- [Matthew] The German Club, New York City,
August 24th, 1914,
two years before the Rising.
Two groups of men file in and take their seats,
the air tense with expectation.
The First World War rages,
the US has yet to pick a side,
and German officials in America are working hard
to extend their country's influence behind the scenes.
Today's meeting is part of that operation.
One of the two groups consists of German dignitaries:
an ambassador, a military attache,
a banker, and a journalist.
Many of them are spies working to disrupt ties
between the United States and the Entente, and they are led
by the cordial but unreadable Johann Henrich von Bernstorff,
a Prussian count and ambassador.
The other party consider themselves a diplomatic delegation,
albeit for a state that doesn't exist yet.
They are Irish nationalists, some American born,
but others from Ireland.
The nationalists make their proposal.
They want German assistance in defeating their mutual enemy,
the British, and they ask for only two things:
weapons and military expertise.
Von Bernstorff listens intently and promises
to contact his superiors to see what can be done,
because if he can help raise rebellion in Ireland,
the war could really be over by Christmas.
(studious music)
Thanks so much to World Anvil
for helping us forge today's historical tale.
Last episode, we explored the background causes
of the Easter Rising and how politics,
both in Parliament and the streets, led to the moment
in 1916 where people went for their rifles.
Today, though, we wanna rewind a little bit
and go back to 1914 to trace the web of spies
and backroom operators trying to put those rifles
into revolutionary hands.
By the later half of 1914,
preparations for an Irish nationalist uprising
were already well underway.
A shadowy faction of the Irish Republican Brotherhood
calling itself the Military Council was forging ahead,
hoping to strike while Britain was embroiled in a world war.
But to succeed, the plotters knew
they'd need help from overseas.
Both Germany and America seemed like natural allies,
the former because it was at war with Britain
and would benefit from a revolt and the latter
because it contained a large Irish population
which included militant nationalists.
In fact, in the 1860s and '70s,
an Irish American radical group
known as the Fenian Brotherhood
had repeatedly invaded Canada
as a way to pressure the British to leave Ireland.
As a result, Irish nationalists traveled to the US,
hoping to secure funding from Irish Americans
and support from German diplomats.
Foremost among those operatives was Roger Casement,
a former British diplomat.
Casement had become disillusioned with the empire
and embraced the nationalist cause.
On his visits, he met with both senior Irish Americans
and German officials, such as Von Bernstorff.
But progress was slow.
So in late 1914, Casement decided to go to the source.
He traveled to Germany in disguise,
narrowly dodging British spies along the way.
Once in Berlin, he became one of several Irish nationalists
courted by German nobles and diplomats
and through those connections
secured nominal backing from the Kaiser.
That done, he started a new project, recruiting a force
of Irish nationalists out of Irish prisoners of war
captured while serving in the British army.
Casement visited POW camps in Germany,
one holding 2,000 Irish prisoners,
in hopes to raise a German led and armed legion
that could join the planned uprising.
Yet, his plea for Irish unity seemed to fall on deaf ears.
Less than 60 men volunteered, and he abandoned the effort
after, according to one American diplomat, quote,
"the remaining Irishmen chased him out of the camp."
It was an ill omen, and not the only one.
The Germans had supplied him with fewer weapons
than he'd hoped for and no military advisors.
Disillusioned, in April 1916,
Casement boarded a German U-boat
and prepared to return to Ireland
in hopes to put off the rising before it ended in disaster.
Meanwhile, back in Ireland,
matters were close to spiraling out of control.
The IRB's Military Council
had to keep its planned rising a secret,
not only to avoid discovery by the British
but also to hide their plans from their own organization.
The president of the IRB,
nominally the council's parent group,
didn't feel the time was right for a rising,
a view shared by the commander
of the Irish volunteers, Eoin MacNeill.
But despite this, many Irish volunteer officers
owed their loyalty to the Military Council
and could be relied upon to fight
if the Military Council called for it.
And to add yet more daggers and cloaks
to this cloak-and-dagger convention,
there was a small nationalist faction
even more determined to stage an uprising
than the IRB's Military Council.
The Irish Citizen Army,
led by former British soldier James Connolly,
saw themselves as socialist revolutionaries
and were planning a rebellion of their own.
Knowing that disunity would invite destruction,
the military council secretly reached out
to the firebrand Connolly,
inviting him to join them rather than strike out alone.
To the council's relief, Connolly accepted.
It was time for the next stage of the plot.
On the 19th of April 1916,
the Military Council published a forged document
that detailed British plans to arrest senior nationalists.
The council then informed officers in the Irish volunteers
that the rising would begin Easter Sunday.
Of course, nationalists with lukewarm views
about the rising, like Eoin MacNeill, were kept in the dark,
but revolutionary circles are small,
and a rising's hard to keep quiet.
McNeil found out and panicked.
He issued a countermanding order
instructing the Irish volunteers
not to take part in the uprising.
Chaos ensued.
Irish volunteers had to choose
whether to follow MacNeill's orders or the Military Council,
and amidst the confusion, some retrieved hidden weapons
and prepared to fight while others left them
in lofts and barns, believing it would be better
for the cause if they stayed at home.
And on top of that, another drama was playing out at sea.
Off the coast of Kerry, Ireland,
Good Friday, April 21st, 1916.
The German naval captain checks his charts.
The maps are in Norwegian, and he has no radio on board.
His ship, the SS Libau,
currently disguised as a neutral Norwegian vessel,
is deep in British waters, and within the Libau's hold,
concealed beneath a cargo of timber, are 20,000 rifles,
a million rounds of ammunition, and 10 machine guns.
They're the German Empire's contribution
to the eminent rising,
and while the shipment is smaller
than the nationalists hoped,
it still dwarfs the last gun running
at Howth two years earlier.
But when the ship arrives,
there's no one to collect the guns.
The captain is in the right place, but at the wrong time.
Irish nationalists are expecting to meet him two days later.
None are present along the coast
to guide the German ship to shore,
and the captain's worst fears quickly materialize.
Three Royal Navy destroyers appear on the horizon.
They hail him and he responds with his false identity.
Thinking the Norwegian ship is lost,
they escort the Libau into Cork Harbor,
and knowing they'll be searched,
the Libau's captain gives orders to place scuttling charges
rather than reveal his cargo.
After a series of thudding detonations,
the weapons meant to ensure Irish independence sank
into the depth within sight of Cork Harbor.
That Easter weekend, it seemed as though everything
that could go wrong had gone wrong for the Military Council.
Confusion rained among the rank and file
thanks to MacNeill's counter-order,
and the desperately needed German arms
and ammunition had been sunk.
And to top things off, Roger Casement,
who was supposed to link up with the weapons shipment,
had been deposited by a German U-boat on the Irish coast.
Ill from a recurring bout of malaria,
he was found and arrested by an Irish policeman.
Now, the local Irish volunteers
might have attempted a rescue,
but they were under orders not to make any moves
before Easter Sunday in case it tipped the authorities off.
Everything now seemed in doubt.
Ironically, the British were aware of almost all of this.
Not only had they successfully intercepted
both Casement and the nationalist arms shipment,
but the very idea of staging an uprising during Easter
had been leaked to various senior sources,
and some historians have even suggested
that parts of the British establishment
actually wanted a rising to happen,
as it would allow future crackdowns
on the nationalist movement.
But it seems, however,
that most of the authorities were simply too slow
to act on the intelligence they received, and in that sense,
finally, the nationalists experienced some luck.
The Military Council delayed the rising
from Easter Sunday to Easter Monday, allowing them to meet
and decide whether or not to go ahead with their plans.
They voted on it and raised hands.
They would carry on.
One of their members, barrister, writer,
and committed revolutionary Patrick Pearse,
who six months earlier had delivered a speech
to a nationalist crowd that had ended with the words
"Ireland unfree shall never be at peace,"
was elected President of the Irish Republic.
Orders were to strike the following day.
For better or worse, the uprising was going ahead
and the Military Council would now make certain
that Pearse's words were no empty threat.
The time for oration, negotiation,
and deals in the dark was over,
and the the time for actions had arrived.
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(dramatic music)