De Valera VS Churchill (4/6)

In his Victory in Europe Day radio broadcast (May, 1945), British Prime Minister Winston Churchill launched a strong attack on the Irish governments policy of neutrality, while being hurtful to the Irish people as a whole .

De Valeras reply, also in a radio broadcast, won widespread respect and praise in Ireland from even his staunchest opponents.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• IRA
• ireland
• devalera
• churchill

[DonegalRaymie201]

@JLAEBB

WW2 wasn't a "British War" was it? And Irish neutrality was only afforded by willingness of other Nations to fight the Nazi threat!

If UK had fallen to Hitler, Eire would have been doomed too! And without UK as the base and launch point, how could the US, Canadians, Australian etc have regained Western Europe? No D-day, no nothing!

[DonegalRaymie201]

@JLAEBB

"assault on western Europe"? We like to think it was a Liberation, not an assault! Freeing France, Holland, Belgium, Denmark etc from Nazi tyranny!

Maybe you should ask the occupied Dutch, French, Danes etc who was their "assaulters"?

And you miss the point. SOMEONE had to oppose Nazism/Fascism, because there comes a point when you have to take a stand! And Neutrality amounts to simple complicity!

[jwood36]

@DonegalRaymie201 Goes to show the British attitude towards Ireland, throwing sideswipes at Dev while at the same time kissing Rossevelt's arse and calling it ice cream, it was hardly an act of complicity given that Ireland then risked invasion from two countries instead of one, without Irish weather reports there would've been no D-Day either

[Tonyo1221]

Tens of thousands of Irish men went to Britain and signed up to the British army and fought in the war regardless. These men were and remain Irish heroes who paid the ultimate sacrafice for British, Irish and European freedom. And remember Sweden, Switzerland, Denmark and others also remained neutral. Churchill was the archetect of his own problems in relation to not getting Ireland on board offically and his promises on Irish unity were probably undeliverable and certainly not to be trusted.

[DonegalRaymie201]

@RPenta

WTF are you gibbering about? NO ONE knew the Japs were going to attack, that's how they caught you off-guard so badly! Our War was here in Europe, not the Pacific FFS!

[RPenta]

Natch, since Churchill knew about the impending Pearl Harbor attack and did not war the US about it--assuming it would have done any good since FDR wanted the US to enter WW2.

[JLAEBB]

@DonegalRaymie201

First of all, the allied commanders called it "the assault on western europe" and when the allied "liberation" began, the russians had already pretty much defeated the germans... The germans were fighting with their last reserves.