Sinn Fein / IRA people bizarrely
have a self-image that their
bigoted, sectarian, reactionary, violent group, with a paramilitary wing,
are some kind of "anti-fascists".
So they really hate it when you remind people what their organisation did in WW2.
The IRA supported the Nazis in WW2
(the real ones, not just rhetorical ones).
They ran safe houses for Nazi spies,
aided Nazi intelligence,
and even helped Nazi bombers.
They supported Nazi Germany in print,
and called for its victory in Europe.
They wrote poems to Hitler,
and threatened death to anyone who aided the Allied war effort.
They planned to bring about a Nazi German invasion of Ireland,
and would no doubt
have been installed as a quisling government
had Germany occupied Ireland.
As a group of violent fanatics
devoted to hatred of Britain,
SF/IRA has always been sympathetic to the enemies of Britain and the enemies of Western democracies.
The IRA's support for the Nazis
is the worst example, but
there are others.
Introductory reading - online articles
Many people refuse to believe the information on this page.
Here are some introductory online articles
by professional historians:
(*) Note that Brian Hanley is from a
far leftist
background
with very different politics to me.
But I still recommend his careful research.
He was the guy who found that incredible poem to Hitler.
The IRA supported the Nazis,
and the Nazis supported the IRA.
The IRA helped the Luftwaffe bomb Belfast and Derry.
Hitler would of course have done to Ireland
what he did to every other country.
In the Wannsee Conference
notes of Jan 1942,
Ireland's 4,000 Jews were listed
for extermination.
No doubt Irish quislings would have helped in this,
as quislings helped in every other country.
Luckily, the IRA failed in their plans,
and the Jews of Ireland
were not exterminated.
The IRA has still not apologised for this.
Operation Green
- Hitler's plan for the Nazi invasion of Ireland.
Plan Kathleen / The Artus Plan
- The IRA plan for the Nazi invasion of Northern Ireland.
The IRA wanted the Nazis to "liberate" Northern Ireland from the British.
The Belfast Blitz
- 200 German aircraft bombed Belfast in 1941.
1,000 dead, and half the city wrecked.
And the IRA helped them.
Nelson McCausland
has more detail on how the IRA aided Nazi bombing.
[Hanley, 2005]
has shocking wartime quotes from the IRA and Cumann na mBan.
In the illegal War News, the IRA's main publication,
"Satisfaction was expressed that the "cleansing fire"
of the German armies was driving the Jews from Europe.
...
War News condemned the arrival in Ireland of "so-called Jewish refugees",
along with unspecified numbers of "Albanian, Abyssinian, Mongolian [and] Tartars"."
Hanley points out that a Nazi invasion of Ireland
would have killed vastly more Irish than were killed in
the conflict with Britain.
In a single night:
"the Germans killed more Irish civilians in the
bombing of Belfast
than had died at the hands of the British during the
War of Independence."
A Nazi invasion of Ireland
would have killed at least 100,000 Irish.
As
Frank McGahon says
about the IRA's support for the Germans:
"England's difficulty would certainly have been Ireland's opportunity:
Ireland's opportunity to live under the Nazi jackboot."
A past we'd rather forget
by Henry McDonald, 7 January 2001,
sums it up:
"In the 1940s, the IRA was allied to one of the most evil regimes in human history.
Had they succeeded in their goal of uniting Ireland on the back of a Nazi victory,
every man, woman and child would have become vassals of the Nazi empire.
And, as Micheal Burleigh emphasises .. Hitler planned to eliminate the Jews of Ireland
as part of his maniacal project to destroy entirely the Jewish people.
Yet this collaboration with Nazism is rarely mentioned in the traditional nationalist
narratives of the twentieth century."
SDLP figure
Paddy Devlin
was in the IRA when young.
He said
that during the war
they supported the Nazi side:
"Paddy Devlin admitted that during the war there was a great degree of sympathy for the Nazis inside the IRA in Belfast. Devlin recalled that while in Crumlin Road jail he and his comrades enthusiastically plotted the advance of the Germans into the Soviet Union on a map in their prison cell. Each time news came through the radio about Nazi victories he and the other IRA inmates would cheer to the rafters."
SF-IRA supported the Nazis.
The unionists fought the Nazis.
Explain that, Sinn Fein.
The IRA helped the Luftwaffe bomb Belfast in 1941.
From p.397 of
[McMahon, 2008].
The IRA did not break off its alliance with Nazi Germany when the Holocaust started.
The Holocaust
began in earnest
with the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union
in June 1941.
Nazi Germany began the systematic extermination of the Jews of Europe,
first with
mobile death squads,
later with gas chambers.
In April 1942 the
IRA Army Council passed a formal resolution supporting co-operation with Nazi Germany.
From p.223 of
The Secret Army,
J. Bowyer Bell,
1997 edn.
Chief-of-Staff of the IRA at this time was Seán McCool.
The IRA would be the Vichy regime if the Holocaust came to Ireland.
[2] For Caitlín Brugha, see below.
See also Saoirse,
Dec 2009.
[3] For Liam S. Gogan, see
"Na Coisithe" (The Footsteps), by Johnny Gogan, TG4 TV, Mar 2010.
See also "Past master"
(profile of Johnny Gogan),
Sunday Times, Irish edn, 14 Mar 2010.
[4]
Every
Chief-of-Staff of the IRA
from 1937 to 1945 was a Nazi collaborator.
Links with Nazi Germany started before the war and continued until Germany lost.
In 1937 to 1945, the IRA openly praised the Nazis, ran safe houses for Nazis, helped Nazi intelligence, planned a Nazi invasion, and helped Nazi bombing.
Every IRA leader supported this policy.
[14]
Seamus O'Donovan hoped for Nazi victory in WW2, and
said that a victorious Nazi Germany
"would have been very generous indeed"
to Ireland, which
"at last would become a place worth living in"[O'Donoghue, 2011].
[18]
At the
funeral of Herman Goertz
in Dublin in 1947,
his coffin was draped with a swastika flag.
Those attending included
Nazi collaborators Seamus O'Donovan and Charlie McGuinness.
Also
Dan Breen.
Sean Harrington, Chief-of-Staff of the IRA 1941-42,
was a Nazi collaborator.
The above is from
The Guy Liddell Diaries (MI5 diaries),
Volume 1: 1939-1942.
Charlie Kerins, Chief-of-Staff of the IRA 1942-44,
was a Nazi collaborator.
The above is from the
Morning Bulletin, Rockhampton, Australia,
1 Feb 1943.
Some guy (apparently) called
"Ru Ni Digs"
disputes my page:
He
denies that
Sean Harrington, Chief-of-Staff of the IRA 1941-42,
and
Charlie Kerins, Chief-of-Staff of the IRA 1942-44,
were Nazi collaborators.
So the items on Harrington and Kerins above are a response to him.
The fact is that every Chief-of-Staff of the IRA from 1937 to 1945 was a Nazi collaborator.
It was policy.
Every IRA leader supported this policy.
If "Ru Ni Digs" claims some IRA leader broke with policy and did not support the alliance with the Nazis, I think it's up to him to provide proof of this extraordinary claim.
"Ru Ni Digs" claims I use Stormfront as a source, which is simply a lie.
Republican graves at St. Finbarr's, including Tom Barry's, were
vandalised in Mar 2013. Nazi graffiti was daubed on them.
Disgraceful. Anyone who does this should be jailed.
Nelson McCausland
of the DUP seems to be alone in spotting the possible irony that
Tom Barry was a Nazi collaborator.
Evidence so far though points to an attack by an unstable person with legal problems,
rather than a political attack.
There may be all sorts of good reasons why they did so, but
the Irish state commemorated a Nazi collaborator
with a postage stamp.
Nazi collaborator
Sean MacBride
appeared on an Irish stamp in 1994.
From poppe-stamps.com.
Nazi supporter
George Bernard Shaw
appeared on a stamp in the same set.
(Shaw has appeared on Irish stamps
multiple times.)
Viva la Quinta Brigada,
song by
Christy Moore
celebrating
Frank Ryan's
fight against Franco
in the Spanish Civil War.
Christy Moore doesn't mean it to be,
but unfortunately this is another memorial to a Nazi collaborator.
Christy Moore's simplistic view of the Spanish Civil War:
Even if we just stick to the Spanish Civil War,
this song is terribly simplistic.
Christy Moore describes the war as:
"Truth and love against the force of evil;
Brotherhood against the fascist clan."
Franco was a fascist dictator and ally of Hitler who
committed atrocities.
But
the Spanish Republicans included communists and allies of Stalin
who committed atrocities
such as killing 7,000 clergy.
I would not support either side.
Christy Moore attacks
the Irish who fought for Franco:
"Many Irishmen heard the call of Franco;
Joined Hitler and Mussolini too.
Propaganda from the pulpit and newspapers;
Helped O'Duffy to enlist his crew.
The word came from Maynooth, "support the Nazis".
The men of cloth failed again;
When the Bishops blessed the Blueshirts in Dun Laoghaire;
As they sailed beneath the swastika to Spain."
Yes, the church was wrong to support fascists,
but missing is the fact that the fascists' enemies were
torturing and killing priests and nuns, and burning churches.
The "anti-fascists" burned synagogues and churches, castrated priests, raped nuns, banned religion.
Notice how
Christy Moore makes out that the other side were fighting for Nazi Germany.
In fact, the only Irishmen who actually fought for the Nazis
were the IRA republicans,
including .. Frank Ryan.
Unfortunately for Christy Moore,
Frank Ryan's later behaviour makes this song
a tribute to a Nazi collaborator.
Christy Moore's support for communist tyranny:
Christy Moore has very dodgy politics.
In 2001
he covered
"Companeros",
a tribute to the Cuban communist dictatorship.
See lyrics.
Incredibly,
a new memorial to a Nazi collaborator
was erected in Ireland in 2014.
Memorial to Frank Ryan erected at Limerick City Hall, Sept 2014. Shameful.
There is a statue of
Nazi collaborator
Sean Russell
in
Fairview Park, Dublin.
This disgusting statue was erected in 1951.
See account in
"United Irishman", Oct 1951.
See also
Special Branch report
(and here).
1,000 people - IRA, Sinn Fein
and Cumann na mBan -
marched to
the unveiling.
The ceremony to honour the Nazi collaborator
began with a decade of the Rosary in Irish.
The IRA man and playwright
Brendan Behan
was one of the attendees.
In 2003,
Mary Lou McDonald
made a speech
honouring
Sean Russell
at the statue.
The Simon Wiesenthal Centre
called for it to be left
unrestored as a symbol of Ireland's "shame".
They said:
"It's a blot on the history of Ireland, but blots have to see the public light."
They described the incident as
"an opportunity for Ireland to confront its past".
They said:
"We're not iconoclasts
but I think the destruction of something like this has a meaning,
and we would ask for it to be left there as a lesson of what Irish neutrality was all about."
Sadly, this did not happen.
A new statue to the Nazi ally
was erected by the
National Graves Association
in 2009.
Shame on them.
Talking about Hitler in 1939, he says: "Over the next six years, thousands of Irish volunteers were to die opposing him.
Just one - Sean Russell - died in his service. Yet he is the only Irish victim of the Second World War to have a statue in his honour in Dublin."
He cannot believe that a new statue was made:
"Who approved this in Dublin City Council?
And what is the prevailing aesthetic which can rule that the destroyers of
Nelson's Pillar
in Dublin may permanently affect the streetscape of the capital, but that a statue to a Nazi fellow traveller should be restored?"
The shameful statue of the Nazi collaborator Sean Russell, Fairview Park, Dublin.
Here in July 2009 it has been vandalised, with Nazi flags painted on.
Photo from here.
Henry McDonald, 9 May 2004, says:
"Dublin remains the only city in democratic Europe where a figurine still stands
in homage to a man who openly collaborated with the Nazis."
Even worse, as
Tony Allwright
points out, this is
"the only statue in Dublin to an Irish volunteer killed during World War 2"
- a stooge who
died on a Nazi U-boat!
This statue should be removed by the state and destroyed.
Note I do not support non-state action against this statue
(or any other Irish memorial to a Nazi collaborator).
I believe in the rule of law, not the rule of direct action.
In response to the listing here of
Seán McCool
as a Nazi collaborator,
someone called
Ruairi McCool
sent me the following threatening email in Nov 2009.
Instead of providing evidence that his (I assume) relative did not in fact collaborate with Nazi Germany,
he writes:
Mr Humphrys,
How dare you label great warriors of Ireland Nazis!
You don't deserve to live you Jewish bastard!
Eat shit! I'm a hero if I murder 100 Palestinians, am I?!
While one might understand an emotional reaction to having a relative criticised,
a death threat is completely out of order.
I referred the email to the Gardai.
He seems to deny that his relative was a Nazi collaborator. But this is fact, not opinion:
From pp.220-222 of
1997 edn
of The Secret Army:
When Seán McCool became Chief of Staff of the IRA in 1942,
"McCool and McNamee were tireless and even took up the German thread again. On February 28, 1942, German Sergeant
Gunther Schuetz escaped from Mountjoy. ... he disappeared down the old Republican pipeline to appear .. at Mrs Caítlín Brugha's house. ... McCool established direct contact with the Brughas and plans were begun to get Schuetz out of the country on a fishing boat with a shopping list of IRA needs."
(McCool was captured in the middle of these plans.)
Of course, it is no surprise that McCool helped Schütz
and had contact with Nazi Germany.
Every single Chief-of-Staff of the IRA from 1938 to 1944
collaborated with Nazi Germany.
They only stopped because the Nazis lost the war,
not because anybody thought collaborating with the Nazis was wrong.
I also had republican relatives who supported the Nazis
and may have even collaborated with them.
It was said that one of my relatives spent the day in tears when Hitler died.
But unlike Ruairi McCool,
I feel no need to defend them.
They made their own decisions, and it is their shame not mine.
"What do you think of the war now the Russians are making great headway.
It's hard luck that their successes are helping to save the cursed Empire
once again apparently.
Still a lot of things could happen before the end of it all is reached.
So here's hoping."
- Seán McCool, letter of 28 Mar 1944, disappointed that the war is not going to finish off Britain.
From
Sighle Humphreys papers, UCD Archives,
P106/893(1).
Seán McCool's collaboration with Nazi Germany in 1942.
From p.221 of The Secret Army,
J. Bowyer Bell,
1997 edn.
Defenders of the IRA and Sinn Fein
react in various absurd ways to the information on this page.
They often end up saying that supporting the Nazis was right.
"DuineEileAmhain"
said it was all long ago.
(And this from people who bang on about 1916, Cromwell and the Famine!)
"tombarry1921"
(who used the handle of
a Nazi collaborator)
said
that the IRA collaborating with Nazi Germany in fact proves their anti-Nazi credentials!
Here is a classic example. "AndrewDJMorgan"
declares strongly
that
he is anti-Nazi,
and Nazis should be "beaten".
Modern Sinn Fein regularly calls its opponents "fascists",
attacks Fine Gael
as "blueshirts",
and so on.
This nauseating hypocrisy
from the only party that supported the Nazis
is amusingly easy to answer.
Nauseating
Sinn Fein
hypocrisy.
"Horrors of IRA collaboration with Nazis must be forgotten",
more like.
SF-IRA,
the party that collaborated with the Nazis in WW2,
and threatened people who fought the Nazis with death,
now lectures us about the Holocaust.
Mary Lou McDonald
of Sinn Fein, the person lecturing us about the Holocaust above,
made a speech in 2003
honouring the
Nazi collaborator, IRA leader
Sean Russell.
From here.
More fun with Sinn Fein hypocrisy on Twitter, Dec 2014 - Jan 2015.
Fine Gael Minister
Charlie Flanagan
attacks Sinn Fein.
Sinn Fein TD
Padraig MacLochlainn
unwisely links Fine Gael to the Blueshirts.
A perfect chance for
me
to dump something like
the above in the thread.
Answer that, Sinn Fein!
Sinn Fein Councillor
blocks me for mentioning IRA support for Nazis.
In Aug 2016, I noticed anti-Israel Sinn Fein Councillor
Paul Donnelly
blocking various pro-Israel critics.
So I
tweeted
a link to my page:
"IRA support for the Nazis - original documents".
One tweet, to a page of primary sources, not opinion.
He responded by
blocking
me.
The real freedom fighters of World War 2 were the men who defeated Hitler
and saved Western democracy.
Freedom fighters:
The US military, the UK military, and their allies land in France, 1944,
to liberate Europe from the Nazis.
From here.
When the brave US troops landed in Northern Ireland in 1943
to prepare for the coming liberation of Europe,
the IRA
threatened to kill them.
The Nazi collaborator
Hugh McAteer,
Chief-of-Staff of the IRA,
denounced the American military presence in Northern Ireland as an
"invasion of our rights"
and warned that US troops could expect to be targeted by the IRA.
Not content with collaborating with the Nazis in WW2,
the IRA even bombs those who did the right thing and fought the Nazis.
In 1987 in Enniskillen the IRA
bombed
a memorial service
to the allies in WW2,
killing 11 people.
Search for videos
here
and
here.
"Oh here's to Adolph Hitler,
Who made the Britons squeal,
Sure before the fight is ended
They will dance an Irish reel."
- The IRA's War News,
23 Nov 1940,
applauding
Nazi Germany's conquest of Europe.