sinn fein/ira and the nazis

[Wasp]

We all went way off topic on la mon thread so I am starting a new thread where we can continue.

The IRA sought to collaborate with the Reich during WWII. IRA Chief of staff Sean Russell whose statue blights a Dublin park (and was decapitated in 2004) died when being returned to Germany by U Boat. The IRA collaboration was more than just a case of my enemy’s enemy” or Finnish co-belligerence, The IRA of the time did adopt a pro Nazi and decidedly anti Semitic stance. apologists who still take a romantic view of the IRA’s past should take note that the “Boys of the old brigade” were happy to get into bed with Hitler.

I have read here about the news would have had made many ira members/supporters here not to have heard about what exzactly the nazis were up to. I have also read about the ira fighting the facists in Spain but is it not true that IRA members also fought on the Francoist side as part of Eoin O Duffy’s Bandera Irlandesa.

Here is part of another article.

Sean Russell offered his services and those of the IRA to Germany is a matter of fact. Even in 1940 the ugly face of Nazi ideology would have been clear to even the most naïve. Events such as Kristallnacht or the invasions of Poland, Norway, the low countries and France hardly went unreported in Ireland! The pro-German tone of IRA publications during WWII is also a matter of record.

[Jim]

Ah Setanta give it up. Everyone fuckin knows that when we arent praising killers we are saluting mein furhrer.

When we say its untrue, its just more republican lies.

[earl]

Just to make my stance clear WASP, I'm no IRA apologist, nor have a romantic view of them. I've told you before that the IRA have enough rope to hang themselves with without conjecture, opinion and innuendo muddying the waters. If actual facts get lost in a mire of half-truths and myths, then you are actually doing your cause harm. As regards the IRA fighting with Eoin O'Duffy's crowd, this really shows that you don't really have any decent information on this subject. It's like saying that some members joined the UVF!! There was a civil war down here, and the aftermath of that war created the blueshirts on one side, the IRA on the other and everyone else, stuck in the middle. Do you actually think that the IRA's perceived love for fascism was so great, that they decided to let bygones be bygones, and head off arm in arm with the very people that they'd been savagely fighting the few years previously? It really is akin to the IRA and UVF heading off arm-in-arm to fight side by side in a foreign war. An absolutely ridiculous suggestion! They all went to Spain to continue to blow each other to bits!

[Wasp]

the assertion that "The IRA of the time did adopt a pro Nazi and decidedly anti Semitic stanc"

War
News, the IRA's main publication, became increasingly pro-Nazi in
tone, even claiming active IRA involvement in the German bombing of
British cities. But more chillingly it began to ape anti-Semitic
arguments. Satisfaction was expressed that the 'cleansing fire' of the
German armies was driving the Jews from Europe. British war minister
Hore Belisha was described as a 'wealthy Jew' only interested in
'profits'. War News condemned the arrival in Ireland of 'so-called
Jewish refugees', along with unspecified numbers of 'Albanian,
Abyssinian, Mongolian [and] Tartars'. These new arrivals were not only
supposedly putting Irish people out of work but also exploiting those
that they employed. Belfast was said to be increasingly in the 'hands
of international Jewry' because of this influx. 'The Jews', War News
warned, were 'like the English, when they are strong they bully and
rule.' In Dublin de Valera's government was also dominated by 'Jews
and Freemasons' who were becoming the 'new owners of Ireland'. Fianna
Fáil TD Robert Briscoe was singled out for attack.

Throughout
the 1930s Sinn Féin publications written by O'Kelly had repeatedly
attacked alleged Jewish influence in Ireland. By 1940 he was praising
Hitler for freeing Germany from the 'heel' of the 'Jewish white slave
traffic'. Indeed, by 1940 republicans and former Blueshirts were
mingling in a variety of small pro-German organisations in Dublin.

THE IRA AND NAZISM

by Brian Hanley

Seán Russell, the IRA chief of staff, spent the summer of 1940 in a
'very large' villa in the leafy Grunewald, near Berlin, surrounded by
extensive grounds and parks, enjoying all the privileges of a diplomat
with regard to access to food, petrol and other rationed goods. His
villa contained radio gramophone facilities and an 'excellent library'
equipped with 'special war maps' that enabled Russell to keep abreast
of Germany's stunning military victories that summer. As a registered
representative of the Irish Republic he was accorded 'every privilege
possible', including the use of a car and chauffeur for trips around
Berlin and the German countryside and the services of a young Austrian
aristocrat, who was appointed as his companion and interpreter. He was
given access to the high-security Brandenburg military camp to study
the latest techniques in sabotage and guerrilla warfare, and met
leading Nazis such as Foreign Minister Joachim Von Ribbentrop.
Following the fall of France, Russell urged that the German high
command make use of the IRA to strike at British forces in Northern
Ireland as part of a general attack on Britain. His plans were
accepted and incorporated into Operation Sealion (the plan for the
invasion of Britain), a mark of the 'respect and esteem' in which
Russell was held by the German military leadership. During August
Russell was to return to Ireland to oversee the implementation of
these plans, but on his journey home by U-boat, he became ill and
died. His body was buried at sea with full German naval honours.

The above information comes not from one of Russell's many critics,
eager to paint him as a collaborator with the Nazis, but from the
republican newspaper The United Irishman of October 1951. The article
was published to coincide with the unveiling of a monument to Russell
in Dublin's Fairview Park and concluded that he was a 'worthy
successor to Tone and Casement'.

However, in July 1940 the IRA leadership issued a statement outlining
its position on the war. The statement made clear that if 'German
forces should land in Ireland, they will land...as friends and
liberators of the Irish people'. The public was assured that Germany
desired neither 'territory nor...economic penetration' in Ireland but
only that it should play its part in the 'reconstruction' of a 'free
and progressive Europe'. The Third Reich was also praised as the
'energising force' of European politics and the 'guardian' of national
freedom. In response to critics such as George Bernard Shaw, who had
drawn attention to Hitler's anti-Catholic policies, the IRA countered
that both 'Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini' proved their lack of bias
by helping to establish the 'Catholic government' of Franco in Spain.
In August the IRA confidently predicted that with the assistance of
'our victorious European allies' Ireland would 'achieve absolute
independence within the next few months'.

The IRA's statements drew angry responses from Irish Freedom,
published by the Connolly Association, and Irish Workers Weekly,
published by the Communist Party of Ireland, who criticised the IRA
for inviting 'German soldiers to come and devastate the country they
talk of freeing'. These papers also noted how the IRA and their
'strange bedfellow General O'Duffy' were lauding as 'liberators'
powers that held 'Abyssinia, Austria, Albania and Czechoslovakia' in
subjection. The reference to the former Blueshirt leader was apt.
During 1940 IRA officers approached O'Duffy and asked him to become an
intelligence operative for the organisation. Irish Freedom noted with
disgust how the Nazis seemed to have been able to 'corrupt' some of
the leading Irish republicans.

and this assertion. "I have also read about the ira fighting the facists in Spain but is it not true that IRA members also fought on the Francoist side as part of Eoin O Duffy’s Bandera Irlandesa."

Some IRA volunteers fought fascism in Spain is used to absolve
the organisation of charges of collaboration. But the IRA actually
forbade its members to go to Spain, and those volunteers who did go
went in defiance of their leaders. Similarly, the commander of the
Irish anti-Fascists in Spain, Frank Ryan, had severed his connection
with the IRA in 1934 and joined the Republican Congress. There were
pro-Franco as well as pro-Spanish republican elements within the IRA.
A number of younger officers became more open to right-wing politics.
Supporters of the old IRA leadership in 1938 had accused some of
Russell's supporters, such as Peadar O'Flaherty, of 'fascist'
leanings. The strategist of the bombing campaign, James O'Donovan, was
also seen by some as influenced by fascist thinking. It was in this
context that IRA officers could approach Eoin O'Duffy, who as a Free
State general, Garda Commissioner and Blueshirt leader had been a
sworn enemy of their organisation, and offer him a place in its
leadership. Clearly a section of the leadership at least was also
happy to revel in Nazi successes.

[Wasp]

Over and over again I have read here and elsewhere how Russell wasn't a collaborator but a simple military man who found himself in Hitlerite Berlin in 1940 and had little option but to keep on the err right side with a regime which he detested. I think Hanley who I believe is a left winger to blow that theory apart.

You see he found this, an article from The United Irishman of October 1951, marking the unveiling of the Fairview Park statue. It detailed, quite without embarrassment, the considerable luxury in which Russell lived in Berlin and the respect and esteem in which he was held by the Nazis as he negotiated how the IRA might best coordinate its activity with the Nazis in the unfolding conflict with Britain.

This was eight years after Hitler had come to power, seven years after the construction of the Dachau concentration camp, six years after the promulgation of the law banning Jews from German citizenship, three years after Crystalnacht, when Jewish homes and synagogues were destroyed, scores of Jews murdered and thousands hauled off to prison camps. All this was widely known. And yet Russell cheerfully discussed and planned an IRA-Nazi alliance.

[earl]

It was in this
context that IRA officers could approach Eoin O'Duffy, who as a Free
State general, Garda Commissioner and Blueshirt leader had been a
sworn enemy of their organisation, and offer him a place in its
leadership. Clearly a section of the leadership at least was also
happy to revel in Nazi successes.

I'm going to need a lot more convincing than this single source. It just doesn't make sense to me! This is the first time I've heard any of this, so for the moment, I'm treating it as suspect.

[Wasp]

www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/releases/2003/november14/irish.htm

www.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20060206/032178.html

Seán Russell, the IRA chief of staff, spent the summer of 1940 in a
'very large' villa in the leafy Grunewald, near Berlin, surrounded by
extensive grounds and parks, enjoying all the privileges of a diplomat
with regard to access to food, petrol and other rationed goods. His
villa contained radio gramophone facilities and an 'excellent library'
equipped with 'special war maps' that enabled Russell to keep abreast
of Germany's stunning military victories that summer. As a registered
representative of the Irish Republic he was accorded 'every privilege
possible', including the use of a car and chauffeur for trips around
Berlin and the German countryside and the services of a young Austrian
aristocrat, who was appointed as his companion and interpreter. He was
given access to the high-security Brandenburg military camp to study
the latest techniques in sabotage and guerrilla warfare, and met
leading Nazis such as Foreign Minister Joachim Von Ribbentrop.
Following the fall of France, Russell urged that the German high
command make use of the IRA to strike at British forces in Northern
Ireland as part of a general attack on Britain. His plans were
accepted and incorporated into Operation Sealion (the plan for the
invasion of Britain), a mark of the 'respect and esteem' in which
Russell was held by the German military leadership. During August
Russell was to return to Ireland to oversee the implementation of
these plans, but on his journey home by U-boat, he became ill and
died. His body was buried at sea with full German naval honours.

The above information comes not from one of Russell's many critics,
eager to paint him as a collaborator with the Nazis, but from the
republican newspaper The United Irishman of October 1951.

thepoormouth.blogspot.com/2007/01/ireland-neutrality-ira-and-reich.html

The IRA sought to collaborate with the Reich during WWII. IRA Chief of staff Sean Russell whose statue blights a Dublin park (and was decapitated in 2004) died when being returned to Germany by U Boat. The IRA collaboration was more than just a case of my enemy’s enemy” or Finnish co-belligerence, The IRA of the time did adopt a pro Nazi and decidedly anti Semitic stance. apologists who still take a romantic view of the IRA’s past should take note that the “Boys of the old brigade” were happy to get into bed with Hitler.


www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=1250

www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/columnists/article2184197.ece

A comforting theory that Russell wasn't a collaborator but a simple military man who found himself in Hitlerite Berlin in 1940 and had little option but to stay onside with a regime which he detested, was exploded two years ago in an feature in History Ireland, Oh Here's to Adolf Hitler, by the left-wing historian, Brian Hanley.

Hanley dug out an article from The United Irishman of October 1951, marking the unveiling of the Fairview Park statue. It detailed, quite without embarrassment, the considerable luxury in which Russell lived in Berlin and the respect and esteem in which he was held by the Nazis as he negotiated how the IRA might best coordinate its activity with the Nazis in the unfolding conflict with Britain.

This was eight years after Hitler had come to power, seven years after the construction of the Dachau concentration camp, six years after the promulgation of the law banning Jews from German citizenship, three years after Crystalnacht, when Jewish homes and synagogues were destroyed, scores of Jews murdered and thousands hauled off to prison camps. All this was widely known. And yet Russell cheerfully discussed and planned an IRA-Nazi alliance.

HOPE this helps, but sure anything that remotely suggests anything that goes against republican brain washing or version of history is scorned upon.

I note on the other thread Setanta you have said again about my links, so I am still trying to find the other very informative site.

[earl]

WASP, there's several rules to follow when searching on the the internet for credible sources of information. Blogs are not considered credible, unless they are linking to a credible source. Blogs are a source for opinions and not facts usually. You'd have a very hard time trying to get anyone to take a blog as a source seriously. I would not consider 'jams o donnell' who wrote one of the above blogs as a credible source on Irish history.
Another rule is how the site looks. If it looks like some 10 year old with Microsoft Frontpage basic package put it together, you can bet that this is a website put up by an individual rather than an organisation. The last rule is what other types of information is available on a site. For example, I wouldn't consider a cheap looking site which contains topics from the IRA and the nazi's to the illuminati as a credible site. The BT link is to a columnist section, where a journalist will offer up his opinion on a topic.

[Wasp]

Setanta you asked what was the ira adopting a pro nazi and anti- semitic stance based on, try the war journal of the time which I have already posted.

www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2004/may/09/northernireland.monarchy

The Irish government has just completed the restoration of the Prince Albert statue, on the Merrion Row side of the Leinster House estate. This project has enraged the Sinn Fein Six inside the Dail who have demanded that the statue be pulled down because it is a symbol of British imperialism.

Perhaps someone, preferably those in the party leadership, ought to have a quiet word with their TDs and remind them about that old saw regarding stones, glass houses and people inclined to hurl objects. Before the Sinn Fein TDs start ranting and raving about a harmless old symbol from Ireland's Victorian past they should ponder on the presence of another very different statue north of the Liffey, in Fairview Park. This effigy represents Sean Russell, the commanding officer of the IRA during the Second World War. Russell, whose life ended on a German U-boat a couple of hundred miles off the western Irish coast in June 1940, was a self-proclaimed ally of Nazi Ger many and was prepared to kill and maim British and Irish civilians to disrupt the Allied war effort. He even asked Hitler's Germany to supply the IRA with weapons and money.

Think about it. Dublin remains the only city in democratic Europe where a figurine still stands in homage to a man who openly collaborated with the Nazis. What's more, modern day Sinn Fein politicians, such as the party's candidate in Dublin for the Euro elections, Mary Lou McDonald, seem to have no problem attending commemorations to honour this ally of Adolf Hitler. Compared to the Prince with the exotic ring piercing, the statue of someone who was prepared to risk handing over his country to the benign mercies of the SS should be a greater cause of controversy and outrage.

www.mazalien.com/irelands-nazis.html

Programme one: Cathal begins with an investigation into the notorious Andrija Artukovic, Nazi Minister of the Interior in Croatia and the man responsible for the deaths of over 1,000,000 men, women and children in concentration camps. His time here is shrouded in mystery, as the Department of Foreign Affairs still refuses to release the file on this man. Programme One also focuses on Celestine Laine, leader of the Bezen Perrot, a Waffen SS unit responsible for the torture and murder of civilians in occupied Brittany, and Pieter Menten, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Jews in Poland. Why was the Irish state prepared to harbour men such as Artukovic and Laine, while Jewish refugees were refused asylum? To find out the answer, Cathal talks to historians and other experts, uncovers government documents, and investigates the thorny issue of anti-Semitism in mid-20th century Ireland.

In Programme Two, Cathal O'Shannon investigates how the cold war opened new channels for Nazis seeking sanctuary here. He tells the story of 'the most dangerous man in Europe' and Hitler's favourite soldier - Otto "Scarface" Skorzeny, a James Bond figure who famously rescued Mussolini from a mountaintop fortress. Skorzeny was feted by the Dublin social glitterati, even hobnobbing with a future Taoiseach. He also looks at Helmut Clissmann, the man tasked by the Nazis to recruit the IRA for their war against Britain. Cathal moves on to investigate the Flemish nationalists who became Nazi collaborators - men like Albert Folens, who went on to become a successful publisher of Irish schoolbooks, Albert Luykx, who fled justice in Belgium and later conspired with Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney to import arms for the IRA, and Staf Van Velthoven, the last surviving of 'Ireland's Nazis'.

www.nuzhound.com/articles/skin1-30.htm

In 1940 Russell travelled to Germany to try to interest the Reich in a bizarre plan to jointly invade Northern Ireland, codenamed 'Operation Kathleen'. The Germans were not impressed with the IRA, one intelligence officer in Ireland regarding them as "worthless". Russell died of a perforated ulcer on board a German U-boat.


Most Northern Catholics were indifferent to the war. Many served with distinction in the home defence forces. Though almost all resisted conscription, only a minority, including several in the IRA, were openly sympathetic to Nazism, revelling in Hitler's early successes. In the Falls district of Belfast, though, the police and army were regularly taunted with pro-Nazi slogans and graffiti and Celtic supporters gave Nazi salutes to Linfield fans.




In August 1940 Senator McLaughlin with two colleagues met Edouard Hempel, the German Minister in Dublin, placing the nationalist minority under Axis protection. The IRA meanwhile, as then Volunteer Paddy Devlin recounts, gathered information about ground defences and passed it on to the Germans. It was to be the great regret of Devlin's life.

[earl]

I tell you what WASP, you continue to believe that the IRA are both socialist and fascist, and try and spread the message to the world, using blogs and conspiracy sites, we'll continue to believe the official narrative thats in the history books and the rest of the world couldn't give a fcuk.

End of thread and let us never go back over this subject again, as this is the third time, and it really is a complete waste of typing power at this point. In fact, I'd rather skewer my eyeballs out with a rusty nail than go over this topic again, as it's completely pointless.

[Wasp]

So what you are saying is that those who view things differently than how republicans view these things are wrong, they too have researched just like republican versions of history but according to some on here they are all wrong.

Are none of these links credible? Are those who wrote for various newspapers not credible? I history Ireland not credible? Is Hanley not credible? Or is this guy not credible?

I found his site at long last.

markhumphrys.com/politics.contents.html

He wrote this

'I'm against the gangsters of Sinn Fein-IRA, but that doesn't mean I have much time for their unionist opponents. As a southern Irishman, I have much more in common with England than with Northern Ireland. England and the Republic of Ireland are both relaxed, liberal, secular states where nobody cares what religion you are. Northern Ireland is not like that, so it is much more alien to me than England is.
If unionists could only embark on a secular, liberal project to make Northern Ireland more like England, I would support them all the way. But this 17th century religious triumphalism is utterly alienating.

Unionists often complain that they have little support internationally (or even in Britain). This is because ethnic supremacy does not travel well. It plays brilliantly at home, but it does not travel. Most of the world simply is not part of the glorious chosen group, and so to them its claims of ethnic supremacy are as absurd, meaningless and unconvincing as, say, Serb claims of ethnic supremacy.

Unionists must abandon any taint of ethnic or religious supremacy, and become secular and universal - like the English. Certainly a secular, liberal case can be made for the union.'

Previous generations of my family weren't exactly prudent. My family has a long history of putting their political and religious ideas in the public domain. My great-great-grandfather was a Home Rule MP and Free State Senator. My great-grandfather was a Home Rule MP and Free State TD. My grandfather took part in an armed insurrection against the state in 1916. RIC Special Branch had a long file on him. My other grandfather took part in the allied capture of Iraq in 1917, and was then a colonial administrator in Iraq, probably in Hilla province. My granduncle was the first Prime Minister of Ireland in 1922. His son became Prime Minister of Ireland in 1973. My father puts his political and religious ideas in the public domain, as do my brothers. Many other relatives have spoken and published on political and religious topics. If they weren't and aren't silent, why should I be? And my workplace is covered with offensive political posters, including ones glorifying violence and terror. If they can speak, why can't I?



Doesn't sound like a lyalist site now does it???

[He_Who_Walks_in_The_Wilderness]

Tim Pat coogan in his book the IRA talks about to anti-semetic attacks carried out in dublin by the IRA in the 1920's, interesting since he is regarded as very pro-republican, Arthur Griffith was also accused of being anti-semtic, he did defend anti-semetic rioters in limerick, interestingly considering he was father of sinn fein he denouced socalists as 'conscious tools of the British Empire' but then Personly i have never viewed either the PIRA/sinn fein as socalists.

[Jim]

I've read that book.

Arthur griffith was indeed very anti-semetic, as were many many people in his time, for the period of history it was commonly accepted to be anti-semetic. Arthur griffith was also a pleb that ended up losing control of most of "his" party at the end of the day.

The father of Sinn Fein, are you having a laug, his idea of republicanism and of Sinn Fein was very different, he only changed his mind when he knew what he wanted wasnt achievable.

Sinn Fein are not an out and out red socialist party, thats what the IRSP are for, Sinn Fein are without a doubt a leftist party though, or there wouldn't be Sinn Fein protests up on Red-watch, would there?!

www.redwatch.org.uk/ulster1.html

[Blue Angel]

I'm not fan of Arthur Griffith -I regard him with the same disdain Connolly did - his republicanism had little in the way of social dimensions and his vision of a dual monarchy is not one I subscribe to and yes he was notoriously racist and anti-semitic.

[Jim]

His republicanism has very little republicanism, more like.

Infact, he wasnt a republican, just a nationalist.