What would Irish infrastructure look like now if Germany won the war and wanted Ireland to prosper

badabing106

Would it be the neglected land it is today with no short,medium,or long term planning?

When would a fast transport system from Ireland's main airport to every part of the country have happened?

Would it take decades to build a new children's hospital in the capital of Ireland ?

Jim_Hodge

I assume your own responses would be Yes, Yes, No.

Personally I haven't a clue as there are far too many variables.

BlueSkyDreams

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058339077/what-would-irish-infrastructure-look-like-now-if-germany-won-the-war-and-wanted-ireland-to-prosper

Ireland wouldn't exist.

So the question is pointless.

Sonic the Shaghog

If I remember from reading years ago, Hitler didn't see the Irish as subhuman, but not exactly perfect specimens either.

So it's possible we would be some sort of manufacturing hub tolerated for the Reich or we could also be used as similar to what we do now with beef etc

In saying that himself was a vegetarian and big into animal rights so he could have done an Eamon Ryan and made us cut the herd too.

the_amazing_raisin

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058339077/what-would-irish-infrastructure-look-like-now-if-germany-won-the-war-and-wanted-ireland-to-prosper

Hmm, well perhaps the best way to find out would be to look at all the fantastic infrastructure the Nazi's built in the countries they occupied

If you're now struggling to find any examples, it's because they didn't build anything in the countries they occupied and instead robbed those countries of the majority of their wealth while subjugating the population into varying degrees of slavery

Unless you were Slavic, they just shot you in that case

So the simple answer is that things would be great if you were a postwar German settler in occupied Ireland and otherwise crap for the native Irish

There might be decent infrastructure, although the Nazis intent for Ireland was to become a sort of agricultural breadbasket, which doesn't need high speed railways

But, you can bet the Irish wouldn't be allowed to use any of it

Fritzbox

Would it be the neglected land it is today with no short,medium,or long term planning?

Ireland is not a neglected land today with no short, medium or long term planning. Who says that?

When would a fast transport system from Ireland's main airport to every part of the country have happened?

There is a fast transport system from Dublin airport - the motorways.

Would it take decades to build a new children's hospital in the capital of Ireland ?

How many Children's hospitals in Poland, France or Greece did Hitler build in the 1940s, and how long did he take to build them?

Emblematic

Plans for Dublin:

Markcheese

What a strange thread ,

neutral ireland may have sailed a path through a german led post war worlld ,

The Reich did build infrastructure in captive land , they built an auto-bahn straight across poland , obviously it wasnt for polands benefit , it was heading straight to the eastern front .

Ireland would have been ,a small english speaking island with no industry,and an undeveloped farming sector , off the far west of europe

I cant imagine that a german europe would have been funding anything in ireland ,

nachouser

Would we be better off if we were ruled by Nazi Germany is not something I thought I'd be seeing on the Internet today.

sxt

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121853974#Comment_121853974

That's not the question that was asked..

The question was

What would Irish infrastructure look like now if Germany won the war and wanted Ireland to prosper ?

I.e What would the infrastructure of Ireland look like if it had the urban planning,engineering and technology expertise and a government that was willing to invest and modernise the infrastructure of the land to make it prosper look like? and they had 80 years to do it....

The only reason that Ireland doesn't have a crumbling infrastructure now is because it joined the Eu in the 1970s and the E.U helped invest and plan and construct...

Travellers waiting on a bus or a taxi from the airport to get onto the m50 motorway isn't a high speed network... is there any country in Western Europe that doesn't have a railway from the main airport?

Notmything

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121853820#Comment_121853820

Cause neutrality would deter Hitler, like how it worked for Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Netherlands etc.

Very much doubt Ireland would have been left alone considering part of it was in the UK. Besides controlling Ireland would deny it's use to the Americans.

Hitler didn't exactly have the best of intentions for the bits of Europe he did conquer so not sure why Ireland would have been any different.

nachouser

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121853988#Comment_121853988

I'd say we'd all have lovely looking uniforms and the trains would definitely be better, but not everyone would like their destination.

Fr Tod Umptious

Why would they want Ireland to prosper OP ?

corner of hells

I’d say the infrastructure would be amazing , it would to be to the Tiger Tanks to Cavan.

gym_imposter

Far less ribbon development in rural Ireland

AMKC

Ireland would have been used for our lands and food that's it. We would all be farmers off some type and all probably poor too. They would take all our food and leave us with little just like the British did.

dxhound2005

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121854665#Comment_121854665

And more von Ribbentrop.

Badly Drunk Boy

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121853556#Comment_121853556

In saying that himself was a vegetarian and big into animal rights so he could have done an Eamon Ryan and made us cut the herd too.

Yes, you're 100% right. Eamon Ryan is a modern day Hitler. 😜

Peregrinus

Nazi Germany didn't want any of the countries it conquered or occupied to prosper. It basically wanted to loot them to sustain the (non-viable) economic policies being pursued in Germany itself.

The OP's speculation about what a victorious Nazi Germany would have wanted is as off-beam as his perception of the current state of Ireland.

Francis McM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121854707#Comment_121854707

Even in 1847, statistics show the British imported more food in to Ireland than exported food. In 1847, at the height of the Famine, Ireland exported 39,000 tonnes of wheat, and 98,000 tonnes of oats , and imported 199,000 tonnes of wheat, 12,000 tonnes of oats and 682,000 tonnes of maize.

Do not believe everything you were taught.

Back to the thread title,  Hitler did not care for the neutrality of many neutral countries he invaded. He invaded neutral countries, sent many there ( Jews, the disabled, gypsies, homesexuals etc ) to extermination camps and used others as slave labour. He would have done the same in Ireland.

Hangdogroad

More swastikas and military parades.

dxhound2005

We had a lucky escape back in the day. Hitler planned to make the IRA a puppet government in Dublin.

Baba Yaga

id say the bundespolizei (they wouldnt be called an garda siochana thats for sure!) and the army would have designer styled uniforms and lots of guns and would probably be german born and bred...us irish would be either farming and digging the land under gunpoint or shipped off for a bit of a shower...

whisky_galore

It would be a sort of human zoo exhibit/holiday resort for tweedy jacketed Nazi "intellectuals" studying Race Theory. They'd liquidate problematic authors, artists and politicians and our tiny Jewish population and keep the rest of us for ethnographic study.

Any transport, hotels etc would be reserved for the wealthy master race.

victor8600

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121855333#Comment_121855333

Exactly. Nazi Germany's economic policies were disastrous, the war was being used to cover up for the ineptitude of Nazi's government. Let's consider Greece as an example of a conquered state. Hitler actually regarded Greeks as almost equal to Germans, and didn't want to exterminate them. Greece's was conquered without much infrastructure damage. And yet 600 thousand Greeks died of hunger and related diseases during the German occupation. In Greece, where there was never a problem with growing food or fishing the sea.

Grayson

We'd have far more trains but they wouldn't work on time.

Hoop66

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121853556#Comment_121853556

Hitler was neither a vegetarian, nor was he "big into animal rights". He ate meat, he was just advised not to by his doctors because of his terrible bowels. His "vegetarianism" & his "teetotalism" (he drank alcohol) was part of Goebbels plan to make him appear more like Ghandi, less like Churchill.

As for the animal rights, yes Germany brought in strict animal welfare laws, but they were designed to make it difficult for Jews & Muslims to obtain meat as their religious strictures around slaughter were what the laws prohibited.

Grayson

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121853556#Comment_121853556

I can't see them outsourcing manufacturing from the Ruhr valley to Ireland.

LambshankRedemption

A point my father made to me a few years ago. One of the reasons infrastructure in Germany is so good now is because Germany was pretty much flattened during WW2. Its much easier to build straight roads and modern buildings when you have a blank canvas to start with.

As others have said, under German rule, I'd expect modern Ireland to be one big field, feeding the rest of Europe.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121856132#Comment_121856132

Not at all. Hitler regarded Ireland as basically an adjunct to Great Britain, and the Nazis had earmarked Dublin as one of six regional centres from which occupied Großbrittanien would be administered. They did envisage using local collaborators (as well as, and subordinate to, German officials) in the administration but they did not regard the IRA as an especially useful asset in this regard.

In other occupied countries the Nazis mostly sought collaborators either from the local Fascist movement (which was tiny in Ireland) or from more traditional conservative and anti-Bolshevik elements. The local Fascists would be the more enthusiastic collaborators, but frequently not very competent, while the conservatives approached the matter more reluctantly - in a "we are where we are, have to make the best of it, do what we can to alleviate the worst aspects of occupation, lesser of two evils" kind of spirit.