Ireland joins WW2 and reunifies

In 1940, the British offered to Prime-Minister Éamon de Valera to reunite Northern Ireland with the independent republic in return of Ireland joining WW2 and giving access to Irish ports by the Allies.

What could have happened had Éamon and the Northern Ireland parliament accept this offer?
 
Neutrality was overwhelmingly popular with the Irish public and both Éamon de Valera and opposition leader Richard Mulcahy assessed Irish public opinion as leaning towards the Axis, there's a real risk of a second civil war particularly if it looks like the Irish government is going to introduce conscription and/or Northern Ireland isn't transferred immediately.

This fear is most likely the main reason why de Valera never took the British offer OTL.
 
In 1940, the British offered to Prime-Minister Éamon de Valera to reunite Northern Ireland with the independent republic in return of Ireland joining WW2 and giving access to Irish ports by the Allies.


What could have happened had Éamon and the Northern Ireland parliament accept this offer?

I believe Eamon correctly saw the deal for what it was; a poison pill that would've only served to weaken the Irish state and Fianna Fial, unification or no
 
I though they offered a few counties and that the offer was rescinded almost immediately.

I must have read about it in here, but I can't find the message.
 
In 1940, the British offered to Prime-Minister Éamon de Valera to reunite Northern Ireland with the independent republic in return of Ireland joining WW2 and giving access to Irish ports by the Allies.
Nitpick, Ireland wasn't a republic in 1940.

What could have happened had Éamon and the Northern Ireland parliament accept this offer?
A disastrous multi-sided civil war.

Would Brits even be able keep their promise even if they truly would want give NI to RoI?
Nope.


The 27 June 1940 plan merely committed Britain to an immediate declaration accepting "the principle" of a united Ireland, with a Joint Defence Council to be established and discussion body to examine the details of unification. In return Ireland would drop it's policy of neutrality, though without commitment to active involvement in the war provided British ships were allowed to use Irish ports and British troops and aircraft were allowed access to Irish territory.

While MacDonald (Secretary of State for the Colonial Office,) told the de Valera that "a united Ireland would come into actual being within a comparatively short period of time" the latter did not believe this, nor did Lemass or Aiken.

De Valera rejected the plan on three grounds:
1. He did not believe that the UK would fulfil its guarantee of a united Ireland; MacDonald stated that Britain "would not and could not march troops into the six counties to force a policy upon their government"
2. He believed that Britain would lose the war
3. The risk of domestic dissention
 
Regardless of a proposed unification of the island of Ireland about 5000 Irish soldiers & around 37000 civilians volunteered to serve in the British Army in WWII. The soldiers were treated abysmally by their government after the war. On their return home they were formally dismissed from the Irish army, stripped of all pay and pension rights, and prevented from finding work by being banned for seven years from any employment paid for by state or government funds. The civilians were "blacklisted" and ostracized. Their names were published and they were considered almost as traitors.

The Irish government did not officially pardon the men they saw as deserters until 2012. Such behavior hardly suggested the Irish leadership at the time was willing to support the allied cause. I am afraid my views on Irish neutrality during WWII don't make for polite reading.
 
Regardless of a proposed unification of the island of Ireland about 5000 Irish soldiers & around 37000 civilians volunteered to serve in the British Army in WWII. The soldiers were treated abysmally by their government after the war. On their return home they were formally dismissed from the Irish army, stripped of all pay and pension rights, and prevented from finding work by being banned for seven years from any employment paid for by state or government funds. The civilians were "blacklisted" and ostracized. Their names were published and they were considered almost as traitors.

The Irish government did not officially pardon the men they saw as deserters until 2012. Such behavior hardly suggested the Irish leadership at the time was willing to support the allied cause. I am afraid my views on Irish neutrality during WWII don't make for polite reading.

Deserting the national army tends to result in you being considered a traitor, yes. Not sure many states feel that shouldn't be a fairly big deal.
 
In 1940, the British offered to Prime-Minister Éamon de Valera to reunite Northern Ireland with the independent republic in return of Ireland joining WW2 and giving access to Irish ports by the Allies.

What could have happened had Éamon and the Northern Ireland parliament accept this offer?
What if: British-Ireland deal in 1940, united Ireland goes to war

A British plan, drawn up in June 1940, envisaged an immediate declaration accepting "the principle" of a united Ireland, the establishment of a Joint Defence Council and a joint body to deal with the constitutional detail of unity and the possibility of merging the administrations North and South. In return, the then Taoiseach, Eamon de Valera, was asked to abandon the policy of neutrality.

But Ireland could remain "non-belligerent" if the government invited British ships into Irish ports and British troops and aircraft were allowed access to Irish territory to secure the country against a German invasion while protecting Britain's western flank.

In a Dominions Office file from June 27th, 1940, released as part of the open government initiative, the Secretary of State for the Colonial Office, Malcolm MacDonald, told the Taoiseach over lunch that if the plan was accepted "a united Ireland would come into actual being within a comparatively short period of time".

The meeting was the culmination of discussions between the two men over 10 days in Dublin when de Valera had outlined his opposition to abandoning neutrality and renewed his calls for Britain to supply Ireland with arms to defend itself against German attack.

De Valera eventually rejected the plan on the grounds that Dublin could not be sure London would fulfil its guarantee of a united Ireland, his belief that Britain would lose the war and the fear of dissension within the Fianna Fail party.
The then Northern Ireland Prime Minister, James Craig, was incensed when he was told about the plan for a united Ireland.

At the Dublin meeting, which was also attended by the Minister of Supplies, Sean Lemass, and the Minister for External Affairs, Frank Aiken, Lemass said there was no guarantee in the plan that a united Ireland would be established immediately. Indeed, de Valera had made the same point during a meeting with MacDonald on June 26th when he described the offer as a "deferred payment" for entering the war.

But MacDonald countered by claiming that while London "would be glad if a united Ireland could come into being at once", there were practical difficulties that made such a proposal impossible. The three governments would need to consider at length a new constitution. Merely extending the Irish Constitution to include Northern Ireland would not work either, he told de Valera.

Dublin also raised concerns about Northern Ireland's willingness to unite. MacDonald told de Valera London would not "coerce" Northern Ireland into an agreement and "would not and could not march troops into the six counties to force a policy upon their government". Nevertheless, the present circumstances "offered a very good chance of such an agreement being reached".

Aiken then raised the possibility that British security could still be guaranteed if Northern Ireland was informed that Ireland would remain neutral. But MacDonald dismissed Aiken's proposal, pointing out that Northern Ireland's role in the war was "most valuable to us".

MacDonald then asked to speak not as a representative of the British government, but in a private capacity as an individual "whose sympathies were on the side of the establishment of a united Ireland".

He told de Valera and his colleagues that they faced a stark choice. "If the leaders of Eire now stayed out of the war, and perhaps contributed to German strength by doing so, whilst the people of Northern Ireland and of the United Kingdom were joined in the supreme struggle against the Nazis, then none of us in Britain would be very concerned to create a united Ireland afterwards."

A German invasion of Ireland, MacDonald said, would "extinguish Irish freedom" during the war, but if Ireland's defences were increased it would make a German attack much less likely.

But de Valera argued that national unity would be broken if British troops were stationed on Irish soil and Ireland's neutrality would be prejudiced, exposing the country to a greater risk of German attack.

In a meeting on June 26th when MacDonald read out the entire British plan, he noted de Valera's resistance to the plan. "He said that to involve his people in a war was a terrible responsibility . . . he thought it more likely that the Germans would wish to punish them savagely for presuming to enter the war against them. They would bomb Dublin."
 
Neutrality was overwhelmingly popular with the Irish public and both Éamon de Valera and opposition leader Richard Mulcahy assessed Irish public opinion as leaning towards the Axis, there's a real risk of a second civil war particularly if it looks like the Irish government is going to introduce conscription and/or Northern Ireland isn't transferred immediately.

This fear is most likely the main reason why de Valera never took the British offer OTL.
Hell, allying with Britain? Might not go down well with some sections of the population.
 
Regardless of a proposed unification of the island of Ireland about 5000 Irish soldiers & around 37000 civilians volunteered to serve in the British Army in WWII. The soldiers were treated abysmally by their government after the war. On their return home they were formally dismissed from the Irish army, stripped of all pay and pension rights, and prevented from finding work by being banned for seven years from any employment paid for by state or government funds. The civilians were "blacklisted" and ostracized. Their names were published and they were considered almost as traitors.

The Irish government did not officially pardon the men they saw as deserters until 2012. Such behavior hardly suggested the Irish leadership at the time was willing to support the allied cause. I am afraid my views on Irish neutrality during WWII don't make for polite reading.

Ah bit off there, many more than 5000 served in the British military during WW2, most suffered no such actions, it was those that deserted from the Defence Forces during the Emergency that faced what you posted, and to this day those that served with them and didn't desert still hold the view that they should have faced Court Martial upon their return and imprisonment for their actions, tell me, how do other nations deal with troops that desert during effectively war time conditions?

As for the policy of Ireland during the War, given both the relationship with the UK and the damaged state the nation was still in post Civil War it shouldn't be surprising, however the reality is that the Allies received plenty of support from the state even then (it should also be noted that the Treaty Ports would have taken massive investment by this stage to be of use and be defended, investment that I'm sure that Dev didn't trust the UK to make (or leave post WW2). As to the OP's question regarding the proposal, I'd give it two chances of being anything other than one of Churchill's flights, there's no way in the midst of WW2 that anyone in the Cabinet would risk NI kicking off (which it would have) and the damage that would have done to the combat strength of the UK at the time. And after WW2 even if Ireland had joined I (and I'd guess Dev and his Cabinet) wouldn't trust a UK not under threat to consider ending the United Kingdom.
 
Deserting the national army tends to result in you being considered a traitor, yes. Not sure many states feel that shouldn't be a fairly big deal.

Ah bit off there, many more than 5000 served in the British military during WW2, most suffered no such actions, it was those that deserted from the Defence Forces during the Emergency that faced what you posted, and to this day those that served with them and didn't desert still hold the view that they should have faced Court Martial upon their return and imprisonment for their actions, tell me, how do other nations deal with troops that desert during effectively war time conditions?

As for the policy of Ireland during the War, given both the relationship with the UK and the damaged state the nation was still in post Civil War it shouldn't be surprising, however the reality is that the Allies received plenty of support from the state even then (it should also be noted that the Treaty Ports would have taken massive investment by this stage to be of use and be defended, investment that I'm sure that Dev didn't trust the UK to make (or leave post WW2). As to the OP's question regarding the proposal, I'd give it two chances of being anything other than one of Churchill's flights, there's no way in the midst of WW2 that anyone in the Cabinet would risk NI kicking off (which it would have) and the damage that would have done to the combat strength of the UK at the time. And after WW2 even if Ireland had joined I (and I'd guess Dev and his Cabinet) wouldn't trust a UK not under threat to consider ending the United Kingdom.
Fuck that shit, these are the motherfucking NAZIS we're talking about here.
 
Fuck that shit, these are the motherfucking NAZIS we're talking about here.

Doesn't change the fact that those in power had little to no reason to have any faith in the UK Government of the day, nor does it change the fact that trying to "ally" with the UK before even the US had joined the war would have risked plunging the nation back into Civil War. Not too mention the fact that by 1940 the scale of what the NAZIS were wasn't known, you're using hindsight.
 
Doesn't change the fact that those in power had little to no reason to have any faith in the UK Government of the day, nor does it change the fact that trying to "ally" with the UK before even the US had joined the war would have risked plunging the nation back into Civil War.
I was talking about the treatment of WWII veterans by Ireland.
 
I don't think you get how badly England was regarded in much of Ireland. Yes, Nazis were bad, but England, oh, England....

It's not just that, as I've said there was no such issue for any of those that joined the UK industries or the Commonwealth forces as volunteers, it was only those that deserted that were treated in such manner, and as I said even decades later those surviving members of the DF of the time are still highly opposed to the actions of Shatter in that regard. Like many things involving Anglo-Irish relations, it's complicated.
 
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