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

And?

FDR and Churchill didn't like neutrality. So what?

Nobody has claimed neutrality was without criticism.

Neutrality requires resolve. You have to manage it carefully, fend off criticism, intimidation, provocation and beware those dangling trinkets.
The Irish government almost in it's entirety, did that for the duration of the war.

I could have split that into what's relevant to your comment and the rest into other separate posts. But it's too much hassle on a mobile and boards crappy software.

This is interesting and may or may not be correct,

But wars are unpredictale and nobody knew what the course or outcome of WW2 would be.
Use hindsight by all means, but not to criticise those at the coalface managing the day by day events.
I remember a story about a poor history play where one of the characters says goodbye to his mother with the line:

'Farewell mother, I'm off to fight in the 100 years war'. 😁

Read the independent.ie link I gave you testerday. Failing that, the wiki page on Dev himself. He did deny the notorious Bergen-Belsen camp as propaganda, when it was shown to the world. Of course, he was looking through his usual anti-British, green tainted eyes, as the British had liberated and entered that camp, and shown it to the world.

"So what?" say you. 40 million civilians died in WW2, and we did nothing to help shorten the war when we could have.

"All that requires for evil to thrive is good men to do nothing", as the old going says.

The world could not have helped come to the conclusion that Dev did not think Hitler was all that evil when he commiserated on behalf of the Irish people on his death?

Apologies, the first part of the post (the part you did not quote) was correctly directed at you.

The second part of the post was mistake, it was meant for FrancieBrady. Not easy replying on a phone sometimes, and yes I made a mistake and am saying sorry to you for it.

I have said that previously, you ignore it and continue to parrot a line that you have used probably 50+ times at this stage. That adds nothing to the discussion.

The world has moved on, it's time you should too.

None of my post that you quoted has any hindsight. You revert back to the dogma of hindsight regardless of what is posted. This on a par with posting the same cartoon or document a zillion times.

The allies had no virtually defenses around Belfast they thought German couldn't or wouldn't try to bomb it. Germany tested the defenses found none and came back with bigger raid. They didn't do it again so the allies were right. Also the allies put defenses around Belfast after that. So the Germans realized that was likely at the time.

That's not hindsight that's people in period making decisions on the available evidence at that time.

Dublin bombing was subjectively likely political not a mistake and not strategic. If there was any real concern about future bombing there would have been more defenses put in place. There wasn't. Even Irelands blackout was not taken seriously or rigidity enforced. Again decisions in period.

This is simple data analysis. It's based on the available facts "at that time". It shouldn't need explaining and I won't be again.

Hindsight my arks.

Neutrality has blurry edges.

The OP premise was wrong he's never come back to explain his reason for posting. Poor.

Very little combat happened in NI 

You could not make this comment until the war was over, nobody knew how long the war was going to last, they are unpredictable for a reason.

Even over England 80-90% of air combat was over the South and SE due the short range of German fighters.

This may have changed. As mentioned Germany wasn't expected to take France so easily but a change in their ability saw them do that.

The concentration of allied resources for bombing and D-day was the same.

If you look at Pembroke it was in range of German aircraft and important not just because of the flying boat base but because it stored admiralty oil tanks. These were attacked heavily blitz etc. But even this important target wasn't attacked after 1943.

This is classic hindsight. Nobody knew that attacks would cease.

Exact same 'my enemy's enemy is my friend' thinking of Sean Russell there. Whatever will be said about that?😁

I never said or even hinted Dev was mad.

You can think Roosevelt was mad if you want, but he was a leader of the U.S. during the war years and widely considered considered among the respected leaders of America ever.

Churchill has a bad reputation in India and for good reason. Given the bust of churchill was returned to the Whitehouse by Trump im not sure that does Churchills reputation any good.

Britain had a mixed reputation going into WW2 given some of its colonies wanted independence, like India.

There was no referendum on neutrality, so how do you know exactly what support for it was like? The vast vast majority of those who helped one side helped the Allies, not the Axis.

Also, Dev had extremely strict censorship, his media were not even allowed use the word Nazi in case it would paint the poor Germans in a bad light. News of German or Axis atrocities were not allowed to be reported here, so how could people make an informed, educated decision even if they were allowed to in a refeundum or poll?