Irish neutrality during World War II

The Irish government had good reason to be concerned, lest the war in Europe re-open the wounds of the Civil War. There were pro- and anti-fascist movements in Ireland, and the IRA continued to pursue its own agenda.

Former Old IRA commander and founder of the Fine Gael Party General Eoin O'Duffy became a leader of the paramilitary Army Comrades Association organisation in 1932–33.[12][13] In recognition of his consistent support for Ireland's Jews, Éamon de Valera, Ireland's Taoiseach during the war, has a forest in Israel named in his honour.[14] In this context, it is relevant to note that two Irish contingents fought in the 1937 Spanish Civil War – but on opposing sides. O'Duffy's Irish Brigade fought with the (Fascist) Nationalists and the Irish contingent of the International Brigades fought with the Republicans, though neither had government support.

In the six months prior to the onset of war, there had been an escalation of Irish Republican Army violence and a bombing campaign in Britain under the new leadership of Seán Russell. De Valera, who had tolerated the IRA as recently as 1936, responded with the Offences against the State Act, 1939. Upon the outbreak of the main conflict in September, subversive activity was regarded as endangering the security of the state. There were fears that the United Kingdom, eager to secure Irish ports for their air and naval forces, might use the attacks as a pretext for an invasion of Ireland and a forcible seizure of the assets in question. Furthermore, the possibility that the IRA (in line with the Irish republican tradition of courting allies in Europe) might link up with German agents, thereby compromising Irish non-involvement, was considered.[15]

This threat was real: Russell, in May 1940, travelled to Berlin in an effort to obtain arms and support for the IRA. He received training in German ordnance, but died on a submarine while returning to Ireland as part of Operation Dove.[16] A small number of inadequately prepared German agents were sent to Ireland, but those who did arrive were quickly picked up by the Directorate of Military Intelligence (G2). Active republicans were interned at the Curragh or given prison sentences: six men were hanged under newly legislated acts of treason and three more died on hunger strike.[17] The Germans also later came to realise they had overestimated the abilities of the IRA. By 1943, the IRA had all but ceased to exist. In Ireland, neutrality was popular, despite rationing and economic pressure.[18]

Ireland was isolated at the outbreak of the war.[19] Shipping had been neglected since the Irish independence.[20][21] Foreign ships, on which Ireland had hitherto depended, were less available; and neutral American ships refused to enter the "war zone".[22] [23] There were 56 Irish ships when the war started; and 15 more were purchased or leased during the conflict; 20 were lost. In his Saint Patrick's Day address in 1940, Taoiseach Éamon de Valera, lamented:

"No country had ever been more effectively blockaded because of the activities of belligerents and our lack of ships, most of which had been sunk, which virtually cut all links with our normal sources of supply."[24]

The diminutive Irish Mercantile Marine continued essential overseas trading. This period was referred to as "The Long Watch" by Irish mariners. They sailed unarmed and usually alone, flying the Irish tricolour. They identified themselves as neutrals with bright lights and by painting the tricolour and EIRE in large letters on their sides and decks,[25] despite this, twenty percent of seamen were killed in the war. Allied convoys often could not stop to pick up survivors.[26][27] Irish mariners would rescue seafarers from both sides, but they were attacked by both, predominantly by the Axis powers. With the work of the seaman the imports reached their destination and exports, mainly food supplies for Great Britain, were delivered. 521 lives were saved.[28]

In addition, some British ships were repaired in Irish shipyards.[29]

Despite being frequently encountered as rumours, no U-boats ever used Ireland as a refuelling base. The origins of this claim likely originates with the 1939 dumping of 28 rescued Greek sailors by German submarine U-35 onto the Irish coast, after the U-boat commander Werner Lott sank their Greek cargo freighter, which was bound for Britain with metal ore.[30] This U-boat incident was featured on the cover of the popular U.S. Life magazine, on 16 October 1939. As in the days preceding, news of the dumping was widely published, the magazine and the locals who spotted the unloading of the captured Greeks noted that the U-boat had conducted the action and re-submerged before coastal defence aircraft could be directed onto the trespassing vessel.[30][31]

For de Valera the emphasis of Irish neutrality was on preservation of Irish sovereignty, so committing to the policy accomplished both rational and ideological goals. While the revolutionaries of the Irish War of Independence were ready to enter into alliances with the enemies of Britain to secure Irish independence, they realised that continuing such a policy after achieving independence would be dangerously provocative, a point de Valera made as early as February 1920:[32]

An independent Ireland would see its own independence in jeopardy the moment it saw the independence of Britain seriously threatened. Mutual self-interest would make the people of these two islands, if both independent, the closest of allies in a moment of real national danger to either.

This statement reflected a point de Valera had made as early as 1918 (when writing to President of the United States Woodrow Wilson, seeking that the United States formally recognise the Irish Republic as an independent state):[32]

Ireland is quite ready by treaty to ensure England's safety against the danger of foreign powers seeking to use Ireland as a basis of attack against her.

After the Italian conquest of Abyssinia in 1936, de Valera said at the League of Nations:[33]

peace is dependent upon the will of the great States. All the small States can do, if the statesmen of the greater States fail in their duty, is resolutely to determine that they will not become the tools of any great Power and that they will resist with whatever strength they may possess every attempt to force them into a war against their will.

Months before the outbreak of war, de Valera gave a statement to the Associated Press which appeared in newspapers on 20 February 1939:[34]

The desire of the Irish people and the desire of the Irish Government is to keep our nation out of war. The aim of Government policy is to maintain and to preserve our neutrality in the event of war. The best way and the only way to secure our aim is to put ourselves in the best position possible to defend ourselves so that no one can hope to attack us or violate our territory with impunity. We know, of course, that should attack come from a power other than Great Britain, Great Britain in her own interest must help us to repel it.

At a series of meetings in 17–26 June 1940, during and after the Battle of France, British envoy Malcolm MacDonald brought a proposal to end the partition of Ireland and offered a solemn undertaking to accept "the principle of a United Ireland" if the independent Irish state would abandon its neutrality and immediately join the war against Germany and Italy. However, the reality of unity would have to be agreed by the "representatives of the government of Éire and the government of Northern Ireland", each of which distrusted the other intensely. De Valera therefore rejected the amended proposals on 4 July, worried that there was "no guarantee that in the end we would have a united Ireland" and that it "would commit us definitely to an immediate abandonment of our neutrality".[35] The offer and his rejection remained secret until a biography was published in 1970.[36] Prime Minister Churchill proposed that a Council for Defense of all Ireland should be formed out of which "the unity of the island would probably, in some form or other emerge after the war." The Irish Prime Minister interpreted that statement as an offer to end of partition in return for his nations entry into the war. De Valera was said to have stated: "We cannot believe you." Later stating "...if we were foolish enough to accept that invitation...we would be cheated in the end."[37] De Valera had campaigned against partition and the 1937 Constitution drafted by him had an irredentist clause describing the State as the "whole island of Ireland". After the war he again called repeatedly for the ending of partition.

Notice from German-occupied Jersey inviting Irish citizens to register as "nationals of a neutral state."

In April 1941, the question of Ireland's entry into the war was again raised when the Australian Prime Minister Menzies paid a visit to Belfast and Dublin for private discussions with De Valera and John M. Andrews, the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland. Subsequently, Menzies reported to Churchill that the complexity of the questions of Irish unity and sovereignty meant that there was little possibility of Ireland's abandoning its policy of neutrality.[38]

Without the Irish treaty ports (which the United Kingdom had released a year prior to the war), an independent Ireland posed a serious disadvantage to the military capability and safety of British fighting and trade, risking the possibility of invasion if that disadvantage ever proved too great. If Irish sovereignty was to be maintained, then neutrality would have to be steered consciously to the benefit of British interests, as these were its own: at once to aid the British war effort but also to forestall invasion by Britain to regain the treaty ports. Ireland, like other neutrals was '...neutral for the power that potentially threatened them most.' [39] During the war, and accusing de Valera as a 'Nazi sympathiser', the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland, Lord Craigavon, urged Churchill to use Scottish and Welsh troops to overrun 'southern Ireland' before installing a Governor-General for the whole island at Dublin, but this proposal was rejected by London. Nevertheless, Churchill directed Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery to prepare plans to seize Cork and Queenstown (Cobh) so their harbours could be used as naval bases.[40] Better submarine-detecting technology, as well as military bases in Iceland, meant that the Irish ports were no longer as vital for the Allies as they had been during World War I.[41]

In this regard Viscount Cranborne acknowledged at the war's end that the Irish Government had '... been willing to accord us any facilities which would not be regarded as overtly prejudicing their attitude to neutrality', collaborating with the British war cabinet.[42] (See below for complete text.) The pattern of co-operation between British and Irish agencies began upon the onset of war when de Valera permitted the use of specified Irish airspace mainly for patrolling coastal points. The use of the "Donegal Corridor", the narrow strip of Irish territory between County Fermanagh and the sea, was significant. By the autumn of 1941 use of the corridor was a daily routine.[43] While de Valera rejected British appeals to use Irish ports and harbour facilities directly, de Valera was, according to M.E. Collins, 'more friendly than strict neutrality should have allowed.'[44] The co-operation that emerged allowed for meetings to take place to consider events after German troops had overrun neutral Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium. Three days after the fall of France, Irish and British defence officials met to discuss how British troops could, strictly at de Valera's invitation, occupy Ireland upon the event of a German landing there to expel foreign troops attempting to use her as a back door to later invade Britain (Plan "W"). The meetings continued, as Cranborne described, throughout the war, facilitating further dialogue.

Before the war began, de Valera had held a meeting with career diplomat Dr. Eduard Hempel, the German Minister in Ireland since 1938. The meetings discussed Ireland's close trade links with the United Kingdom and the ease with which Britain could invade her if its interests were threatened. He, in turn, communicated to Berlin that such was the case that it 'rendered it inevitable for the Irish government to show a certain consideration for Britain' and urged war officials to avoid any action that would legitimise a British invasion of Ireland.[44] In mid-June 1940, Secretary of External Affairs Joe Walshe expressed his 'great admiration for the German achievements.' Hempel, for his part, wrote to Germany of 'the great and decisive importance, even to Ireland, of the changed situation in world affairs and of the obvious weakness of the democracies.' Hempel might well have known better of Irish intentions, having earlier described a native custom 'to say agreeable things without meaning everything that is said.'[44]

Other examples of Irish attitudes towards Nazi Germany found expression in mid-1940 in de Valera's Chargé d'Affaires in Berlin, William Warnock, 'whose "unquestionable" hostility to Britain could easily be interpreted as sympathetic for National Socialism.'[45] Academic J.J. Lee questioned just how much of Warnock's zeal towards Hitler's Reichstag speech on 19 July was genuine enthusiasm for the 'international justice' that could be expected after Germany's victory, as opposed to an adherence to the instructions of Dublin to please oneself to the potential victors. Three years later, by 1944, the orientation of the war and of Irish relations to Germany had turned about-face, with the likelihood of a German victory now remote. In that climate, the Irish Government, once so ready to 'say agreeable things', Hempel remarked, had become 'unhelpful and evasive'.[46]

The United States Ambassador to Ireland, David Gray, stated that he once asked de Valera what he would do if German paratroopers "liberated Derry". According to Gray, de Valera was silent for a time and then replied "I don't know".[47]

Ireland maintained a public stance of neutrality to the end by refusing to close the German and Japanese Legations. The Taoiseach Éamon de Valera personally visited Ambassador Hempel at his home in Dún Laoghaire on 2 May 1945 to express official condolences on the death of German dictator Adolf Hitler, following the usual protocol on the death of a Head of State of a state with a legation in Ireland. President Hyde visited Hempel separately on 3 May.[48] Irish envoys in other nations did likewise, but no other Western European democracies followed Ireland's example.[49] The visits caused a storm of protest in the United States.[50]

De Valera denounced reports of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp as "anti-national propaganda"; according to Paul Bew, this was not out of disbelief but rather because the Holocaust undermined the assumptions underlying Irish neutrality: moral equivalence between the Allies and the Axis, and the idea that the Irish were the most persecuted people in Europe.[51]

Ireland's position on Jewish refugees fleeing Europe was sceptical. Irish authorities during the war generally gave two justifications for turning away prospective immigrants: that they would overcrowd the nation and take Irish jobs, and that the presence of a large Jewish population would inflame anti-Semitic sentiments amongst the Irish.[52] There was some domestic anti-Jewish sentiment during World War II, most notably expressed in a notorious speech to the Dáil in 1943, when newly elected independent TD Oliver J. Flanagan advocated "routing the Jews out of the country".[53][54]

There was some official indifference from the political establishment to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust during and after the war. This indifference would later be described by Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform Michael McDowell as being "antipathetic, hostile and unfeeling".[55] Dr. Mervyn O'Driscoll of University College Cork reported on the unofficial and official barriers that prevented Jews from finding refuge in Ireland, although the barriers have been down ever since:

Although overt anti-Semitism was not typical, the Southern Irish were indifferent to the Nazi persecution of the Jews and those fleeing the [T]hird Reich….A successful applicant in 1938 was typically wealthy, middle-aged or elderly, single from Austria, Roman Catholic and desiring to retire in peace to Ireland and not engage in employment. Only a few Viennese bankers and industrialists met the strict criterion of being Catholic, although possibly of Jewish descent, capable of supporting themselves comfortably without involvement in the economic life of the country.[56]