Podcast: Ireland in World War II with Joseph Quinn

John Dorney speaks to Joseph Quinn, a historian based at the UK National Archives to discuss Ireland’s role in the Second World War.

We discuss:

• Why Ireland remained neutral
• How successive British governments made offers of Irish unity in return for the use of Ireland’s Atlantic ports during the war and why these offers were ultimately rejected.
• In what numbers Irishmen and women served in Allied forces and other Irish aid to the allied powers, notably in naval intelligence.
• The prospects for the invasion of neutral Ireland by one or more of the belligerents.
• Ireland’s uneasy relationship with the United States during the war.
• Eamon de Valera’s infamous condolences to German ambassador Hempel on the death of Adolf Hitler.

See also; The British Empire and the Second World War with Irish historian Jonathan Fennell. First broadcast on the Irish History Show.

In which we discuss the broader context ofthe British Empire and and its war effort in 1939-1945