Spymaster left out in the cold until now: Dan Bryan's patriotic work uncovered

While researching German espionage in Ireland during the Emergency, Marc Mc Menamin discovered recorded interviews with Dan Bryan, Ireland’s top spymaster during WWII. He tells Jennifer McShane why Bryan deserves a key place in the pages of Ireland’s wartime history

Dan Bryan: headed up Ireland's military and intelligence response to the Emergency

It all began when Marc Mc Menamin was researching for a previous book and discovered the work of Carolle J Carter, a professor at San José State University in northern California. In her book, Carter referenced recording interviews with Dan Bryan (Ireland’s top spymaster during WWII) as well as many others with IRA operatives and Nazi spies. 

Marc wondered if the tapes of these interviews still existed — and whether he could find them. After many emails, letters and Zoom calls, he located the tapes — which contained more than 35 hours of previously unpublished audio recordings — which had been in storage in an attic in California for over 50 years.

And so, his new book, Ireland’s Secret War, tells the stories of these never-before-heard interviews directly through those who played a huge part in Ireland’s role in WWII. These ‘off the record’ interviews with Colonel Dan Bryan expose parts of Irish history that have never been discussed before, such as details of Britain’s involvement in the North Strand bombings.

The North Strand the morning after the Geman bombing, on the night of 31st May 1941, four high-explosive bombs were dropped by German aircraft on the North Strand area of Dublin City, The casualties were many: 28 dead and 90 injured, with 300 houses damaged or destroyed.

It all cumulates into what is fascinating first-hand accounts of what the Nazis’ plan for Ireland was, for example, and also reveals how close Ireland came to being invaded during the war, by the Nazis as well as the US and the British.

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“There's always been cultural links with Germany and Ireland and they go back a long time in history,” Marc says of the links between the two countries.

“But when it comes to the war, the cultural links are still there. So they're not countries that are kind of operating in isolation. It’s very common, the idea of Germans coming to study, say, in Trinity College, where there was a cultural exchange, and the idea for some of those to come here and maybe be doing some spying — it wasn't beyond the pale for something like that to happen.”

The front cover of the Irish Press, the morning after the North Strand bombings

The book centres on Colonel Dan Bryan who Marc describes as a man who masterminded the Irish response to World War II and also served as Irish military intelligence after the foundation of the State. Most would be unfamiliar with him, Marc agrees, but says he deserves a firm place in the pages of Irish history for his wartime efforts.

“What basically brings all this into force is the main protagonist in the book Dan Bryan, who was probably one of the greatest unsung heroes in 20th-century Irish history alongside Richard Hayes, who worked as the codebreaker for the army,” he explains.

“Essentially, Dan sees the constitutional situation Ireland is in, being close to the United Kingdom, but not in the United Kingdom and also having this land border with Northern Ireland — and fears that can be taken advantage of quite easily because first of all, the defence forces are quite poorly armed. And second of all, due to that close proximity to Britain. He then pens a very famous memorandum called Fundamental Factors on Irish Defence Policy, which is not taken too seriously initially, but eventually, it becomes the foundation stone for the policy of neutrality during the second World War.”

“Dan Bryan was the figure in the army who says that 'we need to get on top of this, or we're going to have two very big problems, either a German invasion in Ireland to attack Britain, or we're going to have a pre-emptive British invasion or allied invasion to order to stop the Germans from getting in here'. So he's the one who sees the wood from the trees,” Marc explains, adding that Bryan was not your typical hero, having initially trained in medicine.

“He looked more like a rural GP than a war hero, but he was very committed to public service. He was a very conscientious man. And in the tapes, he talks very frankly about various things that happened during the war, from the North Strand bombing, some of the spying operations, he talks about, what he would have done himself if he could have personally intervened, following the death of the German spy Herman Gertz, who came to Dublin in 1940. 

Herman Gertz: a German spy in Ireland at the time of the Emergency

"So, what you get is the sense of a man who is one of these old school public servants, very committed to his country, very noble, and someone who sought no fame for anything that he did. And as a result, he has kind of just been left out of the historical record books. I just really felt that these guys like Dan Bryan have been drastically underused in terms of the historical record in Ireland, and I wanted to document that story."

“And the thing about Dan Bryan is that he kept relationships with people that he even disagreed with. He took the Free State side in the Civil War, took Michael Collins’ side and was critical of Éamon de Valera for causing what he felt was causing the Civil War, but comes to admire him and the way he does things later on in the war. His role was very much about relationships and maintaining those relationships, both in terms of his friends and those he wouldn’t have agreed with.” 

The tape transcripts are incredibly compelling and the lifeforce of the story, and given they are decades old, offers insight in a way we hadn’t before — straight from the man who was right in the centre of the action during the period referred to as the Emergency in Ireland.

Marc McMenamin: negotiated 35 hours of interviews for an insight on Dan Bryan's role in the Irish efforts in Emergency times

“When you hear the tapes of the kind of man that he was, the life he led, being this kind of James Bond-esque figure, a very unassuming quiet gentleman with the insights he has, it becomes so interesting,” Marc continues.

“There’s tapes of him, some of the spies with tapes of some of the Irish army intelligence, and these would have been all recorded in 1969 and early 1970 between Athlone and Dublin.” 

War and the Irish stance on war is relevant even today with the sad events in Ukraine, he says, when talking of neutrality and points out that even with Ireland’s neutrality back then, the war did visit Ireland on several occasions.

“You had bombing in County Wexford, you had the North Strand bombing. I teach in Eden Derry, County Offaly and there was an entire family destroyed by a Luftwaffe bomb. And I think when you look at the geopolitical situation in the world today, and when you look back at historical precedents, there are a lot of parallels between the first and second world wars,” he adds.

“In the First World War, we were part of the British colony, but in the Second World War, there were men who fought in British uniforms and in American uniforms. There are women who got involved in the UK, making parachutes and things like that. So, the idea that we were neutral? We were, but not really and I think that’s been well established by now.”

• Ireland’s Secret War: Dan Bryan, G2 and the lost tapes that reveal the hunt for Ireland’s Nazi spies (Gill Books, €16.99) by Marc Mc Menamin is out now.