Irish Soldiers who deserted during WWII to join the British Army & Starvation order

Yahew wrote: »

Where do the badly educated English classes pick up this nonsense?

try checking out these notorious war criminals,ANDRILA ARTUKOVIC,[involved in the murder of over one million jews] BOZEN PERROT,PIETER MENTON,just for your information,like your grandfather people like me left school at 13,we had to work to help feed our families,so we could also pay taxes ,that pays for the schools to educate dick heads to insult us.

getz wrote: »

wake up and smell the coffee, when you realize Devs gamble in keeping ireland out of the war was foolhardy,and they paid a price for it afterwards,as churchill said,our merchant seamen as well as public opinion generally take it much amiss that we should have to carry irish supplies through air and u-boat attacks and subsidize them hansomely when de valera is quite content to sit happy and see us stranded,yet even gandhi [the great indian pacifist ] urged and recruited over one and a half million indians to fight for the british against the nazi,by staying neutral ireland did not get the help that other european countries got after the war to build up their economies,in fact ireland was a outcast,and was rejected membership of the united nations,on the grounds that it had made no contubition to the war against fascism,hardly anything to be proud of.and yet irish men and woman gave their lives in their thousands to help in the war effort

When World War II broke out in 1939. Gandhi initially favoured offering "non-violent moral support" to the British effort, but other Congressional leaders were offended by the unilateral inclusion of India in the war without consultation of the people's representatives. All Congressmen resigned from office.[53] After long deliberations, Gandhi declared that India could not be party to a war ostensibly being fought for democratic freedom while that freedom was denied to India itself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohandas_Karamchand_Gandhi#World_War_II_and_Quit_India

CDfm wrote: »

Lots of countries took in Nazi's -shamefully the formed part of the emerging states etc - and DeV turned a blind eye to Briscoes Zionist activities too.

The leading minds behind much German arms development in WWII were much sought after the wars end by the main victor nations. They may have punished political leaders but the minds behind weapons such as the V bombs were an important commodity. This even had an operational code name; Operation Paperclip, as it is widely known.

After WWII ended in 1945, victorious Russian and American intelligence teams began a treasure hunt throughout occupied Germany for military and scientific booty. They were looking for things like new rocket and aircraft designs, medicines, and electronics. But they were also hunting down the most precious "spoils" of all: the scientists whose work had nearly won the war for Germany. The engineers and intelligence officers of the Nazi War Machine.

The U.S. Military rounded up Nazi scientists and brought them to America. It had originally intended merely to debrief them and send them back to Germany. But when it realized the extent of the scientists knowledge and expertise, the War Department decided it would be a waste to send the scientists home. Following the discovery of flying discs (foo fighters), particle/laser beam weaponry in German military bases, the War Department decided that NASA and the CIA must control this technology, and the Nazi engineers that had worked on this technology.

There was only one problem: it was illegal. U.S. law explicitly prohibited Nazi officials from immigrating to America--and as many as three-quarters of the scientists in question had been committed Nazis. http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/operationpaperclip.htm

They were also to play an important role in the moon landings:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4443934.stm

early attempts to exclude ardent Nazis were to be ignored when America sorted out its 'priorities'.:

Truman expressly excluded anyone found "to have been a member of the Nazi party and more than a nominal participant in its activities, or an active supporter of Naziism or militarism."

The War Department's Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) conducted background investigations of the scientists. In February 1947, JIOA Director Bosquet Wev submitted the first set of scientists' dossiers to the State and Justice Departments for review.

The Dossiers were damning. Samauel Klaus, the State Departments representative on the JIOA board, claimed that all the scientists in this first batch were "ardent Nazis." Their visa requests were denied.

Wev was furious. He wrote a memo warning that "the best interests of the United States have been subjugated to the efforts expended in 'beating a dead Nazi horse.'" He also declared that the return of these scientists to Germany, where they could be exploited by America's enemies, presented a "far greater security threat to this country than any former Nazi affiliations which they may have had or even any Nazi sympathies that they may still have." http://www.conspiracyarchive.com/NWO/project_paperclip.htm

"It was only 20 years since Ireland had won its independence after many centuries of rule from London, and the Irish list of grievances against Britain was long - as Gerald Morgan, long-time professor of history at Trinity College, Dublin, explains.
"The uprisings, the civil war, all sorts of reneged promises - I'd estimate that 60% of the population expected or indeed hoped the Germans would win.
"To prevent civil unrest, Eamon de Valera had to do something. Hence the starvation order and the list."
Ireland adopted a policy of strict neutrality which may have been necessary politically or even popular, but a significant minority strongly backed Britain, including tens of thousands of Irish civilians who signed up to fight alongside the 5,000 Irish servicemen who switched uniforms."



The fact that the article sought out an academic at an Irish university, and then claimed he was an expert in the subject (even though he teaches English) only because he was British, just shows how inward looking the BBC and how the British suffer from collective aphasia.

Any other country's media would have asked an Irish history professor, not a man who was never taught Irish history.

Why they think Ireland's sovereignty should have been less important than providing manpower for Britain of all countries, or consider 7 years of blacklisting from the civil service(if they even applied) worse than execution, I'll never know....

...but it's probably a mixture of ignorance and arrogance. Gobsheens!

Fratton Fred wrote: »

Belgium, the Netherlands, Poland, Norway and numerous other countries all tried that approach. Unfortunately Hitler didn't have much respect for neutrality.

You should check Wikipedia for a quote "peace in our time" by a chap called Neville Chamberlain.

As I recall Britain tried to invade Norway as the same time as Germany did.
and had been laying mines in Norwegian waters to sink German ships iron ore ship sail through Norwegian waters before Norway was invaded.

The soviet union invade Poland too with with the agreement of the Germans.
The Soviet occupation of Poland in 1940 was very nasty affair also.
Katyn massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_massacre

"Stalin had decided in August 1939 that he was going to liquidate the Polish state, and a German-Soviet meeting in September addressed the future structure of the "Polish region."[11] Soviet authorities immediately started a campaign of sovietization[12][13] of the newly-acquired areas. The Soviets organized staged elections,[14] the result of which was to become a legitimization of Soviet annexation of eastern Poland.[15] Soviet authorities attempted to erase Polish history and culture,[6] withdrew the Polish currency without exchanging roubles,[16] collectivized agriculture,[17] and nationalized and redistributed private and state-owned Polish property.[18] Soviet authorities regarded service for the pre-war Polish state as a "crime against revolution"[19] and "counter-revolutionary activity",[20] and subsequently started arresting large numbers of Polish citizens. During the initial Soviet invasion of Poland, between 230,000 to 450,000 Poles were taken as prisoner, some of which were executed. NKVD officers conducted lengthy interrogations of the prisoners in camps that were, in effect, a selection process to determine who would be killed.[21] On March 5, 1940, pursuant to a note to Stalin from Lavrenty Beria, the members of the Soviet Politburo (including Stalin) signed an order to execute 25,700 Polish POWs, labeled "nationalists and counterrevolutionaries", kept at camps and prisons in occupied western Ukraine and Belarus.[22] This became known as the Katyn massacre.[23][21][24]

During 1939–1941 1.450 million.of the people inhabiting the region were deported by the Soviet regime, of whom 63.1% were Poles, and 7.4% were Jews.[10] Previously it was believed that about 1.0 million Polish citizens died at the hands of the Soviets,[25] however recently Polish historians, based mostly on queries in Soviet archives, estimate the number of deaths at about 350,000 people deported in 1939–1945.[26]"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Territories_of_Poland_annexed_by_the_Soviet_Union#Soviet_occupation_of_Poland.2C_1939.E2.80.931941

if Britain declared war on Germany to save Poland to from invasion why the they allow the Soviets to keep it at the end of the war?

if Ireland were in the way of Germany invading France or the Soviet Union we would have been invaded too.

Why did Britain invade Iceland?

Not sure why Neville Chamberlain thought telling the Czechoslovakia not to defend the Sudetenland would improve chance of peace.,and it was not any of his business.

I think here was buying time to prepare Britain for war with Germany.

Fratton Fred wrote: »

Thank you for your diagnosis Doctor, I will get some cream for that next time I'm at the chemist:rolleyes:

Tell me, I wonder if the author of this book might know a thing or two about Ireland and WWII

No problem boss, but that does not make Gerald Morgan an expert in Irish history. Could they not find one in Trinity, no?
Just shows he hopped on a bandwagon. What was it again "60% were pro-Nazi" he tells us. Evidence?

The fact that the book calls Ireland "Southern Ireland" shows that it was written by a British person, who didn't bother to learn the name of the state.


...incidentally what does that plaque mention "Southern Ireland".:D

Incidences of desertion in the British Army in WWII (from Ahrenfeldt, Psychiatry in the British Army in the Second World War, p. 273):

1/10/39-30/9/40: army strength (average) 1,538,675; deserters 6,889; incidence per thousand soldiers 4.48
1/10/40-30/9/41: army strength (average) 2,211,547; deserters 22,248; incidence per thousand soldiers 10.05
1/10/41-30/9/42: army strength (average) 2,455,720; deserters 20,834; incidence per thousand soldiers 8.49
1/10/42-30/9/43: army strength (average) 2,681,697; deserters 15,824; incidence per thousand soldiers 5.9
1/10/43-30/9/44: army strength (average) 2,729,480; deserters 16,892; incidence per thousand soldiers 6.19
1/10/44-30/9/45: army strength (average) 2,830,831; deserters 17,663; incidence per thousand soldiers 6.24.

I would imagine that a certain % of the deserters listed above would have been Irishmen who decided to return home to the relative safety of Ireland,are there any figures or estimates available? what was the punishment they received from the British goverment?What do you think would be the British public's attitude be towards them? both then and now?

CDfm wrote: »

I think the quote is "peace for our time" and the British and French ignored the German Nazi build up until it was too late.

That did not make it an irish problem and ireland had our own problems

our population didnt begin to stabilize/stop declining until around 1970 and if you look at the north the process of political stabilisation is just happening in the past decade or so.

Ireland was in a very bad place anyway




I have bolded that part because it really is the hub of the argument.

Ireland was probably one of the only democracies that emerged from WWI to survive in tact following WWII

To achieve that it had to bob & weave thru WWII and why restricting its , less than loyal, former servicemen applying for public service jobs is a small sanction is a concern now is funny pathetic.

And , lest we forget, Europe was a bombed out shell post WWII and no-one knew what would emerge.

None of that should take away from Britain/Churchill standing up against the Nazi's or anyones bravery in WWII as the Nazi's were monsterous and evil and Ireland and the Irish did play a significant and often unrecognized part in it.

Churchill was a warmonger who loved nothing better than a scrap. There is a reason why his own people got rid of him at the end of the war. nobody wanted another one.

we should also recognise the part Irish people played in Frances's and America's wars. Irishmen who served in British armed forces do not like to be placed on the same level as the French Foreign Legion.
with Irishmen in the American armed forces it is also a little awkward although fighting weapons of mass destruction sounds a lot like freedom of small nations and also some the cause they pursued were less than noble . I believe it was Grant who said 'the only good Indian is a dead Indian'. I am sure thousands of Irish soldiers fought the evils of communisim in Vietnam. let them be remembered.

CDfm wrote: »

But we did recieve aid

http://www.fourcourtspress.ie/product.php?intProductID=355

,yes in a way you did recieve aid ,but not under the terms of the marshall plan,US decision was not an automatic one,anger with wartime neutrality was still strong in washington.US minister to dublin george garrett believed that ireland was as vulnerable as any other european country,but US annoyance was soon evident,the bulk of assistance came in the form of loans rather than grants ,unlike to other european countries

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

In the late sixties there was a well-known diehard republican/IRA supporter (he had a vegetable round in south Dublin) who used to comment 'You can say what you like about Hitler, but didn't he bomb London!'
P.

it was still quite acceptable to say 'hitler was not all bad, sure didn't he fight the english' up until the eighties.

ejmaztec wrote: »

If the alleged 60% were nazis, then I would have expected an Irish fascist government to be in power with that kind of support.

Hoping that Britain was going to lose seems more spite than ideology.

Ireland was full of barstool Nazis and republicans. if Germany had won we would all have had to learn another language.

Belfast wrote: »

I could see the Germans bombing us, but could not see how they could transport and supply and army big enough to invade Ireland.

True that Germany may not have been able to invade us, due to the presence of Britain. But, judging by what happened in the north, had we sided officially with Britain, the British army would have re-entered the twenty six counties and set up defensive measures against possible German invasion. Thus, a newly independent sovereign state was going to be welcoming in foreign forces.

We all know Fianna Fáil would never have given away Irish sovereignty, willy nilly. It's not their style..... (!)