Plan Kathleen

Plan Kathleen, sometimes referred to as Artus Plan, was a military plan for the invasion of Northern Ireland sanctioned by Stephen Hayes, Acting Irish Republican Army (IRA) Chief of Staff, in 1940. Plan Kathleen is frequently confused with Operation Green, the German military plan to invade Ireland drawn up in 1940.

Kathleen took place in the context of then IRA Chief of Staff, Seán Russell, being incommunicado in the United States as he pursued the propaganda arm of the S-Plan. Russell was attempting to arrange passage to Berlin (see Operation Dove), having left Stephen Hayes as Acting Chief of Staff back in Ireland.

While Russell's movements were unknown to Hayes, he sanctioned the drawing up an invasion plan to end partition and reunify the island of Ireland. The plan was written by an IRA volunteer called Liam Gaynor. Gaynor created the plan in early 1940, sometime before it was decided to send the plan to Nazi Germany via courier. Hayes had a couple of reasons for doing this; he wanted German assistance for IRA operations in Ireland, and he wanted to re-establish the IRA link with German Intelligence (Abwehr) to secure arms and money. The courier for transporting the plan to Germany was a Dublin businessman with German heritage named Stephen Carroll Held. Held left for Germany and arrived on 20 April 1940. His first call was to the door of the first Abwehr contact in Ireland, Oscar Pfaus. Pfaus then took Held to Berlin to meet with Abwehr Section-Leader Kurt Haller. Held was instructed to produce a previous agreed means of identification that would prove that he was an emissary sent by the IRA. During this first meeting, he did not meet Hermann Görtz, an Abwehr agent who was preparing to leave for Ireland, but he was introduced to him later. Due to his nervousness, the Abwehr were suspicious and they found the plan he carried extremely amateurish.

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