The Emergency
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- For information about the 1975-1977 Emergency in India under Indira Gandhi, please see Indian Emergency (1975 - 77).
The Emergency was an official euphemism used by the Irish Government (of the State now known as the Republic of Ireland) during the 1940s to refer to its position during World War II. The State was officially neutral during World War II and in government media, direct references to the war were avoided. This was partly due to the political and nationalist tensions in Ireland at the time which resulted from the Anglo–Irish War and the Irish Civil War. The term has remained in use in, for example, as a cultural and historic context in school books. The official state of emergency commenced on 2 September 1939, enabling the Emergency Powers Act to be passed the following day, giving sweeping new powers to the government for the duration of the Emergency. The Act was repealed on 2 September 1946. Although the state of emergency itself was not rescinded until 1 September 1976, no emergency legislation was ever in force after 1946 to exploit this anomaly.
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Significant events
Eamon de Valera, who was Taoiseach (head of government) during the Emergency, introduced the Emergency Powers and Offences Against the State Acts and the Special Criminal Court to suppress the Irish Republican Army (IRA), many members of which sought to provoke a confrontation between the United Kingdom and Ireland. The government started a recruiting drive in case of invasion. In July 1940, three German agents were arrested after landing in Skibbereen, County Cork. This event became known as Operation Artur. Early in the war, de Valera refused Winston Churchill's demands to open the former Treaty Ports to British shipping.
In 2005 documents were released from the UK Public Record Office regarding contacts between de Valera and a British MI6 officer in 1942 over the State joining the allies. Details of the meetings were not disclosed but it is believed the British made a vague offer to de Valera of a united Ireland. De Valera did not take the offer seriously, and was unhappy with the attempted deception.
Belfast Blitz
Template:Main Meanwhile, Northern Ireland (as part of the United Kingdom) was certainly at war and the Harland and Wolff shipyards in Belfast were among the strategic targets for German attack. The Luftwaffe carried out a bombing raid on Belfast on April 7 1941; eight people died. There was no defence of the city. On Easter Tuesday, April 15 1941, 180 Luftwaffe bombers attacked Belfast. Again, there was no defence from the RAF. There were only 7 anti-aircraft batteries in Belfast. However they ceased firing lest they damage the (absent) RAF airplanes. Over 200 tons of explosives, 80 landmines attached to parachutes and 800 firebomb canisters were dropped. Over 1000 died and 56 000 houses (more than half of the city's housing stock) were damaged leaving 100 000 temporarily homeless. Outside of London, this was the greatest loss of life in a night raid during the Battle of Britain. At 4.30 AM Basil Brooke asked de Valera for assistance. Within two hours, 13 fire tenders from Dublin, Drogheda, Dundalk and Dún Laoghaire were on their way to cross the Irish border to assist their Belfast colleagues. De Valera followed up with his "they are our people" speech and formally protested to Berlin. Although there was a later raid on May 4, it was confined to the docks and shipyards.
Dublin Bombing
On the night of May 30 of the same year, Dublin's Northside was the target of a Luftwaffe air raid. Thirty-eight were killed and seventy houses were destroyed on Summerhill Parade, North Strand and the North Circular Road. The German government claimed the raid was an error and West Germany paid compensation after the war. However, it has been claimed that this was actually a deliberate warning by Germany not to assist the Allied war effort (since the Dublin fire brigade helped put out fires in Belfast and so bring the shipyards back into use more quickly). At the time, Germany apologised saying that high winds were to blame. Eduard Hempel claimed that they were captured aircraft flown by the British. On October 3, the German news agency announced that the German government would pay compensation for dropping bombs on Dublin.
Winston Churchill later conceded that the raids might have been the result of a British invention which distorted Luftwaffe radio guidance beams so as to throw their planes off courseTemplate:FnTemplate:Fn
Neutrality
Template:Main The possibility of Irish neutrality had been discussed since before the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921. One of the British objections to Irish independence was that Ireland might fall under the influence of a foreign power or be used as a stepping stone in some future invasion of Britain. It was suggested by some on the Irish side that Ireland could satisfy British objections by declaring perpetual neutrality, similar to that of Switzerland.
The Irish state was the only Commonwealth dominion to have an official policy of neutrality. Irish neutrality in WWII arose for a number of reasons. A large part of Irish society recognised the importance of the fight against fascism. Some 43,000 citizens from what is now the Republic of Ireland and around 38,000 from Northern Ireland (where there was no conscription) served with British forces during World War II, and there were many informal acts of support for the allies. The support from parts of the Irish government has become clearer since the declassification of State papers in the 1990's. For example, British servicemen who crashed over the State were allowed to go free if they could claim not to have been on a combat mission, otherwise they were released "on licence" (promise to remain) and many chose to escape to the United Kingdom through Northern Ireland. Downed Germans were nearly always interned. Detailed weather reports of conditions in the Atlantic Ocean were broadcast on a weak radio-telephone link, which had a range such that the Allies could intercept, but not the Germans. The timing of D-Day was based in part on Irish weather reports of incoming weather conditions from the Atlantic. The chief German minister in Dublin, Eduard Hempel, also had his radio confiscated in 1943 to prevent him passing information to his leaders.
On the other hand, elements of the Irish Republican Army that wished to undermine the Anglo-Irish Treaty and end British rule in Northern Ireland actively collaborated with the Axis. This was part of a significant constituency of anti-British feeling. The Anglo-Irish War and the subsequent Irish Civil War were then quite recent and continuing British rule of Northern Ireland was viewed by many as an illegal occupation. This gave rise to a significant part of Irish society and government, of which de Valera was a part, that asserted a moral equivalence between the Allies and the Axis. For example, de Valera at the League of Nations in 1938 saw the looming conflict in terms of the great power politics of the nineteenth century, stating that if the great nations were to behave irresponsibly, the small nations should not assist them.
An alliance with the United Kingdom therefore risked serious political instability. The policy of neutrality enabled the State to maintain internal political unity. In addition, it was also felt that the country could not handle a major war due to the economic problems of the time and the running-down of the military since the civil war. Because of Ireland's strategic position on the western approaches to northern Europe, there was also a serious danger of invasion and occupation from either side, an anxiety heightened by Britain's occupation of Iceland in 1940. Irish neutrality during World War II had broad support with only one vote against it in Dáil Eireann (the lower house of parliament), from James Dillon, who argued that the State should side with the Allies. He resigned his Dáil seat and from Fine Gael, the main opposition party, because of their support for neutrality.
Relations with Germany
In pursuit of its policy of neutrality, the Irish Government refused to close the German and Japanese embassies. Before and in the early years of World War II, the German government investigated whether the IRA could be used against the United Kingdom, as well as whether or not it would be tactically advantageous to invade Ireland or to persuade the Irish Government to side with the Axis powers. Germany courted Ireland to this end, before and during the war, but without success. The Nazis also made contact with IRA men interned at the Curragh.
Elements of Irish public opinion were slow to accept the nature of the Nazi regime. The films of concentration camps were denounced as propaganda, and there was official indifference to the fate of the Jews during and after the war, even though de Valera knew of the atrocities as early as 1943.
On the occasion of the death of Adolf Hitler, de Valera paid a controversial visit to Hempel to express sympathy with the German people over the death of the Führer. This action has been defended as proper given the state's neutrality. Douglas Hyde, Ireland's president, also sent condolences [1], an action which enraged the United States minister as no similar action had taken place on the death of the United States President, Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The Emergency after the end of World War II
De Valera's reluctance to recognise a difference between World War II and previous European wars was illustrated by his reply to a radio broadcast by the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill on V-E Day. Churchill praised Britain's restraint in not occupying Ireland in order to secure the Western Approaches during the Battle of the Atlantic:
- "the approaches which the southern Irish ports and airfields could so easily have guarded were closed by the hostile aircraft and U-boats. This indeed was a deadly moment in our life, and if it had not been for the loyalty and friendship of Northern Ireland, we should have been forced to come to close quarters with Mr. de Valera, or perish from the earth. However, with a restraint and poise to which, I venture to say, history will find few parallels, His Majesty’s Government never laid a violent hand upon them, though at times it would have been quite easy and quite natural, and we left the de Valera Government to frolic with the German and later with the Japanese representatives to their heart’s content."
De Valera replied to Churchill in another radio broadcast, which was popular among many Irish nationalists.:
- "Allowances can be made for Mr. Churchill’s statement, however unworthy, in the first flush of victory. No such excuse could be found for me in this quieter atmosphere. There are, however, some things it is essential to say. I shall try to say them as dispassionately as I can. Mr. Churchill makes it clear that, in certain circumstances, he would have violated our neutrality and that he would justify his actions by Britain’s necessity. It seems strange to me that Mr. Churchill does not see that this, if accepted, would become a moral code and that when this necessity became sufficiently great, other people’s rights were not to count... that is precisely why we had this disastrous succession of wars - World War No.1 and World War No.2 - and shall it be World War No.3? Mr. Churchill is proud of Britain’s stand alone, after France had fallen and before America entered the war. Could he not find in his heart the generosity to acknowledge that there is a small nation that stood alone not for one year or two, but for several hundred years against aggression; that endured spoliations, famine, massacres, in endless succession; that was clubbed many times into insensibility, but each time on returning to consciousness took up the fight anew; a small nation that could never be got to accept defeat and has never surrendered her soul?"
After the end of the war, Hempel remained in Ireland and de Valera first resisted the return to Germany of arrested German agents, and then, at Hempel's request, the Irish Government opposed the outcome of the Nuremberg trials. Documents produced by the Department of External Affairs refused to accept the concept of a war criminal and compared the Nuremberg trials to the British use of the judicial system in Ireland against Nationalists.
The returning Irish volunteers returned to indifference or even hostility. On the whole they saw themselves as defending Ireland as well as Britain and supported Irish neutrality. However, after the end of the war, United States personnel were allowed to wear their uniforms in Ireland, but not those who had served in the British forces. In addition, the Irish government cancelled the Remembrance Day march. Special legislation was introduced so that the 4000 Irish soldiers who had deserted to Britain (most after there was any threat to Irish neutrality) suffered additional punishment on their return. Opinions in the Republic on the Irish volunteers remain somewhat divided and the issue remains sensitive for many. For many years until they were not recognised by the Irish Government; however, in April 1995 Taoiseach John Bruton paid tribute to those who
- "volunteered to fight against Nazi tyranny in Europe, at least 10,000 of whom were killed while serving in British uniforms. In recalling their bravery, we are recalling a shared experience of Irish and British people. We remember a British part of the inheritance of all who live in Ireland."
Notes
- Template:FnbTim Pat Coogan de Valera ‘long fellow, short shadow’ page 585
- Template:FnbJoseph T Carroll “Ireland in the War Years” page 109