Sir, – Prof Geoffrey Roberts (January 28th) considers Irish Army deserters to have been soldiers of conscience fighting Nazi occupation of Europe in the 1940s. I would suggest they joined the British army as the pay was much better. He is highly critical of Ireland’s decision to remain neutral. Prof Roberts does seem to gloss over many of the realities that prevailed at the time. Britain had the biggest empire in the world and wished to maintain it. A resurgent Germany threatened this dominance. Those were the major factors that underpinned the start of the second World War. Ireland had very little to gain by openly supporting either of these powers.
I fully agree that the slate be wiped clean with regard to those who deserted and joined the British army. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Prof Geoffrey Roberts (January 28th) must surely know that, while the Nazi massacres of civilians during the second World War were the largest, there were also large-scale civilian massacres committed by the Allies for which any impartial war crimes’ tribunal would have had to try those responsible. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, in the lower of two estimates, calculated that 330,000 people had died in the bombing of Japanese cities in 1944-45. The main architect of this campaign, Gen Curtis LeMay, is reliably quoted as saying that “if we’d lost the war, we’d all have been tried as war criminals”. That was no less true of air marshal Sir Arthur Harris, though he might have scorned to express the thought.
Éamon de Valera’s opposition to the Nuremberg Trials did not imply any sympathy for the Nazis. He simply saw, as any clear-sighted person must see, that war crimes’ tribunals that prosecuted the leading Nazis, and did not prosecute LeMay, Harris and their political superiors, were victors’ justice. I believe he tactfully chose a different example, the killings at Katyn, to make the point. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Prof Geoffrey Roberts (January 28th) ) is wrong when he says that the Allies “fought to liberate Europe from German occupation”. In mid-1940 Gen Bernard Montgomery with his 3rd Division was ordered to prepare plans to invade Cork and seize its harbour. There were no Germans or Nazis anywhere near there then or at any other time during the Emergency. On the contrary, it was only the Irish Monty was worried about, as he says in his Memoirs (p70) “I had already fought the Southern Irish once, in 1921 and 1922, and it looked as if this renewed contest might be quite a party – with only one division”.
It is utterly repugnant to pardon anyone who deserted Ireland’s Defence Forces, and carrying with them knowledge of “the Southern Irish” dispositions, who then increased British capacity to invade Ireland during the Emergency. – Yours, etc,
Sir, – Apropos of the voluminous and heated correspondence regarding a pardon for those soldiers who deserted the Irish Army during “The Emergency”, it would be interesting to know exactly what oath or commitment was subscribed to by these men when they signed up in the first place. – Yours, etc,