Monthly Archives: May 2011

After yesterday’s post concerning the sale of Oswald Mosley’s old home in Fermoy, County Cork comes this des res fit for a fascist.

You want lebensraum? We’ve got lebensraum.

Locals believed this art deco house had a swastika on the roof – it doesn’t but a Nazi plot was hatched here

ONE OF THE most unusual homes built in 20th century Ireland – a detached house at 245 Templeogue Road, Dublin, with an amazing history – is for sale for €1.25 million, through DNG Terenure.

The house, then called Konstanz – after the southern German town on the shores of Lake Constance – was owned by Stephen Carroll Held. The businessman, who was born to an Irish woman and adopted by a German man, acted as a go-between, helping the IRA to liaise with the Nazi regime in Berlin. He told gardaí that the stash in the guest bedroom belonged to a lodger but he was promptly nicked and sentenced to five years “penal servitude”.

But there had been a lodger – who’d fled. Hermann Goertz, a German SS officer, had been staying in what he’d hoped was a “safe house”. He had arrived in Ireland a few weeks earlier, by parachuting into Ballivor, Co Meath (as one does). His mission impossible? To progress wacky plans for an IRA-backed Nazi invasion of Ireland with the aim of attacking Britain through Northern Ireland.

The Nazi Safe House In Templeogue (Michael Parsons, Irish Times)