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

You minimised the damage to it after I pointed out it was the first public building to be structurally damaged in Dublin bombings by the Germans. You wrote, and I quote " whole swathes of buildings were damaged to varying degrees. Some destroyed. Both the Synagogue and Pres church buildings still stand today."

Many in the western world outside Ireland had seen newsreels or read reports from the recently liberated Nazi extermination camps the previous month to when Dev expressed his condolences about Hitler, so there is little excuse for Dev not to have know. Eisenower visited a recently liberated German camp and saw the huge piles of bodies, starving Jews etc first hand on April 12 1945.

Dev expressed his condolences about Hitler on May 2nd 1945.

Of course, the general population in "the Free State" were heavily censored. The absence of information and manipulation of what information there was then in Ireland, reminds me more of North Korea than a modern democratic state, so perhaps it is excusable for many Irish people to have thought the way they did.

The state and media were required to use the term "The Emergency" rather than "war". People were not allowed use the term " Nazi". The sinking of Irish flagged ships by the Germans was not reported.

Quote "The Irish authorities had failed to develop the state’s defensive capabilities to a level whereby neutrality could be defended militarily. Aiken, however, defined propaganda as ‘one of the most important weapons of war’ ". Atrocities against Polish Jews, 3,000,000 of whom were killed, was not reported.

"Buchenwald, Belsen, Lublin, Dachau, Auschwitz-Birkenau—none could be allowed disturb the equanimity of the neutral Irish mind."

The New York Herald Tribune used an article " to imply that Irish neutrality was biased towards the Axis powers."

"Film censorship was even stricter than that of the press; virtually no reference to the war was allowed and special newsreels, with no war news, had to be made for the Irish market"

Nice attempt from you to deflect yet again to the meeting between Roosevelt and Aiken.

Both quotes above are correct. I do not think I used the term the meeting was "a disaster". However Aiken failed in his objective to get arms. He was kept waiting a couple of weeks for the meeting, during which he was observed by the FBI. When the meeting did happen, Roosevelt interrupted Aiken and told him it was reported that Aiken said Ireland had nothing to fear from a German victory.

Even our own RTE said of the meeting "Franklin D Roosevelt's explosive 1941 meeting with Frank Aiken ended with raised voices, histrionics and flying knives, forks and plates."

I would say if there was a meeting and the meeting ended in a row with knives, cutlery, plates flyng, one party (the visitor) repeatedly refusing to leave etc, then that would have been pretty close to a disaster.

If I use AI (which I usually do not), and ask the question was the meeting a disaster, it says "Yes, the April 1941 meeting between Irish Minister Frank Aiken and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was widely considered a disaster. It was tense, unproductive, and ended in a dramatic diplomatic row".

Now stop diverting: set up a separate thread on the meeting if you want. Incidentally two of the ships we leased from the Americans after that, and repainted in Irish colours etc, were sunk by U boats, with the loss of Irish lives. The supplies in the ships was lost too. Dev never told the Irish public about that.

This was all explained to you many times before, with links.

As the mod correctly said "the minutae of specific incidents might be served better in a separate thread. Hence, keep on topic on the main point of this: Irish Neutrality per se."

"Antagonised in to the war by Germany"? What an odd phrase you use. There was no realistic chance of us joining the Axis powers. Six neutural countries in Europe were invaded by Germany : were they "antagonised in to the war by Germany"?

The map below shows countries opposed to the Axis powers, in dark and light green. The Axis are in blue. Neutral in grey. Who was "antagonised in to the war by Germany"? Explain yourself.

Maybe you are blaming the Jews for being "antagonised in to the war by Germany"?

N.B. yes we know there was support in Ireland then for Dev but he kept the Irish population in the dark with a mixture of censorship and propaganda during "the emergency" (The state and media were required to use the term "The Emergency" rather than "war". People were not allowed use the term " Nazi". The sinking of Irish flagged ships by the Germans was not reported, atrocities by the Axis not reported etc). See post 1024.

Aiken, however, defined propaganda as ‘one of the most important weapons of war’ 

My mind is open to the fact that Germany could well have bombed Ireland deliberately, and if you look online you will se that is not an uncommon view. However, I did not say they did. I keep an open mind, having weighed up all the evidence. I did not put a percentage on the probability that the Germans deliberately bombed Ireland.

.Some Dev supporters clain that the German planes jetisoned their bombs so they would not have to carry them home to France: well, as the night was clear, could'nt they have done that over the sea instead of over the city?

Quote: " Again, you’re talking about the south sector and there was a big Jewish community there. A big Jewish community, and they were bombed. The synagogue was apparently bombed and damaged"

" And again, there was an awful lot of anti-jewish policy in Dublin in them days."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/54/a6084254.shtml

Some people speculate Amiens st station ( now Connolly Station) was targeted ( missed by 400 -800 meters , and hit the North strand instead, killing about 28), because thousands of Irish people were using it to go up to N.I. to join British forces every month.

Also some people speculate some of the Germany bombings in Ireland were retaliation ( or as a warning) for us sending fire engines up north to help in the Blitz there, which killed the guts of a thousand people if I remember correctly.

There was no blackout in Dublin during the war (unlike in Belfast + Britain, which were blacked out), and on one night for example in Dublin green white and orange flares went up to the circling Germans on a clear night, but they bombed anyway. As Lord Haw Haw said they would.

Edit:  I got the numbers for you: In Belfast, 955 people were killed and 2436 people were injured. More than 50% of houses were damaged or destroyed.

Not sure if you read what I posted or not. It seems you did not read the link anyway. I know most of the extermination camps were liberated by the Russians, not the western Allies, but that is not the point. There were lots of concentration camps liberated by the westen allies eg Bergen-Belsen, liberated by the British-Canadians. 70,000 people were killed there by the Germans. When the British army entered the camp they found discovered over 60,000 emaciated prisoners, suffering from extreme starvation, typhus, and dysentery. They also discovered 13,000 unburied corpses scattered across the grounds. That may not be extermination but must be pretty close to it?

In my post I wrote "Eisenhower visited a recently liberated German camp and saw the huge piles of bodies, starving Jews etc first hand on April 12 1945." I did not say it was an extermination camp or what type of camp he visited. I think the camp Eisenhower visiting on April 12th was one of the smaller Nazi camps but still has 7,000 victims in dreadful conditions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohrdruf_concentration_camp

The point I made was "Many in the western world outside Ireland had seen newsreels or read reports from the recently liberated Nazi extermination camps the previous month to when Dev expressed his condolences about Hitler, so there is little excuse for Dev not to have know. Eisenower visited a recently liberated German camp and saw the huge piles of bodies, starving Jews etc first hand on April 12 1945."

Read the link I gave. Here it is again.

Quote " footage of liberated camps like this one arrived in the United States, where they were featured in newsreels for viewing in public theaters. Allied occupation authorities then ordered all German prisoners of war in the United States to see these images. In Germany itself, Allied commanders often forced members of the local German population to view the bodies of those killed in the nearby camps or on death marches. German civilians were also forced to exhume the bodies and give them a proper burial. Later, British and American military authorities ordered German townspeople to watch films of Nazi atrocities."

But you think in very heavily censored Ireland, the people doing the censoring, Dev and his mates, were not aware of what went on, when he expressed his condolences for Hitler? Not even 3 weeks after Eisenhower was filmed and widely publicised in one camp? Not credible.

So make a point then?

Nothing the 3 main powers in the world did made us end our policy of Neutrality. Neither the meeting of Aiken and FDR,(whatever happened at it) the machinations of Churchill and the British nor the provocation and bombings of the Germans.

We stuck to our policy which continues to this day.

This was from 1944 when Dev refused to expel the German legation which would have violated International law.

Did the Germans care about international law when they sunk the SS Irish Pine, a ship clearly painted in the Irish colours. It was a neutral merchant vessel operated by Irish Shipping Ltd during WWII. On November 16, 1942, she was torpedoed and sunk in the North Atlantic by the German U-boat U-608. All 33 crew members were lost.

Dev never told the Irish public about it or many other atrocities by the Germans in case it would affect public attitudes towards Germany.

Did the Germans care about the Irish people they forced in to Slavery?

A yes / no will suffice.

No surprise The New York Herald Tribune used an article " to imply that Irish neutrality was biased towards the Axis powers."

Dev never told the Irish public because it wasn't confirmed till the 1970's that she had been sunk by the Germans, she was presumed lost in a storm.

Three months later, it was no more — its fate remained unknown for decades, and an Irish Press article in 1952 referred to the “mystery of the Irish Pine”, but the likelihood of it being sunk by a Nazi U-boat was strong.

The truth finally emerged in 1977. Naval historian Frank Forde, while researching in the Naval Historical Branch of the UK’s Ministry of Defence in London for his book, The Long Watch, discovered the secret diaries of U-Boat Commander Rolf Struckmeier, a distinguished operator who had been awarded Germany’s military decoration, the Iron Cross in September, 1942.

The diaries revealed that, in the early hours of Monday, November 16, 1942, the S.S. Irish Pine was on its way to Boston for repair works in the midst of a blinding snowstorm.

Struckmeier’s U-Boat, U-608, had spotted the 5,621 ton steamer the day before and the Irish Pine adopted zigzag movements to navigate its way to Boston. She was carrying the mandatory neutrality insignia, the Irish Flag and had the word ‘Éire’ emblazoned on her side, but Struckmeier claimed he never saw this.

He stalked her for eight hours, frequently losing her in rain and snow squalls, and eventually, at 7.15pm, released the torpedo in rough seas, which hit the target. In three minutes the Irish Pine and its 33-man crew were sunk.

I'm very familiar with the Irish pine seeing as I walk past the memorial to it several times a week.

So in other words you are saying the Germans were at war with us.

NO!

If they were at war with us they'd have declared war on us as they did on the UK and the US after Pearl Harbour)
In the meantime they did not respect neutrality in the Atlantic and sank the ships of neutral countries including the US, Spanish, Portugeuse, Swiss and Swedish.

Good lord. The knowledge deficit is appalling.

And we gave to the Allies as well.

What difference did it make?

We remained Neutral, that's what difference it made.