Nazi spy moved to Irish hamlet to plot back-door invasion of UK
A NAZI spy identified a small Irish hamlet as a back-door route for a Nazi invasion of the UK, a BBC documentary claims.
Dr Ludwig Mühlhausen, a Nazi professor, moved in 1937 to the Irishspeaking town of Teelin in south Donegal, where he plotted for the bay to be used as a secret U-boat submarine base.
The Nazi spy spent a total of six weeks in Teelin on the pretence that he was there to improve his command of the Irish language and learn about local folklore. But the German’s constant photographing of the hamlet and measuring of the depth of Teelin Bay, by dropping lead weights into the tide, later led to the belief that he was scouting the location as a potential landing site for Nazi U-boats.
Mühlhausen had also apparently hung a large picture of Adolf Hitler on his bedroom wall immediately after finding somewhere to stay in the village.
In his reports to the Third Reich, Mühlhausen despaired of what he saw as the “waste” in the Irish economy.
With German efficiency, he wrote, the country’s fishing and farming could be far more profitable. A secret file on the German scholar, kept by military intelligence in Dublin, described him as an “enthusiastic Nazi”.
“He thinks German culture would be good for us, and Ireland would be better run by Germans or British,” one report wrote.
After returning to Germany he broadcasted Nazi propaganda in Irish directly into south Donegal during the Second World War and later became a decorated SS officer under Heinrich Himmler.
Mühlhausen’s secret life is uncovered in a new BBC Two Northern Ireland documentary Nazi sa Ghaeltacht or A Nazi in the Gaeltacht. (“Gaeltacht” means an Irish-speaking region.)
The professor’s footsteps are traced back to Berlin where he was fasttracked through the ranks of the Nazi regime because of his unflinching devotion to Hitler. Two years after his visit, Teelin locals were shocked to hear him broadcasting propaganda in Irish from a Berlin radio station, urging the Free State to keep its neutrality and to remember the atrocities of the English.
While imprisoned by Allied forces in Naples in 1945, Mühlhausen appealed to Dr Douglas Hyde, the Irish president, described in his letter as a “personal friend”, for release.
The letter is written in old Irish script; on the back of the envelope is Mühlhausen’s address in the prisoner of war camp and his SS rank.
There is no evidence to suggest that the president ever replied to Mühlhausen.
Journalist Kevin Magee told the Belfast Telegraph: “I wanted to find out if the story of the Nazi in the Gaeltacht was true, so I began investigating, talking to locals, asking questions and examining a whole variety of sources.
“Piece by piece, I was able to pull this remarkable story together.
“When I began my journey, I had no idea I would discover just how committed Mühlhausen was to the entire Nazi project. The plot reads like a World War Two thriller, except this story is for real.”