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

Just because Braun got a free pass from the US doesn't mean he gets a free pass from everyone or history or that other people with associations or dubious judgment should either. Though a head of state should be aware of optics and politics in their actions..

V2 was notoriously inaccurate. Why they only aimed them at very large cities. The idea that used them to precision target a small port in Ireland is daft. They wouldn't they have wasted them like that either. You don't prioritize the least important targets.

Slave labour was used across German industries. The scale of involvement was vast. You can't really single out one weapon or individual due to that. Obviously Braun was vastly more significant than most.

Double standards definitely.

A few even set up here after the war.

One whose name would have been familiar to us all in school.

And the founder of the Irish Pharmaceutical Healthcare Association

Away up the yard with the lecturing Flinty. Nobody I know on this thread is praising Dev for going to Hempel. It was an error.

The 'complaints' are about the vendetta conducted from a high moral ground that is a fantasy.

It wasn't meant as having sympathy for them, just examples of former Nazi's who settled here.

I would suggest that a certain poster isn't the only person guilty of dropping something about dev into every post. Theres a lot at it.

My view not every German is a war criminal, even if they were in the armed forces. At some point you've got to move forward. None of that has anything to with Ireland.

I think that one of the Irish agents (O'Reilly) used his former contacts in German intelligence to get investment for Shannon.I think that Clissmann was one of his contacts.

I’ll never understand supposedly Irish people who can’t shake off a British or US centric view of the world and of Ireland and what we do.

I find the elite opportunists like von Braun and Speer even more despicable than the true believers around Hitler. Both of them were cute enough to get away with their crimes.

Thats because Dev and co expected and were hoping for a German victory in the first few years of the war at least. They thought that would give them Irish unity and they were fooled by the Germans. Even in the few weeks before Hitler's suicide, Eisenhower was filmed and photographed and publicised worldwide in a liberated Nazi death camp, which also showed the mounds of skeletal bodies etc. Dev and co. never told us about these Nazi death camps, how there were millions of civilians killed. Strict censorship. Our media was not allow to use the word Nazi. It might offend the poor dears. Our media told us about the Dresden bombing though, strangely enough, with accounts of civilians killed.

You are right, there is nothing to link our government to the Nazis between 1933 and 1945. Because as far as they were concerned in the media to us they did not exist. The rest of the world had plenty to say about them though. The word Nazi was widely used almost everywhere else in the world.

Try putting yourself in the position of every single TD bar one and the vast majority of the people here Francis, for once.
They had to do what they thought best and they stuck to it and we are still neutral to this day. And tgat neutrality has been respected by most and has a value in conflict zones since.

We are talking about WW2, not modern neutrality. Sep up a separate thread for modern neutrality if you want.

It is clear people here were not told a fair, balanced view of events in WW2, the Nazis were not even mentioned. Yet hundreds of thousands of Irish people either directly or indirectly helped the Allies. Extremely few helped the Axis.

Our so called official "neutrality" pleased the Germans, it was all they could have hoped for : it irritated the Allies. Even the Canadians joked we were Hitlers favourite flower:

Little did Dev and co. know what the Nazi's final solution was for us Irish though.

Many Irish people fought in the war. They considered it "World War". Do you not understand them.

Why assume all Irish people think the same. Its not a hive mind.

Why assume everyone on boards is Irish.

Maybe we should post in a thread title, which side the group think are allowing.

Our neutrality stance during the war resulted in almost half of captured Irish Free State seamen dying in horrific conditions in Nazi captivity. Did our government ever ask the Germans about that? What did Nazi Part member Hempel say about that, seeing as he was allowed stay here in relative luxury near Dun Laoghaire for 4 years after the war even though the Allies wanted to question him, seeing as we seemingly did not?

"When the Irish sailors steadfastly refused to work in German munitions factories or on German ships, the SS sent them to brutal labour and concentration camps"

How Irish seamen were abandoned by our government to face Nazi brutality | Irish Independent

I always endeavour to see things from all perspectives.

Just because Dev's entire government supported something does not give the total picture, or does not necessarily say they did the right thing, especially as they controlled the media in the country.

Would not our government in WW2 have done the wrong thing if our neutrality resulted in the battle of the Atlantic being lost, Ireland invaded by Nazi Germany and our citizens worked to death in slave labour concentration camps, like some of our merchant seamen were?