‘The accumulating evidence supports the view that, even before the fall of France in 1940, de Valera believed that Hitler would win the war and in payment for keeping the Allies out of the Éire ports, he would obtain Northern Ireland on his own terms,’ the US wartime minister to Ireland David Gray wrote in … Read more
The noted linguist, Celtic studies expert and Nazi propagandist Dr Hans Hartmann has been enjoying something of a revival recently. First he had a starring role, albeit dramatised, in Desmond Bell’s film The enigma of Frank Ryan. This depicted Hartmann interviewing Ryan about his IRA role in wartime Berlin, something that never actually happened, although … Read more
That neutral island: a cultural history of Ireland during the Second World War Clair Wills (Faber & Faber, €20) ISBN 9780571234479 Clair Wills’s work integrates two different approaches to history: one focusing on diplomacy and politics, the other on culture and society. She attempts to reverse the trend of concentrating on specific areas of Ireland … Read more
Sir,—Your valuable article by David O’Donoghue on the IRA and the Nazis in the last issue (HI 19.2, March/April 2011, pp 36–9) prompts me to submit a photograph taken at one particular burial ceremony in Wexford on 11 June 1941. While official photos were taken for Irish Army intelligence by a Kodak representative, an audacious … Read more
Groups of Irish nationalists, lighted torches in hand, stride forward and are joined by other Irish nationalists singing in unison about the virtues of ‘freedom’. The scene segues into black-and-white images of the sea hurtling into cliffs and the tide encroaching upon a beach, the ‘freedom’ chorus continuing. Yet the refrain is actually concerned with … Read more