I
found the media furore which broke out after the
statue in Dublin of former IRA chief of Staff Seán
Russell was damaged very interesting. Basically
the media's anger became directed not at the individual
who damaged the Statue, allegedly an anti racist,
but at its subject and the organisation he at one
time led. The main accusation was that the IRA of
the late 1930’s early 40’s were willing
accomplices of the Hitlerite Nazis, and that Russell
and his travelling companion Frank Ryan were all
but collaborators when they attempted to return
to Ireland in 1940 on a German submarine, their
one-way ‘tickets’ for the journey having
been provided by the German Army's intelligence
service, the Abwehr. The submarine failed to reach
its destination, due to Russell becoming ill on
route and dying from a stomach ailment/appendicitis
on the journey. It was ironic that Russell's fellow
passenger on the submarine was Frank Ryan, but more
about him later. Safe to say the proof that he was
a mere passenger on the U-boat, there on the sufferance
of Russell, was clearly demonstrated by the decision
of the boats captain H-J von Stockhausen, who after
Russell's death, having discussed the matter with
Ryan, decided to abort his mission rather than carry
on and disembark Ryan in Ireland, as he was ordered
to do with Russell. As far as the Captain was concerned
and more importantly his superiors back at Abwehr
Headquarters, no Russell, no mission. So it was
back to Germany for Ryan, who was never to set foot
on Irish soil again in his lifetime.
Bar the odd small article and letter in defence
of Russell, which has been published in An Phoblacht/Republican
News (AP/RN), as far as PRM is concerned, the
accusations made against these two men and the movement
one of them headed is, it seems, a case of the less
said the better. And this in the year Sinn Fein
is celebrating the centenary of its birth as a political
party, despite the fact that little more than a
year ago, on the 17th of August 2003, a senior member
of PIRA was designated to make the main speech at
the Russell statue, at a ceremony which celebrated
Russell's life and alongside him stood an up and
coming member of Sinn
Fein. Although looking back at this event and
taking into account that Sean Russell personified
the pure physical force mentality of Irish republicanism
and was known to be contemptuous of politics, the
presence of Brian Keenan may well have been an attempt
to shore up the peace process and keep all thought
of a split from the minds of volunteers.
In a way it is a great pity we have not heard from
the leadership of SF on this matter, as it would
have allowed the PRM to explain the attitude it
now takes to the IRA's involvement with Nazi Germany
during World War Two, as involved they undoubtedly
were. The fact they have chosen not to do so tells
one a great deal about how they cherry-pick what
they feel should be placed before the general public
and how they seem incapable of acknowledging that
as far as strategy is concerned, the IRA and its
leadership are not always infallible. Few would
surely feel it would be a sin for a leading member
of the PRM to have come forward and answered the
criticism by stating the war-time strategy of the
IRA and Russell's part in drawing it up had been
a grave error which could have had grave consequences
for the Irish people. For if the Nazis had won WW2,
far from honouring any agreement Russell may have
made with them, in all probability he and those
he commanded would have been the first to be put
up against the wall, with the likes of General Eoin
O’Duffy leading the firing party, followed
by the absolute oppression and serfdom of the Irish
people as was experienced by all those who suffered
under the yoke of the Nazi jackboot in occupied
Europe during WW2
And do not be confused into believing that this
is a movement which hesitates about putting pen
to paper if the need arises. Indeed they have their
own newspaper group or to be fair one that is very
close to them, The Andersonstown News Group,
that intends launching a new daily newspaper which
will cover the whole of the island of Ireland. One
would have thought, for a Chief of Staff of the
IRA to be publicly portrayed throughout much of
the Irish media as a Nazi collaborator in the period
leading up to the 60 anniversary of the liberation
of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death and concentration
camp would be enough to bring forth someone from
the leadership in his defence. If, that is, any
defence is possible?
Whilst after SF commemorated Sean Russell in 2003
its more than probable that someone who opposes
SF may have concluded that any Media campaign to
denigrate Russell as a Nazi collaborator would have
legs and could be used to attack SF during it anniversary
year. However this in no way negates the truth of
the IRAs contact with the Nazis during WW2. In
a letter published in the 27/01/05 issue of AP/RN,
a correspondent writes the following.
“How
very sad that the desecration of Seán Russell's
statue in Dublin has prompted some people to denounce
him as pro-Nazi. The most prominent images evoked
by use of the word Nazi will forever be of the
holocaust and Hitler's death camps, images seared
into the collective unconscious of most of the
world. But when Russell asked for German help
in 1939 he, along with the rest of the world,
could not possibly have known these horrors were
going to occur. Britain and its allies fought
the Germans to prevent fulfilment of German expansionist
and invasion plans, not to prevent a holocaust
they didn't know was going to happen. This year,
we commemorate the discovery and liberation of
Hitler's death camps in 1945. In 1939, they had
not even been designed.”
The
above quotation from the letter is historical nonsense.
Whilst it is true that the decision on the Final Solution
would not be made until 1942 at the
Wannsee Conference in Berlin, concentration camps
sprung up in Germany almost immediately after Hitler
came to power. For example, Dachau concentration camp
was erected in March 1933. By the mid thirties these
camps were holding large numbers of the Nazis' political
opponents who refused to cease all political activity
inside Germany, along with others whom the Nazis considered
undesirables, like religious opponents of the regime,
homosexuals and gypsies. Also during the 1930s a system
of euthanasia for mentally disabled people was brought
into practice; all that was needed to end the life
of these unfortunate souls was the signature of two
doctors.
In 1935, the
Laws of Nuremberg became the law of the land throughout
Germany; Jews were refused German citizenship and
any marriage between Jews and Germans was forbidden.
On the night November 9, 1938, which became known
throughout the world as Crystal Night, Jewish business
were destroyed and synagogues burnt to the ground.
Plus for good measure, as often happens in this type
of situation, then and now, the victims were blamed
and some 30,000 Jews were deported to concentration
camps.
In 1936, Austria, which had been an independent Nation
for a thousand years, was unified with Germany by
force of arms, deceit and blatant fraud. The elected
Austrian Chancellor, Schuschnigg, soon after was replaced
by a Nazi satrap, Seyss-Inquart. Czechoslovakia was
occupied in 1938 by much the same means, and the very
State annulled, becoming a Protectorate of the nation
which had just raped and plundered the gallant little
Czech State. In democratic Spain, in its support for
Franco, the Nazi war machine was having a trial run
out, the end result of which was a Fascist dictatorship
which was to suppress the Spanish people for the next
thirty odd years.
Far from any of this being a secret, the Nazis' propagandised
about carrying out these criminal tasks. They did
so because they were proud of their handiwork. Indeed
the hatred, fear and contempt that was felt against
the Nazis throughout much of the world at this time
was one of the main reasons that thousands of people
left the comfort of their hearth and home to join
the International Brigades, to take up arms in defence
of the Spanish Republic. Hundreds of Irishmen, many
of them former members of the IRA, joined these Brigades.
Thus there was no way a senior Republican of the time
could not know what was going on within Nazi Germany
and elsewhere in Europe, as the subject of how to
defeat fascism was a hot issue within the ranks of
the IRA.
Indeed it became one of the issues that separated
those who remained in the IRA like Sean Russell, from
their former comrades such as his travelling companion
on his last journey, Frank Ryan. Ryan, having resigned
from the IRA earlier in the 1930s, had played a leading
role in recruiting Irish Republicans into the International
Brigades. Indeed it was after he returned to Spain
from Ireland in 1938, after a period convalescing
from wounds received whilst fighting in the International
Brigades, that the Spanish insurgents Army captured
him. (He was actually captured on 30th March 1939
by Italian Fascist Troops fighting alongside the Francoite
Rebel Army. In Red and Green, by Adrian Hoar
pp 243.) He had returned to Spain against all advice,
as he saw it as his duty to bring home safely as many
as he could of the Irish members of the Brigades who
were still alive, as it seemed to Ryan the end of
the war and defeat for the Spanish Republic was near.
On capture he was sentenced to death and transported
between a number of Spanish prisons, all the time
expecting the sentence to be carried out. Despite
a campaign mounted in Ireland, which was supported
by De Valera who was then in government, General Franco
would not budge on a pardon for Ryan, even though
he had agreed to the repatriation of all other members
of the International Brigades held by his government.
Eventually, for a host of reasons too complicated
to go into here due to lack of space, Franco agreed
on Ryan, by sleight of hand, being given into the
custody of the German Army's Abwehr department, who
spirited him to Paris and then Germany, where he was
reintroduced to Sean Russell, who broke the news to
him that he was returning to Ireland the following
day and if Ryan wished to accompany him, there was
a birth on the boat for him (In Red and Green,
by Adrian Hoar pp 243). Thus it was one generous act
of an Irishman to another who was in need of getting
home; it really was that simple. What other parties
may have had in mind, as far as Ryan was concerned
were neither here nor there.
The whole point about most statues is they are symbolic
for those who erect them the purpose is often far
more than to honour the individual whose likeness
the statue is crafted of. The statue of Russell was
no exception. Before the PRM decide to sponsor the
recrafting of it, perhaps they should pause and consider
if it is appropriate at this time to honour a physical
force, apolitical Republican whose strategy in the
late 1930s early 40’s, if it had come to fruition,
may have had disastrous consequences for the Irish
people. In saying this, I in no way wish to denigrate
Russell's contribution to Republicanism; he was without
doubt a dedicated and tireless soldier of Ireland.
But he would have been the first admit that he lacked
political direction beyond the 'Brits out' mentality,
his attitude being drive the Brits out, then it's
down to the politicians. The whole problem with a
broad church is that it can so very easily become
one of three things: a dictatorship, a sludgy mess
in the middle, or an active democracy in which all
opinions are tolerated within the parameters of the
party's historic purpose. On the Russell statue, SF
has an opportunity to prove they are moving in the
latter direction. Whether they take it or not is another
matter.
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