Re: President sent sympathy on Hitler's death
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But the presidential record for 1938-1957, made public this week, sheds new light on one of the most embarrassing chapters in Irish history - its decision to maintain cordial relations with the Nazis even after news of the Holocaust emerged.
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Ireland also censored any mention of the Holocaust from news reports during the war. It's also been criticised for refusing entry to Jews at the same time.
Early in the war, De Valera refused Churchill's demands to open the Treaty Ports to British shipping. Although initially Churchill made much of this, the British Admiralty had neglected the ports since the Treaty and they could not be used effectively anyway.
The British also allegedly offered the prospect of a United Ireland in return for Ireland entering the war on the Allied side. De Valera was suspicious of British offers though and rejected the proposal.
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Until now it was believed that Ireland's prime minister, Eamon de Valera, was the only leader to convey official condolences, a gesture criticised worldwide.
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Indeed. In fact Churchill made a point of criticising Ireland during his victory speech, even making veiled threats:-
the approaches which the southern Irish ports and airfields could so easily have guarded were closed by the hostile aircraft and U-boats. This indeed was a deadly moment in our life, and if it had not been for the loyalty and friendship of Northern Ireland, we should have been forced to come to close quarters with Mr. de Valera, or perish from the earth. However, with a restraint and poise to which, I venture to say, history will find few parallels, His Majesty’s Government never laid a violent hand upon them, though at times it would have been quite easy and quite natural, and we left the de Valera Government to frolic with the German and later with the Japanese representatives to their heart’s content. - Winston Churchill
De Valera replied as such:-
Allowances can be made for Mr. Churchill’s statement, however unworthy, in the first flush of victory. No such excuse could be found for me in this quieter atmosphere. There are, however, some things it is essential to say. I shall try to say them as dispassionately as I can. Mr. Churchill makes it clear that, in certain circumstances, he would have violated our neutrality and that he would justify his actions by Britain’s necessity. It seems strange to me that Mr. Churchill does not see that this, if accepted, would become a moral code and that when this necessity became sufficiently great, other people’s rights were not to count... that is precisely why we had this disastrous succession of wars - World War No.1 and World War No.2 - and shall it be World War No.3? Mr. Churchill is proud of Britain’s stand alone, after France had fallen and before America entered the war. Could he not find in his heart the generosity to acknowledge that there is a small nation that stood alone not for one year or two, but for several hundred years against aggression; that endured spoliations, famine, massacres, in endless succession; that was clubbed many times into insensibility, but each time on returning to consciousness took up the fight anew; a small nation that could never be got to accept defeat and has never surrendered her soul?" - Eamon De Valera
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The traditions of the Irish people are the oldest of any race in Europe north and west of the Alps, and they themselves are the longest settled on their own soil
- Edmund Curtis (A History of Ireland: From Earliest Times to 1922)
The Irish are one of the most ancient nations that I know of at this end of the world, and are from as mighty a race as the world ever brought forth.
For it is certain that Ireland hath had the use of letters very anciently and long before England; that they had letters anciently is nothing doubtful, for the Saxons of England are said to have their letters and learning, and learned men, from the Irish.
- Edmund Spenser (writer, and British Government Official in Ireland, AD 1596).
The renaissance began in Ireland seven hundred years before it was known in Italy. And Armagh, the ecclesiastical capital of Ireland, was at one time the metropolis of civilisation.
- Arsene Darmesteter, Professor of Old French and Literature
Ireland can indeed lay claim to a great past; she can not only boast of having been the birthplace and abode of high culture in the fifth and sixth centuries . . . but also of having made strenous efforts in the seventh and up to the tenth century to spread her learning among the German and Romance peoples, thus forming the actual fountain of our present continental civilisation.
- Heinrich Zimmer, Professor of Celtic and Sanskrit, Member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences
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Saturday, December 31st, 2005
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