The ex-IRA man who died a Nazi collaborator

Frank Ryan fought in the Irish and Spanish civil wars but became a Hitler stooge. A new film tells his story, says Richard Fitzpatrick

FRANK RYAN’S life was dramatic. Born at Bottomstown, Elton, Co Limerick in 1902, he was a teenage IRA volunteer. He fought on Éamon de Valera’s side in the Civil War, most of which he spent in prison, and was imprisoned at various stages for his political beliefs.

Disillusioned with the infighting of Irish republicanism, he went to Madrid in December, 1936 to fight with the International Brigade, leading the Connolly Column in the Spanish Civil War. He was injured and imprisoned in Burgos for a couple of years until German intelligence, keen to make use of his dissident IRA connections, took him to Berlin. He spent the Second World War in a curious dance with the Third Reich, before dying in a hospital in Dresden in 1944.