What if Ireland had not been neutral during WW2?

Yes it's hindsight but joining the fight in 1942 would have looked like a very dangerous move then. Even now it's clear it would have led to many more of our people being killed for no gain.

'If we provided our ports, Particularly Cork but maybe Shannon estuary, we would have been a target for German bombs.'

And a target for 'the boys'...

He was probably in one of his legendary drinking sessions at the time of making that offer. Anyhow, our northern brethren obviously would have none of it, if there was anything at all of substance to it which I very much doubt. A throwaway phrase that could be interpreted as anything.

Cyclingtourist wrote

I've been reading 'In Time of War' Robert Fisk's excellent book about Ireland in WWII and a few things stand out for me. One, the importance Dev placed on partition as a barrier to normal relations with Britain. 

The barrier to normal relations were the British refusal to recognise Ireland as a state. There was no 'normal' relationship and couldn't be until the UK recognised Ireland under the 1937 constitution , and its' right to make decisions for itself. In 1939 Churchill wrote to Halifax that Ireland was legally at war but skulking". Churchill did not recognise that Irish independence

Secondly, how he used the IRA threat as an argument for strict neutrality

Surely , he recognised that any entry to war risked reopening the civil war in Ireland. Why should any Irish leader risk that

and thirdly how unprepared Éire was to defend its neutral position despite Dev being aware for at least three years that war in Europe was almost inevitable.

Ireland was unprepared. But not because of any inaction on behalf of the Irish government. The country had a small poorly resourced army and had no easy way of correcting that. It simply lacked the financial resources. It would also be unable to provide any useful army formation to any allied effort.

The truth was that neutrality was the option Dev had envisaged but apart from getting the treaty ports back when Britain was following a policy of appeasement little or nothing was done to develop a strategy beyond that.

But the government did develop and pursue a very successful strategy, keeping the country out of the war completely, while assisting , where it could, the allies against the fascist states.

When, after the fall of France in mid-1940 the British government offered to pressure the NI regime into a unified Irish state in return for our full participation, the prospects of Britain being defeated were so likely that while tempting this offer was inevitably rejected.

There is no evidence that the British government ever pressurised the NI regime with regard to unification. There is evidence that Churchill said, to the Irish government, that a unified Ireland might emerge after the war. But Churchill made no secret that he , even then, saw Ireland as an integral part of the united kingdom and of the Commonwealth . Rightly , De Valera put no trust in anything Churchill promised.

I won't bother going through all your claims when your first is so obviously incorrect. Britain did recognise the 26-county state and negotiated with it the 1937 Anglo-Irish Agreement which saw the return of the Treaty Ports that were within its jurisdiction. The 1937 constitution retained Éire's position within the Commonwealth, Dev chose not to break the link as he saw it as a possible road to future national unity. Significantly it wasn't FF who broke that link and declared a republic.

You seem to be confusing Churchill and his occasional outbursts with official British policy. You should examine the FACTS rather than rely on your own bias. Merely asserting something doesn't make it a fact.

This presumes that unionism held a veto at a time when Britain needed all the help it could get. MacDonald was someone who had played a part in the pre-war appeasement policy and was generally sympathetic to Irish nationalism but given the perilous state of Britain's position in July, August and September 1940, the tenuous offer was unlikely to be accepted and the British cabinet realised this from the start.

Dev was quite sympathetic to the British position and from the recorded conversations, he had realised, after Germany violated the neutrality of Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark and Norway, that a German victory would have been disastrous but other diehards like Aiken were so instinctively anti-British that they couldn't see beyond their narrow focus of partition.

The level of assistance actually provided to Britain and her allies varied according to the fortunes of war. In the dark days of 1940 it was minimal but then as things improved, from an allied perspective, cooperation increased. Éire was almost totally dependent on Britain, and given this fact it's reasonable to ask 'how independent were we'? IMO we were as independent as Britain allowed taking into account Irish-American opinion and the availability of Northern Ireland.

My position is that we could have entered the war in early 1942 when the threat of air attack was minimal and the benefits of American war investment, in an isolated economy dependent on its nearest neighbour, so beneficial. Instead the old question of partition was brought to the fore and a population that had been fed a diet of heavily censored war news never seriously questioned this approach.

If such a course had been taken we would have been post-war in a better position to diversify our economy and markets as well as less isolated from modern European influences. Instead we continued for a couple of decades to delude ourselves about our inherent moral superiority while bleating on about the 'terrible injustice' of partition.

"Churchill never gave a guarantee of a UI to Dev."

No he didn't, Éire turned down the offer from his cabinet to back Irish unity in return for its entry into the war on Britain's side. An involvement that wouldn't have required it to provide troops for overseas duty.

"Investment is a different topic entirely and didn't depend on a position taken during WII." 

Well if you're considering 'what if' which is the topic of this thread then 'investment' as well as other economic factors are relevant. If we had entered in 1942 as I suggest, instead of being isolated and dependant on Britain we would have benefited from investment in our port and marine communications, areas largely neglected by the FF governments of the 1930s. Inward investment in the then ROI didn't really take off till Dev was gone in the late 1960s twenty years after the end of WWII. At least Lemass tried to build bridges with Northern Unionists unlike his predecessors who saw partition as a purely British imposition that needed to be rectified by the UK government in London.

"Did any neutral country declare war on Germany during the war without being attacked?" 

Firstly, we were attacked, both by the Luftwaffe and the Kreigsmarine as well as the Abwher trying to infiltrate fifth columnists and its general meddling in our domestic politics with its IRA contacts.

Secondly, yes other neutrals did declare war on Germany without being attacked, most of Latin America did at one stage or another following the U.S. entry in December 1941. Brazil even had troops fighting against Germany in Italy.

Unfortunately it seems the neutrality narrative fostered by Aiken's extraordinary regime of censorship lives on in the half-truths still commonly trotted out in modern-day Ireland.

Dominion status of the British Empire was conferred on Ireland. It was not recpognised by Uk as a fully independent state. It's limited ability for independent policy was regularly checked by UK. It was expected, along with other Dominions, to declare war on Germany in tandem with UK and the failure to do so was considered by many in the British establishment, not just Churchill, as illegal. It should be born in mind that that limited ability to independence was granted by act of Westminster and could have been removed just as easily. Therefore the idea that we could have normal relations with Uk, i.e. relations as with a foreign state was just not possible. Our independence was disputed and we were only as independent as the UK allowed us be.

You make the exact same point in your subsequece post. "it's reasonable to ask 'how independent were we'? IMO we were as independent as Britain allowed taking into account Irish-American opinion and the availability of Northern Ireland."

The only similarity between Brazil and Ireland is that they both needed to act in their own interests. Brazil, which had a pro Nazi position, found it's markets cut off by Royal Navy blockade and found the only market for its' goods was US. It was also in the interests of the American countries including US but excluding Canada, to maintain their neutrality collectively and that was done by a international treaty pre war. What is more, thee decisions in Brazil were made by the Vargas dictatorship , not by any democratic government .

you say

"Unfortunately it seems the neutrality narrative fostered by Aiken's extraordinary regime of censorship lives on in the half-truths still commonly trotted out in modern-day Ireland."

You earlier accused me of prejudice rather than relying on facts. I think you need to re-read that statement you wrote 2 days ago.

Irelands aid to the allies and it's cause were well known to both the UK and US. Weapons were sent to Ireland from both to aid in our defence and our support and intelligence was received with thanks by both allies. More Irish from Southern Ireland fought that from Northern Ireland. We aided the return of allied airmen to NI . So if you are right, we should have benefited from US investment and largesse after the war. Instead we had to contend with almost pathological hatred directed at the Irish from both Roosevelt and Gray during the war.

An animus that was not directed at Sweden, for instance, a neutral that supplied iron ore to the Germans. Or in fact to any other neutral country. Whatever the reason for the anti Irish sentiment in the US after the war, focussing on our neutrality is misguided. In fact that anti Irish sentiment in US was evident long before the war.

The fact that an official investigation and report into the legality of Ireland's neutrality was even commissioned is very telling, though. That anybody in the UK would even question this speaks volumes about their attitude to Irish independence. And it strongly suggests that, whatever about the legality of Irish neutrality, there were many in the UK who couldn't accept its legitimacy, and whose view of Irish independence was therefore a qualified one; Ireland didn't have, in their view, the kind of independence that would allow them not to ally themselves with other countries under the British crown in time of war.

There's a bit of background here, in the form of a British-Irish disagreement over the legal foundations of the Irish state. In the British view, the Irish Free State was established in 1922 by an Act of the Westminster Parliament, and the Oireachtas exercised legislative powers conferred upon it by Westminster. These powers could (in theory) be revoked and/or the Irish Free State could be abolished by a further Act of the Westminster Parliament, but Westminster had bound itself, in the Statute of Westminster 1931, not to legislate with respect to a Dominion (including the Irish Free State) unless the Dominion in question requested and consented to the legislation, with the result that the Irish Free State couldn't be abolished or limited by Westminster without its own agreement. Still, the authority of the Oireachtas to legislate for Ireland was conferred by the British crown, and the entrenchment of that authority was also a decision of the British crown, and whenever the Irish state or the Oireachtas acted, they were exercising powers derived from the crown.

The Irish view was different. Whatever had been the situation in 1922, in 1936 the Irish people had enacted the Constitution. They did not do so in exercise of any power to legislate conferred, or purportedly conferred, on them by Westminster, since Westminster had never passed any Act conferring any legislative power on the people of the Free State. So this was, legally speaking, a revolution; the people had asserted a power to provide a new legal foundation for the state and the institutions of the state had all accepted that assertion of power (signified by politicians, judges, etc taking an oath to uphold the new Constitution, after it was enacted).

So, in the Irish view, the legal foundations of the state and its powers of legislation, government etc didn't derive from the British crown at all. They were asserted by the people, in a bloodless revolutionary act that simply overrode and swept away any similar powers or authority previously asserted or exercised or conferred by the British Crown.

The dispute about the legitimacy of Irish neutrality stems from this particular difference of view. If the Irish Free State was, legally speaking, an emanation of the crown, how could it not be at war with the King's enemies?

This wasn't a bizarre fringe view. It was, for example, the official view in Australia, which did not declare war on Germany in 1939 because it considered that the UK declaration of war automatically applied to it too, just as it had in 1914. Canada took the opposite view, that a separate Canadian declaration of war was required, but of course it did declare war. People who disputed the legality or legitimacy of the Irish position were essentially asking whether the Canadian view or the Australian view was correct with regard to Ireland, but both those views proceeded on the assumption that the Irish state's authority derived ultimately from the British crown. Ireland didn't accept that assumption at all.

In case it hasn't been heard by some on this thread here's de Valera's excellent reply to Mr Churchill on Ireland's neutrality in the recent war.

So because they sought legal advice, something governments do regularly, this somehow proves something their (in)actions contradict?

Yes they saw Éire as different to the USA and the USA didn't see Canada as some fourth green field.

No I think if you read Fisk's book you will see that, if anything, it was sought to counter the wild outbursts of Churchill, something that happened regularly throughout the war where cooler heads, both military and civilian, prevailed. Churchill was a great war leader but Britain wasn't a dictatorship.

"But their action/inaction did not contradict it, it furthers it. Montgomery was tasked with developing plans for the invasion of Ireland. Even he, in his memoirs, found it strange to devote almost all available army resources to such an invasion."

The Éire government and military had plans for the British 'invasion' if Germany landed troops here. These plans were worked out in consultation with the British. They were even prepared to countenance a pre-emptive 'invasion' but thought this inadvisable as the Irish population 'was so ill informed as to the true danger' (Dev's view) that it would be better to actually wait till German forces had landed, so as to demonstrate to this uninformed public the necessity of British military intervention.

"But the whole point is , that relations between UK and Ireland were not normal and they were not normal because of the UK view that Ireland was either legally ( Churchilll et all) or morally (rest of UK government) at war with Germany ."

Sorry, neither the UK government, nor Churchill had the view that Éire was 'at war with Germany'.

"It is doubtful that we would have contributed toe the BEF in France, but after the fall of France, it is possible that we would have provided support to RAF fighter squadrons recuperating during Battle of Britain, perhaps also training bases. . Royal navy might have begun to use the Cork and Cobh posts but these had little air defences and may not have been as useful as Churchill believed. American troops may have been stationed here and RAF Coastal Command would definitely operate from Irelands west coast. All of these of course would make us targets for German raids. Outr posts would be attacked by submarines of destroyers, ( as UK ports were) , our cities might be bombed. This could speed up development of more long range bombers in Germany."

The main contribution was to be the provision of naval and air bases around the south coast to provide extended anti-submarine cover. The transhipment of goods coming from North America would also have been a role for Irish ports.

Sure, if we weren't neutral we would have been a target for German attacks.

U.S. troops would have been stationed here as they were in NI from early 1942.

"On the deficit side, Irish troops might have seen action in Africa and Italy and then Normandy through to Germany. There would have been considerable casualties amongst them. The British military did not have a good reputation in protecting such troops."

Irish troops did see action in North Africa and Italy where the Royal Irish Brigade saw action from late-1942 till Germany surrendered. This was a brigade that drew its personnel from the entire island, a fitting example IMO of Irish unity. BTW it was called 'Irish' at the insistence of Churchill and against the wishes of the NI PM who saw it as obscuring the fact of Éire's neutrality.

"When the war was over, we would have a large foreign army on our shores and no possibility of removing them. Our hard won independence , only 20 years old would have evaporated. We might have a united Ireland , but it would be part of the UK."

Unlikely, most foreign troops would be in Germany. There would have been no willingness on the part of either the U.S. or Britain to remain, effectively in occupation of the territory of an ally, against the wishes of that country.

Éire was the official name of the country, in the 'first official language' following the 1937 constitution.

Churchill said lots of things.

Every major power 'plans' for things they never do, it's called contingency-planning.

"I cannot understand your insistence on arguing every point and your continuing expressing such anti Irish sentiment . Perhaps you can explain?"

None of my opinions are anti-Irish, although they may not be sufficiently anti-British for you.

England did not need Ireland on its side, Ireland's neutrality which denied Germany the use of Irish ports or airfields was good enough. What Britain did need was food and that flowed without hindrance between Ireland and Britain. Britain sunk all 36 of Ireland's ocean going ships. Who do you think that made us wholly dependent on for tobacco, razor blades and many other things. The excuse was that German submarines were hiding under the Irish ships. Many small countries continue to exist because they have nothing of value that makes them attractive targets. I would put Ireland, Denmark, Latvia, Estonia, Sweden, Norway and Portugal on that list. It might be of interest to know that GB is only 60% food self sufficient. Now that they are out of the EU and quite weak militarily the day could come when they need the cabbage and potato patch next door. The unified EU military force is probably a good idea for all the small EU member countries.

"There is an English name for the country in official and popular use, also established by the 1937 constitution; why not use it?"

because I'm Irish and have lived in Ireland all my life and because I generally type my posts on a keyboard and because I want to and because it's accurate and because I'm posting about post-1937 where people still sometimes in 'popular culture' refer to it as the 'Free State' which was quite common usage in NI and also in towns like Dundalk up to recent years. It also is clear when I use it that I'm referring to the neutral part of the island (1939-45).

A couple of people here have highlighted my use of it and it makes me wonder what's their problem?

Why do you ask?