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

Verified April 1945

Shown in Irish Cinemas May- June 1945. After Censorship was lifted May 1945

Anything else you need? Diagram maybe?

We all know the date of the end of the war in Europe,VE day May 8th.

As regards when the films or new of the atrocities was allowed to be shown, it was after that. Best some can come up with so far is someone said something about some film somewhere in the Irish Press on June 11th, 1945. So was possibly then.

As the war in the far east was not over, the atrocities in the far east by the Axis powers there afaik were not allowed to be reported until the war there was over.

Portugal was neutral and gave the Allies the use of the Azores.

And yes, the Holocaust WAS known about before Hitlers suicide, never mind the end of the war in Europe. Did you not read the links? No excuse for your lack of knowledge.

The UK did have a censorship policy to protect their forces but they (like most of the world) allowed the use of the Nazis word, and did not hide or conceal the Nazi death camps as they were liberated.

Edited for spelling typo.

Shown in Irish Cinemas May- June 1945

Have you as link or source for that "May-June" cinema showing, or is it something you picked out of thin air again?

You have been debunked so many times, like the other day when you claimed the Americans did not use the word Nazi, and I showed you Eisenhower's speech ( which you had not heard of), full of the "Nazi" words.

And you say censorship was lifted in May 1945. Did that really happen then, or was that not only partially, as the war (WW2) would continue for more months in the far east? The first mention you can find is some lad in the Irish Press newspaper on June 11th saying something about something else somewhere. Very vague.

Anyway, the Nazi death camps were liberated from the summer of 1944. Plenty of filming in January 1945, and by America and Britain to show the world in April 1945. But Dev and his government is thought to have dismissed it as Allied propaganda and would not let the knowledge starved Irish public know about it at all until June 1945.

No wonder we were the outliers in the world, with the ONLY PRIME MINISTER in the world to express condolences on Hitler's death.

Keep rooting to find anything to back up your wild claim about the May '45 cinema showing of the Holocaust.

The extent of the Holocaust was not known until after the war. Notice how Francis McM tries to avoid that fact. And as for censorship, it is part of war. Countries will try to control information. And it is particularly sad that the suffering of others would be used by Francis McM like this for a revisionist crusade to attack Irish neutrality and de Valera.

There is also the geography of the Azores to consider. Its position was a factor in whether Portugal could defend it from the Allies or the Germans. It simply did not have the resources. It was completely different to the Treaty Ports in Ireland which, in the case of Cobh and Berehaven were near to a major city. That made their position vastly more complex for a neutral country like Ireland.

Had Ireland provided access to the Allies, Germany might well have considered Ireland to be a de facto member of the Allies even if there was no declaration of war. That wuld have harmed Ireland an probably thousands of Irish civilians would have died. But Francis McM doesn't care about them. De Valera and the government did and acted in the interests of the Irish people first. Not the Allies. Not the British. Not some random revisionist over 80 years later trying to claim that they were wrong.

The one thing about chickenhawks all through the ages is that they will talk tough and say that "we" should fight but you won't find them on the frontlines. They want others to do the killing and the dying. That is why the repeated use of "us" and "we" is quite offensive to Ireland, the Irish and to those who fought, and to those mllions who did die.

Came across this reading about how Censorship worked both ways. The cutting and subsequent banning of this film on the grounds it was propaganda and it glorified war.

A YANK IN THE RAF
perhaps the strangest tale of censorship in Ireland is that of the 1943 film ‘A Yank in the RAF’. The film was released in Ireland and ran for a week at Dublin’s Savoy cinema, during which time 41,000 people saw the film, but had its certificate suddenly pulled. The reason? Well ‘A Yank in the RAF’ was seen to be a fairly standard propaganda film released when World War II was tearing the world apart, but since Ireland was neutral in this conflict, the film was seen to be inappropriate and yanked from Irish cinemas.

Movies banned in Ireland - articles • Movies.ie - Irish Cinema Site

The Holocaust was well known about before the end of the war. In 1942 people were aware. First Nazi camp was liberated in summer 44 by the Russians, and Auschwitz liberated and filmed in Jan 1945. Other camps were liberated and filmed by Americans and British weeks before Hitler died.

Dev knew of Irish people dying in Nazi Concentration slave labour camps in 1944 but did not want to anger the Nazi regime. In fact, the Irish government was first notified of Irish merchant seamen being held in German labour camps by March 1943. The Irish Legation in Berlin was fully engaged in the matter by October 1944. But still the Irish seamen died in Nazi camps and the surviving seamen felt abandoned by the Irish government. Ignored by Dev and co.

Are you claiming that because the full extent of the holocaust was not known on May 2nd 1945, that excuses Dev being the only P.M. in the world to offer condolences? That maybe he thought only 10% of captured Irish merchant seamen were killed in Nazi Concentration camps instead of forty something per cent? That maybe he thought only 4 million Jews died instead of 6 million?

As regards attacks by Germany on Irish Treaty ports if we had lent any back, bear in mind thet Derry or the port at Derry was not bombed to any meaningful extent during the war, even though thousands of ships arrived there during the war. If Dev lent the Treaty ports to the Allies, he could have got the Americans to protect them. In the last year or two of the war, the Germans had more to do, they had limited fuel and resources and it would not have been safe or worthwhile for them to fly around the UK to get to us anyway.

The Holocaust was not known among the general public in Ireland at the end of the war in Europe, ( we were not even allowed hear the word Nazi, never mind know about their camps), but it was known among the general public in Britain and US.

Knowledge of the mass extermination of Jews and other groups by Nazi Germany was circulating in the UK long before the war ended, though the sheer, horrific scale of the atrocities was only fully exposed when Allied forces liberated the camps in 1945. About three weeks before the end of the war in Europe the British filmed one of the camps they liberated to show to the public.

But they were know about years before that even.

I checked there - the Germans weren't occupying part of the US nor did they have a constitutional claim on part of the US.

No, I was referencing your inability to work out why the IRA might be bombing in Britain. It was you who made a trite comparison after all.

 there were no bombings or real acts of sabotage by Germans in America during ww2. (there were of course 300 bombings/acts of sabotage by IRA in Britain in 1939/40).

It doesn't require rocket science qualifications.

Many posts ago I said the optics of what Dev did were not great. I don't think anyone here feels any different. Even Hempel worried for Dev and his strict adherence to diplomatic protocol.

Ho HUm, the world got over it and it was not the defining act of our neutrality.

*I supplied sources that satisfy me that the cine reels were shown sometime after 11th May 1945 when Censorship was abolished.

If you know different and have sources, let's see them.

Emergency censorship was lifted on the 11th May 1945.

Military Archives | Office of the Controller of Censorship

Grow a pair and learn to walk back from your claims when they are routinely debunked.

I have supplied sources that 'satisfy me' that the Bergen Belsen cine-reels were being shown here in May-June 1945.

If you can debunk that work away.

So do you have back up for that? Censorship relating to wartime ended on 11th may 1945.

Maybe you can unsatisfy/debunk what I think happened and claimed.

All eyes on you Francis.

It was you who said the Holocaust newsreel was shown in May 1945. The only record of when a Holocaust newsreel was first shown in Ireland films was the fellow in the Irish Press mentioning it in June 1945. So you have no source, record, link or proof of what you claimed.