Drawing the IRA of the Allies

The Irish Republican Army, of The Troubles fame, had a long-term struggle against the British oppressors, even resulting in making some rather unsavoury friends in WWII.

Formed in the 1910s before waging the guerrilla War of Independence, the IRA helped achieve the Irish Free State.^[1] However, to some, the treaty that achieved independence didn't go far enough, leading to the Irish Civil War.^[2] After being on the losing side of this war, the IRA drifted a bit aimlessly, and then was banned by the Irish government in 1936.

Caught somewhat on the back foot, the IRA sought to take advantage of the chaos in Europe during the Second World War. The S-Plan,^[3] devised by the IRA involved sabotaging and bombing civilian infrastructure in England as Britain limped through the early stages of the war. The natural consequence of this, I suppose, was then to join forces with the enemy of my enemy.

Seán Russell, the Chief of Staff (read: leader) of the IRA, trained in explosives with the Nazis in 1940 to further take the war to the UK.^[4] At that particular time, support for the Nazis from the IRA was so strong that they heil-ed them "friends and liberators of the Irish people".^[5] After setting off back to Ireland on Operation Dove,^[6] Seán's untimely death from a burst gastric ulcer on a German U-boat cut the mission short.

In reality, despite the IRA fawning over the Nazis, the sentiment wasn't reciprocated. Plan Kathleen,^[7] which would have been a German amphibious assault near Derry, Northern Ireland, took no account of fortifications and had no provisions for control of the sea. On this plan, the German spy Hermann Görtz remarked: "The plan was therefore completely useless. It nearly broke my heart, since it came from the IRA Chief of Staff". On the character of Acting Chief of Staff Stephen Hayes, Görtz had this to say:

I do not think it is necessary for me to describe the disappointment which I felt when I met Stephen Hayes, although I had already been warned. I expected someone like Léon Degrelle [leader of the Belgian Rexists] or like the leaders of the Breton independence movement, or the Ukrainian leaders with whom I had become acquainted in Berlin. Hayes was an ex-footballer. At first he showed himself as a man of good personal qualities but that is not enough for the leader of nationalist extremists. Later his character deteriorated. I think from alcohol and fear.