page_title: Oscar C. Pfaus
section_title: Mission to Ireland, 1939
hierarchical_section_title: Oscar C. Pfaus / Mission to Ireland, 1939
caption_attribution_description: English: Fascist leader O'Duffy with activists of the Blue Shirt Movement
context_page_description: Oscar Carl Pfaus was a German immigrant who became an American citizen through military service. He had a succession of jobs before becoming involved in pro-Nazi organizations in Chicago in the early 1930s and becoming a full-time Nazi propagandist there. He was also active in New York.
  He returned to Germany in 1938 to work in propaganda for the Deutscher Fichte-Bund with responsibility for Ireland, the United States, and Canada, attempting to cultivate ties in the U.S. through correspondence with Irish-Americans and anyone who might be sympathetic to German interests. His letters were extensively quoted in the proceedings of the Dies committee on Un-American Activities in 1939.
  He was recruited to the Abwehr, the German military intelligence agency, which sent him to Ireland in 1939 to make contact with the Irish Republican Army and others who might help Germany. The Abwehr eventually sent an agent to the United States who arranged for the IRA to carry out acts of sabotage there, such as the 1940 attack on the Hercules Powder Company plant in New Jersey in which more than 100 people were killed or injured.
context_section_description: In 1939 and throughout the Second World War, Ireland was not a strategic priority for the Germans. Officially, the Abwehr had banned contact with anti-government groups in Ireland although in practice there had been some limited contact with the IRA and Irish nationalists from which the Abwehr had concluded that the IRA was too weak to form a credible partner against Britain. On January 12, 1939, the IRA set out to raise its profile with Germany and to establish a working relationship with the Nazis by sending an ultimatum to Lord Halifax, the British foreign secretary, that if British troops were not withdrawn from Ireland within days, further action would be taken. The IRA subsequently declared war on Britain and began a series of bomb attacks in England on January 16 under the S-Plan or Sabotage Campaign.
  Accordingly, in February 1939, Abwehr II, the department responsible for relations with discontented minorities, sent Oscar Pfaus to Ireland under the cover of being a journalist for a German newspaper to make contact with the IRA, the first of 13 agents they sent in 1939–43. He received a briefing from Franz Fromme, whom the Abwehr regarded as an expert on Ireland, and travelled via Harwich, London, and Holyhead, arriving at the coastal town of Dún Laoghaire, county Dublin, on February 2 or 3, 1939 by the mailboat Cambria and staying until February 14. The British authorities warned the Irish that he was coming but Irish intelligence did not keep him under close surveillance as they thought he was travelling only to spread propaganda. On arrival, he made his way to  Dublin city where he rented a room in a boarding house.
  The Abwehr's level of knowledge about Ireland was shown by the fact that Pfaus's designated contact was Eoin O'Duffy, a fascist and former Blueshirts leader, but by then, unknown to the Abwehr, a staunch opponent of the IRA. O'Duffy refused to help but Pfaus was able to contact the IRA through O'Duffy's secretary, the fascist sympathiser Liam D. Walsh who knew Maurice Twomey, a former IRA Chief of Staff. Twomey took Pfaus to a Dublin safe house while his status was established and that having been done, Pfaus met IRA leaders Seán Russell and Jim O'Donovan as well as other IRA members. O'Donovan later described Pfaus as a "real S.S. type". It was agreed that an IRA man would visit Germany for further discussions and a £1 note was torn in half for identification purposes with the visitor to take one half and Pfaus to keep the other. O'Donovan subsequently visited Germany three times in 1939. 
  As well as the IRA, Pfaus was also able to meet individuals from the wider Irish nationalist and republican movements which contained strands of pro-fascism, anti-Semitism, and anti-communism. He met the anti-Semite and anti-democrat William J. Brennan-Whitmore and Liam Walsh, both members of the executive committee of the tiny Celtic Confederation of Occupational Guilds (CCOG), but of interest to the Abwehr, and arranged for Walsh to visit Germany, where he promised to use the CCOG to back German interests. Another of Pfaus's contacts was Maurice O'Connor, an Irish railway clerk who had visited Germany and was pro-Nazi and later took a significant role in the CCOG as it became more radical. O'Connor drew up a pamphlet titled "Who is your enemy?" that was adapted from Pfaus's "We Accuse!", originally published in Chicago.
  As a result of Pfaus's visit, the IRA established better connections with the Germans, but they never acquired the munitions and wireless equipment that they hoped for, while the Germans were never able to persuade the IRA to launch a full assault on Northern Ireland to divert British troops away from the mainland, meaning that there were few concrete results of the collaboration. The German agents that followed Pfaus into Ireland during the war proved ineffectual at best and incompetent at worst, such as Walter Simon, who was briefed by Pfaus and arrived in Ireland with a list of 2,400 people whom the Abwehr thought might be good contacts. Soon after arrival, he got drunk and was arrested with 
caption: Eoin O'Duffy with his Blueshirts.
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