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

It's kinda sad and 'says it all' that his memoir failed to find a publisher in America for 50 years after his death and Bew's book only published in a limited run and only by an Irish publisher there. Received no reviews in any major American news and print that I can find either.

Shows how much the period has been forgotten about there. Nobody's that interested or bothered.

You have not looked at the figures. You think us Irish painting our merchant ships green white and gold, with EIRE in massive letters on the side, and fully lit up at night, ( when allied were in blackouts) would have saved the ships? No.

We were hoping having a sign saying "don't hit us… hit someone else instead" might make us safer, but it did not really work.

Despite Dev sucking up to the Germans, figure were as follows:

Approximately 22% to 29% of the Irish merchant fleet was lost. Out of 56 ships initially on the Irish register (which later grew to around 71 with chartered vessels), 16 Irish merchant ships were sunk by the Germans.

The overall loss rate for Allied merchant fleets was nearly 4,800 Allied merchant ships sunk in total, representing roughly 15% to 27% of specific national merchant fleets by the end of the conflict.

So percentage losses of Irish ships was higher. Why was that do you think - ever strike you the Nazis just did not like the Irish? Despite the fact Dev was afraid to call the Nazis "Nazis" in case it would offend them, and Dev banned the media here from using the term Nazi, ….never mind reporting their attrocities ).

Wrong. Only 5 of the 16 were hit by mines, the rest were deliberately sunk by German submarines and aircraft, with one sunk by collision.

Anyway, the Allied ships were hit by torpedoes, bombs, gunfire and mines etc too….just not in as high a percentage numbers as the Irish ships.

FrancisBrady seems to think us being "neutral", soaking up to Hitler and having massive signs on our ships effectively saying "don'nt hit us, fire your torpedo at someone else" done us favours. It did not. Hitler and Hempel fooled Dev and co. And Dev and Co fooled FrancieBrady and his ilk, because Dev and co never told the Irish people the full story.

Think about it. Our shipping losses were higher that the Allies, in percentage terms. Even though we were not in the war and did not play any real part in defeating Hitler. Oh we sent a weather report from Belmullet, in case the Allied ships and planes just over the horizon there got it wrong….its not as if the Allies did'nt have thousands of weather stations!

Its amazing Dec never told you about our extraordinarily high shipping losses? Dev a bit economical with information? He never told you about the Nazis because he banned the media in Ireland from using that word, he never told you about the Nazi death camps, Japanese atrocities etc either. But at least the media here did tell us about the Dresden bombing. Of course.

Can you show the mathematics behind your claim that Irish shipping losses were higher than those of the Allies in percentage terms? How many Irish ships safely crossed the Atlantic in WW2

A quick search shows between 40 and 50 Portugese ships sunk. The Swedish merchant marine seems to have suffered 35 to 40% losses. The Portugese seem to have been attacked by both sides. WW2 in the Atlantic was a dangerous time and ships from neutral countries were sunk by Germn torpedoes, aircraft and mines.

With a non-neutral Ireland, Irish ports and cities would have been attacked by Germany. Thousands of Irish civilians would probably have been killed. That would have been one result of a non-neutral Ireland. The irish government knew what happened to cities in the UK and mainland Europe. Their first duty was to the irish people.

It is highly simplistic to think that ships from a non-neutral Ireland would not have been sunk at a greater rate.

The German U-boats operated, for a while, in wolfpacks and specifically targeted convoys. That is multiple U-boats targeting specific convoys rather than searching for individual targets. Once a U-boat found a convoy, it would transmit a radio signal to other U-boats with the coordinates of the convoy. Some convoys sustained high losses. Being neutral helped some ships.

Had Ireland not been neutral, the losses of Irish shipping would have been higher. As with most things in war, there is a terrible calculus in that what mattered was how much supplies were delivered and how many salings these ships made before being sunk. The US realised early that it could outbuild the Axis with its Liberty Ships construction program. But all that doesn't matter to your agenda to claim that Irish neutrality in WW2 was wrong and de Valera was a very bad man.

Read "Blackett's War" for the best explanation of why the convoy system was adopted and the reluctance of admirals to adopt it. Eventually, Blackett's work was accepted and the system was adopted. Some pf the lessons from WW1 were igmpred or temporarily forgotten.

Most neutral shipping would have been marked as such. With a U-boat making a surface attack, it may have been easy to identify neutral ships. With a periscope attack in the Atlantic, the identification of neutral ships might have been more difficult. If they were sailing in an Allied convoy, avoiding hitting neutral ships would have been much more difficult with the torpedoes of the time.The convoys were protected so an attacking U-boat might have a limited time to attack.

In terms of shipping, Axis was in a game it could not win. The US produced large numbers of ships quickly. The other aspect was that at various times, the Enigma encryption used by the U-boats and wolfpacks was compromised. There was also an electronic warfare race where developments such as radar and sonar. This made surface attacks for U-boats more risky and enabled their detection at range while submerged.

What made the Treaty Ports important was that they were deep water ports (Lough Swilly, Berehaven and Cobh). The latter two would certainly have been targeted from France if Ireland was not neutral. Lough Swilly may have been vulernable from Norway.

What makes it likely that Irish ports would have been targeted by Germany in the event of a non-neutral Ireland is that the Germans did target ports and docks. Defending against such attacks would also have required more Allied ships and aircraft to protect these ports.

At the start of the war, the U-boats took advantage of the neutrality of the US and operated close to the US coast. Because the US defences were not well organised, the shipping losses were hihh. Things changed and prior to Peal Harbour and Hitler's declaration of war on the US, there was almost an undeclared war in the Atlantic between the US and the Germans.

The data on shipping losses for neutral countriies is not as available as that for the Allies or Axis. Some of it should be available from the various merchant marine organisations or websites. Breaking it down into categories such as torpedoed, mined etc would involve some work if it has not already been done.

Any development in tactics is generally followed up with another from the other side. The concentration of the ships in convoys led to the wolfpack tactic. Had Enigma not been compromised, that might have caused very serious problems for the Allies. By using radio signals to organise the attacks on convoys, the U-boats provided some indications on their locations. The compromised Enigma messages increased the accuracy of those locations. The problem with intelligence derived from breaking Enigma was that that intelligence had to be used carefully to avoid letting the Germans know that Enigma had been compromised.

Far from Ireland being a backwater country on the edge of Europe, there was a very real intelligence war happening here the and the Abwehr was trying to get weather and military intelligence. The German legation was involved in that. There was also cooperation with the Allies that was quite different from the political situation. De Valera would have known about this and it explains some of his reaction to Gray. Even the OSS thought there was a major security leak with information flowing through the German legation. This was based on intelligence it had received from an agent in the German Foreign Ministry. It turned out to be part of a disinformation operation.

So what would us being neutral change about those numbers? Surely if we were part of the Allies they would be even higher?

None of that aligns with known facts or the available resources of the Germans.

The NI wasn't neutral had important ports and bases and was pretty much untouched other than the Belfast Blitz which itself was a one off.

Quoting figures and percentages or the absence of attack is interesting and all very well but again that overview was not available to those at the time.

Just like Dev. ship captains and companies had to make decisions on the fly and based on what might or was likely to happen.

I remember a programme about an Irish ship clearly marked was attacked off Spain by the Allies and had to limp back to Cobh. Had it not being carrying coal it would have sank. There were several others too. Must look it up.

Lots of dangers to ponder and negotiate if going to sea.

Whatever decision was made it had to be made based on the known info not on numbers compiled when the war was over.

j

All of the Irish ships sunk were by the Germans. The one odd attack you refer to was an attack on MV Kerlogue, an Irish ship on the Lisbon run which was carrying coal from Wales to Portugal, and it was attacked with gunfire from two Polish mosquito fighters serving under the RAF. The ship and crew survived. The same ship was almost sunk by Germany too.

It was generally by far the Germans we had to fear during the war though, it was them that sunk all our shipping, it was them that dropped about 50 bombs on Ireland. Do not forget - you probably did not know - the Germans put some captured Irish merchant sailors working to death in slave concentration camps, where some died. Any Irish merchant mariners the British came across were given a "tot" of rum and treated well.

Correct. The Port at Derry was of massive importance to the Allies in WW2, with up to 140 allied vessels at a time, and with over 36.000 Allied personnel from various Allied countries. You would have thought the Germans would have bombed it heavily but they did not.

We know that now.

Again NOBODY had your luxury of hindsight then.

Derry was not in range of German Bombers. Belfast wasn't even considered to be an achievable target as seen by it's early defences.

No searchlights were set up in the city at the time, and these only arrived on 10 April. There was no smokescreen ability, however there were some barrage balloons positioned strategically for protection. Given Belfast's geographic position, it was considered to be at the fringe of the operational range of German bombers and hence there was no provision for night-fighter aerial cover. Indeed, on the night of the first raid, no Royal Air Force (RAF) aircraft took to the air to intercept German planes. On the ground, there were only 22 anti-aircraft guns positioned around the city, six light and sixteen heavy, and on the first night only seven of these were manned and operational.

but they kept the fact we suffered higher shipping losses than the Allies secret

Have we any back up for this?