Hi.
As an American of Irish descent, I still wonder why Ireland was neutral in both worid wars.
I also wonder why Ireland made abortion legal.
St. Patrick is spinning in his grave.
I also wonder what St. Patrick thinks about the current status of the Church.
I’m full of wonder today...and cow patties.
5.56mm
Ireland could not have been neutral during WWI, there being no independent Ireland and still being part of the UK. Plenty of Irish soldiers were in the British armed forces fighting against Germany and its allies.
Plenty of Irish Free State soldiers and citizens were in Britain’s armed forces during WWII as well in spite of the Free State’s “neutral” stance; they were quite blacklisted by the Free State and subsequent Irish Republic after the war ended.
Occupied Ireland was part of the UK in WWI; the Easter Rebellion (with rifles supplied by Germany) was supposed to address that.
In WWII, Ireland was neutral because The Devil still occupied the north of Ireland; why would they defend England as it was bombed by Germany? If anything, there was hope for union with the north in an English defeat.
In terms of St. Patrick, I suspect more European Catholics would have preferred to see Bolshevism defeated. Britain and the US were primarily Protestant countries, allied with atheist Soviets. Most “Catholic” countries either supported the Axis or remained neutral; Spain also realized that when Nazism fought Bolshevism, there were no “good guys”. The Catholic populations closer to Bolshevism (Hungary, Croatia, Slovakia, Lithuania, Ukraine) didn’t have the luxury of neutrality - they saw Stalin up close & personal in the Spanish Civil War, the invasion of eastern Poland, and the Winter War with Finland (and they saw the West do nothing in any of those cases; they were on their own).