PLAN FAILED

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 66, Issue 56, 15 December 1945, Page 4

PLAN FAILED

REVOLUTION IN IRELAND

(Rec. 1.30 p.m.) LONDON, Dec. 14. The German intelligence service attempted to ferment, revolution in Ireland with the help of the Irish Republican Army, to take place simultaneously with a planned invasion of Britain, said the sabotage chief, MajorGeneral Lahausen, in an interview with the correspondent of the Associated Press in Nuremberg.

The attempt failed when the . key Irish revolutionary figure “mysterious>ly died” aboard a U-boat while crossing the English Channel. General Lahausen said that Ribbentrop considered the plot so important politically that the Foreign Office took over its direction. It consisted of two parts: (1) To establish agents in Ireland to work with the I.R.A. and to use Ireland as a base for sabotage operations: against major British industries. (2) Its collaboration- with the I.R.A. through one of its leaders and lay the political groundwork for thd uprising. One of the key agents was an Irish sailor who was living in the United States, and who went to Germany via Italy. He saw Ribbentrop, after which the scheme was immediately implemented* He was an idealist and dreamer. *A second agent, also a sailor, was described as the typical revolutionary type.

General Lahausen said that relations between the two men were strained, probably due to a clash of personalities. The agents boarded a U-boat, at, Willielmshaven for an undisclosed point on the Irish coast, The intelligence corps arranged to drop by parachute a. radio and transmitter and special sabotage equipment to agents at prearranged rendezvous. The agents were to establish contact with the German Foreign Office through secret signs to be given by the different arrangements of flower pots on the windowsill of a German Embassy in Dublin.