland Redaktion. Ile soon became bored with the tedious work and volunteered for an assignment with Abwehr I-M (the naval intelligence section). Designated as "Agent Rush," O'Reilly planned to return to his native Ireland and eventually report on British naval matters, but the German Foreign Office scuttled the plan before it could be launched.51 Having thoroughly worn out his welcome at the Inland Redaktion, O'Reilly was recruited by the SD for another espionage mission-this time to report on political developments in England-outside the veto power of the Foreign Office. He was trained at the SS intelligence center at Lehnitz and given a thorough course in radio construction and procedure. When it was decided that the mission's complexity required additional personnel, O'Reilly volunteered to return to Jersey to select another man.
His ultimate choice, John Kenny, proved to be less than inspired. Mentally dull, bordering on stupid, Kenny was anxious to break the monotony of island life. Ile was put through a crash course at Lehnitz, but later admitted that he did not seem to understand much of what was taught and that his instructors were not very pleased with his aptitude or progress. Though the agents were to be inserted by parachute, neither man received any formal training, other than a quick briefing before the flight.52 On 16 December 1943, the black lIc-111 dropped John O'Reilly about a mile from his family home in Kilkee, County Clare. Landing safely, O'Reilly buried his parachute and set off with his transmitter case for home. Gradually, reports came in about strange noises and sightings on the road, though O'Reilly's father, a retired sergeant in the Royal Irish Constabulary who had helped arrest Sir Roger Casement in 1916, did not see fit to report his son's unorthodox arrival to the police. O'Reilly was arrested two days after landing, and his adoring family hid his espionage money and a folder containing his coding instructions.
Kenny's landing did not go well. When he parachuted into County Clare on 19 December, things quickly went from bad to worse. With his lack of training, he did not realize the importance of collapsing his chute upon landing, and a wind gust promptly carried him over the field and across a small wall, until a more formidable stone wall finally arrested his momentum. Ile wandered, bruised and bloody, to the nearest farmhouse. The police were called immediately.53
Irish intelligence interrogated the pair immediately, but the process was long and slow. Kenny did not seem to have a clear idea of his mission or of anything else, but obligingly gave what details he did know. O'Reilly enjoyed the interviews and looked upon them as a chance to test his wits against those of his interrogators. He gave an intriguing mix of truth and falsehood, but his story was eventually unraveled with assistance from M15. O'Reilly's coding system, which was quite distinct from that used by the Abwehr, was another challenge for Dr. Richard Hayes, but it was eventually broken.54 Unlike the German and Dutch nationals arrested for espionage, O'Reilly and Kenny were released shortly after VE day and allowed to rejoin Irish society without further penalty. O'Reilly did not cease being an annoyance for Irish authorities in captivity: he successfully escaped from Arbour Hill prison in 1944 and made his way back to Kilkee. The police were astounded when his father, Bernard O'Reilly, claimed the five-hundred-pound reward for his recapture. There were ulterior motives at work: Bernard kept both the reward money and money hidden earlier, and gave both to his son upon his release from prison. John O'Reilly used his instant wealth to buy a pub in Dublin (popularly called "The Parachutist Bar"-actually called "O'Reilly's") and later purchased a Dublin hotel.
The worsening military situation in 1944 precluded any further German intelligence interest in Ireland. Events had moved beyond the point where Ireland was important in the greater scheme of things, and such considerations as North Atlantic weather and political events in England no longer held any importance to a Germany engaged in a losing war of attrition.
Conclusions and Analysis
The German intelligence failure in Ireland is a microcosm of the general failure in the German intelligence system as a whole. Shortly after the war, M15 completed a classified study on the German intelligence effort and arrived at some telling conclusions.
In view of the manner in which the spies were recruited it is hardly surprising that almost without exception, they proved to be extremely poor material. In most cases they were men devoid of moral principles, who would have worked for any side that paid them. Many had drifted from one job to another without making good; many had been sentenced for various offences; a high proportion suffered from venereal disease. It was reported by a number of agents that the recruiters of the Abwehr were keen on showing results to their superiors by dispatching as many agents as possible, and that in many cases they did not expect results. Their aim was quantity rather than quality.55
The ideal (and usually mythical) recruit for espionage work combines initiative, intelligence, loyalty, and a sense of mission priorities. While German forces, particularly the Brandenburg Regiment, possessed such men, they were inexplicably not chosen for missions to Ireland or anywhere else. The selected few were the exact antithesis-lacking in judgment, wasteful, and concentrated on anything but the task at hand. Selection was based on any number of inane factors: possession of a false passport, illegitimate children, or notoriety from a previous failed track record in the world of espionage. Existing problems in personnel selection were amplified by the failure of Abwehr controllers to properly brief the agents so chosen. Elementary mistakes, such as not knowing the accepted local currency (Gortz), not understanding that the IRA and the Irish Army were two distinct organizations (Schutz), or not being able to distinguish between an active and a long-inactive rail line (Simon), were all easily avoidable. With so little prewar planning and minimal cooperation from the German Legation, the Abwehr provided only a bare minimum of information regarding local contacts and safe-houses and essentially forced its agents to figure out the situation on their own. The fact that Preetz was able to operate for almost three months was a testament to his luck, not the quality of his instruction.
Another disabling factor for German intelligence was a lack of proper command and control. With the IRA transmitter seized shortly after the outbreak of the war, Germany had no reliable means of determining the status of the agents or their missions. Replacement sets were lost through carelessness, and the German Legation in Dublin was unable to risk its own position to maintain a constant watch over espionage activities-and, indeed, would probably have been foolish to have done so. This interruption in the flow of situational intelligence seemingly did not deter the Hamburg and Bremen Abwehr posts from sending a steady stream of agents, without first establishing the status of the previous missions. Allied interrogation reports on senior Abwehr officers had a common denominator: the commanders ultimately responsible for the missions had almost no idea of what was going on in their own commands. Part of this is attributable to a lack of hard intelligence from the field, but some of it is simply due to a profound shortfall in the area of professional competence. The Abwehr displayed carelessness in the smaller details, such as providing the agents with their identity papers. Go;rtz's paybook in a false name was not even filled out completely or correctly; Schutz had a competently forged passport, but no visa stamp; and Lenihan carried his radio instructions on a typed piece of paper, without even a half-hearted effort at concealment.
A valid question might be whether the failure of German espionage was occasioned by negligence or design. It stretches the bounds of probability to suggest that all responsible people in the Abwehr opposed the Nazi regime and were therefore committed to its downfall by deliberately sabotaging their own intelligence effort. Certainly Admiral Canaris was opposed, or became opposed to Hitler, but does that directly translate into a global intelligence failure? The most likely answer is that Canaris was both an opponent of the regime and a poor supervisor, who picked men of limited experience to run his foreign intelligence service. Both time and increasing numbers worked against the German intelligence community. Prior to Hitler's ascension to power, the German Army was limited by the Versailles Treaty to an army of 100,000 men, including some 4,000 officers. General military rearmament started less than three years later. By 1944, at the high point of manpower utilization, some 12 million soldiers and 250,000 officers were under arms. It was a logistical impossibility to expect that such a rapid numerical increase would be accompanied by a corresponding rise in experience and quality. The Abwehr did not-and probably could not-effectively correlate the increase in personnel with the intelligence gathering tasks expected of it.
A significant part of the problem can be traced to errors in judgment. The decision to ally itself with the IRA shows that when the facts contradicted the illusion, the Abwehr chose to embrace the illusion. The Germans were under the mistaken impression that the IRA was a paramilitary force to be reckoned with, and it seemed natural that it would mesh with German strategic intentions toward England. Indications that the IRA was, in reality, hopelessly amateurish and readily contained by the Irish government did not figure into the greater Abwehr plan of operation. No German inducement was sufficient to redirect the IRA from its sporadic campaign of violence in Ireland to more suitable and more important targets elsewhere. Germany should have realized this in 1940, but had still not learned this lesson in 1944. Ironically, the German Minister in Dublin, Dr. Eduard Hempel, who consistently refused to support ongoing Abwehr operations in Ireland, was exactly right in his 1939 opinion that the IRA was not a suitable vehicle to further German strategic interests.56 Situational analysis, never a strong point with Canaris's Abwehr, should have demonstrated the folly of a deep German-IRA link before valuable resources were directed at that goal.
In some respects, the main reason that German intelligence in Ireland failed-a brilliantly effective counterintelligence system managed by Ireland and Britain-was beyond the Abwehr's power to control. To the Irish, counterintelligence was no mere luxury, but a fundamental line of defense. With a regular army of only slightly over seven thousand men at the start of the war-and hopelessly devoid of modern weapons-- a determined German attack with even a few divisions would have meant certain defeat. The defensive use of intelligence-counterintelligence-- was therefore the only viable strategy in an effort to blunt any belligerent power's effort to gather information or prepare for a hostile landing. G2 made up for a lack of funding with first-class personnel. Both of the men who headed wartime Irish Military Intelligence, Colonels Liam Archer and Dan Bryan, were dynamic and intelligent officers who understood the nature of the threat and the proper methods of working counterintelligence operations in Ireland. They well knew what was happening in their own backyard and were in a position to make proactive choices, rather than let events spin out of control. Between them, aided by the powers of physical, electronic, and postal surveillance on a massive scale, there was little mathematical chance that any potential threat (whether Allied, Axis, or IRA) would go undetected. The so-called "Dublin Link" with MIi insured that information gathered in Ireland would ultimately go to the benefit of the Allied war against Nazi Germany. This cooperation had its opponents, even in Ireland, and particularly when it seemed likely that Germany would vanquish Great Britain. The phrase "England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity" had a wider audience than the ranks of the IRA, but this sentiment typically did not interfere with the sharing of intelligence information.57
Ireland was never a serious military target of German intelligence, though that hardly made a difference in the effectiveness of the operations. England, which was arguably the main European threat, was repeatedly subjected to Abwehr operations and personnel that were on an equally low par with those employed in Ireland. Ireland was, however, a potential political asset, and its neutrality policy served the short-term interests of the Reich. Germany hoped that Ireland would act as a foil for British interests and as a diversion for their military and political resources. Concern the British focused on Ireland was concern that could be more profitably directed elsewhere. In terms of military intelligence, Ireland was a German capability, a card held in reserve, but never one that was vigorously or convincingly played. Ireland's utility to Germany necessarily depended on a pivotal event: the invasion of England. As the feasibility of Operation Sea Lion receded in the autumn of 1940, so, too, did German interest in Ireland. After that point, Ireland held a distant place of secondary importance as a weather observation platform, but had no further tactical importance. Incompetence and poor preparation at all levels of the German intelligence hierarchy prevented even the secondary missions in Ireland from being conducted with any meaningful chance of success.
1. On the Enigma operation, see David Kahn, Seizing the Enigma (London: Arrow, 1996); F. 11. Hinsley, British Intelligence in the Second World War: Its Influence on Strategy and Operations (London: HMSO, 1975); F. H. Hinsley and Alan Stripp, eds., The Codebreakers: The Inside Story of Bletchley Park (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). Concerning "Double-Cross," see Anthony Cave Brown, Bodyguard of Lies (London: W. H. Allen, 1976); and Nigel West, MIS (London: Trident, 1981).
2. Enno Stephan, Geheimauftrag Irland (Hamburg: Gerhard Stallings Verlag, 1961) and Spies in Ireland (London: Macmillan, 1963).
3. Carolle Carter, The Shamrock and the Swastika (Palo Alto, Calif.: Pacific Books, 1977). A few other books have examined espionage activity as an adjunct to a more comprehensive story of wartime Ireland. These include John Duggan's Neutral Ireland and the Third Reich (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 1989); Robert Fisk's highly readable In Time of War: Ireland, Ulster and the Price of Neutrality, 1939-45 (London: Paladin Grafton, 1983); Tim Pat Coogan's De Valera: The Man Who Was Ireland (New York: Harper Perennial, 1993); and Joseph Carroll, Ireland in the War Years (Dublin: Newton Abbot, 1975).
4. Eunan O'Halpin, Defending Ireland (Dublin: Oxford University Press, 1999). 5. With the exception of telephone and mail surveillance records on the Axis
legations, the intelligence files at the Irish Military Archives are open to researchers. Britain's Security Service (MIA) wartime files have been made public on a much more discriminating basis, and the M16 files remain closed. German files at the various branches of the Bundesarchiv are available for inspection, but are not co-located or centrally indexed. Former agents Jan van Loon and Dieter Gartner are alive and well at the time of this writing.
6. Liddell report, p. 6, KV 4/9, Public Record Office (PRO), Kew Gardens, Surrey, England; and David O'Donoghue, Hitler's Irish Voices (Belfast: Beyond the Pale, 1998), 19-21.
7. Helmut Clissmann file, FO 940/49, PRO.
8. For example, German military intelligence in World War I (IIIb) sponsored a number of ill-fated missions to Ireland, from landing Sir Roger Casement and two companions in support of the Easter 1916 rising to a few individual missions that were swiftly defused (Coogan, De Valera,, 61-62, 110-11).
9 West MIS_ 114
10. World War II German Military Studies, Vol. 4, Part III: Command Structure, Ms T-101, Chap. BI f-Intelligence, pp. 2-3; Interview with Gunther Schutz, 11 April 1946, 62/X/0203, Irish Military Archives (IMA).
11. Fisk, In Time of War, 85-87.
12. IRA-German contacts, G2/0265, IMA; J. Bowyer Bell (The Secret Army: The IRA, 1916-1972 (Dublin: Poolbeg Press, 1989]) presents a detailed picture of the IRA in the interwar period, but focuses only incidentally on the German activities. Because of the split, Barry resigned, and Sean Russell succeeded him.
13. Liddell report, p. 31, KV 419, PRO.
14. Summary dated September 1945 in 62/3783, IMA. O'Donovan was later arrested by Irish authorities, but was released in 1943.
15. Stephan, Spies in Ireland, 38-40.
16. Memorandum from Lieutenant Greene to G2, 30 January 1940, 62/1164, IMA, and IRA transmission log, courtesy of Mr. Michael Hill.
17. Weber-Drohl summary, 62/1928, Part 11, IMA. The Abwehr employed freelance agents who recruited personnel for the various stations. Depending on the operation, the agent would be controlled by a particular Ast, though he might well be recruited to another. Weber-Drohl was a case in point.
18. BdU operations order, D6nitz to Cdr. U-37, 22 January 1940, USNA 11, T1022, p.32419.
19. Summary of persons interned under the Emergency Powers Act, 27 November 1946, A34, National Archives of Ireland (NAI).
20. Based on a review of Weber-Drohl's letters at the Irish Military Archives. Cf. Duggan, Neutral Ireland and the Third Reich, p. 266.
21. Gortz to Commodore Hermann, 4 March 1935, Crown vs. Gortz, CRIM 1/813, PRO.
22. West, MIS, 16-22. Gortz also had the singular distinction of being dubbed "the Flying Spy" in S. Theodore Felstead's prewar book, Germany and Her Spies (London: Hutchinson, 1940), insuring that his notoriety preceded him to Ireland.
23. Richard Hayes Papers, Ms 22,981, National Library of Ireland (NLI). For reasons not entirely clear, the police did not notice anything suspicious about the person dressed in riding boots speaking with a German accent, and made no report of the incident.
24. Michael Kinsella statement, 2 December 1943, 62/1722, IMA.
25. Annotated Gortz report, December 1944, 62/1711, IMA. Gortz stated that the IRA men came to him and asked if they should execute their chief, Stephen Hayes. According to Gortz, "they wanted to give the decision on Hayes's life into my hands . . . they gave into my hands not nominally but practically the leadership of the IRA. I needed only to order the death of Hayes and I was their leader."
26. Ibid., 22.
27. Summary of Gortz's prison messages, part XII, 62/1711, IMA.
28. Liddell report, KV 4/9, PRO. Anglo-Irish security cooperation, begun in August 1938, included procedures for sharing information between MIS and G2, and a general understanding on common defense policy issues.
29. "Herr Hempel's Statement," 28 May 1947, A34 DFA NAI.
30. Enno Stephan, "Die Vergessene Episode: Deutsche Agenten im irischen Untergrundkampf," unpublished manuscript, pp. 447-48; and Jan van Loon inter
view, 15 November 1999. Herr Stephan's assistance with my own work is gratefully acknowledged.
31. Dublin Metropolitan Division (DMD) report, 20 June 1940, 62/2648, IMA. Simon also carried a radio, which he buried on landing. The exact fate of the device is unknown, and it may still be buried in County Kerry. Carter (The Shamrock and the Swastika, 191-94) indicated that the radio was found in time for his trial, but this is not confirmed in the official file.
32. Undated Preetz chronology, 62/0265, IMA. 33. G2 report, 11 November 1940, 62/0265, IMA.
34. Commandant Colm Cox, "Militar Geographische Angaben fiber bland," An Cosantoir (March 1975): 83. Fall Grim was ostensibly a projected invasion of the eastern Irish coast by the German 7th Army Corps. The five prepared pre-invasion booklets were really a mass of political, geographic, historical, and linguistic information-some of it remarkably thorough, other parts amazingly dated-to assist invading forces. Cf. John Duggan, "The German threat: myth or reality" An Cosantoir 49 (September 1989): 6-12.
35. G2 memorandum, September 1945, G2/X/0305, IMA.
36. Criminal charge and disposition sheet, S/12013, NAI.
37. Telephone interview with Dieter Gartner, 12 January 2000.
38. 62/0203, IMA. The clippings were advertisements for Aspro Medicated Tablets and a review of "Oxford Pamphlets." The original clippings and an enlarged copy of the operational instructions are in the file at the Irish Military Archives.
39. Schutz interview with G2, 11 April 1946, 62/X/0203, IMA.
40. Schitz interview with G2, 1 May 1942, 62/X/0203, IMA. The target of the police raid was not Schiltz but Mrs. Caitlin Brugha, the IRA activist who was providing the safehouse. She and her daughters ran the IRA courier network in Dublin for money and weapons.
41. DID weekly summary, 4 December 1939, 62/0261, IMA.
42. Undated M15 memorandum [October 1945-el, KV 2/170, PRO.
43. DMD summary, 62/0261, IMA. The Garda surveillance team also noted that Unland regularly took his dirty clothes to Dublin's Swastika Laundry (DMD weekly summary, 5 February 1940), hardly a low profile for a Nazi spy.
44. Memorandum from Captain J. Healy to Colonel Liam Archer, undated report, G2/X/0203, IMA.
45. Undated summary, 1941, G2/X/0805, IMA. 46. West, MI5, 212.
47. Frederick Boland to W. C. Hankison, 4 February 1943, A60, DFA, NAI.
48. Author's interview with Jan van Loon, 20 May 1999. 49. Statement of 13 September 1941, 62/3748, IMA.
50. The growing rivalry between the SD and the Abwehr is thoroughly detailed in the most comprehensive analysis of the German intelligence services to date, David Kahn's Hitler,- Spies (New York: Macmillan, 1978), as well as in General Reinhard Gehlen's selectively truthful autobiography, Der Dienst (Mainz: Hasse and Kohler, 1971), 41-42.
51. Ahlrichs to Menzel, 21 November 1942, KV 2/119, PRO.
52. Kenny interview with G2, 11 April 1944, 62/X/1263, IMA. Kenny was described by his G2 interrogator as having "little education and limited intelligence."
53. Memorandum on John Kenny, KV 2/119, PRO. Kenny's only possessions were a camouflage parachute and 94. He stated that he had been given 100 by the SD before his flight and could not understand what happened to the missing S6.
54. Summary of coding systems, Richard Hayes Papers, Ms 22,984, NLI.
55. Report on the operations of Camp 020 and Camp 020-R (B.LE.) in connection with the interrogation of enemy agents during the war, 1939-1945, 27 November 1945, p. 106, KV 4/8, PRO.
56. Hempel to Woermann, 14 November 1939, Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918-1945, Series D, Vol. VIII, pp. 405-6.
57. The best (and practically the only) in-depth analysis of Irish security policy is O'Halpin's Defending Ireland, which details the successful efforts of Irish internal security institutions from the creation of the state until modern times.
Mark M. Hull
Mark M. Hull earned his Ph.D. from University College Cork, with a dissertation on German wartime espionage. A U.S. Army Reserve officer, he also holds a J.D. from the Cumberland School of Law. He has published articles on the American Civil War and military espionage.
Copyright Society for Military History Jul 2002