Ireland, West Germany and the New Europe, 1949-73: Best friend and ally? 9781526126054

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Ireland, West Germany and the New Europe, 1949–​73

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Ireland, West Germany and the New Europe, 1949–​73 Best friend and ally? MERVYN O’DRISCOLL

Manchester University Press

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Copyright © Mervyn O’Driscoll 2018 The right of Mervyn O’Driscoll to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN  978 0 7190 8983 1  hardback First published 2018 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-​party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset by Out of House Publishing Ltd

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Dedicated to Emeritus Professor Dermot Keogh & Professor Joe Lee for their commitment, dedication and contribution to historical scholarship

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Contents

List of tables Acknowledgements List of abbreviations Introduction 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Ireland and Germany before 1949 Honeymoon Emerging dissonance Trade and agriculture in the 1950s Irish industrialisation and the German ‘economic miracle’ Germany, Lemass and foreign policy adaptation Germany and Ireland’s application to the EEC, 1961–​63 The long road into Europe Land wars, Nazis and the Troubles

page viii ix x 1 12 31 44 67 97 128 149 174 196

Epilogue: Ireland, German reunification and remaking Europe

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Select bibliography Index

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Tables

4.1 Irish–German trade, 1950–59 5.1 Department of Justice statistics on aliens allowed to land in Irish ports

page 81 115

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Acknowledgements

In writing a book of any nature, an author must always engage in research, especially a book of historical import. In the process of research one is influenced by and encounters many people whose views, insights and assistance contribute to the final outcome. To this end I am indebted to many people and institutions whose assistance have contributed to this volume. None more so that Emeritus Professor Dermot Keogh and Professor Joe Lee who have inspired my thinking on many historical issues since my undergraduate days. Their respective contributions to historical scholarship are immense. On more than one occasion their thought provoking undergraduate lectures caused me to look at historical situations and relations through a multi-dimensional lens. To this end I dedicate this volume to them. I also acknowledge the contributions and support of many others, my colleagues at the School of History, UCC, under the leadership of Professor David Ryan and including in particular Emeritus Professor Geoffrey Roberts, Dr Jérôme aan de Wiel, Dr Andrew McCarthy, and the school’s administrative staff together with Dr Mattie MacNamara formerly of the Department of French, UCC. I wish to express my thanks to the School of History Research Committee, the College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences Research Committee and the Irish Research Council for their financial support. I am grateful to those who dealt with my unrelenting requests for material and unending queries in particular the National Archives Dublin, National Library of Ireland, Boole Library – University College Cork, Auswärtiges Amt-Politisches Archiv – Berlin, Bundesarchiv Koblenz, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung – Sankt Augustin, National Archives – London and the Archives Department at University College Dublin. No written work can be complete without the support of family and friends who were the sounding boards for my findings and ideas, including Finín O’Driscoll and Finbarr Mannix together with the love, encouragement and invaluable input received from my wife, Michelle and son, Calum. To those I may have omitted, heartfelt thanks.

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Abbreviations

AA AA-​PA AIFTA CAP CDU CET CIE COREPER CRS CSU CTT DEA DFA DIC DIHT DNB DPA EC ECSC EDC EEC EFTA EMS EMU EPC EPTR

Auswärtiges Amt (or German Foreign Office) Auswärtiges Amt-​Politisches Archiv, Berlin Anglo-​Irish Free Trade Agreement Common Agricultural Policy Christlich Demokratische Union (Christian Democratic Union) Common External Tariff (of the EEC) Córas Iompair Éireann (Ireland’s national transport authority) Comité des représentants permanents (Committee of Permanent Representatives to the EEC) Confidential Report Series (Department of Foreign Affairs) Christlich-​Soziale Union (Christian Social Union) Coras Tráchtála Teo (Irish Export Board) Department of External Affairs Department of Foreign Affairs Department of Industry and Commerce Deutscher Industrie-​und Handelstag (German Chambers of Commerce) Deutsches Nachrichtenbüro (German Press Agency) Deutsche Presse-​Agentur (German Press Agency) European Communities European Coal and Steel Community European Defence Community European Economic Community European Free Trade Association European Monetary System Economic and Monetary Union European Political Cooperation Export Profits Tax Relief

newgenprepdf

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List of abbreviations EPU ERP

European Payments Union European Recovery Programme (informally known as the Marshall Plan) ESB Electricity Supply Board EU European Union FDI Foreign Direct Investment FDP Freie Demokratische Partei (Free Democratic Party) FRG Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany before 1990) FTC Foreign Trade Committee (Ireland) GATT General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade GITA German-Irish Trade Association GDR German Democratic Republic (East Germany) ICEM Irish Council of the European Movement IDA Industrial Development Authority IGC Intergovernmental Conference (of the EC/​EU) IMF International Monetary Fund IRA Irish Republican Army JEIA Joint Export–​Import Agency NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization NFA National Farmers’ Association NICRA Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA) OEEC Organisation for European Economic Cooperation RIA Regional Integration Arrangement RTÉ Radió Teilifís Éireann (national Irish broadcaster) RUC Royal Ulster Constabulary SEA Single European Act SEM Single European Market SOF Secretary’s Office Files (Department of Foreign Affairs) SPD Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (Social Democratic Party) TD Teachta Dála (member of the Irish parliament or Dáil) UN United Nations UUP Ulster Unionist Party WEU Western European Union

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Introduction

West Germany played a pivotal role in encouraging the Republic of Ireland’s adaptation to a ‘European’ path. Its influence was both direct and indirect. Quite simply, Ireland was enticed by the tantalising trade opportunities offered by the rude economic good health of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). The FRG was the industrial magnet at the heart of the European Economic Community (EEC) from the late 1950s. It promised to counteract Ireland’s over-​reliance on the relatively underperforming British economy. West Germany’s dual importance as one of the largest food importers in the world and its growing position as an exporter of industrial investment lured an economically desperate Ireland towards the EEC. The prevailing contemporary view is that US Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) played a major role in the Irish leap into industrial and economic modernity. The centrality of American investment to contemporary Irish economic sustainability is incontrovertible, but it is incorrect to superimpose this back on to the 1950s and 1960s. US firms only began to predominate as investors in Ireland after the completion of the Single European Market (SEM) and the inauguration of European Union (EU) in 1992. But before the end of the Cold War, West Germany was the motor of the European economy and access to it was deemed vital for Irish economic diversification. From the mid-​1950s, when Ireland was experimenting with a new national development model, the field of foreign investors was diverse. West German firms seeking a business-​friendly, low-​cost environment and cheap labour competed with US multinationals to occupy the position of the second-​largest investor in Ireland (behind Britain). This book contends that Ireland recognised that the post-​war German economic miracle (Wirtschaftswunder) offered trade openings. Germany acted as a dynamic force in Ireland’s modernisation from the mid-​1950s. Ireland wanted ‘to ride the wave of the future’,1 and the challenge was to adapt. This study of Irish–​West German relations offers up a prism through which to reinterpret the shifts in Ireland’s international reorientation and adaptation between 1949 and 1973.

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Ireland, West Germany and the New Europe

The FRG was established in 1949 and recognised by the Western Allies (the United States, Britain and France). In response, the Soviet Union sanctioned the foundation of its Eastern alter ego, the German Democratic Republic (GDR or East Germany). The division of Germany into two competing states, reflecting East–​West rivalry in the Cold War, was formalised and the Soviet Union ended the blockade of West Berlin. Simultaneously, during that tumultuous year, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was formed. It was the collective security equivalent of the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) that had been founded in 1948 and tasked with the post-​war economic stabilisation and reconstruction of the United States’ European friends and allies. Ireland refused to join NATO, though it was a founding member of the OEEC. Separately, in 1949 Ireland declared itself a republic and left the British Commonwealth. 1949, therefore, is a milestone for post-​war Ireland, Germany and Europe, and it defined and circumscribed their future possibilities and identities. The year signalled new beginnings for Germany, Europe and Ireland. By 1949, the post-​war humanitarian crisis that had been visited on large swathes of the West German population was solved. German reconstruction had also recommenced strongly. Ludwig Erhard’s currency reform, in the form of the Deutsche Mark’s2 replacement of the Reichsmark in 1948, is commonly viewed as laying the groundwork for the German renaissance. In parallel, West European and the transatlantic nations now identified the Soviet Union as the international menace. They began to view a resurgent West Germany as a necessity for their economic and defence security. This realisation laid the basis for a new European economic and security architecture. A stark contrast opened up between the international paths of West Germany and Ireland during the next decade. Many Germans grasped that uninhibited nationalism had devastated their country and Europe, and they had to learn lessons from the Nazi past. West Germans began to construct a new state and identity. Their country was occupied and overseen by the Western powers, notably the United States. West Germany was a penetrated political system; it was externally regulated and controlled. Its first and long-​serving chancellor, Dr Konrad Adenauer, engaged in policies that went a long way to solving traditional West European rivalries. The newly minted West Germany, with its capital in Bonn, embraced international rehabilitation and integration into the democratic fold. West Germany’s position as the strategic fulcrum of Cold War Europe, its economic rebirth and the opportunities presented by West European cooperation smoothed its relative normalisation in little more than a decade. Adenauer consciously restrained the FRG’s freedom of action by enmeshing it deeply in multilateral structures and institutions. The federalised and democratised West Germany became a founding member of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) in 1952. It entered NATO in 1955. Next Franco-​ German cooperation became the underpinning for advanced regional economic

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Introduction

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integration. It led to the signing of the treaties of Rome in 1957, which led to the European Economic Community (EEC) and European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom). In his steady and single-​minded fashion Adenauer built up his Western neighbours’ trust. Cumulatively, a ‘new Europe’ based on multilateral cooperation, free trade and regional economic integration was under construction. It was founded on Adenauer’s pronounced pro-​American orientation and his willingness to subsume, or even subordinate, West Germany within an international architecture that divested the country of substantial autonomy. In practice, Bonn transmuted into America’s indispensable ally on the Continent that assured Western European cooperation, economic vitality and military security. In sum, West Germany was converted into a core insider in a space of a decade or so. It was a product of American engineering which sponsored West European trade liberalisation, integration and collective security. A robust ‘new Europe’ based on multilateralism, interdependence and regionalism was constructed incrementally around West Germany to contain the Soviet Union. West Germany became a showpiece sculpted to meet American economic and security interests. It was renovated into a beacon of transformative possibilities, democracy, affluence and liberal values. West Germany reflected Adenauer’s vision, which renounced traditional nationalist rivalries. Conversely, the Republic of Ireland (after 1949) either failed to recognise or respond positively in a timely fashion to the new forces. This was a product of its location, experiences and national formation. The country had learned different lessons. During the interwar period, the fledgling Irish state had unsuccessfully sought a more international orientation, and to Europeanise by developing relations with major European states, including Weimar Germany. This interwar effort to counterbalance its former ruler and powerful neighbour, Britain, failed. The fragile liberal post First World War order envisioned by Woodrow Wilson completely disintegrated during the Great Depression. Extremism in the form of Fascism and Nazism tore the international order asunder and fuelled a retreat into atavistic nationalism and conflict. Ireland’s efforts to break its economic dependence on Britain and end its effective status as a provincial economy came to naught, while its industrial protectionism produced anaemic results. Faced with the dramatic deterioration in the international climate, Ireland and Britain reluctantly recognised each other’s political autonomy and accepted their economic and security interdependence in practice: they agreed a pre Second World War settlement (the Anglo-​Irish Treaty of 1938 and associated verbal assurances that Ireland would not become a base from which to attack Britain in ‘a time of war’). The only unresolved aspect of the Irish national project was the persistence of the partition of the island, and Dublin held London responsible for this. Nonetheless, the 1938 Anglo-​Irish bargain held during and after the war. Relations, while not close or symmetrical, worked in spite of the disputed status

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of Northern Ireland. Ireland and Britain had forged a pragmatic understanding that satisfied neither diehard Irish republicans nor British imperialists fully. Neutrality during the war confirmed and broadcasted Irish political identity and independence, even though its economy remained coupled to the British one. At best, Ireland ‘emerged slowly and hesitantly’3 after Second World War into ‘a new and vastly different world’.4 It was wary in the light of the failure of the interwar liberal order and defensive in terms of its newly won sovereignty. The Anglo-​Irish economic arrangement delivered stability and familiarity against the backdrop of the wider international volatility of the early post-​war years. Britain also emerged from the war with its national self-​image affirmed and secured; its weakened position was not viewed as requiring a wholesale transformation of its international approach. In sum, the recent experiences of Ireland and Britain appeared to underline the value of their nation-​states in contrast to those of Germany and other continental states. The latter were more receptive to innovative forms of international and regional cooperation. Ireland and Britain remained sceptical about discussions from the late 1940s favouring advanced forms of European economic integration and supranational institutions. These were perceived as threats to national sovereignty. The Irish rejection of NATO membership in 1949, based on the claim that the signing of the treaty legitimised partition, together with Ireland’s failure to modernise and reduce protectionism, prolonged Ireland’s complacent detachment, in the shadow of Britain, from many security and economic changes in Western Europe. In a sense, by the early and mid-​1950s Ireland was an enigma to many Western European observers: it was pro-​Western, anti-​communist and a free economy, but it was a neutral and an industrial protectionist. Its trade was profoundly regionalised (reliant on Britain). This commerce was contingent on Ireland’s maintenance of the Commonwealth preference, by which Ireland was regarded by Britain as analogous to a Commonwealth member state for trade purposes. This dispensation granted it commercial advantages, especially in terms of exporting agricultural commodities duty-​free to Britain. However, the relationship offered Ireland few opportunities for modernisation. It subsisted mostly by supplying low-​cost and unprocessed food products (notably live cattle) to the British urban-​ industrial economy. Little had changed in this Anglo-​Irish commercial connection since Irish independence in 1922. Ireland’s economy remained backward and agricultural; the Anglo-​Irish trade arrangement discouraged the development of a sophisticated, value-​added, food-​processing industry. To all intents, it was a satellite economy. Geographical proximity, the traditional pattern of trade, weak entrepreneurialism and a common language ensured that Ireland’s subaltern relationship continued unperturbed after the achievement of political independence. Of course, Irish society was intensely conservative, and powerful social forces regarded economic modernisation and all that it entailed (e.g., urbanisation, industrialisation and secularisation) as a threat to its rural, Catholic

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Introduction

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and national values. Irish foreign policy remained dedicated to reinforcing the country’s independence from Britain and ending the island’s division. The local (i.e., Anglo-​Irish) factors animating Irish foreign policy preferences were dimly comprehended or viewed as peripheral to global security concerns by external observers. However, Ireland participated in the Marshall Plan, was a member of the OEEC and the Council of Europe, and gained belated entry into the United Nations (UN) in 1955.5 It is against this general backdrop that the book will examine Irish–​German relations. Focusing primarily on political, diplomatic and commercial relations, it questions the uncritical tendency to accept the message propagated in the public diplomacy of both states. This argued that the bilateral relationship was special (or uniquely ‘friendly’). Amity and partnership were invariably evoked in official exchanges between Ireland and West Germany after 1949. The literature surveying the relationship traditionally regards the post-​war relationship between the two democracies as ‘exceptionally positive’ or close.6 Such portrayals gained particular credence when Ireland unhesitatingly supported German reunification during 1989 and 1990. A recent German ambassador to Ireland has suggested, ‘This episode in history, is, for German-​Irish relations telling: it shows that relations have traditionally been excellent.’ He pointed to ‘a great wealth of cultural and economic exchanges … stretching as far back as the Middle Ages’ and the common characteristics of the two countries expressed in their membership of the EU, support for international cooperation and development, and the UN.7 Such claims have substance but they represent a simplification of multifarious contacts and connections. Like any relationship, even a relatively amicable one, the Irish–​West German one was prone to strains. Depicting it as a ‘love affair’ is hyperbole. At the very least, the post-​war relationship was more multifaceted and nuanced than initial impressions suggest. Therefore, this book will present a more intricate narrative. Bitter trade disputes beset Irish–​German relations throughout the 1950s. During the 1960s some Irish rural localities were unsettled by local resentment against Germans and other foreigners buying land. The Irish Government felt compelled to introduce legislation to restrict land purchases by foreign nationals. The controversy was invigorated by international press speculation about former Nazis and war criminals seeking a safe haven in Ireland. This posed another complication for Irish–​German relations. A wave of arson attacks on mainly German properties in 1969 and 1970 prompted questions in the Bundestag. On the other hand, the influential Irish Times, which was considered by the FRG Embassy in Dublin as the least friendly of all the Irish dailies towards the FRG, wrote in its editorial in 1962 that West Germany was Ireland’s ‘best friend and ally’ in supporting Ireland’s application to join the EEC. There is evidence to suggest that this was the case. Adenauer argued that the Germans possessed ‘ancient special feelings’ for the people of Ireland.8 Ireland as a generous humanitarian donor to

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Germans after the war was applauded by West Germany. Germany was also a major investor in Irish industrial investment from the mid-​1950s. It is indisputable, nonetheless, that Ireland was a negligible preoccupation for official West Germany and lay outside its core interests. Ireland was distant and for the most part it was regarded as part of the British ‘world’ or lying within London’s sphere of interest. In that respect this book will confirm there was considerable continuity in Germany’s official attitudes to independent Ireland from the interwar and wartime periods into the post-​war.9 In spite of Ireland’s efforts to differentiate its national identity and statehood from those of Britain, successive German regimes assumed that Ireland remained an organic part of the British economic and security system. Ireland’s ‘entrapment’ within the British sphere would be the decisive factor when Ireland and Britain applied for membership of the EEC. Irish policymakers had no alternative other than to delay the country’s application after Charles de Gaulle vetoed Britain’s EEC application in January 1963. This contradicted their earlier assertions that Ireland would continue with their application if Britain’s failed. This book will analyse approximately 25 years of Irish–​West German affairs, allowing a measured examination of the fluctuating relationship. It terminates in 1973, when Ireland joined the European Communities (EC). This book examines the relationship against an evolving international backdrop that included war termination, continental rebuilding, regional integration and the Cold War. Factors such as the nature of both countries’ relations with Britain, power asymmetries and dissimilar perspectives on economic, political and defence matters will be investigated. Some differences of policy, such as on trade liberalisation, NATO, the Cold War and Northern Ireland, will be illuminated. Therefore, this book explores a number of interrelated developments that intruded on the official relationship. Its primary contention is that West Germany, as the leading West European continental nation, was the Irish target market on continental Europe. Debates about Irish foreign policy often neglect or fail to appreciate Irish relations with states other than Britain and America. However, Ireland’s role in the world has been heavily affected by the nature of Germany and its foreign policies ever since the 1870s, as I  have argued in previous work.10 To adopt a restricted Anglo-​American or Anglocentric perspective on modern Irish foreign relations ignores the continental, and especially the German, factor in Irish foreign policy and trade.11 Likewise the post-​1945 focus of Irish foreign policy on Ireland’s responses and associations with successive European cooperation ventures conceals the fact that a search for a solution to the ‘German Question’ drove these ventures. This book draws extensively on the National Archives of Ireland in Dublin and the Auswärtiges Amt-​Politisches Archiv (AA-​PA), Berlin. This is the repository of the files of the German Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt or AA) and its missions abroad. The archive also contains detailed correspondence with other

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Introduction

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government arms, including the Economics Ministry, the Chancellery and the President’s Office. In addition, the Archives of the Christian Democratic Party at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation at Sankt Augustin were consulted. These contain a useful collection of newspaper and periodical articles relating to Ireland published in the Irish and West German print media. Cumulatively, the German sources complement the official documentation available in the National Archives of Ireland, Dublin. In the latter case, the files of the Department of Foreign Affairs (hereafter referred to as DFA) and the Department of Taoiseach were invaluable, but records from the Department of Industry and Commerce and the Department of Justice were also partially available and they added some key insights. (It is a cause for regret that many government departments and agencies have not released files with the same assiduity as Foreign Affairs and the Department of the Taoiseach. This severely restricts historical research, institutional analysis and historically informed policy analysis.) The private papers of key national figures (e.g., Frank Aiken, Patrick Hillery and Eamon de Valera) deposited in the Archives Department of the University College Dublin also revealed insights and details. The online databases of the Irish Newspaper Archives and the Irish Times Archive proved to be exceptional research resources. They enabled the construction of a detailed image of Irish official and popular readings of German developments and Irish–​German relations. The corpus of literature on Irish–​German relations has grown from a relatively low base since the early 1990s. Irish–​German studies are now a rich vein of multi-​disciplinary research, primarily in the field of culture and literature. There is also a secondary field which explores Irish–​German business interactions.12 The inauguration of the Centre for Irish German Studies in the University of Limerick in 1997 illustrates the rise of what might be termed German–​Irish cultural studies. Much of the research is led by German departments in Irish universities or by individuals working across several disciplines, mainly in the fold of language, literature, culture and communication studies, in Irish and German universities. Of this field, Claire O’Reilly has noted that ‘it is remarkable how many publications have refracted the relationship through the lens of the German perspective of Ireland’.13 There is undoubtedly a heavy focus on German interpretations and stereotypes of Ireland and Irishness in this general field of language, literature, culture and communication. Most recently, Fergal Lenehan has published Stereotypes, Ideology and Foreign Correspondents, which analyses the articles devoted to Ireland in two West German ‘prestige’ weeklies, Die Zeit and Der Spiegel, from 1946 to 2010.14 It is a work of intercultural and transnational studies. Lenehan’s focus is on German images and representations of Ireland and Irishness. It is a helpful contribution and some of its findings are confirmed in this book. Although it is revealing about the tropes and discourses in these two German publications, Lenehan’s work is narrow in focus and different in motivation to this book. Likewise Lenehan’s methodology is different

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from the standard methods of international, political, diplomatic and economic history that this book adopts. Moreover, it reveals little about the broader nature of the interstate relationship that is the objective of this book. However, it is a useful complement. There is a compact body of work concentrating on Irish–​German interstate relations, and the international history of this relationship. The historical study of the first five decades of twentieth-​century Irish–​German relations is a particular site of productive and rich research.15 Only recently have attentions turned to appreciating Irish relations with the FRG and the GDR after 1949.16 Historical scholarship first began to explore the significance of relations between independent Ireland and Germany in the 1970s. Cumulatively, the historical work is heavily focused on the ‘European Thirty Years Crisis’ (1914–​45) and its edges. This book is the first effort to compile a book-​length study of Irish–​West German relations from the Irish perspective, beginning with West Germany’s foundation and ending with Ireland’s entry into the EEC. Jérôme aan de Wiel has pioneered the study of East German relations with Ireland over a longer period (from 1949 to 1990), primarily through the lens of the East German intelligence services, the Stasi. Ireland finally agreed to inaugurate diplomatic relations with East Germany in 1980,17 although it recognised and opened full relations with West Germany quickly after its foundation. One short book by Cathy Molohan, Germany and Ireland 1945–​55:  Two Nations’ Friendship, ventured to explore post-​war Irish–​West German relations. It was dominated by the war termination matters (the repatriation of German military internees, German spies, and German diplomats) that cast a long shadow over Irish dealings with the Allies and nascent West Germany. Many works which have dealt with Ireland and Germany’s interactions during Second World War cover some similar ground in their final chapters or codas, but Molohan’s work has major value as it considers the immediate post-​war decade on its own merits and in noteworthy depth. It also documents previously unexplored aspects of the relationship such as Irish relief to wartorn Germany. Molohan opened up the field of post-​war Irish–​German relations as a distinct field worthy of historical exploration. Political, diplomatic, cultural and commercial relations were illuminated. However, the result was an appraisal which largely accepted Irish and German declarations that their relationship was friendly. It lacked a longer-​term perspective. Molohan’s book did not explore the tensions that simmered in the relationship after the mid-​1950s, since its focus was earlier. The work might also have usefully considered wider European integration questions too. Even though Molohan’s book is a noteworthy contribution, there remains a major opportunity to investigate post-​war Irish–​German relations over a longer time frame (nearly three decades), taking into account major developments in the Cold War, including the rehabilitation of West Germany, European reconstruction, European

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Introduction

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integration (ECSC, EEC), the liberalisation of international trade and collective security (NATO). This book aims to go at least some of the way to filling these and other gaps. The general historical literature on Ireland’s post-​war foreign relations is developing but it tends to be heavily EEC, UN or Northern Ireland centred. No full-​length monograph exists that critically examines Ireland’s post-​1945 relations with any European state over such a lengthy period of time using primary evidence. The FRG is a worthy candidate for such a study as it was Ireland’s key trading partner in continental Western Europe. The only approach that can satisfactorily capture enough of the complexity and provide a convincing explanation and understanding of the Irish–​German relationship from 1949 to 1973 is the historical narrative. Using the historical narrative approach, I  will shed new light on post-​war Ireland’s shift from an Anglo-​Irish focus to a wider European one. This will enable an improved appreciation of the challenges associated with Irish adaptation and modernisation. Notes 1 H. Gärtner, ‘Austria’s Relations with Germany: Between Balancing and Bandwagoning’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, 9 (1998), p. 67. 2 Commonly called Deutschmark in English. 3 D. Dinan, ‘After the “Emergency”:  Ireland in the Postwar World, 1945–​50’, Éire-​ Ireland, 24 (1989), p. 86. 4 F. S. L. Lyons, Ireland since the Famine (London: Fontana, 1973), p. 558. 5 M. O’Driscoll, ‘Multilateralism:  From Plato’s Cave to the European Community, 1945–​73’, in B. Tonra, M. Kennedy, J. Doyle and N. Dorr (eds), Irish Foreign Policy (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2012), pp. 36–​41. 6 N. O’Mahony and C. O’Reilly (eds), Societies in Transition: Ireland, Germany and Irish-​ German Relations in Business and Society since 1989 (Baden-​Baden: Nomos, 2009). 7 C. Pauls, ‘Preface: Ireland and Germany –​Two Countries Joined by Friendship and Partnership’, in O’Mahony and O’Reilly (eds), Societies in Transition, p. v. 8 NAI, DFA, Embassy Series, Bonn, 18/​2/​1II, Memo of Conversation between Lemass and Adenauer, 22 October 1962. 9 For a pre-​war analysis of German attitudes, see: M. O’Driscoll, Ireland, Germany and the Nazis:  Politics and Diplomacy, 1919–​39, 2nd edn (Dublin:  Four Courts Press, 2017), in particular pp. 49, 68–​70, 113, 166–​9, 216–​18, 266–​7. Pre-​war Germany treated Ireland as a subset of Britain’s direct sphere of influence and resisted any appearance of interference in British interests until the late 1930s. This general pattern of German behaviour continued into the post-​war period. 10 For example, O’Driscoll, Ireland, Germany and the Nazis. 11 The one major exception to the Anglophone-​centred literature is the exemplary work: J. aan de Wiel, The Irish Factor 1899–​1919: Ireland’s Strategic and Diplomatic Importance for Foreign Powers (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2008).

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Ireland, West Germany and the New Europe

12 Informative and wide-​ ranging assessments of the state of Irish-​ German studies include: C. O’Reilly, ‘Contextualising Ireland and the Irish in Germany –​Reception and Perception’, in O’Reilly and O’Regan (eds), Ireland and the Irish in Germany, pp. 13–​28; F. Lenehan, Stereotypes, Ideology and Foreign Correspondents: German Media Representations of Ireland, 1946–​2010 (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2016), pp. 2–​4. 13 C. O’Reilly, ‘Contextualising Ireland and the Irish in Germany’, p. 14. 14 Lenehan, Stereotypes, Ideology and Foreign Correspondents. 15 C. J. Carter, The Shamrock and the Swastika: German Espionage in Ireland in World War II (Palo Alto: Pacific, 1977); M. O’Driscoll, ‘The Economic War and Irish Foreign Trade Policy: Irish-​German Commerce 1932–​9’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, 10 (1999), pp. 71–​89; M. O’Driscoll, ‘Inter-​war Irish-​German Diplomacy: Continuity, Ambiguity and Appeasement in Irish Foreign Policy’, in M. Kennedy and J. M. Skelly (eds), Irish Foreign Policy, 1919–​69: From Independence to Internationalism (Dublin: Four Courts, 2000), pp. 74–​95; R. R. Doerries, Prelude to the Easter Rising: Sir Roger Casement in Imperial Germany (London: Frank Cass, 2000); J. Fischer, Das Deutschlandbild der Iren 1890–​1939 (Heidelberg: Winter, 2000); H. Dickel, Die deutsche Aussenpolitik und die irische Frage von 1932 bis 1944 (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1983); J. P. Duggan, Neutral Ireland and the Third Reich (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1985); M. M. Hull, Irish Secrets: German Espionage in Ireland, 1939–​45 (Dublin: Irish Academic, 2003); M. O’Driscoll, ‘ “To Bring Light Unto the Germans”: Irish Recognition-​seeking, the Weimar Republic and the British Commonwealth, 1930–​ 2’, European History Quarterly, 33: 1 (2003), pp. 65–​100; J. P. Duggan, Herr Hempel at the German Legation in Dublin, 1937–​45 (Dublin; Portland, OR: Irish Academic, 2003); M. O’Driscoll, Ireland, Germany and the Nazis: Politics and Diplomacy, 1919–​ 39 (Dublin: Four Courts, 2004); N. Keogh, Con Cremin: Ireland’s Wartime Diplomat (Douglas Village, Cork: Mercier, 2006); J. aan de Wiel, The Irish Factor, 1899–​1919: Ireland’s Strategic and Diplomatic Importance for Foreign Powers (Dublin and Portland, OR: Irish Academic, 2008); C. Sterzenbach, Die deutsch-​ irischen Beziehungen während der Weimarer Republik, 1918–​33: Politik, Wirtschaft, Kultur (Münster: LIT, 2009); G. Holfter (ed.), The Irish Context of Kristallnacht: Refugees and Helpers (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2014); G. Holfter and H. Dickel, An Irish Sanctuary: German-​ speaking Refugees in Ireland 1933–​ 45 (Oldenburg: de Gruyter, 2016); Siobhán O’Connor, Irish Government Policy and Public Opinion towards German-​ speaking Refugees, 1933–​43 (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2017). 16 K. Molohan, Germany and Ireland 1945–​ 55:  Two Nations’ Friendship (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1999); M. O’Driscoll, ‘Hesitant Europeans, Self-​Defeating Irredentists and Security Free-​Riders? West German Assessments of Irish Foreign Policy during the Early Cold War, 1949–​59’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, 21 (2010), pp. 91–​106; M. O’Driscoll, ‘The “Unwanted Suitor”:  West Germany’s Reception, Response and Role in Ireland’s EEC Entry Request, 1961–​3’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, 22 (2011), pp. 1–​24; M. O’Driscoll, ‘West Germany’, in M. O’Driscoll, D. Keogh, and J. aan de Wiel (eds), Ireland through European Eyes: Western Europe, the EEC and Ireland, 1945–​73 (Cork, Ireland: Cork University Press, 2013), pp. 9–​74; M. O’Driscoll, ‘Die Stunde Null:  Appraising Irish Relief to Postwar Germany’, in O’Reilly and O’Regan (eds), Ireland and the Irish in Germany, 63–​84;

11

Introduction

11

M. O’Driscoll, ‘A “German Invasion”? Irish Rural Radicalism, European Integration, and Irish Modernisation, 1958–​73’, International History Review, 38:  3 (2016), pp. 527–​50; M. O’Driscoll, ‘ “We are trying to do our share”: The Construction of Positive Neutrality and Irish Post-​War Relief to Europe’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, 27 (2016), pp. 21–​38. 17 J. aan de Wiel, ‘The Trouble with Frank Ryan; “corpse diplomacy” between Ireland and East Germany, 1966–​1980’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, 25 (2014), pp. 203–​20; J. aan de Wiel, East German Intelligence and Ireland, 1949–​90: Espionage, Terrorism and Diplomacy (Manchester: Manchester University, 2015).

12

1

Ireland and Germany before 1949

To gain a better appreciation of Irish–​West German relations after the establishment of the FRG in 1949, this chapter discusses aspects of their pre-​1949 relationship. Anglo-​Irish relations and Irish neutrality, in particular, had a major impact. Neutrality heavily coloured matters, as Ireland was the only member of the British Commonwealth to declare and maintain neutrality during Second World War. Allied propaganda frequently depicted Ireland as pro-​German. This, in addition to the German Reich’s involvement in the Easter Rising of 1916, has attracted copious interest. However, this geopolitical focus conceals much, including Germany’s economic and cultural links with Ireland, while the pro-​German label is problematic and displays fundamental misunderstandings about the Irish–​German and Anglo-​Irish relationships. Moreover, this chapter exposes the long history of connections before the attainment of Irish independence in 1922. They included, for example, a common Celtic heritage, the role of the Irish Celtic Church’s conversion of the central European region from the sixth century, and German academic interest in Irish philology and history. These contacts and associations have played durable rhetorical and sentimental roles in relations ever since. The evocation and remembrance of historical parallels, past contacts and cultural similarities are a method to establish, build and reinforce formal links. They represent foundational and instrumental components of the public diplomacy of states and their efforts at relationship building. Small or relatively marginal states and nations, such as Ireland, often compensate for their weakness by pointing up such associations with more powerful states. In contemporary idiom this is an effort to exploit ‘soft power’; it is a venerable diplomatic tool. Promoters of Irish nationalism during the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, as well as representatives of the infant Irish state after 1922, relied on such devices to influence Berlin.

13

Ireland and Germany before 1949

13

Pre-​independence1 One prehistoric connection applied to good effect in modern Irish–​German bridge-​building was that of a common Celtic heritage. This provided a basis for exchanges in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At that point the advent of modern Irish and German nationalism reinforced or interplayed with the scholarly investigation of the pre-​modern origins of their respective nations. During the nineteenth century, German-​speaking academics in central Europe forged the fields of philology and linguistics. They led research into the Irish language and built up close links with their Irish counterparts. This scholarship interacted with the growth of Irish nationalism and cultural regeneration. Linked to German intellectual interest was a wider recognition of the role of the early Irish and Scottish Churches in the Christian conversion of Europe and the German region after the fall of the Roman Empire and the onset of the ‘Dark Ages’.2 The formative role of the early Irish Church in the German region was consolidated by Irish Benedictine monks from the twelfth century. Many German and Austrian cities today, such as Cologne, Würzburg, Regensburg, Mainz and Salzburg, possess churches and monasteries of Irish origin. Up to one hundred Irish saints and missionaries are still remembered in German-​ speaking countries today.3 This evidence of the island of Ireland’s contribution to Christendom heightened modern Germans’ receptiveness to the idea that Ireland formed part of European civilisation. Academic cross-​pollination, therefore, matured, and it was assisted by pan-​ Celticism and Christianity. It enhanced cultural relations from the end of the eighteenth century. German scholarship empowered Irish identity with an intellectual rationale by developing Celtic studies as an academic subject. The first German department in Ireland or Britain was established in Trinity College Dublin in 1776; it became a focus for cultural and intellectual relations.4 Several German universities founded Celtic studies programmes and participated in the Irish cultural renaissance at the end of the nineteenth century.5 The professor of Celtic philology at Berlin University, Heinrich Zimmer (1851–​1910), played a prominent role in promoting interest in the Irish language. In 1903 Douglas Hyde, the founder of the Gaelic League (Conradh na Gaeilge) and an evangelist of de-​Anglicisation, persuaded Kuno Meyer (1858–​1919)  –​a German scholar and staunch supporter of the Irish language –​to become the first director of the School of Irish Learning in Dublin. Later Meyer acceded to Zimmer’s chair of Celtic in Berlin in 1911 and was a firm supporter of Irish nationalism.6 ‘Celtomania’ held sway in European, and especially in German philological circles, during the latter half of the nineteenth century when it was realised that most European languages were traceable to one mother tongue, Indo-​European. Academic speculation centred on the possibility that Irish was an elder European language more closely associated with the Indo-​European root tongue than

14

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Ireland, West Germany and the New Europe

modern Slavic and Romance languages. Thus the Irish language, Celtic heritage and Christian Ireland’s function in re-​enlightening Europe during the Dark Ages fascinated Germans and other Europeans. Celtic studies scholars were among the first emissaries sent by the Irish independence movement to build links with Germany after the outbreak of the Anglo-​Irish War in 1919. Ann (‘Nancy’) Wyse Power, a product of Kuno Meyer’s School of Irish Learning and a graduate of Celtic studies from University College Dublin (UCD), had earlier commenced a doctorate in Celtic studies in Bonn. She was tasked with setting up an abortive Irish republican publicity and diplomatic bureau in Berlin during 1921.7 The first Irish minister plenipotentiary to Germany after 1929 was an eminent Celtic studies scholar, Professor Daniel A. Binchy.8 Official Germany displayed limited interest in Ireland until the polarisation of the major European powers into two opposing and rival blocs before First World War. It was largely Anglophile in its cultural tastes. This partially reflected Lutheran Germans elementary affinity with English Protestantism as well as an admiration of Britain’s global empire. Some exiled Society of United Irishmen had sought refuge in Hamburg, having inspired the failed French military intervention in Ireland in 1796. Following a United Irishmen rebellion in 1798, more exiles followed. Hamburg offered a neutral base close to revolutionary France and easy shipping access to Ireland.9 Later, informed Catholic opinion in Germany followed Daniel O’Connell’s campaign for emancipation in the early nineteenth century with interest. The development of the Irish nationalist movement after the Famine was also noted. Following the unification of Germany (1870–​71) official interest in Ireland was largely absent. Imperial Germany viewed Britain as a country to be emulated. It was only when Berlin’s great power ambitions stimulated Anglo-​German antagonism at the end of the century that the prospects for Imperial Germany’s interaction with Ireland grew. The division of Europe into two rival blocs in the early twentieth century heralded the possibility that Ireland would be exploited as Britain’s strategic Achilles heel in any conflict. The service of Major John MacBride’s Irish Transvaal Brigade (colloquially known as ‘MacBride’s brigade’) with the Boers and Imperial Germany during the Second Anglo-​Boer War (1899–​1902) foreshadowed future links. It presaged Sir Roger Casement’s efforts in Germany during First World War to enlist German imperial support for the Irish revolutionary cause. In general, Imperial Germany lacked a detailed understanding of the forces at work in Irish society after its decades of neglect of Britain’s ‘Ireland’s Question’. Its resources were focused on breaking the military deadlock on the continent. Since sufficient German support failed to materialise, Casement returned to Ireland in a German submarine to call off the 1916 Easter Rising. Captured, he was tried, publicly humiliated and executed for treason against Britain. He metamorphosed into an iconic republican martyr.10 German Hibernophiles and Irish expatriates founded a German–​Irish Society

15

Ireland and Germany before 1949

15

(Deutsche-​Irische Gesellschaft) in Berlin after the failed ‘Rising’. Kuno Meyer, now in Berlin, was its first president. A later secretary of the society aptly calculated that the Germans retained an interest in Ireland to ‘a certain extent … and they were even more interested because of being at war with the British’.11 Interwar Imperial Germany’s defeat in First World War and its replacement by an unstable democracy, the Weimar Republic, did not augur well for the development of relations during and after the Irish War of Independence (or the Anglo-​ Irish War, 1919–​21). Irish Republican Army (IRA) agents in conjunction with private German individuals, including demobilised soldiers, ran a gun-​running operation out of Hamburg to supply the Irish insurgency. Weimar struggled for legitimacy and leniency in the face of the victors’, notably France’s, retributive impulses. Since British statesmen, in general, laboured to temper French revanchism, the sustenance of cordial German-​British relations was a priority for Berlin. In spite of many German expressions of private support for the Irish national cause, Weimar refused to extend formal recognition to the Irish republican mission that was sent to Berlin in 1921. Although sections of the German press and many individuals interpreted the Anglo-​Irish Truce (July 1921) and the Anglo-​Irish Treaty as a vindication of the Irish independence movement, no formal recognition of the Irish mission in Berlin was likely. The early Weimar Republic experienced acute political and economic turmoil. Its governments did not want to upset the British Government, which was interpreted as adopting a more lenient position towards Germany than France. The Irish representatives eventually withdrew from Berlin in 1923. The fragile Weimar Republic in the mid-​1920s was far too preoccupied with its own survival to give much consideration to Irish affairs. In any case, many foreign governments, including Germany, had difficulty in interpreting the implications of Ireland’s dominion status until Commonwealth negotiations clarified matters gradually in the decade following the signing of the Anglo-​Irish Treaty (6 December 1921). The bloodshed and the disorder of the Irish Civil War (1922–​23) hindered Ireland’s normalisation as a member of the family of nations. Only in the late 1920s did the Irish Free State government meld the divided state sufficiently to attend to external links beyond Britain and the United States. Naturally, Germany was among the first cohort of continental states with which Ireland wished to establish external relations. Formal relations finally commenced during the winter of 1929–​30, when legations were established in Dublin and Berlin. Unfortunately, this occurred at an inopportune juncture. The Wall Street Crash of October 1929 brought the period of global and German post-​war recovery (‘the Golden Era’ from 1924) to an end. The Great Depression destabilised the fragile Weimar Republic; the fragmented

16

16

Ireland, West Germany and the New Europe

democratic parties withered in the face of the political radicalism and populism of the Nazi and the communist parties. During this unsettled post-​1929 period, Weimar sustained a circumspect attitude towards the Irish representatives. The AA remained mindful of not offending British sensitivities or interfering in the intricate Anglo-​Irish constitutional and trade matters; Ireland was viewed as lying within Britain’s established sphere of influence. Irish independence was interpreted as a humiliation for the British Empire, but it was still an empire that had emerged victorious from the ‘Great War’ and it held the balance of power between France and Germany. Generally, London was uncomfortable with the harsh treatment of Germany under the Treaty of Versailles (1919). Realpolitik, in effect, recommended Germany’s cultivation of Britain; the interests of the Irish Free State were not allowed to interfere with this strategic calculus.12 Germany, moreover, lacked substantial tangible commercial or psychic interests in Ireland; it was a terra incognita for most Germans. Successive Irish envoys observed that the upper-​class Germans who dominated the Auswärtiges Amt (German Foreign Office) were Anglophile in tastes and inclined towards the powerful British embassy’s perspective.13 As for the ‘average’ uninformed German layperson, successive Irish diplomats detected a general sympathy and identification with Ireland’s plucky fight against the might of the British Empire.14 The first Irish minister to Weimar observed, in 1930:  ‘[T]‌he Foreign Office is not really interested in us any more than it is in any small unimportant state situated a considerable distance from its frontiers. It thinks of us in precisely the same terms as it thinks, say, of Bulgaria or a small Central American Republic. It is concerned to maintain the most friendly relations possible with us’.15 He might have added that as long as those friendly relations did not prejudice high-​quality German relations with Britain. Political reservations did not prevent a healthy German export trade to Ireland from the mid-​1920s. The Irish Free State avidly wanted to modernise its infrastructure and industrial base. Arms of government and new semi-​state bodies charged with developing the economy awarded several large contracts to German firms in fields such as electrics, steel structures and plant machinery. The first major breakthrough occurred when Siemens-​Schuckert was awarded the contract to construct the Ardnacrusha hydroelectric plant for the Electricity Supply Board (ESB).16 The Free State signed a Treaty of Commerce and Navigation with Germany on 12 May 1930.17 This was the first such commercial treaty negotiated successfully by the Free State with any state. Laying the basis for annual commercial treaty negotiations between the two, this framework agreement survived the war and formed the basis for Ireland’s trade relations with West Germany in the 1950s and 1960s. Germany became the Free State’s second largest trading partner after Britain during the 1930s. Some major German firms made a significant though, relative to British firms, small inroad into the Irish market. They contributed to the modernisation of the Irish economy winning substantial contracts

17

Ireland and Germany before 1949

17

to supply the new semi-​state bodies such as the ESB and the Turf Development Board, and government departments. German firms were also successful in winning contracts to equip Irish sugar factories. Nonetheless, Britain remained Ireland’s overwhelming trading partner, accounting for over 90 per cent of Irish foreign trade throughout the 1930s.18 From the Irish perspective, the balance of trade improved from a distressing imbalance in favour of Germany to a more balanced, but still unfavourable, two-​to-​three ratio by the outbreak of war. Although still to Germany’s advantage, from the Irish perspective it was more sustainable. Between 1932 and 1938, Germany moved from Ireland’s fourth largest destination for exports to second place behind the UK, although the total volume of trade remained small.19 The Nazi takeover of Germany had not signalled a reversal in Berlin’s attitudes to Ireland as geopolitical realities continued to govern the relationship. Until the late 1930s intimacy with Ireland was viewed as a potential menace to any prospect of Anglo-​German friendship. Nazism introduced a new racialist dimension to the German pursuit of intimacy with Britain by arguing the two nations were branches of the ‘Aryan’ race. Consequently, Nazi Germany refused to take advantage of the opportunity presented by the Anglo-​Irish ‘economic war’ to markedly enlarge its trade with the Free State. It did not act on de Valera’s suggestion to the German minister on 22 January 1934 that Irish imports could be divided equally between Germany, Britain and the United States, and its exports could likewise be divided.20 The AA viewed the ‘economic war’ as a transitory dispute and thought that in the long run Britain would retain its mastery over the Irish economy.21 At a political level, Nazi Germany was confounded by Irish politics at first. In 1933 and 1934, Eoin O’Duffy’s Blueshirts were portrayed in some publications as undertaking a Irish-​style ‘Nazi revolution’, and de Valera’s Fianna Fáil Government was interpreted as part of a universal Jewish democratic conspiracy. De Valera’s revision of Ireland’s constitutional relationship with Britain was viewed as weakening the latter dangerously. Charles Bewley, the Irish minister to Berlin, protested against the depiction of de Valera as a half-​caste Jew in one Nazi publication. Nazism possessed a very jaundiced understanding of Ireland, but to an extent this was alleviated by Irish protests and a re-​education policy undertaken by the Irish minister in Berlin.22 This did not endear the Nazi regime to de Valera. Blatant anti-​Catholic and anti-​democratic sentiments infused the Nazi regime and Dublin grew disapproving of its deepening totalitarianism. This was not allowed to materially affect the official relationship, unless it impacted directly on Ireland’s self-​respect and religious feelings. Bewley was instructed by de Valera to protest against the AA’s dismissal of the former German minister to Ireland, Dr Georg von Dehn-​Schmidt, from his new post in Bucharest in 1935 for being photographed kissing the papal nuncio’s ring in Dublin in 1934.23 Any suggestions of Nazi proselytisation of the Irish population were discreetly

18

18

Ireland, West Germany and the New Europe

resisted. As early as 1935 Dublin even instructed Bewley to dissuade a German scholar from coming to Ireland ‘in view of the general things in Germany, especially the attitude of the State towards Christianity’.24 Until 1938 Nazi Germany encouraged an Anglo-​Irish settlement to strengthen the British Empire in line with Nazism’s Anglocentric outlook. Anything which potentially diluted the Commonwealth was viewed by Berlin with concern. Following de Valera’s successful passing of the new Irish constitution in 1937 (to solemnize his government’s revisions of the Anglo-​Irish relationship in a consolidated document that expressed Irish values), German newspapers construed it as a challenge to Britain. The 1937 constitution established an Irish republic in practice, if not in name. This was not applauded by official Germany; it prioritised Britain’s interests over Irish nationalist ones. Germany welcomed the 1938 Anglo-​ Irish treaty, which formally ended the “economic war” and led to the return of the Treaty Ports to Ireland, viewing it as a settlement of the Anglo-​Irish dispute. The official German view following the Anglo-​Irish Treaty in 1938 was that Ireland would follow the inexorable logic of strategic and economic dependence on Britain and agree to an Anglo-​Irish defence arrangement. Hitler, Dr Eduard Hempel (the German minister to Ireland), the AA and the Wehrmacht believed neutrality was not a credible option, despite mounting evidence that de Valera was determined to pursue neutrality in a general European war involving Britain. After all, they observed that de Valera’s foreign policy after 1936 paralleled that of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain on issues relating to Abyssinia, the Spanish Civil War, the Anschluss and the Sudetenland crisis. De Valera was an appeaser. The clearest evidence of Ireland’s appeasement policy towards the Third Reich came during the Munich crisis of September 1938. De Valera and J. V. Dulanty, the Irish high commissioner in London, fortified Chamberlain’s efforts to pacify Hitler. As de Valera stated in his broadcast to the United States on 25 September: The war of sheer aggression … is not the war that we need to fear the most. The most dangerous war is that which has its origin in just claims denied or in a clash of opposing rights –​and not merely opposing interests –​when each side can see no reason in justice why it should yield its claim to the other. If by conceding the claims of justice or by reasonable compromise in the spirit of fair play we take steps to avoid the latter kind of war, we can face the possibility of the other kind with relative equanimity.25

On 3 November 1938, an official statement from the Irish Government Bureau announced the renewal of the Irish trade agreement with the German Reich, noting that both the Sudetenland and Austria were included in the term ‘German Reich’. Éire thus extended de jure recognition to Germany’s absorption of these regions. On the other hand, de Valera and the Irish Government

19

Ireland and Germany before 1949

19

did not judge that Germany had a legitimate national claim to the rump state of Czechoslovakia following Germany’s march into Prague on 15 March 1939. The Irish Government would not extend de jure recognition to the new German Protectorate of Moravia and Bohemia, and the new state of Slovakia, which Hitler, in effect, appropriated.26 All of this was comparable to British readings of the situation. The convergence in Anglo-​Irish policy was interpreted as confirmation by Berlin of Irish alignment with the British foreign policy outlook. Indeed this was the risk Charles Bewley repeatedly warned his political masters in Dublin about from the mid-​1930s. Of course, Bewley displayed a proclivity towards pronounced Anglophobia combined with a tendency to minimise or ignore negative features of Nazism including its anti-​Semitism. He was eventually recalled from Berlin and effectively demoted, provoking his resignation in September 1939.27 His continual carping at the supposed Anglophile nature of de Valera’s foreign policy made him a liability. Bewley’s removal forms part of what Hempel feared was a mounting ‘countermovement’ in Irish circles against Berlin. During much of the 1930s Irish newspapers (with the possible exception of the Irish Times) expressed sympathy for the revisionist foreign policy of Hitler and fell into line with the quasi-​appeasement policy of de Valera. By 1938, articles sympathetic to Nazism were lacking. Hempel detected the general and strong Irish disapproval of the Nazi regime especially after its pogrom against Jews during Kristallnacht (9–​10 November 1938), even among circles latterly favourable to Nazi Germany.28 The Deutsches Nachrichtenbüro (German Press Agency or DNB) had employed a local Irish journalist from 1936 to promote a favourable image of Nazi Germany, but this was viewed as inadequate by 1938. In early 1939, this led to the appointment of a Nazi member of the DNB from Berlin to educate the Irish press and public opinion. Hitler’s perception of Britain underwent change and this reverberated on German strategic calculations. He now viewed Chamberlain as an annoying busybody, particularly as a result of his intervention in the Munich crisis of 1938. Britain also failed to comply with his aspiration for an Anglo-​German strategic quid pro quo, whereby Britain would concentrate on its global maritime empire, leaving Germany unmolested to carve out a land empire in Eurasia (Lebensraum). Negative Nazi propaganda commenced against Britain. It was calibrated to appeal to minority nationalists within the British Empire as it accented London’s injustices in India, Malta and Palestine, and so forth.29 Ireland could be a key strategic player in the event of an Anglo-​German war, but Hitler believed conflict was avoidable on the grounds that Chamberlain would continue to appease. He assumed that racial fraternity between Britain and Germany, in conformity with Nazi Aryan theory, would alleviate differences and disputes. The AA, German Naval Command and Berlin continued to assume Ireland would side with Britain should an Anglo-​German conflict occur. They doubted de Valera’s commitment

20

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Ireland, West Germany and the New Europe

to neutrality was credible in view of Ireland’s defencelessness. Calculating that the strategic, economic, cultural and democratic ties binding Ireland to Britain were enduring, despite the unresolved issue of Irish partition, they reasoned Ireland would eventually emerge as a pro-​British non-​belligerent or even a British ally in a future European war. They anticipated Ireland would return the treaty ports to Britain ‘in time of war’. From their vantage point, the North Atlantic was of such vital strategic importance that Britain could not afford to respect Irish neutrality. Alternatively, they thought Ireland’s self-​interest dictated it would eventually comply with British demands.30 Neutrality, 1939–​45 In April and May 1939, Hempel finally concluded de Valera was unbending in his determination to declare neutrality in the event of a European war. The German minister was now convinced that de Valera’s frequent proclamations of neutral intent were sincere, the Irish population overwhelmingly favoured it, and the policy, on balance, would favour German interests. Neutrality would deny Britain access to the Irish ports, air space and waters. It would impair its North Atlantic defence and supply lines. Hempel persuaded his sceptical superiors in Berlin to accept Irish neutrality mere weeks before the outbreak of war in Poland.31 In January 1939, the launch of the IRA’s bombing campaign (S-​Plan) against mainland Britain drew the attention of Abwehr (German military intelligence) to the prospect of redirecting and assisting the IRA to open a terrorist campaign in Northern Ireland on the grounds of national self-​determination. This would divert British forces in the event of an Anglo-​German conflict. After earlier indeterminate probes, the Abwehr launched a tardy overture towards the IRA in 1939. Their efforts failed to institute sufficient trust, a united strategy or secure communication with the IRA before the war broke out. The IRA, in any case, was in a frail state after deep ideological schisms during 1930s. When the Irish Government applied draconian ‘Emergency’ legislation against suspected ‘subversives’; the IRA was dismembered for practical purposes during 1940 and early 1941.32 Dublin interned suspected subversives and dispensed harsh justice, circumventing the customary legal system, by drawing on emergency legislation. Threats to British security were quashed in line with de Valera’s repeated assurances that Ireland would not offer a base for attack against Britain. Irish neutrality’s survival relied on sustaining British toleration of it. This necessitated a degree of covert Irish cooperation and flexibility in order to meet British strategic interests. The lack of effective German intelligence activities in Ireland in the pre-​war years, combined with the poor quality of German agents dispatched in the early war years, a lack of synchronisation between interested German organisations

21

Ireland and Germany before 1949

21

and a primitive understanding of de Valera’s Ireland and its enigmatic relationship with Britain, all contributed to a farcical German espionage record in Ireland. German espionage in ‘Emergency’ Ireland was a history of failure (based on known evidence). Of the 12 German agents sent to Ireland between August 1939 and December 1943, the Irish security services detained 11 within days, if not hours, of landing, with one notable exception. The latter, Hermann Görtz, eluded capture for a distressingly extended period but nonetheless failed to complete his mission, as the IRA was suppressed by the unrelenting government pursuit of suspects.33 The most perilous period for neutrality occurred when Germany planned to invade Britain (Operation Sea Lion) in the summer and early autumn of 1940. As the Luftwaffe attempted to establish air superiority (Battle of Britain) in order to invade, fears of German intervention in Ireland or a pre-​emptive British invasion to forestall a projected German invasion, transfixed the Irish government. How serious Hitler was about an invasion of Ireland (based on the German operational study Fall Grün (or Case Green) is hotly debated), but it was probably a ruse to distract British forces from Britain itself.34 Regardless, the success of the Royal Air Force (RAF), combined with Hitler’s shifting strategic calculations in the autumn of 1940, allowed this perilous phase to pass and neutrality remained intact. The potential for irruption receded after 1940. In public, the Irish government sustained a visage of dogmatic neutrality. Like many neutrals this concealed plasticity, particularly towards Britain, and later the United States. The German minister smoothed neutrality’s survival by defending the view that neutrality was advantageous to Berlin. Berlin did not classify Ireland as an economic neutral, though, as it was an important British food and labour reservoir. Berlin calculated that Britain could occupy Ireland if Irish bases were a strategic necessity or if Ireland seriously undermined the British war effort.35 It is difficult to establish whether Hempel engaged in un-​neutral acts such as assisting German espionage. The German Legation, its staff and the minister were placed under close surveillance.36 No direct evidence came to light that Hempel was acting undiplomatically. Hempel was dependent on the use of a radio transmitter in the legation for secure and rapid communication with Berlin but the transmitter represented a threat to neutrality if it could be proven that Hempel used it to convey military intelligence. The Irish recognised that the possession and use of a wireless transmitter by a diplomatic mission was permissible under international law,37 but they applied pressure on the German Legation to desist from using it to avoid provoking Britain. They eventually persuaded Hempel to put the transmitter beyond use in 1943. Hempel came from the old school German career diplomatic tradition. He outwardly exhibited professionalism and exemplary diplomatic conduct which abetted Irish neutrality chiefly at times of heightened Allied criticisms. De Valera was grateful to Hempel for playing a constructive role in enhancing neutrality’s

22

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Ireland, West Germany and the New Europe

sustainability. By not giving the allies evidence of un-​neutral behaviour, Hempel eased de Valera’s defence of neutrality. This played into de Valera’s special consideration for Hempel’s welfare after the end of the war. Undeniably Hempel was astute but he was also a German patriot; he desired German victory for traditional German nationalist reasons but was not a Nazi fanatic. He secretly joined the Nazi party on 1 July 1938, one year after his posting to Ireland,38 most likely for job security and career reasons. The Irish Government, under de Valera, persisted to the bitter end and refused to abandon neutrality even when the Axis was close to defeat. Neutrality was a potent icon of sovereignty and differentiated Ireland from its former ruler (Britain). It offered de Valera a way of appealing to the Irish electorate as he frequently opined that wars between great powers were not the business of small or weak states, which had nothing to gain but everything to lose. Neutrality could also be conveniently justified as a protest against partition. In sum, de Valera succeeded in squaring the circle that neutrality was simultaneously moral, realistic, idealistic, anti-​partitionist, benevolent towards the Allies and nationalistic, regardless of Nazi Germany’s aggression, genocidal policies and totalitarianism. Neutrality had its foundation myth and it also served to consolidate the state in line with Fianna Fáil’s vision. Post-​war After the war the Irish authorities resisted Allied requests to deport German Legation staff and interned German spies. The government demanded assurances that the Germans transferred to Allied controlled German territory would not be ill-​treated, interned, interrogated, prosecuted or repatriated to the Soviet-​ occupied zone (if that was their traditional domicile). The spies had committed offences against the Irish state and served time in Irish prison, so it was argued they should not be punished twice for the same offence. The British Government failed to adhere fully to its promises after the Irish deported the German military internees in August 1945. These Germans were interned for several months in a prisoner-​of-​war camp in Brussels before they were granted permission to return to their homes and families in the British and American zones in Germany. This negative experience factored into the Irish reluctance to hand over the German former diplomats and spies against their will.39 The Irish eventually deported the spies in 1947 when the Allies were no longer interested in them. The former legation staff returned to Germany of their own volition from 1947 to 1950. The Western Allies now considered them to be distractions; the new imperative of the three Western Allies (Britain, American and France) was to rebuild Germany as a bulwark against communist infiltration and the Soviet Union. In general, in 1945 and 1946, the Irish continued to adhere to a strict reading of the obligations attaching to neutrality. The authorities resolutely defended the

23

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23

reputation of neutrality during the late war and demanded it should be accorded the respect it was entitled to diplomatically and legally. This buttressed the international projection and consolidation of de Valera’s Ireland. This inflexibility played to the sensationalist depictions of Irish neutrality in the late war by the Allied and liberated press as divulging covert Nazi sympathies and representing a betrayal of fellow democracies in a ‘just war’. The Nazi sympathiser tag was granted superficial credence by de Valera’s imprudent visit to the private residence of Hempel to extend his condolences on the death of the German head of state, Adolf Hitler, in May 1945. De Valera stood firm by the protocol that ordained the offering of condolences to the diplomatic representative of the state whose head of state had died. In strict adherence to traditional legal interpretations, de Valera maintained such a visit was not a judgement on the policies and actions of that head of state. Against the backdrop of the international news about the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps and the regime’s unprecedented war atrocities de Valera’s action understandably generated a storm of criticism. De Valera could have faked a ‘diplomatic illness’. For de Valera, punctilious compliance with traditional diplomatic protocol had acted as a primary method of sustaining neutrality during the war. It also appealed to the Cartesian logic of de Valera’s mathematical mind. He felt a sense of duty to Hempel, whom he held had played a central role in neutrality’s survival. But he miscalculated by thinking that by visiting the private residence of the German minister, rather than the legation proper, he would be protected from international condemnation.40 Ireland was one of the first countries to send relief to defeated Germany. This initiative formed part of its post-​war pan-​European package.41 De Valera had pledged aid to ward off starvation on the European continent in the same address that he belittled Churchill’s boast that he had not laid ‘a violent hand’ on Ireland, despite acute British ‘necessity’ during Second World War. In his speech of 16 May 1945, de Valera expressed gratitude for the deliverance of the nation from the ravages of war but he requested an increase in Irish food production to feed Europe.42 This struck home in the Irish press during the summer and autumn as news arrived about the devastation that prevailed. Irish humanitarianism was underlain by a common and reflexive Irish view that great wars were the outcome of great power politics that afflicted vulnerable people. Neutrality during the ‘Emergency’ was partially sustained by such assumptions, and on viewing the devastation visited upon Europe many denizens calculated it was obligatory that the unscathed Ireland should donate generously. Ireland had a duty to provide assistance to the defeated and maintain non-​partisanship. The Irish Government budgeted £3  million for post-​war relief to Europe, from which Germany accrued benefit. Ireland first provided supplies to the International Red Cross and the liberated West European countries of France, Belgium, Italy and the Netherlands during the summer of 1945. It responded to the distress afflicting Germany and Austria in the late summer and early autumn.

24

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Ireland, West Germany and the New Europe

Germany lay in ruins. Basic subsistence was a challenge for large sections of the population and the country attracted little international sympathy. The tenor of US policy, for instance, was clear in the directive issued to General Eisenhower that ‘Germany will not be occupied for the purpose of liberation but as a defeated enemy nation’.43 Allied policies after the war ‘seemed to emphasize destruction rather than reconstruction’.44 The priorities of the Allies were the demilitarisation, de-​Nazification and decentralisation of Germany.45 In contrast, de Valera, the Irish government and public contended that even the Germans deserved charity. This was perhaps a product of a longstanding view that the victimisation of Germany after First World War had created the conditions for another war. The Western allies, led by the Americans, gradually shifted ‘from a policy of punishment to one of restoration of Germany’ during 1946 and 1947 because of the apparent threat of the Soviet Union.46 It was a full 14 months following the German surrender, however, before the first American aid packages arrived in Germany in August 1946.47 Until that point the job was left to neutrals to alleviate Germany’s distress. Allied aid did not arrive in large quantities until 1947 but the winter of 1946–​47 was one of the harshest in Western Europe for centuries. Matters were exacerbated by the collapse of German coal production. Irish relief to Germany was reputedly the highest per capita for any donating country. Voluntary donations were highest during Christmas seasons; in December 1947 the Irish people donated nearly two million dollars’ worth of food and clothing to Germany during that uncommonly harsh winter.48 Most aid was delivered to the occupied zones via Switzerland. The Catholic Caritas organisation also distributed the supplies throughout all four occupation zones in Germany.49 Ireland’s help was not forgotten years after the crisis and the new West German state and many earlier recipient bodies commemorated Irish post-​war generosity to Germany. A journalist for the Irish Independent, visited Germany in 1955 and reported that one of his German contacts told him: ‘Oh yes, the Irish. You were the first to offer us food and friendship at the end of the war when we were friendless and starving.’50 The equanimity of Irish humanitarianism bred disbelief initially among some who had suffered at the hands of Nazism.51 One dimension of Irish assistance engendered particular controversy: the activities and motives of the Save the German Children Society. The society was founded in October 1945 with the express non-​political purpose of saving ‘as many German children as possible from death by starvation this winter … irrespective of class, creed or politics’. Its reputation was tarnished by newspapers reports of the atavistic nationalist and anti-​British comments of two individuals attending its inaugural meeting.52 This was greeted by protests at the meeting that the organisation was to assist people rather than propagate hate. The chair responded by stating the society had ‘no political motive’, German children were the focus ‘because they are worse off than the children of any other country’, and the views expressed by some speakers

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Ireland and Germany before 1949

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were not those of the committee.53 Nonetheless, the newspaper reports inflicted grave reputational damage before the society had even commenced its work.54 In the light of these utterances and the connections of some of its founding members, the Irish and British authorities, the Red Cross and established voluntary organisations distanced themselves. The British would not work with the society. Their lack of support was critical –​their cooperation was essential for any project to transfer German children to Ireland from the British-​occupied zone in Western Germany. Britain had no principled objection to assisting Germans in need and facilitated similar enterprises in Britain, Switzerland, Denmark, South Africa and Sweden. Despite the efforts of the society to repair its blemished image, the British authorities would only cooperate with the Irish Red Cross in transferring German children to Ireland. The departments of Justice and External Affairs, were unhappy with the society’s role in damaging Irish–​British relations and distrustful of the bona fides of a few of its members. The Irish Red Cross eventually received permission to make arrangements to care for approximately 500 deserving German children for stays of a maximum of three years by the Allied Control Council. The entire operation was called ‘Operation Shamrock’. The first group of German children arrived in Ireland on 27 July 1946 for distribution to foster families nationwide. The Save the German Children Society gradually developed relations with the Red Cross and subsequently assisted in the placement of German children.55 It performed a supporting role to the Red Cross. German classes were provided for the German children in Dublin and this eventually led to the foundation of St. Kilda’s German School in Dublin in the early 1950s. The fostered German children were returned to their families in Germany after three years. Lobbying from the Save the German Children Society resulted in approximately 50 German children receiving permission to remain in Ireland permanently with the consent of their German relatives.56 In spite of the unpropitious circumstances surrounding its foundation, the Save the German Society persevered to make a contribution. It was a large and popular organisation with many active branches nationwide, and the majority of its membership felt it fulfilled a humanitarian role and possessed no political motivations.57 It was one organisation among many that contributed to the relief of Germany including the Irish Red Cross, the Cork-​Cologne Fund, St. Vincent de Paul Society, Archbishop of Dublin and the Knights of St. Columbanus.58 Confessional loyalties played a role. A survey of newspaper reports indicate that emphasis was placed on assisting Catholic Germans. Likewise, Irish Protestants assisted German Protestants. Nazism’s persecution of the Catholic Church was a notable item in Irish newspapers, particularly the Irish Independent.59 With the onset of the Cold War, an additional factor impelling Irish charity towards Germany was the general desire to halt the spread of communism and save Christian civilisation.

26

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Ireland, West Germany and the New Europe

The city of Cork adopted Cologne as the target for its humanitarian donations during 1947 and 1948. It was an area with a high Catholic population and Cardinal Frings of Cologne thanked the Lord Mayor and citizens of Cork for the relief. This and ‘Operation Shamrock’ in the Ruhr region sparked a special connection between Cork and Cologne. It prompted the Commander of the Military Government in the City of Cologne, Lieutenant Colonel J. M. White, to appeal to Cork’s Lord Mayor ‘to render whatever assistance was possible to alleviate the terrible distress in Cologne’. He pointedly noted the population was 90 per cent Catholic and had supported Nazism ‘far less’ than ‘most other parts of Germany’. ‘The threatening spectre of hunger and misery is standing before us’, he reported. His pleading acquired potency by virtue of the fact that White was an Irishman whose grandfather had held the office of Lord Mayor of Cork some 80 years previously.60 The Cork–​Cologne link persisted at least until 1949.61 War shattered Berlin also became a focus for Irish aid even before the commencement of the Berlin blockade.62 Irish society exhibited fervent anti-​communist, pro-​American and pro-​Western feelings. Anti-​communism was a deep-​seated feature of Irish Catholicism and the Soviet Union’s veto of the Ireland’s application to join the UN in 1946 gave most Irish citizens another reason for hostility towards Moscow. Moscow’s actions kept Ireland waiting in the antechamber in New York for a further nine years. The circumstances of the Soviet Union’s actions on this issue were frustrating; Ireland became a hostage to the competitive exclusion policies of America and the Soviet Union as they blocked each other’s friends from UN membership. The persecution of Catholicism by communist regimes in Eastern Europe heightened Irish antipathy. The case and sentencing of Cardinal Aloysius Stepinac in October 1946 by Tito’s Yugoslavia became a cause célèbre.63 Following the overthrow of the cross-​party Czechoslovak government in February 1948 the spread of communism was considered an international menace. Dreading that the Italian Christian Democrats would lose to a communist/​socialist coalition in the general election in the spring of 1948, the Irish ambassador to the Holy See offered Ireland as a safe haven for the pope. The minister for external affairs, Seán MacBride, backed the Irish Catholic hierarchy’s popular appeal for funds which when furnished played some small role in the Christian Democratic electoral victory. The CIA was the major external sponsor of the Christian Democrats. MacBride told the US minister to Ireland that ‘if any country is attacked by Communists, we’re in it’.64 This was followed by the Berlin Blockade, and fears of a third world war became pervasive. The life imprisonment of Cardinal Josef Mindszenty by the Hungarian Government in 1949 excited the anti-​communist passions of Irish Catholics, including the Irish Government.65 With the formalisation of the division of Germany into two separate states in 1949, the FRG and the GDR, backed by the rival Cold War superpowers, Ireland was predisposed to supporting West Germany. This was reinforced by

27

Ireland and Germany before 1949

27

the post-​war strength of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party. It was a partial successor of the pre-​Nazi Catholic Centre Party, although its leader, Adenauer, was determined to appeal to Protestants to bulid a broad-​based party. Although the minister for external affairs, Seán MacBride, maladroitly bid in 1949 to barter Irish membership of NATO in return for a promise of US support to end Irish partition, Ireland was sentimentally and ideologically approving of West Germany and fell into line with Western policy that the GDR was an ‘artificial creation’ without a mandate.66 Perplexingly, MacBride was a ‘cold warrior’ and a stalwart of the West in the evolving Cold War,67 in spite of his diplomatic ineptitude surrounding NATO accession in 1949. For instance, he strongly supported Irish membership of the Marshall Plan, the European Movement, the Council of Europe and the OEEC. Nonetheless, his actions led to Ireland’s exclusion from NATO and the fortification of its neutralism. Overall, the harbingers for Irish–​German relations after the passing of the Basic Law and the establishment of the FRG in 1949 were encouraging. There appeared to be a strong basis for German thinking that Ireland was predisposed to offer greater understanding to Germany than many other European states. Notes 1 For an overview of Irish–​German exchanges before independence, see: M. O’Driscoll, ‘West Germany’, in M. O’Driscoll, D. Keogh and J. aan de Wiel (eds), Ireland through European Eyes; Western Europe, the EEC and Ireland, 1945–​1973 (Cork: Cork University Press, 2013), pp. 10–​20. 2 National Archives of Ireland, Dublin [hereafter referred to as NAI], Department of Foreign Affairs [hereafter referred to as DFA] 338/741, Note on Cultural Relations with Germany, c. 1955, p. 1; T. Ó Fiaich, ‘St. Kilian: His Irish Background and Posthumous Influence’, Seanchas Ardmhacha, 13: 2 (1989), pp. 61–​80. 3 H. Flachenecker, Schottenklöster-irische Benediktinerkonvente im hochmittelalterlichen Deutschland (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1995); D. Ó Riain-​Raedel, ‘Irish Benedictine Monasteries on the Continent’, in M. Browne and C. Ó Clabaigh (ed.), The Irish Benedictines: A History (Dublin: Columba Press 2005). 4 C. Molohan, Germany and Ireland 1945–​1955: Two Nations’ Friendship (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1999), p. 77. 5 See S. Ó Lúing, ‘Celtic Studies in Europe: A Brief Sketch’, in S. Ó Lúing, Celtic Studies in Europe and Other Essays (Dublin: Geography Publications, c.2000), pp. 15–​38. 6 Ibid., pp. 26–​9. 7 See O’Driscoll, Ireland, Germany and the Nazis, p. 28; M. Kennedy, ‘Power, Ann (‘Nancy’) Wyse Power’, in Dictionary of Irish Biography. http://​0-​dib.cambridge.org. library.ucc.ie/​quicksearch.do;jsessionid=207934E00BAFA17964EB6A3AF1881F66 [accessed 4 October 2016]; M. O’Neill, From Parnell to de Valera: A Biography of Jennie Wyse Power, 1858–​1941 (Dublin: Blackwater Press, 1991).

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Ireland, West Germany and the New Europe

8 For Binchy’s diplomatic career in Berlin see O’Driscoll, Ireland, Germany and the Nazis, pp.  63–​80. See also:  T. Garvin, The Lives of Daniel Binchy:  Irish Scholar, Diplomat, Public Intellectual (Newbridge: Irish Academic Press, 2016). 9 P. Weber, On the Road to Rebellion: The United Irishmen and Hamburg 1796–​1803 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1997). 10 Roger Casement, the German role in the Easter 1916 Rising and Imperial Germany’s attitude to the Irish separatist movement after the turn of the century has generated a specialist sub-​literature. Some of this includes: R. R. Doerries, Prelude to the Easter Rising: Sir Roger Casement in Imperial Germany (London: Frank Cass, 2000); R. Casement (ed. A. Mitchell), One Bold Deed of Open Treason: The Berlin Diary of Roger Casement 1914–​1916 (Sallins, Co. Kildare: Merrion Press, 1916); M. E. Daly, Roger Casement in Irish and World History (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2005); J. aan de Wiel, The Irish Factor, 1899–​1919. 11 C. Bewley, edited and with an afterword by W. J. McCormack, Memoirs of a Wild Goose (Dublin: Lilliput Press), p. 79. 12 See for example O’Driscoll, Ireland, Germany and the Nazis, p. 34. 13 Ibid., p. 33. 14 Ibid., pp. 27, 33–​4, 71. 15 Ibid. 16 See A. Bielenberg (ed.), The Shannon Scheme and the Electrification of the Irish Free State:  An Inspirational Milestone (Dublin:  Lilliput Press, 2002), in particular G.  O’Beirne and M.  O’Connor, ‘Siemens-​Schuckert and the Electrification of the Irish Free State’, pp. 73–​99 therein. 17 Treaty of Commerce and Navigation between the Irish Free State and Germany (Dublin, Paper No. 223, 1930). 18 See O’Driscoll, Ireland, Germany and the Nazis, pp. 58–​60. 19 NAI, DT, S145574A, Memorandum for the Government, Trade Agreement between Ireland and Western Germany, 23 June 1949. 20 NAI, DFA, Letter Book: Berlin 1934–​5, Walshe to Bewley, 10 February 1934. 21 For an elaboration of this argument see: M. O’Driscoll, ‘The Economic War and Irish Foreign Trade Policy: Irish-​German Commerce 1932–​9’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, 10 (1999). 22 O’Driscoll, Ireland, Germany and the Nazis, pp. 113–​18. 23 NAI, DFA, 18/​10, Walshe to Bewley, 26 February 1935. 24 NAI, DFA, Berlin Letterbook, Walshe to Bewley, 26 April 1935. 25 E. de Valera, Peace and War Speeches by Mr. de Valera on International Affairs (Dublin: M. H. Gill and Son, 1944), p. 72. 26 NAI, DFA, 205/​161, Boland to Walshe, 12 December 1944. 27 Bewley’s poor performance has been the subject of considerable debate. See in particular:  O’Driscoll, Ireland, Germany and the Nazis and A. Roth, Mr. Bewley in Berlin:  Aspects of the Career of an Irish Diplomat, 1933–​1939 (Dublin:  Lilliput Press, 2000). 28 O’Driscoll, Ireland, Germany and the Nazis, pp. 245–​6. 29 Ibid., p. 244. 30 Ibid., p. 272.

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3 1 Ibid. 32 S. Ó Longaigh, Emergency Law in Independent Ireland, 1922–​48 (Dublin: Four Courts, 2006); S. O’Longaigh, ‘Emergency Law in Action, 1939–​45’ in D. Keogh and M. O’Driscoll (eds), Ireland in World War Two: Diplomacy and Survival (Cork: Mercier, 2004), pp. 66–​74; Eunan O’Halpin, Defending Ireland: The Irish State and its Enemies since 1922 (Oxford: Oxford University, 2000), p. 249. 33 O’Halpin, Defending Ireland, pp. 240–​2. 34 M. Hull, Irish Secrets: German Espionage in Wartime Ireland 1939–​45 (Dublin: Irish Academic, 2003), p. 107. 35 C. Leitz, Nazi Germany and Neutral Europe during the Second World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), p. 8 f. 2. 36 Hull, Irish Secrets, p. 34. 37 E. Denza, Diplomatic Law: A Commentary on the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, 2nd edn (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 2, 3, 173 f.  1; P. Malanczuk, Akehurst’s Modern Introduction to International Law (London: Routledge, 1997), p. 126. 38 D. O’Donoghue, Hitler’s Irish Voices: The Story of German Radio’s Wartime Irish Service (Belfast: Beyond the Pale, 1998), p. 219; Hull, Irish Secrets, pp. 33–​5, p. 298 n. 33. 39 Molohan, Germany and Ireland, pp. 13–​34; O’Halpin, Defending Ireland, p. 277. 40 D. Keogh, ‘Eamon De Valera and Hitler: An Analysis of International Reaction to the Visit to the German Minister, May 1945’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, 5: 1 (1989), pp. 69–​92. See also M. Kennedy, ‘Our Men in Berlin: Some Thoughts on Irish Diplomats in Germany 1929–​39’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, 10 (1999), pp. 53–​70. 41 For a fuller appreciation of Ireland’s relief, see M. O’Driscoll, ‘Die Stunde Null: Appraising Irish Relief to Post-​war Germany’ in O’Reilly and O’Regan (eds), Ireland and the Irish in Germany, pp. 63–​84. 42 M. Moynihan, Speeches and Statements by Eamon de Valera, 1917–​73 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1980), Doc. 91, pp. 470–​4. 43 1945 Policy Directive to the Commander in Chief of the U.S. Forces of Occupation (JCS 1067), 17 October 1945, in U.S. Dept. of State, Germany, 1947–​9: the Story in Documents (Washington, DC: U.S. Govt. Print. Off., 1950), p. 23. 44 C. Buchheim, ‘From Enlightened Hegemony to Partnership: The United States and West Germany in the World Economy, 1945–​68’, trans. R. Sharp, in Junker (ed.), The United States and Germany in the Era of the Cold War, 1945–​1968, pp. 258–​9. 45 ‘Eisenhower Reports Food Problem Serious In Germany’, Irish Times, 1 October 1945, p. 1. 46 W. I. Hitchcock, The Struggle for Europe:  The History of the Continent since 1945 (London, Profile, 2003), p. 31. 47 Godehard Weyerer, ‘CARE Packages:  Gifts from Overseas to a Defeated and Debilitated Nation’, trans. E. Weinberger, in Junker (ed.), The United States and Germany in the Era of the Cold War, 1945–​68, pp. 522–​3. For a vivid account of Allied vengeance in the immediate post-​surrender period, see: Friedemann Bedurftig, ‘A People without a State: Post VE-​Day Germany’, History Today, May 1995. 48 See Molohan, Germany and Ireland, p. 41.

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49 Caritas memo, 4 September 1947, Caritas Archive 371(-​87) Fasz. 3K. Cited in Molohan, Germany and Ireland, p. 45. 50 Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes, Berlin (hereafter cited as AA-​PA), Bestand B31, Band 61. 51 See Libres, 19/​10/​45 in NAI, Dublin, DFA, 414/​7; Paris Matin, 28 October 1945 in NAI, DFA, 414/​7. 52 ‘ “Save the German Children Society” Formed in Dublin’, Irish Times, 17 October 1945, p. 1. 53 Ibid.; ‘Move to Aid Children of Germany’, Irish Independent, 17 October 1945, p. 3. 54 Letter by V. Brittain, ‘The Bigoted Lout’, Irish Times, 18 October 1945, p. 3. 55 ‘More Homes Sought for German Boys’, Irish Independent, 29 January 1947, p. 3. 56 Molohan, Germany and Ireland, pp. 47–​61. This provides a thorough evaluation of Operation Shamrock and the role of the Save the German Children Society. 57 ‘Irish Aid for German Hospitals’, Irish Times, 8 October 1946, p.  3; ‘Money for Suffering German Children’, Irish Times, 26 February 1947, p. 3; ‘Irish Society helps German Children’, Irish Independent, 26 February 1947, p.  3; ‘Films of German Children in Eire’, Irish Independent, 21 July 1947, p. 3; ‘Concert will Help Refugee Children’, Irish Times, 18 November 1949, p. 5; ‘Charity Recital’, Irish Times, 8 June 1950, p. 5; ‘Opinions on German boys in Dublin’, Times Pictorial, 7 July 1951, p. 4. 58 ‘German Gift Unveiled to be Unveiled Saturday’, Irish Independent, 26 January 1956, p. 8. 59 See, for example, ‘The Holy Father indicts Nazis’, Irish Independent, 4 June 1945, p. 2; Editorial, ‘The Pope on Persecution’, Irish Independent, 4 June 1945, p. 2. 60 ‘Cologne Cardinal’s Letter to Cork Mayor’, Irish Times, 14 August 1946, p. 3; ‘Irish Officer Appeals for Aid to Germans’, Irish Times, 3 September 1946, p. 3; ‘Plight of Cologne’s Population’, Irish Independent, 3 September 1946, p. 2. 61 ‘Cologne Thanks Cork’, Irish Times, 26 January 1949, p. 3. 62 ‘German Cardinal Thanks Ireland for Food’, Irish Times, 14 February 1947, p.  3; ‘Berlin Bishop Thanks President for Food Gifts’, Irish Times, 11 March 1948, p. 1. 63 D. Keogh, Ireland and the Vatican (Cork: Cork University Press, 1995), pp. 227–​30. 64 Ibid., p. 232. 65 Ibid., pp. 248–​9. 66 P. L. Wylie, Ireland and the Cold War:  Diplomacy and Recognition 1949–​ 63 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2006), p. 122. 67 D. Keogh, Ireland and Europe 1919–​89: A Diplomatic and Political History (Cork/​ Dublin: Hibernian University Press, 1990), p. 216.

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2

Honeymoon

In the light of Ireland’s neutrality and post-​war humanitarianism, relations between the FRG and Ireland commenced on encouraging terms. Ireland also supported West Germany’s reincorporation and inclusion as a normal state in international society after 1949. There were several additional portents that a close relationship was in the offing including the intensification of cultural, religious and sporting links. Other positive signs included the seriousness both governments attached to the speedy establishment of diplomatic relations and the unremitting Irish criticism of the artificial division of post-​war Germany. The anti-​communist convictions of Irish society and Dublin’s aversion to relations with the Soviet Union guaranteed that Ireland instinctively fell in with Bonn’s preferences, but there was an emerging utilitarian consideration too  –​ access to the West German market for agricultural products. Antipathy towards Moscow was principally a product of the pronounced Catholicity of Irish society. It inclined towards German Christian Democracy under the aegis of Konrad Adenauer rather than the Social Democratic Party (SDP) of Erich Ollenhauer. The fact that West German Catholics largely supported the Christian Democrats, while Protestants were predisposed towards the SDP, probably reinforced this Irish Catholic predisposition. Recognition and diplomatic relations Normal relations between Germany and Ireland were not possible in the immediate post-​war period. However, Ireland evinced interest in reviving Germany as a market for agricultural produce as early as 1946, realising that the opportunities for Irish exports to Germany were substantial. However, the division and occupation of Germany combined with the general post-​war chaos prevented a resumption of normal trade. The prospects for a reopening of normal trade only occurred in early 1949 when the Joint Export–​Import Agency of the Occupation Authorities (British and American) began to relax export–​import controls.1 The

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regularisation of relations had to wait until the passing of the Basic Law in 1949 and the establishment of the FRG. By June 1949, negotiations were underway for an Irish–​German agreement to revive trade for the first time in a decade. The agreement was signed in July 1950 and John Belton was appointed ‘General Consul’ to West Germany to handle trade relations. In late 1950, the West German government expressed an interest in establishing a Consulate-​General in Dublin and the negotiations commenced.2 West Germany gained the right to initiate and conduct full and normal diplomatic relations on 13 March 1951 when its cabinet agreed to a revision of the Occupation Statute to establish a foreign ministry. Underlining the centrality of enhancing the FRG’s foreign profile and freedom of manoeuvre, the chancellor, Dr Konrad Adenauer, became the foreign minister as well. (Eamon de Valera exercised the dual portfolio of Taoiseach and minister for external affairs for similar national reasons from 1932 to 1948.) Belton was immediately called to attend a meeting at the FRG Consular Office to be informed, ‘You are now actually sitting in the German Foreign Office and I am very glad to be able to tell you that you are our first visitor particularly so as you are a friend of ours.’ West Germany’s preference was for an exchange of minister plenipotentiaries rather than consul generals.3 On 4 June 1951, the establishment of full diplomatic relations between Ireland and West Germany was announced. Dublin immediately upgraded Belton to the position of envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary,4 and Ireland became the first state to appoint a minister to West Germany (with the exception of those countries which had earlier appointed representatives to the Allied High Commission to Germany). Ireland’s equanimity and benevolence in the post-​war period had created a positive impression in Bonn, which was anxious to expand its diplomatic exchanges quickly; the legitimacy-​ hungry West German state prioritised international recognition as the legally recognised German ‘successor state’. Dublin’s antipathy to both communism and the Soviet satellite state, the GDR, underlined the advantage to Bonn of forging diplomatic links. The practice of the Irish government was to negotiate with its West German counterpart as an equal, even when the international status and powers of the FRG were evolving and dependent on the extension of competences to it by the Allied Occupation Authorities. This was evident first in the early post-​war trade negotiations up to 1951 when it was unclear whether German delegations possessed the competence to negotiate on behalf of the FRG or whether they acted as nominees of the Occupation Authorities.5 In the early years following the foundation of the FRG, the Irish also complied with German requests to sign any agreements in Bonn. Such symbolic acts were steps in the consolidation of the status of the FRG,6 when West Germany’s status was questioned. The inhibiting constitution of the FRG (the Basic Law of 1949) was amended (the ‘little revision’) to permit the establishment of the German Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt or AA) in 1951, but the Occupation Statute remained in force.7

33

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An indication of Irish respect for West German interests occurred when Ireland abided by the request of the FRG in July 1951 to revive the 1930 Treaty of Commerce and Navigation. This provided for the mutual grant of most-​favoured nation treatment in trade and shipping matters.8 Compliance with Bonn’s wishes was an expression of benevolence as the Irish judged the 1930 treaty was partly redundant and required substantial modification.9 The legal adviser of the Department of External Affairs (hereafter referred to as DEA), Michael Rynne, would have preferred a new treaty, as to ‘hedge the 1930 Treaty around with a series of complicated interpretative notes’ might be difficult.10 The assistant secretary of the DEA, William P. Fay, however, argued: ‘there has been only a partial extinction of the German Reich, it is clear that its international personality continues’ in the form of ‘the not-​yet full-​sovereign government’ of the FRG. He declared the GDR was ‘a somewhat disreputable vassal of Soviet Russia’ with no diplomatic representation in Western Europe.11 Moreover, as the Irish state had accepted the treaty relationships of Britain, when it acquired independence in 1922, it was unreasonable to object to the FRG’s revival of the 1930 treaty.12 The treaty’s perpetuation was based on a gentleman’s agreement that some aspects of the treaty were no longer applicable.13 This Irish compliance with the FRG and Western Allies’ wishes had far-​reaching legal and political repercussions. Dublin considered it was acting in accordance with international law and justice. The legal adviser, Rynne, affirmed it was in Ireland’s interest to reconstruct what would now be termed ‘international society’ and this required the rule of international law founded on the principal pre-​war ‘lawmaking’ conventions operating between Ireland and ‘as many other countries as possible’.14 Thus, the Irish position was that the FRG was a partial successor state of the German Reich –​the Reich had only suffered an ‘extinction partielle’. This compliance with West German and the Western Allies’ desires contrasted with the foot dragging of Switzerland. This neutral state, on which Ireland modelled much of its practice in the late war, remained ‘somewhat cautious’ about recognising Bonn ‘too fully as a successor’ of the Reich in 1951 and 1952. Switzerland retained the hope that German reunification would occur in ‘due course’, but in the interim it wanted to preserve Swiss property and other rights in East Germany.15 In the circumstances, Bonn had reason to be grateful for the matter-​of-​fact recognition Dublin granted to it. Of course, commercial motives played a role in Irish calculations, but in the opposite direction to Swiss calculations. Dublin possessed trifling if any commercial links with the GDR. One member of the Department of External Affairs, William P. Fay, observed: we have positive reasons of a political and commercial character for acceding to the [West] German démarche. Without harming ourselves in any way, our agreement to regard the Treaty as being in force would show some friendliness towards the

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Ireland, West Germany and the New Europe new German state; and from the importance which the German delegation seem to attach to it, might conceivably lead to trading concessions which we might not gain otherwise.16

German goodwill For its part, Bonn assiduously cultivated the nascent relationship. After all, the newly minted West German state felt internationally friendless. Circumstances began to change with the development of the Cold War in the late 1940s; these contributed to a newfound American and Western European perception that Western economic vitality and security was contingent on a rehabilitated German state, but deep suspicions remained about the implications of a restored Germany. It was hardly surprising that Belton reported in 1950, ‘There is a great deal of sympathy in this country [the FRG] for Ireland because of our neutrality during the war and of partition.’17 The preponderance of evidence points to West German efforts to acknowledge and reciprocate Irish goodwill. In early 1952, West Germany had only 32 missions abroad, of which Ireland was one.18 By January 1953, it had opened 66 missions, but it was falling behind in its plan to reach its target of 135 foreign missions.19 Worrying charges emerged about some of the recruits to the new AA. As early as 1951, Belton noted that the Frankfurter Rundschau was proclaiming that the ‘Foreign Office bears an unfortunate but striking resemblance to Hitler’s; that it contained a disproportionate number of erstwhile Nazis.’ These allegations impelled Adenauer to appoint a judge to conduct an investigation.20 It is interesting to note that the new AA re-​employed the Reich’s former minister to Ireland, Dr Eduard Hempel.21 The Irish authorities and major dailies retained the view that his wartime conduct had been professional and assisted the survival of neutrality.22 Ireland had no objection to his re-​employment by the AA but it held major reservations about Henning Thomsen Hempel, who had been second-​in-​command at the Dublin Legation during Second World War. Thomsen applied for reinstatement in the AA in 1951. As Belton told Dublin, ‘Mr Thomsen’s sympathies if not affiliations with the Nazi party are well known to us and it will be interesting to see what appointment if any he receives’ in view of Adenauer’s decision to investigate former Nazis in the German AA.23 Thomsen had been an SS officer since 1937,24 and he was regarded as an intelligence officer and ‘a strutting Nazi’ by his Irish hosts.25 However, he secured a legation post in Lima, Peru in 1953, and went on to gain the rank of ambassador, serving in Iceland and Africa.26 Perhaps Thomsen had been an ambitious young man during the Nazi period, and dabbling in intelligence work was intriguing and exciting. So far no records have been unearthed to suggest that an Irish valuation of Thomsen’s suitability for a diplomatic appointment in South America was either sought or offered. Of course, it had no direct implication for

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Irish–​German relations. However, another former servant of the Nazi state was not so fortunate. The AA anxiously asked Belton ‘off the record’ in April 1951 if Ireland was agreeable to the appointment of Dr Joseph ‘Jupp’ Hoven as counsellor to the FRG Legation in Dublin ‘on account of his knowledge of Ireland’. Formal ‘prior approval’ from Ireland was not required for such a position, but the AA’s request for an opinion intimates that some in Bonn possessed doubts about his suitability or, at the very least, his acceptability to his intended hosts. The AA is ‘of course, well aware that it is not necessary to seek agreement for a Counsellor, but, nevertheless and in view of the fact that Mr Hoven spent some years in Ireland before the war, they would not make the appointment without prior approval’ of Iveagh House.27 Hoven was to all intents and purposes an agent during his sojourns in Ireland, North and South, as a ‘sometime anthropology student’ during the late 1930s. Working for Abwehr, he attempted to recruit Irishmen at the Friesack POW camp for sabotage and intelligence activities against Britain during Second World War.28 In fact, Irish Military Intelligence, G2, had amassed a disturbing dossier on Hoven’s intelligence activities. Even if it could not produce ‘absolute legal evidence’ as to his pre-​war activities and his associations with the IRA, G2’s director Dan Bryan’s advice was damning. He reported that British intelligence was familiar with Hoven’s dubious past in pre-​war Ireland and Northern Ireland, in addition to wartime Germany. London might well object to his appointment and British newspapers might latch on to it too causing embarrassment for all. The DEA Secretary summed up: ‘Probability is that if appointed here, British and Belfast papers would revive the “Nazi spy attached to German Legation in Dublin”.’29 In the light of this, Frank Aiken, the minister for external affairs, was resolute. He declared he did not want Hoven to return to Ireland on the grounds that his former activities were ‘inimical’ to the Irish government.30 The AA dropped the proposal. Fortunately, the AA’s selection for the first minister to Ireland, Dr Hermann Katzenberger, was sublime. Though the 60-​year-​old Katzenberger was nearing retirement, he had a distinguished career that appealed to his Irish hosts. As a longstanding Catholic democrat, an advocate of political Catholicism and a venerable anti-​Nazi, he was decidedly palatable to Irish circles. Katzenberger was a leading member of the German Catholic Centre Party during the interwar period. He was also the Press Chief of the Heinrich Brüning government (1930–​ 32) during the period in which Daniel A. Binchy was the first Irish minister to the Reich. Dismissed from his post on the fall of Brüning, he eventually gained a post in the press section of the AA in 1934. He was considered politically unreliable by the Nazi regime, so he was sidelined and left the service to enter the press and publishing industry in 1938. In 1945 he became a founding member of the CDU and played a leading role in the party. He became the Head of the Press Office of the Land of North-​Rhine Westphalia in 1947 and then

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the Administrator-​Director of the Bundesrat (Federal Upper House) in 1950.31 Although close to the end of his career, Katzenberger cut a high profile. He was committed to placing German–​Irish relations on a solid footing. German gratitude Katzenberger took the opportunity on the presentation of his credentials to President Seán T. O’Kelly to express German gratitude for Irish relief, particularly to children, after the war.32 This set the tone for German public and cultural diplomacy during the early years of the FRG’s legation in Dublin. In September 1951, soon after his appointment, Katzenberger paid tribute to the Save the German Children Society’s efforts to provide relief.33 This society and others including the Irish Red Cross continued their humanitarianism into the 1950s. They had changed their focus away from fostering children to supporting ethnic Germans expelled from Eastern Europe who were adjusting with difficulty to life in West Germany.34 Throughout the 1950s the Save the German Children Society gained repeated tributes from West Germany for its work.35 In 1953, Katzenberger decorated approximately 30 individuals in recognition of their charitable services with the society, the Irish Red Cross, the Cork-​Cologne Fund and other humanitarian organisations in supplying relief to post-​war Germany.36 The recipients included the Supreme Court president/​chief justice and former attorney general Conor Alexander Maguire, the senator and lord mayor of Dublin Andrew Clarkin, the professor of Irish T. F. O’Rahilly and the chief inspector in the Technical Education Branch of the Department of Education Dr Proinnséas Ó Súilleabháin.37 West Germany’s proposal to grant the highest decorations to the president (Seán T. O’Kelly), the Taoiseach (John A. Costello), and the former Taoiseach (Eamon de Valera) as a sign of German appreciation for Irish relief provoked uneasiness.38 In terms of protocol, DEA fretted Ireland had no decorations to offer in return and, aside from the president, no member of the government had accepted foreign decorations before (other than papal decorations).39 Behind the various protocol issues a deeper political reservation lurked: the First Inter-​ Party Government worried that decorating Valera, the leader of the opposition, might insinuate German recognition for his central role in sustaining neutrality during the war. The AA attempted to pacify Irish anxieties by impressing that any award signified a ‘unilateral gesture of gratitude for what had been done, in a time of grievous need’. In the German estimation, de Valera as the ‘immediate post-​war Taoiseach had a great deal to do with originating and carrying out the work of help for German children’.40 The prospect of embarrassment waned when de Valera automatically declined the offer. He went as far as to advise that if he was Taoiseach he would ‘be slow to accept’ it as ‘the conferring of such a decoration would be liable to be misconstrued as a mark of recognition of the

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State’s neutrality in the war … and might, therefore, have a harmful effect on this country and its external relations.’41 Costello followed de Valera’s advice and declined the decoration on grounds that the president’s acceptance of an award in his role as Head of State would be adequate recognition of Irish humanitarianism.42 President O’Kelly accepted the award on 13 April 1955.43 The FRG president, Professor Theodor Heuss, informed his counterpart that the German people would ‘never forget’ Irish charity during the post-​war period, ‘in a world still racked by bitterness and dissension’.44 However, the concerns triggered by the offer of German decorations to the present and former heads of the government revealed deep Irish sensitivities. The controversies surrounding the meanings attributable to wartime neutrality by international commentators clearly remained omnipresent. The FRG and its people’s expressions of appreciation continued. On 28 January 1956 Katzenberger, unveiled a sculptured fountain in St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin, as an expression of German gratitude. Funded by the voluntary German society, Dankspende des deutschen Volkes (German Peoples’ Thanksgiving Fund), the bronze fountain was the work of a famous Bavarian Professor Dr Josef Wackerle.45 At the unveiling, Katzenberger stated: We in Germany will never forget the generosity … I myself shall always bear in mind what an official of the Department of External Affairs once said to one of my colleagues, i.e., that the Irish people did not so much deserve the gratitude of the German people as we owe gratitude to God for having spared Ireland from the horrors of war. That, I think, is indeed the expression of a truly Christian point of view.46

Various German organisations also presented works of art to a number of Irish voluntary associations that had assisted in the alleviation of post-​war distress.47 The memory of Irish charity remained in the German official and popular consciousness. Sports and cultural diplomacy In addition to the speedy re-​ establishment of diplomatic relations, Ireland assisted in the ‘normalisation’ of West Germany in other ways. The intensification of sports and cultural links formed an essential element of the rehabilitation of the German people. For West Germans engagement in international sporting competitions was a way back into the civilised world. Such sports diplomacy was a priority for Bonn, the unassuming capital of West Germany. In 1951, German organisers selected Dublin as a venue for several contests involving German national teams in their first international outings since Second World War. German authorities regarded Ireland as a safe venue that guaranteed receptive and neutral

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sporting audiences to reintroduce West German teams to international competition. During 1951, the West German amateur boxing, athletics, and football teams came to Dublin to play in some of their first international fixtures since 1939.48 German diplomats carefully observed the reception of their teams by Irish audiences and newspapers. The FRG mission reported on the warm welcome the national athletics team received in July 1951 from the Irish crowd, and tellingly remarked that it was gratifying to witness that the Irish, unlike other peoples, were starting to identify Germans not as war criminals but as ordinary people.49 The West Germany–​Ireland soccer match in Dublin on 17 October 1951 was a significant fillip for German self-​confidence, even though Ireland won by a slim margin. The match was part of the country’s post-​war return to friendly internationals. No German team had competed in the FIFA World Cup of 1950. This Irish outing by the West German national team was an important preliminary step in the German return to international competition. Katzenberger attached importance to the attendance of the president of the Republic of Ireland, the minister for defence, and the minister for external affairs. He was extremely pleased at the positive and respectful reception of the West German team by the Irish press and spectators. Notwithstanding Ireland’s 3–​2 victory, Katzenberger reported that sport could create and reinforce bonds between nations. Of course, he asserted that a German equalizer should have stood, and implied the British referee was at fault for this.50 The 1951 fixture was the first step in West Germany’s build-​up to the FIFA World Cup of 1954, when the unfancied West Germany beat the favourites Hungary in what Germans now refer to as ‘Das Wunder von Bern’ in Bern(e), Switzerland. Katzenberger supported the foundation of an Irish–​German Society in Dublin soon after he arrived, becoming its patron.51 The Legation managed the administration of the society temporarily in an effort to get it off to a good start.52 Key members of the former Save the German Children Society were involved. At least two members of the inaugural committee were members of the German diplomatic team in Dublin. The influence of the Save the German Children Society persisted at the highest level, with the election of the former president and founder of the society, Dr Proinnséas Ó Súilleabháin, as President of the Irish–​German Society on 24 October 1951. The Irish–​German Society’s stated objectives were explicitly apolitical  –​to foster cultural links only. It stated publicly that Jews were welcome as members of the society.53 Within two years, society membership had grown to between 400 and 500. It engaged in weekly gatherings, hiking tours, traditional dancing, building up a library of German books and music, and teaching German.54 Smaller German societies formed in Cork and Limerick from 1951 onwards.55 The Dublin branch of the Irish–​German Society was very active during the 1950s and the West German Legation built a close working relationship with it on matters of mutual interest. For example, the society organised a

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two-​week-​long and high-​profile ‘German festival’ in October 1958, involving numerous exhibitions, lectures, musical recitals, films and other activities.56 A unique educational institution emerged from the Irish–​German Society in the early 1950s. Part of the premises of the Irish–​German Society in Dublin at 44 Leeson Park, which was leased by the German Legation on behalf of the society, was set aside for an after-​hours German language school. It catered for the children of the staff of the Legation, other interested members of the German community in Dublin, and a few remaining German children (mainly orphans) who had been brought over by the Irish Red Cross and Save the German Children Society efforts in the late 1940s but remained under the care of Irish foster parents.57 Members of the German Legation in Dublin played a critical role in establishing and supporting the school; Dr Katzenberger was ‘keenly interested’ in it and the cultural attaché, Dr Kolb, played a key role.58 In September 1954, the inadequacies of after-​school teaching of German led to the establishment of a German day-​school funded by the Bonn authorities; the school was ineligible for grants from the Department of Education as it did not conform to the standard Irish curriculum. In 1957 the FRG purchased a house on a 4-​acre site in Donnybrook to place the school on a permanent footing. The West German government posted German teachers to it as they would to any school in West Germany. The name of the school was significant –​St. Kilian’s –​ as it recalled the work of the celebrated seventh century Irish missionary who evangelised northern Bavaria and Thuringia. He is still venerated in Würzburg.59 A ‘noticeable tendency’ was that several early teachers at St. Kilian’s originated from Bavaria. This reflected a strong Catholic connection between Bavaria and Ireland.60 St. Kilian’s rapidly grew to incorporate the Kindergarten and secondary levels, to complement its original focus on primary education. By the 1960s St. Kilian’s had established an ‘enviable’ educational reputation. In 1965 a ‘good proportion’ of the school’s students were ‘purely Irish’; only approximately 40 per cent of the student body was German by this stage. The school differed greatly from the vast majority of its Irish counterparts in that the student body was co-​ educational and inter-​denominational in complexion.61 Conclusion Overall, German diplomats and those Germans who encountered Ireland in the early 1950s gained a largely favourable impression. As a former neutral state, uninvolved in the hostilities of Second World War, the Irish population as a whole was viewed as even-​handed in its reception of Germans, perhaps even uniquely so in Western Europe and more particularly in the English-​speaking world.62 The UK remained the national ‘other’ from the Irish perspective. The several hundred Germans living in Ireland were delighted by the benign Irish official and popular stance towards Germany.63 Katzenberger even formed the

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view in the spring of 1952 that the minister for external affairs, Frank Aiken, retained a ‘certain liking’ for Germany and its people despite visiting the country only once (in 1928) and Germany’s Nazi record.64 As the decade advanced, however, Germans grew to disapprove of many features of Irish foreign policy. These highlighted differences in foreign policy outlooks. West German and Irish public diplomacy may have sustained a public chorus that celebrated a first-​rate relationship, and indeed their diplomatic and cultural links were of a high quality, but fundamental cleavages materialised. Notes 1 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6, Department of Industry and Commerce (hereafter DIC) Memo, Trade Relations between Ireland and Germany, June 1949, p. 3. 2 Molohan, Germany and Ireland, pp. 67–​9; ‘New Exports Pact with W. Germany’, Irish Times, 13 July 1950, p. 1; ‘Irish Trade with West Germany’, Irish Times, 15 June 1949, p. 1. Irish Times, 13 July 1950, p. 1; ‘Irish Trade with West Germany’, Irish Times, 15 June 1949, p. 1. 3 NAI, DFA, Confidential Report Series (hereafter CRS), P12/​3A: Bonn, Belton to Nunan, 12 March 1951. 4 ‘Mr. Belton’s New Post in Germany’, Irish Times, June 5, 1951, p. 1; ‘Exchange of Diplomats’, Irish Independent, June 5, 1951, p. 7. 5 See for example NAI, DFA, 307/​10/​6, Foreign Trade Committee, Minutes of Meeting held on 29 June 1951. 6 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​4, Memo by KR, 22 July 1952; ibid., Biggar to Murray, 21 September 1952. 7 NAI, DFA, 305/​109/​1, Rynne to Butler, 7 December 1950; NAI, DFA, 305/​190 II, DEA Memo, The FRG, 2 August 1966, p. 1. 8 NAI, DFA, Secretary’s Office Files (hereafter SOF), A 54 I, Agreed Minute, Draft presented to Germany on 15 June 1953; NAI, DFA, 307/​72/​1 II, Memorandum for Government, Agreements of 1945, 1953 and 1958 relating to Payment of Compensation by Germany for Bomb Damage, Annex II, 13 June 1959; NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​4, DEA Memorandum for Government, Renewal of Trade Agreement with Germany, 24 September 1952, p. 4. 9 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​1, Fay to Secretary, 10 July 1951; ibid., M.R/​J.F. to Butler, 7 December 1950. 10 NAI, DFA, 305/​109/​1, Rynne to Butler, 7 December 1950. 11 Ibid., Fay to Secretary, 10 July 1951. 12 Ibid. 13 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​4, DEA Memorandum for the Government, Renewal of Trade Agreement with Germany, 24 September 1952, p. 4. 14 NAI, DFA, 305/​109/​1, Rynne to Butler, 7 December 1950. 15 Ibid., Warnock to Fay, 12 October 1951; ibid, Fay to Secretary, 2 January 1952. 16 Ibid., Fay to Secretary, 10 July 1951. 17 NAI, DFA, 315/​14/​70, Belton to Nunan, 2 November 1950.

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18 NAI, DFA, CRS, 313/​ 10, Memo, Germany’s Diplomatic Representation, 31 January 1953. 19 Ibid. 20 Ibid., Belton to Secretary, 1 October 1951. 21 Nichevo [R. M. Smylie], ‘An Irishman’s Diary’, Irish Times, 2 February 1952, p. 7; Duggan, Herr Hempel, pp. 226–​7. 22 Nichevo [R. M. Smylie], ‘An Irishman’s Diary’, Irish Times, 2 February 1952, p. 7; Hull, Irish Secrets, and Duggan, Herr Hempel, passim. Both Hull and Duggan do not view Hempel in uncritical terms but on balance they reveal his ability to satisfy conflicting demands. He may have manoeuvred to maintain a distance from intelligence work, but he engaged in it to a degree to satisfy his masters in Berlin while advising them that such activities endangered Irish neutrality and that neutrality was in Germany’s best interest. 23 NAI, DFA, CRS, 313/​10, Belton to Secretary, 1 October 1951. 24 O’Donoghue, Hitler’s Irish Voices, Appendix V, p. 219. 25 Duggan, Herr Hempel, pp. 26–​7, 161–​3. 26 Ibid., p. 226. 27 NAI, DFA, SOF, P213, Belton to Nunan, 14 April 1951. 28 Hull, Irish Secrets, pp. 32, 47, 107,217–​21. 29 NAI, DFA, SOF, P213, Memo by Nunan, Josef Hoven, 21 April 1951; ibid., Bryan to Nunan, 1 May 1951. 30 Ibid., Belton to Nunan, 14 April 1951. See unsigned annotations on this letter dated 30 June 1951 and 2 July 1951. 31 Ibid.; ‘ “Almost Certain” For Dublin Post’, Irish Times, 3 February 1951, p. 8; ‘An Irishman’s Diary’, Irish Times, 16 April 1956, p. 6; ‘Former German Minister Dies’, Irish Times, 25 November 1958, p. 8; Elsasser, Germany and Ireland, p. 69; H. Schwarz, Konrad Adenauer, vol. 1: A German Politician and Statesman in a Period of War, Revolution, and Reconstruction (Providence, RI: Berghahn Books, 1995), p. 368; N. D. Cary, The Path to Christian Democracy: German Catholics and the Party System from Windthorst to Adenauer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), pp. 232–​3; E. L. Evans, The German Center Party, 1870–​1933: A Study in Political Catholicism (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1981), p. 254. 32 ‘German Envoy Presents Credentials’, Irish Independent, 27 July 1951, p.  7; ‘Credentials Presented By German Minister’, Irish Times, 27 July 1951, p. 1. 33 ‘Save the German Children Society’, Irish Times, 14 September 1951, p. 5. 34 Ibid.; AA-​ PA, Bestand B31, Band 63, Letter by O’Connor to unknown, 25 September 1950. 35 ‘Germans send Token of Thanks’, Irish Independent, 12 January 1952, p. 4. 36 NAI, DFA 301/​7/​51, List provided by Richthofen, 19 Aug. 1953; Horan to Nunan, 8 December 1953; ‘Awards for Saving German Children’, Irish Times, 17 December 1953, p. 7; ‘German Medals for Irish Men and Women’, Irish Times, 14 December 1953, p. 5. 37 NAI, DFA 301/​7/​51, List provided by Richthofen, 19 August 1953; ibid., Horan minute, 19 August 1953. Fearghal McGarry asserts that O’Sullivan was an ‘anti-​ Semite propagandist’ in the early 1940s. McGarry has unearthed evidence to suggest that G2 regarded him as a problematical individual who socialised and associated with

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a group of cranks, fascists and pro-​Nazis in Dublin. O’Duffy’s biographer thus views him as a Nazi ‘fellow traveller’ in the early years and months of Second World War. See Fearghal McGarry, Eoin O’Duffy: A Self-​Made Hero (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 330. 38 NAI, DFA 301/​7/​74 IA. 39 Ibid., TJH/​EK to Nunan, 25 October 1954. 40 Ibid., Belton to Nunan, 4 October 1954. 41 NAI, DT, S15745, Moynihan Minute, 12 November 1954. 42 NAI, DFA, 301/​7/​74 IA, Aide-Mémoire (to FRG), 6 January 1955. See also NAI, DT, S15745, Moynihan Minute, 7 April 1955. 43 ‘W. German honour for President’, Irish Times, 14 April 1955; see also NAI, DT S15745. 44 NAI, DT, S15745, Translation of the German Minister’s Address, c. 14 April 1955. 45 ‘German Monument to Irish Generosity’, Irish Independent, 28 January 1956; ‘The Germans Remember’, Sunday Press, 22 January 1956. 46 ‘Germans will not forget Irish Aid’, Evening Herald, 28 January 1956; ‘German Gift Unveiled’, Irish Independent, 20 January 1956. 47 ‘German Monument to Irish Generosity’, Irish Independent, 28 January 1956. 48 Boxing Correspondent, ‘Irish Boxers’ Task Tomorrow’, Irish Times, 15 February 1951, p.  2; ‘Germans will be a Big Attraction’, Irish Times, 2 July 1951, p.  2; ‘German Athletes Beat Crusaders’, Irish Times, 6 July 1951, p. 2; ‘Ireland Beat Germany 3–​2’, Irish Independent, 18 October 1951, p. 10. 49 Auswärtiges Amt-​Politisches Archiv, Berlin (hereafter referred to as AA-​PA), Bestand B31, Band 63, Report, Achilles to AA, Irisch-​deutscher Sportwettkampf, 6 July 1951. 50 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 63, Report, Katzenberger to AA, Fußball-​Länderkampf Deutschland-​Irland in Dublin, 19 October 1951; ‘Ireland’s Chances are Slight but’, Irish Independent, 17 October 1951, p. 10; ‘Ireland will be Lucky to avoid Defeat’, Irish Times, 17 October 1951, p. 2; ‘Ireland’s great Win over Germany’, Irish Times, 18 October 1951, p. 2. 51 AA-​PA, Bestand 31, Band 63, Katzenberger to AA, Irisch-​ausländische Gesellschaften, 16 January 1952. 52 Ibid. 53 ‘Irish-​German Society formed’, Irish Times, 25 October 1951, p. 3; AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 63, Katzenberger to AA, Gründung einer Irisch-​Deutschen Gesellschaft, 29 October 1951. 54 NAI, DFA 363/​163, Kolb to Durnin, 13 January 1954. 55 Ibid. 56 Ibid., Irish German Society presents German Festival, 1–​15 October 1958. 57 Ibid., Note of a Meeting with Baron von Richthofen, 19 January 1953. 58 John Horgan, ‘St. Killian’s School, Dublin’, Irish Times, 21 May 1965, p. 10. 59 For further information on St. Kilian’s German School see www.kilians.com/​[accessed 1 May 2012]; John Horgan, ‘St. Killian’s School, Dublin’, Irish Times, 21 May 1965, p. 10; Molohan, Germany and Ireland, pp. 58, 82. 60 John Horgan, ‘St. Kilian’s School, Dublin’, Irish Times, 21 May 1965, p. 10. 61 Ibid.

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62 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 60, Report, Author unknown (probably a West German traveller or journalist) to AA, Eindrücke aus Irland, c. 30 July 1953; ibid., Report, Katzenberger to AA, Band 61, Zahl der deutschen Staatsangehörigen, 21 April 1952. 63 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 60, Report, Author unknown (probably a West German traveller or journalist) to AA, Eindrücke aus Irland, c. 30 July 1953; ibid., Band 61, Zahl der deutschen Staatsangehörigen, Report, Katzenberger to AA, 21 April 1952. 64 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 60, Charakteristik irischer Persönlichkeiten, Report, Katzenberger to AA, 21 April 1952.

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Emerging dissonance

On the surface it appeared an affinity existed between the two countries in the late 1940s and early 1950s. However, the cultural, sports and public diplomacy concealed fundamental cleavages. This chapter sketches how tensions emerged and grew as the FRG consolidated in the 1950s. To a great extent the differences reflected the two countries’ distinct wartime experiences and their differential engagement with the US-​sponsored reconstruction of Western Europe and international politics generally in the early Cold War. West European states were relegated to a secondary power status under the US defence umbrella. US-​backed trade liberalisation promoted growing Western European interdependence in the post-​war decade, while alliances (NATO, the Warsaw Pact and other pacts internationally) transformed global security. The first chancellor of the FRG, Konrad Adenauer, inherited an occupied and provisional state that was mistrusted by its neighbours because of its recent history and its strategic weight. He chose an unqualified Western orientation and adopted a policy of reconciliation and entanglement with the West. This was an overt rejection of the totalitarianism of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. West Germany’s swift economic recovery and the opportunities presented by European integration eased its normalisation. In effect, Bonn began to transmute into the indispensable American ally on mainland Europe and it shifted from an outcast into an irreplaceable insider. Conversely, Ireland presented an enigma to many: it was pro-​Western, anti-​ communist and possessed a free economy but it remained neutralist, industrially protected and irredentist. The local (i.e., Anglo-​Irish, nationalist and economic) factors animating Irish foreign policy choices were viewed as marginal by external observers, who defined their identity by reference to the global Cold War framework. For a small state like Ireland, which was geographically peripheral to and mostly insulated from the major international disputes, the local context was the defining one in view of its identity and weakness relative to its neighbour.

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The tensions generated by this discordance increased as the 1950s progressed and reflected West Germany’s growing acceptance as a ‘normal’ state in the Western system. Tensions were largely submerged beneath a mutual interest in cordiality and a search for ‘friends’ and trade, but by the mid-​to late 1950s they were indisputable. Let us start by delineating the stance of West Germany. Westpolitik, 1951–​55 Adenauer was not only the Chancellor of West Germany from 1949; he also took up the portfolio of minister for foreign affairs in 1951 when the new state was granted the right to conduct an independent foreign policy. This highlighted the importance he attached to steering the state on its first steps in the international domain. He retained the portfolio of foreign affairs until June 1955 by which time he had secured Germany’s status with its elevation to full membership of NATO. However, Adenauer’s approach to West Germany’s orientation was constant throughout the remainder of his tenure in the Chancellery (until 1963) as he persisted with the consolidation of West Germany’s status. Even though he relinquished the foreign ministership in 1955 he retained a hold over the AA and successive ministers until he left the Chancellery in 1963. Irish diplomatic assessments consistently bear this out. Throughout this time, he embraced the West (Westpolitik) in order to anchor Germany. The West’s value system was more amenable to the Catholic Rhinelander’s than that offered by Soviet communism. Deep engagement with European integration offered a means of restoring Germany’s reputation and reassure neighbours, especially France, that West Germany lacked aggressive objectives. Franco-​German and German–​US reconciliations were the cornerstones of his foreign policy framework and he would not endanger either. West Germany also accepted trade liberalisation; the process was, after all, sponsored by the United States, the underwriter of West European security, and the key occupying power of West Germany. The chancellor desired German membership of NATO as a potent emblem to show that the Western Allies accepted their former adversary as an equal. He relied on proving to the Western occupation powers, particularly sceptical France, that West Germany would irrevocably bind itself to regional and international institutions as a security guarantee. In effect West Germany subsumed itself in a dense network of binding relationships with the OEEC, Council of Europe, IMF, World Bank, and sister organisations of the UN (FAO, WHO, UNESCO, ILO).1 Thus Adenauer’s objective was to reconfigure the German national character (which he distrusted) in constructive ways, achieve the removal of Western occupation forces by consent and restore full sovereignty. West Germany would become ‘a model democracy, an economic powerhouse, a staunch supporter of European federation, and a close ally of the Western powers’.2 Adenauer hoped that reunification would eventually materialise as Bonn’s

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success would offer an attractive alternative to the people of the GDR. The puppet government there and the power of the Soviet Union would not be capable of containing popular discontent.3 Thus Adenauer’s ‘policy of strength’, based on integration into the West, would work on many levels. Adenauer drew a lesson from Irish history in taking this line of attack. During 1947 and 1948 Lord Pakenham was the chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster with special responsibility for the British zone of Germany and he befriended Adenauer. Pakenham had a strong attachment to Ireland and was a friend of Eamon de Valera from the early 1930s. (He wrote for the Irish Press on several occasions during the war and would later co-​author de Valera’s official biography.)4 On relinquishing his zonal responsibilities in 1948, Pakenham presented Adenauer with a copy of his 1935 book on the Anglo-​Irish Treaty5 and intimated his hope that Germany would not confront the same tragic choice Ireland faced during the negotiations of 1921: ‘Sign away your birth-​right or see your country ravaged.’ Adenauer’s response was prescient: ‘If you mean that half a loaf to start with is better than no bread I couldn’t agree with you more.’6 This disclosure by Pakenham suggests Adenauer possessed an urbane understanding of the issues at stake in the treaty negotiations. Judging by Pakenham’s acquaintance with both Adenauer and de Valera, this was hardly surprising. In his memoirs of 1953, Pakenham supposed that Adenauer’s ‘main lines of future policy were already mapped out’ as early as 1948. That was a year before the FRG was formed and Adenauer became Chancellor. Pakenham claimed Adenauer’s statesmanship after 1949 brought few surprises as he resolutely followed his chosen policy mix to prove Germany’s ‘capacity, co-​operativeness and trustworthiness’.7 A reading of Belton’s reports from Bonn during his posting from 1951 to 1955 confirms this. In spite of the intermittent nature of Belton’s political reporting, he did submit a solid appreciation of Adenauer’s Westpolitik. Belton’s accounts and the Irish ambassador’s reports from Washington, DC showed how the United States, in particular John Foster Dulles, the US secretary of state, and the State Department, were of a strong like mind with Adenauer in their assessment of the central European situation. Adenauer’s prime advantage was unwavering US support in the pursuit of his vision.8 The Political Division of DEA deemed Adenauer an adherent of Bismarck’s precept that ‘politics is the art of the possible’. In the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s brutal suppression of the East German uprising (1953), the division judged that Adenauer had already decisively advanced the sovereignty and equality of rights of the FRG.9 The East German workers’ ‘uprising’ of 17 June 1953 was an unambiguous gesture of popular dissatisfaction at the negative socio-​economic consequences of Sovietisation and central planning. It escalated into demands for free elections but was violently repressed when the Soviets intervened militarily to sustain the hold of Walter Ulbricht and the Socialist Unity Party (the successor to the German Communist Party) on East Germany. The uprising and its suppression fortified

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Adenauer’s claims that Westpolitik was in the best interests of the German people. It secured democracy, human values, a thriving economy and international normalisation. Moreover, it was attractive to the unfortunate population of GDR. He pointed to the FRG’s membership of the Council of Europe, the ECSC and the signing of the treaty to establish the European Defence Community (EDC) (May 1952), which signified that its Western neighbours, and former adversaries, were beginning to trust the new state and treat it as an equal. This offered a stark juxtaposition in comparison to the brutal Soviet treatment of the East Germans.10 Irish commentators, including Belton, realised electoral support for Adenauer and Westpolitik could wither if he failed to deliver on the termination of the Occupation Statute of 1949. Under this law the FRG had been granted self-​government but its sovereignty was restricted: the Western Allies retained the right to maintain occupation forces and to control the new state’s defence policies. Belton also evinced grave doubts about the chances of Adenauer policy delivering reunification. He went so far as to claim in 1953 that German reunification was ‘a pious hope … It is like world peace … a highly desirable thing but unattainable’. Moscow had ‘no intention of loosening her grip on Eastern Germany’.11 On another occasion, Belton noted the prospects for achieving unity without conflict were remote and the Germans would not countenance another war.12 In September 1954, Conor Cruise O’Brien explained how the power-​political logic underlying Adenauer’s dismayed West German public opinion. Adenauer’s commitment to US President Dwight Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles’s declared policies of ‘rollback’ and ‘massive retaliation’ (an overwhelming nuclear response to any Soviet aggression) frightened many (not just the Social Democrats). Sections of the CDU and the Freie Demokratische Partei (Free Democratic Party: FDP) held reservations about Adenauer’s ‘negotiation from strength’ approach to the Soviet Union and his desire for Germany to rearm within a Western framework. O’Brien estimated there was still the possibility of  ‘a strong movement of opinion in favour of a deal with the East’ and for the Soviet Union to secure German reunification on its terms.13 Until 1955, the reports of both Belton and Aedan O’Beirne evoked a sense of uncertainty about the ageing Adenauer’s chances of success but Belton believed Adenauer’s policies were the only means to stabilise West Germany and counterbalance the Soviet threat.14 As for O’Beirne, he concluded that the SDP, even following the death of its first post-​war leader Kurt Schumacher, did ‘not provide an effective alternative’ to Adenauer. He grasped that the SDP was only beginning to move away from its traditional Marx–​Engels analysis of history and its affinity with neutralism; in the long term, it might become a catch-​all party rather than simply a working-​class one. Then it might have ‘a large influence’. However, the only circumstance in which the SDP would gain power in the short term was if Adenauer’s policies failed completely.15 Belton and O’Beirne were reading the German political situation astutely.

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The Head of the DEA Information Division, Conor Cruise O’Brien, also offered a useful assessment of the German mood in 1954. That September he was on an extended visit organised by the press department of the FRG. He spoke to several ‘unofficial personalities’ and their attitudes displayed ‘little real friendliness’ towards the three Western occupying powers. They approved of Adenauer’s approach on pragmatic grounds ‘because the Americans are the greatest power’. O’Brien did not discover any ‘final commitment’ to the Atlantic Alliance among these ‘unofficial personalities’. Instead he detected a ‘guarded contempt’ for America, in particular towards its diplomacy and ‘hysterical’ attitudes to communism, but also towards the American belief in the ‘permanence’ of Adenauer’s policy.16 The conversion of the electorate to Adenauer’s vision was slow and voters’ support for his road map was conditional on success. O’Brien’s sceptical assessment of German opinion in September 1954 was partly a consequence of the EDC debacle. The French National Assembly’s failure to ratify the EDC treaty on 30 August 1954 was a grave setback for Adenauer. The EDC treaty was designed by the French to forestall the American wish to make West Germany a member of NATO and end the occupation of its territory. The EDC would permit Germany to contribute to international units under an integrated command for the benefit of Western European defence, but in the final stages of the treaty’s ratification the Gaullists were not prepared to submit France to the same constraints as West Germany. In advance of the French vote, Belton predicted that should the EDC be defeated, a disgraced Adenauer would be ousted, leading to the formation of a coalition led by the Socialists, which would negotiate with the Soviets to bring about reunification. Belton concluded, ‘If that ever happens, it will be not only the end of Western Germany, but would involve that transfer of the overwhelming balance of power to Soviet Russia.’17 Immediately after the French veto, a discerning Belton ventured, ‘it seems to me that the only intelligent solution is the grant of full sovereignty to Germany on the understanding that its armed forces will form an integral part of NATO’.18 Fortunately, for Adenauer, neither the British nor the Americans would allow Gaullist obstructionism to prevent German rearmament or its integration into the Atlantic Alliance. A British endeavour, the Eden initiative, salvaged ‘shipwreck’ of Adenauer’s EDC policy,19 to safeguard both German and French interests. Under the ensuing Paris Treaties, West Germany promised not to manufacture atomic, biological or chemical weapons, but could develop a standing army. Occupation ended and full sovereignty was granted, with the exception of Berlin. The package deal allowed Germany to join NATO, which it did after May 1955. French security concerns were addressed by Britain’s guarantee to permanently deploy four divisions in West Germany under NATO command. Henceforth, any British and American military forces in the FRG contributed to NATO defence; they were not occupation forces. It was a remarkable set of compromises

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that gave Adenauer and the Anglo-​Americans what they wanted, while permitting France to save face. It amounted to the granting of West German sovereignty by conceding military powers to it as part of the Atlantic Alliance. President Seán T. O’Kelly sent a congratulatory message to President Theodor Heuss to mark the occasion.20 Belton undoubtedly admired Adenauer. He reported in February 1955, ‘He [Adenauer] has consistently shown a most commendable patience and understanding, vis-​à-​vis the various vacillations of the French Government … He has taken blow after blow with a calm courage that has inspired a world respect.’21 Vindicated, Adenauer relinquished the title of minister for foreign affairs in June 1955. This was simply a nominal change as he continued to control the direction of German foreign policy closely and in accordance with his Westpolitik priorities. The contrast Even though Irish diplomats respected Bonn’s general Westernisation policy, including its alignment with NATO, as the only feasible option, the orientation of Adenauer’s Germany differed markedly from Ireland’s. Ireland’s First Inter-​ Party Government took landmark decisions in 1948 and 1949 that had enduring effects. They involved departure from the British Commonwealth, the institution of the Republic of Ireland and a refusal to accept the US invitation to join NATO. With the achievement of the republic, partition assumed a renewed salience as the unresolved point between the newly constituted Republic of Ireland and the UK. The pernicious effects of anti-​partition were displayed when Seán MacBride rejected the US request to join NATO in 1949. The staunchly republican MacBride failed in his misjudged efforts to exchange membership of NATO for the unrealisable attainment of an all-​island Ireland. Afterwards, no other national political party or national leader would contemplate joining NATO unless partition ended. To do so would expose them to criticism for not adhering to nationalist and republican principles. Regardless, Ireland’s affinity lay with the West. It refused to exchange diplomats or maintain any meaningful diplomatic or formal contact with the Soviet bloc. A Soviet veto blocked Irish membership of the UN for almost a decade. Ireland was left to wait for a package deal in 1955 which permitted US friends and allies, including Ireland, into the UN in exchange for the entry of Soviet associates. Fearing a third world war over Berlin or Korea, successive governments (1948–​51; 1951–​54) sought a defence agreement with, and weapons from, the United States, but these endeavours failed. For the United States to agree to such a bilateral would undermine NATO and there were more pressing demands for American munitions within the Atlantic Alliance.22 The longer Ireland remained outside NATO, the more entrenched its neutralist line became.

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However, Ireland, like most West European states, was gravely concerned by East–​West tensions, despite its unarmed neutrality. The Department of External Affairs regarded ‘Germany as a country of major interest in the present European situation’.23 Its Political Division devoted considerable attention to the unfolding East–​West arguments about the reunification of Germany and the issue of Berlin. The fear of a third world war, tension over the status of Berlin and speculation about a reunited Germany were front-​page news in Ireland perennially. It was unclear whether the ideological and geopolitical disputes in central Europe were containable. Before the Korean War armistice (November 1954) and the binding of Western Germany as an equal into the Euro-​Atlantic set-​up (especially NATO in 1955 and the EEC in 1957), a sense of international impermanence reigned that was deeply unsettling for Ireland. Ireland played a role in the early European cooperation discussions of the late 1940s. It was a founding member of the OEEC in 1948, a recipient of US grant aid under the European Recovery Program (ERP), otherwise termed Marshall Aid, and a founding member of the Council of Europe in 1949). But, it took no part in the advanced forms of integration in the 1950s, that is, the ECSC (1951) and the EEC (1957). Involvement in a supranational Europe was problematic for the Irish political class, regardless of party affiliation, with the sole exception of the idiosyncratic Seán MacBride, who, as minister for external affairs, was unable to convert the First Inter-​Party Government to his way of thinking (1948–​51). In the subsequent Fianna Fáil administration (1951–​54), Taoiseach Eamon de Valera and the new minister for external affairs, Frank Aiken, adopted a reserved attitude to deeper European cooperation recognising the constraints of Ireland’s trade dependence on Britain. The senior department of government, the Department of Finance, was wedded to the primacy of the Anglo-​Irish economic relationship and the sterling bloc. The young Irish state also possessed a sovereignty-​defensive mind-​set. De Valera encapsulated the Irish approach on deeper European integration when he informed the Council of Europe on the 17 August 1949, ‘If the nations here on the mainland of the continent consider that they cannot wait for us, perhaps they should consider going on without us by an agreement among themselves for a closer union.’24 This Irish perspective prevailed until the early 1960s. The Irish foreign policy outlook possessed substantial implications for its interactions with West Germany as the 1950s unfolded. The equivalency thesis In rejecting membership of NATO in 1949, Seán MacBride had effectively argued that since NATO and the United States supported German reunification, they should also support Irish reunification. After 1949, the Irish Republic maintained this policy of drawing a crude analogy between the political division of the island of Ireland and Germany to augment its anti-​partition propaganda.

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Dublin estimated that Bonn was a natural anti-​partition ally. In November 1950, Belton asserted that ‘no country in Europe can appreciate the evils of partition better than the Germany of today. It is my consistent experience that it is pushing an open door to explain to Germans how the Irish people feel about the partition of Ireland.’25 The Department of External Affairs attentively monitored international discussions relating to the division of Germany, not only for the reason that it was a central aggravating factor in the Cold War, but more particularly that it could be presented as analogous to Ireland.26 The newly minted Information Section of External Affairs, led by Conor Cruise O’Brien, was tasked with building up international support to end Irish partition.27 As early as September 1949, it was translating Irish anti-​partition material into German for dissemination.28 In November 1950 the Berlin periodical Illus published a short article, ‘The Berlin of Ireland’, stating that the denizens of the tiny town of Pettigo (350 inhabitants) called their town the Berlin of Ireland as it was divided by the border.29 The Irish Government and its organs persisted in seeking to link the partition of Ireland to the division of Germany throughout the 1950s. No propaganda opportunity was neglected.30 All German public and press comment on Irish partition was carefully monitored for indications of a favourable German disposition.31 In general, German officials and the German press recognised the significance of the Northern Ireland question for the Irish Republic’s foreign policy. They appreciated that irredentism was of overriding political importance to the Irish state in the 1950s.32 German press coverage was generally sympathetic to Irish arguments in spite of the fact that most of the information available on the topic of Northern Ireland emanated from London press agencies. This even led to concerns on the Irish side that an unfortunate impression might be generated among the German public that the Dublin government lent some support to the IRA border campaign (1956–​63).33 AA analyses during the 1950s viewed Irish partition as insoluble. The central role of religion in the dispute was noted. Dr Felician Prill, Katzenberger’s successor in Dublin, argued in 1958 that the Stormont government in Northern Ireland played one religion against another to rule and exaggerated the Catholicity of the Irish Republic and its anti-​Protestantism. ‘One feels back in Cromwellian times’, Prill observed despairingly.34 German official commentators regularly noted the ardent religiosity of Irish people, the presence and power of the Catholic Church in the society of the Republic of Ireland, and the constraints this placed on Irish governments’ autonomy.35 In parallel, German newspaper and broadcast journalists often reported what they discerned as a stranglehold of Catholicism on Irish society to the irritation of Irish official observers into the 1960s.36 On balance, German officials were also inclined to rely on the explanation that religion was the basis of the enduring tensions. German officials repeated variants of the religion hypothesis from the 1950s into the 1970s. For instance, in 1962 Hans von

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Herwarth, the state secretary in the office of the federal president, informed the Irish ambassador that he considered that religious differences underlay partition and the difficulties in Anglo-​Irish relations. He suggested Germany experienced a similar phase of Catholic–​Protestant tensions in the nineteenth century, but he hoped that with socio-​economic progress the Irish sectarian cleavage would recede as the German one had. Then Christian Churches in Ireland and Britain would overcome their differences and cooperate in the fight against communism, the real enemy.37 In view of the strength of feeling that partition provoked in Irish politics, German diplomats in Dublin worried on occasion that the Irish might even be tempted to resort to the use of force in extreme circumstances to achieve national unification, in spite of the Republic’s insistence on non-​violent means. It was only with the onset of the IRA border campaign after 1956 that it became clear to German observers that Irish governments of all political hues were distressed by both the violence of the IRA and the instability it engendered in Anglo-​Irish relations. Nonetheless, as late as June 1959, Prill, the German ambassador, fell prey to melodramatic fears that the Irish situation might spiral out of control, just as Cyprus did.38 There was little indication that was likely during the 1950s or early 1960s. Yet it was only in 1961 that Prill’s successor, Reifferscheidt, informed the AA that the Irish state would never use force to end partition.39 The AA was ill at ease with the repeated Irish efforts to construct parallels between Irish and German partition. The insistent Irish propaganda campaign linking the two partitions threatened to embroil Germany in a sensitive Anglo-​ Irish issue. Therefore, the AA habitually instructed German diplomats to sustain good German–​Irish relations but not at the cost of damaging German-​British relations. For example, in 1963 the German ambassador was directed not to tolerate any comparisons between Northern Ireland and the GDR; the UK was an ally and a vital partner in the Atlantic security community.40 His predecessor in 1960 was bluntly instructed as follows: practise restraint with regard to occasional Irish comparisons of the partition of the Irish and German peoples. The population of Middle-​Germany is robbed of all liberty and political and personal rights, against that the population of Northern Ireland had the opportunity in a free election to express their opinions, and they live in conditions which cannot be compared with those in the Soviet occupied zone.41

The FRG preserved an unwavering continuity in this approach to Irish irredentism throughout the 1950s and 1960s. From the West German official perspective the best interests of the West, including that of the FRG, was to treat the Anglo-​Irish dispute over Northern Ireland as a domestic matter of the UK so not as to distract the UK from its

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primary role as a key defender of the West and a leading player in NATO. The maintenance of British troops in the FRG as part of the NATO defence shield was a potent and valued signal of the British commitment to protect West Germany from Soviet aggression and coercion. In view of these fundamental West German security considerations the Republic of Ireland’s raising of the issue of Northern Ireland’s status was viewed as a vexation and a structurally unimportant territorial issue that should be resolved by the local players. London was the party to the dispute which had weighty international influence, so its interests overrode Dublin’s. Moreover, under international law Northern Ireland was recognised as a constituent part of Britain. German officials heavily resented the problematic parallels drawn by Dublin and they feared the potential negative repercussions of any expression of FRG affinity with the Irish government’s position. Thus, Bonn upheld a studied diplomatic silence in the interests of friendly relations.42 Irish diplomats understood the German requirement to maintain good relations with Britain, but they failed to appreciate the degree to which the AA sought direction from its British counterpart on sensitive matters relating to Irish partition and Anglo-​Irish relations.43 Perhaps only Conor Cruise O’Brien, the head of press information, formed a realistic assessment of Germany’s stance. Following a trip to West Germany in 1954 he grasped that the FRG was too constrained by its own fragile situation to offer a marginal state such as Ireland backing to resolve partition.44 Nonetheless, the AA still sought Irish support for German reunification, which it received it unconditionally.45 After Irish entry into the UN in 1955, Ireland possessed membership of a global forum that the FRG lacked and any propaganda on behalf of the injustice of German partition was welcome on condition that it was not linked too closely with Irish irredentism.46 In the light of Ireland’s instinctive anti-​communism and its drawing of parallels between the division of Ireland and Germany, it adhered to all West German and US requests to refuse recognition to the GDR. This, of course, was a natural extension of Ireland’s recognition of West Germany as the successor of the Reich.47 It complied with Adenauer and the Western Allies’ line that the GDR did not exist, or it should be treated as if it did not, on the basis that it was the Soviet-​occupied zone with a puppet government enforced by military force against the popular will. Ireland refused to recognise the legitimacy of the GDR. It did not support its membership of the UN until the process of East–​West détente assured membership for both the FRG and the GDR in 1973.48 The FRG was grateful for Irish support. Anglo-​Irish relations, neutrality and NATO Regardless, Germany judged that Ireland should have been a member of the Atlantic Alliance as it was a West European state with strong democratic credentials and a pronounced anti-​communist societal ethos. Ireland was an informal

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member of the West from Bonn’s perspective.49 The FRG was the central rampart of Western defences against the Soviet Union, which it viewed as the overriding threat to international peace and freedom. This perspective as the exposed, yet strategically important, cockpit of the Cold War coloured its interpretation of Irish neutrality. Germany understood that neutrality flowed from the unabashed Hibernia Irredenta or ‘sore thumb’ stance of Dublin. In 1954 the eminent and influential German foreign policy journal Aussenpolitik made a number of telling observations: It is a matter not of a constant foreign policy, and still less of an attempt to build up a lasting neutrality, but of an aspect of Irish foreign policy towards Great Britain … Ireland has never agreed to the separation of her Six Northern Counties and makes use of all available means to exert pressure on England, directly or on the wider political sense, to cause her to satisfy her Ulster policy.50

Aussenpolitik concluded neutrality was a ‘Tauschmünze’ (‘coin for bargaining with’) and Dublin would abandon it if partition was terminated.51 As Katzenberger noted in 1954, Ireland was not neutral for reasons of conviction and was quite unlike Sweden and Switzerland –​it was purportedly prepared to abandon neutrality if partition ended.52 After West Germany gained admission to NATO in 1955, the AA grew anxious to have its diplomats in Dublin report on any shifts in public opinion in favour of joining NATO. It worried that Ireland was virtually defenceless by contemporary standards and it would not be able to resist any aggressor.53 It regretted the formal Irish unwillingness to participate, but accepted Irish entry was impossible without a satisfactory solution to partition. Prill considered it was in the collective interest of NATO to ensure that the Irish partition question did not degenerate into violence, creating a perilous weakness behind the Western front as it faced the Iron Curtain. Overall, to German eyes, especially those of the second FRG representative to Ireland, Prill, Irish non-​membership presented a dangerous gap in NATO’s defences in north-​west Europe, but there was no easy solution.54 Perceptions of the Irish state and nation Other features of Ireland were a cause of negative German commentary. On one hand, the healthy functioning of Irish democracy was construed in unequivocally positive terms by official Germany. Katzenberger noted the Irish affinity for democracy would not allow for the acceptance of a ‘Führerkult’ even in the case of a respected figure such as de Valera.55 Conversely, West German officials and diplomats tended to view the Irish people and state as conservative, even

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pre-​modern. This is evident in many disapproving reports submitted by successive FRG diplomats, which depicted Ireland as irredentist, nationalist, introspective and disproportionately anti-​British. In this respect German commentators detected what seemed to them to be incomprehensible, unsound or counterproductive paradoxes in the Irish collective mentality and its foreign policy. For instance, Irish language policy and the position of the language were particularly perplexing to official Germany. Officially, Irish was the national language. Official documents and signs suggested a bilingual population, but the reality was that Irish was not a living language for the vast majority. Instead the politics of symbolism prevailed whereby the language was integral to the national identity, but the Irish state and people found it commercially advantageous and easier to communicate in English.56 It was also noted that despite Ireland’s nationalist aversion to the UK, economic realities assured Irish dependence.57 Approximately 93 per cent of Irish exports were destined for the UK. A sensitive matter in German–​Irish relations was the treatment of Imperial Germany’s succour of Roger Casement and his role in the Easter Rising of 1916. From Bonn’s perspective it would have been preferable if this German connection with 1916 was neglected for the benefit of Anglo-​German relations, but this was impossible owing to the centrality of Casement as an Irish nationalist martyr and the importance assigned to the Easter rebellion in the Irish nationalist liturgy. It was a foundational element of the contemporary Irish republican canon. All shades of Irish republicanism invoked and commemorated Casement, and Irish republicanism stretched all the way from the broad democratic fold to the militant minority (the IRA). The first FRG minister to Ireland confronted the sensitive challenge of how to handle West Germany’s official attitude to the Easter Rising of 1916. Katzenberger anticipated an invitation to a ceremony celebrating Casement’s role in the 1916 rising. In 1953, at a major memorial ceremony in Ballycastle, Northern Ireland, a reported crowd of 200,000 people addressed their thanks to Konrad Adenauer for German support of Casement’s initiatives.58 Casement remained a potent issue in Anglo-​Irish relations as the British Government refused to repatriate the body of the executed separatist icon to Ireland for burial despite repeated requests. While Katzenberger estimated the French ambassador’s attendance at a recent commemoration of the more distant 1798 rising was acceptable, he judged the attendance of a German representative at a Casement commemoration would be problematic: German representation at a Casement ceremony held out the prospect of irritating the UK, in Katzenberger’s estimation. Conversely, a German refusal to accept such an invitation jeopardised relations with Ireland. In these circumstances, the AA advised him to dissuade Irish officials from extending such an invitation –​it would create great embarrassment for the FRG. If this proved unsuccessful he was instructed to draw upon ‘a classic diplomatic trick’, such as

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feigning ‘a holiday or an illness’.59 The subsequent silence on the matter in Irish and German records, and the press of both countries, suggests the German tactics worked. The troublesome issue would resurface in 1966. The fiftieth anniversary of the Easter Rising in 1966 generated even greater potential complications for the FRG as it again struggled to avoid becoming politically compromised.60 But this time the omens for German involvement had improved. The British ambassador had been present during the repatriation of Casement’s remains from Pentonville Jail, London, a year previously, and had attended the state funeral at the Republican plot in Glasnevin cemetery, Dublin. In addition, there was the prospect of warming North–​South relations, following the celebrated Lemass–​O’Neill meetings of 1965. The Irish government planned to invite the survivors of the U19 and the Aud to attend, and asked the German authorities for permission to exhibit photographs and documents relating to the U19’s mission including its log book. Irish authorities also elicited the participation of the German Cultural Institute in exhibitions associated with the anniversary celebrations. Undoubtedly, the Irish authorities would have welcomed an indication of German association with the events. The matter, nonetheless, remained a delicate one in German eyes, as it not only potentially affected good relations with both the UK and Ireland, but the president of Ireland and the Taoiseach had participated in the Easter Rising. Moreover, the celebrations coincided with de Valera’s efforts to seek re-​election to the Irish Presidency. Conveniently, the AA was able to draw on protocol in order to reject the FRG Embassy’s proposal that the FRG President Heinrich Lübke should send a short and neutral letter of congratulations to de Valera on the occasion. The FRG Embassy argued that not to do so would be out of step with other countries.61 The German ambassador, Trützschler, claimed that such a gesture of a special connection between Germany and the Republic of Ireland would be gratefully received by the Irish. It would reinforce the Irish Republic’s resistance against continuing GDR efforts for recognition.62 Instead the AA only permitted the German ambassador to transmit his congratulations orally, though the FRG forwarded copies of original German documents relating to the Easter Rising.63 In essence the FRG Embassy adhered strictly to the practice of other members of the diplomatic corps in all its public statements and attendance at various events relating to the commemorations. It remained detached and measured. If Germany acted out of line by not participating, Dublin would be upset, but any sign of German enthusiasm was liable to be interpreted as an improper political gesture by the British. The British dimension remained paramount in the German conduct of all matters relating to Irish separatist commemorations for reasons of Realpolitik.

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The official appellation of the independent Irish state arising from its very distinctive constitutional development after 1922 generated confusion and comment in many circles. Confusion and acrimony ruled in domestic and international circles about the use of the terms ‘Éire’, ‘Ireland’, ‘Republic of Ireland’ and other designations. Non-​nationalist circles in Northern Ireland and Britain commonly used the terms ‘26 counties’ and ‘Southern Ireland’, although these terms possessed no constitutional basis. The British state used the term ‘Éire’ in all official correspondence in referring to the Irish state. Thus, the appellation designated to the state by any party was viewed as the adoption of a political position on the independent Irish state.64 In the summer of 1953, the Irish government issued a policy document in an effort to correct the misunderstandings and confusions surrounding the appropriate designation for the Irish state. It directed that ‘Éire’ should be used only when referring to the Republic of Ireland when the Irish language was being used, but ‘Ireland’ was the term that should be employed in English and the corresponding word for Ireland should prevail in other languages. It cautioned against the use of the term ‘Republic of Ireland’, as it could be interpreted as accepting the existence of another Ireland, meaning Northern Ireland, and implying acquiescence in partition and conveying the impression of the abandonment of Dublin’s claim over Northern Ireland. Richthofen of the German Consulate-​General concluded that de Valera was the architect of this new government policy. The Irish Government wanted to retain the ‘fictitious identity of the State appellation with the geographical unity of the entire island’. Richthofen recommended that the AA and the German press should use the term Irland in all papers in line with Dublin’s policy direction.65 The AA on studying the matter concluded that the ‘Republic of Ireland’ was the more correct name.66 This is a telling decision on its part: it marks a German–​ Irish divergence on key matters relating to the fitting role and outlook for Ireland in post-​war Europe. The AA was unprepared to back official Irish claims to Northern Ireland even in matters relating to the appellation of the independent Irish state fearing it might complicate its relationship with Britain. German criticisms As the 1950s unfolded, therefore, a clear official German perspective on Ireland’s dismal economic situation emerged: Ireland was suffering from self-​inflicted misery arising from misguided and outmoded attitudes and policies such as disproportionate sovereignty consciousness, international standoffishness and economic protectionism. In a nutshell, the implicit German diagnosis was that Ireland’s deteriorating social and economic conditions stemmed from an unhealthy fixation on partition to the detriment of Ireland’s responsibilities to fellow democracies of the

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West. This led Ireland to miss out on the benefits of economic and trade liberalisation, in the FRG’s estimation. These internal German assessments of Ireland’s foreign posture and economic situation were generally well-​intentioned and good-​natured, but nonetheless critical. The first FRG representative to Ireland, Katzenberger, noted that the Irish economy experienced persistent difficulties, namely a stubborn foreign-​trade deficit. Despite Ireland’s political aversion to Britain, 93 per cent of the country’s exports still went to the British market in 1954. Efforts to gain a foothold in other markets had not proven successful.67 The electorate was clearly dissatisfied with the grim economic and financial condition of the country, and this contributed to the defeat of de Valera’s government in the general election of 1954. Katzenberger argued that the Second Inter-​Party Government of John A. Costello (1954–​57) lacked economic wisdom so the deleterious economic situation continued and swelled mass emigration.68 The criticisms of the second FRG minister to Ireland, Prill, were more pointed and negative. These were coloured by the fact that when Prill arrived in Dublin in autumn 1956 Germany was widely regarded as a lynchpin of European integration, a strong adherent of NATO and a devotee of the West (Westpolitik). Its former wartime adversaries now accepted Germany’s cardinal contribution to the prosperity and security of Western Europe. The enduring German economic renaissance also revived self-​belief. Official FRG commentaries on Ireland reflected this attainment of security and stability, and of German membership of the Euro-​Atlantic community. Adenauer highly prized these accomplishments and was determined to consolidate them by advancing Franco-​German reconciliation through integration. The negotiation (1955–​57) and initiation of the EEC (1958–​59) inculcated a German conviction that regional integration was the solution to national rivalries and territorial differences, in addition to a driver of economic growth. In January 1956, Konrad Adenauer exercised the right (Richtlinienkompetenz) under Article 65 of ‘Das Grundgesetz’ (the Basic Law) to insist German policy should be one of ‘a clear, positive German attitude to European integration’. He directed that the political dimension of European integration should be pursued.69 European integration, combined with the Atlantic Alliance, became the prism through which Germany diagnosed Irish geopolitical and economic ills. The second Irish minister, T. J. Kiernan, was cognisant of this as early as April 1956. He noted that ‘the official German attitude is based on the strong personal attachment of both the chancellor and the foreign minister to the ultimate aim of European integration. (There may be, and probably is, a basic belief that in such a Europe, Germany will be primus inter pares and that her primacy would be pronounced.)’ At this early stage, as the negotiations to establish the EEC were underway, a prescient Kiernan advised his superiors:

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It may be worth considering whether we cannot aim at reconciling our de facto position, as governed by economic factors, with a longer-​term policy of wider co-​ operation, in the interests of European integration, with the broad ideological purposes of which we must agree. The best way to avoid fragmentation [of Western Europe into economic blocs] (and it is worth noticing that the Soviet [sic] favours the OEEC plan of co-​operation on atomic research) is to broaden co-​operation with small successful practical organisations, such as the ECSC, and not to stand completely apart from them. This issue may arise with further developments of the ‘Messina’ group towards stages of economic integration.70

But this advice was not heeded (see the next chapter). Germany displayed its misgivings about Ireland’s protectionism and aversion to regional economic cooperation when Ireland presented its case for special consideration during the discussions to establish an OEEC Free Trade Area in mid-​ 1957. The articulation of major Irish reservations to opening up the economy to free trade occasioned a formal German response deprecating Ireland for an exaggerated protectionist outlook and a lack of enthusiasm. The FRG observed that Ireland ‘should have greater confidence’ in its ability to overcome the difficulties entailed in joining a pan-​European free trade area. In order to become a member of proposed free-​trade area, Ireland had first to accept the principles of non-​discrimination and reciprocity.71 The AA understood Ireland’s deep reluctance to engage with European economic cooperation. It noted that Irish membership of the sterling bloc and its extreme trade dependence on Britain were decisive factors. This pecuniary and commercial dependence was politically unpalatable to Irish circles and contradicted Ireland’s supposed counter-​dependence policy. The AA estimated Ireland could only gain from membership of a European federation, and if Britain reversed its aloof attitude to integration then Ireland would follow. Economic realities ordained it. From the German standpoint, Ireland was poorly developed and starved of the capital required to modernise, while the UK was either unwilling or incapable of providing sufficient investment to develop Ireland.72 Between 1956 and 1959, Prill looked for signs of an emerging Irish awareness of the repercussions of the prolonged discussions about the economic reorganisation of Western Europe. The Irish, however, were hesitant Europeans who lacked an ideological attachment to European unity and regional integration. Their response was one of slow and reactive adaptation to the new realities. The Irish mentality still perceived the European continent as distant and the lay Irish person lacked detailed knowledge about Germany, although he or she was knowledgeable about the UK, and displayed some sentimental attachment to France and Spain for historical and religious reasons. The Irish were ignorant about East European issues in Prill’s estimation. In 1958, he reported that Ireland could only survive economically if it opened up and embraced competition and

60

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integration. In April 1957, he informed the Dublin Rotary Club that ‘In Europe to-​day there was hardly a country which … could go it alone.’73 By March 1959, his view, at a luncheon of the Dublin Rotary Club, was that trade discrimination was an ‘anachronism in a time in which the nations of the free world should stand together, facing the same dangers from the unfree world, even in the economic field’. Additionally, he argued that ‘discrimination would always be to the disadvantage of the retaliating country’.74 However, de Valera’s Ireland demonstrated a lack of common cause with the West in general in the mid-​and late 1950s. For instance, Irish delegates at the Council of Europe repeatedly critiqued and rejected a succession of proposals to coordinate the foreign policy including those of German members. The Irish members interpreted such efforts at a common foreign policy within the Council of Europe as a means to extend and implement NATO policy. Irish parliamentarians were singularly averse to suggestions that the Council of Europe might be subsumed in a broader ‘Atlantic community’.75 More importantly, Aiken and Irish foreign policy failed to identify with the Western powers on high-​profile controversies relating to Cyprus, Algeria and apartheid. He proposed troop withdrawals from the central Europe, Algerian self-​determination, the discussion of Chinese admission to the UN and condemned South Africa’s racial politics.76 The FRG disapproved of the general direction of Irish foreign policy under Aiken not only in terms of Ireland’s continuing detachment from NATO. William Warnock, the new Irish minister in Bonn, dutifully reported in 1957 that the pro-​SPD Frankfurter Rundschau thought that Frank Aiken’s initiatives introduced a ‘fresh wind’ into the ‘stuffy atmosphere’ of the UN.77 In practice, however, the AA, official Germany and the Christian Democrats seemed perturbed by the striking similarity between Ireland’s Cold War policies and the German neutralist opposition, the SPD.78 The adoption of a self-​styled ‘moral’ or neutralist Irish foreign policy at the UN appeared fanciful and ineffective from the point of view of the hard-​headed realism that impelled the FRG. German Realpolitik believed these Irish positions exemplified a disregard for its European neighbours, which lay prostrate before the Red Army. The influential Professor William G. Grewe, the director of the political division of the AA, was not convinced by Irish explanations that a neutral state was obligated to promote alternative thinking on testing international issues and ‘to speak her mind freely without hesitation’. Grewe, an international law professor and an adviser to Adenauer,79 critiqued the lack of realism attaching to Aiken’s search for a comprehensive peace in the Middle East and Central Europe. Aiken had not consulted with the FRG before putting forward his proposals. His ambitious plans involving full troop withdrawals and the effective neutralisation of the regions were viewed by Bonn as impractical and diplomatically naive. Dublin discovered its failure to consult beforehand was conceivably injurious to Ireland’s relations with the affected parties, such as the FRG. In October 1957,

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Grewe candidly told the Irish envoy that even if the USSR withdrew its army from the GDR and the United States withdrew from the FRG, the Red Army would still occupy most of Eastern Europe including the strategically vital Poland and Czechoslovakia; thus the USSR would still hold Germany hostage. The political director declared that Aiken’s proposals ‘stood no chance of being implemented’.80 The Irish Times journalist, L. R. Murray, who was undertaking a tour of West Germany in October 1957, reported that Germany’s attitude to Aiken’s Central European plan was ‘distinctly cool’.81 As for Aiken’s proposal that the UN should intervene and provide an international solution to the Franco-​ Algerian conflict, Grewe simply stated the FRG ‘would steer clear of the controversy about Algeria’ as it was ‘cautious in all matters concerning relations in France’.82 Reconciliation with France was a key ambition of Germany. Moreover, European integration was reliant on the still tender plant of the German–​French axis, which should not be sacrificed under any circumstances. It was not surprising Prill speculated that the final government of de Valera lacked special affection for the FRG.83 Regardless of Ireland’s desire and need for greater economic collaboration with the West, Prill concluded de Valera’s foreign policy would remain unaltered. It would continue to avoid any association with the West.84 Even though Prill recognised this paradox in 1958, he recommended that the FRG should ameliorate Ireland’s economic difficulties in an effort to build relations between Ireland and the West.85 This fitted into the emerging German paradigm of utilising economic statecraft, particularly lucrative inducements, in order to alter the behaviour of other states in a positive manner.86 However, there were signs of hope when Prill reported in his reflections on events in 1958 and early 1959 that Aiken’s ‘escapades in foreign policy, especially in the United Nations’ had made him unpopular. Catholic circles found Aiken’s support for communist China’s admission to the UN disturbing and incomprehensible. Irish circles also heartily disapproved of Aiken’s general policy of negotiating with the Soviet Union. Aiken and Lemass were in competition to replace de Valera as Taoiseach, but Prill identified Jack Lynch, the minister for education, a relatively young and ascending politician, as European in outlook and interested in Germany.87 Earlier, in May 1958 Prill had identified Lemass as very doctrinaire and a diehard protectionist.88 Fortunately, he had misread Lemass. Correspondingly, the FRG ambassador’s glum speculation that Ireland’s poor economic conditions would combine with irredentism to lead to political radicalisation and a crisis over partition was not fulfilled.89 Lemass would prove to be a forward-​looking Taoiseach in terms of his economic and Northern Ireland policies. In sum, until the late 1950s, Ireland and Germany held several divergent foreign policies and perspectives. In 1956 some in the AA thought that they dimly spied the possibility of a bargain that could reconcile Ireland to West Germany’s pro-​NATO and Europeanist attitude for the benefit of both Western Europe

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and Ireland. While the AA understood that only a more positive British policy towards European integration would induce Ireland to reconsider its attitude, the influential Political-​Directorate 2 of the AA contended that Ireland was important to Europe from both a strategic and transportation perspective. Perhaps the EEC Six should supply the necessary capital or development aid that Ireland urgently required to modernise to escape its economic stagnation in return for political benefits, that is, a stronger Western alignment of Irish foreign policy?90 The AA, particularly Political-​Directorate 2, was anxious for the German envoy to report any shift in Irish public opinion towards contemplation of NATO membership as a possible means of protecting Ireland in the Cold War.91 The prospects for Ireland aligning to the Atlantic Alliance were limited in the short term though. Prill informed his superiors that as long as de Valera remained in charge a more outward and compliant Irish orientation more favourable to NATO, its Western European neighbours, regional integration and economic liberalisation was unlikely.92 His perspective and the view of Bonn were shaped by the intensifying trade tensions between Ireland and West Germany during the 1950s. However, in the middle of these German–​Irish difficulties, the use of FDI, particularly West German capital, to develop Ireland’s economy, lessen the country’s dependence on the UK and Europeanise the Irish outlook held some potential to influence Irish thinking. Notes 1 S. Erb, German Foreign Policy: Navigating a New Era (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2003), p. 27. 2 Hitchcock, Struggle for Europe, p. 148. 3 H. Schwarz, Konrad Adenauer, vol. 2:  The Statesman, 1952–​67 (Oxford:  Berghahn, 1997), p. 8. 4 P. Maume, ‘Pakenham, Francis Aungier (“Frank”)’, in Dictionary of Irish Biography http://​0-​dib.cambridge.org.library.ucc.ie/​viewReadPage.do?articleId=a7166 [accessed 13 December 2016]. 5 F. Pakenham, Peace by Ordeal: An Account from First-​Hand Sources of the Negotiation and Signature of the Anglo-​Irish Treaty of 1921 (London: Jonathan Cape, 1935). 6 F. Pakenham, Born to Believe:  An Autobiography (London:  Jonathan Cape, 1953), p. 195. 7 Ibid. 8 See for example:  NAI, DFA, 305/​172, Hearne to Nunan, 26 June 1953. Dulles told Hearne that the worker riots in East Germany were a ‘confirmation of Adenauer’s policies’. He stated, ‘Adenauer is a great German statesman and a great European statesman’. For more evidence of Irish appreciation of this close relationship see:  NAI, DFA, 305/​172, Belton to Nunan, 1 October 1953; ibid., Memo, German Re-​unification, 6 October 1953, p. 7; ibid., B.O’R/​LM to MacDonald, 13 February 1953.

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9 NAI, DFA, 305/​172, Memo (probably by the Political Division), German Re-​unification, 4 August 1953, p. 15. 10 Ibid., p. 6. 11 NAI, DFA, CRS 313/​10, Belton to Nunan, 19 February 1953. 12 Ibid., Belton to Nunan, 22 May 1952. 13 NAI, DFA, 436/​49, Cruise O’Brien, Report on Visit to the Federal Republic of Germany (3–​17 September 1954), 28 September 1954, p. 17. 14 NAI, DFA, CRS 313/​10, Belton to Nunan, 1 May 1954, p. 3. 15 Ibid., O’Beirne to Nunan, 26 July 1954, pp. 8–​9. 16 NAI, DFA, 436/​49, Cruise O’Brien, Report on Visit to the Federal Republic of Germany (3 to 17 September 1954), 28 September 1954, pp. 16–​17. 17 NAI, DFA, 305/​172, Belton to Nunan, 1 May 1954. 18 NAI, DFA, CRS, 313/​10, Belton to Nunan, 11 September 1954. 19 Ibid., Belton to Nunan, 11 September 1954. 20 NAI, DFA, CRS, 313/​10 A, Lennon to Katzenberger, 6 May 1955. 21 Ibid., Belton to Nunan, 18 February 1955. 22 O’Halpin, Defending Ireland, p. 266. 23 NAI, DFA, CRS 313/​10, Unknown to Belton, 12 May 1952. The department was not assisted in its monitoring of the German situation by the paucity of reports emanating from Belton. On occasion the department’s political section felt it necessary to produce assessments of the international diplomacy on German issues and the internal West German situation from public sources (mainly newspapers). See, for example, NAI, DFA, 414/​24/​16 I, Memo, West Germany and the Bermuda Conference, 9 June 1953. 24 FitzGerald, Protectionism to Liberalisation, p. 12. 25 NAI, DFA, 315/​14/​70, Belton to Nunan, 2 November 1950. 26 Voluminous files were devoted to the matter within the DEA during the 1950s and 1960s. Some of the main ones were: NAI, DFA, 305/​109/​1 305/​109/​2, 305/​109/​2A, 305/​109/​2B, 305/​172, 305/​172A, 305/​172B and 96/​3/​136. 27 M. Kennedy, ‘The Marshall Plan and the Expansion of the Irish Diplomatic Service’, in Kennedy and Skelly (eds), Ireland, Europe and the Marshall Plan, pp. 120–​1. 28 NAI, DFA, 305/​14/​70, Cruise O’Brien to Boland, 3 September 1949. 29 Ibid., Belton to Nunan, 2 November 1950; ibid., Illus, No. 44, 5 November 1950. 30 For an assessment of Irish propaganda activities see Molohan, Germany and Ireland, pp. 87–​95. 31 See, for example, NAI, DFA, CRS, 313/​10D, Holmes to Cremin, 10 April 1958. 32 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 64, Report, Katzenberger to AA, Politischen Jahresbericht, 31 January 1955. 33 NAI, DFA, CRS 313/​10C, Warnock to Murphy, 22 January 1957; NAI, DFA, CRS 313/​10D, Holmes to Cremin, 10 April 1958. 34 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 128, Report, Prill to AA, Irland unter der dritten Regierung de Valera, 5 May 1958. 35 Ibid.; AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 128, Report, Prill to AA, Irland unter der dritten Regierung de Valera, 5 May 1958; AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 131, Report, Prill to AA, Irland und die NATO nach der Pariser Konferenz, Irland 1958/​59, 10 January

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1958; AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 128, Report, Prill to AA, Irland 1958/​59, 15 May 1959. Admittedly the anti-​communism of Catholicism played to the advantage of West Germany: the Irish state and much of the Irish media strongly supported the FRG and its uncompromising policy on Berlin against the Soviet Union. See: AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 256, Report, von Trützschler to AA, Einstellung des Erscheinens der Dubliner Sonntagszeitung Sunday Review, 4 December 1963. 36 Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, Sankt Augustin, Pressedokumentation, file: Staaten, Irland, 1951–​83, Press cutting, Der Tagesspiegel, 21 April 1949; NAI, DFA, Embassy Series, Bonn, PP/​1/​4/​B, Report, Bonn Embassy to McCann, Iren wandern nicht mehr aus, 17 September 1965; NAI, DFA, Embassy Series, Bonn, PP/​1/​4/​B, Report, Iren wandern nicht mehr aus, John O’Sullivan comments on German television documentary on Ireland, 20 September 1965; NAI, DFA, Embassy Series Bonn, PP 1/​4/​ 1, Press cutting, Frankfurter Rundschau, 22 April 1967. 37 NAI, DFA, CRS, 313/​10H, Report, Gallagher to Cremin, European Unification, 29 May 1962. 38 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 128, Irland 1958/​59, Prill to AA, 15 May 1959, p. 14. 39 T. Casserly, ‘Irish-​German Relations, 1949–​72’ (unpublished MA thesis, University College Cork, 1994), pp. 13–​15. 40 Ibid., p. 11. 41 Ibid., p. 10. 42 For a development of this argument, see Casserly, ‘Irish-​German Relations’, pp. 9–​11. 43 NAI, DFA, CRS, 313/​10A, Belton to Murphy, 14 June 1955. 44 Molohan, Germany and Ireland, pp. 96–​7. 45 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 62, Memo, von Puttkamer to the German consul-​general, Beiträge der Abteilung 2 für die Instruktion des neuen Gesandten der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in Dublin, 25 July 1956. 46 NAI, DFA, CRS, 313/​10E, Holmes to Cremin, 28 September 1959; Casserly, ‘Irish-​ German Relations’, p. 5. 47 NAI, DFA, 305/​109/​1, Rynne to Butler, 7 December 1950. 48 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 64, Report, Katzenberger to AA, 31 January 1955. For an account of Irish non-​recognition policy towards the GDR, see Wylie, Ireland and the Cold War, pp. 117–​48. 49 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 64, Report, Katzenberger to AA, Politischen Jahresbericht, 31 January 1955. 50 NAI, DFA, Embassy Files, Bonn, 19/​3I, Belton to Nunan, 15 June 1954. 51 Ibid. 52 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 64, Report, Katzenberger to AA, Politischer Bericht, 25 January 1954. 53 Ibid., Band 62, Report, von Puttkamer to Prill, Beiträge der Abteilung 2 für die Instruktion des neuen Gesandten der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in Dublin, 25 July 1956. 54 Ibid., Band 128, Report, Prill to AA, Irland 1958/​59, 15 May 1959. 55 Ibid., Band 64, Report, Katzenberger to AA, Politischer Bericht, 25 January 1954. 56 See NAI, DFA, Embassy Files, Bonn, PP/​1/​3, Press cutting, ‘Eine “Landessprache”, die kaum jemand spricht’, Mannheimer Morgen, 15 September 1955.

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65

57 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 64, Report, Katzenberger to AA, Politischer Bericht, 25 January 1954. 58 ‘Dank aus Irland’, Die Welt, 4 August 1953. 59 ‘President Unveils Mayo Memorial 98 Men Allies are Honoured’, Irish Press, 31 August 1953; ‘Casement is Honoured at his Birthplace’, Irish Press, 2 September 1953. AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 62, Katzenberger to Kordt, 3 September 1953; ibid., von Etzdorf to Katzenberger, 10 September 1953. 60 For an assessment of the complications created by Irish nationalist anniversaries with West European states see Jérôme aan de Wiel, ‘The Embarrassments of Irish Nationalist Commemorations for Western Europe, from Fontenoy in 1907 to the Easter Rising in 1966’, Irish Studies of International Affairs, 27 (2016). 61 The justification produced was that the anniversary was not a national bank holiday. AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 302, Note by Dannenbring, Deutsche Beteiligung an den Feierlichkeiten zur 50. Wiederkehr des irischen Osteraufstandes von 1916, 25 March 1966. 62 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 302, Fax, von Trützschler to AA, 24 March 1966. 63 Ibid., Note by Dannenbring, Deutsche Beteiligung an den Feierlichkeiten zur 50. Wiederkehr des irischen Osteraufstandes von 1916, 25 March 1966. 64 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 60, Report, Amtliche Bezeichnung des Staates Irland, von Richthofen to AA, 13 July 1953. 65 Ibid. 66 Ibid., internal AA Note, Betr.: Staat Irland, 29 July 1953. 67 Ibid., Band 64, Politischer Bericht, Report, Katzenberger to AA, 25 January 1954. 68 Ibid., Report, Katzenberger to AA, Politischen Jahresbericht, 31 January 1955. 69 Schwarz, Konrad Adenauer, vol. 2, p. 231. 70 NAI, DFA, CRS, 313/​ 10B, Report, Kiernan to Murphy, German Attitude to European Integration, 30 April 1956. 71 NAI, DT, S15281J, Report by J. C. B. McCarthy, Free Trade Area –​Working Party No. 23 –​Consideration of the Irish Case, n.d. (c. 28 May 1957). 72 See, for example: AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 62, Memo, AA to Prill, Instruktion für den Gesandten der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in Irland, 27 October 1956, pp. 17–​ 18; AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 62, Report by von Puttkamer, Beiträge der Abteilung 2 für die Instruktion des neuen Gesandten der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in Dublin, 25 July 1956. 73 ‘ “Mistake” to Think All Germans Rich’, Irish Times, 9 April 1957, p. 4. 74 ‘Trade Discrimination “an Anachronism”,’ Irish Times, 24 March 1959, p. 4. 75 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 64, Report, Prill to AA, Irlands Haltung in der UNO und im Europarat, 6 November 1957, p. 2. See also M. Kennedy and E. O’Halpin (eds), Ireland and the Council of Europe:  from Isolation towards Integration (Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 2000), pp. 120–​1, 125, 146, 151. 76 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 64, Report, Prill to AA, Irlands Haltung in der UNO und im Europarat, 6 November 1957; AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 131, Report, Prill to AA, Irland und die NATO nach der Pariser Konferenz, 10 January 1958. For an account of Irish policy at the UN, see J. M. Skelly, Irish Diplomacy at the League of Nations 1945–​ 1965: National Interests and the International Order (Dublin: Irish Academic Press,

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1996), ­chapters  2, 3; T.  Geiger, ‘A Belated Discovery of Internationalism? Ireland, the United Nations and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1945–​60’, R. Miller, ‘Ireland and the Middle East at the United Nations, 1955–​2005’, and A. Bhreatnach, ‘A Friend of the Colonial Powers? Frank Aiken, Ireland’s United Nations Alignment and Decolonisation’, in M. Kennedy and D. McMahon (eds), Obligations and Responsibilities:  Ireland and the United Nations 1955–​2005 (Dublin:  IPA, 2005), pp. 25–​53, 54–​78, 182–​200. 77 NAI, DFA, CRS, 313/​10C, Report, Warnock to Murphy, 26 October 1957. 78 D. L.  Bark and D.  R. Gress, A History of West Germany, vol. I:  From Shadow to Substance 1945–​1963 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), pp. 303–​4; R. J. Granieri, ‘Political Parties and German-​American Relations: Politics Beyond the Water’s Edge’, in Junker, The United States and Germany, pp. 141–​8; D. Rosolowsky, West Germany’s Foreign Policy:  The Impact of the Social Democrats and the Greens (New  York:  Greenwood Press, 1987), pp. 13–​36; AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 61, Press cutting, L. R. Murray, ‘Adenauer’s Germany –​(2) Neutrality and NATO’, Irish Times, 9 October 1957. 79 R. A. Blasius, trans. S. E. Robertson, ‘The Ambassadors of the Federal Republic of Germany in Washington, 1955–​68’, in Junker (ed.), The United States and Germany, p. 158. 80 NAI, DFA, CRS, 313/​10C, Report, Warnock to Murphy, Attitude of the Irish Delegation at the United Nations Assembly, 3 October 1957. 81 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 61, Press cutting, L. R. Murray, ‘Adenauer’s Germany –​ (2) Neutrality and NATO’, Irish Times, 9 October 1957. 82 NAI, DFA, CRS, 313/​10C, Report, Warnock to Murphy, Attitude of the Irish Delegation at the United Nations Assembly, 3 October 1957. 83 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 128, Report, Prill to AA, Irland unter der dritten Regierung de Valera, 5 May 1958. 84 Ibid. 85 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 131, Report, Prill to AA, Irland und die NATO nach der Pariser Konferenz, 10 January 1958. 86 See Smyser, How Germans Negotiate, pp. 51–​2, 55, 179–​81. 87 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 128, Report, Prill to AA, Irland 1958/​59, 15 May 1959. 88 Ibid., Report, Prill to AA, Irland unter der dritten Regierung de Valera, 5 May 1958. 89 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 131, Report, Prill to AA, Irland und die NATO nach der Pariser Konferenz, 10 January 1958. 90 Ibid., Band 62, AA to Prill, Instruktion für den Gesandten der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in Irland, 27 October 1956, pp. 17–​18; ibid., Band 62, Report by von Puttkamer, Beiträge der Abteilung 2 für die Instruktion des neuen Gesandten der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in Dublin, 25 July 1956. 91 Ibid., Band 62, AA to Prill, Instruktion für den Gesandten der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in Irland, 27 October 1956, p. 9. 92 Ibid., Band 131, Report, Prill to AA, Irland und die NATO nach der Pariser Konferenz, 10 January 1958.

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4

Trade and agriculture in the 1950s

Ireland’s even-​handedness after the war encouraged hopes of a mutually beneficial trading relationship, but, contrary to expectations, trade became a major point of contention. As an agricultural exporter with a small, protected, manufacturing base supplying its home market, Ireland’s foreign exports largely consisted of unprocessed foods, mainly live cattle, to the UK. It exported cattle, carcase beef, veal, cereals, fish and woollens to Germany during the 1950s, in a mirror image of the 1930s. At first sight, West Germany presented Ireland with a tantalising opportunity: pre-​war Germany’s primary source of food now lay in the eastern Soviet-​occupied zone. Once West German economic reconstruction occurred, its urban-​industrial society produced iron and steel products, non-​ferrous metal products, potash fertilisers, machinery and engineering equipment and tools that were ‘essential’ to Irish industry and agriculture.1 From the German perspective, Ireland offered a sterling market, where it had made some inroads during the 1930s. If it could reopen the Irish market, particularly in the electrical engineering and plant machinery domains, West Germany could earn ‘hard’ currency to expedite reconstruction. In the early post-​war years, Germany had been the grateful recipient of humanitarian assistance but by the mid-​1950s its function as the West European economic motor was secure. Ireland resumed its traditional supplicant role.2 Whatever delusions Irish governing elites, vested interests and public opinion nurtured, they quickly discovered that small and peripheral states, reliant on the export of unprocessed products, lacked a strong bargaining position. Diminutive protected industrial markets were unable to swim against international trade currents: they lacked the domestic economies of scale to sustain diverse and competitive firms, vigorous entrepreneurship and innovation. Irish political and economic elites failed to grasp the consequences of the US-​impelled liberalisation of the global economy in a timely fashion. The economic lens of a nation-​centric paradigm dominated, and political independence did not bestow automatic economic sustainability. The economic nationalism of the 1930s was no longer

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sufficient to sustain the nation. An interlude occurred before the Irish political elites realised the import of the changes underway. Irish shortcomings contrasted to the economic resurgence of Western Europe in the 1950s. Initially, as a defeated and occupied state, West Germany had no option but to consent to the American international vision. It became an influential disciple of, and vector for, US free trade ideology and an integrated United States of Europe. Variously proud and defensive in terms of Ireland’s national achievements, and infused by deep cultural and social conservatism, successive Irish governments either failed to detect or fully comprehend the implications of the unfolding challenges until an urgent readjustment was required. The economy remained based on an ideal of family farming and agricultural exports. Its policy of import substitution industrialisation was a disappointing failure.3 Its heavy dependence on unprocessed agricultural exports in the form of live cattle saw it fall progressively behind its Western neighbours in per capita income terms after 1950. As an economic tortoise it presented a stark contrast to the regenerated economies of Western Europe, in particular the dynamic West Germany. Emigration, rural depopulation poverty and hopelessness epitomised 1950s Ireland. Economic and financial dependence on Britain contradicted Ireland’s political liberation and constrained its freedom of manoeuvre. Irish responses to the unfolding national economic crisis in the early 1950s were reflexively traditionalist in spirit. Consequently, a yawning trade imbalance emerged to Ireland’s disadvantage with Germany. Frictions heightened mid-​decade as the situation grew acute and Dublin chose to engage in a contest of wills to redress its chronic adverse balance of trade with Bonn. Irish press, opinion and producers were galled by alleged German inflexibility at a time of rude German economic health.4 Ireland now engaged in brinkmanship with Germany during trade negotiations. Overall, this chapter traces this evolving trade relationship and demonstrates how Ireland’s reliance on agriculture as its primary generator of exports was no longer a sustainable economic policy by the late 1950s. Anglo-​Irish trade Before analysing Irish–​German commercial linkages we must first appreciate Ireland’s trade with the UK, the primate destination for Irish exports. In the years of rationing following the war the British imperative was to secure ample and cheap food supplies for their urban society. London desired to monopolise Irish supplies to ensure security of supply but demanded Irish produce, especially beef, at a cheaper price than it paid British farmers and at prices comparable to efficient agricultural producers such as Denmark, New Zealand and Australia. For its part, Ireland wanted stability for its primary industry, cattle rearing, and a fixed, long-​term British export market. Dublin’s authorities proved incapable

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of, or were discouraged from, developing a higher value-​added food-​processing industry, particularly in beef.5 Since Dublin had rejected its political allegiance to Britain and established a republic, London felt a limited sense of responsibility for the Irish situation. It made strategic sense for Britain, however, to source a substantial proportion of its food from its neighbour.6 Ireland’s Commonwealth trade preference survived the foundation of the Irish Republic in 1949, granting it a trading advantage over non-​Commonwealth states. Consequently, Irish authorities persisted with the overriding belief that the British market was of primordial importance and viewed any suggestions to liberalise agricultural markets under the auspices of the OEEC as a threat to Ireland’s preferential access to Britain. They were averse to multilateral trade projects that risked non-​traditional supplier states encroaching on the British market for food. The Anglo-​Irish Trade Agreement of 1948 had reaffirmed Britain as the predominant destination for Irish exports at a time of global food shortage: the Irish agreed to limit the export of live cattle to the continent to 50,000 head per annum. The government also consented to send not more than 10 per cent of its cattle exports to the continent and to ship at least 90 per cent to the UK.7 This securely affixed Ireland to the UK as a regional economy. It restricted Ireland’s options just as export possibilities emerged in continental markets. Before the 1948 negotiations senior British officials on the Overseas Negotiations Committee were acutely concerned about the signs of a diversification of destinations for Éire’s cattle exports. It noted that Ireland exported only 20,000 head of cattle to the Continent per annum before 1939; however, by 1947 this had reached 57,000 and the figures were still rising. Irish exports to the UK fell away from 640,000 head of cattle per annum (annual average over the three years before the war) to 460,000 head in 1947.8 According to the UK mnister for food, the growth in Irish exports to the continent was ‘disturbing’. He foresaw, ‘An unchecked growth of Irish fat cattle trade to the Continent would not merely rob us of fat cattle but would soon begin to affect the trade in store cattle as well, upon which our own farmers so much depend.’9 If this trend was not halted, Ireland’s reliability as Britain’s beef larder could be jeopardised. The question arising for Ireland though, was would it grasp the opportunity and increase production to meet the high demand in Britain and Western Europe, therefore broadening its export base and improving efficiency? Unfortunately, its political classes and economic interests were incapable of apprehending the strategic opportunity presented by the continental food shortages. The government, or more specifically the minister for agriculture and traditional agricultural interests, chose a conservative approach. They opted for security in the British market transforming Irish farmers into second-​class British farmers by proxy. When Dublin sought and negotiated the Anglo-​Irish Trade Agreement in 1948, it reversed the post-​war development of a continental export trade. It underestimated its strong bargaining position with

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London so in return for tethering the country tightly to the British market it received little. For instance, the British authorities were not prepared to divert supplies of fertilisers or animal foodstuffs to Ireland.10 All Dublin achieved was price parity with UK farmers on store cattle. Unsurprisingly, one British Treasury official noted ‘that the negotiations were concluded on the lines of the UK brief ’.11 UK authorities realised their objective of re-​establishing their pre-​war monopoly of Irish cattle and beef exports and reintegrated the two economies closely to service London’s food security needs. The treaty satisfied their objective of ensuring that 90 per cent of Éire’s total exports should be delivered the UK,12 restoring the pre-​war pattern of trade.13 This prevented market diversification. Ireland’s assistance to post-​war Europe had created international goodwill and profile, as well as an exploitable market for beef, but its Anglocentric mindset failed to comprehend this. The British emphasis on the import of live Irish cattle, particularly store cattle for fattening by its farmers, retarded the development of an Irish meat processing industry; thus the Irish lost out on the possibility of value-​added exports and a growth in employment, but they had not even comprehended this developmental opening. The practice of British bulk buying the vast majority of Ireland’s exportable agricultural produce ensured that there was no need for the Irish to innovate and market. No international Irish food brands were established. Ireland remained an acquiescent exporter of unprocessed foods and labour (people) to the UK. At a time of world food shortage, when food prices were high, Irish policymakers chose the safe option. Taoiseach John A. Costello admitted as much when he stated that the Irish were ‘prepared “to put all their eggs in the British basket” ’. He promised they would ‘watch that basket carefully’.14 For Ireland, the German market was secondary and the Irish customised their production and deliveries to UK preferences. German representatives made regular complaints about the differential between full and Commonwealth preferential rates of tariffs on industrial imports,15 which remained petrified under the earlier Anglo-​Irish Trade Agreement of 1938. Dublin was bound ‘not to alter existing differentials between the full and preferential rates and to maintain a minimum differential of 10%’. Even when the differential exceeded 10 per cent on selected commodities, or when errors were identified, Dublin was chary of revising them for fear of unsettling London.16 In the light of the strong flow of German manufactures into Ireland after 1949, the perpetual trade imbalance in Germany’s favour and the primacy of the UK as a trade partner, Ireland was disinclined to revise the tariff gap to assist further German penetration, since they applied to all non-​Commonwealth countries.17 Irish exporters tended to sell produce, mainly cattle and beef, to Germany when prices there were higher than those in Ireland,18 and Irish prices were benchmarked to UK prices. German officials and business quickly divined that Irish exporters in both the agri-​business and manufacturing sectors did not invest in

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market research, advertising, product development or a regular affordable shipping service to build up a permanent and long-​term foothold in the German market, or other non-​British markets, in the medium-​term. There was substance in these German arguments. When Britain raised its domestic food production in the 1950s (by providing supports to its farmers), and when its other external suppliers improved the quantity and quality of their exports, then food prices declined from their immediate post-​war peaks to Ireland’s disadvantage. Denmark was the perennial Irish concern: it maintained special arrangements with the UK. Food export openings in Britain and Western Europe grew very competitive as the 1950s progressed and world food production grew. Reopening trade, 1949 Thus the Irish economy was bound to British requirements and failed to develop a sophisticated agri-​business and food-​processing sector. Despite the strategic constraints of its reflexive focus on the British market, from 1949 Ireland still aspired to the promotion of a mutually beneficial trade with West Germany. Correspondingly it erroneously assumed Irish produce that met British dietary tastes would prove attractive to German consumers. Before the war trade between Ireland and Germany was governed by mutual most-​favoured-​nation treatment in accordance with the Treaty of Commerce and Navigation (May 1930). Based on this pre-​war experience, Ireland envisioned West Germany as an attractive export prospect.19 A number of industrial firms were eager to reopen trade with their pre-​war German suppliers as early as 1946.20 They needed spare parts and replacements for the run-​down machinery and engineering tools they had purchased from Germany before 1939.21 Once leading German industries, such as engineering, pharmaceuticals, insecticides, dyes, chemicals and machinery, recovered their productive capacity in the late 1940s and early 1950s, they hunted for export outlets to earn hard currency. German electrical firms, notably Siemens, were a major supplier of the ESB before the war. They were anxious to renew this relationship.22 For its part, Irish agriculture was starved of artificial fertilisers and essential inputs during the ‘Emergency’. The soil was degraded by maintaining production for export to Britain during the war and focusing on tillage (for food security during the Emergency). Attempts to extract sufficient quantities of fertilisers from the UK in the immediate post-​war years were only partially successful. Ireland lacked sufficient dollar reserves to purchase essential supplies from the United States. German potash and fertilisers could greatly rectify this deficit. With the merging of the British and US zones (Bizonia) for economic purposes on 1 January 1947, direct trade seemed attainable. The Americans were anxious to encourage German exports in order to finance the country’s rebuilding.

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Senior American officials in the occupation administration indirectly informed the Irish that they would entertain trade initiatives.23 Some Irish manufacturers also lobbied the Irish authorities to explore formal trade arrangements with the Occupation Authorities through the Joint Export–​Import Agency (JEIA). In October 1948, a delegation of the Federation of Irish Manufacturers Ltd. visited JEIA headquarters in Frankfurt to secure openings for industrial products and to clarify payment procedures.24 Their report argued that an agreement between Ireland and the JEIA was necessary to establish a foothold in Germany. By this point, most Western European states had concluded such agreements. The Irish delegation concluded that there was a large volume of business transactable and Ireland, with ‘skilful handling’ and ‘patient study’, could develop a sizeable export market for many traditional Irish exports, including footwear, shirts, woollen goods, bindings, tweeds, yarns and malt products.25 On the basis of this and with the encouragement of the American Legation in Dublin, a small Department of Agriculture mission travelled to the JEIA in Frankfurt in March 1949. The objective was to discuss the opportunities for agricultural exports, as well as some industrial exports, and explore the possibility of a trade agreement. In the light of the positive reception, the officials of the interested departments (Agriculture, Finance, Industry and Commerce, External Affairs), the Foreign Trade Committee (FTC) on which they were represented, and ministers unanimously proposed that Ireland negotiate an agreement to advance commercial relations.26 Irish representatives negotiated and signed a trade agreement with the Occupation Authorities and German officials on 15 and 16 June 1949. Ireland was the last ERP (or Marshall Plan) member to negotiate a trade agreement with Trizonia (the British, American and French zones), and it was the only one which still did not have a trade representative in situ.27 This milestone was no guarantee of success. First, the granting of most-​ favoured-​nation treatment between Ireland and Trizonia ‘did not cover the preferential treatment accorded by the Republic of Ireland to the goods of countries of the British Commonwealth’.28 Additionally, the treaty stipulated that payments relating to the trade between Ireland and Trizonia would occur in the same manner as payments involving trade between the UK and the occupied zones.29 Both of these provisions reinforced the monopoly of Anglo-​ Irish trading and currency arrangements over efforts to establish a satisfactory Irish–​German trade relationship in the short and medium term. The agreement proposed the export of $3.25 million of goods from Ireland in return for $4.14 million of imports from Germany. Irish negotiators assumed they had established a precedent by negotiating an aspirational trade ratio of three to four with Trizonia (future West Germany) in this first agreement.30 This was never attained in the subsequent two decades, fuelling deep and lingering Irish resentments.

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Rising tensions, 1949–​55 Irish exports to Germany under the 1949 agreement were overwhelmingly agricultural and unprocessed. In contrast, the West German zones’ proposed exports to Ireland were primarily manufactures.31 Germany was a rapidly recovering manufacturing powerhouse. This trade pattern was identical to the nature of their import–​export relationship before 1939. Notwithstanding Irish efforts at industrialisation under protective barriers since 1932 the results were mediocre and much of the materials and machinery that Irish industries depended upon were imported from industrial economies such as the UK, Germany and the United States. In the early 1950s the total volume of Irish trade (imports and exports) with Germany grew rapidly in comparison to its trade with other non-​UK trade partners. Germany became Ireland’s second or third largest trade partner in the 1950s (depending on the annual returns).32 It was on a par with the United States as a trade partner. Hopes were raised in Irish circles that the FRG’s developing liberalisation policy, at American insistence, which was designed to increase trade with all countries, would result in a reciprocal relationship as the tempo of German economic recovery accelerated. The Irish authorities negotiated annual renewals of the 1949 agreement with the new West German authorities and aimed at an equitable trade balance. In 1949, the Department of Agriculture considered West Germany as ‘one of the most promising markets for certain agricultural products’.33 The department remained anxious to find permanent but supplementary markets for cattle, carcase beef, canned meat and butter. It anticipated that West Germany would fill this role.34 This did not transpire. There were a number of teething difficulties with the operation of the annual trade agreements. It was only in 1951 that most of the arms of the German federal government and administration were centralised in Bonn.35 The failure to appoint trade attachés between the two countries quickly after the signing of the 1949 trade agreement, reflecting the challenges of establishing the machinery and rights of a West German state, delayed the solution of early administrative problems and retarded trade promotion.36 Whether Irish exporters filled the annual quotas they were granted in 1949 and subsequent years was contingent on several factors. The nature and timing of the ‘calling-​up’ of Irish quotas, in addition to typical commercial issues such as quality, price, transportation costs and delivery times, played a large part. The complexities of the Occupation Authorities’ import systems, which Bonn continued after 1950, caused persistent problems and led to repeated Irish complaints. A ‘call-​up’ was the official publication of a German demand to Irish exporters to tender to supply a quantity of a commodity to fill the quota apportioned to Ireland by the annual trade agreement. Irish exporters then tendered and the German authorities and importers made offers

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to them on the basis of price, delivery times and other factors.37 Keen competition from Denmark and the Netherlands dampened agricultural prices on the German market as the post-​war recovery proceeded. By virtue of their proximity to West Germany they benefited from lower freight costs and held entrenched positions as preferred traditional suppliers.38 If Irish exporters could not gain a profit margin comparable to what they could gain by selling their food to the UK, then there was limited incentive to export to Germany. The high cost of shipping to Germany rendered it imperative that German prices should be higher or that Irish producers should reduce the costs of production. In addition, the complicated and lengthy system of granting import and currency licences meant that it proved almost impossible to sell cattle and other products to Germany in 1949 and 1950. The call-​up system produced interminable difficulties throughout the 1950s. The system had been imposed on the Germans by the Occupation Authorities to ensure free competition. It led to an over-​application for licences from Irish exporters when the Germans announced the call-​ups, and ‘the subsequent reduction of each application pro rata’. This was inclined to produce uneconomic orders for individual Irish traders many of whom lost interest and did not fill the orders they were allocated.39 The currency issue receded once the Deutschmark became established as a hard currency after 1952. On the manufacturing side, Irish products had to be ‘unusually attractive’ in terms of quality and price to compete in the FRG.40 As a result there was only a partial filling of the manufactured commodity quotas allocated to Ireland.41 In fact, many of the manufactured good quotas granted to Ireland under the early agreements remained unfilled. In the early years, nonetheless, the Department of Industry and Commerce maintained that ‘Germany was already showing signs of developing into one of our best markets outside Britain’.42 After all, it was the Federation of Irish Manufacturers that had promoted the governmental initiative of opening formal trade relations with Germany after 1947. Irish firms had thus played a role in lobbying the government for such a facility to enable Irish manufactured exports.43 In the early 1950s, Industry and Commerce’s universal objective was to maximise manufactured exports, for example, textiles. A major hindrance to balanced trade was Germany’s large dollar deficit and its balance-​of-​payments crisis in late 1950 and 1951. Its global imports exceeded its exports. This reflected the FRG’s need for imports to undertake reconstruction. The imbalance forced Bonn to unilaterally halt the import of some products –​it could not pay for them.44 When the German balance-​of-​payments deficit under the European Payments Union (EPU) grew, the Board of the EPU authorised Germany’s emergency measures to restrict imports and redress the imbalance. The OEEC exhorted Germany’s trade partners, including Ireland, to take greater exports from it while accepting that its imports would be curtailed in the short term.45 Germany’s temporary foreign currency difficulty was comprehensible, but

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Ireland’s export of cattle –​its major commodity –​to Germany collapsed. This dramatically affected the balance of trade. After the resolution of this currency crisis, the Deutschmark became established as a hard currency. However, the German–​Irish balance of trade failed to improve.46 In 1953 another problem affected exports of cattle to Germany: the ‘abnormally low prices’ of cattle and meat in Germany relative to Ireland.47 The leader of the German trade delegation that was negotiating the annual agreement in October 1953 acknowledged that Irish exports to German ‘were not progressing too well’. He assured his hosts that Bonn was ‘anxious to do whatever was possible to correct’ the position.48 The adverse Irish trade balance with Germany for 1953 stood at a ratio of one to six.49 Irish exports improved marginally in 1954 but German exports to Ireland continued to rise steeply as the German industrial base improved. Ireland, therefore, sustained a pronounced negative trade balance with Germany again in 1954 and 1955.50 Consequently, Germany was a disproportionate contributor to Ireland’s growing global trade deficits.51 A surplus balance of trade with Ireland and other countries had assisted the FRG’s efforts to speed its recovery. In contrast to Ireland’s global adverse trade balance, the FRG showed a consistently favourable one after taking corrective action to address its balance-​of-​payments deficit within the EPU in 1952.52 Demands grew from the Irish government, interest groups (particularly farming organisations) and national newspapers for larger exports to Germany. A major expression of Irish dissatisfaction occurred in January 1952. Katzenberger was summoned to Iveagh House to meet the assistant secretary, William P. Fay. Fay informed a startled Katzenberger that Dublin considered Bonn demonstrated a lack of goodwill in the implementation of the trade agreement, particularly in the area of import licences for Irish produce. Fay revealed that Industry and Commerce and other departments were berating External Affairs for supposed insufficient dedication to export promotion. Ireland was ‘very dissatisfied’ with the German treatment of Irish exports, in particular tweeds and hat hoods. He presented Katzenberger with an aide-​mémoire outlining the grievances and demanding rectification. Katzenberger told the AA that Irish trade demands were reasonable and, moreover, the FRG could not carry on invoking Irish–​German friendship without making benevolent gestures.53 In 1952, Dublin also signalled serious intent to develop the FRG as an outlet for exports by constructing a permanent exhibition stand at the Frankfurt Trade Fair. The objective was to assist Irish firms to market their products and build contacts.54 As the minister for industry and commerce, Seán Lemass, stated at the opening of the Irish National Pavilion at the Frankfurt Trade Fair in September, ‘We hope that Germany, on her part, will find it possible to facilitate our efforts to increase our trade with her. Now that Germany is getting back to its full strength, the time seems most opportune for increasing and widening the scope of our exports

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to Germany.’55 Katzenberger recognised that the Irish would welcome an expansion of the trade to reduce their dependence on Britain.56 The exasperation of the Irish FTC waxed as its initial sanguine export expectations were not met. Germany was Ireland’s second trade partner in the 1930s, in terms of Irish exports. It reacquired this position in 1950 and 1951 but in 1954 it fell behind the United States into third place. Simultaneously, Irish–​German trade inequality grew precipitously, according to Irish statistics. The departments of Industry and Commerce, and Agriculture, in addition to the FTC, ardently pursued a policy of levelling the trade balance by expanding exports.57 Bargaining shortcomings Ireland now encountered structural obstacles. The first was the asymmetrical nature of trade liberalisation. During the early 1950s, OEEC trade liberalisation advanced briskly with lasting repercussions. OEEC liberalisation had two major features: it aimed at eradicating quantitative import restrictions (quotas) leaving the tariff system intact; and it briskly liberalised the industrial rather than the agricultural domain, which played to the advantage of industrial powers. Both Ireland and Germany implemented the OEEC programme. Ireland had already eliminated at least 75 per cent of its import quotas by late 1952.58 Germany liberalised quickly too: by 1955 over 90 per cent of its imports were liberalised,59 and Ireland was liberalised to a comparable level. In October 1953, therefore, Ireland and Germany dispensed with the annual renegotiation of substantive articles of the annual trade agreement as so many manufactures were liberalised.60 In future the annual discussions focused on setting Germany’s import quotas for non-​liberalised commodities,61 that is, primarily agricultural goods. With the advance in the OEEC’s dismantling of quantitative restrictions, the majority of the manufactures Ireland imported were liberalised.62 However, quotas remained the primary obstacle to Ireland’s staple agricultural exports (cattle, beef, butter, offal, etc.) to Germany.63 Some products Ireland exported to Germany were freed from quota restrictions during the 1950s (e.g., eggs, poultry, breeding horses, dried milk, cheese, woollen and worsted goods),64 but these were not a mainstay of its agricultural sector or a central focus of its export interests. Unluckily for Ireland, one of the few non-​liberalised industrial sectors was gypsum wallboard and this was a rare example of an internationally competitive Irish industry –​it was mechanised and drew on local raw materials.65 The Department of Industry and Commerce was thwarted in its efforts in 1953 when Germany reduced its import quota; a German wallboard factory near its Eastern frontier was operated by East German refugees.66 Overall, OEEC liberalisation favoured the recovery of competitive industrial economies placing agricultural economies

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like Ireland’s at a bargaining disadvantage. In the few manufacturing industries where Ireland could compete, such as wallboard, it encountered protectionism. The second impediment Ireland encountered was the political weight of West German agricultural interests and its agricultural policy mix. Irish authorities and agricultural interests had originally assumed the implications of German partition (the loss of its Eastern agricultural lands and congestion caused by fleeing refugees) created a large market for food imports, but this was not to be.67 With a heavily urban-​industrial society and an artificially inflated population Germany could never attain self-​sufficiency in essential foodstuffs, but it maximised indigenous production; the memory of post-​war hunger combined with the shortage of hard currency (into the early 1950s) reinforced this. Two hundred thousand farming families from the East had fled to the West, and they worked in agricultural sectors such as horticulture and intensive livestock production boosting production.68 Similar to many of its neighbours, West Germany endeavoured to realise a high level of food security following its wartime experiences and this general European fixation was reflected in the hands-​ off attitude the OEEC took towards domestic agricultural interests. Prevalent fears of a major conflict or crisis emanating from the Cold War, not least on the issue of Berlin and the status of Germany, underlined this imperative. Bonn protected its farmers by using quotas and tariffs to stimulate their output and standard of living; West German farmers were formed into well-​organised and powerful lobby groups (known collectively as the ‘Green Front’) in the late 1940s and early 1950s. These had a pronounced affinity for the CDU, which dominated federal government. As Con Cremin, the Irish ambassador to France and vice-​chairman of the Council of the OEEC, noted in 1953 during the European Green Pool discussions to liberalise trade in agricultural products, the head of the German delegation was ‘really the representative of the German equivalent of the British National Farmers’ Union’.69 Thus no progress was possible in liberalising agricultural products of Irish interest. West Germany subsidised domestic agriculture heavily in response to vested interests, security considerations and domestic politics. As a result German agricultural production recovered rapidly. During 1948–​49 West German food production was estimated to be 30 per cent below pre-​war levels; by 1954–​55 this had been reduced to 23 per cent.70 In meat production West German progress was swifter, and this diminished the import openings for Ireland and other meat producers. The non-​liberalised sector included cattle and beef, and to a lesser extent dairy products.71 Thus in 1955 Aedan O’Beirne, the secretary of the Irish Legation in Bonn, was realistic when he estimated the German import of meat and livestock remained marginal to its overall market needs. Germany could fill over 90 per cent of its meat needs from domestic supplies (bacon, pork and beef ).72 And this figure continued to rise. German meat output fluctuated to a minor extent seasonally, depending on weather conditions, but the inexorable

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trend was towards self-​sufficiency. Denmark and the Netherland’s proximity to West Germany made them the main external suppliers of meat products. Denmark was Germany’s leading external provider of cattle and beef. In the meantime, German manufactures flowed into Ireland.73 German manufacturing assets lay primarily in sectors that were vital to supplying Ireland’s import substitution industries. Germany’s key strengths and competitiveness lay in heavy industrial sectors such as iron, steel, heavy engineering, plant machinery, and chemicals. These were indispensable inputs for Ireland’s light industry, which focused on production for the domestic market. It was in many Irish firms’ interests to import such German products to continue manufacturing as they were usually competitively priced or estimated to be of superior quality compared to other international competitors. But Ireland’s predominantly agricultural and non-​liberalised exports could not gain easy access to West Germany under OEEC rules. This state of affairs continued as consecutive governments grappled impotently for a solution. The Irish wanted to redress the manifest imbalance in the October 1955 quota negotiations. The negotiations were overshadowed by the unwillingness of the German authorities to ‘revalidate unutilised’ export licences amounting to £125,000 of live cattle under the previous trade agreement. The Department of Agriculture’s contention was that the relevant German authorities had ‘called up’ the full amount specified by the agreement ‘too early’ in the season for Irish traders to take advantage of them. Additionally, there had been licensing issues, therefore only £500,000 of the cattle quota had been used. As Irish cattle exports were entering peak season, Ireland could fulfil the unfilled licences from September 1955 onwards. An Irish démarche ‘deprecated’ the German authorities’ unwillingness to cooperate.74 During October 1955, the Irish pressed for a ‘liberal’ German attitude.75 However, the German negotiators would not revalidate the unused cattle/​beef licences, but they consented to extend the same quota for cattle and beef that Ireland had received in 1954. They also assented to an unpublished minute whereby Bonn promised to consider increasing the quota if it was exhausted.76 The quotas secured in October 1955 for most products were comparable to the previous year but the negotiations were tainted by rancour. During the negotiations the head of the German delegation, Dr W Junker, responded to an Irish request to increase the quota for smoking pipes by declaring he had discovered that the relevant Irish manufacturing firm was at full capacity and it could not fill the increased order. This ‘appeared to reflect on the bona-​fides of the Irish side’.77 The Irish negotiators rebutted this as contrary to their information. The head of the Irish delegation told the FTC that Junker’s behaviour ‘appeared to be contrary to good taste, if not to protocol’.78 Immediately following the conclusion of the negotiations, the Department of Industry and Commerce interviewed the senior staff of the firm who confirmed that the Junker’s assertion was unfounded or

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based on ‘hearsay’79 and Dr Junker had not approached them.80 The Department of External Affairs protested to the German Legation that Junker’s behaviour was ‘distinctly unpleasant’ ‘without putting it into so many words’.81 The Irish minister, Kiernan, delivered an oral protest to Junker in Bonn, who accepted the veracity of the Irish account and promised to ‘do everything to ensure the quota was granted’.82 A second vexation arose when the German authorities published the quotas agreed by the trade delegations before the Irish government had an opportunity to approve them formally. In the estimation of the FTC, the Germans action was occasioned by their intention to demonstrate they had made no major concessions to the Irish before they entered into trade negotiations with Britain and other countries.83 Collectively, these incidents inclined the Irish towards a mistrust of German tactics. Irish frustrations were accentuated by Germany’s accumulating surplus under the EPU. By 1953, the OEEC Council and its Steering Board for Trade regarded West Germany, as ‘an extreme creditor country’ that unbalanced the EPU, and so it should ‘take all possible steps to increase its imports’ from OEEC countries.84 In 1954 and 1955, Denmark and the Netherlands demanded the liberalisation of West German agriculture and the end of restrictive import practices which prevented Germany from increasing agricultural imports. They demanded the reduction of Germany’s customs and quota restrictions to rebalance the EPU.85 As a result of this and the lodging of a formal Danish protest against West Germany to the OEEC, the Department of Agriculture was in no mood for compromise when faced with repeated German arguments that the lack of success of the Irish in filling their cattle and meat quotas in Germany depended ‘purely on commercial considerations’.86 Traditional German arguments, such as that Irish cattle and beef prices were ‘too high’, Irish transport methods were uneconomic and Irish traders were not exerting sufficient pressure to enter German markets, were investigated by the Irish authorities during 1955 and 1956.87 In the face of German importers’ allegations that the fault lay with the poor quality of Irish cattle, the Department of Agriculture dispatched an official to Hamburg in the spring of 1956 to ascertain the reasons for the lack of Irish success in exporting cattle and beef to West Germany.88 The result was indeterminate as the situation was ‘more intricate than had first appeared’ owing to the complex web of German protective procedures, duties, taxes, freight and other charges involved. However, the sending of this mission underscored a determination to guarantee a healthy cattle and beef trade with Germany. Faced with rising evidence of Irish tenacity, German officials were apparently prepared ‘to do whatever was possible to assist in the marketing of Irish cattle as a result of the presentations’.89 In 1956, the Irish authorities brokered a significant reduction in the cost of cattle freight between Dublin and Hamburg.90 These and other Irish activities in 1955 and 1956 were evidence of Irish resolve to tackle barriers to exports to Germany. If inertia had characterised

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Irish export aspirations in the early 1950s, this had now ended. Irish expectations were stoked by extensive Irish and international media coverage of Germany’s dramatic reconstruction. The new German minister, Dr Felician Prill, made an effort to dampen Irish expectations. He submitted in a speech to the Dublin Rotary Club in 1957 that it was a serious ‘mistake’ to label all Germans as ‘rich’ on the basis of the German economic miracle. He argued that Germans experienced very high taxation levels, lower standards of living and owned fewer private assets per capita compared to countries such as the UK, Switzerland, Sweden or Belgium. He stated that ‘we in Federal Germany are relatively poor’.91 There was a palpable sense in Irish circles, nevertheless, that Dublin had extended to Bonn every facility to assist in its acceptance into the family of nation-​ states after Second World War. Ireland had fully recognised West Germany as the only legal German state; refused to trade with East Germany; and its market had been ‘altogether receptive for German products’.92 If as Die Welt reported in October 1956, the Federal Economics Ministry viewed Ireland’s trade with West Germany as ‘traditionally passive for Ireland, since the main Irish products in the agricultural field are priced high and mainly go to Great Britain’,93 there was accumulating evidence that the Irish were now animated. This all fitted into a milieu of general Irish economic underperformance and a failure to meet export targets to Germany specifically. Added to this, was the growing Irish awareness that agricultural countries were disadvantaged relative to industrial economies under OEEC liberalisation. As the Irish Times bitterly argued, in early 1959, ‘Highly industrialised countries such as Britain and Germany … will have to face the problem created by domestic agricultural production. Their great wealth permits them to subsidise agriculture as a semi-​social policy; yet the source of their wealth, to a large extent, is trade with agricultural countries which in their turn, must export to live –​and to buy industrial goods.’94 Desperate measures Every year from 1946, Ireland experienced a balance-​of-​payments deficit. After 1950, its economy stagnated when all other West European countries experienced rapid economic growth.95 Ireland’s global balance-​of-​payments deficit grew to £35 million in 1955 which was contributed to by falling agricultural exports (prices collapsed). The formerly war ravaged economies of Western Europe, including West Germany, had boosted their agricultural production.96 Coupled with mechanisation and improved veterinary practices this led to a global food surplus. Ireland’s negative balance of trade with Germany contributed £7.1 million or 20.3 per cent to Ireland’s deficit in 1955, which was disproportionately large. The Irish economic nadir had been reached. In March 1956 Gerard Sweetman, the minister for finance in the Second Inter-​Party

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Table 4.1  Irish–​German trade, 1950–​59 Year 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959

Exports to Germany £1,460,000 £1,175,000 £866,000 £894,000 £1,750,286 £1,456,698b £2,276,000 £3,304,911 £2,795,291e £3,482,492

Imports from Germany £1,917,000 £4,575,000 £5,375,000 £5,375,000 £7,317,191 £9,555,426c £7,905,000 £6,947,634d £7,934,631f £10,479,654g

Ratio of exports to imports 1 : 1.3 1 : 3.9 1 : 6.2 1 : 5.8a 1 : 4.1 1 : 6.7 1 : 3.4 1 : 2.1 1 : 2.8 1 : 3h

 Figures for 1950 to 1953 from NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​8, Brief for Trade Delegation visiting Germany in October 1954. b  The figure for exports to Germany for 1955 is given at £1,412,000 in NAI, DIC, FTG, 490/​12, Note on Trade with the FRG, n.d. (c. September 1957), p. 2. c  1955 import/​export figures from NAI, DT, S14557 E, Memorandum for Information of Government, Trade Discussions with Western Germany –​November 1956, 10 December 1956. d  NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​13, Address of the German Minister to Ireland delivered at the Rotary Club on Monday, 23 March 1959. e   NAI, DIC, FTG, 490/​15, Discussions –​March 1960. f  NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​13, Address of the German Minister to Ireland delivered at the Rotary Club, 23 March 1959. g   NAI, DIC, FTG, 490/​15, Discussions –​March 1960. h  Ibid. a

Government took the dramatic step of imposing special import levies to redress the balance-​of-​payments deficit.97 Ultimately, this extraordinary measure produced the desired result: in 1957 Ireland experienced its first surplus since 1946.98 However, this measure irretrievably damaged the image of the inter-​ party government. It revealed a sense of desperation. The measure revealed a lack of political and economic ingenuity or determination to adapt the Irish economy to the implications of Pax Americana. Successive Irish governments had failed to address the deteriorating position. All the export promotion efforts had failed in the face of entrenched vested and institutional interests, both domestic and international. The failure by Ireland to correct its swelling trade imbalance with Germany played into Sweetman’s decision; there was a prevalent feeling by 1956 that Germany was unwilling to concede reciprocity, contrary to its protestations of friendship and goodwill. Irish officials wasted little time in deploying the special import levies as a means to leverage greater trade concessions.

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The new Irish minister to Bonn in mid-​1955, Dr T. J. Kiernan, was a harsh critic of Bonn’s diplomatic and bargaining style. By January 1956, he was declaring, ‘It seems to be a normal reaction of German policy to start with an attitude of toughness. This is called negotiation from a position of strength … The next reaction, when the bluff is, as it were, called, is to go to great pains to effuse sweet reasonableness. The reaction is as much an exaggeration and as obviously as playing of a part as the opening gambit. Finesse is not a German strong point.’99 Kiernan supposed German government ministries conducted relations with Ireland on the basis of ‘German-​state raison d’état’. Ireland was ‘of no or insignificant importance’ to them in international relations. He had expected the German administration to have an ‘open-​minded’, or at least an ‘agnostic or neutral attitude’, when dealing with Ireland or proposals emanating from Irish quarters. On the contrary, he reported the ‘first reaction’ of the AA to all Irish proposals to be one of ‘stultifying’ ‘rejection, followed by an investigation to find the reasons to justify rejection’.100 Drawing on his censorious reading of relations, he proclaimed the underlying feature of German negotiations with the Irish on all matters, not alone trade, was ‘a superficially friendly attitude and completely uncooperative real intention’. Kiernan’s diagnosis for the German ‘stonewall without a gate’ and ‘indifference’ was primarily the ‘rigid’ climate of German official opinion and administration which resulted in the ‘minimum devolution of responsibility … even on unimportant points’. It was unlike the Irish, British or Australian approaches, which would consider ‘special cases’ or ‘exceptional circumstances’ in order to cut a general deal. He argued, in the case of West Germany, that ‘The machine is always in evidence; the individual never.’ He even suggested the FTC had been wrong in suggesting that the behaviour of Junker at the October 1955 trade talks was a personal failing. To Kiernan’s mind, it was ‘evidence’ of a general ‘attitude’ prevalent among ‘senior’ German officials. Protests at Junker’s performance had not impacted on his career: he was soon afterwards appointed to ambassadorial rank. Kiernan adopted a direct approach in his subsequent conversations with Professor Caspari, a senior AA official.101 He opined that Ireland had failed to ‘reach any kind of favourable terms of trade’ and complained about the ‘impossibility of getting over [the FRG’s] tariff walls’ for commodities that Ireland was centrally interested in exporting. Going further he argued there was a fundamental ‘contradiction between the actual trading policies of Germany and the policy of the common market’ (which Germany was supporting in the EEC negotiations). Caspari’s reply was that Ireland’s trading difficulties were largely self-​inflicted, arising from high prices, uneconomic transport methods and traders who were ‘not exerting any pressure to enter the German markets’. In effect, Caspari suggested that the fault lay with Irish transportation, marketing, distribution and pricing systems.102

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In the face of such immobility, Kiernan dispatched a seething report to his superiors in June, fulminating against German ‘rigidity’, raison d’état and immunity to ‘persuasive argumentation’. Exceptional treatment which he knew was within the power of the concerned German ministries was not granted in several instances. Kiernan acknowledged, however, Ireland lacked bargaining counters. Unremitting appeals for equitable treatment based on the prevailing imbalance of trade, the revalidation of under-​utilised licences (owing to seasonal and delivery difficulties) and a sense of fair play would not work. Kiernan concluded that Ireland occupied a position of such minor importance in Germany’s priorities that only the ‘strong-​arm method of discussion’ might prove fruitful. ‘The import levies hurt German interests’, according to Kiernan. That was the only method to force the German political leadership to pay attention to Ireland’s ‘extreme dissatisfaction’ at the disproportionately adverse balance of trade after five years of patience and adherence to protocol.103 This was perhaps the only way to confront German bureaucratic inflexibility and unbending implementation of all political directives and agreements in the Irishman’s estimation. A widespread view had crystallised: Germany was abusing Ireland as a ‘trading post’ and this could not be allowed to continue. Kiernan was a trenchant critic of German treatment of Ireland and as the senior diplomat in Bonn he influenced Irish policymaking. Kiernan’s reports, in combination with the reports of trade negotiations before 1956, substantiate the view that the Irish and West German states had very different organisations, negotiating styles and cultures. Their antithetical official outlooks and interests came to a head during this period of acute Irish economic depression. Negotiations were now in a very challenging phase. Following the implementation of special import duties, British and Commonwealth exporters benefiting from the imperial tariff preferences hurried to take advantage from the cancelled Irish orders with German exporters. In some cases, they were prepared to offer discounts to win the contracts of German firms in Ireland.104 The markets in Ireland of some German firms, such as Bosch, Siemens and Volkswagen, were endangered; thus, German exporter associations placed pressure on the AA to seek an alleviation of the impact of the levies.105 In the face of West German pleading that the imposition of Irish special import levies disproportionately disadvantaged their firms, the Irish remained obdurate. As a DEA formal note to the German Legation made clear: no concessions could be granted and no remission of levies would be permitted as to do so would ‘defeat the purposes for which they were imposed’. It seemed that the Irish were now adopting the same toughness that they believed characterised German bureaucracy. They argued the new levies were a ‘temporary expedient’, which would be removed as soon as the balance-​of-​payments situation corrected itself. Pointedly, the note implied this would occur if the German authorities ‘having regard to their very favourable trade balance with Ireland’ could make ‘special

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concessions in the matter of the admission of Irish goods to their country’.106 Quite simply, the minister for, and Department of, Finance were not disposed to show any flexibility on the grounds that West Germany was a highly incommensurate contributor to the Irish balance-​of-​payments deficit in 1955.107 The Irish Government unflinchingly stuck to its hardline tactics. Before and during the November 1956 annual discussion of import quotas, German newspapers suggested that Bonn would increase quotas for Irish cattle, beef and other non-​liberalised goods.108 The AA intimated the same to the Irish legation.109 At the quota discussions, the German delegates maintained that the levies were not true customs duties, but were special taxes, and it was improper to apply the Commonwealth preference too. The Irish upheld their fixed attitude:  the levies were customs duties and the Commonwealth trade preference had to be maintained under the Anglo-​Irish agreement of 1938.110 No exceptions could be granted. The Irish delegates seemed to succeed in their objective: with ‘strong pressure’ they secured a doubling of the import facilities for live and slaughtered cattle (including carcase beef ). However, an agreed minute made the qualification that if the German meat market became saturated, the Germans could suspend temporarily, or withdraw, the import facilities, on the proviso that they took comparable action against other meat-​supplying countries.111 The special levies delivered results: German exports to Ireland fell to £7.9 million in 1956 from the ‘phenomenal’ high of £9.6 million in 1955. Irish exports also marginally improved leading to an export/​import balance of 1 :  3.4 in West Germany’s favour, the best ratio from Dublin’s perspective since 1950. Nonetheless, an enormous imbalance in trade remained.112 But the grant of an increased German quota of £1.25  million for Irish cattle and beef at the November 1956 negotiations further ameliorated the imbalance during 1957. In fact, additional German considerations ensured that this category of Irish exports amounted to almost £2.2 million, of which beef alone accounted for £1.65 million, during the term of the 1956/​57 quota.113 One reason for the expansion of Irish cattle exports was the German discovery that Irish cattle responded unusually well to foot and mouth serum. Evidence emerged that German consumers began to view Irish beef as of superior quality, if generally fatter than the lean meat normally demanded by the German market, and hope was nurtured in Irish circles that with time German tastes might adapt.114 In the first eight months of 1957 Irish statistics revealed that ‘German exports to Ireland were approximately twice as large as Irish exports to Germany.’115 The maintenance of the special import levies and the improved German consideration for Irish cattle and beef substantially reduced the trade disparity in 1957. In 1957 Irish exports to Germany were valued at £3.3 million and imports from Germany at £6.9 million.116 Irish circles felt their tough bargaining was vindicated.117

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Much of the beef exported in 1957 formed part of complex contracts held by Irish exporters or German importers with US military forces stationed in West Germany. The beef was either in the form of special cuts required by the US forces, or carcases under an import-​for-​export arrangement whereby the German importer was permitted to dispose of a portion of the Irish beef on the German domestic market provided he arranged for the export of an equivalent weight of German meat or meat products.118 A Frankfurt firm, comprising US former army people, had successfully introduced Irish chilled meat to the German market (the off-​cuts from their deliveries to the US air force). Established German importers handled chilled Irish beef for the first time.119 The outcome of the negotiations in November 1956 and the indirect and small toehold for Irish chilled beef on the German market, however, was not a harbinger. Contrary to German intimations that there would be no difficulties, during the next round of the trade discussions in 1957120 the talks descended into the most fractious and prolonged affair in post-​war Irish–​German trade history. The failure of the talks provoked a severe controversy. While Ireland’s global balance-​of-​payments position had improved, allowing some relaxation in the special import levies, Ireland’s trading position remained ‘critical’.121 There had been some optimism that Irish cattle and beef were finally becoming established in the German market.122 The Department of Agriculture entertained aspirations for at least a doubling of the quota for cattle and beef to £2.5 million.123 But such hopes were illusory: in the negotiations to set the quotas for 1958, Bonn would only extend the same quota for cattle and meat as the previous year. Its representatives were instructed to terminate or reduce to a minimum the meat trade. Yet carcase beef was largely responsible for the progress in Irish export figures.124 The Germans categorically refused to accept beef instead of live cattle in the early stages of the trading year and would give no obligation that they would accept beef in the later stages either.125 If this transpired, there would be no export of chilled or processed beef to Germany during 1958.126 The character of the negotiations in late 1957 gained a grave character that coloured the overall Irish–​German relationship. Broader considerations bore heavily on both governments’ calculations. German economic policy underwent a ‘radical readjustment’:  in 1957 the International Monetary Fund (IMF) demanded Germany should discontinue ‘certain economic restrictions’. This was positive from an Irish perspective, but of far more import was Germany’s signature and ratification of the EEC Treaty.127 A  fearful Department of Agriculture considered that acceptance of any unsatisfactory offer from Germany would establish a headline for future negotiations on agriculture between the EEC Six.128 The minister for agriculture, Seán Moylan, wished to establish a durable foothold for Irish cattle and meat exports to Germany before the EEC was launched. He instructed the Irish negotiators not to comply with the derisory German quota offers and other proposed import

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restrictions in the bilateral negotiations.129 As the Department of Agriculture later noted: The German stand in what must be a relatively unimportant issue for them does, however, suggest that in the new alignment which is taking place in Europe the OEEC Liberalisation Code may operate to the serious detriment of food exporting countries like Ireland. None of the Common Market countries has a liberal policy in regard to food imports. The predominant voices in the Common Market, i.e., those of France and Germany, are definitely restrictionist and this country’s position in bargaining with the Common Market countries may be expected to get weaker rather than stronger if OEEC liberalisation on the present basis should continue when the Common Market arrangements become effective in practice.130

From an Irish perspective the EEC cast a long shadow over the trade deliberations. Germany was the only noteworthy market that Ireland could reasonably expect to break into with cattle and beef exports in continental Europe, but the foundation of the EEC compounded difficulties. Added to this was the agonising formation of the Irish beef-​processing industry. This embryonic industry was regarded by the Department of Agriculture as the future for Irish beef exports:  it increased direct and indirect Irish employment; it avoided the losses that were intrinsic in the live cattle trade; it maximised Irish profits; and it overcame the problem of Ireland’s distance from the German market (five to seven days by ship).131 This nascent industry experienced substantial challenges: the preference of its export markets, including the UK, was for live cattle which they could process domestically. Sustaining and expanding the emerging German market for the products of the Irish beef-​processing industry was considered an imperative by the handful of Irish firms involved. The Federal Agricultural Ministry’s issuing of a press release in the midst of the trade negotiations in late 1957, predicting ‘a reduction in the facilities hitherto accorded to Ireland for the importation into Germany of dead meat’, angered the Irish meat-​ processing firms. The Irish delegation protested that this announcement was contrary to good taste and protocol as the talks were ongoing and it pre-​empted the outcome of the negotiations.132 Regardless the German delegation refused to go beyond their original paltry offer for cattle and beef. In his report to the AA, the head of the German trade delegation, Dr Werner von Bargen, acknowledged that the ongoing Irish economic crisis made the matter an extremely touchy matter and that the export of agricultural products was ‘a question of life and death’ for the Irish economy. Bargen recommended to the AA that it would be better to agree to the Irish request for ‘political reasons’ noting the Irish were understandably touchy if the bilateral deal added to Ireland’s high unemployment and emigration. He and the AA endeavoured to convince the other ministries that a concession to the Irish

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was ‘politically’ important and would prove to be economically negligible since Irish beef only represented between 1.5 per cent and 2 per cent of the FRG’s beef imports.133 However, the Ministry of Agriculture was unwilling to alter its stance in the face of the AA’s desire to seek a workable compromise with the Irish at the negotiations. On the other hand, the Ministry of Agriculture’s premature press release had compounded the public relations difficulties of the Irish government in managing the domestic cattle industry and beef processors’ expectations. Dublin’s prerogative was to expand exports of live, fresh and chilled beef to Germany to offset a decline in Irish exports to Britain.134 Consequently, the Irish delegation, on instructions from the minister for agriculture, and with the support of his ministerial colleagues, adjourned the negotiations with a view to reconvening in a few weeks to negotiate a compromise.135 Pressure was applied on Bonn, with the support of the Irish Fresh Meat Exporters’ Society, interested German importers, the Dáil, national newspapers and the provincial and farmers’ press.136 Efforts were made by the Irish Legation in Bonn to broker an agreement in December. A  German offer on beef was refused as only ‘a slight advance’, but to calm the situation Bonn issued a call-​up for Irish live cattle in December enabling that trade to be resumed without the finalisation of a treaty.137 The Irish government claimed it was afraid the ‘situation would explode in Ireland’.138 Although the AA was ‘dismayed by the seriousness of the situation’, the Ministry of Agriculture was unmoved, and with a public outcry in Ireland no compromise was possible.139 The beef trade remained largely suspended. A concerned minister for external affairs made a démarche to Prill on 30 December 1957, pleading for the German to use his good offices to broker a break in the deadlock and secure a renewal of the trade agreement on satisfactory terms.140 Despite the German minister’s best efforts no movement occurred. As Prill anticipated, the political room for manoeuvre in Bonn, in particular in the Ministry of Agriculture, was constrained by the political and lobbying power of German farmers.141 In early December, the Irish Legation in Bonn, German importers and the minister for industry and commerce concluded Ireland possessed ‘no effective weapons to hand to force the Germans to improve their terms’ so the Irish had to either accept what was offered or accept the consequences.142 The Department of Agriculture was unwavering in its stance that Ireland should not acquiesce to Germany’s efforts to close down the trade in Irish processed beef. The matter continued to drift without solution. The National Farmers’ Association (NFA) and the Fresh Meat Exporters’ Society advocated retaliating against Germany.143 In February 1958, the FTC debated the possibility of discriminatory action against German imports without infringing OEEC regulations. However, this was not pursued because it ‘was hardly the intention to start an economic war with Germany’.144 Besides, under OEEC regulations it was

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unclear whether or not Ireland possessed the right to retaliate against liberalised German exports on the basis of its ‘unfair treatment’ of ‘non-​liberalised’ imports from Ireland. The priority of Ireland overall was to conform to OEEC regulations.145 The Department of, and minister for, Industry and Commerce were opposed to discriminatory action against Bonn on the grounds ‘that the possibility of effecting reprisals of this nature was very limited in view of the fact that the bulk of our purchases from Germany consisted of industrial products which we bought there only because it was to our advantage to do so, and in respect of the most of which we had already entered into firm liberalisation commitments with OEEC’.146 Reprisals would damage Ireland’s already weak general-​trading position. From a broader outlook, the continuing stalemate was damaging Irish–​ German relations. The arguments of the other interested departments and the evident immobility of Bonn led to a softening of Agriculture’s line in mid-​March 1958. Otherwise the entire Irish cattle and beef trade with Germany would be placed in jeopardy. In April, in the absence of any agreement, the Irish exporters lost a contract to supply prime beef cuts to the US forces in Germany.147 Only 2,400 cattle were exported to Germany from Irish ports from mid-​December to mid-​March, and that was a German goodwill gesture.148 An anxious FTC wished to break the impasse. William Warnock, the Irish minister to Germany, was called home for consultations and then despatched to put out feelers to Bonn. The prolongation of the extraordinary circumstances was inadvisable and Dublin wanted to know what a tolerable resolution was from the German perspective. Dublin was now willing to compromise and requested a few amendments to what the Germans had proposed in December.149 The German minister played a constructive mediating role. Prill intervened during 1957 and 1958 to make strong representations in Bonn in favour of compromise.150 He reinforced Bargen’s earlier arguments to conciliate the Irish, advising that political considerations should be taken into account. With Ireland’s military neutrality in mind, he made the case that the FRG should assist Ireland with its economic problems in order to ease the alignment of Ireland’s foreign policy with the West. He regretted Bonn’s failure to repair trade relations in a timely fashion.151 Prill considered that trust had been detrimentally affected by brinkmanship and a distinct Irish perception of a lack of German consideration for Ireland in trade matters.152 The German representative’s line was that Ireland was isolated from the Western mainstream by virtue of its independent-​minded foreign policy under Aiken’s direction at the UN and its unbending anti-​partition. Prill contended Ireland’s policy of self-​sufficiency had failed and to survive the cycle of unemployment and mass emigration Ireland had to open up to competition and European integration.153 He maintained that Germany could prevent a dangerous social and political radicalisation of Irish life. By assisting its economy to improve, Germany might encourage Ireland to move in the direction

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of integration with the West. Pointedly, he suggested that Germany could materially assist Ireland’s transition by offering improved import quotas and facilitating the establishment of German industries in Ireland.154 In other words, he underlined prospective political advantages accruing to Germany if it adopted a more compliant attitude on quotas. However, Prill’s advice did not make any major difference at this time. The solution to the crisis eventually came when Irish decision-​makers realised that they lacked leverage. As late as May 1958, a former minister for agriculture, James Dillon, who was questioning the current minister for agriculture’s handling of the situation, offered detailed advice on Ireland’s negotiating stance and argued for a ‘sterner line’ with Germany.155 Dillon admitted that he had ‘found negotiating with the Germans quite a difficult business’, and advocated that the minister for agriculture exclude German products from the Irish market completely unless Bonn offered equitable trade relations.156 Calmer counsels prevailed, in particular those of the DEA and Department of Industry and Commerce. Even the hardline Department of Agriculture finally discerned that the stand-​off could permanently shut Irish cattle and beef out of the German market. The original quota offered by the Germans of £1.25  million for cattle and beef was accepted by the Irish, but with restrictions on the amount of processed beef this could include.157 In addition, they maintained their reservation that they could stop the import of Irish cattle and beef if the German market experienced an over-​supply. Apart from minor concessions the German position had not altered since December 1957. Lacking leverage or the support of his colleagues, the minister for agriculture recognised that the German offer could not be improved upon.158 Neither did Warnock succeed in extracting a formal undertaking from the Germans that the discrimination between live cattle and beef ‘should not prejudice’ Ireland’s ‘future relations with Germany when the Common Market’ came into effect.159 Unsurprisingly the Irish Times viewed the agreement as ‘highly unsatisfactory’. It opined, ‘She [Germany] is now the most prosperous country in Europe, with no balance-​of-​payments problem, and a highly advantageous turn of trade with Ireland. To cut so deeply into the principal item which we supply in return does not forward the good relations which have so far prevailed between the two countries.’160 Conclusion From an Irish perspective, the policy of ‘levelling-​up business’, associated with hard Irish negotiating tactics since 1955, was not a complete failure. The trade imbalance had fallen since 1956 from five or six to one, to two or three to one.161 Domestic political interests favoured an equalisation of the terms of trade with Germany. Prill, by 1958, was suggesting that the government of Ireland lacked any particular affinity or preference for Germany in terms of

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its general foreign outlook.162 German official commentators were convinced that Irish foreign policy in terms of its defence, political and economic orientation was at odds with the Western world and the realities of the Cold War. A  senator even raised a question in the Seanad suggesting that Irish diplomatic missions with Western European countries, especially with Germany, were unsustainable unless reciprocal trade relations were achieved.163 However, from the depths of the Irish economic abyss and its frayed trade relations with Germany a new economic ‘promised land’ was already beginning to emerge. The future Irish industrial development policy of attracting foreign investment was emerging. Paradoxically, this shift was stimulated in large part by German capital exports to prevent its economic miracle from overheating. Prill was partially correct: Ireland’s distinctive independent posture and policies were finally tempered by commercial considerations. Ironically, German industrial investment, not German quotas for Irish agricultural products, acted as a major catalyst for Ireland’s reorientation. Notes 1 The supply of these materials and commodities were considered ‘essential to the other’s economy’ in the 1952 trade agreement. See: NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​4, Trade agreement, 19 September 1952. 2 O’Driscoll, Ireland, Germany and the Nazis, passim. 3 Liam Kennedy, The Modern Industrialisation of Ireland 1940–​88 (Studies in Irish Economic and Social History 5, Dundalgan Press, 1989), p. 10. 4 ‘NFA wants more active Trade Policy’, Irish Times, 3 April 1957, p. 6; Editorial, ‘Trade with Germany’, Irish Times, 4 June 1958, p. 5; ‘Government Attitude Approved’, Irish Independent, 23 January 1958, p. 10; Editorial, ‘Trade with Germany’, Irish Times, 17 November 1957, p. 5. 5 See M. Daly, The First Department of Agriculture:  A History of the Department of Agriculture (IPA: Dublin, 2002), ­chapter 6. 6 T. J. Hickey, ‘Wealth from the Land’, Irish Times, 2 June 1952, p. 4. 7 Daly, First Department, p. 296. 8 TNA, CAB, 134/​ 218/​ 50, Report of the Overseas Negotiations Committee, Negotiations with Eire, p. 2. 9 TNA, CAB, 134/​217/​40, Memorandum by the Minister of Food, Exports of Eire cattle to the continent, 11 May 1948. 10 TNA, CAB, 134/​ 218/​ 50, Report of the Overseas Negotiations Committee, Negotiations with Eire, pp. 2, 9. 11 Daly, First Department, p. 298. 12 TNA, CAB, 134/​217/​23, Report from the Overseas Negotiations Committee, Annex, Price of Live Cattle imported from Eire, 20 March 1948. 13 Maher, Tortuous Path, p. 6. 14 Daly, First Department, p. 296.

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15 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​8, Appendix II, Notes on the Provisions of the Existing Trade Agreement affecting Trade in Industrial Goods (attached to brief for trade delegation visiting Germany in October 1954). 16 See, for example:  NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​5, FTC, Trade Negotiations with German Delegation from 7 to 15 October 1953, p. 10. 17 Ibid. See also: NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​8, Appendix II, Notes on the Provisions of the Existing Trade Agreement affecting Trade in Industrial Goods (attached to brief for trade delegation visiting Germany in October 1954); NAI, DT, S17253 A-​62, Liability of Goods of Non-​Commonwealth Origin to Minimum Import Duty of 10% under the Anglo-​Irish Trade Agreement 1938, n. d. (c. October 1962). 18 NAI, DT, S17253 A-​62, Visit of the Taoiseach to the FRG October 1962, Notes for including in Brief. 19 NAI, DIC, FTG, 490/​1, FTC, Report from T. Murray and St. J. Connolly on Trade Discussions in Frankfurt, 15 and 16 June 1949, p. 7. 20 NAI, DIC, FTG, 490, FTC, Revised Minutes of Meeting held on 10 January 1947; ibid., FTC, Revised Minutes of Meeting held on 15 April 1947. 21 NAI, DIC, FTG, 490, 13 July 1946. 22 NAI, DIC, FTG, 490/​1, FTC, Report from T. Murray and St. J. Connolly on trade discussions in Frankfurt, 15 and 16 June 1949. 23 NAI, DIC, FTG, 490, Memorandum, 3 June 1947. 24 Ibid., Minute, 12 November 1948. 25 NAI, DIC, FTG, 490, Report to the Council on visit to Frankfurt, 3 November 1947. 26 NAI, DT, S145574A, FTC, Revised Minutes of Meeting held on 13 June 1949; ibid., Memorandum for the Government, Trade Agreement between Ireland and Western Germany, 23 June 1949. 27 NAI, DIC, FTG, 490/​1, Note of Negotiations, Trade with Germany, Proposed Agreement, n.d. (c. June 1949). See also NAI, DIC, FTG, 490/​1, Report by Murray and Connolly on Trade Discussions in Frankfurt, 15–​16 June 1949. 28 NAI, DIC, FTG, 490/​ 1, Annex II, Agreed Memorandum of Discussions, 16 June 1949. 29 Ibid., Annex I, Agreement between the Republic of Ireland and the Military Governments of the US, UK and French Occupied Areas of Germany, c.  June 1949. 30 NAI, DT, S14557A, DEA Memo for Government, Trade Agreement between Ireland and Western Germany, 23 June 1949; ibid., FTC, Minutes of Meeting held on 19 May 1950, p. 3. 31 NAI, DIC, FTG 490/​1, Draft Irish-​German Agreement, 16 June 1949, Annexes A and B. 32 ‘Bonn and Republic May Seek New Pact’, Irish Times 23 May 1952, p. 4. 33 NAI, DT, S14557A, Nagle to Cremin, 29 December 1949. 34 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6, FTC, Minutes of Meeting held on 29 June 1951, p. 3. 35 Ibid., FTC, Minutes of Meeting held on 6 April 1951. 36 For example, see NAI, DT, S4557 A, FTC, Minutes for Meeting held on 25 April 1950.

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3 7 NAI, DT, S14557 A, FTC, Minutes of Meeting held on 12 May 1950. 38 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​8, FTC, Minutes of Meeting on 15 April 1955. 39 NAI, DT, S14557A, FTC, Minutes of Meeting held on 13 December 1949; ibid., FTC, Minutes of Meeting held on 1 March 1950, p.  2; ibid., FTC, Minutes of Meeting held on 25 April 1950; ibid., Department of Industry and Commerce, Draft Brief for Trade Negotiations with Western German Authorities –​1950, p. 3. 40 Ibid., DEA Memo for Government, Trade Agreement between Ireland and Germany, 25 June 1949. 41 Ibid., DIC Draft Brief, Trade Negotiations with Western German Authorities –​1950, n. d. (c. May 1950). 42 Ibid., Minutes of Meeting held on 25 April 1950, p. 2. 43 See NAI, DIC, FTG, 490. 44 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6, Note by DEA official, 30 November 1950. 45 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6, Report of the Managing Board, Position of Germany in the European Payments Union, C (51) 57, n. d. (c. February 1951); ibid., Seelinger to Belton, 28 February 1951; ibid., Extract from telegram:  “bundpressinfo bo” fs.nr. 617, 27 February 1951. 46 Ibid.; ‘Ireland’s Bid for Markets in Germany’, Irish Times, 4 September 1952, p. 1; ‘Broader Trade with Germany’, Irish Times, 27 September 1952, p. 1. 47 NAI, DFA, 314/​ 10/​ 6/​ 4, DEA, Memorandum for Government, German Trade Agreement, 23 October 1953, p. 1. 48 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​5, FTC, Trade negotiations with German Delegation from 7 to 15 October 1953, p. 1. 49 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 64, Report, Politischer Bericht, Katzenberger to AA, 25 January 1954. 50 Molohan, Germany and Ireland, p. 72. 51 ‘£47, 201, 870 Adverse Trade Balance’, Irish Times, 21 August 1950, p. 1; ‘Big Gap in External Trade’, Irish Times, 12 June 1952, p. 1. 52 ‘Europe Advised to make Greater Use of OEEC Services’, Irish Times, 12 September 1956, p. 4. 53 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 63, Katzenberger to AA, 15 January 1952. 54 Molohan, Germany and Ireland, p. 73. 55 ‘Irish Show Opened at Frankfurt’, Irish Times, 2 September 1952, p. 1. 56 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 62, Katzenberger to AA, 5 September 1952. 57 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​5, FTC, Minutes of Meeting held on 23 July 1954; ibid., German Trade Agreement, 23 October 1951, p. 3. 58 NAI, DFA, 314/​ 10/​ 6/​ 4, German-​ Irish Trade Relations, n.d. (c. November/​ December 1952). 59 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​8, FTC, Minutes of Meeting on 15 April 1955. 60 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​5, FTC, Trade Negotiations with German Delegation from 7th to 15th October 1953, p. 3. 61 NAI, DFA, 314/​ 10/​ 6/​ 4, DEA, Memorandum for Government, German Trade Agreement, 23 October 1953. 62 Ibid., DEA, Trade Agreement with Germany, Press Statement, 23 September 1952. 63 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​8, Minutes of Meeting on 15 April 1955.

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64 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​4, DEA, Press Statement, Trade Agreement with Germany, 23 September 1952. 65 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​5, FTC, Trade Negotiations with German Delegation from 7 to 15 October 1953. 66 Ibid. 67 NAI, DFA, 305/​ 57/​ 256/​ 29, Statement by Mr Hermes, Chairman of the German Delegation, European Conference on the Organisation of Agricultural Markets, 18 March 1953. 68 Ibid. 69 NAI, DFA, 305/​57/​256/​29, Cremin to Nunan, 25 April 1953. 70 Ibid., Groupe de travail ‘ad hoc’ sur la concentration des politiques agricoles, projet de chapitre sur de l’Allemagne, 24 August 1955. 71 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​8, FTC, Minutes of Meeting held on 15 April 1955. 72 Ibid., O’Beirne to Secretary, 25 August 1955. 73 Ibid., FTC, Minutes of Meeting held on 14 October 1954. 74 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​9, Note by DEA,16 September 1955; ibid., FRG Legation to DEA, 14 October 1955; ibid., Brief, Trade Negotiations with German commencing 27 October 1955. 75 Ibid., Brief, Trade Negotiations with German commencing 27 October 1955. 76 Ibid., FTC, German Trade Negotiations 27–​31 October 1955. 77 Ibid., FTC, Minutes of Meeting held on 11 November 1955. 78 Ibid. 79 Ibid., Iremonger to O’Beirne, 21 November 1955. 80 Ibid., FTC, Minutes of Meeting held on 11 November 1955; ibid., German Trade Negotiations –​Smoking Pipes, by F. J. Hegarty, 2 November 1955. 81 Ibid., Iremonger to O’Beirne, 21 November 1955. 82 Ibid., Kiernan to Secretary, 8 December 1955. 83 Ibid., FTC, Minutes of Meeting held on 11 November 1955. 84 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​7, Position of Germany, Report by the Steering Board for Trade (OEEC), 26 November 1953. 85 Ibid., Note by Secretary of the Council, Causes of Disequilibrium in the EPU which have led to Germany’s extreme Creditor position; ibid., Statement by the Delegate for Denmark, 27 March 1954; ibid., Extract from Report dated 8 March from Paris on the 243rd Meeting of the Council of OEEC held on 5 March 1955. 86 NAI, DT, S14557 E, FTC, Minutes of Meetings held on 27 January and 17 February 1956. 87 NAI, DFA, CRS 313/​10 B, Kiernan to Secretary, 30 April 1956. 88 NAI, DT, S14577 E, FTC, Minutes of Meetings held on 5 March 1956; NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​9, O’Ceallaigh to Secretary, 17 May 1956. 89 NAI, DT, S14557 E, FTC, Minutes of Meetings held on 5 March, 17 April 1956. 90 Ibid., FTC, Minutes of Meeting held on 28 June 1956. 91 ‘ “Mistake” to think All Germans Rich’, Irish Times, 9 April 1957, p. 4. 92 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​10, Ó Ceallaigh to Secretary, 10 October 1956. 93 Ibid. 94 ‘Trade with Germany’, Irish Times, 17 January 1959.

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95 J. H. Whyte, ‘Economic Crisis and Political Cold War, 1949–​57’, in J. R. Hill (ed.), A New History of Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 283. 96 Lee, Ireland 1912–​1987, p. 326; Brian Girvin, From Union to Union: Nationalism, Democracy and Religion in Ireland –​Act of Union to EU (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2002), p. 146; Whyte, ‘Economic Crisis and Political Cold War, 1949–​57’, p. 282. 97 Cormac Ó Gráda, A Rocky Road: The Irish Economy Since the 1920s (Manchester: Manchester University Press., 1997), p. 27; P.D. Loftus, ‘The Crisis Years: The Second Inter-​Party Government and the Politics of Transition in Ireland, 1954–​ 1957’ (unpublished PhD thesis, UCC, 2008), p. 205. 98 Whyte, ‘Economic Crisis and Political Cold War, 1949–​57’, p. 283. 99 NAI, DFA, 414/​24/​26 I, Kiernan to Secretary, 13 January 1956. 100 NAI, DFA, CRS, 313/​10B, Kiernan to secretary, 14 June 1956. 101 Ibid. 102 Ibid., Kiernan to Secretary, 30 April 1956, pp. 6–​8. 103 Ibid., Kiernan to Secretary, 14 June 1956. 104 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​8, Memorandum, Bonn, 6 November 1956. 105 NAI, DFA, 3140/​10/​6/​10, Warnock to McCann, 13 November 1956. 106 Ibid., Note, DEA to FRG Legation, 18 October 1956. 107 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​10. 108 Ibid., Warnock to McCann, 13 November 1956. 109 Ibid., Note by DEA official, 26 September 1956. 110 Ibid., Note, DEA to FRG Legation, 18 October 1956; ibid., Memorandum by Bonn, 6 November 1956; ibid., Memorandum for Information of Government, Trade discussions with Germany –​November 1956, December 1956. 111 Ibid., Memorandum for Information of Government, Trade Discussions with Germany –​November 1956, December 1956; ibid., Agreed Minute of Discussions held at Bonn from 5 to 10 November 1956, 10 November 1956. 112 NAI, DFA, FTG 490/​13, Note on Trade with Federal Republic of Germany, n.d. (c. September 1957). 113 NAI, DT, S14557 E, Memorandum for the Information of the Government, Trade Discussions with the Federal Republic of Germany, 21 April 1958. 114 Ibid., FTC, Minutes of Meeting held on 26 October 1957. 115 Ibid. 116 ‘German-​Irish Trade Pact Reached’, Irish Times, 30 May 1958, p. 1. 117 ‘F.A.O. Comparisons of Grain Production’, Irish Times, 11 February 1958, p. 3. 118 NAI, DT, S14557 E, Memorandum for the Information of the Government, Trade Discussions with the Federal Republic of Germany, 21 April 1958, p. 2. 119 Ibid., FTC, Minutes of Meeting held on 26 October 1957. 120 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​13, Ó Ceallaigh to Murphy, 25 July 1958. 121 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​11, Ó Ceallaigh to Secretary, 9 September 1957. 122 NAI, DT, S14557 E, FTC, Minutes of Meeting held on 26 October 1957. 123 Ibid., FTC, Minutes of Meeting held on 13 September 1957. 124 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​11, FTC, Minutes of Trade Talks with German Delegation at Iveagh House, 28 October to 4 November 1957. 125 Ibid., Memo, Irish–​German Trade Talks, 2 November 1957.

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1 26 NAI, DIC, FTG, 490/​13, Trade Agreement with Germany, 21 November 1957. 127 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​11, FTC, Minutes of Trade Talks with German Delegation at Iveagh House, Dublin, 28 October to 4 November 1957. 128 NAI, DIC, FTG, 490/​ 13, Department of Agriculture Memorandum for the Information of the Government, Trade Discussions with the Federal Republic of Germany, 21 April 1958. 129 Ibid. 130 Ibid., p. 6. 131 See, for example: Editorial, ‘The Trade Pattern’, Irish Times, 24 January 1958; NAI, DT, S 14557 E, Memorandum, c. November 1957. 132 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​11, FTC, Minutes of Trade Talks with German Delegation at Iveagh House, Dublin, 28 October to 4 November 1957. 133 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 63, Deutsch-​Irische Wirtschaftsverhandlungen, Report. Mr von Bargen to AA, 7 November 1957; ‘Bonn to Cut Imports of Irish Cattle?’, Irish Times, 30 October 1957, p. 1. 134 ‘Exports increased in the Face of Intense Competition’, Irish Times, 30 July 1958, p. 7. 135 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​11, FTC, Minutes of Trade Talks with German Delegation at Iveagh House, 28 October to 4 November 1957, p. 3; NAI, DIC, FTG, 490/​13, Extract from Report of Departmental Conference no. 514, 11 November 1957. 136 NAI, DT, S 14557 E, Ó Gráda to DT Secretary, 26 November 1957; ibid., Bastow to de Valera, 14 November 1957; ibid., Schnable, Gaumer and Co. to Aylward, 12 November 1957; Dáil Debates, 6 November 1957, Vol. 164, No. 4, Col. 490; NAI, DIC, FTG 490/​13, Warnock to Secretary, 18 December 1957. 137 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​11, Phone Message from Mr O’Kelly, 12.15 pm on 6 December 1957; ibid., Telegram from Bonn received 8 p. m., Saturday, 7 December 1957; ibid., Note of Meeting at AA on 9 December at 2.30 p.m.; ibid., dictated by Brian O’Kelly by phone at 10 a.m. on 10 December 1957, Suggested informal Memorandum for German Delegation; ibid., FTC, Minutes of Meeting held on 12 December 1957. 138 Ibid., Decode of Telegram received from Bonn on 12 December 1957. 139 Ibid. 140 NAI, DIC, FTG, 490/​13, Note on Démarche made on 30 December 1957 by the Minister for External Affairs to the German Minister regarding the trade in dead meat with Germany. 141 Ibid. 142 NAI, DIC, FTG, 490/​13, Minute of Position as understood by O’Kelly and Minister for Industry and Commerce, 9 December 1957; ibid, Phone Message from Mr O’Kelly 12.15 p.m. on 6 December 1957. 143 ‘Exporters approve Government Action’, Irish Times, 23 January 1958. 144 NAI, DT, S 14557 E, FTC, Minutes of Meeting held on 21 February 1958. 145 Ibid.; NAI, DT, S 14557 E, FTC, Minutes of Meeting held on 28 February 1958; NAI, DIC, FTG, 490/​13, Murphy to Kennan, 3 March 1958; ibid., OEEC Code of Liberalisation –​Non-​Discrimination, n.d. (c. February/​March 1958). 146 NAI, DT, S 14557 E, FTC, Minutes of Meeting held on 28 February 1958; NAI, DIC, FTG, 490/​13, Extract from Report of Departmental Conference No. 528 dated 3 March 1958.

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1 47 NAI, DFA, FTG, 490/​13, Molloy to Kennan, 29 April 1958. 148 NAI, DT, S14557 E, FTC, Minutes of Meeting held on 14 March 1958. 149 Ibid. 150 NAI, DT, S14557 E, FTC, Minutes of Meeting held on 11 September 1958. 151 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 131, Prill to AA, 10 January 1958. 152 Ibid., Band 128, Prill to AA, 5 July 1958, p. 3. 153 Ibid., Prill to AA, 5 May 1958. 154 Ibid., Prill to AA, 15 May 1959. 155 Dáil Debates, 14 May 1958, Vol. 168, No. 2, Col. 213. 156 Ibid., Col. 180. 157 NAI, DT, S14557 E, Memorandum for the Information of the Government, Trade Discussions with Western Germany, 31 July 1958, p. 2. 158 Ibid., Memorandum for the Information of the Government, Trade Discussions with the Federal Republic of Germany, 21 April 1958, pp. 6–​7; ibid., FTC, Minutes of Meeting held on 16 April 1958. 159 Ibid., FTC, Minutes of Meeting held on 1 May 1958. 160 Editorial, ‘Trade with Germany’, Irish Times, 4 June 1958, p. 5. 161 Ibid. In press reports there was some variation in terms of the value accorded to the trade between the two countries. 162 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 128, Prill to AA, 5 May 1958, pp. 11–​12. 163 See, for example, Political Correspondent, ‘Trade Talks to Start with Germany’, Irish Times, 1 November 1958, p.  1; Dáil Debates, 28 October 1959, Vol. 177, Cols. 336–​8; Seanad Debates, 23 July 1959, Vol. 51, Col. 464.

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Irish industrialisation and the German ‘economic miracle’

The remarkable growth in Western Europe, and particularly Germany, during the 1950s contrasted starkly with the dismal Irish performance. Ireland’s economy was hitched to the lethargic British one (relative to Western Europe) and heavily reliant on live cattle exports. Lacking an efficient manufacturing sector Ireland was unable to develop foreign markets for its limited industrial products, which were generally poor quality and overpriced by international standards. By 1955 the principal Irish non-​agricultural exports to Germany were non-​ferrous scrap and woollen or worsted fabrics. Traditional Irish fabrics and textiles were aggressively marketed, but they confronted German tariffs and imitations produced by German mills.1 In the estimation of the Irish minister in 1955, the best industrial export prospects lay in woollens, tweeds, leathers, shoes, laces, knitwear and other traditional manufactures.2 These would never approach the volume and value that Ireland required to counterbalance imports from Germany, which were usually essential capital goods. Major Irish firms and semi-​state bodies, such as the ESB and the CIE (Córas Iompair Éireann), relied on imports of German heavy machinery and plant machinery; they possessed an established relationship with world-​leading German firms, such as Siemens-​Schuckert, which offered keenly priced, high-​quality products.3 It was inadvisable to disrupt these long-​ established supply chains. Until the mid-​1950s, the Irish authorities presumed that cattle and beef offered the best opportunity to redress the adverse balance of trade,4 but this policy failed dismally. This chapter complements the previous one and largely parallels it in time frame, but its focus is on the Irish Government’s shift to appreciate that industrial advancement and foreign capital presented the best means of expanding Irish exports. It does so by exploring the history of German investments in Ireland and the incremental development of Irish policies to attract foreign capital. Bonn played a dynamic and instructive role in reorienting Ireland. A halting Irish perspectival switch occurred from viewing West Germany as a fall-​back market for agricultural exports to appreciating its potential as an investor in modernisation.

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German companies played an enduring part in Ireland’s adjustments from industrial protectionism and agricultural-​centrism (an obsession with beef and cattle exports). The Wirtschaftswunder was a stimulus for Irish adaptation in the same way that it propelled Western Europe. A core element of this chapter, therefore, is its clarification of the geneses of Irish modernisation. These are frequently attributed to Seán Lemass in his final term as minister for industry and commerce (1957–​59), and then as Taoiseach (1959–​66), in combination with T. K. (‘Ken’) Whitaker as Secretary of the Department of Finance (after 1956). But this allegory of economic redemption is flawed.5 The shift began haltingly under the Second Inter-​Party Government of John A. Costello, which governed from June 1954 to March 1957. That dysfunctional coalition experimented hastily to find solutions to Ireland’s economic nadir. Several government agencies finally began to promote Ireland as an export platform and a location for foreign capital. The activities began in an ad hoc fashion and in desperation, but they laid the seeds for what Lemass and Whitaker subsequently nurtured. The inter-​party government’s fumbling to interest foreign investment was refined by Lemass and Whitaker, but it was the inter-​party Tánaiste and minister for industry and commerce, William Norton, who took the first steps and spied the opportunity. Tracing Ireland’s early efforts to benefit from Germany’s remarkable resurgence clarifies the origins of Ireland’s new development strategy. Neglected opportunities? There were some early openings for promoting industrial investment from Germany and the Continent. The DEA was attentive to the prospects that Germany offered. As early as 1947 the Secretary of DEA, F. H. Boland, wrote to the Department of Industry and Commerce recommending the adoption of ‘positive measures to attract’ ‘uprooted and transplanted Continental’ firms, which were dedicated to recapturing their pre-​war export trade and possessed a ‘degree of experience in dealing with foreign markets’.6 In a similar vein in 1950, the consul-​general designate to West Germany, John Belton tabled proposals to develop Ireland’s transportation and marketing infrastructure with Germany. The FTC accepted his least ambitious proposal: a permanent national stand at the Frankfurt Trade Fair. This remained Ireland’s primary marketing tool in West Germany for several years. Belton recommended that the state-​owned Irish Shipping Ltd should establish a regular and affordable freight service to Hamburg; he also proposed an Aer Lingus service to Frankfurt; both proposals were rejected by Industry and Commerce, Aer Lingus and Irish Shipping Ltd, on the grounds that existing methods of travel and shipping were ‘reasonably adequate’ and the scale of trade with Germany was unpredictable.7

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There were some stillborn or ineffectual initiatives to redirect Irish manufacturing firms towards foreign trade and to revise the tariff system to promote international competitiveness. They included, for instance, Lemass’s abortive 1946 proposal to establish a new body, a Foreign Trade Advisory Committee. Such proposals to assist industries to export were invariably resisted by the frugal Department of Finance, which viewed such proposals as an unwarranted cost and socialistic (market intervention); the latter was a fatal slur in an instinctively anti-​ csmunist society. Against the backdrop of the Marshall Plan the Irish reflex, with insistent OEEC urging, was to develop the United States as an export destination. Even then Ireland exhibited a lack of urgency: it was one of the last OEEC countries to establish an export promotion board (the Irish Export Board, which was soon renamed as Coras Tráchtála Teo), targeting the United States. The Department of Finance ensured that the board lacked the prerogative to grant export credits and incentives; it was reduced to an advisory level.8 Cumulatively, the effort to expand exports to the United States bore anaemic results, and the United States was a country with which Ireland had strong affinities and at a time when the United States was the global economic hegemon. Moreover, Ireland had a desperate need to earn US currency. As for the Industrial Development Authority (IDA), which was founded in 1950 at the bidding of the First Inter-​Party Government, the stout resistance from two institutional heavyweights, the Department of Finance and the Department of Industry and Commerce, placed it in a straitjacket. Both would have preferred its expiration.9 The former minister for industry and commerce, Seán Lemass, opposed its creation; he threatened to abolish it when Fianna Fáil returned to government. Later Lemass would half-​humorously suggest to its head, J. P. Beddy, that he should describe his occupation as that of ‘Plumber’.10 That moniker would reflect the ingenious efforts required by the IDA to construct the pipework for FDI to circumvent hostile domestic interests. From 1950, the Irish Legation to Bonn became aware of the potential to attract investment. It received several expressions of interest from German businessmen, technicians and proprietors who were interested in becoming established in Ireland. In February 1951, Belton reported considerable German interest in the trans-​shipment of semi-​finished goods of German origin to Ireland for completion, ‘with a view to finding a market for them in Britain and the Commonwealth countries by making them eligible for preference’.11 The FTC advised in April 1951 that it was permissible to finish off goods of German origin in Ireland for re-​export to Britain, Northern Ireland and the British colonies if a prescribed value of the goods (of the order of 50 per cent) was attributable to work and materials of Irish, British or Commonwealth origin.12 However, at this stage, the IDA was interested in ‘concrete proposals’ which complied with the tedious Control of Manufactures Acts that enforced protectionism.13 In effect, the Irish Legation in Bonn found itself fielding German investment interest with minimal

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backup.14 In 1954 one intending German investor complained to the Irish legation about his experience of dealing with Irish agencies:  they were ‘unwieldy, unrealistic and painfully slow’. Even the secretary of the Irish Legation in Bonn was moved to ‘confess that I share his view’. There was simply a lack of will and ‘stultifying’ questionnaires.15 Only the most intrepid foreign investor could make headway. Bureaucratic politics, the constraints of the Control of Manufactures Acts, conservative outlooks, special interests, an ideology of fiscal rectitude and agricultural fixations prevented change. Unwelcoming Other enterprising proposals emanating from the Legation in Bonn received precious little encouragement. In November 1950 Belton drew attention to several enquiries from potential tourists, particularly German Catholics, who desired to visit the country of St Patrick. A German travel agency wished to explore a group travel document scheme to permit religious tourism on a par with the arrangements that had been worked out for German groups to visit Rome. Belton recommended the Department of Justice devise ‘every possible facility’ to enable such tourism and that it should re-​examine its rejection of his earlier proposal that Aer Lingus should link to Düsseldorf.16 The exclusionist Department of Justice was not disposed to relaxing restrictions. Its minister was concerned about expellees and displaced persons resident in West Germany and the ‘known fact that large numbers of Germans are anxious to move westwards’.17 He reportedly preferred to wait until ‘normal world conditions prevail’.18 Most discouraging was the Irish Tourist Board’s response that, even if it secured additional funding, it ‘would scarcely consider it advisable to give priority to any particular European country in the matter of publicity expenditure’; although it was in favour of Aer Lingus flights to Düsseldorf.19 A disheartened DEA was forced to write and admit to Belton that this was not ‘very “helpful” ’.20 However, the major brake on German investment was the Department of Justice’s attitude towards aliens in general. This was reinforced by Irish adherence to a common travel area and a series of security understandings with the UK –​a jurisdiction with a comparatively insular outlook.21 The protectionist-​oriented Department of Industry and Commerce reflexively viewed aliens and external competition as threats to the economy. Such illiberal policies were based on a defensive nationalist or moral community perspective that feared competition for scarce employment, moral contagion, foreign ideologies (especially communism/​ socialism), godless materialism and religious difference. As the 1950s unfolded, this worldview was actively challenged as the Council of Europe and the OEEC liberalised passport controls to assist tourism and intra-​European trade. Justice acceded to reductions in travel restrictions with Western European countries such as France and Belgium, but it opposed reciprocal liberalisation with West

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Germany.22 The existence of an estimated 9.5 million refugees and expellees in West Germany engendered fears of an ‘inrush of indigent Germans’.23 Bonn’s various proposals for reciprocal liberalisation of visa requirements were refused in the early and mid-​1950s ‘for economic and security reasons’.24 Of course, the Department of Justice extended a few ‘gestures’ of goodwill. In May 1952, the Irish reciprocally abolished visa fees for German students and young lecturers entering Ireland to study or work.25 In July 1953, Dublin abolished visas for holders of official passports (diplomatic, ministerial and service personnel) with Bonn. However, in response to Bonn’s unilateral termination of the visa requirement for Irish passport holders in 1953, Dublin followed London’s precedent and refused to reciprocate.26 As a friendly gesture, it consented to grant free transit or entry visas to German nationals for tourist visits of less than three months. By late 1953, the secretary of justice, Thomas J. Coyne, and the minister for justice, Gerald Boland, conceded the unrestricted admission of West German passport holders was not a direct threat to Irish security but rejected change on the grounds ‘the British do feel that they can’t afford to abolish visas’. If Ireland took an independent line and abolished visas it would ‘punch a hole in the security net we have drawn, by mutual agreement, around the two islands consisting of a unique system of control and an exchange of information and black lists’.27 So after 1953 the Department of Justice argued that if an Irish abolition of visa controls with Germany ‘were to lead to a decision by the British that they could no longer maintain common working arrangements with us the Dept. of Justice would have to oppose it tooth and nail’.28 The Department of External Affairs fretted  –​the Department of Justice’s approach was harmful to Irish–​German relations and impeded the promotion of trade and tourism at a time when West Germany began to display rude economic health. In November 1953, Justice was moved to note that External Affairs occasionally suggested ‘in a friendly way and informally’ that Justice was ‘too slow, illiberal and perhaps unreasonable’ in its insistence on the maintenance of visa controls for Germans and Austrians.29 Ireland’s disconcerting attitude was shown again in June 1953. An applicant for a business visa, understood to be the brother-​in-​law of the German minister (Katzenberger), complained ‘in the case of Britain with which country Germany was at war [Second World War], visa fees have been abolished, but Ireland which was not at war with Germany still charges fees’.30 Following this, German representatives lobbied for the abolition of the visa requirement generally or, if this were not possible, for German businessmen specifically. When the Irish rejected these proposals ‘on security grounds’, the German officials ‘pooh poohed’ it and pointed out Ireland’s recent elimination of visas with Italy (‘which had a high percentage of her population communistic’).31 Ireland finally made a substantial step towards liberalising visa controls with West Germany following a shift in UK attitudes in 1954. That September it announced it would not require holders of FRG passports to obtain a visa for

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a stay in Ireland of less than three months, on condition that applicants were not seeking employment.32 It took until 1957 for Ireland to abolish all visa requirements for German passport holders except for those who intended to seek employment or engage in farming or business.33 Ireland, in common with other Western European states, still reserved its right to retain visa controls for stateless aliens or refugees holding German travel documents or passports.34 The delay in dispensing with visa controls impaired early efforts to convert any German investment and tourism interest in Ireland to material advantage. Moreover, prospective German investors and tourists found it difficult to acquire reliable knowledge of Ireland in the absence of any marketing of the country as a potential destination in Germany.35 Only the most intrepid German would venture to Ireland in the early or mid-​1950s, and there were few with a personal knowledge of, or interest in, Ireland to impel such a trek. Additional evidence, if it was needed, of insularity, was the apparent Irish disinterest in the acquisition of foreign skills.36 In 1953 when Dr W. E. Junker, the leader of the German trade delegation, raised the possibility of a stagiaire agreement for the exchange of German and Irish apprentices for training in industry, J. Haughey, of the Department of Industry and Commerce, disabused him: ‘we had such agreements with Switzerland and France, but found that in practice they were not being availed of by our people, probably due to the language difficulty, and we did not in consequence appear to gain anything from them’.37 In the face of Irish unresponsiveness, the matter was dropped. Notwithstanding the prevailing Irish inertia, the perseverance of some Irish and German local and private initiatives in commercial collaboration played a role in the gradual opening up of the Irish economy and collective mind. Faber-​Castell The pencil and biro manufacturer W.  Faber-​Castell Ltd was seminal in this regard. A venerable family firm from Stein, Nuremburg, the local initiative of the Fermoy Progressive Association enticed it to set up a branch plant.38 Beset by emigration and unemployment, the town of Fermoy took the initiative to canvas potential foreign investors including Faber-​Castell. Negotiations commenced with Faber-​Castell to set up a factory in Fermoy in 1952 and the Department of Industry and Commerce and the Irish Legation at Bonn became involved. This inaugurated a steep Irish learning process about how to satisfy the needs of German subsidiaries locating in rural Ireland. Acculturation began. To sustain a foreign-​owned pencil factory supplying the Irish domestic market and exploit export options required the active support of many arms of the Irish state. The IDA, the Department of Industry and Commerce, and the Department of External Affairs worked to make Faber-​Castell viable by identifying potential external markets to compensate for the small size of the Irish home

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market. When the factory opened in early 1955, its objective was to supply the Irish market, which remained dependent on UK pencil imports, and to export by drawing on the ‘world-​wide sales organisation’ of the parent company.39 Thus the firm appealed to the established Irish protectionist policy of import substitution, but it also pointed towards export-​oriented manufacturing. Irish interest in this latter possibility grew as the limitations of the small Irish market became apparent. This approach would mollify protectionists while extending horizons. Following the election of the Second Inter-​Party Government in June 1954, a new minister for industry and commerce, William Norton, realised the import of the Faber-​Castell initiative; he was ‘anxious that the Fermoy Company should receive every reasonable facility’ to ensure its success.40 On Faber-​Castell’s request detailed information on Ireland’s preferential access to various Commonwealth countries was supplied, drawing their attention to Ireland as a prospective export base to compensate for the small size of its domestic market.41 Fermoy uncovered the opportunity of promoting Ireland as an investment location; other municipalities and local development associations, such as the Limerick Chamber of Commerce Industrial Committee, independently canvassed Irish missions, foreign trade organisations and foreign chambers of commerce to evoke foreign investment interest. Local activism and volunteerism was motivated by a desire to mitigate unemployment and stem emigration.42 Irish promotional campaigns drew attention to the high-​profile Continental pencil manufacturer in Fermoy as a device to attract further German and non-​ British firms. An additional example of German industrial capital investment occurred when on 27 May 1954 Sligo Industrial Development Corporation announced the erection of a new textile factory (Sligo Models Ltd), manufacturing high-​class women’s clothing for export to Germany and other continental countries. It was a venture between Herr Heinz Breuningr and Mr Caesar Blackman. Textiles, in particular tweeds, woollens and worsted piece-​goods, continued to occupy the positon of Ireland’s largest non-​agricultural export to Germany.43 Second Inter-​Party Government, 1954–​57 Lemass’s earlier efforts as minister for industry and commerce from 1951 to 1954 to exhort indigenous firms to increase exports had failed. At one point, in exasperation, he was reduced to admit Ireland would remain a food-​producing country.44 Most firms lacked either the desire or the ability to export or compete internationally despite exhortation and encouragement from the department.45 Ireland had also made no major breakthrough in advancing its agricultural exports to Germany. As Ireland’s largest trading partner on the continent, Germany was a target for Irish exports since the 1920s in an effort to redress the unfavourable bilateral trade balance.

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Inspired by Faber-​Castell and its emblematic value (an international leader in its field), the minister for industry and commerce in the Second Inter-​Party Government, William Norton, spearheaded efforts to attract foreign investment. By this point, a ‘powerful head of steam was building up for change’ from other sources within the Irish central administration including the Department of Finance and Central Bank.46 Successive years of faltering agricultural exports, domestic stagnation and deflation combined with a yawning balance-​of-​payments deficit, creating a sense of a national emergency. As Taoiseach Costello argued, Ireland faced a ‘trinity of problems’ consisting of emigration, unemployment and the balance-​of-​payments deficit,47 which had become a crisis after years of austerity and deflation. His Second Inter-​Party Government has a poor reputation for good reasons; it lacked political coherence and was afflicted by rigid fiscal conservatism. It was seemingly unable to agree a lucid policy to exit the deep crisis.48 All that united it was the desire to keep Fianna Fáil out of government. However, some of its experiments were germinal and a preponderance of the literature has failed to recognise their implications.49 The export drive of the government gave the IDA renewed purpose following the lassitude of the early 1950s, when its mandate was questioned by powerful and hostile government departments. Under Norton and his Second Inter-​Party Government colleagues, who had instituted the IDA during the First Inter-​Party Government (1948–​51), no such reservations existed and the authority reinvigorated after 1954. It was equipped with the IDA-​commissioned Stacy May report of 1952. Produced by the IBEC Technical Services Corporation (US), the Stacy May report concluded that Ireland should recognise the failure of Irish entrepreneurship in the diminutive home market and emulate the example of Puerto Rico by pioneering incentives to attract foreign investment.50 While the arguments of the IDA were resisted by the Department of Finance and Central Bank, the IDA pressed ahead. Its arguments found purchase within elements of the Second Inter-​Party Government. Costello and Norton were resolute:  it was a national priority to reduce the balance-​of-​payments deficit. An interagency effort between Industry and Commerce, External Affairs and the IDA emerged to attract foreign investors. Industry and Commerce and the IDA exhibited an improved readiness to work with foreign investors to fashion investment schemes, rather than seeking prêt-​à-​porter proposals.51 The IDA opened discussions with Irish diplomatic missions in late 1954 to develop the publicity campaign.52 It took aim at Western Europe and North America, and Germany became a chief focus.53 Cathal Loughney, Secretary of the IDA, informed the Irish Legation in Bonn that besides preferential Commonwealth access, grants under the Undeveloped Areas Act, lower wages, the possibility of double taxation relief and relaxation of the Control of Manufacturers Acts ‘there is the possibility that, in the present international situation, an industrialist in, say Germany, might be attracted to Ireland by its relatively more secure position’.54

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Through the legation’s good offices, the Assistant Secretary of the Department of Industry and Commerce met with relevant German authorities to make enquiries on behalf of the IDA; he was in Bonn, negotiating a renewal of the annual trade agreement in late 1954.55 The German Economics Ministry pledged full cooperation and ‘active assistance’.56 During 1954 and 1955 the IDA in consultation with other agencies and government departments, especially Industry and Commerce, devised promotional brochures.57 It had the active and full support of Norton. His thinking was displayed in a meeting with the US ambassador in January 1955, when he contended that Irish industrialisation based on import substitution was reaching its natural end. He claimed growth hinged on exports and he noted the trifling size of the Irish market had impaired autarky. He observed that Ireland’s only option was to maximise exports, but Irish manufacturers lacked an exporting mentality: so the situation now was that we would like to induce foreign firms to come in here bring some of the capital and the technical “know-​how” for new industries with the object of not only supplying the Irish market but also of carrying on an export trade. …we were favourably located for the British market and that we had the advantage in supplying that market of a long standing Trade Agreement with Great Britain which guaranteed us preferential treatment for our products. The same applied to other Commonwealth countries. He thought that in many cases it should be easier to sell goods in these markets from a factory in Ireland than to sell in the same market similar goods produced in the U.S.A. The question, therefore, was how best to go about inducing U.S. firms to establish industries here.’58

Arising from the advice of the US ambassador and others, Norton and the IDA revised the promotional literature to emphasise the special advantages that goods of Irish origin enjoyed in entering Britain.59 This approach became a central selling point in IDA literature from 1955. The seeming success of the first IDA mission to Sweden in March 1955 encouraged the despatch of one to Germany, which was then followed by ones to Belgium and the United States.60 The IDA drafted circulars targeting six specific industries in Germany which it had a special interest in promoting during its forthcoming visit such as textile printing, medical and pharmaceutical products, and so forth.61 These enumerated Ireland’s presumed advantages. Interest was not limited to these six industries, as the Irish authorities would ‘consider any proposal … as one of the main aims of the drive to secure the co-​operation of foreign industrialists is to establish industries which will export all or a large proportion of their output’.62 The two ‘principal’ attractions the brochure underscored were Ireland’s protection of foreign-​sponsored firms and its trade agreements with European countries. In the case of Britain it publicised that many Irish goods ‘enjoy free entry’ to Britain or were charged a lower or preferential tariff rate not available to non-​Commonwealth countries.63

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Norton went on a private visit to a Postal Telegraph and Telephone International’s meeting at Frankfurt and Wiesbaden in August 1955. He took time out to call to Bonn and talk to the State Secretary of Federal Economics Ministry, the Deputy Chancellor and the Secretary of the Federation of German Chambers of Commerce to accent the importance of the upcoming IDA mission from an Irish government perspective. Norton met with the Director of the Deutscher Industrie-​und Handelstag (DIHT; the German Chambers of Commerce), and arranged to channel promotional materials to that influential German organisation. This underlined the minister’s priorities. He stressed that Ireland valued German technical competence and he claimed Ireland offered cheap electricity, stable government, abundant labour and the absence of communism. Irish financial assistance would be made available to assist the opening of branches of German industrial giants.64 This general pitch set the mould for later Irish marketing; granting the Irish Government had to refine the package of incentives to appeal to investors.65 Norton provoked an international public relations sensation when he stressed at a press conference in Bonn that German firms based in Ireland stood to gain preferential access to the British Commonwealth. They could tunnel under the Commonwealth tariffs. This caused consternation in some British circles that distrusted German intentions and worried about an encroachment into Britain’s economic sphere.66 As the ‘London Letter’ of the Irish Times reported, ‘the idea, which when first mooted was received with scepticism blended with amazement in some quarters here’.67 The Manchester Guardian was moved to report Norton’s initiative as a ‘threat’ to Anglo-​Irish relations, while the Daily Herald talked of the ‘back door threat’.68 The Daily Mirror puffed that ‘the guilty honeymoon that Éire had with Hitler’s Germany during the war is now being evolved into a peacetime trade relationship’.69 Reuter’s correspondent in Bonn, Ian Fraser, consoled the Irish Legation by stating that papers such as the Daily Mail and Daily Express were ‘ready to sensationalise anything but that, the British press, following British public opinion, is inclined to look for a “stab in the back” from Ireland, following the experiences in the first World War and the second’.70 The fact remained Ireland was entitled to advertise that foreign subsidiaries could enjoy the imperial preference (accorded under the Anglo-​Irish Trade Agreements of 1938 and 1948).71 The controversy performed a publicity function. According to Kiernan, the minister’s visit ‘broke the back’ of the challenge facing the upcoming IDA mission; so in that sense it was ‘a huge success’.72 Immediately, the IDA began to receive enquiries from German industrialists.73 The DIHT suggested the ‘iron was now hot’ for Ireland to attract German investment and advised, according to a German saying, ‘the deer should be shot when you saw it or it would run away’.74

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The IDA mission arrived in November. The AA and the Economic Ministry arranged meetings, contacts and introductions to key German business leaders and organisations.75 The Federation of Chambers of Commerce notified its members ‘of Irish interest in attracting German capital investment’.76 The mission arrived in Germany just weeks after the high-​profile formal opening of the Faber-​Castell’s plant in Fermoy, County Cork, so that the IDA could point to a recent and respected German enterprise becoming established in Ireland.77 Beddy, Chairman of the IDA, led the mission and its personnel included John Leydon, Norton’s economic adviser. The delegation visited Bonn, Düsseldorf, Stuttgart, Frankfurt and Nuremberg and reported ‘encouraging results’.78 It held discussions with 30 individual manufacturers.79 The IDA mission was followed by a joint mission of CTT (the Irish export promotion board) and the Irish Exporters’ Association to first the Netherlands and then Germany. This was the first time the two bodies cooperated on a trade mission and it was the first occasion that the CTT, the national body responsible for earning US currency through the promotion of exports to the United States, extended its activities beyond the dollar markets.80 The CTT (founded 1951) was tasked with increasing the exports of existing indigenous and protected Irish industries, but in 1955 the Second Inter-​Party Government expanded its geographical remit beyond the United States.81 The CTT identified Germany as a primary objective,82 as it was ‘one of the largest and most concentrated markets in Europe. It is once again a prosperous country, its remarkable recovery … being a matter of common knowledge’.83 Kiernan warned the CTT that ‘the market is keenly competitive and will provide openings only for Irish goods which can compete’ in terms of high quality, keen pricing and ‘sufficient volume’.84 Nonetheless, the CTT assumed that the German market ‘should be receptive to products of progressive Irish firms’ that were already successful exporters to the United States and Canada.85 The mission spent four weeks touring Germany from late November 1955 to promote traditional meat and agricultural exports, Irish food and drink specialities, textiles, wool and leather goods. Eventually in 1957, the CTT would recognise the accuracy of Kiernan’s scepticism when it concluded that Irish firms were unable to compete on price and quality in Germany even though practically all the industrial goods Ireland were interested in exporting were now liberalised (gin, Waterford crystal, rope).86 Likewise, the IDA’s mission achieved limited success, at least in the short term. There was no dramatic influx of investment. Only three of the 30 German firms that the IDA mission visited in November 1955 remained interested by the autumn of 1956. One of the three included the crane manufacturing firm Liebherr based in Biberach an der Riss in the Upper Swabia region of Baden-​ Württemberg.87 Norton was committed to securing Liebherr’s investment (an estimated £750,000). Initially, the Undeveloped Areas boundary was extended to include Kinsale, when the firm showed interest in becoming established there.

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Norton spared no efforts in securing Liebherr and informed Costello ‘my concern is to see that the promoters’ plans are nursed in every way open to me … I will not be dissatisfied if this large industry is set up anywhere in the Undeveloped Areas. I am most anxious not to quarrel with the firm lest we lose the industry’.88 Killarney was eventually chosen as the site ‘on the ground that Herr Liebherr wished his workers be in pleasant and restful surroundings’ although ready access to a port might have made more business sense.89 It began operations in Killarney in 1959. Unfulfilled promise, 1955–​56 Several factors dampened the success of the Second Inter-​Party Government’s promotional drive. Even if Norton had been convinced that the solution to Irish export and industrial underperformance lay exclusively in foreign industrialists (and he did not), he still had to contend with powerful domestic critics, not least the opposition and his own heavily protectionist-​minded Department of Industry and Commerce.90 After all, the latter had introduced and sustained protectionism under Seán Lemass’s leadership after 1932. Besides Norton’s message to attract external capital was ill-​formed and flawed. The campaign focused on attracting industry to fill gaps in the industrial sector and to expand exports to alleviate Ireland’s balance-​of-​payments difficulties, rather than setting up new firms in competition with pre-​existing protected ones. It paralleled the government and Norton’s emergency efforts to address the balance-​of-​payments crisis by reducing the consumption of foreign imports (using special import levies) in favour of home-​produced goods. As such the message welcoming foreign industry during Norton’s period was heavily qualified, but it was the dawn of a realisation that export-​oriented foreign investment was an option. (Seán Lemass on the opposition benches and the newly appointed (May 1956) Secretary of the Department of Finance, Ken Whitaker, were thinking along similar lines. They were favourable to amending the Control of Manufactures Acts, in order to promote Irish industrial competitiveness and attract foreign capital.) Ireland needed a coherent package of focused measures to appeal to foreign investment, but the enticements offered in 1955 were ad hoc and primitive. Other than offering a back door into the Commonwealth, the package was uninspiring. It was composed in an act of extreme anxiety to rescue the state’s economic fortunes. It was based on accident and opportunism. The appeal to foreign firms to establish under the umbrella of protectionism had been in existence since the 1930s, but it only succeeded in appealing to mainly British companies to set up branches to avoid the tariff wall and retain their customary Irish markets. The Undeveloped Areas Act (1952) offering financial and other incentives to encourage firms to establish was not originally designed as an FDI tool. It

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was a response to pressures from the depopulating Western seaboard, but it was exploited by the IDA and Norton after 1954 as a fall-​back measure in their campaign to attract foreign investment. At this point Ireland had not even formally made provision for double taxation relief with most countries. However, the initiatives of 1954 and 1955 pioneered interdepartmental and inter-​agency coordination, involving External Affairs, the IDA, the CTT and Industry and Commerce. The controversy surrounding Norton’s visit to Germany in August 1955 provoked Irish and international interest. The fact that Liebherr eventually materialised as the only German firm that eventually invested in Ireland, from the group of German firms expressing an interest in doing so in 1955 and 1956, underscores the anaemic and precipitate nature of the investment package offered by Ireland in 1955. As the Badische Zeitung pronounced in September 1955 in the aftermath of Norton’s visit and prior to the IDA delegation visit, it was not optimistic about the prospects for success as the protectionist legislation still prevented foreigners from owning more than 49 per cent of a company based in Ireland.91 There were other reasons why the timing of the Irish initiative was sub-​optimal. Germany was not yet ripe for the mass export of industrial capital. As Kiernan noted, ‘apart from people who would see in investment in Ireland a form of insurance against disturbed conditions in Germany, capital is required in great volume for German industry itself ’. German capital accumulation had not reached a point where excess capital was available for export en masse. Instead Kiernan advised Ireland should emphasise its appetite for an influx of foreign firms as a means to improve workforce skills and technical capacity rather than to supply capital.92 This tack was then pursued by Norton and the IDA during 1955, 1956 and 1957 in the face of pervasive domestic suspicions that foreign industrialists would displace indigenous enterprises. An additional problem was that German representatives were chary of encouraging a dramatic investment into Ireland in view of the delicacy of Anglo-​ German relations. The DIHT was anxious to avoid negative British publicity or to reinforce British anti-​German feelings, so it advocated a phased introduction of German firms into Ireland.93 Kiernan advised that simply drawing on the services of DIHT to canvas major German industrialists was insufficient: it could be ‘assumed that virtually every German interest which wishes to go to Ireland of its own accord will have been made aware of the IDA’s concern to assist them’.94 Ireland required a systematic programme to stimulate investment rather than the frantic opportunism that occurred in 1955 and 1956. It warranted a professional campaign which would signify a united national commitment. Kiernan maintained that the IDA should identify the gaps or deficits in the Irish industrial economy which would benefit from German assistance. Then the IDA should adopt a directed approach and make confidential enquiries to relevant German enterprises through the good offices of industrial and commercial banks, the Federation of German manufacturers and industrial consultants.95 Several

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follow-​on visits to build relationships with prospective investors and the development of an appropriate support network in Germany dedicated to nurturing them was required.96 Regardless, 1954 and 1955 marked the beginning of a learning process. Engagement with recently arrived firms from Germany and elsewhere, such as Faber-​Castell, and ongoing discussions with interested firms such as Liebherr, educated the Irish authorities. It led to the beginnings of the process of formulating an attractive package to lure foreign investment to Ireland.97 In 1956 the Second Inter-​Party Government expanded An Foras Tionscail’s (the industry board for the Undeveloped Areas, established in 1952) geographical remit from the undeveloped west and south-​west regions to include the entire country.98 The body gained the authority to offer grants to new export-​ oriented industries to assist with site acquisition and factory construction. The most far-​reaching inter-​party government innovations, therefore, occurred close to the end of its short tenure armed with the lessons from its preceding foreign investment promotional drives to Germany and elsewhere. The Export Profits Tax Relief (EPTR) scheme was initiated as part of the 1956 Finance Act. This granted a 50 per cent tax remission on profits generated by increased exports. Costello overrode objections from the Revenue Commissioners and Finance in October 1956.99 This was extended in 1957 and 1958 by the subsequent Fianna Fáil administration. The expansion of the responsibility of the CTT in 1954 and 1955 to promote the exports of indigenous industry in non-​dollar areas for the first time, the invigoration of the IDA, the expansion of An Foras Tionscail’s remit and powers, and Norton’s efforts to attract foreign industry to augment Irish technical skills and capital, signified that change was underway. In addition to Norton and Costello’s receptiveness to export-​oriented foreign investment, Lemass was a progressive. Sitting on the opposition benches, he assisted in defending the retention of the proposed provision for tax relief on exports after it was dropped in the second reading of the 1956 Finance Bill, as a result of objections from the Committee of Inquiry into Taxation on Industry.100 When the provision was reinstated in the final draft of the bill, Lemass requested the expansion of the period of remission from tax on export profits to provide a greater inducement to expand exports.101 This intervention fitted into his enduring efforts to enhance productivity and exports.102 When Lemass re-​entered government in 1957 and 1958, he strengthened the attractiveness of the EPTR by extending the amount and duration of remission. In sum, it was the Second Inter-​Party Government, by design or accident, which laid the foundations for a future national development strategy (nationwide grants for industrial investors, EPTR, supporting the IDA’s search for international capital, and an interagency momentum). It was embryonic but it was a breakthrough.103 Subsequent progress in refashioning the Irish modernisation strategy would remain incremental and slow in the face of forces of continuity, protectionist shibboleths and vested interests but it gathered momentum and began to produce results.

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Accumulating change, 1957–​59 The IDA took Kiernan’s advice and began a sustained promotional campaign in Germany in autumn 1957. That September 1957 Beddy and Loughney met with the representative of the Commerzbank-​Bankverein from Düsseldorf, who was purportedly ‘enthusiastic’ about recommending Ireland as an investment location to clients.104 Next Beddy contacted industrialists he had met on his original mission to Germany in November 1955 but who had not invested in Ireland.105 On this occasion he was equipped with more enticements as a result of the Industrial Grants Act, 1956 and the Finance Act, 1956. Cathal Loughney visited Germany to meet with interested industrialists in early 1958. Loughney informed Warnock afterwards that he was cautious but hopeful: ‘some at least of the contacts seem reasonably promising’.106 The IDA was abetted in its German campaign by the announcement in October 1957 that Hans Liebherr had ‘active plans’ to invest in Ireland and he planned to construct a factory in Killarney,107 and Irish endeavours redoubled to ensure the establishment of the plant went ahead as painlessly as possible for the company.108 The IDA now proclaimed to all potential investors: ‘where any foreign firm is starting a factory here we try to deal with all their problems … bring their troubles to us and we will look after them’.109 Consideration was devoted to developing standardised Irish customs procedures to ease the setting up of German branches in Ireland.110 By 1958, a significant mood change had occurred. In mid-​1958 the IDA commissioned the Battelle Institute in Frankfurt am Main, a branch of the leading non-​profit US science and technology development institute. Battelle assisted in elaborating a programme for Irish industry and it drafted publicity material in consultation with the IDA for despatch to 100 selected German firms.111 Interested investors were instructed to write to the Chairman of the IDA directly and mark their letters ‘personal’.112 Battelle adapted the IDA brochure ‘Opportunities for Industrialists in Ireland’ that had been evolving since 1954 and 1955, and transformed it into a shorter and plain-​ spoken leaflet to evoke German interest. In addition to delineating Ireland’s stable democracy, tax reliefs, cash grants, labour surplus (‘the only North European country with a manpower surplus’) and the like, it supplied details on the exemptions and preferential customs rates available to goods of Irish origin entering the British market.113 The IDA appointed Gerard MacCarthy as its European Representative in 1959. He acted as the travelling representative of the IDA in Europe. His first visit was to Germany in May and June 1959. He was accompanied by Cathal Loughney a member of the IDA Board. The visit coincided with the launch of another major advertising campaign in Germany.114 The Irish authorities conducted a major publicity offensive for MacCarthy’s first visit. The IDA advertised in five major German newspapers to achieve federal coverage on 2 June 1959.115 This spawned

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a cascade of interest, enquiries and articles from other, chiefly regional, papers.116 News items outlining Ireland’s industrial possibilities began to appear regularly from this time in two leading dailies, Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Die Welt.117 Simultaneously the Battelle Institute despatched promotional materials to 500 German industrialists.118 The Irish Honorary Consulates in Munich and Hamburg became drawn into actively promoting Ireland’s advantages to industrialists.119 A comprehensive public relations drive was in operation in Germany consolidating the earlier endeavours and contacts. Seán Lemass demanded reports on its progress.120 By August 1960, 12 German firms were in production in Ireland (the origins of at least three of these, including Faber-​Castell, predated the post-​1954 drive), and 10 more factories were under construction.121 With strong signs of the reorientation of Irish commercial policies in the late 1950s a significant number of German branches began to open. Political will, bureaucratic design and government policy had passed a watershed, while the package of fiscal inducements had matured. Timing was critical. The German economy was propelled by a strong international demand for its exports. It remained unscathed by the international economic recession of 1958,122 but strains were emerging: it was experiencing rising costs in the construction sector, a labour shortage and wage increases. Inflationary pressures and large capital surpluses accumulated and were exacerbated by the undervaluation of the Deutschmark.123 The German authorities wanted to reduce the inflationary pressures; encouraging the export of industrial capital was one palliative. By this point, most of the basic infrastructure for remunerative commercial arrangements between the two countries was in place or in process. In 1958, the two states began negotiating a double taxation agreement to facilitate German investment.124 Ireland aimed to remove ‘a major disincentive to the investment of German capital in Ireland’.125 The text of the draft agreement was substantially agreed by 1961. Finalisation of the treaty was delayed preventing its entry into force until 2 April 1964.126 In practice, until that point, the Irish authorities made provision so that German companies domiciled in Ireland would not be subjected to double taxation. Following three years of negotiations, a scheme for non-​academic technical traineeships in German industry for Irish citizens was signed in May 1960.127 This aimed to enhance the scientific, industrial, commercial, agricultural, engineering and technical skills of Irish workers in small Irish enterprises.128 Travel and tourism Tourism was also invigorated, but only after the Irish authorities finally liberalised visa access during the watershed period from 1954 to 1957 (the tenure of the Second Inter-​Party Government). Following several years of suggestions from the Bonn Legation and complaints from interested Germans falling on deaf

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ears,129 Ireland began to recognise the potential Germany offered as a source of tourists. As Conor Cruise O’Brien noted in September 1954: ‘The Germans are, of course, a great tourist people and Ireland has many attractions for them, not the least being the fact that it is one of the few nearby countries with which they have not recently been at war and that therefore German tourists are quite popular here.’130 However, internal institutional and governmental disputes undermined Ireland’s general efforts at tourism promotion until 1955. Then the Second Inter-​ Party Government established a single statutory body responsible for tourism development, Bord Fáilte, after years of bickering.131 In April 1955, the FTC belatedly realised there was an opportunity to market Ireland as a tourist destination noting large numbers of Germans were now touring other European countries.132 An expansion in this invisible Irish export would assist the balance of trade between the two countries.133 William Norton was centrally involved –​ he introduced the legislation in 1955. For tourism (and business) to flourish, regular flights between the two countries were vital. In 1952, the semi-​state national airline, Aer Lingus, became interested in developing a central European air service, centred on a link with the FRG to facilitate business travellers and attract German tourists to Ireland.134 The Bonn settlement of 1952 granted Germany full authority as a sovereign state, including control of its airspace. The aviation dimension of the treaty finally became effective in 1955. The Irish Government elected to wait rather than negotiate air access with the Allied Control Commission fearing it would need to renegotiate it soon afterwards when the German authorities assumed control.135 Time was then needed to build up the capacity of the German national airline, Lufthansa. The Irish–​German Air Transport Agreement was finally signed at Bonn on 12 June 1956,136 though the Irish authorities and Aer Lingus had hoped to have the service operational a year earlier. Aer Lingus began to operate from Dublin to Frankfurt (twice weekly) and Düsseldorf (thrice weekly) from April 1957.137 The agreement permitted Aer Lingus to turn Düsseldorf and Frankfurt into Aer Lingus hubs for flights to Denmark, Italy and Switzerland. It transformed Irish air connectivity. Lufthansa was granted rights to operate an air link from various points in the FRG to Dublin via intermediate points. It also gained the entitlement to operate through Shannon Airport to North America.138 This was propitious as the 1955 Tourist Traffic Act had instituted one unified tourist board, Bord Fáilte (the Irish Tourist Board). It began to create the basis to focus Irish tourist development energies in a more synchronised and coherent manner.139 By 1957, Bord Fáilte was organised. Until that point German travellers and travel companies arranged their own travel and itineraries to Ireland and lacked any promotional materials. In 1956 a leading travel agency in Berlin bluntly informed one German contemplating a vacation to Ireland that ‘Ireland was not a tourist country’.140 With direct air routes and the establishment of

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Bord Fáilte German tourist traffic to Ireland began to increase by 1959.141 The publication of Heinrich Böll’s Irisches Tagebuch in 1957 assisted in the German tourist discovery of Ireland. It represented life in the West of Ireland as a serene, unhurried and pre-​industrial experience set in a picturesque landscape.142 Articles appeared with increasing regularity in German newspapers about Ireland. Many tended to corroborate the impressions of Böll about the west and south of Ireland and its traditional rural qualities, and thus enhanced Ireland’s attractiveness as a tourist destination.143 German schools and travel organisations began to arrange tours of Ireland.144 The resulting improvements in the Irish economy and its opening to foreign investment only began to become apparent from about 1959, just after Lemass’s accession. The campaigns to attract German industrial investment had the attendant advantage of generating wider knowledge and publicity about Ireland and its rural, unspoilt landscape. In July 1960, the Deutsche Tagespost reported: As a German, one is welcomed with open arms. This friendship is genuine and showed itself in deeds after the last war. Ireland is one of the countries which did the most for needy Germany at that time. It is an ancient land which, in olden times, brought Christianity to many parts of Europe. It founded “Zechen” in the Ruhr which even to-​day is referred to by names such as “Hibernia”. One feels oneself 50 years back on this quiet island. The Irish are individualistic and they are not in a hurry.145

The consequence was a rise in German tourists destined for Ireland from a very low base.146 Bord Fáilte experienced difficulties in calculating the increasing tourist movement between the two countries, as the bulk of German visitors entered the Republic of Ireland via Northern Ireland or the British mainland and there were no nationality checks on these routes. However, the Department of Justice’s statistics on aliens allowed to land in Ireland who had not arrived via an intermediate point in the UK gives a partial glimpse of the upward trend.147 In 1962, Aer Lingus concluded the German travel market remained grossly under-​ exploited. Bord Fáilte estimated that in the region of 3,000–​ 4,000 German tourists visited Ireland in 1961, although it was known that approximately 7,500 Irish people visited Germany annually. Even though Bord Fáilte distributed promotional materials to approximately 800 travel trade outlets in Germany annually, it concentrated its activities on Britain and North America neglecting Continental Europe including Germany. Even a low-​cost promotional campaign in Germany might repay investment (Aer Lingus estimated). A particular problem was that the cost of accommodation in Ireland was too expensive for mass tourism. The prospective solution lay in expanding the provision of holiday accommodation in private houses, which tended to be favoured by German holiday-​makers, rather than relying on traditional hotels.148 Overall, this

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Table 5.1  Department of Justice statistics on aliens allowed to land in Irish ports Year

Shannon Airport

Dublin Airport

Cobh

Dublin

Other ports

Total

1955 1956 1957 1958 1959

120 276 217 228 216

108 131 411 446 698

39 35 70 67 69

34 25 19 29 23

9 2 10 7 7

310 469 727 777 1013

Source: NAI, DFA, 366/​150, Meagher to Cremin, 20 October 1960.

increase in German tourist numbers reflected the growth of Irish tourism generally and income from tourism in the early 1960s was the highest ever attained by Ireland.149 A change had commenced. As the Deutsche Tagespost put it in 1960, tourist traffic to Ireland was still not ‘worth mentioning’, but the potential had been recognised.150 In sum, international air travel was a key piece of infrastructure required to enable the flow of international capital and industrial investment from the 1950s, and it enabled the development of British, American and German multinational companies by allowing their executives to fly in and out of Ireland with relative ease. In addition it facilitated the expansion in tourism between Ireland and Germany. The development of tourism went hand-​in-​hand with direct air links and industrial investment in a virtuous cycle from the late 1950s. Watershed 1960 was a watershed in the Irish–​German commercial relationship. The movement of people between the two countries, ministerial visits, commercial and industrial connections intensified to a remarkable extent in 1960. During 1960 German newspaper articles grew frequent on the topic of Irish industrial, business and foreign investment practices. They highlighted the attractions Ireland held for tourists. In early 1960 West Germany and Ireland negotiated and ratified another trade deal amidst a growing Irish realisation about Germany’s importance as a trade partner.151 The public acrimony surrounding Irish–​German trade negotiations since the mid-​1950s was not present. A spirit of cooperation entered the relationship in line with Irish efforts to benefit from the liberalisation of world trade and the multilateralisation of European commerce. It paralleled the incipient modernisation of the Irish economy, which was based on incentivising foreign investment in the country. Ireland was transforming into a location for branches of foreign firms. After a lost decade, the government and many state

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agencies were espousing a new economic model and expanding their trade horizons to seek foreign investment and cultivate contacts. This Irish realignment captured the German imagination and assisted Ireland in winning the attention of its business sector. It was exemplified by the coverage it gained in Der Spiegel the influential and leading weekly national German news magazine. In April, Der Spiegel celebrated the success of Gerard B. MacCarthy, the Continental Director of the IDA. He had attracted ‘serious applications’ from German firms to establish branch plants in Ireland. MacCarthy was cited to the effect that his efforts had led to ‘a small avalanche of applications’ (approximately 50).152 This exposure was invaluable as it underscored the investment opportunities in Ireland in a landmark federal-​wide publication. It publicised Ireland’s positive demographics, the ready availability of low-​cost labour (high unemployment and ‘permanent underemployment’), low employer social welfare contributions, an attractive tax regime, and a myriad of tax exemptions and subsidies. MacCarthy, in effect, largely reiterated the sales pitch of William Norton in 1955 by making the ‘bold’ contention that German firms were interested in Ireland as a location to ‘under-​tunnel’ the British, Commonwealth and European Free Trade Area’s (EFTA) tariff walls and enter British and Commonwealth markets.153 In June 1960, a deluge of articles appeared by German journalists in German newspapers with the announcement of the forthcoming visit by Aiken to Bonn and Berlin in August 1960.154 The Augsburger Allgemeine celebrated the German role in Ireland’s economic development with a headline ‘Ireland: Minor Outlet for German Miracle’. It commended the decline of Irish emigration, rising German immigration, the low cost of property in Ireland, the provision of employment for Irish people by German firms, and the active encouragement of German investment by the IDA.155 By this point, Germany was experiencing an acute labour shortage. Brian Ó Ceallaigh estimated this ‘has been the reason for the recent considerable interest on the part of German firms in considering investment in Ireland’. The number of Gastarbeiter (guest workers) was climbing and showed no signs of a slowdown, so Ó Ceallaigh advised, ‘I think we can reckon with continued interest, at least for some time, due the labour shortage here.’156 Assertions by Cassandra of the Financial Times asserted that popular German security concerns, at a period of heightened East–​West tension over the status of West Berlin, were responsible for German enterprises setting up in distant Ireland. But this was rebutted by Der Mittag as to be ‘so absurd that it cannot really be taken seriously’.157 Hard economic calculations rather than diffuse fears about atomic war largely drove German capital investment in Ireland. By 1960 and 1961, the IDA, the Department of Industry and Commerce and the DEA were becoming proficient and professional in touting for investment and promoting Ireland. In place of the disparate policy changes that emerged during the 1950s, Ireland now had a consolidated and codified state policy, the First Programme for Economic Expansion.158

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117

The launch of the First Programme for Economic Expansion in 1958 was the psychological turning point in the modernisation of Ireland. It ascribed to the state the central role of encouraging national economic development by adopting an export-​oriented strategy. It provided state aid and incentives to private entrepreneurs to attract FDI, if indigenous entrepreneurial spirit was unequal to the national need. To a great extent, it integrated the piecemeal initiatives that had been launched from the mid-​1950s into a semi-​coherent development strategy. The launch of the Programme coincided with a palpable upswing in Irish economic activity from 1959.159 The initial signs of an improvement in Irish economic performance were beginning to emerge in 1958 and 1959 coinciding with the Germany’s domestic labour shortages and oversupply of capital. The attraction of FDI to achieve industrialisation was just one part of Ireland’s First Programme for Economic Expansion. But it portended improved Irish-​ FRG trade and perhaps a more equal balance of trade. Between 1955 and 1962, approximately 24 factories with FRG shareholders were established in Ireland. In late 1962, the development of seven more commenced and another eight were planned.160 Germany became Ireland’s second-​or third-​largest trade partner behind the UK from the mid-​1950s (ranked as second or third, depending on annual returns). It was on a par with the United States. By the early 1960s FRG firms were among the top two or three investing (year dependent) in Ireland and contributing to Irish industrialisation.161 It was clear in 1959 and 1960 that Irish–​German trade relations and business ventures had improved from the earlier nadir.162 Irish exports to Germany grew steadily to £3.7 million in 1960.163 In 1961 German exports to Dublin grew to £14.4 million, but Irish exports increased to £5.6 million marginally narrowing the ratio of German trade to Irish trade.164 Irish dynamism was noticeable in industrial and manufactured exports, principally. Aiken’s visit The flow of positive publicity continued when Frank Aiken, escorted by the Secretary of External Affairs, Cornelius (‘Con’) Cremin, visited Germany on a high-​profile six-​day visit in late August 1960. In addition to discussing international issues, Aiken dedicated his visit to inspiring German industrialists to invest in Ireland. In Cologne, he spoke to the Federal Association of German Industry about the attractions of Ireland for business.165 He was keen to advertise that West German industrialists based in Ireland could export most goods to Britain duty-​free, or take advantage of a preferential intra-​Commonwealth reduced tariff.166 The visit communicated a very different message to that of the early 1950s. Barely a mention was made of the ‘sore thumb’ (Irish partition), and the objective was the cultivation of close relations with the turbine of the West European

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economy. A noticeable theme throughout Aiken’s visit was the vital role of German investment in Ireland as he engaged in a succession of meetings with Adenauer, the German foreign minister, businessmen and industrialists. Aiken was closely identified with his dedication to UN work, but in 1960 trade and investment were the clear priorities during his visit to West Germany. Flattering the Federal Association of German Industry he spoke about widespread Irish respect for ‘the efficiency of German production and business management’, and he emphasised Ireland’s attractiveness for export-​oriented firms (surplus and motivated manpower, fiscal and tax incentives, etc.) He also explained that investing in Ireland might assist German firms to retain their international competitiveness (in view of the full employment and high costs prevailing in Germany).167 In another speech on his tour, Aiken incited German patriotism when he stated Germany was second only to Britain in terms of its investments in Ireland, surpassing the American, other European and Japanese firms. He elaborated that German investment in Ireland was ‘a striking example of the achievement of balance where there was previously imbalance’.168 This pointed to an emerging tacit understanding between the German and Irish authorities that a balance of interests was possible: incoming German capital would boost Irish industrial exports to Germany (and elsewhere), compensating for the traditional asymmetry in the trading relationship and the impossibility of overcoming the protectionist-​minded German farming lobby. Perhaps an equipoise in the trading relationship might be possible? Aiken told his German opposite number that Ireland hoped German investment would ‘continue and intensify’.169 In reply, the German foreign minister, Heinrich von Brentano, intimated that while the German industrial investment abroad was ‘a matter for the private initiative of German firms, the Federal Government would, however, support all steps taken in this direction’.170 Brentano reaffirmed that in his address at a subsequent formal dinner in Aiken’s honour on 24 August 1960.171 Adenauer in his audience with Aiken also reiterated Bonn’s support for German firms setting up in Ireland.172 Aiken told Irish newspapers, ‘the German Government had promised to do all it could to encourage industrialists in Ireland’. He suggested the inequitable balance of trade between the two was diminishing as a result of recent German capital in-​flows and the increasing volume of Irish exports to Germany.173 In an effort to balance domestic Irish criticism, particularly from the farming lobby, he also submitted that ‘importation of German capital may now help to redress’ the trade imbalance.174 As a result Aiken declared his six-​day trip ‘highly satisfactory’.175 The improving nature of commercial relations was evident in the short and medium-​term. The announcement of the appointment of a new German ambassador to Ireland, Dr Adolph Reifferscheidt, coincided with Aiken’s return from his German sojourns.176 He proved to be an energetic promoter of German–​ Irish relations. Possessing a PhD in economics and a pre-​1943 career in industry,

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followed by a post-​war career in various local and state government roles relating to the economy and administration, he was well placed to stimulate trade. In 1952 he was appointed the FRG consul general in Montreal and then he became the consul general in New York in 1955. This was followed by a stint leading West Germany’s representation at the Council of Europe after 1958, until he was appointed to Ireland in 1960. His credentials and background underlined his interest in foreign trade promotion and assisting German industrial investments abroad.177 He was committed to improving trade relations and played an active role in soliciting Irish industrial investment in Ireland. When the Kölner Stadt-​Anzeiger reported his appointment on 3 January 1961, it observed that ‘Nachdem Heinrich Böll Irland dichterisch erkundet hat, ist mit Reifferscheidt nun abermals ein Kölner hinübergezogen, um die Beziehungen –​und diesmal sind es auch wirtschaftliche –​kräftig zu pflegen.’178 Reifferscheidt wasted no time. As early as March 1961, he undertook an information tour in Germany ‘to strengthen Irish–​German relations, particularly in the field of economics, with a view to furthering the industrialisation of Ireland’.179 Reifferscheidt’s appointment signified a renewed German effort to improve the economic relationship. The new ambassador’s activism in assisting German investment and promoting trade equalisation in the bilateral relationship was highly regarded by Dublin. Reifferscheidt fashioned a strong rapport with his Irish interlocutors in a short time. Days after taking up his post in Dublin in January 1961, he informed Aiken and Cremin that his minister, Brentano, intended to come to Ireland on an official visit in June 1961 in response to the extension of Aiken’s invitation during his visit to Germany in August 1960.180 During 1961 and 1962, Reifferscheidt played a supportive role in advocating the Irish case for membership of the EEC within the AA following Ireland’s application for membership. Initial evidence in favour of increasing intimacy and understanding at an official level was evident in the swift and successful conclusion of the Irish–​German trade agreement in April 1961. Unlike previous annualised trade agreements, the new one was a two-​year agreement for 1962 and 1963. It introduced greater stability into the relationship. Germany even granted some improvement to imports of Irish cattle.181 In 1962, the Irish Government expressed some satisfaction at the growth of exports to the FRG and decided to open a consular office in Hamburg, the largest city and port in the FRG. The primary objective of this departure was to promote ‘our earnings in that country’ and to enhance Irish economic development.182 Conclusion Irish efforts were now targeting Germany as a potential key contributor to Irish modernisation on a par with the United States. It remained a significant but supplementary market for agricultural goods; the Department of Agriculture no

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longer monopolised the process of defining Irish export and trade interests with Germany. Tensions would often resurface in trade talks and on agricultural matters, but the Irish Government never again allowed the narrow interests of the cattle and beef trade to overshadow or define the national interest in its commercial relations with West Germany. Meanwhile the EEC had begun to intrude heavily on Irish–​German commercial interests. Notes 1 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​8, No. 2096, FTC, Minutes of Meeting held on 15 April 1955. 2 Ibid., Kiernan to O’Regan, 25 August 1955. 3 NAI, DIC, FTG, 490/​3, Report of Interview with ESB, by RTB, 19 May 1950. 4 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​9, Brief, Trade Negotiations with Germany commencing 27 October 1955. 5 See: Paul Bew and Henry Patterson, Seán Lemass and the Making of Modern Ireland, 1945–​66 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1982); Brian Farrell, Seán Lemass (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1983); John Horgan, Seán Lemass: the enigmatic patriot (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1997); Brian Girvin and Gary Murphy (eds), The Lemass Era: Politics and Society in the Ireland of Seán Lemass (Dublin: University College Press, 2005); Tom Garvin, Judging Lemass: The Measure of the Man (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2009). 6 NAI, DFA, 359/​59, Boland to Leydon, 21 June 1947. 7 NAI, DT, S14557A, FTC, Minutes of Meeting held on 13 June 1950; ibid., FTC, Minutes of Meeting held on 11 August 1950. 8 Girvin, Between Two Worlds, p. 174; Whelan, Marshall Plan, p. 343. 9 Keogh, Twentieth Century, p. 202; Lee, Ireland, p. 310. 10 Horgan, Lemass, p. 150. 11 NAI, DFA, 330/​381, Belton to Nunan, 21 February 1951; ibid., Item no. 1368, FTC, Minutes of Meeting held on 6 April 1951. 12 Ibid., Item no. 1368, FTC, Minutes of Meeting held on 6 April 1951. 13 Ibid. 14 See for example: NAI, DFA, 315/​59, Aedan O’Beirne to Secretary, 11 December 1951. 15 NAI, DFA, 315/​303, O’Beirne to Biggar, 21 January 1954. 16 NAI, DFA, 366/​150, Belton to Nunan, 17 November 1950. 17 Ibid., Costigan to Nunan, 20 December 1950. 18 Ibid., Unidentified to Belton, 2 February 1950 19 Ibid., Unidentified to Nunan, 5 January 1951. 20 NAI, DFA, 366/​150, Unidentified to Belton, 2 March 1951. 21 See, for example, the damning indictment of Irish, and by association British, immigration and refugee policies in O’Halpin, Defending Ireland, pp. 76, 303. Irish restrictiveness is well-​delineated in relation to the Jews, see Dermot Keogh, Jews in Twentieth-​Century Ireland: Refugees, Anti-​Semitism and the Holocaust (Cork: Cork University Press, 1998). 22 NAI, DFA, 351/​19, Berry to Iremonger, 23 November 1951. 23 Ibid., Berry to Nunan, June 1951.

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2 4 NAI, JUS, 8/​1015, Berry to Nunan, 26 May 1953. 25 NAI, DFA, 351/​19, German Legation to DEA, 24 May 1952; ibid., Iremonger to Secretary/​Finance, 9 November 1951. 26 Ibid., Chadwick to Commins, 29 April 1955. 27 NAI, JUS, 8/​1015, Coyne to Boland, 27 November 1953 (with attached annotation of Boland), 1 December 1953. 28 Ibid., Memo, Berry(?) to Coyne, Abolition of visas for Germans, 7 November 1953. 29 Ibid. 30 NAI, DFA, 351/​19, Ó Ceallaigh to Nunan, 18 June 1953. 31 NAI, JUS, 8/​1015, Memo, Berry to Coyne, Abolition of Visas for Germans, 7 November 1953; ibid., Berry to Commins, 21 October 1953. 32 NAI, DFA, 351/​19, DEA to German Legation, 18 September 1954. 33 Ibid., DEA to FRG Legation, 28 February 1957. 34 Ibid., DEA to FRG Legation, 29 December 1953. 35 Ibid., Belton to Nunan, 7 October 1953. 36 See Peter Murray, Facilitating the Future? US Aid, European Integration and Irish Industrial Viability 1948–​73 (Dublin: UCD, 2009). 37 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​5, FTC, Memo, Trade Negotiations with German Delegation from 7 to 15 October 1953, p. 11; see also NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​7, FTC, Minutes of Meeting held on 6 October 1953, p. 2. 38 ‘Pencil Firm Opens New Irish Factory’, Irish Times, 16 September 1955, p.  7; ‘Progressive Southern Town:  Fermoy Looks to the Future’, Irish Independent, 26 February 1955, p. 11. 39 NAI, DT, 2002/​ 64/​ 8, Note for the Parliamentary Secretary’s Information, Establishment of Pencil Factory at Fermoy by Messrs. A. W. Faber-​Castell (Ireland) Ltd., n.d. (c. September 1955). 40 NAI, DT, 2002/​64/​8, Memo by Culligan, 24 November 1954. 41 ‘Pencil Firm Opens New Irish Factory’, Irish Times, 16 September 1955, p. 7; ‘Fermoy to have Pencil Factory’, Irish Times, 14 September 1955, p. 4; NAI, DFA, 315/​59/​292. 42 NAI, DFA, 315/​59/​343, Murphy to Nunan, 11 February 1955; ibid., Stokes to Murphy, 14 January 1955. 43 ‘Factory to make clothes for export only’, Irish Times, 27 May 1954, p. 1. 44 ‘Ireland’s bid for markets in Germany’, Irish Times, 4 September 1952, p. 1. 45 For example, see the Irish Minister to West Germany’s observations in NAI, DT, S14557E, Belton to Secretary, 6 January 1955. 46 David McCullagh, Reluctant Taoiseach: A Biography of John A. Costello (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2010), p. 293. 47 Ibid., pp. 347–​8. 48 For a trenchant critique of this government’s dismal features see: Niamh Puirséil, The Irish Labour Party: 1922–​73 (Dublin: University College Dublin, 2007), pp. 179–​201. Brian Girvin is similarly dismissive and fleeting, see Brian Girvin, Between Two Worlds, pp. 189–​90. Strong signs of the dysfunctionality of the inter-​party government are also present in the less critical McCullagh, The Reluctant Taoiseach, pp. 288–​371.

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49 There are exceptions to this, notably Whyte, ‘Economic Crisis and Political Cold War, 1949–​57’, p. 283. Even Bew and Patterson, who wrote the seminal account of Lemass and credited him as the political mastermind behind the liberalisation of the Irish economy, admit: ‘It is sufficient to note that the coalition had already introduced EPTR [Export Profits Tax Relief ] and had a more substantial commitment to foreign capital than a party [Fianna Fáil] which had until very recently denounced such proposals.’ Bew and Patterson, Seán Lemass, p. 101. 50 Murphy, Economic Realignment, pp.  38–​40; Barry and Ó Fathartaigh, ‘An Irish Industrial Revolution: The Creation of the Industrial Development Authority (IDA), 1949–​59’, History Ireland, May/​June 2013, 21: 3. 51 See NAI, DFA, 315/​59/​353/​5. 52 NAI, DFA, 315/​59/​343, Loughney to Warnock, 11 October 1954; ibid., Molloy to Minister Plenipotentiaries in The Hague, Brussels and Berne, 15 November 1954. 53 Ibid., Loughney to Warnock, 11 October 1954. 54 Ibid. 55 NAI, DFA, 315/​59/​343/​5, Unidentified to Belton, 13 October 1954. 56 Ibid., Belton to Loughney, 12 April 1955. 57 Ibid. 58 NAI, DFA, 315/​59/​343/​1, Report of a Meeting, Initialled T.  Ó‘M, 23 January 1955, p. 1. 59 Ibid., Norton to Taft, 3 March 1955. 60 Dáil Debates, 7 March 1956, Vol. 155, No. 1, Col. 46; ‘Minister reports progress of search for Investors’, Irish Times, 8 March 1956. 61 NAI, DFA, 315/​59/​343/​5, Murphy to Kiernan, 19 August 1955; ibid., Loughney to Belton, 23 March 1955. 62 Ibid., Murphy to Kiernan, 19 August 1955. 63 Ibid. 64 NAI, DFA, 315/​59/​357, Kiernan to Murphy, 3 August 1955; AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 62, Note, Aufzeichnung über den vom Presse  –​und Informationsamt der Bundesregierung anlässlich des Besuches des stellvertretenden irischen Ministerpräsidenten Mr. Norton am 1. August 1955 in Hotel “Königshof ” in Bonn veranstalteten Pressetees, 4 August 1955; ‘Norton seeks West German Industries’, Irish Independent, 2 August 1955, p. 9; ‘Mission will seek to attract German Industries, Irish Times, 2 August 1955, p. 1; ‘Mr. Norton visits German Peat Plant’, Irish Times, 4 August 1955, p. 1. 65 NAI, DFA, 315/​59/​343/​5, Kiernan to Secretary, 15 August 1955. 66 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 62, Memo, Aufzeichnung über den vom Presse –​und Informationsamt der Bundesregierung anlässlich des Besuches des stellvertretenden irischen Ministerpräsidenten Mr. Norton am 1. August 1955 in Hotel “Königshof ” in Bonn veranstalteten Pressetees, 4 August 1955. 67 ‘London Letter’, Irish Times, 7 October 1955, p. 5. 68 NAI, DFA, 315/​59/​343/​5, Telegram from London, No. 3295, Molloy to Barry, 3 August 1955. 69 Ibid., Telegram from London, No. 3303, Molloy to Barry, 4 August 1955. 70 Ibid., Kiernan to Murphy, 15 August 1955.

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71 House of Commons Hansard, Col. 345–​532, Vol. 545, 27 October, 1955 (http://​ 0-​ g ateway.proquest.com.library.ucc.ie/ ​ o penurl?url_​ v er=Z39.88–​ 2 004&res_​ dat=xri:hcpp&rft_​dat=xri:hcpp:rec:CDS5CV0545P0–​0003, accessed 28 June 2012); House of Commons Hansard, Cols. 1179–​ 1348, Vol. 545, 3 November 1955 (http://​0-​gateway.proquest.com.library.ucc.ie/​openurl?url_​ver=Z39.88–​2004&res_​ dat=xri:hcpp&rft_​dat=xri:hcpp:rec:CDS5CV0545P0–​0008, accessed 28 June 2012). 72 NAI, DFA, 315/​59/​343/​5, Kiernan to Norton, 16 August 1955. 73 Ibid., Donovan to Schacht, 19 August 1955; ibid., Donovan to Keramische Werkstätte, 19 August 1955; ibid., Kiernan to Secretary, 11 August 1955; ibid., Muenster to Bonn Legation, 10 August 1955; ibid., Kaiser to Legation of Ireland, Bonn, 8 August 1955; ibid., Kiernan to Secretary, 10 August 1955. 74 Ibid., Note by Ó Ceallaigh, 27 October 1955. 75 Ibid., Kiernan to Secretary, 2 November 1955. 76 Ibid. 77 ‘Pencil Firm opens new Irish Factory’, Irish Times, 16 September 1955, p. 7; ‘Pencil Factory opened in Fermoy’, in Pictorial, 24 September 1955, p. 9. 78 ‘Irish Groups will Visit Germany’, Irish Independent, 13 September 1955, p. 7; ‘Trade Group satisfied with Visit to Germany’, Irish Times, 26 November 1955, p. 9; ‘Trade Visit to West Germany next Week’, Irish Times, 4 November 1955, p.  4; ‘ “Any” German Industry may set up here’, Irish Times, 8 November 1955, p. 7. 79 Dáil Debates, 7 March 1956, Vol. 155, No. 1, Col. 46. 80 ‘150 German Firms seek Trade Talks’, Irish Times, 28 November 1955, p. 1; ‘Trade Group to visit Netherlands’, Irish Times, 27 October 1955, p. 1. 81 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​9, Draft Survey of the Market in Western Germany, by Niall Mooney (of CTT), August 1955, p. 3. 82 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​8, O’Regan to Murphy, 19 August 1955. 83 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​9, Memo by Niall Mooney (of CTT), Draft Survey of the Market in Western Germany, August 1955, p. 3. 84 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​8, Kiernan to O’Regan, 25 August 1955. 85 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​9, Memo by Niall Mooney (of CTT), Draft Survey of the Market in Western Germany, August 1955, p. 3. 86 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​10, Memo, Trade with Germany, c. September 1957. 87 See NAI, DT, S17253 A/​ 62, List of Firms established in Ireland by German Industrialists. 88 UCD, P190/​696(17), Norton to Costello, 22 February 1957. 89 NAI, DFA, 315/​59/​343/​5, Minute, Unidentified to Murphy, 17 October 1957; NAI, DFA, 315/​59/​343/​5, Ó Ceallaigh to Loughney, 11 February 1960. 90 ‘Minister Reports Progress of Search for Investors’, Irish Times, 8 March 1956. See Childers critique of Norton’s efforts to attract foreign investment:  Dáil Debates, 7 March 1956, Vol. 155, No. 1, Cols 47–​8. 91 ‘Kapital für Irland?’, Badische Zeitung, 19 September 1955. 92 NAI, DFA, 315/​59/​3443/​5, Kiernan to Secretary, 2 November 1955. 93 Ibid., Note by Ó Ceallaigh, 27 October 1955. 94 Ibid., Kiernan to Secretary, 2 November 1955. 95 Ibid.

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96 Ibid., Note by Ó Ceallaigh, 27 October 1955. 97 See the extensive file on government interactions with Faber-​Castell at NAI, DT, 2002/​64/​8. The challenge of adjusting the manufacturing licence granted under the Control of Manufactures Acts to accommodate product development and incidental packing all come to the fore in this file. 98 Kennedy et  al. (eds), The Economic Development of Ireland in the Twentieth Century, p. 63. 99 J. F. McCarthy, ‘Ireland’s Turnaround: Whitaker and the 1958 Plan for Economic Development’, in J. F. McCarthy (ed.), Foreword by Garrett FitzGerald, Planning Ireland’s Future:  The Legacy of T.  K. Whitaker (Sandycove, Co. Dublin:  Glendale Press, 1990), pp. 27–​9. 100 Dáil Debates, 5 June 1956, Vol. 157, No.10, Cols. 1345–​9. 101 Dáil Debates, 5 December 1956, Vol. 160, No. 13, Cols. 1884–​6. 102 Indeed, Brian Girvin and Frank Barry have disclosed how Lemass was one of the parties, including the IDA, in favour of tax relief for exports since the early 1950s. But all efforts to implement such a proposal was blocked by the Department of Finance and Revenue Commissioners. See: Girvin, Between Two Worlds, p. 174; F. Barry, ‘Foreign Investment and the Politics of Export Profits Tax Relief, 1956’, Irish Economic and Social History, 38 (2011), pp. 54–​73. 103 Barry, ‘Foreign Investment’, pp. 54–​73; Barry and Ó Fathartaigh, ‘The Industrial Development Authority, 1949–​59’. 104 NAI, DFA, 315/​59/​3443/​5, Loughney to O’Ceallaigh, 24 September 1957. 105 Ibid. 106 Ibid., Loughney to Warnock, 21 February 1958. 107 ‘German Industrialist to Invest in Ireland?’, Irish Times, 16 October 1957. 108 NAI, DFA, 315/​59/​3443/​5, Holmes to Coffey, 20 February 1958; ibid., Holmes/​ Coleman? to Coffey, 19 August 1958; ibid., Ó Ceallaigh to Coffey, 18 July 1958; ibid., Donovan to Coffey, 20 August 1958. 109 Ibid., Donovan to Coffey, 20 August 1958. 110 Ibid., Ó Ceallaigh to Coffey, 18 July 1958; ibid., Donovan to Coffey, 20 August 1958. 111 Ibid., Loughney to Battelle, 29 September 1958. 112 Ibid. 113 Ibid., Donovan to Ó Ceallaigh, 29 September 1958. 114 Ibid., Loughney to Secretary, 18 June; ibid., Note on Visit to Germany, 22 May–​ 3 June 1959; NAI, DFA, 436/​123/​1, Memo, Attraction of Industry to Ireland, August 1960. 115 NAI, DFA, 315/​59/​3443/​5, Loughney to Secretary, 18 June 1959; ibid., Note on Visit to Germany, 22 May–​3 June 1959. 116 Ibid., Ó Ceallaigh to Donovan, 10 July 1959. 117 Ibid., Loughney to Secretary, 18 June 1959; ibid., Note on Visit to Germany, 22 May–​3 June 1959. 118 Ibid. 119 Ibid., Ó Ceallaigh to Loughney, 17 October 1959; ibid., Linnebach to Ó Ceallaigh, 24 November 1959. 120 Ibid., Note on Visit to Germany, 22 May–​3 June 1959.

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1 21 NAI, DFA, 436/​123/​1, Memo, Attraction of Industry to Ireland, August 1960. 122 NAI, DT, S11283 B/​95, Brief, Molloy to Ó Nualláin, Present Economic and Financial Position of the Federal Republic of Germany, 23 August 1960. 123 Ibid. 124 See TNA, IR, 40/​14494; NAI, DT, S17201/​61, Memo, Position regarding Proposed Double Taxation Agreements with the Federal Republic and the Netherlands, 3 October 1959. 125 NAI, DT, S17201/​61, DEA Memorandum for Government, Convention with FRG for the Avoidance of Double Taxation, 1961. 126 NAI, DT, S17201/​95, Treaty Series, 1964, No. 8, Convention between Ireland and the Federal Republic of Germany for the Avoidance of Double Taxation. 127 NAI, DFA, 436/​123/​1, FRG Legation to DEA, 3 October 1957; NAI, DFA, 436/​ 123/​1, Stagiaire Agreement between Ireland and Germany, n.d. (c. August 1960); NAI, DT, S14557 F, Agreement between Ireland and the FRG concerning Stagiaires, 11 May 1960 (entered into force 1 January 1962). 128 NAI, DFA, 436/​123/​1, Interdepartmental ERP Committee Meeting No. 231, Minutes of Meeting held on 7 January 1958. Established large firms and semi-​ state bodies such as ESB and CIE already possessed continental contacts or had existing arrangements in place for training technicians. See: NAI, DFA, 315/​402, Committee for Training of Irish Technicians in Germany, Minute of Meeting held on 7 March 1961. 129 NAI, DFA, 366/​150, Belton to Secretary, 17 November 1950; ibid., Schuetz to Belton, 12 April 1955; ibid., Belton to Secretary DEA, 4 May 1955; NAI, DFA, 436/​49, Visit to the Federal Republic of Germany:  3 to 17 September, 1954, by CCO’B, 28.9.1954; NAI, DT, S14557 E, Organiser’s (F. J.  Hegarty) report on exhibition of Irish goods in the National Pavilion, Frankfurt Spring Fair, 15 April 1955. 130 NAI, DFA, 436/​49, Memo by CCO’B, Report on Visit to the Federal Republic of Germany, 3 to 17 September 1954, 28 September 1954. 131 Zuelow, Making Ireland Irish, pp. 70–​1. 132 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​8, FTC, Minutes of Meeting held on 15 April 1955. 133 ‘Partition, Irish and German’, Irish Times, 26 May 1955. 134 ‘NAI, DFA, 321/​61/​18, Leydon to SecDEA, n.d. (stamped received 9 April 1952); ‘Transatlantic Air Service Next Year?’, Irish Times, 10 September 1952, p.  1; ‘Aer Lingus Plan New Services’, Irish Independent, 28 March 1955, p. 3; ‘Direct Air Link with Germany’, Irish Independent, 19 April 1957, p. 14. 135 NAI, DFA, 321/​61/​18, Report of Discussion with German Delegation (Strasbourg Air Conference), by R Ó Concubair, 3 May 1954. 136 Ibid., Secretary of DIC to Director of Civil Aviation, Ministry of Transport, Bonn, January 1957. 137 Ibid., Aer Lingus Timetable effective 14 April 1957. 138 Ibid., Minute, CF to Molloy, 11 May 1957. 139 Loftus, ‘Crisis Years’, p. 205. 140 NAI, DFA, 366/​150, Biggar to Molloy, 24 April 1956. 141 ‘More Tourists came from Continent’, Irish Times, 20 August 1959, p. 5.

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142 Heinrich Böll, trans. L. Vennewitz, Irish Journal (Evanston, IL, Marlboro Press/​ Northwestern, 1998). 143 See NAI, DFA, 414/​74A, Holmes to Cremin, 5 November 1958. 144 NAI, DFA, 366/​150, Ó Ceallaigh to Sheridan, 24 February 1949; ibid., Holmes to Cremin, 2 December 1959. 145 NAI, DFA, 414/​74A, DFA translation, ‘Green Isle of Hope’, Deutsche Tagespost, 19 July 1960. 146 ‘More Tourists came from Continent’, Irish Times, 20 August 1959, p. 5. 147 NAI, DFA, 366/​150, Meagher to Cremin, 20 October 1960. 148 NAI, DT, S17253 A/​62, Material for Taoiseach’s Visit to Bonn in October 1962, pp. 8–​9. This inability to count tourist numbers from individual countries from continental Europe continued as late as 1966. All statistics prior to this date are educated guesses based on the gross figures provided from the Department of Justice. See NAI, DFA, 99/​3/​197, Mulloy to McCann, 19 January 1966, pp. 4–​5. 149 TNA, FO, 371/​164772, Transcript of Jack Lynch Speech to the National Foreign Trade Council, New  York, ‘The Problems and Opportunities of Small Countries Facing the Common Market’, 30 October 1962, p. 8. 150 NAI, DFA, 414/​74A, DFA trans., ‘Green Isle of Hope’, Deutsche Tagespost, 19 July 1960. 151 Our Political Correspondent, ‘Trade Talks with Germany begin Today’, Irish Times, 14 March 1960, p. 9; ‘Progress in Talks on Trade’, Irish Times, 19 March 1960, p. 1; ‘Pattern of Irish Trade with Germany; Wide Gap but Exports are rising’, Irish Times, 19 April 1961, p. 4. 152 London Letter, Irish Times, 19 April 1960, p. 7. 153 Ibid.; ‘Mission will seek to attract German Industries’, Irish Times, 2 August 1955, p. 1; ‘Ireland seeks West German Industries; Mr. Norton outlines Plan in Bonn’, Irish Independent, 2 August 1955, p. 9. 154 NAI, Dublin, DFA, Embassy Series, Bonn, PP1/​ 4/​ 1, ‘Deutsches Privatkapital in Irland willkommen’, Wiesbadener Kurier, 10 June 1960; ibid., ‘Irland und Deutschland kommen sich näher’, Stuttgarter Zeitung, 10 June 1960; ibid., ‘Deutsche interessieren sich für Irland’, Düsseldorfer Nachrichten, 10 June 1960; ibid., ‘Deutsche investieren in Irland’, Westdeutsche Allgemeine, 10 June 1960; ibid., ‘Die deutsche Invasion in Irland’, Fränkischer Tag, 10 June 1960; ibid., ‘Irland zieht deutsche Firmen an’, Die Welt, 3 August 1960; Our Political Correspondent, ‘Aiken to pay Official Visit to Bonn’, Irish Times, 13 August 1960, p. 1. 155 NAI, Dublin, DFA, Embassy Series, Bonn, PP1/​ 4/​ 1, ‘Irland, Nebenstelle des deutschen Wunders’, Die Augsburger Allgemeine, 4 June 1960. 156 NAI, DFA, 315/​59/​343/​5 II, Ó Ceallaigh to Donovan, 20 October 1960. 157 NAI, DFA, 315/​59/​343/​5 II, Der Mittag, Düsseldorf, 27 September 1960. 158 John Bradley, ‘Changing the Rules: Why the Failures of the 1950s Forced a Transition in Economic Decisionmaking’ in Keogh, Ireland in the 1950s, p. 111. 159 Kennedy, Economic Development, pp. 60–​70. 160 AA-​PA, B31, Bd. 238, von Plehwe circular, Deutsche Investitionen in Ireland, 18 October 1962.

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161 Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, Sankt Augustin, Pressedokumentation,file:  Staaten, Irland, 1951–​1983, Press cutting, Bulletin, nr 197/​S.1663, 23 October 1962. 162 Irish Times Reporter, ‘Irish Trade with Germany Improves’, Irish Times, 29 May 1959, p. 6; ‘Pattern of Irish Trade with Germany’, Irish Times, 19 April 1961, p. 4. 163 ‘Wide Gap but Exports are Rising’, Irish Times, 19 April 1961, p. 4. 164 Dáil Debates, 4 April 1962, Vol. 194, No. 8, Cols. 1169–​70. 165 ‘Aiken’s Visit: Bonn Promises to Support Industry’, Irish Times, 26 August 1960, p. 1. 166 ‘Aiken greeted at Berlin Airport’, Irish Times, 27 August 1960, p. 9. 167 NAI, DT, S17253 A/​62, Address by Aiken to the Federal Association of German Industry, Cologne, 25 August 1960; ibid., Note of meeting between Aiken and members of the Federal Association of German Industry on 25 August 1960. 168 NAI, DFA, 436/​113, Untitled address, n.d. 169 NAI, DT, S17253 A/​62, Memo, Conversation between Aiken and von Brentano, 24 August 1960, p. 6. 170 NAI, DFA, 436/​113, Memo, Official Visit of Aiken to the German Federal Republic (23–​28 August 1960), p. 7. 171 NAI, DT, S17253 A/​62, Note on Meeting between Aiken and Members of the Federal Association of Germany Industry on 25 August 1960. 172 Ibid., Memo, Official Visit of Aiken to German Federal Republic (23–​28 August 1960), p. 5. 173 ‘Aiken is pleased with Visit to Germany’, Irish Times, 30 August 1960, p. 1; ‘Aiken’s Visit: Bonn Promises to Support Industry’, Irish Times, 26 August 1960, p. 1. 174 Connacht Tribune, 3 September 1960, p. 2. 175 ‘Aiken is pleased with Visit to Germany’, Irish Times, 30 August 1960, p. 1. 176 ‘Ambassador to be replaced’, Irish Times, 30 August 1960, p. 1. 177 NAI DT S5803 B/​94, Ó Muimhneacháin to Runaí an Uachtaráin, 24 June 1960. 178 NAI, DFA, Bonn Embassy D14/​1, ‘Kölner in Dublin’, Kölner Stadt-​Anzeiger, 3 January 1961. 179 ‘Ambassador Answers Irish-​German Society’, Irish Times, 6 April 1961, p. 9. 180 NAI, DFA, Bonn Embassy D14/​1, Cremin to Warnock, 25 January 1961. 181 ‘New German Quotas for Irish Goods’, Irish Times, 7 April 1961, p. 1. 182 Dáil Debates, 4 April 1962, Vol. 194, No. 8, Cols. 1309–​10.

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From a narrow perspective, Dublin’s EEC application in July 1961 became an unavoidable necessity when Harold Macmillan decided to launch a British bid. It followed at least two years of anxious discussion and reflection in Irish government circles about the country’s economic isolation and vulnerable position. The realisation had intensified that the country needed to join a benevolent multilateral trading block. The EEC held particular appeal in the field of agriculture, though no firm decision could be taken to apply. Ireland’s economic destiny was hitched to Britain’s but Denmark began to infringe more heavily on this food marketplace. This chapter traces the German discernment of, and contributions to, the alterations and deliberations taking place within Ireland about its place in the world. The period after Lemass became Taoiseach in June 1959 was a dynamic period but there were strong forces of continuity. Lemass actively redefined and Westernised Irish foreign policy. He encroached on the bailiwick of Frank Aiken in a way de Valera had not. Germany approved of the recalibration of Aiken’s idealism. It facilitated Lemass’s refurbishment of the Irish development model and the move away from the bankruptcy of protectionist self-​sufficiency. This process advanced well. It marked a retreat from the high water mark of Aiken’s neutral and middle-​power activism at the UN in the late 1950s. Ireland acquired an external appearance that was less independent-​minded or jarring to its Western neighbours’ interests and preferences. This is substantiated by German official reactions and readings. The new Irish approach did not abandon core Irish principles (neutrality, anti-​colonialism, identity and protection of native firms), however. It was a cautious process of balancing the new forces of modernisation with the conventional ones that had formed in de Valera’s Ireland. Irish policy now fostered closer consultation with its West European and Atlantic neighbours in framing foreign initiatives. This was designed to avoid alienating Ireland’s western neighbours. Lemass was alive to the need to build bridges. The imperative was to attract foreign investment and

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adapt to the changing international economic architecture. Continuing industrial investment from Germany and other Western countries was an alluring prospect. The trade distortion effects of the West European division into rival trade blocs, the EEC and EFTA, compounded the difficulties Ireland experienced from the early 1950s in the face of the trade liberalisation policies of the OEEC. Lemass’s open posture enhanced the Irish–​German relationship from 1959 to 1961. Official Germany encouraged this reshaping of Ireland’s direction. The visit of Aiken to Germany in August 1960 and the return one by his German counterpart, Brentano, in June 1961 played a significant role in nurturing Dublin’s illusions that an Irish application for membership of the EEC held out some prospect of success. This was based on a degree of Irish hopefulness and perhaps over-​reading of obscure EEC and German attitudes to the EFTA neutrals. The implications of the latter for Ireland’s sui generis position were unclear. ‘Badly needed challenge’ to Ireland, but Ireland can respond, 1959–​601 As already established, Ireland was a mere observer of European cooperation initiatives during the 1950s. A decisive turning point was de Gaulle’s veto of the OEEC Free Trade Area proposal in 14 November 1958 which stymied efforts to envelop the EEC in a wider industrial free trade zone. This provoked a response in March 1959 with the surprise announcement that Norway, Sweden and Denmark were in negotiations with the UK, Austria, Portugal and Switzerland to form a small industrial European Free Trade Area (EFTA). ‘The seven’ made swift headway and agreed the text of the Stockholm Convention by November (it entered into force in May 1960). This had a salutary effect on Irish official circles. It accentuated the exigency of engaging in multilateral trade cooperation at precisely the point that the European options were vanishing. Europe was now at ‘sixes and sevens’, leaving Ireland as a member of ‘the forgotten five’ (Greece, Ireland, Iceland, Spain and Turkey); that is, those states of the OEEC that were not members of the EEC or EFTA. In May 1959 the German ambassador, Prill, noted the mounting Irish recognition of Ireland’s exclusion from major urban-​industrial markets on the continent.2 It is clear that the DEA recognised that the negotiation of bilateral trade agreements with countries other than Britain had been reduced to a virtual ‘farce’ by the end of the 1950s as Ireland’s chief imports were manufactures and they were predominantly liberalised, whereas its agricultural exports were checked by the agricultural protectionism and rural welfarism of most developed economies. The latter were buttressed by the OEEC and EEC in Western Europe. It lacked bargaining power.3 Preferential industrial and agricultural access to the British market was Ireland’s lifeblood, but the Irish became apprehensive that it would be eroded by EFTA. Denmark presented a specific challenge. Complacent dependence on the umbilical special trade link with the UK ended.

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As a major agricultural exporter and trade rival, Denmark possessed long-​ established exceptional access to the German market much to Ireland’s chagrin. Acutely worrying from an Irish perspective, Denmark employed its forthcoming membership of EFTA to negotiate a deal with the UK in 1959. This granted Danish agricultural produce comparable access to the British market to that which Ireland possessed.4 The surprising negotiation of EFTA and the absence of an invitation to Ireland to participate, followed by Danish alacrity in negotiating the preferential deal with Britain, reverberated through Irish circles.5 The Irish authorities belatedly identified the material disadvantages attached to non-​ membership of either EFTA or the EEC, and had to fortify their trading relations with Britain before its EFTA partners could make additional inroads.6 The international trading order had irrevocably transformed. The German Ambassador, Prill, told his superiors in June 1959 that Ireland had three hypothetical options: it could join EFTA, join the EEC, or remain outside both and promote reconciliation between the two rival trade blocs to form a genuinely pan-​European economic organisation which would include Ireland. But in reality Prill calculated that Ireland had no choice. It was unable to join EFTA; EFTA was an industrial trade organisation and Ireland feared competition for its protected manufacturing sector. Conversely, Dublin could not join the EEC without Britain as this would sunder its predominant trade. Thus, Prill concluded Ireland had no choice but to remain outside both blocs, and yet it could not afford to remain isolated. It had to build bridges expeditiously to protect its access to the British market until the opportunity surfaced to associate with a trade bloc amenable to Irish interests. The EEC was probably the bloc best suited to Irish interests in the long run. The ambassador reckoned the Irish government finally accepted that economic success depended on a rapid transformation to guarantee international competitiveness.7 His reading of the situation was percipient and comparable to the collective view of the commercial counsellors of the embassies of the EEC countries.8 The customary Anglo-​Irish special trading relationship had been sub-​optimal. Though it had offered security to key Irish farming interests it had also restrained Irish economic modernisation. But now even the relative comfort of the familiar Anglo-​Irish trade pattern based on the British extension of the Commonwealth preference to Ireland was imperilled. Ireland’s modernisation was in an acutely exposed and fragile state. The White Paper, Programme for Economic Expansion (1958) was, as the centre-​left Süddeutsche Zeitung of Munich observed in May 1959, largely theoretical and Lemass was warning of a ‘long road’ ahead.9 Although German commentators saw some encouraging signs of an Irish conversion to the paradigm of economic liberalisation after 1959, Ireland still occupied the disagreeable position of an impotent dependency of Britain,10 so the Irish reaction still appeared lethargic from the German perspective. Moreover, the import of the First Programme for Economic Expansion was largely a psychological and

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morale raising national exercise.11 It was not tightly focused on promoting the establishment of foreign-​owned export-​oriented industry to take advantage of a free-​trade environment, or in preparing existing protected firms to seek benefits from liberalisation. That would only occur in the Second Programme for Economic Expansion after 1963. Irish people, in general, did  not worry unduly about problems on the ‘far-​ away Continent’ observed Dr H. Benirschke, Head of the German Press Agency in London, in May 1959. He was familiar with Ireland and noted that even among ‘a number of leading personalities … I found a good deal of distrust towards the idea of close European co-​operation and towards the throwing in one’s lot with a European community.’ In his estimation the reticence with regard to European cooperation was based on the apprehension that ‘a small nation like Ireland could not safeguard its interests properly within some sort of political community’. He concluded this fear was a product of unhappy historical memories of association with its powerful neighbour, Britain. Benirschke’s efforts to explain that small nations such as Belgium and the Netherlands were contented members of the Six and possessed a very ‘different outlook’ left ‘leading personalities’ ‘unimpressed’.12 However, Prill sensed that the landmark economic conference organised by the Irish Council of the European Movement (ICEM) in early July 1959 played a major role in raising awareness in Irish economic and trade union circles about the economic reorganisation of Europe into ‘sixes and sevens’. Its high-​profile cast of foreign speakers made headline news and Prill estimated that the speakers collectively created the helpful impression that the rest of Europe considered Ireland a worthy member of the European family.13 John Cahan, the deputy secretary-​general of the OEEC, pronounced that Ireland ‘badly needed a jolt’, since it was ‘getting a bit complacent’, but the Danish bilateral with Britain had finally delivered it.14 Prill later concluded that Cahan’s speech created an enduring impression in Ireland.15 The president of the EEC Commission and a former state secretary at the AA, Walter Hallstein, contended the EEC presented opportunities as well as challenges for Ireland. Underlining that the EEC was a political project and an enterprise that made ‘sound economic sense’, he insisted it was an ‘engine of prosperity’ for Europe and the world. No doubt in an effort to appeal to the Irish audience, Hallstein asserted that the wealthy EEC member states would assist their friends and ‘less favoured partners’, not least because ‘benevolence is good business’. He even outlined the prospective benefits of the Common Market for ‘developing’ economies.16 Of course, Cahan and Hallstein’s comments should be considered against the backdrop of the Irish government’s recent formal plea to all member states of the EEC and EFTA, prior to the ICEM conference. In effect Dublin adopted the posture of the ‘béal bocht’ (Irish; poor mouth). Desperately, it implored members of

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the EEC and EFTA to extend the same level of reductions in tariffs and advances in quotas to Ireland that they extended to fellow members without requiring Irish reciprocation. The Irish aide-mémoire submitted that this would be a transitional measure until a fully fledged pan-​OEEC trading arrangement could be agreed, ending the trade bloc division. The Irish premise was that Ireland was acutely vulnerable to the division of the OEEC into two divergent trading blocs and as a consequence they had a duty to respect Ireland’s ‘practical difficulties’.17 In effect, Ireland requested the trade benefits attached to membership of the EEC and EFTA, but none of the costs. The Irish government would retain protectionism to shelter vulnerable sectors, and retain domestic support for pressing forward with liberalisation. The EEC and EFTA, unsurprisingly, would not tolerate this as it would negate the advantages of membership of a trade bloc. Prill described this Irish approach as seeking ‘exceptional advantages’ from the two trade blocs. Only 4.6 per cent of Irish exports were destined for the EEC and c. 78 per cent were destined for EFTA (primarily the UK). The German ambassador, therefore, sensed an ardent Irish yearning to reduce the state’s dependence on Britain in an effort to augment its foreign freedom of manoeuvre,18 but the proposal was thoroughly unrealistic.19 As Hallstein was careful to highlight during his ICEM address, the EEC’s Common External Tariff (CET) was a necessary protection. The EEC was ‘bound by obligations’ for the collective benefit of all member states under the Treaty of Rome and the CET was the EEC’s primary integrative device. It was, therefore, unalterable.20 The official West German response to the Irish aidemémoire, as far as can be sensed, was evasive in line with Bonn’s traditional interest to sustain amicable relations. The Irish proposal was almost certainly contrary to GATT regulations, which demanded reciprocity in all trade deals. Brussels could not agree to Ireland’s demands.21 The aide-mémoire was an act of desperation by a government that had tardily apprehended its predicament. The Irish Times gloomily encapsulated the Irish dilemma thus: ‘We are already, to all intents and purposes, outlawed from the economic comity of Europe.’22 Irish policymakers at last realised the country’s access to the Commonwealth trading preference was in jeopardy. As the Irish Times noted, ‘Ireland, being economically more or less inside the Commonwealth, and politically outside, is now the odd country out’.23 By this point, the official German view was well established: Ireland had limited options –​it was a fringe European state in power and geography terms –​and it had not cultivated a strong ‘European’ presence and identity.24 Thus Ireland should develop a constructive relationship with the UK on political matters, particularly on partition, rather than aggravating its primate economic partner. By abstaining from engagement in the inexorable tectonics of Cold War power politics (i.e., bipolarity) and persisting with outmoded protectionism Ireland had not served its interests or those of the democratic West, in the German estimation.

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From late 1959, however, official Germany grew expectant as the cascade of European bloc formation bolstered Lemass’s modernising impulses. The take-​off of German and other advanced countries’ industrial investment in Ireland coincided with Lemass’s economic expansion initiative and the unsettling effects of Europe splitting into ‘sixes and sevens’. As Prill calculated in December 1959, the Irish government adopted a ‘wait and see attitude’. Ireland had to keep its options open. The EEC was an attractive proposition but the entry requirements were too high and Irish entry without Britain would cause severe economic injury. Conversely, EFTA offered little in terms of trade opportunities and threatened Irish industry. Prill reported that Lemass favoured an all-​encompassing OEEC agreement if Ireland’s special circumstances were taken into account.25 In the interim, the Lemass government grasped that its advantaged trade relations with the UK demanded shoring up in the face of Denmark’s incursion and Ireland’s trade isolation (outside EFTA and the EEC). A gauge of the depth of Lemass’s distress about Ireland’s economic future was his preparedness to pay a hefty price to institute an Anglo-​Irish common market and common agricultural policy to boost British industrial investment in Ireland and extend the British agricultural price support system to Ireland. But Dublin had nothing to offer London to induce it to deepen the trade relationship, in contrast to the attractions of a multilateral trading bloc (even a weak fall-​back such as EFTA). As a consequence, the Anglo-​Irish Trade Agreement of April 1960 did not live up to expectations. It was a rear-​guard action aimed at reinforcing the Anglo-​Irish trade relationship as far as possible. It instituted annual trade consultations as standard practice.26 That same month Lemass declared in the Dáil, as part of an evaluation of Ireland’s general economic orientation, ‘The best situation possibly for us would be association with the Common Market, if Britain were also a member of it, on a basis which satisfactorily took account of our economic circumstances.’27 Fortunately, a British rethink towards the EEC commenced even before EFTA’s Stockholm Convention was signed. As a terse internal UK Foreign Office memo admitted, all that united the Seven were ‘ties of common funk’;28 EFTA formed a diverse and badly matched assemblage, united only by a common inability or unwillingness to adhere to the Treaty of Rome. EFTA’s creation, however, partially preserved Britain’s dignity, following de Gaulle’s scuppering of its earlier OEEC free-​trade proposal. The balance of power in Irish foreign trade had shifted. The Department of Agriculture remained heavily resentful of German protectionism. In August 1960, it admitted that it retained an ardent interest in Germany as ‘the biggest import market for the commodities in which we are interested’. But after years of failure to break into that market, it was fatalistic. Not alone was West German agriculture the most heavily protected of all the Six, German consumers favoured fabricated beef (pies, sausages, etc.) which could be sourced from the

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cheap discards of the dairy herds of its neighbours, particularly Denmark, as opposed to prime Irish beef. The Department of Agriculture admitted that ‘our view is that the other [EEC] countries’ prices will tend to be pulled up towards those in Germany’. It predicted other member states of the EEC would expand their production ‘leaving only diminishing possibilities for any country outside the club’.29 The minister for agriculture proposed reinforcing the weak Irish bargaining position by adopting import controls (licensing) on key German exports to Ireland (e.g., cars). He claimed this could be configured to avoid contravening OEEC liberalisation rules. However, this recommendation was firmly opposed by the Department of Industry and Commerce and Department of Finance, for raising ‘trade issues of a very wide nature’.30 The overall Irish trade calculus had altered. The Department of Industry and Commerce was apprehensive about the negative impact of such a proposal on burgeoning German industrial investment in Ireland. Overall, Germany was a very significant industrial investor and industrial growth was outstripping agriculture’s anaemic performance. Industrial exports from foreign branch plants were the main contributors to the sudden turnaround in the Irish economic statistics in 1959 and 1960. The Department of Finance objected that to adopt such a course of action as the Department of Agriculture put forward ‘would not be consonant with the obligations’ Ireland would assume if it acceded to GATT.31 GATT membership was an objective of Lemass, the Department of Finance and the Department of Industry and Commerce. The basic outlines of a solution were appearing and they centred on the prospect of a fruitful relationship with Germany within the EEC. Adapting to European foreign preferences A reconfiguration of Irish foreign policy was also palpable in other arenas and it broadly coincided with Lemass’s elevation to the head of government and the appearance of European trade divisions. Until this juncture, Ireland had remained an independent-​minded actor in the UN under Aiken’s stewardship (after 1957). It had demonstrated limited common cause with its European neighbours in the UN’s Western European Group. This was signified by its non-​ membership of NATO and its unreliability on several issues of concern to the Western Europeans.32 The AA, it will be recalled, was disconcerted by Aiken’s proposal in 1957 recommending NATO and Warsaw Pact troop disengagement in the Central European zone to create a neutral zone. Bonn regarded Aiken’s intervention as unsolicited and ill-​advised.33 Such unilateralism in an area of direct interest to Germany without advance consultation was unwise. Irish support for Chinese membership of UN was also contra the American line that was mimicked by the Western Europeans in the UN. Adenauer’s Germany was a devotee of US policy preferences on most matters; its security depended on US sponsorship and

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activism in NATO. Aiken’s maverick behaviour (by Western standards) in the UN in 1957 and 1958 had not been greeted with acclamation in West German circles. Irish membership of the UN was important in German official minds, particularly in the light of the Germany non-​membership of this important organisation. In line with its standard practice since the 1950s, the Irish Republic remained an unflagging adherent to the Hallstein Doctrine.34 It resolutely refused to recognise the GDR as an independent sovereign state designating it ‘the Soviet Occupied Zone of Germany’ in line with NATO practice.35 Bonn and West German public opinion were grateful for Aiken’s plea for German reunification at the opening general debate of the 14th session of UN General Assembly in September 1959: If a just and lasting peace is to be made in Europe, the problem of German reunification must be settled in accordance with the will of the majority of the German people and the right of nations to unity and independence. There is, as far as we can see, no peaceful and permanent solution for Berlin, except as the capital of a united Germany.36

His modulated intimation suggesting a central European zone of peace inspected by the UN, consisting of ‘a reunited Germany, together with Poland and other eastern European countries … free from foreign troops, free from weapons of blitzkrieg and mass destruction’, also gained coverage.37 The German papers were silent about the main part of Aiken’s speech which was devoted to the dangers of nuclear weapons and the necessity for nuclear non-​dissemination and a test ban.38 As a result of the publicity surrounding the German reunification component of Aiken’s 1959 speech, a member of the Irish Legation was invited to visit the border between the FRG and the GDR in October 1959.39 Next Frederick Boland, the Irish permanent representative to the UN, stood as a candidate in the elections for the presidency of the General Assembly for the 15th session of the UN (1960–​61). This may have lain behind the FRG foreign minister’s extension of an invitation to Aiken to visit West Germany. The offer was accepted and led to Aiken’s official state visit in August 1960. The Irish Times ventured that Ireland’s role in the UN was the primary motivation for the invitation.40 On his arrival, Aiken was thanked by Brentano for Ireland’s support for German reunification at the UN. He explained the visit was intended to exchange ideas only as no problems existed between the two countries.41 No formal negotiations were conducted as part of the six-​day visit during which Aiken courted the German people assiduously. Throughout his visit, he repeatedly complimented them on the country’s remarkable economic recovery. He flew to West Berlin and was interviewed by West German television at the Brandenburg Gate to reaffirm, ‘We in Ireland believe there can be no peace except with a united Berlin and a

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united Germany.’ Aiken informed the mayor of Berlin, Willy Brandt, Ireland supported West Berlin’s position in the Cold War and sooner or later he hoped to visit a reunited free Germany with Berlin as its capital.42 The FRG Government-​ supported ‘Curatorium for an Indivisible Germany’ praised Aiken as ‘a true friend of the German people’ ‘and an understanding supporter of German reunification’.43 Aiken’s visit undoubtedly enhanced Irish–​German rapport and raised Ireland’s profile in Germany generally. Nonetheless, the members of the EEC were ambivalent about Boland’s candidature in the race for the position of President of the UN General Assembly owing to Ireland’s military neutrality and Aiken’s earlier outspokenness at the UN. Fulsome American support for Boland’s candidature eased Ireland’s acceptance by the Western European Group in the UN. Boland had already gained a reputation for fairness and professionalism through his work at the UN, and on a personal level he was ‘ideologically strongly pro-​Western’.44 As Conor Cruise O’Brien recalls: A President of the General Assembly who was known to be personally committed to the United States, but whose delegation’s credentials as ‘non-​aligned’ were accepted in the Third World, might be just what the United States was looking for in its difficult and dual quest for a president who would be both amenable and electable.45

The Germans became convinced of the wisdom of the American tack. Boland had played a key role in Aiken’s denunciation of the brutal suppression of Tibetan resistance by China in the spring of 1959. Ireland also co-​sponsored the initiative with America to ensure that the UN General Assembly debated and passed a resolution calling for the respect of Tibetan human rights and ‘their distinctive cultural and religious life’.46 All of this appeared to confirm that Ireland was a neutral state with which the West could work productively. Aiken’s tenacity in the pursuit of nuclear non-​dissemination (non-​proliferation) eventually won Ireland respectability in Western circles too, although West Germany remained hesitant. The UN General Assembly approved Aiken’s non-​ proliferation resolution by a large margin despite the opposition of the Soviet bloc on November 1959. Prior to the vote, the German government was apprehensive it would destabilise NATO and the American nuclear guarantee, but Cremin, in an effort to allay concerns, informed the FRG envoy in Dublin that nuclear weapons states such as the United States would retain the right to deploy nuclear weapons in non-​nuclear weapons states (on condition that control remained with the United States).47 In summer and autumn 1960 Aiken prepared the ground for a more assertive UN non-​proliferation resolution. In the light of the negative reactions of the FRG to his earlier troop disengagement proposal,48 Ireland advanced substantial consideration to West Germany’s interests in UN matters.

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The emerging importance of Germany to Irish economic expansion warranted nurturing. On balance, West Germany came to view Ireland as a valuable mediator and link state between the West and the recently established states in the UN: its ‘independent’ status, Western affinities, middle-​power status, and its distinction as an early decolonized state could help the West to garner majorities in the General Assembly. Ireland acquired growing respect in Western circles for its UN work; it was now displaying pragmatism and some grasp of Realpolitik by ‘abandoning its overtly activist, unfettered [independent] role in favour of one more sympathetic to its European allies and the United States’.49 This shift was announced by Lemass in the Dáil soon after his accession as Taoiseach; he declared, We cannot in principle accept a contention that the [UN General] Assembly should not discuss any proposal brought forward in the context of a threatening world situation merely because one or other of the Great Powers did not wish it. While asserting that principle we must be on our guard at all times to ensure that our position will not be misunderstood, that the interests of friendly States will not be ignored, and of course have consideration also to the suitability of raising an issue at any particular time.50

The German Embassy formed the view that Ireland’s first-​rate relations with the non-​aligned nations at the UN were valuable. It advised Brentano in 1961 that ‘recent indications are that Ireland could be of great use to the Western world, if she remains outside NATO’.51 Irish foreign policy, now displayed a flourishing adeptness in accommodating Western interests while pursuing modified idealism at the UN.52 This tempering of Irish idealism and independence guaranteed greater acceptability for Ireland in Western circles. The Irish permanent mission at the UN under the leadership of Boland won remarkable international standing with its clarity of thought, energy and efficiency. By June 1962, a UK brief was positively laudatory about Ireland at the UN: ‘Representing a small country with an impeccable anti-​colonial tradition, and yet a Western power, the Mission has been in a unique position to bring common-​sense to bear on the more extreme initiatives of the Afro-​Asians.’53 The German ambassador, Reifferscheidt, pinpointed 1960 as the turning point in Irish foreign policy. He credited Lemass with inaugurating this by declaring that Ireland was ideologically not neutral, anti-​communist, pro-​democracy and consequently in favour of the West. The FRG ambassador portrayed Aiken as a ‘minister for UN affairs’. Conversely, he interpreted Lemass as a dynamic leader dedicated to Ireland’s economic transformation, improved Anglo-​Irish relations, and European cooperation.54 From a West German perspective, there were promising signs of Ireland’s plasticity even in the field of neutrality. In particular, Reifferscheidt was struck by

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Lemass’s speech to the Solicitors’ Apprentices Debating Society in early December 1960.55 Lemass pronounced that though Ireland was militarily neutral, it was not ideologically neutral, that it could not be in the light of its democratic, christian, anti-​communist and anti-​imperialist credentials.56 The Taoiseach underscored that neutrality offered no immunity if a world war broke out; instead he affirmed that Ireland would seek to assist the western democracies in any way it could in such an apocalyptic war. Ireland was not indifferent in the East–​West conflict, We are clearly on the democratic side … in opposition to the false philosophies of Communism and totalitarianism … We appreciated the effort and cost which the great Western States are contributing to maintaining the present world balance of power, and how important it is for the preservation of peace and for security of all the democratic countries, including our own.57

Notwithstanding this ideological partisanship and Lemass’s unambiguous support for the aims of NATO, he cited the traditional Irish ‘difficulties’ with certain provisions of the North Atlantic Treaty (the territorial inviolability of member states) as preventing the abandonment of neutrality. He declared though that Ireland was no great loss to NATO owing to the ‘relative insignificance of any military contribution which we could make’. In these circumstances Lemass underlined Ireland’s close identification with the UN as the ideal forum to make its contribution to world peace.58 Reifferscheidt reported to Bonn, ‘the remarks of the Taoiseach clearly mean the neutral tendencies of Irish foreign policy up to now will be taken over more and more by a realistic appraisal of the world situation and the dangers of the East–​West conflict’.59 He later confided to Con Cremin, the Secretary of the DEA, in 1961 that by stressing the speech to Bonn he judged he played a ‘certain role in persuading Dr von Brentano to come to Dublin in May [1961]’.60 This might have exaggerated Reifferscheidt’s role as a return visit by Brentano to Ireland was in order to reciprocate Aiken’s visit in August 1960. However, Cremin later formed the ‘impression that Dr Reifferscheidt is very close to Dr von Brentano’.61 It is worth noting that there were earlier instances of Lemass’s unambiguous public declarations of ideological affinity with the Western democracies. The Taoiseach consistently maintained a ‘fresh approach’ to NATO and neutrality since October 1959.62 On 19 August 1960, for instance, Lemass had gone on the public record at an address to Muintir na Tire Rural Week. He asserted, ‘in the ideological conflict which had divided mankind into two opposing camps, “there is no neutrality, and we are not neutral. In this struggle the concept of neutralism, positive or negative, is a dangerous illusion”.63 On that occasion, Lemass’s statement had received less publicity. Regardless, it would appear Lemass was returning to the more ideological, anti-​communist, emphasis of Costello’s Second

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Inter-​Party Government, with less stress on the national independence principle that Aiken had favoured until 1960. This indicated a shift towards Ireland’s West European and transatlantic neighbours.64 Reifferscheidt was therefore correct in detecting this. Lemass intervened and moderated Irish unilateralism and idealism at the UN in the interests of cultivating relations with West Europeans. The toning down of Irish pronouncements had commenced early under Lemass’s tenure as Taoiseach. Lemass informed Con Cremin on 24 September 1959 that while we should maintain the position that we are among the strongest opponents within the United Nations of colonialism this should not involve our … standing on anti-​colonialist principle to such an extent as to lead to our condemning European countries generally trying to ‘decolonize’ themselves, with which we have friendly relations, and with which we trade.65

Although Lemass made this pronouncement to Cremin in the specific context of the Algerian War, it was clear that the Taoiseach’s wishes had ramifications. The implication of recent research on Ireland’s exertions at the UN to balance its interests in anti-​colonialism and national self-​determination on one hand, and its desire to maintain good relations with France more generally but specifically in the context of growing Irish interest in the EEC on the other, strongly points to Lemass moderating Aiken and Ireland’s posture and tone at the UN. Gillissen has suggested that Ireland exhibited a clear consideration for French interests in the Algerian War out of respect for traditional friendship and perhaps as a result of Lemass’s concern not to damage Ireland’s standing with France, a core EEC member state.66 Adenauer was generally obeisant to Charles de Gaulle’s foreign policy preferences, where they did not contradict Adenauer’s Atlanticist loyalties or other vital German interests, in the interests of cultivating Franco-​German reconciliation. Evincing a strong respect for hardline Gaullist positions, such as in the Algerian War, Lemass demonstrated a comprehension of the strategic logic of the EEC power game and the Cold War. The Taoiseach’s adjustment of Irish foreign policy, in order to take into account the preferences of EEC states, strengthened after Ireland applied for EEC membership in July 1961. In response to Aiken’s memorandum on the agenda of the forthcoming UN General Assembly meeting, Lemass wrote to Aiken in September 1961: ‘I do not think it wise to take any initiative on the subject’ of South Tyrol. He effectively instructed Aiken not to draw any comparisons with Irish partition in its discussion of the contested jurisdiction over South Tyrol, which was claimed by Austria from Italy. He wrote, ‘having regard to our vital interests in retaining Italian goodwill during the EEC negotiations, it is very important that we should not come into any conflict with them on the Tyrol question at this time’.67

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There were also signs of a moderation in Irish policy on another matter of interest to Bonn. As early as January 1957, Lemass was abandoning the sentimental rhetoric of anti-​partitionism, when he opined at a Fianna Fáil parliamentary party meeting that peaceful methods were never given a chance by the frequent recrudescence of IRA violence.68 Lemass’s speech to the Oxford Union on 15 October 1959 was a portent of a new wind in South–​North relations. While maintaining the Irish nationalist desire for a one-​island nation-​state and restating the policy of his predecessor, Eamon de Valera, that one means to achieve this was an all-​Ireland Parliament, with the same powers as Westminster, and the retention of the Stormont parliament with its existing power, he promised the Northern Ireland Protestant population additional assurances and safeguards and ‘[i]‌n this matter we would go very far indeed to meet them’. But if even this flexible nationalist approach was unacceptable, he stated that practical and economic cooperation should begin and progress between the two parts of the island to mitigate the ‘economic handicaps’ of partition: Ireland is too small a country not to be seriously handicapped in its economic development by its division into two areas separated by a customs barrier. The fact that its progress has fallen behind that of other countries of Western Europe is certainly due in some measure to this cause, and, since Ireland is probably Britain’s largest customer, this has its repercussions on British commercial interests also.

He proposed substantive economic and sectoral cooperation on a model comparable to the EEC for the island of Ireland to the benefit of the archipelago.69 There had always been some low-​profile and covert cooperation on matters of mutual concern,70 but from 1959 Lemass’s open expressions favouring North-​ South cooperation for the benefit of the economic development of both, without it being a precondition for unity, was a departure. It was a ‘significant sublimal break with de Valera’, in the estimation of John Horgan.71 Tentative steps commenced in this direction and the Republic of Ireland offered tariff reductions to northern manufacturers to commence a process towards an all-​island free trade area.72 It is interesting to note that this resonated within German quarters who, based on their EEC experience and the evolving Franco-​German rapprochement after their troubled history, viewed economic cooperation and free trade as a conflict resolution device. Felician Prill certainly saw Irish economic protectionism as a barrier to reconciliation and reunification.73 Brentano’s visit In the spring and early summer of 1961, the tenor of the debate in Ireland transformed from one of ‘wait and see’ and ambiguity regarding the advisability of EEC membership to, as the Irish Independent expressed it, ‘How and When?’74

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Britain contemplated applying for membership. If it decided to go ahead, Ireland would have little choice but to follow. Irish interest in promoting cultural links with the Continent grew. In June 1961, the Department of External Affairs decided that Irish societies in Germany and other continental states ‘constitute valuable media for the wider dissemination of a knowledge of Ireland on the continent’ and it was opportune to provide more support, both moral and material, as well as generously recognising Irish societies’ activities.75 Dublin instigated a public diplomacy initiative to raise Ireland’s profile and cultivate sympathy for its probable application to join the EEC. In April 1961, following the announcement that Brentano would visit Ireland in early June, the Irish Times published a special supplement on the FRG and its relationship with Ireland.76 An air of expectation accumulated. Brentano would be the first German minister to visit Ireland since Irish independence. In fact, it was the first time a foreign minister from the West had done so since 1945. The Irish press declared that Brentano’s visit was more than a simple courtesy return visit.77 To the Irish press, the FRG seemed more favourable to British entry into the EEC than France, and it was generally believed that Germany had advised Kennedy that Britain should join.78 Brentano’s visit to Ireland thus took on weighty significance. Indeed in May 1961, Reifferscheidt reported to the AA that the division of Europe into two trading blocs preoccupied Irish political circles as they worried about Ireland’s economic future. He observed the Irish strongly favoured developing relations with the EEC rather than the EFTA, and Irish trade dependence on Britain would impel Irish entry if the latter joined the EEC. Nonetheless, Irish opinion considered it was imperative that Ireland negotiate longer transition periods to adapt its economy, particularly its protected industries. Irish government and official circles followed the protracted Greek–​EEC association negotiations with interest.79 The Irish Times surmised, ‘the terms on which Greece would be admitted would set a pattern for other nations that would demonstrate to what extent the “Six” form a closed shop’.80 On 16 May 1961, Lemass informed the Dáil no decision had been made as to whether or not membership or association with the EEC would be optimal, if it transpired that Britain decided to apply for membership.81 Heightened Irish domestic concern materialised around the implications of EEC membership for Ireland. A  statement attributed to Professor Ludwig W. Erhard, the FRG Vice-​Chancellor, in mid-​May 1961 provoked anxiety: he reportedly stated that only the NATO members of EFTA were qualified for full membership of the EEC. This caused Irish consternation. The diplomatic correspondent of the Irish Times, Leo Muray, revealed a senior official in Erhard’s office, Dr Meyer-​Cording, had raised the same argument in talks with journalists; Meyer-​Cording purportedly insisted ‘new members would have to accept the political institutions of the “Six” in the first place, since the community was

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to be regarded as the first step towards the political integration of Europe’.82 Interpreting the import and implications of these reports proved problematic. Erhard’s and Meyer-​Cording’s comments specifically related to bridge-​building efforts between the EEC ‘Inner Six’ and EFTA ‘Outer Seven’. They did not directly relate to Ireland. Nonetheless, as a self-​ascribed military neutral the mere mention of NATO membership as a precondition for membership of the EEC piqued automatic Irish concern. A few days later, Lemass spoke in the Dáil to quell public apprehensions. He correctly pronounced the Treaty of Rome was silent on the matter of defence, ‘nor is there any reason to think that membership of NATO is a condition of subscribing to the Treaty’. He advised that Erhard had spoken in the specific context of EFTA neutral states, who ‘might feel unable to subscribe to the Rome Treaty because of its possible political implications’.83 The possible inferences to be drawn from Lemass’s statement were: Ireland was not a member of EFTA, it did not retain the same reservations and it was ideologically pro-​Western. As for the remarks attributed to Meyer-​Cording, Lemass expressed perplexity about the use of the term ‘political institutions’. The Taoiseach observed ‘the tasks entrusted to the Community shall be ensured by a number of institutions, each of which –​ to quote the Rome Treaty [Article 4] –​“shall act within the limits of the powers conferred upon it by this Treaty” ’.84 And political and defence cooperation was not required under the terms of the treaty. The public controversy refused to die down when, on 30 May 1961, Muray reported in the Irish Times a Western EU official had informed him that Ireland was excluded from membership of the EEC by virtue of its non-​membership of NATO.85 Brentano, therefore, had to handle a quizzical Irish public when he arrived on 1 June 1961. He clearly held reservations about neutral states ‘associating’ with the Common Market. The record shows that he had informed White House and US State Department officials in April that the solution to the EFTA–​EEC division was not made any easier by the EEC’s ‘political character and motivation’. He informed them that ‘EFTA has neutral member-​countries who may have difficulty in associating themselves with the Common Market’.86 On his arrival, Brentano appeared to pacify his hosts publicly. He informed reporters that the economic and political cooperation at the core of the EEC ‘had nothing to do with NATO and neutral countries could join and would not be affected’. He doubted whether Erhard had made the exact statement attributed to him since NATO and the EEC were completely distinct organisations. Brentano explained, full membership would imply agreement with the political objectives of the EEC, and would mean participation in its political institutions and the achievement of policy decisions but that it could happen some time in the future  –​in a world emergency –​that the maintenance of neutrality by individual member-​countries would present great difficulties.

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The Irish Times reported, ‘he sees the EEC as a beginning, not an end’ and there was ‘no reason why countries like Sweden, Switzerland and Austria could not join as associate members –​with full economic rights and obligations –​without infringing their neutrality policies’. He also stated, ‘The full idea of the Community, however, was to secure economic and political co-​operation.’ He asserted the ‘door is open for other countries to join, provide they are prepared’ to comply with the ‘rules and obligations’ of the Treaty of Rome.87 Prima facie this public statement was regarded as an encouraging signal by Irish sources: Ireland could seek to join the EEC as a neutral. A close evaluation of Brentano’s statement presents alternative and complex implications. First, in all the instances in which Brentano publicly discussed neutral states applying for EEC membership while he was in Ireland, he specifically referred to ‘association’ rather than membership, signifying that neutral states might acquire the economic benefits of membership without participating in ‘the political aspects which full membership entailed’. Second, in responding to questions about the progress of Greece’s association talks, he agreed there was ‘a certain resemblance’ to the Irish position in terms of its economic situation, and Ireland could negotiate ‘certain safeguards’ to protect its infant industries similar to those that Greece was negotiating.88 In sum, Brentano’s public responses in Dublin were qualified and did not rule out full membership, but conjured up an association as the preferable option in view of Ireland’s early stage of economic development, trade dependence on Britain, and neutrality. In private talks with the Irish Government, Brentano assured Lemass that he was cognisant of ‘Ireland’s special position’, namely its inability to reach a final decision to join the EEC until Britain had clarified her potential application status. Reifferscheidt reported Irish appreciation at Brentano’s explanation that NATO membership was by no means a precondition for entry into the EEC.89 A separate account of the meeting was provided by Dr Benirschke, the London correspondent of the DPA. He had accompanied Brentano to Dublin and was regarded by E. H. L. Albert of the UK Foreign Office as ‘a very reliable man and shrewd observer’. Benirschke told Albert, who was a member of the European Economic Organisation’s Department of the Foreign Office, that in the face of the Irish official concerns about Erhard’s position, Brentano ‘told them that this should not be understood literally and that the German Vice-​Chancellor had probably only meant to point out that at the moment only NATO members were likely to wish to join the Six’. Generally on economic grounds, the Irish had ‘more or less implored’ Brentano ‘to see that their interests should be safeguarded … that while they were more anxious to maintain their neutrality and did not want to march in line with the UK, in view of the great consequences to their economy they might have to consider any step that might be necessary’.90 Another official in the UK Foreign Office acerbically commented, ‘The Irish have been typically remiss in making their position clear: and it is not by whining to the Germans that they are going to safeguard their interests.’91

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On Brentano’s return to Germany he publicly denied that NATO membership was a prerequisite for EEC membership and pointed out that whether or not Ireland wished to become a part or full member had to be carefully considered. However, ‘he had received the impression that the Irish Government had decided on a “wait and see” policy and only then apply for part-​membership in the Common Market after Britain had made a like decision’. He also intimated that ‘similar talks were also being conducted with Denmark and that a genuine possibility existed for admittance of such States as did not wish to become full members of the Common Market’ indicating that the EEC member states were ‘well aware of … the agricultural structure of Ireland’.92 Brentano insinuated association status. Conversely, Irish commentators and officials read his qualified remarks as a general statement of support for an Irish application for full membership on an equal basis to a British one. Brentano had not proposed unqualified German support for full Irish membership contrary to Irish perceptions. It would transpire that Bonn was internally divided on the advisability of Irish association or full membership of the EEC. This was revealed when Ireland unexpectedly applied for membership on 31 July 1961 on the assumption that it possessed German backing for membership. Notes 1 ‘ “Badly Needed Challenge to Ireland” –​But Ireland can Respond’, Irish Times, 21 July 1959, p. 1. 2 AA-​PA, Berlin, Bestand B31, Band 131, Report, Prill to AA, Irland und die Europäische Wirtschaftsassoziation, 20 May 1959; FitzGerald, Protectionism to Liberalisation, pp. 65–​101. 3 FitzGerald, Protectionism to Liberalisation, p. 95. 4 Daly, The First Department, p. 359. 5 Analyst, ‘Ireland and the Seven  –​1:  Changes in the Line-​out’, Irish Times, 18 May 1959, p.  7; ‘The Outer Seven’, Irish Times, 16 June 1959, p.  7; ‘Great Danes and Mere Irish’, Joseph Foyle, Irish Times, 25 June 1959, p. 7; Special Correspondent, ‘The Anglo-​Danish Pact’, Irish Times, 14 July 1959, p. 7. 6 Murphy, Economic Realignment, p. 183. 7 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 131, Report, Prill to AA, Irland und die Europäische Wirtschaftsassoziation, 20 May 1959; Bundesarchiv Koblenz, Walter Hallstein papers, Nachlass N/​1266, Archivsignatur 1769, Report, Report of the Vereinigte Wirtschaftsdienste GmbH, 12 June 1959. 8 Bundesarchiv Koblenz, Walter Hallstein papers, Nachlass N/​1266, Archivsignatur 1769, Report, Rapport des conseillers commerciaux des ambassades et légations des pays membres de la Communauté Economique Européenne en la République d’Irlande, n.d. (c. May 1959); AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 585, Report, Haltung Irlands gegenüber der EFTA, 15 August 1959. 9 See press cutting: C. Geyer, ‘Heisse Politik auf der kühlen Grünen Insel’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, n.d. (c. 16/​17/​18 May 1959) in NAI, DFA, Embassy Series, Bonn, PP1/​4/​1.

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10 Bundesarchiv Koblenz, Walter Hallstein papers, Nachlass N/​1266, Archivsignatur 1769, Report, Prill to AA, Tagung des Irish Council of the European Movement, 28 July 1959. 11 See Lee, Ireland 1912–​87, pp. 346–​55 for further elaboration of this style of argument. 12 H. Benirschke, ‘A German Looks at Ireland’, Irish Times, 6 May 1959, p. 9. 13 Bundesarchiv Koblenz, Walter Hallstein papers, Nachlass N/​1266, Archivsignatur 1769, Report, Prill to AA, Tagung des Irish Council of the European Movement, 28 July 1959. 14 ‘European View of Irish Economy’, Irish Press, 21 July 1959, p. 5. 15 Bundesarchiv Koblenz, Walter Hallstein papers, Nachlass N/​1266, Archivsignatur 1769, Report, Prill to AA, Tagung des Irish Council of the European Movement, 28 July 1959. 16 Ibid., Draft of a Speech to be delivered by Walter Hallstein in Ireland, 3 July 1959. 17 AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 585, Report & Aide-Mémoire, AA to German Minister for the Economy, Minister for Supplies and Minister for Finance, Europäische Wirtschaftsassoziation; irisches Memorandum über Übergangsmaßnahmen, 13 July 1959; Editorial, ‘Trade Horizon’, Irish Times, 27 April 1960, p. 7. The editorial commented on Anglo-​Irish trade relations but the premise of ‘béal bocht’ (Irish; meaning ‘the poor mouth’) was readily applicable to Ireland’s conduct of its economic foreign policy. 18 AA-​ PA, Bestand B20–​ 200, Band 585, Report, Prill to AA, Europäische Wirtschaftsassoziation, 27 July 1959. 19 Ibid. 20 Bundesarchiv Koblenz, Walter Hallstein papers, Nachlass N/​1266, Archivsignatur 1769, Draft of a Speech to be delivered by Walter Hallstein in Ireland, 3 July 1959. 21 AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 585, Report by Dillner, Irisches Memorandum wegen Behandlung Irlands durch EWG und EFTA vom 07/​07/​59, 4 August 1959. 22 Editorial, ‘Matters of Commerce’, Irish Times, 9 January 1960, p. 7. 23 ‘London Letter’, Irish Times, 16 August 1960, p. 5. 24 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 131, Report, Prill to AA, Irland und die europäischen Wirtschaftszusammenschlüsse, 4 December 1959. 25 Ibid.; AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 585, Report, Haltung Irlands gegenüber der EFTA, 15 August 1959. 26 See Murphy, Economic Realignment, p. 184; Daly, First Department, pp. 358–​61. 27 Dáil Debates, 26 April 1960, 181:1, col. 54. 28 N. Piers Ludlow, Dealing with Britain: The Six and the First UK Application to the EEC (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. 31. 29 NAI, DFA, 436/​123/​1, Note, A Department of Agriculture signatory to Cremin, 19 August 1960. 30 NAI, DFA, 314/​ 10/​ 6/​ 14, Department of Agriculture Draft Memorandum for Government, Export of Cattle and Beef to Germany, January 1961; ibid., Revised Version of Final Version of Proposed Memorandum on the Export of Cattle and Beef to Germany, n.d. (c. February 1961); ibid., Foreign Trade Committee, Minutes of Meeting held on 3 February 1961, Minute No. 2541. 31 NAI, DFA, 314/​10/​6/​14, Maher to O’Doherty, 6 February 1961.

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3 2 Kennedy, ‘ “Persuade an Alternative European Candidate to stand” ’, p. 164. 33 Skelly, Irish Diplomacy, pp. 102–​14. 34 This was probably wise in view the unremitting reports emanating from the Irish Ambassador to Bonn which emphasised Adenauer regarded the Hallstein Doctrine as of paramount importance. For example, see NAI, DFA, CRS 313/​10E, Warnock to Cremin, 18 September 1959. 35 Wylie, Ireland and the Cold War, p. 135. After 1955 Ireland adhered to West German directions not to facilitate GDR membership of any international organisation as a sovereign state, including the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO). Ibid., pp. 129, 136. 36 ‘Aiken hopes for more Summit Contacts’, Irish Times, 24 September 1959, p. 9. 37 Ibid. 38 NAI, DFA, CRS, 313/​10 E, Holmes to Cremin, 28 September 1959. 39 Ibid., Report, Holmes to Cremin, The Border in Germany, 12 October 1959. 40 Political Correspondent, ‘Aiken to pay Official Visit to Bonn’, Irish Times, 13 August 1960, p. 1. 41 Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, Sankt Augustin, Pressedokumentation,file: Staaten, Irland, 1951–​83, Bulletin, Bulletin des Presse und Informationsamtes der Bundesregierung, No. 159, August 1960, pp. 1553–​4. 42 ‘Aiken’s Visit to Germany ends’, Irish Times, 29 August 1960, p. 7. 43 ‘Aiken’s Visit: Bonn Promises to Support Industry’, Irish Times, 26 August 1960, p. 1. 44 Kennedy, “ ‘Persuade an Alternative European Candidate to stand’ ”, p. 161. 45 O’Brien, Memoir, p. 196. 46 Skelly, Irish Diplomacy, pp. 171–​87. 47 Ibid., p. 258. 48 Ibid., pp. 260–​1; Evgeny M. Chossudovsky, ‘The Origins of the Treaty on the Non-​ Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons: Ireland’s Initiative in the United Nations (1958–​ 61)’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, 3: 2 (1990), pp. 120–​2. 49 Skelly, Irish Diplomacy, p. 170. 50 Dáil Debates, 7 July 1959, Vol. 176, Col. 622; Aoife Bhreatnach, ‘Frank Aiken:  European Federation and United Nations Internationalism’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, 13 (2002), p. 244. 51 Casserly, ‘Irish-​German Relations’, p. 82. 52 Skelly, Irish Diplomacy, p. 255. 53 TNA, DO 181/​9, Brief, Sir Saville Garner’s Visit to Dublin, June 1962. 54 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 238, Report, Die Aussen-​und Wirtschaftspolitik des irischen Ministerpräsidenten, Reifferscheidt to AA, 1 October 1962. Reifferscheidt’s analysis fits with existing historical assessments of a division of duties between Lemass and Aiken. See Aoife Bhreathnach, ‘Frank Aitken: European Federation and United Nations Internationalism’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, 13 (2002), pp. 237–​ 49; and Skelly, Irish Diplomacy, pp. 170–​1. 55 Editorial, ‘A Fair Stand’, Irish Times, 2 December 1960, p. 7; ‘Should China be admitted to the United Nations?’, Irish Times, 5 December 1960, p. 4; ‘NATO Membership hardly consistent with our Policy’, Irish Times, 10 December 1960, p. 4. 56 Casserly, ‘Irish-​German Relations’, p. 81.

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57 Political Correspondent, ‘Neutrality cannot give us Immunity’, Irish Times, 2 December 1960, pp. 1, 9; ‘Taoiseach’s Statement East-​West Issue’, Irish Independent, 2 December 1960, p. 11. 58 Ibid. 59 Casserly, ‘Irish-​German Relations’, p. 81. 60 Ibid. 61 NAI, DFA, CRS, 313/​10 G, Note by Cremin, 27 October 1961. 62 Horgan, Seán Lemass, p. 222. 63 ‘We Are Not Neutral, Says Taoiseach’, Irish Times, 20 August 1960, p. 1; Editorial, ‘For the Defence’, Irish Times, 22 August 1960, p. 5. 64 Bheathnach, ‘Frank Aiken’, pp. 238–​9. 65 Skelly, Irish Diplomacy, p. 220. 66 See C. Gillissen, ‘Ireland, France and the Question of Algeria at the United Nations, 1955–​62’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, 19 (2008), pp. 151–​67. See also C.  Gillissen, ‘France’, in O’Driscoll et  al. (eds), Ireland Through European Eyes, pp. 91–​6. 67 UCD, Aiken Papers, P104/​6328, Lemass to Aiken, 13 September 1961. 68 Horgan, Seán Lemass, p. 173. 69 NAI, DFA, Bonn Embassy D-​ 23, Part  1, Éire Ireland, No. 455, 19 October 1959, p. 7. 70 See M. Kennedy, Division and Consensus:  The Politics of Cross-​border Relations in Ireland, 1925–​69 (Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, 2000). 71 Horgan, Seán Lemass, p. 257. 72 H. Patterson, Ireland since 1939: The Persistence of Conflict (Dublin: Penguin, 2006), p. 150. 73 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 128, Prill to AA, 5 July 1958. 74 Editorial, ‘How and When?’, Irish Independent, 2 June 1960, p. 10; Maher, Tortuous Path, p. 123. 75 NAI, DFA, Embassy Series, Bonn Embassy 22/​4/​1 I, Brennan to Bonn Ambassador, 20 June 1961, and attached memorandum, ‘Support by Cultural Relations Committee of Activities of Irish Societies on European Continent’, n.d. (c. June 1961). 76 See Irish Times, 19 April 1961. 77 AA-​PA, Berlin, Bestand B31, Band 221, Report Reifferscheidt to AA, Gegenbesuch des Herrn Bundesministers des Auswärtigen Dr. Heinrich von Brentano in Irland am 30. und 31. Mai 1961, 8 June 1961. 78 Desmond Fisher, ‘Waiting for Britain to Make Up Her Mind’, Irish Press, 18 May 1961. 79 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 222, Report, Reifferscheidt to AA, Irlands Stellung zu den europäischen Wirtschaftsblöcken, 18 May 1961. 80 Editorial, ‘Seven Out?’, Irish Times, 20 December 1960, p. 7. 81 Dáil Debates, 16 May 1961, Vol. 189, No. 3, Col. 301. 82 Diplomatic Correspondent, ‘Link with “Six” would affect Neutrality’, Irish Times, 17 May 1961, p. 1. 83 Dáil Debates, 25 May 1961, Vol. 189, No. 7, Col. 958. The issue was raised by Dr Noël Browne earlier: Dáil Debates, 17 May 1961, Vol. 189, No. 4, col. 462.

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8 4 Ibid. 85 Leo Muray, ‘Non-​Membership of NATO an Obstacle’, Irish Times, 30 May 1961, p. 1; ‘Query for W. German Foreign Minister’, Irish Times, 30 May 1961, p. 1. 86 Doc. 4, ‘Memorandum of conversation between the German and US governments’, 13 April 1961, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–​66, XIII, Western Europe and Canada, p. 8. 87 Political Correspondent, ‘NATO Membership Not Needed for Common Market’, Irish Times, 1 June 1961, p. 11. 88 Ibid.; ‘Ireland might get Concessions in the “Six” ’, Irish Independent, 1 June 1961, p. 1. 89 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 221, Report, Reifferscheidt to AA, Gegenbesuch des Herrn Bundesministers des Auswärtigen Dr. Heinrich von Brentano in Ireland am 30. und 31. Mai 1961, 8 June 1961. 90 TNA, FO 371/​158219, M6114/​5, Albert minute, 2 June 1961. 91 TNA, FO 371/​ 158219, M6114/​ 5; FitzGerald, Protectionism to Liberalisation, pp. 114–​15. 92 ‘Von Brentano Hints at Irish Membership of “Six” ’, Irish Times, 6 June 1961, p. 1.

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Germany and Ireland’s application to the EEC, 1961–​63

The general situation confronting Ireland following its formal membership application to the EEC in July 1961 is well known. It faced an uphill battle to convince ‘the Six’ to open formal accession negotiations. The hyperbole of Jock Bruce-​Gardyne’s article ‘The Unwanted Suitor’ in The Statist proclaimed that Ireland’s application received a ‘frigid reception’, resulting in a ‘cold douche for a keen convert’. Bruce-​Gardyne’s article may have resulted in an Irish Government protest to the British journal,1 yet it cannot be denied that the Six were startled by the Irish application and held grave doubts about Ireland’s economic and political fitness. It took until October 1962, one year after the commencement of full negotiations with the other applicants, for the EEC Council to approve the opening of negotiations with Ireland. Dublin was alarmed at the prospect of extended pre-​negotiations and the possibility of an eventual judgement denying its eligibility for full membership. Recurrent signs that the member states were unsympathetic unnerved Dublin’s leadership. It might be supposed that West Germany would be well placed to judge Ireland. West Germany was Ireland’s second-​or third-​largest trade partner from the mid-​1950s (depending on annual trade statistics) as it jostled with the United States behind Britain. In the early 1960s, German firms were also among the top two or three investing in Ireland.2 Bonn favoured and fostered Ireland’s transformation; it wanted to normalise Ireland as a member of the West European family of nations. This did not signify that German perspectives and attitudes to the Irish application were uniformly positive, however, or that Ireland’s integration into the EEC was a primary or even a secondary German priority. Rather its attitudes to Ireland derived from the general German official policy framework about the ideal configuration of the West. A close examination of official West German outlooks reveals that they were generally less positive about Irish membership in 1961 and early 1962 than the Irish had initially assumed. Regardless, Bonn played a central role in supporting Ireland to persist with its application and advising it to make the necessary changes to its economy

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and direction. Initially, Ireland had misread, or read too much, into Brentano’s visit to Dublin in late May 1961. Contrary to initial Irish expectations, it was the Ministry of Economy in Bonn rather than the AA that became the foremost supporter of the Irish application within the German Government. Overall, the Irish Government did not handle the application process well. The efforts to ‘steal a march’ on the UK, the emphasis on Ireland’s special economic circumstances, the repeated underlining of the interrelationship between the British and Irish applications, and the well-​advertised interest of the Six and the Commission in the political objectives of the EEC bedevilled Ireland’s case for admission until October 1962. A false start The key early problem that preoccupied Irish policymakers was presentational given Ireland’s structural dependence on the British economy. Ireland was not in control of its own destiny: its ability to join the EEC, or not, was determined by the outcome of the Macmillan review of Britain’s relations with the EEC. For nationalist reasons, it was unpalatable for the Fianna Fáil administration to admit that Ireland’s destiny was governed by Britain’s interests. The Dublin Government concluded it would be unwise to broadcast Ireland’s economic dependence on Britain. There was a ‘political necessity to appear to be taking the decision independently’.3 When Dublin was informed privately by diplomatic sources in late June that Macmillan was on the cusp of a decision in favour of submitting a formal application for membership these concerns became uppermost. Realising an Irish application to join the EEC could trigger bewilderment in European circles, which were not anticipating such a move by an economy that had shown little interest in integration until recently, Dublin calculated it should prepare them. It also took the opportunity to engage in special pleading. An Irish government explanatory aide-​mémoire was despatched to all the capitals of the Six in early July. The heavily qualified and tentative aide-​mémoire implied the Irish intention to apply for membership was contingent upon the British decision. It also drew attention to Ireland’s incipient modernisation but inadvisably suggested Ireland ‘would be unable to comply fully with some of the provisions [of the Treaty of Rome] within the time appointed’.4 The hesitant aide-​mémoire was accompanied by Irish diplomatic efforts in Bonn and the other EEC capitals to ascertain if the EEC might extend special measures or exceptional treatment to Ireland. The Irish chargé d’affaires in Bonn, for instance, underlined to his interlocutors that his superiors attached importance to receiving European views on this matter, or that was the impression formed among senior German officials in Brussels and Bonn.5 The British Foreign Office and Lord Privy Seal Edward (‘Ted’) Heath supported an Irish application to join the EEC, but fretted that an early or poorly

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prepared Irish application could incur ‘serious political difficulties’, not alone for Ireland but for the UK. The Foreign Office’s European Economic Organisations Department estimated that neutrality placed Ireland in a ‘completely different category’ to the other prospective applicants (the UK, Denmark and Norway). The Foreign Office worried about stating this openly to the Irish fearing the information might not be well received.6 Instead, the Commonwealth Relations Office attempted to influence Irish calculations obliquely on 19 July 1961 by showing the Irish ambassador, Hugh McCann, the record of a minute of a conversation with Dr Günther Harkort. Harkort was the leader of the German delegation attending the Anglo-​German Economic Committee in London at the time. He was a senior German diplomat and Head of the AA’s Sub-​Department 40, which was responsible for General Trade Policy.7 (In a matter of weeks he would be appointed Head of the Permanent Mission of Germany to the EEC in Brussels.)8 Harkort intimated it would be ‘very unlikely’ the Six would agree to Ireland’s membership as ‘it would be very difficult for the Irish to fit into the political pattern’. McCann informed Dublin but the Irish authorities, and Lemass’s view was that they had received satisfactory assurances from Brentano that their non-​membership of NATO would present no bar to Ireland’s admission to the EEC.9 Although the formal Irish application to join the EEC was unconditional when it came on 31 July, its effect was undermined by the earlier aide-​mémoire which drew a picture of Irish economic exceptionality. The latter undercut the effect of its later application declaration that Ireland was prepared to embrace the Treaty of Rome in its entirety; it presented sceptics in Bonn and other European capitals with an expedient to justify withholding membership in favour of associate status for Ireland. The official Irish application was presented to Professor Ludwig Erhard, then President of the Council of the EEC. Erhard was also the vice-​chancellor and economics minister of the FRG. Reports received in Ireland prior to Brentano’s landmark visit to Ireland in May 1961 suggested that Erhard and senior officials in his ministry possessed serious reservations both about the compatibility of neutrality with EEC membership and the capability of the relatively backward Irish economy to adjust to the full rigours demanded by Treaty of Rome (see previous chapter). Predictably, in late August the FRG Ministry of Economy, after its preliminary studies of the Irish economy, concluded membership was not appropriate for Ireland. It reckoned association status was preferable ‘under the present circumstances’. After all, the earlier Irish aide-​mémoires had admitted that the country occupied a ‘developing’ status out of step with the Six.10 Con Cremin, the Secretary of the DEA, was aware that many EEC states were incredulous. He estimated that the FRG was the state most concerned about the political question. This reflected the Irish reading of the German commitment to the Atlantic Alliance as its primary bulwark against the Soviet Union. Brian Ó

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Ceallaigh, the Irish chargé d’affaires in Bonn, attempted to clarify the German position, fearing that the Six ‘tended, because of our past performance, to look at us as a sort of Sweden’.11 He was inadvisably frank with the head of the AA division responsible for European integration, Dr Heinz Voigt, on 25 August. Ó Ceallaigh disclosed the potential loss of the British market arising from UK entry into the EEC had prompted the Irish application. He also unwisely divulged a disagreement between Lemass and Aiken over the issue of whether Ireland preferred full membership or association. Aiken favoured association. This revelation would have added weight to the view that Ireland might settle for association.12 Despite this, Bonn agreed to support Lemass’s request that the Irish application should be considered by the EEC in parallel to Britain and Denmark’s. It assented to Dublin’s request to set aside the earlier aide-​mémoire when assessing Ireland’s suitability for membership.13 This followed Voigt’s earlier intimations to Ó Ceallaigh on 5 August, that the German Government would ‘benevolently’ evaluate the Irish application.14 However, on 30 August Handelsblatt carried a report from Brussels opining that perhaps Ireland would be better served by association.15 This compounded Irish anxieties. Most worryingly, Rolf Lahr, secretary of state in the AA, informed Günther Harkort that he favoured association status for Ireland. Lahr preferred a smaller cohesive EEC to rapid enlargement in order to maintain the integrative momentum.16 Lahr clearly favoured EEC consolidation and ‘deepening’ rather than the inclusion of new members with special difficulties, those lacking a commitment to political integration, or those failing to adhere militarily to NATO. Qualified support There were signs of change in other quarters in Bonn, however. The thinking of the Ministry of Economy progressed following a visit from Secretaries of Finance and External Affairs T. K. Whitaker and Con Cremin to Bonn in September. The Irishmen’s effort to assuage any doubts achieved some success as they held back from the negativity and special pleading that had characterised the damaging aide-​mémoire preceding Ireland’s formal request for membership. They convinced Professor Dr Ulrich Meyer-​Cording, who was head of Division E (European Intergovernmental Economic Cooperation) of the Federal Ministry of Economy, and his minister, Ludwig Erhard, that the Irish economy was healthier than originally anticipated, Ireland did not require EEC financial aid, Dublin was ready to meet all the obligations of full membership and the Irish economy would adapt if lengthy transitional periods (12–​15 years) were extended to protected Irish industries.17 In this regard, the success of the First Programme for Economic Expansion and swelling German industrial investments in Ireland were gauges of the potential Ireland possessed to make a swift economic transformation. As was his wont, the German ambassador to Dublin,

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Reifferscheidt, played a constructive part in smoothing understanding: he confirmed the Ministry of Economy’s assumptions by testifying that Cremin and Whitaker accurately represented the state of the Irish economy. He argued that Irish demands for lengthy transitional periods to accommodate its protected industries were ‘modest, not to say almost irrelevant’.18 The British Embassy in Bonn also worked to alleviate German concerns about Irish membership by making representations to senior officials of the AA.19 By October 1961, the Ministry of Economy was mollified. According to its appraisal then, Ireland could comply with the economic conditions for full membership. It even impressed on the AA that the Irish had expressly and unreservedly declared their readiness to engage fully in political cooperation (‘ever closer union’).20 However, Brentano’s AA remained tepid. Its political section was unconvinced by either Ireland’s economic capabilities or the Ministry of Economy’s arguments. It held the view that non-​membership of NATO and neutrality were incompatible with the political objectives of the EEC. Dr Josef Jansen, who headed the AA’s Western Department I (Political Division), advised Lahr that Ireland would be unable to cooperate with the EEC on defence and foreign policy cooperation; therefore, Germany should adhere to the attitude of Brussels that pre-​negotiations take place with Ireland first to ascertain if it met the minimum criteria to apply for membership. (Jansen, a Francophile, was according to some ‘Adenauer’s man in the Foreign Office’,21 and he was ‘a fiercely anti-​communist Catholic’,22 so his advocacy of Ireland’s defence alignment with the West fitted his profile.) If during the course of these pre-​discussions, it transpired that Ireland’s economic situation was not an obstacle to immediate membership, Jansen continued, it should be explained to the Irish ‘that the well-​known political grounds are an obstacle to entry for the time being’. Jansen was attracted to the proposition of Ted Heath to Brentano at their Bonn discussions on 6 October 1961. Heath, the recently appointed as Lord Privy Seal, was responsible for securing British entry into the EEC. According to the German record, he suggested to Brentano that Ireland should be permitted to become an associate member (under Article 238 of the Treaty of Rome) with the possibility of eventual membership. If following a transitional period Ireland proved able to adhere to the full economic and political rigours of EEC membership, then it could be offered membership.23 Lahr concurred and added that Ireland’s proposal to benefit from a 12-​year transition period was incompatible with the spirit of full membership. Adopting a laxer position than Jansen on the political question, Lahr thought that political cooperation should not be linked explicitly with NATO membership, although he thought the applicant should exhibit a benevolent attitude to issues of vital importance to the West. He deemed this was not the case with Ireland.24 NATO membership, after all, was not an explicit stipulation of the Treaty of Rome though many of the Six argued it was an implication. The British embassy

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in Bonn suspected, on the basis of information it received from high ranking officials of the Ministry of Economy, that the opposition of the AA, like that of the French, was founded on the fear that four new full members (Britain, Denmark, Norway and Ireland) would form a voting bloc, preventing the founding members (the Six) from holding a qualified majority.25 The implication was that by excluding Ireland, the demonstrably weakest applicant, the Six could retain their qualified majority and sustain their vision of the EEC. This hypothesis has some plausibility: the French and the AA feared Britain still harboured designs to dilute the EEC into a looser free trade arrangement. Erhard and his ministry were longstanding devotees of wider trading arrangements. Erhard had long been a free trader. While the Irish application was comparatively weak the minuteness of the state (relative to the EEC) suggested its incorporation would not present practical integration difficulties for the EEC. The real issues were the broader implications or precedents set by accepting Ireland as a member. By this point Reifferscheidt was reporting deep unease in Irish public opinion and the Irish government at the lack of progress. He warned that a negative outcome to Ireland’s application would be considered a ‘crushing political defeat’ and a rebuff, but the Irish expected full German backing.26 Warnock reinforced his German counterpart’s arguments in discussions with the AA on 19 October. The Irish ambassador announced the Irish government’s surprise at the unhurried treatment of its application. Denmark and Britain had received permission for formal entry negotiations in October 1961. When Dr Helmut Allardt, the head of the commercial section in the AA, queried Irish attitudes to the political obligations of the EEC, in view of its neutrality, Warnock requested the EEC should clarify ‘what was meant by political obligations’. He restated Ireland’s official position that neutrality could be dispensed with if NATO membership did not require Irish recognition of the legality of partition. Warnock was firm: the territorial issue relating to Northern Ireland was the sole reason for Irish non-​ adherence to NATO and the country did not deserve to be penalised for its right to national self-​determination.27 The DEA, by this point, was deeply worried about what it was learning of the AA’s attitudes. On the afternoon of 20 October, Cremin called in the German ambassador for a meeting in Iveagh House, during which he ‘urgently and imploringly’ expressed his government’s worries. According to Reifferscheidt, Cremin explained Ireland was troubled by the AA’s serious reservations in relation to NATO, rather than any economic criticisms of Ireland’s case for candidature. Cremin asserted that Germany should display ‘psychological understanding’ for Ireland’s position on NATO, since it derived from partition and this was analogous to the FRG’s problems in relation to the GDR.28 He specifically mentioned the unenthusiastic attitude of Lahr. Cremin pleaded that Ireland could not join NATO on principle. In a direct appeal to German sensitivities, he argued that it would be like asking the FRG to sign a defence treaty with the GDR and to

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recognise the division of Germany. Reifferscheidt defended Lahr weakly arguing that his superior was unfamiliar with the Irish situation. He admitted his government was divided on the application but Erhard was favourable. The ambassador promised to promote a more informed German position.29 Reifferscheidt reiterated Brentano’s statement in Dublin of May 1961 that NATO was not a precondition for membership of the EEC.30 Lahr was unmoved by Reifferscheidt’s report of his talk with Cremin and instructed him that Ireland had to recognise that the negotiations with Britain were paramount. He predicted that the result of the negotiations would be an offer of association to Ireland. Lahr reiterated that Ireland was economically unprepared and contended that the main motive for Ireland’s quest to join the EEC was to derive economic benefit. He believed it had limited or no interest in the EEC’s political objectives. For Lahr, the economic interests impelling Ireland’s application, combined with its devotion to neutrality, signified its lack of commitment to the political goals of the EEC. He insisted that Ireland’s benevolent neutrality did not meet the EEC’s political aspirations. Indifferent to the ‘sore thumb’ justification for NATO non-​membership, he asserted that if partition was the barrier it should also prevent Ireland from seeking EEC membership as the Treaty of Rome was as much a political, as an economic, treaty. Lahr, nevertheless, declared that the FRG retained a benign attitude to Ireland. The challenge was that ultimately its case for full membership was rather insubstantial. In conformity with established West German sensitivities, he was affronted by Cremin’s efforts to draw parallels between Northern Ireland and Eastern Germany. It might be inferred that, to his mind, the drawing of an equivalence between the two cases was at best uninformed and at worst bogus. Irish complaints about the lack of progress in its negotiations in comparison to Britain’s were irrelevant, as Irish entry was dependent on the success of Britain’s application.31 Such an unfavourable appreciation of the application by the leading AA official epitomises the challenges Ireland confronted. In fairness, Reifferscheidt had diagnosed at an early stage that the loss of sovereignty entailed in adherence to the Treaty of Rome would prove psychologically challenging for the Irish nationalist narrative that recalled centuries of struggle for independence and had only recently acquired it.32 Notwithstanding his deep reservations about Ireland’s membership qualifications, Lahr, on behalf of Germany, argued on principle for parity of treatment of all countries’ applications when he attended the Council of Ministers of the EEC meeting in late October. He informed his European colleagues that it was imperative to commence full negotiations rapidly with the Irish, the case should be considered in parallel with the British and Danish ones and it should observe identical procedures on the basis of natural justice. He pointedly stated that an EEC decision to instigate Irish entry negotiations did not predetermine a successful outcome and could result in the granting of association.33 Lahr and West

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Germany’s arguments in favour of full negotiations with Ireland were supported robustly by the Dutch, but were rejected by the remainder of the Council of Ministers. Instead, the Council requested additional clarifications from Ireland and invited an Irish delegation to Brussels to present Ireland’s case for membership before it could contemplate opening entry negotiations.34 In summary, the German delegation at the Council of Ministers took account of the congenial relations between Ireland and Germany and debated against the majority of the EEC member states and the Commission in favour of opening membership negotiations with Ireland. It did so in spite of the grave misgivings on the part of senior and influential sections of the AA about Ireland’s suitability; indeed, these reservations mirrored those of the majority of its European partners who had deployed them to refuse to open membership negotiations.35 The divergence between Reifferscheidt and the economics ministry on one side, and the AA on the other side, about Ireland’s fitness for membership carried on into 1962.36 The Adenauer and Erhard equation Lurking behind the cleavage between the Ministry of Economy and the AA after August 1961 were longstanding tensions and personality differences between Erhard and Adenauer. During the 1955 and 1956 EEC foundation discussions, Erhard and his ministry were ‘strongly market oriented’ and favoured a pan-​ European free-​trade system as part of the OEEC, which prompted Adenauer to intervene decisively in the internal German deliberations. He instructed that the FRG should follow ‘a clear, positive German attitude to European integration’ (i.e., the EEC and its nuclear equivalent, Euratom). This was in accordance with the chancellor’s prerogative to offer general foreign policy directives (under Article 65 of the Basic Law), and it was aimed at Erhard.37 An economist by training, Erhard subscribed to free-​market principles and was attracted to the US economic model and the inclusion of Britain in any European economic bloc. Erhard and several senior staff in the Ministry of Economy sustained good relations with their British counterparts. Conversely, Adenauer, a career politician, favoured supranational integration as a political solution to the historic Franco-​ German rivalry. The divergence in the two men’s priorities and attitudes grew markedly after the return of Charles de Gaulle to power in France in June 1958. Adenauer aimed to solidify Franco-​German friendship and heal the differences between the two nations.38 De Gaulle’s readiness to staunchly defend Adenauer’s positions and policies in relation to German reunification and Berlin abetted their relationship building, especially when Macmillan was suspected by Adenauer of feebleness in protecting the rights of the FRG against the Soviet Union. For all intents and purposes, Adenauer and de Gaulle had political designs for the EEC which,

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though not identical were complementary: Adenauer saw the EEC as the vehicle to achieve full Franco-​German rapprochement, while de Gaulle tended to view it as a means to augment French international influence. In contrast, Erhard, as minister for economic affairs, was infused with liberal ideas of Atlantic free trade and he was enticed by Anglo-​American visions. As the copious and detailed reporting of William Warnock, the Irish ambassador to Bonn from 1956 to 1962, revealed, Adenauer still ran German foreign policy. Warnock wrote in September 1959 that the chancellor ‘still controls –​ one might even say dictates –​the Federal Republic’s foreign policy’.39 Adenauer may have surrendered the title of foreign minister in 1955 to Brentano but he continued to act as the organiser and overseer of foreign policy. He appointed, or ensured that, key officers of the AA were loyal to him. Brentano’s efforts at self-​ assertion as minister for foreign affairs, particularly following the appointment of Walter Hallstein as president of the EC in 1958, had failed. Hallstein, previously as secretary of state in the AA, had maintained a close relationship with the chancellor and was frequently consulted by Adenauer ahead of Brentano. On major foreign policy matters involving France, Britain, the Soviet Union and America, Warnock observed that their ambassadors frequented the Chancellery, rather than the AA.40 Moreover, Dr Josef Jansen, director of the AA’s Western Department I, was often noted as an Adenauer devotee. All of the reports emanating from Warnock after 1958 underlined the inflexible bearing of Adenauer, and consequently West German foreign policy, on signature matters. West Germany would only negotiate with the Soviet Union on the national question from a position of strength, and would not tolerate any of its friends or allies compromising on Germany’s national rights. The status of Berlin was non-​negotiable and it should not be used as a pawn in the broader East–​West game. Neither would Adenauer retreat from the claim to the right to national reunification based on self-​determination. Accordingly, the Hallstein Doctrine would remain an immutable first principle of German foreign policy, as long as Adenauer held the reins of power and he demonstrated no willingness to divest. Concomitantly, Franco-​German reconciliation was a paramount German national interest after the successive military conflicts from 1870 to 1945. Adenauer unswervingly held his ground against all criticisms and critics as he struggled to square the circle of these framework policies. He was unwavering in his determination that West Germany should continue these policies even after his departure from the political scene. But Erhard was viewed by many as his natural successor. In the words of the chancellor’s authoritative biographer, the so-​called ‘farce’ of electing the federal president in the spring of 1959  ‘ushered in’ ‘Adenauer’s Seven Years’ War’ against Erhard.41 Following Adenauer and the influential Federal Minister for the Interior Gerhard Schröder’s failed ruse to propose Erhard as the CDU candidate in the presidential race to ‘put him out of the running as

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a candidate’ to succeed Adenauer in the chancellorship,42 Adenauer was then persuaded to stand for the presidency in a moment of uncharacteristic rashness. He soon reversed his decision, at the cost of some embarrassment, when he realised that Erhard was the candidate most likely to replace him in the Chancellery, leaving him with no power, as the presidential role was largely ceremonial. These developments were closely scrutinized by Irish mandarins as the outcome had major significance. Cremin, the secretary of the Department of External Affairs, told Warnock that, ‘Everybody here has naturally been very interested’ in the developments.43 Bob McDonough (or McDonagh) produced an incisive and insightful report in June 1959, just prior to the German presidential election. It contended that Adenauer’s volte-​face and decision to remain as chancellor was ‘to deny the succession to Erhard’. Erhard was deeply irritated with reports Adenauer questioned ‘that he was less resolute on foreign policy than Adenauer and that he opposed European integration’.44 McDonagh’s report was heavily constructed on Warnock’s plentiful reports on the unfolding CDU presidential debate during 1959, and the Irish ambassador clearly believed the chancellor had ‘thwarted Professor Erhard’.45 Erhard continued in his post as minister for economic affairs but it was evident he dissented from Adenauer’s preference for a deeply integrated ‘small Europe’ of the Six, if that was the price of maintaining the new Franco-​German axis. Warnock reported Erhard’s address at the opening of the Frankfurt Autumn Fair on 30 August 1959, when he warned that the division of Europe into ‘economic blocs’ (EEC and EFTA) would weaken the West politically: ‘The negotiations for the economic integration of Europe seemed to him like the Tower of Babel.’46 In circumstances where Adenauer retained unflinching control during 1959, 1960 and 1961, the unquestioning Irish observance of the Hallstein Doctrine amounted to an acceptance of the inexorable. Likewise Ireland’s ongoing retreat from, or tempering of, Aiken’s unilateralism, his proposed disarmament and neutralist-​style solutions to the East–​West confrontation in central Europe in 1958, fitted the same mould. However, Adenauer’s hold on politics and his popularity experienced growing assaults after 1959.47 The SPD underwent a reformation in 1959, challenging the CDU–​CSU (Christlich-​Soziale Union; Christian Social Union) for the centre ground for the first time since the foundation of the FRG. The CDU–​CSU lost its overall majority in the Bundestag as a result of the September 1961 federal election, leaving Adenauer with no option but to rely on the support of the FDP (liberals). Dr Erich Mende, the leader of the FDP, was an arch-​critic of Adenauer, but he abandoned his demand that Adenauer should step down immediately to form an FDP–​CDU coalition. Instead he accepted the chancellor’s undertaking to quit after two years. Brentano resigned as minister for foreign affairs, rather than submit to FDP supervision,48 to be replaced by Gerhard Schröder.49 Warnock lamented Brentano’s departure thus:

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He may not have been a great Foreign Minister, but he was well-​disposed towards us. I  know from his immediate circle in the Foreign Office that he enjoyed immensely his visit to Ireland last spring and his statement in Dublin to the press on the EEC/​NATO issue has undoubtedly been of assistance to us. We have every reason to feel grateful to him for it. Now we shall have to start working with a new man, probably one who knows little about Ireland.50

Brentano had lacked autonomy in the foreign affairs portfolio under the watchful gaze of Adenauer, but from an Irish perspective he had been of some service. Cremin detected that Reifferscheidt appeared to have been a confidante of Brentano, ‘somewhat critical of Dr Adenauer and more partial to Dr Erhard’.51 Dublin was preoccupied about the repercussions of the government change and any resulting instability at this defining time in Ireland’s pre-​application discussions. Cremin speculated on the impact of the future retirement of Adenauer and whether it might weaken the ‘tenacity’ of Bonn in the steadfast pursuit of its ‘rather intransigent line towards Russia and a strongly “European” policy’. Cremin asked Warnock if Erhard would ‘be less staunch in either of these matters?’ He explained: Possible developments in Bonn may also not have any special importance for us as distinct from its effects on the international situation generally. We are, however, the more interested in any suggestion of the radical change inasmuch as there are many indications that Bonn is at present perhaps the strongest protagonist within the Six of the thesis that new members must accept particularly all the political implications of the EEC.52

On the basis of information and discussions in Bonn, Warnock gleaned it was unlikely it would waver from its ‘firm line of German policy laid down over many years’. The Irish ambassador persisted that ‘past experience has shown it is unreal to expect the Chancellor will come to the end of his active life in the near future! He has completely outmanoeuvred those who have tried to replace him.’53 Warnock also informed Cremin that Schröder, the new foreign minister, had sought that office for many years, as he viewed it as a stepping stone to the Chancellery. Warnock suggested that as a loyal servant of Adenauer, Schröder might one day fulfil his ambition. To underline the situation, the Irish ambassador stated that the new foreign minister ‘keeps unconditionally to the Adenauer conception’.54 Any speculation on the part of Cremin or Lemass that a more amenable Erhard would succeed Adenauer as chancellor in the near future was just wishful thinking, it would seem. What lesson was drawn from this by the Irish mandarins and the Taoiseach? They redoubled their efforts to underline Ireland’s political affinity with NATO

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and the EEC as Schröder was another Adenauer loyalist in the AA. Irish diplomatic efforts concentrated on attesting to Ireland’s willingness to accept unconditionally ‘ever closer union’, the concept of the EEC as an emerging political community and the possibility of a defence dimension to integration. It was not surprising, therefore, when Lemass addressed the member governments of the EEC in Brussels on 18 January 1962, that he underscored these points.55 Perhaps this would assist in alleviating some of their concerns about Ireland. A trial balloon? In February 1962, the outside world became aware of a discussion in Irish circles about the advisability of joining NATO. The government and informed public opinion considered that neutrality was the ‘key problem’ accounting for the lack of progress in Ireland’s EEC application.56 In early January 1962, Reifferscheidt told his superiors in Bonn that Ireland’s decision to apply for the EEC signified ‘not only a strong economic but also a strong political turn to the West’. But he concluded Ireland would not join NATO as long as partition persisted in spite of its strong ideological connection to the West.57 However, his view was challenged by a surprising turn of events in February. On 5 February 1962, Micheál Ó Móráin, minister for lands and the Gaeltachta, delivered an address at Castlemorris to the Castlebar Chamber of Commerce. He intimated that even though participation in NATO was not a prerequisite for EEC membership: ‘It would be unrealistic if we did not take into account the fact that the existing members of EEC are members of NATO and, further, that common political objectives and the benefits of coordination in the fields of foreign and defence policy undoubtedly played a part in inducing the existing members to bury economic rivalry.’ He continued that Ireland shared the ideals underlying the Treaty of Rome and Ireland was ready to subscribe to the political aims of the EEC. It had been made quite clear by the Taoiseach on different occasions that a policy of neutrality here in the present world division between Communism and freedom was never laid down by us or, indeed, ever envisaged by our people. Neutrality in this context is not a policy to which we would even wish to appear committed … I … emphasise that we are entering negotiations for membership of the EEC without any pre-​committed attitude, political or otherwise.’58

The speech generated national headlines and led to abundant commentary.59 Ó Móráin’s statement, in the estimation of the Irish Times, implied a lack of commitment to military neutrality in Ireland’s negotiations to join the EEC. In spite of the ensuing public furore, Ó Móráin took four days to clarify his position, allowing speculation to flourish. Then he declared that the Irish Times had omitted or distorted parts of his speech, creating an incorrect impression. He

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stated ‘specifically’ that he had not said the government was preparing to bring Ireland into NATO, nor did he imply that there had been any change in policy. However, he admitted he had stated at Claremorris that ‘we’ were entering the negotiations ‘without any pre-​committed attitude, political or otherwise, other than the desire to play a part in the integration of Western Europe’. Official silence until that point convinced Reifferscheidt, and his diplomatic colleagues in other missions in Dublin, that the Ó Móráin speech was a government or even a Lemassian stratagem to provoke public debate and evaluate the government’s room for manoeuvre.60 This was certainly plausible. But the precise intent of the speech remains a matter for conjecture. Was it a piece of public diplomacy on the part of elements of the government to communicate Ireland’s pro-​Western ideological tilt and its lack of a principled attachment, or even permanent adherence, to neutrality? Or was it simply a restatement of policy in a slightly bolder fashion, but nonetheless along well-​established Lemassian lines, that excited critical opposition (the Labour Party) and public opinion? Was the Irish population finally becoming aware of the latent political and military implications of EEC membership having not fully understood the import of Lemass’s earlier statements? It remains unclear, but Lemass often engaged in the practice of ‘kite flying’ to measure public opinion. Regardless, the Ó Móráin speech provoked a reassessment of Irish-​based German representatives’ views. The DPA representative informed Bonn on 7 February that unnamed reliable sources in Dublin had revealed to him that Ireland was prepared to engage wholeheartedly in European integration, and even NATO membership would not be excluded by Ireland in the future. He inferred that if NATO membership was necessary for political cooperation within the EEC and for Ireland’s economic development, then Ireland was prepared to become a member state. However, his reliable sources hinted that the time was not yet appropriate for such a departure.61 In line with this analysis, Ó Móráin and Lemass deemed it necessary to deny in the Dáil on 14 February that there was any suggestion that Ireland might or should abandon neutrality and join NATO; they repeated the assertion that the minister had been misrepresented in reports and his words had been taken out of context. Lemass denied any change of policy by the government with regard to NATO or the EEC or that there had even been informal suggestions from the EEC or its member states that Ireland should alter its policy. He indicated that the Irish Government would not retreat from neutrality despite its sympathies for the West.62 Progress Meanwhile, Ireland’s concerns continued in the face of the persisting refusal of the EEC to commence formal entry negotiations until it had ascertained the strength of the Irish case. The EEC Commission and Council required information and

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assurances that the country was prima facie a suitable candidate for membership and that it could meet the obligations required of members in view of its ‘special circumstances’. Irish officials and the government had to display forbearance and commitment to European integration to convince the EEC institutions and the Six. By spring 1962, Ireland was not any closer to gaining the EEC’s permission to follow Denmark and Britain and commence full negotiations. Assessments of Ireland’s economic situation revealed that Ireland possessed certain weaknesses. Cumulatively, its economic situation was healthier than the EEC had initially assumed, its industrial development was progressing well from a low base, and the overall state of its economy was steadily improving.63 But German officials informed Walter Hallstein that its case was ‘special because Ireland is in a certain way a developing country’, so a shortened ‘Greek preparatory phase’ should be imposed on Ireland.64 However, during May 1962, a more positive attitude advanced in the AA and elsewhere, particularly after Adenauer received high-​level intimations from the US State Department that the United States was strongly supportive of Irish membership. This was personally relayed by George Ball in a discussion with Adenauer. At this point, Karl Carstens, secretary of state of the AA’s Western European department, expressed qualified support for Irish entry on the basis that no ‘unsurmountable economic obstacles’ existed and provided ‘Ireland re-​ orientates herself politically in such a way that here too there are no longer any obstacles, that is to say that she joins NATO’. Voigt, the head of the European integration department, concurred. He conjectured whether the Irish government should be told appropriately to create the political requirements for joining the EEC.65 However, Hans von Herwath, the secretary of state in the office of the federal president, was still perplexed by the paradoxes and subtleties of the Anglo-​ Irish relationship which possessed all the appearances of a ‘family quarrel’.66 The Dutch worked to good effect in consolidating Bonn’s support for Dublin’s application at this point. The Atlanticist Dutch, especially through the representations of the Dutch ambassador, Hendrik van Vredenburch, were uniquely supportive of the Irish application, as they were of the other applicants; they wanted to dilute the Franco-​German hegemony by enlarging the EEC.67 The Irish ambassador in Bonn thought ‘the Netherlands was working hard for us behind the scenes’ in Bonn.68 Herwath was swayed by Vredenburch’s arguments that Irish entry would copper-​fasten the American commitment to Europe, in the light of the political weight of 20 million Irish-​Americans.69 According to the account of the Dutch ambassador, the politically powerful Franz Josef Strauss, the FRG minister for defence, also concluded that Irish membership could grant the EEC significant additional political leverage on the United States. The Dutch, therefore, fortified and broadened the pro-​Irish coalition in Bonn and overcame some doubts there. Appreciating the efficacy of the Dutch line of argument which underlined the size of the Irish diaspora in the United

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States (Germany’s indispensable ally) Brian Gallagher, the new Irish ambassador to the FRG, began to deploy this argument with officials of the AA, with some good effect.70 As a result, Gallagher formed the impression by late May 1962 that the ‘doubts about the desirability of admitting Ireland as a full member to the Community seems to me to be rapidly receding’.71 Misgivings about Ireland’s non-​membership of NATO remained in certain quarters in the AA, most notably in the mind of Lahr, but by June any remaining scepticism had dissipated to a considerable degree. Jansen, a previous cynic, advised Lahr on 7 June that the member states should commence full entry negotiations with Ireland. The AA had still not reached a collective position, although it now concurred with the Ministry of Economy that there were no substantial arguments against full membership negotiations with Ireland. The AA maintained Ireland was not yet in a position to participate in European political and defence cooperation as that would necessitate the termination of Irish neutrality and NATO membership. But the United States was favourable to Irish membership. Lemass had repeatedly declared Ireland’s willingness to participate in EEC political cooperation and this had to be accepted at face value. Jansen indicated that the end of Irish neutrality and accession to NATO should be demanded once Ireland’s EEC entry negotiations commenced properly.72 Lahr agreed with this, penning an illuminating note in the margin of Jansen’s report: ‘Y[es], the Irish must be told this soon enough.’73 The matter of Irish neutrality was simply postponed in Jansen and Lahr’s perspectives. ‘Best friend and ally’ It was on the basis of this advice and approach that the German delegation joined with its Dutch counterpart to propose, to the EEC Council of Ministers meeting of 24 July 1962, the commencement of full and immediate EEC negotiations with Ireland. On this occasion German support was less lukewarm than had been the case in October 1961. Now the AA, the chancellor, the Federal President’s Office and the minister for defence had recognised prospective benefits arising from Irish membership of the EEC. However, the French and the Italians disagreed. A decision was postponed until after the summer recess ostensibly to allow extra time to evaluate the Irish application and relevant supplementary information provided by Dublin. The Commission also argued that it lacked the administrative capacity to initiate negotiations with the Irish at this point.74 Therefore, September was a nerve-​wracking experience for the Irish. For the first time the Six were approaching a decision on whether or not to commence accession negotiations. The Irish Government engaged in a new ‘propaganda offensive’75 to advance its application. Lemass took full advantage of the visit of top European journalists from major national newspapers of the EEC Six; the

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ICEM had invited them to Dublin on a fact-​finding mission. Lemass reiterated his message: Ireland was ‘not neutral’ despite its inability to make a military commitment to NATO, it had no reservations about fully supporting the political aims of the EEC and it would continue with its application even if the British one failed. The major European newspapers duly reported it.76 This orchestrated media event in Dublin reinforced Ireland’s steady diplomacy throughout the EEC capitals. A  German–​Dutch pro-​Irish campaign inside the EEC complemented the Irish efforts. In the internal EEC debates Germany worked with the Netherlands to get the Irish application full and fair consideration. It was resolute that Ireland was a fitting applicant. At the COREPER debate of 20 September 1962, the German and Dutch continued to face French and Italian opposition, while Belgian and Luxembourg sat on the fence.77 The Germans rejected the Italians’ delaying tactics. The Italians argued that Ireland’s application was dependent on that of Britain, so there was no necessity to commence negotiations with the Irish until progress had been made on the British application. The Franco-​Italian bloc proved unmoveable at the COREPER meeting. In response to this continuing resistance, the Ministry of Economy maintained pressure on the AA urging that the Irish had waited patiently for an answer for far too long; it sustained that view that Ireland deserved at least a confirmation of their admission suitability, even if it was desirable for practical and logistical reasons to delay substantive negotiations until the fate of the British application became clearer. Herr Hünke of the Ministry of Economy extemporised that on the basis of economic and statistical data, Ireland was a poor country, but it would be incorrect to classify it as a developing economy; it was perfectly capable of taking on the responsibilities of membership. Moreover, in Hünke’s estimation Ireland’s request for ‘special treatment’ in certain areas was ‘extraordinarily modest’, compared to what was demanded by the other applicants. He was adamant that prevarication should end and an immediate decision was required.78 Hünke’s spirited counsel set the tone for the position adopted by the German delegation during the pivotal EEC Council meeting of 24 and 25 September 1962. Alfred Müller-​ Armack, the German delegate (secretary of state for European affairs in the Federal Ministry of Economy) argued that negotiations had to be opened with the Irish; Müller-​Armack was a longstanding advocate of free markets.79 The Germans and the Dutch worked in tandem throughout the meeting in arguing for an unqualified commencement of the formal negotiations with the Irish. The Italians and Belgians shifted ground to favour the commencement of negotiations with some reservations about whether or not Ireland was more suited to association rather than membership. They had concerns about the political implications of Irish membership. The West Germans firmly refuted these stated reservations. First, they contended the outcome of the negotiations should not be predetermined as that was the function of the

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negotiations. Second, the delegation rebutted the French and Italian expressions of concern about the possible political difficulties of the Irish application. Hallstein’s position had also altered since July –​he now favoured conceding that Ireland was admissible noting the delay of nearly a year and a half and the growing Irish dissatisfaction at the lack of progress. The balance of the Council had shifted decisively in favour of accepting that Ireland had reached the minimum threshold necessary to begin full talks. The French delegation prevaricated and argued that Paris had not formulated a view on the Irish application. However, a delay would not suffice for much longer in the face of the growing pressure to recognise Ireland’s admissibility. The Italian chair ruled that Ireland had to be given a definite reply as soon as possible and the matter would remain on every agenda for Council meetings in the near future until all the delegations could agree on a common reply.80 This was designed to force the French hand. The only remaining major block to the opening of negotiations was France. The Irish Times reported that West Germany had emerged ‘as the best friend and ally of Ireland in its application for membership’.81 The Taoiseach had been invited on a state visit of the FRG in October and planned to attend the opening of the Vatican Council in Rome. These invitations were used as an opportunity to tour all the capitals of the Six and reinforce Ireland’s case. Lemass was confident in setting out on his visit to Bonn in the light of the FRG’s leading role in championing Ireland’s EEC case. German representatives were instructed to communicate that West Germany was actively working to ensure that the Council should not treat Ireland’s application any differently from that of Denmark’s or Norway’s, countries whose demands for special treatment far exceeded Ireland’s and which were more reserved in their political commitment to the Community.82 Reifferscheidt again briefed the AA that Lemass had decisively led Ireland away from isolation in 1959 and 1960 to encourage inward investment and diversify Ireland’s export markets. He had also led Ireland to seek full membership of the EEC and revealed clear sympathies for the aims of NATO. The Lemass of Reifferscheidt’s pen portrait was that a dynamic, outward-​looking man of reconciliation with Britain. This was calculated to appeal to German sensitivities.83 Bonn was confident that the mood surrounding Lemass’s visit would be a positive one in the light of the track record of German investment in Irish modernisation and Bonn’s backing of Dublin’s EEC application. The FRG had consolidated its position as Ireland’s largest European trading partner, on a par with the United States and second only to Britain.84 Since 1955, 24 factories with German shares had been established in Ireland and another eight were planned. The FRG actively encouraged German firms to invest in Irish industrialisation as long as investment conditions remained favourable.85 The Irish press was appreciative of Adenauer’s declaration in the Bundestag that the FRG welcomed the orientation of the Irish, British, Danish and Norwegian towards Europe and hoped that their applications would prove successful. It even speculated on the possibility of a visit by the German

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Chancellor to Ireland in reciprocation for Lemass’s visit.86 On 22 October 1962, at the outset of Lemass’s German visit, he received news that Ireland was finally invited to commence membership negotiations with the EEC.87 For these reasons, the scene appeared set for a warm encounter. A report by Brian Gallagher on 15 October, however, may have caused some pause for reflection in Irish circles.88 It was read by both Cremin and Lemass prior to their visit to Bonn.89 Its subject was Adeanuer’s statement of policy on 12 October in the Bundestag. Gallagher explained that Erich Ollenhauer, the chairman of the SDP, accused the chancellor during the debate of ‘having created, by his attitude, the impression of uncertainty as to the position of Germany with regard to the adherence’ of the applicant states to the EEC. Ollenhauer wanted to know why Germany was not doing more to facilitate Britain’s adherence to the EEC, declaring in a pointed criticism that Adenauer’s ‘warm words’ in favour of Franco-​German relations ‘should be equally valid for British-​German relations’. Adenauer protested ‘vehemently’ that he was in favour of British entry. He reprimanded Ollenhauer for not realising that as chancellor he had to defend national interests in the negotiations in Brussels and he implied that German economic interests had to be protected in the accession negotiations, as the British did not want to join the EEC for ‘purely philanthropic reasons’. He continued, ‘Furthermore, have you thought, when speaking of the entry of Ireland, Denmark and Norway, of the problem of the distribution of voting power?’ Gallagher was prompted to finish his report as follows: It will be observed that the only apprehension the Chancellor expressed with regard to Ireland is in connection with the distribution of voting power in a community enlarged by the adherence of one large and three small countries. The difficulties involved in reaching a new arrangement can hardly be regarded by anyone as insuperable in an economic community, although, as the Chancellor himself suggested on an earlier occasion, it might give rise to more difficulties in a political union.90

The import of this was to highlight how, irrespective of Adenauer’s protestations of good faith in facilitating British accession, hard bargaining was the order of the day and the outcome of the British application remained uncertain. This corroborated numerous indications the Irish received about the tough British accession negotiations during 1962. The suggestion that Adenauer was apprehensive about the effect of Ireland, Denmark and Norway’s prospective accession on the EEC Council’s voting balance gave credence to the information received by the British embassy in Bonn (October 1961) about some of the AA’s concerns (see above). In the light of these uncertainties, how would Lemass’s visit progress? The highpoint of the Lemass visit was his ‘quite long’ audience with Adenauer (70 minutes) on 22 October 1962. A close reading of Adenauer’s line of argument suggested that his support for Ireland was lukewarm rather than

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fulsome.91 Rhetorically, the Chancellor assured Lemass that Germany possessed an ancient and continuing ‘special feeling’ for Ireland. He intimated that the FRG would gladly extend any assistance it could to Ireland including investment. Additionally, and notably, he informed Lemass that the FRG ‘was entirely with us on our application’. His failure to make any reference to NATO or a political union was noteworthy. However, the German Chancellor was clearly reserved when he turned the conversation towards Ireland’s EEC application specifically. Even as he assured the Taoiseach of the FRG’s full support for Irish membership, he raised the prospective effects of the Anglo-​Irish relationship on Ireland’s application. The Irish report of the conversation noted that ‘[o]‌ne could perhaps detect a slight anti-​British bias in some of Dr.  Adenauer’s observations’. He probed Lemass’s and Irish intentions by stating that Ireland was politically independent but economically ‘very dependent on Britain’. In response, Lemass recognised the economic realities, but argued that if the British application was rejected, Ireland would persist with its application: Britain will perhaps always be our major market but if she should not succeed in joining the EEC, her economy is likely to decline and in the long run she may become a kind of second Spain as the former centre of a former empire. A principal reason why we would wish, if it were economically possible, to join the Common Market even if Britain should fail to do so, is, the Taoiseach explained, because of our interest in an attraction to the political aspects of the Community and the drive for European unity.

Adenauer was non-​committal when faced with this declaration of the Irish political aspirations underlying the application and Ireland’s willingness to go it alone into Europe if necessary. He disagreed that Britain would become another Spain and emphasised the economic capacity of the British Commonwealth. The Chancellor articulated the view that the 20 million Irish-​Americans in the United States should be in a position to assist the development of the Irish economy. Lemass demurred countering that if Americans invested industrially in Ireland, it was for hard commercial reasons, not sentimental attachment. Moreover, American firms expended inordinate time in reaching a decision to base branches in Ireland in comparison to their German or British counterparts. Adenauer simply indicated that the working capacity of Brussels was logjammed by the British application for another six to nine months, so the Irish application would be held up. The Irish delegation was unsure about the implications of Adenauer’s drift and the Department of External Affairs concluded its report thus: ‘Dr. Adenauer’s assurance about continued sympathy for our application, independently of the British, was … noteworthy. According to Dr. Reifferscheidt, the expression of Dr. Schröder, the foreign minister, registered a question mark at this point.’

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There were thus some ambivalent signs about the prospects for the Irish application emerging from the Lemass-​Adenauer meeting. Lemass’s impressions of his meeting with Adenauer are not recorded. But the indications are that he was far more impressed by his meeting with Ludwig Erhard.92 The latter fulsomely praised Lemass’s economic stewardship of Ireland and assured the Irishman of continued German support for Ireland’s industrialisation and moves towards the EEC. Erhard strongly supported British membership of the EEC and commended Ireland’s decision to seek membership as ‘wise as a detached small country would be in a difficult position’. He went so far as to suggest that the ready and speedy Irish acceptance of all the obligations for EEC membership ‘might well prove in the long run to be easier for us’.93 During the remainder of 1962, the German ambassador to Ireland continued to provide a sympathetic account of the Irish situation to Bonn. He adhered to a positive Erhard-​like outlook by comparison to Adenauer’s somewhat hedged position. He presented Lemass as a progressive and outward-​looking leader (in contrast to Aiken), who was energetically preparing Ireland for EEC membership. According to Reifferscheidt’s sketches Lemass possessed a strong ideological affinity with the West, backed the American position during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and wished either to reformulate or abandon Irish neutrality in order to allow Ireland to join ‘Europe’.94 His reports gave added weight to Lemass’s efforts to enter the EEC. The Irish refrain that Ireland was fully committed to the EEC, demanded no preconditions or special treatment in contrast to other applicants, and was ideologically pro-​Western had largely succeeded in German official, political and media circles.95 In this regard, Reifferscheidt’s unwavering advocacy of the Irish case assisted Irish diplomacy in overcoming reservations and divisions in Bonn. The German ambassador, however, detected a weakness in Lemass’s domestic campaign to prepare and convince the Irish public about the economic and political repercussions of EEC membership. Reiffersheidt noted the main opposition party, Fine Gael, supported the government’s policy of seeking and preparing for accession to the EEC, but it was critical of the way in which the government was pursuing its policy whereby Lemass had adopted a ‘salami tactic to dismantle piece by piece Ireland’s neutrality policy’.96 Regardless, the matter of neutrality was not confronted as de Gaulle’s veto of the British application in January 1963 prevented Ireland from pursuing its application. Its application was suspended until such a time as the blockage to British entry could be overcome. Conclusion West Germany was initially sceptical and divided about Ireland’s suitability on economic and political grounds. The internal differences of opinion persisted until October 1962 when the EEC finally granted Ireland permission to begin entry

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negotiations. Bonn supported Ireland’s right to begin full entry negotiations as early as October 1961, although substantial elements of its government and civil service were dubious about Ireland’s suitability on both political and economic grounds. West Germany’s qualified support in favour of the early commencement of negotiations with Ireland was based on the principle that it was unjust and discriminatory to engage in pre-​negotiations when the other applicants were not subject to the same stricture or waiting time. Moreover, there was a danger of creating a false impression that successful pre-​negotiations might be construed as a portent of an eventual successful outcome to full entry negotiations. The AA and others in Bonn were yet to be convinced that Ireland could meet the entry criteria. This was the official and agreed German line with its EEC partners and Ireland until October 1962. It was based on the explicit understanding that granting Ireland the right to commence entry negotiations proper did not guarantee a successful result. This pragmatic federal position was a useful compromise that overcame the differences of opinion within the FRG’s institutions. From July 1961 to October 1962, an assiduous Irish diplomatic and public relations campaign worked to good effect to portray the country’s application in the best possible light. Assisted by the unstinting encouragement of the German ambassador in Dublin and the unflagging Dutch, the reservations held in many parts of the West German civil service and government receded. But they never dissolved completely. Although Ireland’s campaign to open full negotiations ultimately succeeded, the AA’s political objections remained. Irish energies to present neutrality in a light that deflected German concerns were not misdirected. Counterfactually, if de Gaulle had not vetoed the UK application and if Irish negotiations had commenced in 1963, Ireland would have faced serious questioning about its political and defence orientation from several EEC member states, including West Germany and France. Notes 1 The Statist, 26 January 1962, pp. 261–​8. 2 Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, Sankt Augustin, Pressedokumentation, file: Staaten, Irland, 1951–​83, Press cutting, Bulletin, nr. 197/​S.1663, 23 October 1962. 3 FitzGerald, Protectionism to Liberalisation, p. 134. 4 See Maher, Tortuous Path, pp. 123–​6. 5 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 221, Beitritt Irlands zur EWG, Note & aide-​mémoire, Harkort to Müller-​Armack, 3 July 1961; ibid., Note, Jansen to Lahr, 4 July 1961. 6 TNA, FO 371/​158220, M6114/​24, Memo, Gallagher to Wilford, United Kingdom and the Six: Talks with the Irish, 18 July 1961. 7 Martin P. C. Schaad, Bullying Bonn: Anglo-​German Diplomacy on European Integration, 1955–​61 (Basingstoke, Hants: Macmillan Press, 2000), p. 188 n. 93. 8 Die Kabinettsprotokolle der Bundesregierung online at www.bundesarchiv.de/​cocoon/​ barch/​0/​z/​z1960a/​kap1_​8/​para2_​30.html [accessed 23 October 2016].

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9 TNA, FO 371/​158220, M6114/​24, Barclay to Lord Privy Seal, 18 July 1961; ibid., M1114/​25, Bottomley to Gallagher, 20 July 1961; ibid., M6114/​26, Barclay to EEO Department, Conversation with Dr Harkort, 21 July 1961. 10 AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 635, Note, Hünke to Müller-​Armack, Beitrittsantrag des Irischen Freistaates zur EWG, 23 August 1961. 11 See Casserly, ‘Irish-​German Relations’, p. 84. 12 AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 635, Note, Voigt to Lahr, 25 August 1961. 13 Ibid., Note, Voigt to German missions in Brussels, The Hague, Dublin, London, Paris and Rome, Beitritt Irlands zur EWG, 30 August 1961. 14 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 221, Voigt to Lahr, 5 August 1961. 15 NAI, Dublin, DFA, Embassy Series, Rome, 1909 RI, Report, 1961, Ó Ceallaigh to Cremin, 30 August 1961. 16 AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 6.AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 221, Be 35, Note, Lahr to Harkort, Beitritt Irlands zur EWG, 22 September 1961. 17 Ibid., Letter & Note, Beitritt oder Assoziation Irelands zur EWG, Meyer-​Cording to Lahr, 16 Sep. 1961. 18 Ibid., Report, Reifferscheidt to AA, Irlands Stellung zur Europäischen Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft 10 October 1961. 19 Ibid., Note, Keller to Müller-​ Armack, Beitritt Irlands zur EWG; Britische Stellungnahme, 13 October 1961. 20 Ibid., Note, Jansen to Lahr and Brentano, Behandlung des irischen Antrags auf Beitritt zur EWG, 13 October 1961. 21 O. Bange, The EEC Crisis of 1963: Kennedy, Macmillan, de Gaulle and Adenauer in Conflict (London: Macmillan, 2000), p. 154. 22 W. G. Gray, Germany’s Cold War: The Global Campaign to Isolate East Germany, 1949–​ 1969 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), p. 155. 23 AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 635, Note, Jansen to Lahr and Brentano, Behandlung des irischen Antrags auf Beitritt zur EWG, 13 October 1961. 24 Ibid., Note, Allardt to Lahr (?), Irischer Antrag auf Beitritt zur EWG, 19 October 1961. Lahr’s’ version of who put forward the proposition that Ireland should be granted association status as a necessary stage for membership is contradicted by the account of the UK Embassy in Bonn, see TNA, FO 371/​158221, M6114/​58, Majoribanks to Gallagher, 21 October 1961. 25 TNA, FO 371/​ 158221, M6114/​ 58, Majoribanks to Gallagher, 21 October 1961. 26 AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 635, Report, Reifferscheidt to AA, Irlands Stellung zur Europäischen Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft; Vortrag des Vizepräsidenten der EWG-​ Kommission Dr.  Mansholt vor dem Irish Council of the European Movement in Dublin, 17 October 1961. 27 Ibid., Note, Allardt to Lahr (?), Irischer Antrag auf Beitritt zur EWG, 19 October 1961. 28 Ibid., Telegram, Reifferscheidt to AA, 20 October 1961. 29 See Casserly, ‘Irish-​German Relations’, pp. 86–​7. 30 AA-​ PA, Bestand B20–​ 200, Band 635, Telegram, Reifferscheidt to AA, 20 October 1961. 31 Ibid., Letter, Lahr to Reifferscheidt, 23 October 1961.

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32 Ibid., Report, Reifferscheidt to AA, Irlands Stellung zur Europäischen Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft, 8 August 1961. 33 Ibid.; AA-​PA, B20–​200, Band 635, Report of the Council of Ministers of the EEC, 31 October 1961. 34 Ibid., Report of the Council of Ministers of the EEC regarding meeting of 23–​25/​10/​ 61, 31 October 1961; ibid., Voigt to Reifferscheidt, 2 November 1961. 35 Ibid., Report, Voigt to German embassy in Dublin, Irischer Antrag auf Beitritt zur Europäischen Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft, 2 November 1961. 36 For another example of Reifferscheidt’s support, see: AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 238, Report, Reifferscheidt to AA, Die politische Lage Irlands um die Jahreswende 1961/​ 1962, 8 January 1962. 37 Schwarz, Konrad Adenauer, vol. 2, p. 231. 38 A. C. Mierzejewski, Ludwig Erhard:  A Biography (Chapel Hill, NC:  University of North Carolina Press, 2004), pp. 167–​72. 39 NAI, DFA, CRS 313/​10E, Warnock to Cremin, 18 September 1959. 40 Ibid., 31 October 1959. 41 Schwarz, Konrad Adenauer, vol. 2, p. 411. 42 Ibid., p. 415. 43 NAI, DFA, CRS, 313/​10E, Cremin to Warnock, 10 April 1959. 44 Ibid., Memo attached to Cremin to PSM, The Adenauer-​Erhard Controversy, 23 June 1959. The handwritten covering note by Cremin credits Mr Mc Donough with authorship of the memo. 45 Ibid., Report, Warnock to Cremin, Dr Adenauer and his Party, 13 June 1959. 46 Ibid., Report, Warnock to Cremin, Professor Erhard on West Germany’s Economic Position, 2 September 1939. 47 Many of these are detailed by Warnock in NAI, DFA, CRS 313/​10F. 48 NAI, DFA, CRS, 313/​10G, Letter, Warnock to Cremin, 31 October 1961. 49 Ibid., Report, Warnock to Cremin, The New Foreign Minister, 27 November 1961. 50 Ibid., Letter, Warnock to Cremin, 31 October 1961. 51 Ibid., Note by Cremin, 27 October 1961. 52 Ibid., Letter, Cremin to Warnock, 13 October 1961. 53 Ibid., Letter, Warnock to Cremin, 23 October 1961. 54 Ibid., Report, Warnock to Cremin, The New Foreign Minister, 27 November 1961. 55 Maher, Tortuous Path, Appendix II, pp. 375–​6. 56 See, for instance, ‘Fading Opposition to Irish Link with EEC; Neutrality the Key Problem’, Leo Murray, Irish Times, 1 February 1962. 57 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 238, Report, Reifferscheidt to AA, Die politische Lage Irlands um die Jahreswende 1961/​1962, 8 January 1962. 58 ‘O Moráin says he did not say it; Blames the “Irish Times” ’, Irish Times, 10 February 1962, p. 1. 59 See Editorial, ‘Shedding Neutrality’, Irish Independent, 7 February 1962, p.  7; Editorial, ‘Is NATO Membership Essential?’, Cork Examiner, 8 February 1962, p. 6; ‘Full Part to Play in the New Europe’, Irish Press, 6 February 1962, p. 1. 60 AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 635, Wandlungen in der Einstellung Irlands zur NATO, Report, Reifferscheidt to AA, 15 February 1962; ‘O Moráin says he did not

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say it; Blames the Irish Times; O Moráin says he was misrepresented’, Irish Times, 10 February 1962, pp. 1, 6. 61 Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, Sankt Augustin, Pressedokumentation,file: Staaten, Irland, 1951–​1983, Fax, Deutsche Presseagentur (DPA), Irland möglicherweise 16. Mitglied der NATO, 7 February 1962. 62 Dáil Debates, 14 February 1962, Vol. 193, No. 1, Cols. 6–​8. 63 For example, Bundesarchiv Koblenz, Walter Hallstein Nachlass N/​ 1266, Archivsignatur 1224, Report, Demande d’adhésion de l’Irlande; situation de l’Irlande, 16 April 1962; AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 634, Fax No. 451, Brussels (burogeneral) to AA, 19 April 1962. 64 Bundesarchiv Koblenz, Walter Hallstein Nachlass N/​1266, Archivsignatur 1224, Report, German official (no name) to Hallstein, 11 May 1962. 65 AA-​ PA, Bestand B20–​ 200, Band 634, Report, Voigt (probably) to unknown addressee, 24 May 1962. 66 NAI, DFA, CRS, 313/​10H, Report, Gallagher to Cremin, European Unification, 29 May 1962. 67 This point emerges strongly in the recent work of Jérôme aan de Wiel, ‘The Netherlands’ in O’Driscoll et al, Ireland through European Eyes, pp. 236–​7. 68 NAI, DFA, CRS, 313/​10H, Report, Gallagher to Cremin, European Unification, 2 June 1962. 69 Ibid., 29 May 1962. 70 Ibid., 2 June 1962. 71 Ibid., 29 May 1962. 72 AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 634, Note, Jansen to Lahr, Beitrittsantrag Irlands zur EWG, 7 June 1962 (see annotation by Lahr). 73 Ibid. 74 AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 634, Fax, Harkort to AA, 77. Tagung des EWG-​ Rates am 24/​07/​62, 26 July 1962; ibid., EWG-​Ministerrat behandelte am 24.7 erneut Beitrittsantrag Irlands zur EWG, Note by Jansen, 30 July 1962. 75 FitzGerald, Protectionism to Liberalisation, p. 193. 76 Maher, Tortuous Path, pp. 155–​8. 77 AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 634, Note by Hünke (?), 21 September 1962. 78 Ibid., 21 September 1962. 79 See A. C. Mierzejewski, Ludwig Erhard: A Biography (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), pp. 24, 62. 80 AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 634, Fax 29, Boemcke to AA, Tagung des EWG-​ Rates am 24./​25. September 1962, 25 September 1962; ibid., Report, Report on the 79th conference of the EEC Council & résumés of meetings of Permanent Representatives, c.  24/​25 September 1962. For additional information see Jérôme aan de Wiel, ‘The Commission, the Council and Ireland’s EEC-​applications, 1961–​ 1973’, in O’Driscoll et al (eds.), Ireland through European Eyes, pp. 343–​5. 81 ‘Adenauer may be invited to Ireland’, Irish Times, 12 October 1962, p. 11. 82 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 238, Note by Voigt, Vorbereitung des Besuchs des irischen Ministerpräsidenten Seán Lemass, 9 October 1962. 83 Ibid., Report, Reifferscheidt to AA, Die Aussen-​und Wirtschaftspolitik des irischen Ministerpräsidenten (Taoiseach) Seán Lemass, 1 October 1962.

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84 Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, Sankt Augustin, Pressedokumentation, file: Staaten, Irland, 1951–​83, Bulletin, nr 197/​S.1664. 85 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 238, Memorandum, Deutsche Investitionen in Ireland, c. 9 October 1962. 86 The earlier Schröder-​Aiken trips and rumours that the German President, Dr Lübke, might visit Ireland on vacation the following year gave credence to the view of a possible Adenauer visit. AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 238, Report, Reifferscheidt to AA, Irlands Stellung zur Europäischen Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft, 10 October 1962; ‘Adenauer willing to talk to East; Ireland “welcome in EEC” ’, Irish Times, 10 October 1962, p. 1; ‘Adenauer may be invited to Ireland’, Irish Times, 12 October 1962, p. 11. 87 FitzGerald, Protectionism to Liberalisation, p. 197. 88 NAI, DFA, CRS, 313/​10H, Report, Gallagher to Cremin, Ireland and the EEC, 15 October 1962. 89 The marginalia indicate this. 90 NAI, DFA, CRS, 313/​10H, Report, Gallagher to Cremin, Ireland and the EEC, 15 October 1962. 91 NAI, DFA, Embassy Series, Bonn, 18/​2/​1II, Taoiseach’s visit to Germany, Annex IX:  Conversation between Lemass and Adenauer, 22 October 1962; cf. Geary, Inconvenient Wait, p. 49. 92 NAI, DFA, Embassy Series, Bonn, 18/​2/​1II, Draft, Letter from Taoiseach to Erhard, 6 November 1962. 93 NAI, DFA, Embassy Series, Bonn, 18/​2/​1 II, Annex X, Conversation between Lemass and Erhard on 24 October 1962. 94 AA-​ PA, Bestand B31, Band 238, Report by Reifferscheidt, Die Aussen-​und Wirtschaftspolitik des irischen Ministerpräsidenten (Taoiseach) Seán Lemass, 1 October 1962; ibid., Report by Reifferscheidt, Irlands Stellung zur Europäischen Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft, 10 October 1962; ibid., Report by Reifferscheidt (…) Echo des Besuchs in der irischen Presse und Öffentlichkeit, 2 November 1962; ibid., Band 239, Report by Reifferscheidt, Irlands Stellung zur Europäischen Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft im Zusammenhang mit seiner Neutralitätspolitik, 6 November 1962; ibid., Report by Reifferscheidt, Neue Erklärungen der irischen Regierung zur sogenannten Neutralitätspolitik, 21 December 1962; ibid., Band 256, Report by Reifferscheidt, Die politische Lage Irlands um die Jahreswende 1962/​1963, 7 January 1963. 95 In terms of media see, for example, NAI, Dublin, DFA, Embassy Series, Bonn, 18/​2/​ 1II, ‘Irland und Europa’, Badische Neueste Nachrichten, 3 November 1962. 96 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 221, Report, Reifferscheidt to AA, Gegenbesuch des Herrn Bundesministers des Auswärtigen Dr. Heinrich von Brentano in Ireland am 30. und 31. Mai 1961, 8 June 1961; ibid., Band 239, Report, Reifferscheidt to AA, Irlands Stellung zur Europäischen Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft im Zusammenhang mit seiner Neutralitätspolitik, 6 November 1962; ibid., Report, Reifferscheidt to AA, Neue Erklärungen der irischen Regierung zur sogenannten Neutralitätspolitik, 21 December 1962.

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Irish–​German relations were unaffected by de Gaulle’s veto of the British application on 14 January 1963, notwithstanding Irish frustration at French unilateralism. The FRG had played such a consequential role, in tandem with the Netherlands, in convincing its EEC partners to allow the Irish application to proceed that criticism was impossible. From an Irish perspective, de Gaulle was the political obstacle to Irish accession by virtue of his hostility to British membership. After January 1963, Ireland and West Germany continued conscientiously to prevent marginalia from undermining their core relationship. So long as Ireland displayed an understanding for West Germany’s national and security interests in the Cold War, the FRG was reasonably satisfied. Concurrently, Dublin was content if the FRG supported, within the limits of practicality, Irish membership of the EEC and German firms continued to invest in Irish modernisation. EEC application, 1963–​65 In early February 1963, the German chargé d’affaires in Dublin, Baron Götz von Houwald, predicted correctly that Ireland would suspend its application until the British reapplied. All the indications that the German embassy received were of the Irish resolve to pursue accession when circumstances allowed.1 Houwald reported that Lemass pushed ahead with economic reform and the steady dismantling of protectionism to prepare for membership of the EEC.2 German quarters knew Ireland was impatient to recommence entry negotiations, but it remained a powerless observer or demandeur awaiting the outcome of internal EEC wrangling about Britain’s suitability. From 1963 to 1970, German commentators appreciated Ireland’s limited freedom for manoeuvre. Regardless, Ireland persisted in nurturing communication with the EEC states in preparation for eventual accession. In mid-​1963 Francis Biggar, the Irish representative to the EEC and ambassador to Belgium, paid Günther Harkort, the German permanent representative to

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the EEC, an ‘unofficial’ visit. He wished to discuss how Ireland could maintain meaningful contact with the EEC. Biggar explained that his government desired to demonstrate its unfaltering interest in membership.3 The FRG ambassador thought that the Irish government wanted to discuss the EEC within the Irish–​ German setting.4 However, the state secretary of the AA, Rolf Lahr, advised the Irish ambassador in August 1963 that such bilateral discussions were delicate and the correct arena for such informal discussions was in Brussels between the Irish and German permanent representatives to the EEC.5 The AA evidently feared creating an impression that Germany was conspiring against France. Ireland’s regular broadcasting of its acceptance of ‘ever closer union’ and the Irish representatives’ stress on Ireland’s historical, cultural, religious and contemporary continental links were interpreted as indications of appropriate European credentials.6 Germany could only offer generic encouragement and goodwill. Any Irish illusion that the country could apply and gain membership without simultaneous British entry was far-​fetched. On 1 February 1965, Harkort reported that the Irish minister for agriculture, Charles J.  Haughey, was ‘asking around’ Brussels and stressing Ireland wanted to adhere as a full member. Harkort reported that the European commissioner for external relations’ reply to Haughey’s ‘academic question’ about the possibility of Ireland joining alone was understandably ‘cautious and reserved’.7 Following Adenauer’s replacement as the FRG chancellor by Ludwig Erhard in 1963, with Dr Gerhard Schröder as his foreign minister, ‘relations between the French and the Germans were … marked by varying degrees of coolness’.8 Erhard and Schröder rebalanced Bonn’s foreign policy from Paris towards Washington. The Erhard–​Schröder duo upheld the necessity of admitting Britain to the EEC without delay, the primacy of trans-​Atlanticism, the principle of majority voting in the EEC and the centrality of NATO. All of this brought them into direct conflict with de Gaulle.9 Erhard’s positions were supported by the Benelux and Italy. The divided EEC lost momentum after 1963. The Irish government and its embassies in Bonn and Paris monitored the twists and turns of the strained German–​French relationship from 1963 onwards in a fruitless effort to elicit signs of a rapprochement that would allow a second British application. The suspended Irish application was inconsequential to the geopolitical calculations of German foreign policy, but Irish circles were comforted to a degree by Erhard’s Atlanticist and pro-​British outlook. Erhard would not permit de Gaulle to push ahead with closer political union before enlarging the EEC, but this contributed to European stasis. Irish ambassador Eamon Kennedy reported in early July 1964: ‘This is of great significance for our own [Ireland’s] Common Market hopes because, in effect, the German policy is to keep the door still open for British membership.’10 A few days prior to this, Erhard told the Irish ambassador, ‘he fully appreciated the importance of our [Ireland’s] trading relations with Britain’.11

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Even if Bonn remained sympathetic, internal British party politics and an Anglo-​French entente were the key to unlocking the door to British, and thus Irish, entry. Months before Harold Wilson’s Labour Party’s widely anticipated victory over the Conservatives in the general election of October 1964, Erhard predicted to Kennedy that even a victory by the avowedly anti-​Marketeer Wilson would not spell disaster; he would be forced by ‘economic logic’ to reverse his attitude to the EEC.12 However, Erhard and Schröder’s pronounced Atlanticism vexed the Irish, who had hoped that they had already assuaged German objections to Irish adhesion to the EEC. With a new German government there were no grounds for complacency. In an audience with the Irish ambassador in March 1964, Gerhard Schröder ‘supposed that Ireland might have been in long ago if she had been a member of NATO’. Following the ambassador’s ritualistic recapitulation of the enduring Irish explanation for its anomalous position, Schröder acknowledged the Irish position and said he was not earnestly suggesting Ireland should adhere to NATO, but the organisation, despite its problems, prevented ‘Communist expansion’.13 Thus NATO remained a complicating factor in the Irish search for EEC membership. Investment and trade, 1963–​66 In the absence of a breakthrough on the EEC the Irish continued to pursue the German market as the one offering the most opportunities in Western Europe.14 While it waited hopefully for EEC membership, the government had little option but to pursue the liberalisation and modernisation of the economy. The minister for industry and commerce, Jack Lynch, launched the Second Programme for Economic Expansion (1964–​67) to maintain the pace of industrialisation and promote export-​oriented firms. German firms remained a critical component of this drive. In 1964 Handelsblatt reported that the Irish economy was making steady progress since 1958 and Irish industrial production had increased 8.5 per cent year on year.15 Irish tenacity was required to prepare for the competitive nature of EEC markets and to take advantage of export opportunities, despite the impossibility of membership in the short term.16 Bonn understood Dublin viewed progress in trade relations and investment as support for Ireland’s EEC aspirations and a sign of German confidence in the Irish reorientation. Germany gained a lever on Irish calculations by virtue of its investment in Ireland’s export-​driven modernisation. From 1959 to 1973, Germany was Ireland’s best single trading partner in the EEC, and the member state with by far the most industrial investment in Ireland.17 Taken together with Germany’s repeated declarations of support for Irish membership of the EEC, these created a reservoir of Irish goodwill towards Germany. (France, by comparison, lagged far behind as an Irish trade partner.)18 By 1964 of the 190 foreign firms that had

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established in Ireland since 1955, 21 per cent were German. It was the second largest industrial investor behind Britain (accounting for 46 per cent of foreign firms) and substantially ahead of the United States (14 per cent).19 By January 1965, at least 37 German factories had opened in Ireland.20 One result of this was that the Irish Government opened a permanent CTT office in Frankfurt in 1964, upgrading the temporary one opened in 1962, in response to increasing Irish manufactured exports to Germany. By the end of 1963, approximately 43 per cent (£2.5 million) of Irish exports to Germany were manufactures deriving mainly from German industrial investments.21 The Irish Independent reported in September 1965, ‘Among the six countries of the E.E.C., the FRG was easily Ireland’s biggest trading partner.’ For example, in 1961 exports to Germany accounted for 35 per cent of Ireland’s exports to the EEC.22 Buoyed by this, a German–​Irish Trade Association (GITA) was founded in November 1964 to promote trade.23 Irish Government financial incentives to investors, a pro-​business government, and low social and wage costs were a strong economic attraction. The tax break on profits generated from exports was also a strong pull factor.24 However, powerful interest groups in the Irish farming and agri-​business sectors remained dissatisfied. Germany after all was viewed, naively, in such circles as an insatiable urban-​industrial behemoth capable of devouring excess Irish products regardless of quality, poor marketing or a lack of demand for core Irish export products (e.g., beef ). Moderating such unrealistic expectations had been the challenge ever since the 1950s. Werner Schwarz, the German minister for food, agriculture and forestry, visited Ireland in early May 1964, and German ambassador Trützschler considered the visit was a ‘great success’. He reputedly emphasised to his Irish ministerial counterpart, the chairman of the NFA and the host government that Germany was advancing Irish interests as far as possible within the constraints of EEC rules.25 The Irish Times paraphrased Schwarz that ‘if trade arrangements were left solely to the governments of the two countries concerned, the volume of trade between Ireland and Germany would be very much greater’. However, Germany ‘had to attend to her Common Market commitments as well’.26 As part of the trade negotiations that year, the German representatives assured their Irish counterparts that German purchases of Irish beef and cattle would remain stable in the foreseeable future, but that butter exports would fall. The Germans repeated their traditional line that exports of several Irish commodities might be improved with better Irish market research and product promotion. Irish negotiators appeared to accept that one reason for the large trade imbalance was a lack of interest by Irish exporters beyond cattle, beef and butter exports.27 Irish agriculture and agri-​business lacked diversification, sophistication and resourcefulness, in the light of the effects of the complacency bred by traditional dependence on the British market.

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The Irish government recognised the road to the German market lay through Brussels. It requested an interim cattle and beef export arrangement with Germany on the model of the one enjoyed by the Danish. Denmark had agreed a special export deal with Germany circumventing or reducing the EEC’s tariffs until the end of 1965, and the Irish argued that as a traditional cattle and beef exporter to Germany, they were entitled to similar arrangements, since Ireland had liberalised the vast majority of its trade with the EEC.28 In the naive expectation that it would succeed in this gambit, Ireland failed to renew its request for a continuance of the bilateral quotas that had long governed the Irish–​German cattle and beef trade beyond the end of 1963. The Irish request for a special arrangement equivalent to that of Denmark’s was, of course, duly rejected by the Commission, which viewed the exceptional German-​Danish arrangement as contrary to the letter and spirit of the Common Market. In any case, the Danish agreement was due to terminate at the end of 1965. But it would not be renewed now.29 Notwithstanding Irish concerns about Denmark’s preferential treatment, Irish exports of live animals (primarily cattle) had increased from £1,247,000 to £5,364,000 between 1963 and 1965.30 A new ‘young and ambitious’ minister for agriculture,31 Charles J. Haughey, energetically lobbied his German counterpart, Schwarz, to redress ‘the prevailing imbalance’ in Irish–​German trade. He underlined, ‘that whether or not we can continue to buy more and more from them [the Germans] in the future will greatly depend on the response to our efforts to increase our sales to Germany’.32 According to German officials, 7 per cent of German imports of beef cattle were from Ireland.33 Haughey persisted in pursuing the European Commission for an interim arrangement despite its earlier rejection of the proposal.34 The introduction of quotas on cattle imports into the United States in 1964 redoubled Irish determination to maximise exports to Germany.35 In a reversal of roles in 1965, the Danes criticised British and by association Irish cattle exports to Germany. The first hint of difficulties emerged when the Danish prime minister and foreign minister visited Bonn on an official visit in June 1965. The Danes experienced ‘growing difficulties’ in exporting agricultural commodities to Germany as the EEC tariff wall began to affect Denmark too. The AA told the Irish ambassador that German duties on non-​EEC agricultural imports were rising to comply with the rules of the EEC. Similar to Dublin, Copenhagen had an acute balance-​of-​trade deficit with Germany and, reminiscent of earlier Irish suggestions, threatened to impose punitive duties on imported German cars if no progress was made. The AA informed the Danes and the Irish that no bilateral concessions were now possible under EEC rules. The Danes reacted by attempting to encourage bridge-​building between EFTA and the EEC, leading the AA to express concern about ‘the growing economic disunity in Western Europe’.36

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Later in 1965 and 1966, the Danes alleged that increased Irish and British exports to Germany were depressing the prices Denmark received for its sales in Germany. The complaint was directed primarily at Britain for allegedly allowing imports of Irish and Argentine cattle into Britain for re-​export to the FRG backed by British export subsidies. Thus, it was claimed, Irish beef exports to Germany were far greater than recognised. According to the Danish delegate to EFTA, ‘The amount of Irish beef going to Germany is 20 or 30 times as much as it used to be’. He further ‘claimed that Britain never had as large a market for beef in Germany until Irish beef was channelled through’ and ‘sold at ridiculously low prices’ subsidised by British export reliefs.37 The Danish feared the recently agreed Anglo-​Irish Free Trade Agreement (hereafter AIFTA) would compound matters and duly filed a suit against Britain within EFTA.38 German commentators divined the reason for Ireland’s motivation in concluding the 1965 AIFTA was to secure access to the British market. This was impelled when in October 1964 the new Labour Government imposed a temporary 15 per cent surcharge on imported manufactured goods which affected one-​third of Ireland’s exports to the UK.39 The AIFTA of 1965 that resulted from the Anglo-​Irish negotiations was both an economic necessity in terms of assuring Irish access to the British market and a ‘means to an end’. It also had the attendant value of disciplining Irish businesses on the rigours of competition and the end of protectionism; it formed the basis for Ireland’s reactivation of its case to enter GATT in 1965.40 Irish authorities were anxious to allay fears such as those expressed in the Westdeutsche Rundschau that the AIFTA would act to the disadvantage of German investors and firms. In 29 January 1966, the Wuppertal-​based newspaper wrote that ‘southern Ireland and England will become an economic unit … in the years ahead’ and British firms would replace German ones.41 This was refuted by the Irish authorities. A copy of Lemass’s lengthy pro-​EEC speech to the Council of Europe on 24 January 1966 was forwarded to Schröder on 3 February. Lemass’s complimentary speech on post-​war European integration and Irish determination to enter the EEC emphasised Ireland’s ‘European’ convictions and culture. Moreover, Lemass presented AIFTA as ‘a step closer to Europe’, which dispelled economic uncertainty in trade relations with Britain; it was a ‘transition’ to joining a ‘wider European grouping’, the EEC.42 The views of the Westdeutsche Rundschau were probably uncharacteristic of German reportage, more generally. The right-​of-​centre and influential national daily Die Welt, for example, understood Irish economic tactics as preparing for European competition in a graduated way to break the stranglehold of Britain on the Irish economy.43 Bonn did not draw any negative implications from AIFTA and accepted the Irish explanations. On the contrary, the accelerated liberalisation of the economy was commented on approvingly in German official circles as yet another sign that Ireland was actively preparing for integration. Germany remained a high-​priority

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Irish target for export promotion, trade advancement and industrial investors in the Irish economy.44 Success continued. Irish manufactured exports to Germany expanded; they were mainly the products of the German branch plants based in Ireland. Nonetheless, 1965 was the last year Ireland was able to export substantial quantities of beef cattle and other staple food products (e.g., butter) to Germany. The EEC’s punitive import duties effectively shut Ireland out.45 This underscored that the critical Irish cattle trade with Germany was inextricably bound up with the EEC. Unless Ireland could acquire market access it would be condemned to the increasingly competitive and diminishing British market. It also lacked the bargaining power of Denmark. As a member of EFTA, Copenhagen could speak the language of ‘bridge-​building’ and exploit the reality that it was a longstanding major supplier (pre-​twentieth century) of agricultural produce to Germany, which it bordered directly (unlike Ireland). Denmark’s economic and financial position grew acute in the 1960s as a result of a Europe at ‘Sixes and Sevens’. Denmark could, therefore, construct a stronger case and possessed more leverage and a greater moral claim on Germany.46 By September 1966 Irish live cattle exports to West Germany had ‘virtually disappeared’ –​from 30,000 to 40,000 head of cattle had been the norm in previous years.47 In comparison, the Danes experienced a serious decline but not a total collapse: their cattle exports to the FRG fell from 250,000 in 1965 to 180,000 in 1966.48 In September 1966, Aiken pleaded unsuccessfully with the EEC Commission.49 Then Germany decided to take advantage of a special inter-​zonal arrangement, which allowed it to trade with East Germany without the implementation of EEC tariffs. In October, the Irish celebrated the minor success of gaining an allowance to export 2,000 live cattle ‘off the grass’ in the following weeks to the FRG for re-​export to the GDR. Using the same device, Denmark had already received the right to export 16,000 head of cattle to the FRG.50 In spite of intensive diplomacy to recapture earlier levels of cattle export, the German and EEC markets were off limits for Ireland because of the prohibitively high Common External Tariff (CET). Only minor concessions could be pursued unless Ireland gained membership.51 Therefore, exclusion from the EEC market coupled with deepening integration of the EEC fuelled mounting challenges for Ireland’s efforts to trade with Germany especially (but not exclusively) in the field of agricultural products. The Regional Integration Arrangement (RIA) that underpinned the EEC distorted trade and motivated membership. However, Ireland benefited from German FDI, which in turn expanded Irish exports of manufactures. The ideal solution remained simultaneous Irish and British entry into the EEC at the earliest opportunity.

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181 Another veto

In January 1965, the minister for industry and commerce, Jack Lynch, and the minister for agriculture, Charles Haughey, embarked on a trade mission to the FRG and underlined Ireland’s devotion to eventual EEC membership.52 German newspapers were quick to note a major generational change was underway in Irish politics.53 This new post-​revolutionary generation adhered to the Lemassian line that there was no alternative to modernisation and EEC entry. This new generation reinforced the commitment of the Irish government, main opposition parties and economic interest groups to EEC membership. It was determined to differentiate the Irish from both the Austrians, who sought associate status, and the UK, which evinced ambivalence towards the EEC.54 The German Representative to the EEC concluded that Haughey’s visit to Brussels was intended to demonstrate Irish earnestness. He concluded that the Irishman’s ‘academic question’ to Jean Rey of the Commission about whether Ireland could join the EEC alone (i.e., without Britain) was a ploy: there was no possibility of this being feasible in the light of Irish economic dependence on Britain.55 In February 1965, Lemass distanced Dublin from London. In his declaration to the Cork Chamber of Commerce, Lemass indicated that he never shared the opinion of some British politicians that the EEC would collapse. Instead, his government was undertaking necessary measures to modernise the economy in anticipation of entry. According to the German ambassador, the Irish aimed to demonstrate to the EEC that Ireland was an avid and worthy applicant. Although elements of the German press speculated on the utility of association as a stepping stone to membership, repeated Irish government statements publicly rejected this as a tolerable solution. Critical lobby groups such as the Irish Farmers’ Association, and the Federation of Irish Industries were committed advocates of EEC membership.56 The sincerity of Irish intentions appeared incontrovertible. Signs of UK engagement with Europe emerged in mid-​1965 with the prime minister’s proposed bridge-​building between the EEC and EFTA. Moreover, Wilson floated the idea of greater technological collaboration with de Gaulle’s France. These developments were viewed hopefully in Irish circles. However, their German counterparts were realistic. For instance, while Günther Harkort, now the head of the trade division of the AA, favoured a contact procedure between EFTA and the EEC, he feared the proposal would anger the French. Besides both the EEC and EFTA were internally divided about the best way to solve the division of Europe into two trade blocs.57 Harkort possessed useful insights into the EEC process as he was the former German ambassador to the EEC. He had a doctorate in Irish–​British trade relations so he struck up a good working relationship with the Irish ambassador, Eamonn Kennedy. While acknowledging

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Ireland’s vulnerable trading position, he was consistent in communicating to Kennedy that the blockage to Irish accession would not be easily resolved; that is, the Anglo-​French mismatch and Franco-​German differences would prevent Britain from becoming a member of the EEC in the near term. Harkort expected that agriculture would be the sticking point –​de Gaulle would not alter CAP to meet British objections.58 In May 1966, Harkort discussed with Kennedy positive signs suggesting that the British Labour Government had undergone a partial conversion in favour of European integration or at least that the German foreign minister believed this to be the case. He informed Kennedy that Erhard and Schröder were sceptical about their ability to influence de Gaulle and bring about a successful British application because Franco-​German relations and Anglo-​French relations were at a low ebb, especially after de Gaulle’s recent withdrawal of France from the integrated military structure of NATO.59 ‘[A]‌ny talk of Britain’s entry before 1970 was just not realistic in present circumstances’, according to Harkort.60 Regardless, Bonn continued to offer Ireland moral support for its EEC ambitions and repeated its commitment to encourage German private investment in Ireland. Paul Lücke, the German minister of the interior, visited Dublin in August 1966 and he affirmed the steadfastness of Germany in this regard.61 It appeared that events were turning in Ireland’s favour in terms of the drift of the debate within the EEC. The French extraction of the Luxembourg compromise from ‘the Five’ in January 1966, following the unsettling EEC ‘empty chair crisis’, suited Irish (and British) preferences. The compromise permitted the invocation of vital national interests to block majority voting. If Ireland and Britain entered the EEC in due course, its political nature would be favourable to their state-​centric conceptions, in contrast to the integrationist impulses of West Germany and other member states. Then in September 1966 reports of Erhard’s statements on a visit to Oslo created a mixture of hope and concern in Irish circles. Erhard stated he did not support further EEC political integration as it would create difficulties in its external relationships particularly with the free nations of Europe.62 Harkort informed Kennedy that the Chancellor was simply ‘realistic’ in acknowledging the situation,63 notwithstanding the annoyance such an admission caused to the integrationist wing of the CDU. Worryingly (from an Irish perspective), Erhard also reportedly advised EFTA to negotiate entry into the EEC as a bloc. According to Kennedy, ‘The Chancellor also made the point … that if the European neutrals such as Sweden, Switzerland and Austria were to belong to a wider European trading area it would be necessary to distinguish between economic and political aims. In effect he seemed to be stressing the former.’64 But what about Ireland, as it was not a member of EFTA? Additionally, NATO membership was still not totally a dead letter. In an address to the Irish Council of the European Movement in Dublin on 6 March

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1967, the Vice-​President of the ECSC Albert Coppé declared, ‘The European Six are not neutral … we are not neutral and never will be.’ He declined to give a direct answer to the question of whether Ireland’s non-​NATO membership would present a problem. He reportedly specified that ‘consideration would need to be given to the fact that Ireland was a neutral nation’ with implications for North Atlantic defence.65 As the FRG ambassador informed Bonn, NATO membership remained a knotty issue in Irish politics, although in his estimation Ireland was not a genuine neutral, and partition was the primary obstacle to Irish participation in NATO.66 He thought the Irish were obsessed with the prospects of the Irish application to the EEC and were agitated by reported suggestions from Paris that Britain should join first and Ireland a number of years later.67 When Wilson launched Britain’s second application in May 1967, the Irish duly reactivated theirs and indicated that they hoped to join the EEC with Britain as full members by 1970. However, Britain’s application was unlikely to succeed. It amounted to a Wilsonian stratagem that had the double aim of exhibiting Labour’s determination to enter the EEC while underlining de Gaulle’s perverseness in the face of evident British tractability.68 This time the internal German divisions that had marked Ireland’s efforts to join in 1961 and 1962 had been surmounted and the EEC division of the AA judged that the Irish application posed no serious problems. It adjudged Ireland’s economy could meet the stringencies of entry, even if ‘the transition to a free market in an enlarged community will not be easy in every respect for Ireland’. For instance, the Irish determination to protect infant industries would cause problems and Irish agricultural exports might unsettle German agricultural interest groups. Ireland had to catch up expeditiously in terms of social policy to meet European norms. However, the EEC division believed these issues were resolvable.69 In sum, the AA concluded that relations between Germany and Ireland were agreeable. The FRG was now Ireland’s second largest export market.70 When the Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, and the minister for finance, Charles Haughey, visited Bonn on 27 June 1967, the new West German chancellor, Kurt Kiesinger, and the German finance minister, Franz Josef Strauss, restated the FRG’s support. They promised to coax sceptical France to recognise Britain’s suitability for EEC membership. They underscored the gravity of the French obstacle.71 Strauss raised the question of Ireland’s contingency plans should Britain’s second effort fail: would Ireland persist with its application? Haughey maintained that for the practical reasons, such as AIFTA, this was unlikely.72 Dublin maintained a buoyant public persona in European circles and reiterated Ireland’s commitment to meet the obligations of membership. In the face of Lynch’s undying public optimism following a disheartening interview with de Gaulle in November, the FRG Embassy in Paris reported that the director of European affairs at the Quai d’Orsay found Lynch’s optimistic public declarations to be ‘incomprehensible’. The director speculated that domestic Irish

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political factors underlay Lynch’s enduring public optimism.73 As predicted, de Gaulle blocked Britain’s accession again on 27 November 1967. Ireland was left in the same indeterminate position it had occupied since January 1963. In the aftermath of de Gaulle’s second veto, Die Welt recognised Ireland’s desire to join the EEC remained as fervent as ever and its motivations were stronger than the other applicants as it searched for market diversification.74 Ireland’s failure to enter the EEC had led to the loss of some traditional markets, in particular the German market for beef and cattle. As a result, Ireland experienced an overproduction of cattle and beef; the UK market was incapable of absorbing the export surplus created by EEC tariff barriers. A solo Irish application to join the EEC was inconceivable. After all 70 per cent of total Irish exports were destined for Britain.75 The Irish continued to lobby for Irish cattle exports to Germany in the late 1960s and early 1970s, admitting to their German counterparts that the matter of the equal treatment of Irish and Danish cattle imports into Germany was a Community decision. This lack of a level playing field could only be remedied once Ireland became a member of the EEC.76 The Gaullist impediment Following de Gaulle’s 1967 veto, speculation was widespread that EFTA and the EEC might embark on a bridge-​building arrangement. There was no serious consideration by the Irish of EFTA membership. In any case, in spite of widespread speculation, no action was taken on EFTA–​EEC bridge-​building. De Gaulle had floated the possibility of Irish association to the EEC in his conversation with Lynch at their meeting in November 1967,77 but Dublin’s view was that such a halfway house could become permanent and it would not satisfy Ireland’s needs. In 1968 the Six discussed a number of initiatives to build an interim link with the applicants short of membership. Germany spearheaded a joint German–​French proposal for a progressive reduction in industrial trade obstacles with the applicants, but it was vague regarding agricultural products generating anxiety in Ireland. The Irish, like the Danes, ‘found themselves in the same kind of uncomfortable situation’: they disliked any talk of an interim arrangement that might become a substitute for, or defer, membership. Kennedy felt Germany in taking a leading role in floating an interim associate arrangement was ‘speaking with a lack of consistency’, perhaps even ‘a lack of candour’. On one hand, the foreign minister, Willy Brandt, asserted that such a trade arrangement was no substitute for full membership; rather it was a stepping stone to it. Regardless, EEC widening was off the agenda and no interim arrangement could be designed to achieve full membership while de Gaulle was in power, in Kennedy’s view.78 It may be, the Dutch ambassador to the FRG later told Kennedy, that ‘the Germans were playing a waiting game until their own general elections’ later in 1969.79

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The FRG–​French proposal was only one of the vague proposals put forward by the Six. The Six’s discussions were interminable and indeterminate. The lack of consensus between ‘the Five’ and France was palpable. The stalemate was likely to continue indefinitely much to the exasperation of Ireland. Irish–​FRG relations, no matter how cordial, were not the passport to EEC membership. In essence, the FRG–​Irish relationship (in addition to its bilateral relations with Britain, Denmark and Norway) was peripheral to core German foreign policy interests, particularly the sustenance of the FRG–​French axis of European integration. During late 1968 and early 1969, representatives of Germany endeavoured to provide suitably soothing words of support to Ireland while working to maintain some semblance of Franco-​German unity, by leading a proposal for an interim trading arrangement. Bonn’s contortions were occasionally viewed as somewhat hypocritical by Irish official commentators. In general, though, the Irish officials and diplomats were realists:  they understood Germany lacked room for manoeuvre in the light of its prevailing interests. The unscripted departure of de Gaulle as president of France, in April 1969, transformed the attitude of Germany’s ‘Grand Coalition’ of Social and Christian Democrats. Kiesinger’s government adopted a pro-​enlargement line sensing the opportunity to reverse the European logjam. Strauss, the finance minister, emerged as a robust political personality in 1969; he was a stout advocate of British membership. The Irish ambassador estimated that Strauss favoured the simultaneous entry of the four applicants (Britain, Ireland, Denmark and Norway).80 Just weeks following de Gaulle’s exit from the political scene, Kiesinger auspiciously declared that the linkage between political and economic integration should be broken: economic integration should not necessarily lead to political integration. This pronouncement was important. Kiesinger’s explicit acknowledgement that neutral countries should not be excluded simply because they did not wish to partake in a prospective common defence and foreign policy heartened the Irish Government.81 Then in mid-​July, Gerhard Jahn, the parliamentary secretary of state at the AA, officially confirmed to a relieved Lynch and the newly appointed minister for external affairs, Patrick Hillery, that it was the German intention to treat all applicants equally and thus Germany wanted the negotiations to start and end simultaneously for all four.82 The Irish ambassador formed the impression that whoever won the next federal election in the FRG, a renewed Federal consensus would prevail in favour of enlargement.83 Just weeks later, the foreign minister, Brandt, delivered an assertive pro-​ enlargement speech to the SPD convention in the same vein. The Irish ambassador argued that the forcefulness of Brandt’s delivery was a warning to the French ‘not to attempt to bargain for prior agreement on agricultural policy against expanded membership’.84 This new German assertiveness reflected not alone the political demise of de Gaulle but the political transformation and sense of resulting from the experience and success of the national unity

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government of the Grand Coalition (SPD and CDU) since 1966. As Pulzer argues, it counted as the ‘second foundation’ of the FRG.85 There was also a realisation that Germany was the economic powerhouse of Western Europe and its preferences mattered in EEC matters. However, just as optimism broke out in favour of enlargement in summer 1969 new shadows threatened to obscure the Irish path to Europe. Evidence emerged in the early autumn suggesting that Irish commentators had misread Kiesinger’s instincts. In fact, his views on enlargement differed quite substantially and worryingly from Brandt’s and in ways that were less favourable to Irish preferences. As Kennedy reported in August, Kiesinger began to espouse a more demanding approach to enlargement raising the bar for applicants. Die Welt reported Kiesinger favoured the development of an EC common foreign and defence policy within the framework of NATO before the commencement of enlargement negotiations. Kiesinger opined publicly that even though he favoured eventual British membership of the EEC the country was beset by serious social, economic and political problems. Kennedy interpreted this as a sign that the chancellor considered Britain was not ready for membership, and the Six should proceed with elaborating a common foreign policy. Brandt firmly disassociated himself from Kiesinger’s comments, and plainly stated that talks on foreign and defence policy coordination could only begin following enlargement. These signs of disagreement within the ‘Grand Coalition’ were worrisome, as were the indications that Kiesinger’s perspective prevailed among the personnel of the AA. Guarded pessimism about the prospects for enlargement prevailed among senior members of the AA at the end of September, in Kennedy’s estimation.86 There were signals, in the assessment of Kennedy, Kiesinger’s enthusiasm for the early inclusion of Britain had waned following the outbreak of the Northern Ireland Troubles in August 1969.87 Fortunately for the Irish, Brandt formed a centre-​left SPD–​FDP coalition following the federal election on 28 September 1969. The accession of Brandt to the Chancellery greatly assisted the British (and by extension the Irish) candidature.88 Brandt’s pursuit of Ostpolitik and the FRG’s adherence to a tighter form of proposed EC monetary integration worried the new French president, Georges Pompidou. Pompidou now began to view Britain as a would-​be ally within the EC against a more assertive Germany, which was less willing to follow the Elysée’s political lead. The chances of British, and by implication, Irish entry increased. Once Pompidou extracted the guarantee at The Hague Summit that CAP financing would be finalised before enlargement occurred, the date for the commencement of enlargement negotiations was set for June 1970. The French turn towards Britain was eased by the accession as British prime minister of the convinced ‘European’ Edward Heath, following the victory of the Conservatives in the general election of June 1970.89 The prospects of Irish accession to the EEC now appeared promising.

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In early 1970, the AA considered the Irish application to be a relatively straightforward affair. It understood Ireland’s desire to be kept informed of the progression of the negotiations with the other applicants, particularly Britain, and if no Community method could be found to ensure this, the FRG would be content to do so at a bilateral level.90 In February 1970, the FRG foreign minister, Walter Scheel, assured his Irish opposite number, Patrick Hillery, that Ireland should not expect any major problems in the accession negotiations; similarly, Scheel maintained the view that Ireland would not experience many difficulties in the subsequent transition phase to full entry. This allayed Hillery’s fears. Germany promised fulsome support for the Irish wish for the Community to conduct parallel negotiations with the four applicant states with the objective of simultaneous accessions.91 By and large, Hillery and Hugh McCann, the secretary of the Department for External Affairs, were pleased with the warm welcome and support they received on their visit to Bonn in February 1970.92 By the time that Ireland’s formal negotiations for the EEC entry commenced in the summer and autumn, the FRG had formed a solid grasp of many of the sticking points in the forthcoming EC–​Irish negotiations. It identified Ireland’s probable special demands would be transitional periods, anti-​dumping measures, the protection of developing industry, tariffs on imports of raw materials for industry, regional development policy and such.93 Since the early 1960s, the Lemassian line prevailed in Dublin: assurances that Ireland unreservedly accepted the aims of the treaties, including their political and defence implications, were volunteered by members of the Irish government and the civil service at every opportunity.94 In any case, neutrality’s salience as a litmus test for membership had declined since the mid-​1960s. This partially reflected the irreconcilable intra-​Community differences over foreign and defence policy cooperation, and the success of the Irish at communicating their message about the sui generis and malleable nature of Irish neutrality. Perhaps the replacement of Aiken by Hillery in 1969 had finally smoothed any lingering German concerns. As the counsellor (later chargé d’affaires) of the Dublin Embassy, Dr Josef Koenig noted as early as July 1969 the Irish Government was prepared to embrace the political aims of the EC, and the people generally felt they were Europeans, notwithstanding their strong ties with America.95 The Irish were content with the open contacts between the German and Irish governments following Britain’s application for membership in June 1970.96 Although Bonn informed Dublin that the negotiations would be difficult and ‘at times hard’,97 the Germans were optimistic. A  widespread Irish perception prevailed that Germany was supportive and constructive.98 The Irish started to work closely and build relations with the Danes in 1971. Kennedy estimated it was in Irish interests to work with them as they drew on

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‘a deep overdraft of goodwill’ in Germany. In this way, ‘we should be able to use our influence to the best advantage in the Federal Republic’. Brandt was well disposed towards the Scandinavians. Not least, he had a Norwegian wife but also he subscribed to a social democratic vision for a wider Europe and solidarity with the social democratic governments of Scandinavia.99 Ireland and Denmark held many common negotiating positions in the EC adhesion process that made an ad hoc issue-​based concert advantageous. Contrary to the UK, they favoured no transitional period for agriculture, as they aimed to export food freely and expeditiously. They both craved the financial windfalls arising from full and early participation in the subsidised food production system of the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). This conflicted with the British preference for a readjustment period of five or six years for their agricultural and food-​importing systems and their dislike of CAP supports for producers and guaranteed food prices.100 The Danes and Irish also favoured the negotiations with all applicants commencing and ending concurrently. They feared the British ‘might try to reach agreement on issues that would vitally affect’ them, for example, on food prices during a mooted transitional period.101 Thus Ireland fell in with the Danes on many issues, and the Germans were predisposed towards generosity towards the Danes for reasons of history and propinquity. The German negotiators were impressed by the positive, open and unqualified spirit of the Irish declarations at the start of the negotiating process in the summer and autumn of 1970.102 According to the German ambassador, Ireland, unlike other applicants, was negotiating according to the spirit of the Treaty of Rome: it was not trying to alter it through negotiations.103 Hillery guaranteed that Ireland would participate constructively in the political aims of the Community.104 The Irish negotiators emphasised where necessary that this positive Irish engagement extended to future EC defence policy since Ireland’s neutrality was not doctrinaire, so it was not a traditional, treaty-​bound or ideological neutral comparable to Switzerland, Sweden and Austria.105 Ireland would play its role in the common defence of a politically unified Europe.106 It was vital to engage constructively with EC political cooperation in the run-​up to and following the publication of the Davignon Report of October 1970. This report arose from The Hague Summit of December 1969 and delineated ways to increase EC foreign policy action.107 To validate its European credentials, as well as to partake in the unfolding foreign policy coordination debate, the Irish requested German support for Irish participation in the meetings of the Davignon Committee in February 1972. The European Unity desk of the AA promised to ‘warmly’ support this and noted Ireland’s lack of reservations in comparison to Denmark and Norway.108 The impressions German representatives conveyed, throughout the enlargement negotiations, were that there were no ‘insuperable difficulties’ in relation to the Irish candidature.109 However, Bonn emphasised that any EC concessions to overcome Irish accession difficulties, including on the sensitive issue of an

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exclusive Irish fisheries coastal zone ‘could only be in the context of transitional arrangements’.110 The challenges raised by Ireland’s application were minute in comparison to those raised by Britain’s. As the AA indicated in November 1970, Ireland’s entry into the EC would not dramatically affect the internal balance:  only 0.3 per cent of the EC imports from non-​member states originated in Ireland; only 0.5 per cent of EC exports were destined for Ireland; and its population of approximately 3  million signified a mere 2 per cent increase in the EC’s population. Notwithstanding the importance of agriculture for Ireland it would not pose problems for EC agriculture or CAP.111 The fisheries issue became a ‘sticking point’ in the negotiations, and Dublin requested the recognition of the Irish language as an official EC language, but the Irish were ‘ready to make concessions’ in the German estimation.112 The impression that Keating obtained from Poensgen of the AA was that the Germans, on the whole, highly regarded the Irish negotiator’s behaviour on the fisheries question for being ‘constructive’ and Ireland confined itself to ‘fighting only on matters of real importance and had not created difficulties about unimportant side questions’.113 The German authorities also responded positively to Irish requests for an EC regional policy on the basis that the implementation of such a policy would both increase and reflect Community solidarity.114 Of course, Irish entry ‘depended more on the British attitude and political will for membership than on the EEC’.115 The Conservative Party’s victory over Labour in the general election of 18 June 1970 was opportune: the new prime minister, Edward Heath, was a convinced, long-​term advocate of UK membership of the EC. By this point integration had advanced swiftly following The Hague Summit, which created more obstacles for British adhesion. In particular, the Treaty of Luxembourg of April 1970 directed that the EC should be financed using a mechanism (providing the EC with its ‘own resources’), which would fall disproportionately on member states that relied heavily on imports from non-​EC states. This would operate to the UK’s economic disadvantage when it entered the EC; it possessed an unusually large international trade footprint. The British Government was prepared to accept the institutions and practices of the EC without qualification (in contrast to 1961), but it desired to reduce the budgetary cost of membership to reflect its weakened economy. France, the chief beneficiary of the Luxembourg funding mechanism, was unwilling to adjust the EC funding mechanism. The consequence was an Anglo-​French dispute, which prevented the enlargement negotiations from advancing quickly. By 29 April 1971, Keating was reporting ‘everybody sees some difficult bargaining on comparatively minor points [in the Irish accession negotiations] but no basic problem other than the British one’. He was informed ‘delicately’ by the AA that the prospect of Irish entry without Britain were ‘virtually nil on political quite apart from economic grounds since in view of any eventual

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political activity by the community our membership would strategically be very difficult for Britain and so even at this stage would give rise to problems both for the Six and for our neighbour’.116 Many in Bonn feared the British accession bid was in danger of failing. The ‘overall consensus’ among the diplomatic corps and the AA in Bonn, according to Keating, deemed French ‘intransigence’ was primarily at fault. However, there was also a ‘growing acceptance’ that France had ‘legitimate interests’ to protect, while the British were ‘proving too tough in their bargaining stance’, having not left ‘sufficient room for manoeuvre’.117 Keating was deeply concerned. Until April 1971 the German diplomatic line had been one of ‘utter optimism’. Now the German feeling was that ‘a great deal remains to be achieved in comparatively little time’ and they were anxious about the growing evidence of a negative British public reaction to eventual membership.118 The Department of External Affairs realised the lack of influence the ‘Five’, including Germany, had over the French. As the German ambassador to the UK told his Irish counterpart in late April 1971: ‘the great problem for the Five at the present time is to get some idea as to how Monsieur Pompidou’s mind is working on the question of British admission. He is playing his cards very close to his chest and that makes it all the more difficult to bring any influence to bear on him.’119 The German ambassador to London predicted that a heads of government meeting between Pompidou and Heath was necessary to ‘resolve’ the crisis.120 The details of the Anglo-​French summit of 20 and 21 May 1971 are not germane here, except to point out that Heath, the committed Europhile, convinced the French president of the sincerity of Britain’s commitment to EC membership and its willingness to play by communitarian rules. Heath’s views of Britain in Europe and Europe in the international system were sufficiently convergent with those of Pompidou, perhaps even identical in certain respects, to satisfy the French President. As a result of the bilateral meeting, Pompidou believed Heath’s Britain would adapt to specific EC policies (relating to the EC budget, economic and monetary union, political cooperation and agriculture) and adopt a genuinely ‘European’ attitude. This newfound Anglo-​French political will facilitated the swift clearance of the logjam of the negotiations during the remainder 1971. The Irish negotiations to join the EC were completed successfully in January 1972.121 Ireland signed the treaty just days later. Official Germany applauded the signs of Irish modernisation, Europeanisation and national moderation since the early 1960s. However, reactionary, extreme nationalist and xenophobic responses to modernisation by segments of the Irish population disconcerted many German commentators in the 1960s and early 1970s. These will be explored in the next chapter. Such forces were on open display as part of the campaign for the national referendum to modify Bunreacht na hÉireann (Irish Constitution) and permit Irish entry to the EC in 1972.

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191 Notes

1 AA-​PA, B20–​200, Band 1823, Houwald to AA, 3 February 1963. 2 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 256, Houwald to AA, 11 February 1963. 3 AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 1823, Harkort to AA, 24 July 1963. 4 Ibid., von Trützschler to AA, 2 August 1963. 5 AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 1825, Lahr note, 5 August 1963. 6 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 276, Trützschler to AA, 31 January 1964. 7 AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 1823, Harkort to AA, 1 February 1965. 8 A. Grosser, Germany in Our Time: A Political History of the Postwar Years, trans. Paul Stephenson (London: Pall Mall Press, 1971), p. 314. 9 Pulzer, German Politics, p. 74; J. W. Friend, The Linchpin: French-​German Relations, 1950–​90 (New York: Praeger, 1991), pp. 43–​4. 10 NAI, DFA, CRS, 313/​10J, Kennedy to McCann, 7 July 1964. 11 Ibid., Report, Kennedy to McCann, Conversation with Dr Erhard, 30 June 1964. 12 Ibid., Kennedy to McCann, 30 June 1964, p. 1. 13 Ibid., Gallagher to McCann, 28 March 1964. 14 Daly, First Department, p. 370; Geary, Inconvenient Wait, pp. 62–​3. 15 ‘Steigende Industrieproduktion in Irland’, Handelsblatt, 24 October 1964. 16 ‘No Extension of Time available to adapt industry’, Cork Examiner, 7 February 1964, p. 1. 17 See, for example:  ‘Mr. Colley sees heads of “Six” ’, Irish Independent, 28 February 1967, p. 10. 18 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 277, Report, Trützschler to AA, Besuch des französischen Aussenministers in Dublin, 19 June 1964. 19 ‘Steigende Industrieproduktion in Irland; Lohnerhöhungen bereits bis Ende 1965 festgelegt’, Handelsblatt, 24 February 1964. The following year Germans made up approximately 25% of the foreign companies that had established firms in Ireland since 1955: ‘Germans welcome Irish goods Cologne Fair leader states’, Irish Independent, 18 June 1965, p. 3. 20 ‘Irland sucht Fabriken’, Die Welt, 27 January 1965. 21 ‘New Coras Trachtála Office in Frankfurt’, Irish Times, 21 October 1964, p. 11; ‘New Trade Office Opened in Germany’, Irish Times, 22 October 1964, p. 11. 22 ‘Irish Exports to Germany Show Increase’, Irish Independent, 30 September 1965, p. 6. 23 ‘New German-​Irish Trade Body’, Irish Times, 27 November 1964, p. 9. 24 ‘Steigende Industrieproduktion in Irland; Lohnerhöhungen bereits bis Ende 1965 festgelegt’, Handelsblatt, 24 February 1964. 25 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 276, Report, Besuch des Herrn Bundesministers für Ernährung, Landwirtschaft und Forsten in Irland, Trützschler to AA, 14 May 1964. 26 ‘German Minister Begins Visit’, Irish Times, 4 May 1964, p. 1. 27 Diplomatic Correspondent, ‘German Market Can Be Developed’, Irish Times, 29 April 1964, p.  7; Diplomatic Correspondent, ‘Dairy Industry Cool to German Suggestion’, Irish Times, 7 May 1964, p. 13. 28 See Geary, Inconvenient Wait, pp. 65–​8; ‘Ireland’s Stand in E.E.C. Talks’, Irish Times, 26 May 1964, p. 11; ‘Closer Link with European Community’, Irish Times, 23 July 1964, p. 8; FitzGerald, Protectionism to Liberalisation, pp. 246, 248–​9.

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2 9 Geary, Inconvenient Wait, p. 68. 30 ‘Substantial Growth in Exports to Germany’, Irish Times, 19 May 1966, p. 14. 31 AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 1823, Report, Trützschler to AA, Irland und die Europäische Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft, 18 February 1965. 32 ‘Expanding Trade with Germany’, Irish Times, 30 September 30, 1965, p.  4; Our Diplomatic Correspondent, ‘Haughey keen about Beef Sales to Germany’, Irish Times, 1 February 1965, p. 1. 33 ‘Haughey Seeking German Sales’, Irish Times, 30 January 1965, p. 7. 34 AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 1823, Fax, Harkort to AA, Beziehungen zu Irland, 1 February 1965. 35 Niall Fallon, ‘Our Export Prospects’, Irish Times, 1 April, 1965, p. 1. 36 NAI, DFA, CRS, 96/​3/​211, Kennedy to McCann, 11 June 1965. 37 ‘Irish Beef Exports worry Denmark’, Irish Times, December 17, 1965, p. 1; Diplomatic Correspondent, ‘Danes Complain of Irish Exports’, Irish Times, 24 January 1966, p. 1. 38 ‘Denmark sues Britain’, Irish Independent, 15 February 1966, p. 1. 39 FitzGerald, Protectionism to Liberalisation, p. 242; AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 277, Houwald to AA, 30 October 1964. 40 Maher, Tortuous Path, pp. 192–​3. 41 NAI, DFA, Embassy Series, Bonn, PP/​1/​3, Press cutting, Westdeutsche Rundschau, 10 January 1966 & 29 January 1966. 42 NAI, DFA, Embassy Series, Bonn, D/​1/​4, Kennedy to Schröder, 3 February 1966. 43 Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, Sankt Augustin, Pressedokumentation, file:  Staaten, Irland, 1951–​83, Press cutting, Die Welt, 27 February 1965. 44 For example: ‘Germans told of Ireland’s Advantages’, Irish Times, 15 October 1965, p. 12; ‘Irland sucht Fabriken’, Die Welt, 27 January 1965; NAI, DFA, CRS, 96/​3/​211, Report, Kennedy to McCann, Ministerial Conversations on the Common Market, 5 February 1965. 45 Daly, First Department, p. 475. 46 For an Irish commentator’s unfavourable perspective on Ireland’s lack of influence on the EEC relative to Denmark, see: John Lambert, ‘Ireland Waits in the Queue for Common Market Membership’, Irish Times, 10 February 1967, p. 5. 47 Wesley Boyd, ‘E.E.C. Turns Down Tariff Proposal’, Irish Times, 21 September 1966, p. 1. 48 Diplomatic Correspondent, ‘Joint Approach to E.E.C.  on Cattle?’, Irish Times, 8 February 1967, p. 1. 49 Ibid.; Editorial, ‘Back from Brussels’, Irish Independent, 22 September 1966, p. 12. 50 ‘Cattle for Germany’, Irish Times, 13 October 1966, p. 6; Diplomatic Correspondent, ‘Cattle Deal arranged in Brussels’, Irish Times, 14 October 1966, p.  11; ‘Haughey quizzed by Television Panel’, Irish Times, 21 October 1966, p.  11; Diplomatic Correspondent, ‘2,000 Cattle Order not Delivered’, Irish Times, 3 December 1966, p. 1; ‘Long Way Round’, Irish Times, 13 December 1966, p. 11. 51 Wesley Boyd, Diplomatic Correspondent, ‘Lynch will seek German market for Irish Cattle’, Irish Times, 27 June 1967, p. 1; Diplomatic Correspondent, ‘Germans seek Import of Irish Cattle’, Irish Times, 11 August 1967, p. 1; ‘EEC Ban on Irish Live Cattle Imports’, Irish Independent, 27 October 1967, p. 1; NAI, DFA, Embassy Series,

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Bonn, PP/​1/​5, Press Cutting, ‘Irlands Exportweg ist lang’, Handelsblatt (Düsseldorf ), 23 February 1967; AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 1824, Note by AA, Gespräch des irischen Aussenministers Hillery mit Herrn Staatssekretär Dr. Harkort am 04/​02/​70, 5 February 1970. 52 ‘Irland sucht Fabriken’, Die Welt, 27 January 1965; NAI, DFA, CRS, 96/​3/​211, Kennedy to McCann, 5 February 1965. 53 ‘Irland vor einem neuen Abschnitt’, Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung, 29 April 1965. 54 NAI, DFA, CRS, 96/​ 3/​ 211, Kennedy to McCann, 5 February 1965; AA-​ PA, Bestand B20–​ 200, Band 1823, Trützschler to AA, Irland und die Europäische Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft, 18 February 1965. 55 Ibid.; NAI, DFA, CRS, 96/​3/​211, Kennedy to McCann, 5 February 1965; AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 1823, Harkort to AA, 1 February 1965. 56 AA-​ PA, Bestand B20–​ 200, Band 1823, Trützschler to AA, 18 February 1965; ‘Irland blickt zum Kontinent’, Die Welt, 27 February 1965; ‘Irland vor einem neuen Abschnitt’, Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung, 29 April 1965. 57 NAI, DFA, CRS, 96/​3/​211, Kennedy to McCann, 20 August 1965. 58 NAI, DFA, CRS, 2001/​43/​201, Kennedy to McCann, 11 March 1966. 59 Ibid., Kennedy to McCann, 27 May 1966. 60 Ibid., Kennedy to McCann, 28 September 1966. 61 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 302, Trützschler to AA, 10 August 1966. 62 NAI, DFA, CRS, 2001/​43/​201, Kennedy to McCann, 28 September 1966; ‘Erhard to Propose Efta Talks with Six?’, Financial Times, 5 September 1966, p. 1. 63 Ibid., Kennedy to McCann, 28 September 1966, p. 2. 64 Ibid., p. 1. 65 Diplomatic Correspondent, ‘Ireland may have to join NATO: “Six are not neutral” ’, Irish Times, 7 March 1967, p. 11; AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 1823, Trützschler to AA, 23 March 1967, pp. 3–​4. 66 AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 1823, Trützschler to AA, 23 March 1967, pp. 4–​5. 67 Ibid., pp. 5–​6. 68 See Parr, passim. 69 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 311 & Bestand B20, Band 1823, Report by Dr. Poensgen, 20 June 1967. 70 AA-​ PA, Bestand B20–​ 200, Band 1823, AA Report, Besuch des irischen Ministerpräsidenten John Lynch am 27. Juni 1967 in Bonn, 20 June 1967. 71 Ibid., Meyer-​Lindenberg to Brandt, 28 June 1967. 72 Ibid. 73 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 311, Fax, Limbourg to AA, 7 November 1967. 74 Rudolf Herlt, ‘Irland heute –​zwischen Harfe und Baukran’, Die Welt, 20 April 1968. 75 AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 1824, Koenig to AA, 4 July 1969. 76 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 376, Note by AA, 2 February 1970. 77 AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 1824, Fax from Limbourg to AA, 6 November 1967. 78 NAI, DFA, CRS, 2000/​14/​468, Kennedy to McCann, 3 January 1969. 79 Ibid., Kennedy to McCann, 16 January 1969. This corroborates D.  J. Maher’s account. See Maher, Tortuous Path, p. 237. 80 Ibid., Kennedy to McCann, 29 May 1969.

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81 NAI, DFA, CRS, 2000/​14/​468, Report from Chargé d’Affaires Irish embassy in Bonn to McCann, 3 June 1969. 82 AA-​PA, B20–​200, Band 1824, Fax from Jahn to Brandt, 16 July 1969. 83 NAI, DFA, CRS, 2000/​14/​468, Kennedy to McCann, 2 July 1969. 84 Ibid., Kennedy to McCann, 22 July 1969. 85 See Pulzer, German Politics, p. 89. 86 NAI, DFA, CRS, 2000/​14/​468, Kennedy to McCann, 29 August 1969. 87 Ibid., Kennedy to McCann, 19 September 1969; ibid., Report, The Situation in Northern Ireland and the German Government, 23 December 1969. 88 Kennedy told the deputy head of the AA’s Political Division I  that he noted the important contribution that Germany had made in the landmark summit, see: AA-​ PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 1824, Note from Gehlhoff to AA Secretary of State(?), 16 December 1969. 89 D. Dinan, Ever Closer Union, 2nd edn (London: Macmillan, 1999), pp. 59–​64; P. M. R. Stirk and D. Weigal (eds), The Origins and Development of European Integration (London: Pinter, 1999), pp. 215–​18; D. W. Urwin, The Community of Europe: A History of European Integration since 1945, 2nd edn (London: Longman, 1995), pp. 139–​40; P. H. Gordon, France, Germany, and the Western Alliance (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995), p. 15; H. Young, This Blessed Plot (London: Macmillan, 1998), p. 215. The Irish Ambassador to Bonn reported that prior to The Hague Summit the British were convinced there was a genuine will to enlarge the EEC, and that Brandt’s government was likely to be helpful to the British perspective, see: NAI, DFA, CRS, 2000/​14/​468, Kennedy to McCann, 20 November 1969. 90 Ibid. 91 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 376, Report, Besprechung des Herrn Bundesministers mit dem irischen Außenminister Dr. Hillery am 4. Februar 1970, 12 February 1970. 92 Keogh, Lynch, p. 292; AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 1824, Hillery to Scheel, 13 February 1960; ibid., Hillery to Brandt, 13 February 1960. 93 AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 1825, Note by AA, 25 June 1970. 94 See, for example: AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 276, Trützschler to AA, 31 January 1964; AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 1824, Koenig to AA, 4 July 1969; AA-​PA, B20–​200, Band 1824, Koenig to AA, 21 July 1969; AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 1825, Fax, Overbeck to AA, Irischer EWG-​Beitritt; erster Verhandlungstag in Luxemburg, 1 July 1970; AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 1825, Sachs to AA, 22 September 1970; AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 1825, AA Note, 24 November 1970; AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 1825, Overbeck to AA, 1 December 1970. 95 AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 1824, Note from Koenig to AA, 4 July 1969. 96 Ibid., Band 1825, Overbeck to AA, 6 August 1970; AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 1825, Fax from Overbeck to AA, 6 August 1970. 97 NAI, Dublin, DFA, CRS, 2001/​43/​202, Keating to McCann, 2 October 1970. 98 Even German officials noted this Irish perception. See: AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 1824, Koenig to AA, 4 July 1969. 99 NAI, DFA, CRS, 2001/​43/​202, Kennedy to McCann, 19 February 1970. 100 Ibid., Kennedy to McCann, 30 January 1970. 101 Ibid., Kennedy to McCann, 19 February 1970.

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1 02 AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 1825, Note by AA, 24 November 1970. 103 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 376, Overbeck to AA, 19 December 1970. 104 AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 1825, Fax from Overbeck, 1 December 1970. 105 Ibid.; NAI, DFA, Embassy Series, Bonn, D/​ 101/​ 1, Fogarty to Keating, 8 February 1971. 106 NAI, DFA, Embassy Series, Bonn, D/​101/​1, Fogarty to Keating, 8 February 1971. 107 S. J. Nuttall, European Political Co-​Operation (Oxford: Oxford University, 1992), pp. 51–​80. 108 NAI, DFA, 2003/​17/​88, Keating to McCann, 10 February 1972. 109 NAI, DFA, 2001/​43/​202, Keating to McCann, 1 October 1970, p. 1. 110 Ibid., p. 3. 111 AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 1825, Note by AA, 24 November 1970. 112 Ibid., Band 1913, Report by AA, 1 September 1971. 113 NAI, DFA, 2006/​131/​1189, Keating to McCann, 14 December 1971. 114 AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 1913, Note by AA, 9 September 1971. 115 NAI, DFA, Embassy Series, Bonn, D/​101/​1, Fogarty to Keating, 8 February 1971. 116 NAI, DFA 2006/​131/​1189, Keating to McCann, 29 April 1971. 117 Ibid. 118 Ibid., Keating to Morrissey, 1 April 1971. 119 NAI, DFA, 2003/​1/​854, O’Sullivan to Morrissey, 28 April 1971. Cited in: Michael Whelan, ‘Anglo-​Irish Relations in the Framework of the EEC and Northern Ireland, 1969–​75’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University College Cork, 2013), p. 88. 120 Ibid. 121 AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 1913, Fax from Sachs to AA, 19 January 1972.

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The national referendum on Irish entry to the EC took place on 10 May 1972. The result in favour of accession was an endorsement of modernisation and Europeanisation, and all that they entailed. The turnout of 71 per cent and the resounding 83 per cent in favour were interpreted by native modernising elites and external supporters as popular approval of government policies.1 A deeper analysis of the referendum campaign reveals an impassioned public debate about the implications of Irish adaptation to the European and international ‘mainstream’. As early as 1970 the FRG ambassador, Kuno Overbeck, perceived that EC membership required a transformation of Ireland’s collective psychology and identity. After all, it was a country that had attained full independence relatively recently. In August 1970 Overbeck worried that membership would prove difficult –​it required a renunciation of Ireland’s traditional way of thinking.2 Unquestionably, the accession negotiations instigated vigorous debates among interest groups such as trade unions and industrial associations, but Overbeck concluded the general public was not deeply engaged with the European project: ‘European thought’ was not present. He noted that the anti-​EC lobby laboured to influence the nationalist-​minded Irish electorate by shifting the focus of the campaign from possible negative economic implications to the hypothetical adverse political effects of membership, such as an erosion of sovereignty, the winding down of neutrality and a weakening of Irish identity. It was unclear to Overbeck in October 1970 as to whether this tack would sway public opinion.3 The new ploy of anti-​EC groups was a response to the emphasis of the pro-​ EC campaign on the economic advantages of membership. European sceptics appealed to traditional sentiments and interests disturbed by the twin processes of modernisation and integration. Even though the electorate finally voted convincingly in favour of entry in May 1972, earning the Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, plaudits for disposing of nationalist rhetoric with ‘considerable skill’,4 two days before Gröpper, Overbeck’s

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successor, had noted that the intense referendum campaign had stimulated extensive propaganda and exaggeration. Roland Hill reported in the Stuttgarter Zeitung that no one doubted the result would be positive, but ‘apathy’ and ‘exhaustion’ were prevalent following the prolonged and animated debate about the merits and demerits of accession. Hill indicated that the discussions were vexed by several red herrings. For example, some unfounded anti-​EC speculation centred on whether the Commission might forbid the Irish from playing bingo.5 Gröpper summarised the public mood two days prior to the referendum in a way which suggested less than wholesome Irish approval of EC entry: ‘little enthusiasm can be detected for the historic European idea. The average voter is amazed, confused and a little surly at the junction and seems to be saying to himself: “Wherever I go I’ll wish I’d taken the other way” ’.6 Therefore, both Overbeck and Gröpper harboured reservations about the depth of the conversion of the Irish populace to the ‘European way’. These misgivings reflected long-​held official German perceptions and stereotypes of Ireland and its people as unhealthily traditionalist. Ireland was habitually regarded as pre-​modern or anti-​modern. Some disquieting Irish trends emerged during the 1960s which pointed to domestic tensions and mounting resistance to modernisation. These sometimes took on an anti-​German hue and found violent expression in the volatility of the late 1960s. This chapter will focus on the resentments in some rural Irish districts against the purchase of land and property by foreigners, particularly Germans. This resounded throughout the decade and mixed with controversial revelations about aspects of Irish–​German relations during Second World War. Finally, Northern Ireland descended into chaos after August 1969. This tragedy animated the nationalist and anti-​partitionist states of mind of many in the Republic of Ireland. How would the Republic of Ireland and the FRG manage their relations in the face of such challenges at the precise moment at which the prospect of Ireland’s entry into the EC promised to open up new horizons and possibilities? Land wars The ‘land question’ remained an emotive rural electoral and welfare issue. The terms ‘foreigners’, ‘non-​nationals’ and ‘aliens’ were employed interchangeably throughout waves of agitation against non-​citizens purchasing land after 1945.7 During the late 1940s and the early 1950s, most of the hostility against foreign ownership was directed against UK purchasers.8 The chief argument was that such purchases inflated prices in a country where there was insufficient land to meet domestic demand. The 1960s witnessed further reactions against foreigners purchasing Irish landholdings. Germans were usually identified as the unwanted purchasers in the 1960s, although many nationalities were buying Irish properties. The agitation led to a protracted polemic playing out in the Irish media, the

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Oireachtas, the international media and ultimately the Bundestag. Accusations of a dispossession flourished in local and national newspapers. Countless Dáil questions about land sales to ‘foreigners’, especially ‘Germans’, were posed by backbench and Opposition TDs (Teachta Dála; member of the Irish Parliament or Dáil) during the 1960s and early 1970s. The uneasiness played on the sense of attachment to the land that many Irish people felt. It resonated strongly with nationalist discourse. Land was inextricably linked to the ‘national’ or Irish question, and controversies about the ownership of land grew acute in the aftermath of the Great Famine (c. 1845–​49). It reached a crescendo during the prolonged period of agrarian unrest and civil disturbances that characterised the rolling land wars from the 1870s to 1890s. Tenant farmers sought redress for their grievances regarding land redistribution, rent and tenure. Land thus played a potent role in invigorating and reinforcing the nationalist movement against British rule. The British state’s response before the formation of the Irish Free State (in 1922) was to intervene to transfer land ownership from the mainly Anglo-​Irish landlord class to tenants in an effort to satisfy popular demands. Generally, tenants became small owner-​occupiers. However, land persisted as a potent rural electoral and welfare issue, as there was an insufficient quantity of the resource available to satiate the demands of smallholders. Successive Irish governments were unable to anaesthetise the prickly ‘land question’ after 1922. Land redistribution under the ‘new’ Land Commission polarised and divided entire communities. The consolidation and redistribution of holdings pitched neighbours against one another, and smallholders against larger ones. Purchases of farms by foreigners were expressly emotive. In the 1960s protests, when German land purchasers were ostracised in some parishes, the equability of Irish–​German relations was imperilled. This was inopportune at the time that Ireland was in the process of repositioning internationally. The FRG was the main continental investor in the Irish economic development from the Irish government’s perspective. It was the indispensable EEC member; indeed, it was the primary economic motor of integration. International media coverage drawing attention to xenophobia or unhospitable behaviour was regarded as most unhelpful by a modernising Ireland which circulated an image of the country as one of ‘Céad Mile Fáilte’ (Irish; a hundred thousand welcomes). Until the 1960s, Irish governments of all descriptions were unwilling to ban foreigners from buying land. They maintained the line that such purchases were not having a material effect on prices in view of the minuscule scale of purchases in relation to the overall size of the Irish land bank.9 The lack of a definitive national register specifying the nationality of land purchasers, however, led to criticisms of the government. It allowed misinformation and inaccurate depictions of the extent of the purchase of land by foreigners to fester. Successive governments of all complexions until the 1960s argued there was no need for such

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a register and they claimed the complaints were exaggerated. Efforts to prevent ‘foreigners’ from purchasing Irish property was regarded as legally and practically objectionable. It was also noted that any law debarring aliens from acquiring real estate ‘would be contrary to the almost universally accepted practice of modern States’. Irish citizens had the constitutional right to transfer their property freely and to acquire property in other jurisdictions.10 Against the backdrop of a possible general election, the Fianna Fáil Government had introduced a stamp duty of 25 per cent on land purchases by aliens who were not ordinarily resident in Ireland for three years before October 1947.11 From the mid-​1950s, when the attraction of foreign capital for industrialisation became a priority, governments deemed it doubly inadvisable to go any further.12 After all, the Land Commission possessed the power to purchase arable land owned by foreigners as well as that of nationals, but internal Land Commission investigations revealed limited evidence of any problem.13 Successive governments argued the penal stamp duty was a sufficient deterrent.14 The first major post-​war wave of discontent against foreign purchasers occurred in the late 1940s and early 1950s. This was a time when some British subjects, in particular, acquired holdings in Ireland. However, this wave subsided as the 1950s advanced. A second major wave of rural agitation against foreign purchases of land was concentrated in localities along the Western seaboard, beginning in 1959 or 1960. The wave was different from the first wave in that it gained a heavily anti-​German tone. In 1960, on the occasion of the announcement of Aiken’s acceptance of an invitation to visit West Germany, German newspapers devoted extensive coverage to the friendly Irish–​German relationship. Ireland was represented as a land of opportunity possessing a pro-​business environment that welcomed Germans and revealed no anti-​German bias as demonstrated by Irish neutrality during the war. In June 1960, the Augsburger Allgemeine claimed the German economic miracle had opened a branch in Ireland and ‘Germany’s first “colony” since 1919 has a future’.15 A few Junkers (aristocratic large landowners and estate owners), expelled from the GDR, had settled in Ireland during the 1940s. They included Prince Ernst Heinrich von Sachsen, who held relatively large landholdings by Irish standards, but most German-​owned properties were modestly sized. The arrival of a few high-​ranking servants of the former Nazi state in the late 1950s and early 1960s, such as Otto Skorzeny and Alexander von Dörnberg, the chief of protocol in the Foreign Office (1938–​45), introduced an unwelcome degree of international interest.16 It may also have coloured local perceptions of all new arrivals, or provided a convenient excuse to denigrate all Germans and land buyers who spoke a foreign tongue. The British and Italian press ran lurid headlines such as ‘Is Ireland’s culture sold off for a fistful of Deutchsmark’ and ‘The German invasion: the Germans have a foothold in Britain’s backdoor’.17 It was not correct to depict West German investment as a flood in 1960 when there were only 700 or 800 German nationals living in

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Ireland, 12 operational German firms in the country and 18 more in the process of starting up.18 Yet the populist Italian paper, La Domenica del Corriere, theatrically suggested that Germans were establishing bases in Ireland and produced a provocative map, which used West German flags to depict the locations of supposed German land purchases.19 The Irish Embassy in Rome protested to the editor. German purchases of coastal properties, anecdotal reports of ‘German-​only summer resorts’ and the occasional fencing off of beaches caused local resentment in some Irish coastal districts.20 The influential farming weekly, the Irish Farmers Journal, became involved and advocated restricting the purchase of land. It argued Ireland was the only country in Europe to ‘allow free sale of land to foreigners’.21 The Irish Times took up the Irish Farmers Journal’s line demanding restrictions.22 The controversy threatened to dominate the limited German newspaper coverage of Ireland and create a deleterious image of the country. For instance, the Frankfurter Rundschau recounted in January 1961 that the NFA had petitioned the government, demanding that it should prevent the sale of land to Germans. Fortunately, the paper adopted a conciliatory tone, suggesting a need for Germans to act cautiously. German purchase of the cheap Irish land (by international standards) had commenced approximately two years previously in 1959, it reported, and they were competing for the best plots of land in the range of 60–​80 hectares, pricing young Irish farm apprentices and farmers out of the market.23 A concerned German ambassador spoke to Aiken in January 1961, but formed the impression from him that the Irish Government was nonchalant, as it contended that there was no threat to ‘national interests’. The number of purchases and quantity of land exchanging hands was diminutive in a national context. Therefore, ‘restrictive matters’ were not on the agenda despite statements that the government would monitor affairs in a bid to quell apprehensions.24 Nonetheless, the German ambassador took the opportunity as part of a trade promotion mission to Hanover to state that Ireland welcomed industrial investment but not purchases of land.25 Nazi histories Sensationalist German invasion allegations in the foreign press entwined with the arrival of a former high-​profile Nazi and military servant of the Nazi state. Irish–​ German relations during Second World War. were a continuing source of comment and amusement in Irish and international newspapers. But it was the arrival of the Austrian citizen Otto Skorzeny, a former SS-​Obersturmbannführer (lieutenant colonel) in the Waffen-​SS, in the late 1950s that did most to heighten concerns. He was Nazi Germany’s most audacious unconventional warfare specialist and responsible for the rescue of Benito Mussolini (September 1943) and Hitler’s false flag operation at the beginning of the Battle of the Bulge (December 1944).

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He escaped internment by the Allies after the war and went on the run to Spain, eventually acquiring a Spanish passport. Skorzeny was declared de-​Nazified in absentia by West Germany in 1952. He was also acquitted of war crimes by both the Dachau War Crimes Tribunal in 1947 and later by an Austrian court in 1958. His freedom to travel thus grew, but the UK still classified him as an undesirable. In 1957, 1958 and 1959, Irish authorities granted him entry to Ireland on holiday visas when no evidence was found to exclude him. He was permitted to stay for a maximum of three months on the standard holiday visa. In 1959 Skorzeny purchased a 200-​acre farm in County Kildare in his wife’s name. This was legal under Irish law. He divided his time between living in Kildare and his other residence in Majorca for the next decade, but he remained under suspicion for participation in international neo-​Nazi, paramilitary and mercenary activities much to the discomfiture of Dublin. Skorzeny’s Kildare farm and his Irish vacationing provoked worrying domestic and international insinuations and criticism. It became common in some newspapers internationally to allege that Ireland had become a haven for Nazis on the run from war crimes. The Department of Justice was suspicious and wary of Skorzeny’s activities, but no evidence could be produced, nor could a basis be found in Irish law, to exclude him. When he applied for permanent residence in Ireland in 1959, he was refused. The government remained apprehensive about his beliefs, activities and associations, but Skorzeny was free to enter Ireland on holidays for up to three months per annum, with no right to conduct any business activities.26 Another case involved Baron Alexander von Dörnberg, ‘The Quiet Giant’. He and his wife purchased a holiday home consisting of a house on 12 acres of land, near Glengarriff in West Cork, in 1959 or 1960. As the Head of the Protocol Department of the Foreign Office from 1938 to 1945, he had played a role in the Munich Agreement (1938) and the Molotov-​Ribbentrop Pact (1939). Unsurprisingly, his presence in Ireland attracted attention and Aiken opposed his application to take up residence in Ireland in 1960.27 The Department of External Affairs pointed out to the Department of Justice that there was a fatal flaw in Irish legislation that permitted foreigners to buy property in Ireland while possessing holiday visas. On acquiring property they applied for permanent residence and the land purchases then came to the attention of Justice and External Affairs.28 By 1960, Aiken and his department disapproved of granting residence to individuals such as Dörnberg, who had held central roles in Nazi Germany. A suggestive note by a senior member of the Department of External Affairs in June 1960 records: ‘Case discussed with Minister this evening. He sees no good reason to give permission to people like the [sic] Von Doernberg to settle here. We owe them nothing. They have property in Germany. Let them stay there.’29 The cases of Skorzeny and Dörnberg exacerbated the Irish government’s difficulties and strengthened demands for restrictions on land purchases by foreigners, usually identified (frequently incorrectly) as Germans. The capture of

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Otto Adolf Eichmann in Argentina by Mossad in May 1960, followed by the international publicity surrounding his televised trial between April and August 1961, and his execution on 1 June 1962, expanded international awareness of the Holocaust.30 In May and July 1961, members of the Opposition proposed three bills to either amend the Aliens Act (1935) to restrain the acquisition of land by non-​ nationals and to establish a publicly accessible national register of all transfers of land to non-​nationals.31 All three bills were opposed by the government. To defuse the situation, the government reinforced the 25 per cent stamp duty and closed loopholes in the Finance Act of 1961.32 The government also finally decided to create a national register of land purchases by foreigners.33 Afterwards it invoked the statistics collected to refute what it saw as exaggerated claims. As the minister for lands informed the Dáil on 7 June 1962, approximately 4,000 acres was purchased out of the 13 million acres of arable land in Ireland in the 10 months since the register began operation. Most of the purchases related to ‘white elephants, huge old estates’ that had no agricultural use or small parcels of land for residential purposes (less than five acres in extent). He added, ‘it will take a long time … for the Germans to wipe us out’.34 Nonetheless, public unease continued. The ‘land question’ became inescapably entangled in facile media sensationalism that alleged that Ireland had been pro-​Nazi during the war and was now suspiciously friendly towards West Germany. In 1961, the publication of Enno Stephan’s, Geheimauftrag Irland, in Oldenburg aggravated tensions. It divulged many details about Nazi espionage and intelligence in neutral Ireland.35 Journalists extracted information and translated sections from the German edition. Stephan defended his research and refuted ‘malicious beliefs’ about an alleged pro-​German preference on the part of Ireland’s wartime neutrality.36 He contributed several articles based on the book to Irish newspapers. The English edition (Spies in Ireland) was published in London in 1963 and it was serialised in the Sunday Independent in late 1963.37 The FRG Embassy was indirectly affected by the coverage: some members of the Third Reich’s legation were suspected of engagement in espionage during the ‘Emergency’. The case of Helmut Clissmann was also problematic. He was identified as a source for some parts of Stephan’s book. Clissmann was the representative of the German Academic Exchange Service in Ireland until 1939, and he had been granted full Irish citizenship on returning to Dublin after Second World War. It transpired that he had been an intelligence officer in the Abwehr during the war and, worryingly, he had played a role in some Nazi intelligence efforts in neutral Ireland. He was also a former head of the Dublin branch of the Irish–​German Society, had played an active role in the Save the German Children Society and occasionally wrote letters to Irish newspapers, particularly the Irish Times, to correct any statements or reports about German espionage.38 The FRG and Irish governments would have preferred if he had retreated into a life of anonymity and not complicated post-​war relations.39

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Eamon de Valera was now the President of the Irish Republic. He informed Reifferscheidt that he regretted the publication and translation of Stephan’s book for the sake of relations between the two countries. He considered it was totally superfluous and was reputedly aggrieved by it: he claimed he had never uttered some of the words attributed to him in the book.40 During the 1960s and 1970s increasing details of Nazi wartime espionage, Nazi-​IRA links and Nazi wartime designs on Ireland emerged, driven by testimony of some of the protagonists and the opening up of German, British and American wartime archives to public scrutiny. Dramatised and often inadequately contextualised or misunderstood details of Nazi espionage and diplomacy proved newsworthy, but they were never allowed to interrupt the smooth operation of FRG–​Irish relations. Bonn and Dublin regarded such coverage as an unpleasant nuisance. However, it became unavoidably linked with protests against German land purchases. During the spring and summer of 1962, as the Irish authorities redoubled their efforts to convince the EEC that Ireland was a worthy applicant, the troubling allusions to a ‘German invasion’ intensified. The Catholic Bishop of Cork, Dr Cornelius Lucey, aggravated matters when he addressed a confirmation in Skibbereen on 30 April 1962. He reputedly stated a ‘colonisation by purchase for money of … this land of ours’ was a travesty, and insisted, ‘Every foreigner who takes over our land in this country means one Irish emigrant more for England’.41 Lucey’s remarks formed part of a series of statements criticising the government’s failure to prevent emigration from the west coast. Readers’ letters to the Irish Times following Lucey’s remarks identified Germans as the foreigners in question and invoked the inflammatory language of Nazi Lebensraum and the Herrenvolk.42 The minister for industry and commerce, Jack Lynch, was forced to address the matter in the Dáil. He pointedly advised bishops to follow the 1957 injunction of the professor of moral theology and canon law of St Patrick’s College, Maynooth, that they possessed the right to offer solutions to political problems insofar as religious or moral issues were involved, but ‘it did not extend to matters in which there were not religious or moral issues, such as those of a purely political or economic nature’.43 The minister for lands’ statement in the Dáil in June that allegations of a ‘German invasion’ were based on no evidence also heartened the German Embassy.44 Then on 20 June, a special dispatch from Dublin was published in the Hamburg newspaper Die Welt, which reported rising hostility against German landholders. The article was penned by Dr Georg Rosenstock, a country doctor, who was married to an Irishwoman and lived near Limerick. The piece was entitled ‘ “Herr Neureich” aus Deutschland verärgert die irischen Bauern’ (‘ “Mr nouveau riche” from Germany upsets the Irish farmers’). It excited Irish opinion by reporting that some manorial walls in Ireland were daubed with slogans of ‘Get out, Nazis’ and Irish farmers were complaining about the behaviour of German landowners.

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This led both the Cork Examiner and the Irish Independent to deny such reported xenophobia was normal, although problems existed in a few localities. The Cork Examiner claimed Die Welt was guilty of a ‘gratuitous insult [by suggesting] that they [Germans] are not safe in Ireland’. Rosenstock also talked to the British Daily Express, which published an article on 22 June, elaborating on his argument that Irish opinion was generally anti-​German.45 The German Embassy denounced the Die Welt article as containing ‘a mass of inaccuracies, exaggerations and downright errors’ injurious to relations between the two countries. An extensive reply from the embassy was published in Die Welt to disprove the impressions created by Rosenstock. It professed that ‘some of our compatriots have behaved in a tactless and overbearing manner’, inciting local disturbances by failing to respect Irish mores; isolated incidents had occurred, but they were exceedingly infrequent. The embassy’s attitude was that there was no proof of any wide-​ranging anti-​German feeling in Ireland. According to Garda sources, there was only one isolated incident of anti-​German slogans in August 1961.46 Indeed, most of the protests were local ‘affairs’ in counties Cork, Kerry and Mayo, involving protests against fencing off sections of coastline and beaches. It was histrionics to extrapolate a national wave of anti-​Germanism from localised controversies. Most protests were the product of multifarious issues. These included the following: anger at Irish emigration; rural ‘congestion’; the desire to fashion economic farms from ‘uneconomic’ ones; cultural miscommunication; groundless rumour; misidentification (of nationality); specific local issues; a national memory of dispossession; a history of absentee landlords; European unfamiliarity with Irish legal and traditional rights (right of access); and general xenophobia. However, government denials that any serious land-​buying problem existed failed to prevent controversy. The lack of accurate statistics before the Finance Act of 1961 had allowed the growth of resentment based on limited facts, even though it was clear that no national problem existed.47 The emotive issue intruded as a confounding aspect of Ireland’s application to the EEC. Fortunately, the ‘land question’ did not encroach in any serious way on the Lemass visit to West Germany in October 1962. Adenauer raised the issue of the negative reactions to German purchases of Irish property in his talk with Lemass in Bonn on 22 October, but Lemass maintained there was ‘no real problem’ and the issue had been exaggerated by the media. It arose from some sensitivity in a few overpopulated parts of the west. Adenauer evinced empathy, acknowledging that ‘in Germany too there is a problem of dwarf holdings’ in some regions, but Germany promoted the siting of industries in such areas to alleviate tensions and ‘absorb’ excess population. His comment implied approval of the Irish policy of modernisation; he did not interpret reactions to German land purchases as a bilateral problem.48

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The 1965 Land Act The land question rumbled on throughout the 1960s and into the early 1970s, defying a simple solution. Old allegations persisted and new ones emerged. A sample of Opposition deputies’ questions and statements in the Dáil in 1962 and 1963 highlights some of the accusations that were made against foreigners, particularly Germans, purchasing Irish land. Charges often centred around foreigners who purchased ‘beach-​head properties’, obstructing the traditional public ‘right-​of-​way’ to the seashore or foreshore.49 The adequacy of the 25 per cent stamp duty was also questioned on the grounds that Irish land prices were exceptionally low in comparison to West German standards.50 Claims were also made that legal loopholes were exploited by purchasers to avoid payment of the duty.51 It was suggested that the price paid for farms by foreigners was sometimes under-​declared to minimise the stamp duty payable to the Irish state.52 And it was asserted that Ireland was far too permissive in its policy towards foreigners purchasing land by international standards (Switzerland, Denmark).53 In general, the number and frequency of Dáil questions complaining about the extent of the land purchases are marks of the discontent prevalent in some rural constituencies, particularly along parts of the scenic western seaboard. The government was unwilling to admit to any inclination to restrict foreign land purchases initially, but it monitored other jurisdictions to gauge their responses. The wealth of some Germans after a decade of the Wirtschaftswunder granted them the means to purchase foreign properties. Negative domestic reactions in Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Denmark led the governments of those states to implement restrictions on foreigners purchasing property in the early 1960s. After Ireland applied for membership of the EEC in 1961, Dublin discovered that Denmark, a co-​applicant, had legislation from December 1959 that imposed a residency requirement of a minimum of five years on foreign nationals before they could purchase real estate.54 Copenhagen was not censured by Bonn and indeed its application for EEC membership had progressed more smoothly than Ireland’s until de Gaulle’s abrupt intervention on January 1963. Armed with such precedents, and confronted by public anxiety in some regions, the Irish government acted, in anticipation of a general election. The terms of the 1965 Land Act included provisions that ‘were not completely dissimilar to those of a Clann na Talmhan Bill rejected’ by the government four years earlier.55 Under the terms of the act, the penal stamp duty was abolished, but complete control over the purchase and leasing of rural land to foreign nationals was vested in the Land Commission for the first time, except where transactions were certified by the minister for industry and commerce as relating exclusively to industrial purposes. Any ‘non-​qualified person’, that is, a foreigner (who had lived in Ireland for less than seven years) had to apply to the Land Commission to purchase rural land after March 1965.56 The 1965 act

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granted the Land Commission wide powers to protect and extend the rights of way over any lands in the country.57 Included in these provisions was ‘a new power to create rights of way to the sea and to lakes and rivers’.58 This was aimed at addressing a grievance in some scenic coastal communities that a few foreigners, including Germans, had proved unwilling to respect traditional rights of way through coastal properties to beaches. Rights of way were a foreign concept in the FRG legal system. By March 1965, Lemass was stating in interviews with journalists and broadcasters that Ireland was not interested ‘in external investment in agricultural land’ arising from ‘a farm-​structure problem of long standing’. He specified that Ireland was pursuing a ‘small-​farm enlargement policy’ to assist Irish farmers.59 According to the Sunday Press, by January 1966 the Department for Lands was ‘bluntly’ informing all auctioneers that the farm land would ‘not ordinarily pass into the control of non-​citizens’ and this practice ‘should be effectively discouraged’.60 Irish policy had reversed from one of a relatively hands-​off or low-​intervention policy on land sales. Between 1965 and 1969, the Land Commission sanctioned 352 land sales totalling 18,494 acres to ‘non-​qualified persons’. (This compared to the 590 transactions totalling 45,989 acres that incurred the 25 per cent stamp duty between 1961 and 1965.)61 Of these 352 land purchases by foreigners, only 28 involved German buyers.62 The predominant nationality buying land was British (245). They were followed by Americans in second place (45), leaving Germans in third position.63 In spite of the relatively small scale of the purchases after 1965, the opposition persisted with the view that this represented ‘a rather alarming surrender of Irish land to foreign interests’.64 ‘Fire over Ireland’65 Oliver J. Flanagan was one rural TD who regularly posed Dáil questions on the matter. He was the Fine Gael TD for the rural Laois-​Offaly constituency and a colourful character. An adherent of conservative Irish values and traditionalism, he possessed a ‘keen sense of what appealed to the rural voter’.66 He told the Dáil that the 1965 Land Act was ‘akin to closing the stable door after the horse has gone’.67 Land leagues formed in several regions to lobby for the compulsory purchase of farmland acquired by ‘aliens’ prior to the 1965 Land Act. Leinster was the new epicentre of unrest. Land leagues were active in counties Westmeath, Kildare and Meath, or parts thereof, where the Land Commission had resettled poor farmers from the west on smallholdings in the 1930s.68 This signified the third wave of agrarian unrest against foreign land purchases and it was concentrated in the counties surrounding the growing urban sprawl of Dublin. The Leinster protests coincided with land prices reaching ‘their highest level ever’ in that province. According to an investigation by an agricultural journalist, this was a result of a mixture of forces including the high value placed on development

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land in the expanding Dublin hinterland, farmers’ efforts to enlarge holdings, and simple speculation. It was, therefore, incorrect to scapegoat a tiny number of Germans or other foreigners for inflating land prices.69 Regardless of the great strides towards industrialisation, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported that Ireland remained a largely agricultural economy, with approximately 30 per cent of the working population’s livelihoods dependent on agriculture and forestry. The thorough modernisation of the Irish economic base required time.70 German press commentators noted that improved employment opportunities had slowed the pace of emigration. Nonetheless, an estimated 15,000 emigrated in 1968.71 The rate of economic growth slowed and inflationary pressures intensified during the late 1960s and early 1970s.72 The FRG ambassador, Prill, observed that Irish workers were more and more assertive in demanding better wages and conditions.73 The uneven economic modernisation process interacted with social inequalities, traditional interests and radical republican ideology to produce a volatile cocktail in some quarters. A sign of the times was the call for regulation of ownership of retail outlets on the basis that small and independent indigenous retailers were subject to ‘oppressive competition’ from ‘non-​national retailers’.74 Several economic and social groups, therefore, felt challenged by both modernisation and liberalisation. Intensified social and national unrest marked the late 1960s. This found expression in the form of a nationwide surge in industrial unrest, demonstrations and protests, some of which were ‘simply the Irish manifestation of movements in many western countries’. Rising expectations fed traditional grievances. Some protests gained a strong nationalist or overt radical tone, and militant republicans exploited local and socio-​economic grievances.75 In this simmering environment, anti-​foreigner agitation reached a climax with arson attacks on several foreign firms and landholders, some of which were German. In December 1968, Sinn Féin announced its intention to form land leagues and it vilified large landed estates, in general, as the ‘prize of Cromwellian conquest’.76 During 1968 and 1969, the IRA claimed responsibility for violent acts, including the burning of buses bringing non-​strikers to work during a strike77 and blowing up a lobster boat in Galway Bay.78 Both were presumed to be the property of American-​owned companies.79 Sinn Féin activists also picketed Brittas Bay, County Wicklow, demanding free access to beaches.80 On 7 March 1969, an arson attack was conducted on the home of a German man who owned a stud farm near Kilcock in County Meath.81 Following the burning, the IRA issued a statement claiming one of its local units had conducted it in an act of solidarity with local people ‘agitating for acquisition of the estate by the Land Commission’. The statement pledged to resist ‘this new cheque-​book attack on the rights and property of the Irish people, whether it be industrial … fisheries … or land …’.82 The Gardaí began to take ‘extra precautions’ to patrol and protect some estates in County Meath.83

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At this point, the Land Commission was exercising its mandate to compulsorily purchase good-​quality land owned by ‘non-​qualified persons’. A ‘handful’ of German property owners were affected.84 On 23 May 1969, the Irish Press reported that the small FDP opposition party intended to raise a question in the Bundestag. The FDP’s proposed action was informed by press reports that Germans were being ‘dispossessed’ in Ireland. The question would ask what the FRG Government intended to do to protect the property of West German landowners in Ireland.85 According to the Irish Embassy, ‘A campaign of agitation has been mounted [in West Germany] by a small group of German landowners [based in Ireland], but the number of complaints is very small’. The official Irish position was that Germans were not treated differently from other foreigners, or indeed Irish citizens; they were all liable to compulsory purchase.86 The tabling of the Bundestag question provoked outrage in Ireland and on 27 May 1969 the National Land League protested in the Irish Press against the intervention. The league’s leaders posed the emotive rhetorical question: ‘Are our rules so unresponsive to the needs of the people of the countryside that they have reneged on the ideals of Lalor, Tone, Pearse and Connolly?’ and Lalor’s dictum of ‘The land of Ireland for the people of Ireland’.87 Ominously, the United Irishman printed a statement giving notice that the IRA ‘regards as a matter of urgency, and gives priority to, the restoration to the Irish people of such foreign-​owned property, without considering any right to compensation as necessarily resulting’. It would ‘take measures’.88 On the night of 11 June, properties on three foreign-​owned farms were set alight in counties Meath and Louth, and another escaped damage when an incendiary device failed. Two were owned by Germans, one was occupied by another German and one was owned by a retired British Army major. Not all of the properties were large. In a ‘grim irony’, one of the German properties had been sold to the Land Commission the previous February, but this was not publicly known. The attacks signified an assault on private property. These violations occurred in the course of a ‘dirty’ general election campaign during which opposition parties called for a clampdown on foreign-​national land purchases. The Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, immediately condemned the ‘silly, subversive’ acts that threatened the rights of property. He added that foreign investment was an international reality and the perpetrators were damaging the interests of the Irish people.89 A day after the attacks, news emerged that two German factories were in the process of establishment in Galway, underlining the importance of German industrial investment.90 The German ambassador, Prill, informed the secretary of the Department of External Affairs that he considered, ‘he should let the Department know how seriously he viewed these developments’. McCann replied the incidents were criminal acts and their perpetrators would be pursued by the Gardaí. On the subject of the FDP’s tabling of questions in the Bundestag, Prill reported that he

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had informed the Foreign Office that the compulsory acquisition of land owned by Germans in Ireland was non-​discriminatory and only five of the 300 Land Commission compulsory acquisitions involved Germans. Hermann Höcherl, the German minister for agriculture, telephoned the Irish chargé d’affaires in Bonn to inform him of his ‘dismay’ at the violations.91 A spokesman for the embassy indicated that Prill’s visit was conducted for ‘informational’ purposes and Germany was not submitting a formal protest: ‘the embassy was satisfied that there was no animosity towards Germans as such in Ireland’. However, that night Sinn Féin members picketed the embassy to ‘highlight the question of foreign ownership in Ireland, not merely for German ownership’. A Sinn Féin spokesman claimed the protest had been arranged ‘some weeks ago’ when it was reported that questions were to be raised in the Bundestag. The German consulate office in Limerick was also picketed.92 On 12 June, the IRA issued a statement taking responsibility for the attacks of 11 June, contending that it formed part of its ‘policy of resistance to foreign take-​over of our land’. It claimed it was protecting the Irish nation: ‘What assurance can he [Jack Lynch] give that a “Bay of Pigs” landing will not occur here should any future Irish government attempt to recover this land now being bought by foreign cartels, or even to regulate its use for the benefit of the Irish people?’ Independent of the IRA statement, Tomás Mac Giolla, President of Sinn Féin, stated in an interview on RTÉ that Sinn Féin was campaigning against foreign ownership of Irish resources but ‘using different means’ to the IRA. He suggested there was a direct link between the 800th anniversary of the arrival of the Normans in Ireland and the campaign against foreign ownership.93 On 13 June, the Parliamentary state secretary of the Foreign Office, Gerhard Jahn, countered the claims of the FDP in the Bundestag that German landowners were being discriminated against. Based on Land Commission statistics, obtained by Prill, only five West German owners had been expropriated (involving land totalling 543 acres), out of a total of 367 compulsory sales (totalling 18,840 acres) under the Irish Land Act of 1965. However, 12 cases against Germans were pending.94 On 16 June, Prill declared at a Dublin Rotary Club lunch that the recent isolated and ‘disagreeable events’ were ‘not political but personal’; they were the ‘work of extremists’ who were present in some form in every country.95 Despite resolute Irish and FRG official interest in checking the scaremongering, the controversy refused to wane. The incendiary pronouncement of Oliver J. Flanagan, on 6 August 1969, at a meeting of the General Council of Committees of Agriculture in Dublin amplified tensions. Flanagan avowed, ‘We have no room in this country for Nazis and we are not going to entertain them here … the sooner we take steps to end this the better’.96 That an elected representative should enunciate such extreme opinions at any time was reckless, but it was especially so in the aftermath of arson attacks. Compounding matters, the Irish Independent reported, Flanagan stated ‘he considered all Germans as Nazis’.97 While he reaffirmed he was ‘thinking particularly of Germans’, he stated

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he was opposed to all alien purchasers of Irish land.98 Flanagan was a member of the front bench of Fine Gael, which took the rare step of immediately renouncing Flanagan’s statement and condemned all illegality against foreign landowners.99 He resigned from the Fine Gael front bench a few weeks later, citing personal and work reasons, but ‘strongly denied that it was related to any differences or pressure in the party’.100 Established farming organisations, such as Macra na Feirme, also condemned his utterances.101 The Fianna Fáil Government deprecated the ‘unjustified and inflammatory statements’.102 Jack Lynch considered Flanagan’s comments ‘ill-​advised’ and concluded, following an internal review of the extent of foreign nationals’ land purchases, that they appeared ‘to be relatively insignificant’.103 However, the gravity of the fact that anti-​foreigner sentiment was used to justify attacks on properties did not have a salutary effect. Unfortunately, more homes and properties owned by British and other nationalities would be firebombed or vandalised. In January 1970, two more German-​owned properties were damaged in suspected arson attempts though the Gardaí ultimately concluded the incidents were accidental.104 A National Land League committed to peaceful methods was founded in 1969 with the objective of pressing the Land Commission to purchase all the land acquired by foreigners since 1961 for subdivision among Irish small farmers.105 Concurrently, the Land Commission expropriated larger foreign-​owned agricultural holdings purchased before the 1965 Land Act, as well as Irish owned ones. This affected a handful of Germans as well as other nationalities. The expropriation of even a small number of German landowners threatened to tarnish Ireland’s image. Ireland’s leading magazine, Business and Finance, remarked that the government’s attitude on foreign ownership ‘runs every risk of being labelled schizophrenic’ as it attempted to prevent foreign ownership of some areas of the economy on the basis that it was ‘prejudicial to the public interest’ while energetically seeking to attract investment in other sectors.106 It was not surprising that at least one German landowner undergoing expropriation exploited this incongruity in an effort to negotiate better terms of sale of his land to the Land Commission. He threatened to warn his ‘fellow-​countrymen … against all investment in Ireland, for I shall have lost faith that your country has honest intentions towards the investors whom it invites’.107 Then in the summer of 1971, following the representations of another irked German landowner, the FRG Society for the Promotion and Protection of Investments Abroad published a number of articles in German trade periodicals such as Handelsblatt and Wirtschaftswoche, warning of the danger of investing in Ireland, on the basis that Ireland had a ‘Janus’ attitude towards foreign capital.108 The unsavoury environment surrounding foreign landownership was unedifying to say the least. It displayed a tragic national narrative on land ownership and a prevalent sense of ‘land hunger’. The distasteful atmosphere and illegality also exposed tensions at the heart of the model of Ireland’s top-​down modernisation,

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and its reliance on FDI. This industrialisation strategy created a thriving export-​ oriented sector of the economy, but traditional segments of the indigenous economy, such as small farmers and small retailers, felt threatened. It would be incorrect to overgeneralise though. Many Irish people were content with the economic progress resulting from liberalisation and modernisation. Only a few individuals or republican organisations were prepared to endorse or employ violence against ‘scapegoats’ such as Germans and other aliens. Moreover, this was not a uniquely Irish phenomenon. Rather it fitted into the broader international context of some citizens in Germany’s neighbouring Western European countries complaining about German land purchases in the 1960s and 1970s. This was nourished by simmering national rivalries to some extent, notwithstanding European integration, as well as fears about ‘alien’ purchasers’ impact on land prices, and cultural misunderstandings. It was not simply an anti-​German phenomenon either as evidenced by attacks on the second-​homes of English people in Wales. Irish resentment against German land purchases was limited by comparison to that evinced in countries such as the Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Italy. Within this broader context, Germany would not allow the issue to interfere in its gainful and cordial relationship with Ireland. The EEC dimension Inconveniently, the violence against German-​and other foreign-​owned properties occurred as the prospects for Irish membership of the EC improved. However, Bonn never seriously raised the issue in this setting to Dublin’s relief. The challenge was for Ireland to validate its Europeanist credentials and persuade voters to endorse membership. A centre-​point of Irish tactics during the negotiating process was the recurrent affirmation of the country’s willingness to accept the acquis communautaire and commit fully to the ideals and objectives of an ‘ever closer union’. The prickly question of land ownership complicated matters though. Article 54, 3 (e) of the Treaty of Rome stipulated the Council should liberalise the land and building markets of the member states permitting the citizens of all the member states to purchase such assets freely in the other member states.109 Partial progress was made on the implementation of this provision. Two council directives were adopted. They empowered the citizens of a member state to acquire farms in other member states which had been abandoned or had lain uncultivated for two years or more. The other directive granted rights to nationals of one EC member state to acquire farms in another member state if they were employed in agriculture in another member state for an unbroken period of at least two years.110 The Department of Lands and its minister advised in 1971 that these two directives would have a minimal or negligible impact on Ireland, so the Irish government should be able to accept them without problem.111 However, EC directive 67/​654 of 24 October 1967 provided for the liberalisation of the

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market in ‘wooded land or forest soils’, which conflicted directly with Section 45 of Ireland’s 1965 Land Act.112 Worryingly, in January 1969 the EC Commission proposed a draft directive to grant full rights of establishment in agriculture; if enacted this would enable a farmer in any member state to purchase land in all the EC states. The draft directive was under consideration during Ireland’s accession negotiations. If this was adopted without alteration, then Section 45 of the 1965 Irish Land Act (which required foreign nationals living in Ireland for less than seven years to gain the consent of the Land Commission to buy rural or agricultural land) would be in direct conflict with it. In the light of domestic resentment against foreigners purchasing land, the government faced a political dilemma. The departments of Land and Agriculture, in particular, searched to discover a means to prevent the adoption of the directive or if this proved impossible to find a legislative tool to undercut its impact.113 The adoption of the directive was delayed by internal EC disagreements after 1969 but it seemed inevitable that it would eventually come into effect. The Irish government decided on 19 May 1970 that it had to explore the possibility of securing a deal with the EC to retain ‘sufficient control over the disposal of land to enable policies adequate to Irish needs to be applied’.114 One of the grounds on which Anthony Coughlan and the Common Market Study Group opposed Irish accession to the EC was that the government would lose its power to prevent citizens of other EC member states from purchasing Irish land.115 On 21 September 1970, Patrick Hillery informed the EC that Ireland was prepared to accept the directives already adopted but that Ireland wished to negotiate a possible postponement of the general right of establishment in agricultural land since Ireland needed to maintain ‘sufficient control over the disposal of land’ to deal with structural problems in the agricultural sector.116 During the summer of 1971, activity in the EC in favour of implementing the draft directive generated anxiety within the Irish government, especially on the part of the departments of Land and Agriculture, as well as the Forestry and Wildlife Service.117 The Irish Government consulted with the Danes to find a solution. Danish officials warned Brussels of a possible ‘psychological explosion’ in Denmark if the draft directive was adopted. Ideally, both the Irish and Danish governments wanted to prevent the EC Council from adopting the draft directive. At the very least, they hoped that the adoption of the EC directive could be postponed until after Irish and Danish entry and, at that point, they would seek a transitional period before implementing it.118 During the summer and autumn of 1971, Dublin made ‘urgent representations’ to the EC member states to defer adoption of the draft directive until after accession.119 The Irish embassies in the capitals of the Six were informed, It has become a matter of the greatest urgency that our disquiet at the possible adoption of such a Directive should be made known immediately in the capitals of the Six.

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The adoption of such a measure at this time would cause serious difficulties for us. It would arouse public opposition even more acutely than that caused by free access provision of the Common Fisheries Policy and could pose major problems for the Government in the Referendum context.

Irish diplomats were instructed to communicate the sensitivities immediately.120 However, Hillery was not hopeful about the chances of securing a deferral of the EC’s adoption of the draft directive until after accession or, if the Irish–​ Danish gambit failed, of Ireland obtaining from it a lengthy derogation following entry.121 The French held some longstanding objections to the draft directive and German diplomats ‘more or less said outright that we [Ireland] should work specially on the French’. The hostility of France to the proposed measure was a major factor.122 It was also providential for Dublin that Copenhagen had a serious domestic political problem in coping with farmers’ opposition to German land purchases. Denmark went on the ‘diplomatic offensive’ to block the directive after June 1971. It requested a permanent exemption from the EC directive if it was adopted. Nonetheless, no member state wanted to block the directive. The Commission, Germany and the Netherlands refused Danish entreaties leading the Danish ambassador to intercede with Chancellor Willy Brandt at a private dinner party. Only then did the German attitude change. It was decided not to proceed with the directive, at least temporarily. According to Morton Rasmussen, Denmark’s intervention was an example of how ‘one candidate with intense interest in a particular issue could bend the communitarian principles, if confronted with member states with only a diffuse interest in the question’.123 Thus, the draft directive was not adopted by the EC Council prior to Irish entry. The matter of the draft directive remained under consideration at EC level though and disturbed Dublin throughout the negotiations at least until after the referendum in May 1972. During the referendum campaign, the National Land League criticised the government’s White Paper for not promising to safeguard ‘the land of Ireland for its people’.124 The seriousness of the issue impelled the EEC Information Service of the Department of Foreign Affairs to prepare and distribute an informational leaflet on the issue of the purchase of Irish land by citizens of other EC member countries. It aimed to temper public or sectoral anxiety while underscoring the government’s policy was to protect Ireland’s controls on the purchase of land by foreign nationals. It judiciously underlined that the basic principles underlying CAP were to respect national and structural differences throughout the Community and that any adjustments to agricultural policy should be incremental.125 The foreign purchase of Irish agricultural land did not play a critical role in the referendum campaign, because the EC Council had failed to adopt the draft directive. A  substantial section of the Irish agricultural sector assumed the economic advantages of EC membership (especially CAP subsidies) outweighed any hypothetical or exaggerated fears about foreign

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land ownership. While the land question appeared manageable, another matter proved far more perturbing: ‘the Troubles’. Troubling times West Germany was anxious about the turn of events in Northern Ireland in the late 1960s. A pan-​nationalist and Catholic coalition was mobilised, encouraged by the liberal policies of the Northern Ireland prime minister, Terence O’Neill. It became a major social and political force under the banner of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association (NICRA). Greater assertiveness and rising civil disobedience on the part of Catholics pursuing social and political fairness and justice in Northern Ireland, was interpreted as a threat by many loyalists who organised counter protests against NICRA. A pall of violence descended around NICRA’s marches as loyalist mobs intervened; the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) failed to protect NICRA. Elements of the RUC were tempted into oppressive action against the protestors, reflecting the sympathies of its rank-​ and-​file Unionist make-​up. The Northern Ireland state was losing control and the situation was swiftly descending into intercommunal violence, riots and counter-​riots. Polarisation was occurring. Loyalist radicals moved Ulster Unionism to the right and attacked the reformist and liberal policies of Terence O’Neill. The general pandemonium and lawlessness was televised and broadcast worldwide. The North appeared to be growing steadily ungovernable and O’Neill no longer had the support of the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP). The situation forced him to resign in April 1969. At first, the German media was mesmerised and it devoted an enormous amount of coverage to the unfolding civil rights marches, the communal violence and growing political crisis. The threat of civil war loomed in Northern Ireland. The attitude of the German press generally towards the Taoiseach’s suggestion in April 1969 that a UN force should become involved in calming the Northern Ireland situation was supportive, ‘understanding and sympathetic’. The Irish ambassador detected a degree of German ‘Schadenfreude’ at the discomfiture of London. The FRG had been the butt of English criticism for many years, but now the ‘boot was on the other foot’.126 In April 1969, the FRG foreign minister, Willy Brandt, had appeared to Kennedy as ‘quite understanding and sympathetic in his rather reticent way’.127 Notwithstanding initial German sympathy for the plight of Catholics in the North, Irish representatives nonetheless encountered a poorly informed government, civil service and public. During April 1969, Ambassador Kennedy was struck by widespread ignorance of the partition problem:  ‘What has, however, somewhat surprised me in conversation with German officials, businessmen and ordinary members of the public in recent weeks is how very many of them had no real knowledge of the history or the realities of partition and who

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actually thought that the Six Counties were somehow part of our administration!’ Startlingly, Kennedy pointed out the term ‘unionist’ was widely assumed by many Germans to mean somebody in favour of Irish national reunification.128 Even such a high-​level official as Georg Duckwitz, the secretary of state of the Foreign Office, revealed to Kennedy in August 1969 that ‘He had thought the “Irish Question” had been solved. Now he knew it hadn’t been, and he felt that the German man in the street knew it too.’ Duckwitz could hardly believe the ‘recent events’ in Northern Ireland which he regarded as reminiscent of the Thirty Years War (1618–​48), and appeared out of place in the twentieth century.129 Die Welt likened the situation to that of the Middle Ages.130 According to the secretary of the Irish Embassy ‘the standard German error’ consisted of ‘seeing the problem in religious terms exclusively’.131 In August 1969, public order completely broke down in Derry during the ‘Battle of the Bogside’, and spread to other Northern cities, and especially to parts of Belfast. ‘Hooligans’, on both sides of the political divide, vented their atavistic tribal feelings, while the RUC was not evenhanded and over-​reacted against the nationalist/​ Catholic community. This incited further nationalist anger and resentment. Matters spiralled out of control. Mass rioting occurred on the borderlands between Catholic and Protestant districts. Violence and arson effectively cleansed several neighbourhoods of Derry and Belfast of Catholics or Protestants. Residential segregation was imposed. Any limited intercommunity trust that had existed previously now totally crumbled. A refugee crisis emerged as several thousand Catholics fled towards the border seeking refuge in the Republic of Ireland. Nationalist opinion in the Republic of Ireland was outraged and demanded action. Powerful government cabinet hardliners in Dublin demanded Irish military intervention to protect the nationalist minority in Northern Ireland. Lynch’s domestic position was defied. He resisted aggressive urgings from the hawks, but instructed the mobilisation of the army to deal with the unfolding humanitarian crisis along the border and for possible peacekeeping duties, if necessary in combination with Britain or with the UN in Northern Ireland. He arranged for the army to set up field hospitals on the border to assist the refugees. On 13 August, Jack Lynch made a broadcast stating that his government ‘could no longer stand by and see innocent people injured or perhaps worse’ and criticised the Northern authorities and British Government’s management of the situation. He requested the safeguarding of the civil and political rights and fundamental equality of the minority in Northern Ireland. Lynch intimated that Dublin had a legitimate stake in the matter and he intended to request a review of the constitutional position of ‘the Six Counties of Northern Ireland’.132 This was interpreted as a disproportionately interventionist or even a provocative response in British and Unionist circles, though from an Irish nationalist perspective it was considered to be measured in contrast to the attitude of several hawks in his own Cabinet. Lynch was

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performing a delicate balancing act and his statement accorded with the tradition of ‘peaceful reunification’, which had been laid down by Lemass. Northern Ireland deteriorated completely as August 1969 wore on. London deployed the British Army with the intention of protecting besieged civilian (mainly Catholic) districts and restoring law and order. Lynch’s initial response was not well received by the German press or government and official circles. His ‘stand-​by’ speech of 13 August was greeted unfavourably by many quarters in the German press. For instance, the conservative national daily Die Welt, which on 12 August was reporting in a sympathetic way on the Battle of the Bogside as ‘akin to the risings in the American negro ghettoes, rising born of poverty and above all hopelessness’, quickly confounded the Irish Consul in Hamburg. In line with many German papers it failed to print in whole or in part the Jack Lynch’s address that was supplied in German by the Department of External Affairs. Instead, Die Welt concentrated on Lynch’s statement that reunification was the only ‘permanent solution’ to the problem, largely neglecting the Taoiseach’s efforts to put forward what appeared, from Dublin’s perspective, to be constructive proposals to alleviate or resolve the crisis including a UN peacekeeping force. In its editorial of 15 August, Die Welt stated that ‘Dublin has thus interfered wantonly in the affairs of others’ by demanding unification which fortified the obduracy of ‘the unionists in Belfast’ and thus it had aggravated London’s difficulties in the search for a settlement. Instead Die Welt devoted more coverage to Prime Minister Chichester-​Clark’s criticism of the Republic of Ireland’s stance, and his contention that its ‘demand’ for a UN peacekeeping force amounted to meddling in the domestic affairs of another state. Moreover, Die Welt considered the ‘surprising movement’ of Irish troops to the border an ‘indirect intervention’ in ‘the British province of Ulster’. It reported political observers as regarding the presence of Irish troops on the border as a ‘demonstration’ of support for Northern Catholics who were demanding equal rights, thus inflaming the delicate situation.133 In 19 August 1969, Duckwitz received the Irish ambassador, who presented him with a Note Verbale outlining the Irish government position on the ‘Battle of the Bogside’, in accordance with Lynch’s ‘stand-​by’ speech and his subsequent statements over the following days. Kennedy’s mission was to underline that the ‘chief aim’ underlying all of Dublin’s actions was ‘the achievement of peace and order in the Six Counties’. Dublin wanted German assistance in solving the crisis. At first sight Duckwitz’s expressions of interest and empathy appeared hopeful. He stated that his government was following with ‘deep concern’ the developing catastrophe, and he noted that ‘they would be particularly appreciative of the constructive wish of the Irish Government, expressed in the Note to restore peace and order’. Duckwitz proceeded to express a lack of confidence in Lord Chalfont’s [minister in the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office] judgement, on Kennedy’s expression of dissatisfaction at his brusque rejection of

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Hillery’s joint peacekeeping proposal. Kennedy reported that the state secretary mentioned partition as the root cause of the problem, that the Stormont regime was ‘utterly discredited’ and the disbelief of German public opinion that ‘the grotesque figure of Reverend Ian Paisley’ could be ‘real’.134 However, Brandt’s official notification of Germany’s position several days later was a non-​committal statement that Germany was ‘watching events in friendly countries with much interest’ and hoped ‘the problems … might find a solution which is satisfactory to all concerned’.135 This brief formal response was revealing, as it offered no active support to Dublin. ‘[E]‌vents in friendly countries’ referred to both the UK and the Republic of Ireland, and broadly hinted that the Germany could not take up a position between the two. It, therefore, set the tone for future German policy on Irish entreaties for assistance on Northern Ireland. In line with the representation of Irish statements and actions by powerful elements of the FRG press, Bonn doubted Dublin’s political and diplomatic abilities to deal with the crisis. Duckwitz told Kennedy on 19 August that it was ‘very important to avoid permitting actions which could only help extremists on both sides and play into the hands of those who would wish to turn the civil rights issue into a conflict of North against South’. Kennedy interpreted this in the context of German news bulletins reporting armed IRA units criss-​crossing the border.136 As Kennedy reported later, there was ‘a sense of bewilderment and confusion at the aims of Irish foreign policy’, which the Head of the First Political Division of the AA, Dr Paul Frank, openly expressed to him. Kennedy regarded this reaction as ‘widely shared’ in the AA and Bonn through the autumn and winter of 1969.137 The FRG estimation of the chances of success of the Irish UN initiative was one of ‘scepticism’. Bonn expressed incomprehension at the Irish request for FRG support on this matter: it was not a member of the UN and possessed no vote.138 FRG observers at the UN doubted if Ireland would gain the required nine votes in the Security Council, even if members of the British UN delegation were ‘ill at ease’ at having to defend the Northern situation.139 Soviet support for the Hillery’s UN peace-​keeping proposal ‘caused only cynical reactions’ within the AA. At best, the FRG’s reaction to Ireland’s ill-​fated UN initiative was one of ‘unease’ and ‘friendly embarrassment’.140 The Grand/​Great Coalition government had virtually disintegrated in the run-​ up to the federal elections of 28 September.141 The succeeding Social Democratic government of Brandt lacked faith in the ability of the UN and other multilateral fora to effect German reunification, and that was why Bonn pursued bilateral contacts with Moscow and East Germany. Thus Dr Gehlhoff, the Deputy Head of the Political Division, encouraged bilateral contacts between the directly affected parties and states in Northern Ireland in an effort to build trust and formulate a solution to the crisis, rather than avoiding talking to one another.142 As Gehlhoff stated: ‘We [FRG] are moving away from a policy of refusing to recognise existing frontiers in Europe towards a policy of trying to erode them

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through cooperation’.143 Bonn thus adopted a publicly detached, non-​committal approach on Northern Ireland. It offered occasional friendly and informal observations based on its national question. There was plenty of evidence of a significant wave of West German public sympathy for the Irish nationalist case, but Realpolitik was paramount in the FRG’s official stance. Bonn did not want to become involved and worried about the potential negative repercussions for German–​British relations and the Western Alliance should it support Dublin or even mediate between Dublin and London. In conformity with established policy, the FRG was determined to avoid or minimise efforts to draw parallels between German and Irish partition. Repeated Irish efforts to enlist German official support for its stances and initiatives came to naught. This dichotomy between the German public’s and official government’s responses was continuous from 1969 to 1973, at least in Irish diplomatic evaluations. Hillery defended his government’s position during autumn 1969 in an interview with the Social Democratic inclined Frankfurter Rundschau in October 1969. He was anxious to counteract the impression that Dublin had hinted at intervention in Northern Ireland and inflamed militant Northern ‘Protestantism’.144 But Ireland failed to communicate its message to substantial parts of the German media and government. Internal splits within the Irish government were evident. The FRG Embassy noted in February 1970 that Neil Blaney, the minister for finance, held a view comparable to the IRA; that is, Irish troops should be sent to Northern Ireland.145 Such an open expression of dissent with Lynch’s policy from within the Irish cabinet undermined the Lynch–​Hillery message. By spring 1970, the FRG Embassy was worried about the prospect of the radicalisation of Irish political life. Blaney continued to demand the sending of the Irish Army into Northern Ireland and there was widespread speculation in Ireland that Blaney might succeed Lynch.146 The ‘arms crisis’ in May 1970 had the hallmarks of a struggle for the soul of Fianna Fáil147 and it displayed a worrying German dimension. The first hint received by the AA that a crisis was in the offing occurred on 4 May 1970; the Irish Embassy in Bonn rang to inform the AA that the IRA was suspected of having purchased five tons of arms and was attempting to smuggle them into Ireland through the port of Hamburg or Frankfurt airport. The AA immediately contacted the relevant authorities in an effort to prevent such an eventuality.148 The ‘arms crisis’ subsequently unfolded in May 1970 with news that the bid to import arms illegally for Northern Irish nationalists had failed. It resulted in the dismissal of C. J. Haughey, minister for finance, and Neil Blaney, minister for agriculture. Bonn withheld from making an official comment, as accurate information was lacking. Moreover, the FRG authorities were anxious to remain aloof from the deep domestic Irish crisis, notwithstanding the arms-​smuggling dimension. The FRG Embassy speculated about the possibility that the Lynch government would fall, owing to the intense splits within it.149 However, Lynch’s handling of the situation publicised that he

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would not tolerate armed or covert intervention by agents of the Irish state in the affairs of Northern Ireland. As Lynch dealt with his critics inside and outside the Fianna Fáil Party, the FRG ambassador noted the palpable fear in the Republic of Ireland that the Northern Ireland crisis would deteriorate into a full-​scale civil war and spread to the Republic.150 By this point in 1970, the ‘honeymoon’ period of the British Army in nationalist areas of Northern Ireland ended in the light of its maladroit and unsubtle efforts to counter the commencement of a Provisional IRA bombing campaign. The arrest of Bernadette Devlin, a young radical socialist republican MP, provoked sectarian strife and street violence across Northern Ireland in the summer of 1970, including in the nationalist Falls Road area of West Belfast. This was used to justify Hillery’s secret fact-​finding mission to meet moderate nationalists on the Falls Road in an effort to comprehend better the nature and scale of the problem. But it also plainly demonstrated Dublin’s solidarity with the moderate nationalist community in the North. The Stuttgarter Zeitung reported that the retrospective revelation of Hillery’s action was viewed by the British as a diplomatic faux pas, but by the Irish as a ‘masterpiece of diplomacy’.151 As circumstances in Northern Ireland continued to deteriorate, Bonn grew ever more cautious. In line with traditional West German behaviour since the early 1950s, it respected the British position that under international law Northern Ireland was an internal British affair. Recognising this, Dublin’s shifted to request the FRG to bring any informal influence it had to bear on London to reconsider its policies. By August 1971, Lynch’s government was frustrated by what it viewed as the counterproductive and inflammatory British Government policy of punitive law-​and-​order measures, including the introduction of internment without trial (August 1970). Craving international backing and desiring to persuade the Conservative government to reconsider internment, Iveagh House instructed all its foreign missions to plead with their hosts to make representations to Britain to adopt ‘a more reasonable attitude’ in the North. On 13 August 1971, Keating told the AA’s political director, von Staden, that London’s introduction of internment without trial had been a serious mistake. Furthermore, the Irish ambassador upheld his government’s arguments that the deployment of the British Army had played to the IRA’s advantage and radicalised Northern Ireland nationalists. Unfortunately, this underlined the accuracy of Dublin’s prophecy to London in the summer and autumn of 1969.152 Even if von Staden expressed sympathy, and promised that the AA would study the situation, one week later the Irish ambassador was discouraged. The acting head of the Irish desk informed Keating that Ireland’s request was under consideration but that Germany ‘had little freedom of manoeuvre’ vis-​à-​vis the British Government, which was not only a prospective EEC partner, but a present ally and a negotiating member of the four-​power group deciding the future of Berlin’. He recognised that any British troops diverted to the North would be withdrawn from defending the FRG

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against the Warsaw Pact. The FRG faced real ‘difficulties in doing anything very concrete’.153 The muted FRG attitude to Irish requests continued notwithstanding, or perhaps because of, its support for the British and Irish applications. Unduly complicating these was not to the FRG, Britain or Ireland’s best interests. In that sense it could be argued that the AA was correct: the ‘carrot’ of EC entry tempered Anglo-​Irish relations at a perilous period and introduced a note of normality in otherwise extraordinary circumstances. The ‘bread and butter issues’ of the EC negotiations required an unprecedented level of Anglo-​Irish coordination and communication. Although European integration did not solve the Northern Ireland question, it opened up a breathing space and facilitated some normalisation of Anglo-​Irish relations. Improved relationship building was possible in a neutral European integration space which required repeated contact and dialogue on other vital issues. On 29 January 1972 (‘Bloody Sunday’), three platoons of the Parachute Regiment killed or mortally wounded 14 defenceless civilians as part of the suppression of a banned civil rights march in the Bogside, Derry. A very ‘bitter’ Keating visited von Staden two days later to complain against Britain’s ‘lack of understanding’ in Northern Ireland and requested support in an effort to find a political solution. Von Staden, although regretful about what had transpired, restated the traditional FRG position that Northern Ireland was an internal British matter. ‘Bloody Sunday’ aroused an emotional mass public protest in Dublin that led to the burning of the British Embassy on 2 February. Anti-​British incidents took place not alone in Ireland and Britain, but worldwide. As part of the IRA’s backlash, two cars exploded in the British zone in West Berlin, the offices of the BBC and Reuters were attacked, and a 66-​year-​old German caretaker was killed by an explosion at a British-​owned yacht club.154 Hillery embarked on an unproductive tour of European capitals in February to explain the Irish perspective on the Northern crisis. Somewhat akin to the other EC states and in line with its past posture, Bonn adopted a ‘friendly’, neutral or ‘non-​committal’ stance.155 Its representatives simultaneously expressed ‘shock and sympathy and an anxiety to be helpful where possible though they made it clear they did not know exactly what they could usefully do’.156 Foreign minister Dr Walter Scheel was ‘the political brains of the Foreign Ministry and Chancellor Brandt’s expert on foreign affairs’. He welcomed Hillery’s intimation that only a ‘political solution’ (i.e., ‘non-​violent’) was possible, but ‘in the midst of a conflict it was difficult … to tell others what to do, but if their contacts could be usefully employed they would be prepared to make them available’. By this stage, the standard German line for dealing with Irish entreaties was to offer the unofficial ‘good offices’ if useful, counsel moderation, reinforce the Irish inclination towards political solutions, and put forward the view that the eventual

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solution lay in an enlarged EEC of 10 members. They did not wish to confound the accession process or the FRG’s foreign relations unnecessarily.157 Notes 1 AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 1825, Report, Overbeck to AA, 20 July 1970. 2 Ibid., Report, Overbeck to AA, 25 August 1970. 3 Ibid., Report, Overbeck to AA, 8 October 1970; AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 376, Report, FRG Embassy (Dublin) to AA, 22 October 1970. 4 ‘Ein Nein wäre das grössere Risiko’, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 10 May 1972. 5 Roland Hill, ‘Die Iren haben ihre Jahrhundert-​Entscheidung zu treffen’, Stuttgarter Zeitung, 10 May 1972; ‘83 Prozent stimmten für Irlands EWG-​Beitritt’, Die Welt, 12 May 1972. 6 AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 1913, Report, Gröpper to AA, 8 May 1972. 7 Dooley, Terence, The Land for the People: The Land Question in Independent Ireland (Dublin: Dublin University Press, 2004), p. 182. 8 NAI, DT, S14200A, Purchase of Property by non-​nationals, n.d. (c. June 1947). 9 For example, see:  Ibid., de Paor (Private Secretary Minister of Lands) to Private Secretary (of the Taoiseach), 30 January 1959. 10 NAI, DT, S14200 A, Memo, Acquisition of Real Property by Aliens, 31 December 1947. 11 Ibid., Geary to Moynihan, 19 January 1953, p. 1. 12 Dáil Debates, 8 May 1956, Vol. 157, Cols. 43–​4; Dáil Debates, 21 November 1957, vol. 164, cols. 937–​8. 13 NAI, DT, S14200 A, O’Brien to Moynihan, 20 November, 1957; Dáil Debates, 25 February 1959, Vol. 173, No. 1, Col. 27–​9; NAI, DT, S14200A, Memorandum re Dáil Question No. 45 (25 Feb. 1959), n.d. (c. February 1959). 14 See NAI, DT S14200 A, S17045 B 61, S17097/​61 for some examples for the period from 1945 to 1961. 15 NAI, DFA, Embassy Series, Bonn, PP1/​4/​1: London correspondents of the German press, Press cutting, ‘Irland:  Nebenstelle des deutschen Wunders’, Augsburger Allgemeine, 4 June 1960. 16 Ibid. 17 NAI, DFA, Embassy Series, Rome, 455, Report & Press Cutting (La Domenica del Corriere, 12 June 1960), Waldron to Cremin, 18 June 1960; NAI, DFA, Embassy Series, Bonn, PP1/​4/​1, ‘Deutsche investieren in Irland’, Westdeutsche Allgemeine, 10 June 1960. 18 NAI, DFA, Embassy Series, Bonn, PP1/​ 4/​ 1, ‘Deutsches Privatkapital in Irland willkommen’, Wiesbadener Kurier, 10 June 1960. 19 NAI, DFA, Embassy Series, Rome, 455, Report & Press Cutting (La Domenica del Corriere, 12 June 1960), Waldron to Cremin, 18 June 1960. 20 ‘German Invasion worry to Irishmen’, Windsor Daily Star, 2 December 1960. 21 Editorial, ‘Foreigners buying our Land’, Irish Farmers Journal, 22 October 1960, p. 27; ‘Control Land Purchase by Foreigners’, Irish Farmers Journal, 14 January 1961, p. 1.

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2 2 Editorial, ‘Farms for Foreigners’, 14 January 1961, p. 7. 23 AA-​PA, Berlin, Bestand B31, Band 221, ‘Irische Bauern beunruhigt über zunehmende deutsche Landskäufe’, Frankfurter Rundschau, 24 January 1961. 24 AA-​PA, B31, Bd. 221, Report, Reifferscheidt to AA, Deutsche Landkäufe in Irland, 27 January 1961. 25 ‘The “New Invasion” ’, Irish Times, 27 March 1961. 26 NAI, DFA, P 316, passim. 27 NAI, DFA, 305/​404, Horan (?) to Berry, 15 July 1960. 28 Ibid., Horan to Secretary, 21 June 1960. 29 Ibid. T. J. Horan was the Assistant Secretary of the Department of External Affairs. 30 For more detail an analysis of the impact of the Eichmann capture and trial see O’Driscoll, ‘A “German Invasion”?’, pp. 534–​5. 31 Dáil Debates, 3 May 1961, Vol. 188, Cols. 1536–​ 44; NAI, DT S 17097/​ 61, Memorandum for Government, Land Control of Acquisition by Non-​Nationals) Bill, 6 July 1961; Dáil Debates, 12 July 1961, Vol. 191, Col. 706. 32 Dáil Debates, 19 July 1961, Vol. 191, Cols. 1304–​5. 33 Ibid. 34 Dáil Debates, 7 June 1962, Vol. 195, Col. 2333. 35 AA-​PA, B31, Bd. 221, Report, Reifferscheidt to AA, Hinweise in der irischen Press auf das Buch von Enno Stephan Geheimauftrag Irland, Verlag Stalling, Hamburg, 17 October 1961. 36 Stephan, Spies in Ireland, p. 9. 37 For example, Enno Stephan, ‘Instalment No. 3; From the book, “Spies in Ireland” ’, Sunday Independent, 8 December 1963, p. 10. 38 Clissmann’s role was public knowledge. See for example:  ‘Irish-​ German society formed’, Irish Times, 25 October 1951, p. 3; ‘Memorial Service for Fallen Germans of Two Wars’, Irish Times, 14 November 1955, p. 7; Helmut and Budge Clissmann letter to the editor, ‘German Spies in Ireland’, Irish Times, 11 June 1958, p. 7. 39 AA-​PA, Berlin, Bestand B31, Band 221, Report, Reifferscheidt to AA, Hinweise in der irischen Press auf das Buch von Enno Stephan Geheimauftrag Irland, Verlag Stalling, Hamburg, 17 October 1961. 40 AA-​PA, Berlin, Bestand B31, Band 238, Report, Reifferscheidt to AA, Empfang durch den Präsidenten von Irland Eamon de Valera, 6 January 1962. 41 ‘Land Sale to Aliens Condemned’, Irish Independent, 30 April 1962, p. 1. 42 Liam Doyle Letter to the Editor, ‘The German Invasion’, Irish Times, 4 May 1962, p. 9; Michael Farrell Letter to the Editor, ‘The German Invasion’, Irish Times, 9 May 1962, p. 7. 43 Dáil Debates, 17 May 1962, Vol. 195, Cols. 1052–​4. 44 AA-​PA, B31-​Bd. 239, Report, Reifferscheidt to AA, Deutsche Landkäufe in Irland, 14 June 1962. 45 ‘Germans in Ireland’, Cork Examiner, 21 June 1962; AA-​PA, Berlin, Bestand B31, Band 239, Report, Reifferscheidt to AA, Deutsche Landkäufe in Irland, 26 June 1962; ‘Attitude to Germans in Ireland’, Irish Independent, 22 June 1962, p. 14. Georg Rosenstock, ‘ “Herr Neureich” aus Deutschland verärgert die irischen Bauern‘, Die Welt, 20 June 1962.

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46 ‘Embassy Protest to Hamburg Newspaper’, Irish Independent, 18 July 1962, p. 12; ‘Attitude to Germans in Ireland’, Irish Independent, 22 June 1962, p. 14. 47 ‘Ireland for Sale?’, Irish Times, 4 September 1962, p. 8. 48 NAI, DFA, Embassy Series, Bonn, 18/​2/​1II, Taoiseach’s Visit to Germany, Annex IX: Conversations in Bonn. 49 Dáil Debates, 7 June 1962, Vol. 195, No. 16, Col. 2296. 50 Dáil Debates, 11 December 1962, Vol. 198, Cols, 1005–​6; Dáil Debates, 20 March 1963, Vol. 201, Cols. 18–​21. 51 Dáil Debates, 10 December 1963, Vol. 206, Cols. 807–​8. 52 Dáil Debates, 23 October 1963, Vol. 205, Col. 107. 53 Dáil Debates, 19 July 1961, Vol. 191, Col. 1350; Dáil Debates, 3 July 1962, Vol. 196, Col. 1246. 54 NAI, JUS, 203/​26/​5, Danish Embassy Commercial Section, London to Cremin, 8 May 1963. 55 Dooley, Land for the People, p. 187. 56 Section 45, Land Act, 1965 www.irishstatutebook.ie/​1965/​en/​act/​pub/​0002/​index. html#zza2y1965; NAI, DFA, 2003/​1/​264, Kissane to Ó Cróinín, 10 September 1970 (see attached memorandum ‘Purchase of land by non-​nationals’, May 1969); NAI, DT, 96/​4/​492, Flanagan to Lynch, 12 December 1969. 57 Dáil Debates, 3 March 1965, Vol. 214, Cols. 1311–​13. 58 Ibid., col. 1316; Section 20, Land Act, 1965, www.irishstatutebook.ie/​1965/​en/​act/​ pub/​0002/​index.html#zza2y1965 [accessed on 5 January 2011]. 59 NAI, DT, 96/​4/​492, Interview Notes, c. 25 March 1965. 60 ‘Clamp on Land Sales to Aliens’, Sunday Press, 9 January 1966; NAI, DT, 96/​6/​492, Department for Lands Memorandum, Purchase of Land in Ireland by Non-​Citizens, May 1969. 61 Ibid. 62 NAI, DT, 969/​4/​492, Flanagan to Lynch, 15 August 1969. 63 NAI, DT, 2004/​21/​143, O’Dowd to Toal, 26 June 1970. 64 Dáil Debates, 8 November 1966, Vol. 225, Cols. 269–​70. 65 Editorial, ‘Fire over Ireland’, Irish Times, 12 June 1969, 11. 66 See O’Driscoll, ‘A “German invasion”?’, p. 538. 67 Dáil Debates, 17 May 1966, Vol. 222, Col. 1797. 68 The extensive newspaper cuttings that form part of NAI, DT, 96/​6/​492 record the activities of the Westmeath Land League. 69 Irish Times, 10 July 1969. 70 Jochen Rudolph, ‘Irlands langer Weg zum Industrieland’, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 21 July 1969. 71 Werner Spiegel, ‘Murphy und O’Sullivan können sich jetzt im Land ernähren’, Stuttgarter Zeitung, 21 June 1969. 72 AA-​PA, Berlin, Bestand B20–​200, Band 1825, Report, Overbeck to AA, Kurzfassung des 25. Berichtes der Wirtschaftsreferenten bei den diplomatischen Vertretungen der EWG [in Dublin], 20 July 1970. 73 AA-​PA, Berlin, Bestand B31, Band 375, Report, Prill to AA, Politischer Jahresbericht 1968, 31 January 1969.

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74 NAI, DT S99/​1/​60, Proposed Legislation for the Control of Supermarkets, Memo, Department of Finance, 3 April 1968, p. 1. 75 J. H. Whyte, ‘Reconciliation, Rights, and Protests, 1963–​8’, in J. R. Hill (ed.), A New History of Ireland, Vol. VII, Ireland 1921–​84 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), pp. 322–​3. 76 ‘Sinn Féin Land Leagues to Undo “Conquest” ’, Irish Times, 13 December 1968, p. 12. 77 ‘Going too Far’, Irish Press, 30 May 1968, p. 8. 78 ‘They Blew Up Galway Lobster Boat’, Irish Press, 5 August 1968, p. 9. 79 Ibid. 80 ‘Protests made in Three Areas: Beach, Lands and Fishery’, Irish Press, 16 June 1969, p. 13; ‘Fine Day for Brittas Picket: Co. Donegal “Fish-​in” ’, in Irish Press, 30 June 1969, p. 3. 81 ‘No special guard on farms’, Irish Times, 9 April 1969, p. 4; DFA 2008/​79/​1926, Memorandum, Protest at Burnings of German Farms’, n.d. (c. 1969). 82 ‘Warning by the Republican movement’, Irish Press, 31 May 1969. 83 ‘No Special Guard on Farms’, Irish Times, 9 April 1969, 4. 84 ‘Bonn asked: “Aid Irish Germans” ’, Irish Press, 23 May 1969. 85 Ibid. 86 Ibid. 87 Letter by D. McCarthy, E. Gilligan and P. Power, ‘German landowners’, Irish Press, 27 May 1969. 88 ‘Republican Threat to alien Land-​owners’, Irish Times, 3 June 1969, p. 10. 89 ‘Burnings Condemned by Taoiseach’, Irish Independent, 12 June 1969, 7. 90 ‘Two German Factories for Galway’, Connacht Tribune, 13 June 1969, 1. 91 Irish Times Reporter, ‘Fire Attacks made on Four Farms’, Irish Times, 12 June 1969, p.  1; NAI, DFA, 2008/​79/​1926, Memorandum, Protest at Burnings of German Farms, n.d. (c. 1969). 92 Irish Times Reporter, ‘Fire Attacks made on Four Farms’, Irish Times, 12 June 1969, p. 1. 93 ‘IRA fear “Bay of Pigs” here –​Against profiteers’, Irish Press, 13 June 1969. 94 ‘Raids not solely anti-​German’, Irish Independent, 14 June 1969, p. 1; A. Croaty, ‘Bonn plays down the farm attacks’, Irish Press, 14 June 1969. 95 ‘Burnings “not political” ’, Irish Independent, 17 June 1969, p. 8. 96 Irish Independent, 7 August 1969. 97 Ibid. 98 ‘Fine Gael and Macra Object’, Irish Press, 8 August, 1969, p. 4. 99 Irish Times, 8 August 1969; Irish Press, 8 August 1969. 100 Irish Press, 6 October 1969. 101 Ibid., 8 August 1969. 102 See NAI, DT, 96/​6/​492. 103 Ibid., Lynch to Flanagan, 12 September 1969. 104 NAI DFA 2008/​79/​1926, Note by Department of External Affairs to AA, n.d. (partially fire damaged). See also: Irish Independent, 9 January 1970. 105 Irish Times, 17 September 1969; Irish Independent, 18 September 1969. 106 Business and Finance, 11 July 1969. See NAI, DT, S96/​6/​492.

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1 07 NAI, DFA, 2008/​79/​1926, Schleifenbaum to O’Sullivan, 23 March 1971. 108 Ibid., Translation of Handelsblatt No. 98, 24 May 1971; ibid., Drury to Secretary, 27 May 1971. 109 NAI, DFA, 2003/​1/​264, Memo (draft), Purchase of land by non-​nationals, c. 10 October 1970. 110 Ibid. 111 NAI, DFA, 2005/​145/​887, Memo by Minister for Lands (Seán Flanagan), EEC Freedom of Establishment on Land, 19 July 1971. 112 Ibid., Memo for Government by Department of Lands, Negotiations for accession to the European Communities:  Freedom of establishment in Forestry, 11 October 1971. 113 See: NAI, DFA, 2005/​145/​887; NAI, DT, 2004/​21/​143; NAI, DFA, 2003/​1/​264 for the detailed interdepartmental and ministerial discussions. NAI, DFA, 2005/​145/​ 887, Quick Notes on Memorandum for Government (for Tuesday next) submitted by Department of Foreign Affairs to-​day (Friday) relating to Right of Establishment on Agricultural land, 8 October 1971. Voices were raised continuously in public fora expressing concern about the matter. See: Irish Press, 26 November 1970; Dáil Debates, 24 February 1971, Vol. 251, Col. 1952–​3; Irish Press, 30 April 1971; Irish Times, 19 May 1971; Irish Times, 9 July 1971. 114 NAI DFA, 2003/​1/​264, Draft Memo, Purchase of Land by Non-​nationals, c. September 1970. 115 Irish Times, 19 June 1970. 116 NAI, DFA, 2005/​ 145/​ 887, DFA Summary of Memo for the Government, Negotiations for Accession to the European Communities: Freedom of Establishment in Agricultural Land, 6 October 1971; Irish Press, 22 September 1970. 117 NAI, DT, 2004/​21/​143, DFA Memo, Purchase of Agricultural Land by Non-​ nationals, Supplementary note, Representations to the Member States of the EEC, 21 July 1971. 118 Ibid., Purchase of Agricultural Land by Non-​ nationals, Supplementary note, Representations to the Member States of the EEC, 21 July 1971. 119 NAI, DFA, 2005/​145/​887, DFA Memo for the Government, Negotiations for Accession to the European Communities: Freedom of Establishment in Agricultural Land, October 1971. 120 NAI, DT, 2004/​21/​143, Extract from Instructions sent to the Irish Embassies in the Capitals of the Six on 17 June 1971; NAI, DFA, 2003/​1/​264, Memo, Purchase of Land by Non-​nationals, attached to Kissane to Ó Cróinín, 10 September 1970. 121 NAI, DFA, 2005/​145/​887, DFA Memo for the Government, Negotiations for Accession to the European Communities: Freedom of Establishment in Agricultural Land, 6 October 1971. 122 Ibid., Memo, unclear signature, Land Purchase, 28 June 1971. 123 Morten Rasmussen, ‘State Power and the Acquis Communautaire in the European Community of the early 1970s’, in Jan Van der Harst (ed.), Beyond the Customs Union: The European Community’s Quest for Deepening, Widening and Completion, 1969–​1975 (Brussels:  Bruylant, 2007), pp. 370–​ 1; M.  Rasmussen, ‘Joining the European Communities:  Denmark’s Road to EC Membership, 1961–​ 73’ (Unpublished PhD, thesis European University Institute, Florence, 2004), p. 273.

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1 24 ‘League calls for Land Safeguards’, Irish Press, 17 January 1972, p. 3. 125 NAI, DT, 2004/​21/​143, DFA Pamphlet, Ireland and the EEC:  The Purchase of Land, November 1971. 126 NAI, DFA, CRS, 2000/​14/​468, Report, Kennedy to McCann, Crisis in the Six Counties: German Reactions, 30 April 1969. 127 Ibid. 128 Ibid., Report, Kennedy to McCann, Crisis in the Six Counties: German Reactions, 30 April 1969. 129 NAI, DFA, Embassy Series, Bonn, D/​23, Kennedy to McCann, 19 August 1969. 130 Ibid., Mulloy to McCann, 15 August 1969. 131 Ibid., Report, Secretary of Irish embassy (Bonn) to McCann, 14 November 1969. 132 For a detailed and measured reconstruction of the crisis from the Taoiseach’s perspective see Dermot Keogh, Jack Lynch: A Biography (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2008), pp. 166–​75. 133 NAI, DFA, Embassy Series, Bonn, D/​23, Mulloy to McCann, 15 August 1969. 134 Ibid., Kennedy to McCann, 19 August 1969. 135 Ibid., Frank to Kennedy, 27 August 1969. 136 Ibid., Kennedy to McCann, 19 August 1969. 137 NAI, DFA, CRS, 2000/​14/​468, Kennedy to McCann, 23 December 1969. 138 Ibid. 139 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 375, Fax, Boeker to AA, 18 August 1969. 140 NAI, DFA, CRS, 2000/​14/​468, Kennedy to McCann, 23 December 1969. 141 Ibid. 142 Ibid. 143 Ibid. 144 NAI, DFA, Embassy Series, Paris, 2001/​31/​10, DEA Circular to all Irish Missions abroad, n.d. (c. 12 November 1969). 145 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 375, Report, Koenig to AA, 9 February 1970. 146 Ibid., Report, Koenig to AA, 16 February 1970. 147 AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 1825, Fax, Hans Hamburger (Counsellor in German Embassy in Dublin) to AA, 15 May 1970. 148 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 376, Note, Mr. Henatsch, 4 May 1970. 149 AA-​PA, Bestand B20–​200, Band 1825, Fax, Overbeck to AA, 29 May 1970. 150 See the German Ambassador’s depiction of the situation in AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 375, Report, Overbeck to AA, 10 February 1971. 151 ‘Nation der Iren in zwei Staaten’, Stuttgarter Zeitung, 21 July 1970. 152 AA-​PA, Bestand B31, Band 376, Note by Thomas, 16 August 1971. 153 NAI, DFA, Embassy Series, Bonn, D/​101/​1, Report, Keating to McCann, 23 August 1971. 154 ‘25000 Iren stürmen britische Botschaft’, Stuttgarter Zeitung, 3 February 1972; ‘Man Dies in West Berlin Explosion:  Believed Protest over Derry’, Irish Times, 3 February 1972, p. 9. 155 Walsh, Hillery, p. 285. 156 NAI, DFA, CRS, 2003/​17/​88, Keating to McCann, 18 February 1972. 157 Ibid.

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Epilogue: Ireland, German reunification and remaking Europe

‘I shall not forget this.’1 Helmut Kohl

Made in Germany Ireland’s relationship with West Germany was an essential component in its embrace of economic modernisation and European integration. By the mid-​ 1950s the Irish economy and society was moribund; the recipe of protectionism and irredentism had demonstrably failed as the basis on which to sustain an independent Ireland. The crisis acted as a catalyst and began the Irish movement towards an alternative national economic model. German representatives encouraged this adaptation and from this time West Germany played an influential role in consolidating Ireland’s faltering steps along this new course. As the German minister to Ireland advised the Dublin Rotary Club in April 1957, ‘In Europe to-​day there was hardly a country which … could go it alone’.2 Later he openly criticised trade discrimination and retaliation as an ‘anachronism in a time in which the nations of the free world should stand together’.3 Irish expectations that it could develop Germany as a major market for its agricultural produce (especially beef and dairy products) and moderate its dependence on Britain remained unrequited throughout the 1950s. As matters turned out food exports would not account for the rapid rise in Irish exports to West Germany in the succeeding two decades. Instead exports were manufactured goods produced by German branch plants based in Ireland. Bonn, in a tacit effort to appease criticism concerning the lack of openings for Ireland’s staple agricultural products, fostered the interest of West German firms in investing in Ireland. This conveniently contributed in some small way to alleviating the overheating German economy and the excess of industrial investment capital there. By the mid-​1960s West Germany was the second largest industrial investor in Ireland, ahead of the United States, but after Britain.4

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This modification in Irish economic fortunes and direction was accompanied by adjustments in Irish foreign policy. In the early 1960s, the AA was commenting approvingly on the mounting signals that Irish foreign policy was undergoing a process of moderation and mainstreaming: there was a mounting tendency for Ireland to consult its Western neighbours, including West Germany, on numerous matters. The FRG grew to appreciate that Ireland as a pro-​Western neutral state offered some compensations. The defining emphases in Irish foreign policy moved away from forceful neutralism and irredentism. Lemass declared Ireland was not an ideological neutral. He portrayed Ireland as wholly anti-​communist, democratic and Western in its sympathies. Lemass’s vocal advertising of Ireland’s Western affinities hinted at future Irish flexibility in the field of neutrality if Ireland secured admission to the EEC. The yearning in Irish circles to reduce the state’s precarious economic dependence on Britain was palpable. From 1961, when Ireland applied for EEC membership, Western Europe became its defining foreign policy and trade framework. Ireland clasped it for several reasons. Admittance to the EEC market, which fundamentally relied on the FRG’s and generous EU funding, held the promise of liberation. Membership would enhance Ireland as a platform for export-​oriented FDI, as US and other non-​EEC firms searched for desirable investment locations to access the EEC. West Germany and European integration were two sides of the same coin. The appeal of the EEC was not simply markets and supports. Ireland interpreted integration as a declaration and not as a threat to national identity and independence; it had the potential to equalise the unequal relationship between Ireland and Britain. Europe reframed Anglo-​Irish relations in a multilateral context; EC membership allowed confidence building in the relationship away from the pressure cooker of bilateral disputes over the best ways to deal with the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland. The two had to work together as equal partners; that required close consultation, cooperation and coordination. Joint admission to the EC widened the relationship in a healthy fashion. By pooling sovereignty in the EC the Irish authorities estimated they had some, as opposed to no, influence on international economic and political matters. Membership broadened Irish horizons substantially. Moreover, the EC that Ireland entered in 1973 tolerated Irish neutrality as discussions on political union had stalled completely after 1963. For these reasons and more, the Irish were as pro-​European in sentiment as the original six member states. It seems that Dr Garret FitzGerald’s advice5 for Ireland was largely adhered to by successive governments after 1973: As a small country we must ensure that we do not create problems for our partners save in the case of issues that are of vital importance to us. Only when our case is so strong –​so overwhelmingly strong –​that in logic others should objectively accept it, should we press our interests in a way that can create problems for other people.

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We must avoid pinpricking our partners and thus losing the goodwill that we need on certain relatively few crucial occasions.6

Dublin self-​consciously avoided disrupting the progress of European integration and consolidated Ireland’s record as a constructive European member. And at the heart of the EC was West Germany. After Ireland’s entry into the EC in 1973, a dramatic growth in trade with West Germany occurred, consolidating that destination as Ireland’s largest trading partner in the EC, and on a par with the United States as an export market and supplier.7 Irish exports to the FRG in 1989 were IR£1.6 billion and amounted to 11.1 per cent of Irish exports worldwide; the FRG was Ireland’s second largest export market after the UK and usually surpassed the United States.8 In 1989, Ireland’s trade surplus with West Germany exceeded IR£500 million per annum.9 This large trade surplus was consistently maintained between 1982 and 1989,10 in spite of the grave Irish recession. Ireland interpreted the commercial opportunities offered by West Germany, and the prospect of the EC Internal Market in 1992, as the primary channel for exiting the Irish recession. The positive trade balance with the FRG was a reversal of the traditional Irish deficits with West Germany before the 1970s. Exports to the FRG had diversified from the live cattle and textiles, which predominated in the 1930s, 1950s and early 1960s, to include electrical machinery, processed foods, office equipment, computers, chemicals and electronic goods.11 In 1987 Ireland established an interdepartmental coordinating committee under the chairmanship of the Irish ambassador in Bonn to promote trade, investment, tourism and cultural exchanges with the FRG.12 This integrated approach exemplified the urgency the authorities placed in exploiting the market potential of the FRG. The Irish economy had transformed since the 1950s and the high value German market was a prime target for exporters. In sum, West Germany had established a positon of economic and international influence in Ireland from the late 1950s, when the Irish authorities endeavoured to exploit the export potential of the Wirtschaftswunder in order to reactivate the stagnant Irish economy and reorient it towards Foreign Direct Investment and export-​oriented manufacturing. West Germany was and would remain the economic powerhouse of Western Europe. The EC, built on a foundation of Franco-​German rapprochement, was a source of prosperity, interdependence and peace between the original six member states. But Ireland’s trajectory from the 1960s to the 1980s shows that the EC performed a comparable role on the island of Ireland. East Germany Any Irish efforts to draw parallels, however, between Irish partition and the division of Germany caused West Germany disquiet. The FRG preserved a studied

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diplomatic silence on the Northern Ireland question, and this continued without alteration when the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’ exploded after 1969. In contrast, the FRG had counted on unconditional support for German reunification from the Irish authorities after 1949, and it was delivered automatically and unquestioningly. After Ireland acceded to the UN in 1955, the FRG was grateful for Irish propaganda highlighting the injustice of the division of Germany in this global forum. Ireland strictly adhered to the Hallstein Doctrine and refused to recognise the GDR through the 1950s and 1960s. Ireland refused to support the GDR and the Warsaw Pact’s demands for the GDR to become a member of the UN until FRG policy changed and adopted Ostpolitik. The latter eased East–​West détente, but it also enabled membership of the UN for both East and West Germany in 1973. Ireland voted for the GDR’s membership; the GDR’s acceptance by the UN was a necessary element of East–​West détente and the Irish government supported the process.13 Regardless, the Irish authorities were conspicuously reluctant to open diplomatic relations with East Germany. Anti-​communism was deep-​seated. This reflected the influence of the Catholic Church on ‘the Irish mind’. Generally, the Irish population found the communist regimes behind the Iron Curtain to be odious for reasons of religion and democracy. Irish newspapers invariably denounced communism and the Eastern bloc. The Irish Communist Party was minuscule and ostracised. Times began to change with Ireland’s attainment of EC membership (1973), but the expansion of the Irish diplomatic network tended to reflect trade opportunities from the late 1960s and, with the exception of the Soviet Union, Ireland had diminutive economic interests in the socialist states. Diplomatic relations were finally established with the GDR in 1980; Ireland was the last member of the EEC to exchange diplomats with the GDR and the reasons for this eventual compromise were idiosyncratic: an elected member of the party (Fianna Fáil) that comprised the government in 1979 and 1980 had a strong family interest in repatriating the body of the famous but contentious Irish revolutionary republican, Frank Ryan, from Dresden. Ryan had fought with the International Brigades in the Spanish Civil War becoming an international socialist and anti-​fascist icon.14 By 1989, relations between Ireland and the GDR had not matured, in contrast to Ireland’s relationship with West Germany. Irish–​East German trade was minuscule and was dwarfed by Irish–​West German trade. In 1988, just before the GDR’s existence became a matter for debate, Ireland exported £8.4 million to the GDR and imported €8.9 million from there.15 Unifying Germany and Europe, 1989–​90 The Fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 was unexpected and the pace of German reunification repeatedly exceeded most observers’ expectations. Ireland was scheduled to take over the presidency of the European Council for six

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months on 1 January 1990. By the late 1980s the Irish state had already occupied the post of President of the EC Council thrice (1975, 1979 and 1984). Irish governments had strongly embraced the policy of running effective presidencies as a matter of ‘vital national interest’. Adopting a ‘can do’ attitude and an honest broker perspective, the Irish political elite considered the EC was an intrinsic part of the national mission. Ireland earned plaudits from fellow EC politicians and civil servants for its effectiveness and even-​handedness in the running of past presidencies.16 From his accession as Taoiseach in 1987, Charles J.  Haughey identified Ireland’s relations with the EC as a strategic priority to extricate the Irish economy from a severe slump. Haughey played a leading role in lobbying the Commission to maximise Ireland’s receipt of cohesion, structural and social funds to mitigate swingeing fiscal austerity and reposition the Irish economy before the completion of the single market. This was scheduled to commence operation on 1 January 1993. He ensured he was ‘the real centre of authority for the most important’ EC matters from 1987.17 Haughey controlled the most important matters of government. In July 1989 when Gerry Collins succeeded Brian Lenihan as minister for foreign affairs, his role and that of the Department of Foreign Affairs were much reduced in European affairs. Haughey, therefore, was actively preparing for the Irish Presidency of the EC in the first six months of 1990 long before German reunification became an issue. The historic importance and high stakes were not lost on Haughey or his government in the final months of 1989. While Western statesmen had incessantly appealed for the reunification of Germany, few anticipated the Berlin Wall falling on the night of 9 and 10 November 1989. Kohl’s suggestive declaration to the people in West Berlin on that fateful night added a sense of apprehension. His ‘one nation’ rhetoric appealed to many in the GDR, but it conjured up fears abroad particularly in London and Paris. The Irish premier had to facilitate communication and consultation between his European partners. The Taoiseach and his Spanish counterpart, Felipe Gonzalez, were the ‘prime instigators’ of the extraordinary ‘mini-​summit’ of EC leaders in Paris (held on 18 November) to discuss East Germany.18 At this early stage, Haughey publicly declared the latest events ‘merely reinforced the need to speed up the process’ of European integration as ‘we should move rapidly towards cohesion so that EC can be an entity for stability’ in a time of change. Haughey stated, ‘German reunification was a matter for the German people … and because of our own history we were naturally inclined towards any wish by the German people to come together in unity. It was, however, a matter for the peoples in both parts of Germany to resolve.’19 Family history predisposed Haughey to oppose Irish partition, involving him in dubious activities in 1969 and 1970 after the outbreak of the ‘Troubles’.20 His inclination towards German reunification was an undeniable correlate of his Irish republicanism.

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Any prospect of a meeting of minds between the EC heads of government was crushed on 28 November 1989 by Kohl’s unilateral announcement of a 10-​ point plan for German unity. Point 5 aimed at establishing confederative structures to enable an eventual federation of Germany comprising the two states.21 Kohl’s assertiveness worried Margaret Thatcher and François Mitterrand,22 but not Haughey, who continued to reiterate his line in favour of German reunification paralleled by deepening EC integration. As a small state Ireland’s natural ally was the Commission. Haughey held comparable views to the President of the European Commision, Jacques Delors, on German reunification. The two had already built up an ‘excellent’ relationship before the end of 1989.23 Delors, an integrationist whose full ambitions remained unrequited by the Single European Act, understood German reunification might vanquish European differences on deeper integration by convincing integration sceptics of the need for a fully fledged EU to balance and constrain a united Germany. The faint outlines of a twin-​track strategy materialised and the instincts of Delors and Haughey converged: bind a reunited Germany more tightly into the EC to mitigate European concerns about its resurgence. Ireland took over the presidency of the European Council on 1 January 1990. Ireland faced a major responsibility not least because the Strasbourg Council of 8 and 9 December 1989 had seen open arguments between the European leaders about Kohl’s conduct of policy in relation to East Germany.24 Judging by developments later in December, the situation was deteriorating. After Strasbourg Mitterrand paid a visit to the East German regime, which Kohl viewed as unhelpful. Spectacularly Mitterrand presented a vague plan for a European confederation in his address to the French nation on 31 December 1989. He did so without consultation with his advisors, his foreign minister or his European partners.25 Kohl refused to accept European confederation as a solution for ‘inter-​German’ affairs, signalling that he did not welcome Mitterrand’s interference in what he saw as an internal matter. In a departure, the EC foreign ministers met informally on 20 January 1990 to prepare for the General Affairs Council in mid-​February. This Irish initiative, Haughey indicated, was necessary to review the situation, as matters were ‘changing so quickly’ and the Community needed to frame a response to the accelerating changes in Eastern Europe.26 Collins chaired the informal meeting of foreign ministers under the auspices of European Political Cooperation (EPC) in Dublin Castle. He regarded it as ‘exceptionally important’, as it would shape the agenda of the EC regarding Eastern Europe,27 particularly after the violent Romanian Revolution in late December 1989. The foreign ministers discussed the EC Commission’s preliminary assessment of the critical economic situation in the emerging democratic Eastern European states. At this stage, Delors’ revelation that the possible ten-​year aid package to the new democracies in the East could cost £150 billion, led to concerns it would strain the finances of the EC and

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threaten other funding programmes such as structural funds.28 The ‘thorny question of whether East Germany should be admitted to the EC’ was left undecided. Collins told reporters, ‘the EC would have to move slowly on the issue of East German membership’ and it would ‘wait for democratic elections before making any decision’.29 However, the East German regime was collapsing and it decided to bring the date of the first democratic East German general election forward to 18 March 1990. Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev met Kohl in Moscow on 10 February and he removed Soviet objections to reunification, if that reflected the democratic will of the East German population.30 Haughey had visited Paris for a working lunch with Mitterrand on 6 February 1990.31 According to Noel Dorr, this Haughey–​Mitterrand meeting delineated the outline of a prospective solution. Mitterrand’s thinking was evolving and he demonstrated a realistic assessment of the situation. Haughey gained Mitterrand’s approval that it was opportune for the Presidency to call a special summit in April, after the East German elections. Mitterrand remained unenthusiastic about German reunification, but a potential compromise was in the offing to clear the way for German reunification. In return for Mitterrand’s support for reunification, Kohl agreed to strengthen the EC by re-​committing to an early economic and monetary union (EMU) and, importantly for Mitterrand, the FRG Chancellor endorsed and agreed that European political union was a priority. The process of reunification and the acceleration of European integration would now proceed in parallel; the EC had to fast track integration and not be deflected by German unification.32 Following the resounding electoral victory of the pro-​unification parties in the East German general election of 18 March 1990, the importance of the special summit was heightened: the democratic will of the East German electorate in favour of speedy unification was impossible to ignore. The prospective extension of the Deutschmark into East Germany would demand a realignment of the European Monetary System (EMS). To counter concerns about an overly dominant Germany (in demographic and economic terms), the Irish Presidency had to build EC consensus quickly to take advantage of Mitterrand’s willingness to contemplate German reunification within an EC framework. The Irish were well positioned to assist in moulding a European Germany. Haughey began a tour of the European capitals to prepare for the special summit. His overall objective was to accelerate progress towards EMU and extract a commitment that the EU would embark on political union negotiations.33 If Kohl was prepared to accept this, then it would reassure the other heads of government that Germany’s commitment to integration remained. Haughey’s European tour began with Helmut Kohl on 28 March 1990; this meeting was crucial if the presidency was to build a ‘collective’ approach.34 It went well, and indeed probably accorded with Kohl’s instincts, but it was assisted by Haughey’s unblemished record of supporting German unity. In a joint press

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conference following their meeting, Kohl stated: ‘Some people have been following German unity with a certain scepticism. We must now provide a framework in our efforts for European unification’. He proposed that the EC would gain fresh impetus with an Intergovernmental Conference (IGC) on political union to parallel the delayed one for EMU; the latter was to commence in December under the Italian presidency. In effect, Kohl allayed apprehensions when he claimed the reunification of Germany and European political union were ‘two sides of the same coin’.35 The chancellor told the press of the need to press forward with European integration and he affirmed that the IGC on EMU in December 1992 should be ‘very serious, thorough, but speedy as well’, as monetary union was a necessary complement to the coming into operation of the SEM in 1993.36 With the Irish go-​between securing a working compromise that satisfied the political EC titans, it was virtually a certainty that most other heads of government, with the possible exception of Margaret Thatcher, would endorse German reunification in return for a German commitment to deepen integration on a tight schedule. On 29 March, Haughey told the press both Kohl and Mitterrand ‘are very much talking along the same lines’. Haughey advised it was preferable to proceed with EC consolidation and deepening before contemplating the entry of new member states.37 He gauged that a majority of EC states favoured a major integrationist undertaking. Finally, on 20 April 1990, Kohl and Mitterrand issued a joint letter to the Presidency of the EC Council commending Haughey for calling the special summit. It endorsed the strategy of revitalising and intensifying the stalled discussions on EMU. It suggested the EC Council should commence preparations for a parallel IGC on political union to improve unity, strengthen democracy, make the EC’s institutions more efficient and develop a common foreign and security. With this authoritative indication that the Franco-​German axis had rediscovered its momentum, the outcome of the special summit was a foregone conclusion. The Dublin summit signified a relaunch of the Franco-​German ‘grand bargain’.38 The ‘extraordinary’ EC Council at Dublin in April 1990 accepted German reunification as an internal FRG matter involving the incorporation of the GDR rather than a wider EC issue. The summit also endorsed the concept of a second IGC to negotiate political union. The date for its completion was set during the second Dublin summit of June 1990. The outcome remained uncertain but, in retrospect, the restoration of the Franco-​German axis at the two Dublin summits was decisive. These approved the de facto reunification of Germany and initiated the revamp of the EC’s economic and political architecture. After lengthy negotiations and anxious ratification processes this eventually bore fruition with the inauguration of the EU on 1 November 1993. Irish–​German relations, 1990–​2016 If there ever was a ‘special relationship’39 between Ireland and Germany, then the early and mid-​1990s was its apogee. German was a popular language choice

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for students in second and third-​level education,40 as Irish families, encouraged by government, perceived European, especially German, language acquisition as a means of promoting trade to escape the Irish recession. In German–​Irish relations, 1996 was an annus mirabilis. The focal theme for the Frankfurt Book Fair that year was ‘Ireland and its Diaspora’.41 According to a German opinion poll, Germans identified the Irish as their favourite European neighbours.42 Kohl opened the fair on 1 October 1996 in conjunction with the first female president of Ireland, Mary Robinson, and the Irish poet and playwright who won the Noble Prize for Literature in 1995, Seamus Heaney. This represented the best of new and old Ireland. On the following day, Kohl travelled to Dublin for a two-​day official visit which coincided with the Day of German Unity on 3 October, the annual commemoration of German reunification. The Irish Times suggested this was a ‘considerable compliment’ as it was ‘the first time he has celebrated it [unification day] abroad’.43 Kohl publicly expressed his gratitude to Haughey for his fulsome support of German reunification during the watershed of 1989 and 1990. He noted, ‘Quite a few of our neighbours were a bit more hesitant in supporting us … I shall not forget this.’44 Ireland was in the ‘German camp’ in 1996: it had moved out of Britain’s shadow with its embracing of EMU and its goal of making Ireland a member of the ‘core group’ in the EU. It favoured accelerated integration and joining the single currency (the euro) in the first wave.45 From 1989 to 2007, Germany always ranked within the top four Irish export markets and ‘with the exceptions of 1997 and 1998 in the top three for imports’. Until 2001, Germany was Ireland’s leading Continental market; then it was overtaken by Belgium. Ireland retained a strong, positive trade balance with Germany throughout the entire period, ‘making it one of the few external trading partners with whom Germany currently has a negative trade balance’.46 Changes, however, were underway. An intense pro-​business ethos attracted FDI to Ireland from non-​EU (primarily US) firms seeking access to the EC/​ EU especially in anticipation of, and after, the realisation of the single market in 1993. Ireland transformed into a highly globalised economy with high-​value niches in computers, pharmaceuticals, insurance and financial services;47 it became a key commercial interface or intercessor between the United States and the EU, as well as a supposed exemplar of a state successfully managing European integration and globalisation. The Irish economic transformation from the 1990s to the 2000s was a product of a concoction of factors peculiar to Ireland. Many claimed responsibility for the ‘Celtic Tiger’. Until 2000 or 2001, it was assumed that the Irish were cognitive insiders of the EU.48 Dissonant voices were heard from the Progressive Democrats, a small party in a coalition government with the far larger Fianna Fáil party. The Progressive Democrats exhibited Atlanticist and neoliberal economic thinking. In July 2000, Mary Harney, the Tánaiste (deputy prime minister) and the leader of the Progressive Democrats, proclaimed: ‘Geographically we [Ireland] are closer

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to Berlin than Boston. Spiritually we are probably a lot closer to Boston than Berlin’.49 In a follow-​up, she maintained the Progressive Democrats supported enlargement and European unification, but as economic liberals they subscribed to a Gaullist version of the EU as a union of independent states whereby states retained control over the necessary policies to promote national economic wellbeing in a global economy.50 The ‘Celtic Tiger’ phenomenon and Dublin’s (un) conscious blending of Boston and Berlin’s socio-​economic models had produced a unique perspective on the EU in at least some Irish quarters, and it also fuelled a sense of economic and national confidence. This was epitomised by the Irish electorate’s rejection of both the Nice Treaty and the Lisbon Treaty in Irish referenda in 2001 and 2008, which led to reruns in 2002 and 2009. Both the first Nice (Nice I) and Lisbon (Lisbon I) referenda signified a gap had opened between the EU, German and Irish political elites on one hand, and the Irish electorate, the democratic base, on the other. The pro-​European Irish political establishment may have reversed the initial popular rejections of the Nice and Lisbon treaties in the reruns of the referenda (Nice II and Lisbon II), but the initial rejections signified an EU credibility problem in Ireland; the Europhile political parties (the three main political parties of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour) and state elites had neglected voters assuming they were innately Europeanist. Ironically, these EU referenda problems were indices of Irish unease at the renovation of the European bargain which the Irish Presidency of 1990 had helped to broker. The successive treaty developments were estimated by many Irish voters to have diluted the voice of pre-​1990 small member states, which in turn engendered apprehensions that the new Europe was less compatible with Irish interests. There was growing concern that Irish and EU interests were no longer in step. As the EU struggled to adapt its structures and policies incrementally in a treaty-​making surge after 1990 (Maastricht 1992, Amsterdam 1996, Nice 2001, Lisbon 2007) the rising fluidity, size and complexity of the EU aggravated popular Irish misperceptions and low levels of knowledge about the EU. In confusion (perhaps reflecting EU treaty fatigue), many traditional supporters of integration chose not to vote in the Nice I and Lisbon I referenda, while committed Eurosceptical sections of the electorate grew. The popular rejections of the Nice I and Lisbon I referenda forced embarrassed Europhile elites in Ireland to recommit to mobilising the electorate. The result was a marked improvement in turnout during the Nice II and Lisbon II referenda. The effects of the push towards political union, EMU and enlargement transformed the EU into an entity that was more challenging from the Irish perspective. It would be an exaggeration to say that in the twenty-​first century, German perceptions of Ireland altered from a view of it as ‘model pupil’ to one of ‘problem child’,51 but Ireland began to act as a somewhat less compliant integrationist.

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The enlargement of the EU, after 2004, undermined Ireland’s attractiveness for German investment. No dramatic increase in German manufacturing investment has occurred in Ireland for a considerable period of time; the vast majority of the 300 German companies in Ireland that presently employ 20,000 workers are long established.52 However, German banks did come into the Irish Financial Services Centre in Dublin and a few German ‘high-​tech’ and services companies have invested in Ireland since 2004. From that perspective, the Irish–​German business relationship is relatively static. Irish trade within the EU has diversified from Germany to other EU states such as Belgium, France and Poland to ensure that Ireland’s commerce with the current EU (not including the UK) equals or exceeds the sum of its trade with the UK and the United States.53 As such it is broadly and equally dependent on trade with the UK, United States and the EU (non-​UK) leading to a balancing act. To a great extent the Irish and German economies were both high cost and dependent on manufactured exports and specialised services by 2000. Their two societies and economies had grown more alike (urban-​industrial or tertiary) and while Germany remains an anchor market for Irish exports its growth potential is restricted. Irish industrial and employment policy is wedded to the attraction of FDI and remains heavily centred on US multinational enterprises in the IT and pharmaceutical sectors. The frailties of the Irish development model were exposed following the most precipitous financial crisis in the history of independent Ireland; the Irish property crash threatened the entire banking sector and the foundations of the state. The national risk of acute dependence on globalised trade, which was susceptible to international shocks, was highlighted. The government’s failure to control expenditure, its over-​reliance on unsustainable income streams and generally poor financial regulation were laid bare. The political, economic and financial elites stood charged with hubris, profligacy, corruption or unachievable expectations. The basic chronology of the crisis is well known. In September 2008, the government extended a blanket guarantee to the creditors of the Irish banks. Whether or not this action was at the behest of the European Central Bank remains contested, but when international markets called the state’s bluff in 2010 it was impelled to accept an EU/​IMF rescue package to prevent contagion from destabilising the Euro and the global financial system. The Irish financial crisis had a polarising impact on Irish–​German popular discourse.54 The extensive reportage and commentary of the Irish Times correspondent based in Berlin, Derek Scally, will be drawn upon here to communicate a flavour of the polarised bickering in the public discourse of the two peoples. Derek Scally adopted the persona of public mediator in his columns as he struggled to moderate popular Irish criticisms of Germany in the months and years after the EU/​IMF ‘bail out’. His efforts were remarkable in an important sense: the typical reader of the Irish Times in Ireland is upper middle class and educated, who might be expected to adopt a more balanced and reserved

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perspective than readers of the more populist broadsheets and the tabloids. But Scally felt the need to pacify and educate its readership about the German role as his audience displayed evidence of anti-​German feeling. This is summarised in one line from a sample letter to the editor of the Irish Times as recently as August 2015. It was written in response to Scally’s pleas not to blame the German banks. The letter ended: ‘I don’t think even Mr Scally can deny that Chancellor Merkel was at the tiller of EU political decision-​making when our EU colleagues coldly chose to hang us out to dry’.55 In short, the severe austerity after 2008 provoked instinctive public anger, even among the higher socio-​economic echelons, against real or perceived originators or perpetrators of Irish hardships, including various German agents and German banks.56 One of the grievances expressed was that Irish citizens were ‘bailing out’ German financial institutions and bondholders, in addition to Irish ones; it was suggested German finance had irresponsibly fuelled an unsustainable Irish property boom with ‘cheap credit’ after 2000. Irish critics of the bail out were mystified that unguaranteed senior bondholders were fully reimbursed for investing in a risky property ‘bubble’. Simultaneously, the mainstream German media discourse was that the German taxpayer bore the brunt of the bail out and was paying for the irresponsibility of weaker Eurozone economies’ lack of fiscal discipline.57 The German media emphasis was on Irish political ineptitude and profligacy with extensive use of patronising metaphors such as the ‘greedy child’.58 Crude and oppositional depictions of the ‘other’ in Irish and German discourses, which often bordered on the offensive, stereotyped and blamed the ‘other’, in an exceedingly troubling dynamic. The tenor and quality of dialogue at times descended into simple nationalist ‘them versus us’ narratives. An inclusive and mature European-​wide discussion about the origins and solution of the crisis was required. Today Ireland has commenced an economic recovery, but the effects of the far-​reaching austerity remain. The two Irish governments which brokered and adhered to the terms of the 2010–​13 rescue package (they estimated they had no alternative) were not re-​elected in the face of mass resentment. As a result, the traditional Irish political and party systems came close to a complete makeover. The political implications of the financial trauma are still unfolding. Despite simmering resentment in substantial sections of the population against a variety of actors, including Germany, for allegedly causing or exacerbating the crisis, the custodians of the Irish state since 2010 have diligently devoted themselves to rehabilitating Ireland’s image. Remarkable attention has been expended on rebuilding Ireland’s reputation in Germany, cognisant of the latter’s pre-​eminence in the EU.59 Granting formal or official relations between the two states remained largely open and cordial throughout the Irish financial crisis. Also the Irish government’s willingness to comply with the ‘bail out’ was repeatedly commented on positively from 2011 or 2012. This underscored that German officialdom and media now came to regard Ireland

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as a ‘model pupil’ after a wayward phase. Nonetheless, the frequent negative German media coverage of Ireland over the entire crisis period damaged Ireland’s international reputation, leading the agents of the Irish state, notably the Department of the Taoiseach and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, to seek to remedy this in an industrious fashion. From the Irish official perspective, Germany remains the primate EU state, and Ireland’s success heavily relies on cultivating its relationship with Berlin, in the same way it devotes considerable attention to London and Washington, DC, which are the other two capitals central to Ireland’s economic and political future. The problem now is that after 2016 both Washington DC and London appear to have departed from the multilateralist and Europeanist text with the unscripted election of Donald Trump and the shock of Brexit. The implications for Ireland’s balancing act between London, Washington DC and Berlin are unfolding. Notes 1 M. Hennessy, ‘Chancellor says “thanks” for Irish Support of Reunification’, Irish Examiner, 3 October 1996, p. 4. 2 ‘ “Mistake” to think all Germans rich’, Irish Times, 9 April 1957, p. 4. 3 ‘Trade Discrimination “an Anachronism” ’, Irish Times, 24 March 1959, p. 4. 4 ‘Steigende Industrieproduktion in Irland; Lohnerhöhungen bereits bis Ende 1965 festgelegt’, Handelsblatt, 24 February 1964. According to the Irish Independent in 1965, German firms accounted for approximately 25% of the foreign firms that had established in Ireland after 1955: ‘Germans welcome Irish Goods Cologne Fair Leader states’, Irish Independent, 18 June 1965, p. 3. 5 Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs (1973–​77) and Taoiseach (1981–​82, 1982–​87). 6 B. Laffan, ‘Constitutional Change in the European Union:  The Small-​ State/​ Large-​State Issue from Ireland’s Perspective’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, 8 (1997), p. 72. 7 E. Conrads-​Hassel, ‘The Federal Republic of Germany –​An Ever Growing Market for Irish Products’, in Exporting to Germany:  Summary of Speeches given at Export Seminars of the German-​Irish Chamber of Commerce (Dublin: German-​Irish Chamber of Commerce, 1990). 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid., Foreword. 10 Ibid. 11 Ibid. 12 Dáil Debates, 3 May 1990, Cols. 609–​10. 13 Ibid., 97. For a full account of Irish non-​recognition policy of the GDR, see Wylie, Ireland and the Cold War, pp. 117–​48. 14 For a full account of the Ireland-​GDR recognition and diplomatic questions see: Aan de Wiel, ‘The Trouble with Frank Ryan’, pp. 203–​20. 15 Ibid., p. 218.

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16 B. Laffan and J. O’Mahony, Ireland and the European Union (London:  Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 40–​1. 17 Email from Noel Dorr to author, 24 March 2016. 18 K. Hone, ‘Haughey helped float summit plan’, Irish Times, 15 November 1989, p. 9. 19 D. Coghlan, ‘Haughey calls for rapid move to EC unity and integration’, Irish Times, 17 November 1989, p. 1. 20 He was suspected of involvement in the ‘Arms Crisis’ of 1969 and 1970. He was arrested for trial on charges of a conspiracy to import arms illegally without government approval. However, he was acquitted as a result of insufficient and contradictory evidence. 21 D. Marsh, ‘Kohl’s Unity Initiative Annoys Genscher’, Irish Times, 5 December 1989, p. 6. 22 K. Hamilton, P. Salmon, and S. Twigge (eds.), Documents on British Policy Overseas, III: 7, German Unification, 1989–​1990 (London: Routledge, 2010), p. xv. 23 Interview with Noel Dorr by L. Dagg, ‘Le rôle clé de l’Irlande dans la réunification’, ParisBerlin (Le News-​Magazine Franco-​Allemand au service de l’Europe), Special Number (Summer 2010), p. 126. 24 W. Martens, Europe: I Struggle, I Overcome (Dordrecht; New York: Springer, 2008), p. 101. 25 F. Bozo, ‘The Failure of a Grand Design:  Mitterrand’s European Confederation, 1989–​1991’, Contemporary European History, 17: 3 (August 2008), p. 392. 26 S. Flynn, ‘Eastern Europe tops EC agenda’, Irish Times, 8 January 1990, p. 1. Also see Collins’s statement to the European Parliament: 90/​001, Statement on the Programme of Activities of the Irish Presidency, 16 January 1990, European Political Cooperation Documentary Bulletin, 6 (1990), pp. 47–​8. 27 S. Flynn, ‘Dublin EC Ministers’ Talks Will Add Soviet Crisis to Agenda’, Irish Times, 7 January 1990, p. 6. 28 ‘Collins backs £150b. EC Aid’, Irish Independent, 18 January 1990, p. 3. 29 ‘EC Allots Emergency Aid for Poland, Romania’, Philadelphia Inquirer, 22 January 1990. 30 A. Stent, Russia and Germany Reborn: Unification, the Soviet Collapse, and the New Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000). 31 K. Hone, ‘Taoiseach Backs France on European Confederation’, Irish Times, 6 February 1990, p. 6. 32 Dorr interview. 33 D. Coghlan, ‘EC Summit to Press for Speeding Up of Economic, Monetary Union’, Irish Times, 28 March 1990, p. 8. 34 Dáil Debates, Vol. 397, No. 5, col. 1098, 27 March 1990, http://​oireachtasdebates.oireachtas.ie/ ​ d ebates%20authoring/​ d ebateswebpack.nsf/​ t akes/​ dail1990032700003?opendocument [accessed 17 February 2016]. 35 ‘European Union’, Irish Times, 29 March 1990, p. 11. 36 F. Pyle, ‘Kohl floats Plan to speed Political Union of Community’, Irish Times, 29 March 1990, p. 1. 37 S. Flynn, ‘Leaders want full EC Union by 1993’, Irish Times, 30 March 1990, p. 1. 38 M. R. Gueldry, France and European Integration:  Towards a Transnational Polity? (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001), p. 124.

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39 V. O’Regan, ‘German Media Perceptions of Ireland since the Bailout: From “Problem Child” to “Model Pupil”?’, in O’Reilly and V. O’Regan (eds), Ireland and the Irish in Germany, p. 147. 40 N. O’Mahony, ‘Irish-​German Business Relationships since 1989 –​Continuity and Discontinuity’, in O’Mahony, Societies in Transition, p. 153. 41 P. Murphy, ‘All change in the Quest for the Fair Land’, Irish Times, 2 October 1996, p. A2. 42 D. Staunton, ‘President to open Book Fair in Frankfurt’, Irish Times, 30 September 1996, p. 5. 43 Editorial, ‘Dr Kohl’s Visit’, Irish Times, 3 October 1996, p. 15. 44 M. Hennessy, ‘Chancellor says “thanks” for Irish Support of Reunification’, Irish Examiner, 3 October 1996, p. 4. 45 R. Gillespie, ‘The Big Fellow’, Irish Times, 2 October 1996. 46 N. O’Mahony, ‘Irish-​German Business Relationships since 1989:  Continuity and Discontinuity’, in N. O’Mahony and C. O’Reilly (eds), Societies in Transition: Ireland, Germany and Irish-​German Relations in Business and Society since 1989 (Baden-​ Baden: Nomos, 2009), p. 144. Belgium’s supplanting of Germany reflected Antwerp’s role as a major global drug redistribution node. As such the Belgian port receives most of the Irish pharmaceutical exports to non-​US destinations. See: E. Burke-​Kennedy, ‘Exports –​the Engine that keeps on humming and the Primary Driver of Economic Turnaround’, Irish Times, 22 May 2015, p. 5. 47 S. Byrne and M.  O’Brien, ‘The Changing Nature of Irish Exports:  Context, Causes and Consequences’, www.centralbank.ie/​publications/​Documents/​The%20 Changing%20Nature%20of%20Irish%20Exports.pdf [accessed 15 March 2015], p. 60. 48 B. Laffan, ‘Ireland and the European Union’, in W. Crotty and D. E. Schmitt (eds.), Ireland on the World Stage (Harlow, Essex: Longman, 2002), p. 85. 49 B. Laffan, ‘Irish Government and European Governance’, in T. Garvin, M. Manning and R. Sinnot (eds.), Dissecting Irish Politics:  Essays in Honour of Brian Farrell (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2004), p. 126. 50 M. Harney, ‘Future of the EU lies in Union of Independent Sovereign States’, Irish Times, 20 September 2000, p. 16. 51 V. O’Regan, ‘German Media Perceptions of Ireland since the Bailout: From “Problem Child” to “Model Pupil” ’, in O’Reilly and V. O’Regan (eds), Ireland and the Irish in Germany, p. 147. 52 Ibid; see also O’Mahony, ‘Irish-​German Business Relationships since 1989’, p. 150. 53 M. Hennigan, ‘Is Euro Area Ireland’s Top Trading Partner’, in Finfacts Business News Centre www.finfacts.ie/​irishfinancenews/​article_​1028937.shtml [accessed 14 March 2016]. 54 D. Scally, ‘Three Years that irrevocably changed the Hiberno-​German Relationship’, Irish Times, 13 December 2013, p. 19. 55 A. Kealy (Letter to Editor), ‘Blaming German Banks’, Irish Times, 20 August 2015, p. 13. 56 D. Scally, ‘How Clueless Irish Pundits Misrepresented Germany’, Irish Times, 16 September 2013, p.  3; D.  Scally, ‘When it comes to Late-​Night Euro Zone Deals

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Germany will always be blamed’, Irish Times, 25 March 2013, p. 3; D. Scally, ‘We should not Blame German Banks for Irish Economic Crash’, Irish Times, 18 August 2015, p. 12. 57 D. Scally, ‘Blame for German Bank Collapse lies a Lot Closer to Home than Dublin, Study Reveals’, Irish Times, 30 November 2012, p. 7. 58 A fine analysis of German newspapers’ highly critical portrayal of Ireland after November 2010 is O’Regan, ‘German Media Perceptions of Ireland’, pp. 147–​80. 59 A strong indication of the diplomatic and political campaign to rescue Ireland’s damaged reputation is displayed in the former Irish ambassador to Germany’s account of his four year posting to Berlin (October 2009 until August 2013): D. Mulhall, ‘German-​Irish Relations: A View from the Embassy in Berlin’, in O’Reilly and O’Regan (eds), Ireland and the Irish in Germany, pp. 201–​16.

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Institutional archives and public records Auswärtiges Amt-​Politisches Archiv (AA-​PA), Berlin (Archives of German Foreign Office) Files relating to Ireland

Bundesarchiv, Koblenz Walter Hallstein papers

Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, Sankt Augustin Press files relating to Ireland

National Archives of Ireland (NAI) Department of Finance (DFIN) Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) Confidential Reports –​Bonn, Paris, League of Nations, and Rome Early Papers Series, 1919–​24 Legation Files –​Bonn Main Departmental Registry Files Secretary’s Office Files –​A and P files Department of Justice (DJ) Department of An Taoiseach (DT) Department of Trade and Commerce (DIC) Department of the President Minutes of Cabinet

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The National Archives, Kew Gardens, London (TNA) Cabinet Office (CAB) Dominions Office (DO) Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) Foreign Office (FO) Home Office (HO) Security Services (KV)

The private papers (O’Brien, Bryan etc. to Hillery) University College Dublin, Archives Department (UCDA) Conor Cruise O’Brien papers Dan Bryan papers Eamon de Valera papers Fianna Fáil papers Fine Gael papers Frank Aiken papers Ken Whitaker papers Patrick Hillery papers

National Library of Ireland (NLI) Brendan Corish papers Seán T O’Kelly papers

Newspapers Badische Zeitung Berliner Tageblatt Birmingham Post Cork Examiner Daily Express Daily Telegraph Evening Herald Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung Guardian Handelsblatt Irish Farmers Journal Irish Independent Irish Press Irish Times Kölnische Zeitung Der Spiegel Stuttgarter Zeitung

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Sunday Independent Sunday Press Telegraph The Times Völkischer Beobachter Die Welt Westdeutsche Rundschau Die Zeit

Online resources Documents on Irish Foreign Policy www.difp.ie/​browse-​volumes/​ House of Common Hansard https://​hansard.parliament.uk/​ Houses of the Oireachtas http://​oireachtasdebates.oireachtas.ie/​ Irish Newspaper Archives www.irishnewsarchive.com/​ Irish Times archive www.irishtimes.com/​archive Irish Statute Book http://​acts.oireachtas.ie/​en.toc.decade.html

Published sources Documents on Irish foreign policy Foreign relations of the United States

Hamilton, Keith, Patrick Salmon, and Stephen Twigge (eds.), Documents on British Policy Overseas, III: 7, German Unification, 1989–​90 (London: Routledge, 2010) U.S. Dept. of State, Germany, 1947–​49: The Story in Documents (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Print Office, 1950)

Books and articles Aan de Wiel, Jérôme, East German Intelligence and Ireland, 1949–​90: Espionage, Terrorism and Diplomacy. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015) Aan de Wiel, Jérôme, The Irish Factor, 1899–​1919:  Ireland’s Strategic and Diplomatic Importance for Foreign Powers (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2008) Aan de Wiel, Jérôme, ‘The Trouble with Frank Ryan: “Corpse Diplomacy” between East Germany and Ireland, 1966–​80’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, 25 (2014), pp. 203–​20 Bange, Oliver, The EEC Crisis of 1963: Kennedy, Macmillan, de Gaulle and Adenauer in Conflict (London: Macmillan, 2000) Barry, Frank, ‘Foreign Investment and the Politics of Export Profits Tax Relief, 1956’, Irish Economic and Social History, 38 (2011) 54–​73 Barry, F. and Ó Fathartaigh, M. (2015) ‘The Industrial Development Authority, 1949–​ 58: establishment, evolution and expansion of influence’, Irish Historical Studies, 39 (155), pp. 460–​78 Bedurftig, Friedemann, ‘A People without a State: Post VE-​Day Germany’, History Today, May 1995

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Berghahn, Volker R. (ed.), Quest for Economic Empire: European Strategies of German Big Business in the Twentieth Century (Providence, RI: Berghahn Books, 1996) Bew, Paul and Henry Patterson, Seán Lemass and the Making of Modern Ireland, 1945–​66 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1982) Bewley, Charles, edited and with an afterword by W. J. McCormack Memoirs of a Wild Goose (Dublin: Lilliput Press) Bhreatnach, Aoife, ‘Frank Aiken:  European Federation and United Nations Internationalism’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, 13 (2002), pp. 237–​49 Bielenberg, Andrew (ed.), The Shannon Scheme and the Electrification of the Irish Free State: An Inspirational Milestone (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 2002) Böll, Heinrich, Irish Journal Trans. Leila Vennewitz (Evanston, IL:  Marlboro Press/​ Northwestern, 1998) Bozo, Frédéric ‘The Failure of a Grand Design:  Mitterrand’s European Confederation, 1989–​91’, Contemporary European History 17: 3 (August 2008), pp. 391–​412 Carter, Carolle J., The Shamrock and the Swastika: German Espionage in Ireland in World War II (Palo Alto, CA: Pacific, 1977) Cary, Noel D., The Path to Christian Democracy: German Catholics and the Party System from Windthorst to Adenauer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996) Casement, Roger, One Bold Deed of Open Treason:  the Berlin Diary of Roger Casement 1914–​16, ed. Angus Mitchell (Sallins, Co. Kildare: Merrion Press, 1916) Chambers, Anne, T. K. Whitaker: Portrait of a Patriot (Dublin: Doubleday, 2014) Chossudovsky, Evgeny M., ‘The Origins of the Treaty on the Non-​Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons: Ireland’s Initiative in the United Nations (1958–​61)’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, 3: 2 (1990), pp. 111–​35 Crotty, William and David E. Schmitt (eds.), Ireland on the World Stage (Harlow, Essex: Longman, 2002) Dagg, Laura, ‘Le rôle clé de l’Irlande dans la réunification’, ParisBerlin (Le News-​Magazine Franco-​Allemand au service de l’Europe), special issue (summer 2010) Daly, Mary E., Roger Casement in Irish and World History (Dublin:  Royal Irish Academy, 2005) Daly, Mary E., The First Department of Agriculture:  A History of the Department of Agriculture (Dublin: IPA, 2002) Daly, Mary E., Sixties Ireland:  Reshaping the Economy, State and Society, 1957–​ 73 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016) Denza, Eileen, Diplomatic Law: A Commentary on the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) De Valera, Eamon, Peace and War Speeches by Mr. de Valera on International Affairs (Dublin: M. H. Gill and Son, 1944) Dinan, Desmond, ‘After the “Emergency”: Ireland in the Post-​war World, 1945–​1950’, Éire-​Ireland, 24 (1989), pp. 85–​103 Dinan, Desmond, Ever Closer Union, 2nd edn (London: Macmillan, 1999) Doerries, Reinhard R., Prelude to the Easter Rising: Sir Roger Casement in Imperial Germany (London: Frank Cass, 2000) Dooley, Terence, The Land for the People:  The Land Question in Independent Ireland (Dublin: Dublin University Press, 2004)

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Duggan, John P., Herr Hempel at the German Legation in Dublin, 1937–​45 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2003) Duggan, John P., Neutral Ireland and the Third Reich (Dublin:  Lilliput Press, 1989 rev. edn) Elsasser, M., Germany and Ireland: 1000 Years of Shared History (Dublin: Brookside, 1997) Erb, Scott, German Foreign Policy:  Navigating a New Era (Boulder, CO:  Lynne Rienner, 2003) Evans, Bryce and Stephen Kelly (eds), Frank Aiken:  Nationalist and Internationalist (Sallins: Irish Academic Press, 2014) Evans, Ellen Lovell, The German Center Party, 1870–​1933: A Study in Political Catholicism (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1981) Farrell, Brian, Seán Lemass (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1983) Fischer, Joachim, Das Deutschlandbild der Iren 1890–​1939 (Heidelberg: Winter, 2000) FitzGerald, Maurice, Protectionism to Liberalisation: Ireland and the EEC, 1957 to 1966 (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2001) Flachenecker, Helmut, Schottenklöster: irische Benediktinerkonvente im hochmittlealterlichen Deutschland (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1995) Friend, Julius W., The Linchpin:  French-​German Relations, 1950–​90 (New  York: Praeger, 1991) Gärtner, Heinz, ‘Austria’s Relations with Germany: Between Balancing and Bandwagoning’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, 9 (1998), pp. 63–​72 Garvin, Tom, Judging Lemass: The Measure of the Man (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2009) Garvin, Tom, The Lives of Daniel Binchy:  Irish Scholar, Diplomat, Public Intellectual (Newbridge, Co. Kildare: Irish Academic Press, 2016) Garvin, Tom, Maurice Manning and Richard Sinnot (eds), Dissecting Irish Politics: Essays in Honour of Brian Farrell (Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2004) Geary, Michael J., An Inconvenient Wait: Ireland’s Quest for Membership of the EEC, 1957–​ 73 (Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, 2009) German-​Irish Chamber of Commerce, Exporting to Germany: Summary of Speeches given at Export Seminars of the German-​Irish Chamber of Commerce (Dublin: German-​Irish Chamber of Commerce, 1990) Gienow-​Hecht, Jessica C.  E. and Frank Schumacher (eds), Culture and International History (New York: Berghahn Books, 2003) Gillissen, Christophe, ‘Ireland, France and the Question of Algeria at the United Nations, 1955–​62’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, 19 (2008), pp. 151–​67 Girvin, Brian, Between Two Worlds:  Politics and Economy in Independent Ireland (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1989) Girvin, Brian, From Union to Union: Nationalism, Democracy and Religion in Ireland –​Act of Union to EU (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2002) Girvin, Brian and Gary Murphy (eds.), The Lemass Era: Politics and Society in the Ireland of Seán Lemass (Dublin: University College Press, 2005) Gordon, Philip H., France, Germany, and the Western Alliance (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995) Gray, William Glenn, Germany’s Cold War: The Global Campaign to Isolate East Germany, 1949–​69 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2003)

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Griffiths, Richard T. and Brian Girvin (eds.), The Green Pool and the Origins of the Common Agricultural Policy (London: LP, 1995) Grosser, Alfred, Germany in Our Time: A Political History of the Postwar Years, trans. Paul Stephenson (London: Pall Mall Press, 1971) Gueldry, Michel R., France and European Integration:  Towards a Transnational Polity? (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001) Hanley, Brian and Scott Millar, The Lost Revolution: The Story of the Official IRA and the Workers’ Party (Dublin: Penguin, 2009) Hitchcock, William I., The Struggle for Europe:  the Turbulent History of a Divided Continent, 1945–​2002 (London: Profile 2004) Holfter, Gisela, Heinrich Böll and Ireland (Newcastle upon Tyne:  Cambridge Scholars, 2012) Holfter, Gisela (ed.), The Irish Context of Kristallnacht; Refugees and Helpers’, in Irish–​ German Studies (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2014) Holfter, Gisela and Horst Dickel, An Irish Sanctuary: German-​speaking Refugees in Ireland 1933–​45 (de Gruyter: Oldenburg, 2016) Horgan, John, Seán Lemass: The Enigmatic Patriot (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1997) Hull, Mark, Irish Secrets: German Espionage in Wartime Ireland, 1939–​45 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2003) Junker, D. (ed.), The United States and Germany in the Era of the Cold War, 1945–​68 (Cambridge: German Historical Institute, Washington, DC and Cambridge University Press, 2004) Kelly, Stephen, with a foreword by Vincent Browne, ‘A Failed Political Entity’:  Charles Haughey and the Northern Ireland Question, 1945–​ 92 (Newbridge:  Merrion Press, 2016) Kennedy, Kieran A., Thomas Giblin and Deirdre McHugh (eds), The Economic Development of Ireland in the Twentieth Century (London: Routledge, 1988) Kennedy, Liam, The Modern Industrialisation of Ireland, 1940–​ 88. Studies in Irish Economic and Social History 5 (Dublin: Dundalgan Press, 1989) Kennedy, Michael, Ireland and the League of Nations, 1919–​46: International Relations, Diplomacy and Politics (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1996) Kennedy, Michael, ‘Our Men in Berlin: Some Thoughts on Irish Diplomats in Germany 1929–​39’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, 10 (1999), pp. 53–​70 Kennedy, Michael, Division and Consensus: The Politics of Cross-​border Relations in Ireland, 1925–​69 (Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, 2000) Kennedy, Michael, “ ‘Persuade an Alternative European Candidate to stand’ ”, in Michael Kennedy and Deirdre McMahon (eds), Obligations and Responsibilities: Ireland and the United Nations, 1955–​2005 (Dublin: IPA, 2005) Kennedy, Michael and Deirdre McMahon (eds), Obligations and Responsibilities: Ireland and the United Nations, 1955–​2005 (Dublin: IPA, 2005) Kennedy, Michael and E. O’Halpin (eds), Ireland and the Council of Europe: From Isolation towards Integration (Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 2000) Kennedy, Michael and J. Skelly (eds), Irish Foreign Policy, 1919–​66: From Independence to Internationalism (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000)

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Keogh, Dermot, ‘Eamon De Valera and Hitler: An Analysis of International Reaction to the Visit to the German Minister, May 1945’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, 5: 1 (1989), pp. 69–​92 Keogh, Dermot, Ireland and the Vatican (Cork: Cork University Press, 1995) Keogh, Dermot, Ireland and Europe, 1919–​89: A Diplomatic and Political History (Cork/​ Dublin: Hibernian University Press, 1990) Keogh, Dermot, Jack Lynch: A Biography (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2008) Keogh, Dermot, Jews in Twentieth-​ Century Ireland:  Refugees, Anti-​ Semitism and the Holocaust (Cork: Cork University Press, 1998) Keogh, Dermot with Andrew McCarthy, Twentieth-​century Ireland: Revolution and State Building, 2nd edn (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2005) Keogh, Dermot and M. O’Driscoll (eds), Ireland in World War Two:  Diplomacy and Survival (Cork: Mercier Press, 2004) Keogh, Dermot and Carmel Quinlan (eds), Ireland in the 1950s: The Lost Decade? (Cork: Mercier Press, 2003) Keogh, Niall, Con Cremin:  Ireland’s Wartime Diplomat (Douglas Village, Cork: Mercier, 2006) Kettenacker, Lothar, Germany since 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) Koopmans, Ruud, Democracy from Below: New Social Movements and the Political System in West Germany (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995) Laffan, Brigid, ‘Constitutional Change in the European Union: The Small-​State/​Large-​State Issue from Ireland’s Perspective’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, 8 (1997), pp. 69–​79 Laffan, Brigid and Jane O’Mahony, Ireland and the European Union (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008) Leach, Daniel, Fugitive Ireland: European Minority Nationalists and Irish Political Asylum, 1937–​2008 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2009) Lee, J. J., Ireland 1912–​85:  Politics and Society (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1989) Leitz, Christian, Nazi Germany and Neutral Europe during the Second World War (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000) Lenehan, Fergal, Stereotypes, Ideology and Foreign Correspondents:  German Media Representations of Ireland, 1946–​2010 (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2016) Ludlow, N. Piers, Dealing with Britain: The Six and the First UK Application to the EEC (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) Lyons, F. S. L., Ireland since the Famine (London: Fontana, 1973) Maher, D. J. (with a foreword by P. J. Hillery), The Tortuous Path: The Course of Ireland’s Entry into the EEC, 1948–​73 (Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, 1986) Malanczuk, Peter, Akehurst’s Modern Introduction to International Law (London: Routledge, 1997) Manathunga, Catherine, ‘The Evolution of Irish Disarmament Initiatives at the United Nations, 1957–​61’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, 7 (1996), pp. 97–​113 Martens, Wilfried, Europe: I struggle, I overcome (Dordrecht; New York: Springer, 2008) McCarthy, John F. (ed.), Foreword by Garrett FitzGerald, Planning Ireland’s Future: The Legacy of T. K. Whitaker (Sandycove, Co. Dublin: Glendale Press, 1990)

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McCullagh, David, A Makeshift Majority:  The First Interparty Government, 1948–​51 (Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, 1998) McCullagh, David, The Reluctant Taoiseach: A Biography of John A. Costello (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2010) McMahon, Deirdre, ‘Ireland, the Dominions and the Munich crisis’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, 1: 1 (1979), pp. 30–​7 McMahon, Deirdre, Republicans and Imperialists: Anglo–​Irish Relations in the 1930s (New Haven/​London: Yale University Press, 1984) Mierzejewski, Alfred C., Ludwig Erhard:  A Biography (Chapel Hill, NC:  University of North Carolina Press, 2004) Milward, Alan S., The European Rescue of the Nation-​ State, 2nd edn (London: Routledge, 2000) Molohan, Cathy, Germany and Ireland 1945–​55: Two Nations’ Friendship (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1999) Moynihan, M., Speeches and Statements by Eamon de Valera, 1917–​73 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1980) Murphy, Gary, Economic Realignment and the Politics of EEC Entry:  Ireland, 1948–​72 (Dublin and Bethesda, MD, Maunsel, 2003) Murphy, Gary, In Search of the Promised Land: The Politics of Post-​war Ireland (Cork: Mercier Press, 2009) Murray, Peter, Facilitating the Future? US Aid, European Integration and Irish Industrial Viability 1948–​73 (Dublin: UCD Press, 2009) Nuttall, Simon J., European Political Co-​Operation (Oxford: Oxford University, 1992) O’Brien, Conor Cruise, Memoir: My Life and Times (Poolbeg: Dublin, 1999), O’Brien, Máire Cruise, The Same Age of the State (O’Brien: Dublin, 2003) O’Connor, Siobhán, Irish Government Policy and Public Opinion towards German-​speaking Refugees, 1933–​43 (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2017) O’Donoghue, David, Hitler’s Irish Voices: The Story of German Radio’s Wartime Irish Service (Belfast: Beyond the Pale, 1998) O’Driscoll, Mervyn, ‘A “German Invasion”? Irish Rural Radicalism, European Integration, and Irish Modernisation, 1958–​ 73’, International History Review, 38:  3 (2016), pp. 527–​50 O’Driscoll, Mervyn, ‘Die Stunde Null:  Appraising Irish Relief to Postwar Germany’ in Claire O’Reilly and Veronica O’Regan (eds), Ireland and the Irish in Germany  –​ Reception and Perception (Baden-​Baden, Germany: Nomos Verlag, 2014), pp. 63–​84 O’Driscoll, Mervyn, ‘Hesitant Europeans, Self-​Defeating Irredentists and Security Free-​ Riders? West German Assessments of Irish Foreign Policy during the Early Cold War, 1949–​59’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, 21 (2010), pp. 91–​106 O’Driscoll, Mervyn, ‘Inter-​war Irish–​German Diplomacy: Continuity, Ambiguity and Appeasement in Irish Foreign Policy’, in Michael Kennedy and Joseph Skelly (eds), Irish Foreign Policy, 1919–​69:  From Independence to Internationalism (Dublin:  Irish Academic Press, 2000), pp. 74–​95 O’Driscoll, Mervyn, Ireland, Germany and the Nazis: Politics and Diplomacy, 1919–​39, 2nd edn (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2017)

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O’Driscoll, Mervyn, ‘Irish–​German Commerce, 1932–​9: Irish Foreign Trade Policy, the Economic War and the Anglo–​Irish–​German Diplomatic Triangle’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, 10 (1999), pp. 71–​89 O’Driscoll, Mervyn, ‘Irish–​ German Relations, 1929–​ 32:  Irish Reaction to Nazis’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 11: 1 (1997), pp. 293–​307 O’Driscoll, Mervyn, ‘The “Half-​Irish” Herbert Remmel’, in Sabine Egger (ed.), Cultural Translators –​Selected Irish-​German Biographies (Trier: WVT, 2015), pp. 71–​94 O’Driscoll, Mervyn, ‘The “Unwanted Suitor”: West Germany’s Reception, Response and Role in Ireland’s EEC Entry Request, 1961–​3’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, 22 (2011), pp. 163–​86 O’Driscoll, Mervyn, ‘ “To bring light unto the Germans”:  Irish Recognition-​seeking, the Weimar Republic and the British Commonwealth, 1930–​2’, European History Quarterly, 33: 1 (2003), pp. 65–​100 O’Driscoll, Mervyn, ‘ “We are trying to do our share”:  The Construction of Positive Neutrality and Irish Post-​War Relief to Europe’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, 27 (2016), pp. 21–​38 O’Driscoll, Mervyn, Dermot Keogh and Jérôme aan de Wiel (eds), Ireland Through European Eyes: Western Europe, the EEC and Ireland, 1945–​73 (Cork: Cork University Press, 2014) Ó Fiaich, Tomás, ‘St. Kilian: His Irish Background and Posthumous Influence’, Seanchas Ardmhacha, 13: 2 (1989), pp. 61–​80 Ó Gráda, Cormac, A Rocky Road: The Irish Economy Since the 1920s (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997) O’Halpin, Eunan, Defending Ireland:  The Irish State and Its Enemies since 1922 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) Ó Longaigh, Seosamh, ‘Emergency Law in Action, 1939–​ 45’ in Dermot Keogh and Mervyn O’Driscoll (eds), Ireland in World War Two:  Diplomacy and Survival (Cork: Mercier, 2004), pp. 66–​74 Ó Longaigh, Seosamh, Emergency Law in Independent Ireland, 1922–​48 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2006) Olsen, Thorsten B., ‘The Dilemmas of Interdependence: Danish Foreign Policy, 1945–​ 72’, Journal of European Integration History, 7: 2 (2001), pp. 37–​64 Ó Lúing, Seán, Celtic Studies in Europe and Other Essays (Dublin:  Geography Publications, 2000). O’Mahony, Niamh and Claire O’Reilly (eds), Societies in Transition: Ireland, Germany and Irish-​German Relations in Business and Society since 1989 (Baden-​Baden: Nomos, 2009) O’Neill, M., From Parnell to de Valera:  A Biography of Jennie Wyse Power, 1858–​1941 (Dublin: Blackwater Press, 1991) O’Reilly, Claire and Veronica O’Regan (eds), Ireland and the Irish in Germany –​Reception and Perception (Baden-​Baden: Nomos, 2014) Ó Riain-​Raedel, Dagmar, ‘Irish Benedictine Monasteries on the Continent’, in M. Browne and C. Ó Clabaigh (eds), The Irish Benedictines: A History (Dublin: Columba Press 2005). Pakenham, Frank, Born to Believe: An Autobiography (London: Jonathan Cape, 1953)

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Patterson, Henry, Ireland since 1939: The Persistence of Conflict (Dublin: Penguin, 2006) Puirséil, Niamh, The Irish Labour Party:  1922–​ 73 (Dublin:  University College Dublin, 2007) Pulzer, Peter, German Politics, 1945–​95 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995) Rosolowsky, Diane, West Germany’s Foreign Policy: The Impact of the Social Democrats and the Greens (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987) Roth, Andreas, Mr. Bewley in Berlin: Aspects of the Career of an Irish Diplomat, 1933–​39 (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 2000) Schaad, Martin P. C., Bullying Bonn: Anglo-​German Diplomacy on European Integration, 1955–​61 (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan Press, 2000) Schwarz, Hans-​Peter, Konrad Adenauer, vol. 1: A German Politician and Statesman in a Period of War, Revolution, and Reconstruction (Providence, RI: Berghahn Books, 1995) Schwarz, Hans-​Peter, Konrad Adenauer, vol. 2:  The Statesman, 1952–​ 67 (Oxford: Berghahn, 1997) Share, Bernard, Shannon Departures:  A Study in Regional Initiatives (Dublin:  Gill and Macmillan, 1992) Skelly, Joseph Morrison, Irish Diplomacy at the League of Nations, 1945–​1965: National Interests and the International Order (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1996) Sloan, G. R., The Geopolitics of Anglo-​Irish Relations in the 20th Century (London: Leicester University Press, 1997) Smyser, W. R., How Germans Negotiate: Logical Goals, Practical Solutions (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace, 2003) Stent, Angela, Russia and Germany Reborn: Unification, the Soviet Collapse, and the New Europe (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000) Sterzenbach, Christopher, Die deutsch-​ irischen Beziehungen Während der Weimarer Republik, 1918–​33: Politik, Wirtschaft, Kultur (Münster: LIT, 2009) Stirk, Peter M.  R. and David Weigal (eds), The Origins and Development of European Integration (London: Pinter, 1999) Thomas, Nick, Protest Movements in 1960s West Germany: A Social History of Dissent and Democracy (New York: Berg, 2003) Tonra, Ben, Global Citizen and European Republic:  Irish Foreign Policy in Transition (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006) Tonra, Ben, Michael Kennedy, John Doyle and Noel Dorr (eds), Irish Foreign Policy (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2012) Urwin, Derek W., The Community of Europe: A History of European Integration since 1945, 2nd edn (London: Longman, 1995) Van der Harst, Jan (ed.), Beyond the Customs Union: The European Community’s Quest for Deepening, Widening and Completion, 1969–​75 (Brussels: Bruylant, 2007) Walsh, John, Patrick Hillery: The Official Biography (Dublin: New Island, 2008) Weber, Paul, On the Road to Rebellion: The United Irishmen and Hamburg, 1796–​1803 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1997) Weyerer, Godehard, ‘CARE Packages: Gifts from Overseas to a Defeated and Debilitated Nation’ (trans. Eric Weinberger), in Detlef Junker (ed.), The United States and Germany in the Era of the Cold War, A  Handbook, vol. I:  1945–​1968 (Cambridge:  German Historical Institute, Washington D.C. and Cambridge University Press, 2004)

253

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253

Whelan, Bernadette, Ireland and the Marshall Plan, 1947–​57 (Dublin: Four Courts, 2000) Wylie, Paula L., Ireland and the Cold War: Diplomacy and Recognition, 1949–​1963 (Irish Academic Press: Dublin, 2006) Young, Hugo, This Blessed Plot (Macmillan: London, 1998) Zuelow, Eric G. E., Making Ireland Irish: Tourism and National Identity since the Irish Civil War (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2009)

Unpublished theses Casserly, Tara, ‘Irish-​German Relations, 1949–​72’ (unpublished MA thesis, University College Cork, 1994) Loftus, Paul D., ‘The Crisis Years: The Second Inter-​Party Government and the Politics of Transition in Ireland, 1954–​57’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University College Cork, 2008) Rasmussen, Morton, ‘Joining the European Communities:  Denmark’s Road to EC Membership, 1961–​73’ (unpublished PhD thesis, European University Institute, Florence, 2004) Whelan, Michael, ‘Anglo-​Irish Relations in the Framework of the EEC and Northern Ireland, 1969–​75’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University College Cork, 2013)

254

Index

Note: ‘n’ after a page reference indicates the number of a note on that page. Page numbers in italic refer to tables. AA-​PA see Auswärtiges Amt-​Politisches Archiv, Berlin Abwehr, the 20, 35 academic cross-​pollination, pre-​independence 13–​14 Adenauer, Konrad 2, 3, 5, 27, 31, 32, 44, 45–​9, 55, 58, 134, 139, 175, 204 and Ireland’s EEC membership application 156–​60, 162, 166–​8 Aer Lingus 113, 114 agriculture Common Agricultural Policy 188, 189 FRG 77–​8, 80 Irish reliance on 68, 68–​70, 75, 76, 78, 79–​80, 84–​5, 177, 207 Aiken, Frank 35, 40, 60–​1, 88, 116, 117–​19, 128, 134–​7, 139, 152, 180, 200, 201 air travel, international 114–​15 Albert, E. H. L. 143 Algerian War, the 139 Aliens Act (1935) 202 Allardt, Helmut 154 An Foras Tionscail 110 Anglo-​German Economic Committee 151 Anglo-​German relations 109 Anglo-​Irish Free Trade Agreement 179–​80 Anglo-​Irish relations 12, 18, 52, 53, 54, 106, 132–​3, 150–​1, 162, 177, 220, 228

Anglo-​Irish trade 17, 50, 55, 58, 59, 68–​71, 72, 83, 86, 105, 130, 133, 175, 178–​80, 181–​2, 184, 237 Anglo-​Irish Trade Agreement (1938) 70, 84, 106 Anglo-​Irish Trade Agreement (1948) 69–​70, 106 Anglo-​Irish Trade Agreement (1960) 133 Anglo-​Irish Treaty (1921) 15 Anglo-​Irish Treaty (1938) 3–​4, 18 Anglo-​Irish Truce (July 1921) 15 Anglo-​Irish War (1919–1921) 14 Anglocentric perspective 6 anti-​communism 26, 31, 32, 53, 64n35, 230 anti-​EC lobby 196, 197 anti-​modernism, Irish 197 anti-​partitionism 140 arms crisis, the 218, 240n20 Augsburger Allgemeine 116, 199 austerity 231 Auswärtiges Amt-​Politisches Archiv (AA-​PA), Berlin 6–​7 Auswärtiges Amt, the 16, 17, 18, 19, 32, 34–​6, 45, 51, 52, 53, 54, 56–​7, 59–​62, 86–​7, 107, 119, 134, 178 European Unity desk 188 and Ireland’s EEC membership application 153, 154, 156, 163, 169, 175, 183 and the Troubles 218, 219 and UK EC membership 189–​90

255

Index Badische Zeitung 109 Ball, George 162 Bargen, Werner von 86–​7 Basic Law 27, 32, 58 Battelle Institute 111, 112 Battle of the Bogside 215, 216 Beddy, J. P. 99, 107, 111 Belgium 105 Belton, John 32, 46, 47, 48, 49, 63n23, 98, 99, 100 Benirschke, H. 131, 143 Berlin 14, 15, 50 Berlin blockade 2, 26 Berlin Wall, Fall of 230, 231 Bewley, C. 17–​18, 19 Biggar, Francis 174–​5 Binchy, Daniel A. 14, 35 Blackman, Caesar 103 Blaney, Neil 218 Bloody Sunday, 29 January 1972 220 Boland, F. H. 98, 135, 136 Böll, Heinrich 114 Bord Fáilte 113, 114 Brandt, Willy 136, 184, 185, 187–​8, 214, 217 Brentano, Heinrich von 118, 119, 135–​6, 137, 138, 141–​4, 151, 153, 158–​9 Breuningr, Heinz 103 Brexit 239 British Commonwealth 4, 12 British Empire 18 Bruce-​Gardyne, Jock 149 Bunreacht na hÉireann 190 Business and Finance 210 Cahan, John 131 Caritas 24 Carstens, Karl 162 Casement, Sir Roger 14, 55 Caspari, Professor Fritz 82 Catholic Centre Party 35 Catholic–​Protestant tensions 51–​2 Celtic Church 12, 13 Celtic heritage 12, 13–​14 Celtic Tiger, the 235, 236 Centre for Irish German Studies, University of Limerick 7 Chalfont, Lord 216–​17 Chamberlain, N. 18, 19 China 136

255 Christendom, Ireland’s contribution to 13 Christlich Demokratische Union (Christian Democratic Union) 27, 35, 47, 77, 157–​8, 182, 186 Churchill, Winston 23 Clarkin, Andrew 36 Clissmann, Helmut 202–​3 Cold War 25, 26–​7, 31, 34, 44, 53–​4, 61, 62, 132, 139 Collins, Gerry 231, 232–​3 Cologne 26, 117 Commerce and Navigation, Treaty of 16, 33, 71 Committee of Inquiry into Taxation on Industry 110 Common Agricultural Policy 188, 189 Common Market, the 142, 144, 178 Common Market Study Group 212 Control of Manufactures Acts 99–​100, 104, 124n97 Coppé, Albert 183 COREPER debate, 1962 164 Coras Tráchtála Teo (CTT) 107, 109, 110 Cork 38 Cork–​Cologne Fund 25, 26, 36 Cork Examiner 204 Costello, John A. 36–​7, 58, 70, 98, 104, 108, 110, 138–​9 Coughlan, Anthony 212 Council of Europe 5, 27, 47, 50, 60, 100, 179 Cremin, Cornelius 77, 117, 119, 138, 139, 151, 152–​3, 154–​5, 158, 159, 166 CTT see Coras Tráchtála Teo cultural diplomacy 38–​9 currency reform 2 customs procedures 111 Czechoslovak 26 Czechoslovakia 19, 61 Daily Express 106 Daily Herald 106 Daily Mirror 106 Dankspende des deutschen Volkes 37 Davignon Committee 188 de Gaulle, Charles 6, 129, 133, 139, 156–​7, 168, 169, 174, 175, 182, 183, 184–​5, 205

256

Index

256 de Valera, Eamon 17, 18–​19, 20, 21–​2, 23, 32, 36–​7, 46, 50, 58, 62, 140, 203 Dehn-​Schmidt, G. von 17 Delors, Jacques 232 democracy, Irish 54 demographics 116 Denmark 128, 129–​30, 134, 144, 151, 152, 162, 165, 166, 178–​9, 180, 184, 187–​8, 205, 212, 213 Department for Lands (Irish) 206, 211 Department of Agriculture (Irish) 72, 73, 76, 78, 79, 85, 86, 87, 89, 119–​20, 134, 154 Department of External Affairs (Irish) 50, 51, 79, 100, 101, 104, 109, 141, 158, 167, 190, 201, 208, 216 Department of Finance (Irish) 50, 84, 99, 104, 134 Department of Foreign Affairs (Irish) 231 EEC Information Service 213 Department of Industry and Commerce (Irish) 75–​6, 78–​9, 88, 98, 102–​3, 104, 108, 109, 134 Department of Justice (Irish) 100, 101, 114, 201 Derry 215, 216 Deutsche Tagespost 114, 115 Deutscher Industrie-​und Handelstag (DIHT) 106, 109 Deutsches Nachrichten Büro (German Press Agency) 19 Devlin, Bernadette 219 Die Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 112 Die Welt 80, 112, 179, 184, 186, 203–​4, 215, 216 DIHT see Deutscher Industrie-​und Handelstag Dillon, James 89 diplomatic relations 32–​6, 39–​40, 55–​6, 82, 90, 118–​19, 160 Dörnberg, Alexander von 199, 201 Dorr, Noel 233 Dublin 15, 17–​18, 37–​8, 52 FRG Embassy 5 Irish–German Society 38–​9 St. Stephen’s Green 37 Dublin, Archbishop of 25 Dublin Rotary Club 60, 80, 209, 227 Dublin summits 234

Duckwitz, Georg 215, 216–​17 Duggan , John P. 41n22 Dulanty, J. V. 18 Dulles, John Foster 46, 47, 62n8 Easter Rising, 1916 12, 55–​6 EC directive 67/​654 211–​14 economic and monetary union 233, 234, 235, 236 economic growth 207 economic policy, German 85 economic policy, Irish 67–​8 economic recovery 238 economic situation, Irish 57–​8, 61 economic statecraft 61 EEC Information Service, Department of Foreign Affairs 213 Eichmann, Otto Adolf 202 Eisenhower, Dwight 47 Electricity Supply Board (ESB) 16, 17 Emergency Ireland 20–​1, 71 EPTR see Export Profits Tax Relief Erhard, Ludwig W. 2, 141–​2, 143, 151, 152, 156–​60, 168, 175–​6, 182 ESB see Electricity Supply Board European Atomic Energy Community 3 European Central Bank 237 European Coal and Steel Community 2, 47, 50 European Communities 6 European Council, and German reunification 230–​4 European Defence Community 47, 48–​9 European Economic Community 1, 3, 50, 58–​9, 62, 82, 85–​6, 119, 120 appeal 128 associate members 143 Common External Tariff 132 common foreign and defence policy 186, 188 Council of Ministers 155–​6, 163–​5 Inner Six 141–​2 Irish accession 196–​7 Irish exports to 132 Irish membership application 5, 128–​9, 130, 133, 140–​4, 149–​69, 174–​6, 176, 181–​6, 204, 228–​9 Irish membership negotiations 139, 149, 156, 162, 163, 169, 187–​9, 211–​14

257

Index European Economic Community (cont.) and the land question 211–​14 Irish relationship with 129–​34 preferences 139 tariffs 178, 180 European Free Trade Area 116, 129, 129–​30, 132, 133, 141, 142, 178–​9, 184 European integration 45, 50, 58–​60, 62, 232, 236 European Monetary System 233 European Movement 27 European Payments Union 74 European Recovery Program 50, 72 European Thirty Years Crisis (1914–​45) 8 European Union 1, 236–​7 Euroscepticism 236 export–​import controls 31–​2 Export Profits Tax Relief 110 exports, EEC 189 exports, German 71–​2, 78–​9, 81, 83, 84, 112, 116–​17 exports, Irish 67, 68–​71, 72, 73–​5, 76, 78, 79–​80, 81, 103, 176, 227 cattle and beef 84–​9, 97, 177–​80, 184 diversification 229 European Economic Community 132 German Democratic Republic 230 growth 117, 119, 229 industrial 118 non-​agricultural 97 tax relief 124n102 exports, UK 178–​9 Faber-​Castell Ltd 102–​3, 104, 107, 110, 112, 124n97 Fay, William P. 33–​4, 75–​6 FDI see Foreign Direct Investment Federal Association of German Industry 117, 118 Federal Republic of Germany acceptance as a normal state 45 Aiken’s visit 117–​19, 129 and Anglo-​Irish Free Trade Agreement 179 Atlanticism 175–​6 balance-​of-​payments deficit 74 balance of trade surplus 75 criticisms of Ireland 57–​62 currency reform 2 defence role 53–​4

257 and EC directive 67/​654 213 economic miracle 97, 98 economic recovery 44 election, September 1969 186 Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) 98–​100, 103, 105, 116–​17, 118, 180 formation of 26–​7 Grand Coalition 185–​6 the Green Front 77 historical background 2–​3 Industrial Development Authority (IDA) mission 106–​8 Industrial Development Authority (IDA) promotional campaign, 1957–​59, 111–​12 inflationary pressures 112 influence 1 and Ireland’s EEC membership application 129, 141–​4, 149–​69, 174–​6, 176, 181–​4, 184–​6, 187–​9, 204 Irish trade 70, 71–​3, 177–​80 labour shortage 116 normalisation 37 Ostpolitik 230 perceptions of Ireland 54–​7 protectionism 133–​4 reconstruction 2 relations with Ireland 5–​6, 31, 39–​40 relations with UK 52–​3 and the Troubles 216–​21, 230 and the UN 134–​8 Westpolitik 45–​9, 58 Federation of Chambers of Commerce 107 Federation of Irish Industries 181 Federation of Irish Manufacturers Ltd 72 Fermoy Progressive Association 102–​3 Fianna Fáil 17, 104, 110, 140, 150, 199, 210 Finance Act (1956) 110, 111 Finance Act (1961) 202, 204 Financial Times 116 Fine Gael 210 First Inter-​Party Government 36, 49, 99, 104 First Programme for Economic Expansion 116–​17, 130–​1, 152 First World War 14, 23–​7 fisheries coastal zone, Irish 189 FitzGerald, Garret 228–​9 Flanagan, Oliver J. 206, 209–​10

258

Index

258 Foreign Direct Investment 62, 98–​103, 104, 108–​10, 114, 116–​17, 118, 176–​7, 180, 211, 228, 235 foreign policy, British 19 foreign policy, Federal Republic of Germany 157 foreign policy, Ireland 5, 6, 40, 49–​50, 51, 54, 58, 60–​1, 90, 228 interwar years 18 moderation 140 Westernisation 128, 134–​9 Foreign Trade Advisory Committee 99 Foreign Trade Committee 72 Forestry and Wildlife Service 212 France 45, 48–​9, 61, 139, 156–​7, 164–​5, 182, 183, 184–​5, 190, 213, 232 Franco–​German rapprochement and cooperation 2–​3, 156–​7, 185, 229, 234 Frankfurt Book Fair 235 Frankfurt Trade Fair 98 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 207 Frankfurter Rundschau 34, 60, 200, 218 Freie Demokratische Partei 47 G2 35 Gaelic League (Conradh na Gaeilge) 13 Gallagher, Brian 163, 166 GATT see General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 132, 134, 179 German Cultural Institute 56 German Democratic Republic 2, 33, 46, 53, 135, 154–​5, 229–​30 formation of 26–​7 international organisation membership 146n35 Irish trade 230 relations with Ireland 8, 33–​4 uprising (1953) 46–​7, 62n8 German–​Irish Society (Deutsche-​Irische Gesellschaft) 14–​15 German–​Irish Trade Association 177 German partition 26–​7, 50–​3 German reunification 33, 47, 48, 50, 53, 135–​6, 230–​4, 235 Germany, historical background 12–​27 Germany, Imperial 9n9, 14–​15 Germany, Nazi 17–​20, 21–​2, 25, 200–​1 espionage 202–​3

Gillissen, Christophe 139 Gonzalez, Felipe 231 Gorbachev, Mikhail 233 Görtz, H. 21 Great Depression 15–​16 Greece 141, 143 Grewe, William G. 60–​1 Hague Summit 186, 188, 189, 194n89 Hallstein, Walter 131–​2, 157, 162, 165 Hallstein Doctrine, the 135, 146n34, 158, 230 Hamburg 14 Handelsblatt 152, 176, 210 Harkort, Günther 151, 174–​5, 181–​2 Harney, Mary 235–​6 Haughey, Charles J. 178, 181, 183, 231–​4 Haughey, J. 102 Heath, Edward 150–​1, 153, 186 Hempel, E. 18, 19, 20, 21–​2, 23, 34, 41n22, 190 Herwarth, Hans von 51–​2, 162 Heuss, Theodor 36, 49 Hill, Roland 197 Hillery, Patrick 185, 187, 188, 213, 217, 218, 219, 220 Hitler, A. 18, 19, 21 Höcherl, Hermann 209 Horgan, John 140 Houwald, Götz von 174 Hoven, Joseph ‘Jupp’ 35 Hull, Mark 41n22 humanitarianism, Irish 23–​6, 36–​7, 67 Hyde, D. 13 ICEM see Irish Council of the European Movement conference, 1959 131–​2 IDA see Industrial Development Authority imperial tariff preferences 83 import levies 80–​1, 83–​4 Industrial Development Authority (IDA) 99, 102–​3, 104–​5, 106–​12, 109, 111–​12, 116, 124n102 Industrial Grants Act (1956) 111 industrialisation, Irish 6, 73, 97–​120, 168, 239n4

259

Index industrialisation, Irish (cont.) Aiken’s visit to the Federal Republic of Germany 117–​19 Faber-​Castell Ltd 102–​3, 104, 110, 112, 124n97 First Programme for Economic Expansion 116–​17 Foreign Direct Investment 98 German Foreign Direct Investment  98–​100 inertia 100–​2 promotional campaign, 1957–​59 111–​12 promotional drive 106–​12 Second Inter-​Party Government 103–​10 Second Programme for Economic Expansion 176 underperformance 108–​10 watershed 115–​17 International Monetary Fund 45, 85, 237 International Red Cross 23–​4 interwar years 3, 15–​20 IRA see Irish Republican Army Ireland, Republic of affinity with West 49–​50 anti-​partition 49 appellations 57 balance-​of-​payments deficit 80–​1, 104, 108, 116–​17 Commonwealth preference 4 conservatism 68 demographics 116 economic underperformance 80 economy 4 EEC accession 196–​7 enigma 44 European path 1 German criticisms 57–​62 historical background 2, 3–​5, 12–​27 isolation 88–​9, 102 modernisation 4 perceptions of 54–​7 relations with Federal Republic of Germany 1, 5–​6, 31, 39–​40 relations with German Democratic Republic 8, 33–​4 relations with UK 3–​4, 6, 33, 68 US Foreign Direct Investment 1 Ireland’s Question 14 Irish Central Bank 104 Irish Civil War (1922–​23) 15

259 Irish Communist Party 230 Irish constitution (1937) 18 Irish Council of the European Movement (ICEM) 164, 182–​3 Irish Exporters’ Association 107 Irish Farmers’ Association 181 Irish Farmers Journal 200 Irish financial crisis 237–​9 Irish Financial Services Centre 237 Irish Free State 15, 16–​17, 198 Irish Fresh Meat Exporters’ Society 87 Irish–​German Air Transport Agreement 113 Irish–​German relations, 1990–2016 234–​9 Irish–​German Society 38, 202 Irish–​German trade agreement 32 Irish Government Bureau 18 Irish Independent 24, 25, 140, 177, 204 Irish language 13–​14 Irish nationalist anniversaries 55–​6 Irish partition 20, 50–​3, 117, 140, 214–​15, 231 Irish Press 208 Irish Red Cross 25, 36, 39 Irish Republican Army (IRA) 140, 207, 209 border campaign (1956–​63) 51, 52 interwar years 15 Nazi links 203 Second World War 20, 21, 35 the Troubles 217, 218, 219 Irish republicanism 55 Irish reunification 216 Irish Times 5, 80, 89, 106, 132, 135, 141, 142, 143, 160–​1, 165, 177, 200, 202, 203, 237–​8 Irish Tourist Board 100 Irish War of Independence, 1919–​21, 15 Italy 26, 164–​5 Jahn, Gerhard 185, 209 Jansen, Josef 153, 157, 163 Joint Export–​Import Agency 31–​2, 72 Junker, W. 78–​9, 82 Katzenberger, Hermann 35–​6, 37, 38, 39–​40, 55, 58, 75–​6, 101 Kennedy, Eamonn 181–​2, 184, 186, 187–​8, 214–​15, 216–​17 Kiernan, T. J. 58–​9, 79, 82–​3, 107, 109, 111–​12

260

Index

260 Killarney 108, 111 Kinsale 107–​8 Knights of St. Columbanus 25 Koenig, Josef 187 Kohl, Helmut 232–​4, 235 Kölner Stadt-​Anzeiger 119 La Domenica del Corriere 200 Lahr, Rolf 152, 153–​4, 155–​6, 163, 170n24, 175 Land Act (1965) 205–​6, 206, 209–​10, 212 Land Commission 198–​9, 205–​6, 208–​9, 210, 212 land ownership, foreigners 197–​200, 201–​2, 203–​4 land question, the 197–​200, 202, 203–​4, 205–​14 language policy, Irish 55 Leinster 206–​7 Lemass, Seán 61, 75, 98, 99, 103, 108, 110, 112, 124n102, 128–​9, 133, 134, 137–​40, 141, 142, 143, 206, 216, 228 and Ireland’s EEC membership application 152, 161, 163–​4, 165–​8, 181, 204 Lemass–​O’Neill meetings 56 Lenehan. F. 7–​8 levelling-​up business policy 89–​90 Leydon, John 107 Liebherr 107–​8, 109, 110, 111 Limerick 38 Limerick, University of, Centre for Irish German Studies 7 Limerick Chamber of Commerce Industrial Committee 103 Lisbon Treaty 236 literature 5, 7–​9 Loughney, Cathal 104, 111 Lübke, Heinrich 56 Lucey, Cornelius, Bishop of Cork 203 Lücke, Paul 182 Luxembourg, Treaty of 189 Luxembourg compromise, the 182 Lynch, Jack 61, 176, 181, 183–​4, 196, 203, 210, 215–​16, 218–​19 Mac Giolla, Tomás 209 MacBride, J. 14

MacBride, Seán 26, 27, 49, 50 McCann, Hugh 151, 187, 208–​9 MacCarthy, Gerard 111–​12, 116 McDonough, Bob 158 McGarry, Fearghal 41–​2n37 Macmillan, Harold 128, 150 Maguire, Conor Alexander 36 Manchester Guardian 106 Marshall Plan, the 5, 27, 50, 72, 99 Mende, Erich 158 Meyer, Kuno 13–​14, 15 Meyer-​Cording, Ulrich 141–​2, 152 middle-​power activism 128, 137 Mindszenty, Cardinal Josef 26 Mitterrand, François 232, 233, 234 Molohan, C. 8 Müller-​Armack, Alfred 164 Munich Agreement 201 Munich crisis 18, 19 Muray, Leo 141, 142 Murray, L. R. 61 National Archives of Ireland, Dublin 7 National Farmers’ Association 87, 200 National Land League 208, 210, 213 nationalism, German 13 nationalism, Irish 12, 13, 196 NATO see North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Ireland’s EEC membership application 151, 152, 153–​5, 160–​1, 163, 164, 175–​6, 182–​3 Nazis and Nazism 17–​20 Netherlands, the 107, 162–​3, 164, 169, 184, 213 neutrality, Irish 12, 18, 19–​23, 27, 34, 49–​50, 54, 60, 128, 137–​8, 142, 143, 155, 161, 163, 164, 187, 202, 228 Nice Treaty 236 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 2, 4, 27, 44, 45, 48, 49, 50, 53, 54, 58, 60, 62, 134–​5, 137–​8, 142, 144, 175, 186 Northern Ireland 4, 53, 57, 140, 186, 197 the Troubles 214–​21, 230, 231 Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association 214

261

Index Norton, William 98, 103, 104, 105, 106–​12, 113, 116 Norway 151, 165, 166, 188 nuclear non-​dissemination (non-​proliferation) 136 Ó Ceallaigh, Brian 116, 151–​2 Ó Móráin, Micheál 160–​1 Ó Súilleabháin, Proinnséas 36, 38, 41–​2n37 O’Beirne, Aedan 47, 77 O’Brien, Conor Cruise 47, 48, 51, 53, 113, 136 Occupation Authorities 32, 72, 73, 74 Occupation Statute 32, 47 O’Connell, D. 14 O’Duffy, E. 17 OEEC see Organisation for European Economic Cooperation O’Kelly, Seán T. 36–​7, 49 Ollenhauer, Erich 31, 166 O’Neill, Terence 214 Operation Shamrock 25–​6 O’Rahilly, T. F. 36 O’Reilly, C. 7 Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) 2, 5, 27, 50, 69, 74–​5, 76–​7, 79, 80, 87–​8, 99, 129, 132, 133, 134 Ostpolitik 230 Overbeck, Kuno 196–​7 Paisley, Reverend Ian 217 Pakenham, Lord 46 patriotism, German 118 Permanent Mission of Germany to the EEC 151 Political-​Directorate 2, 62 Pompidou, Georges 186, 190 post-​war period 22–​7 post-​war relief 23–​6 Power, Ann (‘Nancy’) Wyse 14 pre-​independence 13–​15 Prill, Felician 51, 52, 54, 58, 59–​60, 62, 80, 87, 88–​9, 100, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 140, 207, 208–​9 Progressive Democrats 235–​6 protectionism 3, 4, 99–​100, 103, 108, 132, 133, 140, 227 Pulzer, Peter 186

261 Rasmussen, Morton 213 referendum, EEC accession 196–​7, 213 Reifferscheidt, Adolph 52, 118–​19, 137–​9, 141, 153, 154–​5, 156, 159, 160, 167–​8 Revenue Commissioners and Finance 110 Rey, Jean 181 Rome, Treaty of 3, 133, 142, 150, 151, 160, 188, 211 Rosenstock, Georg 203–​4 Royal Ulster Constabulary 214, 215 Ryan, Frank 230 Sachsen, Prince Ernst Heinrich von 199 St. Kilian’s German School 39 St. Stephen’s Green, Dublin 37 St. Vincent de Paul Society 25 Save the German Children Society 24–​5, 36, 38, 39 Scally, Derek 237–​8 Scheel, Walter 187, 220 School of Irish Learning 14 Schröder, Gerhard 157–​60, 167–​8, 175–​6, 182 Schwarz, Werner 177, 178 Second Inter-​Party Government 58, 80–​1, 98, 103, 103–​10, 112–​13, 138–​9 Second Programme for Economic Expansion 130–​1, 176–​7 Second World War 4, 8–​9, 12, 17–​20, 21–​2, 34, 35, 200–​1, 202 Siemens-​Schuckert 16 Single European Act 232 Single European Market 1, 234 Sinn Féin 207, 209 Skorzeny, Otto 199, 200–​1 Sligo Industrial Development Corporation 103 Social Democratic Party 31, 47, 158, 166 Society of United Irishmen 14 sources 6–​9 sovereignty 4 Soviet Union 2, 3, 26, 33, 46–​7, 49, 54, 61, 157, 233 Spiegel 116 sports diplomacy 37–​8 Stacy May report 104 Stephan, Enno 202–​3 Stepinac, Cardinal Aloysius 26

262

Index

262 Stockholm Convention 129 Strauss, Franz Josef 162, 185 Stuttgarter Zeitung 197, 219 Sunday Press 206 Sweden 105 Sweetman, Gerard 80–​1 Switzerland 33, 205 tariffs 70–​1, 178, 180 Thatcher, Margaret 232 Thomsen Hempel, Henning 34 Tibet 136 tourism 100, 112–​15, 115, 126n148 Tourist Traffic Act (1955) 113 trade 4 1950s 67–​90, 81 agreement, 1949 32 Anglo–​Irish 17, 50, 55, 58, 59, 68–​71, 72, 83, 86, 105, 130, 133, 175, 178–​80, 181–​2, 184, 237 cattle/beef licences 78 Commonwealth preference 84, 103, 106 competition 74 European Union 237 German Democratic Republic 230 German market 70, 71–​3, 177–​80, 229, 235, 237 interwar years 16–​17 Irish balance of power 133–​4 levelling-​up business policy 89–​90 liberalisation 3, 76–​7, 79, 80, 115–​16, 132 negotiations 76–​80, 82–​9, 115–​16, 120 quota restrictions 74, 76, 84, 85–​6, 89 reopening 71–​3 tensions 5, 73–​6 US–​Irish 73, 76, 99, 107, 229, 237 watershed 115–​17 Treaty Ports 18, 20 Trinity College Dublin 13 Troubles, the 214–​21, 230, 231 Trump, Donald 239 Turf Development Board 17 Ulbricht, Walter 46 Ulster Unionist Party 214 Undeveloped Areas Act (1952) 104, 108–​9 United Irishman 208

United Kingdom Brexit 239 economic performance 1 the Eden initiative 48 European Economic Community (EEC) membership application 6, 133, 141, 144, 150, 151, 152, 162, 164, 166–​7, 168, 169, 174, 175, 176, 181–​2, 183, 185, 186, 228 European Economic Community (EEC) membership negotiations 187, 188, 189–​90 exports 178–​9 Foreign Office 143, 150–​1 foreign policy 19 and Ireland’s European Economic Community (EEC) membership application 150–​1, 153–​4 Irish dependence on 150–​1, 177 relations with Federal Republic of Germany 52–​3, 55 relations with Ireland 3–​4, 6, 25, 33, 68 Second World War 20 sphere of influence 16 visa liberalisation 101 United Nations 5, 26, 49, 53, 60, 88, 128, 134–​7, 139, 217, 230 United States of America 3 defence umbrella 44 Foreign Direct Investment 1, 235 Industrial Development Authority (IDA) mission 105 international vision 67–​8 and Ireland’s EEC membership application 162 Irish trade 73, 76, 99, 107, 229, 237 preferences 134–​5 relations with Federal Republic of Germany 45 relations with German Democratic Republic 53 relations with Ireland 49 Second World War 21 University College Dublin 14 US military forces 85 Versailles, Treaty of (1919) 16 visa controls, liberalisation 101–​2

263

Index Voigt, Heinz 152, 162 Vredenburch, Hendrik van 162 war criminals 5, 199, 200–​1 Warnock, William 60, 88, 89, 154, 157–​9 Weimar Republic 3, 15–​16 Westdeutsche Rundschau 179 Westpolitik 45–​9, 58 Whitaker, T. K. (‘Ken’) 98, 108, 152–​3 White, Lieutenant Colonel J. M. 26

263 Wiel, Jérôme aan de 8 Wilson, Harold 176, 183 Wilson, Woodrow 3 Wirtschaftswoche 210 World Cup, FIFA 38 xenophobia 198, 204 Yugoslavia 26 Zimmer, H. 13