The contacts prior to 1940 had expressed an intent by the IRA to assist in the German campaign against Britain. From the IRA's point of view, that was a means to a united Ireland – they had no love for the policies of Éamon de Valera, Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler, or Joseph Stalin. The 1938 takeover by Russell, and a reaffirmation of the "Second Dáil mentality" with his succession, placed the organisation on a path from which it viewed its only recourse as "violent struggle against the forces of foreign occupation". Certainly they wished for the defeat of Britain, which they viewed as the perennial oppressor and persecutor of their nation. The Abwehr, as it did in other nations, made much of encouraging that state of mind within the IRA. That included attempts, via German agents, to keep alive the tenuous links, formed mostly by O'Donovan.