Hi.
I'm listening to a Librivox recording of "Three Times and Out" by Nellie McClung. She's best known in Canada for being a member of the Famous Five, but apparently also wrote this story by Private Mervin C. Simmons, who was a German POW in WWI. In his story, he mentions a situation where Irish prisoners would be permitted to fight given special privilege to "fight against England". I'm aware of what far going on between England and Ireland in 1914, but don't know much about the Irishmen who fought for the Germans.
What exactly happened there? Who actually took the Germans up on the offer? Were they used in German propaganda at the time? What battles did they fight in? How were they received when (if?) they returned home? Any other interesting facts you've got are welcome.
In October 1914, Roger Casement, ex-British diplomat turned Irish revolutionary, approached the German government seeking aid for Ireland in a potential revolt against Britain. One of the things he managed to convince the German government of rather quickly was to establish a separate camp for Irish POWs at Limburg. Between December 1914 and July 1915, Casement attempted to convince these Irish POWs to accept German weapons and support, switch sides, and join him in an attempt to retake Ireland from the British. However, of the 2,200-4,000 Irish POWs at Limburg, Casement only managed to recruit 56.^1
This tiny group was transferred to the camp at Zossen in July 1915, and Casement and the German government made various proposals about where and how to employ them, while they received training from a Prussian regiment. News of the Easter Uprising in Ireland reached Germany in March 1916. After some back and forth negotiations, Casement and two members of the Irish Brigade were sent ahead, and were immediately captured by the British upon landing. Casement was executed for treason, while the other two took plea bargains for giving evidence against Casement.
The remaining members of the Irish Brigade moved camps a few times, but never saw combat. At the end of the war, the German government gave them fake German passports, and most chose to return to Britain or Ireland. There was no desire in Britain to create martyrs or stir the embers of the recently crushed Easter Rising by putting the men on trial for treason.^2 Two were tried and pardoned, while one had his sentence of death commuted to life in prison.^3
This was not an isolated policy. The German camp at Zossen mostly held Hindi and Muslim POWs. If they were convinced to fight for the central powers, they would be sent to either Southeastern Europe or the Ottoman Empire. Ethnic Germans who were captured fighting for Russia were held in better camps, and Germany tried to convince them to become naturalized citizens and join the German army. France, Russia, Italy and Austria-Hungary all tried the same thing with various ethnicities considered disloyal to their home country. However, all these attempts at recruitment had limited success at best.^4
No one seems to have gotten real propaganda value out of the Irish Brigade. The Germans and Irish were embarrassed by the small number of recruits from such a large pool, and the British preferred not to dwell upon Irishmen switching sides, no matter how small the number.
Footnotes
1: Pinning down the numbers has been difficult. As far as I can tell without far more detailed research, there were 2,200 POWs when Casement began his recruiting, and that number had swelled to 4,000 by the time he gave up in mid-1915. The camp may have held as many as 12,000 prisoners by the end of the war.
2: http://www.irishbrigade.eu/british-policy.html
3: Stover, Justin Dolan, “The Afterlife of Roger Casement’s Irish Brigade, 1916-1922,” Breac: A Digital Journal of Irish Studies, 2016. https://breac.nd.edu/articles/the-afterlife-of-roger-casements-irish-brigade-1916-1922/
4: Heather Jones, “A Missing Paradigm? Military Captivity and the Prisoner of War, 1914–18,” Immigrants & Minorities, 26:1-2 (2008), 36-40.
Sources
Although not an academic source, I have to suggest you start any research on this topic at http://www.irishbrigade.eu/ It has excellent primary sources on this topic, and lists several published accounts from members of the brigade. Justin Stover’s article on the brigade after Casement's death is available for free online.
Jones, Heather. “A Missing Paradigm? Military Captivity and the Prisoner of War, 1914–18.” Immigrants & Minorities, 26:1-2 (2008), 19-48.
Rachamimov, Alon. POWs and the Great War: Captivity on the Eastern Front. Oxford: Berg, 2002.
Speed III, Richard B. Prisoners, Diplomats, and the Great War: A Study in the Diplomacy of Captivity. New York: Greenwood Press, 1990.
Stover, Justin Dolan. “The Afterlife of Roger Casement’s Irish Brigade, 1916-1922.” Breac: A Digital Journal of Irish Studies, 2016. https://breac.nd.edu/articles/the-afterlife-of-roger-casements-irish-brigade-1916-1922/