Is Irelands neutrality stance in WW2 unfairly criticized? (see Mod note 217)

The first major concentration camp liberated by British forces in World War II was Bergen-Belsen on April 15, 1945. They discovered approx. 60,000 starving and sick prisoners, in horiffic conditions, along with thousands of unburied bodies. There were actually a few soldiers from this island in the British army force first in to the camp.

And in May 1945 our Taoiseach Dev and President Hyde then let Ireland down in the eyes of the world by being the only country to express condolences on the death of Hitler.

The Germans got a personal visit from DeV when Hitler died. The American legation got a letter of condolences but no visit when FDR passed away.

I think it was David McCullagh in his biography of Dev who said it was a personal visit to a friend - Hempel, more than it was anything else.

I think you have to put it into the context of where Ireland was in the 1930s too. The war started in 1939. Ireland's independence had only happened in 1922, just 17 years earlier, followed by the brief civil war, and the Anglo Irish Trade war was had only ended the previous year, and we'd all but formally declared a republic in the 1937 constitution.

Post WWII British views of itself are of course very warm and cuddly - the plucky strength of the lovely old British army and all of that and the Nazi regime they were facing was utterly appalling in every respect, so the good vs bad narrative applies - and even more heavily so in retrospect as the atrocities came to light, but from an Irish perspective the view of the British military and empire was far different and was based on relatively recent past experience from 1916 onwards. Many figures in the Irish political circles of that era had served time in British prisons for their actions in the war of independence and had seen colleagues face the death penalty, many members of the public had experienced the wrath of the Black and Tans and then the hardships of the Economic War.

To describe the relationship as frosty would be an understatement.

Irish officialdom's point of view would have been to preserve independence. It's very likely they mostly saw a threat of being taken over or rolled back into the British empire system by the necessities of the war - but they also seemed to be quite seriously concerned about a German invasion too, but saw it as less likely, but had no real resources to fend one off should it happen. Ireland wasn't any kind of military power and was largely an agrarian economy in dire poverty, with mass emigration at the time. The calculation would have been not to provoke anything that could have brought the war here, as we had no ability to defend ourselves.

You can talk about these things in terms of noble goals, but sacrificing the population to being carpet bombed for the sake of defending the neighbours who'd been beating you up 20 years earlier is a bit of a stretch for any democracy.

Dev's weird gesture was what it was - utterly weird and very poorly calculated, and from what I have read was also against all advice at the time. He didn't seem to have any sympathy for the nazis, but seemed to have some kind of borderline fixation on wanting to do everything by the book and somehow be civil to the ambassador. He also didn't seem to have much awareness of how that gesture would look internationally - it was very much in line with an inward looking element of politics that saw everything in the context of local relations, not yet as global ones. That miscalculation and misstep has very predictably been repeatedly dragged up ever since by anyone who wants to characterise Ireland's neutrality as something that it definitely wasn't.

Ireland did quietly participate in a whole load of post war aid efforts in France and elsewhere, which is often totally underplayed and forgotten about too, and it did basically remain neutral, but softly on the allied side throughout the war - offering pragmatic cooperation where needed.

All I see in Irish history of that era is a fledgling independent democracy, in a dire state of poverty that didn't want to get squashed in what was at the time seen as a far away war somewhere else. Most small participants in WWII didn't jump into it out of noble causes - they were invaded or under imminent threat and had no choice.

It's interesting too that after WWII, the Irish Government wasn't opposed to the idea of a NATO like arrangement, just because of partition was not going to accept being in any kind of command structure with the UK, and from what I read had actually proposed a bilateral arrangement with the US, which was rejected - largely because it would have undermined the establishment of what was to become NATO if everyone wanted their own arrangements.

Then the other often overlooked one is that the USSR blocked Irish membership of the United Nations for several years, claiming it was because of our neutrality, but in reality it was probably more just ideologically driven as we were seen as very close to the US.

Ireland's membership of the UN was definitely somewhere that we could grow and project soft power and legitimacy that was not about Anglo-Irish relations or as a former British territory or based on having to lean on US relations, but on our own two feet as one of a post WWII development of a lot of small nations - we had peers and we were discovering each other quickly in that era. You can see that in the way that we cautiously and them more enthusiastically took up missions as UN peacekeepers. Then you see that further expanding though our later membership of other multilateral organisations and ultimately the EEC/EC/EU. All of that gave us more independence by being able to stand up.

I just think the way Ireland's experience of WWII is often framed online is just by people who have an agenda to peddle, usually trying to claim ulterior or negative motives to Irish neutrality and usually imagining a very different world to that which existed at the time, and imagining that Ireland was far more powerful and relevant to international affairs than it was at that time.

Roosevelt thought Gray was an extremist and ignored a lot of his opinions.

Gray constantly asked for tougher stances on Ireland and was rebuffed/ignored.
You'll find him complaining in the documents here.

Search Books – Documents on Irish Foreign Policy

go through the papers on that site, there is more than one.

Ask yourself, did the US do what Gray wanted, no they didn't. I.E. his suggestions were ignored.

• The US did not impose targeted economic punishment on Ireland. They maintained normal diplomatic and trade relations and they avoided formal blockades and coersive trade policy.

• All things Gray wanted and there was more.

Gray definitely poisoned relationships with the US. Hempel respected the Irish position even knowing we were neutral 'on the allied side'. As did the British to a great extent, save the odd rage by Churchill. Roosevelt promised Churchill that he would end Irish independence after the war but d uring the war, the British had a much more fruitful, diplomatic and pragmatic relationship with Ireland.

The British position on Irish neutrality, as distinct from any other country, is that they did not recognise the right of Ireland to have a separate position to Britain, as a Commonwealth nation. When Britain declared war on Germany it did so on behalf of the Commonwealth as well and considered that Ireland had to follow suit. I think it was the Statute of Westminster that gave Ireland the right to take an independent role.

In short, the criticism of Ireland's neutrality was a throwback to an older colonial mindset, i.e. "the Irish must do as they are told" and it was a shock when De Valera held his position. Thankfully he did and we were spared.

 Even before the fall of France in 1940, Dev believed that Hitler would win the war and in payment for keeping the Allies out of port in the 26 countiess, he would obtain N. Ireland on his own terms. So wrote the US wartime minister to Ireland David Gray in 1956.

Was Dev oblivious to what happened some citizens in other neutral countries in Europe. Denmark, Norway, Luxembury, the Netherlands, Belgium? Dev obviously condoned what happened the monorities in those neutral countries which were invaded, and who had minorities who were rounded up, and deported to the Extermination camps by the Nazis. Why else did he go out of his way to express condolences on the death of Hitler.

Course, he was not the only FF Taoiseach to make a fool of himself. Haughey condemned Thatcher at the start of the Falklands war, not thinking Britain would win it. He was then left wondering why no British tourists came to Ireland for most of the 1980s, and we had emigration close to 20%. Many of those who emigrated went to Britain ironically. I remember people joking when are the Argentine tourists coming, it was so quiet in the tourism business then.

Dev obviously condoned what happened the monorities in those neutral countries which were invaded, and who had minorities who were rounded up, and deported to the Extermination camps by the Nazis. 

Nonsense. Back it up with evidence please?