It’s no good Elmer, he says we can’t go looking for it until after the war |
How a free Ireland helped the old enemy
Ireland may have stayed out of World War II, but its men and women flocked to the war effort, writes Peter Berresford Ellis
That Neutral Island: A Cultural History of Ireland During the Second World War, Clair Wills, Faber and Faber, £25.00 order this book
OF all the European states that remained neutral in the Second World War none was more controversial than Ireland, according to Professor Wills in her new study of the period.
Most Norwegians would differ, for neutral Sweden even allowed German troops and weapons transit to Norway in 1943.
So why is it that, compared to Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Turkey – actively trading and supplying war materials to keep the Nazi armaments effort in production – it is Irish neutrality that is the subject of controversy and criticism?
What was expected of Ireland, emerging less than 20 years before from a vicious war of independence with England, with vivid memories of the atrocities of the ‘Black and Tans’, shootings of their elected representatives, the terror burning of cities, towns and villages by British troops, such as Cork, Mallow, Balbriggan, and with reprisal assassinations and judicial executions?
Could most of the Irish population in the 1930s really be persuaded there was a difference between the two belligerents?
Had Ireland, as a state, rushed blithely to war on what was then perceived to be England’s side, there would have been an immediate and bloody renewal of the civil war which had followed the war of independence, which ended only 16 years before.
In realpolitik terms let us also remember, as British Cabinet papers now reveal, the British government was seriously talking of making peace with Germany anyway following the collapse of the British Army in France.
And what if Ireland had declared war on Germany? Under the Treaty of 1922 it had not been allowed to develop a navy to protect its home waters.
In 1939 it had been restricted by the UK Government to a defence force of 7,600 regulars, and could only call on its ‘A’ and ‘B’ reserve force of 4,300 men.
The restrictions on building an army of any size had been forbidden under the terms of the Treaty with London so that no Irish Army could ever outnumber the British garrison in Northern Ireland – a clause insisted by Britain for obvious reasons. How, then, was this small country to defend itself with only eight aircraft, four anti-aircraft guns, four searchlights and six armoured cars?
The only answer would have been to allow the British Army – or such few troops as could be spared in 1940 – to return to Irish sovereign territory 16 years after being forced to quit it.
But in spite of official Irish neutrality, as historians are now discovering from the opening records, as the war progressed, Irish neutrality was of crucial importance in securing an Allied victory. I am afraid, this book does not make these facts clear.
For example, Richard Hayes, the Director of the National Library, comes in for criticism in this book for his role as Irish Film Censor.
Strangely enough, there is no mention that Hayes, a fluent German speaker and code expert, was also an officer in G2, the Irish intelligence service. He was able to crack the German spy codes.
Irish President Eamonn De Valéra then allowed this information to be shared with British military intelligence and together both services were able to spy on the German Legation in Dublin, not only picking up vital information but feeding the Nazi war machine false information.
Irish volunteers were also allowed to pass freely to also the UK to enlist in the Allied war effort, both military and civil.
Nearly 10,000 volunteers from the Free State had enlisted in the RAF alone in 1940. Many became fighter pilots and Churchill, in 1940, proposed a ‘Shamrock Wing’ in the same form as the American Eagle Squadron, or the Czech or Polish squadrons. An Irish Brigade of the British Army was formed and designated as such in War Office records but referred to in public communiqués as the 58th Division.
Volunteers from the Free State won more decorations for valour in the Allied forces than many officially belligerent nations.
In the British Army alone 780 decorations for valour were won including eight VCs. This is not counting Northern Ireland, for these figures were from people with addresses in the Free State and do not include those who volunteered but gave addresses in England, Scotland or Wales.
Trying to find such information, I found Professor Clair Wills’ 502 page tome, curiously disappointing.
It tends more to the folklore than history. I had been hoping that it would expand and put into perspective the excellent work done by Dr Mark Hull (Irish Secrets: German Espionage in Wartime Ireland1939-1945 (2003)). It seems to support the myth-making side, giving space to the bitter propaganda claims of Nicholas Monsarrat to the extent that one looks for the references to U-boats refuelling in Irish ports and an SS Panzer Division hiding in the Wicklow Mountains and other absurd ideas.
There is an entire chapter on ‘War At Sea’ and curiously no mention of the ships and men of the Irish Merchant Marine, proceeding under neural flags, who were killed, their ships sunk and not only by the German forces.
I was also surprised that there is no mention of the Irish historian, novelist and playwright, Dorothy Macardle. Famed for writing the standard work on the 1916-23 War of Independence she was a member of the first National Executive of Fianna Fail.
She became an active anti-Fascist in 1935 and covered the last years of the League of Nations for the Irish Press.
She argued with de Valéra over neutrality and during 1939-45 based herself in London working for the Allied war effort.
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