The Article
The Article: The Irish Interlude: German Intelligence in Ireland, 1939-1943
Author(s): Mark M. Hull
Source: The Journal of Military History, Vol. 66, No. 3 (Jul., 2002), pp. 695-717
Published by: Society for Military History
Accessed via: https://www.academia.edu/3215973/The_Irish_Interlude_German_Intelligence_in_Ireland
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3093356
I know virtually nothing about the German spies who landed in the Republic of Ireland during the Second World War. My interest has focused solely on the spies who arrived in Great Britain during the war. In part this has been due to the MI5 files that were released to the National Archives. In part it’s been due to the fact that my own grandfather, Josef Jakobs, landed in England. And finally, almost all of my travel has been to the London area. I’ve never been to Ireland and accessing their archives would be a massive outlay of time, energy and money.
So, when I watched Mark Felton’s video on parachutists landing in England (or was it the British Isles?), I realized that I needed a crash course in the spies who landed in Ireland. I didn’t even known how many had landed via parachute. I did a quick Google search and came across this article published by Mark M. Hull in The Journal of Military History. It gave me an excellent overview of the spies who arrived in Ireland! Hull has accessed the Irish Military Archives, scoured the National Archives (Kew) and provided us with a great intro to the subject.
Introduction
The article begins by nothing that Germany dispatched 12 spies to neutral Ireland during the Second World War. Of those 12 spies, 10 were sent by the Abwehr and two by the Sicherheitsdienst (intelligence arm of the SS). I can understand how the intelligence guys in Germany might have seen Éire as an easy backdoor to Great Britain and yet, it was not to be.
Hull notes that the Abwehr missions were “organically” flawed due to a variety of reasons, all of which apply equally to the spies who landed in England:
- hazy military intelligence objectives
- flawed local and political information
- questionable personnel selection
- sloppy execution
Sadly, this is nothing new. The espionage missions to Great Britain also suffered from the same weaknesses. Hitler’s interdict on espionage activities in the United Kingdom from 1935 to 1937 seriously hampered the Abwehr’s efforts to insert spies into England.
The article also notes that the agents chosen for Ireland were not of the highest quality, nor well-trained. While they were a mix of civilian and military personnel, they were often recruited by freelance recruiters of questionable quality. Few of the spies would have passed for a native English speaker and many only spoke passable English. They received a basic course in radio instruction but the parachute spies received no airborne training.
On top of that, some German sources in Ireland suggested that a liaison with the Irish Republican Army (IRA) could boost the German espionage missions. Unfortunately, the IRA were “hopelessly amateurish, poorly financed, ill-led and devoted to uncoordinated attacks of terror and mayhem”. The Abwehr didn’t realize analyze the cultural and political aspects of the IRA. Contact was made with the IRA in 1937 and again in 1939 when a member of the IRA visited Berlin and came back with a radio transmitter. They were to use it to send coded broadcasts to Germany but ended up using it for internal propaganda broadcasts. The IRA apparently didn’t know that the Irish Police and Irish Military Intelligence (G2) could detect and locate their transmissions. The radio cell was rounded up on 24 December 1939.
That didn’t stop the Abwehr. A succession of spies were sent in 1940-1941, most of whom failed to make contact. The Abwehr kept sending more agents, into the unknown, rather like throwing good money after bad. Or, in this case, throwing bad agents after bad.
Abwehr Agents – 1940-41
Ernst Weber-Drohl
The first agent was 60 year old Ernst Weber-Drohl, a former pro wrestler and circus strongman. He was not prime spy material being arthritic and not particularly bright. But he did speak passable English and he had had two illegitimate children after a fling with an Irish girl in 1907-1908. His story would be that he was seeking to make contact with his long lost family.
Drohl was dispatched by rubber dinghy from a submarine in February, 1940, but shortly after casting off, the dingy capsized and the transmitter sank to the bottom of the ocean. Drohl managed to make it ashore and delivered a wad of cash to the IRA but was soon arrested by for illegal landing. He was released and rearrested a few times before being detained until 1946.
Dr. Hermann Goertz
We’ve come across this guy before… across the water in England. Dr. Hermann Goertz was a veteran of the First World War and a failed lawyer. In the mid-1930s, he was also under threat of bankruptcy and managed to land a gig as a German spy. He was sent to England as a civilian in 1935 he wasn’t a very good one. He was arrested and sentenced to four years imprisonment, being deported back to Germany in 1939.
After not hearing anything from Drohl, the Abwehr decided to send another spy into the unknown. For some reason, they chose the failed (and formerly jailed) spy, 50 year old Hermann Goertz. On 5 May, 1940, Goertz dropped out of the belly of a He-111 and landed near Ballivor, County Meath (northwest of Dublin). His radio transmitter was dropped with a separate parachute at the same time. But, after landing in the dark, Goertz could not find the transmitter and it might still be lying out there somewhere. He also landed wearing his Luftwaffe dress uniform, along with an incomplete Soldbuch (army pay book) with a false name (that he had signed incorrectly). Goertz managed to find an IRA safe house and was shuttled from house to house for around 18 months. He completely disregarded his mission from the Abwehr, and began to dabble into internal IRA affairs. His mental health seems to have suffered and he became increasingly unstable.
On 27 November, 1941, Goertz was arrested and spent the next six years in prison. There are some who belive that G2 knew of his presence and simply followed him around, allowing him to remain at large, while arresting the extreme IRA elements who were drawn to Goertz. The hapless spy was released in late 1946 but did not want to be sent back to German, fearing that he would be executed, although the Irish authorities assured him that would not be the case. In the spring of 1947 Goertz was arrested prior to being deported to Germany. He refused to go and committed suicide with a cyanide capsule on 23 May 1947.
Walter Simon
We’ve come across this guy before too! Perhaps the Abwehr thought that failed spies had valuable experience which would prevent them from making the same mistakes on their new missions? Simon had been sent on three pre-war missions to England but in 1938 was imprisoned for three months after violating the Aliens Registration Act.
On 12/13 June, 1940, Simon landed via submarine on the Dingle coast (southwestern Ireland). His mission was to set up a weather reporting station and monitor British shipping in the channel between England and Ireland
Simon got a bit tipsy (drunk) no the bus to Tralee. When he arrived in Tralee, he asked two plain clothes detectives in they knew anyone in the IRA. Simon was arrested upon arrival in Dublin and was found to be carrying several thousand English pounds and some American dollars. He was interned for the duration.
Wilhelm Preetz
Next we have Wilhelm Preetz who landed via landed by U-boat in June 1940. Preetz had married an Irish girl (who was back in Germany) and was somewhat familiar with the country. His mission was the same as Simon’s, set up a weathering reporting station and monitor shipping in the Irish Sea. He traveled to Dublin where he connected with an Irish national named Donohue. Preetz set up his radio transmitter and managed to send a few messages back to Germany but had continuous trouble with the transmissions (he was in the middle of Dublin). Preetz had several romantic entanglements (one with the sister of his wife) and bought a new Chrysler car which, naturally, drew attention. His freedom lasted a scant month before his signals were detected and he was arrested in August 1940. He was detained for the duration of the war.
Tributh, Gärtner, Obed
Next, we have a rather odd trio of two German soldiers from the Brandenburg Regiment and an Indian importer/exporter of zoo animals. On 7 July, 1940, these three arrived on the southwest coast of Ireland via a powered French sailboat. Tributh (22), Gärtner (19) and Henry Obed, their guide, were to have gone over to England to commit acts of sabotage in support of Operation Sea Lion (the proposed invasion of England by the Germans).
Henry Obed might never have been to Ireland, but he did have a friend who lived there and he was moderately familiar with British customs. Unfortunately, while dark-skinned Indians might be a relatively common sight in England, they were not all that common in Ireland.
The three caught a truck from the coast to Drimoleague and told the driver that they had disembarked from a boat in Baltimore. The local police officer in Drimoleague took one look at the dark-skinned Obed and knew something was up. Their story didn’t jive with the harbour master in Baltimore. The three were apprehended in Cork where a good supply of explosives were found in their luggage. There were interned for the duration of the war.
Günther Schütz
By the fall and winter of 1940, it was clear, at least to the Germans, that Operation Sea Lion was postponed (if not outright cancelled). But the Germans were still in desperate need of weather reports to support their operations against the Allied Atlantic Convoys.
On 13 March, 1941, a He-111 dropped Wachtmeister (Sergeant) Günther Schütz. Like Goertz and Simon, Schütz had done some pre-war spying in England. Unlike them, he had not been caught and arrested. This was a definite plus for Schütz, and he was relatively young and intelligent. He was trained in wireless transmitting and weather reporting, as well as microdots. He had obtained a South African passport from a childhood friend and the Abwehr had doctored it so that his photograph on the passport actually had genuine-looking raised seals.
Young, smart and relatively well-trained… we might think that Günther Schütz might have managed to be a relatively good spy. He landed without incident, buried his parachute and helmet, and set off for Dublin. Unfortunately, he quickly realized that he had been deposited in the wrong drop zone. The He-111 navigator had made a critical error and Schütz was 100 miles further south than he was supposed to be. The intrepid Schütz started walking, carrying his suitcase and was noticed by a passing cyclist, who told police. When questioned, Schütz panicked and rattled off his well-memorized cover story. His car had broken down between Naas and Dublin, and he was walking home. Had he actually been dropped in the correct location, this would have made sense geographically… as it was, it was a geographical impossibility. The police asked to look inside his suitcase where they found a transmitter, bottle of cognac, partially eaten sausage and a microscope. Schütz rather lamely said that he was a keen student of botany but the presence of the microscope and various strange newspaper clippings helped police connect the dots.
On the plus side, Schütz did manage to convince the police that his real name was Hans Marschner, for a while. Ultimately they discovered that he was to have checked on a Germany sleeper agent named Werner Unland, whose spy handler was a man named… Günther Schütz. The authorities put the pieces together and Schütz was taken to Mountjoy Prison for the duration. He did manage to escape in 1942 and was on the lam for 6 weeks before being rearrested and sent to Athlone Prison where the other agents were kicking their heels.
Joseph Lenihan
The next spy was Joseph Lenihan, an Irishman who had been captured on Jersey while working as a potato picker. He volunteered for service with the Abwehr and was trained in Paris and The Hague. His mission was to report on the weather and he duly parachuted into County Meath on 18 July, 1941.
Lenihan landed successfully and promptly went on a spending spree with the Abwehr’s money. He reunited with his family for a while and then went to Northern Ireland where he turned himself in to the Royal Ulster Constabulary. They funneled him over to MI5 who happily code-named him BASKET. They had hoped to use him as a double agent but he would have needed to operate from Ireland and the neutral Irish government was having nothing to do with that. Lenihan was permitted to return to Ireland and lived in freedom during the war.
Jan van Loon
On 14 September, 1941, a young man was observed entering the German Legation. He was followed and later arrested. He was a Dutch national, Jan van Loon, who had a notebook with convoy dates written down in it. He was interned for the duration of the war and remained in Ireland afterwards.
SD Agents – 1943
The last two two spies sent to Ireland were recruited by the Sicherheitsdienst (SD). Two Irishmen (John Francis O’Reilly and John Kenny) who had been captured on Jersey in June 1940 were inserted by parachute in mid-December 1943. Their mission was to report on political developments in England. Dropped three days apart, both men were quickly arrested and interrogated. They were released shortly after VE Day and faced no further penalty.
Conclusion
Hull’s conclusion hits the nail on the head. The spies sent to Ireland were no different than the ones sent to Great Britain. The agents were generally poorly chosen and not even close to being presentable spy material. The agents should have had initiative, intelligence, loyalty and a sense of mission priorities. On the whole, they were lacking in judgement, wasteful and concentrated on anything by the task at hand. On top of that, they were poorly trained and poorly briefed. Many were not the brightest lightbulbs in the box.
As noted earlier, the Abwehr kept sending agents to Ireland without any idea of the status of the previous missions. The Abwehr was careless in small details such as identity papers. Was this poorly planned, poorly executed espionage activity by negligence or design? That is a question that has been asked before. Hull argues that it is hard to imagine that it could be by design, that all of the Abwehr officers/spymasters were anti-Nazi. He suggests that it was a result of pre-war limitations on German’s ability to have a functioning military intelligence service. The limitations imposed on the German military by the Versailles Treaty, combined with Hitler’s interdict on spying from 1935 to 1937 meant that the Abwehr was poorly prepared for rapid rearmament and espionage action.
Add to that the fact that Ireland’s counter-intelligence was first-rate and that they shared intelligence with MI5, and one can see how the Abwehr’s agents were doomed almost from the get-go.
Review
I found this article to be extremely helpful in providing an overview of German espionage agents in Ireland during the Second World War. The article was concise and even had footnotes directing the reader to primary sources.
I did come across another article on the JSTOR site that also tells the tale of the Irish spies. It was a paper read to the Old Dublin Society on 28 March, 2001, by James Scannell. It relies on published works (books, journal articles, newspapers), the most recent of which was published in 1999. It does not reference the declassified G2 files from the Irish Military Archives, so I wonder at the accuracy of some of the accounts. I’ll have to do a review of it in another blog post.
Review Score
5 out of 5 – excellent, well-researched article