Shamrock and Swastika (2001 TV Movie) User Reviews

Excellent documentary!

[Jazzist-H-Crisp · 10/10 · 3 August 2009]

The makers of this documentary have performed a valuable service. The history of IRA involvement with the Nazis is an episode that most IRA supporters today would prefer not to discuss - if they even know that it happened at all! It took courage to make this documentary, given the ruthless methods that the IRA employ with their opponents, and I salute the film-makers for that.

Sean Russell, the leader of the IRA who went to Berlin to try to persuade Hitler to attack Britain through Ireland, wanted Britain to lose the war. He instigated a terrorist bombing campaign in Britain in 1939 and killed several people in Coventry and Liverpool. He died on a Nazi submarine on his way back to Ireland.

Many leading Irish republicans were complicit in the dealings with Nazi Germany, eg Sean McBride, Francis Stuart, Seamus O'Donovan, Stephen Hayes. German agents went to Ireland to assess the practicalities of attacking Britain from there. However, the leadership decided that it preferred to keep Ireland neutral since that provided good shelter for the U-boats attacking Allied convoys.

There is a statue to Sean Russell, IRA leader and Nazi collaborator, in the centre of Dublin.

great film about an interesting new perspective on the Nazis & Ireland

[blackcoffee49 · 10/10 · 10 March 2006]

I thought this was well paced, nicely edited and really interesting piece on an aspect of WWII history not so well known - that the Nazis were incompetent.

Really liked the way the archives were used, but there is some serious research evident here as well. Particularly amusing are the antics of the German spies dropped or landed in Ireland. All but one were arrested within one day.

Interesting to see that one IRA man Frank Ryan, who had fought against the fascists in the Spanish civil, got rescued from a Spanish prison by the Abwehr, brought through recently occupied Paris to Berlin, where he was immediately put on a submarine for Ireland, along with IRA leader Sean Russel. Russel had come to Nazi Germany from the US in order to forge links with the Nazis, and now he wanted Ryan to go to Ireland to launch a coup, which would divert the British. After many days at sea, including attacks on convoys, Russel died, and the sub turned back, bringing Ryan back to Germany, where he died before the end of the war.

I see the same people made a follow-up doco called 'Tintown' on the internment camp in Ireland where IRA, German Luftwaffe and British RAF were kept during the war. The Irish were treated far worse than the Germans, who didn't want to go home when the war was over.