Posted on 01/09/2007 5:52:35 PM PST by joan
A NAZI war criminal given asylum in Ireland after the second world war lived here under an assumed name approved by Eamon de Valera’s government, according to new research.
The Nazi collaborator was advised by de Valera to continue using an alias so that if the French government asked if he was in Ireland, the taoiseach could truthfully answer no.
Célestin Lainé was leader of the Bezen Perrot, a Waffen SS unit, and responsible for the torture and murder of civilians in occupied Brittany. He joined the SS when the Germans recruited local help and took command of the region, ordering the torture and execution of resistance fighters who had once lived alongside him.
In 1944, as the allies liberated Brittany, many Nazi collaborators fled France. Some of those captured were found in possession of letters of recommendation written in English and addressed to the Irish consulate in Paris.
In 1947 word reached Lainé that the Irish government was prepared to grant him asylum. In an interview with RTE to be broadcast this week, Dan Leach of the University of Melbourne reveals that the former head of the Breton Nationalist Party met de Valera to discuss Lainé.
“De Valera advised him (that Lainé should) continue using his alias so that if the French asked him if Lainé was in the country he could truthfully answer ‘no’,” Leach said. Lainé kept a low profile in Ireland until his death in 1983.
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.
“It is strange that a man responsible for a million deaths could live quietly here with nobody asking who he is or how he got here,” O’Shannon said. “In Rathgar he was saved from allied vengeance and prosecution.”
Yugoslavia demanded Artukovic’s extradition in the 1950s and after 30 years of legal wrangling he was sent back to his homeland and sentenced to death. He died in 1988 in prison.
Brian Girvan, a historian, says de Valera was well aware of the extermination of Jews by Nazis during the war but still identified with Hitler’s army.
“He never gave an unqualified position to the Allies. He was not going to say that we won’t allow (Nazis) into Ireland. There was an opinion in Ireland that those who were executed were in the same way as Irish nationalists had been,” Girvan said.
“He saw the Nazis as a nationalist regime that represented the German people to a certain extent. His stance doesn’t make him pro-Nazi but he was very narrow in his focus.”
In a letter to de Valera in 1944, David Gray, the then US representative in Ireland, demanded that Ireland refuse refuge to Nazi war criminals. De Valera was furious and saw the demands as America trying to tamper with Ireland’s new sovereignty.
During the 1970s it emerged that Pieter Menten, a Dutchman responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Jews in Poland, was dividing his time between Holland and Waterford, where he had a large country home at Mahon Bridge.
Locals were stunned in 1976 when Menten was arrested, tried and, in 1980, sentenced to 10 years in prison for war crimes. When he was released he believed he would live out his days in Ireland but Garret Fitz-Gerald, the then taoiseach, barred him from the country.
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.
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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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