Irishman in SS

Night Flight

Fusilier James Brady

James Brady was one of two Irishmen known to have served in the Waffen-SS during World War Two.
Brady originally volunteered for the Royal Irish Fusiliers, an Irish Regiment in the British Army, in late 1938. After basic training in Hampshire, he was posted to the Channel Islands in May 1939. In that month he and another man, Frank Stringer, were imprisoned after attacking and injuring a local policeman, and were captured by the Germans when they invaded in June 1940.
The Germans transferred the pair to a POW camp, but soon transferred them to the special Abwehr facility at Friesack Camp in an attempt to recruit them as saboteurs. Stringer proved willing to co-operate, and in September 1941 he and John Codd were transferred to Berlin to begin explosives training at the Abwehr training camp at Quentzgut. That December, Brady and a group of other Irishmen also transferred to Berlin to begin similar training. This latter group, however would seem to have been secretly working on the orders of the Senior British Officer at Friesack to sabotage the German scheme; by September 1942, all the Irishmen involved were imprisoned by the Germans, some in Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
In early 1943, Brady and Stringer were released by the Germans and kept in readiness for Operation Osprey. Subsequently they volunteered for the Waffen-SS and underwent training at Cernay in occupied Alsace-Lorraine. In January 1944, they were recruited to SS-Jäger-Bataillon 502, a special forces unit under the command of Otto Skorzeny.
In late 1944, Brady was involved in Operation Landfried (behind the lines operations in Romania) and in Operation Panzerfaust, the raid on Budapest to prevent Admiral Horthy siding with the Russians. He also fought at Schwedt on Oder with Skorzeny's ad hoc division in January 1945, and was wounded at the Zehden bridgehead in March. He subsequently fought in the Battle of Berlin.
He surrendered to the British Army in 1946 and was sentenced to fifteen years in prison. He was released in 1950 and returned to Ireland.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusilier_James_Brady

SlabMurphy

Night Flight wrote: »

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusilier_James_Brady

Very interesting, he wasn't featured on Irelands Nazi's programme was in ?? Not admiring the cause he fought for, but seemed like a tough nut all the same.

Dummy

That is an interesting find OP.

I just came across these on a Google search to find more info.

http://www.stormfront.org/forum/showthread.php?t=6278

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=51&p=1212761

http://www.zoominfo.com/people/Brady_James_572791612.aspx


Thanks,

D

Night Flight

Also:

http://www.csn.ul.ie/~dan/war/ssvols.htm

Night Flight

More here.

http://www.axishistory.com/index.php?id=399

TerrorFirmer

I think one of them was a cook for a time in the SS?

Night Flight

So he claimed after the war, but it is very likely he was playing down his actual role.

Night Flight

http://www.mercierpress.ie/index.php?pageID=2&bookID=424

Morlar

Night Flight wrote: »

http://www.mercierpress.ie/index.php?pageID=2&bookID=424

From what I have read of it so far thats not a bad little book - I would also recommend Enno Stephans 'Spies in Ireland' one and Mark Hull's 'Irish Secrets'.

BostonB

I've just finished the Terence O’Reilly book. Its only an ok read IMO. The characters he focuses on weren't that interesting IMO. Those guys seems to have been wasters more or less, and he focuses on a lot of non Irish stuff aswell. Especially Otto Skorzeny etc. I know its to put the units the main charachters ended up in, in context, but it feels like he had to do it to pad out the book.

Night Flight

Hitler's Irishmen Terence O'Reilly Mercier Press npa
320pps
ONE YEAR after the end of the World War II, two members of Hitler's SS undergo interrogation in London. "Name?" the interrogator barks. James Brady, comes the reply. "Where were you born?" Roscommon. "And you?" his companion is asked."Frank Stringer." Birthplace? "Leitrim." This is quite extraordinary and has the reader sitting up. Both men join the British army. Fate has it that they are stationed in Jersey. They assault a policeman and are sentenced to 18 months. The Germans invade. The Brits abandon the island - a piece of history you seldom read about - plus the two Irishmen. Brady and Stringer become members of the Waffen SS. They tell their interrogators that they did so in their "crusade against communism" and get off the hook. Their plea did not convince this reader, but I would say the SS captors were extremely persuasive. Maybe they believed Hitler was the coming man. Brady, an enthusiastic researcher, sets up the period in depth, particularly the anti-communist feeling in Ireland at the time. In one case, James Gralton, a member of the Communist Party of Ireland, built a social centre in Leitrim. The church denounced Gralton as an "anti-Christ" and warned that "any horse hauling materials to the site would die within a year". Wonderful read.

http://tribune.televisual.co.uk/article.tvt?_scope=Tribune/Tribune%20Review/Books&id=89568&SUBCAT=Tribune/Tribune%20Review&SUBCATNAME=

BostonB

Why did it make the reader sit up? You'd think that wouldn't be surprising considering the name of the book.

Sephiroth_dude

very interesting stuff indeed.

McArmalite

A bit off topic, but watching a programme on English soldiers recruited into the waffen ss for propganda purposes, the programme stated that appearently 2,000 soldiers volunteered from India to fight in the Waffen SS. Whether they were recruited in India or POW camps it didn't say. Since there also were many Bosnian Muslims also who volunteered for the waffen ss, is it a great irony to say that the waffen ss were a - racial and religious diverse organisation ??

ejmaztec

McArmalite wrote: »

A bit off topic, but watching a programme on English soldiers recruited into the waffen ss for propganda purposes, the programme stated that appearently 2,000 soldiers volunteered from India to fight in the Waffen SS. Whether they were recruited in India or POW camps it didn't say. Since there also were many Bosnian Muslims also who volunteered for the waffen ss, is it a great irony to say that the waffen ss were a - racial and religious diverse organisation ??

I think that they were getting a little less selective when the tide was turning. Didn't some of the "thoroughbreds" turn their noses up at the recruitment changes?

BostonB

If anyone wants to buy my copy let me know.

Night Flight

OVER HERE
NICOLA TALLANT THE notorious Waffen SS planned to send an elite unit of officers to Ireland to organise the resistance, it has emerged.
The crack squad of some 100 Nazi soldiers was due to be dropped into the country - and not just supplies and a transmitter for the IRA as has been long believed.
A new book, Hitler's Irishmen, details just how close Ireland came to being involved in the bloody battles of World War II despite our neutrality.
Author and military historian Terence O'Reilly details how 100 Waffen SS guards were hand-picked to create the elite Irish mission.
In the book, he refers to a document recently released by the UK National Archives.
In it, the specialist responsible for Irish Affairs, Kurt Haller, says: "The Waffen SS put at the disposal of Amt VI, a unit of about 100 picked men, commanded by a Dutchman.
The men were to act primarily as instructors to Irish regular and irregular forces." The unit was set up and given instruction on how to train an Irish resistance after America began to build up its forces in the North when it entered the war in 1941.
A special plane was even prepared from the Luftwaffe to transport the troops which were made up of some of the most highly skilled and fanatical officers in Hitler's army.
Documents also show how the Nazis believed the Irish would be ideal candidates for guerrilla warfare, provided they received "the stiffening of German instructors".
But the plan was scrapped when the unit was instead sent to Persia in 1943 when the likelihood of Allied invasion of Ireland decreased.
It goes beyond earlier revelations about Operation Sea Eagle - a German Foreign Ministry plan to land a seaplane on a lake here to supply the IRA with funds and a transmitter.
The Irish Republican Frank Ryan was due to land in advance of the main party to ensure that the Germans would be welcomed as allies and liberators.
Arms were later to be dropped by air and then sent by "blockade runners" from France. The document used in the book goes on to explain how it was hoped that if the country was over-run by British in a few days that Ireland would turn on their old foes.
However, in his report, the Nazi's Ireland expert Helmut Clissmann, described the men as "arrogant and contemptuous of all foreigners" and went on to say he was doubtful of their ability to co-operate with Irish guerrillas without causing friction.
O'Reilly writes: "Partly as a result of Clissmann's report, but mostly due to the decreasing likelihood of any Allied invasion of Ireland, the SS commandos were released for other duties."
However, the SS unit was given training in sabotage techniques and captured British weapons in preparation for their deployment here.
Hitler's Irishmen also traces the role of two natives, James Brady and Frank Stringer.
Both originally joined the Irish regiment of the British Army but ended up working for the Nazis and signing the oath of the notorious Waffen SS.
O'Reilly says: "Stringer seems to have been a bit of a drifter who went along with whatever was happening.
"But Brady, which was a false name, is a very mysterious character. He was deadly dedicated to the SS."
Copyright 2008 MGN LTD

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4161/is_20080615/ai_n26686409

Night Flight

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] The Irish who fought for Hitler

27 July 2008
Reviewed by Dermot Bolger
Hitler’s Irishmen. By Terence O’Reilly, Mercier Press, €17

If the Nazi Party was not a thoroughly malign and evil scar across the moral landscape of the 20th century, its encounters with those few Irishmen willing to serve its cause would make for a comic novel.

Terence O’Reilly’s interesting new study of this period is entitled Hitler’s Irishmen, but could easily be called Hitler’s Handful, because so few were involved and because Irish recruits who were more interested in drink, women and money than ideology were always going to be a handful in the efficient German military machine.

When James Clarence Mangan evoked images of French brandy, wine from the Pope and Spanish ale to give hope in his nationalist poem, Dark Rosaleen, he never dreamed of German military aid, because historically Germany was never a possible ally of Ireland. In fact, the most brutal troops involved in suppressing the rising of 1798 were the German Hesse-Darmstadt Legion, then serving with the British.

When, in 1914, the IRB’s Roger Casement tried, with naive confidence, to recruit an Irish brigade from among Irish prisoners of war held in Germany, his approaches were greeted with such hostility that he managed to find only two recruits, both of whom he recognised as ‘‘rogues’’.

Although by April 1916 he had persuaded a number of prisoners to join his Irish brigade, their fighting and drinking was so widespread that their camp commander estimated that these 53 Irishmen were causing him more trouble than the 17,000 Germans under his command.

The Germans should have learned their lesson, but by 1940 the Nazis were establishing a special Irish POW camp in an effort to once again recruit a committed Irish brigade to fight alongside them against Britain.

Recruiting was not helped by the fact that, initially, conditions in the Irish camp were harsher than in the camps the men had been transferred from - because the Irish camp, being secret, did not receive Red Cross parcels.

Like Casement before him, the would-be recruiters (who initially included Francis Stuart, although he quickly grew disillusioned) met with intense hostility - as might be expected when confronted by prisoners who had volunteered to fight fascism.

If pickings were slim, some pickings were there, including two young Irishmen, James Brady and Frank Stringer, who later became the only two Irishmen to have worn the uniform of the Waffen-SS.

Neither had enjoyed a distinguished war up to that point. Both had joined the British army in 1938 - Stringer already possessing a criminal record for stealing turf and Brady using an assumed name.

Posted to the British dependency of Guernsey in 1939, they managed to get themselves arrested for assaulting a police sergeant when refused service in a pub for being drunk, and were left behind in a prison cell when the British forces retreated from the island on the eve of a German invasion.

As the only two British soldiers left to face the Germans, they swapped a Guernsey prison cell for a German prisoner-of-war camp without having fired a shot in anger.

Parts of Terence O’Reilly’s book will be familiar to readers, such as Sean Russell’s promotion of the IRA’s grandiose notions of the mass German invasion of the North, when the Nazis really wanted the IRA to engage in low-level sabotage; Frank Ryan’s activities in Germany; and the often comic incompetence of low-grade German spies landed in Ireland.

But it is in the stories of Brady, Stringer and others like Corporal John Codd (in whom the Germans initially invested great hopes) that O’Reilly’s book becomes truly interesting.

O’Reilly is a staff member of the Irish Defence Forces library, specialising in military history, and his extensive military knowledge is apparent on every page.

This can be a two-edged sword in that at times he feels the need to contextualise what these Irish volunteers were doing (beyond drinking, womanising, refusing to obey orders and generally infuriating their German masters who hoped to train them to be useful saboteurs) by giving a potted history of the war at any given time.

But as only a handful of Irishmen served Hitler (in contrast to the 42,000 serving in the war against fascism by 1945) it is perhaps not his fault that they sometimes get lost amidst the bigger picture.

And some of the details he unearths are wonderful, including the fact that, although by 1944 the Waffen-SS was forced to relax its racial standards, some of the ‘‘Irishmen’’ gathered in the Irish camp were never likely to make the grade, as they included a Navaho native American who happened to be called Flaherty and a South African Zulu transferred there simply because his long tribal name began with an ‘O’.

This is a well-documented and fascinating account of a handful of men who later wisely chose to disappear from history. [/FONT]

http://www.thepost.ie/post/pages/p/story.aspx-qqqt=BOOKS-qqqm=nav-qqqid=34635-qqqx=1.asp

FiSe

ejmaztec wrote: »

I think that they were getting a little less selective when the tide was turning. Didn't some of the "thoroughbreds" turn their noses up at the recruitment changes?

As far as I know, the policy behind foreign SS unit was that every conquered nation should have at least 1 SS unit recruited locally.
Recruitment of some nations and in some regions was more successful. And some of these “non Germanic” volunteer units were more than a match for purely German ones.
So you have SS Nordland, SS Langemarck, SS Wallonie, SS Nederland and so on to name a few…
Propaganda and need of human power played a big part in this policy...

guinnessdrinker

Interesting stuff. Nightflight, are you doing a phd in this area by any chance?

Night Flight

guinnessdrinker wrote: »

Interesting stuff. Nightflight, are you doing a phd in this area by any chance?

Nope, just an unhealthy interest in the topic at hand.

meathstevie

If you want to dig deeper into that part of Europe's past throw a few names like : Leon Degrelle, Anton Mussert, Cyriel Verschaeve, Jef Van De Wiele, etc etc. These are all chaps from Belgium and Holland who played significant roles in their time. You'll also notice that they were part of a strong facist tendency that existed all over Europe in those days. Hitler, Horty, Mussolini, Petain etc didn't create their dictatorships overnight you know.

Snickers Man

meathstevie wrote: »

a few names like : Leon Degrelle, Anton Mussert, Cyriel Verschaeve, Jef Van De Wiele, etc etc. ...all chaps from Belgium and Holland who ....were part of a strong facist tendency that existed all over Europe in those days. Hitler, Horty, Mussolini, Petain etc didn't create their dictatorships overnight you know.

Wasn't just Europe. There were strong Fascist tendencies in America at the time too. Hitler's Nuremberg laws, in particular the one forbidding marriage between Jews and Aryans, were heavily influenced by the anti-miscegenation" laws of many US states, ie laws forbidding marriage or any form of sexual relations between whites and people of other races.

There was also strong support at the time for "eugenics" ie a pseudo Darwninian approach to strengthening the gene pool by enforced sterilisation of "imbeciles", "idiots" and other so-called "mental defectives".

Even the great jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes said in a Supreme Court ruling that it was much better and cheaper to simply ensure that people likely to grow up to become criminals or dependents were never born in the first place rather than wait until they offended and had to be hanged. "Three generations of imbeciles is enough", he famously said.

In practice, the eugenicists often classified people of other races as mental defectives liable for sterilisation in an attempt to breed them out of existence.

OK, so it's not quite stuffing them into gas chambers but the intention is largely the same.

Old Darwin has got a lot to answer for. Or at least, many of the people who picked up on his ideas do.

pablomakaveli

There is a story that two korean men fighting for the germans were taken prisoner at normandy. Apparently they had been conscripted by the japanese and sent to fight the russians in manchuria. The russians captured them and sent them to fight the germans on the eastern front. They were then captured by the germans and sent to normandy where they were made fight for the germans before being captured by the americans.

McArmalite

BostonB wrote: »

I've just finished the Terence O’Reilly book. Its only an ok read IMO. The characters he focuses on weren't that interesting IMO. Those guys seems to have been wasters more or less, and he focuses on a lot of non Irish stuff aswell. Especially Otto Skorzeny etc. I know its to put the units the main charachters ended up in, in context, but it feels like he had to do it to pad out the book.

Gotta admit it's very well researched, but a bit dull, the characters in it didn't set the world on fire and seemed to do more drinking and chasing Frauleins - but could you blame them .

mountainyman

Night Flight wrote: »

Nope, just an unhealthy interest in the topic at hand.

Like the priest in Father Ted? Are there any Mayo men who were in SS?

Snickers Man

mountainyman wrote: »

Like the priest in Father Ted? Are there any Mayo men who were in SS?

If there are you should find them on the wall of the Mayo Memorial Peace Park. It's dedicated to the memory of Mayo men who died fighting.

For anybody.

UN. US. UK. U name it. They're all there.

mountainyman

Snickers Man wrote: »

If there are you should find them on the wall of the Mayo Memorial Peace Park. It's dedicated to the memory of Mayo men who died fighting.

For anybody.

UN. US. UK. U name it. They're all there.

That's why I ask. I want to get them on the wall of that park.
I am not a Nazi just feel that fair is fair and if we have to remember the men who died to save the world from Communism in Malaya and Kenya we should remember those who founght armed communists in Russia and Poland.

Night Flight

mountainyman wrote: »

Like the priest in Father Ted? Are there any Mayo men who were in SS?

Nearly as bad

Don't know about Mayo, but here's another one from Laois

The bizarre story of Laois’s very own Nazi

IT IS a topic rarely discussed in Irish history: the handful of Irish men who fought and co-operated with the Nazis during World War II. Among them was a Laois man, Corporal John Codd. His story is as bizarre as it is complex, and it’s richly detailed in Portlaoise writer Terence O’Reilly’s new book </B>Hitler’s Irishmen.

The book tells the story of John Codd amazing army career. By his late 20s, he had seen much of the world, from Canada to China. While he had a sharp intellect and a talent for languages, it appears his character was a stubborn one and that he was quick to anger. The former British soldier was also a flagrant carouser who at times took advantage of the Germans’ faith in him for his own personal enjoyment.

During his time he trained extensively for saboteur missions that never came to fruition for one reason or another. At no time, however, did he take part in anything that could be remotely thought of as a war crime.

Although Irish military intelligence kept a file on Codd, not a great deal is known of him prior to 1940s - or after 1951, when he seemingly disappeared without a trace. His current whereabouts are unknown, though South America might be a good guess.

Born near the Slieve Bloom mountains in 1912, his family later moved to Dublin. A man of little of formal education, he was intelligent and could converse in half a dozen languages. He emigrated to Canada in 1929 as a teenager. In 1931, he made the move to London and - like his father and brother before him - he enlisted in the British Army with the Royal Welsh Fusiliers

He took part of the evacuation of civilians from Shanghai in 1938. Shortly after he left army, he was recalled in 1939 with the outbreak of World War II. Dispatched with the British Expeditionary Force to France, he was wounded in the retreat from Dunkirk and subsequently captured in May

1940. Transferred to a prison camp in Friesack, he was interrogated by the German army intelligence, Abwher. It soon became quite obvious that he would be willing to fight against the English. He claimed to have been a member of the IRA and his eagerness and language skills was enough to convince the Abwher that he’d be useful in their sabotage plots in England.

Codd’s real motivation is subject to speculation but issues of self-preservation rather than a shared ideology were the probable source for his collaboration. He became deeply unpopular among the other British POWs in Friesack for his obstinacy and his willingness to collaborate. Approached about the possibility of doing missions for the Germans, an unabashed Codd is reported to have become very interested at the financial aspects of the arrangements, particularly the £8,000 budget.

He was released from the camp along with a younger Leitrim man, Frank Stringer. The two saw the sights of Berlin in what was a considerable change from the monotony of the Stalag. However, Codd’s temperament flared again and he grew irritated by his German handlers, believing he should be left to roam the streets of Berlin unescorted.

In October 1941, Codd became involved in a mission known as Operation Innkeeper. This was to involve Codd and Stringer being dropped in England, where they would act as saboteurs. Codd, at the time, was paid well over the average wartime wage of a German worker. Like a true Irishman, he used the money to enjoy himself.

According to one German military intelligence report: “In Berlin, he showed he had indiscriminate capacity for women and drink.”

Codd soon over-ran his allowance and would burst into fits of rage when his monetary whims were not met. He had also met a local German girl who he wished to marry but was refused permission by his handlers at the time. At the same time he was being extensively trained in improvised explosives, using substances such as charcoal, which he quickly became adept at.

Operation Innkeeper was shelved after a reshuffle in the Abwher in 1942. Stringer was also separated from his countryman, as Abwher officials believed that Codd was having a negative influence on the young man.

Angered by what he perceived as a snub, Codd wrote a threatening and abusive letters to an Abwher official, stating that he would stop co-operating with the Germans if certain conditions were not met. His letter did not go unnoticed. He was paid a visit shortly afterwards by the Gestapo and imprisoned in August 1942.

Apparently seeing the error of his ways, the Laois man repented to army officials and said he would be more co-operative if given a second chance.

He was released, but the Abwher would have no more to do him and his antics. He was then approached by the Sicherheitsdienst (SD), the intelligence branch of the Waffen SS, who saw potential in the crafty and combustible Laois man. He soon started training in cryptography.

Despite the SS disapproving of marriages between Germans and foreigners, they gave permission to Codd to marry his girlfriend, Irma Schoenhoff, and the couple settled down in a bungalow in Lehnitz. Codd trained alongside men from Norway, Turkey, Algeria, Italy, Denmark and several other nations in the use of Allied weapons. He was also introduced to an American of German extraction named William Colepaugh.

Colepaugh had fled America to answer the Fuhrer’s call to serve, and German intelligence had taken a keen interest in him. Codd was instructed to teach him German and it became evident that plans for the pair to travel to America were in the offing.

Codd was, however, unceremoniously scrubbed for the mission after Colepaugh - like so many others - expressed his intense distaste for the Laois man. Colepaugh would eventually leave for New York with a German called Erwin Gimpel. It would turn out to be a stroke of luck for Codd. In America, Colepaugh would again switch allegiance back to the US and confess his plot to the FBI. Gimpel was sentenced to death.

This was to be Codd’s last opportunity to join a saboteur mission as, following D-Day in 1944, the Germans directed all their efforts combating the Allies in main land Europe.

It was suggested at one stage that Codd should join the British Free Corps, a group of British POWs who fought with the SS. Codd balked at this on the principle that he was Irishman and he would not fight alongside the English. Considering that he served in the British forces for eight years, the statement can be taken very lightly.

Codd knew also himself the writing was on the wall for the Germans and this refusal could be seen as another act of self-preservation. He noted that his training officers drank their sorrows away as a foreboding atmosphere began to envelop Germany.

In April 1945, Codd was at home with his wife when the Russians made the final thrust into Germany. Hiding in their bomb shelter, the pair escaped unmolested by the Russians.

In the chaos of the downfall of Hitler’s Germany, Codd saw his opportunity for escape.

He and his wife moved west, negotiating and bluffing his way through half a dozen Russian checkpoints and interrogators. With Codd’s guile and language skills, the pair arrived in Hildensheim, where they were air-lifted to Brussels.

In Brussels, Codd claimed Irish nationality to officials. He wasn’t on any British wanted lists and he was again passed freely by their officers. The couple subsequently went France to meet the Irish legation there at the same time convincingly passing through several more interrogations. From France, they travelled through England and arrived in Dun Laoghaire from Holyhead on 18 June

1945.

They headed to Codd’s mother’s home. Mrs Codd, who hadn’t seen her son for the best part of a decade, only for him to appear with a German bride in tow, didn’t take kindly to his return. It’s recorded that the first night Codd spent at home was at the roadside.

Soon afterwards, Irish military intelligence, G2, interrogated Codd and his wife but again the pair were soon released. They took up residence in Dublin but from 1951, Codd seemingly vanishes. At the time, poverty was rife in Ireland with high levels of unemployment and emigration.

It is believed that Codd had immense difficulty in securing work and there are rumours that he wished to start a new life in South America. Either way, Codd has since disappeared into the mists of history and it is suggested by the author of Hitler’s Irishmen that perhaps this is for the best:

“Several Irish families had no idea that a father or an uncle had served with Eoin O’Duffy’s Bandera in the Spanish Civil War, it being thought best that such fascists be left as a skeleton in the family cupboard ... Few Irish would welcome the knowledge than an ancestor had served in a cause in so unworthy.”
Perhaps this is true, but when you read about John Codd’s bizarre life you can’t help feeling that he was an extraordinary man who found himself in an extraordinary situation, which ultimately led to extraordinary results.
Hitler’s Irishmen by Terence O’Reilly is on available now in all good books shops.

http://http://archives.tcm.ie/laoisnationalist/2008/10/02/story28670.asp

BostonB

mountainyman wrote: »

That's why I ask. I want to get them on the wall of that park.
I am not a Nazi just feel that fair is fair and if we have to remember the men who died to save the world from Communism in Malaya and Kenya we should remember those who founght armed communists in Russia and Poland.

Did you read the book?

Pgibson

TerrorFirmer wrote: »

I think one of them was a cook for a time in the SS?

Ha Ha Ha.

There were a LOT of cooks in the SS it seems.
Poor gentle souls.

.

Night Flight

Ve Vere only obeying orders!

John Codd on Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Codd

ilkhanid

"There is a story that two korean men fighting for the germans were taken prisoner at normandy. Apparently they had been conscripted by the japanese and sent to fight the russians in manchuria. The russians captured them and sent them to fight the germans on the eastern front. They were then captured by the germans and sent to normandy where they were made fight for the germans before being captured by the americans."
It's a pity the Americans did'nt enlist them into their forces fighting the japanese in the pacific theatre. They would have done a complete circuit of the globe.

LuckyBleeder

A lot of teh non-german ss divisions were rubbish.The so called Freies Indien legion to name but one were little more than ex-pow's who never fired a shot in anger.

R.Dub.Fusilier

here is a related article i found on the net http://www.geocities.com/irishnationalist1921/THE STORY OF ROTTENFUHRER JAMES BRADY WAFFEN SS.




article cut-link is enough.mod.

Fuinseog

SlabMurphy wrote: »

Very interesting, he wasn't featured on Irelands Nazi's programme was in ?? Not admiring the cause he fought for, but seemed like a tough nut all the same.

james brady may not have been his real name. he was supposd to hail from roscommon, but nobody knew him there.

Fuinseog

McArmalite wrote: »

A bit off topic, but watching a programme on English soldiers recruited into the waffen ss for propganda purposes, the programme stated that appearently 2,000 soldiers volunteered from India to fight in the Waffen SS. Whether they were recruited in India or POW camps it didn't say. Since there also were many Bosnian Muslims also who volunteered for the waffen ss, is it a great irony to say that the waffen ss were a - racial and religious diverse organisation ??

there is abook out about Eric Pleasant (or is it Peoples). he served in teh legion of st. George

Fuinseog

what happened to 'James Brady' after 1950? he was court martialled but thereafter disappeared

BlackEdelweiss

I read the book about him, "Hitlers Irishmen" I think it was called, its not that great a book and the Irish guys involvement in the war was minimal, a bit of a crap story I thought overall. One interesting little story from it was when they were in a prisoner camp they shared a cell with Stalin's son who nobody got on with, there was even a bit of bullying if I remember correctly. One day an english cell mate punched Stalin's son who lost the plot and ran outside and made for the wire, or a guard, I cant remember exactly, and was promptly shot and killed.

BostonB

Agreed its not a great book, and its not a great story.

McArmalite

LuckyBleeder wrote: »

A lot of teh non-german ss divisions were rubbish.The so called Freies Indien legion to name but one were little more than ex-pow's who never fired a shot in anger.

Yes, most of non German SS divisions were rubbish, more for propaganda purposes, though I think some such as the Viking Division formed from Danish, Swedish fascists etc were pretty formidable.

Here is a picture of Rommell inspecting some Indian soldiers.

BlackEdelweiss

[FONT=ARIAL, SANS SERIF]I am not sure if this guy was in the SS or the Heer but foreign servicemen were almost exclusively in the SS, but it sounds like an interesting story. I have tried to find out more about it but have so far been unsuccessful.
"Dan George McDaid
Born the illegitimate son of a domestic servant girl raped by a rich landlord who cast her out on the road when she bore his illegitimate son, McDaid’s life began in extreme adversity and destitution. His mother died when he was just 13 and he was left to fend for himself, the experiences of which set the scene for his later exploits in life.

He joined a ship’s crew and found himself in Europe in the 1930’s where he was arrested in Germany for robbery with violence and was pressed into the German army. He saw action in France and on the bloody Eastern front where he was highly decorated.

At war’s end he escaped in an allied soldier’s uniform and drove an ambulance to Portugal and from there took a boat to Mexico. Imprisoned, for illegal gold mining, he once again escaped and crossed into the USA. His songs detail his various American exploits.

He returned to Ireland in 1962 and was by then a seasoned vagabond affecting thefts and con-tricks as the opportunities presented themselves. Obviously suffering from untreated shell-shock, his increasingly erratic behaviour led him further along the path to self -destruction and possibly his finest song writing period, until the time of his mysterious disappearance in 1986."[/FONT]

FiSe

I don't think that 'most non German SS divisions were rubbish' and that 'foreign servicemen were almost exclusively in the SS'. I would say that it was the opposite. The Waffen SS divisions were the elite of the German army in another words the best on the front line. Highly motivated, well trained, equipped with the best available material.

Not all of those foreign units fought main battles, which could lead to that statement, but were deployed on their home ground as an anti-partisan force, brutal, bloodthirsty and merciless.

But, it's true that some of the 'units' were for propaganda purposes only. Like the one formed from British POWs, which, I think, never even reached any operational status.

Most of the above mentioned foreign 'volunteers', like Indians, Tartars, Russians and so on, were formed as a part of WH units.

sven76

Hello
Do You maybe know in the battle of Zehden did ss English corps also participate? they were stationed not far in the Angermunde
Please help me

nuac

Re foreign SS - Beevor mentions that some of those fought very bravely at the fall of Berlin

sven76

Ok i att. jpg with item from Zahden/Cedynia is it possible british whistle in this place ??? Maybe they come from Ireland??? Im waiting for Your opinion Kind Regards

TerrorFirmer

I've recently made a brief radio documentary on Brady and Stringer; can link you guys with the radio broadcast segment. I'm also working on a larger piece of several thousand words, find the topic absolutely fascinating.

My aim is to make the whole event accessible to anyone. I've covered everything from beginning to end in the radio segment, which is fairly basic, but my work in progress is far more detailed.

Stringer and Brady are the only two confirmed Irishmen to have served Germany in combat roles, there are others, like Patrick O Neill, which are unsubstantiated, and are likely to never be uncovered.

Let me know if you want to hear the podcasts.