WI: Ireland aligns with Axis during World War 2

What if Ireland and Taoiseach De Valera agreed to align with Hitler and the Axis to fight off the British after the Irish Wars of Independence and Civil War? Hitler could benefit by using Ireland as a station for German troops and air force bases to attack Northern Ireland and Britain and with France being under German control Britain would have been cornered.

Would the general Irish population have agreed to go along? How would Churchill have reacted?
 

Ryan

Donor
the RN prevent any German forces from ever reaching Ireland and the country gets beaten and occupied in short order.

the Irish will be very unhappy with the occupation and it would probably require a fairly substantial amount of troops. I could see the Americans taking over occupation duty (like with Greenland and Iceland) and probably having a nicer time due to less hostility against them by the Irish.

alternatively, upon the declaration other members of the Irish government overthrow Valera for his insane proposal and quickly cosy up to the British to prevent an occupation, perhaps allowing the use of the treaty ports or declaring war against the Germans.
 
What if Ireland and Taoiseach De Valera agreed to align with Hitler and the Axis to fight off the British after the Irish Wars of Independence and Civil War? Hitler could benefit by using Ireland as a station for German troops and air force bases to attack Northern Ireland and Britain and with France being under German control Britain would have been cornered.

Would the general Irish population have agreed to go along? How would Churchill have reacted?

Da Valera may have had dodgy ideas about the British (being biased I would say that) but he loved Ireland and knew what picking the wrong side would mean for it. No navy means no Ireland in the case of war with Britain and allying with the Nazis means no sympathy from anybody.

I doubt the Irish population would have agreed to anything so stupid, I am certain the Republic's political class would have dismissed such a ludicrous idea out of hand and Churchill would have laughed...until he found it were true at which point the Free State would become history.

Short of SS troopers riding sea lions to Ireland I really don't see how any Germans could get there. (yes I know someone is going to suggest U-boats but those barely had room for their own crews so the trip would have been...fun)
 
The nominal neutrality of Ireland was heavily weighted towards Britain (or against the Nazis, anyway).

If you want to discuss the EFFECTS, we have to know the CAUSE for the massive (and, as pointed out, insane) change of position this would require.
 
the RN prevent any German forces from ever reaching Ireland and the country gets beaten and occupied in short order.

the Irish will be very unhappy with the occupation and it would probably require a fairly substantial amount of troops. I could see the Americans taking over occupation duty (like with Greenland and Iceland) and probably having a nicer time due to less hostility against them by the Irish.

alternatively, upon the declaration other members of the Irish government overthrow Valera for his insane proposal and quickly cosy up to the British to prevent an occupation, perhaps allowing the use of the treaty ports or declaring war against the Germans.


I thinks it more likely the latter - still plenty of links with the UK - and plenty of Irishmen fought the Germans in the Great war!

As it was lots of Irishmen fought for the British and many more come to Britain to work in the war industries
 
Yeah, no for all his faults Dev wasn't stupid, cunning, not stupid. There was zero chance of the Free State taking this position, hell there was even discussions and plans for Sealion if it happened (with Ireland joining the Allies). At no point was there any suggestion of the Free STate aligning to the Axis.
 

Orsino

Banned
The nominal neutrality of Ireland was heavily weighted towards Britain (or against the Nazis, anyway).

If you want to discuss the EFFECTS, we have to know the CAUSE for the massive (and, as pointed out, insane) change of position this would require.
Didn't the Irish government pass intelligence to the Germans?

I'd suggest there were a significant number of Nazi-sympathisers in Ireland during the war and they were helped out by the fact that a lot of the Irishmen who were sympathetic to the Allies had elected to serve in the British military and were thus out of the picture.

Whilst Ireland openly joining hostilities against the UK is very unlikely there was certainly enough antipathy towards the British and enough admiration for the Nazis that the Irish might become undeclared Axis members.
 
Didn't the Irish government pass intelligence to the Germans?

I'd suggest there were a significant number of Nazi-sympathisers in Ireland during the war and they were helped out by the fact that a lot of the Irishmen who were sympathetic to the Allies had elected to serve in the British military and were thus out of the picture.

Whilst Ireland openly joining hostilities against the UK is very unlikely there was certainly enough antipathy towards the British and enough admiration for the Nazis that the Irish might become undeclared Axis members.

No actually the Free State was very Pro-Allies in their neutrality, examples being U boat reports were passed to the UK, weather reports were given to them(used for the decision for D- Day for example), the Donegal air corridor, the allowing Allied Servicemen to cross over into NI, think there was some level of intelligence communication, joint plans for Sealion were made, and the radio transmitters of the Axis embassies were confiscated when the Allies asked pre D Day. These are just the well known examples, I can't think of any known collusion with Axis forces (Dev being an asine gobshite for Hitler's death doesn't count, that's just Dev being an Asshole).

If you have anything to suggest that this very significant "Pro Axis" group existed I'd like to see it, at most it was just a toss up (stupidly but remember the times) as to who was more evil, the British Empire or the Axis. To highlight this I'm reminded of a quote from a former IRA rebel of the War of Independence, he joined up in WW2 and was captured by the Japanese, after the War he was asked why, his response "The English are our enemies, nobody else gets to fight them!"

Again the overwhelming official and unofficial actions of the Free State were anything but Pro Axis,unless you can provide evidence otherwise?
 
Didn't the Irish government pass intelligence to the Germans?

I'd suggest there were a significant number of Nazi-sympathisers in Ireland during the war and they were helped out by the fact that a lot of the Irishmen who were sympathetic to the Allies had elected to serve in the British military and were thus out of the picture.

Whilst Ireland openly joining hostilities against the UK is very unlikely there was certainly enough antipathy towards the British and enough admiration for the Nazis that the Irish might become undeclared Axis members.

Given the number of Daily Mail readers in England at the time - I think you had more chance of the UK declaring for the Nazi's than the Irish
 

Orsino

Banned
Given the number of Daily Mail readers in England at the time - I think you had more chance of the UK declaring for the Nazi's than the Irish
The country that was at war with the Nazis was more likely to side with the Nazis than the country that wasn't?

sparky42, afraid I don'the have it to hand but I recall reading in Hull's German Espionage in Wartime Ireland that the Irish state facilitated meetings between the IRA and Eduard Hempel in Dublin and through the IRA information was passed to Nazi Germany, although I'm sure the Irish government wouldn't have had any interest in some of the overly ambitious IRA-Nazi plans that were drawn up.
 
I know almost nothing about Irish politics, but the fact that the IRA (or at least some of it) played some footsie with the Nazis in WWII on "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" is not too surprising. This a a loooong way from the Irish government joining the Axis, or even tilting towards them like Spain. The Irish Free State lives as long as the UK lets it - if the Irish join the Nazis not all the Irish in Boston (including Joe Kennedy Sr) will say boo if the UK drops the hammer. It would take all the whiskey in Ireland and then some to convince any sane leader of the Free State to do this.

To venture in to ASB territory, if the unmentionable sea mammal occurred and the Nazis were approaching Buckingham Palace the leaders of the Free State might pile on enough to cross the border and "liberate" Ulster. Short of that...
 
The country that was at war with the Nazis was more likely to side with the Nazis than the country that wasn't?

miss-the-point.png


It's a way of emphasing how unlikely it is.
 
See my post at https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/gCpYlPUC7KU/lTsfyqKhDMUJ

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I think it's totally unfair to group de Valera together with the "IRA
Nazoids" (in fact, he detained 500 of them without trial--in itself,
very authoritarian, but at least showing that they had very different
views of the war).

It is clear from Tim Pat Coogan's biography of de Valera and from Dermot
Keogh's book on twentieth century Ireland that de Valera wanted the
Allies to win. An appendix to Coogan's book spells out the quiet
cooperation between Ireland and the Allies in intelligence and other
matters...

As for Keogh's conclusions, I'll repost what I posted some time ago:

Also, see Dermot Keogh, _Twentieth Century Ireland: Nation and State_,
p. 110:

"The release of new archival material continues to show the extent to
which Irish neutrality was prepared to be friendly towards the Allies.
The findings to date can be summarised as follows: regular liason
between Allied and Irish military authorities and the preparation of
joint plans to defend the Irish state; intimate cooperation between G2
and Allied intelligence services; exchange of meteorological reports and
the forwarding of all information to Britain concerning the movement of
Axis planes, ships, and submarines in the Irish Sea; and permission
given to Allied aircraft to overfly a corridor of Irish territory in
northern Donegal for easier access to the Atlantic."

Furthermore, Irish policy toward captured Allied and German servicemen
(in case of forced landings or crashes in Irish territorial waters) was
effectively pro-Allied. The government distinguished between
operational and non-operational flights, and used this distinction to
hand back most British and American planes and their crews. By
contrast, almost all German airmen were interned. (Considering that
they were allowed to visit swimming baths, the local Curragh golf links,
and a tennis club, one can say that they were *slightly* better off than
had they been returned and reposted at the eastern front!) Keogh, btw,
estimates that the number of Irish citizens who went to
Northern Ireland or to Great Britain to enlist may have been as high as
30,000. (To put that in perspective, the Irish Republic's own army
didn't reach the figure of 37,000 until late 1940.) This certainly
confirms your point about widespread anti-Nazi sentiment among the Irish
people. And as Keogh notes, the Irish government did nothing to prevent
them from enlisting.

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To this I would only add that even if Coogan and Keogh overrate de Valera's Allied sympathies, for him to get Eire into the war on the Axis side, he would have had to be both (1) loony and (2) far more of a dictator than he actually was (though as I noted he no doubt had an authoritarian streak).
 
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