By that stage of events, each IRA Chief of Staff., from 1937 onwards, had been involved in liaisons with the Germans to one degree or another. Those liaisons were to continue into the tenure of Stephen Hayes and his overture to Nazi Germany via "Plan Kathleen" in 1940. Once Hayes was exposed as a traitor to the IRA, there was a power shift within the organisation, which led to the futile Northern Campaign in 1942. The IRA's Northern Command was briefed on the previous liaisons with the Germans but they appear not to have grasped how fragile and scant they were. That power shift, the restrictions imposed on the IRA during "The Emergency", and the change in fortunes for the German forces in World War II, effectively ended the liaison between the IRA and Abwehr. The Abwehr kept attempting to conduct operations in Ireland, but the majority of those operations were stillborn and never took place, or were total fiascos. However, those attempts were made without the knowledge of the IRA. Whether the organisation was in a position to assist with the planned operations is open to debate, but it is widely assumed that it was not. It was demoralised and militarily moribund, and even the ability to gather fruitful intelligence was gone.