Mein Leben für Irland

Let's hear it for the hypocrites of this world. This infamous 1941 feature film is a propaganda piece from Nazi Germany directed by M. W. Kimmich, being a crude melodrama condemning the way Britain crashed about Ireland prior to 1922, as the Germans were currently crashing about Europe (the tale is told of you). In Dublin in 1903 an Irish nationalist called Michael O'Brien (Werner Heinz) is caught by the British and executed, but not before marrying his sweetheart Maeve Fleming (Ann Dammann) in prison. In 1921 his son Michael O'Brien Junior (Will Quadflieg) is being educated by the British at an exclusive boarding school. But rebellion is brewing both inside and outside the school, leading to an orgy of book burning (hmm - i wonder where they got that idea from?), as the boys go off to fight with the nationalists. Written by Kimmich and Toni Huppertz, it's rather nauseating to watch the Nazis crying crocodile tears for the Irish cause, even if criticism of British imperialism in Ireland is perfectly valid, and all we're left with as highlights are a rugby match, and a student getting a ducking in the school swimming pool.

Max Kimmich was a hack writer of adventure screenplays who had failed in Hollywood in the Twenties but found a niche back in Germany when more talented men were driven into exile after 1933. Marrying Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels's youngest sister gave him an edge in the biz by grinding out anti-British stories-- about as perfunctory and patronising to their audiences' intelligence as the typical post-war Red-baiting script from Hollywood.

'The Fox of Glenarvon' (1940) had demonstrated, via Kimmich, the Nazis' tender solicitude for the liberties of small nations: specifically Ireland. In 'My Life for Ireland' next year Kimmich came up with a story so inept and ahistorical that it makes American pabulum look like Edward Gibbon. One doubts that Goebbels, a sophisticated analyst of politics, saw it as more than prolefeed.

To take only the first scene: we are told this is 'Dublin' in 1903. Now as far as I know the Irish capital is not an isolated peasant's hut in what looks like a small studio rain forest. I do know that by 1903 Ireland was quieter than for many centuries. The Potato Famine and the widespread evictions that followed were long past.

Thanks to a combination of carrot and stick by the United Kingdom government, and increasing integration of Ireland into the economy and political system with deliberate over-representation in Parliament, the Irish were tending to become what some derided as 'West Britons'. Would-be revolutionaries were in despair of attaining Home Rule, far less fullblown independence.

The Irish government had a highly effective espionage network which detected no dangerous dissatisfaction. It is the quiescent land depicted by Joyce in 'Ulysses', not that of David Lean and Robert Bolt in 'Ryan's Daughter. But according to Kimmich, an armed struggle was in progress, and the English were still evicting bankrupt tenants-- commanded by a portly 'sheriff' who dies leading an unarmed charge on the rebels.

His troops are 'English' policemen-- seemingly the Royal Irish Constabulary has been stood down. The rebels, who have been blazing away without worrying if they hit the hovel's native inhabitants, are caught. All are sentenced to death within 24 hours by a military court apparently composed exclusively of Brigade of Guards officers. The condemned are hung on 'short drop' gallows (actually done away with half a century earlier), escorted to their doom by soldiers in bearskins. Any resemblance to due process of law in peacetime Edwardian Britain is entirely accidental.

The rebel leader is allowed to marry his sweetheart shortly beforehand in an obvious echo of Joseph Plunkett in the 1916 Easter Rising. Her being already pregnant with his son hardly consorts with middle-class Irish Catholic morality of the times. It does, though, suit the current Nazi wartime rhetoric about tolerating illegitimacy to restock the race.

Eighteen years later the situation becomes more baffling. The son is now being educated and brainwashed at an English-style public school; the oppressive government has decided to convert the sons of rebels instead of marginalising them. Yet the country is still seething according to the cowardly VC winner 'Sir George', played like a typical Prussian junker complete with monocle. Cue the next generation of heroic liberation struggle, begun on the playing fields of 'St Edward's College'.

Back on boring old Planet Reality, by 1921 most of Ireland had already become the Irish Free State. There certainly were ructions, more than in the preceding independence struggle of 1916-20; but they were due to civil war between different factions of the Irish Republican Army. The English had packed up and left. Twenty years seems rather a short spell in which to have forgotten the chronology.

Ah well, perhaps this farrago distracted a few Fritzes and Friedas while the RAF was hitting back and Hitler was preparing to attack the Soviet Union. It may well be that audiences in some of the small countries Adolf had introduced to the blessings of the New Order sympathised with the Irish of the movie in the wrong way, identifying the oppressors with Germany. But it might have tickled cynical cinema-goers more to know what the Fuhrer had in mind for the object of Kimmich's solicitude.

In 1916 Hitler's predecessor, the Kaiser, had promised help to the leaders of the Rising, then left them in the lurch. Hitler despised the reactionary Catholic regime of the Free State and had ordered his generals to frame plans for a protective occupation if it showed any signs of softening towards the Allies... for which they contemptuously assigned just two battalions of the Wehrmacht.

The Nazis not only cried crocodile tears for the Irish; they did not rate their fighting prowess very highly. But after the Battle of Britain, any stick would do to try to portray the Reich's undefeated enemy as the really cruel tyrant.

While Ireland is rebelling against Britain, the son of a rebel is sent to an English boarding school to be forced to `think English'. He leads a revolt in the school during the war of independence in 1921, sabotaging the British invaders.

This film was a typical example of anti-British propaganda, made in Germany during the years of World War Two.

Taken out of its Nazi Germany context, My Life For Ireland for me is not even good propaganda. It was a story I just could not buy. But during its day playing to an audience of impressionable youth, and that's who it was aimed at who never got any contrary information, I can see why it had a certain appeal. This film was never shown in Ireland, the products of German cinema in 1941 were not getting off the continent.

My Life For Ireland was aimed at German youth, Hitler youth about to go to war against the British to show what a rotten nation this was. It begins in 1903 when we see landlords evicting tenants, starvation all around, things that were actually happening over fifty years earlier. Werner Hinz playing Irish patriot Michael O'Brian is captured after a raid where an English sheriff who looked a whole lot like Winston Churchill is shot and killed. Hinz is sentenced to death,but on the day of his execution, he marries his pregnant girlfriend Anna Dammann and she swears to raise an Irish patriot.

Fast forward to 1921 and that kid is now young Will Quadflieg and he and other Irish kids are going to an English public school set up in Dublin to train the youth to be good subjects of His Majesty. Quadflieg brings home some his friends and one of them Heinz Ohlssen is really taken with Quadflieg's mom. So when he sees IRA man Rene Deltgen visiting Damann he misreads things, but still it was only innocently that he betrays Deltgen to a British kid going to his school and acting as an informer.

For the rest of the film, let's say the young man gets a big old chance to redeem himself for the cause of Ireland. The title of the film says it all.

This film was directed by Max W. Kimmich who was Joseph Goebbals brother-in-law so you know that this film had the interest of the highest authorities in Nazi Germany. Marketed to German youth, the message was obvious, the Irish kids fought and beat the British back, you Hitler led German youth can do the same.

Personally I found the whole puppy love aspect of the plot just a bit ridiculous. I can't believe that Kimmich who was a writer as well as director of this film could not come up with a better plot device.

On the plus side Kimmich also must have seen John Ford's The Informer because My Life For Ireland has that same dark look of intrigue about it and the final scenes of the uprising are well staged. And I learned here that extras were actually killed during those scenes and they were left in the film. Even in Hollywood, that wouldn't have happened.

Seen today My Life For Ireland is a curiosity and a sad remembrance of kids going off to battle with the message of this film and others ringing in their ears.

The movie was a very well made and honest description of the situation in Ireland at the time and in no way was propaganda at all. Britain indeed did everything to keep Ireland on its knees as it did with other occupied nations all over the world. The scenes were realistic and the mood was well captured. The actors were able to play Irishmen and women in a very realistic fashion. Rarely does one see a movie shot in a non English country that appears to be genuine and credible. It is a sure bet that someone Irish was on location to direct the German movie makers to present every minute detail on film. The film had a quality that one normally sees from the famous director Ford.