1916 Read Free

events? The paper will also confirm that some British officials at the highest level took the decision to let the Rising happen intentionally in order to decapitate the republican movement. This is proven by the existence in the German archives of a document entitled Aufgabe P .
    The years between 1890 and 1907 saw some major realignments in the system of European alliances. Briefly, in 1892 a military alliance was signed between France and Russia. Owing to naval tensions between Britain and Germany, the Entente Cordiale between Britain and France saw the light in 1904. Eventually, the Anglo-Russian Agreement became a reality in 1907. The latter led to the formation of the so-called Triple Entente countries – Britain, France and Russia. It must be pointed out that the Entente and the Agreement the British signed were not military alliances, but from Germany and Austria’s perspective this constituted a strategic encirclement. 5 From that moment onwards, the German leaders would try to drive a wedge between their rivals but their efforts were not successful. In a future war, which many statesmen and militaries expected sooner or later, the German general staff relied on the famous ‘Schlieffen Plan’, which consisted in first knocking out France before rapidly transferring all divisions to the east front to deal with the advancing Russian army. 6 But the Germans were most preoccupied with the United Kingdom and its vast empire, which they considered to be their most dangerous enemy. Would the British interfere if Germany entered a war against France and Russia? This question bordered on the obsessive in Berlin. But did Britain not have a weak western flank, Ireland, which might be exploited or which might prevent her from entering a continental war? Germany was well aware that Ireland was rife with political tensions due to the nationalists’ struggle for home rule, which was opposed by unionists.
    Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany was closely following the Irish crisis. He was personally informed by Dr Theodor Schiemann, a historian, who was corresponding with George Freeman. 7 Freeman was a journalist who specialised in foreign affairs and was then working for the Gaelic American in New York, the newspaper owned by the Irish republican and Clan na Gael leader, John Devoy. Freeman and Schiemann had begun their correspondence in 1906 and had been put in touch with each other by a German editor working in Japan. Freeman had offered to work ‘against England’ [sic]. 8 Most of their correspondence concerned anti-British propaganda and occasionally work of a cloak-and-dagger nature. Once, Schiemann asked how many Irishmen were serving in the royal navy, the answer to which Freeman was not able to ascertain. 9 Obviously the idea was to figure out whether Irishmen could be relied upon to disrupt the organisation of the royal navy.
    As for the Kaiser, he became more and more frustrated by Britain’s attitude towards Germany and more and more aggressive in his comments regarding Ireland. He was being kept up to date about the latest developments in the Irish crisis by reports from his embassy in London. When, on 14 September 1912, Richard von Kühlmann, the chargé d’affaires of the embassy, suggested that the crisis would weaken England as a world power because of the influence the Irish exercise in America, the Kaiser wrote in the margin: ‘That would be a great boon.’ 10 There was also some interaction between Germany and Austria-Hungary about Ireland. In August 1907 Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow sent a letter to Aloys von Aehrenthal, the powerful Minister of Foreign Affairs in Vienna, in which he explained that the British would probably not be involved in a European war lest uprisings should happen in Ireland and India. Bülow explained that this might be useful to know for Emperor Franz Josef before his scheduled meeting with King Edward VII. 11 There was even more. In November 1908 the Irish nationalist Frank Hugh