Nazi Government and I.R.A.

Scoondal

The I.R.A. had a continuing contact with Nazi Germany from the mid 1930s until D-Day.
Before the war, the I.R.A. killed five civilians and wounded seventy in Coventry one week before war was declared.
Tom Barry was very keen about his stay in Berlin in the late 1930s.

Ash.J.Williams

Scoondal wrote: »

The I.R.A. had a continuing contact with Nazi Germany from the mid 1930s until D-Day.
Before the war, the I.R.A. killed five civilians and wounded seventy in Coventry one week before war was declared.
Tom Barry was very keen about his stay in Berlin in the late 1930s.

You’ve said nothing

Manach

As per the forum charter there is a need to provide some primary or secondary sources when discussing potenitally contentious historical topics. Thus the original post is rather light on these. If the OP could provide a more focused evidenced post?. - Mod

Scoondal

Okay. I assumed my general knowledge was generally known. I will respond with sources when I find them

con747

Scoondal wrote: »

The I.R.A. had a continuing contact with Nazi Germany from the mid 1930s until D-Day.
Before the war, the I.R.A. killed five civilians and wounded seventy in Coventry one week before war was declared.
Tom Barry was very keen about his stay in Berlin in the late 1930s.

Here you go, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Republican_Army–Abwehr_collaboration. So whats going to be next, the I.R.A and Sinn Fein lured Jesus to his death?. You know when people are scared when this is what they resort to.

dePeatrick

Scoondal wrote: »

The I.R.A. had a continuing contact with Nazi Germany from the mid 1930s until D-Day.
Before the war, the I.R.A. killed five civilians and wounded seventy in Coventry one week before war was declared.
Tom Barry was very keen about his stay in Berlin in the late 1930s.

No link at all? Trolling much?

Peregrinus

Scoondal wrote: »

Okay. I assumed my general knowledge was generally known. I will respond with sources when I find them

Might also be helpful to say something about what you're posting. Posting facts that you assume to be already generally known, with no comment or analysis, is pretty odd behaviour.

"The Irish Parliamentary Party worked closely with the Liberal Party in the later decades of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th. This alliance was tested when the Irish Party split over Parnell, but resumed when the party regrouped around Redmond."

con747

Scoondal wrote: »

The I.R.A. had a continuing contact with Nazi Germany from the mid 1930s until D-Day.
Before the war, the I.R.A. killed five civilians and wounded seventy in Coventry one week before war was declared.
Tom Barry was very keen about his stay in Berlin in the late 1930s.

Here is some more for you, "While IRA chief-of-staff during 1937 Barry made clear his opposition to the proposed bombing campaign in Britain and explicitly condemned the proponents of this campaign’s courting of Nazi support. Finally, Barry certainly remained strongly republican all his life but he was both openly and privately critical of the Provisional IRA. He felt that an Ireland ‘free and overflowing with milk and honey’ would not have been worth the cost of the Birmingham bombing of 1974. In 1976 he refused to sign a letter of support for republican prisoners, arguing that the Provisional IRA had lost support because of its own recent activities, activities that he as an old IRA man could not countenance. The correspondence is undated but I suspect it was written in the aftermath of the Kingsmills killings of January that year.". Now do your own research.

VG31

dePeatrick wrote: »

No link at all? Trolling much?

I've read a number of books on Ireland during WWII and Abwehr-IRA links.

The IRA bombed Coventry just before WWII started as part of their S-Plan bombing campaign in Britain.

Contact between the IRA and the Abwehr mostly ceased after 1942 primarily due to plans to invade Britain having been abandoned, and also due to the Abwehr discovering that the IRA were of no help.

Suckit

OP most likely read this the other day, and is wetting himself https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8008611/PETER-HITCHENS-let-IRA-gangsters-Ireland-did.html

con747

Two threads have opened up linking Sinn Fein to Nazi Germany tonight, coincidence?

Suckit

con747 wrote: »

Two threads have opened up linking Sinn Fein to Nazi Germany tonight, coincidence?

Three. One in 'expand your horizons' too.

Scoondal

Suckit wrote: »

Three. One in 'expand your horizons' too.

Can you respond to the thread question ? Don't go off subject.

con747

Scoondal wrote: »

Can you respond to the thread question ? Don't go off subject.

I see your resurrecting both of your Nazi threads tonight.

Suckit

Scoondal wrote: »

Can you respond to the thread question ? Don't go off subject.

What question? There is no question. Just an effort of a thread.

olestoepoke

Wasn't that around the time of the facist blue shirts that later became FG. Just saying.

con747

Suckit wrote: »

What question? There is no question. Just an effort of a thread.

Very bad effort on both the resurrected threads. Ignore and might go away for a few more weeks.

Peregrinus

olestoepoke wrote: »

Wasn't that around the time of the facist blue shirts that later became FG. Just saying.

You mean, "wasn't that around the time of the Fascist blueshirts that FG later absorbed and effectively buried, so they never troubled anyone again and Irish democracy survived the 1930s"?

No, it was a bit after that. The Blueshirts were absorbed into FG in 1933 and had been broken up, and their former leadership neutralised, by the end of 1934. The IRA didn's start flirting with the Nazis until about 1938.

olestoepoke

Peregrinus wrote: »

You mean, "wasn't that around the time of the Fascist blueshirts that FG later absorbed and effectively buried, so they never troubled anyone again and Irish democracy survived the 1930s"?

No, it was a bit after that. The Blueshirts were absorbed into FG in 1933 and had been broken up, and their former leadership neutralised, by the end of 1934. The IRA didn's start flirting with the Nazis until about 1938.

They still represent the same class of people that the blue shirts did they are by far the richest party with their 50 TDs having a combined wealth of €80 million. When confronted with a housing crisis they will protect the landlord class and subsidise developers. In an economic crisis they will bail out their own class and punish single parents, workers, and the most vulnerable with austerity. In the 1930s they were prepared to flirt with fascism to defend their class privilege. Today, they have adopted the cloak of liberalism to maintain power. The lesson from the shady history of Fine Gael is simple; never trust them.

olestoepoke

You mean, "wasn't that around the time of the Fascist blueshirts that FG later absorbed and effectively buried, so they never troubled anyone again and Irish democracy survived the 1930s"?

No, it was a bit after that. The Blueshirts were absorbed into FG in 1933 and had been broken up, and their former leadership neutralised, by the end of 1934. The IRA didn's start flirting with the Nazis until about 1938.[/QUOTE]
Screen Shot 2020-03-04 at 07.09.55.png

Peregrinus

olestoepoke wrote: »

They still represent the same class of people that the blue shirts did they are by far the richest party with their 50 TDs having a combined wealth of €80 million. When confronted with a housing crisis they will protect the landlord class and subsidise developers. In an economic crisis they will bail out their own class and punish single parents, workers, and the most vulnerable with austerity. In the 1930s they were prepared to flirt with fascism to defend their class privilege. Today, they have adopted the cloak of liberalism to maintain power. The lesson from the shady history of Fine Gael is simple; never trust them.

You're under the impression that the Blueshirts represented wealthy people?

Ascendant

Suckit wrote: »

What question? There is no question. Just an effort of a thread.

One possible question is what would have happened had Seán Russell had had his way and Britain lost the War. Would Hitler have allowed an independent (presumably united) Ireland to remain as such? Would Dev twisted in the wind and maintained Irish neutrality as before?

bullpost

Scoondal wrote: »

The I.R.A. had a continuing contact with Nazi Germany from the mid 1930s until D-Day.
Before the war, the I.R.A. killed five civilians and wounded seventy in Coventry one week before war was declared.
Tom Barry was very keen about his stay in Berlin in the late 1930s.

Its common knowledge that Tom Barry was a fashionista and was really there to check out the latest Hugo Boss military uniforms worn by the SS.

Peregrinus

Ascendant wrote: »

One possible question is what would have happened had Seán Russell had had his way and Britain lost the War. Would Hitler have allowed an independent (presumably united) Ireland to remain as such? Would Dev twisted in the wind and maintained Irish neutrality as before?

I seem to recall that the Nazi plans for the government of occupied Britain, drawn up when they contemplated an invasion in 1940, are known to have identified six regional centres for the military occupation government, one of which was Dublin. I think that tells you all you need to know about how much they intended to respect Irish independence or Irish neutrality.

It's possible that there would have been a notionally separate Irish puppet state, but if so the Germans certainly thought of that and the corresponding British puppet state as a single unit, so far as German occupation/control was concerned. The truth is that whether there would be one puppet state or more than one is probably not a question to which they had given a great deal of thought.

Given all this, the question of what policy De Valera would have adopted seems to be moot. Nevertheless I think it worth pointing out that the question is oddly framed. If De Valera had sought to maintain Irish neutrality, how would this be "twisting in the wind"? Maintaining a policy of neutrality consistently with respect to both major belligerents seems to be pretty much the opposite of twisting in the wind.

Ascendant

Peregrinus wrote: »

Given all this, the question of what policy De Valera would have adopted seems to be moot. Nevertheless I think it worth pointing out that the question is oddly framed. If De Valera had sought to maintain Irish neutrality, how would this be "twisting in the wind"? Maintaining a policy of neutrality consistently with respect to both major belligerents seems to be pretty much the opposite of twisting in the wind.

Well, neutral officially but leaning heavily towards one side at the expense of the other:

Éire allowed British airmen who crashed on its territory to return home, but German pilots were interned

In 1941 fire crews from Drogheda and Dundalk helped when Belfast was blitzed by the Luftwaffe

The RAF was allowed to fly over the Donegal Air Corridor in order to patrol the Western Approaches during the Battle of the Atlantic, saving British planes a 100-mile detour

In 1941 de Valera banned the German Ambassador, Dr Hempel, from using his radio to contact the Third Reich and in 1943 he confiscated the radio, thereby limiting the Ambassador's ability to communicate Allied manoeuvres to Berlin

Weather reports were secretly transmitted to the Allies, and proved very valuable during the D-day landings in June 1944

In February 1945 de Valera gave permission for the British to establish secret radar bases in Éire

After all, no way was Dev stupid enough to think you could be completely quote-neutral-unquote when you're squeezed between two combatant countries on the same side, as in the UK and US.

Would Dev have tried the same deal with the Nazis in the event of a swastika flying over Downing Street or would he insisted on an actual not-helping-one-side-not-helping-the-other policy this time? Hitler may have tolerated it, assuming he still had troops tied up in Russia or elsewhere.

Peregrinus

Ascendant wrote: »

Well, neutral officially but leaning heavily towards one side at the expense of the other:
After all, no way was Dev stupid enough to think you could be completely quote-neutral-unquote when you're squeezed between two combatant countries on the same side, as in the UK and US.

Would Dev have tried the same deal with the Nazis in the event of a swastika flying over Downing Street or would he insisted on an actual not-helping-one-side-not-helping-the-other policy this time? Hitler may have tolerated it, assuming he still had troops tied up in Russia or elsewhere.

If Germany had successfully invaded and occupied the UK in 1940 (but not Ireland, so Dev was still in a position to make any decisions) the war would have been over - neither the US nor the USSR nor Japan were belligerents at the time, and France had already been defeated. It's hard to see who would have continued fighting. So there would have been no conflict for Dev to be neutral in.

simongurnick

History always sides with the victors. Not going to try to justify the nazi's by any means but the allies dropped the atomic bombs. IRA were right to seize on any potential opportunity. In previous years casement met the germans but they determined the IRA as too disorganized to rely on
.

BalcombeSt4

Yeah, David Llyod George had a great time in Berlin in the 1930's as well, so great he wrote an article on his return to Britain calling Hitler the greatest German who ever lived.

Neville Chamberlain went to Munich in the 1930's to cut up Czechoslovakia & hand it to Hitler on a plate.

Yes, the IRA bombed Coventry in 1939 & killed 5 people. The Glenanne Gang bombed Dublin & Monaghan in May 1974 & killed 34 people.

History taking out of context & spun around means nothing.

BalcombeSt4

Peregrinus wrote: »

If Germany had successfully invaded and occupied the UK in 1940 (but not Ireland, so Dev was still in a position to make any decisions) the war would have been over - neither the US nor the USSR nor Japan were belligerents at the time, and France had already been defeated. It's hard to see who would have continued fighting. So there would have been no conflict for Dev to be neutral in.

But the war have had to resume at some point if Hitler wanted to take the "living space" the USSR had in East, and to take control of the oil fields in the Caucasus.

Scoondal

The IRA's links with Nazi Germany
Recently released MI5 files, together with unpublished memoirs by the IRA’s top emissary to pre-war Berlin, shed fresh light on the hitherto covert links between extreme republicans and German military intelligence, as David O’Donoghue reports.


The first direct talks between the IRA and the Nazis began in 1937 when Tom Barry, the then chief-of-staff, travelled to Germany. The legendary leader of the Cork flying columns was accompanied on his travels by a German agent, Jupp Hoven. While posing as a TCD student, Hoven undertook spying work in Belfast, Dublin and Cork. He was a close friend of Helmut Clissmann who ran the German academic exchange service in Dublin. Both men were from Aachen and had nurtured links with the IRA in the 1930s.

Barry’s 1937 trip to the continent was aimed at seeking German support for IRA attacks on British military installations in Northern Ireland. But at an IRA convention in April 1938, Barry’s plan was rejected in favour of more grandiose pro-German plans conceived by the new chief-of-staff, Seán Russell. The 1916 veteran had long cherished a Casement-style alliance with Germany.

James O’Donovan and the S-plan



In August 1938, Russell called on an old IRA comrade, James O’Donovan who, since 1930, had been working as a manager at ESB headquarters in Dublin. The IRA leader’s visit was to enlist his friend’s help in designing a bombing campaign on English soil, to be launched the following year. Russell and O’Donovan were the only two surviving members of the IRA general headquarters staff who had opposed the Anglo-Irish treaty in January 1922. Despite being on the state payroll and having a young family, O’Donovan did not hesitate to accept Russell’s call to arms. In his unpublished memoirs (written in retirement in the 1960s), O’Donovan boasted that while Russell

‘became responsible for personnel, organisation and finance…I evolved the whole details of the sabotage campaign [the S-plan]…conducted the entire training of cadre units, was responsible for all but locally-derived intelligence, carried out small pieces of research and, in general, controlled the whole explosives and munitions end.’


O’Donovan’s elder son, Donal, had misgivings about his father’s decision to re-enlist with the IRA in 1938, at the age of 41. But James O’Donovan himself never expressed any regrets about his role in the English bombing campaign, which resulted in the deaths of seven members of the public, scores of serious injuries, and the execution of two IRA volunteers in February 1940.


The IRA declares war
The S-plan kicked off with polite formality, as might be expected from an ex-pupil of the Jesuits (O’Donovan was born in Roscommon in 1896 and educated at Glasgow’s prestigious St Aloysius College). In mid-January 1939, the British foreign secretary, Lord Halifax, received an IRA letter declaring war, which began ‘Your Excellency…’. It was typical of O’Donovan to issue a deadly threat cloaked in formal terms.


The ultimatum gave the British government four days to withdraw troops from Northern Ireland—an impossible deadline to meet. In fact, however, the S-plan had nothing to do with forcing a British withdrawal from the North, and everything to do with attracting the attention of the Germans. Russell saw Hitler as the only European leader capable of destroying Britain. His logic was that with England on her knees, nothing could prevent a German-backed reunification of Ireland.


Abwehr makes contact; O’Donovan dispatched to Germany

As a wave of IRA bombs exploded across English cities on 16 January 1939, it didn’t take the Abwehr long to act. In early February, it dispatched one of its agents, Oscar Pfaus, to Dublin to meet the IRA leadership. O’Donovan recalled that on 3 February the German agent ‘met Seán Russell and myself in Pete’s [Kearney] house in Clontarf. He explained that his principals would be glad to meet a representative from us and discuss the possibility of assistance…’


This was an offer the IRA leaders could not refuse. Having been entrusted by Russell to reciprocate Oscar Pfaus’s visit, O’Donovan set off for Hamburg with his wife Monty, a sister of the republican martyr Kevin Barry. The ground-breaking IRA-Abwehr talks continued at various addresses in the city and O’Donovan recalled that ‘we discussed many matters of common interest’. The Abwehr team was led by the head of its Hamburg office, Friedrich Carl Marwede (who used the cover name Pfalzgraf). O’Donovan recalled:


‘I dealt with the whole IRA position as given to me by Seán Russell. I passed on in good faith what events proved to be a very roseate appraisal of their strength in personnel and equipment, and their prospects as an organisation.’


It was agreed that the Germans could summon O’Donovan to Germany by writing to him, in code, at ‘Florenceville’, the ESB manager’s lavish Shankill home set in 1.5 acres of gardens. In addition, the Germans supplied the IRA emissary with radio transmission ciphers, coded letters ‘to convey important elementary messages’ and a list of Abwehr agents’ names and addresses.


But with no immediate prospect of money from Germany to sustain the bombing campaign in England, the IRA decided to send Seán Russell on a fund-raising trip to America where he would liaise with Joe McGarrity, the powerful leader of the Clan na Gael organisation. Stephen Hayes from Wexford was appointed to take over as the new chief-of-staff.


O’Donovan’s second and third visits to Nazi Germany
On 24 April 1939, Jim O’Donovan set off for Hamburg again. Arranging ten days’ holiday from his ESB job, O’Donovan caught the liner New York at Cobh on Monday, 24 April 1939. According to historian J. Bowyer Bell, the visit was ‘to discuss potential agents, the supply of arms in the event of war, radio sets and courier communication. The only firm result was a courier route between Brussels and London using an exiled Breton’. O’Donovan’s memoirs disclose that the Breton was Paul Moyse whom O’Donovan later met (on Sunday 21 May 1939) when he visited the Belgian capital to collect Abwehr radio codes. Meanwhile, the S-plan continued unabated. In May alone, there were over 40 IRA incendiary, tear-gas and bomb attacks in 13 English towns and cities.


O’Donovan’s final visit to Nazi Germany occurred in late summer 1939 when he and his wife boarded the liner Washington in Cobh on Friday 18 August. The ship had sailed from New York and it was hardly a coincidence that the head of Clan na Gael, Joe McGarrity, was also on board. In fact, both men were scheduled to meet senior Abwehr agents in Berlin.


Jim and Monty stayed at the exclusive Rüssischer Hof hotel. O’Donovan initially met with two Abwehr agents called Neumeister and Schwendy. As his memoirs reveal, O’Donovan saw himself as a ‘plenipotentiary’ with ‘plenary powers’ to negotiate with Hitler’s regime on behalf of the ‘government and people of the republic of Ireland’. At a city apartment, they were joined by other Abwehr agents, and O’Donovan noted that their ‘sympathy with my objectives was obvious and sincere’. Later on, Neumeister sounded him out ‘as to England’s probable reactions in the event of war’. For three hours, O’Donovan faced a continual ‘bombardment of questions’ from the German agents whose faces appeared ‘strained and flushed’.


In 1946, Kurt Haller (a German foreign office liaison officer with the Abwehr) told MI5 that at the meetings in Neumeister’s Berlin flat, O’Donovan


‘…again asked for German support for the occupation of Northern Ireland, while Marwede requested concentration, for the time being, on smaller military targets in Northern Ireland and Great Britain. The Germans tried to stall O’Donovan over Northern Ireland, but did not refuse point-blank, nor did O’Donovan altogether refuse IRA participation in attacks on military targets, but no real agreement was reached on this fundamental point. A large part of the discussions dealt with technical details. It transpired that O’Donovan was ordnance officer and QMG [quartermaster general] of the IRA and seemed most interested in obtaining delivery of weapons, ammunition and explosives.’


Three days after returning to Dublin, Jim O’Donovan was able to watch from the safety of his ESB office as the tragic events unfolded in Coventry. On Friday 25 August, an IRA bicycle bomb exploded in the West Midlands city killing five people and injuring 72.


Seán Russell and Frank Ryan
The outbreak of war just over a week later put paid to the seven-point Berlin pact agreed between Jim O’Donovan and Major Marwede. The German arms, ammunition and explosives were never delivered, but money was sent via various agents. Thirteen German agents were sent to Ireland in the 1939-1943 period. The radio link was up and running in October, and the courier service was also used.


A year later, Seán Russell was in Berlin for talks with top members of the Nazi regime. On 4 August 1940, the Abwehr reported that Frank Ryan had arrived in Berlin (having been released from prison in northern Spain shortly before). The following day, unknown to Ryan, a conference was held by foreign minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop, which was attended by Abwehr chief, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, his deputy, Erwin von Lahousen, Edmund Veesenmayer (Ribbentrop’s coup d’état specialist), and Seán Russell representing the IRA. On 7 August, Russell and Ryan were to sail from Wilhelmshaven on a U-boat bound for Ireland. But the mission was called off when Russell died aboard the vessel.

Lahousen told MI5 interrogators in 1946 that ‘Canaris contemptuously referred to Russell as the “music professor”’. Kurt Haller told MI5 that at the Berlin meetings Seán Russell had ‘for the first time…mentioned the potential strength of the IRA (including sympathisers) which he gave as 5,000-10,000 men. This figure was far below German expectations’. According to Haller, ‘the German motive for sending Ryan [to Ireland] was that Russell, throughout his stay in Germany, had shown considerable reticence towards the Germans and plainly did not regard himself as a German agent’. Haller added: ‘By sending Ryan, Abwehr II felt that their own interests would be better safeguarded, as Ryan accepted more easily his position as a German agent’.


Frank Ryan remained on in Germany (until his death in a Dresden sanatorium in 1944) and according to MI5 files, Veesenmayer had already decided to use Ryan as Russell’s successor in 'an auxiliary offensive operation against Great Britain’. Under the German plan, Ryan was

‘to approach the Irish govt. and suggest that the German invasion of Britain would be an opportune moment for the seizure of Northern Ireland…German support [would be] assured, but the Germans would act only after de Valera had committed himself. Ryan had told Veesenmayer that de Valera would support such a plan as this, provided he considered it a legitimate risk to take.’




A post-war MI5 file records that in August 1942, Frank Ryan ‘is said to have been received by Hitler’. But by then Ireland was on Berlin’s back-burner, as the year-old campaign against the USSR was foundering.

While the Nazis saw the IRA as a useful allies should the Wehrmacht invade Britain in 1940, the IRA saw Germany as a stepping stone to a united Ireland. But did Seán Russell, Jim O’Donovan or Frank Ryan ever stop to consider that, had their plan succeeded, the reunited country would amount to nothing more than a puppet state? O’Donovan certainly didn’t, claiming that a victorious Nazi Germany ‘would have been very generous indeed’ to Ireland, which ‘at last would become a place worth living in’.


David O’Donoghue’s The Devil’s Deal: The IRA, Nazi Germany and the Double Life of Jim O’Donovan (2010) was recently published by New Island.

This article originally appeared in History Ireland, March/April 2011 (Vol. 19, No. 2) and is reproduced here with the kind permission of History Ireland.



© Queen's University Belfast 2020, University Road Belfast, B

Scoondal

Sinn Fein are not a socialist party. On Saturday 7 March, Irish Socialists protested in Dublin. Sinn Fein was not involved.

Peregrinus

BalcombeSt4 wrote: »

But the war have had to resume at some point if Hitler wanted to take the "living space" the USSR had in East, and to take control of the oil fields in the Caucasus.

Hard to see that Ireland's neutrality would have been tested in any meaningful way in a war between Germany and the Soviet Union.

tdf7187

Would have thought the Blueshirts were far more invested in the Nazis than Sinn Fein.

tdf7187

Scoondal wrote: »

The I.R.A. had a continuing contact with Nazi Germany from the mid 1930s until D-Day.
Before the war, the I.R.A. killed five civilians and wounded seventy in Coventry one week before war was declared.
Tom Barry was very keen about his stay in Berlin in the late 1930s.

We get it, Sinn Fein will steal your precious bodily fluids something something.


Lefties BAD

Fine Gael GOOD.

Peregrinus

tdf7187 wrote: »

Would have thought the Blueshirts were far more invested in the Nazis than Sinn Fein.

The Blueshirts had a lot of the trappings of Fascism - the shirts, the salutes, the corporate state ideology. Though it has to be said they were much closer to/more influenced by Mussolinin and the Italian Fascists than they ever were by Hitler and the Nazis.

But the IRA of the 1930s were arguably quicker to adopt Nazi political tactics of street violence, use of force against political activity that they disliked or against the agents of the democratic state, etc, etc. In fact, a bit like the Nazis in the early 1930s, the IRA was divided between socialists and militarists. Unlike the Nazis, the socialists in the movement weren't murdered, but they largely left or were purged, leaving a more old-fashioned militant nationalist IRA which, in the event, couldn't secure much in the way of popular support, and became a pretty marginal and flakey group.

So, if you're looking for parallels in Ireland with broader European fascism in the 1930s, you'll find some parallels in the Blueshirts; others in the IRA.

Scoondal

tdf7187 wrote: »

Would have thought the Blueshirts were far more invested in the Nazis than Sinn Fein.

There you go. You can learn a lot from history. IRA were connected, the "Blueshirts" were just a populist movement with no real connections with Nazi Germany.

Peregrinus

Scoondal wrote: »

There you go. You can learn a lot from history. IRA were connected, the "Blueshirts" were just a populist movement with no real connections with Nazi Germany.

In so far as the Blueshirts had any overseas connections or model, it was the Italian Fascists, and not the German Nazis. Recall that in the early 1930s Italian fascism was the dominant model of fascism, having been in power in Italy for about a decade, while the Nazis had only just succeeded in forming part of a coalition government in Germany.

Their only active international connection was attendance at the Montreux Fascist Conference in 1934, but we can't really treat that as a link with Naziism, since the Nazi party wasn't represented there. Shortly afterwards the Blueshirts fell apart, and we can only speculate what attitude they would have taken to the Nazis when the Nazis became the leading Fascist movement in Europe some years later.

satguy

Scoondal wrote: »

The I.R.A. had a continuing contact with Nazi Germany from the mid 1930s until D-Day.
Before the war, the I.R.A. killed five civilians and wounded seventy in Coventry one week before war was declared.
Tom Barry was very keen about his stay in Berlin in the late 1930s.

It was the 30's ,,
The enemy of my enemy is my friend,,, you can thank them later..

BalcombeSt4

Peregrinus wrote: »

Hard to see that Ireland's neutrality would have been tested in any meaningful way in a war between Germany and the Soviet Union.

Yeah, it's hard to see that, I think the USSR would have won the war tho.

Would have been interesting as well as tragic to have seen how a British Resistance would have faired against a German Occupation of Britain. We learned in recent years that thousands of guerrilla units were set up all over towns and villages in Britain in case of German invasion, among them a young Tony Benn.
I wonder would the Free State government have given help to a British Resistance.

And even tho Britain would have been knocked out of the war, would the Empire armies of India, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia & Canada not have continued fighting for the Empire?

mynamejeff

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_Powder_Plant_Disaster


52 people killed bby the IRA in the states during WW2 ,

if that aint a link I don't know what is

BalcombeSt4

Scoondal wrote: »

There you go. You can learn a lot from history. IRA were connected, the "Blueshirts" were just a populist movement with no real connections with Nazi Germany.

But whats your point?

The IRA was also connected to Qaddafi's Libya, and they recieved much more weapons from the Middle East, from Libya, Lebanon & the PLO, but the IRA was never intending to set-up an Islamic Republic of Ireland.
Just like they weren't intending to set-up a Capitalist Republic on Steriods after gaining large amounts of M1 Carbines, AR-15's, M-16's, AR-18's & M60's from close connections to Irish-American gun-runners.
Just like they were not intending to create a Irish Colony for the German Empire after they gained about 1,000 rifles & some pistols from Germany in preperation for the Easter Rising.
Just like they were not intending on creating a Nazi or Fascist Ireland because of a link to Nazi Germany in the 1930's that did not result in the IRA been given any sort of arsenal of weapons. It was probably one of the weakest links the IRA had in the in the 20th century, they even recieved more weapons from links in Belgium, Norway & Holland.

riffmongous

mynamejeff wrote: »

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_Powder_Plant_Disaster


52 people killed bby the IRA in the states during WW2 ,

if that aint a link I don't know what is

Going to ask for a reference for that. The wiki ref isn't available to view

BalcombeSt4

Scoondal wrote: »

Sinn Fein are not a socialist party. On Saturday 7 March, Irish Socialists protested in Dublin. Sinn Fein was not involved.

They probably are not a Socialist party anymore. Now their closer to a Social Democrat party. Was the IRSP at the event?

But certainly they were a Socialist party in the 70's, 80's & 90's. The Republican Movement, which was Sinn Fein & the PIRA, stated time & time again from 1970 - 1994 that their ultimate aim was a 32C Democratic Socialist Republic, and this was stated by all the big names in the IRA Gerard Hodgkins, Brendan Hughes, Tommy McKearney, Ivor Bell etc...
And the IRA's military strategy in rural areas in the 1980's in Fermanagh, East Tyrone & South Armagh/Down was more inspired by the likes of General Giap, Chairman Mao, Castro & Che Guevara, more than it was by people like Collins, Pearce, Frank Aikien etc...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_IRA_East_Tyrone_Brigade#Lynagh%27s_strategy

Suckit

Scoondal wrote: »

There you go. You can learn a lot from history. IRA were connected, the "Blueshirts" were just a populist movement with no real connections with Nazi Germany.

This must warm your heart
http://www.rebelnews.ie/2018/06/25/the-shady-origins-of-fine-gael/

Bdoon51

con747 wrote: »

Here you go, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Republican_Army–Abwehr_collaboration. So whats going to be next, the I.R.A and Sinn Fein lured Jesus to his death?. You know when people are scared when this is what they resort to.

The likes of De Valera and the IRA at that time makes me ashamed of my Irish ancestry....De Valera may have ensured a tiny legislative niche for Jews in Ireland but the overall neutrality policy was abhorrent.

As they would say in Ireland at that time "Who is it that we will be neutral against this year? ".

Bdoon51

riffmongous wrote: »

Going to ask for a reference for that. The wiki ref isn't available to view

Yes it is.

Bdoon51

BalcombeSt4 wrote: »

But whats your point?

The IRA was also connected to Qaddafi's Libya, and they recieved much more weapons from the Middle East, from Libya, Lebanon & the PLO, but the IRA was never intending to set-up an Islamic Republic of Ireland.
Just like they weren't intending to set-up a Capitalist Republic on Steriods after gaining large amounts of M1 Carbines, AR-15's, M-16's, AR-18's & M60's from close connections to Irish-American gun-runners.
Just like they were not intending to create a Irish Colony for the German Empire after they gained about 1,000 rifles & some pistols from Germany in preperation for the Easter Rising.
Just like they were not intending on creating a Nazi or Fascist Ireland because of a link to Nazi Germany in the 1930's that did not result in the IRA been given any sort of arsenal of weapons. It was probably one of the weakest links the IRA had in the in the 20th century, they even recieved more weapons from links in Belgium, Norway & Holland.

The problem is what they didn't do ....goes for Valera as well.

riffmongous

Bdoon51 wrote: »

Yes it is.

No it's not, when you go to the actual reference linked you cannot view the page that is relevant

BalcombeSt4

Bdoon51 wrote: »

The problem is what they didn't do ....goes for Valera as well.

What they didn't buy enough guns and bombs? Maybe they should have invested in a airforce and navy?
You mean Dev not going to London?

BalcombeSt4

Bdoon51 wrote: »

The likes of De Valera and the IRA at that time makes me ashamed of my Irish ancestry....De Valera may have ensured a tiny legislative niche for Jews in Ireland but the overall neutrality policy was abhorrent.

As they would say in Ireland at that time "Who is it that we will be neutral against this year? ".

Ireland would have been a hazard to the allies, just like Itayl was a headache for the Germans having to save them in Greece, "the soft underbelly".

Scoondal

BalcombeSt4 wrote: »

Ireland would have been a hazard to the allies, just like Itayl was a headache for the Germans having to save them in Greece, "the soft underbelly".

Nazi Germany should have invaded Cobh. They would have got free access to a strategic harbour to the west of Britain. There was one bridge into it and they could easily have taken positions around Roches Point / Whitegate and Currabinny.