1916 Read online

  It must be emphasised here that these early contacts between the Irish republicans and the Germans did not result in concrete measures. After all, when the war broke out in 1914 there were no risings in Ireland nor anywhere else in the British empire, except a short rebellion led by Christiaan de Wet in South Africa. Not even contingency plans had been thought out, something bitterly regretted by Freeman in 1915.14 The explanation of this lies probably in the fact that deep down the Germans still believed they could reach an agreement with the British and make sure that they would not interfere in a general war on the continent.

  The home rule crisis intensified when, in 1913, the unionists set up the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and the nationalists retorted by establishing the Irish Volunteers. It now looked as if a large scale civil war was only a matter of time. The Ulster crisis attracted the foreign press, but not only journalists arrived in Ireland. Baron Georg von Franckenstein, from the Austro-Hungarian embassy in London, was among them, and his stay in the country became controversial.15 It should not be forgotten that the 25,000 rifles delivered to the UVF on the night of 24–5 April 1914 came from the Steyr armament factory in Upper Austria.16 The archives in Vienna reveal that Franckenstein wrote a report precisely on 24 April.17 This was a most striking coincidence to say the least and prompts the question as to what he was really doing in Ireland all the more since the report has since gone missing. It is unlikely to be ever recovered as vast amounts of secret files were destroyed in Vienna after the war.18 In 1939 Franckenstein published his memoirs in which he categorically denied any wrong-doing. The problem is that he seemed to have contradicted himself. In February 1913 he had been in India, and as he himself stated in his memoirs: ‘The purpose of my travels and stay in India was to study the general political situation and to ascertain what attitude the natives would adopt in a world war.’19 This was exactly what people accused Franckenstein of having done in Ireland. Similar accusations were levelled at Richard von Kühlmann of the German embassy, who was suspected of having gone on a secret mission to Ulster in the summer of 1914. Like Franckenstein, Kühlmann denied everything. The plot thickens here, however, as Margot Asquith, wife of the British Prime Minister, Herbert Asquith, clearly remembered Kühlmann telling her that he had gone to Ulster.20 Both men’s roles remain cloaked in mystery.

  When the Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo on 28 June 1914 by a young Serbian nationalist, serious tensions developed between Austria-Hungary and Serbia, involving the major European powers. Historians have named this the ‘July crisis’ during which politicians, diplomats and militaries were wondering who was going to do what. What was Ireland’s role in the unfolding events that would lead to the outbreak of the First World War? As seen, Germany was essentially obsessed by the position of the United Kingdom. As Professor A.T.Q. Stewart wrote in 1967: ‘The influence of the Irish crisis on German policy has generally been underestimated.’21 This continues to be the case today as the many books dealing with the outbreak of the war rarely take into account the Irish crisis. And yet there can be little doubt about the veracity of Professor Stewart’s assertion. Indeed, on 26 July 1914 the Belgian ambassador in Berlin, Baron Henri Beyens, wrote that Germany could now wage war ‘in extremely favourable circumstances’. Among the reasons he mentioned was the situation in the United Kingdom: ‘England … is paralysed by her internal dissensions and her Irish quarrels’.22 Beyens could not have known how right he was for on the very same day a British regiment opened fire on a nationalist crowd in Dublin after a gun-running operation for the Irish Volunteers at Howth. Four people died and forty were wounded. The incident became known as the Bachelor’s Walk massacre. The long-awaited civil war looked to be on its way. The next day Albert Ballin, the German ship owner and personal friend of the Kaiser, reported from London, where he had been sent to ascertain the political situation, that Britain’s reaction to Austria-Hungary’s ultimatum to Serbia had been very ‘mild’. He related it to the ‘present situation’.23 Undoubtedly, Ballin had the Irish crisis in mind.

  Still on 27 July Germany rejected a British offer of mediation emanating from Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey, and advised the Austro-Hungarians to also reject it.24 They took this piece of advice.25 Indeed, why should they accept the offer of a disunited United Kingdom? Besides, on 12 July, twelve days before the Austro-Hungarians’ fateful ultimatum to the Serbians, their ambassador in Berlin, Count Ladislaus Szögyény, had already informed them that the Germans thought that ‘above all, England is anything but bellicose at the moment’.26 In Britain politicians at the highest level and of all shades of opinion began to suspect that the Central Powers were taking into account the Irish crisis in the formulation of their policy. On 30 July Prime Minister Herbert Asquith secretly met his political opponents, Andrew Bonar Law (leader of the Conservative party) and Sir Edward Carson (leader of the Unionist party), somewhere in the suburbs of London. Bonar Law and Carson wanted the prime minister ‘to postpone for the time being the second reading of the Amending bill [which provided for the possible exclusion from home rule of certain Ulster counties] … in the interest of the international situation’. Asquith replied: ‘I agreed and read to them the latest telegrams from Berlin which, in my judgement, assume that the German government are calculating upon our internal weakness to affect our foreign policy.’ A short time later he met John Redmond, the leader of the Irish party, to whom he related his rather extraordinary meeting. Redmond ‘thought it an excellent chance of putting off the Amending bill’.27

  On 3 August 1914, when Germany declared war on France, Field Marshal Franz Conrad von Hötzendorf, the Austro-Hungarian commander in chief, wrote: ‘England’s attitude proves to be unfriendly and doubtful. To [our] military attaché [in London], it seems, however, that there is no desire for war for the time being, taking into account the Ulster crisis and the civil war.’28 To point out that Conrad and his military attaché were wrong, as there was no civil war, is to miss the point. What matters here is their interpretation, and this interpretation must have encouraged Conrad and others in persevering in their offensive against Serbia. That there was no civil war in Ireland was largely due to Redmond’s intervention in the House of Commons on 3 August when he put forward that the UVF and the Irish Volunteers would defend Ireland against a foreign (i.e. German) invasion. It can be safely said that Redmond spoiled Berlin and Vienna’s expectations. It also helps to explain why the British cabinet was so hesitant in committing itself to help France and Russia. On 1 and 2 August Grey had told the dismayed Russian and French ambassadors that it would be difficult to send a force of 100,000 British soldiers to the continent because of possible inner troubles in the United Kingdom.29 On 4 August, a genuinely United Kingdom declared war on Germany and, on 12 August, on Austria-Hungary. Ambassador Mensdorff had already warned Vienna on 3 August: ‘Navy and army are mobilised but there are still no decisions as to how they will be used. Enthusiastic adoption in parliament; approval of the opposition, including the two Irish parties.’30As for Redmond, he later exhorted the Irish Volunteers to fight abroad. This provoked a division within the Volunteer movement and the expulsion of the pro-Redmond members from the Executive Committee. But only a few thousand rank and file members remained faithful to their leader and founder, Professor Eoin MacNeill. Within the ranks of these Irish Volunteers, secret members of the IRB were determined to rise against the British while they were fighting against the Germans; among them were Pádraig Pearse and Joseph Mary Plunkett.

  During the first months of the war in Europe, the Irish nationalist Roger Casement was busy negotiating an alliance with the German ambassador to the United States, Count Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff. Later Casement and Franz von Papen, the military attaché of the embassy, worked out the idea of setting up an Irish brigade composed of Irish prisoners of war detained in German camps.31 Bernstorff informed Berlin that Casement would arrive in Germany soon.32 What Bernstorff did not know, however, was that his me
ssages were being intercepted by the British. On 5 August 1914 a team of British secret servicemen disguised as fishermen had cut the transatlantic cables between Germany and the United States. This forced the Germans to use other cables or use wireless that the British could either tap or intercept. It now became a question of being able to decode German messages. The British were blessed with extraordinary luck. On 11 August the Australian navy confiscated a codebook from a German ship, the crew of which had ignored the fact that war had been declared. On 6 September the Russians found a second codebook on a German battleship and sent it to London. Eventually, on 30 November, an English trawler found in its nets a third codebook! By that time the British had already cracked one of the German codes. A room in the admiralty in London became specialised in deciphering. It was the soon-to-be legendary room 40 under the command of Captain Reginald Hall.33 All this meant that communications between New York and Berlin would be intercepted, including the ones of the future Easter Rising.

  Roger Casement arrived in Berlin on 31 October 1914 after an eventful journey. He was introduced to several people in the ministry of Foreign Affairs. Dr Schiemann described to the Kaiser his meeting with Casement in most flattering terms: ‘The impression I got from Casement is extremely favourable. He is a real strength for our interests and is motivated by the hatred of English policy.’34 Casement then travelled to Charleville in occupied north east France where the German high command had its headquarters. There he exposed his plans regarding the formation of an Irish brigade the purpose of which was to participate in the liberation of Ireland. The commander in chief, General Erich von Falkenhayn, agreed to separate Irish prisoners of war from English and Scottish ones.35 This was hardly surprising as Falkenhayn believed that Britain was Germany’s main enemy; everything, therefore, should be undertaken to destabilise the British. A special camp was set up near Limburg an der Lahn, not too far away from Frankfurt am Main. As is well known, the whole operation was a fiasco. At the most fifty five men volunteered and they were not quality soldiers. Even Casement feared them and refused to let them attend mass in the local cathedral.36 As early as 25 January 1915 the military authorities in Frankfurt informed Berlin that the Irishmen in Limburg were mainly ‘urban working class scum who were physically and mentally most inferior’.37 Casement rapidly began to have doubts about the project and the sincerity of his German allies. In the words of his biographer, Angus Mitchell, ‘Hints of paranoia started to permeate his journal as his recruitment efforts floundered and his despondency with the war deepened.’38

  This failure was a let-down for Casement but not really for the Germans. Indeed, Ireland played no part at all in their overall strategy during 1914 and 1915. Before the war, in May 1914, Captain Blum of the submarine section had submitted a plan to turn Ireland into a submarine base, from where a trade war against Britain could be waged. Admiral von Tirpitz had been informed about the proposal.39 But in October 1914 Captain Schlubach questioned the strategic value of the Irish coast as he believed that all submarines needed to do was to block the entries of the harbours of Dublin and Belfast.40 Under these circumstances there was no need to set up bases. In fact the setting up of such bases made little sense as it would have necessitated the opening of supply lines between Germany and Ireland. This implied that the German navy would already have beaten the royal navy. If this was the case all the Germans had to do was to blockade Britain. The British would then have had to sue for peace with their army cut off from them in France. On 23 August Admiral Karl von Truppel pointed out: ‘A conclusive victory of our fleet, risings in Egypt, the Suez Canal, India and Africa are possibilities but no certain factors.’41 The fact that he had not mentioned Ireland was very relevant. It was little wonder that Casement became impatient and depressed.

  Back in Ireland, the small group within the IRB known as the Military Council became aware that the Germans had to be convinced of their intentions. By way of Spain, Italy and Switzerland, they sent Joseph Mary Plunkett to Berlin where he met Casement in April 1915.42 The two men produced an impressive thirty two page report, outlining the history of the Irish Volunteers, the strength of the British army in Ireland and the country’s strategic value.43 Not surprisingly, the Germans were not convinced by their arguments. The meetings between both men and the Germans appear to have been tense.44 Plunkett returned to Ireland without any specific German promises. Casement warned him that the Irish Volunteers should not attempt a rising without the support of the German army.45 It must be stressed that both men did their best to persuade their allies, but that they largely overestimated the abilities of the German navy.

  But at the beginning of 1916 events suddenly gathered momentum. In Dublin the secret Military Council decided to launch a rising on Easter Sunday, 23 April, for which German arms would be urgently required. On 5 February John Devoy received a message containing the Military Council’s decision. He lost no time in contacting Ambassador Bernstorff who in turn sent a coded message to Berlin on 16 February.46 The German general staff immediately offered to help. Why this sudden change of attitude towards Ireland? On 21 December 1915 General Erich von Falkenhayn had met the Kaiser to outline his new plan for a decisive offensive. He explained that Britain was the ‘archenemy’ and that France was ‘England’s tool on the continent’. He believed that the British would finance the war until Germany was beaten. According to him the best way to eliminate Britain was ‘to knock her best sword out of her hands’, in other words the French army. A major offensive would be directed against the French at Verdun. Simultaneously a new unrestricted submarine warfare campaign would be directed against British shipping even if this could provoke the United States into declaring war. The offensive would begin in February 1916.47 There was another major reason to deliver the knock-out blow to Britain. The first food riots had occurred in Berlin in October 1915 and had been caused by what the German population called the ‘hunger blockade’ imposed by the royal navy.48 In Falkenhayn’s mind, however strange this might sound, the offensive against Verdun was in fact part of a general offensive against Britain. If, besides this offensive and the new submarine campaign, a rising could also be fomented in Ireland, so much the better. So it was that the future Easter Rising became part of a wider offensive against Britain. This explains why the Germans suddenly agreed to help the Irish republicans after one and a half years of inactivity.

  The preparations for the Easter Rising in Germany are well known and do not need to be detailed here. Briefly, Casement was totally opposed to the gun-running project that consisted of sending only 20,000 old Russian rifles, 10 machine guns and 4,000,000 rounds of ammunition to the republicans in Ireland.49 Without the participation of German soldiers Casement believed that a rising would be a futile bloodbath. It is striking that German support for the proposed action was, to say the least, limited. It should be noted that by 1916 German industry was producing 250,000 quality rifles and 2,300 quality machine guns a month!50 It looked as if the general staff wanted to organise a low-cost expedition to Ireland. The reason for this was probably that it was still not totally convinced of the seriousness of the republicans’ intentions. On 21 March 1916 Captain Karl Spindler of the German navy was ordered to transport the arms to Tralee Bay, arriving between 20 and 23 April, where he would be met by an Irish pilot boat. Spindler left Lübeck on 9 April aboard the Aud , pretending to be a Norwegian fishing boat.51 As for Casement, he was finally allowed to leave Germany for Ireland aboard a submarine.52 The Germans’ decision remains most curious as they knew that he was against the Rising and that there was an obvious risk that he might try to prevent it.

  In London on 12 February 1916, Lord French, the commander in chief of the home forces, had a conversation with Augustine Birrell, the Irish chief secretary. Birrell told him that the Irish Volunteers were not much of a danger but that he would like to see them ‘get a real good “knock”’.53 Birrell’s remark might well have appealed to French, a man who favoured strong-arm tactics. In April 1918 he w
ould advocate the bombing of Ireland by the royal air force in order to make her accept conscription.54

  Two months later, around 8 April, a most intriguing meeting took place in the Vatican. Count George Plunkett, a papal knight, had an audience with Pope Benedict XV. He had come to ask his blessing for the future rising. Indeed, some time before, Eoin MacNeill had explained that a rising was morally not justifiable. Pearse had then agreed but now knew that MacNeill had to be neutralised lest he should prevent the Rising. Therefore, MacNeill was not informed of its preparations until the very last moment.55 This is, at least, the official version. Because the republicans feared the possible negative reaction of the Irish Catholic church, it seems that it had been decided to send Plunkett to the Vatican to ask the pope for his opinion on the matter. Plunkett gave Benedict a long letter written in French, justifying the Rising and giving the date of its beginning. His audience lasted nearly two hours and nobody else was present. According to Plunkett, he was ‘deeply moved’ and, although he refused to bless the Rising, he did bless the republicans. Plunkett was also struck ‘with the Pope’s familiarity with the Irish cause, and the arguments put forward by England’. This was hardly surprising, as the nationalist-minded Monsignor Michael O’Riordan, the rector of the Irish College in Rome, regularly informed the pope of the latest developments in Ireland. It must also be borne in mind that the Vatican was not on friendly terms with Britain. The British had excluded the pope and the curia from the future peace negotiations in a secret treaty with Italy signed in 1915, the details of which the Vatican had soon obtained. But there was more. Plunkett said that he had been sent by Eoin MacNeill, which was also clearly stated in the letter. This would mean that, contrary to the commonly-held belief that MacNeill had been deceived by Pearse and others until the very last moment, he in fact knew about the future uprising. In 1933 a public controversy broke out between Plunkett and MacNeill, who totally denied having had anything to do with Plunkett’s mission in Rome. The whole episode remains a mystery. But it would beggar belief that a papal knight and a devout Catholic as Plunkett would have lied or deliberately misled the pope.56