Dachau to Dolomites. Tom Wall
a number of men deemed suitable for sabotage and espionage work.
The project came under the remit of Dr Edmund Veesenmayer, later to be directly complicit in Holocaust crimes, but at that time responsible for Irish matters, in particular liaison with the IRA. Hoven had been assigned by him to manage the Irish camp and he held the view that most Irishmen serving in the British forces had only joined because of economic necessity.16 His contacts with the IRA during his time in Ireland may well have coloured his view about the extent and depth of Irish Anglophobia. It is estimated that there were more than 100,000 Irish in British uniforms throughout the war and motives for enlisting varied greatly. For many, especially those who joined before the war, an inability to find gainful employment at home would have been a factor, but there was no necessary correlation between this and anti-British sentiment. The attitude of Irish recruits towards Britain was likely varied and nuanced, and, like many involuntary emigrants, resentment was as likely to be directed homeward.
The selection of ordinary POWs for Friesack had begun in late 1940. Some merchant seamen and civilians were also included in the selection process. Prisoners were promised improved conditions and offered the prospect of release from captivity should they cooperate. The process involved POWs being questioned about their reaction to a theoretical British invasion of the Irish Free State and how they felt about a united Ireland. The purpose was to gauge Irish nationalist and anti-British sentiment. Frank Ryan, a legendary Irish Republican, participated, albeit briefly and reluctantly, in the selection process at the request of the Abwehr. A charismatic figure, he had left the mainstream IRA for the left-leaning Republican Congress and later fought with the International Brigade in Spain. He had become friendly with both Clissmann and Hoven during their time in Ireland and they were instrumental in having him removed from a Spanish prison, where he faced execution. Clissmann, with whom he shared accommodation for a time,17 asked him to help verify claims of past IRA involvement by certain prisoners. Ryan, who was not introduced under his own name, withdrew from the process when one of the Irish servicemen recognised him.18 Presumably, he feared reports portraying him as collaborating with the Nazis. Francis Stuart, the Irish writer who had taken up an academic post in Berlin University just before the war – an arrangement facilitated by Clissmann – also participated in the vetting process.19 Unlike Ryan, Stuart had no qualms about being associated with Nazi propaganda, at least not at that time, for he later went on to make weekly broadcasts on a German propaganda radio station directed at Ireland.20
For some reason the selection process was slipshod and even chaotic. The Germans found the initial responses disappointing, so an adjudged absence of hostility to the possibility of German support for Ireland in the event of British occupation was deemed sufficient reason for selection. One decidedly hostile group was dispatched to Friesack in error following a mix-up of lists, and because the camp was a secret project they were kept there.21 At its peak, about 180 Irish prisoners were housed in Friesack. When one considers that there were likely to be close to 1,000 Irish-born servicemen in POW camps in 1940, this represented only a small percentage of the total. Of those sent to Friesack, only about a dozen volunteered for sabotage or radio training and, it seems for most of these, it was just a ruse to get home and, or, to enjoy the privileges on offer. Volunteers for training were provided with rented accommodation in Berlin, paid an allowance and permitted relative freedom of movement, an alluring prospect at a time when there were few air raids or food shortages in the German capital.
After McGrath settled in the camp he consulted with the senior NCOs present. One of them was a fellow ‘sapper’, Sergeant-Major Whelan from Cork, who was actively warning prisoners against having any dealings with the Germans.22 But McGrath decided on a different approach. He had learned that a number of prisoners had already volunteered to undergo training in radio communications and sabotage. This presented him with a dilemma; if he attempted to stop them, it would have exposed him and undermined his plans. His approach was to sanction their ‘collaboration’ provided they agreed that on landing in Ireland or Britain they would immediately report to the authorities and make no contact with the IRA. In clandestine briefings, he promised those he felt he could trust that ‘he would stand by all’ if ‘they were not influenced by the Germans to undertake anything behind my back’.23 Although most assured him of their support, McGrath wasn’t confident that all would comply with his instructions to double-cross the Germans. There were, in addition, three or four active collaborators and informers outside of his influence. These were hated by the vast majority of inmates and when McGrath publicly set his face against them it enhanced his credibility as SBO with the rest.
Among the prisoners spoken to by McGrath were ‘Sergeant’ Thomas Cushing; Lance Corporal Andrew Walsh and Private Patrick O’Brien all from Tipperary. All three had joined the British Army before the war and, after being placed in Friesack, volunteered for training by the Germans. All were considered at the time to have strong nationalist and anti-British sentiments. Cushing was the dominant personality among the three. A chaplain who spent some time in the camp considered him ‘too active a man to stand prison life’ and someone who would ‘do and say anything to get out of prison’. The priest, though, didn’t believe that he would, in the end, do anything to help the Germans.24 One of the Abwehr officers in the camp painted a more disparaging picture of Cushing during post-war interrogation, when he described him as a stool pigeon who had informed the Germans of McGrath’s predecessor’s escape plan.25 Although it’s not clear if McGrath knew of this, he had his suspicions about Cushing from an early stage. While it remains a matter for conjecture, it is unlikely that Cushing seriously contemplated working for the Germans. He felt little commitment to any cause, least of all that of his jailers, though he may have intended to make a final call depending on which side he perceived as offering the best opportunities for freedom and survival.
Cushing made the most of the freedom afforded him during his training in Berlin. He was less interested in sabotage techniques than the opportunity to indulge in his passion for drink. When captured in Normandy, he and a few colleagues were found to be inebriated, having earlier taken shelter in a well-stocked wine cellar. He was, as he later defined himself, a ‘soldier of fortune’26 and a feckless one at that. He claims to have been involved with the IRA during the Irish War of Independence and Civil War, but this is highly unlikely as he would have been only about ten years old in 1921.27 He was sent to live with a relative in America at the age of fifteen where he subsequently enlisted in the US Army. There, he was regularly in trouble for being drunk and brawling. Soon after his return to civilian life, he claims he enlisted in the Lincoln Brigade to fight on the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War.28 He liked to be known as ‘Red’ Cushing, but this was in reference to his hair colour, not his politics. In fact, he often boasted about his anti-Communism, something that would have placed him at some risk within the International Brigade. The problem with Cushing as a source is that he is entirely unreliable. Barry McLaughlin, who has researched Irish participation in the International Brigade during the Spanish Civil War, is doubtful that he was ever in Spain, or at least not on the Republican side.29 Although he spent his time in captivity known as ‘Sergeant Cushing’ he wasn’t a sergeant.30 In the chaos that was Friesack, he had convinced the Germans and his fellow prisoners that he held that rank, most likely to avoid manual work, as under the Geneva Convention NCOs were only required to do supervisory work. Although some in the Abwehr had confidence in him, at least one considered him to be ‘a rank opportunist, without backbone or moral fibre, a loud mouthed braggart with little courage or intelligence, whose reliability was highly doubtful’.31 He may well have been a braggart, but he was also clever, if irresponsible. The assignment for which Cushing was being trained would have had him transported to Central America on a mission to blow up a lock on the Panama Canal where he had been stationed during his service with the US Army. That the Abwehr could believe that Cushing would carry out such a dangerous and difficult mission for them, in a place where he could easily abscond, illustrates the irrationality that permeated the whole Friesack venture.
Cushing was, by all accounts, loquacious. To use an Irish expression, he had the gift of the gab, and he seems to have used this talent to charm women he met during his stay in Berlin. According to a fellow trainee ‘he led a wild sort of life in Berlin and seldom slept in his own room’.32 One of his alternative sleeping quarters was the lodgings of a former model. He sought permission from the Germans to marry her, but his request was refused.33 Whether he was lovestruck