Joe O'Byrne: ‘We're having the reactivation of the type of politics that we saw in the early 1930s'

Joe O'Byrne owes two long-dead German twentysomethings a debt of gratitude. But not solely that, he says; he also owes them what he calls 'a debt of exactitude'. His second World War novel The Red Orchestra in Blue – published on the 80th anniversary of VE Day – is a fictionalised account of young couple Harro Schulze-Boysen and Libertas Haas-Heye as they evolve from being the cultured darlings of Berlin society into fearless resistance fighters.
Once welcomed in elite Nazi circles (aristocrat Libertas was given away by Hermann Göring at their 1936 wedding), this extraordinary pair became part of the secret anti-Nazi resistance network of artists, intellectuals and allies dubbed The Red Orchestra by the German military-intelligence service.
Both Luftwaffe officer Harro and his writer wife Libertas had been involved in the resistance movement before the war, but once war was declared, such activities were reclassified as treason and punishable by death.
O'Byrne first came across their story when studying for an MA in German literature. He initially wrote a screenplay about them, but came to believe Harro and Libertas were better suited to the expanse and interiority of a novel. From the outset he wanted to keep faith with their authentic selves, and 'Be true to how they lived, what they said, what they were, what they might have been'.
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The Red Orchestra in Blue, which is also a homage to Berlin (O'Byrne lives in Berlin and Dublin), conjures up two brave, brilliant and charismatic individuals. Set during 1939-1942, it depicts Harro and Libertas as companions, comrades and co-conspirators. Their story is both a very public tale of heroism and tragedy, and the private love story of two complex and ambitious individuals whose legacy has become as deeply interconnected as their lives.
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German president tackles uncomfortable statistic: every second German favours 'drawing a line' under Nazi past
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This is O'Byrne's first novel to be published, although he has written plenty ('probably 12,' he says cheerfully). The novel's original publication date of May 2020 was one of many literary casualties of Covid, and he found its cancellation difficult.
'For a couple years after that, I didn't write any more. I started a number of ideas for books - about four or five - and couldn't finish. And then last year I got one of them to the end of a draft.'
The next novel he hopes to publish is Deposition. Set in the Liberties area of Dublin, its dual timeline incorporates the present day and the mid-18th century. The novel he drafted last year, The White Butterfly, takes place in Havana in 1894 and contemporary New York.
'There are writers who like to keep in the same furrow and I don't,' he says. 'I think it's because I work in theatre a lot, where you tend to chop and change.' In addition to writing and directing for film, television and radio, his many theatre credits include Frank Pig Says Hello and The Dead School by Patrick McCabe. He also directed and co-adapted Roddy Doyle's The Woman Who Walked into Doors and The Five Lamps for the stage, and Gary Brown's Dockers.
'Writing a novel is a long process. If you're writing a play you might have a first draft in four weeks. It might take longer, but four weeks is actually possible, whereas with a book you're in it for the long haul. As a writer you have to be patient.'
What would he choose if he could work in one art form only? 'At this stage I would probably stick with fiction. Theatre and film are collaborative arts, but because you're engaging with so many people it becomes difficult. Not that the people are difficult, but the process can be. Sometimes you get up in the morning and think, I just want to be on my own and write, I don't want to have to go into a rehearsal room and engage with all these issues and problems and deadlines. The thing about theatre is that once you start, the deadlines come at you so fast ... It's a big ticking clock.'
It was a grand historical deed, and it was necessary, and to be commended. However, it led to significant internal resistance
—
O'Byrne on Angela Merkel's decision to admit more than a million asylum seekers into Germany
A third significant character in the novel is Polish-born singer and musician Martin Rosenberg (also known as Rosebery d'Arguto), who was arrested by the Gestapo in 1939 and deported to Sachsenhausen concentration camp, where he secretly set up a choir of Jewish prisoners.
Rosenberg's character is introduced with a vivid and insightful description of him as living through three maps: that of Poland when ruled by the tsar of Russia; independent Poland after the first World War; and finally that of 'the expanding Reich when Hitler struck and overran Poland'. It is a striking image, and one with contemporary parallels, as O'Byrne notes, referencing Trump's fixations with Canada and taking control of Greenland.
Redrawing maps is just one of the similarities O'Byrne touches on between Europe of 80 years ago and today, citing the similarities between the rise of Nazism and the current growth of right-wing parties and attitudes. He finished writing The Red Orchestra in Blue in 2015, a year he describes as,
'the beginning of what you might call the current phase of the reactivation of past history,' because that was the year when German chancellor Angela Merkel allowed more than a million asylum seekers to cross the border into Germany.
'It was a grand historical deed, and it was necessary, and to be commended. However, it led to significant internal resistance,' he says, as it became a major factor in the growth of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party.
(The AfD
came second
in Germany's federal elections in February, winning a record 152 seats in the 630-seat parliament.)
'Trump's attacks on certain institutions are reminiscent of the Nazi attacks on the education system and cultural institutions,' he says. 'When the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain came down, people used the phrase 'at the end of history'. Unfortunately history is not over; history has been reactivated. It just went into abeyance, into slumber mode, and now we're having the reactivation of the type of politics that we saw in the early thirties.' In the novel, Harro says, 'It was all an abuse of confidence, the whole Nazi affair.'
As democracy retreats, and culture, science and education are under threat, it's hard not to hear echoes of 1930s Europe all around us today, and O'Byrne's wish for the novel is that it contributes 'to a discussion or argument about the perils of where we're heading at the moment.'
The five-year delay in publishing may yet be to O'Byrne's advantage, as interest in second World War literature continues to grow, particularly since the publication of Anthony Doerr's Pulitzer Prize-winning All the Light We Cannot See, which was adapted by Netflix in 2023. Persephone Books recently reissued Sally Carson's Crooked Cross, which in 1934 depicted the rise of Nazi tyranny with horrifying accuracy.
O'Byrne also explores the value of culture when it is pitted against what Harro describes as 'the march of steel'. Harro and Libertas were so involved in Berlin's cultural life that they would have witnessed the arts being subverted and crushed.
'Most of the artists we might consider the great artists in Germany in the '20s were considered degenerates and so their art was swept aside,' he says. 'They still did have cabarets, but they were very sanitised. The theatres had a limited, more classical repertoire, and classical music was a key part of the cultural offering. Harro and Libertas would have witnessed that, in fact, culture can only do so much.'
From jazz (the 'In Blue' of the novel's title) to cabaret, classical music and the popular hits of the day, music flows like a river through this novel - of all the arts, O'Byrne believes music is the spirit that cannot be crushed.
'Stories like this have to be told and retold,' he says, seeing the role of imagination as to keep hope alive. Ina Lautenschläger, described in the novel as 'fashion model by day, clandestine printer by night', tells Harro, 'At times like these, we must fill our lives with fiction, with fantasy, this is our own little bit of theatre. They cannot take our imagination away from us. That is what makes us human.'
Hope is the key, O'Byrne believes. Of Harro and Libertas Schulze-Boysen he says, 'They were brave, they lived in hope. You don't engage in resistance unless you actually have hope.'
The Red Orchestra in Blue is published by Betimes Books

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Irish Times

3 hours ago

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Letters to the Editor, June 23rd: On the EU and Israel, organ donation and tattoos

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RTÉ News​

10 hours ago

• RTÉ News​

What is the nuclear world order and how did we get here?

In the corridor adjacent to the UN General Assembly Hall at UN headquarters in New York, a giant photograph of the mushroom cloud billowing up from the destroyed city of Nagasaki hangs on the wall. It is part of a permanent exhibition designed to remind passersby of the horrors of nuclear war. After all, the UN was set up in no small part to prevent it ever happening. "Nuclear weapons post a threat to our very existence," reads a nearby quote from the UN Secretary General António Guterres. "The total elimination of nuclear weapons remains the highest disarmament priority of the United Nations," it adds. One wonders, though, how many delegates have ever paused to ponder the terrifying images on display. Considering that since the US dropped two atomic bombs on Japan eighty years ago, killing hundreds of thousands of civilians, several more countries have acquired their own nuclear arsenals. In fact, in that same UN exhibition, a flat screen television monitor shows the number of nuclear tests in the world since World War II. As the reel begins, isolated flashes in the US and the former Soviet Union first appear. The number of explosions steadily gathers pace through the Cold War until the grainy screen displays a mesmerising crescendo of detonations across the whole planet. It's hardly surprising that many historians believe we were miraculously lucky to escape nuclear annihilation in the 20th Century. So, what is the state of the world nuclear order today? The International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN's nuclear watchdog, estimates that today 30 nations have nuclear capability. But only nine have nuclear weapons. They are, in order of the most nuclear warheads in their possession: Russia, the United States, China, France, the United Kingdom, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea. There are an additional six nations that host nuclear weapons namely Italy, Türkiye, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands for the United States and Belarus for Russia. There could have been a lot more, according to John Erath, a former US State Department diplomat, now with the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington DC. "When the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was signed in the late 1960s," he told RTÉ News, "the general estimate was that in 10 years, we would have had 20 nuclear powers". The NPT was a cornerstone UN treaty aimed at curtailing the spread of nuclear weapons and committing member states to nuclear development for peaceful means only. The treaty recognised only five nuclear powers who were, and still are, the permanent members of the UN Security Council - China, France, Russia, UK and US. Today, 191 UN member states are signatories to the NPT. Five are not, namely Israel, North Korea, India, Pakistan and South Sudan. "There has been some success for non-proliferation, and I credit the NPT for getting us there," he said. Some countries such as South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, Japan and South Korea had very advanced nuclear capabilities, Mr Erath told RTÉ News. Brazil had even mastered the entire fuel cycle. "[These countries] could build nuclear weapons in no time, but they decided their security needs do not require them to do so," Mr Erath said. Other nations, though, took a different view. The race for a nuclear deterrent Nations usually decide to pursue a nuclear deterrent in response to their own security concerns - whether real or perceived - despite the enormous price tag and the risk of international condemnation. "Nobody likes having nuclear weapons," John Erath said, adding "they're tremendously expensive, very dangerous and very difficult to build and maintain". He added: "So, the real question is: Why do these threats exist and lead countries to decide to develop and build nuclear weapons?" A report published earlier this year by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons found that the nine nuclear-armed states collectively spent $100 billion (€87 billion) on their arsenals in 2024. The report found that's the equivalent of $3,100 (€2,705) per second. In 2003, North Korea - one of the poorest countries in the world where 60% of people live below the poverty line - quit the NPT and three years later, carried out its first nuclear test. It followed a speech by then US President George Bush in the wake of the 9/11 attacks branding North Korea, along with Iran and Iraq, an "Axis of Evil". In the spring of 2003, the US illegally invaded Iraq on the false pretext that Saddam Hussein was stockpiling "weapons of mass destruction". "North Korea took [the Axis of Evil speech] to mean that they were next on the list," Mr Erath said. How much the toppling of Saddam Hussein in neighbouring Iraq fed into Tehran's decision-making over its nuclear programme is hard to assess. Iran remained in the NPT and claimed it was developing nuclear power for civilian use. But officials elsewhere, especially hawkish policymakers in the US and Israel, accused Iran of stringing negotiators along while secretly enriching uranium to weapons grade. It's fair to assume that the successful acquisition of a nuclear deterrent by North Korea - a fellow member of the so-called - won't have been lost on the Iranian leadership. And there were lessons to be drawn elsewhere too. At the end of the Cold War, Ukraine was in possession of the world's third largest nuclear arsenal, inherited from the collapsed Soviet Union. However, the control systems and launch codes remained in Moscow, which limited Ukraine's ability to use them independently. Nevertheless, under pressure from the Clinton administration in the US, which sought to denuclearise eastern Europe, and in exchange for assurances on territorial integrity from Russia, the UK and the US, Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons. It was a key foreign policy decision that former US President Bill Clinton came to regret following Russia's annexation of Crimea in 2014 and full scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. "I feel a personal stake because I got them [Ukraine] to agree to give up their nuclear weapons," Mr Clinton said in an interview with RTÉ's Prime Time, in April 2023. "And none of them believe that Russia would have pulled this stunt if Ukraine still had their weapons," he said. Russia's so-called "stunt" coupled with US President Donald Trump's ambivalence about defending Europe reignited the debate in Europe over its own nuclear deterrent. French President Emmanuel Macron - which is the EU's only nuclear power - floated the idea of extending the French "nuclear umbrella" to cover all of Europe. That would mean deploying French warheads across the continent like Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands while Türkiye currently hosts American nuclear weapons. Mr Macron's opening gambit was greeted warmly by leaders in Germany, Poland, Lithuania and Denmark. But Russia slammed the French president's move as "extremely confrontational". Mr Trump's 'America First' doctrine also prompted a re-think in South Korea, where opinion polls now show that more than three quarters of South Koreans support the idea of a national nuclear deterrent. And in south Asia, India, which tested its first bomb in 1974, cited the need for a deterrent against regional rivals China and Pakistan. In response, Pakistan - with the help of China as well as the clandestine nuclear technology-smuggling network run by Pakistani scientist AQ Khan - became a nuclear power in 1998. Neither country has signed the NPT and last year Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India said he was reconsidering India's "no first use," policy – a long-standing commitment to a retaliatory strike only. A sudden outbreak of conventional hostilities between the two regional enemies in April, once again raised the spectre of nuclear war. Israel and Iran One of the world's most secretive and controversial nuclear programmes belongs to Israel, centred around the Dimona nuclear reactor in the Negev desert. Israel is believed to possess 90 plutonium-based nuclear warheads but has never publicly admitted its nuclear capability. Israel's nuclear ambiguity and its non-membership of the NPT meant it never faced international sanctions over its nuclear programme, unlike North Korea, Iran and for a time, India and Pakistan. Last week, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Iran's nuclear programme posed an existential threat to Israel. Iranian leaders have frequently called for the eradication of Israel. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that Israel was doing "the dirty work" for other countries, by taking out Iran's nuclear potential. But while Iran's nuclear programme will likely be set back given recent strikes by Israel, and the US overnight, it's unlikely to be destroyed altogether, Mr Erath told RTÉ News. "The most important factor in producing a nuclear weapon is knowledge," he said, "and it's very difficult to kill knowledge". "It's tremendously expensive in terms of resources that both Israel and Iran would be putting into this and most importantly, the cost in human lives," he said. Before the US targeted three Iranian nuclear faciities, Natanz, Isfahan and Fordo, anti-nuclear campaigners had called Israel's initial airstrikes "illegal and unjust". "Israel is the only country in the region that has nuclear weapons," Susi Snyder of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons told RTÉ News, "Iran does not". "Iran was not posing an existential threat to Israel, and that is just a false narrative that Israel is portraying right now in order to justify what is honestly an illegal action," she said. Mad times The famous doctrine of MAD – Mutually Assured Destruction – was credited with keeping the peace during the Cold War. It held that a nuclear strike by the United States or the Soviet Union would trigger retaliation, thereby guaranteeing mutual annihilation. In the 1980s, scientists predicted that even if humans survived the first round of bombs, the explosions would emit so much smoke and ash into the atmosphere, it would block out the sun, triggering a "nuclear winter" that could kill all life on earth. That was surely something neither side would be willing to risk. But on a number of occasions during the 20th Century, the world came perilously close to such a disaster - notably the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 when the USSR positioned nukes in Cuba and NATO's Able Archer war game of 1983, which the Soviets mistook for a real attack and readied their nuclear arsenals to strike back. Is MAD still relevant today? Anti-nuclear campaigners argue that more nuclear-armed states make for a more dangerous world, while rising global tensions increase the risk of deliberate or accidental use. And there's little sign that the world's largest nuclear powers are interested in changing course. President Vladimir Putin formally announced a revision of the Russian nuclear doctrine last year, lowering the threshold for a nuclear strike. Under President Xi Jinping, China has rapidly expanded its nuclear arsenal, while the US continues to pour money into the modernisation of its nuclear programme. "The era of reductions in the number of nuclear weapons in the world, which had lasted since the end of the Cold War, is coming to an end," according to Hans Kristensen, Stockholm International Peace Research. "Instead, we see a clear trend of growing nuclear arsenals, sharpened nuclear rhetoric and the abandonment of arms control agreements." Technological advancements have also dramatically increased the potency of modern atomic bombs. The United States, for example, is building a new bomb designed to be 24 times more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima. At the centre of the UN exhibition stands a charred and mottled statue of St Agnes holding a lamb. It was found face down in the ruins of a Roman Catholic Cathedral in Nagasaki.