Quote:
Originally Posted by jalfrezi
Although Ireland was officially neutral, many Irish people did volunteer to fight alongside the Allies.
De Valera's position was more of a somewhat self-important statesman observing what he thought was unimpeachable protocol.
More Irishmen volunteered to fight for the Crown during the Second World War, against their government's wishes, than ever volunteered for the IRA in its entire history from 1919 to 1997.
De Valera, of course, was a former IRA leader.
During the Second World War, the IRA was an integrated intelligence branch of the Nazi SS and reported to an SS officer at the German embassy in Dublin. During the Nazi firestorm raids on Belfast in the autumn of 1940, IRA agents reported to the SS each day, telling them which areas of the city had been hit the night before, so that the Luftwaffe could always inflict fresh damage and not waste their bombs on already devastated areas.
The IRA, the cause to which de Valera gave his life, did this to their own country in the interests of the fascist enemy.
On the death of Adolf Hitler in May 1945, de Valera put on his black frock coat and his silk top hat and paid a formal courtesy call on the embassy of the Third Reich to ensure that he was the first person to sign the condolence book and to demonstate his sympathy and solidarity with Adolf Hitler and all he stood for. There was no diplomatic reason to do this, since the government represented by the Third Reich embassy had effectively ceased to exist. De Valera did it because he wanted to.
After the war, de Valera imposed what is known in Ireland as 'the starvation order.' Any Irishman who had volunteered for the Crown was to be denied all employment and all government benefits, by law, for ever. And the Irish Republic, to its everlasting shame, carried out this order.
There is no doubt at all whose side de Valera and his Irish-nationalist groupies were on. Irish 'neutrality' in the Second World War was merely a figleaf to stop the RAF bombing Dublin. That's all.