Marc McMenamin - Irelands Secret War: Dan Bryan, G2 and the Lost Tapes That Reveal the Hunt for Irelands Nazi Spies

DAN BRYAN, G2 AND THE

IRELANDS

LOST TAPES THAT REVEAL THE HUNT

SECRET WAR

FOR IRELANDS NAZI SPIES

MARC Mc MENAMIN

GILL BOOKS

Viris fortibus non opus est moenibus.
(To brave men, walls are unnecessary.)

AGESILAUS THE GREAT, KING OF SPARTA (C. BC)

Contents

FOREWORD

T he first 30 years of 20th-century Irish history have been scrutinised much more carefully than the years leading up to and during World War II, and Irelands role in that conflagration has been misunderstood and undervalued, both during the war and since. Irelands neutral position, its quiet tilt toward the Allies, surely contributed to the countrys transition from Free State to Republic. However, Irish neutrality was not without its critics. Both pro-German factions and those convinced that the policy helped the Allies criticised the countrys stance. Although Irish neutrality was benevolent to the Allies, anti-Irish sentiment was widespread in the US as well as in Britain, and even today many Americans believe that Irelands neutrality was a cover for its covert Nazi sympathies.

The first people to write about Ireland in World War II were journalists such as Sean OCallaghan and Enno Stephan, who exposed the German spy Helmut Clissmann. By the time I came to the topic, many of the participants were willing to talk about their experiences, and quite a bit of, but not all, documentation was accessible. One cannot overemphasise the value of firsthand oral accounts and other primary sources, and the papers of those who play a role in historic events should be housed in reputable archives so that those who evaluate the past can have adequate materials to lead them to intelligent judgments.

Marc Mc Menamin has rigorously examined documents that earlier journalists and historians either did not have access to or overlooked. For instance, he has scrutinised interviews with Douglas Gageby, of the Irish Times, as well as the testimony of Commandant James Power, the man in charge of the Athlone internment camp. In his previous book, Codebreaker, Mc Menamin expanded our knowledge of activities of the German colony in Ireland prior to and during World War II. Codebreaker is the definitive biography of Dr Richard Hayes, who broke the Abwehr code that the failed spy Hermann Grtz brought to Ireland.

One of the men who implemented the Irish position in World War II was Col. Dan Bryan, a genial, intellectual man whose life and writings reflected the highest standards of government service. Mc Menamin has made ample use of Bryans papers, as well as of the interviews that I conducted with him and others many years ago. Mc Menamin now provides us with an excellent description of Bryans early life and stresses the importance of the goals expressed in his treatise Fundamental Factors Affecting Irish Defence Policy. Mc Menamin believes that sometimes one person is labelled a hero while someone else, a real hero, is overlooked. His examination of Bryan leads him to conclude that the man has been as undervalued as Irelands policy of neutrality; that he was heroic in his conduct of his duties, and that he deserves greater respect and renown.

Mc Menamin represents a new generation of historians, anxious to go beyond previously accepted stories. He has written an important book, which you are about to read. If his conclusions generate controversy and further investigation into Irelands role in World War II, he will have done a great service to the historical profession as well as to the general reader.

Carolle J. Carter

Professor Emerita

Menlo College

Atherton, California

PROLOGUE: AN OLD BOX OF TAPES

T his story is a sequel of sorts to my 2018 book Codebreaker: The Untold Story of Richard Hayes, the Dublin Librarian who Helped Turn the Tide of World War II. I felt very strongly when writing that book that it was important to tell Dr Hayess story, which had been sadly neglected in the historical record of World War II in Ireland. Hayes had done amazing deeds for the country and was instrumental in breaking a number of German codes during the war. While he was celebrated in the intelligence communities for his achievements in cryptography, he was less esteemed in Ireland, where he is probably better known as an academic and librarian. His Manuscript Sources for the History of Irish Civilisation is still consulted widely by historians and researchers alike.

The book was largely built on the 2017 radio documentary Richard Hayes: Nazi Codebreaker, broadcast on RT Radio 1s multi-award-winning Documentary on One slot. The press coverage that followed the books publication led to numerous offers of TV projects and film scripts inspired by Hayess story. Naturally this piqued my curiosity as to whether there might be film footage or audio tapes of Hayes and Dan Bryan (whose name came up repeatedly during my research on Hayes indeed, in truth you cant separate one man from the other), perhaps in a private collection that had hitherto lain undiscovered. While there is some material in RTs television and radio archives of both men, in which they mostly talked about other topics Hayes on Islamic art and Bryan on the War of Independence material on World War II was thin on the ground. This got me thinking about a book I had consulted while writing Codebreaker. The Shamrock and the Swastika, a ground-breaking study of German espionage in neutral Ireland during the Emergency, was written by Professor Carolle J. Carter of San Jos State University in northern California, who carried out the research for it between 1970 and 1973. The book had its genesis in Prof. Carters masters thesis, which she carried out under the supervision of Professor Charles B. Burdick, one of the foremost authorities on World War II and the author of 10 books on the subject, as well as numerous scholarly articles and book chapters. He is still regarded as a pioneering historian on the history of the German High Command throughout the war.

After much research online I discovered that there was a large archive at San Jos State University, named, in the professors memory, the Burdick Military History Project. I was aware that Prof. Carters book had been mainly written using personal interviews she had carried out with Dan Bryan and Dr Hayes during the early seventies while on a research trip to Dublin. Was it possible that Carters audio tapes, recorded so many years before, still existed? I decided to contact San Jos State University directly. After navigating my way around the college switchboard, I was advised to put my request in writing to Dr Jonathan Roth, who today presides over the Burdick collection. Within 24 hours I received a reply from Dr Roth putting me in contact with the university archivist, Carli Lowe. Carli offered to look through the Burdick collection for material relating to Ireland and found that the archive included primary sources consulted by Professor Burdick in his research, as well as research notes and personal correspondence.

While nothing immediately seemed to pop up in the library catalogue of the collection in relation to Ireland during World War II, Carli suggested that I speak directly with Prof. Carter. I immediately emailed her to introduce myself and inquire if she still had copies of the tapes that she had used in her research for The Shamrock and the Swastika. The email I received the next day opened a Pandoras box that eventually became the basis of this book. I suggested to Prof. Carter that we should organise a Zoom call to talk through things further and so that I could explain my rationale for wanting to obtain the tapes she had recorded so many years before. During the course of our initial Zoom call, I discovered that the tapes in Prof. Carters possession were utterly priceless. They were in effect the untold history of World War II in Ireland told from the point of view of the main protagonists. A precious resource that existed nowhere else in the world.