Hitler Looks West- An Irish Diplomat’s Unwitting Role in the Plan to Alter Irish Neutrality

On 24 August 1942 Ireland’s diplomatic representative to Spain, Leopold Kerney, met a senior figure in the SS (Schutzstaffel), Dr Edmund Veesenmayer, in a Madrid Café. The German had travelled under false papers on a special mission approved by the Reich Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentropp, to sound Kerney out on Ireland’s willingness to to alter its neutral policy in the war.