Chapter III: Part XXXIII
Chapter III: The Lion’s Den
Part XXXIII
November 16, 1936
The Berlin offices of the
Völkischer Beobachter were under siege by ten in the morning, following an early announcement of the fact the government had been vigorously denying for four days: German soldiers had invaded Ireland. Although there were a handful of pushy foreign journalists present, most of these were at Goebbels’ Ordenspalais. Rather, it was principally Germans who crowded outside, spurred on by reports that two men in generals’ uniforms had pulled up in a black limousine and entered the building just minutes before the first radio announcement. von Rundstedt? Bayerlein? No, some were sure that it von Küchler. The few eyewitnesses seemed to insist that Hausser himself had been one of them.
Ernst Trommler held open a slit in the blinds with his fingers, turning to the two bored lieutenant-colonels watching the scene with him.
“Is that all for us, Herr Trommler?” the taller one asked.
“I’m afraid so. Which is ironic, since none of our information on what’s going on is from you.”
The Oberstleutnant smiled modestly. “But you have still gotten enough information. It seems,” he said, walking toward over-editor Sassen’s open door, “that you have very little trouble getting information.”
“Perhaps not, Oberstleutnant. The trouble is that the information we
are getting is not as encouraging as we typically like to print.”
The Emerald Isle was in flames. By sunrise on the second day, November thirteenth, German soldiers had taken most of Derry -- where Hausser had spoken over Londonderry Radio proclaiming that a British invasion of the Free Counties was in progress, and that German troops, whose only quarrel was with the English, had arrived as friends to drive them out. In the Free State, the uprising had spread rapidly from Galway, where the First Infantry Battalion had allowed the wayward German force to dock, and throughout Connacht and then Munster, where vacillating Irish Army officers had been reassured by the sight of tricolour-draped panzers rumbling toward Castletownbere and Cobh.
All the while, a mixed Wehrmacht-IRA column drove ever closer to Dublin, ostensibly to secure the capital and President against a British incursion. It had seemed for a time at midday that President de Valera would, even despite the uninvited invasion at Galway and bitter personal differences with the IRA leaders, make a calculated bid for a United Ireland and fall in with the Pact -- and all over Dublin, the ancient blue harp-flag had appeared in windows and from balconies. Even Moss Twomey cabled his sometime enemy with a plea to make a proclamation that would halt the scattered IRA-Irish Army fighting that had flared throughout the country: “Irish must not spill Irish blood now of all days.” At the same time, the Crown’s representative in Ireland, Governor-General Domhnall Ua Buachalla, was busy being arrested and un-arrested half a dozen times at his mansion on the south side of Dublin by troops confused by contradictory orders. Just as the inscrutable Dev dithered at his offices in the old College of Science building, two ships flying the White Ensign arrived in Dublin Bay. Sailing under the harbor guns, the British light cruisers HMS
Danae and HMS
Dauntless signaled that the Irish Free State had one hour to capitulate; otherwise, they would begin bombarding the city. With fifteen minutes to go, de Valera lost his nerve and ordered his men to stand down and allow two battalions of Royal Marines to land.
British cruisers charging through heavy seas off Ireland, print after painting by A. Cull. Danae
and Dauntless
are in foreground.
The counterblow was just beginning to fall. In the smallest hours of the fourteenth, two British fleets had gathered off Ireland’s Atlantic coast. The first battle squadron, under Vice Admiral John Tovey, had steamed brazenly into Lough Swilly with the rising sun. Sleepy German lookouts at Lenan Head had scarcely registered an odd silhouette when the light cruiser HMS
Colombo came sheering out of the seaward mist at flank speed. She sliced through the makeshift boom across the mouth of the lough bow-on, the mines attached to the boom detonating in her wake in tremendous white pillars. The batteries at Dunree had quickly ranged
Colombo as she ventured deeper into the lough’s cramped channel, though, battering the old ship cruelly for fifteen minutes until the fog bank shrouding the northern approaches began to flash yellow, as if lit by sheet lightning. Seconds later, the old fort began to disintegrate as the battlecruiser
Hood and three heavy cruisers plastered the Dunree promontory at close range. The British proceeded deeper into the lough, until they began to take potshots from 150 mm guns set up on the heights overlooking Buncrana on the eastern shore. As marines from the
Dorsetshire rowed toward the docks, three salvos from
Hood put an end to any more firing from the heights, and in so doing, the last remaining heavy artillery in Lough Swilly. Tovey had brought his force to within sight of Letterkenny before ordering his guns onto the German ships sheltering there. In just twenty minutes, three of the world’s great liners --
Europa,
Paris and
Berlin -- had been sent to the lough’s stony bottom. The
Europa, lying on its side and bleeding fuel oil from gaping wounds, was the largest ship ever sunk in war. Five other, smaller ships sat smashed or scuttled around the great liners as the Free French cruiser
Jeanne D’Arc sped up to the docks and discharged two battalions of Royal Marines to retake the city. It fell within hours.
The story from Galway had been no better. While Tovey was laying waste to the ancient works of Fort Dunree, Admiral Betram Home Ramsey had brought an almost identical force -- led by
Hood’s sister
Renown -- into Galway Bay with battle ensigns flying. After signaling a demand for the surrender of the city, port and all defenders and receiving an incoherent reply, Ramsey had ordered a shelling rather less discriminate than Tovey’s. For more than three hours, the
Renown,
Kent,
Cumberland,
Calcutta,
Achilles and a covey of destroyers had rained their fury on the city and the seventeen German ships caught sheltering there. By the time Ramsey landed his marines at the smoldering quays, thirteen of the seventeen had been sunk and all the rest were burning out of control.
HMS Rodney
steaming toward Galway, Dawn November 14, print after painting by A. Cull.
”Galway Burns.” Print after painting by American student R.M. Gibney.
Hausser had, fortunately, recognized his own inability to defend the ports against determined attack and consequently ordered all the provisions, ammunition and equipment stripped from his ships ahead of time and brought inland. With this news, German fortunes had improved on the fifteenth. Almost all of the Free State except Dublin and Galway was in more or less friendly hands, and the aimless IRA-Irish Army brawling that characterized the first three days of the crisis had petered out amid the realization that there was a very real British invasion afoot. Still better, Generalmajor Nehring’s panzers were nearing Cobh -- this proved an endless source of excitement for the soldiers, who lustily sang “It’s a short way to Tipperary” -- and the Luftwaffe had begun combat sorties from Irish airfields.
A Staffeln of fighter pilots had set sail on the
Europa with fifteen crated Ar-68s, only to learn after laboriously offloading the ship in Letterkenny that the secrecy attending the voyage had been their undoing. The shipping crates on the docks at Wilhelmshaven had, at the Abwehr’s insistence, been labelled according to a coded table. Each “Arado Ar-68, Parts Without Engine” was to be marked as a crate full of “Snow Shoes”, but some harried quartermaster had evidently mistaken “Snow Shoes” as the proper encoding for “Canvas Sheets, Batting” -- and loaded
Europa with useless cloth. One pilot, chagrined that the Staffel had landed with only fifteen orphaned engines, half-jokingly contemplated razing a nearby stand of beech trees and, “stitching the canvas around the sticks better than the factory could.” Needing no black humor to make their situation more absurd, Hausser’s staffers soon deduced in horror that the real planes had been stamped “Wool Mittens” and sunk aboard the
Stuttgart. A rain front in the Irish Sea had delayed the two dozen Heinkel He-51 floatplane fighters flown out to replace them for more than forty-eight hours. Nonetheless, three Staffeln of Ju-52 bombers, with their longer ferry range, had been flown with little trouble to friendly airfields in Limerick and Galway. They had by now begun bombing Belfast with only scattered opposition.
Sifting through a mass of censored reports, Lorenz Sassen was on the telephone with Wilhelm Weiss in Munich, filling in the redacted sections from the latter’s own classified copies of the bombing reports. “Ah, thank you! Cardiff! -- one moment Gruppenführer -- Clara, take this down, Line 48, ‘left Cardiff in flames’ -- I’m sorry, Gruppenführer -- so, Line 52 that is... It is? Well I -- couldn’t -- yes, yes, but then the next is -- yes, I’ll do that.” He hung up the receiver and announced smoothly to Fräulein Knabe that they were to print the presence of four full German divisions in Ireland.
“Over-editor?”
He didn’t look up. “Trommler?”
“The Oberstleutnants are wondering whether they are free to go.”
“Ostensibly we are being briefed on this devastating Cardiff raid by the two of them, so no.”
“Yes, over-editor.”
“On your way out, take these leaders and see that they’ve got the revised information from Weiss. And see if under-editor Ulrich can entertain these two fine officers.”
Said officers dispensed of, Trommler thumbed through tomorrow’s headlines, correcting them in pencil.
Panzers Lead Fight to Free Ireland
Four divisions of German soldiers are now fighting side-by-side with forces of the Irish Free State, to defend that nation from the aggression of Great Britain. Germany was concentrating its forces in a defensive role, when intelligence services learned that the British government had ordered the execution of a plan it has held in readiness since 1916. Deciding that the existence of a neutral country so close to its shores posed an intolerable threat, Stanley Baldwin coerced his king into invading the Irish Free State. Because this is both an outrage against international peace and a strategic threat to Germany, due to Ireland’s strategic ports, overall commander of the Armed Forces Field Marshal von Küchler ordered decisive action. The swift and sure tread of panzers now rumbles through the Irish countryside, putting fear in the hearts of the British soldiers who would oppress that island. Indeed, more than 85% of the island is now safe from this aggression.
Criminal Ramsey Against Peace
The British admiral Betram Ramsey is a criminal against peace and humanity. In retaliation for their support of Free State and German military forces against British military forces, he ordered cruel and illegal vengeance upon the population of Galway, on Ireland’s western coast. This untold suffering stands in marked contrast to the careful and human Luftwaffe bombing of Cardiff, Wales carried out the next night, which took great care only to target military installations in accordance with the established rules of warfare. May Ramsey and those who enable him be brought swiftly to justice before the eyes of the world.
Hausser at Gates of Belfast
General Paul Hausser, hero of the French campaign, is now ashore in Ireland. The decorated commander who seized Paris in a single night has now brought German panzers and their Irish allies to the very gates of Belfast, the capital of the British-occupied portion of Ireland. With the imminent seizure of this critical industrial center and port, the British will have great difficulty in maintaining the blockade which is presently affecting Western Europe. Speaking to the Irish people by radio, General Hausser expressed his wish that Great Britain make an honorable peace that allows all Irish to live independently. Irish President de Valera announced his --
Trommler struck out the last line. According to Weiss, the Abwehr wanted no mention of de Valera’s stance until it was truly final.
He paused, chuckling to himself.
Truly final. Dev was keeping everyone in suspense after all.
Maybe then, just maybe, the under-editor mused, there was still hope of the old man coming around.