Espionage and Counter-Espionage in Wartime Ireland

At the outbreak of the Second World War what is today the Republic of Ireland, then officially Éire, found itself between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, the aggression of Hitler’s Germany posed an obvious threat to the whole of the British Isles, a threat that the meagre Irish Defence Forces were hopelessly inadequate to face. On the other hand, having only eighteen years earlier fought a vicious war of independence (1919-21) to free itself from Great Britain, the option of becoming a junior partner in what was commonly viewed within Éire as ‘Britain’s War’ was all but politically impossible. Misguided it may have been, but during World War II the majority of Irish Catholics, having experienced first-hand the brutality of British security forces, had difficulty accepting Britain’s claim to be the defender of civilization against Nazi barbarism. To one degree or another, they viewed the war as a struggle between rival Imperialisms, with neither side holding the moral high ground. Small wonder then that the administration of Taoiseach (Prime Minister) Éamon de Valera chose to declare Éire to be officially neutral during what was referred to as ‘The Emergency.’ Since the conclusion of the Second World War this decision has been a great source of controversy. This includes questions concerning the very nature of Éire’s neutrality, as is demonstrated by the title of T. Ryle Dwyer’s book, Behind the Green Curtain: Ireland’s Phoney Neutrality During World War II (2009).

It’s within this context that Marc McMenamin examines the work of the Defence Forces’ G2 department, headed by Col. Dan Bryan. McMenamin holds a Master’s degree in history and works in Ireland as both a teacher and a documentary film producer, having frequently collaborated with Raidió Telifis Éireann (the Republic’s equivalent of the B.B.C.) Ireland’s Secret War is something of a sequel to his first book, Codebreaker: The Untold Story of Richard Hayes, the Dublin Librarian Who Helped Turn the Tide of World War II (2018), which served to pique his interest in the individuals tasked with counterintelligence within Éire. What McMenamin discovered was the existence of an all-but-forgotten cache of primary sources. Between 1969 and 1971, as part of the research conducted for her Master’s thesis, the now Prof. Carolle J. Carter had taped a series of interviews with surviving individuals involved in conducting and combatting espionage in Éire during the Emergency (her thesis, in turn, served as the basis for her groundbreaking book, The Shamrock and the Swastika: German Espionage in Ireland in World War II (1977)). Making contact with Prof. Carter in California, McMenamin was delighted to find that the interview tapes had remained in her possession. He arranged for them to be digitally recorded and transmitted to his personal computer in his home in Co. Donegal during a time when Covid restricted air travel.

Understandably, the governments in both Dublin and London were concerned with the unique potential for trouble originating in Éire. The I.R.A. remained committed to a thirty-two county independent Republic, viewing not only the British, who still controlled the six county State of Northern Ireland, as the enemy, but also the government of Éire, which was the product of a compromise treaty that had established the twenty-six counties as a dominion within the British Empire (even if the Irish governed their country as a de facto independent nation-state). Following the tradition in which Irish nationalists had sought aid from the enemies of Great Britain, the I.R.A. made contact with a receptive German government as early as 1937. But, as McMenamin demonstrates, the attempts at coordinated actions were hamstrung both by the conflicting goals of the two parties and ineptitude on both sides. Berlin was perfectly happy with Éire’s neutrality and wanted the I.R.A. to confine its operations exclusively to Northern Ireland and neighboring Britain. Moreover, the Abwehr, woefully ignorant of Irish affairs, assumed that the I.R.A. was a well-organized military force. In reality, the ranks of the I.R.A. in the 1930s and ‘40s were mainly composed of civilians with little to no military knowledge, while the organization itself was hopelessly divided by factions and personal animosities. For their part, the Abwehr’s efforts at espionage in Éire were strictly amateur hour. McMenamin’s account of the various German agents that were dispatched to Ireland is a display of laughable incompetence. Granted, the head of G2, Col. Dan Bryan, deserves credit for ensuring that all of these spies were apprehended shortly after their arrival. But it’s hard to imagine that, with or without the help of the I.R.A., they would have actually contributed in any significant way to the war effort of the Third Reich. Thus, statements such as “The fate of independent Ireland was at stake and only Bryan and G2 stood in the way of the Nazi’s appalling plans.” (p.41) and “Bryan and his colleagues in G2 were Ireland’s last line of defence and the future security of the nation rested on their shoulders.” (p.122) are overblown to say the least.

Col. Dan Bryan’s most important accomplishment during the Emergency was to reassure London that neutral Éire was not a threat to Great Britain’s security, thus helping to forestall any imprudent actions on the part of Churchill. He was among those all-too-rare individuals in de Valera’s Ireland who recognized the growing storm and sounded the alarm. Unlike many a veteran of the War of Independence in the Defence Forces’ Officer Corps who retained an anti-British bias, Col. Ryan’s level-headed analysis of Éire’s options led him to conclude that cooperation with Great Britain was an unavoidable necessity. Fortunately for all concerned, de Valera concurred and the clandestine wartime relationship between Éire’s G2 and MI5 could not have been more cordial, not least because of the tact displayed by the Irish and British officers involved.

Regrettably, as related by McMenamin, the same could not be said for U.S.-Irish relations. President Roosevelt, who had little regard for Éire, thoughtlessly appointed a representative with no experience in diplomacy, one David Gray. This was compounded by the fact that an unfortunate feature of the United States’ commitment to defeating the Axis powers was the attitude of ‘those who are not with us are against us.’ Ignorant of or simply disregarding the covert assistance that de Valera was providing the Allies, Gray antagonized the Irish government to such a degree that even the British became alarmed. Essentially, Éire ended up experiencing the worst of both worlds; de Valera compromised Éire’s non-aligned status by aided the Allies in a myriad of ways that could not be revealed due to the official stance of neutrality, while in both Britain and the United States Éire was publicly excoriated for that very same stance of neutrality.

Ireland’s Secret War concludes with a review of Col. Ryan’s postwar career in the Defence Forces and the development of military intelligence in the Republic up to the present day. McMenamin laments the failure of the government to commemorate the work of the likes of Col. Ryan during the Emergency, attributing it to the starring role played in the nation’s narrative by the nationalist struggle against Great Britain. Indeed, 2022 marks the final year of Ireland’s ‘Decade of Centenaries’ which honors the ‘Revolutionary Period’ of 1912 to 1922, when de facto independence for the twenty-six counties was achieved. McMenamin contends that the cooperation between Éire and the British Government during the Emergency doesn’t comfortably fit into the popularly accepted story of the Republic, which may well be the case to one degree or another. However, in the recent past and right up through the ‘Decade of Centenaries’ the population of the Republic has embraced and celebrated to a remarkable degree those Irishmen, both Catholic and Protestant, who served in the British Armed Forces during the Great War, a subject that would also seem not to fit comfortably within the national narrative. In fact, as the various books, film documentaries, lecture series, etc. addressing the events of the ‘Decade of Centenaries’ have demonstrated, the national narrative has evolved from a simplistic story of patriotism to one that is far more nuanced, one that rejects monopolies of right and wrong and accepts contradiction. Indeed, in a similar spirit, it’s likely that between 2039 and 2045 the service of men such as Col. Ryan will finally receive the recognition they deserve.

As a work of popular history (and thus the lamentable absence of footnotes / endnotes), this book serves as an accessible introduction to Ireland’s circumstances during the War (for the gold standard, in this reviewer’s humble opinion, see: Robert Fisk’s In Time of War: Ireland, Ulster and the Price of Neutrality (1983)). Specifically, McMenamin’s focus on the different individuals involved in espionage and counterintelligence adds to the book’s appeal, even if his use of thumbnail biographies can sometimes interfere with the narrative flow. As part of his focus on the individual, the author quotes liberally from Prof. Carter’s taped interviews. Yet, given that these tapes are presented as something of the raison d’être for his book, they don’t provide any startling revelations, which, after all, shouldn’t come as a surprise, given that they were already mined as sources of information by Prof. Carter. In short, Ireland’s Secret War doesn’t reveal anything that hasn’t already been covered in other works on Ireland’s wartime experiences. That said, McMenamin has succeeded in his goal of ‘illuminating the period of World War II for the casual reader of Irish history’ (pp. xxi-xxii), making this an interesting and pleasant read.

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Note: Ireland’s Secret War is also available in audio- and e-editions.

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