Let's agree to disagree.Deserting the state during a national emergency is highly immoral.
Let's agree to disagree.Deserting the state during a national emergency is highly immoral.
If you were Irish in the Late 19th-Early 20th Century, England was basically Nazi Germany to you, unless you were from Ulster.Doesn't law vs morality matter at all?
This fear is most likely the main reason why de Valera never took the British offer OTL.
That appears to have been lifted wholesale from the IT, here.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."
A British invasion of Ireland would have had serious political ramifications in the US, on whom Britain was then dependent for survival.Well i think Ireland joining the United Kingdom is better than the British invading Ireland, a plan they did make in 1940: What if: British plan to invade Ireland in 1940
In 1940 Churchill made a plan to invade Ireland, he was urged to invade Ireland by Northern Ireland Prime Minister Lord Craigavon, AKA James Craig, a rock ribbed unionist, who believed that Eamon De Valera, the Irish prime minister, had fallen under Nazi sway and a crossborder invasion was needed to remove him and thus he urged Churchill to send British troops composed chiefly of Scottish and Welsh divisions to install a military governor for the whole of Ireland with his HQ in Dublin who would secure the valuable naval bases along the Irish coastline.
Craigavon also told Churchill that distributing propaganda leaflets in Gaelic and English should be used to persuade the Irish that the Scottish and Welsh divisions were there to defend them. Churchill did not do much at first with this invasion idea but later prepared detailed plans for an invasion of southern Ireland.
Field Marshal Montgomery stated in his memoirs: “I was told to prepare plans for the seizure of Cork and Queenstown in southern Ireland so the harbors could be used as naval bases.”
Any invasion of Ireland by Scottish and Welsh divisions would be over quickly with them being able to take control over the country with out much resistance, but for the IRA this would an absolute gift who would have launched waves after wave of guerrilla attacks. “Occupying Ireland would have been an extremely messy and costly undertaking.”
Also attempting to “camouflage” a British invasion by using Scottish or Welsh divisions would have backfired as “Many of the Black and Tans, the British auxiliaries sent to suppress Irish independence, were Scots and they had an appalling reputation”.
In the end this plan was never implemented, Ireland stayed neutral throughout the war, but Irish prime minister De Valera did offend London by offering his condolences to the German ambassador in Dublin on the death of Hitler.
Yes that is correct.That appears to have been lifted wholesale from the IT, here.
It's unlikely that anything less than the full counties would have been accepted.They would have got some territory out of it, Stormont never wanted South Armagh and would have probably agreed to handing it over as a gesture of good faith. Not too sure about the 1940 demographics of Newry, but maybe Newry as well as it was a significantly Nationalist major town. Probably some local border adjustments in Fermanagh and Tyrone. But nothing that would have been worth a major war in terms of tax revenues or new industry.
It's unlikely that anything less than the full counties would have been accepted.
Very probably. And that was something Churchill wouldn't and couldn't deliver.Given both the political costs and the potential combat losses and damage there’s no way the Dail would accept anything but everything.
And that is the trouble, none of them are realistically deliverable without a massive programme of population exchanges. In 1940 Fermanagh is still 49% Unionist and Tyrone around 45% (with a small local majority in East Tyrone) and the other four all have large overall Unionist majorities. It is not until WW2 and the Cold War that the Unionist population really starts to concentrate in the East of the Province as the new industries develop, the railways close and the Linen industry, fishing and coastal shipping begins to decline. Not to mention farm consolidation and mechanisation. This is then accelerated by the Troubles. At the outbreak of WW2 however Unionism is much more evenly distributed than eighty years later.It's unlikely that anything less than the full counties would have been accepted.
Very probably. And that was something Churchill wouldn't and couldn't deliver.
Fairly typical of Churchill then.Yep, and Dev and the Cabinet knew that, hence why I think the offer was never a sincere one, or at least one that had any thought put into it.
Anyone for a spot of Ethnic (well religious) Cleansing? It was pretty popular back then...And that is the trouble, none of them are realistically deliverable without a massive programme of population exchanges. In 1940 Fermanagh is still 49% Unionist and Tyrone around 45% (with a small local majority in East Tyrone) and the other four all have large overall Unionist majorities. It is not until WW2 and the Cold War that the Unionist population really starts to concentrate in the East of the Province as the new industries develop, the railways close and the Linen industry, fishing and coastal shipping begins to decline. Not to mention farm consolidation and mechanisation. This is then accelerated by the Troubles. At the outbreak of WW2 however Unionism is much more evenly distributed than eighty years later.
Just to point out, bombs DID fall on Dublin in 1940 and 1941. There were several instances of German aircraft accidentally bombing targets in Eire.
I was once told German pilots mistook Dublin for Liverpool (okay ?).