Ireland: Refuge of WWII Nazis
February 14, 2024
Author: Shane Paul
Following D-Day in June 1944 when the Allies began to attempt to liberate France from its Nazi invaders, the Nazis were pushed back from areas of France they had controlled for four years.
In the Brittany region, the Nazis had been supported by local fascist Breton paramilitary groupings which hoped to later gain independence from France.
One of these was the fascist Bagadou Stourm paramilitary ‘stormtroopers’ unit founded and led by a Breton artist and sculptor, one Yann Goulet, aka Yann Renard-Goulet.
Before retreating from towns and villages, the Nazis decided to “cleanse” them of locals suspected of being members of the Resistance and they used the Breton collaborators to identify and detain suspects, not least because Breton paramilitaries spoke the Breton dialect and knew their neighbours.
Chief among these Nazi collaborators was a local Breton extremist and paramiltary Yann Goulet who had formed and led the Bagadou Stourm in support of the Nazis and in particular the Waffen SS.
Goulet was also associated with another Breton paramilitary group known as Bezon Perrot named after an extremist Breton Catholic priest previously assassinated by anti-fascists.
The litany of massacres was far from over on July 10, when 18 resistance fighters were shot in Ploumagoar, in the Malaunay woods, after having been savagely tortured.
On July 9, 1944, 300 Germans combed the Bourbriac area. There are SS people there from Rennes, Bezen Perrot, members of the Selbstschutzpolizei.
More than 10 resistance fighters were arrested: tortured in Uzel, 6 or 7 of them were executed in the Lorge forest on July 14.
The others, a dozen, were taken to Bourbriac and finally murdered in Garzonval-en-Plougonver on July 16. Among them, we note the name of Albert Torquéau, college professor and FTP leader.
After the German retreat in August 1944, near the German airfield of Lannion-Servel, 37 bodies of FTP resistance fighters and hostages were found.
Similarly, at Butte-Rouge, in the L’Hermitage-Lorge forest, there were 55 bodies piled up in 11 graves, victims all brought from Uzel before being slaughtered.
La Gestapo Française, Philippe Valode, Gérard Chauvy, 2018
Yann Goulet had served the Nazis in Brittany for four years during which he and his fellows identified Jews, Communists, Resistance fighters, Resistance sympathisers and any other ‘undesirables’.
These were days marked by the pain, the horror, the terror whipped up by the arrival of the Allies, the German troops accelerated the deportations, increased the executions and atrocities against the resistance fighters, the hostages, simple villagers, with the support of Bezen Perrot who actively participated in the raids and interrogations.
On June 13, the Gestapo and the Feldgendarmerie of Saint-Brieuc executed 31 hostages in the forest of Boudan en Plestan.
In Saint-Vincent sur-Oust, 6 resistance fighters were shot on June 22, 1944, after having been tortured, probably by a group from the Perrot Formation.
A German court martial sat in Faouët, in the heart of a land of maquis, and pronounced the death penalty for more than sixty resistance fighters between June 23 and August 2, 1944.
In Côtes-du-Nord alone, there were 12 executions in May 1944, 88 in June, 146 in July, 69 as of Aug 15.
Histoire de la Bretagne et des Bretons, Tome 2, Joël Cornette, 2005
As the Allies’ advance proceeded, Yann Goulet and other Nazi collaborators had to decide – flee to Germany or else to the Republic of Ireland where he had friends in the IRA movement going back many years.
Yann Goulet and a gang of other Nazi collaborators decided to flee to Ireland by way of Wales where they had the support of sympathisers who were members of the Welsh National Party, Plaid Cymru.
Yann Goulet had for many years been a proponent of the association of “Celtic Nations” – Breton, Cornish, Welsh and Irish – and had long been an admirer of the IRA.
He managed to get to Wales along with his wife and children and from there to Ireland.
Yann Goulet was sentenced to death in absentia for his collaboration with the Nazis, but was safe in the sanctuary of the Irish Republic under the warm gaze of Taoiseach/Prime Minister and Minister for External Affairs Edward/Éamonn/Éamon de Valera – who had himself been sentenced to death by the British after the failed 1916 Irish Volunteer ‘Rising’ in Dublin.
Yann Goulet was warmly welcomed by not only the IRA leaders but also by the smaller grouping back then known as Saor Eire.
He counted a former IRA Chief of Staff (1936) among his close friends – Seán MacBride – and IRA veteran Con Casey.
Goulet was granted Irish citizenship in 1952 with no objections being raised as to his Nazi background and death sentence passed by Rennes Tribunal of Justice in France.
He invited the later President de Valera’s son to his daughter Brigid’s wedding.
Yann Goulet was far from the only Breton Nazi Collaborator given sanctuary in the Republic of Ireland – a whole gang of Breton Nazis settled in Ireland, including leaders of Bezen Perrot.
Note that Yann Goulet (on right in photograph), granted Irish citizenship, continued to wear his fascist Bagadou Stourm SS uniform black shirt, white tie and beret – Goulet never expressed any regret for his collaboration with the Nazis.
Goulet managed to resurrect his career in art and sculpture in Ireland counting on guaranteed preferment and advancement by his powerful political ‘Old IRA’ patrons for whom he produced ‘Old IRA’ memorial sculptures:
- Custom House Old IRA Memorial, Dublin.
- Kerry Old IRA Memorial, Tralee.
- East Mayo Brigade Old IRA Memorial, Kilkelly.
- Provisional IRA memorial at Crossmaglen, Co. Armagh.
- Christy Ring GAA Memorial, Co. Cork.
- His private portrait commissions included President and Mrs. Eamon de Valera and Irish Taoiseach/Prime Minister Charles Haughey, T.D.
Modern Provisional IRA Sinn Féin had no objections to Goulet’s background as a Nazi Informer or to his betrayal of his co-citizens in the French Resistance to the Nazis when they paid him to produce the Crossmaglen Provisional IRA sculpture… [No Suprise There.]
Yann Goulet not only regularly exhibited at the Royal Hibernian Academy where there were no objections to Nazi collaborators, but he also became a Professor of Sculpture there.
Ultimately, Yann Goulet was awarded the highest Irish accolade of [private] election to Aosdána – an Irish Government body, funded by the Irish Government, to offer preferment and a free annual salary/pension/stipend (Cnuas) to artists of some £17,000 back then which has risen to over £20,000 now.
Note that the Aosdána biography of Yann Goulet censors his Nazi background entirely, referring only to his having “left France in 1947” – which is effectively a Big Lie by the tax-payer-funded body which gave a warmest welcome to Nazi Goulet.
Yann Goulet and the OIRA, PIRA and INLA
IRA leader Joe Cahill recounted that it was Yann Goulet who initially set up the Provisional IRA’s connection to Libyan Dictator Colonel Gadaffi who later armed and financed the Provisional IRA.
Yann Goulet kept all the versions of militant Irish republicanism on side – he was a pallbearer at the funeral of murdered former Official IRA member and later founder of the Irish National Liberation Army, Seamus Costello, and also designed the headstone atop Costello’s grave in Little Bray, County Dublin.
He made various claims about his IRA connections in the 1960s:
But a few months later, an embassy charge d’affaires learned from another source that one of the [Nazi] refugees, Heussaff, was a meteorologist at Aer Lingus, and he concluded:
“The authorities of the local Ministry of Justice “failed” to inform the French mission last year of Mr. Heussaff’s membership in an official Irish service. This fact provides concrete proof of the duplicity of the Irish police services which, under the aegis of the Ministry of Justice, openly protect the Breton autonomists who have taken refuge in Ireland.”
In another dispatch, he described the general attitude of the Irish towards the Breton autonomists:
“In the name of Pan-Celtism, we will always be ready in Ireland to give credit to Breton grievances, without ever verifying their merits, and we will offer almost unlimited moral and material support to the “persecuted”, even in certain official circles, of the police in particular, carefully avoiding anything that could create incidents with the French government.”
The diplomat’s irritation is partly explained by the fact that Yann Goulet took great pleasure in taunting the French authorities.
A few weeks earlier, he had given an interview to France-Soir, where he explained that “the Irish welcomed us like brothers”. In fact, after his naturalization in 1955, he became a renowned sculptor and even received several commissions from the Irish government.
Better still, he made a bronze bust of Eamon de Valera, and invited one of his sons to the wedding of his daughter, Brigid Renard-Goulet.
This displeased the French authorities because, at the same time, he claimed responsibility for bomb attacks on French territory in the name of the FLB, and made embarrassing statements to the press.
In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, he declared that he had traveled to Brittany several times in a sailboat, even though he was banned from staying in the Breton departments.
According to Fouéré, he brought explosives from France to Ireland, which were used by the IRA to blow up Nelson’s Column in Dublin in 1966.
La France et l’Irlande : destins croisés (16e – 21e siècles), Édité par Catherine Maignant
It is past time that Ireland’s public spaces were cleansed of Nazi sculptures – for that is what Goulet’s works are – but don’t hold your breath since Ireland has always had a grá for those most extreme enemies of The Brits, the Nazis…
United States Ambassador David Gray Warns de Valera
The United States Ambassador to Ireland throughout WWII, David Gray, despised Prime Minister/Taoiseach Éamon de Valera and recorded that de Valera and other political and religious leaders in the Republic of Ireland were convinced that Hitler would win the War [and that Ireland, which had remained Neutral, would be rewarded for its neutrality by the gift of Northern Ireland – thereby achieving the Old IRA’s dream of a United Ireland].
Gray had warned de Valera against giving sanctuary to ‘on the run’ Nazis following the War.
Gray’s memoir later gave the following account of the widespread Irish belief that Hitler would win the War:
The Taoiseach’s office (pronounced popularly ‘tee shack’) and surroundings were all as they had been so often described by interviewers. He himself was the tall, gaunt figure with the suggestion of Lincoln, and ironically in the corner stood the O’Connor bronze statue of Lincoln which John McCormack, the singer, had given to the Irish government. The office was bare, the flat-topped desk was bare and Mr de Valera was dressed in his invariable black clerical-looking suit with black string tie.
He was always neat and his linen was always fresh. His grave eye trouble excited sympathy. It was said that he suffered from glaucoma. From time to time he removed his spectacles and put his hands over his eyes, and from time to time he showed the appealing smile that I had heard about and the suggestion of his peculiar charm. Why Mr de Valera replied to my English speech in Irish was a question not difficult to answer. Both languages are sanctioned by the new Constitution, but Mr de Valera and his Separatist group were anxious to impress on the outside world that English is only an unfortunate and temporary makeshift and that Irish is the true and natural tongue of the nation, though today only one person in six speaks it. Very few Irish politicians speak Irish except as American High School students learn to ‘speak’ French, but they usually begin their speeches with a paragraph in Irish, which they have memorised, and then continue in English. It is the badge of being ‘Irish’ Irish, like the Gaelicisation of proper names.
1916 leaders turned out in tails and white ties
The official dinner in the state apartments of the Castle that evening was as elaborate and well done as the ceremony in the morning. Food, wines, service, cigars, all were unexceptionable. The de Valera revolution had been to a large extent a ‘social movement’. It appealed to the ‘common man’ and repudiated the symbols of privilege. Mr de Valera banned the ‘topper’ and wore the black ‘cowboy’ hat. He and his Cabinet constituted the surviving nucleus of ‘The Sixteen’ and the left-wing IRA faction that had staged the Civil War. Almost every man present had been condemned to death or jail either by the British government or by the Free State government, yet only eight years after coming to power this new aristocracy had all turned out in tails and white ties in the best London tradition, I had never sat down to dine with so many people who had been ‘martyred’ and thrown into prison, nor with so many politicians, who after having been down and out had ‘come back in’ and stayed ‘in’. It had its embarrassing side. It was like dining in a house in which there has been a highly publicised domestic difficulty.
Just as I would have wanted to ask my host whether he really beat his wife as alleged, I wanted to ask the questions to which every historian of the period was trying to find the answers. I wanted to ask why Mr de Valera had not abided by the majority action of his own parliament; why he appealed to the gun and started a Civil War. How he escaped being shot for rebellion, first by the British and then by the first Irish government ever to be recognised by the comity of nations. I wanted to ask him whether Michael Collins had been the chance victim of an ambush or the designed victim of an assassination; and if he knew who murdered Kevin O’Higgins. Of course I asked none of these questions.
The German Ambassador
Herr Hempel – the German minister to Ireland – had a charming house and garden at Blackrock, a suburb on Dublin harbour. His chancery was an ugly, modern red brick house in Northumberland Road. It was here that I called upon him. Herr Dr Hempel received us with great courtesy. He was somewhat over-civil and did not ring true. He spoke fluent English with little accent. I was conscious of being ill at ease. Hempel might be doing his duty as he saw it but he was serving a Führer whose hands were red with the blood of Jews, Poles and Norwegians, on whose conscience was the annihilation of Austria and Czechoslovakia. I was naive enough at seventy to be shocked by these things.
We exchanged pleasant commonplaces. I was not to re-enter the German legation at 58 Northumberland Road till I took possession of it in the name of the United Nations at the end of the war and found the wires of a radio sending set and other interesting items. The Irish government had seen to it that we did not gain admittance until the files had been destroyed.
Collaboration with the Germans
Mr de Valera’s conviction that Hitler would win the war was stupid in view of the opportunities he enjoyed for obtaining authoritative information as to what was going on in the United States. It was doubtless due to the fact that he knew few if any Americans, only ‘Irish in America’. As a matter of fact he himself never told me that Hitler would win, though he scoffed at the suggestion that the United States would become involved. But his deputy Joe Walshe told me. Further, Mr Walshe was confident that at the worst, Hitler would not lose. Cardinal MacRory told me that Hitler would win. Count Plunkett, the patriarch of the IRA, expressed the same opinion. We know from the German papers that one of Mr de Valera’s generals was collaborating with Hempel. Belief in German victory was in the Dublin air. At the end of the war a former Lord Mayor of Dublin, ‘Paddy’ Doyle, a very ‘decent’ man, said to me ‘You know, at the beginning we were all sure Germany was going to win’.
“A Yankee in De Valera’s Ireland: The Memoir of David Gray is edited by Paul Bew. Paul Bew is a member of the RIA and Professor of Irish Politics at Queen’s University Belfast. A historical advisor to the Bloody Sunday inquiry, he was appointed an independent cross-bench peer in 2007 and is a member of the British–Irish Parliamentary Assembly.“
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