Posted on 01/09/2007 5:52:35 PM PST by joan
Another Nazi to take advantage of the soft approach of the Irish government was Andrija Artukovic, who was responsible for the death of 1m people in Croatia. Cathal O’Shannon, who has researched Ireland’s treatment of the Nazis after 1945, has discovered that there is a file on Artukovic in the Department of Foreign Affairs but the government has refused to release it.Victims in Artukovic’s camps died from a mixture of hard labour, starvation and poisoning. He had a particular penchant for poisoning children and enjoyed having his picture taken with dead bodies.
Artukovic worked for Hitler as the minister for the interior in Croatia. He arrived in Ireland in 1947 after being referred by a Franciscan church in Switzerland and lived under the assumed name Alois Annick in Rathgar, south Dublin.
After gaining an Irish identity card he left for America in 1948 and settled in California, where he worked as a book keeper.
This doesn't surprise me. The Irish hated the English. A matter of fact, my grandmother moved from Ireland in the late 30's. She then received a Christmas card from my great grandmother a few years later. On the card there is a Nazi swastika on the corner of it.
"The Irish hated the English."
Let's see, the English invaded their country, took away their land, persecuted them for being Catholic, treated them like trash ... and there's the little matter of the potato famine. Gee, I can't understand why?
And I'm of Irish blood (County Kerry)...and Catholic.
DeValera participated in the Easter Rebellion in 1916. Sinn Fein got its Mauser rifles from Germany, and was expecting more German aid for its uprising. When he became Prime Minister, he refused to allow Ireland to participate in any way in World War II. It shocks me, but it's not entirely a surprise, that he helped out Germany's agents after World War II.
De Valera was an rabid ideologue. He has the key to the north in his hand and gave it up. If he had traded the Irish ports and 400 thousand Irishmen to fight for the Allies under Canadian command. The deal?...Northern Ireland reverts to the Republic after the war. Churchill and Devalera would have had to bite the bullet and take the deal. By 1942 the window of opportunity closed. What might have been...
Maybe, but the Irish didn't think it was their war to fight.
Really?!
I had never heard that before. The British were willing to sacrifice Ulster in return for the Irish Republic allowing the Brits the use of their ports and 400000 recruits.
Who proposed this? The British Foreign Office? You mentioned that Churchill would have had to bite the bullet - so I'm inclined to believe the idea didn't come from him.
This is the way that fanatics think. OTOH, De Valera probably thought that the Germans were going to win. It sure looked that way in the fall of 1940.
Curiously it was Churchill who proposed the idea to to Anthony Eden after the fall of Chamberlain-Halifax. It was Edens job to covertly get the notion to De Valera. De Valera rejected the idea out of hand. Churchill was facing desperate odds with allof western and central Europe under Nazi Control.
The Germans were pressing in the desert war and the War of the Atlantic was hotting up with things looking grin for the UK. Manpower for North Africa Africa was a problem and after Dunkirk Britain had an army without weapons. Bringing Ireland into the war brought an additional dimension. The American Irish. If fighting for the Allies mean't the unification of Ireland. then Irish everywhere of any nationality could be appealed to. They wouldn't be fighting FOR Britain but FOR Ireland.
fyi
It's incorrect to assume that the whole world was firmly united in opposition to the Nazi's, both American and British societies were deeply divided on the issue.
There were liberals around back then too.
I've always found the boozy green beer sentimental Irish nationalism prevalent in this country unappealing. OK, so I secretly root for Notre Dame. Don't tell my wife, she likes Penn State.
The greatest gift the English gave Ireland was the English language. Gaelic speaking Ireland would still be an economic backwater.
The Irish would side with any ideology that was perceived as anti-English.
I think your post addresses the cultural phenonomenon of Irishness. I was more focused on the political and geopolitical opportunities that lay in it. Churchill recognized the opportunity and was willing to trade away Northern Ireland in return for the ports and manpower Ireland could provide. ( The British army has always been substantially Irish) It might have even tipped the balance in terms of American isolationism in 1940. Churchill for all his rhetorical idealism was a pragmatist at heart. Would that De Valera had also been a pragmatist. I always thought that De Valera was something of a weasel and slimey backstabber. His one chance to become truly great and he muffed it.
In the case of Artukovic, it was not anti-English but Pro-Vatican.
Andrija Artukovic was Croatian equivalent of Hinrich Himmler. The official Croatian state policy was to kill one third of Serbs, forcibly convert to Roman Catholic faith the other third and expell the rest. More than half a million of Serbs and over 40,000 Jews were murdered in the most bestial way, that even German Nazis were shocked.
Helping Artukovic to escape was a service to Vatican because Vatican was implicated in Croatian Nazi crimes.
This story is far from over. The Croatian Nazi loot taken from murdered Serbs and Jews was stashed in Vatican and Vatican banks laundered proceeds of the crime. There is ongoing trial in SF, Cal regarding this. The worth of the loot - couple of billion in today's dollars.
High volume. Articles on Israel can also be found by clicking on the Topic or Keyword Israel, WOT
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After gaining an Irish identity card he left for America in 1948 and settled in California, where he worked as a book keeper.
Deported to Yugoslavia in the mid-1980s, he died in prison, having been ruled too ill to be executed.
But we should also remember the 60,000 Irish lads who defied their government and served in UK forces against Hitler and Company.
A salute to their memory!
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