Joe Carroll explains the circumstances surrounding the expression of condolences on behalf of the State's people to the German government on the death of Hitler.
The suicide of Adolf Hitler in his Berlin bunker was announced in the Irish newspapers on May 2nd, 1945. Later that day the taoiseach, Eamon de Valera, accompanied by Joseph Walshe, secretary of the Department of External Affairs, called on the German ambassador, Edouard Hempel, "to express condolences".
The visit took place not at the embassy on Northumberland Road but at the residence in De Vesci Terrace, Monkstown.
The visitors were taken aback when the ambassador kept wringing his hands and crying, "It's all so humiliating". But this version from Walshe was later contested by the ambassador's wife who was also present.
She told the historian, John P Duggan, author of a book on Hempel, that the ambassador had eczema and tended to scratch his hands. The only humiliation they felt was "that Hitler did not die fighting in the streets instead of sordidly committing suicide".
The horrors of the liberated extermination camps were then being shown around the world on newsreels. There was widespread condemnation of the de Valera visit in Britain and other Allied countries. But de Valera was unrepentant and refused any public comment.
Privately he defended it in a letter to the Irish ambassador in Washington, Bob Brennan, saying that the controversial visit was "played up to the utmost".
He went on: "I expected this. I could have had a diplomatic illness but, as you know, I would scorn that kind of thing. So long as we retained our diplomatic relations with Germany, to have failed to call upon the German representative would have been an act of unpardonable discourtesy to the German nation and to Dr Hempel himself."
De Valera added that throughout the war, Hempel's conducts was "irreproachable" and he was always "friendly and invariably correct". This was "in marked contrast" with the American ambassador, David Gray. "I was certainly not going to add to his [ Hempel's] humiliation in the hour of defeat."
Hempel, however, had more involvement in Nazi espionage in the Republic than de Valera knew about. But the latter detested Gray for his campaign to force the Republic to abandon its neutrality and give bases to the Allies.
There is still argument as to whether diplomatic protocol could justify the "condolences" for Hitler's suicide. When the Canadian ambassador to Ireland, John Kearney, visited Walshe soon afterwards, he reported to Ottawa that he "found the atmosphere of the Department profoundly depressed. Walshe even vaguely mooted some idea of an apology. It was evident that the tide of public opinion was rising".
But then came Winston Churchill's victory broadcast in which he denounced Irish neutrality. 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 forever from the earth".
Instead of laying a "violent hand" on its neighbour, Britain had shown huge "restraint and poise" and "we left the Dublin Government to frolic with the German and Japanese representatives to their hearts' content."
The dignified response by de Valera had most of the Republic cheering for him. The call on Hempel was overshadowed for the time being.
Joe Carroll is the author of Ireland in the War Years 1939-1945 and former Washington Correspondent of The Irish Times