A favourite saying of my grandmother’s was, ‘Get a name for early rising and you can sleep till noon’. Not a maxim for Éamon de Valera, you’d have thought, but in Irish neutrality in the second World War, perhaps he had something of its spirit. The reasons for neutrality were understandably stronger on realpolitik than principle, but once Dev’s decision had infuriated the British and delighted the Nazis, it was only necessary to focus on performance to keep the show on the road.
Co-operation between Irish and British Intelligence hid in plain sight. Tens of thousands of Irish citizens joined the British forces and maintained its economy. They were frowned at, but not stopped. While whole Irish Times pages could be censored in the interest of ‘balance’, all was on track, at home and abroad.
The tiny diplomatic corps in Berlin and Rome made up the performers abroad. But what began as a polite dance of protocol would eventually leave the Taoiseach’s men isolated, compromised and far from comfortable with their role.
Diplomatic relations with Nazi Germany began well, too well, when Charles Bewley went to Berlin in 1933. There was enthusiasm for Hitler’s New Order in Ireland, both as an exciting antidote to Stalin’s godless atheism and as something that had a strongly anti-British smell about it. Certainly, Joe Walshe, Secretary of the Department of External Affairs, was beguiled, although de Valera, with democratic instincts he’s rarely credited with, was not. But Charles Bewley was more than beguiled. For almost six years his infatuation with Nazism ran riot.
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As a shameful consequence, he made it impossible for Jews seeking to exit Germany, even with strong Irish connections, to get Irish visas. He didn’t stop there. Information about these Jews, and much else, went straight to the Nazis. Dublin was blind or indifferent. Only on the eve of war did Walshe sack Bewley.
He was succeeded by William Warnock, through heady days of German invulnerability to Stalingrad and North Africa. His job was to maintain even-handedness, to complain if needed (but never too much), and not to disturb the Nazi misbelief that Ireland was (quietly) on their side. Since Irish diplomatic codes could be read by both sides, reports from Berlin are anodyne and hedged by caution. They mention the sinking of Irish shipping, and bombs in Ireland, but when Warnock sums up 1939-40, his words reflect how untouched Berlin was.
‘No political differences have arisen between ourselves and Germany, and the general attitude towards us is one of friendly interest.’
By the time he left Berlin in 1943, all that had changed. The Irish embassy had been flattened. Warnock’s telegram combines the extraordinary and the banal.
‘Whole Legation quarter destroyed… Most of city in ruins. I cannot describe chaos… Please ask my parents to send shirts, heavy underwear and socks.’
When Con Cremin replaced Warnock, the embassy moved to a stud farm owned by an Irishman, a very Irish solution to its problems. But the illusion of ‘normal’ war had gone. In 1944 Cremin asked for exit visas for several Jewish families. It feels like an almost random attempt to help. The response is chilling.
‘If it was intended that these families should become Irish citizens, the German authorities would, I was given to understand, “gladly save us the inconvenience of having so many Jews”.’
In Rome, by 1943, Michael MacWhite had no idea even what government he was speaking to. Italy had surrendered. There was an anti-fascist regime in the south. Hitler had set up a puppet state for Mussolini in the north. Rome was occupied. In a telegram, MacWhite details the clearing of the city’s Jewish Ghetto. He is under no illusions what will happen to the Jews. From Dublin there was no response. Yet when American bombs fell on Rome, de Valera sent a rare protest to the Allies. In 1944 he wrote to Churchill, still insisting the Holy City be protected.
‘Millions of Catholics would risk their lives to protect these monuments… should the City be destroyed… its destruction will be remembered forever.’
There was a second legation in Rome. Thomas Kiernan was Minister to the Holy See. The Vatican was as vehemently neutral as Ireland, though mired in the moral labyrinth of growing evil, but some in the Church were taking sides. Irish priest Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty set up an ‘underground railway’ for Allied POWs, anti-fascists and Jews. Among those helping was Tom Kiernan’s wife, Delia Murphy, working with the British ambassador to smuggle fugitives into the Vatican. It’s unlikely Kiernan didn’t know. He had his own undiplomatic role, passing information from a Vatican source in Japan on to US Intelligence.
There was another Minister to a fascist regime, Leopold Kerney in Spain. While Franco kept out of the war, Kerney wasn’t content in his backwater. He played a part, before the war, in negotiating the release of Frank Ryan, ex-IRA leader and International Brigade commander, from a Spanish gaol, at the price of handing him to German Intelligence. And Kerney’s links to German interests remained ambiguous. In 1943 Irish Intelligence investigated him in Madrid. They concluded he wasn’t doing anything wrong, but he still needed to stop doing it!
Ireland’s wartime diplomats were some of the best minds of their generation. They certainly knew their work was full of contradictions. The white-tie-and-tails of international diplomacy became an increasingly uncomfortable arena. The mismatch between chaotic destruction, let alone deeper horrors, and the façade of neutral even-handedness Ireland insisted on, even as the death camps were liberated, meant the old show wasn’t only pointless, it was becoming unsavoury.
I have always felt de Valera’s neutrality was necessary and right. But I’m unconvinced maintaining the rigorous neutrality of the early years, faced with the orchestrated murder of millions, was either necessary or right. Some of the Taoiseach’s men had their own reservations. The problem with neutrality is that you may need to park the principles you based it on. Or just keep your mouth shut.
The City of God by Michael Russell is the latest instalment in the Stefan Gillespie series and is published by Little Brown.
