Hi
It has always intrigued me. Why did Taoiseach Eamon De Valera send his condolences to Germany on Hitler’s death? It doesn’t make sense to me. Ireland was neutral during WWI. Arrested Nazi spies. Foiled an attempt by Nazis and the IRA to hatch Operation Kathleen to invade Britain. Why on earth send condolences to such a hated individual as Hitler? I look forward to your feedback.
http://greyfalcon.us/Ireland.htm
"De Valera’s government brutally suppressed the IRA but also rebuffed requests to allow Jews fleeing Nazi persecution to receive asylum in Ireland. De Valera also refused to allow Britain or the United States to use strategic Irish ports for protecting Atlantic convoys from attacks by German U-boat submarines, a policy that cost thousands of Allied seamen’s lives.
In his May 1945 victory speech, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill condemned de Valera’s neutrality. Churchill said Britain had considered laying “a violent hand” on neutral Ireland to seize its ports, but avoided this thanks to the crucial support of Northern Ireland, which remained part of the United Kingdom when the island was partitioned in 1921.
But de Valera argued that to refuse condolences “would have been an act of unpardonable discourtesy to the German nation and to Dr. Hempel himself. During the whole of the war, Dr. Hempel’s conduct was irreproachable. … I certainly was not going to add to his humiliation in the hour of defeat.”"
Given the fact that Ireland was a neutral country and it maintained diplomatic relations with Germany, I guess this was just a formality, a part of daily diplomatic procedure. Likewise, during the Cold War, when a Soviet leader died, Western governments sent their condolences.
Probably also to get a rise out of perfidious Albion.
An interesting piece of trivia: The Irish government granted Eduard Hempel (the German minister in Dublin) asylum from 1945 until 1949, the German diplomats weren’t handed over to the allies.
Another vaguely interest piece of trivia: Hitler’s sister-in-law, Bridget Dowling, was Irish, born and rared in Dublin.
“Probably”? :dubious:
I don’t recall hearing about too many other neutral heads of state who found it necessary to send the Nazis a sympathetic telegram.
Franco and Salazar did.
The Swiss and the Swedes stayed quiet. But of course, Oliver Cromwell hadn’t wiped out 25% of their populations
Not too many other neutral heads of state had been part of an armed struggle against “perfidious Albion” just a couple of decades previously.
Wasn’t a telegram, it was a state visit, including the president (although that detail only emerged in 2005, according to the link above).
A factor that seems to have contributed to the international condemnation is that the visit took place right after the full scope of the Holocaust had finally become to the forefront of public consciousness. Just as everyone was grasping the full horror of Hitler’s evil, the Irish leadership blundered into appearing to regret his death. The act itself was stupid and insensitive, but the timing exacerbated the situation.
“You fell victim to one of the classic blunders,” to quote Vizzini in The Princess Bride.
Of course the Iberian fascists would express their sympathy. :rolleyes:
But the moral strength of the Irish struggle came from the twin principles of national self-determination and democracy.
Therefore in what sense is sympathising with a dictator who viciously suppressed democracy, conquered almost all of Europe and a good chunk of the USSR by force of arms, and who instituted a regime of terror and murder of political opponents, and the Holocaust, in any way consistent with the Irish struggle for independence?
The more I read about Dev the more I think he was a detestable man. Poor Michael Collins.
The Allies weren’t looking for Hempel (or anyone else from the German legation in Dublin, SFAIK). He was never accused of any wrongdoing.
He was “granted asylum” in the sense that he was allowed to remain in Ireland even though he no longer had any diplomatic accreditation, or any particular reason for being there. This didn’t save him from the Allies; it saved him from having to go back to Germany, where conditions for some years remained pretty horrendous, and he would have had no job. Plus, he would have had to take his kids out of school.
The Hempels ran a bakery for a few years, and then returned to Germany in 1949, when the Federal Republic was established and he was offered a job in its Department of External Affairs. By then at least the older of his children had left school, and two of them remained in Ireland and settled there.
shrug Why pretend to be neutral then or argue that it’s being done as anything other than a fuck-you to Britain?
Odds are small that Hitler would have thought Ireland had anything worth nicking, but if Britain had fallen then Ireland’s neutrality would have been worth about as much as Denmark’s if Germany wanted to make something of it.
Are you saying there was a visit by the Irish president … to Berlin?! … immediately after Hitler’s death? Like, while the Russians were stilling shelling the rubble and raping the women, and the German death squads were running around executing “deserters”?
How did that work?
The German Wikipedia article about Eduard Hempel [1] specifically mentions that the Allies repeatedly demanded his extradition and so does an article in the German news magazine Der Spiegel from June 1950 [2]. The Spiegel article was about Hempel’s son Konstantin being allowed back to Ireland and it has a picture of the former German minister in Dublin with his son.
[1] Eduard Hempel – Wikipedia
[2] http://magazin.spiegel.de/EpubDelivery/spiegel/pdf/44448788
de Valera visited the German embassy in Dublin and he talked to the ambassador (or the minister, to be more precise) in person.
De Valera hadn’t made a similar visit to the American embassy when President Roosevelt died three weeks earlier.
Ok, that puts it in a completely different light.
Lots of people supported the Germans, often due to an anti-British sentiment. They had to do a quick rewrite when the Germans lost and the full extent of their crimes became apparent.
Gandhi referred to Hitler as a “dear friend” in a letter and said that we resist British Imperialism as much as Nazism does. He did call the actions in Czechoslovakia and Poland monstrous though.