IRA plotted with Nazis to invade Northern Ireland per Telegraph

'A plot by the IRA to link up with the Nazis to invade Northern Ireland during the Second World War was disclosed in secret service files published by the Public Record Office... 

According to the MI5 records, Germany parachuted a spy into Southern Ireland in 1940 to assess the feasibility of the plan after being approached by the terrorist group.

But the plan was foiled after the spy, Dr Hermann Goertz, aka Heinz Kruse, or just "K", was arrested a year later by the Irish government.

The memorandum, written in 1943, read: "On the 5th May 1940 Goertz landed by parachute at Ballivor, Co Meath, Eire. Earlier that year the IRA had been in touch with the German SS through the intermediary of Stephen Carroll Held.

"Held had visited Berlin with a proposal from the IRA for an attack on Northern Ireland by the Germans to be supported by 5,000 IRA recruited in Eire and Northern Ireland.

"Goertz's mission was to examine this proposal and to obtain. . . the military information on which the joint attack by the Germans and the IRA on Northern Ireland could be based."

The report says that he met Stephen Hayes, then leader of the IRA in Dublin, but the meeting was raided. While money, a radio transmitter and a German airman's cap were seized, along with the manuscript of the plan, codenamed Kathleen, Goertz escaped.

For the next year Goertz, who had been arrested as a spy and deported before the war, lived in a number of IRA safe houses. During that period he was approached by a member of the Irish Army, Maj Gen McNeill, a fascist, the files say.

It is believed he was hoping to resurrect some kind of Fascist "Blueshirt" organisation with the help of the Germans. At first, British intelligence believed that McNeill's involvement meant that the Irish Government was collaborating, but its investigation showed he was acting independently.

The operation and McNeill's attempt to link up with the Nazis came to nothing when Goertz was arrested in November 1941.'

The above is from The Telegraph in 2001 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1359872/IRA-plotted-with-Nazis-to-invade-Northern-Ireland.html

Oddly I don't recall the BBC reporting on this link between the IRA and the Nazis. Anyone on the right of British politics would be vilified now for their predecessors links with the Nazis but for the IRA, the BBC make an exception.