Francis Stuart was something of an oddity in wartime Berlin. He was one of only a small number of Irish people there - the others included two IRA men, the one-time chief-of-staff Sean Russell, and Frank Ryan, hero of the republican left and veteran of the International Brigade in Spain.
So why was Stuart there at all? When he arrived in Berlin in January 1940 he was wearing more than one official hat. A refugee from a failed marriage, he also wanted out of Ireland for much the same reasons that James Joyce, Samuel Beckett and others had left. "I didn't want to stay in a place where nothing ever happened," he complained bitterly in later years.
But there was more to it than that. He had been offered a post teaching English at Berlin University and consciously chose to live in the Third Reich some four months after the outbreak of war. The job had been arranged for him by Helmut Clissmann, formerly Dublin head of the German Academic Exchange organisation (DAAD), which in the 193345 period was controlled by the Nazi party.
DAAD sent a stream of students to foreign countries, including Ireland, in the 1930s to collect material which could be useful to the Fatherland's military.
In exchange, students and teachers were offered trips to Germany. In Stuart's case the plan was a cover for other, more sinister, work because, in common with Russell and Ryan (whom German intelligence planned to send back to Ireland in a U-boat as part of Germany's invasion plans for Britain), Stuart was an IRA volunteer.
Before leaving Dublin Stuart had a secret meeting with the IRA's Jim O'Donovan in Killiney, Co Dublin. One of his first stops in Berlin was at an Abwehr office where the officials were dubious of his claims to be an IRA representative. However, Stuart was saved by the intervention of Prof Franz Fromme, who had met the Irish writer on a trip to Dublin.
In between lectures Stuart found time for champagne suppers in clubs with top Nazi party officials and later - after his release from a Spanish prison - Frank Ryan.
After the collapse of the Russell/Ryan landing plan (aborted when Russell died of a perforated ulcer aboard the U-boat on August 14th 1940, west of Galway), Stuart became a scriptwriter for Lord Haw Haw and later made radio broadcasts from Berlin. But in 1944 he was sacked for refusing to make anti-Soviet comments.
Two of Stuart's broadcasts made the Dublin authorities sit up and take notice. The first in December 1942 was when he lavished praise on the IRA's Northern commander, Hugh McAteer. The second came in the run up to the Irish general election in 1943. His basic message to voters was "Don't vote for Fine Gael, that most reactionary party", but do vote for extreme republican candidates. De Valera was reportedly incensed by the remarks. 1944.
David O'Donoghue is the author of Hitler's Irish Voices