Was our neutrality during WWII a folly?

indioblack

Fratton Fred wrote: »

Not touchy Seanchai, just looking for you to get your facts straight. Rather than sing about it, many British people got off their arses and fought in the international brigades. There are also many books on the British Blockade runers as well.


Not that there's muich chance of that. Only you could bring the Boer war into a thread about Ireland and WWII.

Well, at least he didn't forget to mention it this time. India's next.
Don't know much about Franco except that he had a better moustache than Hitler.

jjn2

kentreaper wrote: »

Remember?

Yes, and what's your point? You first claimed that Ireland should have joined the War to protect the weak from fascism (along with your bizarre claim that Ireland left WWI to the British). I then pointed out that Britain was motivated by self interest, and that claims of concern for weak nations were absurd given their treatment of other weak nations. You then brought up the irrelevant point of the Falklands, along with the remarkable claim (which you have since withdrawn), that Britain's involvement in the Falklands War was not motivated by self interest.

kentreaper

Read into it what you want to, old chap.

And try better choices of words!

Pacify was a bad error....

Farewell.

jjn2

kentreaper wrote: »

Read into it what you want to, old chap.

And try better choices of words!

Pacify was a bad error....

Farewell.

Not that I want to waste your time or my time debating the meaning of the word pacify, but it's fairly common to talk about pacifying a threat, and in this sense, what I said is obviously accurate.

indioblack

jjn2 wrote: »

Yes, and what's your point? You first claimed that Ireland should have joined the War to protect the weak from fascism (along with your bizarre claim that Ireland left WWI to the British). I then pointed out that Britain was motivated by self interest, and that claims of concern for weak nations were absurd given their treatment of other weak nations. You then brought up the irrelevant point of the Falklands, along with the remarkable claim (which you have since withdrawn), that Britain's involvement in the Falklands War was not motivated by self interest.

In a perfect world, in a perfect war, (if such can ever be), you'd have goodies and baddies and you can choose which side to be on.
Come to think of it, in a perfect world you'd have no war.
WW2 was an imperfect war fought by imperfect nations following more than one strand of policy at the same time.
Mr Hitler was generally regarded as not good news - and his regime, along with the other axis powers, was stopped by countries which were certainly less that perfect in the past, during the war, and afterwards.
Self interest? It would be very hard, if not impossible, to find any nation, individual or any living thing without self interest at it's core.
The British offered active opposition to the third Reich during the war - that didn't make them shining knights afterwards.
The world had changed - you couldn't shout at the natives anymore.
The war is viewed a little cooler with the distance of time.
Equally, you can overdue the self-flagellation.
There have been earlier posts about the threat of invasion in 1940 and the battle of Britain.
Hitler was regarded as a menace, for obvious reasons. At this stage of the war he appeared unstoppable. His plans for an expected invasion were thwarted. The importance of that aerial contest lay in it's timing.
Hitler's "luck", his hunches had failed him. He was visibly stopped, apparently for the first time.
And so that I don't fall off my soap-box, there is a story - I believe it's true - of a former battle of Britain pilot who decades later liked to walk around in a dress.
Life isn't perfect.

indioblack

jjn2 wrote: »

Not that I want to waste your time or my time debating the meaning of the word pacify, but it's fairly common to talk about pacifying a threat, and in this sense, what I said is obviously accurate.

When Hitler move his attention eastwards he turned his back on a reasonably large island with a large population, a not insignificant industrial base, - capable of raising military forces that could, potentially, threaten him.
Oh, and they wanted him to give up his day job as Chancellor.

foxcat

To allay the anger or agitation of/to restore to a tranquil state

Other meanings of the word pacify

Hardly what Germany was doing to Britain in the last World War - by bombing, air raids and the launching of doodlebugs

:pac:

Feisar

namloc1980 wrote: »

We weren't alone during WW2, Portugal was also officially neutral but in reality it helped the Allies much like Ireland (although much of our assistance was kept secret). The only truly embarrassing episode of Ireland's "neutrality" during WW2 was Eamon De Valera and Douglas Hyde going to the German Embassy to express condolences on Hitler's death.

While embarrassing, it was of little note in the grand scheme of things. "An ounce of help is worth a pound of pity". Ireland gave the Allies an ounce of help and gave the Germans a load of pity. I always wondered at the "think tank" that went on behind that move. Was it a statement of our independence from England more than anything else?
Plus were the horrors of the concentration camps known at the time?

foxcat

Feisar wrote: »

Was it a statement of our independence from England more than anything else?
Plus were the horrors of the concentration camps known at the time?

Yes. And No.

But, after the war is what concerns me. Albert Folens (Educational Books), a convicted friend of the Gestapo was welcomed with open arms - with many more.

While, Ben Briscoe's Jewish relatives/friends appear to have been somewhat unwelcome in christian Ireland.

Neutrality is one thing - but post-war Ireland is another; should neutral countries accept all refugees - none or some?

And what criteria was used in Ireland - was it biased in any way?

Capt'n Midnight

kentreaper wrote: »

Well, that's very good of you!
It just didn't matter that 6m Jews were being killed?

It just didn't matter that nearly 6m Poles were killed
or 6.8 million Ukrainian Civilians
or 13.9 million Russian Civilians
or up to 23 million Chinese Civilians ( and ~ 7m other civilians from other South East Asian Countries )

The number of Russian prisoners of war murdered by the Germans between June '41 and Jan '42 probably exceeds the number of non-Polish Jews killed.

While the extent of some massacres weren't known till later, it was known that they were occurring, just like we know that bad things were going on in Yugoslavia recently.


Lots of civilians were killed during the war. The Allied bombing campaign was killing lots of French and German civilians not to mention the deprivations caused by food shortages and medicines caused by blockades.

Had we signed up for war than there would have been some loss of life here. But the financial and social costs of putting this country in a war state would have been enormous. We'd have to impose even stricter rationing and conscription and higher taxes and blackouts and divert far more resources to the armed forces. Not the sort of thing that would encourage re-election.

Also in the great Irish tradition of an Irish solution to an Irish problem, we allowed people to go to the UK to sign up and work in the arms factories and send money home.


There was no advantage to us in sticking our head up above the parapet relative to the risks involved.

dpe

Feisar wrote: »

While embarrassing, it was of little note in the grand scheme of things. "An ounce of help is worth a pound of pity". Ireland gave the Allies an ounce of help and gave the Germans a load of pity. I always wondered at the "think tank" that went on behind that move. Was it a statement of our independence from England more than anything else?
Plus were the horrors of the concentration camps known at the time?

There's quite a bit of evidence that the British and Americans both knew what was going on in the camps from a fairly early stage (up to and including the death camps). However, that isn't to say they would have shared that info outside of their own intelligence communities. There's an argument they could have used such evidence for their own propaganda, but in reality joe public in the US and UK didn't really care about the fate of European Jews anyway until Tommies and GIs who'd opened up the camps started telling their stories first hand and people were faced with the photographic evidence up front.

foxcat

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

There was no advantage to us in sticking our head up above the parapet relative to the risks involved.

'All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing'


So said Ned Burke.

Ok, there was no 'advantage to us' - but does that make it right?

Capt'n Midnight

kowloon wrote: »

Had the Western Allies realized quite how screwed the Germans were for fuel, and how effective they were bombing it the war could have ended with fewer lives lost. Speer did an excellent job at dispersing German industry as much as possible to combat the bombing but oil refineries and synthetic fuel plants are big by nature and don't lend themselves to being spread out. That actually made them more lucrative targets in the eyes of the Allies.

The ball bearing strategy nearly worked because the Germans dismantled foreign factories rather than leaving them intact. Had they left them in place or had they set them up in Germany then the ball bearing strategy would not have worked.

Compare this to the way Russians were able to move stuff East of the Urals.

Bombing the oil refineries wasn't such a success as the shortage of oil meant that most refineries had lots of spare capacity so rerouteing some pipes could get them back on line fairly quickly unless attacked over and over again.

It's the troops on the ground that win the war though and the Soviets paid the biggest proportion of the blood price. The strategic bombing played its part though, the lend-lease that the Soviets downplayed after the war didn't hurt either.

Gotta agree there. One statistic is that US infantry in WWII had the highest casualty rates of any of the US forces , roughly the same rate as WWI. Look at Afghanistan / Iraq , it's still grunts on the ground.

Capt'n Midnight

foxcat wrote: »

'All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing'


So said Ned Burke.

Ok, there was no 'advantage to us' - but does that make it right?

What was our involvement in DRC ?

What did we do during the Yugoslavian wars ?

We did not recognise the puppet government that the Vietnamese imposed in Cambodia, we recognised Democratic Kampuchea instead.


Then again we provide a few UN peacekeepers.

kentreaper

Yes, we are members of the UN, now a largely impotent body.

In real terms, the US is the world's policeman - the counry to which those threatened will mostly turn to first.

Dyr

foxcat wrote: »

'All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing'


So said Ned Burke.

Ok, there was no 'advantage to us' - but does that make it right?

Firstly Burke didn't say that and secondly c**ts like churchill don't fall under the classification of "good men":)

it's hilarious that Irish people are insecure enough to moan about doing the "right thing" when it comes to international politics. Do you seriously think any country in europe does the "right thing" when it would be detrimental to their national security?

Capt'n Midnight

Wibbs wrote: »

The allied bombing strategy as far as disrupting German industry goes was remarkably ineffective.

If the Blitz didn't break Londoners and instead made them supportive of the war effort what the likes of Butcher Harris think it would work ?

Probably the main benefit of allied bombing was against the V1 and V2. Then again the resources expended by the Germans on the V1 ( huge impact on the potato crop for the alcohol during a food shortage and they cost the same as a fighter aircraft ) meant that it would have been better to let the Germans continue to make them and attack the launch sites than destroy the complete infrastructure.

Where the Brits did make a huge difference was with the cracking of the German enigma codes, with a large sideorder of her navies.

Actually it was the Poles who broke enigma. And made machines to do it. The Brits made some refinements and used valves ( it should be noted too that Konrad Zuse independently invented the computer though he declined to use valves )

The Germans were probably as good at breaking the weaker Allied codes so Ultra wasn't the unique advantage that high powered microwave radar was.

Jewish leaders had asked that Auschwitz and others be attacked/bombed and that fell on deaf ears too. In war few come out with clean souls.

It's a shame they didn't attack those railway lines

Would have been even easier to blackmail the Germans. The Western Allies didn't mistreat German prisoners and visa versa. Neither side used chemical weapons. An accommodation could have been reached to evacuate certain groups.

dpe

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

Gotta agree there. One statistic is that US infantry in WWII had the highest casualty rates of any of the US forces , roughly the same rate as WWI. Look at Afghanistan / Iraq , it's still grunts on the ground.

Actually not true. The biggest percentage casualty rate was actually the Merchant Marine (3.9% dead), then the USMC (3.66%). The army was 2.8% and the Army Air Corps 2.5% (although the casualty rate in the airforce is highly skewed for flyers v groundcrew obviously). Of course US percentage casualties were the lowest of all the combatants (including the British - 5.2%) by quite a distance. (Axis troops and the Russians were all 25% plus).

So for those who say Ireland's involvement would have had no effect; well it might have brought down the number of dead US sailors if nothing else.

foxcat

Bambi wrote: »

Firstly Burke didn't say that and secondly c**ts like churchill don't fall under the classification of "good men":)

Correct on the first point, but semantics.

Wrong on the second. Churchill has won the highest award from the best part of 100 countries; I was in his house, again, yesterday. Chartwell.

No other person has equalled the amount of honours bestowed on him; they were all wrong, were they?

Gwan, get out yer google!

kentreaper

Churchill was a great man - and he was the one who predicted Hitler's rise and was highly instrumental in his fall.

He was the first person to become and Honarary Citizen of the US and won the Nobel Prize (for literature).

Few countries did not award him in some way. Ireland was probably an exception?

ejmaztec

kentreaper wrote: »

Churchill was a great man - and he was the one who predicted Hitler's rise and was highly instrumental in his fall.

He was the first person to become and Honarary Citizen of the US and won the Nobel Prize (for literature).

Few countries did not award him in some way. Ireland was probably an exception?

I'm not surprised at this, as he handed them the UK's family gold, silver, jewels, and anything else that wasn't bolted down.

Fratton Fred

The Polish broke the original codes prior to wwii but the Kreigsmarine used a far more complex system.

kentreaper

ejmaztec wrote: »

I'm not surprised at this, as he handed them the UK's family gold, silver, jewels, and anything else that wasn't bolted down.

Could you be even vaguely specific, tec?

asherbassad

getzls wrote: »

Surely this is a cowards excuse?

Irelands shame.

Shame? Where's the shame in staying out of a scrap between industrialised powers who want to slug it out over control of Europe's and Asia's and Africa's resources?
Like all wars it was another banking and power grab to enrich industrialists many of whom were on opposite sides but were in reality working together. George Bush's grandfather, Prescott Bush was providing oil and steel to the Nazis via Fritz Thyssien. That very steel was going into guns used to shoot American and British soldiers.

Now that, my friend, is shameful but hardly surprising.

ejmaztec

kentreaper wrote: »

Could you be even vaguely specific, tec?

.. access to the UK's secrets, leases on military bases worldwide, gold bullion reserves held in South Africa (the Americans even tailed the ship that was going to pick up the gold, just in case the British changed their minds). I think they even replaced Sterling with the US Dollar as the prime world currency. The Americans were also given any property that was owned by the UK in the US.

On top of that, they made a good killing on lend-lease.

Churchill let them bleed the UK dry, then some.

dpe

kentreaper wrote: »

Could you be even vaguely specific, tec?

He was forced to. The terms of Lend/Lease were actually incredibly harsh. Before the British got anything they had to hand over their entire gold reserves (they'd been sent to South Africa for safe keeping at the outbreak of war) and the Americans got to buy up the American arms of a lot of British companies (like Shell) at rock bottom prices which they then sold on at a massive profit. Lend/Lease was not American altruism in action; and the weapons they did give to Britain prior to 1942 were pretty crap in the main; the old WWI destroyers had to be pretty much rebuilt by the British, the P-40s and other planes they gave were generally inferior to their British equivalents and the Stuart (Lee) tanks were crap compared to the Panzer III/IVs they met in Africa. Unfortunately, since the British had left most of their kit in France, it was better than nothing.

Capt'n Midnight

Sulla Felix wrote: »

I think so. We would have contrivutfed fsck all, but its the principle of the thiknh. Nazism needed to be opposed.

Look at the list of countries who joined up once the writing was on the wall.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allies_of_World_War_II#After_the_Declaration_by_United_Nations

Capt'n Midnight

jugger0 wrote: »

We were right to stay out of it, but if we did enter then i hope it would be to reclaim the rest of our Island from foreign invaders.

Churchill offered the North if we joined in, then again he offered the French national unity with the UK if they didn't surrender. These offers were during the period when the outlook for the UK wasn't certain. And of course one has to remember that the Poles got very little support when they were invaded.

Dyr

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

And of course one has to remember that the Poles got very little support when they were invaded.

And then were royally shafted by winnie after the war despite all the fighting they did for him.

Seanchai

kentreaper wrote: »

Churchill was a great man.... Few countries did not award him in some way. Ireland was probably an exception?

Just checking but is this Churchill chap the lad who as Secretary of State for War during the Irish War of Independence proposed the creation of a paramilitary force known as the Auxiliary Division of the RIC, those charming chaps who paid that visit to Croke Park on Bloody Sunday 1920? Is this also the same Winston Churchill who advocated a shoot-to-kill policy against all Irish people who refused to stay in their homes after the curfew the British imposed during martial law in the same war?

It's absolutely shocking that the Irish don't have a national day of commemoration for this great humanitarian who hadn't a racist, imperialist, mass murdering bone in his body.



The above events in Ireland would have occurred within two years of the same Winston Churchill writing that infamous letter advocating the gassing of, and I quote, "barbarous tribes", otherwise known as the Kurds in Iraq. The Kurds were, indeed, subsequently gassed by Britain's RAF.