In November 1944, a radio operator returned from a covert mission to find that his battalion had moved on for specialized training.
They were preparing for a deceptive operation in which they would pose as an “American tank unit” during the German-planned Ardennes counter-offensive. The soldier in question, Frank Stringer, along with fellow Irishman James Brady, both served within a Waffen-SS unit. Just two months later, they found themselves engaged in combat against the advancing Red Army, ultimately remaining in German service until the final collapse in Berlin.
The path that led Stringer and Brady—hailing from County Leitrim and County Roscommon, respectively—into the military arm of the SS was an unlikely one, beginning before the outbreak of World War II.
The two young men had enlisted in the Royal Irish Fusiliers, a British Army regiment, in 1938. However, in May 1939, while stationed on the Channel Islands, they were involved in a drunken altercation that resulted in the assault of a local policeman. Brady later claimed to have no memory of the incident due to intoxication.
Both were sentenced to prison and remained incarcerated when German forces occupied the islands in June 1940, becoming prisoners of war.
With the war underway, German intelligence sought to recruit Irish POWs for their own purposes, a strategy they had previously considered during World War I. Prisoners from “national minorities” were separated: Ukrainians and Poles in one group, Flemings and Walloons in another, and the Irish alongside the British. The Irish writer Francis Stuart, who had relocated to Berlin in 1939, conducted interviews to gauge their willingness to collaborate.
However, he soon became disillusioned, finding few recruits who exhibited strong nationalist fervor. Many Irish POWs were transferred to the Friesack camp, where they were subjected to anti-British propaganda centered on Britain’s seizure of Ireland’s “treaty ports” during the U-boat campaign.
Conditions at Friesack were harsh, with an estimated 150 to 200 men held there by the spring of 1941.
Despite German efforts, the number of Irish prisoners who fully embraced their cause remained low. Of those who agreed to undergo sabotage training, only 11 men completed the process, and they proved to be far from ideal operatives.
Several had disciplinary issues, with some described by British intelligence officials as men who disgraced themselves with drunken boasts of “taking on all comers” in Berlin cafés. Their political convictions were weak, and only two—Brady and Stringer—ultimately joined the Waffen-SS.
By September 1941, Stringer had shown a willingness to cooperate and was transferred, along with fellow Irishman John Codd, to an Abwehr explosives training camp in Berlin.
Brady, meanwhile, was sent for similar training later that year. However, it later emerged that several Irish recruits were deliberately working to sabotage the German scheme under covert British orders.
By late 1942, many of these men were arrested, with some ending up in Sachsenhausen concentration camp. Brady and Stringer, however, were released in early 1943 and earmarked for Operation Osprey—a German plan to deploy saboteurs in Ireland. Ultimately, the mission was never carried out.
Following their release, both men formally volunteered for the Waffen-SS and underwent rigorous training at Cernay, in occupied Alsace-Lorraine. By January 1944, they had been assigned to SS-Sonderverband z.b.V. Friedenthal, later restructured as SS-Jagdverband Mitte—a special forces unit under the notorious Otto Skorzeny.
That same year, Brady took part in Operation Landfried, which aimed to carry out behind-the-lines missions in Romania, and was later involved in Operation Panzerfaust, a high-risk mission in Budapest to prevent Hungary’s leader, Admiral Miklós Horthy, from negotiating a separate peace with the Soviet Union.
As the war neared its end, Brady was engaged in combat at Schwedt an Oder in January 1945 and suffered wounds at the Zehden bridgehead in March.
Despite these injuries, he continued to fight, taking part in the last desperate battles in Berlin. Meanwhile, Stuart, now working for German foreign radio, delivered broadcasts that lauded Hitler, describing him as “a great leader” who had inspired his nation. Even after the German defeat at Stalingrad, Stuart attempted to frame the moment in heroic terms, likening it to Ireland’s Easter Rising.
One of Stuart’s colleagues, Jack O’Reilly, also took an active role in German wartime propaganda. Drawing on Irish history to shape his narratives, he compared Soviet religious persecution to the oppression under British rule during the Penal Laws.
However, his enthusiasm for the German effort waned, as he found their intelligence operation lacking. O’Reilly himself was parachuted into Ireland in 1943, landing near Kilkee, his own hometown—a spectacular failure in operational planning. Unfamiliar with his surroundings, he quickly attracted attention and was soon captured by Irish authorities after asking local farmers for directions.
Elizabeth Mulcahy, a Sligo woman who had married the German intelligence officer Helmut Clissmann before the war, recalled the amateurish nature of German operations targeting Ireland.
When she visited Berlin’s Irish propaganda unit in 1944, she found their knowledge of the country severely limited, with no access to reliable maps or intelligence beyond the heavily censored broadcasts from Radio Éireann.
As she put it, their most significant updates included reports of fuel shortages, black bread rations, and the passing of a parish priest in Ballina.
After the war, Mulcahy returned to Ireland and later secured a visa for her husband. Stuart spent eight months in an internment camp before being allowed to return as well.
For Brady and Stringer, however, the consequences were far more severe. Surrendering to British forces in 1946, both were court-martialled for aiding the enemy while prisoners of war. Their defense—that they had been abandoned by the British and had little choice but to serve—was dismissed.
Brady was sentenced to 15 years in prison, with three years later remitted, while Stringer faced a similarly harsh fate. Brady was released in 1950 and returned to Ireland, where he lived out his remaining years. The fate of Stringer remains less well documented.
The case of Ireland’s “accidental Nazis” remains a rare and controversial chapter in the country’s wartime history. While some, like Stuart, willingly embraced the Nazi cause, others found themselves swept into its machinery by circumstance, poor choices, or the desperate realities of war.
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