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

Your simplistic view would have you ignore the many reasons economic migrants migrate to where the work is, ho hum no surprises there.

And where is your factual evidence the government was specifically targeting these people?

Put up or down in flames goes another rant.

They were deserters as has been pointed out numerous times!

Did you find anything to cut and paste about the Government specifically making these peoples lives difficult?

No? Ok, that’s that then.

Read the link correctly.

"Of the 60,000 Irish men and women who joined the British Forces fighting against fascism, 9,000 died during the war while 12,000 returned to Ireland. The rest, wisely it appears, chose to stay in the UK.
Returning Home explores in great detail the fate of thousands of Irish soldiers who returned home when the war ended only to find that they were not at all welcome. The book outlines the massive economic, social and psychological problems that these veterans faced for the rest of their lives.
For the 5,000 men who deserted the Irish Defence Forces to join the British Army, poverty, joblessness and social exclusion were their reward (and that of their children as this reviewer can testify).

The eight year ban on deserters being able to take up employment virtually destroyed whatever chance these men had of making a life for themselves and their families.
This book is timely in that the deserters received an apology from the Minister for Defence Alan Shatter in June 2012. The copious footnotes are both extensive and revealing of the plight of individual soldiers who would struggle for the rest of their lives.  Shameful, given their heroic efforts to fight fascism."

More details in the book, and in the other books linked, if you want more details.

How much more pathetic are you going to get is the question here.

All you have is a mistake everyone agrees Dev made.

Your gotcha amounts to a hill of beans forgotten by anyone important almost immediately after the war.

And how many of the 48,000 who did not return to Ireland may have done so if there was not hostility to at least some returning from the war? We will never know for sure.

One thing for sure, all the books can agree on, is those who did return learned very quickly to keep their mouths shut.

Your have changed your tune. Earlier in the thread you and others were excusing Dev, saying he visited Hempel to fulfill a diplomatic duty etc, and that he was correct in going. Now you are saying his visit to Hempel was a mistake.

Or they married and settled in England like my two Aunts who worked for the M.O.D. till they retired and raised their family there. Or maybe they saw the massive unemployment in Ireland and decided to stay in Britain where there was plenty of work rebuilding the country. Harry Callan went back to sea in the Merchant Navy. You are trying to say that 48,000 didn't return because some people had a bad experience. Don't forget this was an Ireland where whole families didn't talk to each other ever again over who they supported in the War of Independence.

How would they know if they didn't return? Did some people have problems when they returned? Yes, but there is no way of knowing how many. The majority of the interviews that you linked were stories of indifference, people had their own problems to be dealing with.

You need books to tell you plenty of things about WW2, because you were caught out so many times already.

Why do you keep ignoring the question "Did Dev or Hempel express condolences for any of the 22 Irish Seamen who died horrible deaths in Hitler's Concentration camps, like they did for Hitler himself?"

It appears that Dev and the distraught Nazi Party member Hempel had more respect for Hitler when he died than for the poor Irish seamen who died in Hitler's Concentration slave labour camps. Says it all.

What is more pathetic is you being recommended books which you admitted not having read, but then you turn around (post number 2624) and tell us what is not in the books. Pathetic. You have been found out. Beg, borrow or steal the books. Read them in a library. But read them.

Rubbish. Everything I have said has been backed by books and by numerous quotations from books, and by numerous links to various websites, media outlets ( BBC, Independent Newspapers, the Examiner etc). You admit you have not read the books and worse still you claim you do not need to read the books. Yet you then have the audacity to tell us what was NOT in the books!

You change your mind when cornered eg you and others defended Dev earlier this thread for his condolences, now you say it was a mistake!

What next, you are going to change your defence of WW2 IRA- collaborator-with-the-Nazis Sean Russell, and say he was wrong too? A good S.F. supporter like you would surely not do that and now just say he made a mistake? Or is it only Dev you change your mind on?

Come back when you have read the books. You will learn a lot.

It is worth noting Churchill, though not in power at the time, was very against the handover of the treaty ports to the Free State / Eire. He said " we seem to give everything away and receive nothing in return… The ports in questions, Queenstown (Cobh), Berehaven and Lough Swilly, are to be handed over unconditionally, with no guarantee of any kind, as a gesture of our trust and goodwill, as the Prime Minister said to the Government of the Irish Republic…"

To give an example if how valuable the ports were, "over one hundred and twenty military vessels operated under the Queenstown (Cobh) Command in World War One, including thirty six American destroyers. They were employed in the fight against German submarines".

If the treaty ports had been retained by Britain, they no doubt could have been used to save the some shipping and lives in the Atlantic in WW2, same as they were in WW1. Same as neutral Portugal's Azores was used by the Allies in WW2.

Chamberlin, the man who gave the ports away, has gone down in history as one of the worst British P.Ms of all time. Churchill is thought of as one of the greatest British P.M.s of all time, if not the greatest.

Notice the lack of blue dots around the southern Irish coast? The British had mined St. George's channel and shuttered Plymouth for Convoy assembly. They used the North Atlantic where that big cluster of blue dots are. That map is from 1941 and Britain had invade both Iceland and the Faroe Islands at that stage so the Treaty ports were obsolete as was explained to you. Yet again your own info contradicts your point.