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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: maceng2 who wrote (8691)	11/4/2001 3:43:55 PM
From: maceng2	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

Unified Ireland and the War in the Atlantic (ww2) During WW2 Britain had to fight the Atlantic War against German U-boats. The Atlantic convoys brought in vital war material, Britain's very existence depended on the Atlantic convoys. There was no "phoney war" on this front. The sinkings started straight away. As part of his appeasement policy the British Prime minister Chamberlain had given up any rights for navel ports in Southern Ireland in 1938. The Irish Prime Minister Eammon De Valera was able to keep the Irish republic neutral. ebooks.whsmithonline.co.uk Churchill was willing to give up Northern Ireland, over the heads of the protestants, in return for access to Irish ports in Southern Ireland. However, how much could De Valera trust the British Government on this issue? ebooks.whsmithonline.co.uk During World War II De Valera stubbornly guarded Ireland's neutrality, despite an urgent telegram from Churchill immediately after Pearl Harbour: "Now is your chance. Now or Never. 'A Nation once again.'" dspace.dial.pipex.com Many Irishmen from north and south of the Irish border served in the British Forces during WW2. Many Irish girls served as nurses in Britain during that war (thanks mother -g-) The pressure of War made some for strange proposals... In a last desperate attempt to save France from capitulating and to keep her army fighting, Churchill and General De Gaule proposed that Britain and France become one united nation. In a telephone call from London on June 16, 1940 to the French Premier, Paul Reynaud, the message stated: ‘The two Governments of the United Kingdom and the French Republic make the declaration of indissoluble union and unyielding resolution in their common defence of justice and freedom against subjection to a system which reduces mankind to a life of robots and slaves. The two Governments declare that France and Great Britain shall no longer be two nations but one Franco-British Union. Every citizen of France will enjoy immediately citizenship of Great Britain; every British subject will become a citizen of France. All the armed forces of Great Britain and France will be placed under the direction of a single War Cabinet’.The proposal caused an uproar in the French Cabinet of which Churchill wrote ‘Rarely has so generous a proposal encountered such a hostile reception’. Without Cabinet support, Reynaud resigned and a new government was formed under Marshal Petain who immediately negotiated an armistice with Germany. members.iinet.net.au The unification of Ireland in exchange for use of her ports continued to be a hot topic during ww2. Here is a couple of pages from FDR's secretaries files... fdrlibrary.marist.edu fdrlibrary.marist.edu As the war closed, unexpectedly in favour for Britain and the Allies, the political war between Churchill and De Valera became openly bitter... 1945 April 30 de Valera visits the German embassy in Dublin and signs a book of condolences memorializing the death of Hitler. The visit provokes widespread criticism but de Valera regards it as a perfunctory diplomatic act by a neutral government. May 13 Churchill takes one last jab at Irish neutrality during victory broadcast, "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" May 17 de Valera makes his reply to Churchill in a broadcast over Radio Eireann. The speech does much to restore his domestic popularity in the wake of the furor over his visit to the Germans. " 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?" worldatwar.net