Fortnight Publications Ltd.

Roosevelt v De Valera: 1939-1945: Part IIAuthor(s): Trevor WestSource: Fortnight, No. 168 (May 29 - Jun. 9, 1978), pp. 7-8Published by: Fortnight Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25546654 .

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ROOSEVELT v DE VALERA: 1939?1945

PART II

In this concluding part of the article of which Part I was published in

Fortnight No 167, SENATOR TREVOR WEST reassesses Eamon

de Valera's handling of Irish

neutrality during World War II, and the effect it had upon Anglo-Irish and

Irish-American relations. The

question of Northern Ireland was one of the main features of these

manoeu verings

In the spring of 1941 Churchill decided to pressurise Ireland by cutting down on supplies of essential commodities. De Valera complained bitterly in his St Patrick's Day broadcast to the US that Ireland was

becoming a part of 'starving Europe' as a result of a blockade by both sides in the war. In trying to blockade each

other, he said, the belligerents were

blockading Ireland. As far as the administration in Washington was

concerned, de Valera had again implied that the British were no better than the Nazis, and from Roosevelt's

point of view these charges could

hardly have been made at a less

opportune time. This marked the

beginning of Gray's almost total disenchantment with de Valera.

However, he pressed his government to ensure that the British made no

moves such as the seizure of the ports or the introduction of conscription in Ulster as they would be sure to

strengthen de Valera's position at home.

Further confusion arose when an

Irish-American delegation met the President in June 1941 requesting arms for Ireland. He implied that a

stumbling block had been the

unwillingness of the Irish to give a definite assurance that they would defend themselves against German attack. The Irish Government were

indignant and de Valera complained that he had given Gray such assurances on several occasions. The

latter agreed and said that he had

passed on the information to the State

Department, so that he did not know the reason for the President's statement. What Gray did not explain,

however, was that he had, in effect, advised Roosevelt not to believe the assurances.

In August 1941 Gray suggested to Roosevelt that Britain should

completely shut off all supplies of coal and petrol to Ireland in order to make her cooperate with the Allies. Gray was making himself and his

government extremely unpopular in

Dublin, and by this time the Irish authorities actually distrusted the Americans more than the British. These suggestions fell upon deaf ears and in October de Valera pointed out that as far as Ireland was concerned 'our rights have been in the main

respected and that Great Britain, in

spite of temptation and the urgings of certain propagandists, has not succumbed to them and has not behaved unworthily.'

'A NATION ONCE AGAIN' When it became clear, before the

attack on Pearl Harbour, that America was going to enter the war, tentative approaches were made to de Valera to secure Irish bases for the American forces. His reply was an

emphatic No, he even told Gray that he expected to be consulted if the US forces were going to use bases in Northern Ireland. The State Depart ment's reply, in blunt diplomatic

language, pointed out that the matter concerned territory recognised by the

US government as part of the UK and that all enquiries should be made to

Westminster. Immediately on learning of the Pearl Harbour attack, Churchill cabled de Valera. 'Now is your chance.

Now or never. A Nation once again.' The latter understood the cable as an invitation for him to discuss Irish

support for the Allies with a vague hope that it would lead to the ending of partition. De Valera showed that he had no intentionof changing his stance. In December 1941 he said, 'We can

only be a friendly neutral. Any other

policy would have divided our people, and for a divided people to fling itself into this war would be to commit suicide.' Roosevelt made a further

attmept to influence the Taoiseach with a message warning that Ireland's freedom was at stake in the war. The reaction of Canada was different. 'It has been demonstrated,' their High Commissioner explained in a report to Ottawa, 'that the Irish government will do almost anything to help us short of involving themselves in the

war. So long as Ireland is partitioned the only thing that could unite them

for war purposes is invasion ? just as

it required a declaration of war by Japan to unite the Americans.'

Having been informed by the British representative in January 1942 that three divisions of American

troops were about to be stationed in Northern Ireland, de Valera issued a statement explaining that while the Irish people harboured no hostility towards the United States, no matter

what troops were stationed there it was his duty to reiterate his claim to

sovereignty over the Six Counties.

Gray was disturbed lest the statement should inflame nationalist passions in the North against the US soldiers, and he recommended that the Irish

Government be brought to heel by a total British economic blockade.

Although the Taoiseach saw his

pronouncement as a simple statement of fact, it was interpreted in a hostile

way by a consideralbe section of US

opinion. This was exacerbated by the fact that de Valera made no protest

when the Germans killed 700 people in a bombing raid on Belfast.

FEARS OF USA The Irish government was con

cerned by increasing US propaganda, and feared that a US attempt to seize the ports had now become more than a remote possibility. To allay these fears, in February 1942, Roosevelt sent de Valera a note explaining that there had never been 'the slightest thought or intention of invading Irish

territory or of threatening Irish

security'. Instead of posing a danger, he claimed that the presence of American troops 'can only contribute to the security of Ireland and of the

whole British Isles, as well as

furthering our total war effort'. In

spite of this, Irish-American relations had sunk to an all time low when in

September 1942 Roosevelt in a letter to Gray explained that his policy towards de Valera was what he called 'the absent treatment', according to

which he simply ignored Ireland and her problems. Just at that time the benevolence of Ireland's neutrality was further evidenced in a formula which was worked out so that no Allied aircrews who landed in the South would be interned as they would

'ordinarily be on training or transit

flights and not at the time engaged in any hostile activity'. All German

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8/FORTNIGHT

airmen who landed in the Free State were interned until hostilities had ended.

SETTLEMENT? When the tide turned, Allied

successes over the Axis forces were

received with obvious enthusiasm in

Ireland, and attention became focussed on the possibilities of a

postwar settlement. In May 1943,

Gray in a memorandum to the State

Department explained that there were at least three points on which

Anglo-American interests were pre judiced by the policy of the Irish

government: the Allies had been denied facilities to protect their Atlantic shipping, the Axis missions in Ireland were an espionage threat, and

finally de Valera planned to raise

partition in a manner which would

poison postwar Anglo-American relations. De Valera, he wrote, was not

really interested in a settlement of the Ulster problem, but intended to raise it to preserve his own political power in the South. The British, he said,

were determined to sustain the Belfast

government, which had furnished the Allies with much needed bases. The US would be bound to support her ally Britain and to take a pro-Stormont line, opening the way for an

exploitation by de Valera of

Irish-American disaffection. To coun

ter this, Gray devised a strategy. Mr de Valera had to be viewed in the US as

definitely hostile to US and Allied interests. He had to be put in the

position of refusing an American

request which might be either to hand over the ports, have the Axis

representatives in Dublin recalled or to face conscription in Northern Ireland. Each of these proposals was

to be framed so that Mr de Valera would refuse or protest, which would

give rise to a propaganda campaign primarily designed to denigrate Mr de

Valera in the USA. As Gray himself

put it, 'The important thing from the

viewpoint of Anglo-American cooper ation is to bring to the notice of the

American people the unfair and

destructive policy of the de Valera

politicians at the time when British

and American interests are essentially the same and to obtain a verdict of

American disapproval which will remove the pressure of the Irish

question from Anglo-American relat ions'.

After considerable discussion be tween Washington and London, this

approach was agreed upon. The US

military advisers took the view that the

Treaty Ports would prove more trouble than they were worth, bearing in mind

the German control of the French

coast, and it was decided to request the dismissal of the Axis representat ives in Dublin. The situation was that the German Legation consisted of three men and two women, while the

Japanese Consulate was smaller still.

During the war the radio transmitter in the German Embassy had been

impounded and they were denied their

diplomatic bag. Germany had in this

period sent ten spies to Ireland, all of

whom were captured, seven within hours of their arrival and two within a matter of weeks. The Irish authorities were confident that they had the

espionage situation under control and

captured Axis documents bear

testimony to this. On 21 February 1944 Gray

delivered a formal note to de Valera

requesting that the Irish Government take appropriate steps for the recall of the German and Japanese represent atives in Ireland. De Valera refused

the request without hesitation, but was

alarmed that it was a prelude to an

Allied invasion, and put his forces on

full alert. The British representative delivered a corresponding note the

following day. De Valera, through the

Canadians, tried to have the notes

withdrawn, to no avail, and in spite of a desire to keep the contents secret the Press got wind of what had transpired,

forcing the US State Department to

make the exchange public. 'Call for St Patrick!* cried the

Dallas Morning News, 'The snakes are

back in Ireland', and a flood of unfounded propaganda hit the US

media. The Washington Correspond ent of the New York Times was more

restrained when he wrote that in

future Mr de Valera would not 'have

quite the same political support from

the United States that he has always counted on in his ancient battles with the British'. The Irish were furious, but the damage had been done. A

good deal of their resentment settled

upon Gray who had been the architect of the plan. However, it had the

opposite effect in Ireland, when in

May 1944 de Valera dissolved the Dail

and in the resulting election Fianna

Fail gained 17 seats and Time

magazine declared that American

pressure had simply made the Irish

people 'more devoted to their own

belligerent neutrality than ever'.

LOOSE ENDS Gray's ruse was successful. As the

war came to its climax with the

liberation of Europe, the issue of

Ireland's neutrality fell into the

background. The attempts which de Valera made after the war to raise the

partition issue fell flat, and by early

August 1946 it was apparent to Gray

that Irish efforts to inject the issue into American politics were being dropped. De Valera agreed to hand over the 250 German internees in Ireland to the British on condition that none of them were executed or were sent into the Soviet zone. The latter clause irritated

Gray, who thought that de Valera was

trying to split the Allies. The recent evidence of those in British hands who were repatriated to the Soviets amply bears out the wisdom of de Valera's insistence upon this condition.

Eventually, to Gray's surprise, de Valera also agreed to hand the ten German spies to the British, and when

Gray resigned his post in April 1949, all the loose ends had been cleared up.

GESTURES AND ACTIONS President Roosevelt died on 12

April 1945, less than a month before the end of the war. Irish neutrality had lost one of its sternest critics, but the

grief expressed in Dublin was genuine, and Gray reported to Roosevelt's wife that de Valera had paid a most

moving tribute to him on a special adjournment of the Dail. This action went largely unnoticed by the international media. This was not so,

however, when de Valera visited the German Minister Hempel to pay his

respects on Hitler's death. A storm of

indignation at the gesture blew up across the world. However, concerning Irish neutrality, it was always

important to distinguish de Valera's

gestures from his actions, and his action had always been guided by a

benevolence towards the Allied cause.

Shortly afterwards, in a victory address in May 1945, Churchill unleashed a strong attack on Irish

neutrality and on the Taoiseach himself. Three days later on radio de

Valera, in a statesmanlike reply, thanked God for sparing Ireland the

conflagration that left most of Europe in ruins, and praised Churchill for

resisting the temptation of violating Irish neutrality. This speech more

than overcame strong Irish criticism which the visit to the German Minister had provoked. De Valera's standing was never higher than at the end of the war. The preservation of Irish

neutrality in face of all opposition ranks as one of his most remarkable

political achievements. It is natural to

wonder whether an Ambassador, more

sensitive than Gray to the Irish

situation, could have achieved his aim

of nullifying de Valera's postwar anti-partition propaganda campaign without putting such a strain on Irish American relations, and whether these wartime feelings have had an effect

upon these relationships which lasts

up to the present day.

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