page_title: Casement Report
section_title: Collaboration with the German Empire in WWI
hierarchical_section_title: Casement Report / Other diplomatic manoeuvres by Roger Casement / Collaboration with the German Empire in WWI
caption_attribution_description: English: German submarines at Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, on 17 February 1914. Identifiable are: U 22, U 20, U 19, and U 21 (first row, left-right); U 14, U 15, U 12, U 16, U 18, U-17, and U 13 (second row, left-right); U-11, U-9, U-6, U-7, U-8, and U-5 (third row, left-right). As U 22 (the newest boat) was commissioned in November 1913, the photo was taken in 1914. Caption says: "Our submarine boats in the harbour" (in German).
context_page_description: The Casement Report was a 1904 document written by Roger Casement —a diplomat and Irish independence fighter—detailing abuses in the Congo Free State which was under the private ownership of King Leopold II of Belgium. This report was instrumental in Leopold finally relinquishing his private holdings in Africa. Leopold had had ownership of the Congolese state since 1885, granted to him by the Berlin Conference, in which he exploited its natural resources for his own private wealth.
context_section_description: In August 1914, at the outbreak of World War I, Casement and John Devoy arranged a meeting in New York with the western hemisphere's top-ranking German diplomat, Count Bernstorff, to propose a mutually beneficial plan: if Germany would sell guns to the Irish revolutionaries and provide military leaders, the Irish would revolt against England, diverting troops and attention from the war with Germany.
  In 1916, the British had intercepted German communications coming from Washington and suspected that there was going to be an attempt to land arms shipments on Irish shores, although they were not aware of the precise location. The arms ship SS Libau, masqueraded as a merchant ship, under Captain Karl Spindler, was apprehended by HMS Bluebell on the late afternoon of Good Friday.
  In the early hours of 21 April 1916, three days before the Easter Rising began, the German submarine SM U-19 put Casement ashore at Banna Strand in Tralee Bay, County Kerry. Casement was suffering from a recurrence of malaria that had plagued him since his days in the Congo Free State, and too weak to travel, he was discovered at McKenna's Fort in Rahoneen, Ardfert, and arrested on charges of treason.
  A group of Irish American congressmen with the help of Joseph Tumulty (the President's personal and Irish-catholic secretary) presented a petition to Woodrow Wilson (of Scots-Irish descent) with the request to lean in on the Casement trial. Wilson was in the middle of his re-election campaign and was counting on the Irish American vote. The British hoping for American intervention in the war, could have hardly ignored a plea from Wilson. On 2 May 1916, Wilson wrote Tumulty: “We have no choice in a matter of this sort. It is absolutely necessary to say that I could take no action of any kind regarding it.”
  On 3 August 1916 Casement was hanged for treason, sabotage, and espionage against the British Crown on the basis of collaboration with the German Empire.
caption: German U-Boot SM U-19, second from the right. c. 1914.
exif: {}