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  • bad decisions....

    irish sympathy for the german cause in ww2........was not helpfull to ireland in the 20th century........

    but did a hopefull irish alliance with napoleon in the 18th and 19th centuries...cause ireland to endure even greater hardship.........?????
    Here Rex!!!...Here Rex!!!.....Wuff!!!....... Wuff!!!

  • #2
    Originally posted by quinner View Post
    irish sympathy for the german cause in ww2........was not helpfull to ireland in the 20th century........

    but did a hopefull irish alliance with napoleon in the 18th and 19th centuries...cause ireland to endure even greater hardship.........?????
    who cares? its all history! gone-past-finished
    https://www.facebook.com/#!/rocknrollrockabilly

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by Paddy View Post
      who cares? its all history! gone-past-finished
      that is very true paddy....

      but an interest in history does no normal person any harm.......just passes away a bit of time.....you have your hobby, i have mine.....
      Here Rex!!!...Here Rex!!!.....Wuff!!!....... Wuff!!!

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by quinner View Post
        that is very true paddy....

        but an interest in history does no normal person any harm.......just passes away a bit of time.....you have your hobby, i have mine.....
        I agree,most of the threads on the Forum have an element of history included in them. Take history away and there is not much left to read on the Forum.
        I google because I'm not young enough to know everything.
        Nemo Mortalium Omnibus Horis Sapit

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by jembo View Post
          I agree,most of the threads on the Forum have an element of history included in them. Take history away and there is not much left to read on the Forum.
          yes jembo.....we read the past and try to analyse it.......

          bankers try to read the future.....and marmalise it...........
          Here Rex!!!...Here Rex!!!.....Wuff!!!....... Wuff!!!

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by quinner View Post
            yes jembo.....we read the past and try to analyse it.......

            bankers try to read the future.....and marmalise it...........
            You got it right there quinner.
            I google because I'm not young enough to know everything.
            Nemo Mortalium Omnibus Horis Sapit

            Comment


            • #7
              Well Quinner, Ireland paid a heavy price for being "neutral" -- per se -- during WWII. We frequently sent German pilots parachuting into Irish airspace a good breakfast and sent them back to Hitler to do more damage. England wanted our help in those dark days and, many would agree, that we were right to refuse given the domination of GB over 2/3rds of Ireland. However, there is another side to the coin; if DeValera had put emotions aside and looked at this through a focused mind, he would have realized a great opportunity for Ireland. Alas, that was not to be and the Marshall Plan bypassed Ireland and left us to dwell in more poverty for another forty years. Regarding Paddy, the old adage applies in that "those who fail to learn from history are bound to repeat it". All one has to do is look at the mess the U.S. is in in Afganistan forgetting the lessons learned from Vietnam. And what would that lesson be? You can't fight a man on his own mountain.

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by EIRESABRE View Post
                Well Quinner, Ireland paid a heavy price for being "neutral" -- per se -- during WWII. We frequently sent German pilots parachuting into Irish airspace a good breakfast and sent them back to Hitler to do more damage. England wanted our help in those dark days and, many would agree, that we were right to refuse given the domination of GB over 2/3rds of Ireland. However, there is another side to the coin; if DeValera had put emotions aside and looked at this through a focused mind, he would have realized a great opportunity for Ireland. Alas, that was not to be and the Marshall Plan bypassed Ireland and left us to dwell in more poverty for another forty years. Regarding Paddy, the old adage applies in that "those who fail to learn from history are bound to repeat it". All one has to do is look at the mess the U.S. is in in Afganistan forgetting the lessons learned from Vietnam. And what would that lesson be? You can't fight a man on his own mountain.
                thanks for that......

                the lesson to be learned from war is......

                you either use all your power.....or you don't get involved....

                armies make bad policemen.....

                the object of military in all history...is to take ground...and to prevent the enemy from forming more armies......that is not being done......

                it was not done in korea....iraq....vietnam....or afghanistan...and many other places.....

                it was not done in ww1...........it was done in ww2....
                Here Rex!!!...Here Rex!!!.....Wuff!!!....... Wuff!!!

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by EIRESABRE View Post
                  Well Quinner, Ireland paid a heavy price for being "neutral" -- per se -- during WWII. We frequently sent German pilots parachuting into Irish airspace a good breakfast and sent them back to Hitler to do more damage. England wanted our help in those dark days and, many would agree, that we were right to refuse given the domination of GB over 2/3rds of Ireland. However, there is another side to the coin; if DeValera had put emotions aside and looked at this through a focused mind, he would have realized a great opportunity for Ireland. Alas, that was not to be and the Marshall Plan bypassed Ireland and left us to dwell in more poverty for another forty years. Regarding Paddy, the old adage applies in that "those who fail to learn from history are bound to repeat it". All one has to do is look at the mess the U.S. is in in Afganistan forgetting the lessons learned from Vietnam. And what would that lesson be? You can't fight a man on his own mountain.

                  My understanding was that German pilots who parachuted into Ireland during ww2 ended up being interned in the Curragh for the duration of the war, while British pilots got the good breakie and were swiftly handed back over the border.

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by DUBLINDAN View Post
                    My understanding was that German pilots who parachuted into Ireland during ww2 ended up being interned in the Curragh for the duration of the war, while British pilots got the good breakie and were swiftly handed back over the border.
                    yes dd...my impression was that......they were sent back on the pretext that they were non-combatants........
                    Here Rex!!!...Here Rex!!!.....Wuff!!!....... Wuff!!!

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      In fact if an allied prisoner escaped from the Curragh and made his way across the border he was returned to the Republic by his own people. The following true story may shed some light on this....

                      "The single most extraordinary K Lines episode documented in the Dublin archives also illustrates the serious political implications of the Curragh camp to the war effort, regardless of how funny it may seem now. On December 13, 1941, an American pilot with the RAF, Roland L 'Bud' Wolfe, 23, escaped from the camp - but was sent back by his own side.

                      Bud Wolfe was from McGehee, Arkansas, and had joined the RAF because he was desperate to fly in combat and wasn't prepared to wait for the US to join the war. After ditching his plane in County Donegal, he was picked up by the Garda and, to his fury, interned. Wolfe found himself with over 40 British, Canadian, New Zealand, French and Polish airmen, magnificently fed, on courteous terms with the guards - and just across a corrugated-iron fence, only four feet high, from several hundred men of the Luftwaffe and the German Navy who had strayed into Eire because their planes had run out of fuel, or their U-boats had been shipwrecked.

                      The K Lines rules, such as they were, were explained to Wolfe by the senior Allied men. He was told that he would receive his full service pay and get supplied a radio and newspapers from home. His laundry would be done. The prisoners could go out by signing a parole paper at the guardhouse, where bicycles were also provided. On the form, they gave their word of honour not to escape. The same applied to the Germans.

                      Several German prisoners enrolled for educational courses in Dublin where they could also visit their country's legation, on which the Swastika fluttered. Allied prisoners could similarly visit their own countries' missions to Eire, but went to Dublin less than the Germans, because they were anxious not to seem to be enjoying too easy a war.

                      The Germans were the more organised POWs, wearing uniforms, planting gardens and making tennis courts, organising exercise classes and singing Nazi songs to taunt the Allies. Once, Irish records relate, they set up a court to convict a comrade of treason. They sentenced him to death and asked the Irish for a rifle and one bullet. The Irish refused. Not only did they want to avoid anyone getting hurt in their custody but, unbeknown to the prisoners, the guards did not have any live ammunition. The execution was abandoned.

                      But the Germans were not averse to enjoying internment, either. In the archive is a 1944 invoice from a Dublin vintner to a flight lieutenant Fleischmann requesting £4. 10s for three bottles of amontillado, two brown sherry, two Irish whiskey, one Scotch, four Sauternes and one gin. On the Allied side a downed Spitfire pilot, Aubrey Covington, prided himself on keeping the bar, where drinks were 10 US cents a shot. An honour system prevailed - prisoners poured their own and wrote the tally in the book.

                      The British were the more relaxed prisoners. Some brought their families to live nearby. One officer had his horse shipped over and became a regular with the local hunt. Others joined rugby, soccer and table tennis clubs.

                      The Germans made no attempt to escape but the Allied men were just over 100 miles from the Ulster border and frequently tried to get up north as a first step to rejoining their units. None was more keen to escape than Bud Wolfe, but as he discovered, escape plans met two formidable problems. The camp may have been harder to escape from than Colditz. Ireland was the only part of Europe outside Switzerland not subject to a blackout, so the Curragh floodlights were on all night. And the camp huts, built in 1915 by the British to house IRA men, were raised from the ground to make tunnelling difficult. But the truly perverse problem was that Britain discreetly but actively discouraged its men from escaping, because Irish neutrality was vital to Winston Churchill.

                      He was worried that if Ireland tipped towards the Nazis, the Irish Atlantic ports could be used by the German navy. This would massively increase the U-boat threat to Britain's lifeline, the north Atlantic convoys. He also knew Hitler believed Ireland could, with IRA help, be occupied by Germany and used as base to attack Britain from the west. The Irish leader Eamon de Valera did not want to be involved in a war, with memories of the bloody Irish civil conflict still relatively fresh.

                      The Curragh camp became a showcase for the British and the Irish to demonstrate Irish neutrality, and the Allied prisoners in it were on show for German spies in Ireland. The British representative in Dublin, Sir John Maffey, tactfully explained this to Allied officers in the Curragh, and it was their job to outline the no-escaping rule to their men. Technically, Maffey said, if a prisoner escaped and got back to London - or Berlin - he would have to be sent back to Ireland again. Churchill dreaded such a diplomatic nightmare.

                      Allied prisoners believed there to be a loophole in the parole deal. If a prisoner managed to get out without signing the form, he would not be breaking parole, and therefore would be a legitimate escapee. Maffey disagreed. Later in the war, he became a hate figure in the camp because he had to inform the Irish military police of a tunnel constructed over eight months by Allied POWs."

                      Personal note: One Luftwaffe detainee (they were never referred to as prisoners) was eventually returned to Germany after the war. Finding that there was nothing for him back home and that his immediate family had been killed in an allied raid, he returned to Ireland.

                      He first stayed in Newbridge, where as a detainee on parole he had been made very welcome. Then, with little work available he came to Dublin where he looked up some of those with whom he had been pen friends with in detention, and who had sent comfort parcels to the detainees.

                      One of these he started to go out with and they married -- she was one of my aunts.

                      He used to tell a story of a time he borrowed a suit from my father to attend a Luftwaffe reunion in Ely Place. One evening they discovered that a couple of doors away there was a RAF reunion being held by the British Legion. The evening began with catcalls back and forth and ended in the lot of them getting drunk together.
                      'Never look down on a person unless you're helping them up'.
                      .

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by Rashers View Post
                        In fact if an allied prisoner escaped from the Curragh and made his way across the border he was returned to the Republic by his own people. The following true story may shed some light on this....

                        "The single most extraordinary K Lines episode documented in the Dublin archives also illustrates the serious political implications of the Curragh camp to the war effort, regardless of how funny it may seem now. On December 13, 1941, an American pilot with the RAF, Roland L 'Bud' Wolfe, 23, escaped from the camp - but was sent back by his own side.

                        Bud Wolfe was from McGehee, Arkansas, and had joined the RAF because he was desperate to fly in combat and wasn't prepared to wait for the US to join the war. After ditching his plane in County Donegal, he was picked up by the Garda and, to his fury, interned. Wolfe found himself with over 40 British, Canadian, New Zealand, French and Polish airmen, magnificently fed, on courteous terms with the guards - and just across a corrugated-iron fence, only four feet high, from several hundred men of the Luftwaffe and the German Navy who had strayed into Eire because their planes had run out of fuel, or their U-boats had been shipwrecked.

                        The K Lines rules, such as they were, were explained to Wolfe by the senior Allied men. He was told that he would receive his full service pay and get supplied a radio and newspapers from home. His laundry would be done. The prisoners could go out by signing a parole paper at the guardhouse, where bicycles were also provided. On the form, they gave their word of honour not to escape. The same applied to the Germans.

                        Several German prisoners enrolled for educational courses in Dublin where they could also visit their country's legation, on which the Swastika fluttered. Allied prisoners could similarly visit their own countries' missions to Eire, but went to Dublin less than the Germans, because they were anxious not to seem to be enjoying too easy a war.

                        The Germans were the more organised POWs, wearing uniforms, planting gardens and making tennis courts, organising exercise classes and singing Nazi songs to taunt the Allies. Once, Irish records relate, they set up a court to convict a comrade of treason. They sentenced him to death and asked the Irish for a rifle and one bullet. The Irish refused. Not only did they want to avoid anyone getting hurt in their custody but, unbeknown to the prisoners, the guards did not have any live ammunition. The execution was abandoned.

                        But the Germans were not averse to enjoying internment, either. In the archive is a 1944 invoice from a Dublin vintner to a flight lieutenant Fleischmann requesting £4. 10s for three bottles of amontillado, two brown sherry, two Irish whiskey, one Scotch, four Sauternes and one gin. On the Allied side a downed Spitfire pilot, Aubrey Covington, prided himself on keeping the bar, where drinks were 10 US cents a shot. An honour system prevailed - prisoners poured their own and wrote the tally in the book.

                        The British were the more relaxed prisoners. Some brought their families to live nearby. One officer had his horse shipped over and became a regular with the local hunt. Others joined rugby, soccer and table tennis clubs.

                        The Germans made no attempt to escape but the Allied men were just over 100 miles from the Ulster border and frequently tried to get up north as a first step to rejoining their units. None was more keen to escape than Bud Wolfe, but as he discovered, escape plans met two formidable problems. The camp may have been harder to escape from than Colditz. Ireland was the only part of Europe outside Switzerland not subject to a blackout, so the Curragh floodlights were on all night. And the camp huts, built in 1915 by the British to house IRA men, were raised from the ground to make tunnelling difficult. But the truly perverse problem was that Britain discreetly but actively discouraged its men from escaping, because Irish neutrality was vital to Winston Churchill.

                        He was worried that if Ireland tipped towards the Nazis, the Irish Atlantic ports could be used by the German navy. This would massively increase the U-boat threat to Britain's lifeline, the north Atlantic convoys. He also knew Hitler believed Ireland could, with IRA help, be occupied by Germany and used as base to attack Britain from the west. The Irish leader Eamon de Valera did not want to be involved in a war, with memories of the bloody Irish civil conflict still relatively fresh.

                        The Curragh camp became a showcase for the British and the Irish to demonstrate Irish neutrality, and the Allied prisoners in it were on show for German spies in Ireland. The British representative in Dublin, Sir John Maffey, tactfully explained this to Allied officers in the Curragh, and it was their job to outline the no-escaping rule to their men. Technically, Maffey said, if a prisoner escaped and got back to London - or Berlin - he would have to be sent back to Ireland again. Churchill dreaded such a diplomatic nightmare.

                        Allied prisoners believed there to be a loophole in the parole deal. If a prisoner managed to get out without signing the form, he would not be breaking parole, and therefore would be a legitimate escapee. Maffey disagreed. Later in the war, he became a hate figure in the camp because he had to inform the Irish military police of a tunnel constructed over eight months by Allied POWs."

                        Personal note: One Luftwaffe detainee (they were never referred to as prisoners) was eventually returned to Germany after the war. Finding that there was nothing for him back home and that his immediate family had been killed in an allied raid, he returned to Ireland.

                        He first stayed in Newbridge, where as a detainee on parole he had been made very welcome. Then, with little work available he came to Dublin where he looked up some of those with whom he had been pen friends with in detention, and who had sent comfort parcels to the detainees.

                        One of these he started to go out with and they married -- she was one of my aunts.

                        He used to tell a story of a time he borrowed a suit from my father to attend a Luftwaffe reunion in Ely Place. One evening they discovered that a couple of doors away there was a RAF reunion being held by the British Legion. The evening began with catcalls back and forth and ended in the lot of them getting drunk together.
                        great story rashers.....

                        have you any information on irishmen in the british armed forces coming home on leave during the war.....
                        Here Rex!!!...Here Rex!!!.....Wuff!!!....... Wuff!!!

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by quinner View Post
                          great story rashers.....

                          have you any information on irishmen in the british armed forces coming home on leave during the war.....
                          Going on family stories it seems that Irishmen on leave from the British armed forces could come home without any problem. In fact I remember Cathal O'Shannon (his dad fought on the rebel side in 1916) telling the story on the telly about the times he spent on leave in Dublin while serving in the RAF during the war.
                          'Never look down on a person unless you're helping them up'.
                          .

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by Rashers View Post
                            Going on family stories it seems that Irishmen on leave from the British armed forces could come home without any problem. In fact I remember Cathal O'Shannon (his dad fought on the rebel side in 1916) telling the story on the telly about the times he spent on leave in Dublin while serving in the RAF during the war.


                            i heard that dev, set up a facility in holyhead to provide civilian clothes for those coming home on leave...they would then hand them back in on their return....
                            Here Rex!!!...Here Rex!!!.....Wuff!!!....... Wuff!!!

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by quinner View Post
                              i heard that dev, set up a facility in holyhead to provide civilian clothes for those coming home on leave...they would then hand them back in on their return....
                              I can't comment on that, but I do know that a family member used to get a voucher for a suit to be supplied by McBirneys on Aston's Quay. I don't know who supplied the voucher though.
                              'Never look down on a person unless you're helping them up'.
                              .

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