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

As was explained to you earlier in the thread, Germany was within international law in considering British merchant seamen as British POWs because the British merchant navy were assisting the Royal Navy. The British merchant marine didn't just transport food and goods, they transported materiel for the Navy.

Politically and legally they were British prisoners of Irish nationality, not Irish prisoners.

Whether you are genuinely confused or clever and trying to play word games isn't clear. But either way your point has been comprehensively rebutted.

The Germans treated captured Irish seamen (from the British merchant navy) entirely outside the terms of the Geneva Convention. Because Ireland remained neutral during WW2, the Nazis viewed these civilian merchant seamen differently, brutally punishing them for refusing to collaborate with the Nazi war effort. Of 50 captured, 44% died in slave labour Nazi concentration camps.

Again you are showing your lack of knowledge of the war. Not all of the German concentration camps were designed purely as slave camps. Some prisoners had quite different conditions and experiences than for example the 32 Irishmen forced into slave labor to build the immense Nazi submarine factory in Bremen-Farge, Germany.

Royal Navy prisoners were generally treated as p.o.w s and were treated relatively well compared to prisoners in the Concentration camps etc.

I never claimed or insinuated the Irish seamen were fishermen, never mind random Irish fishermen, by the way.

I would have thought they had all used forced labour in one capacity or another since forced labour was ubiquitous throughout Nazi-occupied territories. That's a little different from whether they were "designed purely as slave camps".

I think you are the last person who should accuse anyone of lacking knowledge of the war because your use of anachronisms show your whole foundational knowledge of the era is shaky. You conflate post-1970 conceptions of the Holocaust with Britain's attitude towards Polish Jews in 1939.

And your quick resort to AI/Wikipedia summaries has had comical results - like accidentially linking to a first-person account of someone saying Hempel was happy Hitler died whilst trying to convince people Hempel was distraught Hitler died.

'The people of Eastern Europe can thank Dev for their predicament in 1945'

Bizarre stuff. Has this whole thread been a wind-up from the get-go?

Somehow DeValera had the power to win the Battle of the Atlantic, liberate British POWs from concentration camps and liberate Eastern Europe before the Red Army could reach it.

The pivotal figure of the entire war is not Churchill, Roosevelt, Hitler or Stalin. It's DeValera!

You were boasting around the beginning of the thread that the US had funded the Red Army with Lend-Lease(!)

It'd be one thing if you said "You know what, war involves hard choices and compromises have to be made" but no, you claim the Allies ran to the rescue of Polish Jews selflessly and acted purely for the betterment of humanity, they were angels basically, but DeValera stood in their way cackling and secretly plotting a German victory.

You're plumbing new nadirs of self-pitying British nationalism. Two world wars and one world cup indeed.

You absolute bluffer.
The equivalent claim would be me saying The IRA bombed Room 345 on the 3rd floor of The Mercantile building in Canary Wharf.

Back in your under-researched chance your arm post that's what you claimed - The Germans deliberately bombed the Jewish Synagogue.

We're getting into 'Eamon DeValera ate my hamster' territory.

The IRA deliberately bombed Docklands in London. You may try to say it was just blast damage but it was a bomb. The IRA delivered a bomb to there and exploded it.

In WW2 the Germans delivered a bomb to Dublin and circled round in a low flying plane. There was no blackout in Dublin unlike UK cities, so given the geography of Dublin bay etc the Luftwaffe would have known they were over Dublin. The bomb was exploded in the Jewish quarter of Dublin and structurally damaged the Synagogue. They said "

I would trust them to know what happened their Synagogue.

You may say it was just blast damage but sure the buildings in your 150 million Dockland bomb just got blast damage too?

Just more stubborn refusal there.

The IRA bombed Docklands, they did not target a specific building which you claimed the Germans did in Dublin when it would be decades before the tech to do that in a city would exist.

You made a fool out of yourself and your rant. And the funny thing is it was far from the only time.

The shovel will have to be surgically removed.

Go to bed Francis. The case is long closed. It was accidental and had no effect on our neutrality - nothing did, German accidents & provocation, Churchill’s ‘gifts’ Churchills bullying with FDR riding shotgun. Dev and his government and opposition faced them all down.

You have thrown out the 1940 stat of 1100 ships lost and somehow implied that Dev/ neutral Ireland can be blamed for that. You imply we could have closed the mid Atlantic gap, 3-4 million square km. The entire area of the Republic of Ireland is 70k square km. Spoofery about Belmullet portruding 1000s km out into the Atlantic NW approaches.

Then you advise us to read a book… indeed.

Stop telling lies. I never said we could have closed the mid Atlantic gap all by ourselves. I never said Belmullet protruded 1000 km in to the Atlantic.

But all of the Allies say we could have helped. Shipping losses 1941.

Quote:

These ports could have provided several critical advantages, particularly during the early years of World War II:

• Closing the 'Atlantic Gap': During the Battle of the Atlantic, Allied aircraft lacked the range to cover the central Atlantic. Bases in Ireland would have allowed long-range patrol planes (like the Catalina or Sunderland) to spot German U-boats much earlier. [1, 2]
• Extended Escort Range: Retaining the ports would have given the Royal Navy and Royal Canadian Navy vital refueling and repair hubs. This extended the operational range of destroyers and corvettes escorting merchant ships, protecting them against devastating submarine wolf-pack tactics

…..and at No. 1 this week we …..

Are they using that map again. It was pointed out to them the other day that in 1941, when that map is from, Britain had Invaded both Iceland and the Faroe Islands and the southern treaty ports wouldn't have made any difference to the mid Atlantic gap.

And it was pointed out to you that that many ships were sunk closer to the west and s.west coasts of Ireland than to Iceland or the Faroe islands.