HIDDEN HISTORY: IRELAND'S NAZIS What they got wrong

Fictional Albert Folens in zany uniform

The tv programme was screened by RTÉ on 16 January 2007, fronted by Cathal O'Shannon, and by God did they get a lot wrong. These were not mistakes but a conscious effort to cast Folens in the worst light possible.

I intend here just touching on a few of the slurs perpetrated on the then dead Albert Folens. It is however well to remember that his widow and family were very much alive and were grievously hurt by this abomination.

The idea was to portray Folens as a brutal war criminal who had somehow escaped the clutches of the Nürnberg Tribunal.

I will pass over the fact that a sequence in the programme showing "Folens" participating in a brutal interrogation as an interpreter was removed before transmission as a result of a court case. But why waste a piece of dubious casting and a brand new uniform if it can be pressed into service otherwise?

The picture you see above is about as false as they come. It attempts to show that Folens was a Nazi and this subtle suggestion is seen in the SS runes on his lapel. But in Folens' time the Flemish Legion of which he was a member did not have such runes in their uniform. They had been promised that they would not and even if this promise, and many others, was subsequently reneged on by the Germans, there were no runes in Folens' time there. However, the programme makers were so determined to get him into the Waffen SS that they invented a bespoke uniform for him. It's a wonder they didn't exhume the man and give him an SS tattoo just to make their point.

The Sicherheitsdienst
The programme then went on to implicitly slip him into what they thought was the Gestapo by misquoting his place in the organisation chart of the Sicherheitsdienst (Security Service) where he worked in Brussels. They took their cue uncritically from CROWCASS (see below) which must have been one of the most unreliable shopping lists on the planet.

Click on image for a larger version

Unfortunately for them, there is no sign of Folens in III B, the section they said he worked in. Mind you it is well staffed up with interpreters on the Flemish side, more than enough to keep an eye on political dissidents.

Click on image for a larger version

He does, however, appear where he said he was, in section III C, translating the newspapers and keeping an eye on Flemish authors. Purely "lectoral" as he said, paperwork. Note that the section has its own interpreter and it's not him.

And just so you know, the Gestapo are in Department IV.

Gestapo HQ
Apparently RTÉ, had all the details. Folens they asserted worked at Gestapo HQ, 453 Avenue Louise, and he worked on the fifth floor.

It's a mite difficult to know where this detail came from though. The Sicherheitsdienst was on floors eight to eleven when they were in that building but Folens never worked in that building. He worked nearly 3km away at the opposite end of the Avenue. And he was lucky he didn't work there. The programme drew our attention to a plaque on the outside wall of the HQ. It records an airborne attack on the building in 1942 by a Belgian RAF pilot. That took out some senior people, including the head of the Sicherheitsdienst, and estimates vary up to 30 casualties. A dark place indeed.

CROWCASS

Click on image for a larger version

Finally, Folens' entry in the wanted notice for war criminals. The way the programme uses it you'd swear it was a list of Nürnberg indictments. It is actually a shopping list drawn up by the Allies for the convenience of the UN Tribunal. But it is not a list of actual war criminals, though many of these figure in it. It includes a list of people sought (suspects) by their native state so that they can be questioned about their activities during the war. It is only if this leads to a positive result that they would be charged and sentenced to whatever. Crowcass made the same mistake, misinformed by the Belgian state which didn't really know what it was at at that stage. This led to flawed charges against Albert which were only rectified when his final verdict was delivered.

Now the programme's informant made a big play of this in the visuals in the programme. The journalist was in the Belgian archive pointing out the Folens entry to Cathal O'Shannon.

Click on image for a larger version

He draws his finger slowly across the row with Folens name in it. He reads out important details like a file number and where Folens worked and what Folens is wanted for. He conveniently skips over the fact that CROWCASS thinks Folens is German. As we saw that is not the only thing CROWCASS thinks. It thinks he works in III B and is an interpreter and took part in interrogations. How wrong can you get. And it is this piece of rubbish that is the only thing around approaching "evidence", and uncorroborated evidence at that.

Give us a break, for God's sake.

PATRIOTISM

One consideration that may not have entered the heads of those involved in manufacturing this programme is that their wild claims about Folens could have been detrimental to Ireland's international reputation.

The state had a long struggle countering the immediate post-WWII propaganda that it was pro-Axis and had a policy of welcoming Nazi war criminals to its shores. Enthusiastic membership of the EEC in 1973 helped to dispel this image but here we had as late as 2007 that image resurrected in the public domain on the basis of no evidence whatsoever.

So let's be clear who are the patriots here.

One thing definite that can be said about the programme, it did not get its information from a reliable source. Shame on it.

Get the book.

The book is available to readers in Europe here, and to those outside Europe, and particularly in the USA here

If you're interested in more detail, you can check out an annotated transcript of the programme here which sets out all the other things that were wrong with it. This also includes a link to a low quality version of the programme itself.