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Charles Bewley, Ireland’s Ambassador to Nazi Germany

Some people fail spectacularly at their jobs and the story of Charles Bewley, the Irish Minister to Hitler’s Germany is one such tale. The word diplomat has come to be a synonym for tactful and level-headed, with international representatives expected to navigate difficult political situations with a calm and measured attitude, but Bewley refused to adhere to convention.

(Note: Due to the nature of the Irish Free State during this period, the title of Ambassador was not used, instead titles of envoy, minister or chargé d’affairs were variously used.)

Charles Bewley was born into a wealthy unionist Quaker family in Dublin in 1888 but converted to Catholicism and became an Irish nationalist involved in the struggle for independence. He trained as lawyer at Oxford and King’s Inn College in Dublin, and acquired a high level of competency in German, French and Italian. As a Sinn Féin member in 1921, Bewley was appointed to a position in Berlin as consul for trade matters for the as-yet unrecognised Free State or Republic. The nascent state was making connections to further its economic independence from Britain, and Germany was seen as a likely partner. He was soon involved in a row when he was ejected from a Jewish-owned Berlin nightclub for making antisemitic remarks about Robert Briscoe who was also in Berlin at the time. Briscoe was a Jewish member of the Republican movement and later a long-time Fianna Fáil TD and Lord Mayor of Dublin. Briscoe was a gun-runner for the IRA and his mission to Germany resulted in a tug-boat called Frieda landing in Waterford with a large supply of arms for the IRA along with several other shipments. Briscoe reported on the night club incident with Bewley in a letter to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, George Gavan Duffy:

It seems Mr. Bewley arrived there in the evening in a rather advanced state of intoxication, and on my name being mentioned burst forth into a string of most abusive and filthy language. His chief point of argument as an excuse for this attitude was my religion. His expressions about me in connection with my faith were evidently of so strong and so vile a nature as to warrant his forcible ejection. He returned, however, almost immediately and then abused the proprietors until he was again chucked out and forbidden to ever enter their premises again.

Gavan Duffy was well aware of Bewley’s antisemitic views, certainly from Briscoe and also from John Smith Chartres, one of the principal Treaty negotiators and then serving as the envoy to Berlin who reported:

I have known Bewley for several years and have a high regard for him. I know he is mad on the Jewish question and the incident you reported … was inexcusable.

When Bewley applied for the post of Chargé d’Affaires in Berlin, Gavan Duffy recommended that he be posted to a more Catholic area. This was not particularly because of his antisemitic leanings as such, but because they were so pronounced as to be clearly interfering with his professional judgment, an opinion supported by Chartres. Bewley was supported at the time by Joseph Walshe who would later assume Gavan Duffy’s role. Bewley returned to Dublin in 1923, as the Berlin mission was closed down until 1929, and worked as a prosecutor for the pro-Treaty Cumann na nGaedhal government. He has been described as aggressively pro-Treaty and supportive of the execution of Erskine Childers by Free State forces. In 1929 Bewley was appointed by Walshe as Irish Minister Plenipotentiary to the Vatican where he served for four years and was awarded a knighthood for his service by the Pope in 1933. A move back to Berlin followed as he was appointed Irish Minister Plenipotentiary and Envoy Extraordinary to Germany in July 1933 after impressing DeValera during a visit to the Vatican. Once in Berlin, he made waves among the English speaking and diplomatic communities with his crude anti-British jibes. In contrast to his predecessor, D.A. Binchy, who had foreseen the horrific reality of Nazi power, Bewley’s reports from Berlin show that he was enamoured with and enthusiastic about Hitler’s reign and National Socialism, particularly as an authoritarian bulwark against communism. His letters justify the actions of the Nazis in eliminating political rivals and attacking Jews as necessary actions to secure the nation from the perils of communism.

It is true that a promise was given at the same time that the activities of the Jews in commerce would be restricted by law, and it would appear certain that such restriction will be drastic when it comes. Such measures would certainly be in harmony with the general public opinion, which partly as the effect of propaganda and partly as the result of the singularly provocative conduct of the Jews themselves in former years is extremely anti-Semitic.

Unlike many of the diplomats stationed in Germany, he attended several of the notorious mass rallies in Nurnberg that were staged as expressions of Nazi power. He described one as an ‘unqualified triumph’ and praised Hitler as the ‘finest orator that I have ever heard’. Bewley, like many right-wingers at the time, was also concerned with the influence of Freemasonry which he saw as pro-British, pro-Communist, anti-Catholic and pro-Jewish. The association of Freemasonry with subversive Jewish interests led to the forcible dissolution of the German masonic lodges in 1935 by the Nazi regime. Bewley was susceptible to conspiracy theories, and felt sufficiently moved by the question of ritual murders of Christians by Jews to send an official four page report to Walshe, concluding that it was only logical for the German government to act against such a potentially fatal influence. Most of Bewley’s reports are not stated as representing his own personal views, but instead he forcefully represents Nazi viewpoints (and implies they were consensus viewpoints in Germany) without any contradiction, statements which could easily have been taken verbatim from Der Stürmer. A letter on the Czechoslovakian situation classifies Czechoslovakia as a threat to Germany. Another letter dated 15th March 1939 appears supportive of Monsignor Tiso’s National Party in Slovakia for its ultra-Catholic nature.

In his declaration Monsignor Tiso has emphasised the Catholic character of his government, and announced the introduction of new legislation dealing with the Jewish problem on German lines.

Tiso’s enthusiastic collaboration with the Nazis would lead directly to the deaths of over 69,000 Jews, over two thirds of the pre-war Jewish population of Slovakia.

Bewley was also influenced by the writing of Fr. Denis Fahey, a well-known Dublin-based theologian and prolific antisemite. A December 1938 report to Walshe on antisemitism in Germany shows a man fully immersed in antisemitic conspiracy theories who recommends Walshe read Fahey’s The Rulers of Russia, a book that produced lists of Jews supposedly responsible for the spread of communism. The report fully justifies repressive actions against Jewish communities by German, Italian, Czechoslovakian, Polish and Hungarian governments on the grounds of Jewish disloyalty to their ‘host nations’, and supposed allegiance to Zionism and communism. The report also claimed American Jewish bankers financed communist movements in Europe, that Jews were in control of banking, academia, arts and the media, and attacked individual Jewish businessmen as swindlers and fraudsters in need of intervention by state forces. It went on to warn against Jewish immigration, a point particularly relevant to Bewley’s position as Irish Minister in charge of approving visas for Jews hoping to leave Nazi Germany for Ireland. He would run up against Briscoe again in this regard, as Briscoe was advocating for sanctuary for Jewish refugees fleeing persecution. An example of the depth of his antisemitic thought can be seen in the letter.

A further reason given in Germany and all the other countries of Central Europe for introducing discriminating legislation against the Jews is their demoralizing influence on the communities among which they live. It is a notorious fact that the international white slave traffic is controlled by Jews. No one who has even a superficial knowledge of Germany can be ignorant that the appalling moral degradation before 1933 was, if not caused, at least exploited by Jews. The German stage was the most indecent in Europe; it was a Jewish monopoly. German papers appeared of a purely pornographic nature: the proprietor and editor were invariably Jews. Jewish members of the Reichstag were responsible for the introduction of a number of measures abolishing legal penalties for abortion and a number of other practices which are visited by the most severe punishments in every Christian country. Jewish emigrants in the countries which they have been permitted to enter have created and are creating grave moral scandals and are a source of corruption of the populations among which they dwell….There are of course very many other reasons adduced for the elimination of the Jewish element from the public life of Germany: I cannot for obvious reasons enter into them all. I desire however to point out that the facts here stated are well known to everyone who has lived in Central Europe, or who has taken the trouble to make enquiries from non-Jewish sources into the situation as it really is.

Bewley was aware of the intense legal restrictions placed on Jewish Germans by this time by the Nazis and fully justified the exclusion of Jews from most areas of German society. He was also concerned with what he imagined was Jewish repression of Catholics in Eastern Europe. Bewley justified the Nazi measures by comparing them to previous anti-Jewish Papal decrees.

It is perhaps well to refer to the fact that very few, if any, of the measures introduced in Germany in relation to the Jewish problem cannot be paralleled in the measures introduced by the Popes in relation to the Jews of Rome. Under various Papal decrees Jews were forbidden to have Christian servants. Christians who had recourse to Jewish doctors were excommunicated. Jews lived in special parts of the city and carried a distinctive mark (a wheel or circle) on their clothing, marriages between Jews and Christians were not admitted.

Bewley claimed to be unaware of any German cruelty towards the Jewish community, despite outlining in great detail actions that most people would consider outrageously cruel. Instead, he claimed that the news reports of attacks against the Jewish community were invented or exaggerated by Jewish controlled newspapers in England. English Jews are particularly singled out for attack, deriding English media outlets as ‘Anglo-Jewish agencies’, and labelled as being both anti-Irish and anti-Catholic. A letter to Walshe dated 25th January 1939 is a strongly worded missive suggesting that fifty German Christian refugees that had been admitted to Ireland were secretly Jewish and that it would be impossible to deport these ‘undesirable types’.

There is therefore, so far as I have been informed, no safeguard that the 'non-Aryan Christians' admitted into Ireland are not Jews who have applied for Christian baptism merely for the material benefits which they hoped to derive from such a step… Even if territory were found for the settlement of Jews from Europe, and permission were given to the Jews admitted into Ireland to obtain citizenship of it, there is no guarantee whatever that the Jews in question would wish to leave Ireland for, say, Guyana or Madagascar, and in this event it would not be possible to deport them. There would therefore be no possibility of getting rid of these persons for the rest of their lives, while their children would presumably be Irish citizens… It has been the experience of numerous other countries that the Jews admitted for the purpose of agriculture abandon their agricultural work at the first opportunity and go to live in the cities. In Ireland it would in any event be impossible for them to obtain holdings of land. It is therefore safe to say that the fifty persons admitted for training in agricultural work will abandon the country for the cities, where they will live at the expense of the Irish community… The well-to-do families who have guaranteed to maintain 'temporarily' twenty adults and twenty children have obviously no idea of the impossibility of getting rid of these people after the expiration of the temporary period. It cannot be expected that they will continue to maintain them for the rest of their lives. Therefore the persons in question will either be supported directly by the Irish taxpayer, or will obtain employment and thereby increase the number of Irish unemployed… The twenty children will presumably enter one of the already overcrowded professions, thereby increasing the difficulty of making a living for the Irish students who have received the same education at the expense of their families.

It is worth noting again that as head of the Irish Legation, Charles Bewley had an important role to play in the issuing of work visas or refugee status to German Jews fleeing Nazi persecution prior to the war. Less than a hundred were granted leave to enter Ireland despite the massive persecution and large volume of applicants. Bewley was recalled from his post shortly before the war and replaced by William Warnock. He refused to return to Dublin, instead remaining in Berlin working as a journalist for German newspapers including Die Aktion published by the Ministry of Propaganda. He wrote under his own name, clearly identifying himself as the former Irish Minister. Bewley’s articles concentrated on anti-British topics but also included antisemitic material. He was also employed by a Swedish news agency run by Joseph Goebbels and divided his time between Italy and Germany, using an altered diplomatic passport and pretending to be an official Irish representative.

Bewley acted directly for the Nazis and provided confidential information to German intelligence. An October 1940 report detailing various Irish members of the Department of External Affairs included comments that Joseph Walshe was an ‘active supporter of the Jewish cause.’ He produced several reports but was rejected by the SD for a role as an agent. Towards the end of the war, Bewley was arrested in Merano, part of the Salò Republic set up by Mussolini in northern Italy. He was interrogated by Allied troops, briefly sharing a cell with John Amery. Upon hearing of Bewley’s arrest, Irish officials decided that ignoring him was their preferred course of action. Walshe wrote in a memorandum:

Bewley was an ass – but only an ass. He wasn't a criminal – least of all a dangerous criminal. It was notorious that he was a complete coward and would not risk his skin for any cause or nation… The best punishment for Bewley would be to show him how unimportant he was, to release him with a kick in the pants, and let him make his way back to Ireland.

He was issued with a new Irish passport which had his trade listed as ‘A person of no importance’. No charges were brought against him for his wartime activities, and he was released from custody in December 1945. Bewley did not return to Ireland but settled in Rome after the war and published occasional works. He produced an uncritical biography of Hermann Goering in 1956 and wrote his memoirs which remained unpublished until after his death. Charles Bewley died in Rome in 1969 aged 81.

Footnotes:

Chartres’ Anglo-Italian wife, Anna Vivanti, a renowned novelist, was a friend of Gabriele D’Annunzio, the Italian war-hero, poet and ultra-nationalist whose occupation of Fiume created much of the aesthetics for the inter-war fascist movement. Anna was part-Jewish and died in Italy during the Second World War. Despite supporting Mussolini, she had been interned for suspicion of being a British agent and had her books banned.

Robert Briscoe was an ardent Zionist who used his experience to help the Zionist cause in the 1930’s and 40’s. He fundraised in the US and brought Ze’ev Jabotinsky to Ireland to learn guerrilla tactics that were later used by the Irgun in Palestine.

Amery was a British fascist who had helped set up the Legion of St. George, a group of British soldiers recruited to the Nazi cause and was executed in London in December 1945.

Sources:

Dictionary of Irish Biography (available at www.dib.ie)

Documents on Irish Foreign Policy archives (available at www.difp.ie)

Duggan, John P. (1989). Neutral Ireland and the Third Reich. Dublin: Lilliput Press.

Hull, Mark and Moynes, Vera (2017) Masquerade – Treason, the Holocaust, and an Irish Imposter Norman: University of Oklahoma Press

Jewish Virtual Library (Available at www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org)

Kelly, Darren (2016) The Irish Free State’s First Diplomats: Jealousy, Anti-Semitism and Revenge History Ireland Issue 1 Volume 24 January/February 2016

Roth, Andreas (2000) Mr. Bewley in Berlin – Aspects of the Career of an Irish Diplomat, 1933-1939 Dublin: Four Courts Press