The government seems to have taken few steps to control recruitment prior to 1940. A major flaw in the official figures is the failure to record volunteers from the South recruited in Northern Ireland. In all, some 250 men from neutral independent Ireland died with RAF Bomber Command, compared with 218 Frenchmen, 136 Czechs and 34 Norwegians, all of whose countries were at war. Sections. The momentum was maintained when Sir Hubert Gough wrote to The Times in April 1946 insisting that the official figures were incomplete and misleading. According to one official at the time ‘the placing of Irish unemployed workers in employment in Great Britain would provide a very welcome mitigation of the difficulties at home’. November 10 2012 04:46 AM Irish neutrality in World War Two was a most extraordinary thing. However, the emphasis on Irish participation in the war did not extend to domestic politics. The whole business is still a very sensitive subject, even today. A British Liaison Office was set up in Dublin to operate the arrangements agreed between the two countries. Their units were smashed by the German attack in May 1940. In 1943, after the heat of the battle to liberate Tunis, the capital of Tunisia, he was sitting in a bar in the city center having a drink. The reason for this was that the Irish authorities assumed that any male of military age attempting to obtain a travel permit was doing so to enlist. It is hoped Why do Irish Americans still identify as Irish? I could find not one of them in Dark Times, Decent Men. As a consequence the Dominions Office decided to systematically collect the figures. Back home, however, people did not want to know or just didn't care.

Additionally, and most importantly, HH highlighted that until 1 January 1943 Irish citizens enlisting in Northern Ireland were not designated as originating in the South. It's disgraceful that it has taken so long. British officials were disturbed by these claims, in part because they did not believe the figures, but also because they were concerned about the impact on Northern Ireland. All the Irish public had been through were the minor inconveniences of what de Valera called "the Emergency,"  which involved keeping the country on alert and putting up with some shortages and rationing. The lists do not include casualties that occurred as a result of disease, homicide, or suicide. When Kelly was doing interviews for the book many of the surviving veterans and the families of deceased veterans asked him not to use their surnames or addresses. "Word of Nazi atrocities were filtering back to Ireland, partly through the media and partly through people like Dubliner Albert Sutton, who visited Belsen soon after it was liberated and saw harrowing scenes there," Kelly said at the launch of his book.

© Copyright 2020 Irish Studio LLC All rights reserved. For a comprehensive overview, see: Selected Finding Aids Related to NARA's World War II Holdings African Americans Records of Military Agencies Relating to African Americans from the Post-World War I Period to the Korean War , Reference Information Paper Casualty Lists and Missing Missing Air Crew Reports (MACRs) World War II Honor List of Dead and Missing Army and Army Air World War II was the deadliest military conflict in history.An estimated total of 70–85 million people perished, or about 3% of the 1940 world population (est. World War II Draft Cards Some even argued that they were defending Ireland by their actions. Copyright © 2020 History Publications Ltd, Unit 9, 78 Furze Road, Sandyford, Dublin 18, Ireland | Tel. Become a Friend of IrishCentral - help us to continue bringing Ireland to you. Dark Times, Decent Men needed far more diligent research and editing: the pictures, however, are excellent. Some identified with the Empire and were motivated by loyalist sentiment, others were prompted by a more complex political identification with Britain while, perhaps, resenting Irish neutrality or indeed Irish independence. For Ireland, it led to a considerable inflow of money into the country, which helped alleviate some of the hardship associated with the war. And they didn’t care a damn either." The book, Returning Home, is by the young Galway historian Bernard Kelly, and it investigates the shameful way the estimated 12,000 Irish veterans who returned to Ireland after the end of the Second World War were treated. It will be unavoidable  next week in the run up to the vote in Ireland on May 31, so make the most of your time off! In July 1942 de Valera wrote to Seán T. O’Kelly that he expected up to a quarter of a million Irish people in the UK to return to Ireland at the end of the hostilities, adding rather ominously that they would be looking for work. From 1941, the government discouraged anyone from providing letters of introduction, while the British Legion was warned explicitly not to engage in this activity. This was entitled ‘How Many?’ and argued a most impressive case for figures higher than those provided by the British government. The actual number involved became a point of political controversy during 1944 and this debate was to continue for some time thereafter. +353-1-293 3568, That field of glory. Southern Irish veterans commemorate D-Day in Normandy, 23 June 1994. This week we're going to give you a break from the mind-numbing economics and politics of the euro crisis and the referendum here on the Fiscal Compact Treaty. For every 10,000 Irishmen in the British army, 28 joined the SAS: the overall average was six. But at the very least the sacrifice made by thousands of Irish people who volunteered to fight Hitler should have been recognized when they came back. During 1945 the figures for the South were increased to 50,000. Indeed, by the end of the war neutrality had become almost a core value of Irish society, certainly among those who supported Fianna Fáil. The book tells the stories of many of these Irish servicemen and women who fought in the war, but I particularly liked the one about a guy called John Kelly who left rural Kilkenny to join the British Army and ended up fighting the Germans in North Africa. ranks Figures for the army at the end of 1944 were, however, believed to be quite reliable: Officers   Other     Total John died in 2009 and there are pictures of him in the book.But my favorite picture is the one on the cover of the book, which you see here. Another southern Irish Catholic hero, William Sheil, a lieutenant in 1940, a one-star general in 1945 with a DSO and bar, is completely overlooked. From the liberation of Sicily in 1943 to the defeat of Germany, more than 800 soldiers from neutral Ireland were killed. He says he was rescued by a Kerryman, but then was further wounded by an RAF airstrike. British documentation suggests that this was an impossible task, though this was contested by Gough, HH and others. There are difficulties with this, however, as HH seeks not only to include those who left the South to enlist, but all Irish resident in Britain in 1939 even if they do not have next-of-kin addresses in Ireland. Whether that decision was morally justifiable given the murder and mayhem unleashed across Europe by Hitler is arguable.

(In 1980, the legendary Luftwaffe ace Adolf Galland told me that Esmonde's attempt to sink the German battle-cruisers, the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, was the bravest deed he'd ever seen. Such was the case during the World War II when the South was neutral. In addition, it was common for an individual to arrange the specific date he would cross the border and arrangements were made to pick him up by the military authorities. In April 1995 the then Taoiseach John Bruton spoke movingly of 150,000 Irish people from North and South who volunteered to fight the Nazis. The book is published by Merrion, the new history imprint of the Irish Academic Press. He was aboard the Polish ship Chobry when it was sunk off the Norwegian coast in April 1940, and barely escaped with his life. According to one source, he had family reasons for travelling to Northern Ireland during the World War II, but had considerable difficulties obtaining a permit. While it was noted in the report that the South had a larger population than the North, implying that this might account for the difference in the former’s favour, a cryptic note added to the text pointed out that ‘Éire was neutral while Northern Ireland was not’. It's a disgraceful and shameful part of recent Irish history. De Valera had kept Ireland neutral during the war while the British and the Americans fought the most brutal and evil regime the world had ever seen.

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