Ireland's Helping Hand to Europe: Combatting Hunger from Normandy to Tirana, 1945–1950 9789633864104

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Ireland’s

Helping Hand to Europe 1945–1950

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Ireland’s

Helping Hand to Europe 1945–1950

Combatting Hunger from Normandy to Tirana Jérôme aan de Wiel

Central European University Press Budapest–Vienna–New York

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©2021 Jérôme aan de Wiel Published in 2021 by

Central European University Press Nádor utca 9, H-1051 Budapest, Hungary Tel: +36-1-327-3138 or 327-3000 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.ceupress.com All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the permission of the Publisher.

ISBN 978-963-386-409-8 (hardback) ISBN 978-963-386-410-4 (ebook) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: De Wiel, Jérôme aan, 1966- author. Title: Ireland’s helping hand to Europe : combatting hunger from Normandy to Tirana, 1945-1950 / Jérôme aan de Wiel. Description: Budapest ; New York : Central European University Press, 2021. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021023529 (print) | LCCN 2021023530 (ebook) | ISBN 9789633864098 (hardback) | ISBN 9789633864104 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Food relief--Ireland--History--20th century. | Humanitarian assistance--Ireland--History--20th century. | Ireland--Foreign economic relations--Europe. | Europe--Foreign economic relations--Ireland. Classification: LCC HV696.F6 D423 2021 (print) | LCC HV696.F6 (ebook) | DDC 363.8/8309415--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021023529 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021023530

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To C a r m e l Na sh

Bandon, Ireland (2013 †),

H e rta E gge r

Eitorf, Germany (2016 †) and

Ton y B on f i e l d

Limerick, Ireland (2019 †)

In memoriam

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Contents Acknowledgments Introduction

xi 1

Part I

Deciding and Organising Relief at Home CHAPTER ONE

Handshake Debacle amidst Humanitarian Crisis

Independence and Catholic identity Communists, Nazis, and Jews A crypto ally called Ireland Life in wartime Ireland Europe reacts to de Valera’s handshake Slowly coming to terms with Nazi horrors Radio duel between Churchill and de Valera Europe’s misery Thinking of postwar times: UNRRA and the ICRC Thinking of postwar times: the neutrals Thinking of postwar times: the Vatican Concluding remarks CHAPTER TWO

‘A drop in the ocean’: The Decision to send Relief

Grim facts emerging and reported by the Irish press 1845/1945: Asked to remember the Great Irish Famine 25 April 1945: The decision to send relief Motivations to aid Europe 18 May 1945: Dáil adopts relief scheme Concluding remarks CHAPTER THREE

Reaction and Organisation

Administration and management The Irish Red Cross Society Firms, factories, and farms react People and charities react The Irish Save the Children Fund Organising donations Cork adopts Cologne Moralising Irish relief volunteers for the continent Concluding remarks

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17 19 20 23 28 35 38 42 44 46 48 52 54 57 59 59 63 65 70 75 79 81 81 83 84 86 90 92 97 103 105 108

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viii · Contents

Archbishop McQuaid to the Rescue

CHAPTER FOUR

McQuaid the continental A commitment to help Going through the war years Submerged by appeals for aid Organising relief for continental children Relief fatigue Persevering with the NCWC Concluding remarks

1946: Extending Postwar Relief

CHAPTER FIVE

The state of Europe, 1946–1947 Ireland thinks of extending relief operations International Food Conference in London June 1946, Dáil approves second relief budget The weather’s offensives, 1946–1947 Opposition to relief abroad Tinplate crisis & kosher meat Concluding remarks CHAPTER SIX

End of Relief

Other handshake-type debacles: the Nuremberg trials and Görtz funeral International publicity for Ireland Historic photo opportunity in Berlin lost Great publicity successes Swiss versus Irish relief rivalry? Bulgarian and Swiss films on the Don Irlandais The Irish Red Cross Society in trouble The end phase of Irish postwar relief Concluding remarks

109 110 112 113 115 117 119 121 124 127 127 128 133 135 139 142 148 155 157 158 160 161 163 165 170 173 179 183

Part II

Distributing Irish Supplies Abroad

185

Introduction: relief in the unfolding Cold War

187

CHAPTER SEVEN

Irish Aid to Western Europe

France The Irish hospital in Saint-Lô French newspapers’ perceptions of postwar Dublin Distributing Irish relief goods The Netherlands Belgium

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Contents · ix

Italy Saving Rome and fear of communist takeover Zucchero irlandese from Milan to Palermo Irish supplies in the black market? Control crisis Concluding remarks

Cooperation with the International Red Cross in Geneva

CHAPTER EIGHT

The International Red Cross: tasks, issues, and controversies Dublin and the International Red Cross reach an agreement Solving logistical problems & focusing on Germany and Austria More and more urgency Psychological benefits of Irish aid The Catholic end of the affair Concluding remarks CHAPTER NINE

The Western Allied-Occupied Zones in Germany

Abandoning the Germans to their fate? First Irish stop: Freiburg im Breisgau Irish aid in the French-Occupied Zone Irish aid in the American-Occupied Zone Irish aid in the British-Occupied Zone Irish helpers, DPs, and expellees Concluding remarks CHAPTER TEN

Berlin, the Soviet-Occupied Zone, and Eastern Expellees

The situation in eastern Germany Historic moment, first Irish supplies on train to Berlin Quietly breaking the Soviet blockade of western Berlin Irish aid in the Soviet-Occupied Zone Irish aid to German refugees and expellees German expellees leave witness accounts for Irish authorities Looking after German prisoners of war Concluding remarks CHAPTER ELEVEN

Ireland’s Aid to Central Europe: Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland

Austria Czechoslovakia Poland Concluding remarks CHAPTER TWELVE

Hungary

Liberation and occupation, 1944–1945 Catastrophic situation in politically volatile Hungary

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221 222 224 227 229 236 239 240 242 244 247 248 251 260 263 268 272 281 285 289 295 301 303 304 308 313 316 325 331 338 341 343 344 353 359 370 371 373 376

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x · Contents

Distribution of Irish sugar in Budapest Rumours of Catholic and communist misappropriation The mysterious Dr Imre de Kosinsky Archbishop McQuaid helps Hungary High politics and supplies do not mix well Concluding remarks CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Ireland’s Aid to the Balkans: Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, and Romania

Albania Bulgaria Greece Romania Concluding remarks CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Yugoslavia

A complex Yugoslav situation Tensions between the International Red Cross and Belgrade Stepinac trial upsets Irish aid The issue of sending Irish representatives Positive report from Geneva ‘These two innocents’ are an embarrassment to us Hourihane and O’Connor in Yugoslavia Conveniently altering an IRCS report… No cattle for Tito Concluding remarks CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Thanking Ireland

381 389 392 397 402 410 413 414 418 423 429 436 437 438 441 442 445 446 447 449 452 457 460 463

Why send letters of thanks? Letters from officials, clergy, and political parties Letters from ordinary people Letters of thanks from Germany Letters and drawings from German children

465 466 472 475 477

Conclusion

483

Photos List of frequently used abbreviations Bibliography and sources Index

493

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509 511 531

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Acknowledgments

A book that has incorporated so many different sources from all over Europe means that I am not much but extremely indebted to many archivists, scholars, and friends. Without their help, assistance, and time I would not have managed to put this project together. I would like to profusely thank all those who undertook research regardless of the obtained results. The following names have been arranged in alphabetical order of the countries under consideration. In Austria: Dr Christian Fornwagner of the State Archive of Tyrol; Dr Susanne Pils and Dr Michaela Laichmann of the Vienna City and State Archive; Gerhard Steininger of the Upper Austrian State Archive; Jacqueline Kowanda of the Salzburg State Archive; Michael Perschy of the State Archive of Burgenland; Dr Ulrich Nachbaur of the State Archive of Voralberg; Dr Wolfgang Quatember of the Zeitgeschichte Museum in Ebensee; Ulrike Erben of the Archive of the Archdiocese of Vienna; Michael Fliri of the Archive of the Diocese of Feldkirch; Dr Peter G. Tropper of the Archive of the diocese of Gurk; Dr Martin Kapferer of the Archive of the Diocese of Innsbruck; Dr Waltraud Stangl of the Archive of the Evangelical Church. In Belgium: Didier Amaury of the Archives of the Foreign Ministry in Brussels; Patrick Debucquois of Belgian Caritas. In Bulgaria: Stefka Petrova of the National Archives of Bulgaria; Patricia Quaghebeur of the Documentation and Research Centre for Religion, Culture and Society (KADOC) in Louvain. In the Czech Republic: Markéta Šibalova of the Archive of the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs; Czech Caritas in Prague. In France: Cyril Daydé of the Archives of the Foreign Ministry in La Courneuve; Anne-Sophie Cras of the Centre of Diplomatic Archives in Nantes; Fanny Reboul of the County Archive in Rouen; Stéphanie Thouroude of the County Archive of the Manche; Hubert Godefroy of Musée des Beaux-Arts of Saint-Lô; Brigitte Tandonnet of the Archive of the Archdiocese of Bordeaux; Catherine Barbé and Jacques Gaimard of the Archive of the Archdiocese of Rouen; Barbara Baudry and Agnès Piollet of the Archive of the Conference of French Bishops;

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xii · Acknowledgments

In Germany: Karolin Wendt of the Archive of the Foreign Office; Dr Laura Scherr of the Bavarian Main State Archive in Munich; Birgit Meyen of the State Archive of Baden-Württemberg in Sigmaringen; Christina Scheuble and Marco Birn of the Main State Archive in Stuttgart; Michael Sander of the State Archive of Saarland; Dr Martin Schlemmer and Sonja Bednarek of the State Archive of North Rhine-Westphalia; Dr Nicolas Rügge of the State Archive of Lower Saxony in Hanover; Kristin Kalisch of the State Archive of Hamburg; Karl-Ludwig Sommer of the State Archive of Bremen; Manfred Pult of the State Archive of Hessen; Gerald Kolditz of the Saxon State Archive in Leipzig; Dr Tobias Crabus of the Saxon State Archive in Chemnitz; Dr Matthias Manke of the State Archive of Mecklenburg-Pomerania in Schwerin; Frank Esche of the State Archive of Thuringia; Eckhard Mortag of the State Archive of Thuringia in Gotha; Frank Schmidt of the State Archive of Brandenburg; Dr Elke Imberger of the State Archive of Schleswig-Holstein; Dr Jörg Pawelletz of the Main State Archive of Rhineland-Palatinate; Michael Weins of the Federal Archive of Koblenz; Dr Frank Boblenz of the Main State Archive of Thuringia; Bettina Fischer of the State Archive of Thuringia in Weimar Marstall; Dr Jörg Müller of the State Archive of Thuringia in Altenburg; Andrea Beger of the State Archive of Thuringia in Greiz; Dr Norbert Moczarski of the State Archive of Thuringia in Meiningen; Thomas Deres of Historical Archive of the City of Cologne; Jutta Briel of the City Archive of Kiel; Johann Frehse of the City Archive of Bonn; Dr Birgit Kehne of the City Archive of Osnabrück; Dr Hannes Lambacher of the City Archive of Münster; Birgit Horn-Kolditz of the City Archive of Leipzig; Thomas Fuchs of the City Archive of Bonn; Dr Annett Büttner of the FliednerKulturstiftung Kaiserwerth in Düsseldorf; Ulrich Ecker and Christine Gutzmer of the City Archive of Freiburg; Dr Stephan Schwenke of the City Archive of Kassel; Jan Jäckel of the City Archive of Hanover; Jennifer Reiche and Barbara Schäche of the City Archive of Berlin; Elke Machon of the City Archive of Stuttgart; Christine Stade of the City Archive of Dresden; Konstanze Buchholz of the City Archive of Magdeburg; Cordula R. Holtermann of the City Archive of Essen; Norbert Perkuhn and Klaudia Wehofen of the City Archive of Düsseldorf; Josef van Elten of the Archive of the Archdiocese of Cologne; Michael Schonhardt and Dr Schmider of the Archive of the Archdiocese of Freiburg; Dr Hannelore Schneider of the State Church Archive in Eisenach; Michael Streit of the Archive of the Archdiocese of Paderborn; Hans Bresgott of the German Red Cross; In Hungary: István Csízi of the National Archives of Hungary; Dr András Sipos and Tamás Csáki of the Budapest City Archive. In Ireland: Elizabeth McEvoy of the National Archives of Ireland; Brian McGee of Cork City and County Archive; Noelle Dowling of Dublin Diocesan

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Acknowledgments · xiii

Archives; Christopher Moriarty of the Quaker Historical Archive in Ireland; Dr Raymond Refaussé of the Representative Church Body Library in Dublin; Catherine Harrison, Rebecca Dunne and Joe Millar of the Irish Red Cross Society; James G. Osborne of the Archives of the Irish Independent in Dublin. In Italy: Dr Stefania Ruggeri of the Historic Diplomatic Archive in Rome. In Liechtenstein: Monique Jäggi and Rupert Tiefenthaler of the State Archive; Ursula Meier of the Liechtenstein Red Cross. In Luxembourg: Corinne Schroeder of the National Archives of Luxembourg; François Jacobs of Caritas Luxembourg. In the Netherlands: Nicole Brandt of the National Archive in The Hague; Hans den Hollander of the Archives of the Foreign Ministry in The Hague. In Poland: Izabella Czyńska of the Polish Red Cross. In Romania: Dr Ioan Drăgan of the National Archives of Romania. In Serbia: Bojana Femić of the national Archives of Serbia and Montenegro. In Switzerland: Fabrizio Bensi of the Archive of the International Committee of the Red Cross; Grant Mitchell of the Archive of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies; Anna Schaaf and Damian Gonzalez Dominguez of the Photo Library and Photographic Archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross; Marina Meier of the Film Archive of the International Committee of the Red Cross. In the United Kingdom: Jane High of the British Red Cross. In the United States: Dr Maria R. Mazzenga of the Catholic Archives of America. In the Vatican: Fr Bernard Ardura and Professor Emilia Hrabovec of the Pontifical Committee for Historical Sciences. Once the documents were obtained, several friends and colleagues volunteered to help me in the translation of reports and letters written in languages I am not familiar with. Val Rekechynskyy took care of sources in Russian and Serbo-Croatian while my wife, Dr Sabine Egger of Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, showed much patience in deciphering some handwritten letters in German. But here, I would like to single out Dr Szilvia Lengl of Berlin, formerly in Mary Immaculate College, Limerick, who translated no less than fifty pages of Hungarian into English, including a fascinating list of over 500 names of groups and institutions in Budapest which received Irish relief. Thanks to that list it is possible to exactly pinpoint where Irish aid was distributed in that city. I am most grateful to her. I would also like to thank people I met and spoke with about the project. In many instances, their comments triggered new research ideas. A list would be too long, but I would like to mention Reverend Paul Ritchie (Baptist Church, Limerick), who shone light on various aspects of Christian theology, Caroline Ritchie for her enthusiastic

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xiv · Acknowledgments

interest in this project, Daire McNamara, who shared his knowledge of Limerick history with me, Jill Storey (headmistress Villiers School, Limerick), whose help allowed to establish that French children went to Villiers in 1945, Manuel Smalis who, over many coffees, told me about postwar Vienna and the story of his parents, and Angie Smalis who informed me of old Irish-Greek relations. Also, I would like to thank my colleagues in the School of History in University College, Cork (UCC) for their advice, help, support, and suggestions. They are Professor David Ryan, Professor (emeritus) Dermot Keogh, Professor (emeritus) Geoffrey Roberts, Dr Bozena Cierlik, Dr Andrew McCarthy, Dr Mervyn O’Driscoll, Katherine McGarry and Dr Laurence Geary. Dr Shane Lehane very kindly lent me a copy of his doctorate entitled “A History of the Irish Red Cross Society, 1939-1971” (2014, UCC), which was very valuable for this study. Dr Kevin O’Sullivan of the School of Humanities in the National University of Ireland, Galway (NUIG), a specialist in the field of the history of humanitarianism, kindly offered me valuable advice during a conference in Galway. In Limerick, Detlef Becker shared with me his harrowing experiences as a refugee child in eastern Germany. The two anonymous peer-reviewers of Central European University Press (CEU Press) offered much valuable advice and insightful comments, which helped me greatly. All errors are mine. In CEU Press, I would like to particularly thank Linda Kunos, senior editor and my editor, who was consistently encouraging in this project and who made this happen, and Tertia Davis (editor) and Sebastian Stachowski (designer) who revised the manuscript and put it together. Their work is everything an author could wish for and it has been a pleasure and privilege working with CEU Press. I would like to express my gratitude to the National University of Ireland (NUI) for its generous grant-in-aid of publication. I am equally grateful to the College of Arts, Celtic Studies and Social Sciences (CACSSS) in University College, Cork which also financially supported the publication of this book. Their support is of great importance to research and its publication. Finally, last but not least, I am grateful to and also in admiration of my wife Sabine and our sons, Louis, and Paul, for their patience with me during the six or seven years or so it took to complete this book. To all of you, many, many thanks.

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‘Of course, at best, I am sorry to say that what we will be able to do will only be a drop in the ocean’. Éamon de Valera, Taoiseach (prime minister), May 1945

‘Ireland thinks of our sick’. Ouest-France, November 1945

‘We feel much obliged to thank the Irish youth for having taken care of us, Albanian schoolchildren, in such a friendly manner by sending us a good quantity of sugar. For this we are grateful’. Pupils of K. Kristoforidhi School, Tirana, to Junior Irish Red Cross, June 1947

‘I think the world should know how much the Irish people have done to relieve distress in Europe’. John B. McCloskey, National Catholic Welfare Conference representative in Paris, July 1950

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Introduction

In October 1957, on the occasion of Éamon de Valera’s 75th birthday, several newspapers located in the north and east of the Netherlands attacked the Irish leader. All of them had the same article and were part of one press group. The attack was quite personal at times. The Dagblad van het Oosten explained that he led an ‘ascetic life’, enjoyed Irish culture and was a symbol of Ireland’s ‘war of liberation’ against Britain. Now, this symbol had ‘obstructed Irish progress for years’. But the chances were that what had caught the readers’ attention was not so much the personal details of de Valera’s alleged frugal life but the allegation that Ireland had conducted ‘quite a pro-German policy’ during the war. The readers were reminded that de Valera had extended his sympathy to the German envoy in Dublin on Adolf Hitler’s death.1 As could have been expected, the Irish minister in The Hague, Brian Gallagher, objected strongly. He first personally contacted the editor of the newspapers, Gerhard Werkman, and refuted the pro-German allegations. Werkman did not agree and replied: ‘I can imagine that the comment about pro-German policy of your government during the Second World War has struck you, but what is embarrassing does not need to be wrong.’ The editor then rubbed salt into the wound by comparing the attitude of neutral Sweden, which had braved many dangers during the spring of 1945 to bring food to the Netherlands and ‘prevent starvation in the big cities’, to Ireland’s. Resentment dripped from his pen: ‘When Hitler died in April 1945 flags flew halfmast in your country, this can be read in a number of books and you do not deny it. With the 250,000 dead, which Holland had to sacrifice to the insanity of this same Hitler, not one Irishman has ever shown any pity as far as I know of.’2 Despite his scathing attacks on Ireland, Werkman allowed Gallagher a reply in the newspapers. The Irish envoy wrote that he had no objection to the ‘rather unsympathetic tone of several remarks’ but felt that he had to protest against the allegation of pro-German sympathy: ‘I could, of course, name many facts that would prove the contrary but will not do it as I do not wish to correspond further on this 1 NAI, DFA, 67/8, embassy series, The Hague, Dagblad van het Oosten, 18 October 1957. 2 NAI, DFA, 67/8, embassy series, The Hague, Werkman to Gallagher, 22 October 1957.

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2 · Introduction

issue.’ Nevertheless, he stressed that the Irish government had publicly condemned Germany’s ‘non-provoked aggression’ of the Netherlands and Belgium, which, in turn, provoked a formal protest from Berlin. In Ireland, the Irish Press followed the Dutch affair.3 But by not revealing what the Irish government had secretly done in favour of the western Allies and not even stating that perhaps up to 80,000 Irishmen and women had joined the British army, Gallagher and the government allowed this image of a pro-German Ireland to linger on, up to the present day as this author can personally testify. Many on the European continent and elsewhere may not be aware of the complexity and finer aspects of Anglo-Irish relations and readily assume that since Ireland has had a conflict with England/Britain for centuries, it could only have favoured Britain’s enemy, Germany. As T. Ryle Dwyer has written: ‘Many believed Ireland was anti-British to the point of being pro-Nazi.’4 Werkman might not have known it, but there were Irishmen who participated in the liberation of the Lowlands in 1944. Astonishingly, in his personal reply to Gallagher, Werkman reiterated that the neutral Swedes at least had given food supplies to the starving Dutch but that the Irish had done nothing. He was either a very badly informed journalist or chose to have a selective memory of the occasion. During the war, Ireland had only been able to send a very limited amount of relief supplies to the continent because of its remote geographic location and a lack of ships. But straight after the war, it undertook ambitious relief operations, considering its small size, scarce population, and modest national economy. Involved in these operations were the government, the people, the Churches, the Irish Red Cross Society (IRCS), charity groups, and voluntary organisations. It was a national undertaking. The hundredth anniversary of the Great Famine (1845–1850) in 1945, an event that traumatised Ireland and shaped much of its collective memory, played a significant role in convincing people to donate for the continent. Irish relief was also an expression of Christian solidarity between the nations. In Kevin O’Sullivan’s words: ‘From the early twentieth century, the Irish public’s vision of the developing world was dominated by images from missionary magazines and the—often deeply personal— recollections of relatives, neighbours and friends who lived and worked in far flung mission stations across Africa, Asia and Latin America.’ A strong sense developed that Irish values were based on Christianity, justice and peace.5 Ireland had been part of the British Empire and many Irishmen and women had emigrated to overseas 3 NAI, DFA, 67/8, embassy series, The Hague, ‘Het vrije word. De Valera’, Dagblad van Coevorden, 26 October 1957 & ‘Envoy’s note to the Dutch’, Irish Press, 23 October 1957 (INA). 4 T. Ryle Dwyer, Behind the Green Curtain: Ireland’s Phoney Neutrality During World War II (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2009), ix. 5 Kevin O’Sullivan, ‘“Ah, Ireland, the caring nation”: Foreign aid and Irish state identity in the long 1970s’, Irish Historical Studies 38, no. 151 (May 2013): 481.

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Introduction · 3

territories while others had joined Catholic orders and engaged in missionary activities across the globe. In 1945, that sense and that identification with missionary work was channelled into aid for Europe where extraordinary bleak circumstances were prevailing. Supplies like food, clothes and medicines from Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Galway and Castlebar became available in areas ranging from the former D-Day beaches in Normandy to the streets of Tirana, including the Netherlands which Werkman seemed to ignore although it had happened not that long ago. Not many in Ireland and on the continent would nowadays know that it was supplies from Ireland that were the first non-Allied foreign supplies to enter Berlin in 1946 and later the Soviet-Occupied Zone of Germany. That one third of the Hungarian population tasted Irish sugar, a fact recognised by the Stalinist controlled Ministry of Welfare in Budapest, or that some political detainees on Greek islands wore Irish clothes is hard to imagine. And yet, it was the case as extensive research for this book reveals. Under these conditions it becomes easier to imagine why in May 1946 a Bulgarian newsreel in cinemas in Sofia showed Irish supplies being distributed. However, it is remarkably strange that this theme has never been fully explored in twentieth-century Irish history.6 Two eminent professors, both formerly teaching at University College, Cork (UCC), have stressed that there is a lack of investigation into Irish/continental European relations. In 1988, Dermot Keogh wrote that while Anglo-Irish relations were covered, ‘by contrast, the theme of Ireland and twentieth-century Europe has not been tackled in any systematic way’.7 Sixteen years later, Joseph Lee confirmed what Keogh had written: ‘The subject of Ireland’s relations with continental European countries in the twentieth century is a grossly neglected one’,8 possibly because Ireland sees itself firmly anchored in the Englishspeaking world—despite its struggle for independence from Britain. Mervyn O’Driscoll adds a pertinent comment: The Irish post-war aid project was and remains unprecedented in scale and national involvement in the history of Irish humanitarianism. It is paradoxical that it is not remembered. That is another riddle. It would seem to have a lot to do with the ‘history wars’ over the rights and wrongs of the Irish ‘Emergency’ [Ireland’s neutrality during the war] and the debate over Irish post-war insularity.9 6 A recent example of this is David McCullagh’s, De Valera, Vol. II; Rule 1932–1975 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 2018). In an otherwise outstanding biography, nothing is said on Éamon de Valera’s role in Ireland’s postwar aid. 7 Dermot Keogh, Ireland & Europe 1919–1948 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1988), 1–2. 8 Joseph Lee in Mervyn O’Driscoll, Ireland, Germany and the Nazis: Politics and Diplomacy, 1919–1939 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2004), comment on back cover. 9 Mervyn O’Driscoll, ‘“We are trying to do our share”: The Construction of Positive Neutrality and Irish PostWar Relief to Europe’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, vol. 27 (2016): 37.

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4 · Introduction

Indeed, those sometimes passionate ‘history wars’ absorbed all the attention with the result that the history of Ireland’s postwar aid was left unstudied. It is hoped that this book will make a contribution to the outstanding existing studies on wartime and especially postwar Ireland and to our understanding of this particular period in twentieth-century Irish history, namely the relations between Ireland and Europe, Irish foreign policy, the development of Irish internationalism generally speaking, the formation of a small state, and the participation of its citizens, Catholic and Protestant Churches, charities, and voluntary organisations in relief operations that formed a crucial part in Ireland’s policy towards Europe between 1945 and 1950. Much of this literature informed the writing of this book. Beginning with the post-Irish War of Independence (1919–1921) period when the Irish Free State began its development and when the existence of the Department of External Affairs (DEA) in Dublin was not a foregone conclusion, Dermot Keogh in Ireland & Europe 1919–1948 details the state’s foreign policy during the interwar period, the Second World War and the onset of the Cold War, focusing on Europe rather than the English-speaking world, and argues that the history of Irish-continental European relations ‘has been very considerable and unjustly neglected in the past’.10 Keogh’s subsequent Ireland and the Vatican; The Politics and Diplomacy of Church-State Relations 1922–1960 analyses the triangular relations between the Irish government, the Irish Catholic Church and the Vatican and their effects on Irish domestic policy as well as on the international stage.11 Ireland’s Helping Hand to Europe, 1945–1950 complements Keogh’s books, presents a quasiunknown aspect in Irish-continental European relations, and confirms the importance of the Vatican in the formulation of Irish foreign policy and the development of the country’s Catholic identity. Mervyn O’Driscoll has analysed Irish-German interwar relations in Ireland, Germany and the Nazis: Politics and Diplomacy, 1919– 1939 and provides an essential background to Ireland’s policy during the Second World War and its subsequent relief operations as the four Allied occupation zones in Germany received very significant amounts of Irish supplies.12 Moving to the Second World War, the question of Ireland’s neutrality has been controversial. The country made the decision not to fight against the barbarous Nazi regime, and this has raised moral issues. Ireland’s wartime experience has been comprehensively narrated by Robert Fisk in his ground-breaking In Time of War:

10 Keogh, Ireland & Europe 1919–1948, see comment on inside cover of the book. 11 Dermot Keogh, Ireland and the Vatican: The Politics and Diplomacy of Church-State Relations 1922–1960 (Cork: Cork University Press, 1995). 12 Mervyn O’Driscoll, Ireland, Germany and the Nazis: Politics and Diplomacy, 1919–1939 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2004).

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Introduction · 5

Ireland, Ulster and the Price of Neutrality 1939–45.13 Brian Girvin has been critical of Irish neutrality in The Emergency: Neutral Ireland 1939–45, arguing that Éamon de Valera’s government could have joined the Allies in defence of democracy or supported them more actively while remaining neutral.14 Yet, T. Ryle Dwyer argues the contrary in Behind the Green Curtain: Ireland’s Phoney Neutrality During World War II, showing that numerous Irishmen and women joined the British forces and especially that the Irish government and its officials secretly cooperated with the western Allies on a large scale. This pro-western Allies policy is also shown by Michael Kennedy in Guarding Neutral Ireland: The Coast Watching Service and Military Intelligence, 1939–1945,15 while Richard Doherty narrates the experiences of those tens of thousands of Irishmen and women in the British army in Irish Men and Women in the Second World War.16 Ireland’s Helping Hand to Europe contends that Ireland was like a crypto ally of Britain and the United States. Several academics have focused on specific aspects of Ireland’s wartime experience and their studies have been most useful for this book. In That Neutral Island: A History of Ireland During the Second World War, Claire Wills portrays everyday life and cultural life in the country.17 Donal Ó Drisceoil has studied the very strict censorship that operated in Ireland, which was stricter than in other neutral countries in Europe in Censorship in Ireland, 1939–1945: Neutrality, Politics and Society.18 Nonetheless, the Irish people were not totally unaware of what was happening around their country, and many gave money for war victims in Italy or Poland, for example. In Ireland during the Second World War: Farewell to Plato’s Cave, Bryce Evans depicts the social and economic conditions in the country and how the government and citizens coped with the disruptions caused by the war.19 Gisela Holfter and Horst Dickel narrate the arrival of a small number of German and Austrian refugees, among them Jews, in Ireland and depict their everyday life and the support they received from Irish individuals in An Irish Sanctuary: German-speaking Refugees in Ireland 1933–1945.20 Only a small number of Jews reached Ireland before and during the war as the Irish 13 Robert Fisk, In Time of War: Ireland, Ulster and the Price of Neutrality 1939–45 (London: Paladin, 1987). 14 Brian Girvin, The Emergency: Neutral Ireland 1939–45 (London: Pan Books, 2007). 15 Michael Kennedy, Guarding Neutral Ireland: The Coast Watching Service and Military Intelligence, 1939– 1945 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2008). 16 Richard Doherty, Irish Men and Women in the Second World War (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1999). 17 Clair Wills, That Neutral Island: A History of Ireland during the Second World War (London: Faber and Faber, 2008). 18 Donal Ó Drisceoil, Censorship in Ireland, 1939–1945: Neutrality, Politics and Society (Cork: Cork University Press, 1996). 19 Bryce Evans, Ireland during the Second World War: Farewell to Plato’s Cave (Manchester & New York: Manchester University Press, 2014). 20 Gisela Holfter and Horst Dickel, An Irish Sanctuary: German-speaking Refugees in Ireland 1933–1945 (Berlin & Boston: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2017).

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6 · Introduction

government was not particularly liberal in its refugee policy and included ministers and civil servants who were not above antisemitism as Dermot Keogh has shown in Jews in Twentieth-Century Ireland: Refugees, Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust.21 In postwar Europe, Irish supplies were distributed to lucky Jewish survivors in Budapest and Yugoslavia, and continental orthodox rabbis travelled to Dublin to supervise the slaughtering of animals for kosher meat. But these acts of humanitarianism and support could absolutely not make up for having remained passive towards Nazi Germany’s genocidal policies. The immediate postwar period in Ireland, 1945–1950, saw important political developments. The country had remained neutral during the war, at least officially, and chose to continue with this policy although this did not mean that it embraced isolationism, quite the contrary. In A Diplomatic History of Ireland 1948–49: The Republic, the Commonwealth and NATO, Ian McCabe has studied Ireland’s decision to leave the British Commonwealth and officially become a republic in 1949 while at the same time refusing to become a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) during the early Cold War as the government believed that joining NATO would imply recognition of Northern Ireland.22 This refusal should therefore not be seen as a desire to remain neutral in the East-West conflict. As is shown in Ireland’s Helping Hand to Europe, the Irish government continued its prowestern Allies policy after the war with certain decisions taken concerning relief operations in Berlin, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Italy. Despite its official neutrality, Ireland belonged in the West. The history of Irish internationalism has been researched by several academics. In Ireland and the League of Nations, 1919–1946: International Relations, Diplomacy and Politics, Michael Kennedy analyses Ireland’s participation in this innovative new international organisation and is of the opinion that the country focused much more on European affairs than previously thought and that great powers recognised that the ‘small state’ that Ireland was had much influence in the League.23 Ireland’s interest in continental European affairs during the postwar years is further highlighted in Michael Kennedy and Eunan O’Halpin’s Ireland and the Council of Europe: From Isolation towards Integration,24 and more recently by Mervyn O’Driscoll, Dermot Keogh and Jérôme aan de Wiel’s (editors) in Ireland

21 Dermot Keogh, Jews in Twentieth-Century Ireland: Refugees, Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust (Cork: Cork University Press, 2006). 22 Ian McCabe, A Diplomatic History of Ireland, 1948–1949: The Republic, the Commonwealth and NATO (Blackrock: Irish Academic Press, 1991). 23 Michael Kennedy, Ireland and the League of Nations, 1919–1946: International Relations, Diplomacy and Politics (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1996). 24 Michael Kennedy and Eunan O’Halpin, Ireland and the Council of Europe: From Isolation towards Integration (Strasbourg: Council of Europe Publishing, 2000).

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Introduction · 7

Through European Eyes: Western Europe, the EEC and Ireland, 1945–1973.25 The country’s growing interest in European integration and attempts to join the European Economic Community have been studied by Michael J. Geary in An Inconvenient Wait: Ireland’s Quest for Membership of the EEC 1957–73.26 Ireland’s desire to play its part in the global international system has been demonstrated by Joseph Morrison Skelly in Irish Diplomacy at the United Nations, 1945–1965: National Interests and the International Order,27 and by Shane Lehane in A History of the Irish Red Cross, which narrates the founding of the Irish Red Cross Society in 1939, its work in the country and dealings with the International Red Cross in Geneva.28 Ireland’s Helping Hand to Europe confirms the ideas expressed in these books, namely that Ireland did not wish to remain politically isolated on the periphery of Europe. Yet, Ireland’s Helping Hand to Europe fills an important gap in postwar history as Ireland’s relief efforts—and not only the government’s role in them but the nation’s—have practically remained unexplored. Phyllis Gaffney has written on the Irish government and Irish Red Cross Society’s extraordinary endeavours to establish an hospital in Saint-Lô in Normandy in Healing Amid the Ruins: The Irish Hospital at Saint-Lô (1945–46).29 There can be no doubt that the Hôpital Irlandais is the most potent symbol of Irish humanitarianism in action on the European continent and was as well an affirmation of the country’s desire to play its role in Europe. It was the expression of what a small country could do in foreign policy in a world dominated by warring great powers, although its actions were necessarily limited. As Éamon de Valera said in parliament in May 1945, Ireland’s help was ‘a drop in the ocean’. Cathy Molohan has explored Ireland’s aid for Germany after the war, especially the arrival of several hundreds of German children in the country for convalescence holidays in Germany and Ireland 1945–1955: Two Nations’ Friendship.30 But there have been no other studies that narrate in detail Ireland’s help to Europe globally. The country’s relief efforts as part of the state, voluntary organisations, and people have been studied but for a later period beginning, broadly speaking, from the early 1970s. Michael Holmes, Nicholas Rees, and Bernadette Whelan analyse Irish foreign policy towards the third world and examine the European Community’s influence on 25 Mervyn O’Driscoll, Dermot Keogh and Jérôme aan de Wiel, eds., Ireland Through European Eyes: Western Europe, the EEC and Ireland, 1945–1973 (Cork: Cork University Press, 2013). 26 Michael J. Geary, An Inconvenient Wait: Ireland’s Quest for Membership of the ECC 1957–73 (Dublin: Institute of Public Administration, 2009). 27 Joseph Morrison Skelly, Irish Diplomacy at the United Nations, 1945–1965: National Interests and the International Order (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1997). 28 Shane Lehane, A History of the Irish Red Cross (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2019). 29 Phyllis Gaffney, Healing Amid the Ruins: The Irish Hospital at Saint-Lô (1945–46) (Dublin: A. & A. Farmar, 1999). 30 Cathy Molohan, Germany and Ireland 1945–1955: Two Nations’ Friendship (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 1999).

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8 · Introduction

the formulation of this policy in The Poor Relation: Irish Foreign Policy and the Third World.31 Kevin O’Sullivan concentrates on Ireland’s relations with Africa in Ireland, Africa and the End of Empire: Small state identity in the Cold War, 1955–1975 and explains, among others, the Irish government and people’s reaction to hunger on that continent. The humanitarian crisis in Africa, notably in Biafra, became part of a public discussion in Ireland, redefined its foreign policy in the field of humanitarianism, and saw the people massively donate, and Irish non-governmental organisations (NGOs) like Concern and Trócaire became leaders in international humanitarianism. O’Sullivan writes that national and international NGOs offered something unique, that is ‘a direct link between individual citizens in the West and their counterparts in the global South’.32 While this is certainly true, Ireland’s Helping Hand to Europe shows that there was a similar public discussion over twenty years before and that Irish citizens established links with continental Europeans through relief efforts. Ireland’s postwar aid was a display of European solidarity, north-south and west-east, and also Christian solidarity. Gabriel Doherty in ‘Ireland, Europe and the Provision of Food Aid to Poland 1980–81’ published in Irish Studies in International Affairs, an academic journal that specialises in issues concerning Ireland and international affairs (past or present) including specific themes such as development aid, analyses Ireland’s food aid to Poland during the Cold War at a particularly troubled political and economic time when martial law was imposed by the Polish communist regime and food stocks were diminishing. So far Irish humanitarian aid, having been a part of official governmental policy since 1973, concentrated on the developing world outside Europe. Poland was obviously a geographical exception. Ireland, through the European Community (EC) and in cooperation with other memberstates, sent food supplies, notably beef, to that country at cheaper prices but not for free.33 However, as Ireland’s Helping Hand to Europe depicts, Ireland had sent humanitarian aid to Poland before, and in marked contrast to the situation in 1980– 1981, it sent supplies to Poland for free after the Second World War. But it is not only the history of relations between Ireland and the European continent during the twentieth century that has been neglected. The history of the suffering of civilians during and immediately after the war has often been eclipsed to make a clean room for the heroic narrative of the liberation, especially of Western Europe. Allied bombs that killed French, Dutch or Belgians have been conveniently 31 Michael Holmes, Nicholas Rees & Bernadette Whelan, The Poor Relation: Irish Foreign Policy and the Third World (Dublin: Trócaire & Gill and Macmillan, 1993). 32 Kevin O’Sullivan, Ireland, Africa and the End of Empires: Small state identity in the Cold War, 1955–1975 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2013), 108. 33 Gabriel Doherty, ‘Ireland, Europe and the Provision of Food Aid to Poland 1980–81’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, vol. 24 (2013).

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Introduction · 9

blotted out because they were a source of embarrassment. It was only on 6 June 2014, during the seventieth anniversary of D-Day, that for the first time a French President of the Republic officially paid tribute to those 20,000 civilians who died during the Battle of Normandy.34 Two years later, in May 2016, the Mémorial des Civils dans la Guerre (Civilians in Wartime Memorial) in Falaise in Normandy was opened, focusing on the plight of civilians. In the words of Stéphane Grimaldi, director of the Mémorial de Caen (Caen Memorial Museum) dedicated to the study of conflict in the twentieth century: Most museums dealing with the history of the Second World War leave a secondary place to the question of civilians, as if history were only a matter of combatants. Civilians appear to be sneaking into history, between two narratives of battles or frontlines, being simple victims among any others of the war. And yet, the absolute singularity of the Second World War is that it annihilated more civilians than soldiers.35

The systematic incineration of German cities and towns and their inhabitants by Allied bombing raids, the erasure of Dresden being the most enduring symbol, continues to trigger controversies. But the fate of civilians is now receiving more attention, notably their everyday lives during the war and how they coped with food shortages and the strategies they adopted to survive. Women very often played leading roles in these issues as they became the heads of the family, their husbands serving in the armed forces, having been taken prisoner or killed. Ireland’s Helping Hand to Europe shows the role of Irish and continental women during wartime and their involvement in postwar relief efforts, and stresses the condition of civilians. The topic of civilian life and the critical question of food supplies in different European countries during the war has been examined in detail by Tatjana Tönsmeyer, Peter Haslinger and Agnes Laba (editors) in Coping with Hunger and Shortage under German Occupation in World War II.36 Previous studies include, for example, Dominique Veillon’s Vivre et Survivre en France 1939–1947 (Living and surviving in France 1939–1947).37 These 34 ‘François Hollande rend hommage aux victimes civiles du débarquement’, La Croix, 6 June 2014, in http:// www.la-croix.com/Actualite/France/Francois-Hollande-rend-hommage-aux-victimes-civiles-du-debarquement-2014-06-06-1161606 (accessed on 4 April 2015). 35 Stéphane Grimaldi, ‘Le mémorial des civils dans la guerre: un projet unique en Europe’ (3 May 2016), in http://www.memorial-falaise.fr/actualites/#le-memorial-des-civils-dans-la-guerreun-projet-unique-eneurope (accessed on 25 March 2017). 36 Tatjana Tönsmeyer, Peter Haslinger, and Agnes Laba, eds., Coping with Hunger and Shortage under German Occupation in World War II (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). 37 Dominique Veillon, Vivre et survivre en France 1939–1947 (Paris: Payot, 1995).

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10 · Introduction

books, and others, provide the indispensable background to the situation on the continent and serve to stress why Ireland’s aid was so vitally important. The treatment of German expellees from regions in Central and Eastern Europe is also receiving far more attention. Irish supplies reached those people too. In Europe, the fighting ceased in May 1945, but the continent was in a ghastly condition. A common assumption is that once a war is ended, it will also mean the end of major problems or, in any case, they will rapidly end. However, that is very far from being the reality. These major problems were hunger, cold, disease, destruction, demoralisation, and displaced persons (DPs). The continent was simply on the brink of the abyss. In March 1946, the Irish Red Cross Bulletin put it bluntly: ‘After months of peace, war-induced shortages of food and material are carrying on in Europe the work started by the bayonet and the bomb.’38 The history of the final phase of the war, immediate postwar Europe, reconstruction, and relief efforts during that period has seen the publication of outstanding studies in recent years. They have been used for this book. Not all can be cited here, but Tony Judt’s magisterial Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 has been a source of inspiration. The first part of Judt’s work deals with the legacy of the conflict, the beginnings of the Cold War and the initial reconstruction efforts, notably the European Recovery Plan (ERP), far better known as the Marshall Plan, implemented only in Western Europe after the Kremlin’s refusal to participate.39 Ireland’s participation in the plan has been comprehensively studied by Bernadette Whelan in Ireland and the Marshall Plan, 1947–57.40 Yet, if Ireland received American aid, it also exported aid to Europe. Relief or humanitarian aid was a vital part of reconstruction. But Ireland’s role rapidly sank into oblivion, similar to that of other small neutral states. It was the same phenomenon with Dutch aid to Germany after the First World War. The Netherlands (neutral during 1914–1918) were the second largest contributor in aid to Germany after the United States, a fact which is hardly known. In Schweizer Hilfe für Deutschland 1917–1933 und 1944–1957 (Swiss help for Germany 1917–1933 and 1944–1957), Bernd Haunfelder argues pertinently that the aid of small states was dwarfed by that of the United States after the two world wars and consequently was quickly forgotten.41 This book hopes to rescue Ireland’s extraordinary contribution to relief on the continent from oblivion. The history of relief in Europe after the Second World War is only relatively recently beginning to receive due attention. Jessica Reinisch, has explained this 38 39 40 41

IFRC, box 16539, Irish Red Cross Bulletin, March 1946. Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 (London: Vintage Books, 2010). Bernadette Whelan, Ireland and the Marshall Plan, 1947–57 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000). Bernd Haunfelder, Schweizer Hilfe für Deutschland 1917–1933 und 1944–1957 (Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2010), 14–15.

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Introduction · 11

lack of study in a special issue on relief published by the Journal of Contemporary History in 2008: One limitation concerns the fact that, although academic interest in the aftermath of war has grown rapidly over the last two decades, the period 1944 to 1949 still often seems to fall between the separate historiographical camps of war studies on the one hand and Cold War histories on the other. Relief work thus becomes either a postscript to military encounters or a simple stepping stone to subsequent Cold War clashes… both perspectives are problematic and inadequate.42

There are striking similarities with Ireland here. The country’s neutrality and war record and its political developments in the immediate postwar period mentioned above have been widely discussed, forgetting all about its remarkable contribution to relief and reconstruction. To these explanations might be added another one. The history of relief may not appear to be particularly captivating at first sight. If it is not about the Battle of Stalingrad or the Bridge of Spies in Berlin, what exciting information could relief possible reveal? An awful lot in fact, and as this book shows relief is certainly not above high politics and machinations. These reasons help to explain why the story of postwar Irish aid ended up in a historiographical no man’s land. Reinisch has written that ‘together, the contributors [of the articles in the Journal of Contemporary History] seek to redefine our understanding of the rehabilitation of Europe in the aftermath of war, by showing just how much short-term relief materialized as a first step towards longer-term reconstruction’.43 And small Ireland played its part in this. This author was employed as main researcher for a project entitled ‘Ireland and European Integration in a Comparative International Context, 1945-2005’ supervised by Professor Dermot Keogh (UCC) and financed by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS). Documents found during research in Dublin, Berlin and The Hague indicated that Ireland had been involved in large-scale relief operations immediately after the Second World War. After locating where Irish supplies had been sent to, the author contacted about 216 archives in Europe at local, regional, state, private, ecclesiastical, and Red Cross society levels. They were located in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, Albania, Italy, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland. 42 Jessica Reinisch, ‘Introduction. Relief in the aftermath of war’. Special issue in Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 43, no. 3 (July 2008): 372. 43 Reinisch, ‘Introduction. Relief in the aftermath of war’, 371.

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12 · Introduction

Over half of the archives responded to the request for information and were willing to cooperate in the research for this book. Copies of relevant documents were sent to the author. In one particular case in Germany, when asked how much it would cost to send a rather important number of digitalised documents, the archivist replied that considering what Ireland had done for his city after the war no costs would be involved. Rapidly, it became clear that Ireland’s humanitarian aid had not only been important in terms of quantity and quality, but also geographically widespread from France to the Greek islands. This was confirmed during research in the archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and of the former League of Red Cross Societies, nowadays called International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, both in Geneva. Numerous reports, photographs, and letters of thanks from officials and ordinary people who got Irish supplies were unearthed. Included were beautiful drawings for Irish donors made by schoolchildren and elderly people. Suddenly, Ireland was on the map of Europe for many. Another important source was local, regional, and national newspapers, especially in Ireland since they helped to measure and describe the popular response to the relief schemes announced by de Valera’s government. There is much to be said in favour of the digitalisation process of newspapers. An explanation of the organisation of the chapters in this book is called for. Part One is entitled ‘Deciding and Organising Relief at Home’, and aims to portray the global Irish experience, not only that of the Irish state. Chapter one shows that, despite its official neutrality, Ireland was in effect Britain and the United States’ crypto ally as it secretly cooperated with London and Washington on an important scale. Tens of thousands of Irishmen and women joined the British army. Popular and official Irish responses to events leading to the war and during the war are analysed, notably reactions to the persecution of Jews and certain Catholic churchmen. Life in wartime Ireland is portrayed. The conflict brought hardship to the population, but the situation was infinitely better than on the continent. Despite a very strict censorship, the people were not totally ignorant of what was going on in the war. Attempts to send relief supplies abroad were undertaken but limited and not always successful. The following five chapters deal with the decision-making and organisation of relief from 1945 onwards. The reasons and motivations behind the Irish government’s help for the European continent are analysed as are the reactions of the political parties in opposition. At the political level, besides genuine humanitarian preoccupations, issues of international publicity for the country after years of self-isolation and a fear of becoming isolated in postwar Europe were apparent. Irish governmental humanitarianism was not devoid of political calculations. There was some peer pressure from other neutral states in Europe, namely Sweden and Switzerland. Certain Irish officials suspected that some relief rivalry was developing

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Introduction · 13

between the Don Irlandais (Irish Gift), as Ireland’s aid in Europe became known in French, and the Don Suisse (Swiss Gift). Their suspicions are investigated. There was also an obvious desire to affirm the country’s Catholic identity through relief, which would lead to the eventual break between the Irish government and the International Red Cross and other relief organisations based in Protestant Geneva. The government opted to continue its humanitarian work with the National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC). The IRCS felt somehow brushed aside by the government and frictions occurred, a development noticed by the International Red Cross. If during the war the IRCS, founded only in 1939, performed well, the postwar years saw a dramatic decline in its membership and especially a crying need for more funding. A man who played an important role and who had much influence in relief organisation was John Charles McQuaid, the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin. Not only was he at the centre of the operations in his diocese, but he also liaised with the government and could avail of the widespread Catholic network in Europe. Certain civil servants in the Department of External Affairs (DEA), notably Joseph Walshe and Frederick H. Boland, paid much attention to what the archbishop had to say. In issues of humanitarianism involving moral aspects, it was evident that the Catholic Church, the Protestant Churches, and the Quakers wanted to participate and make their opinions known. At the popular level, there were no political calculations but a sincere desire to reach out a helping hand. The amounts of money, clothes and other supplies collected were astonishing for the small and not particularly rich country that Ireland was. Popular initiatives led to setting up notable relief schemes such as the adoption of Cologne, a once prosperous city on the Rhine but now a pile of rubble, by Cork. In Charleville, a small town in the south of the country, Irishwomen knitted woollen garments for continentals in need. Many women became involved in relief: in Ireland where it was collected or on the continent where it was distributed. A central question in humanitarianism is addressed: what motivated people, firms, and farms to give? Although this topic is not fully developed in this book, as part of the general relief effort a number of war-weary children from Austria, France and Germany and about 130 Jewish children from Central Europe stayed in Ireland during the immediate postwar period in order to recuperate.44 This was part of a far wider scheme in Europe where tens of thousands of needy children were sent abroad for what might be called convalescence holidays. Involved was the Irish Save the German Children Society (SGCS) whose leading members had political motivations for welcoming German children specifically. The roles of charities and voluntary organisations such as the Irish Save the Children Fund (ISCF) are detailed. 44 The author is currently researching this topic.

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14 · Introduction

While it remains difficult to establish their exact number, several Irishmen and women volunteered to work in relief operations on the continent. Their experiences and motivations are outlined. In the winter of 1947, when unheard-of weather conditions gripped Ireland for weeks, political and popular objections to the continuation of aid to Europe were expressed and had to be dealt with by de Valera. Citizens but also pupils in schools debated about the moral justification to export foodstuffs under such extreme conditions. Part Two is entitled ‘Distributing Irish Supplies Abroad’ and explores how Irish sugar, bacon, clothes and medicines were distributed on the continent. Not only were these supplies handed out in major urban centres such as Rome and Warsaw but equally in more remote areas such as Rügen, an island in the Baltic Sea, and Drama, a small town in eastern Macedonia. In Saint-Lô, very close to the D-Day beaches, the IRCS and Irish government set up a hospital in 1946 to the locals, French government, and French Red Cross’s greatest gratitude. It was, however, not above controversy. Ireland’s cooperation with the International Red Cross in Geneva, also referred to as the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) or Joint Relief Commission of the International Red Cross (JRC), is highlighted throughout the chapters in Part Two and adds to the history of that organisation in postwar Europe. This cooperation mainly focused on Central and Eastern Europe and although initially strong and cordial, it ended on a rather sour note as de Valera’s government and the International Red Cross differed on the issue of aid in relation to religion behind the Iron Curtain. It was obvious that Ireland’s Catholic identity was reflected in its foreign policy through relief operations. The issue of sending supplies to Central and Eastern Europe under Soviet domination became hotly debated as the Irish government, Catholic Church and people believed that the communists threatened religion and that they might hijack Irish supplies for their own political gain. Pressure from the Vatican on Ireland to cease cooperation with the International Red Cross based in Geneva, the cradle of Calvinism, was also a fact. Eventually, the Irish government terminated its cooperation with the International Red Cross and continued with the National Catholic Welfare Conference, led by the American hierarchy and opposed to communist leaders. Pope Pius XII, much involved in humanitarian aid, was deeply appreciative of Ireland’s relief efforts for Italy especially but also of Ireland’s stance on communism. The postwar years saw the country continuing with its pro-western Allies policy in the unfolding Cold War, notably during the Soviet blockade of western Berlin when Ireland, discreetly, was not opposed that its supplies reached the western sectors of the city. The final chapter of this book is devoted to the numerous expressions of gratitude for Ireland’s relief efforts. They confirm how much the country’s aid mattered.

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Introduction · 15

Hundreds of thousands of letters of thanks from ordinary citizens and officials were sent to Ireland, but only several hundreds have survived it would seem. The themes they contain are analysed as they constitute important witness accounts for the students of history. However, it is important not to develop notions of exceptionalism. Although Irish readers would have every reason to be proud of the collective effort that their country undertook in favour of relief between 1945 and 1950, other countries, institutions, and groups participated in this global effort to save Europe. Therefore, the Don Suisse, the Don Norvégien (Norwegian Gift), the American, British and Soviet governments, Sweden, the Joint Relief Commission of the International Red Cross (JRC), the South African Red Cross, the Iraqi Red Crescent, Iran, countries from South and Central America, the Union internationale de Secours aux Enfants (Save the Children International Union, UISE), and others have also been mentioned. Ireland alone, as de Valera had forcefully said, could not save Europe. It is not proposed here to go into detail for every country concerned as space would be lacking. As mentioned above, research in numerous archives unearthed a very important mass of documents. Yet, there is more material available for some countries than for others because in certain cases primary sources have been preserved and sent to the author while in other cases much was destroyed, got lost or institutional archives did not respond to requests for material. For example, there is much on Hungary and Yugoslavia and less on Greece and Romania. Consequently, more space and in-depth analysis can be devoted to some countries than to others, which explains why Hungary and Yugoslavia have been treated individually. It is equally true that these two countries became problematic for Ireland during the emerging Cold War and that de Valera’s government focused its attention on them, generating an important paper trail which has been recovered in archives in Dublin, Budapest, and Geneva. Generally, striking aspects of Irish aid have been selected and as many relevant foreign primary sources as possible have been incorporated in order to have both sides of events available, Irish and continental, and give a comprehensive transnational picture. Focusing on Ireland and/or Englishspeaking sources alone would be only half the story. Owing to the centrality of the former Reich’s position during the postwar years and the voluminous number of existing documents, the case of Germany has been considered separately in two chapters, one regarding the western Allied-Occupation Zones, the other one regarding the Soviet-Occupied Zone and Berlin. There are noticeable differences. In a way, Part Two could be easily called the history of Irish supplies, where and how they were distributed and who was at the receiving end. Accounts of ministers, civil servants, clergymen, and ordinary people have been used extensively to illustrate the effects that Irish aid produced. Indeed, besides the decision-making

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16 · Introduction

process, administrative approaches, and issues involving high politics, this book sets out to portray and analyse the participation of all concerned, from politicians, influential personalities, and organisations to minor officials, people who donated, people who received, men, women, and children. It aims to be a mixture of top-down and bottom-up history.45 In sum, it is a narrative that combines high politics, diplomacy, civil society, and personal stories. Finally, throughout the book several words in Irish but used in English spoken in Ireland have been used and a translation has been provided for international readers, like for example Taoiseach (prime minister) or Dáil (lower house in parliament). Also, Irish readers will be familiar with some passages on Irish history and explanatory information on Irish geography, but international readers might not be. The author begs for their patience. Hopefully, this book will succeed in adding to our understanding, not only of twentieth-century Irish history, but of postwar European history and the history of humanitarianism as well.

45 Although welcoming the special issue on relief in the Journal of Contemporary History (vol. 43, no. 3, July 2008), Sharif Gemie and Laure Humbert point out that the focus is on decision-makers and personalities, not on recipients. Sharif Gemie and Laure Humbert, (comment) ‘Writing history in the aftermath of “Relief ”: Some comments on “Relief in the aftermath of war” (special issue of Journal of Contemporary History)’, vol. 44, no. 2 (April 2009): 313.

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Part I

Deciding and Organising Relief at Home

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Chapter One

Handshake Debacle amidst Humanitarian Crisis

Since the creation of the Irish Free State in 1921–22, Ireland was busy shaping its identity as a new nation-state. Catholicism and democracy were strong components of this identity. In a postcolonial period, it also sought to show its difference with its former colonial master, Britain, notably through its membership of the League of Nations in Geneva. The country had no time for the Nazi, Fascist, authoritarian and communist ideologies that were developing in certain parts of Europe. However, it welcomed only a very small number of Jewish and other refugees owing to a restrictive asylum policy during the interwar period. But in this regard Ireland was not much different from other Western European countries. When the war broke out in 1939, it opted for neutrality. This was a demonstration of independence towards Britain, an affirmation of identity. It was notoriously ill-prepared for war and, moreover, it had a serious bone of contention with the British: Northern Ireland, over which it claimed sovereignty. However, behind the scenes it was a different matter as Éamon de Valera’s government cooperated secretly with the western Allies. Also, tens of thousands of Irishmen and women joined the British forces. The war disrupted Irish economic life, but the people were far better off than elsewhere in Europe. There was no fighting and there was sufficient food. The closing days of the Second World War proved to be very controversial in Ireland. De Valera unwisely extended his sympathy to the German minister in Dublin on learning of Adolf Hitler’s death at a time when one Nazi horror after the other was being revealed. His handshake caused international outrage and confirmed to many that Ireland, England’s hereditary enemy, had secretly hoped for a German victory. The Irish people had initial difficulties in believing atrocity stories emerging from Germany and Central and Eastern Europe. Winston Churchill took the opportunity of victory celebrations to settle accounts with de Valera, his old foe, despite Ireland’s extensive secret cooperation. But the end of the war was the beginning of another one: the war against human misery. The

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Second World War left behind a trail of carnage and destruction on an unimaginable scale. Also, the Germans were facing vengeance. The guns had fallen silent, but now a peace had to be won. That reality sank in very quickly. Plans were being conceived to cope with the unfolding humanitarian catastrophe and the neutrals (Sweden, Switzerland, Spain and the Vatican) were going to help and had their own motives for doing so, not always humanitarian in character. The road was paved for Irish aid to Europe as Ireland had to get out of its self-imposed isolation during the war and could not idly stand by, watching the misery of the continent and provoking the ire of Allied governments and populations.

Independence and Catholic identity After centuries of conflict Ireland became independent, but not fully, from Britain in 1921–22. The country, overwhelmingly Catholic, had been struggling for home rule for several decades, but Britain was very reluctant to grant home rule essentially for security and strategic reasons. In April 1916, right in the middle of the First World War, a small group of republicans and socialists led by Patrick Pearse and James Connolly respectively staged a rebellion against the British, expecting German support. It went down in history as the Easter Rising. It was a failure and the rebel leaders were executed by the British, causing a general revulsion in the country although many more Irishmen were at that point in time fighting in the British army against the same Germans. The motivations for Irishmen to enlist in the British army vary considerably. Some genuinely believed that Ireland would be granted home rule after the war, as the British government had declared in 1914, and joined for political and patriotic reasons. Others, however, joined because of socio-economic reasons, peer pressure, sense of venture or family tradition. In December 1918, Sinn Féin, a political party led by Éamon de Valera who had participated in the Easter Rising, won the British general election by a very wide margin in Ireland and demanded a republic for the entire island. But the Protestant majority of the people living in the northern province of Ulster, proud of its British identity, rejected this. In 1919, the War of Independence broke out and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) fought a guerrilla warfare against the British in the southern half of the country. Meanwhile, the British government introduced the Government of Ireland Act in 1920, attempting to find a compromise solution for the unionists (overwhelmingly Protestant) in the northern province of Ulster and nationalists (overwhelmingly Catholic) in the south. It was accepted in the north leading to the establishment of Northern Ireland, a state that had an autonomous government within the framework of the United Kingdom. However, the Act was rejected in the south. The War of Independence ended in 1921 and negotiations

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between the Irish republicans and the British government began, eventually establishing the Irish Free State in the south. The new state was granted dominion status within the British Commonwealth of Nations. It officially began its existence in 1922. Ireland was thus partitioned. Yet, the more extreme fringe of the IRA led by de Valera and others did not accept the Anglo-Irish Treaty and the partition of the country. Shortly afterwards, a civil war began between the Irish pro-Treaty forces, backed by the British, and the IRA, ending with the defeat of the latter in 1923.1 The Irish Free State now got a chance to develop peacefully although the Civil War left a legacy of very palpable political bitterness for decades to come. The first president of the executive council (prime minister) of the state was W. T. Cosgrave of Cumann na nGaedheal (later known as Fine Gael in 1933 when that party and others merged).2 The Free State rapidly developed its own specific features. A very strong Catholic ethos, also reflected in the country’s legal system, permeated all levels of society. For example, advocating and selling contraceptives was forbidden and divorce was officially not allowed. It seemed that Irish identity was synonymous with Catholicism. A good few Protestants chose to leave. To make sure that Ireland would remain Irish and not be tainted by foreign or anticlerical influences, a severe censorship was introduced.3 The Free State remained economically closely linked to the former coloniser as Britain was its main source of exports and imports by very far. Its economy was essentially based on agriculture. The government was successful in building up a democratic political framework, but the economy remained weak and job creation was not forthcoming. The result was a high level of emigration, about 33,000 people annually between 1921 and 1931 out of a population of approximately 3,000,000.4 Irish emigrants went to Britain, the United States, Canada and Australia mainly; in other words, they stayed in an English-speaking environment. Ireland’s political and economic relations with continental European countries were rather limited.5 On the world stage, it made its voice heard through its membership in the recently set up League of Nations in Geneva. It championed the cause and rights of small countries and had no hesitation to take views that were not necessarily shared by Britain. Its 1 For excellent analyses of Ireland’s struggle for independence and its role during the First World War, see Keith Jeffery, Ireland and the Great War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), Ronan Fanning, Fatal Path: British Government and Irish Revolution 1910–1922 (London: Faber & Faber, 2013), and Charles Townshend, The Republic: The Fight for Irish Independence, 1918–1923 (London: Penguin Books, 2014). 2 For a comprehensive history of twentieth-century Ireland see Joseph Lee, Ireland 1912–1985 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 3 See Peter Martin, Censorship in the Two Irelands 1922–1939 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2006). 4 For an economic history see Kieran A. Kennedy, Thomas Giblin, and Deirdre McHugh, The Economic Development of Ireland in the Twentieth Century (London and New York: Routledge, 1988). 5 See O’Driscoll, Keogh, and aan de Wiel, eds., Ireland Through European Eyes; and Dermot Keogh, Ireland and Europe 1919–1948 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1988).

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fledgling Department of External Affairs (DEA) became progressively more and more professional.6 After the defeat of the republicans in 1923, de Valera remained president of Sinn Féin but soon realised that the policy of abstention from Dáil Éireann, the Lower House of the Irish parliament, would lead nowhere. In 1926, he set up his own party, Fianna Fáil, and entered the Dáil for the first time in 1927 after the general election, several of his party members carrying guns in their pockets just in case. In 1932, Fianna Fáil won the election and formed the government. Cosgrave handed over power and the change of government was peaceful. There was no return to the civil war days and de Valera remained democratically at the helm of the country until 1948 (as prime minister and minister for external affairs). During that long period in office, including the Second World War, he introduced major changes. The ‘Long Fellow’, as he was commonly known, set out to gradually dismantle the Anglo-Irish constitutional framework. First, he withheld land annuities (money owned by Irish tenants to the British government after they had bought holdings), which led to a damaging economic war with Britain ending in 1938. Then, in 1933, he abolished the Oath of Allegiance to the British monarch. Next, he focused on elaborating a new constitution for the country, Bunreacht na hÉireann. It was ready and approved by referendum in 1937. From then on, the Irish Free State was known as Éire (Ireland) and its head of state was the President of Ireland, not the British monarch. The country was in effect a republic although it would officially become one in 1949. The president of the executive was now called Taoiseach (prime minister). Irish was officially the first language and English the second, although English largely remained the dominant language. It was affirmed that ‘the national territory consists of the whole island of Ireland, its islands and the territorial seas’. This did much to strengthen the desire of Ulster unionists and Protestants to hang on to Northern Ireland. Despite regular denunciations of the evils of partition, de Valera failed to end it, but a solution would have been very hard to find with the entrenched views of the unionist government in Belfast. Also, de Valera negotiated the return of the Treaty Ports (Irish harbours used by the Royal Navy) to Irish authority in 1938, much to Winston Churchill’s anger. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was anxious to succeed in his appeasement policy in Europe and eager to have a reconciled Éire on Britain’s western flank.7 The new constitution had a strong Catholic flavour. The prohibition of divorce was confirmed, and the Catholic Church was deemed to have a ‘special position’ in society, being ‘the 6 For Ireland in the League of Nations, see Kennedy, Ireland and the League of Nations. 7 For this period, see Deirdre McMahon, Republicans & Imperialists: Anglo-Irish Relations in the 1930s (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1984), and John Bowman, De Valera and the Ulster Question, 1917–1973 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1982).

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guardian of the Faith professed by the great majority of the citizens’. However, all other religions were recognised, notably ‘the Jewish congregations’. As Joseph Lee has pertinently remarked, it was ‘a gesture not without dignity in the Europe of 1937’,8 even though Ireland’s assistance to Jews was not exemplary as will be seen. Considering these developments, it is not surprising that Ireland had a special relationship with the Vatican. The first three leaders of the country, Cosgrave, de Valera, and John A. Costello (who replaced de Valera in 1948) sought to make this special relationship a reality. In the words of Dermot Keogh, ‘the shared Catholic ideology bonded Dublin and “Rome” in the early decades of the history of the state’.9 Public displays of respect and affection between the two states were genuine. The Holy See saw in Catholic Ireland an important ally in the British Commonwealth of Nations in whose member-states many Irish migrants had settled. It was the same story in the League of Nations where Irish diplomats worked in favour of the Holy See’s foreign policy objectives. For example, in 1933, Pope Pius XI conveyed his gratitude to de Valera on learning that the Irish delegation in Geneva had voted against the recommendation of contraception. Of course, as in every relationship, there were some disagreements or tensions but ‘the fundamental relationship between Dublin and “Rome” was … never at risk of breaking down’.10 As will be seen, in matters of postwar humanitarian aid between 1945 and 1950, the governments of de Valera and Costello paid much attention to the Holy See’s stance on the issue and also to its general worldview.

Communists, Nazis, and Jews Meanwhile, it looked as if the European continent was being taken over by totalitarian, Fascist and authoritarian regimes. At first, it was especially the Soviet Union which was perceived as being a major threat. Its communism and atheism did much to antagonise Ireland. The spearhead of the anti-communist crusade was the Catholic Church. In October 1931, the hierarchy issued a joint pastoral, denouncing communism and warning against possible infiltration in the country. Groups such as the Friends of the Soviet Union and others deemed to have radical left-wing views were banned.11 Yet, the number of communists remained extremely small and the ideology never took off, but a very strong fear of it remained. Ireland had its very modest version of Mussolini’s Black Shirts, the Blueshirts, and some volunteered to 8 Lee, Ireland 1912–1985, 201–11. 9 Keogh, Ireland and the Vatican, xv. 10 Keogh, Ireland and the Vatican, xxi-xxii, xxiii and 108–109. 11 Maurice Curtis, A Challenge to Democracy: Militant Catholicism in Modern Ireland (Dublin: The History Press, 2010). For quotes see 104, 107–8 & 109.

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fight during the Spanish Civil War alongside Franco’s armies in 1936.12 At home, de Valera did not have too many problems containing the Blueshirt threat. But the real danger did not come from the Soviet Union, communism in Spain or Fascism in Italy, and was in fact closer to Ireland. In March 1933, Adolf Hitler and his Nazi party seized power in Germany, democratically. There were those in Western Europe who did not believe that the Führer was necessarily a menace as he constituted the best line of defence against Soviet Bolshevism. The Irish Times, a middle-class, conservative, and largely unionist (pro-British) newspaper at the time, opined: ‘His insensate hatred of Jewry is the weakest plank in Herr Hitler’s programme… In reasoned warfare against the communists Herr Hitler will have the support of all civilised nations’.13 The newspaper would rapidly change its tune. Soon, concentration camps were opened, political opponents imprisoned or liquidated and the first measures against the Jewish, Roma and Sinti populations were announced. In May, de Valera told the Chief Rabbi of Ireland, Isaac Herzog, that he was ‘deeply aggrieved’ by the situation of German Jews. Ireland had a small population of about 4,000 Jews and antisemitic activities were not of a nature to seriously worry the government, although antiJewish and anti-foreign declarations were increasing towards the end of the 1930s. However, not much was done to assist Jews in Germany. The truth was that they were discouraged to come as refugees to Ireland. According to Mervyn O’Driscoll, ‘the attitudes of some officials and parts of Irish society were tainted by traditional European Christian anti-Semitism’.14 In that, Ireland did not differ from other western democracies. An international conference about the Jewish refugee problem was held in Evian-les-Bains in France in July 1938 during which the Irish delegation explained that their country was not in a position to welcome refugees owing to its lack of industry (employment) and also lack of available land even for the natives. One of the Irish diplomats later remarked: ‘Didn’t we suffer like this in the Penal Days and nobody came to help us’.15 Instead, it was up to a small number of Irish individuals to try and help Jews despite the genuine shock in Ireland at the events of Kristallnacht in November when hundreds of Jews were murdered.16 The same month, the Irish Press, a newspaper which represented the views of de Valera’s 12 Keogh, Ireland & Europe 1919–1948, 49, 69–70, 81–2. 13 ‘Herr Hitler’s way’, The Irish Times, 4 March 1933 (ITDA). 14 See O’Driscoll, Ireland, Germany and the Nazis, for quotes, see 98, 101 and 237–8; see also Keogh, Jews in Twentieth-Century Ireland. 15 Keogh, Jews in Twentieth-Century Ireland, 119–20. The Penal Laws were introduced by the English against Irish Catholics in the seventeenth century. 16 For an in-depth study of Irish-German connections during Kristallnacht, including stories of refugees and helpers, see Gisela Holfter, ed., The Irish Context of Kristallnacht: Refugees and Helpers (Trier: WVT Wissenschatlicher Verlag Trier, 2014).

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party (Fianna Fáil) and government, ridiculed the Aryan race concept by describing it as ‘the laughing stock of the scientific world’.17 It is relevant here to put Ireland’s refugee policy regarding Jews fleeing Nazi Germany into a wider European context. Between 1933 and 1945, about 1,500 refugees asked for permission to settle in Ireland, many applying between November 1938, after Kristallnacht, and September 1939, when the war broke out. It is known that some 426 individuals eventually came. In neighbouring Northern Ireland, between 400 and 500 refugees settled. However, Portugal, like Ireland, was on the periphery of Europe and was neutral during the war. The two countries were not industrially advanced, and few refugees chose to go there before 1938. But there was an important difference. Between 1933 and 1945, up to 15,000 refugees from Nazi Germany went to Portugal. Certain Portuguese diplomats were instrumental in sending thousands of men and women to Portugal in 1940 despite António de Oliveira Salazar’s orders. From Lisbon, many hoped to be able to emigrate overseas. The Jews who succeeded in reaching the country were looked after predominantly by international organisations that had more resources than the people and groups that looked after Jews in Ireland.18 Clearly, the Irish had not been particularly generous in their asylum policy. Yet, it must be emphasised that despite its restrictive refugee policy, de Valera’s government had no sympathy for Nazi Germany. Charles Bewley was a notorious antisemite and had been appointed Irish minister in Berlin in 1933, shortly after Hitler had taken power. He had much admiration for the Nazis and downplayed their cruelty against the Jews, notably during Kristallnacht in 1938. The government recalled him the following summer. Bewley did not like de Valera.19 In March 1938, Hitler’s armies annexed Austria in what became known as the Anschluss (annexation). At first, the local Catholic hierarchy welcomed Hitler’s arrival and issued a statement that the Führer was the best guarantee against atheistic Bolshevism. Cardinal Theodor Innitzer, the Archbishop of Vienna, even signed with ‘Heil Hitler’. Rapidly, however, he drastically changed his mind as Hitler had no time for the Church. His palace was targeted by Nazi thugs and one of his priests died after he was thrown out of the window. The incident caused widespread outrage in Ireland and was denounced in the Dublin and provincial press alike.20 Back in 1935, Lodi Fé, the Italian Fascist consul in Dublin, had 17 O’Driscoll, Ireland, Germany and the Nazis, 239. 18 Holfter and Dickel, An Irish Sanctuary, 148–9, 150, 151–2. 19 Michael Kennedy, ‘Bewley, Charles Henry’, Dictionary of Irish Biography, in https://dib.cambridge.org/ viewReadPage.do?articleId=a0640&searchClicked=clicked&quickadvsearch=yes (accessed on 15 July 2020). 20 See for example ‘Vienna Cardinal attacked’, The Irish Times, 15 October 1938 (ITDA), photograph of Cardinal Innitzer on page six, Kerryman, 15 October 1938 (INA) & ‘Condemned by County Council’, Limerick Leader, 30 November 1938 (INA).

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written: ‘There [is] little fear . . . that Catholic Ireland [will] identify with Hitler and the “new religion” of Nazism.’21 The Innitzer episode largely confirmed that analysis. The Irish Independent denounced Hitler’s invasion of Austria: ‘His brutal onslaught on this neighbouring and unoffending nation is in accord with his treatment of the Church in Germany and of citizens who are not slavish enough to adore him’. It denounced France and Britain’s weak policy.22 The Irish Press reported that the Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s semi-official organ, had learnt that Archbishop Sigmund [Sigismund] Waitz of Salzburg had been arrested by the Nazis and charged ‘with being in league with French and Belgian communists’. Also, there was no more free Catholic press and many Catholic schools and institutions had been closed down.23 A delegation of three Irish citizens handed over a document to the German legation in Dublin, denouncing the Anschluss and stating that the Nazi government was ‘the deadly foe and persecutor of all Churches and the enemy of religious freedom’.24 Despite this strong denunciation of Nazi anti-Catholic excesses in Austria by widely read Irish newspapers, in itself an affirmation of Irish Catholic identity, there was a current of pro-German sentiment in Ireland that merits attention although it should not be exaggerated. There were several ultra-right-wing groupuscules that professed admiration for Hitler’s Nazi Germany and later longed for his victory during the war. They were closely watched by Irish intelligence and de Valera made absolutely sure they would not endanger Ireland’s neutrality. However, they were badly organised and poorly led. All declared their support for the Catholic Church.25 The latter was rather striking and curious after the systematic denunciation of the Nazis’ anti-Catholic excesses in the press. It was perhaps a political strategy meant to reassure public opinion and the hierarchy and not to attract unwanted attention. Yet, towards the end of the 1930s, as war appeared to be ineluctable in Europe, some Irish newspapers began to express more positive views on Germany. In July 1940, de Valera even said that ‘the people were pro-German’. A view echoed by Karel Koštál, the Czechoslovak consul-general in Dublin, who wrote that the Irish were generally not particularly aware of the ‘ideological background of the European struggle’ and that ‘for the ordinary Irish person who does not know Germany it is sufficient that Germany is striking the English’.26 Koštál’s impression contrasts singularly

21 Keogh, Ireland & Europe 1919–1948, 49. 22 ‘Brutality’, Irish Independent, 14 March 1938 (INA). 23 ‘Catholics in Austria: Disclosures by Vatican Organ’, Irish Press, 24 March 1938 (INA). 24 O’Driscoll, Ireland, Germany and the Nazis, 221–2. 25 R.M. Douglas, ‘The Pro-Axis Underground in Ireland, 1939–1942’, The Historical Journal, Dec. 2006, vol. 49, no 4, 1155 & 1159–60. 26 Douglas, ‘The Pro-Axis Underground in Ireland, 1179–81.

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with that of Lodi Fé’s, expressed only a few years before. A pertinent explanation to some change in public opinion towards Germany is that quite a few people in Europe in the early stages of the war were convinced that the humiliating defeat of France and the very likely future defeat of Britain were ‘“an evidence and a justification of their own ideas about the corrupt and inefficient, the hypocritical and antiquated nature of parliamentary government, of bourgeois democracy, of liberal capitalism”’.27 This might very well be. But what does a pro-German current mean in the Irish case? A wish for German ideology to triumph? A desire to see Britain, the traditional foe, defeated and see Ireland achieve full independence and reunification? Or was it mere bravado as Germany appeared to be on the verge of winning the war? It would seem rather incredulous that the deeply Catholic country that Ireland was suddenly embraced that pagan state that Nazi Germany was as had been depicted by Irish newspapers for several years. An ideological conversion seems therefore rather unlikely. A mere bout of nationalist opportunity (among some), as written by Koštál, was much more likely based on the old saying ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’. This current of pro-German sentiment in Ireland remains difficult to define and quantify. In any case, it would never surpass proAllied or neutral sentiment. The G2, Irish military intelligence, correctly predicted that Germany’s next target after Austria would be Czechoslovakia.28 Hitler turned his attention on the Sudetenland where ethnic Germans lived and wanted them to be incorporated into his expanding Reich. It was done in September 1938 when the Munich Agreement was signed. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and French Prime Minister Edouard Daladier wanted to preserve peace at all costs with their appeasement policy. De Valera, of whom one might have expected more sympathy towards Czechoslovakia as a fellow small nation, declared at the League of Nations that Chamberlain was a ‘great English statesman’ and a ‘hero of peace’.29 The reality was that de Valera feared that war was on the cards. During the Sudeten crisis, he told Sir Thomas Inskip, the British minister for coordination of defence, that it was a serious possibility and that he would do his best to keep Ireland out of it. He remarked that like Germany, Ireland had its Sudetenland too in Northern Ireland. The Irish leader believed that the Versailles Treaty of 1919 was much to blame for the crisis between Germany and Czechoslovakia. He had also some sympathy for Poland and Hungary’s concerns about their minorities in Czechoslovakia.30 27 John Lukács, quoted in R.M. Douglas, ‘The Pro-Axis Underground in Ireland, 1939–1942’, 1182–83. 28 O’Driscoll, Ireland, Germany and the Nazis, 223. 29 Deirdre McMahon, ‘Ireland, the Dominions and the Munich Crisis’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, vol. 1, no. 1 (1979): 31, 32, 34. 30 McMahon, ‘Ireland, the Dominions and the Munich Crisis’, 30–1.

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Interestingly, his thoughts constituted a stark departure from what certain Irish nationalist commentators had argued towards the end of the First World War, namely that like in Ireland (Ulster Protestant minority), in Bohemia there was a minority (Germans) oppressing a majority (Czechs).31 And yet, after Munich, he authorised some defence talks with the British but nothing concrete materialised despite his great concern about Ireland’s poor defence capabilities. But soon, de Valera embarked upon an anti-partition campaign and joint Anglo-Irish initiatives in defence were forgotten. He reasoned that if the Sudetenland crisis had been settled, so could the Northern Irish question. He hoped that Chamberlain would now take some initiative in that direction but it never happened. The beginning of war made such an initiative unlikely.32 Nevertheless, in 1940, the British would make one last attempt to end partition in return for greater Irish cooperation in the war. The rest of Czechoslovakia was invaded in March 1939, Slovakia breaking away to form its own pro-Nazi state. In Dublin, Consul General Koštál refused to hand over the Czechoslovak consulate to the German legation, which embarrassed the Irish government, determined to remain neutral. Yet, the government continued to recognise the existence of the consulate.33 De Valera correctly predicted war for the autumn.34 The Second World War began indeed when the Wehrmacht crossed into Poland in September.

A crypto ally called Ireland Ireland, or Éire, had decided to remain neutral in the war unlike the other dominions of the British Commonwealth. It was a political demonstration of independence and sovereignty and Britain could take note. But this decision masked certain realities. De Valera had to bear in mind that openly siding with the British might have increased the risks of a civil war because of the partition issue (Northern Ireland). The IRA and others would have considered the government as collaborationist. In fact, shortly before the hostilities began, the IRA had declared war on Britain and had started a bombing campaign.35 Acting on the old Irish republican motto, ‘England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity’, its preference was for Germany. But de Valera retaliated by introducing emergency powers and internment without trial, which led to the imprisonment of about 2,000 IRA members. 31 Lili Zách, ‘“The first of the small nations”: the significance of central European small states in Irish nationalist political rhetoric, 1918–22’, Irish Historical Studies, vol. 44, no. 165 (2020): 29–30. 32 McMahon, ‘Ireland, the Dominions and the Munich Crisis’, 35–7. 33 Daniel Semek, Czech-Irish Cultural Relations 1900–1950 (Prague: Centre for Irish Studies, Charles University, 2009), 51. 34 Dwyer, Behind the Green Curtain, 10–11. 35 Garret FitzGerald, Ireland in the World: Further Reflections (Dublin: Liberties Press, 2005), 77 and 25–6.

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Five were even executed during the war.36 It was the same approach in Northern Ireland where, by 1942, 802 individuals had been rounded up and interned.37 The authorities south or north of the border were not taking any chances. By the beginning of 1941 in Éire, the IRA had ceased to become a real threat.38 Despite Ireland’s neutrality, de Valera openly criticised the German attack on the Low Countries in May 1940: ‘Today these two small nations [The Netherlands and Belgium] are fighting for their lives, and I think I would be unworthy of this small nation if, on an occasion like this, I did not utter our protest against the cruel wrong which has been done to them’.39 It was a declaration of solidarity between small European nations. But that was not the way the Auswärtiges Amt (foreign office) in Berlin saw it. It instructed Eduard Hempel, the German minister in Dublin, to issue a formal protest regarding de Valera’s declaration.40 But official neutrality was only a façade. De Valera’s government was largely in favour of the western Allies and began to cooperate secretly with them, although initially it had feared a British invasion. Early in the war, de Valera told the American postmaster-general: It will be a long war … but in the final analysis, the Allied powers should win. From our point of view it will be best to stay out of the war. By doing so we will be able to keep intact and at the same time be friendly to England. We are desirous of being helpful, in this or any other crisis in so far as we are able, short of actual participation in the war. That would be ruinous for us and injurious to England.41

On 5 September 1939, the British cabinet discussed de Valera’s ‘desire to help’ but Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, was not persuaded and spoke of ‘the so-called neutrality of the so-called Éire’.42 Churchill’s phrase was rather indicative of what he thought of Irish independence. And yet, shortly after he had become prime minister in May 1940, the British initiated talks with the view of ending partition on the understanding that Ireland entered the war on Britain’s side and that the Royal Navy could use the former Treaty Ports. The Irish eventually rejected it. In July, de Valera wrote to Chamberlain, who was leading the negotiations, that what the British were proposing would ‘commit us definitely to an immediate abandonment of our neutrality [while giving] no guarantee that in the 36 Dwyer, Behind the Green Curtain, 321. 37 Fisk, In Time of War, 378. 38 Girvin, The Emergency, 83. 39 Keogh, Ireland & Europe 1919–1948, 121. 40 Aengus Nolan, Joseph Walshe: Irish Foreign Policy 1922–1946 (Cork: Mercier Press, 2008), 136. 41 James A. Farley, Jim Farley’s Story, quoted in Dwyer, Behind the Green Curtain, 12. 42 Dwyer, Behind the Green Curtain, 16.

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end we would have a united Ireland’. He reiterated his idea that a united Ireland would remain neutral, would defend itself and ‘would provide the surest guarantee against any part of our territory being used as a base for operations against Britain’.43 Distrust of the British remained in Dublin. But with the benefit of hindsight, it would seem that de Valera was sincere in his ‘desire to help’. Irish military intelligence had contacts with its British and American counterparts, the movement of German ships and submarines was reported to London, the German legation was forbidden to use its radio (it was confiscated in 1943), and British and American airmen stranded in Ireland were discreetly sent across the border into Northern Ireland while German pilots remained interned. There are other examples.44 One extraordinary episode was the role played by Dr Richard Hayes, the director of the National Library of Ireland during the war years, and which only came very recently to light. At the beginning of the war, the British discovered that encrypted messages were being sent from Ireland to Berlin. MI5, British intelligence, informed the G2, Irish military intelligence, about it as it constituted a clear danger to Britain. The Irish found out that these messages originated from the German legation in Dublin, but they did not immediately notify London as they first considered the possible international repercussions. De Valera wanted the messages to be decoded as they were a threat to national security. Hayes was entrusted with this crucial mission. Colonel Dan Bryan, the head of the G2, believed that the Germans had to be outwitted. A German agent named Hermann Görtz, later to become the secretary of the Irish Save the German Children Society (SGCS) after the war, was parachuted into Ireland and became Hayes’s number one opponent. Görtz was captured in November 1941 and might well have avoided arrest for so long because he was helped by IRA people and sympathetic pro-republican politicians. Hayes regularly met him in prison and knew he was still communicating with Berlin by smuggling out coded messages on paper which were transmitted to the legation by a republican-minded prison guard. Hayes managed to see these messages without Görtz noticing and eventually cracked the code. But it went much further than that as in the subsequent coded communications he pretended to be Görtz’s spymaster in Berlin and fed him false information, hoping to get more out of him. Görtz was therefore neutralised, and vitally any information getting out of Ireland and reaching Germany able to upset current Allied strategic planning was 43 Geoffrey Roberts, ‘The British Offer to End Partition, June 1940’, History Ireland, issue 1 (Spring 2001), vol, 9, in https://www.historyireland.com/20th-century-contemporary-history/the-british-offer-to-end-partition-june-1940/ (accessed on 15 January 2021). 44 Regarding aspects of Ireland’s questionable neutrality, see Ryle Dwyer, Behind the Green Curtain: Kennedy, Guarding Neutral Ireland; Eunan O’Halpin, Defending Ireland: The Irish State and its Enemies since 1922 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Paul McMahon, British Spies & Irish Rebels: British Intelligence and Ireland, 1916–1945 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2011); and FitzGerald, Ireland in the World.

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thus prevented. Indeed, the Germans were being brilliantly misinformed by the western Allies who were building up a false strategic picture of their position, notably during the critical months before D-Day on 6 June 1944. It was all an ingenious game of deception, and Hayes played his part in this. The British were communicated his findings and were much impressed. Hayes and Bryan worked largely independently from the Irish government. According to specialists, the contribution of codebreakers shortened the war by two years. Revealingly, Hayes travelled discreetly to London after the war and Churchill gave him a medal. But his wartime activities were not revealed lest they should upset Ireland’s policy of neutrality,45 or façade of neutrality. The G2 had nothing much to fear from German spies as their efforts were rather poor.46 It was no wonder when, in January 1941, Sir John Maffey, the British representative in Ireland, wrote in a report to London: ‘Hateful as their neutrality is, it has been a neutrality friendly to our cause’.47 The secretary of external affairs was Joseph Walshe, a man who would play a leading role in Ireland’s postwar aid to Europe. Unlike de Valera, Walshe initially believed that Germany could well be victorious, especially after the stunning fall of France in June 1940, although his judgment changed during the year and he ended up secretly cooperating with the British. In May, he met Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden in London to whom he said that a possible alliance between Britain and the Soviet Union would not be a good idea: The establishment of close relations with Russia (however remote that might be) might make a very real change in the general Irish attitude towards the Allies. The leaders of Germany were indeed anti-Christian but a large section of the German people were good Catholics and good Protestants and might be trusted in the end to re-establish the prestige of Christianity in their own country, but Russia’s atheism was aggressive and incurable.48

Walshe’s statement is relevant as it shows Ireland’s deep distrust of the atheistic Soviet Union, which would later surface during its postwar relief operations, and 45 Donal O’Herlihy and Marc McMenamin (producers), RTÉ Radio 1, ‘Richard Hayes, Nazi Codebreaker’, Irish radio documentary on codebreaker Dr Richard Hayes (39 minutes), October 2017, in https://www. rte.ie/radio1/podcast/podcast_documentaryonone.xml (accessed on 7 September 2020), based on Marc McMenamin’s, Codebreaker: The untold story of Richard Hayes, the Dublin librarian who helped turn the tide of WWII (Dublin: Gill Books, 2018). 46 See Mark M. Hull’s very well researched Irish Secrets: German Espionage in Wartime Ireland 1939–1945 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2003). 47 Ryle Dwyer, Behind the Green Curtain, 131. 48 Nolan, Joseph Walshe. See Chapter Four entitled ‘Walshe and the Establishment of Sustainable Neutrality 1940’, 133–79, see 134 for Walsh’s belief in a possible German victory, and 135 for his meeting with Eden.

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its deep attachment to Christianity. What he said about good German Christians re-establishing ‘the prestige of Christianity’, would indeed happen but only after Hitler was gone, and Catholic Ireland’s aid would be noticed and appreciated by German Catholics and Protestants alike. When the war began, Walshe knew that the country could be invaded by either Britain or Germany and that the Irish armed forces would not be able to resist. Maffey informed London in July 1940 that after France’s defeat, Irish opinion now increasingly believed that the British would be ‘the probable aggressors’.49 Walshe was on good terms with Maffey and also with Hempel, but far less so with David Gray, the American minister who was not impressed by Irish policy during the war. He made absolutely sure that Ireland appeared publicly to be strictly neutral while strongly supporting the western Allies behind the scenes. He gave intelligence reports to the British, was in favour of democracy, and his ardent Catholicism clashed with Nazi ideology.50 Of course, geostrategic factors in evaluating the reality of Ireland’s neutrality must also be taken into account. The country was anchored in the English-speaking world, surrounded by Britain on one side of the sea and the United States and Canada on the other side and it had a border with Northern Ireland. It was therefore not going to have an active pro-German policy, even if it wanted to, as this would have provoked a British or American invasion. The same factors are equally valid in evaluating Sweden or Switzerland’s neutrality as these two countries were surrounded by Germany and its allies, or territories occupied by Germany. Maintaining neutrality was like walking on a tightrope. Having said that, it is evident that Dublin’s sympathy was very clearly with the democratic western Allies. Besides the government’s response to the war, the people’s must be mentioned too. The exact number of Irish citizens who volunteered to fight in the British forces remains difficult to establish and it is not within the scope of this book of trying to find a definitive answer. Some have estimated the number to be around 40,000 while others have pushed it up to about 78,000.51 But these two figures represent respectively about two and a half and four and a half British infantry divisions, an impressive popular pro-Allied contribution for a so-called neutral country. As was the case during the First World War, the motives for joining the British army varied: anti-Nazi or German stance, family tradition, peer pressure, financial considerations, taste for adventure, and escape from boredom at home 49 Girvin, The Emergency, 143. 50 Michael Kennedy, ‘Walshe, Joseph Patrick’, Dictionary of Irish Biography, https://dib.cambridge.org/ viewReadPage.do?articleId=a8908&searchClicked=clicked&quickadvsearch=yes (accessed on 6 June 2020). 51 Dr Garret FitzGerald wrote that over 40,000 Irish citizens joined the British forces. See FitzGerald, Ireland in the World, 124. Brian Girvin has given a very useful summary of the issue. See Girvin, The Emergency, 274–5.

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being the main reasons.52 No Irishmen and women queued up to join the SS outside the German legation in Dublin. For comparative purposes, it has recently come to light that several thousands of Swedish citizens fought for the western Allies as opposed to a mere two hundred who fought for Germany. It has been estimated that over 1,500 Swedes joined the American army. Yet, the government in Stockholm, which allowed Wehrmacht units to cross its territory, instructed the media not to publicise the fact that Swedes were fighting for Norway against Germany. Promoting a pro-Allied volunteer movement was deemed to be unwise.53 However, it did not forbid men and women to join the Allies but probably wished to remain discreet lest Berlin should be offended. In other words, antagonising the Germans could increase the risks of invasion. In Ireland, de Valera did not oppose those who joined the British army, nor was he going to antagonise London to the point of no return for the same geostrategic reasons that Sweden had vis-àvis Germany. It must also be noted that Sweden welcomed over 7,000 Danish Jews during a daring Danish resistance operation in October 1943. Stockholm was visibly not always afraid of risking to provoke Berlin. There is an additional important factor to consider in assessing Ireland’s socalled neutrality: Irish labour for the British war economy. It was obvious that Britain would need extra men and women in the factories. Shortly after the war, a historian formerly from the London School of Economics called Arthur V. Judges, but now working for the British Ministry of Labour and National Service, wrote in a report that it was already clear at the beginning of 1941 that ‘…Éire manpower was about to play a capital part in the British war effort…’. However, Judges correctly analysed that de Valera’s government was faced with an important dilemma, namely to reconcile ‘the need to mitigate unemployment at home’ on the one hand, with the ‘anxiety not too overtly to give economic assistance to a belligerent’ on the other hand.54 And yet, giving ‘economic assistance to a belligerent’ was precisely what the Irish government did. Details were worked out between Dublin and London and in July 1941 an agreement was signed to recruit Irishmen and women to work in Britain. There were some ups and downs in the implementation of this agreement between the two governments but it eventually provided Britain with more than 100,000 Irish workers. After Judges handed in his report (after the war), 52 For a detailed study of motives see Richard Doherty, Irish Men and Women in the Second World War (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1999). 53 Loukas Christodoulou, ‘More Swedes fought Nazis in WWII than previously thought’ interview of Lars Gyllenhaal of the Swedish Military Historical Commission, Sveriges Radio (Radio Sweden), 5 November 2018, in https://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&artikel=7082710 (accessed on 15 July 2020). 54 Enda Delaney, ‘Irish Migration to Britain, 1939–1945’, Irish Economic and Social History, vol. 28, (2001): 48, 52 and 53.

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some British civil servants were not at ease with its publication, one of them pointing out that readers might think that ‘the Éire government helped forward plans for the emigration of Éire nationals, or were really cooperative at all’, which was precisely what Judges had explained. In the end, Judges’s report was never published in full, some passages were changed and even its title was changed from ‘The recruitment of labour from Ireland, 1939–45’ to ‘Irish labour in Great Britain, 1939–45’,55 a much more neutral title. Dr Garret FitzGerald (Taoiseach, 1981–1982 and 1982–1987 and minister for foreign affairs, 1973–1977) rightly argued that ‘it is questionable whether Ireland can properly be described as having been “neutral” in the war, because the scale of assistance that it gave to Britain secretly was scarcely compatible with the concept of neutrality under international law’. He called the country a ‘non-belligerent’.56 It is also called a ‘benevolent neutral’.57 But in view of the government’s unofficial large-scale cooperation with the western Allies, the tens of thousands of Irishmen and women who chose to serve with the British forces, and the more than 100,000 Irish citizens who went to Britain to work in factories for the war effort, all three being a combination of official and popular responses, could the term “crypto ally” not be justified? The acting head of American intelligence in Europe in 1944, J. Russell Forgan, would probably have agreed as he remarked: ‘[The Irish] have never received the credit due to them.’58 Instead, neutral Ireland was regularly denounced by British and American newspapers which spread the most absurd stories. The Daily Mail reported that a German submarine crew entered a pub in Dingle and drank to Britain’s defeat while the Washington Evening Star wrote that Galway was a U-boat base.59 These rumours were denied but they persisted during the war years.60 And in fact, until well after the war. Dr FitzGerald offered a plausible explanation why Ireland’s true role was ignored for so long: ‘As it suited de Valera to give, and after the war to maintain, the impression of Ireland having been strictly neutral, and as it suited Churchill to attack Ireland for the same reason, the nature and extent of Anglo-Irish wartime cooperation was not revealed until the relevant documentation was tracked down by historians several decades later.’61 For the Irish nationalist that was de Valera to openly reveal the country’s secret cooperation with 55 Delaney, ‘Irish Migration to Britain, 47, 48, 63–7. 56 FitzGerald, Ireland in the World, 124. 57 Michael Kennedy, ‘Neutrality: “the very essence of Irish independence”?’, History Ireland, Issue 5 (September/October 2013), Volume 2, in https://www.historyireland.com/18th-19th-century-history/neutralityessence-irish-independence/ (accessed on 15 July 2020). 58 Dwyer, Behind the Green Curtain, x. 59 Dwyer, Behind the Green Curtain, 91, 124 and 229. 60 Dwyer, Behind the Green Curtain, 124. 61 FitzGerald, Ireland in the World, 125.

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the former coloniser might have spelt political and electoral disaster. It would have shattered the country’s political identity and independence as expressed through its foreign policy, neutrality. For the British imperialist that was Churchill it would have been too much to swallow to acknowledge the secret help of a leader who had fought for Ireland’s freedom and won it although imperfectly.

Life in wartime Ireland The reaction of the Irish people to the outbreak of war seems to have been one of indifference or mild surprise, at first at least. In Dublin, the poet Louis MacNeice went to Croke Park to watch the All-Ireland hurling final. The stadium was packed, and spectators behaved as if nothing was going on. ‘Talk of escapism’, MacNeice thought.62 One of the players of the Cork team that was beaten by Kilkenny that day was Jack Lynch, a future Taoiseach. He later admitted that he thought more of his team’s defeat than of the beginning of the war.63 However, there was much sympathy for Poland, Catholic Poland.64 The Irish feeling of empathy for this particular country dated back to previous decades. Irish nationalists saw historic parallels between Catholic Poland, occupied by Russia, Germany and Austria(Hungary), and Ireland, occupied by Britain. In reality, contacts between the two countries were limited, but the political situation of Poland gripped the minds of many Irishmen and women.65 During the First World War, the Irish had collected important funds for Poland, a generous act noticed by the Vatican at the time.66 There was probably not much sympathy for Germany, except for a small minority of staunch nationalists who saw in Germany an instrument to defeat Britain. The intentional bombing of Belfast by the Luftwaffe in April 1941, which killed more people than the raid on Coventry (745 vs. 554), and the accidental bombing of Dublin the following month when twenty-three civilians died,67 can only have produced repulsion for or fear of Hitler, not to mention the propagation of stories of bombing raids in the United Kingdom where hundreds of thousands of Irish or people of Irish descent lived and who undoubtedly reported on the situation 62 Wills, That Neutral Island. For quote see p. 75. For other reactions see 74–6, 81–2 and 171. This book gives a superb insight of cultural life in Ireland during the war years. Hurling is an old Gaelic sport. 63 Dwyer, Behind the Green Curtain, 16. 64 Wills, That Neutral Island, 76, 81–2. 65 See Róisín Healy, Poland in the Irish Nationalist Imagination, 1772–1922: Anti-Colonialism within Europe (Cham: Springer/ Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). 66 Jérôme aan de Wiel, The Catholic Church in Ireland, 1914–1918: War and Politics (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2003), 27. 67 See Fisk, In Time of War, 481–95 for the bombing of Belfast & see Kennedy, Guarding Neutral Ireland, 189– 96 for the bombing of Dublin.

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to family and friends in Ireland. Also, the Nazi regime’s persecution of certain members of the Catholic clergy before the war was unlikely to have been forgotten that quickly. As was to be expected, the war caused serious economic disruption. After the Munich Agreement in 1938, the British Board of Trade took the secret decision that a strategy of economic blockade would be used if war broke out in Europe. Even neutral states would be affected, the aim being to force them to side with Britain. As seen, Churchill made an offer to de Valera to end partition in return for the end of neutrality, but de Valera refused. Churchill was much offended and consequently much needed supplies to Ireland were drastically reduced during the war. This had a very negative impact on the economy, notably on agriculture, the country’s lifeblood, which had relied to a large extent on specific British supplies. For example, six million tons of animal feed were imported from Britain in 1940, but none by 1942. This, in turn, greatly impacted Ireland’s food production. British propaganda had no qualms in depicting neighbouring neutral Ireland as a greedy country where one could eat what one wanted. Irish propaganda retaliated by stressing the Irish people’s ascetism as against the rapacious behaviour of the belligerents. There was an urban-rural divide. Many Dubliners did not eat fruit and vegetables for long periods and there was an increase in the incidence of rickets among children. Many imagined that people in the countryside were better off, but that was not the case. As the British had cut off fuel supplies, transport had become far more limited and food supplies could not be delivered to remote areas in the countryside. The people resorted to alternative ways of getting food. They hated the government’s imposition of the black loaf (100% wholegrain bread). Many poached and hunted, while others sought to get more food in the expanding black market, which was roundly condemned by the government and the Church (a similar situation on the continent as will be seen). Many black market activities took place on both sides of the Irish border. De Valera’s government sought to prevent starvation at all costs and prosecuted those whose actions were detrimental to society, like small farmers who did not produce enough food or traders who made money by overcharging their customers. The government pressured famers into producing more by introducing compulsory tillage despite the lack of crucial British supplies. In the end, despite the evident hardship, nobody died of starvation or diseases related to it.68

68 Bryce Evans, ‘What Ireland ate and drank during the Second World War’, RTE (Irish national radio and television), in https://www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2020/0525/1140447-ireland-emergency-secondworld-war-food-drink-black-loaf-tea/ (accessed on 28 July 2020). For an excellent and detailed study on the economic situation in Ireland during the war years, see Evans, Ireland during the Second World War.

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The country’s very limited number of ships, described by Frank Forde as ‘Lilliputian’, as the Free State government had neglected to develop a mercantile marine worthy of the name, tried to keep the country supplied with essential goods like oil and petrol. Yet, all Irish tankers were sunk within three years despite Éire’s neutrality. Sailing toward neutral Lisbon was a very dangerous undertaking.69 Strict and rigorous censorship was imposed. The idea was not to stress any Irish link with the war and simply keep the Germans in the dark and reveal no details that could help them to make an evaluation of their operations. Plainly put, it favoured the British. In the words of Donal Ó Drisceoil, ‘what must be kept in mind is that the “neutrality” which the Censorship set out to protect was essentially an illusion, one, indeed, which the Censorship itself helped to create and sustain. Irish policy during the war was partial and it was a function of the Censorship to hide that fact behind a deceptive screen’.70 But there was a serious negative aspect to this apparent strict neutrality displayed by the press. As Robert Fisk pointed out, the consequences were that ‘censorship… obfuscated the moral issues of the war and restrained free speech in a way not even contemplated by some other neutrals’.71 Irish censorship was also very selective in the choice of battlefields that could be reported. The British campaign in North Africa was widely covered while Stalingrad was heavily censored as the readers should not sympathise with the Soviets. Often, simple factual Soviet communiqués were used.72 Yet, it could not be said that the people were left totally in the dark. Whereas the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 had not been reported, the Warsaw Uprising of 1944 with the Red Army only kilometres away definitely was. The Irish Independent, a nationalist, Catholic and anti-communist newspaper, had titles like ‘Pope’s reply to women of Warsaw’ in which Pius XII explained his deep compassion for those women, and ‘Fighting in Warsaw’.73 The Irish Press published ‘Himmler says’ in which the SS boss declared that ‘the uprising in Warsaw, which cost the Poles 200,000 dead and the total annihilation of their capital, was engineered in the hope that Germany would be too weak to cope with a rebellion in the rear’.74 The readers here were given a clear hint of the enormity of the carnage. The Irish Red Cross Society (IRCS) collected £10,000 for the Polish Red Cross to help the victims

69 See Frank Forde, The Long Watch: The History of the Irish Mercantile Marine in World War Two (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1981), for quote see 1–2. 70 Ó Drisceoil, Censorship in Ireland, 1939–1945, 101. 71 Fisk, In Time of War, 550. 72 Ó Drisceoil, Censorship in Ireland, 1939–1945, 121. 73 ‘Pope’s reply to women of Warsaw’, 8 August 1944 & ‘Fighting in Warsaw’, 11 September 1944, Irish Independent (INA) 74 ‘Himmler says’, Irish Press, 19 October 1944 (INA).

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of the uprising.75 The Irish Times devoted much space to the tragic event with titles like ‘Another £5,000 for Poland’, ‘Rising of Warsaw ends’ and ‘Warsaw mass of human misery’. On 12 October 1944, there was a photograph published on its front page which clearly showed the ravages in the city.76 In July 1944, it also reported on the dreadful events in Hungary in an article entitled ‘Mass killings of Jews’.77 So did the Irish Press.78 These articles were not particularly rich in detail but at least the readers had an inkling that large-scale atrocities were being perpetrated against Jews in Central Europe. The Irish authorities were asked to intervene in favour of Hungarian Jews but were unable to do anything. In December 1942 and in January 1943, Rabbi Isaac Herzog, who had been chief rabbi of Ireland before the war, had sent two telegrams from Palestine to de Valera, informing him of the deportation and annihilation of Jews by the Nazis. De Valera sought to assist several Jewish groups, and Irish diplomats were instructed in this regard. But Ireland’s response to the persecution of Jews was not exemplary. It is believed that a mere sixty Jews reached the country during the war, an insignificant number. According to Dermot Keogh, ‘Irish policy towards the Jews remained reactive rather than proactive throughout the war’.79 The people could circumvent official censorship by listening to broadcasts in English by the belligerents, reading British newspapers brought back from the United Kingdom or by word of mouth when migrants, family members or friends returned from across the Irish Sea.80 As will be seen in chapter two, the awareness that a war was going on despite the country’s remote location on the fringe of Western Europe and the strict censorship was also reflected in impressive financial donations to charities and voluntary organisations.

Europe reacts to de Valera’s handshake On 30 April 1945, the Soviets were fighting their way through the rubble of Berlin during savage house-to-house fighting. They were nearing the Führer’s bunker, but Hitler had no intention of falling alive into their hands. After lunch, he and Eva Braun retired to their safe sitting room and committed suicide. At 21.30 on 1 May, Radio Hamburg played funeral music. Shortly later Admiral Karl Dönitz 75 ‘Another £5,000 from Irish Times fund’, The Irish Times, 30 September 1944 (ITDA). 76 ‘Another £5,000 from Irish Times fund’, ‘Rising of Warsaw ends’, 4 October 1944, ‘Warsaw mass of human misery’, 3 October 1944 & photo of Warsaw Uprising (page one), 2 October 1944, The Irish Times (ITDA). 77 ‘“Mass killing of Jews”’, The Irish Times, 15 July 1944 (ITDA). 78 Keogh, Jews in Twentieth-Century Ireland, 185. 79 Keogh, Jews in Twentieth-Century Ireland, 77, 174, 185–92, 194. 80 Eunan O’Halpin, ‘Endword: Ireland Looking Outwards, 1880–2016’ (Chapter 26), in Thomas Bartlett, ed., The Cambridge History of Ireland; Vol IV: 1880–to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 813.

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announced that the Führer had died ‘at the head of his troops’.81 He had given an extremely flattering account that came nowhere near reality. The next day, de Valera went to see Dr Eduard Hempel, the German minister in Dublin, to offer his condolences. His decision to do so was thought out as he had sought advice beforehand.82 But the advice he got was contradictory. Seán T. O’Kelly, a close friend of his and then Tanáiste (vice prime minister) and soon to become President of Ireland, counselled him to go ahead with the visit.83 Yet, the under-secretary of the Department of External Affairs (DEA), Frederick H. Boland, apparently bent his knee and begged him not to go.84 Revelations of Nazi Germany’s death camps and other horrors were known by now. However, a strict adherence to protocol and personal esteem for Hempel made de Valera do it. In the space of a handshake, that crypto ally that was Ireland was no more. It was an utter catastrophe not only for the Taoiseach himself but also for the image of the country. Scathing reactions were not long in coming. For example, the (London) Times published a letter of a reader that summed up the international indignation: ‘There would no doubt be justification for de Valera’s visit of sympathy to the German representative in Dublin in ordinary circumstances but in view of the horrible cruelties and slow murders ordered by Hitler condolences of a Christian government seem singularly out of place.’85 Utter embarrassment came when the pro-Nazi British Union of Fascists (BUF) expressed its appreciation of the Taoiseach’s gesture.86 There was no official protest made by the Irish Jewish community whose practice it was at the time to avoid such protests. Nevertheless, bearing in mind its very good relationship with de Valera, they must have been angered and especially nonplussed.87 On the continent, there was outrage. To many a mind, de Valera’s condolences confirmed that Ireland had wished a German victory and this impression would linger for decades. In France, Paris Matin reported a sensational story that ‘a welcoming Mr de Valera had given a castle to his ex-Excellency Herr Doctor Hempel’.88 The Irish Times denounced it as a ‘fabrication’ and commented that ‘the unfortunate fact is that events of equal importance have not necessarily an equal “news value”; and that the report that will seize on the imagination of the public is the 81 Anthony Beevor, Berlin: The Downfall 1945 (London: Viking, 2002), 359–60, 368, 381. 82 Dermot Keogh, ‘Éamon de Valera and Hitler: An Analysis of International Reaction to the Visit to the German Minister’, in Irish Studies in International Affairs, vol. 3, no. 1 (1989): 73–4. 83 Keogh, ‘Éamon de Valera and Hitler’, 73. 84 Keogh, Jews in Twentieth-Century Ireland, 199. 85 Keogh, ‘Éamon de Valera and Hitler’, 80–1, 86. 86 Keogh, ‘Éamon de Valera and Hitler’, 88. 87 Keogh, Jews in Twentieth-Century Ireland, 200–201 and endnote 8 on p. 293. 88 ‘M. de Valera, hospitalier, a donné un château à l’ex-excellence Herr Doctor Hempel’, Paris Matin, 28–29 October 1945 (NAI, DFA, 414/7).

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one which will gain most publicity’.89 Libres stated that ‘Ireland, together with Spain, can be considered as the neutral country that was the most in favour of Nazism’.90 Christophe Gillissen has established that the French minister in Dublin, Jean Rivière, did not object to such attacks by the French press, recommending to Paris that Irish public opinion should be made aware of the ‘inopportune nature’ of de Valera’s handshake. Towards the end of 1945, however, Rivière moderated his anti-de Valera stance when Churchill’s son, Randolph, spoke about Ireland’s ‘benevolent’ neutrality as did several Irish and British newspapers.91 Ireland would also be occasionally portrayed as a country where former Fascist leaders might seek refuge if need be. In 1947, the Nouvelle République (Bordeaux) sensationally and erroneously reported that Franco ‘would have bought a castle in Ireland’.92 It is to be emphasised that not all French newspapers portrayed Ireland negatively. FrancTireur informed its readers that the country had adopted ‘benevolent neutrality towards the Allies’ and that ‘60,000 young Irishmen joined the fighting English army’.93 Nord-Littoral (Calais) even put the figure as high as 150,000, a definite exaggeration, but added correctly that these volunteers ‘constituted an appreciable army for such a small nation’.94 Perhaps these French newspapers had been informed or influenced by the statements published in different English-speaking newspapers. For example, in March 1944, the Manchester Guardian gave a figure of 300,000. In October, a reader of the Daily Telegraph halved that figure and in November 1945, the New Yorker put it at 250,000.95 In the Netherlands, the portrayal of Ireland was not much different. The Volksvriend wrote: ‘According to received news, there was one person who deplored Hitler’s death. He was Éamon de Valera, the Prime Minister of Ireland. He extended his sympathy to Dr Eduard Hempel, the German envoy in Ireland. We can expect in the near future that the great powers will settle scores with him owing to his conduct during the war.’96 This was a fear that the Irish government might well have had at that point in time. Libertas wrote: ‘Not only did Eire’s neutral and dismissive attitude not make Britain’s task any easier, but it also actually made it even more

89 ‘As others see us’, The Irish Times, 28 December 1945 (ITDA). 90 ‘L’Irlande veut secourir “l’Allemagne malheureuse”’, Libres, 19 October 1945 (NAI, DFA, 414/7). 91 Christophe Gillissen, ‘France’, in O’Driscoll, Keogh, and aan de Wiel, eds., Ireland Through European Eyes, 81–2. 92 ‘Le général Franco admettrait la “possibilité” de son départ’, La Nouvelle République (Bordeaux),10 February 1947 (NAI, DFA, 414/7A). 93 ‘Dublin, la ville aux boutiques pleines et aux consommateurs rares’, Franc-Tireur, 16 November 1945 (NAI, DFA, 414/7). 94 ‘L’Irlande, pays de la liberté’, Nord-Littoral (Calais), 1 March 1947 (NAI, DFA, 414/7A). 95 Fisk, In Time of War, 523. 96 ‘Gemengd nieuws’, De Volksvriend, 10 May 1945 (Delpher Kranten).

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complicated by … serving as an asylum and base for German spies.’97 Like in France, there were rumours that Nazis and Fascists had escaped to Ireland. Vrije Stemmen had an article on its front page with the title ‘Hitler in Ireland?’ It was stated that the Führer would have made it to Dublin disguised as a woman.98 It was ridiculous, but the rumour mill was grinding away. The Provinciale Zeeuwsche Courant stressed that de Valera had been on very friendly terms with the German and Japanese envoys.99 In Luxembourg, the Luxemburger Wort explained its incomprehension: ‘It is hardly possible to believe. According to a radio announcement by the Voice of America, the news of Hitler’s death has provoked condolences in diverse neutral countries. In Dublin, de Valera paid a visit of condolence to the German legation.’100 Nowhere was Ireland’s contribution to the Allied cause mentioned. Farther east the Soviets were particularly displeased with the Irish government. When, in 1946, Ireland applied for membership of the recently set up United Nations (UN), Andrei Gromyko, the Soviet representative, was dead against it, saying that it had not brought any assistance to the Allies to win the war and ‘when I say that Éire brought no assistance to the United Nations in the war this is a very conservative statement’.101 The Kremlin could not have known the extent of Dublin’s secret cooperation with London and Washington, but in any case its using of Ireland’s war record was only a pretext to keep well balanced the number of pro-West and pro-East UN member-states in the emerging Cold War. Professor I.S. Zvavich of Moscow University publicly attacked Ireland and said that its refusal to allow the Royal Navy to use the former Treaty Ports had meant heavy shipping losses for the Allies. To his mind, Éire had been ‘thoroughly pro-fascist’ so much so that it was believed at some stage that Hitler might be hiding on the island. He added that de Valera’s government was ‘one of the most fascist and reactionary in present-day Europe’. In his arguments proving Ireland’s Nazi and Fascist sympathies, he quoted the Taoiseach’s lack of clear answer concerning the granting of asylum to Axis war criminals.102 Zvavich was miles away from reality and his arguments were conditioned by the Soviet leadership’s ignorance of the true facts and its political calculations. The policy of forbidding asylum to Axis war criminals in Ireland had been put forward by the Americans in September 1944. Back then, the American minister in Dublin, David Gray, had been determined to discredit de Valera knowing full well that the Taoiseach would reject this policy as it constituted an infringement on the country’s sovereignty, and 97 ‘Eire’s positie’, Libertas, 19 May 1945 (Delpher Kranten). 98 ‘Hitler in Ierland?’, Vrije Stemmen, 23 June 1945 (Delpher Kranten). 99 No title, Provinciale Zeeuwsche Courant, 15 May 1945 (Krantenbankzeeland). 100 ‘Neutrale trauern um Hitler’, Luxembuger Wort, 4 May 1945 (BNL). 101 Keogh, Ireland & Europe 1919–1948, 202. 102 Keogh, Ireland & Europe 1919–1948, 203, 205.

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ultimately official neutrality. It was indeed rejected by the Irish government, tarnishing its international reputation even more.103 Like the mighty Soviet Union, tiny Luxembourg too had noticed Ireland’s stance on this issue.104 De Valera was of course perfectly aware that he was being pilloried on the international scene. He wrote to the Irish minister in Washington that he had ‘expected’ to be criticised for his visit to Hempel on Hitler’s death but that he scorned the old trick of a ‘diplomatic illness’ all the more since he believed Hempel had been ‘always friendly and invariably correct—in marked contrast with Gray’.105 While de Valera was certainly correct in his judgement on Gray, he would have been very well advised to have had such a ‘diplomatic illness’. Ireland was now isolated and accused of Nazi sympathies. On 4 May 1945, Francis T. Cremins, the Irish chargé d’affaires in Berne, reported that the Swiss government had not presented its condolences since no official notification of Hitler’s death had been received from Germany.106 This is what the Irish government should have done.

Slowly coming to terms with Nazi horrors Censorship in Ireland was ended shortly after the end of the war in Europe. Information about German concentration and extermination camps could now be published freely. But the people had, at first, difficulties in accepting their reality, believing it was merely anti-German propaganda. As Clair Wills has put it: ‘The dismissive attitude towards coverage of the camps stemmed in part from the longrunning battle with Allied propaganda over neutrality. It was not simply that it was difficult suddenly to admit publicly that the Allied war had been just, but that it was hard to acknowledge that Allied propaganda was “true”—because Ireland had also been a target of that propaganda’.107 On 15 May 1945, the Irish Times published an article entitled ‘Irish Officers View German Prison Camps’ in which two Irishmen in the British army described their arrival in Bergen-Belsen. About the surviving inmates, one said: ‘They were merely animals, living like animals and acting like them; their minds were gone, and their bodies were emaciated to such an extent that it would be possible for your finger and your thumb to meet around their thighs’. The other declared: ‘All these facts that I have given you are absolutely true. Folks in Ireland have been slow to believe such things. They need to be shaken 103 Daniel Leach, Fugitive Ireland: European minority nationalists and Irish political asylum, 1937–2008 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2009), 65–6. 104 ‘Irland und die Kriegsverbrecher’, Luxemburger Wort, 16 November 1944 (BNL). 105 Keogh, ‘Éamon de Valera and Hitler’, 74–5. 106 Keogh, ‘Éamon de Valera and Hitler’, 76–7. 107 Wills, That Neutral Ireland, 399.

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badly’. He added: ‘They don’t understand the horror of this war because it has not been brought home to them. They have spun their own little cocoon, and have been indifferent, to a great extent, to the sufferings of humanity’.108 ‘Indifferent’ was too strong a word, and perhaps ‘ignorant’ would have been better. But otherwise it was a fairly accurate depiction of the truth. In July, the French chargé d’affaires in Dublin reported to Paris: One might have been forgiven for thinking that with the lifting of censorship, reading three or four Dublin newspapers would now be different and that the development of events and questions essentially related to the end of the hostilities in Europe would be the object of original commentaries in their columns. This expectation was disappointing. Either because of prudence or—which appears to be more likely—lack of curiosity, be it among the editors or the public, the press has remained quite dull. As in the past it contents itself with reproducing information and occasional news distributed by United Press, Associated Press, Press Association and Reuters.109

But the slow flow of gruesome information kept pouring in and some of it would be most difficult to dismiss as mere Allied propaganda. The Irish Times reported that thirty-two Irish citizens, all sailors in the merchant navy, had been detained in an ‘SS camp’ in Bremen in northern Germany and five of them had died from starvation or typhus. They had refused to work for German intelligence. One prisoner, a man from Arklow, told the journalist of the sadistic beatings and killings they witnessed. The names of all these Irishmen, including of those who died, and their hometowns were given.110 The camp in question was Farge, the fourth subcamp of Neuengamme concentration camp, where inmates were forced to work for the German navy.111 There were also first-hand accounts of Irish-American and American soldiers on leave in Ireland. In June, Lieutenant J. O’Brien, who had come to visit cousins in County Kerry, confirmed that the information on concentration and extermination camps was true. So did Corporal Richard Caul who had been in Dachau and who described the surviving inmates as ‘skin and bone’.112 It would be hard for people still sceptical to describe the accounts of these Irishmen and IrishAmerican soldiers as pure British invention. 108 ‘Irish officers view German prison camps’, The Irish Times, 15 May 1945 (ITDA). 109 CADC, Europe 1944–, Irlande, vol. 9, M. Lalouette to French foreign minister, 11 July 1945. 110 ‘Irishman’s story of “horror” camps’, The Irish Times, 17 May 1945 (ITDA). 111 ‘Neuengamme/Bremen-Farge’, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, in http://www.ushmm.org/ wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007390 (accessed on 6 November 2014). 112 ‘US soldiers in Dublin’, The Irish Times, 11 June 1945 (ITDA).

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When the trials of the former SS guards of Bergen-Belsen began in September, which would lead to the execution of notably Josef Kramer, the camp commandant, and Irma Grese, the ‘Beast of Belsen’, Irish newspapers from all political persuasions published articles in which readers were not spared the finer details of the atrocities they committed. The Irish Times had titles such as ‘Belsen prisoner tells of death injections’, ‘Pole describes brother’s death at Auschwitz’, ‘Belsen court told how 300 prisoners were set on fire’, ‘The horrors of Belsen camp’, ‘Evidence of cannibalism in Belsen’ and later in 1946 ‘Gold teeth taken by SS stored in Reichsbank’.113 The Irish Independent published ‘Grim details at Belsen trial’, ‘Women tell of beatings’, ‘Himmler ordered gassing of women’, ‘Belsen conditions frightful’, ‘German slave labour policy’ and ‘Kramer’s admission; forced 80 people into gas chamber’.114 During a lecture for the Dublin University Biological Society in November, a ‘wellknown Dublin surgeon’, Nigel Kinnear, who had just visited Germany and BergenBelsen on behalf of the British Red Cross, described the horrors which he had seen and warned: ‘I came here to put over a piece of propaganda which is neither pro-British nor anti-German, but if you think it is anti-war I would like that.’115 Avoiding the truth or denying it was no longer feasible or credible. The Catholic Bishop of Waterford and Lismore, Daniel Cohalan, openly denounced ‘the very deliberate cruelty of these camps’.116 The Irish people now knew about German crimes. Even Hollywood informed them. In December, Dubliners could watch Tay Garnett’s The Cross of Lorraine with stars Jean-Pierre Aumont and Gene Kelly, shot in 1943 and portraying the ‘Nazi treatment of French internees in a concentration camp’.117

Radio duel between Churchill and de Valera Meanwhile in London, Churchill was determined to portray de Valera with vitriol. On 13 May 1945, he attacked the Taoiseach for his refusal to allow the Royal Navy to use the former Treaty Ports and insisted that had it not been for similar facilities in Northern Ireland, Britain would have had to invade Ireland. Instead, 113 ‘Belsen prisoner tells of death injections, 26 September 1945, ‘Pole describes brother’s death at Auschwitz’, 27 September 1945, ‘Belsen court told how 300 prisoners were set on fire’, 4 October 1945, ‘The horrors of the Belsen camp’, 18 September 1945, ‘Evidence of cannibalism in Belsen, 29 September 1945 & ‘Gold teeth taken by SS stored in Reichsbank’, 7 May 1946 in The Irish Times (ITDA). 114 ‘Grim details at Belsen trial’, 2 October 1945, ‘Women tell of beatings’, 1 October 1945, ‘Himmler ordered gassing of women’, 8 October 1945, ‘Belsen conditions frightful’, 19 September 1945, ‘German slave labour policy’, 12 December 1945 & ‘Kramer’s admission: forced 80 people into gas chamber’, 10 October 1945, in the Irish Independent (INA). 115 ‘Dublin surgeon tells what he saw at Belsen’, The Irish Times, 13 November 1945 (ITDA). 116 ‘Concentration camps: Bishop of Waterford denounces cruelty’, Irish Independent, 22 September 1945 (INA). 117 ‘Film notes’, The Irish Times, 3 December 1945 (ITDA).

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Britain refrained from doing so and, he added, ‘we left the de Valera Government to frolic with the Germans and later with the Japanese representatives to their heart’s content’.118 Churchill’s remarks were quite some distance from the truth, if not plainly deceitful. The Irish authorities had secretly cooperated with the British and the Americans, a fact of which the prime minister could only have been aware of. But frolicking with the Germans was what went on the airwaves and was picked up by the international community. Churchill’s anti-Irish nationalist instincts had come to the fore to settle a personal political duel with his old foe. In Ireland, at least, he lost it. The people were awaiting a reply from their leader. It came on 16 May and was masterly delivered with the right amount of irony. De Valera declared on Radio Éireann: Mr. Churchill makes it clear that, in certain circumstances, he would have violated our neutrality and that he would justify his action by Britain’s necessity. It seems strange to me that Mr. Churchill does not see that this, if accepted, would mean that Britain’s necessity would become a moral code and that, when this necessity was sufficiently great, other people’s rights were not to count. It is quite true that other great powers believe in this same code—in their own regard—and have behaved in accordance with it. That is precisely why we have the disastrous succession of wars—World War No. 1 and World War No. 2—and shall it be World War No. 3? It is, indeed, hard for the strong to be just to the weak. But acting justly always has its rewards. By resisting his temptation in this instance, Mr. Churchill, instead of adding another horrid chapter to the already bloodstained record of the relations between England and this country, has advanced the cause of international morality an important step.119

The effect of the speech was electric. The people rallied to its leader. The Canadian high commissioner reported: ‘With little exception Mr. de Valera’s broadcast is regarded in Ireland as a masterpiece, and it is looked upon as probably his best effort. It has served to almost still the criticism which his visit to the German Minister provoked, and, in so far as I can judge, on balance, Mr. de Valera now stands in higher favour in Ireland than he did before his visit to the German Minister.’120 Churchill’s speech had badly backfired. Later, he would express some regret to his son: ‘it was a speech which “perhaps I should not have made in the heat of the moment. We had just come through the war and I had been looking 118 T. Ryle Dwyer, De Valera: The Man & the Myths (Swords: Poolbeg Press, 1995), 285. 119 Dwyer, De Valera, 286. 120 Dwyer, De Valera, 286.

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around at our victories. The idea of Eire sitting at our feet without giving us a hand annoyed me.”’121 Even that regret was unconvincing: Éire had given a rather big hand for a so-called neutral. If prestige was restored at home, now de Valera had to make sure that Ireland’s prestige abroad was also. Far less quoted in historiography, if at all, is the following passage in the same broadcast: We have been spared what so many nations have had to undergo, and there lies upon us, accordingly, a duty, within our limited power, to assist in succouring those who have been less fortunate than we have been.122

De Valera had just announced Ireland’s intention to help Europe. Hungry mouths and cold feet would help him in considerably enhancing the country’s prestige on the international scene. His handshake debacle on Hitler’s death had tarnished his reputation and through him Ireland’s. Although no written evidence has come to light to substantiate this, besides genuine humanitarianism and compassion his government’s decision to become involved in aid for Europe might partly have been motivated by a desire to change that image many Europeans had of an uncaring and pro-Axis Ireland. At least it can be said that the handshake debacle provided an extra dynamic to proceed quickly with relief, and the announcement that Ireland would help would deflect attention from pro-German allegations. And Europe urgently needed all the help it could get, even from small countries like Ireland.

Europe’s misery When the war ended on 8 May 1945, Europe was unrecognisable. The levels of death and destruction went beyond human capacity to imagine. Over 40 million people had died,123 millions were orphaned or semi-orphaned, millions were wounded, millions were homeless, and millions were uprooted and waiting for repatriation. In Lisieux, not that far from the D-Day beaches in Normandy, a British soldier wrote that it ‘was absolutely flat, words can’t describe the destruction, Coventry and London are nothing compared with this’.124 But progressing from Western into Central and Eastern Europe the picture became far worse. When Walter Ulbricht, 121 Fisk, In Time of War, 540. 122 O’Driscoll, ‘“We are trying to do our share”: the Construction of Positive Neutrality and Irish Post-War Relief to Europe’, 27. 123 Ian Kershaw, The End: Hitler’s Germany, 1944–45 (London: Penguin Books, 2012), 376. 124 William I. Hitchcock, Liberation: The Bitter Road to Freedom, Europe 1944–1945 (London: Faber and Faber, 2009), 37.

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soon to be leader of communist East Germany, and his group arrived in Berlin they described it as ‘a picture of hell’.125 90% of Warsaw was destroyed.126 In Minsk in the Soviet Union, 80% of the city was rubble. It was worse in Kharkov, Rostov, and Voronezh. Ten million Ukrainians had no more homes. The inhabitants lived where they could, mostly in cellars, dugouts, and makeshift shelters. They had no water, gas, and electricity.127 The list of miseries is very far from being complete. Also, the transport infrastructure was in ruins. Roads and railways had been destroyed and bridges bombed or blown up. There was only one bridge intact across the Rhine, none across the Seine between Paris and Le Havre. This meant that even if factories and mines could continue to produce, there would be no transport to deliver the supplies where they were needed. At the end of 1945, many mines were in working order again, but Vienna had still no coal to warm up. There was also a lack of merchant ships. Yet, despite the widespread destruction, Europe’s economy was not affected beyond all hope. It appeared that the incessant Allied bombing raids on Germany had destroyed relatively little economic infrastructure, just over 20%. Certain areas of Hungary, the Czech lands and Slovakia had performed well industrially during the war. In the words of Tony Judt: ‘The dramatically skewed nature of much of the damage, such that it was people and places that suffered terribly while factories and goods were relatively spared, contributed to an unexpectedly speedy recovery after 1945 of core economic sectors.’128 As if this human misery was not enough, other problems rapidly emerged: hunger, disease and cold. An average man needs about 2,500 calories of healthy food a day to live well and a woman about 2,000. But that was not the ideal-case scenario. In June 1945, for example, Germans in the American-Occupied Zone got an official ration representing 860 calories. During the war years, the population had joked: ‘Better enjoy the war—the peace will be terrible’.129 The joke could now no longer be enjoyed. George Clare, a Viennese Jew who had been lucky to leave the continent for Ireland where his father owned a factory in Dublin (Hirsch Ribbons Ltd),130 arrived in Germany to work for the Intelligence Section of the British Information Services Control in Berlin. On his way, his train stopped in a small station in the middle of nowhere and he was ordered out. A sergeant explained to him: ‘You don’t want to get your grub at a main station with crowds of half-starved Germans 125 Giles MacDonogh, After the Reich: From the Liberation of Vienna to the Berlin Airlift (London: John Murray, 2008), 95, 104. 126 Tony Judt, Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 (London: Vintage Books, 2010), 82. 127 Keith Lowe, Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II (London: Penguin Books, 2013), 6–8. 128 Judt, Postwar, 82–3. 129 Judt, Postwar, 21. 130 Keogh, Jews in Twentieth-Century Ireland, 136–8.

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watching and begging kids swarming all over you like buzz-flies. Not pleasant, I can tell you’.131 In Warsaw, one fifth of the population had tuberculosis. There was only one hospital with fifty beds for the 90,000 children in the city. In Czechoslovakia, about 350,000 needy children had tuberculosis.132 In Romania, the number of people who contracted pellagra (caused by a vitamin B3 deficiency) increased by 250%.133 As the New York Times succinctly put it: ‘Europe is in a condition which no American can hope to understand. [It is the] New Dark Continent’.134 Countries and organisations were prepared to help.

Thinking of postwar times: UNRRA and the ICRC Initiatives were being taken to ensure survival in postwar times. The 1940s are generally considered to be a turning point in the history of humanitarianism as the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) was set up. It was ‘a new era of official intervention’ in humanitarianism and its sheer size dwarfed all other voluntary aid agencies. But the Second World War and its aftermath also saw a flourishing of new agencies such as Oxfam and Christian Aid in Britain and the Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe (CARE) and Catholic Relief Services in the United States.135 In November 1943, forty-four nations signed the agreement to set up UNRRA, but Ireland was not among the signatories.136 UNRRA’s objective has been described in the following terms by Jessica Reinisch: ‘Although it was to provide more than mere “soup kitchen” charity, the longer-term “reconstruction” of the world was beyond its remit; rather, it was to provide materials for immediate “relief” and the means for “rehabilitation”. Even in 1943 these broad terms of “relief”, “rehabilitation” and “reconstruction” left much room for significant differences in the expectations and commitments of different member countries. The question of the organization’s precise lifespan was left open’.137 Eventually all UNRRA missions in Europe would end by July 1947. The organisation focused its attention especially on Central, Eastern and Southern Europe and on the displaced persons (DPs) in Germany. Its expenditure was staggering: the supplies sent to the European continent totalled 131 George Clare, Berlin Days 1946–1947 (London: Macmillan, 1989), 16–17. 132 Judt, Postwar, 22. 133 Lowe, Savage Continent, 39. 134 Lowe, Savage Continent, xiv. 135 Kevin O’Sullivan, Matthew Hilton and Juliano Fiori, ‘Humanitarianisms in context’, European Review of History-Revue Européenne d’Histoire, vol. 23, nos. 1–2 (2016): 6. 136 ‘Agreement for UNRRA’, 9 November 1943, Ibiblio, the Public’s Library and Digital Archive, in http:// www.ibiblio.org/pha/policy/1943/431109a.html (accessed on 12 November 2014). 137 Jessica Reinisch, ‘“Auntie UNRRA” at the crossroads’, Past and Present Supplement 8 (2013): 71.

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almost $2.5 billion. The operation in Poland proved to be the most expensive one followed by Italy, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine, and Belarus.138 In 1946, there were about 17,000 UNRRA employees.139 They were trained in centres in London and Normandy before being sent to different areas.140 Washington provided 72% of the funds to keep UNRRA going. Within the organisation, small member-states in Western Europe did not appreciate that German civilians would be looked after. They were also complaining that they were being left out of the decision-making process. In the end, it did not help Germans to return home and Germany paid for the aid it got. Humanitarianism would apply to some and less to others. UNRRA did not get on with the American and British military authorities. Generals preferred to deal with the Red Cross rather than with members of an organisation for which they had not much time and which might jeopardise their operations. However, an agreement was reached with General Dwight D. Eisenhower in December 1944 which allowed UNRRA to deal with the millions of DPs in Germany.141 Despite very good work on the ground and obvious goodwill, it was plagued by administrative and organisational problems.142 The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was founded in 1863 by the Swiss Henry Dunant who had been profoundly shocked by the Battle of Solferino between France and Austria in 1859. Its headquarters was (and still is) located in Geneva and its mission was to protect combatants and non-combatants in conflict zones. It was impartial and apolitical, and its ‘activity does not imply any moral judgement towards those who must be helped or those who must be contacted’.143 The ICRC members were citizens of neutral Switzerland and the ICRC itself was helped by national Red Cross societies like the Irish Red Cross Society (IRCS). However, the end of the hostilities in Europe saw the ICRC in trouble. During the war, it had managed to distribute not only 440,000 tons of supplies to prisoners of war and civilian prisoners but also supplies worth 500 million Swiss francs to different civilian populations. Yet, the good work could not hide the fact that there was a serious financial crisis going on and that the number of personnel had been reduced from 3,373 at the beginning of 1945 to 2,447 at the end of that same year. Moreover, the ICRC had taken care essentially of French 138 Reinisch, ‘“Auntie UNRRA” at the crossroads’, 71, 73. 139 League of Nations, Geneva, Food, Famine and Relief 1940–1946 (New York: American Book-Stratford Press, 1946), 92. 140 Reinisch, ‘“Auntie UNRRA” at the crossroads’, 80. 141 Ben Shephard, The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War (London: The Bodley Head, 2010), 50, 58–9, 151. 142 Shephard, The Long Road Home, see Chapter 8 ‘Dollars or Death’, 135–61. 143 Catherine Rey-Schyrr, De Yalta à Dien Bien Phu : Histoire du Comité international de la Croix-Rouge 1945–1955 (Genève: CICR Georg Editeur, 2007) , 19.

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and British prisoners of war. Now it was dealing with German ones. Soviets, however, had been left out. The Kremlin was very critical of the ICRC for not having objected to the dreadful detention conditions of Soviet prisoners. It was only at the very end of the war that the ICRC had been able to do something for Jewish internees of concentration camps. Many criticised it for not having denounced the existence of the camps. In fact, it was accused of having remained silent on Nazi atrocities. Its line of defence was that a denunciation of the Nazi regime would not have changed anything and might even have endangered its activities for western prisoners of war. Regarding Soviet prisoners of war, it argued that the problem was that Moscow had not signed the Geneva Convention of 1929.144 Equally of note is that rather tense relations developed between the ICRC and the British. In August 1940, Churchill favoured a blockade policy of the continent and made it clear that he was opposed to the sending of relief supplies to civilians in territories occupied by the Germans, arguing that it was their responsibility to feed the populations under their control, which, according to the Hague Convention (1907, Art. 43), appeared to be correct. The British would stockpile supplies that would be distributed to those in need after a victorious war. Churchill’s approach became known as ‘victory before relief ’ and greatly upset the ICRC. The British would only make three exceptions to their approach: first, supplies were allowed to reach Vichy France during the winter of 1940–1941; second, food supplies could be sent to Greece from 1941 onwards until the end of the war; and third, some supply ships and food airdrops for the Netherlands were authorised in 1945. London was not always convinced of the organisational abilities of the ICRC. It was true that a relief operation in Greece in May 1941 went badly wrong as some of the supplies intended for the population were pilfered, it would seem, by the occupiers and possibly even the Italian Red Cross. There were strong doubts in London that the ICRC was in a position to distribute goods without interference from the Germans and their allies. It also happened that several individuals selected by the ICRC to be its supervisors on the spot were not reliable and that others were suspected of intelligence activities by the belligerents.145 As will be seen, such an unreliable individual might have interfered with the distribution of Irish sugar in Hungary. Yet, despite these trenchant criticisms Eisenhower and Churchill praised the ICRC and the latter was given the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945 for its work in 1944. According to Catherine Rey-Schyrr: ‘[The ICRC’s] involvement in favour of German prisoners of war, especially those who were being prosecuted for war crimes, 144 Rey-Schyrr, De Yalta à Dien Bien Phu, ‘Introduction générale’, 19–48. 145 James Crossland, Britain and the International Committee of the Red Cross, 1939–1945 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 105–6, 107–8, 113, 132–3, 133–6.

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and German civilians is misunderstood by public opinion. For the ICRC, however, its involvement is in accordance with its principle of impartiality’.146 The same kind of criticism would be levelled against Ireland when it announced its intention to aid Germany. For the ICRC, the coming of peace in Europe and its problems was going to be a crucial capability and credibility test.147 In fact, its philosophy of caring for all was at odds with UNRRA’s, which excluded Germans. Cooperation possibilities between the two were thus limited. But there was more. Certain British officials believed that the ICRC should be subordinated to UNRRA. This was unpalatable to the ICRC and it had to swallow the bitter pill that two of its richest national societies, the American Red Cross (ARC) and the British Red Cross (BRC), were going to be massively involved in UNRRA’s operations. The reality was that the Allies had not paid too much attention to the ICRC and its possible role during the liberation of Europe and the postwar period.148 Considering its problems with the British and American governments and UNRRA as an emerging humanitarian rival, it is hardly surprising that the ICRC was eager to develop solid working relations with the neutrals, including Ireland, from whom it could hope to receive material and financial donations. Its capability, credibility and ultimately prestige were indeed at stake. Back in 1919, the League of Red Cross Societies had been founded to coordinate the activities of national Red Cross societies in peacetime. At the beginning of the war, the ICRC and the League set up the Joint Relief Commission of the International Red Cross (JRC) to become more effective in their humanitarian operations for civilians. It remained in existence until 1946.149 It was with the JRC that the Irish authorities would deal. Although it is not within the scope of this book to give a detailed analysis of their involvement in postwar relief activities, a certain number of voluntary aid organisations, private and/or religious, played important roles. Several should be briefly mentioned here. CARE (Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe) was founded in 1945 by 22 religious and secular voluntary agencies. The idea was that American donors would send a package of food, containing about 45,000 calories, to needy Europeans. By 1949, almost 9 million such packages had been sent. American donors were generous as they gave $10 million in 1946 and a total $30 million by 1948.150 In Britain, religion (Protestantism) was a key component in the establishment of voluntary organisations focusing on international 146 Rey-Schyrr, De Yalta à Dien Bien Phu, 43, 44 (quote). 147 Crossland, Britain and the International Committee of the Red Cross, 155–6. 148 Crossland, Britain and the International Committee of the Red Cross, 180–9, paragraph entitled ‘A new humanitarian order’ & 204–205. 149 Rey-Schyrr, De Yalta à Dien Bien Phu, 53–4. 150 Heike Wieters, ‘Reinventing the firm: from post-war relief to international humanitarian agency’, European Review of History/Revue européenne d’ histoire, vol. 23, nos. 1–2 (2016): 116–35.

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aid. Oxfam (Oxford Committee for Famine Relief), for example, was set up in 1942 by Anglicans, Quakers and secular liberal humanists to help Greece.151 The YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association), the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and Caritas (Catholic) were other prominent organisations active in postwar Europe.

Thinking of postwar times: the neutrals Besides UNRRA, the ICRC and other organisations, neutral European countries also undertook to provide relief, notably Sweden, Switzerland, Spain, and the Vatican. During the war, the Swedish Red Cross (SRC) and its vice-chairman Count Folke Bernadotte had been active in providing help to starving Greece and to Norwegian and Danish children and had also been involved in exchanges of prisoners of war between the belligerents. Like Switzerland and Spain, Sweden was worried about what would happen after the war and tried to build up good relations with the western Allies. However, public opinion in the country was aware of the Germans’ harsh occupation policies in Denmark and Norway and fully supported humanitarian actions for the neighbours. Sweden’s most daring operation occurred in the closing months of the war when individuals secretly approached SS leader Heinrich Himmler who, unlike Hitler, was thinking of negotiating with the western Allies. It was first agreed that SRC personnel could enter the concentration camp of Neuengamme in northern Germany to look after Danish and Norwegian internees. Then the release of Scandinavian and some non-Scandinavian Jews across Germany was also negotiated. In all, 20,937 people, including approximately 6,500 Jews, reached the Baltic Sea by truck from where they were ferried across to Sweden. As the American consulate in Stockholm put it, ‘the job being done by the Swedes in caring for the less fortunate people is nothing short of miraculous’.152 Rädda Barnen, the Swedish Save the Children Fund, was instrumental in getting supplies to children in various Eastern and Western European countries. Also, no less than 70,000 Finnish children were welcomed in Sweden.153 In January 1944, the govern151 Matthew Hilton, ‘International Aid and Development NGOs in Britain and Human Rights since 1945’, Humanity, vol. 3, no. 3 (Winter 2012): 449–72. 152 Steven Koblik, ‘“No truck with Himmler”: The Politics of Rescue and the Swedish Red Cross Mission, March–May 1945’, in Scandia, Tidskrift för historisk forskning, 2008, in http://journals.lub.lu.se/index. php/scandia/article/view/369/225 (accessed on 17 November 2014), 173–95, for quote see p. 188. 153 Ann Nehlin, Exporting visions and saving children–the Swedish Save the Children Fund, no 494 (Linköping: Linköping University, The Department of Child Studies, 2009), in http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/ get/diva2:240412/FULLTEXT02 (accessed on 29 May 2015), 50 and 70–1. For Rädda Barnen’s operations in postwar Romania and its close encounters with the Romanian intelligence service see Vadim Guzun, ed., Rädda Barnen şi Securitatea, 1946–1949 (Cluj-Napoca: Argonaut, 2015).

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ment set up the Swedish Committee for International Relief and its budget to help in the reconstruction of Europe was 100 million Swedish kronor.154 Swiss governments generally refer to a ‘traditional policy’ when it comes down to aiding political refugees or victims of wars. The country’s neutrality and the fact that the headquarters of the ICRC is in Geneva are of course most significant contributing factors. According to Antoine Fleury: ‘To this is added a moral duty of Swiss citizens, privileged by their neutral status, to help others, especially neighbours, who are victims of authoritarian regimes or destructive wars’. While it is true that Switzerland welcomed French soldiers who fled the German advance in June 1940 and many prisoners of war on the run, its policy towards civilian refugees, especially Jews, was restrictive. The authorities refused to grant them the status of political refugee. The country welcomed over 20,000 of them but thousands—the exact number is difficult to establish—were not allowed in. Before the war, the Swiss government was afraid to upset the Nazi regime by getting heavily involved in the Jewish question and feared a massive arrival of Jewish refugees. However, at the beginning of 1944, Berne was determined to assist in the rebuilding of Europe and relief operations. In 1945, Max Petitpierre, the head of foreign policy, explained that neutrality enabled the Swiss people to render humanitarian assistance to peoples in war. His argument would be used to justify and maintain neutrality despite criticisms from the Allies who believed that Switzerland had made too many compromises with the Nazis. In the end, the deal the Swiss made with the western Allies was that some money taken from German assets in Swiss banks would be transferred to the Allies as an act of solidarity in the rebuilding of Europe. Also, Berne put 250 million Swiss francs at the disposal of the Allies, the Allies in return abandoning claims on German gold acquired by Switzerland. In 1944, the Don Suisse (Swiss Gift) was established. This was a combined effort between the state and the population to raise money for relief operations. It is estimated that at least 153 million Swiss francs were collected, the initiators putting the figure at 206 million.155 So it was that if the Swedish and Swiss peoples who were contributing to relief operations had pure intentions, their respective governments were not above making political calculations. The same can be said about Ireland. Unlike Sweden and Switzerland which were right in the middle of the action, Ireland was simply too far 154 Nehlin, Exporting visions and saving children, 44–5. In 2020, this represents about €230,000,000. The author is grateful to Dr Anders Fjellström of the Department of Economics of the University of Stockholm for the currency adjustments and conversion. E-mail exchange between author and Anders Fjellström, 29 July 2013. 155 Antoine Fleury, ‘Traditions et rôle humanitaire de la Suisse’, Matériaux pour l’ histoire de notre temps, 2009/1, no 93, in www.cairn.info/revue-materiaux-pour-l-histoire-de-notre-temps-2009-1-page-60.htm (accessed on 17 July 2015), 60–70, for quotes see 60 and 65.

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away from the frontline to undertake a daring rescue operation of concentrationcamp internees in Germany like the Swedes had done. Nor did it have the logistics, diplomatic network, and necessary contacts to carry one out. Like the Swiss, the Irish had been restrictive in their refugee policy, especially where Jews were concerned. Like the Swiss and the Swedes, the Irish would use their relief operations to show that small neutrals had their own positive contribution to make and that their neutrality was therefore justified and of use to the community of nations. Another neutral involved in humanitarianism was Spain. Madrid knew that Germany would lose the war and that Spain would evolve in a hostile postwar environment because of Franco’s sympathy for Hitler. The United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union agreed that Spain would not become a member of the newly formed United Nations (it would eventually join in 1955, the same year Ireland would). Yet, the western Allies needed all the supplies they could get to proceed with the reconstruction of Europe and the feeding of famished populations. Therefore, despite their resentment for the Franco regime, they opened trade negotiations with Spain. Madrid being eager to avoid isolation and a possible economic blockade, agreed to participate in UNRRA operations, supplied food (citrus and nuts notably) and raw materials to western European countries and even provided precious ships to transport them. By so doing, it hoped to improve its relations with these countries.156 Ireland was in several ways in a similar position. Unlike Spain it had been in favour of the western Allies. But its refusal to become officially involved in the war and de Valera’s condolences on Hitler’s death had left a bitter taste in the Allies’ mouths. Fear of Allied strictures may well have been a motivating factor for becoming involved in humanitarianism, although Ireland did make several attempts at relief operations during the war. Like Spanish aid, Irish aid would be very welcome in continental countries no matter what kind of government was in power. A pro-active humanitarian Ireland would prevent too many tensions with the western Allies and its isolation in Europe.

Thinking of postwar times: the Vatican Finally, there was the Vatican, and this neutral state had much influence on Catholic Ireland’s postwar aid. It had followed with much apprehension the development of communism in Russia from 1917 onwards and its influence on Eastern and Central Europe. In 1919, Pope Benedict XV ordered that a telegram be sent to Lenin, inquiring about the persecution of Christians in the new atheistic state. 156 Fernando Guirao, Spain and the Reconstruction of Western Europe: Challenge and Response (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998), 1–22.

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The Soviets replied that there was no persecution at all, which was far from being the truth. Yet, they allowed ‘agents of the Holy See’ to participate in relief operations in 1922 when a famine was ravaging certain areas of the nascent Soviet Union. These uneasy early contacts did not promote better bilateral relations between the two states. In the second half of the 1920s, secret negotiations regarding the ordination of bishops in the Soviet Union took place between the papal nuncio in Berlin, Archbishop Eugenio Pacelli, and the Soviets but led to nothing. In 1937, Pope Pius XI explained in his encyclical Divini Redemptoris that communism was a ‘false messianic’ idea and forbade any cooperation between Catholics and communists, promoting instead ‘a vast campaign of the Church against world communism’. In 1939, Pacelli was elected pope and took the name Pius XII. He was a fervent anti-communist and had enough experience of having dealt with it. Pius XII worried about the progress of Stalin’s armies. After the war, he feared that communism would spread to Western Europe, especially in Italy, and kept denouncing it. In Central and Eastern Europe, he reintroduced the practice of secretly ordaining bishops. Also, excommunicating members of communist parties was firmly on his agenda. Pacelli was helped by two close assistants in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State (equivalent of foreign ministry). The first one was Domenico Tardini who, like the Pope, excluded any cooperation with the communists. The second one was Giovanni Battista Montini (future Pope Paul VI). Montini was less of a radical and by Stalin’s death in 1953, he wondered if direct confrontation was still the best approach with the communists.157 It was with Montini that the Irish authorities would frequently deal when discussing relief. Ireland would not be indifferent to the plight of its fellow Catholics abroad and this was reflected in choices made in its relief operations, notably in Hungary, Italy, and Yugoslavia. It would also listen carefully to what the Vatican had to say in these matters. After the First World War, Benedict XV had appealed to the Catholics of the world to come in aid of Central Europe. The end of the Second World War was no different. Vatican relief agencies like the Pontificia Commissione di Assistenza (Pontifical Commission of Relief) looked after refugees and displaced persons in Europe. On 6 January 1946, Pius XII issued his encyclical Quemadmodum in which he appealed to look after the destitute in Europe, especially children. His appeal was heard as far as North and South America. The American hierarchy organised the War Relief Services under the auspices of the National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC) with which Ireland would later cooperate after it terminated its cooperation with the ICRC. The Vatican and Catholic charities much depended 157 George Weigel, The Final Revolution: The Resistance Church and the Collapse of Communism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 59–67.

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on the donations of American Catholics after the war. Rapidly, the Americans contributed no less than $30 million.158 But if communism in Central and Eastern Europe was a serious concern for the Vatican, it had another one, namely the relief operations of Protestant organisations which it suspected of proselytism or considered as Christian competitors. There had been issues before the post-Second World War period. In December 1919, Benedict XV granted an audience to Eglantyne Jebb, the Anglican founder of the Save the Children Fund (SCF) and agreed to sponsor a voluntary organisation that was not Catholic. This was the first time that the Pope took such a decision, but the plight of children was very close to his heart. Also, his decision was politically motivated as it allowed the Vatican to become more involved in humanitarian activities that were mainly dominated by the English-speaking countries and the Protestant Churches. He even organised a fundraising activity for the SCF.159 Yet, this should not be interpreted as an ecumenical departure in the field of humanitarianism as tensions between Catholics and Protestants remained. The Young Men’s Christian Association (YMCA) had been founded in 1844 in Britain by George Williams, an Anglican converted to Congregationalism. Its idea was to spread throughout the world the concept of ‘muscular Christianity’, that is promoting values such as Christian principles, patriotic duty, discipline, and self-sacrifice. Henry Dunant, the future founder of the ICRC, set up the Geneva branch of the YMCA which later became the world headquarters of the organisation in 1878. During the First World War, the Vatican focused its attention on the YMCA’s activities as it felt that through relief there was an attempt at converting people to Protestantism. After the war, the YMCA was active in reconstruction work in traditional Catholic lands like France, Italy, and Belgium. Local Catholic Churches felt threatened. In July 1920, the French Catholic daily newspaper La Croix accused it of proselytism. In November, the Vatican condemned the YMCA on the grounds that it undermined the faith of Catholics. It was said that the YMCA was a negative influence on French and Italian Catholic children and that an anti-Catholic crusade was being orchestrated by a Methodist institution in Rome.160 In 1947, the Vatican Mission in Belgium asked the IRCS if it could send supplies for German prisoners of war as the mission could simply not compete with the YMCA. Both the IRCS and the Irish government accepted to help. 161 158 John Pollard, The Papacy in the Age of Totalitarianism, 1914–1958 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 362–7. 159 Bruno Cabanes, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918–1924 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 283. 160 Thomas J. Burke, ‘The recent condemnation of the YMCA’, Records of the American Catholic Historical Society, vol. 35, no. 2 (June 1924): 137–58. 161 NAI, DFA, 6/419/26, Vatican Mission to IRCS, 2 May 1947; IRCS to DEA, 27 May 1947 & note by Cornelius Cremin, 2 June 1947.

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After the Second World War, American politicians believed it would be very beneficial to link up with religious organisations to strengthen domestic and international security during the emerging Cold War and work together in areas as diverse as healthcare and foreign aid. They were convinced that the spreading of religious beliefs would naturally make a distinction between the good West and the evil Soviet East. To their minds, the Soviet Union needed to be defeated totally and this also included in spiritual and cultural matters. For a number of religious organisations, this constituted a real opportunity to carry out their spiritual mission by presenting the United States as the ‘defender of the Free World’.162 Among them were many evangelicals although some were very critical of the United States’ military and capitalist policies. Foreign aid thus connected the American state with religious non-governmental organisations to set up a strategy of anti-communist containment. The evangelicals stressed that American civilisation, culture and religion was superior. In 1948, a sub-committee of the Committee on Foreign Affairs in the House of Representatives in Washington pointed out that religious organisations should be considered ‘an essential counterpart of foreign assistance programs’.163 During the winter of 1947, the American Board of Foreign Missions sent Charles T. Leber, a Presbyterian minister who was the board’s secretary for Europe, to the continent in order to ascertain the situation of local Churches. In his report, Leber wrote: ‘The people of Europe are hungry, cold and mentally and spiritually sick… All eyes turn to America for healing. America cannot do it. But Jesus Christ can. As important and necessary as political and economic programs may be, it is far from sentimentality to insist that the essential issue in Europe today is moral and spiritual.’164 All this was not music to the ears of the Vatican and helps to explain why it distrusted the ICRC based in Calvinist Geneva and also why it would eventually dissuade Ireland to continue its cooperation with the ICRC as will be detailed in chapter eight.

Concluding remarks After a rather unusual participation in the war, when its government cooperated secretly with the western Allies and several tens of thousands of its citizens volunteered openly to serve in the British forces, a position that was not widely known 162 Axel R. Schäfer, ‘Religious non-profit organisations, the Cold War, the state and resurgent evangelicalism, 1945–90’, in Helen Laville and Hugh Wilford, eds., The US Government, Citizen Groups and the Cold War: The State-Private Network (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 175–7. 163 Axel R. Schäfer, ‘Evangelical Global Engagement and the American State after World War II’, Journal of American Studies, 51 (2017), 4, 1069–94. 164 Hans Krabbendam, ‘A transatlantic religious alliance? American and European protestant encounters, 1945–1965’, The Journal of Transatlantic Studies, vol. 15, no. 4 (2017): 331–47.

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by Europeans and not fully acknowledged by the Allies, Ireland was preparing to be involved in large-scale relief operations and their organisation for the first time in its history. The Irish people had been sheltered from the war owing to the country’s neutrality and remote geographical position and had been selectively informed about what was happening in Europe. Yet, it was nonetheless not completely unaware of what had happened, and it became progressively more conscious of the extent of the chaos in 1945. It remained to be seen how it would react towards the appeals and demands of participation in relief efforts on the continent. Neutral states were about to engage in relief work and their motives for doing so varied, from genuine humanitarianism to political calculations or a mix of both. It was the same for de Valera’s government which now had to pave the way to acceptance of large-scale humanitarianism by the population. The following chapter outlines the political decision-making process for what was to become Ireland’s first major involvement in European affairs since the creation of the Irish state in 1921–1922. Of course, it had interacted with certain western European countries at bilateral level, and also actively participated in the League of Nations. But this time, its involvement would go far deeper as state and nation would participate together.

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Chapter Two

‘A drop in the ocean’: The Decision to send Relief

Between 1939 and 1945, several articles were published in Irish newspapers concerning humanitarian disasters and the government and people’s responses to them. But these occurred because of natural catastrophes, notably in China and India. However, readers were informed of the dreadful famine in Greece in the middle of the war due to the Axis forces’ occupation policies and the Allied blockade. Towards the end of the war, a few articles dealt with the situation in France, the Netherlands, and Germany but the information remained sketchy. Nonetheless, the people had an inkling that the world around them was in serious trouble, and French and Dutch shores were not that far. In April 1945, an interdepartmental committee prepared the relief scheme for the government which was officially announced by Éamon de Valera in the Dáil on 18 May. The hundredth anniversary of the Great Famine in Ireland played a role in the shaping of attitudes toward relief for the European continent. But there were other motivating factors besides genuine humanitarian concern, like international publicity, an opportunity to get the country out of its isolation after years of official neutrality, and the example set by other European neutrals. Briefly, Ireland would or could not stand idly by. The press and the opposition unanimously welcomed the government’s announcement.

Grim facts emerging and reported by the Irish press During the war, the Irish people could glean snippets of information about famines in Europe and elsewhere in the world by reading their national and local newspapers. In November 1942, the Irish Times reported that about 6,000,000 Chinese were starving in the province of Honan. Details about the local conditions were given like dry weather, locusts, and rabbits that were responsible for the lack of food.1 It was the same situation in India a year later where a famine 1 ‘6,000,000 Chinese starving: Millions doomed’, The Irish Times, 20 October 1942 (ITDA).

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ravaged Calcutta. The Cork Examiner explained that ‘long-term plans’ had been put in place in Bengal to look after thousands of ‘famine orphans’.2 The pro-de Valera Irish Press wrote that the Dáil had decided to help and sent £100,000 to the Mayor of Calcutta. The Indian Famine Committee expressed its gratitude to de Valera by stating: ‘Your generosity has earned gratitude of India, and your lead, let us hope, will be followed throughout the world.’3 The Irish government had not forgotten that during the Great Famine (1845–1850) India had made donations to Ireland.4 Historically, the framework of the British Empire had indeed been of great significance in the development of international humanitarianism as solidarity between peoples emerged.5 The Meath Chronicle commented the Dáil’s decision in very favourable terms with a mixture of Christian feelings and remembrance of history: ‘God knows Ireland has a traditional knowledge and dread of famine and here there is still a fellow feeling for those peoples amongst whom the scourge has manifested itself today.… We have been saved the horrors of war; … In thankfulness to God for this great mercy we have a duty to our fellows the world over in this terrible time and the worse times that seem to be impending.’6 The Meath Chronicle’s comments were certainly a foretaste of actions to come in the postwar years. They also revealed that the memory of the Great Famine in Ireland in 1845 had not sunk into oblivion. The Irish would be asked to remember it in 1945 when the war ended and hunger in Europe became a very grave concern. However, the issue here was that the situation in China and India was far away from the European frontlines and therefore could go past the censor relatively easy as the responsibility of the belligerents was not involved (in the sense that their policy had not intentionally provoked the situation). In other words, the neutrality of the press was not affected, and readers could be informed freely. Some parts of Europe were confronted with starvation and famine too, but their situation was related to the belligerents’ strategy and therefore readers were far less informed, if informed at all. Nevertheless, there were bits of information, notably concerning Greece and the Netherlands. During the winter of 1941–42, over 100,000 Greeks died of hunger and the German occupiers were blamed. Yet, it was also the case that chaos reigned in the country, that the system of food distribution broke down as a result, and that many Greeks themselves raided food depots.7 The Irish Press 2 3 4 5 6 7

‘Famine orphans’, Cork Examiner, 13 December 1943 (INA). ‘Planning the £500,000 appeal to people’, Irish Press, 13 November 1943 (INA). O’Driscoll, ‘We are trying to do our share’, 37. O’Sullivan, Hilton and Fiori, ‘Humanitarianisms in context’, 2, 9, 10. Meath Chronicle, 4 December 1943 (INA). Lowe, Savage Continent, 35.

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published a brief article on the situation,8 but unlike the article on China nowhere was it mentioned what had caused it. The situation in Greece did not leave the Irish government indifferent. In January 1943, it approached the British and made an offer to send supplies. London did not agree and argued that ‘they were opposed on principle to any shipments through the [Allied] blockade, since the obligation of feeding occupied territories lay with the occupying Power’. Owing to the gravity of the situation, however, the British had allowed only the Swedes to transport foodstuffs from Canada. Exactly a year later the Irish tried one more time, but again were given the same answer by London. They managed to send some supplies to refugees in Spain in May 1943 and to the Vatican in February 1945. Efforts were also undertaken to send to France 1,000 tons of oats and 1,000 tons of potatoes in October 1944 and the British government was approached. But ‘at that time the difficulties from the military and transport aspects were said to be insurmountable’. The Irish renewed their efforts several times, but the operation was eventually abandoned.9 In all, there were at least seven planned relief operations for the continent between 1943 and the end of the war but logistical problems stood in the way.10 It appeared that the western Allies had not much time for the Irish government’s offers of humanitarian assistance or that relief was not as highly prioritised as winning the war. In June 1944, the retired Royal Artillery General George McKenzie Franks, now a leading member of the Irish Association which tried to promote better relations between the two Irelands, sent a letter to de Valera concerning the welcoming of more continental refugees in the country. He received a revealing answer: The Taoiseach has instructed me to inform you in reply to your letter of the 11th June, that he had not heard about the early arrival in the Six Counties [Northern Ireland] of French refugees. With regard to your suggestion that the Irish government should extend hospitality to groups of such refugees the Taoiseach would like you to be informed that the British and American Governments have been made aware of our readiness to help in the succouring of refugees or in any other form of humanitarian work relating to the suffering of the peoples affected by the war. The Allied Governments have not so far found themselves able to accept any particular proposal made by the Irish Government except that of giving shelter to refugees from Great Britain during the Blitz period. It seems, therefore, more appropriate 8 ‘Greece fights famine’, Irish Press, 25 April 1942 (INA). 9 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4, Report for the Taoiseach/Minister for External Affairs, 24 April 1945. 10 O’Driscoll, ‘We are trying to do our share’, 24–5.

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in all the circumstances to await a request from the Allied Governments should they consider it opportune to seek our aid.11

As seen in chapter one, the British government had adopted a policy of ‘victory before relief ’ during the war from which it departed rarely. It only trusted neutral Sweden in a relief operation for Greece in 1942.12 This explains why Irish offers of humanitarian assistance were rejected by London. The end of the war in the Netherlands was catastrophic for the population of the western regions that had not been liberated by the Allies. In November, the Irish Times published an article entitled ‘Famine in Western Holland’. It gave a few details on the available food supplies and stated that ‘the main reason for these shortages lies in the floods and evacuations’.13 German responsibility had been deliberately omitted. The following month, the Anglo-Celt also reported on the situation but only briefly in the ‘Latest News’ column.14 Yet, as the war entered 1945, articles on food shortages and the plight of local populations in Western Europe became more detailed and a sense of disaster was beginning to develop. It had now sunk in that it was only a question of time before Germany surrendered and censorship appeared to have become less strict. In February, the Irish Times wrote that France was threatened with ‘widespread famine and prolonged disorder if prompt action, depending largely on aid from the Allied military authorities, is not taken’. The country’s transport infrastructure had been badly hit and the newspaper remarked that ‘six months after liberation, French people are hungrier and colder than they were at any time during the German occupation’.15 In March, it reported the words of a British Member of Parliament: ‘Unless we bring food quickly there will be famine and death, and we shall face a problem the like of which the world has never seen, not even in the grim days of the “Black Death” and the plague’. Clement Attlee, the deputy prime minister, did not disagree but replied that Britain’s own supplies were already at a critical level.16 The Irish Press explained that ‘the destruction in Europe has been appalling’ and quoted as an example Cologne, ‘one vast expanse of rubble’, adding that ‘that spectacle in greater or lesser degree is to be found in every great city from London to Stalingrad’. Rebuilding Europe was going to take years. In addition, much 11 Catriona Crowe et al., eds., Documents on Irish Foreign Policy, vol. VII, 1941–45 (Dublin: Royal Irish Academy, 2010), document no. 452, Joseph Walshe, secretary for external affairs, to P.S. Murray, assistant private secretary to the Taoiseach, 24 June 1944, including draft reply to General Franks. 12 Crossland, Britain and the International Committee of the Red Cross, 105–106, 117–18. 13 ‘Famine in Western Holland’, The Irish Times, 25 November 1944 (ITDA). 14 ‘Latest News’, Anglo-Celt, 2 December 1944 (INA). 15 ‘France’s fear of famine’, The Irish Times, 19 February 1945 (ITDA). 16 ‘MPs fear famine in Europe’, The Irish Times, 29 March 1945 (ITDA).

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agricultural land had been destroyed notably in the Netherlands, Italy, and France, and people needed to be fed. ‘What the state of Germany will be like if its territory should be fought over, step by step, it is hard to imagine’, the newspaper wrote. The postwar situation would affect Ireland and ‘our plans must have regard to a pressing world demand’.17 On 25 April, the front page of the Irish Press contained an article called ‘Four million face famine’ in which it was explained that Germans in the Ruhr area would be threatened during the next winter. It quoted MajorGeneral Templer, the chief of the Allied Military Government in the 21st Army Group area: ‘There isn’t enough food in the world to go round, and it’s no use pretending there is.’ According to him, lack of transport was also a main issue.18 The next day, the newspaper reported that the Archbishop of Canterbury (Anglican) had received a letter from the Reformed Church of the Netherlands, informing him that ‘three and a half million inhabitants would be left to die of starvation, if help was not forthcoming’.19 These articles confirmed that Frank Aiken, the Irish minister for the coordination of defensive measures, had been right when he had told farmers at a meeting in Sligo in February 1944 that ‘they were going to have a worse situation after this war than had obtained after any other major conflict in the past. What food they could produce for a number of years to come would be badly needed for their own use, and for help in relieving famine conditions in other countries’.20 Aiken’s message was clear: produce more.

1845/1945: Asked to remember the Great Irish Famine Now that a more detailed picture of Europe began to emerge, certain newspapers and prominent individuals argued that it was Ireland’s moral duty to help peoples in distress, even more since 1945 marked the centenary of the beginning of the Great Irish Famine in 1845. To what extent the Great Famine was still being remembered by the population during the 1940s, the decade of its centenary, is unclear. It would seem that it had been ‘relegated to being a slogan and a taboo for generations’ and that it was ‘hardly commemorated at all in the 1940s’.21 In any case, one hundred years later in 1945 the people were asked to remember it and to turn their remembrance into action. A few days before Germany surrendered, Michael Browne, the Catholic Bishop of Galway, declared that ‘the people of Europe came to the aid of 17 18 19 20 21

‘The aftermath’, Irish Press, 21 March 1945 (INA). ‘Four million face famine’, Irish Press, 25 April 1945 (INA). ‘Famine threat to Netherlands’, Irish Press, 26 April 1945 (INA). ‘Famine will follow war, says Mr Aiken’, The Irish Times, 5 February 1944 (ITDA). Cormac Ó Gráda, ‘The Great Famine and today’s famines’, in John Crowley, William J. Smyth and Mike Murphy, eds., Atlas of the Great Irish Famine (Cork: Cork University Press, 2018), 650.

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this country at the time of the famine a century ago and it was only right that we should now give in return from our abundance’. The Connacht Tribune reported his words under the title ‘Now is the time to repay Europe.’22 A few days later, it reminded its readers of an elementary truth prone to be forgotten quickly, namely that ‘the end of the hostilities in Europe has not released its peoples completely from their agony’. ‘We, from our plenitude’, it continued, ‘—and despite rationing there is much that we can spare—could do much to ease the lot of those over whom the threat of hunger hangs’.23 In an article entitled ‘1845-Famine-1945’, the Nenagh Guardian told its readers that the lessons of history should not be forgotten: ‘To-day there is famine in Europe. To-day amid plenty, as in 1845, millions of men and women and children are facing a lingering, dreadful death from hunger. And we in Ireland, who have so narrowly missed the fate of the stricken peoples of Europe, might well ponder on their plight…’24 In previous times, continental Europeans and peoples from farther afield had indeed helped Ireland. French Catholics had come to the rescue on several occasions. In 1830, 80,000 French francs were collected for Ireland. During the Great Famine, and after Pope Pius IX had appealed for aid, a committee based in Paris collected 500,861 francs. The money was forwarded to the Irish hierarchy.25 It was the same in Austria where much money was collected and sent to Archbishop Daniel Murray of Dublin.26 In October 1929, Secretary for External Affairs Joseph Walshe reminded the Irish legation in Paris that ‘we regard [the Turks] as old friends, at least since they sent us a food ship during the famine…’27 Apparently, back then Abdulmejid (Abdülmecid) I, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, wanted to offer £10,000 to help in the alleviation of distress. But this was an embarrassment to Queen Victoria as she was about to offer £2,000. Consequently, he was asked to reduce his donation to £1,000. The Sultan had no choice but to agree but he also sent five food ships which made it to Drogheda.28 The Russian government sent £2,644.29 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

‘Now is the time to repay Europe’, Connacht Tribune, 5 May 1945 (INA). ‘The agony of Europe’, Connacht Tribune, 12 May 1945 (INA). ‘1845-Famine-1945’, Nenagh Guardian, 22 December 1945 (INA). Grace Neville, ‘”Il y a des larmes dans leurs chiffres”: French Famine Relief for Ireland, 1847–84”, Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique, XIX-2, 2014, in http://rfcb.revues.org/261 (accessed on 3 June 2015). Rudolf Agstner, ‘Consular and diplomatic relations between Ireland and Austria (-Hungary)’, Favorita Papers, Special Edition: Austro-Irish Links Through the Centuries (Vienna: Diplomatic Academy of Vienna, 2002), 59. Documents on Irish Foreign Policy, no 295, NAI DFA EA 231/5, Walshe to Count Gerald O’Kelly de Gallagh (Paris), 28 October 1929, in http://www.difp.ie/docs/Volume3/1929/1005.htm (accessed on 4 July 2013). ‘Turkish aid to Irish famine was highest form of compassion’, by Billy O’Callaghan, Irish Examiner, 14 July 2014, in http://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/features/turkish-aid-to-irish-famine-was-highestform-of-compassion-275281.html (accessed on 14 March 2017). A.V. Miroshnikov, Tri veka Irlandii. Vol 2. 1845–1900 (Voronezh: Istoki, 2014), 10.

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The Protestant minority in Ireland was equally active in thinking about bringing relief to the European continent. There was no religious divide on this issue. Colonel T. J. McKinney, the Director of the Army Medical Services, said at a meeting of the Alexandra College Guild, a middle-class Protestant school in Dublin which focused on social and philanthropic activities, that ‘the world would expect the Irish Red Cross Society, as representing a nation which had escaped the ravages and horrors of war, to play a full part in European reconstruction…’ Roger C. Wilson, the General Secretary of the Society of Friends’ Relief Service in London added that ‘there was widespread hunger in Europe. In Eastern Europe, there would be only half harvests this year. The overriding and dominating difficulty in the way of doing relief work in Europe was the complete destruction of transport’. The Irish Independent succinctly summarised the meeting with the following title on its front page: ‘Ireland’s duty to aid Europe’.30 But these newspapers and individuals did not need to bring pressure to bear on the government to act.

25 April 1945: The decision to send relief In the meantime, the government had taken the decision to come to Europe’s aid and an interdepartmental committee was set up to explore possibilities. It was composed of the secretaries and deputy-secretaries of the Departments of External Affairs (DEA), Finance, Industry and Commerce, Agriculture, and Supplies. During its first meeting on 27 March 1945, Secretary General for External Affairs Joseph Walshe spoke about the looming food crisis and stressed that there was a ‘danger that unless this country showed and publicised its readiness to provide assistance there would be considerable loss of good will and colour would be given to the propagandist charges levelled against us in sections of the British and American press that we were concerned only about ourselves and were enjoying higher standards of living than any other part in Europe’. It was readily agreed that Ireland should provide relief for the continent.31 Walshe’s arguments clearly underlined that there was not solely humanitarian thinking behind the decision. There were already talks with the Dutch authorities to receive children in Ireland and to send food to the Netherlands. Negotiations were in progress with the French to set up an Irish hospital in France.32 On 25 April, another interdepartmental meeting took place in the Department of Finance and it was at this meeting that the key decisions were taken. A list of 30 ‘Ireland’s duty to aid Europe’, Irish Independent, 7 May 1945 (INA). 31 O’Driscoll, ‘We are trying to do our share’, 25. 32 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4, Report for the Taoiseach/Minister for External Affairs, 24 April 1945.

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foodstuffs and commodities worth £3,000,000 had been drawn. James J. McElligott (Finance), who was chairing, said that ‘possibly the Government would have to face criticism from persons who held the view that commodities of the kind should not be sent out of the country having regard to our present circumstances’. Walshe (DEA) did not agree and believed the Dáil and the people would not object, ‘particularly if such gifts were given in kind and not in cash’. According to him, ‘the amount of money involved would be regarded as rather a small donation compared with the value of help given by such countries as Sweden and Switzerland … Our contribution should compare favourably with those of other countries’. Robert Campbell Ferguson (Industry and Commerce) interjected that ‘with the exception of horses and cattle, the offer suggested would represent a cut in current consumption of commodities which were already scarce and in some cases rationed here’. Frederick H. Boland (DEA) did not share Ferguson’s qualified reservations and emphasised ‘the necessity for making it clear in any public announcement, that the giving of relief on the scale proposed represented a real sacrifice to the people of this country’.33 The notion of sacrifice might well be real, but Boland was essentially thinking here of what kind of image Ireland should project on the international scene. Daniel R. Twomey (Agriculture) explained that there might be problems with the sending of canned meat as that depended on ‘available supplies of tin and solder’. As a solution, he suggested that the continental governments should supply the containers.34 This was indeed going to be a major problem in the months to come. John E. Hanna (Finance) pertinently remarked that ‘the real difficulty lay, not in withdrawing these supplies from current consumption in the country or in assembling them for shipment but in their allocation and subsequent distribution’. Denis P. Shanagher (Supplies) unreservedly shared Hanna’s concern and ‘considered it vital to have reliable information as to the relative necessity of any countries who applied to us for a share in any relief which we may provide’. The crucial point here was to figure out which countries needed more immediate relief than others. Walshe agreed with the necessity to obtain ‘reliable information as to local conditions’ and he ‘pointed out that in this matter this country would have to line up with any big relief schemes organised by the British and the Americans’.35 Concerning distribution difficulties, Hanna said that ‘we could possibly avail of the International Red Cross Organisation or UNRRA’. But Walshe did not agree and said that ‘it would be much more desirable to deal direct with governments rather than with organisations such as the International Red Cross—the Spanish 33 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4, Memorandum, conference held in the Department of Finance, 25 April 1945. In 2020, £3,000,000 would represent approximately over €126,000,000. 34 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4, Memorandum, conference held in the Department of Finance, 25 April 1945. 35 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4, Memorandum, conference held in the Department of Finance, 25 April 1945.

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Red Cross had failed us in the matter of distributing relief sent to Spain’.36 He was alluding to a humanitarian operation that had taken place in 1943 when the Irish Red Cross Society (IRCS) sent supplies of a total value of £10,000 to Spain and which the Spanish authorities and Red Cross, in all likelihood, very badly managed.37 Besides issues of practicality based on previous experience, Walshe, the old hand in foreign affairs, explained that ‘apart altogether from the question of proper distribution, this country would get much more credits and much more publicity for our action if we operated through governments’. McElligott was of the same mind and remarked that there were problems between UNRRA and AMGOT (Allied Military Government for Occupied Territories). Eventually, all agreed that dealing with governments bilaterally was preferable.38 Walshe had in fact the same approach as Count Folke Bernadotte, the vice-chairman of the Swedish Red Cross. Bernadotte knew that it was essential that his organisation became involved abroad. In September 1943, in a confidential letter to the executive of the Swedish Red Cross, he wrote: ‘The other area of activities—relief to foreign countries— I consider to be the most primary and necessary task. The reason for this is more than anything else the goodwill that the Swedish Red Cross and especially Sweden would gain by making an active and grand contribution’.39 Sweden’s neutrality had not always been liked by the Allies. John Leydon (Supplies) put forward that ‘a general announcement could be made to the effect that these supplies were available, that a reasonable time could be given to the various governments in which to make application to us, and that we could then proceed to allocate the supplies on the basis of needs and transport facilities’. Twomey reminded everybody present that there were difficulties with ‘shipping accommodation, and particularly in regard to the transport of cattle’ to which Ferguson replied that ‘it would be up to the governments applying for our supplies to arrange for the provision of shipping accommodation’. This made sense as Irish shipping capability was very limited. McElligott stressed that ‘the giving of the relief mentioned would in practice amount to a diversion of supplies from Great Britain’ and that the British might react negatively. But Twomey was not worried and said that ‘in the matter of cattle the numbers proposed were very small in comparison with the numbers received from us by Great Britain’. Leydon agreed with Twomey and remarked that ‘the British themselves were sending commodities to Europe of which we were badly in need here’.40 There would indeed be no reason to fear a British backlash. 36 37 38 39 40

NAI, DFA, 6/419/4, Memorandum, conference held in the Department of Finance, 25 April 1945. Lehane, A History of the Irish Red Cross, 90–5. NAI, DFA, 6/419/4, Memorandum, conference held in the Department of Finance, 25 April 1945. Nehlin, Exporting visions and saving children, 41–2. NAI, DFA, 6/419/4, Memorandum, conference held in the Department of Finance, 25 April 1945.

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Once a general agreement had been reached on supplies, the issue of welcoming continental children who had badly suffered during the war was broached and those present agreed that Ireland should play its part. It is outside the scope of this book to study this topic in detail, but the welcoming of these children constituted an additional relief operation to Ireland’s sending of supplies abroad and it was part of a far broader operation involving children across Europe. In all approximately 1,000 children (about 100 French, 500 Germans, 200 Austrians, and 137 Jews from different Central European countries) came and seemed to have had a very positive stay in the country.41 Some of them stayed with Irish families and went to local schools. In Limerick, for example, the Jesuit Crescent School welcomed German children and Villiers School (Protestant) welcomed French ones.42 150 cadets from the Polish section of the Royal Air Force stayed for a three-week holiday with Irish families in August 1946,43 but it was a different scheme. Also, there were the children who never came in the end. Talks had begun to welcome 200 Dutch children, but eventually the IRCS said it was overstretched and the Dutch questioned the wisdom of continuing to send children abroad as the situation in their country was improving and as such operations were expensive.44 It had been envisaged to bring 200 Polish children to Ireland, but the Provisional Government of National Unity in Warsaw, increasingly controlled by the communists, opposed the plan ‘because it feared ‘“clerical” influence’.45 It was the same story with 200 Hungarian children, prevented from going by their government.46 Catholic Ireland was not to everyone’s liking in the emerging Cold War. The number of foreign children in Ireland paled by comparison to that in Switzerland, about 181,000 from 1940 until 1956.47 41 The author is currently writing a manuscript entitled “Ireland’s foreign children, 1945–1950”. For four excellent studies about children after the war, see Dorothy Macardle, Children of Europe: A Study of the Children of Liberated Countries: Their War-time Experiences, their Reactions, and their Needs, with a Note on Germany (London: Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1949), Tara Zahra, The Lost Children: Reconstructing Europe’s Families after World War II (Cambridge & London: Harvard University Press, 2011); Jan Sintemaartensdijk, De Bleekneusjes van 1945: De uitzending van Nederlandse kinderen naar het buitenland (Amsterdam: Boom, 2002) about the sending of Dutch children abroad; and Bernd Haunfelder, Kinderzüge in die Schweiz: Die Deutschlandhilfe des Schweizerischen Roten Kreuzes 1946–1946 (Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2007) about German children in Switzerland. 42 Molohan, Germany and Ireland 1945–1955, 51, and ‘Irish Red Cross help for European Relief ’, Irish Times, 19 December 1945 (ITDA). The author is grateful to Jill Storey, headmistress of Villiers School, Limerick, whose help enabled to ascertain that two French girls from Normandy went to the school in 1945. 43 ‘Polish youths on holidays in Eire’, Irish Times, 2 August 1946 (ITDA). 44 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/1, Martin McNamara (IRCS) to Frederick H. Boland (DEA), 7 and 17 June 1946, and Sintemaartensdijk, De Bleekneusjes van 1945, 239–41, 242–3. 45 ‘Polish children, move by Provisional Government criticised’, Irish Independent, 15 May 1946 (INA). 46 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/41, note by Cornelius Cremin (DEA) and document left by Countess Catherine Karolyi, chairwoman of the Hungarian Relief Committee in Great Britain, 4 September 1946. 47 Haunfelder, Kinderzüge in die Schweiz, 11.

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But it was Ireland’s first large-scale operation to welcome war victims and the country did not possess the necessary infrastructure and humanitarian experience that Switzerland had. McElligott then closed the meeting, saying that a memorandum concerning Irish relief for Europe would be prepared for the cabinet which was due to meet in the coming days.48 It would seem fair to conclude that Walshe had stamped the meeting with his suggestions. The following day, the minister for finance submitted to the cabinet the memorandum prepared by McElligott, summarising the main issues discussed between the secretaries. The Interdepartmental Committee felt that the supplies under consideration would not entail a ‘serious diminution of our essential stocks’. However, ‘it would not be possible, without undue risk to home requirements, to export cereals’ and ‘to release any piece goods for clothing or any made-up garments in view of the great shortage at home and the fact that the position is not likely to improve for a very long period’. Negotiations with governments rather than with UNRRA or the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) were preferable. Yet, the IRCS was not to be excluded from relief operations. The committee argued that the private collection of clothes for Europe should not be prevented and that the IRCS should set up a committee, inviting representatives of other ‘charitable organisations such as the St. Vincent de Paul Society, the Society of Friends etc’ to look after this.49 This suggestion was eventually taken up. Clothes could be donated by individuals to the St. Vincent de Paul Society which would send them to Germany via the IRCS. If any other association wanted to send clothes to any other country, it would still have to be done through the IRCS.50 The cabinet met for one hour on 27 April and exclusively focused on relief. It agreed with the contents of the memorandum.51 It felt that the ICRC could not be left out of the picture altogether probably because it had acquired such a recognised worldwide status and that circumventing it would be negatively noticed abroad. It was therefore decided to divide the £3,000,000 worth in supplies in five equal parts: France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the ICRC. The latter would oversee Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe. The supplies were a gift but if the governments of these countries wanted to pay, it was deemed acceptable (by February 1946, the Dutch and Italian governments and the ICRC had accepted the gift but the Belgians had preferred to pay and the French had still not made their intentions

48 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4, Memorandum, conference held in the Department of Finance, 25 April 1945. 49 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4, ‘Memorandum for the Government: Relief in Europe’, by the Department of Finance, 26 April 1945. 50 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/20, Joseph Walshe, DEA, to L. Teclaff, Polish Vice Consul, Dublin, July 1948. 51 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/20, CAB 2.7, cabinet minutes, cabinet meeting, 27 April 1945.

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clear).52 There is no doubt that the £3,000,000 relief-scheme was a most generous gesture. Ireland was a country of limited means and placing the scheme in the overall state budget emphasises this generosity. After the war, it cost the government £50,510,217 (gross) to manage public services for one financial year. For example, primary education cost £4,334,532 (gross), child allowances £2,195,950 (gross) and the army £5,047,670 (gross).53 £3,000,000 was therefore a significant amount of money within an Irish context.

Motivations to aid Europe What had motivated the Irish government to go ahead with this relief operation? There are several factors. First, there can be no doubt that genuine humanitarianism lay at the centre of the decision. The government and the subsequent willingness of the people to participate show that the country was by no means indifferent or unaware of the surrounding distress, quite the contrary. There was a definite feeling of empathy, the roots of which lay in Ireland’s own history and its missionary tradition,54 when Irish clergy travelled throughout the British Empire and other parts of the world. A feeling of Christian solidarity and duty was a prime motivating factor in 1945, and it coincided with the hundredth anniversary of the Great Irish Famine. The symbolic aspect and direct connection with history were not to be underestimated. In fact, relief operations for foreign countries, albeit very limited, had been on the agenda during the end phase of the Irish Revolution (1912–22), Ireland’s struggle for independence against Britain. In September 1921, three months before the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty on 6 December which would lead to the official birth of the Irish Free State a year later, the Protestant (Church of Ireland) and nationalist historian Alice Stopford Green asked the people to answer the Pope’s recent appeal to donate to those suffering from famine in Russia. Agnes M. Carroll and Alice L. Franks welcomed Stopford Green’s plea and in a letter to the Irish Independent pointed out that the Irish Save the Children Fund (ISCF, Saor an Leanbh), which was affiliated to the Union internationale de Secours aux Enfants (Save the Children International Union, SCIU) based in Geneva, was already looking after that country. They wrote 52 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4, Shanagher (Supplies) to Walshe (DEA), containing memorandum entitled ‘Relief in Europe’, 7 February 1946. 53 Eire, 1946–47: Estimates for Public Services for the year ending 31st March 1947 (Dublin: Stationary Office, March 1946), x–xiii. The £3,000,000 for relief are mentioned in this volume, not in the one preceding it, Eire, 1945–46: Estimates for Public Services for the year ending 31st March, 1946 (Dublin, Stationary Office, March 1945), x–xiii. 54 Kevin O’Sullivan, ‘History and the development aid debate in the Republic of Ireland’, Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review, vol. 12 (Spring 2011): 110–123, in http://www.developmenteducationreview.com/issue12-perspectives6 (accessed on 9 April 2013).

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that 30,000 Russian children were ‘scattered over Europe’ and both women asked for gifts and money.55 Aid for Russia in the midst of a dreadful civil war after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 was being organised on a large scale in western countries. Millions of dollars were collected to feed millions of people. Involved were governments, national Red Cross societies, the Quakers, Herbert Hoover’s American Relief Administration (ARA), the Save the Children Fund and others.56 This appeal to donate to Russian children was even more remarkable considering that the War of Independence was not officially over yet and that in certain Irish regions food was scarce. But it came during the aftermath of the First World War when a ‘transformative moment’ in the long development of humanitarianism was taking place. The end of the war in 1918 did not mean the end of conflicts and human misery in Europe, and considerable humanitarian work remained to be done. But the war also engendered a strong longing for change and the assertion of the humanitarian rights of soldiers, civilians, refugees, wounded, and needy. Humanitarianism and relief operations undertaken by activists were becoming more and more transnational in their networks and their approach more and more scientific with medical personnel, social workers and so on. The general aim was the ‘pacification of the minds’ after the slaughtering between 1914 and 1918. The foundation of the Save the Children Fund in Britain in 1919 to assist starving children in Germany, Austria, and Russia and the subsequent transformation of the fund into the Save the Children International Union in 1920 was an expression of this transnational approach.57 The situation in Austria was extremely preoccupying, especially in the streets of Vienna. It went down in Austrian history as the Hungercatastrophe. In November 1920, the League of Nations organised an exhibition of art made by Viennese children in order to draw attention to their plight. It travelled to 40 cities and towns in Britain and Ireland and is said to have attracted over 200,000 visitors.58 In February 1922, the Irish Times announced that the ISCF was in possession of £25 for ‘the relief of distress among the children of Connemara’ (west of Ireland). Yet, it was now also running ‘an Irish kitchen, supported by Irish subscriptions, … in a famine district of Russia’ and £10 would be sent to Vienna ‘where food prices are still increasing’.59 Equally of note is that many Irishwomen played a leading part in relief operations. If after the First World War it was the historian Alice Stopford Green who tried to catch the public’s attention on distress on the European continent, it would 55 ‘Appeal for Russian Children’, Irish Independent, 3 September 1921 (INA). 56 Luke Kelly, British Humanitarian Activity in Russia, 1890–1923 (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 160–1, 163, 166, 185. 57 Cabanes, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918–1924, see Introduction, 1–17. 58 Patricia Clavin, ‘The Austrian hunger crisis and the genesis of international organization after the First World War’, International Affairs, 90:2 (2014): 265–78. 59 ‘Irish Save the Children Fund’, The Irish Times, 14 February 1922 (ITDA).

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be the historian Dorothy Macardle after the Second World War with her seminal study on the condition of continental children entitled Children of Europe, published in 1949.60 Relief operations constituted an opportunity for women to play an active role in the realm of decision-making dominated by men. Their involvement had been noticed by the Irish Independent in 1923.61 It must also be noted here that the Irish government had serious problems to solve, but not only of a political nature. In 1923 and 1924, the potato harvests failed because of incessant rainfall. The press predicted starvation on a large scale and several people in the west died of starvation or diseases related to it. The government was quick to point out that any comparison with the Great Famine of 1845–1850 was exaggerated and it downplayed the crisis, believing that a famine now would totally discredit the newly born Irish Free State. But the international press like the Manchester Guardian, the Boston Globe, and even the Soviet Pravda got hold of the story. Catholics in New York sent $25,000 to aid those who were suffering. Fortunately, the weather improved in 1925 and a very good harvest happened, avoiding a new famine tragedy.62 Yet, it was clear that the government feared a repetition of history and that food, or the lack of it, was not too far away from the minds of those in power. But this was a universal preoccupation and was not only limited to the situation in Ireland. The efforts of the ISCF did not leave politicians indifferent. In April 1922 in a letter to ISCF Secretary Hugh Law, Arthur Griffith, the president of the Dáil, announced a donation of £1,000: The Cabinet of Dáil Éireann sends herewith a cheque value £1,000 to Saor an Leanbh [ISCF] Committee to assist them in the work they are doing in relieving distress in the famine-stricken area in Russia. Ireland cannot remain unmoved by the knowledge of the terrible misery which afflicts so many millions of Russians. Our own history, marked as it is by recurrent famines, must necessarily make us only the more keenly alive to the call of humanity. We recognise that the claims of suffering humanity do not stop at National Frontiers, and now that we are at last taking possession of our own country and hope to make her future prosperous and happy, we know also that it is the duty of all peoples to assist each other in their hour of need. We feel sure that the appeal your Committee makes on behalf of the thirty-three millions who are affected by the present famine, and particularly for the children 60 See Macardle, Children of Europe. 61 ‘To save the Children: How Irishwomen assist’, Irish Independent, 8 February 1923 (INA). 62 ‘The forgotten famine and how it put the fledging Irish Free State on the brink’, by Peter Cunningham, The Irish Times, 9 April 2020, in https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/the-forgotten-famine-and-how-itput-the-fledging-irish-free-state-on-the-brink-1.4218048 (accessed on 10 April 2020).

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who are dying daily from starvation, will receive the whole-hearted support of the people of Ireland.63

Griffith’s letter is striking in several respects. It was written at a time when Irish nationalists were vehemently disagreeing among themselves about the validity of the recently signed Anglo-Irish Treaty, disagreements that would lead to the Civil War just two months later and which would end in May 1923. Yet, time was still found to focus on the international situation. But the letter also laid the foundations of what would later become a central element in Irish foreign policy, namely aid and relief operations. They were a way to officialise Ireland’s arrival on the international stage and to assert its identity. The Irish Independent had perfectly understood this. In February 1923, it opined: ‘The exhibition opened yesterday in the Mansion House [in Dublin] under the auspices of the Save the Children Fund is one which deserves the support and sympathy of all who want Ireland to be true to its early traditions and to be a European State.’64 The first very significant expression of this policy was about to take place in 1945. A second motivation, as clearly expressed by Walshe during the interdepartmental meeting of 27 March 1945, was of a more opportunistic nature, namely international publicity and avoiding political isolation after the war. That was why he advised intergovernmental negotiations and cooperation rather than work with UNRRA and the ICRC in which Ireland’s participation ran the risk of being diluted with the participation of other countries. As seen, this was also Sweden’s approach.65 Walshe’s thinking reflects highly political considerations and not only humanitarian concerns. He was following what his chief, Éamon de Valera, had recommended back in 1943 when the government had decided to send financial support, £100,000, to relieve famine in Bengal. De Valera had then not only been motivated by humanitarianism as a passage in a letter to Finance Minister Seán T. O’Kelly reveals: [We will send £100,000 to Bengal] to show that we are not unmindful of the misery in the world around us from which we have been so far providentially saved … An effort will be made to isolate us in the post war period… This seems to me to be an excellent opportunity to break through the net.66

63 Documents on Irish Foreign Policy, no 274, NAI DE 2/269, Griffith to Law, 10 April 1922, in http:// www.difp.ie/docs/Volume1/1922/274.htm (accessed on 4 July 2013). 64 ‘Save the Children’, Irish Independent, 8 February 1923 (INA). 65 Nehlin, Exporting visions and saving children, 47. 66 McCullagh, De Valera, Vol. II, 259–60.

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However, as will be seen in the following chapter this sort of political consideration was not a motivating factor among the Irish people. Third, there was external pressure. Ireland could simply not be seen to do nothing after the devastations and horrors of the war. This would have meant it becoming even more isolated than it already was and expose it to Allied criticism, be it from governments or populations. Fourth, there was neutral peer pressure. As previously explained, Switzerland, Sweden, Spain and the Holy See had undertaken relief efforts and de Valera’s government was aware of this. On 31 October 1944, the DEA received a coded telegram from the Irish chargé d’affaires in Berne, Francis T. Cremins. He informed Dublin about the creation of the Don Suisse, which was ‘a great popular national gesture’ to help others in distress. The Swiss Federal Council would cooperate with cantons, communes, private companies and the citizens, and the total money raised might reach about 200 million Swiss francs. But that was not all. He added that foreign children would be hospitalised in Switzerland and that Swiss medical teams and canteens would be sent abroad.67 On 25 April 1945, Cremins reported on the progress made by the Don Suisse. 9,000 tons of food and industrial equipment had been distributed, especially in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Nine Swiss medical teams were currently involved in relief work. He stressed that it was most important to send equipment to these countries to get the people back to work and avoid demoralisation. To his mind, Ireland had to follow the Swiss example and Max Petitpierre, the head of Swiss foreign policy, had told him that he was pessimistic concerning the situation in Europe in the coming winter. Cremins added that ‘the political and other dangers of this are obvious’.68 Indeed, if discontent and despair spread, some people could turn towards communism and others hang on to their Nazi beliefs. The DEA was also in possession of documents relating to Swedish and even Spanish relief efforts. Back in September 1944, Leopold Kerney, the Irish minister in Madrid, commented on Spanish aid to Belgium that ‘if such assistance is rendered now, the incentive may be political as much if not more than humanitarian’.69 At this stage of the war, Franco’s sympathies for Hitler and Mussolini needed to be quietly and quickly forgotten as the western Allies and the Soviets were about to invade Germany. Fifth, for many Irishmen and women, relief work would stress neutrality’s ‘human and political value’.70 Small, neutral nations would show what they could 67 NAI, DFA, 6/419/24, ‘Decode of Ordinary Code telegrams sent from Berne at 15.26 on 30/10/44. Received in Registry 31/10/44’/ 68 NAI, DFA, 6/419/24, Cremins to Walshe, 25 April 1945. 69 NAI, DFA, 6/419/24, ‘Extract from “Swedish News” for November, 1944’ & Spain’s relief efforts for Belgium, Kerney to Walshe, 30 September 1944. 70 O’Driscoll, ‘We are trying to do our share’, 24.

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do in a world dominated by rival great powers often at war. Sixth, de Valera did not agree with the Allies’ (initial) tough policy regarding Germany and the suffering of that country. For him, this was unacceptable and Irish humanitarian aid would be neutral, Germany deserving aid just as other continental countries did. He ‘interpreted World War Two as the outcome of vindictive peacemaking against Germany after the Great War. This was consistent with his interwar posture’.71 Finally, could it be argued that one of de Valera’s chief reasons to initiate relief operations was a way to make up for his handshake debacle? The answer is no as the Irish government had unsuccessfully tried to send relief to Greece and had succeeded to send small quantities of supplies to Spain and the Vatican. Also, the government through its Interdepartmental Relief Committee had just taken the decision to implement the £3,000,000 relief scheme. All these events happened before de Valera paid his infamous visit to Hempel to extend his sympathy on Hitler’s death. Yet, as explained in chapter one, it might well be that the international outrage it caused made his government more determined to be involved in relief operations, but no documents have been found to substantiate this.

18 May 1945: Dáil adopts relief scheme Now that the government had taken its decision, it had to be presented by the Taoiseach to the Dáil for approval. De Valera did so on 18 May 1945. He began by reminding the deputies of the desperate conditions prevailing in Europe and said that he was ‘reliably informed that the danger of even more widespread distress and famine is very grave indeed’ and that the United States, Britain, and other countries of ‘the United Nations group’ were ‘beginning to put their large-scale [relief] plans into operation’. He added that the task ahead was immense and mentioned that ‘two of the neutral states, Sweden and Switzerland, especially are playing a large part in relieving the people of the neighbouring countries’.72 His opening statement was well thought out. Although the Dáil was about to take a democratic decision in favour or against relief, it was clear that Ireland could simply not stand idly by, hence his references to other neutral countries. He gave a short summary of past attempts at relief during the war and explained that an ‘Irish hospital unit’ was about to be set up in France. Visibly, the Irish had decided to adopt the same approach as the Swiss in providing medical teams although their assistance would be focused on one location only. 71 O’Driscoll, ‘We are trying to do our share’, 24. 72 Dáil Éireann, Dáil Éireann Debate, Vol. 97, No. 7, ‘Committee on Finance. Statement by the Taoiseach: Distress in Europe’, 18 May 1945, in http://debates.oireachtas.ie/dail/1945/05/18/00007.asp (accessed on 27 November 2014).

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De Valera outlined the £3,000,000 (approximately €126,000,000) relief scheme but explained that transport had to be provided from abroad. He added: ‘It will involve a reduction in our ration of some commodities, but the sacrifice involved will, I am sure, be readily accepted by our people to help fellow-beings in dire distress’.73 He was proceeding along the recommendations of the Interdepartmental Relief Committee. He then broached the issue of the IRCS’s role in the future operations and of citizens’ efforts, again basing himself on the committee’s recommendations. Private and charitable organisations had already approached the government with a view of collecting and exporting relief supplies, but it was necessary to set some limit to the quantities to be exported and to undertake efforts in order to avoid disorganisation and waste. The IRCS should coordinate activities initiated by private organisations.74 De Valera presented the list of supplies that would be available from May to December 1945. It was long and rather impressive. There were 20,000 head of cattle (in 1947, there were 1,166,000 in the country75), 1,500 draft horses, over 800 tons of bacon, over 45 tons of canned meat, over 1,000 tons of butter, over 50 tons of dried milk, over 250 tons of condensed milk, over 250 tons of cheese, over 10,000 tons of sugar, 100,000 blankets, over 45 tons of textiles, 50 tons of groats and barley for baby foods, and 500 stoves, cookers, and field kitchens. De Valera reiterated that transport was ‘the real difficulty’.76 The deputies were now invited to react. The first one to speak was Dr Thomas O’Higgins of Fine Gael, the great rival party of de Valera’s Fianna Fáil. He began by saying that Ireland had been lucky to escape the war: ‘It is true to say that, comparatively speaking, we have been living on the fat of the land in the lap of luxury while the world was undergoing torture’. He believed that the population would not be opposed to rationing measures ‘provided our rationing results in equal treatment’ and concluded: ‘On behalf of this Party, I welcome the proposals and, if we are asked to co-operate or assist in any way in the effort, we shall gladly do so’. Joseph Blowick, the leader of Clann na Talmhan (Agrarian party), agreed and reminded his fellow-parliamentarians of the Great Famine: ‘Almost 100 years ago, we, in this country, experienced something similar to what many countries in Europe are undergoing now’. He felt confident that ‘everybody, rich and poor, and particularly the poor, will welcome this gesture, and will be prepared to make any little sacrifice

73 Dáil Éireann, Dáil Éireann Debate, ‘Committee on Finance. Statement by the Taoiseach: Distress in Europe’. 74 Dáil Éireann, Dáil Éireann Debate, ‘Committee on Finance. Statement by the Taoiseach: Distress in Europe’. 75 Lee, Ireland 1912–1985, 302. 76 Dáil Éireann, Dáil Éireann Debate, ‘Committee on Finance. Statement by the Taoiseach: Distress in Europe’.

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or contribution that may be necessary’.77 Blowick was not mistaken here. William Norton, the leader of the Labour Party, stood up to speak next. He was fully confident that the people would support the government’s initiative and said that ‘even on the meagre newspaper information which is available to-day, it must be obvious to all that the position in Europe from the point of view of availability of foodstuffs is truly appalling to-day’. The conclusion of Norton’s speech was marked by a strong Christian ethos and a prediction that there would be a strong identification between those in need in Ireland and those on the continent: ‘I feel sure that those who have least here will strive to give most in the effort to make an adequate contribution to the relief of the sufferings which are being endured by the people of Europe. By our action in this matter, we again demonstrate to the world the sense of Christian values which inspire our people to-day, just as we did when our missionaries brought light and knowledge to a dark Europe in the generations which have now passed from us.’78 Norton had correctly discerned that Christian solidarity and a feeling of empathy would be prime movers. James Dillon was the last to speak. A gifted politician with superb oratorical skills, he was now an independent deputy after his open disagreement with his former party, Fine Gael, over the policy of neutrality which he had strongly opposed as he had deemed that Ireland should fight alongside the Allies. He had called Nazism ‘the devil himself, with 20th century efficiency’. Dillon’s stance had attracted much criticism from all parties in the Dáil at the time, but also outside it. Hempel, the German minister, had complained to de Valera and had called him a ‘German hater’ and even a ‘Jew’.79 The last remark was revealing of Hempel’s political opinions. Dillon wholeheartedly agreed with the proposed relief plan and declared: The whole world, emerging from the maelstrom of war and the hatreds engendered by war, may be misled into forgetting that all men are our neighbours, and that a hungry German is as much deserving of pity as a hungry Pole, and that if a woman or her children are afflicted in the territory of the Reich, they are as much a charge upon our charity and love as would be an oppressed and afflicted person in Poland, Holland, Belgium, Denmark or Norway. I trust that the spirit of charity and duty, which I believe moves every Deputy in this House is but a reflection of the spirit which will move those responsible for the executive task of relieving suffering in Europe.80 77 Dáil Éireann, Dáil Éireann Debate, ‘Committee on Finance. Statement by the Taoiseach: Distress in Europe’. 78 Dáil Éireann, Dáil Éireann Debate, ‘Committee on Finance. Statement by the Taoiseach: Distress in Europe’. 79 Maurice Manning, James Dillon: A Biography (Dublin: Wolfhound Press, 2000), 160, 162, 165–77,. 80 Dáil Éireann, Dáil Éireann Debate, Vol. 97, No. 7, ‘Committee on Finance. Statement by the Taoiseach: Distress in Europe’.

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This was an important statement. Dillon was a conservative Catholic, proud of Ireland’s Catholic identity, and who believed that the Church’s teachings should be respected.81 His words reflected Christian charity or what Didier Fassin has eloquently described as believing ‘in a concept of humanity which presupposes that all human beings are of equal value because they belong to one moral community’.82 It would be Ireland’s approach to relief in Europe, making no distinction between victors and vanquished and caring for all. In that sense, the country was closer to the ICRC than to UNRRA which would not look after the German population.83 But that Ireland had chosen to care for all would not always be understood by some on the continent who believed that the Germans by their crimes were no longer part of that moral community, at least for the time being. De Valera was grateful and declared: ‘I should like to say that I am not surprised at the way in which the offer has been received from all sides of the House. It is exactly what I expected. Of course, at best, I am sorry to say that what we will be able to do will be only a drop in the ocean’.84 He was right. The response of the people’s representatives had been a farsighted and generous one; in fact, it was a continuation of what Griffith had outlined in April 1922 only this time it was going to be far more important in scope. But de Valera was also right when he used the image of ‘a drop in the ocean’. Ireland did simply not have the means to feed and clothe Europe. The only ones that could do so on a large scale were the North Americans. It is no use whatsoever to compare Ireland’s efforts to those of the United States. Like Sweden and Switzerland, Ireland would do what it could do, and its resources and coffers were not as important as those of its two fellow neutrals. But if it was going to be ‘only a drop in the ocean’, it was going to be a drop that would make a huge difference when Irish bacon was given to German children queuing up in a ruined schoolyard or when Irish blankets were distributed to Polish families living in the dugouts and cellars in what was once Warsaw. Strikingly, the Swiss diplomat Philippe Zutter used the same image of ‘only a drop in the ocean’ when the issue of further Swiss aid for Germany was discussed in 1950. But he added that ‘this argument shows inertia and selfishness. Because even if we cannot help everyone, it cannot mean not helping anyone’.85 It is in this light that de Valera’s statement of five years earlier should be read. 81 Manning, James Dillon, 128–9, 153–4. 82 Didier Fassin, Humanitarian Reason: A Moral History of the Present (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2012), 252. 83 Crossland, Britain and the International Committee of the Red Cross, 1939–1945, 184. 84 Dáil Éireann, Dáil Éireann Debate, Vol. 97, No. 7, ‘Committee on Finance. Statement by the Taoiseach: Distress in Europe’, 18 May 1945, in http://debates.oireachtas.ie/dail/1945/05/18/00007.asp (accessed on 27 November 2014). 85 Haunfelder, Schweizer Hilfe für Deutschland 1917–1933 und 1944–1957, 13–14.

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The press unanimously welcomed the Taoiseach’s statement. The Irish Times wrote that the entire people would support him, and that Ireland had enough supplies. It also endorsed Dillon’s statement that the vanquished Germans should not be forgotten and criticised the Americans’ vengeful attitude: ‘It is right that [the Germans] should be punished for their sheep-like acquiescence in their leader’s crimes. It is not right that their children, innocent of any guilt, should be allowed to go hungry’.86 Besides the moral truth contained in these words, there was also another implicit pertinent truth: children were the generations of the future and if Germany and Europe at large wanted a brighter future, they should be looked after. The Irish Independent concurred with the Irish Times regarding the sharing of supplies: ‘Almost a hundred years ago, a famine-stricken Ireland welcomed the relief which came to her from the peoples of Europe’. Even if it had not been the case, it continued, ‘the call of humanity and Christian charity would require that Eire should stint herself the necessities of life in order to help in some measure to relieve the sufferings of Europe’.87 The Nenagh Guardian (local) appealed to the people’s generosity and asked farmers to ‘produce the maximum food supply from our yet fertile fields’.88 The Cork Examiner (regional) devoted a large article to de Valera’s statement entitled ‘Three million pounds worth of food from Eire’.89 Norton had correctly spoken about ‘meagre newspaper information’ on the state of Europe. But more information was now reaching Irish readers as censorship was ended. Titles and articles left no doubt at all about the seriousness of the European situation. The Irish Press published ‘Europe’s huge food needs’, the Cork Examiner ‘10,000 died of hunger in Amsterdam’, the Evening Herald ‘Food from sawdust’ and the Irish Independent ‘Refugees stream into Berlin’.90 In June, the Irish Times reported that Pius XII was deeply impressed by Catholic Ireland’s generosity for the distressed continent.91

Concluding remarks The Irish government was ready to help devastated Europe. But, like other neutrals, its motivation was not entirely altruistic and included political considerations. In 1943, de Valera had anticipated what the postwar situation would be like ‘A welcome gesture’, The Irish Times, 19 May 1945 (ITDA). ‘Irish relief for Europe’, Irish Independent, 19 May 1945 (INA). ‘Generous Ireland’, Nenagh Guardian, 26 May 1945 (INA). ‘Three million pounds worth of food from Eire’, Cork Examiner, 19 May 1945 (INA). ‘Europe’s huge food needs’, Irish Press, 7 May 1945 (INA), ‘10,000 died of hunger in Amsterdam’, Cork Examiner, 12 May 1945 (INA), ‘Food from sawdust’, Evening Herald, 11 June 1945 (INA) & ‘Refugees stream into Berlin’, Irish Independent, 30 August 1945 (INA). 91 ‘The Pope’s views on Ireland’, The Irish Times, 23 June 1945 (ITDA). 86 87 88 89 90

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and that Ireland might be in the international limelight, and not necessarily portrayed favourably. The best way to deflect unwanted attention was to show that the country could be very useful in seriously needed relief operations on the continent that nobody would oppose on account of the country’s position during the war. Previous attempts at aid had not been always successful owing to Ireland’s remote geographical location and limited logistical means but also to the peculiar approach to humanitarianism taken by the British government, namely ‘victory before relief ’ and which, according to de Valera, had contributed to limiting Ireland’s actions. Back in the early 1920s, the fledgling Irish Free State showed its concern for international humanitarian crises, but it was not translated into systematic pro-active governmental aid policy. It was up to the few voluntary organisations like the Irish Save the Children Fund to take the initiative. Essentially, the government remained reactive to events as shown during the Second World War. The postwar period would continue to see the government react to events and demands but would be different in that the nation would become greatly involved. Records prove that the decision to offer aid was unanimously approved. James Dillon’s speech in the Dáil in May 1945 set the tone: hungry mouths had no nationality. Ireland shared with the ICRC its vision of universal care best expressed in this saying of the ICRC: ‘I am blind to the uniform you wear, and see only your wound, that I may tend it. I am deaf to the language you speak, and hear only your cry, that I might bring you comfort. I know not who you are; I only know your distress’. The ICRC’s utopian approach had never been completely accepted by the belligerents, especially Britain.92 But it suited Ireland’s neutrality and spirit of independence, although, as will be shown, politics would interfere in the Irish government’s attitude to relief in Central and Eastern Europe where the Soviets gradually imposed their communist ideology. For the moment, it remained to be seen how the country at large would react to the government’s decision to begin relief operations. De Valera and Dillon were not going to be disappointed.

92 Crossland, Britain and the International Committee of the Red Cross, 97, 184.

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Chapter Three

Reaction and Organisation

Once Éamon de Valera had made his statement on relief in Dáil Éireann on 18 May 1945, it became a question of how firms, factories, farms, charities, voluntary organisations, and the Irish people would react. But that question would lead to many others. How would aid be organised? Who would be involved? Who would pay for related expenses? How would the supplies be centralised? How would they be transported to the storage facilities? What storage facilities were available? Who would transport the supplies to the continent? And why did people give? Feelings of generosity needed to be channelled into practical organisation and aid. Some moralising contests took place between those who agreed with sending supplies abroad and those who did not. But the desire to help was generally very strong throughout the country, embracing all walks of life, all professions, young and old, charities, and Churches. Enthusiasm and determination led to unexpected schemes like Cork adopting Cologne or groups of workers and schoolchildren organising money collections and fundraising events. Some individuals left for the continent to help, among them many women. What were their reasons for doing so? Surprisingly, the private sending of food parcels to continental friends by Irish citizens was at first not allowed by the government. But Irishmen and women who had been trapped in France and Belgium during the war could expect some aid from Dublin.

Administration and management The people in charge of running the relief scheme were the Interdepartmental Relief Committee, which met every so often. Generally, a meeting consisted of representatives of the Departments of Finance, Industry and Commerce, Supplies (when still in existence), Agriculture, and External Affairs. The Departments of Defence and Local Government and Public Health occasionally participated. Industry and Commerce, Supplies, Agriculture, and Finance were responsible for mainly paperwork and for deciding what could be exported and in what quantities. Great care

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needed to be taken that the export of supplies would not disrupt the national economy. The Department of External Affairs (DEA) looked after liaising with foreign governments, organisations and institutions involved in charity and relief works like the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Geneva. Foreign and ICRC delegations arriving in Dublin for negotiations would meet the committee. All departments needed to have their fingers on the pulse of the country and be fully aware of the latest international developments. What about shipment? Although Ireland was an island it would have been problematic to describe it as a seafaring nation, bearing in mind that the size of its mercantile fleet was more than limited. In 1953, the Italian legation in Dublin would even bluntly remark: ‘There is no Irish merchant navy because one cannot call navy a tonnage that is inferior to Switzerland’s . . . [and] almost everything is transported by English shipowners’.1 It was all well and good if supplies were available, but how would they reach those for whom they were intended? In July 1945, the Irish Press gave the answer: ‘The French, Italian, Belgian and Dutch governments had accepted the offer [of relief] and had assured that the necessary shipping would be forthcoming with the least possible delay’.2 However, that was not to say that no Irish ships were involved. Some were, as will become apparent in the following chapters. In October, the same newspaper reported that the Irish Cedar was about to transport 2,000 tons of foodstuffs to Naples. In fact, she was formerly known as the Caterina Gerolomich and was Italian. During the war, she had been acquired by Irish Shipping Ltd. and now would be returned to her previous owners. Two thirds of the crew, including the captain, were Italian.3 Generally, shipment of supplies from Ireland to the continent was satisfactorily organised with only few real difficulties. As far as financial arrangements were concerned, the Interdepartmental Relief Committee decided on 30 July that all expenses regarding goods that were offered to the ICRC should be paid for by the Irish government. Insurance costs for shipments would also be borne by the government. Expenditure needed to be accounted for and the Department of Supplies would pay the bills for foodstuffs and the Department of Agriculture would check. The committee felt that ‘any goods sent out and not paid for by the end of the year should be charged to the special Vote for relief purposes [£3,000,000 scheme] and any repayment that might be received afterwards would be brought to credit’. Belgium, for instance, preferred to pay for 1 Archivio Storico Diplomatico (Historic Diplomatic Archives of the Italian Foreign Ministry), Rome, affari politici 1950–57, Irlanda 1953, busta 230, ‘Estrato dal rapporto 1633/518 in data 16 settembre 1953 del Ministro d’Italia in Dublino’. 2 ‘Four nations accept Irish aid’, Irish Press, 20 July 1945 (INA). 3 ‘Relief cargo for Italy’, Irish Press, 29 October 1945 (INA).

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the supplies.4 These were generous financial decisions. If the government had spoken first, now the country had to react and reactions were not long in coming.

The Irish Red Cross Society One voluntary organisation that had already been active in humanitarian aid during the war was the Irish Red Cross Society (IRCS), set up in 1939. The explanation as to why it was set up only so recently has to do with Anglo-Irish history. The International Committee for Relief to the Wounded, renamed International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in 1876, was created in 1863. The following year, the first Geneva Convention was signed by sixteen European countries. The British government was rather reluctant to join the new humanitarian organisation as it was not convinced of its advantages and as it believed that it was already well equipped to look after its wounded soldiers. Also, it felt that the society would attract amateurs and adventurers. Its relations with the ICRC would remain rather problematic and as seen in chapter one, even tense during the Second World War. Yet, the landed and middle classes were interested in developing humanitarian activities. In 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War, the British National Society for Aid to the Sick and Wounded in War was founded, renamed British Red Cross (BRC) in 1905. The British public donated generously as £300,000 were collected by the end of the war in May 1871.5 This meant that volunteers in Ireland participated in the activities of the BRC until the creation of the Irish Free State in 1921– 22. A vacuum existed until Ireland signed a new Geneva Convention in 1929. Then it became a necessity to set up a national society in the country. On 1 July 1939, the IRCS was officially established with the approval of de Valera’s government. Its three main objectives were to look after wounded or sick soldiers, to provide relief to prisoners of war, and to assist people in need during war or peace, wherever that might be.6 It turned out that the IRCS had been created just in time as a mere two months later, the Second World War broke out. It was thus on a learning curve with no tested organisational experience when the greatest conflict in human history began. On 5 September, four days after the Wehrmacht had invaded Poland, Minister for Defence Frank Aiken made an inaugural speech in Dublin in which he said that ‘Europe is engaged in an awful holocaust…’ At that point in time, he could not have known how appropriate the word ‘holocaust’ would be. He declared that the IRCS 4 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4, ‘Relief for Europe’, meeting on 30 July 1945. 5 Crossland, Britain and the International Committee of the Red Cross, see Chapter One “Britain and the Red Cross, 1864–1929, 15–36. 6 Lehane, A History of the Irish Red Cross, 46–7.

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would have ‘very valuable work to do’ for all those affected by the war and hoped that ‘in every town in Ireland [the IRCS] will have an efficient first aid society . . .’ The ICRC recognised the IRCS on 2 November.7 The IRCS acquitted itself honourably during the war years, all the more bearing in mind its young age and the fact that it was located on the periphery of Europe. Unlike its Swiss or Swedish counterparts, it was far removed from the theatre of operations and was not involved in organising relief operations on the continent or acting as an intermediary between the belligerents. It was also not obvious to develop regular and strong ties with the headquarters of the International Red Cross in Geneva, but this would happen immediately after the war. Instead, it was active at home and took various initiatives in favour of war victims. A few examples will suffice to demonstrate the IRCS’s full commitment to its humanitarian mission. In 1940, it provided £2,000 to the Finish Red Cross. In 1941, it donated £1,000 for the victims of the Luftwaffe’s raids on Belfast. In 1942, it organised food parcels for Serbian prisoners of war detained in Germany and Italy for a value of £700. In 1943, food and clothes were shipped for refugees in Spain for an amount of £10,000. In 1944, £5,000 were collected for relief operations in Greece, Croatia, and Albania. Finally, in 1945, £796 were sent to German internees waiting for their repatriation. In all, the IRCS spent a total of £306,361 between 1940 and 1945.8 The importance of the sum indicates that there was an awareness of the gravity of the situation among the people who donated and that the IRCS had been successful in initiating the right kind of fundraising activities. As will be seen in the following chapters, it was going to operate as a middleman between the ICRC in Geneva and the Irish government concerning donations and supplies destined notably for Central and Eastern Europe. But there were going to be postwar difficulties, not least of a financial nature, but also in its relations with the government.

Firms, factories, and farms react Firms, factories, and farms responded immediately to the call for relief in Europe. The Cork Farmers Union wrote to the DEA to express ‘its desire to co-operate in making the Scheme a complete success’. It described the scheme as ‘very laudable’ and put at the government’s disposal its long experience of purchasing fat cattle throughout the province of Munster.9 Hodges and Sons Limited, ironmongers in Dublin, asked the DEA for more details about the goods to be supplied to the continent.10 7 8 9 10

Lehane, A History of the Irish Red Cross, 50–1. Lehane, A History of the Irish Red Cross, 279–80. NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/1, Cork Farmers Union to DEA, 22 May 1945. NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/1, Hodges to DEA, 25 May 1945.

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Sheridan Brothers, coal importers and shipbrokers also from Dublin, made a most useful proposal: ‘It is with the greatest pleasure that we place at An Taoiseach’s disposal, free of charge, some of our horse transport for the conveyance of goods from the Rail and Canal termini at Dublin to whatever vessels that are nominated for loading at this Port and for a period of say two to three weeks.’11 In County Mayo in the west of Ireland, the Castlebar Bacon Company Ltd. phoned the DEA to organise the expedition of supplies: ‘We note the instructions, and accordingly informed our Chairman who resides in London, who is to immediately get in touch with the Dutch Government who will send in a request of their requirements through Mr. Dulanty your High Commissioner in London. Our chairman has promised to do everything possible with the Dutch Government re the transport of the goods so kindly offered by your Government for this deserving cause.’12 This helped the government in its planning as it sped things up and avoided an extreme centralisation of decision-making which would have led to unnecessary delays. The Dutch would eventually send their ship. The Waterford Chamber of Commerce informed de Valera of its most recent resolution: ‘That we assure the Government of our support in any steps which they may take in giving help to the distressed areas of Europe’.13 M. J. Boylan & Co., leather factories in Dublin, had rubber half soles and heels at the disposal of the relief scheme and first approached the IRCS which, in turn, referred Boylan to the DEA. It informed Joseph Walshe that it had a ‘schedule indicating quantities and prices of goods available’ and that the Department of Industry and Commerce had told the company that it was ‘prepared to grant an Export Licence for them’,14 such a licence being a compulsory administrative requirement. Rubber soles would be of much use. Many adults and children on the continent had no more shoes worthy of the name and primitive replacements had been invented that badly damaged their feet, those of the young especially. Frans Lint, a Dutch boy who was sent abroad for a convalescence period, remembered: ‘I went to Sweden with a pair of these klompkleppers, small wooden planks with a strap around them. They caused much pain’.15 The Dublin Port and Docks Board declared that ‘the Customs House Dockmaster of the Board would be able to accommodate the Irish Red Cross Society, free of charge, in connection with goods which they were assembling for export to the Continent’.16 Storage facilities were going to be quickly necessary 11 12 13 14 15 16

NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/1, Sheridan Brothers to DEA, 23 May 1945. NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/1, Castlebar Bacon Company Ltd. to DEA, 25 May 1945. NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/1, Waterford Chamber of Commerce to Taoiseach, 24 May 1945. NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/1, 6/419/4, Boylan to DEA, 14 August 1945. Sintemaartensdijk, De Bleekneusjes van 1945, 212. ‘Free storage for Red Cross goods’, The Irish Times, 25 May 1945 (ITDA).

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as firms and people began to send their goods. Sunbeam Wolsey factory in Cork sent to Dublin ‘a consignment of 24,000 sets of women’s and children’s woollen underwear…’17 On 14 March, 1946, a large consignment of bacon, 3,202 cwt (hundredweights, approximately 162,341 kilos), was sent to France by Palgrave Murphy Ltd. The amount of money the government had to pay was £35,000. Sixteen curers were involved, and their location in the country indicates that it was a nationwide operation.18 Aer Lingus, the Irish national airline, put at the IRCS’s disposal Collinstown Airport ballroom for a dance at which £400 was raised for relief.19

People and charities react There had been previous large-scale popular participation in relief activities in Ireland although mainly for soldiers. During the First World War, thousands of Irishwomen had done voluntary work to improve the living conditions of soldiers. The activities ranged from knitting socks and mufflers in the Central Red Cross Workrooms in Dublin to collecting money for setting up a hospital in France or looking after servicemen. According to the Belfast Citizens’ Committee, ‘Tens of thousands [of women] in the quiet of their homes, worked incessantly for the men at the front’.20 After the Second World War, there was a similar scenario and many women may well have remembered the situation during the First World War. This time though civilians were going to be the main beneficiaries. The Irish were largely behind the relief scheme by supporting the government, donating to the IRCS, St. Vincent de Paul Society, the Quakers, and other charities or organising fundraising activities themselves. Many believed that great powers were responsible for the outbreak of wars and were thus to blame for the misery of the ordinary people.21 Time had come to give a big helping hand. The St. Vincent de Paul Society decided to collect money to aid its continental counterpart and its initiative had received a ‘most heartening response’. By 19 July 1946, £5,700 had been collected.22 In Castlecomer in County Kilkenny, its members organised ‘a house-to-house collection … to alleviate our suffering fellow-Christians in Europe’.23 It cooperated with the IRCS.24 ‘Cork woollen goods for Europe’, Irish Independent, 16 October 1945 (INA). NAI, INDC, EMR 18/4, European Relief Scheme, Bacon exported to France on 14th March, 1946. ‘Co. Dublin ‘s Red Cross social work’, Irish Press, 23 August 1946 (INA). Jeffery, Ireland and the Great War, 33. Mervyn O’Driscoll, ‘Die Stunde Null: Appraising Irish relief to post war Germany’, in Claire O’Reilly and Veronica Regan, eds., Ireland and the Irish in Germany-reception and perception (Baden Baden: Nomos, 2015), 72. 22 ‘Society’s aid for children in Europe’, Irish Independent, 19 July 1946 (INA). 23 Castlecomer notes’, Kilkenny People, 12 January 1946 (INA). 24 ‘Co. Dublin’s Red Cross social work’, Irish Press, 23 August 1946 (INA). 17 18 19 20 21

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A few days before de Valera made his statement in the Dáil, the IRCS had made a public appeal for financial donations, setting an ambitious target at £500,000. The money raised would be used for an anti-tuberculosis campaign at home and relief on the continent.25 A hurling match between Counties Galway and Clare was organised for this purpose.26 Ceann Comhairle (speaker of the Dáil) Frank Fahy travelled to Tralee in the south-west of the country to persuade people to help the IRCS: ‘…in the name of Christian charity, and the brotherhood of man, I appeal for generous support for the Red Cross Funds’. The Kerryman published a photograph of the occasion, showing Fahy and other personalities, notably several members of the clergy.27 In Tramore in County Waterford, a Festival Red Cross Dance was organised in the Atlantic Dance Hall by the £500,000-Drive Committee. It was stated in the Munster Express: ‘Tell your friends about it and come yourself is the exhortation of the hard-working committee.’28 In the north of the country, the IRCS in County Donegal was satisfied. 200 woollen garments had been sent to headquarters for shipping. Clothes were collected in Ballybofey-Stranorlar and ‘the response was very satisfying’. The Lifford IRCS branch reported that potatoes were being collected but that the IRCS in Dublin did not want them anymore as half of them were rotting in the docks. Although it was not explained why, it would seem that there were difficulties in having the potatoes shipped immediately. Eventually, the British government took the remaining potatoes to feed Dutch children. The IRCS branches in County Donegal had set themselves the target of collecting £13,500 and had been given over £12,000 so far.29 The St. John Ambulance Brigade donated a mobile canteen to the IRCS and received a letter of thanks from the ICRC in Geneva, stating that it ‘would be most useful in any large and devastated city of Central Europe’.30 Three greyhound racing meetings in aid of the IRCS’s £500,000 drive were organised in Dublin. Maurice Chevan, an ICRC official who was currently in the city for talks with the government, expressed his gratitude to the management and the patrons of Shelbourne Park Greyhound Racing Track.31 In Charleville in the south of the country, people knitted woollen garments and the local IRCS branch collected £163. It had previously already collected £92.32 To help Red Cross fund’, Irish Independent, 16 May 1945 (INA). ‘To aid the Red Cross’, Connacht Tribune, 12 May 1945 (INA). ‘Kerry asked to help Red Cross in great work’, Kerryman, 9 June 1945 (INA). Red Cross festival dance’, Munster Express, 22 June 1945 (INA). ‘Irish Red Cross; Co. Donegal Committee’, Donegal News, 26 January 1946 (INA). ‘Useful gift to Red Cross’, The Irish Times, 17 January 1946 (ITDA). ‘Greyhound racing: Shelbourne Park results’ & ‘Greyhound racing: Meeting in aid of Irish Red Cross Society’, Irish Press, respectively 29 November 1945 & 1 December 1945 (INA). 32 ‘Charleville gifts’, Limerick Leader, 5 January 1946 (INA). 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

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The diocese of Limerick contributed £5,100 to the Pope’s appeal in favour of distressed children by the war.33 In Ballyporreen in County Tipperary, Fr O’Gorman congratulated ‘the parishioners, in general, on their generosity in subscribing towards the relief of starving Europe’.34 Schools were active in raising funds. The pupils of the Christian Brothers’ schools in the country had recently raised £235 for the Junior Red Cross (children/teenagers branch of the IRCS) for schools hit by the war. The amount they had now collected was £1,000 and it was sent to Pius XII.35 Avoca School in Blackrock in County Dublin raised £62.36 Alexandra College (Protestant) in Dublin organised a fundraising fête which included displays of ‘country dances, drawings and paintings by the students, and examples of the work of the cookery and needlework classes’.37 The Epworth Choral Society was to give a concert in the Magdalen Church (Church of Ireland/Protestant) in Lower Leeson Street in Dublin, the proceeds of which would be forwarded to aid in Europe.38 It was the same in Mullingar where a concert was organised to raise funds for the IRCS. The County Hall was booked out on the occasion.39 In Galway, the Labour Exchange Staff decided ‘to subscribe one shilling a week out of their pay, and a raffle is held for 10s. [shillings] of the amount. The balance goes to a fund for relief abroad’.40 The County Dublin Beekeepers’ Association ‘issued circular letters to various people, including schools, asking them to provide honey or money. The response was generous, and it was hoped to reach the goal of 100,000 pounds. The honey would be handed over to the Red Cross who would see to its distribution in Europe without distinction of class or creed.’41 In April 1946, one reader wrote to the Irish Independent: ‘I decided that by surrendering my butter ration I could salve my conscience to some extent, and accordingly have forwarded last week’s ration to the Red Cross Society for European relief.’ The reader urged others to do the same during Holy Week. But Martin J. McNamara, the IRCS secretary, while appreciating the beauty of the gesture, advised against it. He explained that the idea was ‘not practicable, as all food supplies had to be sent under the Government scheme, for which an allocation of £3,000,000 was made last year. The [IRCS] was not permitted under the regulations 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

‘Things that matter’, Limerick Leader, 6 May 1946 (INA). ‘Mitchelstown mirror’, Kerryman, 15 June 1946 (INA). ‘Pupils raise £1,000 for Europe’. Irish Independent, 19 September 1946 (INA). ‘Avoca School, Blackrock’, The Irish Times, 15 June 1945 (ITDA). ‘Alexandra College fete’, The Irish Times, 29 June 1945 (ITDA). ‘Irish news in brief ’, The Irish Times, 26 February 1946 (ITDA). ‘Mullingar Red Cross Concert’, Westmeath Examiner, 5 April 1947 (INA). ‘Galway scheme for European relief ’, The Irish Times, 11 January 1947 (ITDA). ‘Honey for relief in Europe’, Cork Examiner, 9 July 1945 (INA).

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to send additional supplies.’ McNamara reminded that in 1945, 2,250,000 pounds of butter had been sent to the continent. There was another difficulty, logistics: ‘In addition to the problems of collecting and packing the rations, there was also the even greater problem of shipping space. Added to these obstacles was the time factor, as butter was a highly perishable commodity, and a great deal of waste was likely to result in dealing with small quantities, especially in warm weather.’42 As will be shown, this was a major issue that the ICRC had to sort out. There was thus a definite eagerness and determination to participate in relief operations, but the government remained vigilant lest too many supplies left the country. Ireland could make donations but obviously not to the point of depleting itself and causing social troubles and distress. It was not exactly as if it was rich and prosperous. There was a population of about 2,900,000 at the time. In 1947, the unemployment rate stood at 9.3% and there was a trade deficit of £92,000,000 as the country imported much more than it exported.43 Unsurprisingly, emigration figures were high: 24,000 Irishmen and women emigrated in 1945 and 30,000 in the following year.44 In the early months of the relief plan, the government announced that as a consequence sugar needed to be rationed, now ‘a half pound per person per week as from the ration week beginning on Saturday, 4th August next’.45 In May 1946, it was announced that the amount of bread served in hotels and restaurants would be reduced to the point where customers would read on menus: ‘It is illegal to serve bread at luncheons, dinner or supper.’ The reason was ‘to make a contribution to the more urgent needs of people in other countries faced with starvation’, but there was also a ‘general shortage of foodstuffs throughout the world, and of cereals in particular’. Asked for his reaction, a manager of a well-known Dublin hotel answered gracefully: ‘I suppose it is a necessary evil. We must make our contribution to those people who are starving in Europe, and do it as cheerfully as we can.’46 The question of why people decide to give is central in humanitarianism. It is also one that remains complex to answer.47 It is impossible to know about three quarters of a century after the event why so many Irishmen and women made a donation of some kind to alleviate distress in Europe. Motivations visibly ranged from Christian duty, humanity, generosity, compassion, empathy, and solidarity to conscience and guilt. Ireland had been lucky to avoid the war, but not far from 42 ‘Suggestions by readers: Anxiety to relieve distress in Europe’, Irish Independent, 13 April 1946 (INA). 43 Kieran A. Kennedy, Thomas Giblin and Deirdre McHugh, The Economic Development of Ireland in the Twentieth Century (London and New York: Routledge, 1988), 58–9, 140. 44 Bernadette Whelan, ‘Integration or Isolation? Ireland and the Invitation to join the Marshall Plan’, in Kennedy and Skelly, eds., Irish Foreign Policy 1919–1966, 210. 45 ‘Sugar rationing: Important notice’, The Irish Times, 17 July 1945 (ITDA). 46 ‘Drastic bread cuts in hotels and restaurants’, The Irish Times, 21 May 1946 (ITDA). 47 O’Sullivan, Hilton and Fiori, ‘Humanitarianisms in context’, 3, 9.

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its shores were millions who were hungry and cold, and who were eagerly waiting for some help. History was also a factor as many Irish remembered or were asked to remember their own famines and the missionary tradition of the country. Ultimately, the question is much tied to issues of collective and individual identity and could be named ‘humanitarian patriotism’.48 Donating and participating allowed the Irish in the postwar period to state that they were active and responsible citizens of a much wider international community. Based on the available evidence for this book, it seems objective to write that all social classes were involved, although it cannot be ascertained whether or not some classes were more involved than others. In any case, there was no difference between Irish Catholics and Protestants in response to the need for relief in Europe.

The Irish Save the Children Fund In 1919, the Englishwoman Eglantyne Jebb founded the Save the Children Fund (SCF) as the situation of children during and immediately after the First World War, notably in Austria, Germany, and Russia, raised grave concerns. There were many radical internationalists and pacifists in the SCF who considered their activities as the best way to promote international friendship and to combat war. These activities were frowned upon by the more conservative and patriotic elements of British society.49 In 1920, the organisation expanded into the Union internationale de Secours aux Enfants (Save the Children International Union, SCIU) based in Geneva.50 Jebb had Irish roots as her mother was Eglantyne Louisa Jebb, born in Killiney, south of Dublin, who had been a noted social activist, founder of the Home Arts and Industries Association in 1884 and supporter of Ireland’s struggle for home rule.51 A more distant relative of hers was the Church of Ireland Bishop of Limerick, John Jebb.52 As seen in chapter two, an Irish branch affiliated to the SCIU, the Irish Save the Children Fund (ISCF, or Saor an Leanbh), was subsequently set up, including Alice L. Franks and Agnes M. Carroll, and it had collected funds for starving Russian children in September 1921. During the Second 48 O’Sullivan, Hilton and Fiori, ‘Humanitarianisms in context’, 3, 10. 49 Emily Baughan, ‘The Imperial War Relief Fund and the All British Appeal: Commonwealth, Conflict and Conservatism within the British Humanitarian Movement, 1920–25’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 40, no. 5 (December 2012): 848. 50 Cabanes, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918–1924, 248, 270–88. 51 Linda Mahood, Feminism and Voluntary Action: Eglantyne Jebb and Save the Children, 1876–1928 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 14, 27. 52 The author is grateful to Mr Daire McNamara (Limerick) for this information in an e-mail exchange (21 May 2019). The statue of John Jebb can be seen in St Mary’s Cathedral in Limerick. Eglantyne was John Jebb’s great niece.

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World War, it had collected funds and initiated actions in favour of Polish, Finish and Belgian children. It had proved more complex to undertake relief operations for Greek children as communications with Greece remained ‘very difficult’. In January 1944, the secretary of the ISCF, Nora Finn, informed Geneva that the Irish Countrywomen’s Association had forwarded £73 for Belgian child relief.53 In December 1945, the ISCF was active in Dublin and its environs. In Ballsbridge, £70 was collected and in Killiney £100. Private donations ranged from 5 shillings to £40. Several schools had raised the minimum sum of £9 necessary to look after one child while ‘two of the bigger cinemas are running special matinees to help’.54 The ISCF was also instrumental in sending sugar to children in need in Romania, powder milk to Budapest, and cod liver oil to the Soviet-Occupied Zone of Germany.55 In March 1946, it wrote in its bulletin Saor an Leanbh that there was a ‘substantial increase in contributions from all sources and in particular those intended for the help of the pitiable children left starving on the ravished [ravaged] fields of Europe’. It also noted that ‘through the Red Cross we have sent garments which we received from all parts of the country for the peoples of Europe’. Saor an Leanbh revealed that there was a wide spectrum of people and associations that had sent sums of money. For example, the Ursuline Past Pupils contributed £5, the Killiney Parish Girls’ Friendly Society £27, the whiskey producers John Jameson & Sons £10, the All Ireland Anti-War Crusade over £15, and Mr and Mrs McCarthy from Sligo £9.56 Noticeable in the list of donors that Saor an Leanbh had established was the presence of many women: Irish Countrywomen’s Association, Ballinagarry branch (over £2), Irish Countrywomen’s Association, Rathkeale branch (£9), Lady Oranmore and Brown (£27), Miss Armitage, Thurles (£1), and Miss Murphy (5 shillings).57 This begs the question of their strong involvement in voluntary relief organisations. Certainly, the issue of gender is important here. By the mid-nineteenth century many women were involved in philanthropy and it is not an easy task in trying to establish their motives for doing so. Genuine altruism was one reason, but genuine boredom was another. In the end, it was an individual decision, but several trends were discernible. Much depended in fact on these women’s 53 AEG, Archives Privées 92.22.2, Comité Irlandais de Secours aux Enfants, 1940–1948, folder 3, see ISCF to SCIU, 28 Feb. 1940 (re Poland and Finland), SCIU to ISCF, 30 June 1942 (re Greece) & ISCF (Nora Finn) to SCIU, 1 Jan. 1944. 54 ‘Save the Children Fund drive’, The Irish Times, 1 December 1945 (ITDA). 55 AEG, Archives Privées 92.22.2, Comité Irlandais de Secours aux Enfants, 1940–1948, folder 3, SCIU to ISCF, 26 Aug. 1947 and 30 Dec. 1947 (re Romania), SCIU to ISCF, 8 May 1947 (re Budapest) & D. Steinmann to Nora Finn (ISCF), 14 Oct. 1946. 56 AEG, Archives Privées 92.22.2, Comité Irlandais de Secours aux Enfants, 1940-1948, folder 3, Saor an Leanbh, bulletin, report for year ending on 31 March 1946. 57 AEG, Archives Privées 92.22.2, Comité Irlandais de Secours aux Enfants, 1940-1948, folder 3, Saor an Leanbh, bulletin, report for year ending on 31 March 1946.

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family circumstances and social and educational background. Religious conviction was undeniable, but so was a craving for adventure, excitement, and rebellion. There was a real opportunity to leave a dull domestic life behind and make use of one’s personal qualities. Women could travel and convey their feelings and ideas about issues in the world. Some found their new roles rewarding, others not.58 In 1945, this complex picture was still very much valid in Britain but also in Ireland. Irish society was very conservative, and postwar relief activities offered women a unique opportunity to do something else.

Organising donations The Tuam branch of the IRCS was busy collecting clothes and sent five large boxes to the Emergency Hospital’s Supply Depot in Lincoln Place in Dublin from where they would be despatched to Geneva. It sent first aid equipment, surgical dressings, and blankets not only to the IRCS headquarters and Europe but also to the Tuam unit of the Order of Malta Corps, which expressed its gratitude and ‘appreciation of the cordial relations which exists between the two societies in the town’.59 But once people had donated clothes to local IRCS branches, what happened next? The Irish Times sent a reporter to the Emergency Hospital’s Supply Depot to find out: The work of sorting, checking and sending off is all done by voluntary helpers. In the large store-room several bales were already sewn up and ready for dispatch. Large packages they are, their sacking coverings stoutly sewn up at both ends, and stamped with a large red cross. The walls are lined with shelves labelled ‘cardigans’, ‘underwear’, ‘baby clothes’ and so on. On the floor was a large hamper, overflowing with men’s, women’s and children’s shoes, waiting to be sent off for repairs. Among other articles of clothing was a very nice brown fur coat. The supplies are sent in to the depot from all over the country. They come by post and by rail, and are brought in by the donors themselves. Local Red Cross committees work tirelessly to collect everything they can, and the helpers mend, wash and generally put the clothes in good condition. I even heard of the case of one woman, who, not content with repairing some children’s clothes, embroidered them in bright colours, so that the children would get pleasure as well as warmth from them. The clothing is dispatched direct to the Joint Relief Commission [JRC] of the International Red Cross in Geneva, and is sent out with other Government supplies . . . 58 Mahood, Feminism and Voluntary Action, 6–7. 59 ‘Tuam Red Cross sends clothes to Europe’, Tuam Herald, 2 February 1946 (INA).

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The Commission then distributes the supplies to the countries most in need of them. They are dispatched in Red Cross lorries and, on arrival at their destination, they are distributed to the necessitous people by local relief committees.60

The Irish Times was generally satisfied with the way clothes were being collected: ‘Depots around the city [Dublin] have already received satisfactory supplies of second hand clothing for European relief.’61 Yet, it pointed out that the IRCS was too much concerned that it could march on St. Vincent de Paul’s territory and as a result ‘very little publicity’ had been given to its scheme. The newspaper deemed the IRCS was a ‘little over-sensitive in the matter’ and argued that there was surely ‘room for the two organisations, particularly in view of the fact that most of the people who have contributed to the Red Cross campaign have already sent in bundles of clothing to the St. Vincent de Paul’.62 Clashes between aid organisations, claiming specific areas of competence, could occur and the Interdepartmental Relief Committee was aware of the risks of turf wars. At its meeting on 30 July 1945, Chairman John Leydon said that ‘the question now was whether we should allow collections by organizations in this country to be exported freely. The case of the Jewish Representative Council of Éire was mentioned particularly.’ He explained that the ‘St Vincent de Paul Society had raised this question long ago and there would be grave objection if the first exception made was in favour of the Jews’. Leydon believed that ‘whatever we did we should not move in the direction of making things easier for people who wished to export’ and stressed that ‘the procedure decided on by the Government must be followed in the absence of any modification in the Government’s decision’. It was eventually agreed that ‘applications should be considered only when they come through the Red Cross Society who should satisfy themselves as to where the clothing in question should go’.63 The authorities wanted to firmly remain in control of the workings of the relief scheme, but it was a fact that textiles were in short supply in the country as de Valera himself had stated on 18 May in the Dáil. As will be shown, tensions would develop between the government and the IRCS. But this was also the case elsewhere in Europe like in Sweden where ‘a struggle for organizational space’ between Rädda Barnen (Swedish Save the Children Fund) and the Swedish Red Cross developed regarding the management of international child relief.64 60 61 62 63 64

‘Irish Red Cross help for European relief ’, The Irish Times, 19 December 1945 (ITDA). ‘An Irishman’s diary: Clothing for Europe’, The Irish Times, 20 November 1945 (ITDA). An Irishman’s diary: Clothing for Europe’, The Irish Times, 20 November 1945 (ITDA). NAI, DFA, 6/419/4, ‘Relief for Europe’, Interdepartmental meeting, 30 July 1945. Nehlin, Exporting visions and saving children-the Swedish Save the Children Fund, 51–7, quote 57.

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Besides the IRCS, St. Vincent de Paul Society, ISCF, schools, citizens’ initiatives, Catholic Church, and Protestant Churches, another group which was deeply involved in relief was the Society of Friends or Quakers. They settled in Ireland during the seventeenth century and soon began charitable works, notably during the Great Famine between 1845 and 1850 when they distributed goods for a total amount of £200,000.65 Their commitment to peace and helping those in need immediately made them focus on the dreadful situation on the continent. In June 1946, one of their appeals for money and clothing raised £1,019.66 In their appeals, the Quakers stressed that they made ‘no distinction between nations or creeds, there are no friends or foes in suffering; all are His people’.67 This was certainly in line with the government’s approach. The Irish Times reported on how the Quakers organised their collection of supplies: Parcels, large or small, will be received at the Friends’ Meeting House, Frederick street [Dublin], or a postcard giving your address and a suitable time to call will bring a car to collect. The bales of clothing are forwarded to the central depot in England, where they are unpacked, sorted and rebaled for shipment to all parts of stricken Europe, at present mainly to France, Norway, Belgium, Holland and Greece. The distribution is under the direct supervision of trained Friends’ Relief workers on the spot and is efficiently organised.68

People were also asked by the Quakers to contribute towards the costs of shipping and packing. No major problems occurred in the organising and transport of relief supplies, but some incidents did occur. A probable case of theft was reported to the Gardaí (Irish police). In August 1945, the Dungarvan Co-Operative Society sent 487 cases of milk powder by train to Dublin North Wall where they were to be loaded aboard the Rosita bound for Antwerp, but twenty cases representing a value of £56 were missing.69 Cases of theft were rare, however. More serious was one case of industrial dispute affecting the transport of cattle to the American-Occupied Zone of Germany. In January 1947, the Travemünde arrived for the second time 65 Maurice J. Wigham, The Irish Quakers: A short history of the Religious Society of Friends in Ireland (Dublin: Historical Committee of the Religious Society of Friends in Ireland, 1992), see Chapter 1 ‘Origins’, 11–31, 84–9. 66 ‘Appeal to relieve European distress’, The Irish Times, 17 June 1946 (ITDA). 67 ‘Help for Europe’, The Irish Times, 8 November 1945 (ITDA). 68 ‘Help for Europe’, The Irish Times, 8 November 1945 (ITDA). 69 NAI, INDC, EMR, 18/5, Garda Siochana report, 29 September 1945 & Accounts Branch report, 22 October 1945.

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from Bremen to load cattle in accordance with the £3,000,000 scheme. After her departure, the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU) argued that the handling of the cattle by a German crew was against an agreement reached three years previously that stipulated that Irish nationals should look after cattle during voyages. This was also the agreement in the harbours of Cork and Waterford. The Amalgamated Transport and General Workers’ Union in Waterford pointed out that in the case of cattle being imported into Ireland, nationals from the country of origin looked after the cattle. The ITGWU now demanded that Irish cattlemen be employed for the next voyages. According to the Daily Herald, already 850 cattle had reached Germany. The United States Military Government in Germany did not agree with this and believed that the trade union’s objections were ‘unreasonable and, in fact, probably illegal’. Consequently, the shipment of Irish cattle into the American Occupied-Zone was discontinued. During a meeting of the Interdepartmental Relief Committee in November, the conclusion was reached that as the Americans ‘had not since manifested any intention of resuming shipment, it could safely be assumed that the outstanding quota would not be taken’. It had initially been agreed to send about 1,500 animals.70 Occasionally, the Irish government had to deal with shipment difficulties and rapidly find alternative solutions. 124 tons of bacon representing a total value of £27,035 were stranded in the port of Liverpool. The bacon was meant for Italy but if it stayed in Britain for much longer it would deteriorate. The Irish comptroller and auditor-general explained what happened next: ‘In the circumstances, authority was given for the sale of the bacon subject to the condition that the proceeds would be applied by the Italian Government strictly to defraying transit charges of other relief commodities provided from voted moneys.’ Eventually, it was sold for £19,322.71 Irish citizens living on the continent were not forgotten and aid was sent to them when conditions allowed. The DEA and IRCS received letters from individuals mainly in France, including nuns, asking for food and clothes. In agreement with the government, the IRCS was to send parcels to those living in France and Belgium on the recommendation of the Irish legation in Paris which also looked after Irish interests in Belgium. It was decided that food parcels of eleven pounds would be sent to one individual every four months. The DEA was quite strict regarding eligibility and those Irish who held British passports would not 70 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4B, see ‘Hitch in gift cattle for Germany plan’, Irish Press, 2 May 1947; ‘Ban on Irish cattle gift’, Daily Herald, 2 May 1947; ‘Report of withdrawal untrue’, Irish Press, 3 May 1947; Labour Court to Cornelius Cremin, 2 May 1947; meeting of Interdepartmental Relief Committee, 25 November 1947; George Bell & Co. to DEA, 19 February 1947 & George Bell & Co. to Irish Seamen & Port Workers’ Union, 7 February 1947. 71 Éire Appropriation Accounts, 1945–46 (Dublin: Stationary Office, 1947), xliii.

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be included, the DEA operating on the assumption that British citizens were already being looked after by the British Red Cross. Interestingly, it was harder for Irishmen and women who lived outside France and Belgium to get parcels as the IRCS did not send any to Germany. It is not clear why this was so, but it can be reasonably assumed that Allied administrative hurdles stood in the way although the DEA was occasionally able to send parcels to Germany through the offices of the International Red Cross.72 Indeed, the British had forbidden the sending of food parcels to Germany until September 1946. It was Victor Gollancz, a publisher and humanitarian, who eventually persuaded Clement Attlee’s government to abandon that restrictive policy. This meant that the Irish were now technically able to send parcels to that country via Britain.73 But red tape and regulations that bordered on the Kafkaesque lingered on. Considering that the government, with the full support of the opposition, had decided to embark on a large and generous relief scheme, it might have been taken for granted that individuals would be free to send food and clothes parcels to whoever they wanted on the continent. That was not so, however. First, people had to apply for an export licence to the Department of Industry and Commerce. Then, ‘in view … of the supply position [in Ireland], the Minister [Seán Lemass] has been obliged to limit these facilities for export to persons who wish to export to relatives and he has not found it possible to extend the concession to the case of persons who wish to export to friends’.74 Succinctly put, if the continental was no relative, then no food parcel was allowed to be sent. The Interdepartmental Relief Committee discussed the issue and it was generally agreed that the policy should be ‘liberalised’. The DEA would write to the Department of Industry and Commerce and the Department of Agriculture in this sense.75 Yet, it is obvious that no such liberalisation occurred. In 1947, several readers of the Irish Times complained bitterly about it.76 Not even the Polish consulate in Dublin could circumvent the existing restrictions.77 There was no need for the government to have such a restrictive approach as small parcels would hardly lead to sudden starvation and deprivation in Ireland. It is hard to imagine a man like Lemass not being 72 For the relevant documentation regarding the sending of food parcels to Irish citizens on the continent, see files NAI, DFA, 6/419/4 & 6/419/4/4. 73 O’Driscoll, ‘Die Stunde Null: Appraising Irish relief to post war Germany’, 67. 74 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/20, Molloy (Dept. of Industry and Commerce) to Austin Bourke, 18 September 1946. 75 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4A, meeting of the Interdepartmental Relief Committee, 27 September 1946. 76 ‘“Winter’s toll”’, The Irish Times, 13 January 1947 (ITDA), ‘European relief ’, The Irish Times, 4 March 1947 (ITDA) & ‘Parcels for Europe’, The Irish Times, 16 January 1947 (ITDA). 77 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/20, L. Teclaff to L.T. McCauley, 6 June 1948, Teclaff to McCauley 17 June 1948 & Joseph Walshe to Teclaff, July 1948.

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convinced of this. It rather suggests a wish of the government to remain in full control of relief operations.

Cork adopts Cologne The Rhine and Ruhr areas had been devastated by Allied carpet bombing. The historic city of Aachen, once capital of Charlemagne’s empire, was now depicted as a ‘fantastic, stinking heap of ruins’. Not that far away, Düsseldorf had endured damage beyond imagination as 93% lay in ruins. Cologne had also been severely hit and 66% was ravaged. Life was hard and aptly summed up by British General Gerald Templer, the head of the Military Government: ‘The city was in a terrible mess; no water, no drainage, no light, no food. It stank of corpses’.78 It had been bombed no less than 262 times, the last time on 2 March 1945, just a handful of days before the US army took the city.79 As explained, the Allies had initially decided to punish the Germans by being not too generous with their food supplies. The consequence was that by March 1946 the daily calorie intake for civilians in the British-Occupied Zone, in which Cologne was located, varied between 1,050 and 1,591.80 As if that was not bad enough, coal ran out and people died of cold. The Archbishop of Cologne was Cardinal Josef Frings who had courageously opposed the Nazi regime. After the war, however, he vehemently rejected the notion of collective guilt, deeming that not all the Germans were responsible for Nazi crimes. He begged the Allies for Christian love, charity and justice and denounced famine in the streets and the expulsions of Germans in Central and Eastern Europe. Briefly, the cardinal was opposed to Allied policy. During Christmas in 1945, he publicly said: ‘I see it as my duty to relieve your pain as best I might … by speaking and writing. I have always made it plain that the whole nation is not guilty, and that many thousand children, old people and mothers are wholly innocent and it is they who now bear the brunt of the suffering in this general misery.’81 His sermon was heard as far as Cork. Kathleen Mulcahy was a member of the Cork branch of Ireland’s Save the German Children Society (SGCS) and was one of the initiators of the Cork to Cologne appeal. The SGCS was not above controversy and its possible motivations to become involved in this appeal must be explored. During its founding meeting in Dublin in October 1945, certain leading members openly expressed their pro-German and anti-British feelings. The SGCS justified its desire to look after German children specifically by stating that ‘beyond all question, they are 78 79 80 81

MacDonogh, After the Reich, 255, 264. Richard Bessel, Germany 1945: From War to Peace (London: Pocket Books, 2010), 252–3. MacDonogh, After the Reich, 362–3. MacDonogh, After the Reich, 368–9.

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the most necessitous’.82 This was subjective and implied political preferences. There can be no doubt at all that German children had suffered very badly, considering the incessant Allied bombing raids or the devastating end phase of the war. But if there was a hierarchy of suffering, as the SGCS leadership seemed to imply, it could have thought of Jewish children who had survived concentration camps or Polish, Soviet and Greek children who had survived Nazi occupation politics and years of undernourishment and other deprivations. Some notable individuals had joined the SGCS. Dan Breen, the hero of the War of Independence against Britain (1919– 1921), became treasurer. During the war, his sympathy had been for Germany.83 He had often been in the German legation in Dublin and had criticised his fellow Fianna Fáil party-member Robert Briscoe who was Jewish.84 Dr Hermann Görtz was a former German spy who lived in Ireland and became secretary in 1947.85 The Garda Síochána (Irish police) kept an eye on the SGCS and had a list of members who had expressed clear sympathies for Germany.86 Another member was Dr Proinsias Suilleabhean of the Department of Education in Dublin,87 and he had caught the attention of the G2, the Irish military intelligence. He had joined the Fascist Irish Blueshirts before the war and had indulged in antisemitic propaganda. The G2 described him as being ‘very keen on all Gaelic activities, to [the] extent of being called something of a crank’.88 The SGCS attracted ICRC delegate Olivier Long’s attention during a visit to Dublin and he reported to Geneva that it had ‘political and also charitable aims’ but that its ‘action is more noisy than efficient’.89 The Limerick County Council was not impressed and did not understand why this society wanted to look after German children only while so many other children suffered too.90 It was a pertinent point. The SGCS had made several attempts to enlist the support of the Catholic Archbishop of Dublin, John Charles McQuaid. One member wrote to him: ‘I believe Adolf Hitler was a gallant Teuton who tried to form a US of Europe, as the only chance to survive the twin monsters of Anglo-American imperialism informed by illuminati, & the Russian communist party. Was he wrong?’.91 McQuaid had

82 Molohan, Germany and Ireland 1945–1955, 44–7. 83 Mervyn O’Driscoll, ‘West Germany’, in O’Driscoll, Keogh and aan de Wiel, eds., Ireland Through European Eyes, 25. 84 Molohan, Germany and Ireland 1945–1955, 44–7 and 121, endnote 37. 85 O’Driscoll, ‘West Germany’, 25. 86 Molohan, Germany and Ireland 1945–1955, 44–7 and 121, endnote 37. 87 SAF, C5/2516, SGCS to Dr Karl Butsch, Deutsche Bank, Freiburg im Breisgau, 16 March 1949. 88 Fearghal McGarry, Eoin O’Duffy: A Self-Made Hero (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 330. 89 ACICR, O CMS C-017, ‘Rapport sur mon voyage à Dublin, 18–28 mars 1946’, 18 April 1946. 90 ‘County Council meeting’, Limerick Leader, 4 May 1946 (INA). 91 DDA, XXX/10, O’Kelly to McQuaid, 20 December 1945.

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not been impressed.92 In a letter to the Apostolic Nuncio in Dublin, he explained that although its members were ‘practising Catholics and well-meaning persons’, the SGCS was suspicious in that it only wanted to look after German children. Its propaganda was vehement, and it was controlled by ‘persons who have been prominent pro-German and anti-British figures’. According to him, ‘the majority of the members of the “Save the German Children Society” are in sympathy with IRA ideals’ and ‘the exclusive attention to German children is thus a manifestation of anti-British feeling’.93 His assessment was objective when one examines the language and ideas contained in The Bulletin, the SGCS’s mouthpiece. The latter stressed German suffering, Allied injustice, Bolshevik barbarism, Irish generosity, etc.94 In July 1950, for example, it wrote: ‘The bulwark of Christianity and the white race against the Huns, Tartars, Mongols, Mohammedans and Bolsheviks has been destroyed. “Unconditional Surrender”, born of a cruel heart, has bled Germany almost white’.95 That kind of sentence would have received Joseph Goebbels’s approval. McQuaid had rightly made a distinction between ordinary members of the SGCS, who were sincere in their desire to aid German children, and its leading members, who had dubious political motivations. It would therefore appear that the Cork branch of the SGCS was not only motivated by humanitarian considerations to adopt Cologne. After all, why not set up a Cork to Warsaw or Cork to Bergen-Belsen appeal? On 4 April 1946, Mulcahy wrote to Frings that he could distribute the food collected in Ireland to the children in Cologne. It was envisaged to send the supplies on a ship from Cork to Antwerp, and then from Antwerp to Aachen. Although the journey from Antwerp to Aachen was a short one, she enquired if it was safe and explained that the Irish government had sent all kinds of supplies to the continent but that goods for Germany were being sent through the Red Cross. The SGCS wanted to send the food crates to Cologne directly as the city of Cork and the county of Cork had decided to ‘adopt’ Cologne in the hope that others in the country would be inspired by a similar model.96 Her enquiry into the safety of the transport was well justified. The Irish Times reported how ‘flying squads of armed German police and motorised platoons of troops have been called in to escort all potato trains through the “hunger belt” of the Ruhr, where mass attacks by looters have increased in number and violence…’97 Frings was delighted and acknowledged 92 DDA, XXX/10, McQuaid’s secretary to O’Kelly, 15 January 1946. 93 DDA, XXX/10, McQuaid to Paschal Robinson, nuncio, 10 May 1946. 94 NLI, MS 42.465, Save the German Children Society, scrapbook compiled by John Seedy. The scrapbook contains several copies of The Bulletin. 95 Molohan, Germany and Ireland 1945–1955, 60–1. 96 HAEK, CRII 25.18,6, Mulcahy to Frings, 4 April 1946. 97 ‘Looters attacking trains in Ruhr “hunger belt”’, The Irish Times, 25 May 1946 (ITDA).

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the ‘generous help’ for Cologne. ‘Even the smallest help means a great relief for them’, he wrote back to Mulcahy. The Pope had also sent supplies recently. ‘I will gladly let the children know that good Catholics in Ireland together with the Holy Father are looking after them’, the cardinal continued. He explained that clothes and shoes were badly needed too and that all donations should be sent to ‘the Caritas association [Catholic relief organisation] of the Archdiocese of Cologne, Georgplatz 18, through the shipping company Bachmann in Bremen’.98 In June, a meeting of the SGCS took place in the Imperial Hotel in Cork, presided by the Lord Mayor, Michael Sheehan. Various suggestions to help German children were discussed when the idea was officially put forward that Cork adopt Cologne and ‘the distribution [of relief supplies] could be done by the clergy of the district’.99 In July, the SGCS met again and discussed ways to raise funds and collect clothes and food like holding flag-days and organising card tournaments and bazaars. A letter from Frings to the SGCS was also read. Like in his letter to Mulcahy, the cardinal emphasised the Catholic aspect of this relief operation, also paying much attention to the Pope’s recent help.100 Sheehan was slightly intrigued by this and wrote to Frings that he was ‘deeply affected by the said news of the appalling distress, not only in your Archdiocese of Cologne but throughout the whole of Germany’. Clothes had been sent and more were on the way from Cork, the Lord Mayor continued. But he explained that after having read Frings’s letter, he was under the impression that the cardinal believed that only Catholics in Ireland had donated. He stressed that in fact ‘persons of different denominations have contributed generally to our collection’.101 Sheehan’s reply did by no means negatively affect the emerging link between Cork and Cologne. On 20 July, the Cork Examiner published an advertisement of the SGCS, announcing that it was ‘Flag day to-day’ and appealing the readers to ‘help Cork to help Cologne’ by donating generously.102 Cork’s adoption scheme got a boost from rather unexpected quarters. In August, Lieutenant-Colonel J. M. White had been informed of it by the cardinal. He took up his pen and wrote to Sheehan personally: ‘I am writing to you, not only as Commander of the Military Government in the city of Cologne, but as an Irishman whose grandfather held office as Lord Mayor of Cork over 80 years ago’. It was a small world. White appealed to the generosity of the Cork people in providing whatever assistance they could, especially food, clothes, and shoes. To 98 HAEK, CRII 25.18,6, undated (draft letter), Frings to Mulcahy. 99 ‘Cork society and the German children’, Cork Examiner, 23 June 1946 (INA). 100 ‘German children: Cardinal’s letter to Cork Society’, Cork Examiner, 6 July 1946 (INA). 101 HAEK, CRII 25.18,9, Sheehan to Frings, 16 July 1946. 102 ‘Save the German Children Society: Flag day to-day’, Cork Examiner, 20 July 1946 (INA).

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make his appeal more convincing, he mentioned that ‘Cologne’s population … was 90 per cent Catholic, and the support given to the Nazi cause was far less than in most other parts of Germany’.103 Whatever the veracity of support for Nazism in Cologne, the sole fact that White had decided to write to Sheehan personally was enough to show the dire circumstances in the city. The same month, Frings also penned a letter for Sheehan to express his gratitude. The clothes had still not arrived but were ‘eagerly awaited’, he wrote. He was also ‘hopeful of early arrangements for sending orphans to Ireland, and sends thanks in anticipation, particularly to those adopting a child’.104 Of orphans there were enough, more than 250,000 born after 1930.105 Several hundreds of children from the Ruhr and Cologne areas, though not necessarily orphans, were lucky to escape the rampant misery and would eventually leave for Ireland to recuperate in 1946.106 Thousands would go to Switzerland.107 Of shoes, there were not enough. One German child told Victor Gollancz that he would not go to school tomorrow as his father needed his shoes.108 Towards the end of 1946, the Cork to Cologne appeal in cooperation with the St. Aloysius Past Pupils’ Union, organised a ‘monster bazaar’ in the Ancient Order of Hibernians hall in Cork city.109 In Donoughmore, the local Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA, Irish sports) organised a ceilidh, a traditional social event with music and dancing, and raised money.110 In November, the Cork Examiner reported that the appeal, ‘under the auspices of the Cork Branch of the Save the German Children Society’, had collected over £2,000. Among the donors were the whiskey producer John Jameson and Son, Castlelyons Cooperative Creamery, General Trading Company Ltd. in Dublin, and also many individuals among whom several clergy members like Dr James Staunton, the Catholic Bishop of Ferns.111 In December, the Cork Examiner wrote that the appeal had raised £3,226.112 Not everybody appreciated the efforts undertaken, however. The Cork County Board of the GAA met to discuss, among others, the organisation of a fundraising tournament in aid of Cork to Cologne. But a Mr Reilly objected to the idea, stating that ‘they had plenty of poverty and suffering in their own city and they could well run 103 ‘Irish officer appeals for aid to Germans’, The Irish Times, 3 September 1946 (White’s letter to Sheehan is dated 8 August 1946) (ITDA). 104 ‘Cologne Cardinal’s letter to Cork Mayor’, The Irish Times, 14 August 1946 (ITDA). 105 MacDonogh, After the Reich, 316. 106 ‘Parents’ request to Irish Red Cross’, Cork Examiner, 23 February 1949 (INA). 107 For German children in Switzerland, see Bernd Haunfelder, Kinderzüge in die Schweiz: Die Deutschland­ hilfe des Schweizerischen Roten Kreuzes 1946–1956 (Münster: Aschendorff Verlag, 2007) 108 MacDonogh, After the Reich, 364. 109 ‘Cork to Cologne’, Cork Examiner, 12 October 1946 (INA). 110 ‘Donoughmore GAA’, Cork Examiner, 16 November 1946 (INA). 111 ‘Cork to Cologne; Special appeal’, Cork Examiner, 23 November 1946 (INA). 112 ‘Cork to Cologne’, Cork Examiner, 14 December 1946 (INA).

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a tournament for the poor of Cork first’.113 Reilly was not the only one with such ideas as will be seen shortly. But in Cologne, misery was rampant and far worse than in Cork. On 31 December, Frings had enough of it. That day in St Engelbert Church, he stunned his flock by saying: ‘We live in times when we have to help ourselves to little things that are necessary to keep ourselves alive and to maintain our health, if we may not obtain them through our work or by requesting them … But I believe that in many cases it has gone much further than this, and when this happens there is only one solution: to immediately return any property you have no right to own, otherwise God will not forgive you’.114 People were astounded as it meant that in order to survive, the stealing of some food and coal might be justified. A new verb in the German language was born: fringsen, to frings, meaning to be obliged to steal with a clear conscience. Cologne was much obligated to Cork. In August 1948, the Archbishop of Armagh, Cardinal John D’Alton, was invited to the centenary of the city’s cathedral. The towering building had miraculously survived the war, especially bearing in mind that it was located right next to the central railway station, a prime target for Lancasters and Flying Fortresses. On his return, D’Alton declared: It is generally felt that the celebrations will do much to raise the morale of the people of Cologne … It was only when one sees the ruins of the once flourishing cities of Cologne, Aachen and Düsseldorf that one begins to realise the insane folly of modern war … Everywhere I went I was greeted with expressions of deep gratitude for all that Ireland has done and is doing to help the German people, and especially the German children in their need.115

D’Alton’s presence at the centenary symbolised the broader efforts at reintegrating western Catholic Germany with the other western countries during the emerging Cold War.116 In January 1949, Dr Josef Koenen, the director of the Cologne branch of Caritas, was in Cork City Hall where he met Sheehan to thank the people of Cork and express his gratitude on behalf of Frings and Cologne City Council ‘for their help of clothing and food to the value of £5,000, forwarded through the “Save the German Children Society”’.117 In the end, the Cork branch of the SGCS was the driving force of the Cork to Cologne appeal. The leadership of the SGCS 113 ‘Charity begins at home policy urged at Cork Co. Board meeting’, The Kerryman, 15 February 1947 (INA). 114 MacDonogh, After the Reich, 368. 115 ‘Monaghan Co. Home: Discussion at Council meeting’, Anglo-Celt, 28 August 1948 (INA). 116 Rosario Forlenza, ‘The Politics of the Abendland: Christian Democracy and the Idea of Europe after the Second World War’, Contemporary European History, 26, 2 (2017): 272-3. 117 ‘Help for Cologne’, Cork Examiner, 26 January 1949 (INA).

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held pro-German views and was motivated by anti-British feelings but those who participated in the appeal and donated in or outside Cork did not necessarily share those views and acted out of ideals of Christianity and solidarity. Unlike what the SGCS had hoped, there were no similar city adoption schemes in Ireland though.

Moralising It was unavoidable that the relief scheme invoking noble ideas of mankind and a strong Christian ethos would generate a certain degree of moralising expressed by ordinary people in letters to the press. The idea was to point the finger at those who did nothing or were unmoved. One reader was deeply inspired by the Pope’s appeal for help and the memory of the Great Famine: ‘I live in a poor district, but the people here have more than enough to eat. To my knowledge many of them are now feeding the greyhounds [racing dogs] on a diet of bread, meat, eggs, cod liver oil— the very thing needed by so many helpless children only a few hours from us in these days of air transport.’118 Another reader stressed that people, including the ‘poorest classes’, spent far too much money on amusements and described the country’s relief scheme as ‘futile little efforts’ as the wealth of the country was ‘evident’: ‘Here, we are willing to pay pounds for a few unnecessary mouthfuls, or for ringside seats at a boxing match; in Europe, millions are condemned to death from cold or starvation in a few weeks. And we do not care.’119 These were harsh words and they were exaggerated. It was clear that Ireland was far better off as compared to continental countries. Yet, as shown, it was not rich, and people and charities were donating and helping. The Donegal News deplored the number of dance halls in the county and wrote: ‘At a time when Europe faces a winter that will be remembered in history as the year of starvation, all over Ireland people are preoccupied with nothing more serious than whether they have seen the latest picture or whether to-night’s dance will be worth going to.’120 Was it sincere criticism meant to spur people into more action or a mere pretext to promote conservative values? It seems fair to state that people could not be expected to stop all kinds of social activities in a gesture of solidarity with demoralised Europeans. What good would that have achieved? But not everyone moralised to get people to donate more. Some, although in a clear minority, insisted that charity began at home first. One reader of the Irish Times was ‘extremely disappointed’ with the Dean of Christ Church (Church of Ireland/Protestant) in Dublin who, according to him, had ‘taken over an agency 118 ‘Suggestions by readers: Anxiety to relieve distress in Europe’, Irish Independent, 13 April 1946 (INA). 119 ‘Potatoes for Europe’, The Irish Times, 16 November 1945 (ITDA). 120 ‘Flashes from Raphoe’s capital’, Donegal News, 24 November 1945 (INA).

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to export goods and money out of Eire’. The reader wrote: ‘May I point out to him, with very great respect, that there are thousands of his own flock in the parishes of St. Mark’s, the Coombe and St. Audeon’s, who have gone hungry during Christmas and for many months previously … Why then should we be called upon to send money out of the country?’121 Padraig O’Rourke of the Democratic Republican Party, probably a one-man party, wrote in bitter terms to the government of his personal condition and of those he saw around him in County Leitrim: ‘Bacon and many other commodities are unknown to us almost. Now is the time to ask why the Government is sending out our blankets, bacon, sugar etc to European countries whilst we are half-starved and half-naked … I now in the name of the people demand an explanation of the Government’s action in starving the poor of this State in order to feed and clothe Italians and Germans … As constituency organiser of a new party, I have a big task to perform. The exposure of Fianna Fáil’s failure will be a pleasure’.122 O’Rourke’s last sentence revealed his political motivations. Yet, there is no doubt that great misery existed in some parts of the country and that the sending of supplies and money abroad, even though very badly needed, must have perplexed some among the poorer classes although charities like St. Vincent de Paul were active in their favour. In the tenements of Dublin, families with up to ten children lived in squalid conditions. Broken window panes and doors meant that winters were bitterly cold. In the absence of toilets, slop buckets were used. During particularly severe winters, nobody would venture out to empty the buckets and they were left in a corner of the room. Stench became one problem, disease another. Besides hunger or poor diet, people were badly clothed, and children could be seen running barefoot in the streets. If they had enough money, the poor would buy second-hand clothes and shoes. As was said in Dublin: ‘Half the population was clothed in the cast-offs of the other half.’123 According to the American minister in Ireland, about one third of a million people were squeezed into squalid tenements with very few basic facilities.124 This made the people’s generous response to distress in Europe all the more remarkable, if not slightly puzzling as there was misery just around the corner. Perhaps donating supplies to warstricken populations was thought to be nobler? As seen, possible popular discontent was one of the issues discussed during the Interdepartmental Committee meeting of 25 April 1945, but it had not been deemed a threat to the government’s relief plan. Yet, arguments like O’Rourke’s would become more prevalent in 1947 when relief 121 ‘Charity at home’, The Irish Times, 3 January 1946 (ITDA). 122 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4A, O’Rourke (Democratic Republican Party) to presumably the DEA, undated. 123 Kevin C. Kearns, Ireland’s Arctic Siege: The Big Freeze of 1947 (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2012), 46–7, 72 & photographs no 9 and 28. 124 Whelan, ‘Integration or Isolation? Ireland and the Invitation to join the Marshall Plan’, 210.

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operations for Europe continued to take place just after the “Big Freeze” hit Ireland and produced exceptional temperatures as low as minus 14 degrees.125 Some of these arguments either in favour or against relief expressed in postwar Ireland are still heard today (in Ireland and elsewhere) and appear to be everlasting and universal.

Irish relief volunteers for the continent Soon after the end of the hostilities in Europe, UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration), of which Ireland was not a member, began a vast recruitment campaign. On 25 May 1945, the Irish Press and the Irish Times published articles, stating that UNRRA was looking for medical staff and had contacted the IRCS. Dr Hugh R. Leavell, the deputy director of the organisation’s Health Division for Europe, was in Dublin where he met IRCS officials. During a press conference, he explained that millions of displaced persons (DPs) were roaming in Europe and that the objective was to recruit 600 teams of medical personnel whose tasks would be to look after them ‘until they could be sent home, to control disease and provide an emergency medical service’. He said that it was UNRRA’s intention to recruit doctors and nurses from the neutral countries and assured that his organisation was not a military one. IRCS Chairman Conor Maguire declared that doctors would receive an annual salary of £600–£1,000 while nurses would get £300–£600. Maintenance allowances and uniforms would be provided and so would insurance. About twenty-five doctors and twenty-five nurses would be recruited.126 A certain number of Irishmen and women volunteered to become helpers either for UNRRA or other welfare organisations and groups. It has not proved possible to give an exact figure of all those who eventually went to the continent. Some might have left from Ireland, others from Northern Ireland and some from Britain where many Irish lived. There are a few hints as to the response UNRRA’s recruitment operation got, however. Four days after the newspapers had published UNRRA’s appeal, an IRCS representative told the Irish Times that not only 200 doctors and nurses had applied but ‘also hundreds of people inquiring about the scheme, many of them unqualified either as doctors or nurses’. He added that for the time being only medical personnel were required.127 In October, the same newspaper published a list of twenty Irish doctors who were working in ‘various countries of Europe’. It can be ascertained that at least three of them were women: ‘Dr Mary M. Galvin, 125 See Kearns, Ireland’s Arctic Siege. 126 ‘Irish doctors and nurses wanted for Europe’, Irish Press, 25 May 1945 (INA) & ‘Irish doctors to serve in Europe’, The Irish Times, 25 May 1945 (ITDA). 127 ‘Doctors and nurses for Germany’, The Irish Times, 29 May 1945 (ITDA).

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Cork; Dr Philomena M. Guinan, Donnybrook, Dublin; [and] Dr Patricia McCaul, Ballymackney, Co. Louth’.128 Ten years later, the Irish Independent asserted that in 1945 there had been 500 applicants for the position of nurse in UNRRA but only twenty-five had been selected in the end.129 Generally, UNRRA volunteers were asked to consider themselves as being part of an internationally minded organisation whose task it was to help those in need. Yet, about two thirds of UNRRA personnel had an English-speaking background because of the leading roles played by the Americans and the British. The recruitment process was not consistent as volunteers had all kinds of socio-economic and professional backgrounds and had different motivations for joining. Religious faith does not appear to have been a major motivating factor. The training courses for the volunteers, usually taking place in the United States, the United Kingdom or France, were not always of high standard. Something that many seemed to have noticed. There was an opposition between the Americans and the British concerning organisation and approach to relief. The Americans had gained practical experience during the 1930s when President Franklin D. Roosevelt had introduced the New Deal to make the United States recover after the Wall Street Crash in 1929. There had been many unemployed and poor to look after during the subsequent Great Depression. By contrast, British personnel had mainly been involved in charity work before the war.130 Regarding those Irish individuals whose testimonies are available it is remarkable that few of them clearly stated what their motivation was for volunteering. Perhaps they naturally assumed that it was obvious enough: helping others in need. The Kerryman interviewed Anne Horgan, a nurse in Mallow Hospital, and remarked that ‘it was not easy to persuade Miss Horgan to talk about the motives which prompted her to volunteer for such arduous work’. She ended up by saying that ‘she could be of some good to suffering humanity. Ireland sent missionaries to Europe and in the past European countries sent help of different kinds to Ireland’. She added jokingly: ‘You never could tell but one of the Russian Generals might ask me to marry him. Do you know what it is, I must say I like those big fierce moustaches.’131 Her innocent joke might in fact have revealed some romantic craving for venture. Horgan, who was from a farming background and lived in the western suburbs of Cork, might have felt that UNRRA offered her a chance to travel far beyond her parish or county boundaries. The missionary aspect she 128 ‘Irish doctors’ work in UNRRA’, The Irish Times, 29 October 1945 (ITDA). 129 ‘Westward home!’, Irish Independent, 28 May 1955 (INA). 130 Silvia Salvatici, ‘“Help the People to Help Themselves”: UNRRA Relief Workers and European Displaced Persons’, Journal of Refugee Studies 25, no. 3 (2012): 428–51. 131 ‘North Cork nurse is selected to work in distressed Europe’, Kerryman, 1 September 1945 (INA).

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mentioned and the sense of pay-back time, was consistent with Ireland’s traditions and what politicians, clergy, and newspapers had been saying about the country’s duty to bring relief to the continentals. For others, the humanitarian aspect was an instinctive motivation. Stella Webb and Margaret McNeill were members of the Irish Quaker community. The Society of Friends had always been engaged in humanitarian work and peace efforts. During the war, some Irish Quakers had joined the British services while others had been involved in the Friends’ Ambulance Unit to look after wounded soldiers or in the Friends’ Relief Service (FRS) to help civilians and refugees.132 Michael P. Flynn applied for one of the twenty-five doctor appointments offered by UNRRA and was successful: ‘To be honest I was not sure what I was applying for, but I had little fear having survived the ordeal of the air raids in Britain.’133 Did Flynn have a penchant for venture? Some members regarded UNRRA as a bit of an exciting activity,134 but it would also require some courage or risk-taking. At home, newspapers correctly stressed that postwar Europe was still a very dangerous place to be in. The Irish Press spoke of a kind of Wild West, explaining that trains transporting UNRRA supplies were pillaged, in one particular case by ‘Hungarian brigands’, or that a mass trial of forty-eight Poles accused of having killed seven Germans was taking place in Paderborn.135 Paderborn was a city where an Irish female relief team was operating, as will be seen. But the Irish government was anxious not to let the country’s most experienced or senior doctors go. According to Flynn, ‘among the doctors [who applied] were five who held the post of County Medical Officer of Health but they were obliged to forego the offers, because the Government would not grant them leave of absence’.136 It is significant that many Irishwomen decided to become helpers. Besides genuine humanitarian feelings, joining UNRRA or other voluntary aid groups was a way to escape the traditional way of life with clear-cut gender divisions. By December 1946, 44% of UNRRA’s almost 13,000 personnel were female. They occupied positions of authority, and as said by Francesca Wilson, a seasoned relief worker, the reason why so many were active in the organisation was that ‘women were better than men for all the improvisations and make-do-and-mends that relief work entails’. She added: ‘Moreover, the trained woman usually recruited to relief work is less susceptible to the temptations of life away from home, especially in a 132 Wigham, The Irish Quakers, 50–3, 84–9, 101, 129, 135–6. 133 Michael P. Flynn, Medical Doctor of Many Parts: Memoirs of a Public Health Practitioner and Health Manager (Dublin: Colour Books Ltd, Kelmed Publications, 2002), 31. 134 Hitchcock, Liberation, 222–3. 135 ‘UNRRA trains pillaged’, 22 August 1945 & ‘Mass trial of Poles’, 8 September 1945, both articles in the Irish Press (INA). 136 Flynn, Medical Doctor of Many Parts, 31.

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conquered country.’137 Clearly, ‘World War Two undoubtedly meant the disruption of traditional gender roles’. Many women of the nations at war had found new jobs and opportunities. In postwar Europe, it remained to be seen whether women would return to traditional gender roles or have greater gender equality because of their wartime experiences.138 Save for those who had joined the British war effort, Irishwomen had lived in a deeply conservative society during the war and before it. UNRRA or other aid agencies offered them a unique opportunity to do something different and a small number seized it. Some of the experiences of these Irish helpers will be narrated in more detail in the following chapters.

Concluding remarks Ireland’s contribution to humanitarianism was comparable to Switzerland’s in that people from all social classes, firms, farms, Churches, and government were concerned and it became a ‘national task’. In Switzerland, the motivations for helping ranged from compassion to Christian responsibility and while the Swiss government had some political motivations for helping, notably avoiding that neighbouring Germany descended into chaos and unpredictability, the Swiss people had ‘purely humanitarian motivations’.139 The same was true for Ireland. The de Valera government’s humanitarian response was not solely based on pure altruism, but the Irish people’s was. It is difficult to know what motivated individuals to give a helping hand to Europe. For the overwhelming majority it was probably Christian principles, feelings of compassion, solidarity, and guilt. For a very small minority, like the leadership of the SGCS, there were political motivations involved. During the First World War, a reinforced sense of solidarity between allied nations developed, a sense that one belonged to a ‘global world’.140 After the Second World War, there was that sense in Ireland, remarkably after years of neutrality on the edge of Europe. The international community needed help, and it would get it because Ireland was part of it. One man who closely followed the unfolding events on the continent and heard the appeals for help, was John Charles McQuaid, the Archbishop of Dublin.

137 Shephard, The Long Road Home, 306. 138 Claire Duchen and Irene Bandhauer-Schöffmann, ‘Introduction’, in Claire Duchen and Irene Bandhauer-Schöffmann, eds., When the War Was Over: Women, War and Peace in Europe, 1940–1956 (London and New York: Leicester University Press, 2000), 3. 139 Haunfelder, Schweizer Hilfe für Deutschland 1917–1933 und 1944–1957, 11, 16. 140 Cabanes, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918–1924, 14.

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Chapter Four

Archbishop McQuaid to the Rescue

When relief for Europe was being organised by the government and supported by the people, one man decided to assist, and his contribution would be very significant. He was John Charles McQuaid, the influential Catholic Archbishop of Dublin. McQuaid had always been deeply committed to assist those in need in his diocese and beyond. Fluent in French and Italian, he knew Europe well. It was thus quite naturally that he focused his attention on the ravaged continent especially since he was almost buried under an avalanche of demands for help. Although some relief fatigue appeared in his correspondence, McQuaid never gave up. He liked to be in control and was well-informed about what was going on in the corridors of power. It was also clear that the top civil servants in the Department of External Affairs (DEA) in Dublin paid heed to what he had to say. There was an additional motivating factor for McQuaid not to give up: the onset of the Cold War. Europe was being gradually divided into an ideological battlefield. On the one hand, there were the western countries, which stood for democracy and freedom of religion, and on the other hand, there was the Soviet Union, which stood for atheistic communism and an alternative to capitalism and democracy. The western leaders, the Vatican and the local Churches had understood that humanitarianism was not only a moral obligation to assist those in need but that it also was an essential tool in combatting communism. There was a Christian missionary aspect too. Europe was urgently in need of ‘“spiritual” reconstruction’. The years of Nazism had engendered a self-destructive spirt of atheism and paganism and had produced unheard-of atrocities. Despite the bleak postwar environment, there was hope for a better future for Europe, a Christian future. The emerging Christian-Democratic parties would have a ‘“missionary” mentality’.1 The Church would naturally be the all-important backbone in this spiritual reconstruction, and McQuaid knew this of course.

1 Forlenza, ‘The Politics of the Abendland’, 271

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McQuaid the continental John Charles McQuaid was born in Cootehill in County Cavan in the province of Ulster in 1895. In 1911, he went to Clongowes Wood College near Dublin, an élite secondary school run by the Jesuits. There, he was taught French by a Jesuit scholar who was none other than Joseph Walshe, the future secretary of external affairs between 1923–1946. Both men would develop a close working relationship when he became Archbishop of Dublin in 1940. McQuaid was profoundly inspired by French Catholicism, notably its emphasis on mortal sin. He joined the Congregation of the Holy Ghost (C.S.Sp), an order founded in Paris in 1703 and which focused on ministering to the poor and providing chaplains to prisons, hospitals, and schools, and was ordained a priest in 1924. He believed that the Irish educational system should be de-anglicised, and its Catholicism strengthened. The young McQuaid spent some time in France and Italy in the 1920s and liked to talk about his ‘wanderings’ through Europe, notably in Paris, Rome, The Hague, Luxembourg, and Fribourg (Switzerland). The Irish Independent noticed his deep knowledge of Ireland and the wider world, as well as his cosmopolitanism. In Dublin, he was often seen in diplomatic receptions in Iveagh House, the residence of the DEA.2 With such a continental background, it was to be expected that McQuaid would not hesitate to help Europe after the war ended in 1945. By the mid-1930s, McQuaid had developed a strong relationship with the new leader of the country, Éamon de Valera, and frequently sought to influence him in matters of public policy. They discussed international affairs, notably the position of the Vatican and issues raised in the League of Nations. Additionally, he provided de Valera with useful information that he gathered here and there. When de Valera set out to draft a new constitution for Ireland, Bunreacht na hÉireann eventually approved by the Dáil and the people in 1937, McQuaid engaged in a lengthy correspondence with him, trying to make the new constitution thoroughly Catholic. Although the ethos of the constitution was indeed largely Catholic, de Valera stopped short of turning Ireland into an official Catholic state, as McQuaid advocated, and formally recognised the position of Protestants and Jews.3 Unsurprisingly, McQuaid took sides with Franco’s forces during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) while de Valera’s government had signed the Non-Intervention Agreement of 1936. He saw in the fighting in Barcelona in 1936 and the killing of priests ‘signs that communism was on the upsurge’ and feared communist activities 2 John Cooney, John Charles McQuaid: Ruler of Catholic Ireland (Dublin: The O’Brien Press, 1999), 33–4, 39, 49, 63–5, 121–2. 3 Cooney, John Charles McQuaid, 88–9, 94–103.

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and attempts at infiltration in Ireland.4 Catholic Action, an umbrella term for lay Catholic groups under the control of local bishops, was meant to uphold true Catholic values in the country and actively oppose communists, Freemasons, and other influences deemed to be pernicious. Some wanted Ireland to espouse the way Catholic groups were organised in Belgium and adopt their battle-cry “For God and Country”.5 The author Seán Ó Faoláin went as far to describe certain members of the Catholic Action as a ‘secret Gestapo’.6 In its opposition to communism, Ireland did not differ from countries on the European continent. The Church had already condemned it during the nineteenth century. In Belgium, many Catholic organisations denounced the red menace as it looked as if it was getting nearer home with the development of socialist and communist parties and trade unions. On 19 March 1937, only a handful of days after his encyclical Mit brennender Sorge in which he rejected Nazi ideology, Pope Pius XI issued Divini Redemptoris in which he condemned godless communism.7 To strengthen his grip on society and neutralise communists and other undesirables, McQuaid established his own intelligence network which penetrated all levels of society. His informers reported not only from Catholic lay organisations, but also from ministries, the army, and the police.8 Plainly put, there was not much relevant information he did not know and those who minded their careers, had ambition, and were true believers were not going to cross swords with him. In 1948, the Vatican took the decision to confer papal decorations on Irish personalities that had been involved in sending supplies to Italy. In a letter to the papal nuncio in Dublin, McQuaid described Secretary for External Affairs Frederick H. Boland as being ‘a very good Catholic, in his won life and in his family’. He added the telling comment: ‘I can say, though, of course, not publicly, that if it were not for Mr Boland, I could never have succeeded in having so much assistance voted and, what is more delicate, passed through properly Catholic channels, as distinct from international and non-denominational channels.’9 McQuaid’s omni-presence in the background focused Boland’s mind and helps to explain why Boland had no hesitation in advocating abandoning cooperation with the Joint Relief Committee of the International Red Cross (JRC), located in Protestant Geneva, Cooney, John Charles McQuaid, 91, 105. Curtis, A Challenge to Democracy, 42, 43, 48–9, 50, 57. 60. Curtis, A Challenge to Democracy, 68. Angst voor het communisme’, exhibition organised by KADOC, 6 March-17 May 2020, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, in https://kadoc.kuleuven.be/3_onderzoek/33_onzeonderzoeksoutput/tentoonstellingen/2019/tt_2020_01_angst_voor_het_communisme (accessed on 8 March 2020). 8 Curtis, A Challenge to Democracy, 68. 9 DDA, file Paschal Robinson, XVIII/241–273, 1948, McQuaid to Robinson (nuncio), 12 January 1948 (xviii/243/ca). 4 5 6 7 ‘

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and continuing with the National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC) in 1947, as will be seen in chapter eight.

A commitment to help But behind this authoritarianism and rather sinister controlling streak was also a man of great compassion who deeply cared for the poor and the sick in his diocese. A historian who was working in the Archbishop’s House noticed that many poor came to the door: ‘There were not many clergy or well-dressed laity; but there was a constant trickle of beggars, itinerants, and down-and-outs of every kind. Whoever else was afraid of the archbishop, these evidently were not.’10 McQuaid became Archbishop of Dublin in 1940. Very early in his reign he decided that it was necessary to coordinate the activities of different Catholic welfare groups. This eventually led to the foundation of the Catholic Social Service Conference (CSSC) in April 1941. The idea behind the CSSC was to provide food, clothes, and employment. Twenty-seven food centres managed by nuns were set up and provided cheap and sometimes even free meals. It has been estimated that several millions of meals were distributed and eaten at these centres or taken home. Maternity centres were set up for expectant mothers or those with young children. McQuaid also helped in creating an ambulance service for pregnant women, which became essential as transport between hospitals and those who lived far away had become problematic during the Emergency (Ireland’s neutrality during the Second World War). The distribution of clothes was successfully organised.11 The CSSC also assisted de Valera’s government during the Emergency. Inspired by the War Relief Agency in Liverpool, McQuaid authorised the recruitment of specialists in different areas, many working for the government and Dublin Corporation. Committees managed food, fuel, clothing, housing, and unemployment. Publicity and fundraising activities were organised and so was ‘unobtrusive surveillance’ of poor areas. He hoped to considerably strengthen the Church’s social involvement in the city.12 The CSSC’s reputation seems to have travelled abroad since a Mrs Csighy from Budapest appealed directly to its aid in November 1946.13 The experience that McQuaid and the CSSC accumulated during the war years would be of great value during the postwar years in Europe when so many asked for his help. He would not let them down. 10 Deirdre McMahon, ‘John Charles McQuaid, archbishop of Dublin, 1940–72’, in James Kelly and Dáire Keogh, eds., History of the Catholic Diocese of Dublin (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000), 353. 11 McMahon, ‘John Charles McQuaid’, 356–7. 12 Cooney, John Charles McQuaid, 135–6. 13 IRCS, unreferenced grey box, Mrs Andrew Csighy to CSSC, 3 November 1946.

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McQuaid’s personal generosity was legendary. For instance, he donated £100 to the Duke of Gloucester’s Red Cross and St. John’s Fund, money that would be spent to look after British soldiers fighting abroad and also civilians, victims of the German bombing raids. And yet, he also donated £50 to the Green Cross Fund, which looked after the families of republican (IRA) prisoners in Northern Ireland, the implacable enemies of the British army. In September 1941, he arranged a church collection ‘to see to it that no good child would go unclothed, no sick, especially no aged, person would be left untended, especially as every person who mutely called for aid was none other than Christ Himself ’. No less than £15,000 was raised on the occasion. It was little wonder why, apparently, de Valera’s government and Dublin Corporation did not attempt to become more active in the social field and were content to supplement McQuaid’s system. However, in no other diocese in Ireland was there a comparable system, but McQuaid did help other bishops on occasion.14

Going through the war years During the war, the archbishop was occasionally approached by groups that asked him for his support. In February 1941, Count Jan Baliński-Jundziłł from the Polish Research Centre in London explained to him that a group of Polish refugees in Britain led by Mgr Kaczyński was about to publish a book on the persecution of the Catholic Church by the Germans. It was entitled The Persecution of the Catholic Church in German Occupied Poland. Would the archbishop, a Church dignitary of a neutral country, agree to write the preface, thus conferring a sense of objectivity to the book, the count asked?15 While there can be very little doubt that he favoured Poland, McQuaid bore in mind Ireland’s official neutral status and refused as he feared it would lead to misunderstanding.16 The Luftwaffe’s bombing raid on Belfast horrified him and he donated £100 to the Belfast Refugee Fund.17 He also gave money to the Irish Red Cross Society (IRCS) in favour of the victims of the Luftwaffe’s accidental bombing of Dublin and praised its efforts on that occasion.18 In 1943, on behalf of farmers, J. J. Counihan, a member of Seanad Éireann (Irish Senate), put forward to the Department of Agriculture a plan to produce 14 Cooney, John Charles McQuaid, 141–2, and 459–60, endnote 56. 15 DDA, XXX/15, Letter, Count Jan Balinski Jundziłł, Polish Research Centre, London, to McQuaid, 21 February 1941. 16 DDA, XXX/15, McQuaid to Balinski, 26 February 1941. 17 DDA, XXI/9A/73/3, coupon of the IRCS, Dublin City branch, 21 April 1941. 18 DDA, XXI/9A/73/3 Conor A. Maguire, IRCS chairman, to McQuaid, 4 June 1941.

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more potatoes for relief on the European continent. The plan was not rejected by the department but received ‘coldly’. Yet, ‘when the farmers made the offer to the Red Cross Society it was received favourably by the bishops and clergy of all denominations, and the Irish Red Cross adopted it’.19 It is not known why the department reacted the way it did, but a desire to remain in control of production of essential food supplies during uncertain times is probably the explanation. In any case, the plan could go ahead. In February 1944, the IRCS informed McQuaid that it was about to make an appeal to incite farmers to ‘put under potatoes an extra area of land beyond their tillage quota to make available for distribution abroad 100,000 tons of potatoes’, a rather ambitious figure. The committee in charge believed that support from the clergy was crucial and Bishops Browne and Lyons had already agreed with the appeal. All political parties and Muintir na Tíre (National Association for the Promotion of Community Development) promised their support. The archbishop agreed but wrote on the top of the letter: ‘Very well: but on condition that clergy and faithful to do work of Christian charity, not a humanitarian work’.20 To McQuaid’s mind, the Christian character of such work needed to be emphasised and the Church’s leading role enhanced. It was in line with his approach to the CSSC. The committee chairman had no objection.21 Shortly afterwards, the IRCS issued its ‘Irish Red Cross—Potato Appeal’ which began by putting the accent on the relief contributions made by Sweden and Switzerland, two other neutrals. The last sentence of the appeal was serious moralisation: ‘In this tremendous crisis when millions are threatened with death from starvation will Ireland stand aside or will she live up to her great tradition of open-handed generosity and Christian charity?’22 The response to the IRCS’s appeal was rather lukewarm, however. Chairman Conor A. Maguire was obliged to explain to the archbishop that it had not been entirely successful and that the clergy’s aid in the matter was essential. McQuaid understood and gave the necessary instructions to his priests.23 It is not clear why the response was not particularly enthusiastic. Perhaps there was a conscious or subconscious fear of suffering from a shortage of supplies just like the people on the war-torn continent. The campaign’s depiction of serious suffering on the continent might well have had adverse effects.

‘Mr de Valera’s Statement on Help for Europe’, The Irish Times, 10 May 1945 (ITDA). DDA, XXI/9A/73/3, Maguire to McQuaid, 1 February 1944. DDA, XXI/9A/73/3, Maguire to McQuaid, 10 February 1944. DDA, XXI/9A/73/3, pamphlet entitled ‘Irish Red Cross-Potato Appeal’, undated, but probably February or March 1944. 23 DDA, XXI/9A/73/3, Maguire to McQuaid, 3 April 1944 & McQuaid to Canon Hickey, 8 April 1944. 19 20 21 22

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Submerged by appeals for aid The moment the war ended in May 1945, McQuaid was submerged by appeals for aid coming from Europe. They emanated from individuals, groups, charities, welfare organisations, and from fellow bishops. All had of course heard of the Irish government’s £3,000,000 relief scheme and approached him in turn. The Catholic Church’s vast network of dioceses, parishes, and charities across Europe was going to be an asset for relief work. On May 4, the French Jesuit priest Fr Robert Jacquinot was in Dublin where he hoped to obtain the Irish hierarchy’s support to help the Pope’s scheme for war victims and homeless. Pius XII was at the head of the International Committee of Catholic Charities. Jacquinot said that ‘very substantial supplies’ had already been received from the American National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC).24 His visit took the DEA somewhat by surprise. Secretary for External Affairs Joseph Walshe told Irish Minister Seán Murphy in Paris that it had had so far no ‘tangible results’ as the hierarchy wanted to take a decision during its next meeting in Maynooth, the seminary near Dublin. Walshe was under the impression that the Holy See had rather hastily set up this committee without considering organisational difficulties. He instructed Murphy to get more information about Jacquinot and his committee.25 Murphy reported back that an Irish priest had interviewed Jacquinot and had not been favourably impressed. He consequently advised the DEA to be ‘very cautious about participation’.26 It is not entirely clear why Walshe and Murphy had adopted such a cautious attitude. It might well have been that they had not anticipated the speed of the Church’s response to rampant distress on the continent. The Irish hierarchy, however, adapted quickly to the evolving situation and organised a nationwide collection in the churches, which resulted in £10,000 being sent to Jacquinot’s International Committee of Catholic Charities.27 The first foreign Catholic dignitary to contact McQuaid was Archbishop Johannes de Jong from Utrecht. In a letter written in Latin, he explained that the current circumstances in the Netherlands were dreadful and that supplies were most urgently needed.28 Here was Catholic internationalism in action. McQuaid contacted Walshe in turn to enquire what could be done for the Dutch and then informed de Jong that foodstuffs and textiles worth £600,000, corresponding to one-fifth of the £3,000,000 relief scheme, would be sent to the Netherlands. He 24 25 26 27 28

‘French priest’s plea for suffering millions’, Irish Press, 4 May 1945. NAI, DFA, 6/419/5, Walshe to Murphy, 24 May 1945. NAI, DFA, 6/419/5, Murphy to Walshe, 15 June 1945. NAI, DFA, 6/419/5, Murphy to Walshe, 13 November 1945. DDA, XV/E/31/1-7, de Jong to McQuaid, 20 June 1945.

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wrote: ‘It is to me a very great pleasure to have been able to contribute in some way to the relief of Your Excellency’s flock. I am no stranger to Holland and to its magnificent Catholic life. The sufferings to which the people have been and are being subjected are bitterly sad, but I have the confidence that Your Excellency’s flock will emerge from the trial purified and stronger’.29 Soon, the first Irish goods reached Dutch shores. Two years later, when the situation had much improved, de Jong penned a glowing letter of praise for McQuaid and the Irish people.30 From Cologne, Cardinal Josef Frings thanked McQuaid for ‘the big amount of meat that has recently come from Ireland’. Frings was so thankful that he subsequently authorised the setting up of a branch of the Legion of Mary in his city.31 The Legion had originally been founded in Dublin in 1921, was composed of lay volunteers, and looked after the spiritual needs of Catholics. McQuaid also received letters from clergymen who asked him for personal favours or favours for specific parishes and dioceses. Fr Joseph Ullrich from Vasbühl in Bavaria explained that the Catholics of Germany were now in dire circumstances because of the actions of ‘irresponsible rulers’. The diocese of Würzburg felt very close to Ireland because of St Killian and his missionary activities during the seventh century. Would it be possible for McQuaid and the Catholics of Dublin to send care packets to the refugees from the east and would it also be possible for undernourished children, mostly expellees, to spend some time in the archdiocese of Dublin, Ullrich asked?32 McQuaid did his best to welcome foreign children in the country, and had already been active in this regard since 1944.33 The first group of 100 boys and girls eventually came from France in September 1945.34 Fr Ansgarius de Twickel, a Benedictine monk in Ohmenheim in Baden-Württemberg, asked him if his brother, a German expellee from Yugoslavia, could go to Ireland as ‘the Irish people is a good Catholic people’. He stressed that his ‘brother has never been a Nazi’.35 It sounded as if there were now many Germans around who never had anything to do with Hitler. This repudiation of Hitler figured prominently in letters sent to McQuaid by ordinary Germans. Gerd Blank from the Soviet Sector in Berlin explained that his house had been destroyed in a bombing raid. He had nothing left and money was useless. ‘Eight days ago, there was half a herring pro person; it was sensational and 29 30 31 32 33

DDA, XV/E/31/1-7, McQuaid to de Jong, 14 August 1945. DDA, XV/E/31/1-7, de Jong to McQuaid, 2 August 1947. Cooney, John Charles McQuaid, 223 and endnote 28, 473. DDA, XXX/11, Ullrich to McQuaid, 25 March 1947. DDA, XVIII/relief, Maguire to McQuaid, 6 July 1944, McQuaid to Mother Paul, 14 July 1944, McQuaid to Maguire, 14 July 1944, Boland to McQuaid, 25 July 1944 & Boland to McQuaid, 25 July 1944. 34 IFRC, box 16539, Irish Red Cross Bulletin, October 1945. 35 DDA, XXX/1/refugees, de Twickel to McQuaid, 7 April 1947.

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we had to queue up 3 or 4 hours before getting it’, he wrote. Before his weight was 75 kilos, and now it was 47. All this was because of Hitler. Blank asked if the archbishop could send him food parcels.36 Emil Stuppi from Maikammer in the FrenchOccupied Zone wrote that ‘Hitler and company’ were responsible for the destruction of Germany and half the world. The daily calorie intake had been around 800 for several years now and it was especially hard on children and the elderly: ‘We would be eternally grateful if we could get a little something for my child, who will celebrate this year his first Holy Communion, and for my eighty-year old motherin-law. Hoping for Christian charity, I venture to send this letter.’37 Francis Suchý, an ethnic German from Mírová in the Karlovy Vary region in Czechoslovakia implored McQuaid, ‘a real and true friend of mankind’ he had been told, to help him trace back his son who had been drafted into the Wehrmacht. Suchý had been expelled to Germany ‘in spite of my being a strict antagonist of the “Nazis”’.38 What McQuaid thought of the genuineness of this anti-Nazi display is unknown but it certainly must have crossed his mind that Germany had suddenly become a nation of Christian beggars.

Organising relief for continental children McQuaid paid much attention to the fate of continental children. When, in 1946, Pius XII appealed to donate generously in their favour, he made sure his appeal was heard in Dublin. First, an account was set up in the Hibernian Bank.39 Then, his priests spread the word. The response was impressive. In the parish of Clondalkin, Mrs O’Sullivan donated £2, Mr Collins £1 and Miss Malone also £1.40 The Knights of St. Columbanus sent a cheque of one guinea (£1 and one shilling).41 Sister Teresa, the prioress of the Dominican College in Eccles Street, sent ‘a cheque for £30 as a contribution from our children and community towards the relief of the suffering children in Europe’. The women of St. Columcille Blind Asylum on Merrion Road donated £12.42 Robert Briscoe, Ireland’s only Jewish deputy, gave £5 and had an ‘immense admiration for the Holy Father for all that has been done by the Vatican for Jews’.43 Briscoe could then not have known how much controversy Pius 36 37 38 39 40

DDA, XXX/11, Blank to McQuaid, 29 March 1947. DDA, XXX/11, Stuppi to McQuaid, 25 February 1948. DDA, XXX/11, Suchý to McQuaid, 18 April 1948. DDA, XXX/2, Hibernian Bank Ltd to Fr M.P. O’Connell, Archbishop’s House, 21 March 1946. DDA, XXX/2, ‘Collection in aid of distressed children of Europe, Sunday 24th March 1946: Parish of Clondalkin, District of Lucan’. 41 DDA, XXX/2, Knights of St Columbanus to Fr M.P. O’Connell, 23 March 1946. 42 DDA, XXX/2, Fr Laurence O’Donoghue to McQuaid, 26 March 1946. 43 DDA, XXX/2, Michael Christie, Dáil, on behalf of Briscoe to McQuaid, 27 March 1946.

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XII would later generate on this issue. The parish of Monkstown donated £177.44 The parish of Rathgar gave £345 and a company called South of Ireland Asphalt Co. added an extra £100.45 The soldiers of Clancy Barracks collected £16.46 C&R Barnes, manufacturers of ladies’ underwear and outwear, sent a cheque of £20.47 A group of friends in Ranelagh made a donation of £30.48 People also sent money to the Catholic newspaper The Standard.49 From outside Dublin, Miss Morrison in Newcastle West in County Limerick wrote: ‘Enclosed please find £30—a subscription sent by someone who wishes to remain strictly anonymous, for the Pope’s fund for the starving children of Europe’.50 In Derrygonnelly in County Fermanagh across the border, Agnes Smyth enclosed a ‘cheque for the starving children & people of Europe’.51 Examples are legion. In the end, McQuaid sent £14,164 to the Pope in July 1946. He also sent an extra £1,000 from his own funds. In November, he sent £213 to the Vatican again for relief operations on the continent.52 Not the diocese of Dublin only was involved in this collection. Cloyne contributed £6,512 and Kilmore £4,000 for instance.53 The St. Vincent de Paul Society, which in 1945 had assisted 29,000 Irish families in need and paid about 385,000 visits to homes of poor people, still found time to focus on what was happening abroad. It set up a fund and collected £5,700. £2,600 was forwarded to the Pope and £2,000 was used to buy ‘a large quantity of a preparation of malt and cod liver oil of great nutritive value for children’.54 Elsewhere there were some independent initiatives. In Rathkeale in County Limerick, the Irish Countrywomen’s Association (ICA) organised a concert and question time at the Central Cinema ‘in Aid of the Starving Children of Europe Fund’.55 The Irish guides (female scouts) collected £800. Through the IRCS, they sent the money to the Netherlands, Switzerland, and Norway to be used by guides there in relief work.56 The welfare of children was something close to people’s hearts. The Irish Save the Children Fund (ISCF) sent £1,950 to Geneva where the headquarters of the international fund was located.57 Elsie Fay, the acting secretary of the Irish 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57

DDA, XXX/2, ‘European Children’s Relief Fund: Subscriptions from the Parish of Monkstown, undated. DDA, XXX/2, ‘Pope’s Fund for Starving Children of Europe: Rathgar Parish Collection’, 8 April 1946. DDA, XXX/2, S. Burke, Chaplain Clancy Barracks, to McQuaid, 16 April 1946. DDA, XXX/2, C&R Barnes to McQuaid, 21 April 1946. DDA, XXX/2, R. MacNeill to McQuaid, 29 March 1946. DDA, XXX/2, The Standard to McQuaid, 14 May 1946 & 21 May 1946. DDA, XXX/2, Morrison to McQuaid, 15 May 1946. DDA, XXX/2, Smyth to McQuaid, 23 July 1946. Cooney, John Charles McQuaid, 210. ‘£10,500 for the Pope’s fund’, Irish Press, 17 June 1946 (INA). ‘Society’s aid for children of Europe’, Irish Independent, 19 July 1946 (INA). ‘A concert and question time’ (advertisement), Limerick Leader, 25 May 1946 (INA). ‘French and Dutch guides for Dublin’, Irish Independent, 12 August 1946 (INA). ‘Urgent needs of children in Europe’, Irish Independent, 29 May 1947 (INA).

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Students’ Society for the Relief of Distressed Children, wrote to McQuaid, explaining that after having heard the Pope’s appeal, a group of Catholic students from various colleges in his diocese had founded a new association to collect clothes and supplies and send them to Rome. They proposed to collect clothes in schools and to do house-to-house collections and asked for the archbishop’s advice in the matter.58 Ireland appeared to be Janus-faced in the question of children in need, however. While it helped with much compassion foreign children, it very seriously neglected some of its own. Irish children who were deemed to be problematic, a rather subjective term, were sent to the dreadful industrial school system where physical, psychological and sexual abuse was rampant. Children born out of wedlock were taken away from their mothers, frequently at birth, and given up for adoption, the mothers, or fallen women, ending up in Magdalene Laundries run by the Catholic Church, separated from society. The state cooperated with the Church and did nothing to stop the widespread abuse, essentially depriving these children and women of basic rights. Most of the people knew what was happening. Thousands of children and women were affected by the industrial schools and the Magdalene Laundries.59 The striking difference in treatment between these Irish children and continental children is easily explainable. While the former were the product of sin or were deemed problematic and not respectable, the latter were the innocent victims of war, so morally very much respectable and needing Christian compassion.

Relief fatigue The fact was that McQuaid was incessantly solicited during the postwar years. In the summer of 1946, the Vatican was asking for clothes for destitute Italian children. Joseph Walshe, now ambassador to the Holy See, wrote to him that ‘it is well known that the situation with regard to clothing is appalling in Sicily, Sardinia and, even in Rome, when the ragged children escape into the streets, it is a heartbreaking sight’. McQuaid committed himself to helping and wrote back that he would do everything possible and remarked that the Irish government did wisely in not 58 DDA, XXX/2, Fay to McQuaid, 14 March 1946. 59 These questions have received much attention in recent years in Ireland and remain very controversial. In 2013, Taoiseach Edna Kenny issued a state apology to all the women who spent years in Magdalene Laundries. Numerous newspaper articles, studies and reports have been written on the subject. See for instance Bruce Arnold, The Irish Gulag: How the State Betrayed its Innocent Children (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2009) and Frances Finnegan, Do Penance or Perish: Magdalen Asylums in Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). Official inquiries took place, the Ryan Report about child abuse and neglect by Church and State was published in 2009 and the McAleese report about the Magdalene Laundries in 2013. It is estimated that between the 1930s and the 1970s about 42,000 children were educated in the industrial schools while about 10,000 women were employed and were forced to live in the Magdalene Laundries since the foundation of the Irish Free State in 1921–1922, the last laundry closing in 1996.

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permitting any public collection of clothing so as not to prejudice the country’s own poor. However, he was confident of collecting significant amounts of clothes and footwear.60 From Austria, the Archbishop of Salzburg, Andreas Rohracher, appealed to him to find about 24,800 kilos of sheet copper in Ireland to repair the roof of the cathedral which had been hit by a bomb in October 1944. Rohracher also mentioned in passing that not enough money had been collected by the locals, quite destitute, for the necessary repairs and that there was also a lack of religious vestments, candles and so on.61 As will be explained in chapter twelve, McQuaid was also doing much for relief operations for neighbouring Hungary, notably involving the CSSC in collecting clothes ‘for distribution to Catholic organisations in Hungary’ as Secretary for External Affairs Boland wrote.62 His experience with that country was not devoid of political interference. Josephine McNeill, soon to be Irish minister to the Netherlands, wrote to the archbishop that she had been approached by the Czechoslovak minister in Dublin ‘to help him to enlist Irish aid and especially Irish Catholic aid for the Czechoslovak refugees who have fled from the terrors of the communist regime in their own country’. Pavel Růžička had told her that 80% of these refugees were Catholic and added that ‘there are no Jews among them’. According to him, ‘the Czechoslovak Jews are collaborating with the communist regime’.63 Růžička had displayed the antisemitic symptoms prevalent in Central and Eastern Europe which consisted in equating Jews with communists. Many Jews in Russia had espoused the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 as they had been thoroughly discriminated against during the Tsarist regime.64 As a result, many equated Jews and communists. A similar equation existed in Ireland,65 and Leon Trotsky was refused exile in 1930 on account of his being a Jew and a communist.66 But McQuaid would not become involved in the Czechoslovak matter. McNeill accepted his decision and replied that she understood why he could not participate in every relief operation.67 Although it is not known why the archbishop refused, it would seem that relief fatigue was in the air. In an undated document, McQuaid revealed his frame of mind. He was simply overwhelmed: 60 61 62 63 64

DDA, XVIII/relief, Walshe to McQuaid, 23 August 1946 & McQuaid to Walshe, 3 September 1946. DDA, XV/E/25/1-7, Rohracher to McQuaid, 22 November 1947. NAI, DFA, 5/372/4, note, Frederick H. Boland to Cornelius Cremin, 29 July 1946. DDA, XXIV/3/9/2(1), McNeill to McQuaid, 5 June 1948. Diana Dumitru, The State, Antisemitism, and Collaboration in the Holocaust: The Borderlands of Romania and the Soviet Union (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 51–2. 65 Keogh, Jews in Twentieth-Century Ireland, 221. 66 Jérôme aan de Wiel, ‘The Shots that reverberated for a Long Time, 1916–1932: The Irish Revolution, the Bolsheviks and the European Left’, The International History Review, vol. 42, issue 1 (2020): 209–10. 67 DDA, XXIV/3/9/3(1), McNeill to McQuaid, 9 June 1948.

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For some months past, I am receiving request after request from Bishops, associations and individuals, to relieve hunger, to provide footwear, to establish orphanages and clubs and to build churches. Such demands are normal after a war. Within the last fortnight, a delegate of the Secours Catholique has come from Paris to enlist my active sympathy and support. Within the last three days, the Caritas of Switzerland has sent a delegate asking me to fund a branch of the Swiss Caritas in Dublin, particularly to provide clothing and footwear to Europe. Now, I am indeed willing to help, but I fear I must say that it is not possible to help by joining all these groups and by founding branches in Dublin. Even if we were not ourselves passing through a period of acute difficulty in regard to essential foods and fuel, it would still, in my opinion, be an error to attempt to introduce these groups into our small, if relatively, prosperous country. In addition, we notice a certain fatigue in the attitude of even very willing persons. The persistent volume of demands and [unreadable] the variety of groups demanding, are wearing down the patient charity of good people.68

The ‘period of acute difficulty’ was an allusion to the ‘Big Freeze’ that was gripping Ireland in the winter of 1947 when very low temperatures were freezing the country and causing widespread misery.69 It seems likely that McQuaid’s words described the reality accurately.

Persevering with the NCWC And yet, the archbishop did not abruptly terminate his activities in favour of relief in Europe, quite the contrary. The end of the 1940s saw him cooperate closely with the National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC), a relief organisation that was tough on the emerging communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe. This cooperation was not coincidental. The Cold War was now developing fast. In March 1947, US President Harry S. Truman made a speech in which he explained that two blocs were developing in the world, the democracies, led by the United States, and totalitarian regimes led by the Soviet Union although he did not name the Soviet Union but it was obvious. It would be the United States’ duty to contain the spread of communism. He also said that ‘the seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want’.70 In August, a letter exchange between Truman and 68 DDA, XVIII/relief, undated but probably 1947. The document is a draft and is addressed to ‘Your Eminence’, most likely someone in Italy. There is also a French version of it. 69 For a comprehensive account of the Big Freeze, see Kearns, Ireland’s Arctic Siege. 70 Anne Applebaum, Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944–56 (London: Penguin Books, 2013), 233.

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Pius XII was publicised in which the President declared that there was no point in pursuing negotiations with an evil force and the Pope stated that there could be no compromise of any kind made with the enemies of God.71 Truman had spoken of ‘misery and want’ and the necessity to combat these evils to prevent totalitarianism as people might be inclined to listen to the voice of extremists if their condition did not improve. What he had in mind became clear on 3 April 1948 when the European Recovery Program (ERP), better known as Marshall Plan, became operational. The United States offered generous financial assistance to rebuild Europe.72 McQuaid was far from being indifferent to these international developments and would give a helping hand to the western countries. Later that same month, the general election in Italy was due to take place and there was serious concern that the communists, who had played a main role in the fight against Mussolini, would win it. McQuaid felt it was his duty to support the papacy and Catholic Italy. He made a radio appeal to fundraise in favour of the Italian Catholic Action movement to help the Christian-Democrats win the election (which they ultimately comfortably won). His appeal was successful. About £60,000 was eventually collected thanks to the state, the Church, and individuals. There were also many popular protests in Ireland against the persecution and imprisonment of Catholic bishops in Central and Eastern Europe.73 The archbishop was adapting quickly to the beginnings of the Cold War, not that it took him great efforts to do so bearing in mind his struggle against communists at home. Unlike the Irish government, he favoured Ireland’s participation in the defence of Western Europe and membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO),74 but Ireland would not join as the issue of partition remained a serious bone of contention with the British. Still in April 1948, McQuaid was instrumental in delivering no less than 30 tons of meat to the diocese of Linz in the American-Occupied Zone of Austria through the offices of the NCWC. In a letter of thanks, Bishop Joseph Fliesser wrote to him that on each meat can a tag had been fixed, stating ‘A contribution of the Irish Catholics’.75 It emphasised international Catholic solidarity and it was only fair that the donors should be clearly mentioned. However, it was also a religious-ideological statement in the rapidly escalating Cold War. The western governments and established institutions would take care of reconstruction 71 Dianne Kirby, ‘From Bridge to Divide: East-West Relations and Christianity during the Second World War and Early Cold War’, The International History Review 36, no. 4 (2014): 739. 72 Applebaum, Iron Curtain, 234. 73 Gerard Madden, ‘The Connolly Association, the Catholic Church, and anti-Communism in Britain and Ireland during the Early Cold War’, Contemporary British History 32, no. 4 (2018): 492–3. 74 Cooney, John Charles McQuaid, 223. 75 Cooney, John Charles McQuaid, 223–4.

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and the people in Europe before the local communists with Moscow’s backing would. In May, McQuaid contacted John B. McCloskey, the NCWC’s representative based in Paris, concerning a former German soldier who had appealed to him for help for his family living in the American-Occupied Zone. McQuaid also wanted to send a monthly parcel to a German family. The NCWC put forward a Mrs Lucia Ramin, living in Nikolassee bei Berlin in the American Sector.76 John McNicholas, the Archbishop of Cincinnati and chairman of the NCWC, profusely thanked him for having facilitated contacts between McCloskey and James Norris, two NCWC delegates, and Taoiseach John A. Costello, Minister for External Affairs Seán MacBride and Secretary for External Affairs Frederick H. Boland. McNicholas wrote: ‘The noble generosity of the Irish people, through its Government—in giving two million pounds of food for distribution in the various countries of Europe, and also in previously contributing four million pounds of food—deserves all the gratitude of which we are capable.’77 McQuaid received a letter from Christel Kretschmer, living in Dresden in the Soviet-Occupied Zone of Germany, once known as Elbflorenz (Florence on the Elbe) before it was reduced to ashes by the Allied air force. She got two boxes of ‘Stewed Beef Steak’ from a local priest and wanted to thank him personally: ‘Since a very long time I haven’t possessed thus a great quantity of meat. I am expecting my second child in three months and thus the gift was especially welcome.’78 Her words of sincere gratitude were not only uplifting but as well encouraging as McQuaid knew his aid was reaching those in need on the continent. In Cincinnati, McNicholas was probably stunned to read that Ireland had donated so much food to help the continent. On 21 July 1949, he wrote two letters separately to McQuaid and Costello, drawing their attention on the terrible plight of German expellees from the east. He asked if they could secure Irish aid for these people in the coming winter. McQuaid lost no time in contacting the Taoiseach and subsequently wrote to McNicholas that he had ‘secured his favourable support’. He also arranged a meeting between McCloskey, Costello and Boland: ‘I believe I can assure Your Excellency that we shall be able to help. And it is a pleasure: the NCWC Relief is doing a marvellous work.’ Costello later informed McNicholas that although the funds for relief granted by the Dáil were now officially exhausted, he was ‘discussing the matter with the people interested here and I am hopeful that some further funds may be made available for the purchase of food towards the

76 DDA, XXX/4, McCloskey to McQuaid, 24 May 1948 & 7 June 1948. 77 DDA, XV/E/51/1-6, McNicholas to McQuaid, 1 January 1949. 78 DDA, XXX/11, Kretschmer to ‘Chief-Office of the catholic Church, Dublin, Ireland’, undated but probably 1948.

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alleviation of distress amongst those people during the coming winter months’.79 That Costello was eager to pull off further relief cooperation was not surprising as he was extremely in favour of good relations with the Catholic Church and the Vatican.80 McQuaid also helped in securing canned meat for French seminaries.81 In April 1951, W. Mittler, the NCWC welfare and supply officer for Salzburg in Austria, sent a detailed letter and photographs of the distribution of 354 cartons of tinned Irish meat, two thirds of them for Volksdeutsche (ethnic German) expellees in Vienna and one third for displaced persons (DPs) suffering from tuberculosis and living in camps in the American, British and French Occupied-Zones. He wrote to McQuaid: ‘How very much this gesture of good-will from the people and Government of Ireland was appreciated by DPs and field workers alike, became apparent from many letters which have reached this office from all areas.’82 Fr Fabian Flynn, also from the NCWC in Austria, wrote: ‘From my own visits to Eire I know quite well what a leading part was played by Your Grace in obtaining this great gift from the Irish Government and people. Please be assured that your efforts will be remembered in the grateful prayers of the needy recipients.’83

Concluding remarks John Charles McQuaid, a man deeply committed to aiding the less fortunate in Irish society, naturally focused his attention on the plight of European continentals. He knew Western Europe well and the international Catholic network was a great advantage in organising relief. His own intelligence system provided him with updated information regarding governmental decision-making, and ministers and top civil servants paid attention to what he said, also in matters of international relief. But the archbishop was also a shrewd politician and a careful observer of the international scene. He knew that humanitarianism had the potential to blunt the force of communism. In March 1947, President Truman warned that the communists in Greece were exploiting the current climate in order to take power. According to him, the seeds of totalitarian regimes ‘spread and grow in the evil soil of poverty and strife. They reach their full growth when the hope of a people for

79 DDA, XV/E/51/1-6, McNicholas to McQuaid, 21 July 1949, McNicholas to Costello, 21 July 1949, McQuaid to McNicholas, 29 July 1949 & Costello to McNicholas, 5 August 1949. 80 David McCullagh, The Reluctant Taoiseach: A Biography of John A. Costello (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2011), 232–4. 81 DDA, XXX/4, McCloskey to probably member of French hierarchy, 4 September 1950 & McCloskey to McQuaid, 13 September 1950. 82 DDA, XXX/4, Mittler to McQuaid, 3 April 1951. 83 DDA, XXX/4, Flynn to McQuaid, 27 January 1951.

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a better life has died. We must keep that hope alive’.84 Pius XII agreed with him, and so did McQuaid. Hope would be maintained through humanitarianism. It would not only be humanitarianism for humanitarianism’s sake but also for ideology’s sake. There had been precedents. After the First World War, Herbert Hoover’s American Relief Administration (ARA) believed that providing relief to those in need was the best weapon against communism in Central Europe.85 It was evident from McQuaid’s dealings with members of government and top civil servants that Irish foreign policy had a strong Catholic feature. This aspect will become very apparent in the following chapters. The government, firms, farms, IRCS, Churches, Quakers, charities, and people’s response to the plight of continental Europe had been extraordinary and generous, and the Interdepartmental Relief Committee ran things efficiently. By the summer of 1946 not all the £3,000,000 had been spent and the Dáil approved a second vote in favour of relief. Europe still very much needed all the help and support it could get. Yet, it appeared that Ireland’s humanitarian élan was now being contested in certain quarters.

84 Truman Doctrine, President Harry S. Truman’s address before a joint session of Congress, March 12, 1947’, The Avalon Project, Documents in Law, History and Diplomacy, Yale Law School, in https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/trudoc.asp (accessed on 14 April 2020). 85 Cabanes, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918–1924, 285.

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Chapter Five

1946: Extending Postwar Relief

In July 1946, the Dáil decided to extend the duration of relief operations. It was true that the general situation in Europe was still very worrying. People were in desperate need of food, clothes, and medicines. However, some in Ireland questioned this decision as there was much poverty at home and as freakish weather conditions brought about a terrible winter in January 1947, which lasted for weeks and almost totally paralysed the country under layers of snow and ice. In Ireland, hunger and cold killed too, made people sick, and made them resort to extreme measures. Yet, Éamon de Valera openly declared that those who voiced opposition to international relief were not justified as there were enough supplies in Ireland. Thus, food and other supplies continued to be exported to the continent, notably to Jewish communities. This time the Irish government decided to focus its attention on Central and Eastern Europe where the situation was worse than in Western Europe and also more complex due to the gradual takeover of communist regimes.

The state of Europe, 1946–1947 Although large-scale relief operations were organised and strenuous reconstruction efforts undertaken in 1945 and 1946, Europe remained in a preoccupying state and the year 1947 looked to become a crucial one. The tidal wave of emotions associated with liberation, peace, and optimism had passed and pessimism was now taking over as the reconstruction task seemed so immense. In France, General Charles de Gaulle declared that twenty-five years of ‘furious work’ would be required to bring the country back on its feet. In the words of Tony Judt, ‘by the beginning of 1947 it was clear that the hardest decisions had not yet been taken and that they could not be postponed much longer’.1 There was a very serious problem of food supplies in Austria and Italy. In the British-Occupied Zone of Germany, the average daily 1 Judt, Postwar, 86, 89.

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calorie intake for an adult decreased from 1,500 in mid-1946 to 1,050 at the beginning of 1947. Western Europeans could no longer rely on the wheat fields of Eastern Europe. In Romania, the new communist regime had introduced disastrous land reforms and the harvest was spoiled by bad weather conditions. It was the same in the neighbouring regions of western Wallachia, Moldavia, western Ukraine, and some parts along the Volga. In the autumn of 1946, reports indicated that conditions of near famine reigned in some of these areas. Children were seriously underweight and there were even cases of cannibalism. In Albania, there was ‘terrifying distress’.2 As if things were not bad enough, dreadful cold came with the winter of 1947. Everything froze and became paralysed, including the so much needed transport infrastructure. Coal, already in short supply, was now even more in demand and sometimes it was a matter of life or death. The Europeans desperately wanted to buy American goods to keep going, but they had no dollars and nothing to export. The ongoing financial crisis was colossal. France had an annual payment deficit of $2,049,000,000 with the United States. In Germany, people used cigarettes instead of money as a means of payment. A bike could be bought for 600 cigarettes in Braunschweig, for example. As long as Germany’s economy remained in the doldrums, recovery elsewhere would be slower and more complicated owing to the central importance of German industry and economic network with other countries before the war. To make their steel plants function again, the French needed German coal. It was imperative to economically re-strengthen the former enemy. In April 1947, French Minister of National Economy André Philip summed it up dramatically but correctly: ‘We are threatened with total economic and financial catastrophe.’3 Economic recovery plans were being made but the eventual implementation of the Marshall Plan was still some time away as it would begin in April 1948.

Ireland thinks of extending relief operations At the beginning of 1946 in Dublin, the government was thinking of extending relief operations. From articles in the press and official reports, it was clear that much more work needed to be done. Documents were exchanged and discussions taking place between the concerned departments. On 4 January, a meeting of the Interdepartmental Relief Committee was convened. The participants summed up what had been done since de Valera’s statement on 18 May 1945. The Dáil Vote had sanctioned the sending of supplies for a total value of £3,000,000. There had also been additional supplies from the Army Vote for a value of approximately £68,000. 2 Judt, Postwar, 86. 3 Judt, Postwar, 86–8, 88–9, 98–9.

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Belgium, France, Italy, and the Netherlands were to receive one-fifth each of the supplies and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) the last fifth, which would be donated to Central, Eastern, and South-Eastern Europe. All the supplies were gifts and the Italians, Dutch, and the ICRC had accepted them as such. The Belgians had preferred to pay. As to the French, they had not yet indicated what their intentions were. They would eventually decide to accept as a gift supplies sent to charitable institutions in their country and distributed by those institutions, but pay for supplies ordered by their ministries.4 The committee decided that ‘any supplies to be made available under a Government Relief Scheme should be paid for solely out of public funds’. Visibly, the government wanted to remain firmly in control. As to the Irish Red Cross Society (IRCS), it had been informed that the Department of Industry and Commerce would be ‘prepared to permit the export of second-hand clothing collected by them for European relief and of certain other commodities not included in the suggested relief programme for 1946– 47’. About the destination of the supplies in this second Irish gift, the committee had reached the following conclusion: ‘… it is considered that having regard to the general improvements in conditions reported from Western Europe, all the supplies in question, with the exception of (1) livestock, and (2) 3,000,000 lbs. [pounds] of canned meat which should be allocated to Italy, should be made available to the International Red Cross for relief purposes in Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe’.5 The focus of Irish aid was now shifting towards Germany, Poland, Austria, Hungary, and the Balkans. At the time of the meeting, January 1946, the committee was largely correct in its assessment that the situation in Western Europe was improving. But a fuller picture must be given here for 1946 and 1947. Belgium was the quickest to repair material damage and infrastructure owing in great part to the port of Antwerp which had survived the war pretty much intact, unlike all others on the continent. The presence of many Allied soldiers in the country ensured that cash was circulating and made available to crucial industries like coal mines and cement factories. The process was slower in Italy and France. The Netherlands, by contrast, had some serious repairing to do as much transport infrastructure and dykes had been destroyed during the last months of fighting. The speed of recovery in Germany was amazing and largely due to the people’s will to rebuild the country. In May 1945, only 10% of German railways were undamaged. By June 1946, 93% of the railroad network could be used again and 800 bridges had been repaired. Coal 4 ‘Dáil agrees to allocate £1,750,000’, Irish Independent, 20 June 1946. 5 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4, Shanagher, Department of Supplies, to Walshe, DEA, 7 February 1946, including summary entitled ‘Relief in Europe’.

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production was increasing. The textile and tyre factories of the badly destroyed city of Aachen were working again only a few weeks after the guns had fallen silent. The reality was that many industries in western Germany, including in the Ruhr, had survived the massive Allied carpet bombings. People were killed, houses levelled with the ground, but factories were still standing. As noted by Tony Judt: ‘By early 1947 the chief impediment to a German recovery was no longer wartime damage, but rather raw material and other shortages—and above all, uncertainty over the country’s political future.’6 In the eastern half of Europe, there was some remarkable progress too. By 1947, the transport system was back on track in most areas. Countries like Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Romania had been spared large-scale destruction unlike Poland and Yugoslavia. Yet, even Poland was going in the right direction as the newly acquired German lands—Polish territory had shifted towards the west—contained industrial towns and fertile soil. Industry and agriculture had flourished in the Czech lands during the war. Industrialisation had been remarkable in Slovakia and in certain areas in Hungary already during the war years.7 But where were the urgently needed foodstuffs and clothes? The Irish authorities summed up what the country had donated for relief by 31 March 1946 under the first Relief Vote (£3,000,000) and the Army Vote: Table 5.1. Irish relief by 31 March 1946 8

France Belgium Italy Holland International Red Cross (ICRC) Total

From Relief Vote £203,236 £203,980 £216,564 £206,933 £254,823 £1,085,536

From Army Vote £14,196 £12,107 £13,546 £13,616 £14,547 £68,012

Total £217,432 £216,087 £230,110 £220,549 £269,370 £1,153,548

The countries that received Irish supplies through the ICRC were: Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary, northern Italy, Poland, Romania, and Yugoslavia. Not all the £3,000,000 had been spent and this was mainly due to three reasons. First, Italy and the ICRC had not been able to accept their Irish livestock share because of logistical difficulties. Also, certain countries had preferred to pay for some of the livestock they got. The saving thus made was estimated at about £650,000. Second, it proved impossible or very difficult to 6 Judt, Postwar, 84–5, 86. 7 Judt, Postwar, 83, 84–5. 8 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4, Cornelius Cremin (?), DEA, to John, E. Hanna, Finance, April 1946, including memorandum ‘Vote for the Alleviation of Distress 1945/1946’.

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export canned meat as the required packaging was not available. That saving was worth approximately £750,000. Third, the amount of sugar for relief had originally been fixed at 15,000 tons but 10,000 tons had been sent, representing a saving of about £300,000.9 A precise breakdown of the supplies sent to the continent was established: Table 5.2. Vote for the Alleviation of Distress (excluding cattle and horses) 1945–46 10 Commodity

Total Allocation

Bacon 800 tons Canned meat 10,000,000 lbs (pounds) Creamery butter 1,000 tons Dried milk 50 tons Condensed milk 250 tons Cheese 250 tons Sugar 10,000 tons Woollen socks 20,000 dozen pairs Woollen gloves 5,000 dozen pairs Knitted undergar- 16,000 dozen pairs apments proximately Knitting yarn 50,000 lbs Baby foods 50 tons Freight and other miscellaneous charges

Number or quantity dispatched up to 31st March, 1946 805 tons Nil 1,000 tons 60 tons 700 tons 204 tons 10,000 tons 17,200 dozen pairs 5,000 dozen pairs 14,760 dozen pairs

Expenditure incurred up to 31st March, 1946

40,000 lbs 40 tons

£13,775 £9,610 £28,708 £1,085,536

£176,460 Nil £238,782 £8,280 £62,810 £32,613 £439,711 £28,835 £6,397 £39,555

As to the supplies sent through the Army Vote, it came down to this: Table 5.3. Army Vote 1945–46 11 Commodity

Total allocation

Woollen blankets 100,000 Stoves and cookers 500 Freight and other miscellaneous charges

Number or quantity dispatched up to 31st March, 1946 100,000 340

Expenditure incurred up to 31st March, 1946 £60,000 £6,180 £1,832 £68,012

9 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4, Cornelius Cremin (?), DEA, to John, E. Hanna. 10 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4, Cornelius Cremin (?), DEA, to John, E. Hanna. 11 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4, Cornelius Cremin (?), DEA, to John, E. Hanna.

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Fewer stoves and cookers were eventually sent but this was explained by the fact that ‘only 340 were successfully found to be surplus to Department of Defence requirements’.12 Subsequently, the Department of Agriculture informed the Department of Finance of the number of cattle and horses that had been exported. Initially, for the 1945–46 relief scheme, 20,000 head of cattle for a value of £800,000 and 1,500 horses for a total value of £75,000 had been earmarked for relief. Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands, and the ICRC were entitled to 4,000 head of cattle and 300 horses free of charge each. However, as seen, neither Italy nor the ICRC was in a position to accept the animals. France paid for some and Belgium paid for all. As to the Netherlands, it ‘accepted the full number offered as a gift and bought some more’: Table 5.4. Cattle for relief on the continent 1945–46 13

4,978 1,320 8,366 Nil Nil

Number paid for by Number paid for importing country by Department of Agriculture 4,978 Nil 192 1,128 4,366 4,000 Nil Nil Nil Nil

Charge on the Vote for Alleviation of Distress Nil £40,425 £159,271 Nil Nil

14,664

9,536

£199,696

Country

Total shipped

Belgium France Holland Italy International Red Cross (ICRC) Totals

5,128

Table 5.5. Horses for relief on the continent 1945–46 14

324 1,202 500 Nil Nil

Number paid for by Number paid for importing country by Department of Agriculture 324 Nil 1,202 Nil 200 300 Nil Nil Nil Nil

Charge on the Vote for Alleviation of Distress Nil Nil £15,360 Nil Nil

2,026

1,726

£15,360

Country

Total shipped

Belgium France Holland Italy International Red Cross (ICRC) Totals

300

12 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4, Cornelius Cremin (?), DEA, to John, E. Hanna. 13 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4, M. Foley, Agriculture, to J.E. Hanna, Finance, 30 April 1946. 14 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4, M. Foley, Agriculture, to J.E. Hanna.

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The Department of Agriculture estimated that for an extension of relief operations for 1946-1947, ‘the provision therein of £800,000 for cattle [and] £250,000 for horses is on the assumption that 20,000 cattle and 5,000 horses will be offered and taken as free gifts’.15 After consultations between the departments, the following list of supplies for the extension of relief for 1946–47 was produced: Table 5.6. Relief supplies for Europe 1946–47 16 Commodity

Quantity or number

1) Live cattle for immediate slaughter 2) Draught horses 3) Sugar 4) Bacon 5) Canned meat 6) Dried milk 7) Condensed milk 8) Cheese 9) Wool 10) Blankets 11) Other bedding materials, etc. 12) Unserviceable army and other clothing 13) Surplus army textile materials 14) Utensils and kitchenware, etc.

18,000 head 5,000 head 10,000 tons 2,400 tons 9,000,000 lbs [pounds] 50 tons 250 tons 250 tons 25,000 lbs 185,000

Total:

Estimated cost—including transport and other charges £800,000 £250,000 £475,000 £534,000 £690,000 £7,100 £24,100 £41,000 £2,675 £114,700 £27,355 £76,235 £43,332 £16,245 £3,101,742

Concerning bedding materials, unserviceable army and other clothing, surplus army textile materials, utensils and kitchenware, it was explained that ‘in view of the miscellaneous nature of the goods included in items Nos. 11–14, numbers have not been shown’.17

International Food Conference in London On 3 April 1946, the Irish Times published on its front page a rather large photograph of James Ryan, the minister for agriculture, and Seán Lemass, the minister for industry and commerce. The title read: ‘Ministers leave for food talks in London’. Both men were accompanied by several officials, including Frederick H. 15 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4, M. Foley, Agriculture, to J.E. Hanna. 16 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4, M. Foley, Agriculture, to J.E. Hanna, table entitled ‘Relief supplies for Europe 1946/47’. 17 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4, M. Foley, Agriculture, to J.E. Hanna.

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Boland of the Department of External Affairs (DEA) and John Leydon of Industry and Commerce. The British government had recently issued a White Paper in which it was stated that the food crisis was ‘no longer one of austerity, but of absolute shortage’ and was estimated that the next harvest would not solve the current problems, and additional problems were even foreseen regarding wheat, rice, meat, oils, fat, and sugar. More ominously, it was predicted that ‘some increase in production may be expected in the former war zones, and a repetition of this season’s disastrous droughts is improbable, but against this, exportable supplies will fall heavily with the virtual exhaustion this season of stocks accumulated during the war’. The French minister for food had left for London, about to plead for 1,132,000 tons of wheat for his country, no less.18 As far as Ireland was concerned, droughts would not constitute a problem, but torrential rain and unprecedented snowfalls would. In a subsequent editorial, the Irish Times argued that at this International Food Conference, countries would be divided into two camps, the haves and the have-nots. ‘Ireland, if only she could produce more wheat, could be classed fairly as a “have”’, it stated. That was why de Valera was right in appealing farmers to produce more. It wrote: Our contributions to relief of distress in Holland and elsewhere have not been tiny in proportion to our small resources, but there is no reason why they should not be larger. Ireland cannot afford to look with complacence upon the sufferings of Europe, if only because starvation breeds disease, and disease is no respecter of national boundaries or of narrow seas. . . . As matters stand, the bulk of her people are better fed than any others in Europe, and only the very poor could not afford a diminution of their food allowance. If a special effort is demanded of Ireland by the Food Conference, we hope that Mssrs. Lemass and Ryan will pledge their country to the limit of its power. Ireland’s surplus may be small enough, but it could mean the difference between life and death to a million people on the Continent.19

The Irish Times was realistic. Ireland did simply not have the means to save the continent. However, if it could save a million people, that would already be a tremendous humanitarian achievement. In London, former US President Herbert Hoover, now chairman of President Harry S. Truman’s Famine Emergency Committee, outlined in very bleak terms the situation. He said that hunger sat ‘at the table thrice daily in hundreds of millions of homes’ and emphasised the desperate condition of children, warning 18 ‘Ministers leave for food talks in London’, The Irish Times, 3 April 1946 (ITDA). 19 ‘Starving people’, The Irish Times, 3 April 1946 (ITDA).

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that they would grow up ‘with stunted bodies and distorted minds’ and that they would furnish ‘more malevolents in the world’. Hoover dramatically declared: ‘The world cannot hate children, even of the enemy. Our children must live in the same world with them … The final voice of victory is the guns, but the first voice of peace is food.’20 Lemass and Ryan heard his appeal for assistance. In his plenary speech, Lemass promised to increase flour extraction and to do everything possible to strictly manage the stocks and consumption of wheat so that Ireland’s usual imports of wheat could be used elsewhere. He explained that his country was small with limited resources but that it had been involved in relief operations for the past few months and that although it was a food producing country, it had to import grain. The home production of grain had been increased during the war, he continued, but owing to a lack of fertilisers the needed land was now impoverished.21 Lemass made a very good impression and his plenary speech was described by the British chairman of the conference as ‘the best contribution of the day’. At the end of the conference, he convincingly declared that it was not possible for European countries alone to solve the food emergency and that there would be a further conference on the issue on a worldwide basis rather than strictly European.22 He was right as vital help would have to come from North America. In the Dáil, de Valera said that he fully supported Lemass and Ryan in their work.23

June 1946, Dáil approves second relief budget The road was paved for Ireland’s second vote for the alleviation of distress in Europe. On 19 June 1946, the Dáil listened to the Taoiseach’s speech in which he summarised the country’s efforts so far. £3,000,000 worth of supplies had been allocated in May 1945 but owing to some logistical difficulties and the fact that Belgium had decided to pay for the supplies and the French for part of them, there was an unexpended balance of £1,552,000. His government therefore put forward the allocation of £1,750,000 so that once again a total of around £3,000,000 worth in supplies would be available. He said that this new sum would cover the cost of sending ‘20,000 cattle, 5,000 draught horses, 10,000 tons of sugar, 2,400 tons of bacon, 9,000,000 lbs [pounds] of canned meat, 300 tons of dried and condensed milk, 250 tons of cheese, 25,000 lbs of wool, 185,000 blankets, as well as a large quantity of supplies (army clothing textiles, bedding material, and kitchenware to a total value of about £163,000)’. He added that the government had received thousands 20 21 22 23

‘20,000,000 under-nourished children’, The Irish Times, 6 April 1946 (ITDA). ‘Mr Lemass pledges Irish help in European food crisis’, The Irish Times, 4 April 1946 (ITDA). ‘Eire pledges help in European food crisis’, The Irish Times, 13 April 1946 (ITDA). ‘Mr de Valera supports minister’s plea’, The Irish Times, 12 April 1946 (ITDA).

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of letters of thanks and appreciation from grateful people, and paid tribute to the work of the Joint Relief Commission of the International Red Cross (JRC) on Ireland’s behalf.24 De Valera then explained that Ireland’s relief operations would now focus on Central and Eastern Europe and that 75% of the available supplies would be allocated to those regions in cooperation with the JRC, 15% to Italy and 10% to Entr’Aide française, a charitable organisation which had distributed important amounts of Irish supplies in France. He said: It is almost impossible for us living in this country to realise the extent of the misery and suffering to which whole populations in that part of Europe are reduced. In Central and Eastern Europe, particularly, there is a problem of human subsistence and of human suffering so vast that even the utmost which we, with our limited resources, can do, can be no more than a very small help towards its solution.25

Hoover would certainly not have disagreed with de Valera here. The Taoiseach went on to say that because of the extreme destitution and need of clothes in Central and Eastern Europe, an inventory had been taken in the army and post office stocks and it was now found possible to send ‘some 30,000 greatcoats, 20,000 men’s suits, some 60,000 yards of serge, shirting, and other materials, 25,000 waterproof capes, 20,000 mattresses, 17,000 towels, over 100,000 other articles of wearing apparel, and a large collection of delph [plates and dishes], cutlery, and other household ware’. The JRC would be put in charge of distributing the supplies ‘according to need, in Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Rumania, and Yugoslavia’. He added: ‘It is proposed to offer 2,000 head of cattle for slaughter as a gift to each of these countries: Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Austria, Czechoslovakia and the British and American zones in Germany.’ To conclude, he said that ‘our efforts must not stop there. We must scrupulously avoid all waste of food’.26 Deputy James Dillon (independent) stood up to reply. Back in May 1945, he had unreservedly welcomed the government’s relief scheme. This time, however, he had some reservations. His opening statement was very positive, praising the ‘energetic measures of the Government’ and saying that all deputies would approve. But then he added this caveat. According to information he had received, urban areas on the continent were still suffering from a lack of food while there 24 ‘Dáil agrees to allocate £1,750,000’, Irish Independent, 20 June 1946 (INA). 25 ‘Dáil agrees to allocate £1,750,000’. 26 ‘Dáil agrees to allocate £1,750,000’.

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was enough in the countryside. He consequently wondered if Ireland was doing the right thing by sending food to cities if food was available not that far away. Friends, who had recently returned from the continent, had told him that ‘in certain cities they were able to eat more luxuriously than they were ever able to eat, if they were prepared to pay’. What was the point of sending Irish food if it ended up in the black market where rich tourists could buy it, he asked? Instead, he suggested that Ireland should no longer send food supplies, but welcome needy children, regardless of religious background. He also wanted to stress that the British people had made great sacrifices during the war, continuously eating the same type of food, and that Ireland should make a gesture by sending some foodstuffs across the Irish Sea.27 William Norton (Labour) agreed with Dillon. He had returned from a continental country to which Ireland had sent substantial amounts of supplies and he had noticed a ‘high-class black market’ where people could get what they wanted provided they had money. There was, therefore, need for caution. As far as he could ascertain, there was a greater lack of meat in Britain than elsewhere in ‘starving Europe’. Patrick Cogan (Clann na Talmhan, agrarian party) made a rather different statement, although one not entirely devoid of caution, saying that he knew much of the foodstuffs Ireland sent went to the right quarters. Robert Briscoe (Fianna Fáil, de Valera’s party) was not particularly worried and simply declared that ‘everything that they sent to Europe had gone to the people for whom it was intended’.28 To these reservations, the Taoiseach replied that his government had received an impressive number of letters of thanks and emphatically said that ‘nobody had given any indication that any of the foods they were sending were going into the black markets’. The ICRC had suggested that the government should send representatives to supervise the distribution operations, which the government would do indeed. About welcoming continental children into the country, he explained that something had been undertaken for French children but that they had not been successful with Polish children. The question of German children was currently being examined. As seen in chapter two, approximatively 1,000 foreign children eventually came to Ireland. De Valera unequivocally paid tribute to the British: ‘As far as England is concerned, it is a matter that everybody must regard as wonderful, the way in which the British are denying themselves to see that more supplies will be available for Europe’. He assured that Ireland would help Britain more if it could: ‘It is not a question of shortage of money. It is a question of getting supplies. Anything that is being sent out from here is rather by way of limitation of our own 27 ‘Dáil agrees to allocate £1,750,000’. 28 ‘Dáil agrees to allocate £1,750,000’.

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supplies than by encroaching on anything the British were purchasing.’ He added: ‘Our supplies are available for Britain in the first instance, and it is very difficult to know what more we can do in the way of helping.’29 De Valera’s admiration for Britain’s willingness to make sacrifices was certainly not misplaced. When the war ended in May 1945, the victorious British government took the decision to cut food rations and bread was rationed in 1946. Life in Britain was better than in most continental countries, but it was not luxurious.30 The Dáil voted in favour of continuing relief operations. Did Dillon have a point that Irish goods might be supplying black markets? As will be seen in Part Two, it was also feared that supplies might be hijacked and used to help the communists, notably in Italy, Hungary, and Yugoslavia. His argument that food was available in the countryside, implying that not everybody was getting some, was definitely correct. But only those people who could barter valuable objects were lucky to lay their hands on food. The experience of Hildegard and Elisabeth Linstedt who grew up in Berlin is a good example. Life was getting back to normal but ‘very slowly’. The sisters got some food from farmers around the city but eventually had nothing left to barter. They then resorted to stealing unripe fruits. Farmers remained ‘harsh’ towards city dwellers. One of them refused to give the sisters eggs but gave a few potatoes, a little bit of flour and a piece of bread.31 Unquestionably, farmers did not always show compassion to city dwellers and especially to the hundreds of thousands of eastern German expellees who arrived in the western occupation zones from Silesia, Prussia, and the Sudetenland and who were in a shocking physical condition. In October 1946, an official of the Food and Agriculture Branch in Germany put it succinctly: ‘Those people who lost the most now find themselves in very close touch with those who lost the least, the farmers.’32 But not all farmers seized the opportunities offered by the condition of postwar Europe to enrich themselves, and much also depended on the local situation and on what crops and vegetables they grew. This scenario could be witnessed elsewhere in Europe and not only in Germany. The American literary critic Edmund Wilson saw misery and profiteering co-existing in the streets of Rome where the black market supplied restaurants and fed haves but not have-nots The British poet Stephen Spender wrote that France was still standing but that there was widespread misery behind the almost intact façade. As he described it so perceptively, the country was 29 ‘Dáil agrees to allocate £1,750,000’. 30 Ian Buruma, Year Zero: A History of 1945 (London: Atlantic Books, 2014), 57. 31 Hildegard Cohn & Elisabeth Dörffel, ‘Heißhunger’, in Jürgen Kleindienst, ed., Gegessen wird immer: Zeitzeugen-Erinnerungen an Essen und Trinken (Berlin: Zeitgut Verlag, 2009), 71–7. 32 Andreas Kossert, Kalte Heimat: Die Geschichte der deutschen Vertriebenen nach 1945 (Munich: Pantheon, 2009), 48, 78–9, 80.

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an ‘invisible ruin’. During the war, the Germans had imposed a harsh economic regime in France which meant that a black market structure was firmly in place even after the liberation. Not only was food scarce but there was a main logistical problem transporting supplies to the cities. There were even widespread black market activities in Jewish DP (displaced persons) camps in Germany.33 One man’s misery was another one’s opportunity, and these illegal activities did not simply stop with the end of the war. While it cannot be excluded that Irish supplies were illegally sold by individuals who received them from aid agencies, there is no evidence to show that entire cargoes had been stolen or hijacked. Some in Britain began to realise that it was pointless to keep punishing the Germans by serving them the minimum amount of food possible. Not so much feelings of compassion as pure economic and financial considerations dictated this. They argued that if Europe remained in the doldrums, military occupation would have to be maintained and this would prove to be a very costly affair for the exchequer. A new approach was needed. In October 1945 in the House of Commons, a representative of the United Nations (UN) warned that the ‘greatest catastrophe the human race ever experienced’ was about to happen in Germany. The debate was reported back to the United States by the New York Times. Across the Atlantic too people started to have serious doubts about hard-line policies towards the former Reich essentially advocated by Henry Morgenthau, Truman’s secretary of the treasury. Congressman Daniel J. Flood said: ‘Hunger, destitution, sickness and disease will breed unrest and the spectre of communism. Hungry people are fertile fields for the philosophies of the anti-Christ and for those who would make God of the omnipotent state.’ Fortunately for the Germans, those American commanders in charge like US High Commissioner General Lucius Clay did not implement an economic revenge policy and helped to rebuild their country instead.34 Washington and London began to change their policies in their respective occupation zones. But then suddenly the weather seriously threatened the production and availability of food, including Ireland’s.

The weather’s offensives, 1946–1947 Soon, ships began to leave Dublin harbour for Bayonne in the south-west of France from where the supplies would be transported to the International Red Cross in Geneva.35 But this was visibly not enough for the pro-British Irish Times. A few 33 Buruma, Year Zero, 57–9, 71. 34 Buruma, Year Zero, 63–6. 35 ‘European relief scheme under way’, The Irish Times, 25 June 1946 (ITDA).

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days after the Dáil’s decision to continue with relief operations, it published a rather moralising article entitled ‘The Cry for Help’. Tens of millions of Germans, and to a lesser extent also citizens of those countries once occupied by the Germans, were facing starvation. The newspaper lauded Britain’s spirit of self-sacrifice as it had decided to renounce to a shipment of American wheat so that needier nations on the continent could avail of it. This meant more bread rationing for its population. The Irish Times declared: ‘Surely the great mass of Irish people can do more than they are doing at present to help in the restoration of a tolerable standard of living in the rest of the world.’ It then quoted the Taoiseach who had said that if the Irish saved one slice of bread every day, then 170,000 pounds of flour would be saved every week, ‘enough to furnish a bread ration to 300,000 people on the Continent’.36 The newspaper was rather harsh on the people who were playing their part in the collection of food and clothes. But then Ireland was subjected to extreme meteorological conditions. In August, torrential rains poured down, threatening the harvest. Farmers were still obliged to work under the compulsory tillage regulations which had been introduced during the war, the idea being to produce certain quantities of wheat, oats, and grains to feed the country. De Valera had also asked them to produce more to feed the continent. But now everything was suddenly called into question as the downpour was almost of Biblical proportions. Turf, widely used to keep warm, was badly soaked. The Irish Independent gave the following account: ‘From the Provinces has come news of homeless families, damaged crops, burst riverbanks, broken bridges, drowned animals and flooded roads’. In September, the weather struck again, and farmers were desperate. The same newspaper ran an eye-catching headline: ‘Food emergency threatened’. In Dublin, Minister for Agriculture Patrick Smith made up his mind. The harvest could not be saved unless volunteers came to help the farmers. On 5 September, he made a public appeal and the people responded positively. The so-called ‘harvest army’ travelled to the countryside and was described as ‘patriots’ and ‘heroes’. But focus was almost exclusively on the harvest, not on turf. The Irish Independent warned that the neglect of turf was dangerous, and that the country should not depend on imports of British coal. Its warning fell on deaf ears and many would live to regret it bitterly in the months ahead. The battle of the harvest was eventually won, and it was a tremendous collective effort of the nation.37 But then the ‘Big Freeze’ was about to hit the country and endanger its survival. 36 ‘The cry for help’, The Irish Times, 21 June 1946 (ITDA). 37 The paragraph on the harvest issue are based on Chapter 1 ‘Battle for the Harvest (1946)’, 18–35 of Kearns’s Ireland’s Arctic Siege.

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Generally, Ireland has a mild climate with no freezing winters and scorching summers. But what occurred in January 1947, and lasted for weeks, was an unheardof winter with exceptionally low temperatures. As Kevin C. Kearns has described, the country was literally buried under layers of snow. Rivers, canals, and lakes froze, and the transport network became paralysed. The year had already got off to a bad start when Minister for Industry and Commerce Seán Lemass announced that owing to a lack of grain, bread had to be rationed. This was upsetting news, especially for those of limited means. The Irish Press announced that the country’s supply situation was ‘about as bad as it was in the worst war years’. Then winter lethally struck. On the night of 30 to 31 January, a temperature of -14º was recorded. It was the same elsewhere in Europe. The French Riviera experienced snow and on the Rhine chunks of ice were making conditions extremely tricky for fluvial transport. For the month of February, there was only a total of sixteen hours of sunshine in Ireland.38 Many Irish people caught the flu, and to make matters worse, Britain suspended its coal exports owing to very serious shortages at home. The little turf available was of bad quality and profiteers exploited the poor. As on the continent, the black market made a difference between those who could afford to buy essential goods and those who could not. Some resorted to burning their furniture to keep warm. Cinemas and pubs were among the rare places where people could feel some warmth. There was also an obvious lack of adequate clothes and footwear. Tenement boys could be seen running barefoot in the streets of Dublin. Schools were places that could keep children warm, until the winter of 1947 and the lack of fuel, that is. Some parents angrily wrote to the press: ‘Could it be believed that in this age of civilisation little helpless children are herded into damp barracks of schools. Thus are the seeds of TB [tuberculosis] and other diseases laid. Surely some form of heating could be supplied for these unfortunates.’ The answer was no, there was no heating available. The spread of tuberculosis was seriously preoccupying as cases in Dublin were estimated to range from 40,000 up to 80,000.39 Archbishop McQuaid decreed that under these exceptional circumstances the rules of fasting should not be applied during Lent. One reader complained to the Irish Independent that ‘our Government … are allowing the poor of this country to starve’ and pleaded for ‘charity at home’.40 Was this an implicit criticism of relief operations for the continent? Curiously, the government was not particularly pro-active and was lambasted by newspapers. Eventually, the army was asked to help clear the snow and was assisted by citizens. Some people suggested that de Valera should ask for foreign 38 Kearns, Ireland’s Arctic Siege, 39, 42, 52, 45, 289. 39 Kearns, Ireland’s Arctic Siege, 84, 112, 87, 118, 128, 120. 122, 162. 40 Kearns, Ireland’s Arctic Siege, 161, 156, 129–30, 136.

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help to cope with the food and fuel crises, which sounded rather ironic at a time when Ireland was sending aid to the continent. The better-off classes were accused of not realising how dire the situation was for the poor.41 But at last there was good news. The American government had decided to send 34,000 tons of coal, probably initially meant for Europe. So did the British, who promised 5,000 tons of coal and 500 tons of coke. Ireland had temporarily become a country where relief had to be sent to. While de Valera was appreciative of this foreign aid, it did not prevent him from denouncing the evils of partition in his traditional St. Patrick’s Day message to the Irish in the United States and Britain. To those in America he said that ‘as long as this unjust situation exists, any genuine cordiality between the people of Ireland and Britain is impossible’.42 It was a well-rehearsed and drilled ritual by this stage, but it did sound surreal at this particular juncture. After weeks, the snow finally stopped but in March torrential floods took over, especially in the southeast. Thousands of animals died, and cities and towns were flooded, notably Kilkenny. The crucial question was how this would affect spring tillage. Again, the country mobilised, and everything was done to assist the farmers. Some went as far as to say that no food should be given to foreign tourists. Their suggestion was certainly indicative of the gravity of the situation. In the end, the weather conditions radically improved, the tillage was saved, and even turned into a golden harvest. The summer was exceptionally hot for Irish standards with 29º recorded on 1 June.43

Opposition to relief abroad Under these extreme climatic conditions, it was predictable that the wisdom of sending supplies abroad would be questioned in Ireland. There had been similar situations elsewhere in the past. In 1919, after the First World War, the American Congress had retreated back into isolationism and refused to pursue humanitarian efforts for Europe. The public believed that aid for European children would mean less aid for children at home. Consequently, American humanitarianism in Europe became a private enterprise with aid agencies such as the American Relief Administration (ARA) led by Herbert Hoover.44 On 13 January 1947, the Irish Independent published an article entitled ‘Thousands of Poles live in Cellars’. It was explained that Patrick Power of the IRCS had just returned from Warsaw where he had overseen the distribution of Irish supplies. Only 7,000 houses in the city were left intact after the Germans had systematically dynamited it. Many inhabitants 41 42 43 44

Kearns, Ireland’s Arctic Siege, 76, 109, 286–8, 199, 215, 164–5, 163, 206–207. Kearns, Ireland’s Arctic Siege, 208, 324–5. Kearns, Ireland’s Arctic Siege, 314–18, 303–304, 325–9, 335–6, 330–1, 342–5. Cabanes, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918–1924, 286.

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lived in makeshift habitats and ‘in a space of a bathroom it was not unusual to find five or six people eating, living and sleeping’. A large photograph was published, showing a person standing in the entrance of a dug-out.45 The next day, it published another article on Poland entitled ‘Tragic condition of Polish People’. A quote by the same Power was highlighted: ‘Want and hunger are everywhere in Poland. It is up to the people of more fortunate countries to see they got help. Poland cannot wait’.46 What Power had said, and the Irish Independent had stressed, was by no means exaggerated as the photographs of John Vachon and the experience of Irishman Brian Moore working for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) in Warsaw testify.47 But this was just before the Big Freeze hit Ireland on 19 January. Four days later, the tone of the Irish Independent had considerably changed. In fact, it had already expressed serious doubts as to UNRRA’s efficiency in an article entitled ‘A tour of Europe’s larder’ back in October in which it was also claimed that the black market flourished and that reports on starvation were exaggerated.48 This impression had, however, not been shared by the Irish Times and the Nenagh Guardian.49 The Irish Independent now explained that Christian charity and solidarity with those who suffered was most laudable but denounced the export of certain commodities, notably bacon that many Irish had not tasted for several years. It criticised the government which had justified the export of bacon as it was part of its European relief commitments: The people of this country are, we believe, quite willing to tighten their belts and dip into their purses—whether the public purse or the private purse—to help in the relief of distress. But nobody would suggest that it would be reasonable for us to send such commodities as, say, wheat, flour, butter, candles, eggs, oatmeal, milk, or other necessaries of which we are ourselves in dire need at the moment. Bacon, too, is one of the things of which Ireland is in sore need. There are times when indefensible things can be done in the name of charity. The export of bacon under present conditions is a case in point. The Government should not forget that its first duty is to the people of Ireland.50 45 ‘Thousands of Poles live in cellars’, Irish Independent, 13 January 1947 (INA). 46 ‘Tragic condition of Polish people’, Irish Independent, 14 January 1947 (INA). 47 Ann Vachon, ed., Poland, 1946: The Photographs and Letters of John Vachon (Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995). The book contains photographs taken by John Vachon, vividly illustrating the sheer scale of Poland’s destruction, and also an introduction by Brian Moore. 48 ‘A tour of Europe’s larder’, Irish Independent, 1 October 1946 (INA). 49 ‘Eire’s £3,000,000 welcomed by distressed Europe’, The Irish Times, 23 December 1946 (ITDA) & ‘Thurles’ priest impressions of Europe to-day’, Nenagh Guardian, 28 December 1946 (INA). 50 ‘Exporting what we cannot afford’, Irish Independent, 23 January 1947 (INA).

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The concern was genuine and the Big Freeze was only beginning. Nobody could predict how long this exceptional weather would last. But as the weeks went by the issue of sending supplies abroad became naturally more prominent. Wanting to prioritise the wellbeing of the Irish population under the current circumstances was an understandable reflex. But had Irish poor been looked after properly and systematically before? The Irish Independent had certainly not always cared about starving Dubliners in previous decades. Perhaps some people remembered that back in 1913, it had published articles on slums in Connemara, apparently conveniently forgetting those in nearby Dublin and its surroundings, some of them being the property of the newspaper’s owner, William Martin Murphy. Perhaps they also remembered that the newspaper had spoken of ‘reeking slums’, describing its inhabitants as ‘jailbirds’ and ‘most abandoned creatures of both sexes’ after a fracas occurred between the police and people in the streets of Dublin, people who were protesting against employment conditions of the local tramway company owned by the same Murphy.51 Back in October 1946, the Polish authorities had gratefully received 100 tons of Irish bacon through UNRRA.52 However, the Big Freeze now interfered with the production of some foodstuffs, including bacon. During the first week of March 1946, about 7,000 pigs had been cured, but only 2,732 during the first week of March 1947.53 Yet, this did not prevent the government from continuing with the export of cattle and meat. On 10 February 1947, the Irish Times announced that owing to logistical difficulties, the government had reached an agreement with Britain and the other countries concerned that Irish cattle for the continent would be shipped to Britain for immediate slaughter and consumption there. In return, the British would dispatch an equivalent quantity of frozen beef to Austria, Hungary, and the British-Occupied Zone in Germany on a ton-for-ton basis. According to the newspaper, ‘approximately 570 tons of frozen beef have already been delivered to the United Kingdom zone in Germany under this arrangement [and] approximately 45 tons of beef have been dispatched to Hungary, and the remaining quantity will follow later’.54 In an article entitled ‘Irish Relief Gift for Hungary’, the Irish Press also announced that meat was about to be transported to Budapest.55 Soon after, negative reactions were heard. A Mr D. Allen, who presided a meeting of the Fine Gael executive in Cork City, dramatically stated: ‘If this senseless policy of shipping foodstuffs is continued, we shall see a repetition here of 51 52 53 54 55

Yeates, Lockout, 76, 109. ‘Irish bacon a great help to Poland’, The Irish Times, 22 October 1946 (ITDA). Kearns, Ireland’s Arctic Siege, 330. ‘Ireland’s gift of fat cattle’, The Irish Times, 10 February 1947 (ITDA). ‘Irish relief gift for Hungary’, Irish Press, 8 February 1947 (INA).

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the Great Famine… ’56 He was very likely thinking of the fact that food had been exported from Ireland in 1847 at a time when hundreds of thousands were suffering from hunger. The Leix (Laois) County Council passed ‘a resolution calling on the Government immediately to cancel the gift to Europe of 25,000 beef cattle’ and asked the government also to stop exporting bacon, sugar, and other commodities as they were badly needed at home.57 There were heated exchanges at a meeting of the Westmeath County Council in Mullingar. A Mr P. Clarke moved a motion that the government immediately stop sending supplies abroad, arguing that the people in the country would be left without meat. He claimed that rich industrialists were having banquets in Dublin while 500,000 tourists, who he described as ‘locusts’, were eating away Irish food. It is not sure where Clarke got this rather astonishingly high figure from or if it was a fact at all. Another member, J.J. Hoey, totally agreed with him and vehemently said that ‘the people of Europe should be allowed to stew in their own gravy’ and that ‘charity should begin at home’. According to his information, ‘the food sent by the Irish people was being eaten in the night clubs of Berlin and Paris’. J. Kennedy, a member of the Dáil, was utterly shocked and called these remarks ‘scandalous and shameful’. He told the meeting that a person in Ireland was living on 3,100 calories a day whereas a German in the American and British-Occupied Zones was on 1,200. His reaction was understandable but not strictly true. The Irish were better off, if not far better off than the continentals but not all of them were living on a daily 3,000-plus calorie diet as previously described and as had been noted by several French newspapers as will be seen in chapter seven. In the end, Clarke’s motion was roundly defeated by ten votes to three.58 Some members of the Catholic hierarchy did not agree with the Independent newspaper group’s campaign. William MacNeely, the bishop of Raphoe, while acknowledging the unprecedented hardships caused by the Big Freeze, wished to thank ‘priests and people for their generous response to the Pope’s appeal for the starving children of Europe’.59 Michael Browne, the bishop of Galway, was more direct: ‘At the moment there seems to be some hesitation in the public mind about the wisdom of sending gifts abroad mainly on the ground that our own need is very great. Conditions have improved somewhat in some countries such as Belgium and Holland; but they are still very bad in Germany, Austria, Italy and Hungary’. He reminded his flock that during the Great Famine, many countries had helped Ireland, including ‘far-off Turkey’. The Connacht Tribune reported 56 57 58 59

‘Cattle for Europe plan opposed’, The Irish Times, 17 February 1947 (ITDA). ‘Cattle for Europe plan opposed’. ‘“Scandalous and shameful remark” on Europe relief ’, Irish Press, 4 March 1947 (INA). ‘Cause of Christ summons us to action’, Donegal News, 22 February 1947 (INA).

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the bishop’s words under the heading ‘Ireland’s Duty to Ease Distress Abroad’.60 The memory of the Great Famine was being used by supporters and opponents of European relief alike. The issue of sending aid to the continent became the object of a duel between newspapers. The Sunday Independent (part of the Independent group) organised a kind of plebiscite, inviting readers to share their opinions. Apparently, 10,745 individuals sent letters. Time had come to look after the country’s own poor, shivering from the cold. This plebiscite was denounced by The Standard (Catholic) and by readers of the Irish Press,61 which was pro-de Valera unlike the Independent group newspapers. In Galway, a debate was organised between Galway Technical School and Dominican Convent Taylor’s Hill on the topic ‘Should Ireland send food abroad?’ The Technical School argued that it should not while Taylor’s Hill argued it should. The Connacht Tribune summarised the debate during which revealing arguments emerged: Both sides gave a vigorous and spirited defence of their subject, the Taylor’s Hill girls holding that Ireland as a Christian country should show charity to her neighbours, and the others replying that both people and cattle in Ireland were dying by the hundred from starvation, but that this distress was not so evident as these hunger-stricken were all ‘hidden in the hospitals dying’. Other points were made that as Ireland did not participate in the war, she therefore had no responsibility to relieve suffering: the high prices and black market in Ireland; the fact that German children brought here were shown by their photographs in the press to be much better clad and healthier than many Irish children; that TB [tuberculosis] and undernourishment were too common here to warrant sending food out the country, and that the bogs and mountains of Ireland were too poor to support our own population.62

Those who attended the debate decided that Technical School had won. While this was a local event, it is very likely that similar opinions against international relief were expressed nationwide. The refusal to endorse responsibility to help others in need based on the sole fact that the country had been neutral during the war, could be described as ‘populist’ in present-day terms. The same goes for the argument about German children. The object of the exercise was precisely to provide

60 ‘Ireland’s duty to ease distress abroad’, Connacht Tribune, 1 March 1947 (INA). 61 ‘Newspapers’ campaign’, Irish Press, 6 March 1947 (INA). & ‘An appeal for the poor of Dublin’, Sunday Independent, 9 March 1947 (INA). 62 ‘Interesting debate in Galway’, Connacht Tribune, 29 March 1947 (INA).

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them with better living conditions in Ireland than they had and could hope for in Germany. It was therefore little wonder they looked ‘much better clad’. The voices of dissent were heard by de Valera. On 19 March in the Dáil, he rubbished their arguments: … the unworthy efforts now being made to attribute to the relief shipments, shortages which are obviously in no sense due to them reflect nothing but discredit on those who make them… There is no shortage of meat in this country, and all but a small quantity of the sugar included in this year’s programme was shipped before the end of October. It was the strike at the sugar factories in the following month which necessitated the reduction of the ration.63

Newspapers continued to report on the critical conditions on the continent. The Irish Times explained that two years of droughts had exhausted the food supplies of the people living in the plains of Moldavia, ‘normally one of the granaries of Central Europe’. Thousands had died and far more were sick.64 Several months later, the Kerryman published a photograph on its front page, showing people queuing up to get meagre rations from an American relief organisation in the town of Jassy (Iaşi) in Romania. It commented that ‘the picture … is typical of conditions in post-war Europe’.65 In the meantime, 20,000 people marched in the streets of Flensburg in northern Germany to protest against the announcement that ‘rations would be cut this week to 768 calories a day’. A local trade union leader warned that ‘democracy without bread is like walking on thin ice, which may break at any moment’. It was a worthy political aphorism. A correspondent of the Associated Press (AP) reported that ‘human figures as emaciated as those of Belsen inmates lie in the municipal hospital in Solingen, and in the hospitals of other Ruhr cities’.66 Shortly afterwards, the Irish government received photographic evidence that confirmed that certain Germans were indeed extremely emaciated.67 Yet, the Irish Independent published a declaration by Brian Brady, a deputy who had supervised relief operations on the continent: ‘Sometimes one gets very impatient with the “charity-begins-at-home” type of propaganda, for, if Irish people realised the true conditions, they would make even greater efforts to relieve the 63 64 65 66 67

‘Taoiseach hits at critics of food shipments’, The Irish Times, 20 March 1947 (ITDA). ‘Millions face starvation in one of “Europe’s granaries”’, The Irish Times, 27 March 1947 (ITDA). ‘Relief for a starving town’, Kerryman, 23 August 1947 (INA). ‘Hunger strikes in Germany’, The Irish Times, 14 May 1947 (ITDA). NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2, DRK (German Red Cross) to ‘Irish Nation’, 18 July 1947. The DRK sent a booklet entitled ‘Schwalbe-Flüchtlinge/Swallow-Expellees’ which showed the shocking physical condition of some young and elderly Germans expelled from Germany’s former eastern provinces.

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suffering of the children in European countries … It is true … that many of us in this country could ourselves be better off, but we should remember that charity is not confined to the well-to-do.’ In September, after the Big Freeze had passed, the same Irish Independent printed the following title in rather large characters: ‘French War Victims thank Eire’. A long article detailed how de Valera had been most cordially and emotionally welcomed by the French authorities and those who had received Irish supplies.68 It was a prestigious occasion in Paris, which reflected very well on Ireland. The recent food-supply controversy was quietly shelved.

Tinplate crisis & kosher meat Tinplate was urgently needed to send canned meat to Europe, notably kosher beef to surviving Jewish communities. Shortly before the end of the war, an interdepartmental meeting in Dublin had stressed that Ireland’s ‘sending of consignments of canned meat would depend on whether there were available supplies of tin and solder and that it might be necessary for us to arrange with governments applying for canned meat to provide us with containers’.69 They could not have known how problematic tin was indeed going to be. Not only did it concern meat but also condensed milk. Mary Hackett of the IRCS and Joseph Walshe were kept informed by the JRC of technical difficulties as it appeared that specific tin produced by an American firm could not be used by the Limerick Condensed Milk Factory (also known as Cleeve’s).70 On 4 January 1946, the Interdepartmental Relief Committee estimated that ‘the maximum amount of canned meat that could be supplied in any one year would be 10,000,000 lbs [pounds]’. The representative of the Department of Agriculture said that ‘from the middle of February onwards it would be possible to supply the meat at the rate of 400,000 lbs a week’.71 That proved to be far too optimistic. In February, Chief Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch Meisels of the British-Occupied Zone in Germany attended a meeting in Zion Schools in Dublin to describe what Jews on the continent had gone through under the Nazi regime. He pleaded for international Jewish solidarity with the surviving Jewish population living in DP camps, including in the former concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen. Robert Briscoe, who was a Fianna Fáil deputy and whose family had fled pogroms in Tsarist Russia at 68 ‘French war victims thank Eire’, Irish Independent, 25 September 1947 (INA). 69 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4, memorandum of interdepartmental meeting held on 25 April 1945. 70 ACICR, O CMS, C-028, Intercross Washington to Intercroixrouge, Geneva, 18 November 1945; croimixt to External Affairs Dublin, 4 December 1945 & Lalive (JRC) to Mary Hackett (IRCS), 10 December 1945. 71 NAI, INDC, EMR, 18/4, memorandum of Interdepartmental Relief Committee held on 4 January 1946.

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the turn of the century,72 said that Ireland was doing much to alleviate distress in Europe. He put forward that the continental Jews ‘should devise some form of support of their own, and if they did so, no objections would be raised to means of purchasing and sending relief to their brethren in the form of food and clothing’.73 Briscoe would play a prominent role in providing relief to his fellow Jews in the years ahead. So would Isaac Herzog. Polish-born Herzog became Ireland’s first Chief Rabbi in 1921, a function he occupied until 1936 when he became Chief Rabbi in the British Mandate of Palestine, later Israel (1948). He was a staunch supporter of Ireland’s struggle for independence, so much so that he became known as the ‘Sinn Féin Rabbi’.74 He was also on very friendly terms with Éamon de Valera. In September during a meeting of the Interdepartmental Relief Committee, chairman Frederick H. Boland (DEA) explained that Herzog had recently been in Dublin and had enquired if kosher meat could be sent to Orthodox Jews living in DP camps in Germany and elsewhere in Central Europe. He added that it was ‘very desirable’ if satisfaction could be given to the rabbi. Mr Gallagher (Agriculture) remarked that ‘some difficulty might be encountered in arranging for the ritual slaughter of animals’. Apart from this remark, which was not an objection, it was agreed that kosher meat should be supplied. But the real problem lay in the tinplate supply. Could 9,000,000 pounds of tinned meat earmarked for export leave the country after all? Boland revealed that de Valera was ‘strongly of the opinion that performance of our undertaking in respect of the supply of canned meat for the Relief Programme should take priority over increased supplies to Great Britain, and that while inability to find the necessary tinned plate, which was something over which we had no control, could be a good excuse for failure to implement our promise, alleged inability to find the meat would constitute no excuse’. Gallagher remarked that his minister was not ‘aware of the definite views of the Taoiseach in this matter’. Boland answered that he would see to it that the Taoiseach inform the minister for agriculture.75 Besides a will to help and de Valera’s friendship with Herzog, there was also an element of national prestige involved. On 1 October, Briscoe called at Iveagh House, the DEA’s residence, accompanied by Dr Joseph Schwartz. Schwartz was the European head of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. The ‘Joint’ as it was known had been founded back in 1914 by, among others, Herbert Lehman of the Lehman Brothers bank in New York who would later become UNRRA’s first director-general.

72 73 74 75

Keogh, Jews in Twentieth-Century Ireland, 8–11. ‘Chief Rabbi on Jewish suffering’, Irish Press, 18 February 1946 (INA). Asher Benson, Jewish Dublin: Portraits of Life by the Liffey (Dublin: A. & A. Farmar Ltd., 2007), 22. NAI, DFA, 6/419/4A, meeting of Interdepartmental Relief Committee, 27 September 1946.

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It looked after Jews in DP camps.76 Schwartz presented a letter of introduction written by Herzog to Cornelius Cremin of the DEA and said that they had come to discuss the sending of 1,000,000 pounds of canned meat to Orthodox Jews. Briscoe said that the provision of meat would not be a problem, but the necessary amount of tinplate would be. Yet, he had received information that canning firms should be able to send tins for the export of 9,000,000 pounds to the continent at the end of the year. Schwartz should obtain from the American government the amount of tin required for the operation, and perhaps he could get even more. Cremin noted in his record of the meeting: Deputy Briscoe urged on Dr Schwartz in my presence the desirability of getting as much additional tin as possible so that if someone were in the Dáil to query our sending so much tinned meat for the Relief of the Jews in Europe, the answer could be given that apart from the humanitarian aspect of this gesture it had helped us to fulfil our undertaking to supply tinned meat for the Continent generally.77

Although this was not explicitly stated in Cremin’s record, it would appear that Briscoe feared hostile reactions in the Dáil when the Jewish connection would become known. He might have been thinking of the notoriously antisemitic Deputy Oliver J. Flanagan who, back in July 1943 had infamously declared: ‘There is one thing that Germany did, and that was to rout the Jews out of their country. Until we rout the Jews out of this country it does not matter a hair’s breadth what orders you make. Where the bees are there is the honey, and where the Jews are there is the money.’78 But Briscoe had another motive for asking more tin. He explained that there were appropriate slaughtering facilities in Dublin for kosher purposes but that only one third of the animal could be used for it. To avoid any waste regarding the remaining two thirds, he told Schwartz that there were therefore very good reasons to get more tinplate. Schwartz told Cremin that it would be best to send the kosher tins to the International Red Cross in Geneva which would then transfer them to the Joint. As to Cremin, he would as soon as possible inform Briscoe ‘what the prospects are of supplying kosher meat’.79 On 12 November, Briscoe phoned Cremin and informed him that according to Schwartz, the material to make three million one-pound cans would be shipped to Ireland before the end of 1946 and 76 Shephard, The Long Road Home, 51, 102, 109. 77 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4C, note by Cremin on meeting, 1 October 1946. 78 Dáil Éireann debates, Emergency Powers (Continuance) Bill, 1943-Second Stage (Resumed), 9 July 1943, in http://debates.oireachtas.ie/dail/1943/07/09/00009.asp (accessed on 9 February 2015). 79 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4C, note by Cremin on meeting, 1 October 1946.

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that the slaughter of the animals had to be supervised by rabbis. At the beginning of December, Cremin in turn informed Briscoe that the Interdepartmental Relief Committee had agreed with the shipment of kosher meat and that the tinplate could be shipped over from the United States. The Irish government eventually decided that 900,000 pounds of kosher meat out of the relief programme would be supplied to Orthodox Jews.80 Yet, it would take many more months to get things sorted out. On 8 January 1947, Cremin summed up the situation for Boland. 10% of the 9,000,000 pounds of canned meat meant for the continent generally, and not 10,000,000 as Briscoe believed, would be made available for kosher; this represented about 900,000 pounds. 300 tons of tinplate would be required to can all the meat, although only one third could be used for kosher, but waste had to be avoided. Cremin had just received news that Schwartz had indicated that the tinplate was becoming available, free of charge as a token of gratitude, despite the current lack. A week later, Cremin got more good news as 3,000,000 one-pound tins could be shipped over from Britain. Added to the tinplate just promised by the Joint and the available supplies in Ireland, at least 7,000,000 pounds of canned meat could be sent to the continent.81 On 15 January, de Valera telephoned Cremin to ask how things stood. Cremin answered that at least tins for 7,000,000 pounds were available. The Taoiseach ‘seemed gratified’. He later let Cremin know that ‘if we should require more tinplate for this purpose Mgr Patrick A. O’Boyle of New York … might be able to assist us’. De Valera had his useful contacts. Cremin was keeping in touch with the Department of Agriculture to see if 9,000,000 pounds could be shipped as initially planned.82 In Jerusalem, Herzog was much pleased. On 16 January, he wrote a letter to Boland after he had heard from Briscoe that Ireland would send one million cans of kosher meat to Orthodox Jews. In it was included the following moving passage: As one who spent many years in your midst and lived through the unfolding of the national destiny of your people at the decisive turning point of its history, I have always had the conviction that Ireland, whose character has been forged on the anvil of suffering, on gaining her peace would not forget those less fortunate than herself. My sorely-tried brethren on the Continent—the remnants of a slaughter without equal in human history— will see in this gift an expression of traditional Irish warm-heartedness and a gleam of the prophetic conception of the brotherhood of all men which, alas!, has not till now informed the approach of the nations 80 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4C, notes written by Cremin, 12 November 1946, 1 December 1946 & 3 December 1946. 81 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4C, notes written by Cremin, 8 January 1947 & 14 January 1947. 82 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4C, note written by Cremin, 15 January 1947.

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of the world to their problem, the solution of which constitutes the gravest moral challenge on the international scene of our day.83

Herzog’s words were undoubtedly sincere and befitting. But it cannot be said that before and during the war Ireland had been responsive to the suffering of Jews. Boland replied that de Valera greatly appreciated his letter. The secretary for external affairs hoped that the tinned meat would be ‘in course of shipment before very long’.84 He remained cautious as far as time was concerned and he was right to. Cremin informed Frank Wheeler of the International Centre for Relief to Civilian Populations (ICRCP) in Geneva, which had replaced the JRC in the meantime, that there were still difficulties to find the necessary tinplate and also cartons to pack the tins, and asked him if the ICRCP could look after the cartons. Wheeler had previously worked for the JRC and dealt with Irish supplies.85 An Irish network was active in trying to solve the tinplate and kosher issue. But in the meantime, the country was in the grip of the Big Freeze and some were not particularly pleased to see canned meat being shipped abroad. In the Dáil, strong opposition was voiced just as Briscoe had sensed it might. Predictably, Flanagan asked James Ryan, the minister for health who was replying for the minister for agriculture, if the government was about to cancel the gift of 25,000 cattle for the continent. Ryan answered that there were currently problems with canning and that it would have been better if it had taken place several months ago. He assured, however, that ‘a big proportion of cattle to be used for canning will be mainly of a kind not used for home consumption’ and that his department would carefully monitor the evolution of the situation. Interestingly, in his choice of words, Ryan had avoided ‘Jewish’ and chose ‘not used for home consumption’ instead. It would appear that political difficulties had been anticipated. But Ryan’s answer was not good enough for Flanagan who replied that the food situation at home was serious and the gift had to be cancelled. Unexpectedly, Flanagan then got support from James Dillon who asked Ryan if he was aware of an article published by the New York Times in which it was stated that 10,000,000 pounds of kosher meat would be distributed to Jews in DP camps. The Ceann Comhairle (Speaker) said that this was a ‘separate question’, but Dillon insisted: ‘Is this meat to which Deputy Flanagan referred the kosher meat described in this announcement in the New York Times? Is the New York Times right or wrong?’ Ryan answered that both deputies were indulging in exaggeration, but Dillon kept insisting. Flanagan said: ‘Is the Minister aware that within the last 83 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4C, Herzog to Boland, 16 January 1947. 84 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4C, Boland to Herzog, 27 January 1947. 85 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4C, Cremin to Wheeler, 30 January 1947 & ‘Irish relief vote passed through Geneva’, Irish Press, 16 August 1946 (INA).

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week we have had a case down the country where a family was almost dying of starvation and had to be taken to the county home?’ Dillon, sensing that Ryan was in the ropes, asked: ‘How much of this meat is going to Europe in the form of kosher meat?’ Ryan eventually answered: ‘At the outside 1,000,000 lbs’. Flanagan thundered: ‘It is a damn shame.’86 In Flanagan’s case, his rabid antisemitism and xenophobia had flared up. Back in May 1945, he had said in the Dáil that he ‘hoped Hitler was still alive’ and had been severely condemned by Dillon for saying this.87 But in Dillon’s case? He kept asking if the meat was for Jews, by implication not for the Irish or Christians. Was it a touch of antisemitism, genuine concern about a lack of supplies caused by the Big Freeze or an opportunity to deal a political blow to the Fianna Fáil government? Antisemitism can be ruled out as he had no time for Nazism and its racialist theories. In September 1937, he had said: ‘Let us remember that all men and women belong to the universal brotherhood of man, which implies the universal fatherhood of God, whether they are Gaels or Arians’.88 This statement was very much in line with the statement he made a few years later on 18 May 1945 when he approved of the government’s relief plan. Domestic politics is the likely answer. The government’s poor performance in dealing with the Big Freeze had been noted and a general election could not be that far away now. Yet, whatever the answer, this was not Dillon’s finest hour. But not only in Ireland were objections raised to the exporting of supplies. Back in August 1945, Francis T. Cremins had reported from Berne that the Don Suisse had published a letter in La Suisse, stating that everything was done to avoid any wasting of supplies sent to countries in need, and commented: ‘The reason for this letter of explanation from the Don Suisse is that there has been some public criticism in Switzerland regarding the sending, to suffering populations, by the Don Suisse, of important goods and foods which are becoming scarce in this country and which it is feared may be very scarce during next winter or during periods of epidemics if any such should occur.’89 Issues with the shipment of canned meat, kosher or non-kosher, continued to plague the government. It was not only the tinplate that caused problems but also a lack of suitable cattle on the market as farmers appeared to hold back cattle in case current Anglo-Irish negotiations in London led to higher prices.90 In the end, the tinplate crisis outlived de Valera’s government, which was beaten during the general election in February 1948 and replaced by an Inter-Party Government led 86 Dáil Éireann, Dáil Éireann Debate, vol. 104, no. 7, ‘Gift of cattle to Europe’, 13 February 1947, in http:// debates.oireachtas.ie/dail/1947/02/13/00019.asp (accessed on 11 February 2015). 87 Manning, James Dillon, 196. 88 Manning, James Dillon, 128. 89 NAI, DFA, 6/419/24, Cremins to secretary for external affairs, 1 August 1945. 90 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4C, note written by Cremin, 2 October 1947.

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by John A. Costello (Fine Gael). But at long last, on 7 September, the Irish Times announced that a group of eleven Orthodox rabbis had arrived in Dublin to supervise the slaughter of the animals. Jewish butchers from Paris were already on the spot, the Jewish delegation now amounting to a total of thirty-four people. Work began the next day and was expected to last for three months. Non-kosher meat was also being canned and the newspaper explained in another article that the shortage of tinplate had delayed the sending of all the intended amount of meat.91 De Valera was no longer Taoiseach, but he was not forgotten in the recently created state of Israel. He and Briscoe travelled to Jerusalem in 1950. They arrived at Lydda Airport at four o’clock in the morning, but a large crowd was there to greet ‘Dev’. The following day, he was invited to dinner by Herzog. There, he met Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion and other members of the Israeli cabinet.92 Israel had declared its independence in May 1948 and wanted to be internationally recognised. Ireland’s answer was not straightforward, however. At first, there was only a de facto recognition from 1949 until 1963. Several members of the government viewed the new Jewish state as anti-Christian and bore in mind the diplomatic policy of non-recognition by the Vatican (formal diplomatic relations between the Holy See and Israel were established only in 1993). It also transpired that the Irish government refused de jure recognition lest it should lead to an Israeli embassy opening in Dublin and leading to the development of ‘Jewish influence’ in the country. But, in 1963, Ireland eventually recognised Israel de jure.93 Two years later, the Irish Jewish community decided to honour de Valera by planting a forest near Nazareth and naming it after him. In August 1966, the first tree was planted. Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol saw in it ‘a fitting expression of the traditional friendship between the Irish and the Jewish peoples, two nations that have so much in common of history and fulfilment’. An Israeli diplomat born in Ireland, Max Nurock, declared at the ceremony that de Valera had ‘richly earned today’s tribute in Israel by showing himself to be a constant and stalwart wellwisher of Jewry and of the Jewish State’.94 De Valera’s infamous handshake with the German minister in Dublin on Hitler’s death was not forgotten but the international Jewish community had not misinterpreted his gesture. The memory of the kosher meat sent to Orthodox Jews cannot have failed to have played a role in naming the newly planted forest after him. 91 ‘Dublin-prepared kosher meat for European Jews’, 4 September 1948, ‘Party arrives to prepare meat for Europe’, 7 September 1948 & ‘Meat for Europe’, 9 September 1948, in The Irish Times (ITDA). 92 Robert Briscoe with Alden Hatch, For the Life of Me (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1959), 302– 305. Strikingly, Briscoe did not mention the kosher meat issue in his book. 93 Paula L. Wylie, Ireland and the Cold War: Diplomacy and Recognition 1949–63 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2006), 198–9. See Chapter 6 in particular, ‘Non-recognition of Israel and the politics of prestige, 1948–63’, 198–254. 94 Keogh, Jews in Twentieth-Century Ireland, 229–33.

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Concluding remarks The decision to extend relief to the European continent was a consistent step in Ireland’s policy. Misery was still rampant, and the odds of rapid recovery were not looking good, although things were slowly improving in Western Europe. The implementation of the Marshall Plan was going to be determining but it would take time. Moreover, it was clear that misery and chaos would be conducive to political extremism, notably the threat of communism. Therefore, abruptly ceasing aid would not have made sense and would have been noticed on the international stage. It was also logical that the Irish government took the decision to focus its second phase of humanitarian aid on Central and Eastern Europe where the situation was worse. Doubts were expressed by some national and local politicians, and also by some newspapers, concerning the decision to continue relief. Their concerns were motivated by rumours of Irish supplies ending up in the black market and especially by the onset of the Big Freeze. While it was undeniably true that Irish people, mostly the poorer sections of society, were suffering during these unprecedented meteorological conditions and that legitimate concerns were expressed regarding the production of food in Ireland, many of these politicians and newspapers played the charity-begins-at-home card and may not have been too much concerned by their ‘own’ poor previously. Objections were expressed by several deputies in the Dáil, notably Oliver J. Flanagan and John Dillon. Their display of local and national concerns showed that they missed the larger picture in Europe of which Ireland was a part and had a special role to play having been spared the horrors of the Second World War, or they simply seized the opportunity to gain political advantage. Dillon and Flanagan were isolated voices in the Dáil, but they would continue with their criticism of relief, as will be seen in the following chapter. Dillon had serious doubts about the efficiency of the International Red Cross and its distribution of supplies in Central and Eastern Europe and believed it played into the Soviets and local communists’ hands. Cold War considerations were beginning to be felt. Misery in Ireland was real, but misery on the continent was far more pronounced. De Valera and his government knew this, kept in mind the larger picture, and persevered with relief efforts. In this, they were supported by the Churches and probably a majority of the population. De Valera deserves credit in his perseverance with relief, notably by sending kosher meat to Orthodox Jews who had been very lucky to survive Nazi brutality. It remains difficult to establish exactly what had motivated him to see this particular operation succeeding as he had clearly taken a personal interest in it. His friendship with Rabbi Isaac Herzog must have played a role, but maybe also the revelations of the Nazi atrocities and the fact

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that Ireland had not done too much for Jews during the war. His handshake with Eduard Hempel had been an egregious mistake. All these facts might have been weighing heavily on his mind, developing a sense of guilt. The Irish government also bore in mind the proactive relief policy advocated by the Vatican. There was a strong Catholic identity in the formulation of Irish foreign policy and abandoning relief would have gone against the publicly known wishes of Pius XII. These wishes could not simply be ignored, and as will be shown the Vatican’s opinions regarding the conduct of relief would be taken into account by Dublin during the emerging Cold War.

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Chapter Six

End of Relief

In an élan of humanitarianism, the Irish government, people, Churches, and voluntary organisations had decided to help Europe, but Éamon de Valera’s cabinet could also hope to attract good international publicity for the country after years of self-isolation during the war. Soon, very positive echoes reached Irish shores although it was felt by certain individuals that the Swiss were trying to downplay Ireland’s aid. Supplies from Ireland and Switzerland were the first non-Allied foreign supplies to be allowed for distribution into all four sectors of Berlin in early 1946. In Sofia, a Bulgarian newsreel showed Irish supplies being distributed. Briefly, there were plenty of reasons to feel satisfied. Nevertheless, not everything was positive. Impressions that Ireland had been pro-German had not disappeared owing to the Irish government’s attitude towards the Nuremberg trials and the rather grandiose funeral of a former German spy in Dublin. Also, the Irish Red Cross Society (IRCS) was in deep financial trouble and its membership was decreasing dramatically. Certain civil servants seriously questioned its organisational abilities. In the political arena, some people strongly voiced their doubts or downright opposition to the continuation of relief in the late 1940s. But de Valera decided that the time was not for quitting. So did his successor as Taoiseach, John A. Costello. During the emerging Cold War, Ireland’s Catholic identity became very apparent through its relief policy. Politicians and civil servants listened to what the Vatican had to say. Cooperation with the International Red Cross located in Protestant Geneva was eventually abandoned for cooperation with the American National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC). The NCWC expressed all its admiration for what such a small country like Ireland had done for the European continent. This was confirmed by the bookkeepers of the Department of External Affairs (DEA) who revealed significant relief figures in 1955.

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Other handshake-type debacles: the Nuremberg trials and Görtz funeral In November 1945, Nazis of the calibre of Hermann Göring, Julius Streicher, and Arthur Seyss-Inquart began to stand trial at Nuremberg. The Irish government’s reaction to this momentous event in legal history, which saw the development of international law in issues of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, was negative and again this attracted the wrong attention, many believing that it confirmed that the country had wanted a German victory. It was another type of handshake debacle. Minister for Justice Gerald Boland declared: ‘Imagine, the people who murdered the cream of the Polish Army and buried them in the Mass Grave in the Katyn Forest, those who bombed the City of Dresden which was undefended and full of refugees and those who atom-bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki having the cheek to try anyone for war crimes!’1 Boland implied that in the final analysis the Allies were as bad as the Nazis. While the Allies definitely did not have a clean record, he simply failed to appreciate the utter barbarity of Hitler’s regime which had exterminated people on a grand scale and in industrial fashion. Details and stories were now freely available in the press and he had no excuse for not knowing. His words might also have reflected an extreme form of small-state neutrality, lumping all great powers together as responsible for the troubles of the world. According to Robert Fisk: ‘[Boland’s] argument had some validity but it also represented a sliding away from the issues that were involved in the war, a wilful refusal to acknowledge the evil nature of Hitler’s Nazi regime and the terror it inflicted upon the world’.2 The Limerick Leader believed that ‘the campaign against war criminals is strangely confined to those who happen to fight on the wrong side’, although it did add that ‘Allied atrocities cannot excuse the monstrous barbarism of the Reich’.3 This was more nuanced than Boland’s statement. De Valera, even though he had had ample time to reflect on his handshake with Hempel and its international repercussions, opposed the planned executions of some of the Nazi leaders as he was convinced that nothing but hatred would develop. He shared his opinion with Sir John Maffey, the British representative in Ireland, to whom he said that they would be a ‘tragic mistake’. He even went as far as to ask the DEA to enquire about their legality. The DEA’s conclusion was that nobody could be tried ‘under a law which did not exist at the date of his crime’, namely ‘crimes against the peace’ which were defined three months after the war. It believed that it was simply victors’ justice.4 Later, the Irish government was willing 1 2 3 4

Fisk, In Time of War, 549. Fisk, In Time of War, 549. Fisk, In Time of War, 549–50, see footnote. Girvin, The Emergency, 21–3.

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to grant asylum to certain German individuals, including Hempel. That decision reflected a desire to assert sovereignty. Many of them were not die-hard Nazis, however.5 Otto Skorzeny, the flamboyant Viennese SS paratrooper who had rescued Mussolini in a daring commando raid in 1943, settled in the country for a brief period at the end of the 1950s. The problem was that again all this sent the wrong signals abroad. But what must also be stressed here is that the Irish government’s attitude towards the Nuremberg trials was not an isolated one, or that it constituted a very visible exception. Many in the legal profession, including in the United States, opposed the trials not because they had sympathy for the Nazis but they deemed that the trials rested on very shaky legal foundations. In Britain, The Economist called Nuremberg an ‘epoch-making event’ and wrote that ‘nothing at all comparable has ever taken place before’. But it emphasised that while ‘the fate for a group of evil men’ was ‘well-deserved’, the victorious nations which administered justice were not exactly above reproach either. The Soviet participation in the invasion of Poland in 1939 was as good as ignored. And what about the bombing of German cities and their non-combatant inhabitants, the dropping of atomic bombs, and the expulsion of German populations from Central and Eastern Europe? Were these not crimes against humanity, The Economist asked?6 But a second handshake-type debacle occurred in May 1947 when a former German spy, Dr Hermann Görtz, got a Nazi-style burial in Dublin. Görtz had been arrested and was due to be deported to Germany but committed suicide. Up to 800 people might have attended his funeral. One of them was Deputy Dan Breen of de Valera’s Fianna Fáil party and also treasurer of the German Save the Children Society (GSCS). The coffin was draped with a Swastika and some attendees gave the Nazi salute.7 Most of those present were rabidly anti-British, like Breen. It beggared belief that the government let this happen so soon after the war but, in all likelihood, there was a desire to avoid a confrontation with IRA or extreme nationalist elements. In the Netherlands, the Catholic daily Limburgsch Dagblad reported on its front page that Queen Wilhelmina had attended the ‘Memorial Day’ ceremony at Margraten where over 17,000 American soldiers lay buried, then the largest military cemetery in Europe. But the chances were that the readers’ attention was caught by the large photograph just next to the Memorial Day article, showing a coffin draped with a clearly visible Nazi flag, surrounded by a crowd. The caption read: ‘Swastika at funeral of spy in Dublin. Hundreds of people, many with Nazi emblems, gathered on second Pentecost Day when the burial of Dr Hermann 5 Leach, Fugitive Ireland, 75. 6 ‘The Nuremberg Judgment’, The Economist, 5 October 1946, in http://www.economist.com/node/ 14205505 (accessed on 7 January 2016). 7 Hull, Irish Secrets, 258.

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Görtz, the German spy who committed suicide, took place. A Nazi flag draped the coffin which was surrounded with many flowers and wreaths.’8 The juxtaposition of Margraten and Görtz’s coffin could not have been more eloquent and misleading. It was therefore crucial that Ireland obtain excellent publicity as a caring nation with its European relief program as it helped to counterbalance this seemingly pro-German attitude.

International publicity for Ireland It was hardly surprising that besides genuine humanitarianism, the issue of international publicity also preoccupied the Irish government. After all, there were high politics involved and Joseph Walshe had said in April 1945 that the country would get credit and publicity for its relief efforts. In October 1945, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) sent a delegation led by Dr August R. Lindt (family of the Swiss chocolate makers) to negotiate with the Allied Control Council the sending of supplies to Germany. These negotiations were partially successful as the distribution of Red Cross supplies was then allowed in all four sectors in Berlin and the British and French-Occupied Zones in western Germany; the Americans would eventually allow it in their zone in March 1946 and the Soviets in theirs the following month.9 The neediest part of western Germany was, according to the ICRC, Saarland, a province along the French border. The situation in Greater Berlin was also extremely preoccupying. Lindt deemed that it was imperative that medicine, blankets, woollen socks, textiles, condensed milk, milk powder, tinned soup, and tinned meat be sent during the first train convoy. Supplies of the Don Suisse and Don Irlandais could be used. Lindt was very conscious of the publicity factor as he said that for the action to be successful, the name of each donor would be clearly indicated during the distribution of the supplies.10 Regarding Saarland, publicity literally looked after itself. When Irish supplies were transported into Saarbrücken, the local authorities issued a flyer with the eye-catching title ‘Hochherzige Tat Edler Menschlichkeit!’ (magnanimous deed of noble humanity!). It was explained in bold characters that the ‘Irish Red Cross has donated Saarland food, shoes and clothes’. Inhabitants were informed that the distribution would take place in four schools, the Rotenbergschule, KnabenMittelschule, Elisabethenschule and Arnulfschule, on 24 December 1945.11 Four months later, as more Irish supplies arrived, the Neue Saarbrücker Zeitung 8 9 10 11

Photograph on front page of the Limburgsch Dagblad, 31 May 1947 (Delpher Kranten). Rey-Schyrr, De Yalta à Dien Bien Phu, 203. ACICR, O CMS, C-023, Dr Leupold to Dr Frey, telephone message, 28 November 1945. ACICR, O CMS, O CMS, C-019, flyer entitled ‘Hochherzige Tat Edler Menschlichkeit!’, 24 December 1945.

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published an article entitled ‘Spende des Irischen Freistaates für Mütter der Stadt Saarbrücken’ (donations of the Irish Free State for mothers of the city of Saarbrücken). It was explained that ‘registered expectant mothers and breastfeeding mothers of the city of Saarbrücken are entitled to a special share of one kilo of sugar and half a kilo of bacon free of charge’.12 This was the kind of publicity that Dublin could only hope for as it enhanced the prestige of the country even though the political appellation Irish Free State was now outdated since it had been replaced by Éire in 1937 when de Valera introduced a new constitution. It was only a minor mistake in the sense that it did not prevent the local inhabitants from knowing that the sugar and bacon came from Ireland. Nonetheless, it was rather symptomatic of a widespread lack of knowledge of the country.

Historic photo opportunity in Berlin lost But elsewhere there were several publicity hiccups and controversies mainly owed, it would seem, to over-sensitivity and information that was difficult to check. In November 1945, the Irish Press complained bitterly that the Neue Zürcher Zeitung from Zurich had not reported anything on Ireland’s relief operations as that newspaper got no relevant information from the news agencies on which it relied. Only negative reports on Ireland were being sent to the Neue Zürcher Zeitung.13 Yet, this was not the case for all Swiss newspapers. In January 1946, the Irish Red Cross Bulletin reprinted an article published by the Tribune de Genève the previous December, praising Ireland’s generous relief work.14 In Berlin, most unfortunately, publicity for Ireland got off to a bad start. On 9 January 1946 at a meeting between departmental representatives and Conor Maguire and Mary Hackett of the IRCS, the publicity issue was discussed. Maguire was annoyed, understandably, with some negative comments that had appeared in the local press, claiming that the country was not doing enough for relief. The government’s supplies were deemed insufficient and as to the IRCS, it was accused of ‘doing nothing’. He said that more publicity should be made. Hackett, who had just returned from a study trip in Switzerland where she had met members of the Joint Relief Commission of the International Red Cross (JRC) and had been told of the ‘propaganda methods’ of the Don Suisse,15 was equally annoyed. She explained that the volume and the quality of Irish supplies had made a ‘tremendous impression’ on 12 NAI, DFA, 419/4 part II (6/419/4/1), ‘Spende des Irischen Freistaates für Mütter der Stadt Saar­brücken’, Neue Saarbrücker Zeitung, 6 April 1946. 13 ‘False Witness’, Irish Press, 5 November 1945 (INA). 14 IFRC, box 16539, Irish Red Cross Bulletin, January 1946. 15 ACICR, O CMS, C-023, report of M. F. Lalive on trip with Mary Hackett, 19 December 1945.

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the continent and that the IRCS had received many letters of gratitude. Hackett was by no means exaggerating. ‘A point often overlooked’, she continued, ‘was that goods which cost £3,000,000 in this country simply could not be purchased for any money on the continent.’ Denis P. Shanagher (Industry and Commerce) informed both IRCS members that it was the government’s intention to publish a statement on relief activities. Hackett gave photographs of Irish goods stored in Geneva which, she said, would be useful in this regard.16 On 23 January in Geneva, the JRC was busily loading the first ever train transport of supplies from the Don Irlandais and Don Suisse for Berlin. For the distribution, Lindt, who was in Berlin, was instructed to mention the name of the donor on all the goods in so far as possible. If ‘[Irish] government’ was not indicated, then ‘Irish people’ should be. All the Irish supplies originated from the Irish government except the 20 tons of biscuits which came from the IRCS.17 This eventful train journey departing from Basel through devastated Germany (see chapter ten) took four days to complete, from 26 until 30 January, but the goods safely reached their destination. It was obvious that the JRC was making serious publicity efforts for Ireland. Dr A. Vaudaux of the International Red Cross travelled with the supplies. Once in Berlin, everything was transported by truck to buildings under supervision of the local health authorities and the unloading began while photographs were taken, showing not only the unloading but also two banners indicating ‘Don Suisse’ and ‘Joint Relief Commission of the International Red Cross’ in German that had been fixed on the buildings. Don Irlandais was missing, however. Vaudaux later explained that sadly the unloading of the Irish supplies, which had been done first, took place under very bad weather conditions and his photographs never came out right.18 This was most regrettable as a genuine historic photo opportunity had been lost, although the provenance of the supplies was never in doubt and certainly not all publicity was lost. The Mayor of Berlin, Dr Arthur Werner, wrote to the chairman of the IRCS, thanking him profusely and explaining that the 22.4 tons of biscuits would be distributed to some 20,000 children in day nurseries.19 Elsewhere, Willem van Tets, the Dutch chargé d’affaires in Dublin, informed de Valera that the consignment of field boilers and stores had reached the Netherlands. Unfortunately, he wrote, ‘some error occurred by which 16 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4, memorandum, meeting between representatives of the Department of Industry and Commerce and Local Government and Public Health and members of the IRCS, 9 January 1946. 17 ACICR, O CMS, C-023, ‘Note pour M.G. Leupold’, 23 January 1946. 18 ACICR, O CMS, O CMS, D-015, ‘Convoyeurbericht’, Dr A. Vaudaux, January/February 1946. The Landesarchiv in Berlin is in possession of a series of photographs, obviously taken by Dr Vaudaux, showing the unloading of the goods. Unfortunately, nowhere can it be seen that an important part of the goods came from Ireland. Landesarchiv Berlin, F_Rep_290-0260487 until F_Rep_290_0260501. 19 ACICR, O CMS, C-023, Werner to chairman of IRCS, 8 February 1946.

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the name of the sender was omitted’. He was going to investigate the matter and believed it would be satisfactorily solved. According to him: ‘There is no doubt that this generous gift was much appreciated at the time and it is likely that the Netherlands authorities wish to express their sincere thanks to the donor who so far was unknown to them.’20

Great publicity successes Despite these hiccups, the pattern for making publicity had been set. Wherever Irish supplies were being distributed, streamers, posters, and local press articles would clearly indicate their provenance. And this was necessary because in certain areas of the continent Ireland was like a terra incognita. On 26 March 1946, Dr Olivier Long of the JRC, who was in Dublin to negotiate the sending of more supplies, made a moving appeal on Radio Eireann: Hundreds of thousands of people mostly children, expectant mothers, sick or old people have benefitted from the generosity of Ireland—and how grateful these people are. You should see the letters written by the local officials dealing with the distribution or by the people who received the goods. They all say more or less the same: ‘We thank you, Irish people, from the depths of our hearts’. Some of them admit that they did not know quite where this country was, but they now say that they will never forget the name of Ireland.21

Long’s remarks proved to be accurate. In Linz in Austria, people queued up alongside a building that had visibly seen better days. Among them were many women and elderly, some smiling. Fixed directly underneath the sign ‘Feuer-Flieger-Alarm’ (fire and plane alarm) was the larger sign ‘Butter-Spende der Irländischen Regierung’ (butter donation of the Irish government).22 Times had changed. The local Austrian press reported the distribution of Irish supplies in 1946, like the Salzburger Nachrichten and the Salzburger Volkszeitung.23 It was the same scene in the Ancient Roman city of Trier, in the French-Occupied Zone of Germany, where happy people eagerly queued up to receive a ration of Irish bacon. On a poster decorated with shamrocks, 20 NAI. DFA, 6/419/1/1, van Tets to de Valera, 7 December 1946. 21 NAI. DFA, 419/4 part II (DFA 6/419/4/1), Long (in Dublin with IRCS) to Walshe (secretary for external affairs), 26 March 1946, containing copy of Long’s speech, approved by Walshe. 22 NAI. DFA, 6/419/4/22/5, Linz local authorities to International Red Cross, containing photographs, 22 March 1946. 23 The author is grateful for this information to Jacqueline Kowanda of the Landesarchiv (federal archive) Salzburg, Austria, 8 April 2014. Salzburger Nachrichten and Salzburger Volkszeitung, 4 January 1946, 5 March 1946 & 23 March 1946.

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it was stated: ‘Irish gift for the civilian population of Trier donated through the International Red Cross. Here free donation of 200 grams of bacon per head of population. The city of Trier warmly thanks the donor’.24 From Rome, Michael MacWhite, the Irish minister, reported the following to Dublin: Enclosed herewith also is a copy of a poster which has been displayed on dead walls all over Italy for St. Patrick’s Day. In large print at the top are the words ‘Distribuzione Straordinaria di zucchero donato dal Governo et dal Popolo d’Irlanda’ [Extraordinary distribution of sugar donated by the government and people of Ireland] and the last paragraph reads: ‘The National Committee of the ENDSI [National Agency for the Distribution of Relief in Italy] in notifying the population of the above distribution (of one pound of sugar free to everybody under 18 years) desires to publicly express to the Government and People of Ireland its warm gratitude for their generous help and effective solidarity in the certainty that they are interpreting the sentiments of all those who have benefitted’.25

MacWhite added a revealing comment that confirmed what Long had said in his broadcast: ‘There is no doubt that through the distribution of Irish relief many Italian children have heard of Ireland for the first time’. The DEA had every reason to be satisfied with the developments in Italy but also elsewhere, notably behind the Iron Curtain where all necessary measures were taken to indicate and stress the provenance of the international aid. Food and clothes from Ireland were the first non-Allied foreign supplies to enter the Soviet-Occupied Zone in Germany although Irish-Soviet relations were very far from being the best, even leading to Moscow’s objection to Irish membership of the United Nations as seen. Foodstuffs were distributed in children’s homes, notably in the region of Brandenburg around Berlin. In one of them, a group of children sitting at table focused on eating their meals under the supervision of four ladies. Just above them pinned on the wall, was a banner, stating ‘Food of the Märkische Volkssolidarität [People’s Solidarity], from the donations of the Irish Red Cross’. The Märkische Volkssolidarität of Eberswalde had even printed on the ration cards that the food was provided by the Irish people. There were going to be twenty-eight days of food for 1,000 children.26 The Volkssolidarität was a welfare organisation active in the Soviet-Occupied Zone and included representatives of all the political parties, 24 NAI, DFA, 419/4 part II (DFA, 6/419/4/1), Donation of the Irish Government to the Civilian Populations of Central and Eastern Europe, distribution of the 1945 donation, by JRC, Geneva. 25 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/4, MacWhite to Boland, 23 March 1946. 26 NAI, DFA, 419/4 part II (DFA, 6/419/4/1), Donation of the Irish Government to the Civilian Populations of Central and Eastern Europe, distribution of the 1945 donation, by JRC, Geneva.

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Churches, and different social organisations. In October 1947, the Volkssolidarität branch in Plauen in Saxony emphasised that it was the duty of Germans to thank donors. Besides gratitude it also had publicity in mind and decreed that the following should be clearly stated on posters: ‘[Donation of the] Irish people, distributed through the International Red Cross and the Volkssolidarität’. Also, the relevant information office was asked to publicise the event in the press.27 This helps to explain why so many letters of thanks from ordinary Germans sent to Dublin came from the Soviet-Occupied Zone. From Yugoslavia, the local committee of the Croatian Red Cross in the village of Oštrice sent the IRCS two photographs of smiling children with adults in their midst, waving the Red Cross flag. In the middle of the group, was a signpost which read ‘Crvenom Križu Irske’ (Red Cross Ireland). The committee was ‘deeply moved’ by the sending of sugar.28 In subsequent reports, the Irish government noted with satisfaction the use of posters and ration cards mentioning ‘Donation of the Irish People’.29 The fact that Irish supplies had been the first non-Allied foreign supplies to be distributed in the Soviet-Occupied Zone of Germany and had been given publicity in the local press was also much appreciated.30

Swiss versus Irish relief rivalry? Yet, some people were not satisfied, or entirely satisfied. John B. Hamill, an IRCS representative, travelled with a delegation to Geneva. On their way, they stopped in Freiburg im Breisgau in Germany close to the Swiss border and observed the distribution of Irish supplies. When he arrived in Geneva for a scheduled International Red Cross conference, he reported to the IRCS: However, it was impressed upon us forcibly in Freiburg, as I have said in my preliminary report and confirmed by the Austrian delegate, that there is an absolute necessity for representatives from Ireland being present at the various distributions. The Austrian delegate told me that what he felt about the distribution in Austria was that Ireland did not get credit for what they were doing and that the people did not appreciate that the distribution was Irish distribution. I am perfectly certain that this is not due to any fault of the Commission Mixte [JRC], but all the supervision is done by Swiss nationals or by other foreigners attached to the International [Red Cross], and while they may put up a notice, there is not 27 SAC, B30409, Kreistag-Kreisrat Plauen, Nr 101, Report of the Volkssolidarität, 2 October 1947. 28 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22//3, Red Cross committee of Oštrice to IRCS, including two photographs, April 1946. 29 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4A, report entitled ‘Relief supplies to Europe’, undated. 30 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4AA, memorandum, ‘The Alleviation of Distress in Germany and Austria’, undated.

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sufficient publication of the fact that Ireland has done what it has done in the various countries concerned. In every case we observed —and I am speaking not alone of my visit to Freiburg, but also of visits to Swiss or International establishments in France—the Swiss publicised their country and there is impressed on the minds of the children and other persons receiving the help and assistance, every possible reference to Switzerland, such as publications of their health resorts, industries etc.31

As if to avenge the Irish, the Austrian delegate went on to make a speech in which he singled out Ireland’s magnificent contribution and heaped tons of praise on its government, people, and IRCS. The DEA was duly informed of this issue.32 It remains difficult to assess Hamill’s claims, namely that the Swiss were looking after their interests first and foremost, not caring about other relief initiatives. What are the facts? It is indeed noteworthy that Vaudaux, a Swiss national, could not take photographs of the unloading of Irish supplies in Berlin after that historic first train journey. The weather then improved, apparently, and he was fortunately able to take photographs of the Swiss supplies. He could have taken another opportunity to take photographs of Irish supplies being distributed with a banner Don Irlandais. Visibly, this was not done or did not cross his mind. It is to be noted that a similar case occurred in Steyr in Upper Austria where the distribution of 2,475 kilos of Irish bacon could not be photographed because of the adverse weather conditions.33 It seems unlikely though that there had been any relief foul-play in Berlin or Steyr, the reason being that it would have been counter-productive for the International Red Cross or the local authorities. Good publicity meant enticing the Irish to do ever more and renew their sending of supplies. The Provincial Government of Salzburg in Austria made this abundantly clear in a letter to the local Health Office. It explained that as had been reported by the press and radio for several days past, all tuberculosis patients would receive an extra ration of canned beef, which was a donation from the Irish government. The Provincial Government instructed that it had to be stressed at all times where the beef came from. Photographs of the distribution should be taken if possible and letters of thanks should be sent to Dublin: ‘These letters of thanks and photographs, during earlier food donations from Ireland, have not failed to produce the desired effect, as this new donation proves.’34 31 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, John B. Hamill to J. P. Shanley, IRCS chairman, 16 August 1946. 32 NAI, DFA, note, no author, no date but in all likelihood summer 1946. 33 OOLA, Best. Amt der Landesregierung seit 1945/Fürsorge 1327/1947, Health Department Steyr to Provincial Government, Oberösterreich, 18 July 1947. 34 SLA, 1947 33-4/10-1362, letter, (probably) Provincial Government of Salzburg to Health Office, 29 April 1947.

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In September 1945, representatives of the JRC, including Jean-Flavien Lalive and Olivier Long, met Rodolfo Olgiati, the director of the Don Suisse. Their meeting was about the possible use of Don Irlandais supplies in the canteens ran by the Don Suisse the moment they would run out of food. Olgiati was not opposed to this idea but remained careful. According to Long and Lalive, ‘Mr Olgiati seems to think that this suggestion is worth exploring while stating that it might be opposed politically by his executive committee. Certain people might, indeed, not appreciate that the Don Suisse’s operations are joined with the Irish government’s operations’.35 In November, Olgiati explained in a letter to Dr Boehringer of the JRC that the Don Suisse was preparing a feeding operation for children in ten German cities. The available food supplies only allowed for an emergency feeding program. The required calorie number could be supplemented but there were problems to get the necessary supplies like fatty foods. To his mind the supplies of the Don Irlandais complemented those of the Don Suisse, and he put forward a combined action. The Irish supplies should reach the cities in time and some of them should possibly be set aside for the Swiss meals. This could be entrusted to the local officials. Olgiati wrote: ‘It would then be the task of the relevant city authorities to possibly set aside certain supplies [of the Don Irlandais] for the supplementing of the Don Suisse’s children meals. I would be extremely interested in your opinion on this matter’. Boehringer did not like it and pencilled at the end of Olgiati’s letter: ‘It seems to me that we should stick to our distribution plan, at least in its main ideas, and we should consider in particular those cities for which the Don Suisse does nothing, in other words the north [of Germany] …’36 On 3 December, during a phone conversation with Lalive, Olgiati again proposed a joint action plan. But he stressed that ‘for psychological and political reasons a clear difference must be made between the Don Suisse and the Don Irlandais’. Evidently, the two should not be mixed up. Lalive answered that the JRC would be happy to cooperate but it had been decided to wait for the arrival of August Lindt, the ICRC delegate in Berlin, to examine possibilities.37 On 10 December, Boehringer eventually wrote back to Olgiati that regarding the supplies of the Don Irlandais, ‘a distribution program has been conceived to which we only want to make changes in cases of emergency’. The JRC’s operations would be centred on Berlin and northern German cities while the Don Suisse was focusing on the south and west, areas that the JRC would also consider for relief. According to Boehringer, the situation was so bad that all kinds of supplies would be welcome 35 ACICR, O CMS C-026, note written by Olivier Long on a meeting with Rodolfo Olgiati, director of the Don Suisse, 4 September 1945. 36 ACICR, O CMS C-028, letter, Olgiati to Boehringer, 30 November 1945. 37 ACICR, O CMS C-023, note by Lalive on phone conversation with Olgiati, 3 December 1945.

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everywhere. It was imperative that they should be sent immediately, and it was therefore too late to make any major changes. The JRC’s food, clothing, and transport departments were busy planning the distribution and based on previous experience, it was not a good idea to disrupt them now. The JRC did not consider a joint action plan possible anymore, yet it was willing to keep the Don Suisse informed of its operations.38 In the light of these contacts, it emerged that Olgiati underlined the need to make a clear distinction between the Don Suisse and the Don Irlandais. This does not prove beyond any doubt that the Swiss did not try somehow to belittle the efforts of the Irish government, but it seems unlikely. Also noteworthy was the emergence of what might be termed relief competition. Prestige was at stake. The Don Suisse, the JRC, and the Don Irlandais were not the same and their distinct identity had to be cultivated. The handful of other Irish delegates who were on the spot also noticed some publicity hiccups. Patrick Power, who travelled to Czechoslovakia on behalf of the IRCS, returned to Dublin in January 1947. Cornelius Cremin met him in the DEA: ‘One feature about the Irish Relief Supplies in Czechoslovakia which struck Mr Power is that most of the receipts submitted (and which he brought back with him) acknowledge the receipt of supplies as from the Don Suisse. He called the attention of the Red Cross in Geneva to this fact. They undertook to have the receipts altered. As Mr Power pointed out, however, the difficulty is that the recipients did not know when the supplies were delivered to them that they came from Ireland.’39 Again this incident concerned the Don Suisse and it was to be expected that the accumulation of these incidents would raise a few eyebrows in Dublin. It is noteworthy that there are no known cases of supplies of the Don Suisse which accidentally were distributed under a banner of the Don Irlandais. It is also important to make a distinction between Swiss nationals and the International Red Cross located in Switzerland, as Hamill rightly did. The JRC made sure that the Don Irlandais got the necessary credits. In a report for Joseph Walshe in February 1946, it explained that ‘all the supplies forwarded are furnished with labels indicating that they are a gift from Ireland’. In this report, specimens of labels were included.40 There are other facts to consider. Lindt, also a Swiss national and who was from the ICRC, took great care that supplies in Berlin were properly labelled. IRCS member Hackett, who had been to Geneva where she had had the opportunity to study the ‘propaganda methods’ of the Don Suisse, had said that Irish supplies made a ‘tremendous impression’ on the continent. It has been proven that 38 ACICR, O CMS C-028, letter, Boehringer to Olgiati, 10 December 1945. 39 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/14, Note by Cremin, 16 January 1947. 40 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/1, report from Dr J. F. Lalive and Dr R Boehringer (JRC) for Walshe, 22 February 1946.

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Irish aid reaching Germany, Austria, Yugoslavia, and other countries received the necessary on-the-spot publicity. Long, who was from the JRC, went on Radio Éireann to thank the country but explained that sometimes it was not exactly known where Ireland was. In fact, the Swiss could hardly be blamed for making publicity for their country—unless they did it at the expense of another one, which seems unlikely here— and their country was ideally placed in the centre of Europe unlike Ireland. Many Swiss organisations and groups like the Swiss Red Cross, the aid agencies of the Protestant Churches, Caritas, the Schweizerisches Arbeiterhilfswerk (Swiss Workers’ Relief Fund), and others were active and sent hundreds of volunteers in different areas in Europe. Sweden and the Friends Relief Service (Quakers) sent representatives too but in smaller numbers.41 Nothing prevented the Irish authorities from making publicity but for that to happen, more representatives of the IRCS or the government had to travel to the continent. Hamill perfectly knew that this was the real issue and he stressed the urgency of sending such representatives. At the International Red Cross conference in Geneva, the Yugoslav and Hungarian delegates had told him that they were anxious for Irishmen and women to come to Belgrade and Budapest.42 What Hamill had correctly stressed was confirmed by Power when he explained to Cremin: Mr Power formed the impression that the Poles are not very aware of the fact that the supplies sent to them from this country came from Ireland. He did not see any receipts in respect of distribution which appears to have been carried out mainly through the intermediary of the Polish Red Cross Society divided into 14 ‘chapters’ throughout the country. There are at the moment twenty-three different foreign relief agencies of American, British, Danish and other nationalities functioning in the country but the supplies distributed by these agencies are handled directly by nationals of the concerned countries. Denmark alone has three relief agencies functioning in Poland.43

In other words, there was indeed something of a relief or prestige competition and if Ireland wanted to have a good chance to be noticed it would be in its interest to have its own representatives wherever the supplies were sent to. If Walshe had spoken about the desirability of publicity, it had to be consistently acted upon. But visibly de Valera’s government should have been more active in this regard. In all, 41 Haunfelder, Schweizer Hilfe für Deutschland 1917–1933 und 1944–1957, 12. 42 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, John B. Hamill to J. P. Shanley, IRCS chairman, 16 August 1946. 43 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/14, note by Cremin, 16 January 1947.

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only a handful of Irish representatives went on continental journeys. Having said that, it must also be explained that the beginnings of the Department of External Affairs (DEA) in the 1920s had not been auspicious. Many were not convinced that the newly-born Irish Free State needed a diplomatic service worthy of the name and others, such as the Department of Finance, believed it was a waste of money. It was only by the end of the 1920s that the survival of the DEA became certain. Moreover, the annual budget for the DEA remained limited, £81,000 in 1939, which meant that recruitment also remained limited.44 Ireland had had no time to develop an extensive diplomatic network in Europe when the war began and the subsequent postwar relief operations were almost unattended by Irish personnel with only a handful of exceptions.

Bulgarian and Swiss films on the Don Irlandais Yet, excellent news for the Irish government and the IRCS came from the Balkans in May 1946. Georges Sotiroff, a Bulgarian JRC delegate, reported to Geneva that a short film on Irish relief was now being shown in ten cinemas in Sofia. It was part of the Bulgarian newsreel.45 In June, he was in Switzerland and had brought back with him the French and English-speaking versions of the film. They both lasted between ten to fifteen minutes and they would be screened in Geneva.46 Shortly afterwards, the decision was taken to give the English version of the film to two IRCS delegates who were presently in the city.47 Most unfortunately nothing more is known of the fate of this film.48 In fact, news of the Bulgarian newsreel came at a moment when the JRC was considering shooting a film on the Don Irlandais in action in Europe. When Olivier Long was in Dublin the previous March to meet representatives of the government, it had been suggested to him during private conversations that films about the distribution of Irish supplies would be ‘extremely useful’. Long had replied that it would be difficult to do in certain cases but that the JRC would understand the importance of it and would consider it.49 Fernand Gigon, a renowned Swiss film maker, journalist, and essayist,50 was asked to make a Keogh, Ireland & Europe 1919–1948, 18–20, 26 & 113. ACICR, O-CMS, C-024, telegram, Sotiroff to JRC, 10 May 1946. ACICR, O-CMS, note written by Lalive (JRC), 19 June 1946. ACICR, O-CMS, note for Lalive (JRC) by Y. Z’Graggen, 28 June 1946. The Bulgarian film could not be found in the archives of the ICRC and the League in Geneva, nor in the archive of the IRCS in Dublin. The author was told that many archives of the IRCS in Dublin were destroyed during a fire. As to the Bulgarian State Archive, it did not respond to the author’s query concerning the film although it was most helpful on other occasions. 49 ACICR, O CMS C-017, report on stay in Ireland, March 1946, by Olivier Long. 50 ‘Gigon, Fernand’, Dictionnaire historique de la Suisse, in http://www.hls-dhs-dss.ch/textes/f/F28754.php (accessed on 13 February 2015). 44 45 46 47 48

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proposal for a documentary. In July, he presented a well-thought out scenario-project. It was entitled ‘Don du Gouvernement irlandais’ (gift of the Irish government), would last about twenty-two minutes and had the support of the JRC. The overall aim would be to show to the Irish audience how much their country’s aid mattered. Not the technical aspects of humanitarianism in action only would be emphasised, but also the face of human misery. The documentary would bring out the ‘human significance’ of the Irish government’s initiatives and would illustrate the whole process of relief, from collecting goods to distributing them. Gigon deemed that three or four months would be sufficient to make it. Interestingly, he believed that it was not strictly necessary to film the Don Irlandais in action and argued that scenes could be reconstructed on the spot with the help of delegates: ‘The pictures then have the merit to be photogenic and their authentic character does not disappear.’51 It would not be the truth but just like it. But after all it was a form of benevolent propaganda and it was all about convincing the audience. The following scenario was proposed. In Dublin, the government collects supplies and stores them in warehouses. The butchers bring meat, dairymen bring milk, grocers bring sugar, and so on. A total of ten articles—meat, butter, sugar, biscuits, vitamin pills, vegetables, clothes, shoes, fish, and cheese—must be selected, that is those provided to the JRC by Ireland. The supplies are loaded aboard ships that arrive in Bayonne or Antwerp. Then, they are transported to Geneva. From there, the viewers of the film travel from one place to another—and sometimes to the capitals of Germany, Poland, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Greece, Albania, and Italy. It was stated: ‘In each of these countries, a drama due to misery is taking place and the Don Irlandais comes to resolve it. And each time, in a different environment and under different circumstances, one of the ten goods chosen in Dublin plays the role of a real saviour’. The conclusion read: ‘Consequently, the beneficial effects of each product sent by Ireland will be seen clearly and in a “real life” way. This approach, which seems arbitrary on paper, is on the contrary a film-making necessity which will give cohesion to the documentary,’ The total cost was estimated at over 24,000 Swiss francs, or £1,310, but excluded travelling and accommodation.52 On 27 September 1946, the Interdepartmental Relief Committee met at Iveagh House to discuss the progress of the aid program. On its agenda was the issue of publicity. Regarding Bulgaria, it was of the opinion that ‘although in certain cases the publicity on the spot as to the source of our relief supplies may not be as full 51 ACICR, O-CMS, C-029, ‘A propos d’un film pour la “Commission Mixte de la Croix Rouge Internationale” sur le Don du Gouvernement Irlandais’, 1 July 1946. 52 ACICR, O-CMS, C-029, ‘A propos d’un film pour la “Commission Mixte de la Croix Rouge Internatio­nale”’.

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as might be wished, there is nevertheless little doubt as shown by the volume of correspondence received from the various countries that the recipients of the supplies are in practically all cases well aware of their source’. About Gigon’s documentary film project, which in the meantime had been submitted to the IRCS by the JRC, the committee was of the view that ‘public opinion here is already well informed about the relief scheme and that expenditure on such a film would not be justified’.53 Its decision was rather surprising. It might well be that Gigon’s project was expensive, and as previously explained, that the DEA was not the richest of departments, but such a documentary would have reached far wider audiences in Ireland and abroad. It was certainly true that people in Ireland were kept well informed by press articles like ‘St Lô appreciates work of its Irish hospital’, ‘Appreciation of Irish help to Europe’, and ‘Society’s aid for children of Europe’.54 But the DEA had lost an excellent opportunity for widespread international publicity as Irish aid in action could have been shown in newsreels all over Europe and across the Atlantic. However, the committee’s decision not to commission Gigon’s film did not have dramatic consequences as superb photo opportunities did present themselves. For example, in December 1950, the Pope and Walshe, then ambassador to the Holy See, were standing in front of a truck loaded with Irish supplies (30,000 pounds of canned meat). On a big poster decorated with a shamrock attached to the truck, people could read: ‘Gift of Ireland to His Holiness Pope Pius XII for needy in Italy’. The photograph was subsequently published in Ireland by The Standard with the title ‘For distribution among Europe’s needy’ and by the Irish Catholic with the title ‘Ireland’s Christmas gift’. The Vatican’s mouthpiece, the Osservatore Romano, also reported the event.55 As to the NCWC, it commented in a letter to Walshe that the photographs were ‘excellent “shots”’.56 Letters of thanks from different international personalities published regularly by Irish newspapers played their part in generating outstanding publicity and instilling a sense of pride in the people. For instance, in December 1947, the Irish Press published ‘Cardinal Innitzer thanks Ireland’. The Archbishop of Vienna was particularly grateful and telegraphed de Valera: ‘Deeply impressed with Irish meat shipment. Beg to assure you of heartfelt gratitude. God bless you and your people’.57 All in all, apart from a few concerns about the Don Suisse—probably unjustified— 53 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4A, Interdepartmental Relief Committee meeting, 27 September 1946. 54 Respectively, Irish Press, 6 June 1946 (INA); The Irish Times, 26 March 1946 (ITDA) & Irish Independent, 19 July 1946 (INA). 55 NAI, DFA, embassy series, Holy See, 24/74, The Standard, 15 December 1950, The Irish Catholic, 14 December 1950 & Osservatore Romano, 6 December 1950. 56 NAI, DFA, embassy series, Holy See, 24/74, Andrew P. Landi (NCWC) to Walshe, 6 December 1950. 57 ‘Cardinal Innitzer thanks Ireland’, Irish Press, 17 December 1947 (INA).

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the Irish government could be fairly satisfied with the publicity side of things. One man who did not complain was Secretary for External Affairs Frederick Boland. In April 1947 in a letter to Walshe, he wrote: ‘On the whole, we are not dissatisfied with the publicity we received’.58

The Irish Red Cross Society in trouble The IRCS had been only recently founded in 1939, the year the war began. Funds were raised with donations, nationwide collections, and charity events. As seen in chapter three, it spent over £300,000 between 1940 and 1945. Several days after the end of the war, Frank Fahy, the Ceann Comhairle (speaker of the Dáil), announced during a meeting of the Rathfarnham IRCS branch the launch of a £500,000 fundraising drive in favour of the campaign against tuberculosis at home and of relief on the continent. Also present were Deputy Liam Cosgrave (a future Taoiseach), who ‘asked the people of Rathfarnham, in thanksgiving for having been spared the privations suffered by so many other countries, to subscribe generously’, and Senator Margaret Mary Pearse, the sister of Patrick Pearse who led the Easter Rising against the British in 1916, who declared that ‘this country had merely suffered a few inconveniences from the war and that Christian charity demanded that all who could possibly do so should contribute’.59 Considering the state of postwar Europe and the increasing amount of information revealed daily in the national press, it was obvious that the fundraising operation would need to be very large-scale in order for it to be credible. But the target of £500,000 was over-ambitious. Of course, £300,000 had been previously raised and therefore an optimistic IRCS leadership might have hoped that such a high target was feasible. But the Irish population was not that well-off, and nobody could foresee what would happen in postwar years. Moreover, to the minds of many, Red Cross activities were exclusively associated with wartime conditions, which was not correct, and the population’s willingness to keep donating could not be taken for granted. The target of £500,000 might also be indicative of a strategic decision although evidence is lacking to prove this. Indeed, voluntary or non-governmental organisations are generally under a lot of pressure, be it internally or externally. Their leaders must constantly think about reinventing organisational approaches or define new objectives as these are not simply ‘self-perpetuating processes’. In other words, they are not moved by humanitarian reasons only but also by the need to adapt to evolving political and economic circumstances. 58 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4, Boland to Walshe, 28 April 1947. 59 ‘To help Red Cross fund’, Irish Independent, 16 May 1945 (INA).

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Strategic decisions must then be taken to ensure good functioning or survival of the organisation, notably envisaging sustained cooperation with the government. Cooperation with governments imposes restraints but can also offer new opportunities. In the United States, CARE (Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe), for example, successfully cooperated with the Truman administration and also the business community at large.60 Now that the war had ended, and that immense relief and reconstruction efforts lay ahead, how would the IRCS evolve? Unlike CARE’s relations with the American government, its relations with the Irish government would remain rather tense and complex in the immediate postwar years. It looked as if the £500,000 fundraising drive was in fact an attempt to become as much independent from the government as possible. The IRCS’s announcement had been made only a few days before de Valera announced the government’s £3,000,000 relief scheme for Europe. Was it an attempt not to be dwarfed in humanitarian matters by the government? Equally of relevance was the IRCS’s ongoing cooperation with the government in setting up a hospital in Normandy, which was proving to be an expensive affair and underlined its dependence on governmental support not only in financial but also logistical matters. Subsequent events show that the IRCS was indeed in financial trouble, had organisational issues and found it difficult to define its relationship with the government. Two months after the £500,000 appeal, during a formal IRCS dinner in Dublin attended by Olivier Long of the JRC, a disappointed Conor Maguire declared that he regretted ‘the appeal for funds had not met a more generous response’. So far, it had raised only £143,000. The sum was in fact impressive for a population of not even three million, especially having been collected within the space of only two months. But that was visibly not the way the IRCS chairman saw it and the reason why became soon apparent. Maguire expounded that most of the money had been spent on relief work on the continent, notably on setting up an Irish hospital in Saint-Lô in Normandy. ‘They had endeavoured’, he continued, ‘to bring aid to countries in a less fortunate position than themselves and had succeeded in doing some little good’. During the war, the IRCS had experienced difficulties in sending supplies to Greece, but ‘they had succeeded in spending £10,000 worth of supplies to Spain’. Supplies had also been collected for the Channel Islands and ‘consignments of eggs had been sent to the Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead, Sussex, an institution for injured airmen’.61

60 Wieters, ‘Reinventing the firm’, 118, 120–1. 61 ‘Response to Irish Red Cross Appeal disappoints’, The Irish Times, 14 July 1945 (ITDA).

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The problem was that the IRCS was facing logistical problems that it could not solve on its own and that it was involved in several large-scale projects. Plainly put, it risked overstretching itself. An additional issue was that the government had not contacted the IRCS concerning its £3,000,000 relief scheme for Europe. Maguire explained that ‘the Irish Red Cross Society had hoped that they would have been called upon to have been the medium through which the scheme would have operated. They had offered their services and would have been glad to help’.62 There was the crux of the matter: the IRCS was frustrated as it had not been consulted to participate in a major relief operation, Ireland’s first, which it considered to be its area of expertise. Maguire’s public statement might well have been calculated to force the government to make a move in that direction. But, as shown, the government had decided to allocate one fifth of its relief budget to the International Red Cross, which would look after Central and Eastern Europe. The IRCS would play a leading role here in coordinating its efforts with those of the JRC and in operating as a middleman between JRC and Irish government officials, but there it stopped. Nagging issues and strained relations between the IRCS, the government, and others lingered on. In August 1945, Joseph Walshe felt obliged to reassure the Archbishop of Dublin, presumably after some misunderstanding between McQuaid and the IRCS, that it meant no harm. He wrote with a condescending touch: ‘I feel quite certain that the Irish Red Cross did not intentionally do anything which they believed would be disrespectful to Your Grace. Some of them just don’t know but I have no doubt of their good intentions and of their gratitude to you for all you have done for them’.63 On 9 January 1946, a meeting between department officials and the IRCS took place. The IRCS delegation was under the impression that there would be no further relief aid coming from the government. Also, Maguire and Hackett deplored the bad publicity in the Irish press and said that the ICRC much appreciated Irish supplies. Denis P. Shanagher (Industry and Commerce) assured them that publicity would be made. Asked by Maguire if a joint public statement could be issued about the present meeting, Shanagher answered no and pointed out that the government did not yet know what the situation was.64 It would in fact soon decide to extend relief operations and vote a second relief budget, as previously detailed. However, Maguire chose to go public and subsequently declared to the press that the government intended to carry on with its relief programme. Shanagher immediately sent him a letter, complaining that no public statement should have been made. John Leydon (Industry and 62 ‘Response to the Irish Red Cross Appeal disappoints’, The Irish Times, 14 July 1945 (ITDA). 63 DDA, XVIII/relief, Walshe to McQuaid, 13 August 1945. 64 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4, meeting between Department of Industry and Commerce, Department of Local Government and Public Health and the IRCS, 9 January 1946.

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Commerce) contacted Walshe and told him that ‘we could not at this stage agree to take over any responsibility for discussing questions of general policy with the Red Cross Society nor can we take any responsibility, directly or indirectly, for any of the Society’s schemes’.65 Had Maguire once again tried to force the government’s hand by making a public statement or was it clumsiness? He seemed to be plagued by a bout of pessimism. At a public meeting in February, he declared that he regretted that apathy had taken hold of the IRCS since the end of the war. The International Red Cross had told him that ‘the supplies of food and clothing sent to various countries in Europe by the Irish Government was greater in quality and quantity, in proportion to the size of the country, than that sent by any other country’. But he stressed that the Irish hospital at Saint-Lô was ‘costing them £2,000 per month, and its success was so great that they had a request from Belgrade to establish a similar hospital there, but it was impossible to do so’.66 In plain words, financial constrains made life problematic for the IRCS. At the beginning of April in Dublin, Dr E. J. Pampana, director of the Health and Relief Bureau of the League of Red Cross Societies in Geneva, said that every Irishman and woman should be proud of the IRCS’s work.67 That appreciation was not shared by everyone, however. It was reported by the Irish Press that the IRCS was ‘planning a campaign to revive interest among its members’. The Irish Red Cross Bulletin put it in no uncertain terms: ‘Are Red Cross personnel becoming bored?’ The example of the IRCS branch in Roscrea in County Tipperary was taken to show that in 1940 there were eighty members but that since the end of the war the number had declined to twenty. The editor of the bulletin did not mince his words: ‘The faint hearts … are gone from the various branches, but the best remain.’68 But public opinion and the press did not always appreciate the IRCS’s difficulties. The Enniscorthy Echo did not understand why a second Irish hospital in Belgrade was not feasible and seemed to suggest that international considerations were the explanation. Maguire refuted this in the Irish Red Cross Bulletin. A lack of financing, he wrote, was the real reason. Although the public had donated £160,000 until now, it was not sufficient as the hospital in Saint-Lô had cost so far £50,000 and ‘its services are free’. In addition, there were other projects for Europe and for Ireland.69 There might also have been an element

65 66 67 68 69

NAI, DFA, Shanagher to Maguire, 14 January 1946 & Leydon to Walshe, 15 January 1946. ‘Red Cross chairman and members’ apathy’, Irish Press, 12 February 1946 (INA). ‘Geneva official’s tribute to Irish Red Cross’, The Irish Times, 2 April 1946 (ITDA). ‘Red Cross call to members’, Irish Press, 6 April 1946 (INA). IFRC, box 16539, ‘Another “St. Lo” for Europe?’, by Judge Conor A. Maguire, in Irish Red Cross Bulletin, April 1946.

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of comparative discouragement involved in the IRCS’s current gloomy frame of mind. Back in October 1945, Jean-Flavien Lalive of the JRC had informed Maguire that a public appeal in Switzerland for European relief had generated no less than 50,000,000 Swiss francs.70 Why could something similar not happen in Ireland? In November 1946, a publicity campaign to revive the £500,000 fundraising drive was initiated. The Irish Times published an advertisement, stating that £177,687 had been collected to date. From August to October 1946, it was the Galway branch of the IRCS which had collected the highest amount of money, £300. The advertisement stressed that the IRCS was needed ‘in peacetime as well as in time of war …’71 This was at the heart of the matter, namely that many believed that the Red Cross was a wartime organisation. Since the war had ended, they believed it had become less relevant. Besides, people were also solicited by other charities and their pockets were not always full. Pessimism and organisational problems seemed to have taken hold of the IRCS executive as its new chairman, John. P. Shanley, resigned in 1947 after a rather short term in office. An acquaintance wrote to him that he could ‘quite understand that it must have [been] practically impossible for you to fit in your own work at all’. He added revealingly: ‘I am afraid the truth is, that the post of chairman as it is constituted at present is an impossible one, and it will have a very bad effect on the society if we have a change again after a short period.’72 But there were other issues of a more political nature. As will be explained in more detail in chapter eight, on 28 April 1947, the new Secretary for External Affairs Frederick Boland wrote to Walshe in Rome that the government was seriously considering terminating its cooperation with the JRC in Geneva, or more precisely the International Centre for Relief to Civilian Populations (ICRCP) which had succeeded it. It deemed that both had their own priorities in communist-controlled Eastern Europe and that some of the Irish relief supplies had been used by communist regimes to enhance their own prestige. He hoped that de Valera would work with the National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC) and explained that it remained to be seen for how long Ireland would continue with its relief operations. The country could not do its own distribution as it did not have the required infrastructure and it would take too long to build one up. Boland added that he did not have too high an opinion of the IRCS: ‘Certainly the Irish Red Cross Society—which, at the moment, seems to be at a particularly

70 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/1, report on meeting between Lalive and Irish representatives on 15 October, 16 October 1945. 71 ‘Irish Red Cross Society (…) £500,000 Drive’, The Irish Times, 13 November 1946 (ITDA). 72 IRCS, unreferenced grey box, M. Bolger, IRCS, Millmount Gorey, to Shanley, 7 April 1947.

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low ebb of efficiency—could not be entrusted with the work.’73 He was visibly well informed of what was going on within the IRCS. The following month, the Cork Examiner published an article containing rather strong attacks by some members on the IRCS leadership. Fr Fee from the Limerick branch said that ‘they were not getting the type of people at the top that they deserved. On the Governing Body it was terrible to see people who had no interest, who had never worked in a branch or County Committee, and the sooner they got them out the better’.74 Both the Irish Press and the Irish Times reported on the critical financial situation. It was estimated that the IRCS had about £5,000–£6,000 left.75 Back in November 1946, the Irish Press had written that the IRCS branch of County Donegal had collected £14,000 for the £500,000 drive, which was ‘the largest contribution in the country on a percentage basis’. But in May 1948, the Donegal News wrote that the society in the county was ‘practically moribund’.76 It was imperative that the IRCS reorganised itself for its very survival, but that would take time. In June 1949, Lord Killanin, the chairman of the IRCS’s national fundraising committee, explained on the radio that many people wrongly believed that the Red Cross only operated during wartime and appealed to the public to send financial donations.77 The decline in membership spoke volumes. In 1941, there had been 22,601 members, but by 1947 only 1,825 remained.78 It was unfortunate that the IRCS, a young organisation, ended the postwar 1940s in such fashion as its commitment to helping continental European countries had been real and appreciated by many men, women, and children roaming the roads of Europe, queuing up for meals, or receiving medical treatment. Fortunately, it bounced back rapidly. In February 1953, a storm broke the dykes on the southwestern Dutch coast, causing floods, death, and destruction. The IRCS immediately came to the rescue by sending blankets and clothes and collecting £15,000.79 This was no mean feat so soon after the incessant demands for aid after the war. In 1951, Seán T. O’Kelly, President of Ireland, paid tribute to its relief work during and after the war, and described it as ‘a fine record, of which the Irish people could be proud’.80

73 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4, Boland to Walshe, 28 April 1947. 74 ‘Red Cross HQ criticised’, Cork Examiner, 5 May 1947 (INA). 75 ‘Shortage funds hits Red Cross’, Irish Press, 11 November 1947 (INA) & ‘Red Cross faces crisis in Ireland’, The Irish Times, 11 November 1947 (ITDA). 76 ‘Donegal first in Red Cross drive’, Irish Press, 20 November 1946 (INA) & ‘Critical state of Red Cross in Donegal’, Donegal News, 1 May 1948 (INA) 77 ‘Funds needed by Red Cross’, The Irish Times, 15 June 1949 (ITDA). 78 Lehane, A History of the Irish Red Cross, 168. 79 Jérôme aan de Wiel, ‘The Netherlands’, in O’Driscoll, Keogh, and aan de Wiel, eds., Ireland Through European Eyes, 208–209. 80 Lehane, A History of the Irish Red Cross, 106.

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The end phase of Irish postwar relief In Geneva, the JRC was about to be dissolved and replaced by the International Centre for Relief to Civilian Populations (ICRCP). But the Irish government chose not to cooperate with the new organisation, arguing during a meeting with an ICRCP delegate that there was a lack of supplies at home.81 This was true enough as the Big Freeze had made its presence felt. But there were also political considerations. The government had been severely criticised about the way Irish supplies had been allocated and distributed on the continent and it had doubts about pursuing its relief operations with the International Red Cross,82 or indeed the ICRCP. In March 1947, Walshe in Rome informed Boland that the Vatican had let it be known that it distrusted the International Red Cross, located in Calvinist Geneva.83 In April, Boland replied that it would be put forward to de Valera to stop cooperating with the International Red Cross and the ICRCP as both organisations were deemed to be unreliable. He hoped that the NCWC would be used instead.84 The ICRCP was later told that it was likely that Irish relief supplies would now be forwarded to the NCWC,85 which turned out to be the case.86 Also, there were serious disagreements between the DEA and the International Red Cross concerning the distribution of Irish supplies in Hungary involving the Hungarian Catholic Action as explained in chapter twelve. On 20 May, de Valera was subjected to rigorous questioning by Dillon during a debate in the Dáil. The independent deputy asked him if the country’s supplies were sent to the ‘Swiss International Red Cross or to the Paris Conference of National Red Cross Organisations’. De Valera replied that they were sent to the International Red Cross in Geneva where they were then distributed by the JRC, this until the end of 1946. Since then, they were being distributed by the ICRCP. Dillon continued and asked if the ICRCP corresponded to the Association of Red Cross Societies established in Paris. If it was the case, he said, would it not be ‘much wiser’ to send Irish supplies to the headquarters of the International Red Cross in Switzerland ‘inasmuch as some of the National Red Cross institutions in Eastern Europe are bodies far different from what deputies ordinarily understand Red Cross Societies to mean?’ De Valera reiterated that the supplies sent 81 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, Meeting of Interdepartmental Relief Committee with representatives of the ICRCP and ICRC, 9 March 1947. 82 NAI, DFA, embassy series, Holy see, 24/74, Boland to Walshe, 2 December 1946. 83 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4, Walshe to Boland, 20 March 1947. 84 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4, Boland to Walshe, 28 April 1947. 85 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/16, Interdepartmental meeting with Frank McDermott of the ICRCP, 20 March 1948. 86 ‘Ireland’s gift for relief of Europe’s needy’, Irish Independent, 27 July 1950 INA).

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to Geneva were then distributed by the JRC, which was composed of the League of Red Cross societies and the ICRC. However, the JRC was dissolved the previous year ‘for certain reasons’ and replaced by the ICRCP. The latter was doing the same job and worked with the International Red Cross. ‘So far as we are concerned, it would seem to me that the body handling the distribution now is equally worthy of confidence with the body that preceded it’, said de Valera. But Dillon was not convinced: ‘Has any suggestion reached the Taoiseach in regard to some of the national Red Cross Societies in Eastern Europe that the same objections might apply to them as have in certain places applied to UNRRA in the past?’ De Valera answered negatively. Dillon pursued: ‘Distinguishing between the International Red Cross at Geneva and the other body whatever it is, would the Taoiseach look into the question as to whether the latter body [ICRCP] corresponds as closely to what he knows would be the wishes of this House, and if, on balance, it appears that the body at Geneva would carry out our purpose more effectively, would he consider ensuring that such supplies as we send are committed to their care for distribution?’ De Valera stated again that he was satisfied with the way things were functioning, but a determined Dillon kept insisting that he should investigate the matter which, eventually, the Taoiseach promised to do.87 Bearing in mind the confidential information that Boland had shared with Walshe about the JRC and the ICRCP only a month before, namely that the government was dissatisfied with the International Red Cross, de Valera had been economical with the truth. On 4 July 1947, the Dáil debated to approve a new budget of £750,000 for the alleviation of distress. The government was intent on continuing with relief operations. Liam Cosgrave (Fine Gael) declared that ‘no person who realised the severity of the suffering in many parts of Europe would question the relief which this country had provided and proposed to provide. However unfortunate conditions might be here in certain areas, they were anxious nevertheless, in so far as our means allowed, to assist peoples stricken by the war and its aftermath’. Dillon agreed and said that ‘wherever hungry people are, we must try to feed them. But we should not send supplies to Poland, the Ukraine and Yugoslavia, which were … exporting foodstuffs to the Soviet Union’. Oliver J. Flanagan protested against ‘“insane sending of food abroad”. Any food we had … should first be placed at the disposal of our own people’.88 To be sure that the people got his message, he explained that ‘while they were condemning the persecution of Archbishop 87 ‘Ceisteanna-Questions. Oral Answers. Relief Supplies’, 20 May 1947, Dáil Éireann debate, vol. 106, no 3, in http://debates.oireachtas.ie/dail/1947/05/20/00004.asp (accessed on 10 May 2015). 88 ‘Vote for relief of Europe halved, but sufficient’, Irish Press, 5 July 1947 (INA).

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Stepinac in Yugo-Slavia, they were sending food there to keep the persecutors alive. “I would be proud to see them dying of hunger”’, he declared. The Dáil voted in favour of the new relief budget except for Flanagan.89 Some deputies were now connecting the developing Cold War to the issue of relief supplies for Central and Eastern Europe, as will be detailed in the following chapters. The positive vote allowed Minister for Industry and Commerce Seán Lemass to promise at the World Cereals Conference in Paris six days later ‘the fullest co-operation of the Irish Government in international measures to alleviate suffering’. He stressed that ‘the abnormal weather of the past winter, however, had given them a severe set-back, and Eire must import in the coming year a considerably greater quantity of wheat than in 1946–47 to maintain the present ration’.90 As the Big Freeze had dented the supply situation and hit the poorer classes hard, Ireland’s decision to continue with relief operations was praiseworthy. As previously outlined, the American administration decided to implement the Marshall Plan, which led to a rather speedy economic recovery in Western Europe. But its implementation did not mean the sudden end of Ireland’s aid. The InterParty government led by John A. Costello had taken over from de Valera’s Fianna Fáil in February 1948. It continued to be involved in relief and cooperated with the NCWC. Archbishop McQuaid had facilitated contacts between the Irish government and the NCWC. For the financial year 1948–1949, the Department of Agriculture spent ‘£281,019 on the purchase and shipment of supplies of canned meat and potatoes’.91 In July 1950, John B. McCloskey, the NCWC representative in Paris, was in Dublin where he declared during a press conference that ‘280,000 pounds of canned meat, in addition to the 6,000,000 pounds already given, is to be sent to Germany, Austria, Italy and France for the needy in those countries’.92 The following month, the Irish Times reported that a final consignment of 100 tons of canned meat was to be shipped to the continent in September.93 Ten years after the end of the war, the DEA issued a memorandum entitled ‘Irish Government Relief Abroad, 1943–1954’. Annex I showed how much money had been spent and where the supplies had been shipped:

89 90 91 92 93

‘Relief policy debated’, The Irish Times, 5 July 1947 (ITDA). ‘Mr Lemass promises Irish aid’, The Irish Times, 11 July 1947 (ITDA). ‘Alleviation of Europe’s distress’, Irish Press, 5 June 1950 (INA). ‘Ireland’s gift for relief of Europe’s needy’, Irish Independent, 27 July 1950 (INA). ‘Final consignment of meat gift’, The Irish Times, 26 August 1950 (ITDA).

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182 · Chapter Six Table 6.1. ‘Aid made available by the Government of Ireland for the alleviation of distress abroad, 1943–1951’ 94 Financial year ended 31 March 1943–44

1944–55 [sic, 45]

1945-46

1946–47

1947–1948

1948–1949

1950–51

Total:

Purpose

Amount voted £

Amount expended £

Alleviation of distress due to war £200,000 and famine in Europe and India (per Irish Red Cross Society). £100,000 Alleviation of distress in Italy due to war (per Irish Red Cross Society). Provision of foodstuffs and other £3,000,000 commodities for the alleviation of distress in Europe due to war (the ‘1945 Gift’).

£100,000

Surplus army stores sent for relief to Europe (including freight, shipping and other charges).

£67,932

Provision of foodstuffs and other commodities for the alleviation of distress in Europe due to war (the ‘1946 Gift’). Provision of foodstuffs and other commodities for the alleviation of distress in Europe due to war, including grants to international and other organisations in respect of relief activities. Provision of foodstuffs and other commodities for the alleviation of distress in Europe due to war, including grants to international and other organisations in respect of relief activities; and for relief supplies for refugees in Palestine. Provision of foodstuffs for the alleviation of distress in Europe due to war.

£100,000

£1,338,529

£3,000,000

£1,599,330

£1,500,010

£200,455

£575,010

£316,884

£25,000

£24,473

£8,400,020

£3,747,603

The figures in the table were based on the DEA’s bookkeeping. There was an explanation put forward which clarified the discrepancy between the total amount voted, £8,400,020, and the total amount expended, £3,747,60395: ‘The Dáil, on 4th July 1947 and 25th February 1948, voted a total of £1,500,010 in respect of the financial year ending 31st March 1948 for the alleviation of distress in Europe due to the war, including grants to international and other organisations in respect of 94 NAI, DFA, embassy series, Holy See, 24/74, DEA to Irish ambassador to Holy See, April 1955. 95 In 2020, approximately over €153,000,000.

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End of Relief · 183

relief activities. Of this amount, only £200,455 was spent. Transport difficulties precluded the dispatch of certain livestock allocated under the relief programme for this year and, owing to continued shortage of packing materials, it was found possible to ship only about one-sixth of the quantity of canned meat for which provision had been made’. Similar explanations were given for other such discrepancies.96 It must be stressed that £3,747,603 was not the definitive total of Ireland’s aid as it represented the government’s aid only and excluded the numerous fundraising activities and clothes collections organised by the IRCS, Archbishop McQuaid, the St. Vincent de Paul Society, the Quakers, the Irish Save the Children Fund, and others. Nor does it include, for example, the money donated to the Pope’s appeal in favour of children. In fact, it would be an arduous task to give an exact final figure as not all sums are available and as it would be impossible to give the worth of clothes and other relief goods donated by the people. Yet, what can be stated is that a final figure would therefore be above £3,747,603. When he was in Dublin in July 1950, McCloskey had said: ‘I think the world should know how much the Irish people have done to relieve distress in Europe’.97 He could not have been accused of exaggeration.

Concluding remarks For the first time in its history, the nation-state of Ireland had embarked upon a large-scale humanitarian operation extending over sizeable parts of the European continent. The efforts that it produced were rather extraordinary considering its size, its economic capacities, and its small population. It can be compared to the efforts of Switzerland, although that country had a long experience of humanitarian aid, was richer, and disposed of a diplomatic network that Ireland did not possess. The IRCS, one of its main voluntary organisations, was young, very eager to build up experience, and show what it could do in a postwar Europe in need of exceptional aid. Its eagerness was understandable, but so was its frustration as it was at first more or less sidelined by the government wishing to be in full control of events. However, it would play an important role in Central and Eastern Europe in conjunction with the International Red Cross in Geneva, developing its transnational ties, as will be explained in the next part. It was not only out of pure altruism and humanitarianism that the Irish government participated in this élan of solidarity between European countries. But there can be no doubt that altruism and humanitarianism were the main motivations among the Irish people. 96 NAI, DFA, embassy series, Holy See, 24/74, DEA to Irish ambassador to Holy See, April 1955 97 ‘Ireland’s gift for relief of Europe’s needy’, Irish Independent, 27 July 1950 (INA).

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184 · Chapter Six

As time passed, some began to question the wisdom of continuing to send supplies abroad especially during the Big Freeze. But that was not exceptional among the helping nations as there had been similar opinions expressed in Switzerland. De Valera, however, was determined to continue with this act of European and Christian solidarity. It can be argued that relief allowed Ireland to become known on the European stage. Of course, it had actively participated in the debates of the League of Nations in Geneva,98 but to the minds of many ordinary people on the continent, relief was what put Ireland on the map of Europe. There were some concerns regarding the international publicity Ireland was deriving from its aid, but the great majority of recipients knew where this aid came from as will be made abundantly clear in Part Two. There had been some historic moments too as Irish and Swiss supplies were the first non-Allied foreign supplies to enter all four sectors of Berlin, and as will be shown, another such moment was the fact that it was Irish supplies that were the first non-Allied foreign supplies to be distributed in the Soviet-Occupied Zone of Germany or the future East Germany. What also transpired from Ireland’s relief operations was the strong Catholic identity of the country, which was an important aspect of its foreign policy. Much deference was shown to the opinion of Archbishop John Charles McQuaid and the wishes of the Vatican be it by top civil servants in the DEA such as Joseph Walshe and Frederick H. Boland or leaders like Éamon de Valera and John A. Costello. It was probably more the case with Costello than with de Valera. This Catholic identity was strongly affirmed during the unfolding Cold War in which the western countries perceived Stalin’s Soviet Union as a global communist and atheistic threat. Judging by the propaganda battle, Europe seemed to be heading towards a kind of clash of civilisations. These factors explain why the Irish government eventually abandoned cooperation with the International Red Cross in Geneva and began working with the American NCWC. This book will now focus on Ireland’s aid to individual countries in Western, Central, and Eastern Europe and explore different issues that emerged with it and will also look at political and popular reactions to the arrival of Irish supplies in these countries. It will illustrate how much needed humanitarian aid was and how widespread Irish relief was. What will become apparent is that humanitarianism was not above political controversy and machinations at a time when Europe was being divided between East and West.

98 See Kennedy, Ireland and the League of Nations.

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Part II

Distributing Irish Supplies Abroad

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Introduction: relief in the unfolding Cold War

At 02.41 on 7 May 1945, Germany unconditionally surrendered. Its emissaries signed the capitulation papers in a school in Reims (Rheims), north-east of Paris, which served as the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF) commanded by US General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Peace was due to come in effect on 8 May. Although a Soviet general had been present during the signing, disagreements regarding protocol, delays, misunderstandings, and political motivations led the Kremlin to demand a re-signing of the act of unconditional surrender but this time in Berlin. There, again issues of protocol delayed the signing. Eventually, Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov in the presence of American, British, and French generals received the German delegation led by Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel who signed the final German Instrument of Surrender at around 01.00 on 9 May. On 6 August, the Americans dropped a first atomic bomb on Hiroshima and a second one on Nagasaki three days later. Tens of thousands of people vanished from the earth and others died later from radiation. It is not known how many precisely died. The same goes for the total number of deaths during the Second World War. Some studies put the figure at about 50 million, but others give estimates around 60 or 70 million. It was beyond comprehension. Some areas of the world had not been destroyed at all, for example, North and South America. The same was true even for some areas in Europe and the Far East despite the fact that the fighting had concentrated there.1 If Paris, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Prague, and Athens had not been destroyed, Berlin, Le Havre, Warsaw, Minsk, and Tokyo had been. But if cities like Athens and Amsterdam had escaped destruction, they had gone through dreadful famines that killed tens of thousands. The war had ended, but the aftershocks of war had not and would linger on. It would take time to rebuild, and those in charge needed to act fast as millions were dependent on immediate humanitarian aid and as local economies needed to be kick-started.

1 Keith Lowe, The Fear and the Freedom: Why the Second World War Still Matters (London: Penguin, 2018), 20–1.

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188 · Part II

The day after Japan formally surrendered, the Irish Times published a thoughtprovoking article entitled ‘Six Years’ in which it reflected on the war, on what needed to be done now, and on the responsibility of the United States and the Soviet Union: These have been six terrible years. They saw the flood of the Germans over France, Holland, and Belgium, almost all Europe; they saw England, with her back to the wall, saved by a miracle of mingled luck and courage; they saw the stoical endurance and then the irresistible onslaught of the Russian people; they saw the treacherous attack of Japan on Pearl Harbour, which threw a semi-isolationist America into a warlike fury overnight; they saw victory in Europe, and now victory over Japan. For scores of years all these countries concerned will bear the marks of that twofold attempt at world conquest … There is plenty of work to be done. Europe is faced with famine in the coming winter unless every ounce of energy is diverted at once to the task of rehabilitation. Germany must be organised and trained slowly and laboriously for a new way of life; but first her immediate need must be relieved. Further suffering will not chasten her citizens . . . Reconstruction is the cry everywhere; but reconstruction will be of little use unless the nations can be certain that destruction will not be let loose again. The responsibility for that will rest upon the Great Powers; it will rest especially upon America and Russia, the two mightiest military powers in the modern world.2

The Irish Times’s article was pertinent and prescient. Relief, rehabilitation, and reconstruction in Europe were imperative and that included Germany. There was no point in maintaining that country and its population in a state of permanent humiliation or poverty. The two great powers that were the Unites States and the Soviet Union had leading roles to play in the emerging postwar world. It is relevant to dwell here on American and Soviet foreign policy and the multilateral relief agency that was the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) during the early Cold War as it provides the political background to Ireland’s relief operations in Europe and helps to understand some of the problems encountered during the distribution of Irish supplies and subsequent decisions taken by the Irish government. Ireland was neutral, yet firmly anchored in the West because of its political and economic system. As seen, UNRRA was created in 1943 but Ireland was not a member state. Although the Soviet Union was a member, it was really led by the United States 2 ‘Six Years’, The Irish Times, 3 September 1945 (ITDA).

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Introduction · 189

and the United Kingdom, Washington being its main financier. The general aim of the newly-born organisation was ‘post-conflict planning’, bringing relief to the devastated areas and their populations and also trying to rehabilitate them. Yet not everybody would be looked after. In order to prioritise Allied demands, Germany and its allies would be treated differently than the countries they had occupied. In other words, there would be a distinction made between victors and vanquished. In practice, things turned out be different as Italy, Austria and later Finland and Hungary received aid from UNRRA. The German population, however, received none.3 The experience of UNRRA workers across the continent was by no means uniform. Relations with local administrations, for instance, could vary from one country to another. While they were very good in Czechoslovakia, they were not good in Greece. The question of how long UNRRA’s aid would last was not settled but the huge amounts of money for relief involved meant that it was a continuous issue especially for the Americans, and their generosity would be dictated by the unfolding Cold War.4 As seen in Part One, the relations between UNRRA and the International Red Cross were strained. And what did Stalin have in mind? That was a question on many a statesman’s mind in the capitals of the western countries. It was difficult to know, even sometimes for his closest collaborators. Back in 1943, he boarded a train from Moscow to Baku in Azerbaijan. During the three days the journey took, he remained alone in his compartment, looking out of the window, thinking. The man impressed, but also confused.5 The Cold War was a drama of interpretation of the other side’s moves, splitting the world into East and West. UNRRA would be affected by this and so would Irish aid in Central and Eastern Europe. In October 1944, Winston Churchill met Stalin in Moscow and infamously gave him a small piece of paper dividing Hungary and the Balkans into future spheres of British and Soviet influence after the war. After some wrangling, the following percentages of Soviet influence were agreed upon: 90% in Romania, 10% in Greece, 50% in Yugoslavia, 80% in Hungary, and 80% in Bulgaria. It remained to be seen how this would work out in reality. Poland’s future was discussed at length between the two leaders. Churchill tried to improve relations between the Kremlin and the Polish Government-inExile in London but to no avail.6 What would happen to Poland was uncertain.

3 Reinisch, ‘“Auntie UNRRA” at the Crossroads’, 70, 74. 4 Reinisch, ‘“Auntie UNRRA” at the Crossroads’, 70–1, 81–2, 87–8. 5 Vladislav M. Zubok, Failed Empire: The Soviet Union in the Cold War from Stalin to Gorbachev (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2007), 16–17. 6 Geoffrey Roberts, ‘Stalin’s Wartime Vision of the Peace, 1939–1945’, in Timothy Snyder and Ray Brandon, eds., Stalin and Europe: Imitation and Domination, 1928–1953 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 250–2.

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190 · Part II

In February 1945, Stalin, Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt met in Yalta where the issue of postwar Germany was discussed. Stalin was in favour of the dismemberment of the country but in the end, it was agreed to defer that issue until a later conference. Regarding Poland, free elections were envisaged after the war, but never happened. The Poles would feel betrayed by the western Allies. That later conference eventually took place in Potsdam near Berlin between 17 July and 2 August. Stalin, Churchill, later replaced by Clement Attlee, and Harry S. Truman, who had replaced Roosevelt, concurred that Germany should be completely demilitarised. The expulsion of ethnic Germans from areas in Central and Eastern Europe was officialised and the leaders agreed that the population transfers should be carried out ‘in an orderly and humane manner’.7 That would not be the case. The Soviets got $10 billion in reparations and parts of it would be obtained through industrial deliveries and equipment located in the western zones of occupation in Germany. They were generally quite satisfied with the outcome of the conference. Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov was reported to have said that ‘the English and the Americans accept that they have lost Eastern Europe and the Balkans’. The Soviets also thought that Truman was ‘quite cultured and shows much understanding of European problems’. When the conference ended, the Allies stated that they had ‘strengthened the ties . . . and extended the scope of their collaboration and understanding’.8 Very soon, however, the Allies were at loggerheads and the Soviets found in Truman an implacable opponent. In fact, Soviet intelligence reported that American foreign policy towards the Soviet Union was undergoing a change under Truman. Many American anti-communist groups, including Catholic and labour organisations, were opposed to maintaining relations with the Soviet Union. Some US generals like George S. Patton had spoken about ‘finishing the Reds’ after ‘the Krauts’ and ‘the Japs’.9 The origins of the Cold War have been much debated. According to Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin ‘neither foresaw nor sought a European-wide revolutionary upheaval’.10 That was understandable. After the war, the Soviet Union was simply exhausted. The human cost was appalling with a staggering 26 million dead, and the figure could be higher. The economic cost was incalculable. American intelligence estimated it to be around 679 billion roubles but according to later Soviet calculations, it was estimated to be at 2.6 trillion roubles.11 There was more bad news for the Soviet Union. In the summer of 1946, a drought began, which provoked a famine killing several hundreds of thousands of people. Yet, the country 7 Buruma, Year Zero, 153–5. 8 Roberts, ‘Stalin’s Wartime Vision of the Peace, 1939–1945’, 253–4, 258–9. 9 Zubok, Failed Empire, 14–15 10 Roberts, ‘Stalin’s Wartime Vision of the Peace, 1939–1945’, 233. 11 Zubok, Failed Empire, 1–2.

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Introduction · 191

had huge supplies of grain which had been stored during the war, but Stalin refused to use them. He rejected UNRRA’s food aid for Russia but did allow it for Ukraine and Belarus. Also, he sent food supplies to Poland, Czechoslovakia and to the French and Italian communists.12 Stalin’s policy might appear odd or inconsistent at first sight. But he was determined to hang on to Central and Eastern Europe and prevent any western penetration into his sphere of influence.13 This might help to explain why he had allowed UNRRA food supplies in Ukraine and Belarus, two areas thoroughly devastated by the war, but refused them for Russia, probably fearing western influence through UNRRA deep inside Soviet territory. The master of the Kremlin was greatly preoccupied with the security of his country’s borders and western support that could be given to internal opponents. For him, the world around the Soviet Union was a threat. His views on religion were conditioned by the use he thought he could make of it and indeed whether he deemed it to be a friend of a foe.14 Yet, the Soviet Union’s precarious state did not prevent American and Western European leaders from fearing a Soviet and communist onslaught. By 1947, 907,000 French had joined the Parti communiste français and no less than 2,250,000 had joined the Partito Comunista Italiano in Italy. Not even membership figures in Poland and Yugoslavia, now controlled by the communists, came near that of Italy.15 This was a worrying trend for capitalist democracies and could signal a communist takeover possibly backed by Stalin. This great worry was best expressed by Belgian Prime Minister Paul-Henri Spaak who, during a tense and memorable session of the United Nations in Paris in 1948, explained that western policy was ‘the result of fear—fear of the USSR, fear of its Government, fear of its policies’ and accused the Soviets of ‘maintaining a fifth column compared with which Hitler’s fifth column was a troop of boy scouts!’16 Whatever the veracity of the remarks about a Soviet fifth column, Spaak’s speech had the merit of eloquently depicting the rapidly deteriorating situation between the western countries and the Soviet Union. This was also felt in relief operations. During 1946 and at the beginning of 1947, the American administration redefined its foreign policy, which would now be based on the United States’ own interests. Back in 1943, Washington had believed that its interests and relief policy would be best served within the framework of UNRRA, a multilateral organisation, but 12 13 14 15 16

Zubok, Failed Empire, 55. Zubok, Failed Empire, 33. Kirby, ‘From Bridge to Divide’, 738. Judt, Postwar, 88. Paul-Henri Spaak, The Continuing Battle: Memoirs of a European 1936–1966 (Boston & Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1971), 121–2.

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192 · Part II

by the spring of 1947, it was of the opinion that specific aid programs would be much better. As early as November 1945, the widely read American magazine Life believed that UNRRA focused too much on aid in Central and Eastern Europe controlled by the Soviets and not enough on Western Europe. Under-Secretary of State Dean Acheson, one of the architects of UNRRA, thought it had been a failure and remarked that too many UNRRA supplies ended up in the black market and that they were used by ‘[communist] governments bitterly hostile to us to entrench themselves’.17 This was a thought-provoking comment. If the theory was that economic chaos, poverty, and misery in Western Europe would play into the hands of the communists, the same could in fact apply to Eastern Europe where harsh conditions might favour a western comeback. Initially, some policymakers in the United States believed that UNRRA’s work in Central and Eastern Europe was indeed, politically speaking, an astute move as it stressed American generosity in areas under Soviet domination. Eastern Europeans knew that some of the supplies they got came from UNRRA and tended to equate UNRRA with the United States. However, by the end of 1946, Congress had become opposed to American funds being used for relief operations in Eastern Europe.18 The view that western supplies were helping communist regimes to remain in power, as expressed by Acheson, prevailed. Recent history might also have played a role in forming or confirming that view. Back in the early 1920s when western humanitarian agencies and governments mobilised to assist famished and starving Russians, some like Herbert Hoover’s American Relief Administration (ARA) believed that the Bolshevik authorities were not competent in organising relief or were not trustworthy.19 As will be shown, these political developments in international aid and this distrust of the Soviets and communists generally would affect Ireland’s decision to continue sending supplies beyond the Iron Curtain. Events were gathering momentum. On 25 February 1947, Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs Will Clayton told the Foreign Affairs Committee in the House of Representatives that American relief would be carried out ‘more efficiently and expeditiously without the cumbersome mechanism of an international relief agency’.20 This was directed against UNRRA. As seen, on 12 March, Truman stated in the US Congress that two opposing blocs were developing in the world and that it would be the United States’ duty to contain the spread of communism. He also explained that totalitarianism thrived on poverty. His declaration would

17 18 19 20

Reinisch, ‘“Auntie UNRRA” at the crossroads’, 87, 89. Reinisch, ‘“Auntie UNRRA” at the crossroads’, 88. Kelly, British Humanitarian Activity in Russia, 1890–1923, 185, 208–10. Reinisch, ‘“Auntie UNRRA” at the crossroads’, 90.

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define American foreign policy for decades to come.21 On 28 April, George C. Marshall, the US secretary of state, returned home from a stay in Europe. He had not liked the Soviets’ reluctance to find a common solution to the German problem and had been shocked by the condition of Western Europe.22 In May, Clayton declared that the production capacities in the western-occupied zones of Germany should be restored and that it was crucial to set up a western European bloc that would be well disposed to the United States. He added that ‘we must avoid getting into another UNRRA. The United States must run this show’.23 He had not just expressed his country’s distrust of multilateral organisations but also the end of UNRRA. Developing East-West tensions made its continuation impossible. By July 1947, all its operations in Europe had ended. Its shipments to Europe represented a staggering $2.5 billion. Poland had been its most expensive operation followed by Italy, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine, and Belarus.24 On 5 June during a speech in Harvard University, Marshall announced a plan to support Europe. It was the European Recovery Program (ERP), more commonly known as the Marshall Plan, and it went into effect on 3 April 1948. It was accepted by the Western European countries but rejected by the Soviet Union which also forbade Eastern European countries to participate in it, thus seriously undermining or delaying their economic recovery. Eventually, when the plan ended in 1952, the Americans had spent about $13 billion. But Washington’s aid was not purely motivated by humanitarianism. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had pointed out that the loss of Western Europe to communism would be a serious strategic security concern for the United States. Moreover, American aid came with strings attached since Washington expected Western European countries to cooperate in a new liberal economic world order that would be beneficial for American exports.25 Ireland was among those countries that accepted the plan.26 Whereas the Americans had invested $13 billion in Western European economies, it has been estimated that the Soviets removed at the very least $13 billion from Eastern Europe.27 The world was now truly divided between two ideological and economic blocs. In Churchill’s words, an Iron Curtain separated East from West. Stalin unsuccessfully attempted to force the western Allies out of western Berlin during a blockade that lasted from Applebaum, Iron Curtain, 233. Judt, Postwar, 89–90. Reinisch, ‘“Auntie UNRRA” at the crossroads’, 90. Reinisch, ‘“Auntie UNRRA” at the crossroads’, 73. Judt, Postwar, 90–9. For a comprehensive study of Ireland’s participation in the ERP, see Bernadette Whelan, Ireland and the Marshall Plan, 1947–57 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000). 27 Csaba Békés, László Borhi, Peter Ruggenthaler & Ottmar Traşcă, eds., Soviet Occupation of Romania, Hungary and Austria, 1944/45–1948/49 (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2015), 24. 21 22 23 24 25 26

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194 · Part II

June 1948 until May 1949. In April 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), of which Ireland was not a member, was set up. In May, the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) saw the light, followed in October by the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). On 9 May 1955, West Germany joined NATO and East Germany joined the Warsaw Pact five days later. The Cold War divide in Europe was complete. As seen in Part One, some in Ireland questioned the wisdom of sending supplies to countries behind the Iron Curtain. They had not enough confidence in the International Red Cross to distribute the supplies to those for whom they were intended. Ireland was firmly anti-communist and the distrust of the Soviet Union was intense and no doubt amplified after Moscow rejected its application for membership of the United Nations in 1946 allegedly on the grounds of its poor war record in favour of the Allies.28 In reality, the Kremlin was thinking in terms of a balance of power within the General Assembly of the United Nations and used Ireland and several other pro-Western countries as bargaining chips, hoping that pro-Soviet countries such as Albania and Mongolia would also obtain UN membership. This is what eventually happened when the Soviets and the Americans agreed on a certain number of countries, including Ireland, joining the United Nations in 1955.29 These strained Irish-Soviet relations dictated caution to the Department of External Affairs in Dublin when dealing with relief in Central and Eastern Europe. Interestingly, the Soviet remark about Ireland’s poor war record was also shared in certain quarters in Western European countries. Part Two details Ireland’s humanitarian aid in individual countries in Western, Central and Eastern Europe, notably in Hungary and Yugoslavia where the Catholic identity of the Irish donors and foreign receivers played a prominent role. But Ireland also sent supplies to all four occupied zones of Germany and acted as a kind of humanitarian corrective since UNRRA did not look after the German population. It acted in consonance with the ideas expressed above by the Irish Times and the words expressed by Deputy James Dillon when he reacted to Éamon de Valera’s speech in the Dáil, announcing relief for Europe on 18 May 1945, namely that ‘a hungry German is as much deserving as a hungry Pole’. By making no distinction between victims in its humanitarian approach, Ireland was close to the philosophy of the International Red Cross. Yet, its Catholic identity led to a break with the latter in which the Vatican and several prelates had a hand. These machinations were set against the background of the Cold War. The Vatican had decided that all Catholics and their organisations and even the Blessed Virgin Mary should be 28 Keogh, Ireland & Europe 1919–1948, 202. 29 Keogh, Ireland & Europe 1919–1948, 202–205; Skelly, Irish Diplomacy at the United Nations, 1945–1965, 15.

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mobilised against communism.30 Pope Pius XII led his Church into battle against the forces of atheistic Bolshevism led by the Kremlin and jettisoned the Vatican’s traditional political neutrality.31 He was supported in doing so by Truman who had recognised the great strength of religion in the unfolding Manichean struggle between good and evil.32 For the Soviets, the Vatican was out to dominate the world.33 Stalin was reported to have said mockingly: ‘The Pope! The Pope! How many divisions has he got?’34 The answer to that question was over 50 million Catholics in Central and Eastern Europe, now dominated by the Red Army.35 In Religion and the Cold War, Dianne Kirby has convincingly argued that the study of religion in the Cold War was neglected for many years although it was crucially important.36 Part Two of this book confirms this. Like in Canada where the State and the Catholic and Protestant Churches worked hand in hand against communism in the early Cold War era,37 the cooperation between State and Church in Ireland, already strong, was even further strengthened as both perceived the Soviet Union and communism as being threats to democracy and religion. Ireland was perfectly aware of the ongoing developments in the Cold War. In fact, the country got caught up in a relief propaganda battle between the emerging East and West. Its universalist approach to humanitarianism was difficult to swallow for some who had suffered from recent German occupation. Also, the official and popular reactions in individual European countries to Ireland’s aid are explored in this part, and so are the experiences and motivations of some Irish workers in UNRRA.

30 See the very interesting and revealing study of Peter Jan Margry, ed., Cold War Mary: Ideologies, Politics, Marian Devotional Culture (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2020). 31 See Frank J. Coppa, ‘Pope Pius XII and the Cold War: The Post-war Confrontation between Catholicism and Communism, in Dianne Kirby, ed., Religion and the Cold War (London: Palgrave Macmillan 2013), 50–66. 32 See Dianne Kirby, ‘Harry Truman’s Religious Legacy: The Holy Alliance, Containment and the Cold War’, in Kirby, ed., Religion and the Cold War, 77–102. 33 Anna Dickinson, ‘Domestic and Foreign Policy Considerations and the Origins of Post-war Soviet Church-State Relations, 1941–6’, in Kirby, ed., Religion and the Cold War, 29. 34 Coppa, ‘Pope Pius XII and the Cold War’, 55–6. 35 Kirby, ‘Harry Truman’s Religious Legacy’, 90. 36 Dianne Kirby, ‘Religion and the Cold War-An Introduction’, in Kirby, ed., Religion and the Cold War, 1–22. 37 See George Egerton, ‘Between War and Peace: Politics, Religion and Human Rights in Early Cold War Canada, 1945–50’, in Kirby, ed., Religion and the Cold War, 163–87.

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Chapter Seven

Irish Aid to Western Europe

On 25 April 1945, the Interdepartmental Relief Committee had met to discuss how best to approach the issue of sending relief supplies abroad. As seen in chapter two, Secretary for External Affairs Joseph Walshe had succeeded in convincing the other departmental secretaries that bilateral talks would be the best way to proceed as it would generate publicity and goodwill more easily for Ireland. Apart from these considerations, it would also bring the country back on the Western European political stage after six long years of official neutrality and isolation. The closest continental countries were France, the Netherlands, and Belgium, and more distantly there was Italy, and some of them had had strong historical relations with Ireland in the past. However, the war had changed some of their perceptions of Ireland, notably in France and the Netherlands. When Éamon de Valera’s government announced its relief offer, the French, Dutch, Belgian, and Italian authorities liaised with their Irish counterparts to organise shipment. The Irish Press reported that these Western European countries had gladly accepted Irish aid and had assured Dublin that they would look after the transport as soon as possible.1 Ireland did not have a sufficiently large merchant navy to take care of the shipping but some Irish ships took part. The tables included in this chapter show the nature and the quantity of Irish supplies sent up to a certain point in time, namely the 31st of March 1946. They are therefore not the definitive figures but nonetheless convey a very good impression of the extent of Irish aid. But Ireland’s helping hand coincided with the onset of the Cold War and it became entangled in the escalating East-West confrontation, notably in Italy where the government and the Vatican feared a communist takeover.

1 ‘Four nations accept Irish aid’, Irish Press, 20 July 1945 (INA).

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France Before 1939, France was largely self-sufficient in food production. During the war, however, production diminished significantly as many men were either prisoners of war or had been forced to work in Germany. In other words, the available agricultural manpower had decreased and food for draught animals was also crucially lacking as it had been mainly imported. Agricultural production shrank by about 25% and it was the urban population that suffered mostly. Moreover, the Germans requisitioned a great deal of food.2 They divided France into different administrative areas. By and large, in the north and west there was the Occupied Zone where they were directly in charge. In the centre and south there was the Free Zone administered by the collaborationist government of Marshal Philippe Pétain based in the spa town of Vichy, but the Vichy regime also looked after the civil administration of the Occupied Zone.3 It introduced anti-Jewish legislation and the French police participated in the rounding up of Jews. After the Allies liberated North Africa, the Germans and Italians invaded the Free Zone in November 1942 for strategic reasons. Numerous civil servants in the Vichy regime now felt that the Allies and Charles de Gaulle’s Free French were in the ascendant. If initially many had believed that Pétain was the best man to sort out the country after the humiliating defeat of 1940, by the end of 1941 the Vichy regime had already become unpopular owing to German reprisals and the deteriorating food situation.4 The food issue had been noticed by Seán Murphy, Ireland’s envoy in Vichy. In a report in December 1940, he wrote that ‘… the Germans are sending considerable quantities of food to Germany and are of course requisitioning large quantities for the Army of occupation’.5 It is estimated that some 8 million civilians (including 2 million Dutch, Belgians, and Luxembourgers) fled the advance of the Wehrmacht. Reims (Rheims) in northeast France saw its population drop from 250,000 to 5,000. The episode became known in France as l’exode.6 The Irish Red Cross Society (IRCS) sent £500 to Geneva in favour of French refugees. Later, it would send £50 to the British Red Cross for parcels for French prisoners of war in 1942, and £1,000 for the French Red Cross in 1944.7 2 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946 (Genève: Comité Inter­national de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, 1948), 330. 3 Dominique Veillon, Vivre et survivre en France 1939–1947 (Paris: Payot, 1995), 66–7, 71–2 & 72–5. 4 See Mark Mazower’s illuminating Chapter 13, ‘Collaboration’, in Mark Mazower, Hitler’s Empire: Nazi Rule in Occupied Europe (London: Penguin Books, 2009), 416–45. 5 Keogh, Ireland and Europe 1919–1948, 158–9. 6 Richard Vinnen, The Unfree French: Life under the Occupation (London: Allen Lane, 2006), 29–30. 7 Lehane, A History of the Irish Red Cross, 279–80.

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Generally, France did not suffer from food shortages as badly as Greece, the Netherlands, Poland, and the Soviet Union.8 Nevertheless, the situation was far from satisfactory. As early as the summer of 1940, the first quantitative restrictions on sugar, pasta, rice, and soap were imposed. In September, individual food cards were distributed, dividing the population into several categories, each category receiving a certain amount of food corresponding to a certain number of calories. For example, those who were Category A (adults aged 12 to 70) received 350 grams of bread a day, 250 grams of pasta a month, 50 grams of cheese a week, 200 grams of fats a month, 200 grams of margarine a month, 300 grams of meat on the bone a week, 500 grams of sugar a month, and 50 grams of rice a month. This food represented about 1,327 calories a day as compared to 3,000 before the war began. Women went through hard times as the onus was on them to keep their homes supplied.9 The availability of food and other supplies varied geographically. In the Dordogne in the south-west of France, food rationing did not badly affect people in rural areas but much more in urban areas. In September 1943, the minister for food supplies wrote that rations had been steadily decreasing nationwide. A study was undertaken in large cities which showed that the daily intake of calories for each inhabitant had diminished to 1,200. In the spring of 1944, rationing went through a severe crisis owing to the destruction of the transport network by Allied bombing raids, German requisitions, the uncollaborative spirit of farmers, the resistance’s food raids on farms, and the general reduction of available supplies. Shortly before D-Day, morale was low, and people were eagerly waiting for the end of the war.10 Social interaction changed noticeably because of these extraordinary circumstances. In long queues before shops that had something to sell, it was clear that only those standing at the beginning would be served. A queue hierarchy therefore emerged. Veterans of the First World War appeared on the scene with medals on their chests, claiming that their war record entitled them to be in front with their wives. The veterans had competitors, however. In Marseille, apparently, immigrant Italian women, in normal circumstances not on the higher echelons of the social order, pushed French people aside by saying ‘Priority to the victors’.11 Given these circumstances, it was not surprising that the French—and indeed the other peoples in Europe—relied on themselves to live and to survive. It became known in French slang as le système D (D standing for débrouille, meaning to be 8 9 10 11

Vinnen, The Unfree French, 215 Veillon, Vivre et survivre en France 1939–1947, 98, 109, 112–13, 116, 220–2. Veillon, Vivre et survivre en France 1939–1947, 88–93, 126, 272–6. Tatjana Tönsmeyer, ‘Supply Situations: National Socialist Policies of Exploitation and Economies of Shortage in Occupied Societies During World War II’, Tatjana Tönsmeyer, Peter Haslinger and Agnes Laba, eds., Coping with Hunger and Shortage under German Occupation in World War II (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 14.

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resourceful). Breeding small animals for consumption was widespread. It is estimated that more than 400,000 rabbits were bred on Parisian balconies or in cellars.12 It was the same phenomenon in Berlin where Flemish Giants were the preferred breed as they were meatier.13 Urban spaces were turned into family gardens where extra vegetables were grown. By 1944, 75,000 hectares (185,000 acres) in France were turned into such gardens or allotments, involving about 10 million people.14 Bartering and the black market were other forms of the système D. Farmers were very willing to exchange butter and milk for shoes and textiles. City-dwellers travelled to the countryside, bringing along items. The black and grey markets began very early in the war, the difference between the two being that the black market allowed some to become rich at the expense of others while the grey market consisted in bartering goods for other items that were difficult to find. The state and even the Church condoned these markets when it was clear that the supplies obtained were small in quantity and meant for personal consumption. Relations between farmers and citydwellers were strained. Many prefects (state representatives in a French département or county) reported that farmers ate well, did good business, and were selfish. If it was true that some were prospering, others were involved in resistance activities and hid Jewish families. A certain number of farmers became indeed rich, but that was far from being the case for all.15 Officially, the Vichy regime kept reminding the population that ‘the black market is a crime against community’, but to no avail. It grew and spread until the Germans were gone.16 And after the Germans were gone, some US soldiers continued with this very lucrative business. All foodstuffs were rationed until the end of 1944, but the situation varied from one region to another. After the war, different international aid agencies were active in the country, notably the Swiss Red Cross which, already during the war, had set up several children’s homes. The Don Suisse sent teams of specialised workers to help in the reconstruction of Le Havre, very badly damaged by Allied bombing raids. It established hospitals with maternity and tuberculosis wards. After the liberation, de Valera’s government initiated bilateral talks with the French regarding the sending of supplies, one fifth of the £3,000,000 budget being devoted to France. Also, almost 17 tons of goods of the Don Irlandais sent to Geneva and initially not 12 Veillon, Vivre et survivre en France 1939–1947, 169–70. 13 Roger Moorhouse, Berlin at War: Life and Death in Hitler’s Capital, 1939–1945 (London: The Bodley Head, 2010), 93. 14 Veillon, Vivre et survivre en France 1939–1947, 171–2. 15 Veillon, Vivre et survivre en France 1939–1947, 176–8, 178–81, 208–10. 16 Fabrice Grenard, ‘“The Black Market Is a Crime Against Community”: The Failure of the Vichy Government to Bring About an Egalitarian System of Distribution and the Growth of the Black Market in France During the German Occupation (1940–1944)’, in Tönsmeyer, Haslinger & Laba, eds., Coping with Hunger and Shortage under German Occupation in World War II, 84.

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meant for France were eventually distributed to needy groups of people who had not been lucky to have donors looking after them.17 But what singled out France from all the other countries where Ireland sent aid to was the fact that the Irish set up a hospital in the devastated town of Saint-Lô, which was not above controversy despite the excellent care it provided to the locals. The French press paid much attention to the economic and social conditions prevailing in Dublin at the time although its reporting was not always objective. Some newspapers found it difficult to accept that Ireland was willing to include Germany in its relief operations. But Irish aid for France was universally praised.

The Irish hospital in Saint-Loˆ Even before relief was sent from Ireland, the Irish Red Cross Society (IRCS) had thought of sending a mobile ambulance unit to the continent in the summer of 1943, but it proved to be unfeasible. Nonetheless, it remained determined to do something on the large scale.18 No doubt, it was inspired by the activities of the Swiss Red Cross and other neutrals. After D-Day on 6 June 1944, the progress of the Allies was more difficult than had been expected. 20,000 French civilians lost their lives during the Battle of Normandy. Many Allied soldiers felt that the locals were not particularly welcoming towards their liberators. Corporal L. F. Roker of the Highland Light Infantry wrote in his diary: ‘They saw us as bringers of destruction and pain’. At least 100,000 inhabitants of the département of Calvados fled when the Allies landed.19 Once the Battle of Normandy was won, Allied soldiers noted during their progression towards northern and eastern France that the inhabitants were far more welcoming. A. G. Herbert wrote: ‘We now felt at last that we had left Normandy and were meeting the real French people for the first time. Unlike the people of Normandy, these folks made us feel welcome, and it seemed worth fighting for their freedom’.20 What Herbert wrote was understandable, but Roker’s analysis was pertinent. The Normans were about to receive important help from across the water. The extraordinary story of the setting up of the Irish hospital in Saint-Lô has been extensively researched by Phyllis Gaffney.21 The unfortunate small Norman 17 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 331–41 & 186. 18 Phyllis Gaffney, ‘A Hospital for the Ruins: The Irish Hospital at Saint-Lô’, in Gerald Morgan and Gavin Hughes, eds., Southern Ireland and the Liberation of France: New Perspectives (Berne: Peter Lang, 2011), 103–120. 19 Hitchcock, Liberation, 21–1, 40–1. 20 Hitchcock, Liberation, 43. 21 Phyllis Gaffney’s studies, ‘A Hospital for the Ruins: The Irish Hospital at Saint-Lô’ and ‘Why was Ireland

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town was located at an important crossing of roads and was targeted by the Allied air force. The strategic idea behind the bombing was to delay the advance of the German army rushing towards the new frontline. Allied planes had dropped leaflets warning the inhabitants to leave but it had very little effect as most of them were blown away by the wind. On 6 June 1944, the town was almost fatally obliterated, and it became known as ‘ la capitale des ruines’ (the capital of ruins). It was indeed the most destroyed town in France as 90% of it had been turned into rubble. It took the advancing Allies over forty days to capture Saint-Lô instead of the nine originally planned. The question soon arose if there was any point in rebuilding it as the living conditions were hazardous and the ruins were infested with rats. But the will to stay and rebuild was there. Therefore, when it became known that an Irish hospital would be set up, the inhabitants were overjoyed as it meant hope and a possible revival of their town.22 General Adolphe Sicé had set up the Provisional Committee of the French Red Cross (Croix-Rouge française, CRF) in Britain in 1943. When the Irish approached the French in London in August 1944 with the offer to send medical relief to France, Sicé was immediately interested and said that he would discuss the matter with Charles de Gaulle’s Provisional Government.23 The CRF was enthused and sent a delegation to Dublin to begin talks. There, the plan was changed from sending an ambulance unit into setting up a hospital.24 In September, the French minister in Dublin explained to the Foreign Ministry in Paris, by now liberated, that organising the hospital would cost £100,000, which the IRCS was not able to afford. He therefore inferred from it that the Irish government would help to support it and wrote: ‘I have no doubt that we are dealing here with a political gesture, and a most significant one within the framework and at the limits of the country’s neutrality to which the Irish government remains attached. The Irish government obviously wishes to re-strengthen the ties between the two peoples [France and Ireland] and, more generally, to multiply its direct relations with continental countries of which France is the closest’.25 His analysis was correct. Concerning the financing of the costs of the hospital, it was done through donations and sweepstakes (a kind of national lottery).26 The French gladly accepted the Irish offer and made sure to hang on to it

22 23 24 25 26

given Special Treatment? The Awkward State of Franco-Irish Diplomatic Relations, August 1944–March 1945’, Etudes Irlandaises, no 24–1, printemps 1999 have been used here unless otherwise stated. See also Gaffney’s Healing Amid the Ruins: the Irish Hospital at Saint-Lô (1945–46) (Dublin: A. & A. Farmar, 1999). Gaffney, ‘A Hospital for the Ruins: The Irish Hospital at Saint-Lô’, 103–120. Gaffney, ‘Why was Ireland given Special Treatment? The Awkward State of Franco-Irish Diplomatic Relations, August 1944–March 1945’, Etudes Irlandaises, no 24–1, printemps 1999, 158. Gaffney, ‘A Hospital for the Ruins: The Irish Hospital at Saint-Lô’, 103–120. Gaffney, ‘Why was Ireland given Special Treatment?’, 159. Aidan O’Donnell and Sarah Blake (producers), RTÉ Radio 1, ‘The Hospital the Irish Shipped to France’,

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as their embassy in London had warned that the Dutch had asked the IRCS to have the hospital in their country.27 On 6 March 1945, the French legation phoned the Department of External Affairs (DEA) to say that the IRCS could go ahead with the preparations for the hospital. The French Provisional Government had reached the conclusion that authorisation of Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF) was not necessary as the hospital would be set up in a civilian area. Visas had to be granted to Irish officials to go to Paris to discuss details.28 But the same day Dr Robert Collis arrived in the DEA. He had been the director of paediatrics in the Rotunda Hospital in Dublin. Back in 1943, Collis, who had contacts with British top civil servants, had put forward plans to send Irish doctors to the continent and to set up an Irish hospital in Normandy. However, he was distrusted by the DEA, de Valera, and the IRCS who considered him to be a pro-British meddler and a ‘big noise’, capable of upsetting Ireland’s neutrality.29 Collis had just returned from London where he had met prominent Gaullists and representatives of the Dutch Red Cross and he was now of the opinion that the hospital project in France should be abandoned altogether. Instead, he put forward that several hundreds of Dutch children, Catholics from the province of Brabant, should be welcomed in Ireland. To his mind, it would be a much easier undertaking. The unidentified DEA official who met Collis was not convinced and subsequently noted that Collis, ‘contrary to his former attitude, displayed this time a considerable anti-French bias, which he quite frankly attributed to impressions received in London where the French are not at the present moment too popular’. The official explained: ‘I deprecated absolutely the idea of giving up all thought of helping the French. Although I did not express the view to Dr Collis, I hold strongly that any effort to get out of our offer to the French would react against us politically, and I am not quite sure that this possibility was completely absent from Dr Collis’ mind’.30 Collis’s proposal came to nothing and shortly afterwards he entered Bergen-Belsen with the British army and looked after the surviving inmates.31 Although his involvement remains unclear, what is clear is that he was behind the idea of setting up a hospital in France, which was eventually built in Normandy (but the choice of location might have been purely

27 28 29 30 31

Irish radio documentary on the Irish Hospital in Saint-Lô (45 minutes), September 2020, in https:// www.rte.ie/radio1/podcast/podcast_documentaryonone.xml (accessed on 7 September 2020). Gaffney, ‘Why was Ireland given Special Treatment?’, 159 & endnote 22, 162. NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/1, note, no author, (possibly Assistant Secretary for External Affairs Frederick H. Boland), 6 March 1945. Lehane, A History of the Irish Red Cross, 108–13. NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/1, note, no author, (possibly Assistant Secretary for External Affairs Frederick H. Boland), 6 March 1945. See Robert Collis and Han Hogerzeil, Straight On: Journey to Belsen and the Road Home (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1947).

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coincidental). It should also be noted that the IRCS had a rather inconsistent attitude towards him. On the one hand, it wanted to have nothing to do with him but on the other hand, it appointed him to a board that was in charge of selecting doctors and nurses for the future hospital.32 Advertisements were published in Irish newspapers to recruit doctors, nurses, and members of the IRCS to serve in a hospital in France and attracted about 600 applicants.33 In March 1945, an IRCS delegation crossed the English Channel and went to the western regions in France where most of the fighting had taken place. Colonel T. J. McKinney of the Irish Army Medical Corps and IRCS was part of the delegation. On his return, he made a moving appeal on Radio Éireann: I was told that many of the former residents have returned to live in the cellars though personally I got the impression that all the cellars must be choked with debris. Saint-Lô might be described as one hundred percent flattened, the work of a few hours from the air. The world will expect the Irish Red Cross as representing a nation which had escaped the ravages and horrors of war to play a full part. Help, much help, will be needed.34

McKinney’s message was clear: Ireland could not morally stand idly by. Saint-Lô was subsequently chosen. The French would provide wooden huts and the Irish the necessary medical equipment and personnel for an indefinite period. In Ireland, equipment was collected for a one-hundred bed hospital, including six ambulances. Samuel Beckett, the future winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1969, was back in the country. He had spent the war years in France where he had joined the resistance. When he learnt that the IRCS needed personnel who spoke French, he volunteered and participated in the loading of the Menapia, which left Dublin for Cherbourg on 14 August 1945. He would act as interpreter in the hospital. Once in Normandy, the equipment was stored with the help of German prisoners of war.35 According to the Irish Independent, ‘the staff, entirely Irish, comprises seven doctors, thirty nurses, two ambulance men, three technicians, and four secretaries’.36 In December 1945, the hospital was finally ready. In January 1946, the first French baby was born there and appropriately called Patrick.37 Decades later, his 32 33 34 35 36 37

Lehane, A History of the Irish Red Cross, 111–13. O’Donnell and Blake (producers, RTÉ), ‘The Hospital the Irish Shipped to France’. O’Donnell and Blake (producers, RTÉ), ‘The Hospital the Irish Shipped to France’. Gaffney, ‘A Hospital for the Ruins: The Irish Hospital at Saint-Lô’, 103–120. ‘Work at Saint-Lô ends: Irish hospital staff for Warsaw’, Irish Independent, 11 January 1947 (INA). Gaffney, ‘A Hospital for the Ruins: The Irish Hospital at Saint-Lô’, 103–120.

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mother wrote: ‘My son Patrick was born in the maternity of your hospital. The care was very good and there was a very good atmosphere; we owe you a lot’.38 On 7 April, the hospital, now known locally as the Hôpital Irlandais, was officially opened in great pomp. The streets of Saint-Lô were covered with French and Irish flags and the authorities and locals were extremely grateful.39 In the words of a Frenchwoman whose daughter was looked after by the Irish: ‘By their presence these doctors and nurses brought hope and encouraged the inhabitants to fight for Saint-Lô’s revival’.40 The hospital was fully equipped and numbered twenty-five wooden huts in total. There was an outpatient department, a maternity ward, two tuberculosis wards, an X-ray department, and a paediatrics department, among others. Penicillin brought from Ireland was much appreciated as it was not available for civilians in France and its price in the black market in Paris was about 250 times higher than in Dublin.41 This helps to explain why the hospital advised its ambulance drivers to carry guns in case there were attempts at robbery.42 The hospital’s services were free of charge, but patients left bottles of Calvados (a regional apple brandy), food, and flowers for the staff. Often, they invited the Irish to their homes. The work of nurses was particularly held in high regard. Thus, the Irish medical team integrated well with the inhabitants and with the Allied forces in the vicinity.43 Yet, an ugly episode did occur amidst this display of goodwill, friendship, and humanity. Space does not allow including all the details of what became known in the local press as ‘L’affaire de l’ hôpital irlandais’.44 Briefly, no definite period had been agreed upon regarding the stay of the Irish medical team and the Hôpital Irlandais became embroiled against its will in a triangular dispute between the local town council, the CRF, and the local medical union of doctors. The hospital was proving costly to run for the IRCS at about £50,000 a semester. Also, several French doctors believed it was time for the Irish to leave and that they should now take over. After all, the war had ended, and the country was free again. It came down to this: French patients had to be looked after by French doctors, and these doctors should be paid of course. The local medical union sent a letter to the IRCS in Dublin, asking the Irish to leave. On 3 August 1946, the hospital director informed the Mayor of Saint-Lô that it would cease its activities on 31 October. The town 38 IRCS, Livre d’Or (Saint-Lô) entry name unreadable. This visitors’ book was created during the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Irish Hospital in Saint-Lô in April 1996. It contains numerous lofty witness accounts of Frenchmen and women (or their descendants) who were looked after by the Irish. 39 Gaffney, ‘A Hospital for the Ruins: The Irish Hospital at Saint-Lô’, 103–120. 40 IRCS, Livre d’Or (Saint-Lô), Marie-Anne Théot’s entry. 41 Gaffney, ‘A Hospital for the Ruins: The Irish Hospital at Saint-Lô’, 103–120. 42 O’Donnell and Blake (producers), ‘The Hospital the Irish Shipped to France’. 43 Gaffney, ‘A Hospital for the Ruins: The Irish Hospital at Saint-Lô’, 103–120. 44 ‘L’affaire de l’hôpital irlandais’, Ouest France, 21–22 September 1946 (ADM, 1310W215).

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council was dumbfounded and immediately wrote to the IRCS, asking for the hospital to stay. The IRCS answered that it was not possible and included the letter of the local medical union. Anger soon flared up when it transpired that two French doctors, who were also members of the council, had been involved in sending the letter to the IRCS and had kept it under wraps.45 Public opinion in Saint-Lô was outraged, to say the least. In September, the inhabitants organised a protest march through the town. The Sûreté nationale (French bureau of investigation) reported to the head of the Renseignements généraux (secret police) in Paris what happened. 4,000 people marched in favour of maintaining the Irish medical team and the local Committee of Liberation was in charge of the protest action. The hospital’s work was loftily praised as was that of French doctors during the war. The name of Ireland when uttered was much applauded. The Committee of Liberation said that a petition had gathered about 2,000 signatures, representing about 8,500 people in total. It demanded the resignation of the two French doctors from the town council. The crowd agreed unanimously. Mayor Georges Lavalley announced his departure for Dublin to convince the relevant authorities to keep the Irish medical team in Saint-Lô for a few months more. He also asked the crowd to remain calm and dignified. However, every time the names of the two doctors were uttered, the crowd shouted ‘Line them up against the wall! Line them up against the wall!’ There were banners with ‘Long live Ireland’, ‘Gratitude to the Irish’, ‘Saint-Lô still needs you’, and ‘Erin go Bragh’ (Ireland forever). The crowd then marched to the hospital where more speeches were made, notably from war veterans and former concentration camp inmates. Flowers were given to the Irish team. The Sûreté nationale commented that the inhabitants were increasingly angry with the two doctors and hoped that they would be severely reprimanded by the government.46 The Mayor of Saint-Lô did travel to Dublin. The CRF, however, believed that it should be put in charge of the hospital and not the local authorities. Eventually, a compromise was reached. The hospital would stay until the end of 1946 after which it would be managed by the CRF for a period of three months. After that period, the town council would take over. As to the two French doctors, they issued a lengthy statement published by the regional press in which they defended their position, invoking legal, technical, and financial aspects. But public opinion reacted so badly that both men resigned from the town council. On 2 January 1947, the last of the Irish medical team left after an emotional farewell.47 The Irish 45 Gaffney, ‘A Hospital for the Ruins: The Irish Hospital at Saint-Lô’, 103–120. 46 ADM, 1004W1727, Sûreté Nationale to head of Renseignements Généraux , 23 September 1946. 47 Gaffney, ‘A Hospital for the Ruins: The Irish Hospital at Saint-Lô’, 103–120.

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wanted to leave a house in good and fair order and did not forget the German prisoners who had helped them. General Sicé, the chairman of the CRF, wrote to the head of the regional police that the IRCS had asked the CRF to thank the thirteen prisoners of war who worked as they did a very good job. As it was the head’s office who had selected these prisoners, the IRCS wanted to express ‘all its satisfaction’ to him.48 The hospital continued to be in use for the next ten years. Although the staff was by now French, it was still referred to as the Hôpital Irlandais. Besides the purely humanitarian aspect of this operation, there was also a politico-diplomatic one. Ireland had managed to remain, officially at least, neutral in the savage war that had just ended. Its involvement in Saint-Lô put it under a new limelight and the Irish were extremely eager to perform well. There was a question of national reputation and pride at stake here. But, of course, there was only so much that the Hôpital Irlandais could do. Set against the backdrop of the gigantic devastation and unimaginable human misery on the continent, the Irish input was necessarily very small, but it did make a huge difference locally. By the end of 1946, when the Irish personnel stopped working, the hospital had looked after 1,427 inpatients and had provided 22,398 consultations. It had cost the IRCS about £80,000.49 The locals did not forget, and Saint-Lô held commemorations in 1996 and 2006.50 The final thought belongs to a French lady who, in 1996, described the Irish medical team as the ‘ joyeux pioniers de médecins sans frontières’ (merry pioneers of Doctors Without Borders).51

French newspapers’ perceptions of postwar Dublin If the Irish hospital in Saint-Lô reflected well on Ireland, the country’s official war record, and especially de Valera’s handshake with Hempel on Hitler’s death, had been vehemently criticised by some French newspapers as seen in chapter one. Ireland’s decision to help all of Europe was of course welcomed by the French press, but its desire to also help Germany was not appreciated as could have been easily expected. In an article sarcastically entitled ‘L’Irlande veut secourir “l’Allemagne malheureuse”’ (Ireland wants to help ‘poor Germany’), Libres informed its readers that the Save the German Children Society (SGCS) had been set up in Ireland and that an Irish minister (not named) had declared that General Eisenhower had been wrong to say that as far as he was concerned Germany could starve to death.

48 49 50 51

ADM, 1004W1727, General Sicé to préfet of the Manche, 30 November 1946. O’Donnell and Blake (producers), ‘The Hospital the Irish Shipped to France’. Gaffney, ‘A Hospital for the Ruins: The Irish Hospital at Saint-Lô’, 103–120. IRCS, Livre d’Or (Saint-Lô), entry of Marie-Anne Théot.

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According to Libres, the Irish minister had said: ‘This great civilised people does not deserve such a savage treatment.’ Yet, it was stated in the same article that Ireland was ready to send supplies to the European continent, including France.52 On 1 August 1945, the French radio announced that Ireland was about to send over goods representing a total value of £3,000,000 ‘to help the stricken populations of the devastated European countries’. Seán Murphy, the Irish minister in Paris, had outlined de Valera’s plan to Foreign Minister Georges Bidault. The French government had expressed its appreciation and negotiations were on the way ‘to fix the quota of the goods to be allocated to France’. The IRCS was already in Saint-Lô where it was setting up a fully-equipped hospital.53 The Courrier Français du Sud-Ouest published an article entitled ‘L’Irlande libre au secours des pays affamés’ (Free Ireland helps famished countries).54 Immediately after the war, some newspapers in formerly German-occupied Western European countries sent reporters to those neutral countries that now sought to help them. For example, a Dutch journalist working for the Nationale Rotterdamsche Courant travelled to Stockholm in 1945 and subsequently described it as a city of the plentiful: ‘Stockholm gives you immediately an ethereal impression: the shops were full of the most beautiful books, clothes, leather goods and the most beautiful fruits and foodstuffs.’55 How was Dublin perceived by the French press? Certain comments were rather surprising. In the autumn, several French reporters arrived in the city and like their Dutch colleague’s impressions of Stockholm, they found that there was no shortage of commodities although they noticed that not everyone could eat to their hearts’ content or dress properly. André-J. Mutterer for Inter wrote that there was plenty of food despite the misery that could be spotted in the streets. The shops were full and to make his point Mutterer included a picture of a poor barefoot boy, standing in front of a window shop full of pastries. The title of his article was revealing: ‘L’Irlande mange mais ne s’ habille pas’ (Ireland eats but does not dress).56 André Jean for Franc-Tireur had reached the same conclusion. The shops were full but not many people had enough money to go shopping. He described the poverty in Dublin and claimed that out of ten children only three at the most had shoes. According to him, the tenements of Dublin housed among the poorest people in Europe. Equally revealing was the title of his article: ‘Dublin, la ville aux boutiques pleines . . . et aux 52 ‘L’Irlande veut secourir l’Allemagne malheureuse’, Libres, 19 October 1945 (NAI, DFA, 414/7). 53 ‘Paris Radio on Ireland’s aid to Europe’, Irish Press, 2 August 1945 (NAI, DFA, 414/7). 54 ‘L’Irlande libre au secours des pays affamés’, Courrier Français du Sud-Ouest, 11 August 1945 (NAI, DFA, 414/7). 55 Sintemaartensdijk, De Bleekneusjes van 1945, 207–208. 56 ‘L’Irlande mange mais ne s’habille pas’, Inter, 4 October 1945 (NAI, DFA, 419/1/3).

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consommateurs rares’ (Dublin, city of fully-stocked shops . . . and few consumers).57 Pierre de Neuvic for L’Etoile du Soir was perplexed by the poor sense of dress he saw around him. He penned that there was plenty of food available and, curiously, that some people were shabby looking and could still be millionaires. When de Neuvic was told that greyhounds were fed with eggs and milk every day, he bitterly thought of the children living in France.58 By August 1946, things had hardly changed. Robert Clarke and Verdu, journalists for Paris-Actualités, described Dublin and Ireland as a kind of heaven where food was in abundance. The city was even nicknamed ‘a small Paris’. Their descriptions were flattering, but poverty was not ignored. ‘The poor are happy’ and nobody gave them money as they looked healthy, they remarked. They even wrote: ‘The shabby-looking adolescents squatting in the dust get up for a moment to bite into an orange or eat a steak in the nearest pub’.59 In a couple of articles, Serge Karsky for Combat agreed with his colleagues. But he also focused on the misery in the country and stressed that many Irish had emigrated. There was not much industry. In the slums, four families could be found living in one room and this only a few meters away from O’Connell Street of which the Irish were so proud. Karsky wrote that the poorest people were the labourers in the countryside. The redistribution of land had been good for rich farmers but not for poorer ones. Finally, he mentioned that family allowances represented almost nothing.60 It was predictable that living conditions were far better in postwar Ireland than elsewhere in Europe. But to state that the poor were happy and that they could eat steak and oranges whenever they wanted had little in common with reality as the St. Vincent de Paul Society could have testified with its 385,000 visits to poor families in 1945 as seen. Rabbi Isaac Herzog and American Minister David Gray’s descriptions of Dublin also contradicted this strange image of happiness portrayed by these French newspapers. Herzog, shortly before the war, believed that ‘Dublin, from what I have seen, has the worst slum conditions anywhere in Europe’,61 while Gray, after the war, wrote that there were over 300,000 people living in cramped tenements, many without the means to buy a few slices of bacon.62 At the end of 1945, the Irish Times denounced 57 ‘Dublin, la ville aux boutiques pleines… et aux consommateurs rares’, Franc-Tireur, 16 November 1945 (NAI, DFA, 414/7). 58 ‘L’Irlande du Sud a des miséreux qui sont parfois millionaires’, L’Etoile du Soir, 21 November 1945 (NAI, DFA, 414/7). 59 ‘En Irlande, dans une atmosphère d’avant-guerre, l’abondance cotoie la misère’, Paris-Actualités, 18 August 1946 (NAI, DFA, 414/7A). 60 ‘Les Français comprennent l’Eire mieux qui quiconque’, Combat, 29 August 1946 & ‘En plein centre de Dublin les taudis étalent leurs façades lépreuses au milieu de l’apathie générale’, Combat, 30 August 1946 (NAI, DFA, 414/7A). 61 Keogh, Jews in Twentieth-Century Ireland, 109. 62 Whelan, ‘Integration or Isolation? Ireland and the Invitation to join the Marshall Plan’, 210.

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these eccentric and ridiculous articles that appeared in some French newspapers. For example, one claimed that Ireland had originally a population of eight million but that since de Valera’s entry into office, it had declined to four million, owing to a severe famine.63 This was a very serious historical distortion. Despite some evident exaggerations and unreliable information, French newspapers had nonetheless correctly noticed that food and poverty coexisted in Dublin. Some of that food was now about to be shipped over to France.

Distributing Irish relief goods By September 1945, ‘1,200 tons of sugar, 50 tons of condensed milk, 20,000 woollen blankets and 2 tons of baby foods’ from Ireland had reached French shores already.64 The newspapers were quick to react. Sud-Ouest reported in the Bordeaux area, notably on the distribution of Irish sugar in hospitals. Patients sang Ireland’s praises.65 The great western daily Ouest-France published an article entitled ‘L’Irlande pense à nos malades’ (Ireland thinks of our sick) and praised Irish ‘proverbial generosity’.66 ‘Proverbial generosity’ was perhaps not that exaggerated. The Irish Times warned indeed that ‘many Irishmen and women will have to make last year’s underwear serve them this winter’ as much home-produced underwear would be shipped to the continent.67 It was no idle warning. Several months later, Justin Godard of the Entr’Aide française, the French welfare organisation in charge of distributing foreign supplies, wrote to the ‘President of the Irish Free State’ (a title that did not exist) that no less than 30,000 children would get Irish woollen underwear.68 The distribution operations took place in a friendly atmosphere and some photographs were sent to Dublin as proof. One series showed a large room draped with French flags and emblems of the Entr’Aide française. Officials were seated on a platform and one man was standing, delivering a speech with some passion it would seem. He was Seán Murphy, the Irish minister to France, and he was addressing a group of elderly people. Next to the platform were bundles of Irish goods, wrapped up it what looked to be white towels. After his speech, Murphy walked to a table and handed out the bundles. The joy and gratitude of the receivers was plain to see. It was certainly a splendid photo opportunity. Perhaps the most emblematic photograph taken of Irish relief operations on the continent was that of an elderly 63 64 65 66 67 68

‘As others see us’, The Irish Times, 28 December 1945 (NAI, DFA, 414/7). ‘Supplies from Eire to Europe’, The Irish Times, 18 September 1945 (ITDA). ‘Un peu de douceur pour les hôpitaux…’, Sud-Ouest, 26 November 1945 (NAI, DFA, 414/7). ‘L’Irlande pense à nos malades’, Ouest-France, 6 November 1945 (NAI, DFA, 414/7). ‘Less underwear’, The Irish Times, 15 October 1945 (ITDA). NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/3, Godard to ‘President of the Irish Free State’, 29 July 1946.

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Frenchman who discovered a pair of woollen socks inside his bundle, his face beaming with surprise and joy.69 Unfortunately, it was of course impossible to satisfy everyone. When Ireland’s generosity became known, some French people wrote personally to ask for supplies. The principal of a school in Job in the Auvergne region wrote a beautifullycrafted letter with lofty arguments to Murphy and explained that his school had 120 deprived pupils aged 6–14, living in rags. Could the Irish not send clothes, shoes, and school material, he asked? ‘You must admit, Your Excellency that such bonds do more in favour of peace and friendship between nations than do the most beautiful of official statements’, he pertinently pointed out. Murphy answered that he should ask the Entr’Aide française but for good measure also informed Joseph Walshe. The latter replied: ‘It would be impossible for the Government or the Irish Red Cross Society to assess the relative needs of the various humanitarian organisations in France. The Entr’Aide française has been nominated by the French Government to receive our supplies, and it must be left to them to distribute the supplies as they think fit.’70 Table 7.1. ‘France: Statement showing quantities and value of relief goods (excluding cattle and horses) shipped to France up to 31st March, 1946’ 71 Commodity Bacon Creamery butter Dried milk Condensed milk Cheese Sugar Woollen socks Woollen gloves Knitted undergarments Baby foods

Woollen blankets Stoves and cookers

Quantity shipped 160 tons 200 tons 10 tons 50 tons 4 tons 2,000 tons 4,000 dozen pairs 1,000 dozen pairs 2,500 dozen pairs 10 tons Freight and other similar charges Total expenditure from Vote for Alleviation of Distress: 20,000 80 Freight and similar charges Total expenditure from Army Vote: Total expenditure:

Value £35,000 £47,761 £1,380 £4,576 £638 £87,863 £6,820 £1,251 £8,490 £2,520 £6,937 £203,236 £12,000 £1,582 £614 £14,196 £217,432

69 See series of photographs in NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/3. 70 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/10, principal of Ecole de Plein Air, Job, to Murphy, 19 January 1946, Murphy to Walshe, 23 January 1946 & Walshe to Murphy, 6 February 1946. 71 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4, Cornelius Cremin (DEA) to John Hanna (Finance), April 1946.

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The French government had decided to accept some of the Irish supplies as gifts but to pay for others. In March 1946, the French legation in Dublin informed the DEA that cattle, workhorses, bacon, tinned meat, butter, cheese, and woollen blankets would be paid for but powder milk, condensed milk, sugar, socks, gloves, underwear, knitting wool, flour for children, and stoves would not. As financial transactions remained difficult to make for the time being, the French suggested paying with goods that the Irish might need.72 On 28 August, Godard wrote to de Valera in glowing terms: ‘Facing the countless miseries left behind by the war, Ireland, who knows to deprive herself to be able to help those who suffer, shows the world in effect a magnificent example of active charity. I believe that this will earn her—and it would only be justice—a special place among the peoples in terms of international solidarity when her superb effort will be known. In any case I am persuaded that this special place will be rapidly granted to her by French public opinion which I will make a point of informing’.73 These were the kind of words that Walshe wanted to hear when it came down to the publicity being derived from aid. Further up north, the end phase of the war saw a catastrophic food situation developing for the Dutch population.

The Netherlands The Wehrmacht invaded the neutral Netherlands in a matter of days in May 1940, an invasion condemned by de Valera as seen. In Hook of Holland, the Irish Guards of the British army participated in the evacuation of Queen Wilhelmina and her government to Britain.74 It was not the occupiers’ intention to starve the Dutch as they were considered to be Aryans and should therefore be won over by Nazi ideology. Thanks to preparations that had been undertaken before the war, self-sufficiency in agriculture was achieved during the war. Also, those in charge of food administration managed to create an efficient rationing system and to limit the extent of black market activities. This explains why no serious food crisis occurred in the country until about September 1944, when the Allies began Operation Market Garden,75 trying to capture several bridges notably across the Rhine. But things went badly 72 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/3, French legation in Dublin to DEA, 29 March 1946, note by Fay, 4 April 1946, Foreign Trade Committee meeting, 25 June 1946 & Department of Industry and Commerce memorandum on meeting with French delegation, 25 June 1946. 73 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/3, Godard to de Valera, 28 August 1946. 74 Doherty, Irish Men and Women in the Second World War, 58–9. 75 Ingrid de Zwarte, ‘Fighting Vulnerability: Child-Feeding Initiatives During the Dutch Hunger Winter’, in Tönsmeyer, Haslinger and Laba, eds., Coping with Hunger and Shortage under German Occupation in World War II, 293–310.

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wrong in Arnhem where British airborne troops and Polish paratroopers were seriously mauled by the SS and failed to secure their objective. Among the British was Irishman Ted Shea. He had joined the paratroopers and during his training sang Kevin Barry (a young Irish IRA member hanged by the British in 1920). Shea had just musically defined the complexity of Anglo-Irish relations. He was wounded in the arm and captured by the Germans.76 Nearby, US soldiers gave food to a desperately famished people. They did not understand why the locals could be so hungry and so shocked when they threw away the fatty bits contained in their meat rations.77 The Dutch would soon become even hungrier. After Operation Market Garden the Netherlands were effectively divided into two parts. The south was liberated, and the Allies progressed north and east on their way to Germany, bypassing the west where the Germans were still in control. The man in charge there, former two-day Austrian Chancellor Arthur SeyssInquart, a full-blooded Nazi, imposed a food blockade in retaliation to a railway strike which sought to disrupt German organisation and speed up liberation. The results were even more catastrophic since a particularly harsh winter set in. Men and women tried to survive at around 500 calories a day. According to one child survivor, ‘We hardly saw some of our neighbours during the winter. I know that during those dark months, they almost never got out of bed. There was no light and no electricity in houses and no more clothes to wear’.78 It went down in Dutch history as the Hongerwinter. Dutch civil society organised aid especially for children. 40,000 of them badly suffering from hunger were evacuated from the west to areas where the situation was better. However, in certain cases religious affiliation played a role in the distribution and receiving of food, meaning that solidarity and community spirit could have its limits. After the war, the Allies were impressed by local relief organisations.79 The Dutch were the only people in Western Europe that were subjected to a deliberate starvation policy.80 Cut off from the retreating German armies, SeyssInquart and his Wehrmacht generals knew that the war was definitely lost, adding even more responsibility to their policy. Eventually, on 29 April, when the Soviets were already in Berlin, the German high command in the Netherlands and the Allies agreed that food airdrops in the western regions could begin. The Hongerwinter claimed the lives of about 16,000 to 20,000 people. According to 76 ‘Cork centenarian recalls his capture at a bridge too far’, The Irish Times, 31 October 2015. 77 Sintemaartensdijk, De Bleekneusjes van 1945, 20. 78 Sintemaartensdijk, De Bleekneusjes van 1945, 77–85. 79 de Zwarte, ‘Fighting Vulnerability: Child-Feeding Initiatives During the Dutch Hunger Winter’, 294 & 302–305. 80 Buruma, Year Zero, 54,

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British officials, 50,000 inhabitants of Amsterdam were near ‘extreme starvation’. The London Times reported that ‘horrors comparable to those of Belsen and Buchenwald appear to have been enacted’.81 Whether it was suitable or not to compare Amsterdam to Nazi camps is debatable, but it did give an impression of the gravity of the situation. The Irish authorities had an inkling of what was going on. In January 1945, I. R. A. W. Weenink, the Dutch consul-general in Dublin, met Frederick Boland, then assistant secretary for external affairs, to discuss an offer made by the Oil and Cake Mills to the IRCS, namely to send ‘a ton and a half of concentrated fish oil for the relief of undernourished people, particularly children in France, Belgium, or Holland’. He asked if the DEA would object if the entire consignment was sent to the Netherlands. All the Irish had to do was to ship it to some British port. The Irish agreed and in March the IRCS dispatched 1.5 tons of vitamin concentrate to the Dutch Red Cross in London.82 A sum of £2,840 was also sent in 1945 by the IRCS to its Dutch colleagues.83 However, the sending of vitamin concentrate and money to the Netherlands was soon forgotten after de Valera shook Hempel’s hand. As seen in chapter one, there was outrage, and Churchill attempted to settle scores with de Valera by accusing him of having frolicked with the Germans. The Bevrijding translated Churchill’s speech into Dutch.84 Like it had been the case in France, several Dutch newspapers wrote that Ireland had been pro-German. The Vrij Nederland reported that de Valera would not be inclined to visit London soon, ‘but he did deserve it. His exaggerated expression of sympathy on Hitler’s death shut all doors’.85 The Trouw reported Churchill’s attack on de Valera’s policy that had threatened Britain’s very existence while Britain had not retaliated.86 Yet, de Valera’s masterful reply to Churchill several days later was commented upon by newspapers when he spoke about the readiness of great powers to ignore the rights of small countries when it suited them. The Kroniek van de Week quoted his expression ‘morals of the wolves’.87 It was the same with the Vrije Stemmen in an article entitled ‘Iersche premier spreekt krasse taal’ (Irish prime minister has strong words).88

81 Hitchcock, Liberation, see Chapter 3, ‘Hunger: The Netherlands and the Politics of Food’, 98–122. 82 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/1, memorandum written by Boland, 11 January 1945 & McNamara to Walshe, 6 March 1945. 83 Lehane, A History of the Irish Red Cross, 280. 84 ‘Rede van Churchill’, De Bevrijding, 14 May 1945 (Delpher Kranten). 85 Vrij Nederland in ‘W. Churchill’s rede van 10 mei’, Keesings Historisch Archief, 14 May 1945 (Delpher Kranten). 86 ‘Churchill sprak over vijf jaren strijd’, Trouw, 14 May 1945 (Delpher Kranten). 87 ‘Iersche Vrijstaat’, Kroniek van de Week, 18 May 1945 (Delpher Kranten). 88 ‘Iersche premier spreekt krasse taal’, Vrije Stemmen, 19 May 1945 (Krantenbankzeeland).

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But then the newspapers’ attention suddenly shifted on another issue: de Valera’s declaration on relief for Europe on 18 May. The Vrije Pers, one of the many resistance news sheets that had mushroomed during the war, reacted quickly. On 19 May, it briefly reported his declaration, including the information that ‘food rations in Ireland will have to be reduced in conjunction with the plan’.89 The next day Katinpers of the Catholic resistance movement printed a small article entitled ‘Ook Ierland zendt hulp naar Europa’ (Ireland too sends aid to Europe). As in the Vrije Pers, it was stated that de Valera had declared that ‘it will mean a decrease in the presently allocated rations to the Irish people’.90 This piece of information was precisely what Dublin wanted to stress: a spirit of generosity and sacrifice. The Catholic daily Avondster announced the news too but got the facts wrong as it spoke of thirty millions worth in clothes.91 It was the same information in the Vrije Stemmen.92 The Opbouw announced the £3,000,000 relief scheme but added that ‘transport presents some difficulties’.93 The Vrij Nederland appeared not to have been interested and on 23 May reminded its readers of de Valera’s condolences to the German envoy.94 Vrij Nederland, a resistance newspaper, had been founded during the occupation. Many of its workers had paid for it with their lives and it also had some pro-Soviet leanings, which might help to explain its unrelenting criticism of de Valera. However, the mood in Dutch newspapers had swung towards optimism and Irish supplies, as those from all other countries, were now eagerly awaited. In June 1945, Gerrit van der Lee, a Dutchman living in Ireland, was sent to the Netherlands by the IRCS. His task was to write a report on the local conditions. He reported that the Dutch authorities were anxious to begin relief operations as soon as possible and were very grateful for the Irish supplies but were willing to pay for them if necessary. Regarding the sending of cattle, they preferred to slaughter the animals but there was a main issue with the supply of tin required to can the meat: ‘Although the Dutch Government can obtain sufficient quantities of tinplate and solder in England, it is expecting opposition from the British Ministry of Food when it transpires that the materials are required for deliveries of tinned meat from Eire. The reason is that apparently the British Ministry is afraid that such deliveries will reduce the quantity available for the United Kingdom.’ Dutch ships were being released from the Allied Shipping Pool so that transport of 89 90 91 92 93 94

‘Korte berichten’, De Vrije Pers, 19 May 1945 (Delpher Kranten). ‘Ook Ierland zendt hulp naar Europa’, Katinpers, 20 May 1945 (Delpher Kranten). ‘De eerste Ministerraad’, De Avondster, 19 May 1945 (Delpher Kranten). ‘Van overal: buitenland’, Vrije Stemmen, 22 May 1945 (Krantenbankzeeland). No title, Opbouw, 26 May 1945 (Krantenbankzeeland). ‘Wist U…’, Vrij Nederland, 23 May 1945 (Delpher Kranten).

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supplies should not present too many difficulties. According to van der Lee: ‘There is an appalling shortage of textile materials and footwear in Holland, and supplies of all kinds are urgently wanted.’95 In September, a Dutch delegation travelled to Dublin for a meeting in the Department of Agriculture. Details of the relief operations were discussed and it was agreed that the Dutch would have to provide for the transport but the Irish would look after the cattle during the voyage.96 The decision had been taken to send the animals after all as tin supplies posed an unsurmountable problem at that point in time. The news of the imminent arrival of Irish cattle spread like wildfire. On 5 October, the Nieuwe Leidsche Courant published an article entitled ‘Sinterklaas komt ditmaal uit Ierland’ (this time Santa Claus comes from Ireland). It was written that the Willem van Oranje would leave Dublin for Rotterdam next week with 20 head of cattle aboard, the first of a total consignment of 4,000. It was stressed that it was a gift from Ireland.97 On 10 October, the Vrije Volk published a photograph of cows being disembarked from the Willem van Oranje on its front page.98 The Provinciale Zeeuwsche Courant described Ireland’s gift as ‘magnificent’.99 The same day, Patrick Donaldson, a twenty-five-year old Irishman living in the Netherlands, wrote to Dublin: ‘I was reading the Dutch papers today, they told us you were sending over [supplies] for the poor Dutch people. “Thanks very much” all the Dutch people say when they see me going to my work’.100 Mr Oberman, who had returned to Rotterdam from captivity in Germany, wrote in English to the ‘President of the Irish Free State’ that he had no clothes and shoes left and asked for some from ‘the country that shows so much kindness for the people of Holland’. ‘My length is 1.82 metre. The length of my shoes is 0.30 metre’, he mentioned.101 N. Schultheis wrote a letter of gratitude to the IRCS: ‘Yesterday every man and every woman in Rotterdam ate your oxes [oxen] and we all thought with great gratitude of “the good Irish people!”’102 At the end of October, another Dutch delegation travelled to Dublin where it met representatives of the Departments of Agriculture and Industry and Commerce. The Dutch said that they were very much obliged for the textiles they received and 95 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/1, ‘Preliminary report on a journey to the Netherlands on behalf of the Irish Red Cross Society (18th to 28th June 1945)’ by van der Lee. 96 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/1, memorandum written by the Department of Agriculture, 24 September 1945. 97 ‘Sinterklaas komt ditmaal uit Ierland’, Nieuwe Leidsche Courant, 5 October 1945 (leiden.courant.nu) 98 Photograph of Irish cows, front page, Het Vrije Volk, 10 October 1945 (Delpher Kranten). 99 ‘Prachtig geschenk van Ierland’, Provinciale Zeeuwsche Courant, 10 October 1945 (Krantenbank­zeeland). 100 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/6, Donaldson to probably DEA, 10 October 1945. 101 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/7, C.C.E. Oberman to ‘President of the Irish Free State’, 10 October 1945. 102 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/5, N.W.S. Schultheis to IRCS, 15 October 1945.

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the sending of more textiles and 100 stoves and cookers was discussed. They were also willing to buy more cattle and horses.103 Many clothes would be distributed to those who had been recently repatriated from Indonesia (where the war of independence was in progress).104 A. H. Boerma, who looked after the issue of food supplies, declared: ‘I came to Ireland because my country is very grateful for the many presents that the Irish sent to the Netherlands. I thank the government of Eire and its representatives for what they have done for us’.105 The Limburgsch Dagblad reported that the delegation offered de Valera a china vase and 100,000 flower bulbs as a token of gratitude, and that he was extremely pleased.106 There would be tulips from Amsterdam in the parks of Dublin; not all the bulbs had been eaten. But it was the arrival of the Orestes in early November that was a special moment. The ship, transporting 630 head of cattle, arrived in IJmuiden in Northern Holland. Irish newspapers reported how ‘crowds … gathered at each side of the canal and young men and girls [waved] home-made Irish Tricolours as well as the Dutch red, white and blue’. The crew of the Orestes, a mixture of Dutch and Irish, were later received by the Mayor of Amsterdam who said that ‘when Holland was prosperous again, it would not forget that Ireland had done this’. For now, Radio Hilversum, the national broadcaster, announced that ‘the extra food is a Christmas present from Ireland’. The Dutch authorities also organised an exhibition in Amsterdam ‘to show how Switzerland, Sweden and Ireland have helped through the famine period’.107 The Provinciale Zeeuwsche Courant wrote that it would now be possible to issue an extra coupon of 100 grams of meat besides the weekly 150 grams thanks to the arrival of more beef cattle on the market and also the arrival of fat cattle from Ireland.108 The Dutch government accepted Ireland’s relief supplies as a gift.109 Up to March 1946, Irish aid to the Netherlands was as follows:

103 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/1, memorandum written on 29 October 1945. 104 ‘Ierland schenkt textiel’, Provinciale Zeeuwsche Courant, 9 November 1945 (Krantenbankzeeland). 105 ‘Nederland dankt Ierland!’ De Burcht, 31 October 1945 (leiden.courant.nu). 106 ‘Hier is Nederland’, Limburgsch Dagblad, 29 October 1945 (Delpher Kranten). 107 aan de Wiel, ‘The Netherlands’, 208. 108 ‘Extra vleeschrantsoen van 100 gr.’, Provinciale Zeeuwsche Courant, 20 November 1945 (Kranten­bankzeland). 109 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/1, Cremin (DEA) to Hanna (Finance), April 1946, including memorandum entitled ‘Vote for the alleviation of distress 1945/1946’.

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218 · Chapter Seven Table 7.2. ‘Holland: Statement showing quantities and value of relief goods (excluding cattle and horses) shipped to Holland up to 31st March, 1946’  110 Commodity Bacon Creamery butter Dried milk Condensed milk Cheese Sugar Woollen socks Woollen gloves Knitted undergarments Knitting yarn Baby foods

Woollen blankets Stoves and cookers

Quantity shipped 162 tons 200 tons 10 tons 50 tons 50 tons 2,000 tons 4,000 dozen pairs 1,000 dozen pairs 2,916 dozen 10,000 lbs [pounds] 10 tons Freight and similar charges Total expenditure from Vote for Alleviation of Distress: 20,000 81 Freight and similar charges Total expenditure from Army Vote: Total expenditure:

Value £35,515 £47,757 £1,380 £4,563 £7,972 £87,833 £6,620 £1,312 £6,587 £3,458 £2,520 £1,416 £206,933 £12,000 £1,445 £171 £13,616 £220,549

In June 1948, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries, and Food Provisions Sicco Mansholt, who would later play a determining role in the formulation of the European Economic Community’s agricultural policy, summed up Irish aid: 4,000 head of cattle, 300 draught horses, 2,032 tons of sugar, 910 tons of canned beef, 160 tons of bacon 200 tons of butter, 50 tons of cheese, 50 tons of condensed milk, 10 tons of baby food, 10 tons of dried milk, 20,000 woollen blankets, 48,000 pairs of men’s woollen socks, 12,000 pairs of woollen gloves, 10,000 pounds of knitting yarn, 28,000 knitted undergarments for children, and 7,000 undergarments for women. Back in September 1945, he had already described Ireland’s aid as a ‘very considerable gift’.111 As detailed in the introduction of this book, a group of Dutch newspapers and its editor, Gerhard Werkman, attacked de Valera in 1957 and accused him and Ireland of having been pro-German during the war and having remained indifferent to Dutch suffering. The information here proves how wrong they were. It also feels as if their attacks were politically motivated somehow or strongly influenced by an anti-German bias. Indeed, it does not seem particularly credible that they could have forgotten or simply not known of Ireland’s 110 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4, Cornelius Cremin (DEA) to John Hanna (Finance), April 1946. 111 aan de Wiel, ‘The Netherlands’, 207.

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important aid so soon afterwards. In neighbouring Belgium, the situation was different and Irish supplies were paid for.

Belgium In May 1940, leading Belgian politicians, soon on the run to Britain, entrusted the management of the national economy to bankers. The idea these bankers came up with was to make sure that the industry would continue to develop while the population’s needs would be looked after, and workers would not be deported to Germany for compulsory work. Since the country had to import about half of its foodstuffs before the war, it was hoped that by providing the Germans with industrial goods—about 60% of industrial production was ultimately sent to the Reich— they would send necessary supplies to Belgium in return. However, exporting military equipment to Germany was forbidden, and Belgian industries had no right to actively seek contracts from the Germans or take initiatives to make profits. The occupiers proved flexible. They sought to use the local industry for their own needs but were willing to abide by Belgian law. Yet, this ‘lesser evil’ policy known as the Galopin Doctrine was not entirely successful as food supplies were not sent and workers were deported. In the end, the policy was simply to keep intact the national economy and prepare the country for the postwar era. After Germany’s defeat, Belgium’s economic recovery was rather spectacular and far quicker than that of other countries that had been occupied. The financial situation was satisfying, which allowed the government to import food for the population and raw materials for the economy. In 1947, Belgium had reached its pre-war industrial production and the following year it was increased by 11%.112 But the population did suffer from hunger and cold, Galopin Doctrine or not. Belgium was not self-sufficient in food production. During the war, there were no more imports. In 1941, the situation became very critical, so much so that having money or belonging to a more privileged social class no longer mattered to get food. In 1942, official rations for Belgians represented 1,356 calories a day, which was lower than for the Dutch, 1,805, but higher than for the French, 1,115.113 But relief supplies from abroad were sent. Remarkably, the Hungarian government agreed to help even though it was an ally of Germany. It deemed it was an act of solidarity between small European states and it had probably not forgotten that Belgium had welcomed over 25,000 Hungarian children for convalescence periods after the 112 Yves Manhès, Histoire des Belges et de la Belgique (Paris: Vuibert, 2005), 153–4, 164. 113 Dirk Luyten, ‘Between Employer and Self-Organisation: Belgian Workers and Miners Coping with Food Shortages Under German Occupation (1940–1944)’, in Tönsmeyer, Haslinger & Laba, eds., Coping with Hunger and Shortage under German Occupation in World War II, 162 & endnote 2.

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First World War. The United States sent supplies of insulin. In December 1944, the Don Suisse asked the Swiss Red Cross to set up several medical centres. Iran donated warm clothes which were distributed to convalescing young Belgians in a camp in a mountainous area in France.114 The same year, the Irish Save the Children Fund (ISCF) sent two financial donations of £95 and £73, the latter having been collected by the Irish Countrywomen’s Association, for Belgian children to the Union internationale de Secours aux Enfants (International Save the Children Union) in Geneva.115 Irish soldiers in the British army were involved in the liberation of Belgium and left contrasting memories behind. The Irish Guards entered Brussels and some among the ecstatic crowd sang It’s a Long Way to Tipperary, almost certainly remembering the First World War.116 Other Belgians experienced the arrival of Irish soldiers differently: ‘They drank the place dry and nearly carved the place up.’117 In 1945, the IRCS sent £1,200 to the Belgian Red Cross to acquire food supplies.118 When Ireland’s offer of relief came, the Belgian authorities preferred to pay for the supplies. It is not known why this decision was taken, but they were in a position to do so and probably that way it appeared as if they were well able to look after the population’s needs themselves and it ultimately avoided being under an obligation to Ireland. A Dutch newspaper wrote that ‘at once negotiations between Belgium and Ireland began’ and provided a list of available supplies. It added: ‘The prices asked by Ireland for these products are so inexpensive that it can be described as a noble gesture towards Belgium.’119 In January 1946, Brussels even enquired if Dublin agreed to sell 1,000 cattle every month.120 This meant that Irish supplies for Belgium were more of a straightforward bilateral trade transaction, even though a generous one apparently, than a relief operation. The situation in Italy was far more preoccupying than the one in Belgium, but for humanitarian and political reasons.

114 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 308–19. For an in-depth study of Hungarian children in Belgium after the First World War see Vera Hajtó, Milk Sauce and Paprika: Migration, Children and Memories of the Interwar Belgian-Hungarian Child Relief Project (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2016). 115 AEG, Archives Privées, 92.22.2, Nora Finn (ISCF) to UISE, 5 January 1944 (£73) & Georges Thélin (UISE) to Finn, 8 May 1944 (£95). 116 Mark van den Wijngaert et al., België tijdens de Tweede Wereldoorlog (Antwerpen: Standaard Uitgeverij, 2004), 272–3. 117 Lt Col Eoghan O’Neill, retd., ‘Plus ça change…’, in David O’Donoghue, ed., The Irish Army in the Congo 1960–1964: The Far Battalions (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2006), 85. 118 Lehane, A History of the Irish Red Cross, 280. 119 ‘België en Ierland: Een nobel gebaar’ Het Financieele Dagblad, 12 September 1945 (Delpher Kranten). 120 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/2, Belgian chargé d’affaires to Walshe, 19 January 1946.

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Irish Aid to Western Europe · 221 Table 7.3. ‘Belgium: Statement showing quantities and value of relief goods (excluding cattle and horses) shipped to Belgium up to 31st March, 1946’ 121 Commodity Bacon Creamery butter Dried milk Condensed milk Cheese Sugar Woollen socks Woollen gloves Knitted undergarments Knitting yarn Baby foods

Woollen blankets Stoves and cookers

Quantity shipped 163 tons 200 tons 10 tons 50 tons 50 tons 2,000 tons 1,200 dozen pairs 1,000 dozen pairs 3,350 dozen 10,000 lbs [pounds] 10 tons Freight and similar charges Total expenditure from Vote for Alleviation of Distress: 20,000 Nil Freight and similar charges Total expenditure from Army Vote: Total expenditure:

Value £35,765 £47,758 £1,380 £4,563 £7,895 £87,873 £1,984 £1,086 £8,569 £3,451 £2,522 £1,134 £203,980 £12,000 £107 £12,107 £216,087

Italy The Joint Relief Commission of the International Red Cross (JRC) gave a grim image of immediate postwar Italy. At the beginning of the war, not much damage was done to the country. However, things changed the moment the Allies landed in Sicily in July and then in Calabria in September 1943.122 The government capitulated, Benito Mussolini was elbowed out of power and the country switched over to the Allies. The Germans considered this an act of treason and their occupation of areas still under their control was brutal. The population was terrorised, the economy plundered, villages levelled, and farm animals and livestock taken away. According to a recent study, the Germans even initiated a form of biological warfare by facilitating the spread of malaria in the Latina province (Pontine Marshes) where 54,929 cases were recorded in 1944.123 De Valera’s government took diplomatic initiatives to stop the bombing of Rome by the Allied air forces and save it 121 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4, Cornelius Cremin (DEA) to John Hanna (Finance), April 1946. 122 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 177, 372–9. 123 Frank Snowden, ‘Latina Province, 1944–1950’, Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 43, no. 3 (July 2008): 509–26.

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from destruction when the Allied armies were about to confront the Wehrmacht. After the end of the hostilities, Irish supplies, notably sugar, were distributed to a desperate population from Milan in the north to Palermo in the south. The Irish government feared that some of its supplies ended up in the local black markets. But the immediate postwar years in Italy proved to be very tense as a communist takeover was feared either after a civil war or the general election in April 1948. Joseph Walshe, now Ireland’s ambassador to the Holy See, was concerned that the Italian communists might attempt to hijack Irish supplies, while the Irish government, Catholic Church, and people donated money to help a victory of the ChristianDemocratic party in the election. The result was that relations between Ireland and the Vatican were reinforced.

Saving Rome and fear of communist takeover Although largely forgotten or unknown, Italy had also been very heavily bombed by the Allies. In fact, Rome alone suffered more from bombing than all the British cities combined during the Luftwaffe’s raids and suffered 7,000 deaths. The number of deaths for the entire country is estimated to be at around 60,000.124 On 19 March 1944, de Valera, appealed to the American and British governments to spare Rome, ‘this Holy City, which for almost two thousand years has been the seat of the sovereign authority of the Catholic Church and contains the great temple of the Catholic religion and the great central seminaries and libraries of the Christian Faith . . .’ While Pope Pius XII and the Vatican were deeply appreciative, Franklin D. Roosevelt pointed out that the Germans were to blame, and Winston Churchill did not even reply.125 The Americans and British progressed slowly, owing to the difficult terrain and the strength of German lines. They reached Rome only in June 1944. Then a standoff happened between the Germans, still in the city, and the Allied armies. Thanks to de Valera’s diplomatic initiatives, no fighting in Rome occurred as the Wehrmacht withdrew. Again, the Pope was deeply appreciative of the Taoiseach’s efforts. In the words of Dermot Keogh, ‘de Valera’s initiative to prevent the bombing of Rome had strengthened the “special relationship” between the Holy See and Ireland’.126 Elsewhere, tens of thousands of civilians were on the roads, fleeing war zones and making Allied progress more difficult. The Allied Control Commission (ACC) in Italy noted in November 1944 that ‘a starving population is a centre of trouble . . . it will thieve, murder and riot in its struggle for existence . . . 124 Richard Overy, The Bombing War: Europe 1939–1945 (London: Penguin Books, 2014), 486, 545–6. 125 Keogh, Ireland and the Vatican, 177–80. 126 Keogh, Ireland and the Vatican, 181–8.

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as it moves it devastates the countryside, ever increasing in size the number of those starving’.127 The Allied armies eventually liberated the cities in the north almost a year later in April 1945. Many Italians joined resistance groups to fight against the remnants of Mussolini’s regime. In 1943 already, there was a crying need for medicines, clothes, and footwear. More than five million habitations were destroyed during the fighting and about four and a half million people lived in makeshift homes and even in mines. The harvest of 1945 had been a bad one and food supplies were running out. Prices of foodstuffs skyrocketed. The cost of living in 1945 was thirty-two times higher than before the war began. Malaria and tuberculosis were widespread. One other major problem was scores of roaming children. Some of them ended up in institutions whose means were limited. Different Swiss charitable organisations, the British Red Cross, the Iraqi Red Crescent, the Don Norvégien (Norwegian Gift), and the Committee for Aid in Italy in Buenos Aires among others sent help. The Ente Nazionale di Soccorso all’Italia (ENDSI, the National Agency for the Distribution of Aid in Italy) looked after distribution operations. Although the country was provided with Irish supplies on a bilateral-agreement basis between Dublin and Rome, Irish goods stored in Red Cross warehouses in Geneva were also sent to Italy in some cases. For instance, the Universities of Milan and Turin received 800 kilos of condensed milk and 2,500 kilos of sugar each. In Turin, 8 tons of condensed milk were distributed among the needy inhabitants.128 When two IRCS delegates drove through Casilina, a slum in Rome, people shouted after them ‘Remember us!’129 Italy was anarchic and was heading for the cliffs. It was no wonder why the Allied High Commissioner, Admiral Ellerly Stone, wrote: ‘If present conditions long continue, communism will triumph—possibly by force’.130 The admiral was right. The Italian communists were gaining ground. Back in September 1944, T. J. Kiernan, the Irish minister to the Holy See, had written to Walshe in Dublin that ‘the administration in Italy is chaotic, and without enough food and no transport and electric light only once in four days, the people are more down than ever. The Communist Party—apparently flush with funds—is making headway in all the towns and villages, feeding people provided they belong to the party’.131 The chances are very high that Walshe had not forgotten Kiernan’s report 127 Silvia Salvatici, ‘Between National and International Boundaries: Displaced Persons and Refugees in Postwar Italy’, Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 49, no. 3 (2014): 521–2. 128 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 372–9 & 177. 129 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4, ‘Report on European Tour’ by Dr J. D. Hourihane and Fr T. J. O’Connor (IRCS delegates). 9 January 1947. 130 David Stafford, Endgame 1945: Victory, Retribution, Liberation (London: Abacus, 2008), 510. 131 ‘Kiernan, Thomas Joseph (‘Tommy’; ‘T. J.’)’, by Michael Kennedy, Dictionary of Irish Biography, in

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when he replaced him in 1946. The communists’ position had been strengthened as they had actively opposed Mussolini’s Fascists. By 1945, they were among the victors and the prestige they gained might help them to take power either democratically or by force. The deteriorating situation in the country would play right into their hands as people would blame the traditional ruling classes and the Allies for what was happening. Moscow and its followers would emerge as credible alternatives. It all came down to what Lenin is alleged to have said, ‘the worst the better’. But what did Stalin want? This was very difficult to figure out for representatives of the Italian (and also French) Communist Party that met him. Stalin’s policy remained ambivalent. It would seem that he had no intention of interfering in Italian affairs as he wanted to respect the western and Soviet zones of influence in Europe. The Soviets believed that interference in the West could have unwanted political repercussions in the East. Stalin feared that a civil war in Italy could have serious consequences on the international stage. Yet, he encouraged the idea that it might be necessary, and that Italian communists should get ready for it. As seen, he was against the Marshall Plan, but the Partito Comunista Italiano (PCI) tended to be in support of it as it sought to avoid confrontation on this issue with public opinion.132 Pius XII and the Vatican were extremely worried about the political situation and made no secret about it. All Catholic forces were going to be used against the spread of communism in Italy.133 The Irish government and Catholic Church were aware of the unfolding situation and would help the relevant Italian authorities and the Vatican to feed and clothe the people, and therefore also help to counter the red threat. Walshe shared Stalin’s opinion that a civil war might well happen in the country.134 Two IRCS delegates who were on the spot noted in their report: ‘In Italy generally the atmosphere was felt to be one of uncertainty and instability.’135

Zucchero irlandese from Milan to Palermo Irish aid for Italy attracted attention in unexpected places. On 30 October 1945, the Palestine Post reported that the Caterina Gerolomich (also known as the Irish Cedar as seen in chapter three), a ship which had been interned in Dublin in 1941, would https://dib.cambridge.org/viewReadPage.do;jsessionid=BF33B536EF74C0B392DDAA62C059B781?ar ticleId=a4539 (accessed on 6 June 2020). 132 Silvio Pons, ‘Stalin, Togliatti, and the Origins of the Cold War’, Journal of Cold War Studies, vol. 3, no. 2 (Spring 2001): 3–27. 133 See John Pollard, ‘The Vatican, Italy and the Cold War’, in Kirby, ed., Religion and the Cold War, 103–17. 134 Dermot Keogh, ‘Ireland, the Vatican and the Cold War: The Case of Italy, 1948’, The Historical Journal, vol. 34, no. 4 (Dec. 1991): 935. 135 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4, ‘Report on European Tour’ by Dr J. D. Hourihane and Fr T. J. O’Connor (IRCS delegates). 9 January 1947.

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be handed back to its Italian owners. When she sailed back home, she would carry about 2,000 tons of supplies as part of the recent £3,000,000 relief scheme.136 There was visibly no objection among the Jewish editors to Ireland’s sending relief to Germany’s former Fascist ally. In January 1946, Radio Éireann informed its listeners about the relief operations. Michael MacWhite, the Irish minister in Rome, had personally distributed 253 two-pound packages of sugar in an old people’s home run by the Little Sisters of the Poor. As a sign of gratitude, an old man had drawn a picture representing Ireland ‘showering sugar on Italy’. Another 5,000 similar packages had been distributed in various sanatoria in the Eternal City. 5,000 disabled soldiers had also received Irish sugar. 4,000 people in refugee camps got a package each, containing ‘a pound of sugar and a quantity of soap and cocoa’. A dispensary for refugee children, ‘Our Lady, Queen of Ireland’, had been set up near St Peter’s. Radio Éireann stressed the plight of Rome’s children and revealed that the mortality rate for those under three years of age had dramatically risen to 40%. Swarms of homeless boys and girls were roaming in the streets.137 For the distribution of relief goods, ENDSI relied on local networks of notables. In Sicily, small villages formed local committees generally including parish priests, doctors, and others who forwarded lists of required goods to ENDSI’s headquarters in Palermo which, in turn, tried to supply the goods and send them by truck.138 ENDSI fully appreciated present or past Irish help for Italy. In a report, it stated: ‘The gift had a greater moral value in that Ireland was herself short of many of the items listed and was obliged to reduce her domestic consumption of them. By this action, Eire has given notable and lasting assistance to our country which had already been the object of the fraternal attention of that nation since 1942’.139 Ireland had indeed done much for Italy during the war. In 1942, the IRCS sent £150 for Italian prisoners of war detained in Britain. In 1944, it sent £500 to the Vatican’s Medical Relief Fund which looked after refugees. The same year it also sent £100,000 (Irish government grant) to the Vatican for relief in the country. In 1947, the IRCS sent £500 to boys’ orphanages in Rome.140 The French minister in Dublin informed Paris that the Pope had sent de Valera a letter of thanks in February 1945 for the £100,000 (Irish government grant) and reminded that all the parties in the Dáil had approved it. He commented that such an initiative could only have created unanimity be it in the Dáil or among the ‘deeply Catholic population’ over 136 ‘Eire sends relief to Italy’, The Palestine Post, 30 October 1945 (NLI). 137 ‘Irish relief work in Italy’, The Irish Times, 31 January 1946 (ITDA). 138 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4, ‘Report on European Tour’ by Dr J. D. Hourihane and Fr T. J. O’Connor (IRCS delegates), 9 January 1947. 139 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4, MacWhite to Boland, containing ENDSI report (as translated from the Italian), 21 August 1946. 140 Lehane, A History of the Irish Red Cross, 279–81.

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which the clergy had still much influence, and wrote that Pius XII had given his apostolic blessing to de Valera, the Dáil and the people. ‘Without a doubt’, the minister continued, ‘it conferred on Mr de Valera a new prestige’.141 ENDSI mentioned that sugar had been distributed to large provincial cities that had been damaged during the fighting. Present distribution was taking place in towns south of the former ‘Gothic line’ (a German defensive line) as well as border towns and cities, like Udine, Gorizia, Trieste, and Pola, and it was particularly appreciated: ‘The foodstuff of which there was the greatest quantity for distribution was sugar, a food indispensable for children and adolescents. The production of sugar in Italy was practically nil, so that the size of the ordinary ration was extremely limited’.142 It was therefore hardly surprising that some Italians worried when, in June 1946, a rumour circulated that Irish sugar would no longer be distributed. The Tempo published an article entitled ‘Unnecessary alarm; Sugar from Ireland will be distributed within the week’. It explained that several readers had phoned, ‘telling us that some retailers assert that the sugar will not be distributed because the shopkeepers are not prepared to bear the cost of transport’. The Tempo wished to reassure its readers that it would be distributed free of charge within a week.143 When two IRCS delegates visited a home for children suffering from malaria, they were greeted with the word ‘Zucchero’ (sugar).144 Irish sugar had made a deep impact. ENDSI gave a detailed account of where sugar had been distributed and it was clear that Catholic institutions were playing a major role in the relief operations nationwide: the Holy Father’s Private Depot, the Sacred Congregation of Seminaries, the Pontifical Relief Commission ‘(for the relief of 250,000 persons in the Provinces of Latina, Frosinone and Chieti)’, the Military Ordinariate, Irish nuns and brothers living in Italy, the enclosed monasteries in Rome, the hospital camps for veterans of the Italian Red Cross, the Italian Red Cross, the war wounded, tuberculosis sanatoria in Rome, the relief and charitable institutions of Milan and its province, the relief and charitable institutions of Genoa and its province, the poor houses of Rome and its province, the poor houses of Florence and its province, and the poor houses of Sardinia. It was the same story with other foodstuffs and goods. For example, Irish butter had been distributed in the Abruzzi, while cheese was handed out to the needy in the poor houses in Naples and to a prisoners’ camp near Taranto in southern Italy. 80,000 lbs (pounds) of condensed 141 CADN, Dublin, 207PO.1, no 179, Jean Rivière to Georges Bidault, French foreign minister, 6 April 1945. 142 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4, MacWhite to Boland, containing ENDSI report (as translated from the Italian), 21 August 1946. 143 ‘Unnecessary alarm; Sugar from Ireland will be distributed within the week’ (translation). Il Tempo, 23 June 1946 (NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4). 144 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4, ‘Report on European Tour’ by Dr J. D. Hourihane and Fr T. J. O’Connor (IRCS delegates). 9 January 1947.

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milk were used in the province of Apuania. Around 35,000 people in the province of Udine got blankets, knitting yarn and woollen stockings.145 The Archbishop of Dublin was very active in providing relief goods, notably much needed clothes which were forwarded to the Vatican from Geneva or Naples for further distribution. After the Big Freeze in Ireland, Joseph Walshe wrote to McQuaid: ‘With regard to the great shortage at home and your increasing difficulties about sending help abroad, Mgr Montini will understand perfectly well, and his gratitude for your gifts already sent will not be lessened in any way’.146 The very Catholic-minded Walshe was working towards a perfect harmony between Dublin and the Holy See through relief work.

Irish supplies in the black market? Two IRCS delegates, Dr J. D. Hourihane and Fr T. J. O’Connor, travelled to Italy to supervise the distribution of Irish relief supplies. ENDSI took them to the south where they visited its large warehouses in Naples. Both men saw how goods were stocked, but not only that: ‘We went over them at night and it was notable that during the tour, we were repeatedly challenged by armed guards as to our right to enter, and had to be guaranteed by our escort’.147 That they were challenged was understandable. In 1944, about 60% of supplies that reached Naples ended up in the black market.148 The reality was that Italy had been unprepared for war, militarily or economically. The Fascists were never able to organise an efficient food supply and distribution system. Right from the beginning of the war, the population had to cope with major shortages, and this in turn led to a widespread black market.149 It had not just suddenly stopped now that the war was over. It had come to Hourihane and O’Connor’s attention that ‘Government decrees, for example, as to coupons for rationed foods in restaurants appeared to be completely ignored, and it was possible to buy a very good meal indeed without any such formality whatever’.150 145 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4, MacWhite to Boland, containing ENDSI report (as translated from the Italian), 21 August 1946. 146 DDA, XVIII/relief, Walshe to McQuaid, 25 March 1947 & NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4, Walshe to Boland, 16 September 1946. 147 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4, ‘Report on European Tour’ by Dr J. D. Hourihane and Fr T. J. O’Connor (IRCS delegates). 9 January 1947. 148 Shephard, The Long Road Home, 43. 149 Jacopo Calussi, and Alessandro Salvador, ‘The Black Market in Occupied Italy and the approach of Italian and German Authorities (1943–1945)’, in Tönsmeyer, Haslinger and Laba, eds., Coping with Hunger and Shortage under German Occupation in World War II, 99–100. 150 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4, ‘Report on European Tour’ by Dr J. D. Hourihane and Fr T. J. O’Connor (IRCS delegates). 9 January 1947.

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It was thus possible to eat well in Italy despite what reports from various relief agencies stated, except that there was a division between the haves and the havenots. The two delegates set out to investigate stories that some Irish supplies were available in the black market. They were not able to find reliable evidence, although it was probably true, but they came up with a pertinent explanation: We made enquiries about rumours that Irish goods sent for the relief of the starving populations had appeared in the black market in Italy. It might be well to say here that ‘black’ is hardly the correct adjective to describe this—it would be more accurately called a ‘second’ market because it operates quite openly and commonly everywhere. At all events, part of the plan of ENDSI consisted in a distribution of sugar (or blankets or footwear) to, say, all children under 18 years old. In this way, the mother of a family of 12 or 14 children might find herself the possessor of a very large quantity (to her) of whatever commodity was being distributed and might prefer to exchange some of it in the black market for something which she required more urgently still, e.g., clothing or boots.151

The point was that the black market was a system that worked but excluded those who did not have sufficient money to buy goods or anything to barter. Directly after the war, Italy’s transport infrastructure was in tatters: one third of the roads and 13,000 bridges had been destroyed, and 90% of trucks as well as 70% of buses could not be used. This meant that the country was paralysed and that supplies could not be distributed efficiently. The result was food riots. The black market provided an alternative, but the Allies tried to suppress it without replacing it with their own supplies which in turn led to even more food shortages.152 In Palermo, Hourihane and O’Connor visited an ENDSI ‘factory’ located in the city’s mental hospital. There, 130 girls were employed in putting together parcels of used American clothes. Up to 7,000 parcels were made every day and the girls received low wages as they were working on a ‘semi-voluntary basis’. But here too the Irishmen noticed that ‘twenty-five armed police were on permanent duty’.153 Their sole presence to guard used clothes indicated how poor the country had become and how desperate some people were to lay their hands on them. It was the same elsewhere on the continent. People simply wanted to survive and used illegal means when necessary. It came down to what the Belgian statesman Paul-Henri Spaak 151 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4, ‘Report on European Tour’ by Dr J. D. Hourihane and Fr T. J. O’Connor (IRCS delegates). 9 January 1947. 152 Hitchcock, Liberation, 233–9. 153 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4, ‘Report on European Tour’ by Dr J. D. Hourihane and Fr T. J. O’Connor (IRCS delegates). 9 January 1947.

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said: ‘Belgians and French and Dutch had been brought up in the war to believe that their patriotic duty was to cheat, to lie, to run a black market, to discredit and to defraud: these habits became ingrained after five years’.154 The same could be said of Italians, Germans, and Poles of course. It was to be expected that Irish goods ended up in the black market in the streets of Naples, Berlin, and Warsaw. In any case, Walshe appeared to be fully satisfied with the way things were going. In late November 1946, he told a United Press correspondent: ‘The distribution was handled with magnificent success, and we are following the same pattern this year. Food from Ireland will continue to arrive to aid Italy.’155 In his statement, he had conveniently left out what had just happened.

Control crisis In January 1947, Hourihane and O’Connor handed in their report on their trip to Italy and Yugoslavia to the IRCS and de Valera’s government. Both men wrote about ENDSI officials: ‘We met the heads of this committee as well as visiting their headquarters in Rome and as far as such was possible we formed the opinion that their distribution was unquestionably equitable and without distinction other than that of relative need’.156 They were not aware that others thought differently in the corridors of power in Rome and the Vatican. In May 1946, Walshe met Mgr Giovanni Montini (future Paul VI) and Mgr Domenico Tardini who managed the Vatican’s foreign relations directly under the Pope’s direction. Both men told him that it was thanks to de Valera that Rome had been spared destruction in 1944.157 Ireland was held in high esteem by the Holy See. In July, Miss M. F. Lalive, whose brother was Jean-Flavien Lalive of the JRC, asked Walshe which organisation could be entrusted with the distribution of Irish supplies in Italy. In turn, he contacted Mgr Ferdinando Badelli, the head of the Pontificia Commissione di Assistenza (Pontifical Commission of Relief), who replied that she should liaise with him. He then introduced Lalive to Mgr Carroll-Abbing, the Vatican’s representative in ENDSI. According to Walshe, ENDSI was ‘really directed by the Vatican’. Lalive was satisfied and told him that she was ‘horrified at the chaos of the Italian Red Cross which, owing to the constant change of personnel, is completely inefficient’.158 Whatever about the accuracy of Lalive’s 154 Judt, Postwar, 41. 155 ‘Red Cross tour to aid Europe’, Irish Independent, 20 November 1946 (INA). 156 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4, ‘Report on European tour’ by Dr J. D. Hourihane and Fr T. J. O’Connor (IRCS delegates), 9 January 1947. 157 Keogh, Ireland and the Vatican, 197. 158 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4, Walshe to Boland, 10 July 1946.

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assessment of the Italian Red Cross, Walshe would soon be forced to revise his opinion on ENDSI. The following month, he met Montini who wished that Ireland would send its supplies to the war victims in Italy through the Vatican and it would get all the credit for it. In a letter to Archbishop McQuaid, Walshe wrote about his meeting with Montini and suggested that the clothes which had been collected in his diocese should be forwarded to the Vatican. He explained that the Vatican was aware that Ireland distributed its supplies for Italy through ENDSI, an organisation that was for the time being under its control through Carroll-Abbing, but that it would now like to receive the gifts directly.159 In September, the Vatican’s wish became an order. Walshe had a meeting with Fr Arcangelo Favaro of the Pontificia Commissione di Assistenza. Some time ago he had requested a ‘confidential “pro-memoria”’ from the commission concerning the distribution of supplies. Now he had it, and he could read this passage: With regard to the help which the Irish Government are good enough to send to Italy, we feel obliged to make it known that Pontificia Commissione Assistenza is the only organ in Italy which acts on a mandate received direct from the Holy Father. The other bodies such as UURR, ENDSI and the International Red Cross are purely (prettamente) lay organisations and it often happens that the recipients of the gifts do not know that they come from a Catholic source. Indeed, it is most unfortunate that anti-clerical elements within these bodies use the gifts of Catholics to forward anti-Christian propaganda. For these reasons we wish to request the Irish Government to be so kind as to use the Pontifical Commission as their channel of distribution.160

In a subsequent report about his meeting with Favaro, Walshe wrote to Boland: ‘I am afraid that it is too definite to ignore, and when I mentioned Mgr [Carroll-] Abbing’s position in ENDSI, Father Archangelo said he could exercise no effective restraint on misuse of our gifts by the communist elements’.161 Walshe was much preoccupied with the rise of communism in Italy. Thanks to its good war record, the Partito Comunista Italiano had been included in postwar coalition governments of so-called national unity. But Pius XII was not impressed. On 20 April 1946, he had appealed to the leaders of the Italian Catholic Action to combat the forces of the anti-Christ, in other words, the communists.162 159 DDA, XVIII/relief, Walshe to McQuaid, 23 August 1946. 160 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4, Walshe to Boland, 16 September 1946. 161 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4, Walshe to Boland, 16 September 1946. 162 Elisa A. Carrillo, ‘The Italian Catholic Church and Communism, 1943–1963’, The Catholic Historical Review, vol. 77, no. 4 (October 1991): 644–657.

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In December, Walshe wrote to de Valera: ‘I have lots of reports to send on various aspects of the situation here, … especially the growing strength of communism and the anxiety of the Holy See in regard to it. It is flowing over the country like a wave after an earthquake.’163 The party was increasing in influence and the national economy was still in the doldrums. This was like a lethal political cocktail from the Vatican and the western countries’ point of view. If on top of that the communists managed to hijack relief supplies, claiming they came from their own sources or something along those lines, then a victory at the next general election would be a distinct possibility. In fact, the Vatican was apprehensive that American relief supplies might fall into the hands of the communists and socialists and had said that they should be entrusted to ‘committees composed of “Catholic” and “honest” citizens’.164 The Irish government had just received its marching orders from the Vatican to avoid a similar scenario and Walshe was very much alive to the evolving situation. Was political manipulation of relief supplies a real danger? Humanitarianism is not above high politics, especially where states are concerned and bearing in mind the emerging ideological Cold War. The following is a relevant example. On 7 April 1946, Bolesław Bierut, a leader of the Polish communists who had been trained in Moscow before the war, phoned Stalin and explained that Poland urgently needed grain supplies. He claimed that UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration) was refusing to supply Poland and said that 300,000 tons of grain until the next harvest were needed. Stalin was sympathetic but had a problem: You see com[rade] Bierut, I should explain to you what difficulties we have in meeting your demand. If your demand had come earlier, we would have been able to satisfy you fully. But a few days ago we made a commitment and concluded an agreement with France. French communists called on us with a request, as they have a difficult situation with supplies. The Americans and the British don’t want to give them; they are attempting to put pressure on them to force them into submission. The British don’t have food for themselves. But they would like to undermine the present system in France. We have decided to give the French 500 thousand tons of grain to support them. That’s why we have concluded an agreement with them. We are going to assist you, but we may be having difficulties in meeting your request to that extent. We will try to give you up to 200 thousand tons.165 163 Nolan, Joseph Walshe, 317–18. 164 Coppa, ‘Pope Pius XII and the Cold War’, 61. 165 Wilson Centre, Diplomatic Archive, International History Declassified, ‘Bierut’s Telephone Conversation with Stalin’, April 07, 1946, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, AAN, KC PZPR, 2724, k. 181–86, in http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/134364 (accessed on 23 May 2017).

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Stalin’s grain deal with France made perfect sense. At the time, Félix Gouin, a socialist, was the chairman of the French Provisional Government, but his deputy was none other than the communist leader Maurice Thorez who was supported by Stalin. Their government introduced many left-wing reforms and it was thus little wonder why Washington and London were upset, and Moscow was not. The Kremlin, like the White House, made political calculations in matters of humanitarian aid. Were Italian communists about to hijack Irish supplies somehow and use them to their advantage? That could not be excluded and Walshe was alert to the possible dangers. In October, the Helfrid was about to sail from Ireland to Naples. Aboard were ‘27,750 woollen blankets, 1,500 tons of sugar, 37.5 tons of condensed milk, 37.5 tons of cheese, 7.5 tons of dried milk and 7.5 tons of baby food’.166 It was imperative that these goods reached the right hands. Michael MacWhite, the Irish minister in Rome, issued a laissez-passer to signore Vicentini, a reliable member of ENDSI, empowering him ‘to accept and to take over the consignment of supplies sent as a gift by the Government and People of Ireland arriving on the SS Helfrid …’167 When the Helfrid was on her way, Walshe informed Montini and told Vicentini that he feared that the distribution would eventually be made by a socialist-communist organisation, especially since the arrival of Pietro Nenni at the helm of the Foreign Ministry (Nenni was a socialist, appointed foreign minister on 18 October 1946, and he would receive the Stalin Peace Prize in 1951). Vicentini assured him that everything would be all right. But Walshe had doubts and later asked MacWhite to go to the Foreign Ministry and check out. It had been like a flash of divine inspiration. MacWhite found out indeed that the distribution had now been entrusted to Opera Maternità e Infanzia (Motherhood and Childhood Work). At a subsequent meeting, Vicentini said that Opera was ‘an exclusively socialist (cum communist) organisation without Catholic or Vatican representation’.168 Vincentini’s statement on Opera needs some serious qualification. In reality, it had been founded in 1925 under Mussolini’s regime and its aims were to provide support to mothers and children in difficulty, and ultimately to combat high infantile mortality rates and contribute to population growth. The Catholic Church in Italy (and elsewhere) always opposed the interference of politics in such issues which it deemed was exclusively its domain.169 It may well have 166 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4, document of the Department of Industry and Commerce (name unreadable), 24 October 1946. 167 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4, laissez-passer for Vicentini, issued by MacWhite. 168 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4, Walshe to Boland, 15 November 1946. 169 D. La Banca, “La creatura tipica del regime”; Storia dell’Opera Nazionale per la protezione della Maternità e dell’Infanzia durante il ventennio fascista, PhD, Università degli Studi di Napoli Frederico II, 2004–2005, 6 & 12, in http://www.fedoa.unina.it/811/1/tesi_di_dottorato_la_banca.pdf (accessed on 1 September 2020).

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been that since Mussolini’s fall from power in 1943, Opera had been managed by left-leaning politicians. But Vicentini’s words ‘without Catholic or Vatican representation’ reflected the real reason: it was a question of power, politics, and influence. Walshe firmly told him that the Irish government would consider this change in the distribution organisation as ‘a breach of faith’ and would make it public, including in the United States. Vicentini immediately sought an interview with Nenni and it paid off as the Foreign Ministry countermanded its instructions. Walshe strongly reiterated that the distribution of Irish supplies should be done by ENDSI, as it had been the case before.170 But he took no chances. A hijacking of Irish supplies by the communists would have plunged his government into serious embarrassment at the Vatican. Consequently, he drove down to Naples with MacWhite and Vicentini to personally inspect the unloading of the Helfrid. It took six hours to reach from Rome, owing to torrential rain and bridges being repaired. The supplies had arrived in good condition with very little damage. Walshe went aboard to chat with the captain and with about twenty journalists to whom he explained the feelings of the Irish people for Italy.171 It was a clever move by a seasoned diplomat. He had made sure that Italians would know that they would be sleeping under Irish woollen blankets and would be eating Irish cheese. In a subsequent report for Dublin, Walshe wrote: ‘There is no doubt whatever in the mind of these excellent Catholic laymen in ENDSI, especially Vicentini, that the consignment would have been used exclusively for the purpose of winning adherents to the Socialist Communist ranks. That is their normal technique, and a notorious fact. Ireland would have got no credit whatever because, as my colleague [MacWhite] agrees, the Socialists and Communists despise us and regard us as pro-clerical.’ To avoid similar crises, Walshe suggested that he and MacWhite should be notified well in advance of the arrival of Irish supplies and supervise their unloading and distribution: ‘If this error had been consummated I am afraid to think of what the Vatican would think of us.’ He argued that it was essential that all departments in the Irish government coordinated their efforts and kept Ireland’s representatives abroad informed: ‘What is true of Italy is, I presume, true of all of Europe at the moment with dreadful prospect increasing every day of communist control and anti-Christian activities elsewhere. How terrible it would be if we were indirect agents of propaganda for these misguided people—who will so very soon realise what a scourge communism can be especially for the poorest

170 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4, Walshe to Boland, 15 November 1946. 171 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4, Walshe to Boland, 19 November 1946.

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classes.’172 As will be seen in chapter fourteen, it was feared that the Yugoslav communists were also trying to hijack Irish supplies. The end of the 1940s saw dramatic developments on the Italian political scene that were closely followed in Ireland. In May 1947, Christian-Democratic Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi expelled the communists and socialists from the government, convinced that they were behind the strikes that were gripping the country.173 In October, the Cominform (Communist Information Bureau) was founded during a conference in Poland after an initiative by Stalin. For a long time, it was believed that it was Stalin’s reaction to the announcement of the Marshall Plan. But recent archival research has revealed that Moscow had been planning such an organisation since 1946 and maybe even earlier. Stalin wanted to impose his ways of ruling to Eastern Europe and prevent any westernisation in the Soviet Union, and that began in his sphere of influence in the east. Among the founding parties of the Cominform were the Parti communiste français and the Partito Comunista Italiano. In February 1948, the local communists, helped by the Soviet embassy in Prague and the Red Army, seized power in Czechoslovakia.174 The same month, a worried Walshe wrote to Boland that if the communists won in Italy, Western Europe would follow. ‘We are in it, therefore, up to the neck and eventually we must do something about it.’ He then had an audience with Pius XII and offered him to come to Dublin if things turned very bad. The Pope was deeply moved but chose to stay in Rome as Walshe advised him to do.175 But what did Walshe have in mind when he wrote ‘eventually we must do something about it’? That soon became clear. The general election in Ireland took place in February 1948 and de Valera lost it by a narrow margin. A coalition led by John A. Costello (Fine Gael) took over. Included was Seán MacBride (Clann na Poblachta/ Children of the Republic), a former chief of Staff of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), now appointed minister for external affairs. It became known as the Inter-Party Government and it was rapidly informed of the danger of Italy becoming communist. Indeed, the Italian general election was scheduled in April. Walshe suggested in a cablegram to the DEA that ‘assistance now, even a small amount, of immense value to cause and for our position at Holy See’ and put forward the transfer of £4,000 or £5,000 to the Vatican. MacBride was very willing to help. Ironically, he would receive the Lenin Peace Prize in 1975 (and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974).176 This idea was 172 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4, Walshe to Boland, 15 November 1946. 173 Carrillo, ‘The Italian Catholic Church and Communism, 1943–1963’, 644–657. 174 Mark Kramer, ‘Stalin, Soviet Policy, and the Establishment of a Communist Bloc in Eastern Europe, 1941–1948’, in Snyder and Brandon, eds., Stalin and Europe, 284. 175 Keogh, ‘Ireland, the Vatican, and the Cold War’, 934–5, 937–8. 176 Keogh, ‘Ireland, the Vatican, and the Cold War’, 934, 939, 933.

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put into action. Walshe had contacts with J. Graham Parsons, an assistant in the American mission to the Holy See, to whom he suggested that the US secret service should send money to certain groups. Parsons, an ‘intelligence person’ who had been sent to Rome by the US State Department,177 was impressed by Walshe’s knowledge of the efforts of local Catholic groups and the Christian-Democratic party to combat the communists and by the fact that he was held in ‘high regard’ by the Vatican. Walshe set up a meeting between Parsons and Italian Catholic Action top representatives, while in Washington US secretary of State George C. Marshall was informed of his initiatives.178 As detailed in chapter four, Archbishop McQuaid and other Irish bishops were involved in fundraising activities and about £60,000 was collected and sent to the Vatican. The latter remained discreet regarding Ireland’s role in the Italian general election. But more Irish money was on the way. At the of the year, £200,000 was sent to the Vatican. On this occasion, Montini, on behalf of the Pope, wrote to Minister for Finance Patrick McGilligan: ‘… much of the welcome assistance and relief which the Holy Father has been able to bring to the poor and suffering peoples of war-stricken countries was made possible by the generosity of Catholic Ireland’.179 The new Inter-Party Government led by Costello showed much respect to the Church..In the end, the Italian communists never took power and were soundly beaten in the election by the Christian-Democrats who had been massively supported by the Catholic Church and financially backed by the United States.180 Irish supplies and money played their part in this. In the final phase of its relief efforts, the Irish government would rely on the National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC) to distribute its supplies in the late 1940s. In July 1949, Montini wrote to Walshe: ‘The representatives of the National Catholic Welfare Conference in France and Italy recently informed the Holy Father of the substantial aid in foodstuffs, clothing and general supplies which the Irish Government has been allocating to the organization for relief work in Europe, and in particular in Germany and Austria’.181 The country had donated generously. In December 1950, the Irish Independent and several Italian newspapers published a photograph of Walshe standing proudly next to Pius XII in front of a truck containing Irish canned meat.182 It was the ambassador’s moment of utter glory. The relief operations in Italy showed how much the Irish government paid attention to what the Vatican thought. 177 Kirby, ‘Harry Truman’s Religious Legacy’, 81. 178 Keogh, Ireland and the Vatican, 238–40. 179 Keogh, ‘Ireland, the Vatican, and the Cold War’, 951. 180 Pons, ‘Stalin, Togliatti, and the Origins of the Cold War’, 5. 181 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/4, Montini to Walshe, 14 July 1949. 182 ‘Pope received gift of Irish meat’, Irish Independent, 6 December 1950 (INA).

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236 · Chapter Seven Table 7.4. ‘Italy: Statement showing quantities and value of relief goods (excluding cattle and horses) shipped to Italy up to 31st March, 1946’ 183 Commodity Bacon Creamery butter Dried milk Condensed milk Cheese Sugar Woollen socks Woollen gloves Knitted undergarments Knitting yarn Baby foods

Woollen blankets Stoves and cookers

Quantity shipped 160 tons 200 tons 15 tons 50 tons 50 tons 2,000 tons 4,000 dozen pairs 1,000 dozen pairs 2,664 dozen 10,000 lbs [pounds] 5 tons Freight and similar charges Total expenditure from Vote for Alleviation of Distress: 20,000 80 Freight and similar charges Total expenditure from Army Vote: Total expenditure:

Value £35,117 £47,752 £2,070 £4,578 £8,085 £88,307 £6,656 £1,286 £8,307 £3,440 £1,260 £9,706 £216,564 £12,000 £1,265 £281 £13,546 £230,110

Concluding remarks Ireland’s first major humanitarian presence on the European continent, the hospital in Saint-Lô, was a brilliant success and put it under the international limelight. There were then talks of setting up a similar hospital in Belgrade or Warsaw, but it never materialised. It had also been a political public-relations success. The French minister in Dublin had correctly analysed that this humanitarian gesture was also politically motivated as it allowed Ireland to begin a rapprochement with continental countries during the end phase of the war or immediately after it. It was the realisation of the idea expressed by de Valera to O’Kelly in 1943, namely that humanitarian aid would avoid Ireland’s isolation by other countries and powers after the war, as seen in chapter two. Although certain French and Dutch newspapers had depicted Ireland and de Valera negatively because of the country’s neutrality and its leader’s ill-advised handshake with Hempel, the western Europeans soon focused their attention on Irish supplies and were glad to receive them. De Valera had showed diplomatic skill in avoiding fighting between the German and Allied armies in Rome in June 1944 for which the Vatican was most grateful. Another 183 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4, Cornelius Cremin (DEA) to John Hanna (Finance), April 1946.

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fact for which the Vatican was most grateful was the supplies that the Irish sent to a very stricken and politically volatile postwar Italy. The early Cold War and the communist threat further strengthened the relations between the Holy See and Catholic Ireland, and Irish supplies and financial donations were the main contributing factors. However, it is important to stress that Ireland never became part of a so-called Catholic bloc. The idea had appeared during the war, and in 1948 it had been put forward by the Spaniards to form a neutral bloc composed of Spain, Portugal, Argentina, and Ireland that would be loyal to the Holy See and the members of which would assist each other in case of war. Its main aim ‘would be the defence of the Catholic religion and resistance to communism’. But de Valera was not a Catholic extremist and was not interested in collaboration with leaders such as Franco, Salazar, and Perón, nor did successive Irish governments have any interest in such type of foreign alliances.184 Yet, as will be seen in the next chapters, Ireland’s relations with the International Red Cross in Geneva were seriously affected by Vatican interference, and the issue of religious freedom, or rather nonfreedom, played an important part in Ireland’s decision to stop sending supplies beyond the Iron Curtain.

184 Keogh, Ireland and Europe 1919–1948, 206–207.

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Chapter Eight

Cooperation with the International Red Cross in Geneva

The headquarters of the International Red Cross is in Geneva in neutral Switzerland. During the Second World War, the organisation endeavoured to help all belligerent countries, combatants, and civilians although its work was not above controversy. When Éamon de Valera publicly announced the offer of relief in May 1945, it lost no time in sending its representatives to Dublin. After having held talks it was decided that one-fifth of the Irish relief budget would be allocated to the International Red Cross for aid in Central and Eastern Europe. Logistical problems had to be overcome, and it appeared that the Irish government was keen that Germany and Austria should not be side-lined for relief. Unlike the Allies initially, neutral Ireland was not bent on punishing the former Axis powers. It became soon evident that the aid which Ireland offered was of great physical and psychological benefit to those continentals who were lucky to be at the receiving end. It was also obvious that the International Red Cross greatly valued Ireland’s supplies as it was experiencing difficulties with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), the Americans, and the British and feared it was being reduced to playing second fiddle in humanitarian work. Therefore, Irish and other foreign supplies increased its room for independent action. Yet, this positive cooperation was not lasting. Some very Catholic-minded civil servants in the Department of External Affairs (DEA) believed that the International Red Cross, an organisation originally founded by Protestants, was above all keen on promoting itself across the Iron Curtain and that Hungarian Catholics had not received their fair share of Irish supplies. The Vatican, deeply appreciative of Ireland’s generosity, was instrumental in persuading Dublin to stop cooperating with it. Eventually, the Irish government chose to continue its relief work with the National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC). Irish humanitarian aid was feeling the effects of the Cold War.

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The International Red Cross: tasks, issues, and controversies The International Red Cross was composed of national societies, the League of Red Cross Societies, and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). In 1945, there were sixty-four national societies, including the Irish Red Cross Society (IRCS). They worked in accordance with the principles of the Geneva Convention, were independent, and acted independently from their governments. In 1919, the League was set up to coordinate efforts between national societies in time of peace. Article seven of the International Red Cross’s statuses stipulated that the ICRC acted as the ‘guardian of the principles of the Red Cross’. It ‘remains a neutral intermediary whose intervention is deemed necessary especially in time of war, civil war or internal troubles’. For example, the ICRC was present during the Civil War in Ireland between 1922 and 1923. It was totally impartial and had no right to pass moral judgements on people or countries. However, it had no representative in the Soviet Union—Moscow had not signed the Geneva Convention—and communist countries were hostile towards it. Indeed, the ICRC was composed of Swiss members and neutral Switzerland was criticised for its relations with Nazi Germany. It was castigated for not having denounced Nazi atrocities and now it was looking after Germany, German prisoners of war, and even imprisoned Nazi criminals. Its impartiality was not well understood by the United States, the Soviet Union, and others. To many its neutrality, like Switzerland’s, was suspect. Consequently, the ICRC was not admitted within the Soviet Union but could operate in Central and Eastern Europe. However, there were many problems with the Soviets who considered ICRC members to be bourgeois and neutrals, favouring the West.1 Towards the end of the war, the ICRC was in serious difficulties as its financial burdens increased while its financial sources decreased. The defeated Italian, German, and Japanese governments terminated their contributions. But there were millions of prisoners of war and displaced persons (DPs) to look after, which almost completely absorbed its funds. At the end of the financial year in 1945, the ICRC had only about 200,000 Swiss francs left. The Swiss government then came to the rescue and made a loan of 5,000,000 Swiss francs. The ICRC had been massively involved during the war but not the League, owing to its international membership, including non-neutrals. The decision was then taken to set up the Joint Relief Commission of the International Red Cross (JRC), combining both the ICRC and the League, in order to get the League involved in operations for civilians. The JRC worked like an ‘executive agent’ on behalf of national 1 Rey-Schyrr, De Yalta à Dien Bien Phu, 19–22, 27–8, 42–8, 241–2.

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Red Cross societies, the Don Suisse, the Quakers, and others (including the IRCS and the Don Irlandais).2 This reorganisation was all the more necessary since the ICRC went through a period of postwar existential crisis. Now that this exceptionally large-scale war was over, what would be its role? In December 1945, the ICRC was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. During his acceptance speech, President Max Huber declared that it was ready to play its part in the efforts to promote a ‘constructive peace’ based on ‘human solidarity’. His declaration was all well and good, but the Allies had set up UNRRA and were not inclined to cooperate too closely with the ICRC. The ICRC resented UNRRA and feared that its possible subordination to it would jeopardise its neutrality. Moreover, UNRRA did not look after the Germans which ran counter to the ICRC’s universalist concept of humanitarianism. There was therefore very little cooperation between the two organisations. In the end, the Allies almost totally excluded the ICRC from their postwar relief efforts and policies to promote a ‘constructive peace’.3 This helps to explain why the ICRC and JRC were most eager to cooperate with Ireland, a neutral country that was not a member of UNRRA and which adhered to the International Red Cross’s universalist humanitarian approach. There was common ground here. Between 1945 and 1946, the JRC managed 87,000 tons of supplies, worth 161,000,000 Swiss francs. The main beneficiaries were Germany and its former allies. The supplies were received and stored in Geneva. There, transport and distribution were organised in cooperation with national Red Cross societies or other relief organisations and in accordance with the wishes of the donors. Yet, during a meeting at Oxford in July 1946, the League decided to dissolve the JRC within six months’ time. It wanted to distribute the supplies it got from national Red Cross societies when these societies were not able to exchange them between themselves. Activities were to stop on 31 December 1946. In agreement with the League and with the support of the Swiss government, the ICRC decided to set up a new organisation to distribute supplies not emanating from national Red Cross societies, like the Don Irlandais and the Don Suisse. It was called Centre d’Entr’Aide internationale aux Populations civiles (International Centre for Relief to Civilian Populations, ICRCP) which saw the light on 1 November 1946. The ICRCP was to distribute supplies to civilian populations and to terminate the current mandates of the JRC. The poor financial situation and the reduction of its personnel were the main reasons behind the ICRC’s decision. In a report published in 1948, it has been estimated by the JRC that the Don Irlandais sent a 2 Rey-Schyrr, De Yalta à Dien Bien Phu, 37–42, 53–4, 60, 137–9. 3 Crossland, Britain and the International Committee of the Red Cross, 179, 181–2, 183–4, 186, 188, 195.

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total of over 13,000 tons of supplies (1945–1946) for a value of about 40,000,000 Swiss francs and that the Don Suisse sent a total of around 59,000 tons of supplies (1944–1946) for a value of about 98,000,000 Swiss francs.4

Dublin and the International Red Cross reach an agreement Bearing in mind its humanitarian mission, its financial difficulties, and the precarious situation on the European continent, it was to be expected that the International Red Cross would react promptly to the Irish government’s announcement of a £3,000,000 relief scheme. In fact, during the summer of 1944, the IRCS had donated £5,000 for relief operations in Albania, Croatia, and Greece and this had immediately caught Geneva’s attention. Dr Olivier Long, the ICRC representative in London (also working for the JRC), had been instructed to get in touch with the IRCS. On 18 April 1945, he was asked to study cooperation possibilities and reached this conclusion: ‘A closer collaboration with this important neutral Red Cross seems to us indeed essential at a time when the needs of European countries at war are incessantly increasing’. On 15 June, instructions were sent to Long to prepare his trip to Dublin. He had to stress the ‘critical situation’ in Austria and Germany and explain that relief operations in Central and Eastern Europe were vitally important. His job was to convince the Irish government to grant a part of its £3,000,000 relief scheme to the JRC.5 In July, Long arrived in Dublin. During a reception attended by the President of Ireland, who was also the president of the IRCS, he was introduced to Éamon de Valera to whom he stressed the plight of civilians in Central and Eastern Europe. The Taoiseach was ‘interested’ and ready to help and asked him to contact Joseph Walshe. On 16 July, Long met the secretary for external affairs who explained that the government had decided to give four fifths of the supplies to Italy, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands and that no decision had yet been taken regarding the last fifth. Walshe put questions on the JRC’s abilities within the Soviet sphere of influence.6 This was not surprising as he had a deep distrust of the Soviets and communism. In 1938 at the time of the Munich Conference, he had written to de Valera that Nazi Germany was ‘the only barrier, undesirable though it may be, between Western Europe and Bolshevism’. After the war, British officials thought that ‘Mr Walshe was considerably preoccupied by the spread of Russian domination…’. The American minister in Dublin reported to Washington that the Irish government 4 Rey-Schyrr, De Yalta à Dien Bien Phu, 204, 204–20, and footnote 15 on 204. 5 ACICR, O CMS C-026, note written by J. F. Lalive entitled: ‘Note sur le télégramme de M. Long concernant les dons du Gouvernement et de la Croix-Rouge irlandaise’, 26 July 1945. 6 ACICR, O CMS C-017, Long, ICRC, London, to JRC, Geneva, 25 July 1945.

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feared Soviet influence in Europe and that the Irish diplomatic corps was advised to pay attention to the opinions expressed by the Holy See. No doubt, this was Walshe’s advice all the more since rumours were increasing that he might be appointed ambassador to the Holy See.7 This turned out to be the case and had a significant impact on Ireland’s relations with the International Red Cross. On this issue of Soviet influence, Long replied that the JRC did not send supplies to areas where it was not sure they would reach those for whom they were intended. After having been given these assurances, Walshe declared that his government was ready to give the remaining fifth to the JRC. It was agreed that perishable supplies like cattle, which the JRC would not be able to use, would be replaced by non-perishable ones. Walshe confided that the governments of the (Western European) countries for which the supplies were intended were ‘not in a hurry to come and collect them’. He then added that Irish ships were sailing regularly to Lisbon and that they might be used for transport.8 It seems that Walshe was not fully aware of the chaos in logistics and red tape obstacles on the continent. Only the previous month, the French chargé d’affaires in Dublin got wind from a ‘confidential source’ that the Interdepartmental Relief Committee had recently met and discussed the responses from the Belgian, Dutch and Italian governments. However, as Paris had not replied so far, the chargé commented that the Irish might believe that France was not interested. The Quai d’Orsay quickly informed the legation that France was very much interested in Ireland’s offer of aid, especially in getting cattle, and was willing to pay for it. However, for now it was better that the proposed aid remained a gift otherwise the Allied authorities might be reluctant to provide ships for the transport of the animals if it was a straightforward commercial transaction. The Quai d’Orsay instructed the chargé to stress that France desired to establish ‘normal conduct of trade again’, and Walshe ‘immediately replied … that it was Ireland’s desire too …’.9 On 18 July, Long sent a telegram to Geneva, giving details on the nature and quantities of the supplies and outlining that ships could transport them to Portugal. Concerning the IRCS, he explained that it was ‘a bit surprised’ that the government had organised the whole operation without having consulted it. Therefore, he recommended ‘treating the IRCS tactfully’. As Walshe had suggested that the JRC should correspond with the Irish government through the IRCS, it would be better to adopt this procedure. Long met the executive board of the IRCS, which told him that it had £5,000 for the JRC and 100 tons of army biscuits. Furthermore, the Department of Finance had allowed the transfer of 7 Nolan, Joseph Walshe, 51, 112–13, 80, 304–307, 301–302. 8 ACICR, O CMS C-017, Long, ICRC, London, to JRC, Geneva, 25 July 1945. 9 CADN, Dublin, 207PO.1, no 179, Lalouette to French Foreign Ministry, 2 or 23 June 1945, Foreign Ministry to French legation, 26 June 1945 & Lalouette to French Foreign Ministry, 30 June 1945.

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£500 to buy medicine for Albania. Long concluded that he had had a most friendly reception in Ireland.10 His report confirmed that there were organisational tensions between the IRCS and the Irish government as outlined in chapter six.

Solving logistical problems & focusing on Germany and Austria Now that an agreement had been reached the only major problem which remained was transport. During the war, Ireland had used a shipping line to Lisbon as Portugal was also a neutral country. Naturally, the Irish first thought that it could be used again but that proved problematic for the JRC in all probability because it was too far away from Geneva. An alternative was found in the port of Bayonne in southwest France.11 However, then a second difficulty arose as the supplies had to be transported by rail from Bayonne to Geneva. As the war had ended, normal economic activity was resumed and the French state railway company, the SNCF, demanded to be paid for the transport even though it was for humanitarian reasons—this was also the case elsewhere as will be seen. The JRC immediately began negotiations with the French and it was eventually agreed that the Irish supplies could be transported free of charge.12 At the International Red Cross headquarters, Long explained that once the supplies reached Geneva, they had to be sent to their final destinations as quickly as possible. He stressed that they had to be distributed ‘on behalf of the Irish government’. The moment they reached their recipients, the Irish government had to be informed. ‘[Dublin] must be held spellbound’ as it is very likely that the JRC could get more donations, emphasised Long.13 That was precisely what the International Red Cross would do, and it would keep the pressure on the Irish authorities. After Long’s visit to Dublin in July, it was now Jean-Flavien Lalive’s turn in October. On his way, the JRC delegate stopped in London where he met Martin McNamara and Colonel McKinney of the IRCS and John A. Belton, a counsellor in the Irish High Commission in the city. McNamara and McKinney showed interest in the JRC’s projects and said that Irish public opinion would be satisfied if part of the country’s supplies were distributed in Germany and Austria.14 It was clear that the International Red Cross was going to concentrate much of its effort 10 ACICR, O CMS C-017, Long, ICRC, London, to JRC, Geneva, 25 July 1945. 11 ACICR, O CMS 0-26, JRC to Walshe, 8 September 1945 & ‘Note sur un entretien avec M. Long concernant le Don Irlandais le 28 septembre’, 1 October 1945. 12 ACICR, O CMS C-017, JRC to J. F. Lalive, JRC delegate visiting Dublin, 22 October 1945 & ACICR, O CMS C-028, ‘Protokoll über die Sitzung zur Beratung der Hilfsaktionen für Yugoslavien, vom 6. November 1945’, report by R. Schnyder, JRC, 8 November 1945. 13 ACICR, O CMS 0-26, ‘Note sur un entretien avec M. Long concernant le Don Irlandais le 28 septembre’, 1 October 1945. 14 ACICR, O CMS C-017, Lalive, London, to JRC, Geneva, 10 October 1945.

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on the defeated nations. This was a logical step as Germany had been excluded from UNRRA’s aid. At the same period, Jean Rivière, the French minister in Dublin, had noticed the Irish focus on Germany and Austria and came up with a pertinent analysis. According to him, statements made by General Eisenhower, different British personalities including Marshal Montgomery and the Archbishop of Westminster (Catholic) and the British press on the increasingly preoccupying situation in Germany had ‘aroused a movement of compassion among large sections of Irish public opinion for Central Europe’s sufferings’. Like the British, the Irish were involved in ‘active philanthropy’ and had, ‘by tradition, a particular sympathy for vanquished peoples’ and this sympathy connected to neutrality, he continued. Also, Ireland was a Catholic country and was ‘struck by the discipline and the dignity of German Catholic circles in the defeat’ as reported by the Standard, the Irish Catholic and the British Catholic Herald. Rivière explained that all countries were offered aid by Ireland and ‘no doubt de Valera’s government wanted to demonstrate that its international solidarity maintained the equal balance between the former belligerents’. His conclusion was relevant as this book shows: ‘It is appropriate to recognise that in its aid, Ireland, which was spared the war, is above all guided by Christian sentiments and, maybe also, by the ambition to play, in the domain of international welfare, the role of a Suisse extrême-occidentale [an extreme western Switzerland]’.15 In Dublin, Lalive met different departmental and IRCS representatives at Iveagh House, the DEA’s headquarters, on 15 October. Walshe (DEA) spoke about supplies already sent and said that ‘the Irish authorities considered it important that a good share of these supplies should be distributed in Austria and Germany’. This was in line with Ireland’s universalist humanitarian approach. Lalive assured that this would be the case and explained that they had no agreement with the Allied authorities in Germany but that they were in touch with the local military authorities, including the Soviets. The International Red Cross would make sure that the people at the receiving end would know that the goods came from Ireland. He added that the conditions in Western Europe were now improving and that attention should be focused on Central and Eastern Europe, especially in Yugoslavia, Hungary, and Bulgaria. To stress his point, he gave some details stating, for example, that 30% of Viennese children were too weak to go to school and that official rations in the city amounted to a mere 760 calories a day as compared to a required minimum of 3,000. It was also thought that no child under the age of one had survived the siege of Budapest and that the infant mortality rate presently stood at 23%.16 His remark 15 CADN, Dublin, 207PO.1, no 179, French minister in Dublin, to Foreign Minister, Paris, 13 October 1945. 16 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/1, report on meeting between Lalive and Irish representatives on 15 October, 16 October 1945

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that conditions were now better in Western Europe needs some qualification. Back in June, a Swiss Red Cross delegation had found that the food situation in the Netherlands had much improved and that the children looked better, which was rather strikingly optimistic.17 Was this a deliberate attempt to deflect supplies to Germany and Austria where the situation was critical but where the International Red Cross could hope to play a major role? It seems indeed rather incredulous that by June already the condition of Dutch children would have drastically improved a mere month after the German capitulation and the end of the hongerwinter. Conor Maguire (IRCS) explained that they were most anxious to participate in the relief operations and that they were already collecting clothes. Lalive replied that clothes and medicines, especially to treat venereal diseases, were badly needed. In Switzerland, the government had provided goods for a total value of 100,000,000 Swiss francs, and an appeal to the public had raised 50,000,000 Swiss francs which would be used to buy supplies in the country and in Denmark. Maguire said that the IRCS would be willing to buy foodstuffs here but after some discussion it was decided that the government would do so and that the IRCS would look after getting medical supplies. The talks then centred on the issue of transport: ‘Dealing with the offer already made, Dr Lalive said that in view of the serious transport difficulties involved he did not think that the International Red Cross would be able to make any use of live cattle and horses. They would much prefer to get tinned meat. In reply to enquiries from Dr Lalive it was ascertained that butter in boxes would last for 6 weeks or more after leaving cold storage, that bacon would last 3 to 4 months and that cheese would last almost indefinitely.’18 J. C. B. MacCarthy (Industry and Commerce) remarked that there might be some surplus of clothes, overcoats and suits from the army. Lalive was happy and welcomed any gift. The Irish government would also contribute to the transport costs from Bayonne onwards. Lalive suggested that it should seek confirmation of the reception of the goods by the foreign governments and that it should send representatives to the continent.19 His suggestion was approved since an IRCS delegation composed of Deputy Brian Brady, Patrick Power, Dr D. J. Hourihane, and Fr T. J. O’Connor visited several countries in 1946.20 Lalive also met de Valera: ‘The Taoiseach had been very sympathetic and thought [Ireland] could do more, but that this should now be done by the nation—and not by the Government—on 17 Sintemaartensdijk, De Bleekneusjes van 1945, 133–4. 18 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/1, report on meeting between Lalive and Irish representatives on 15 October, 16 October 1945. 19 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/1, report on meeting between Lalive and Irish representatives on 15 October, 16 October 1945. 20 ‘Eire’s £3,000,000 welcomed by distressed Europe’, The Irish Times, 23 December 1946 (ITDA) & ‘Plight of distressed described by Irish Red Cross officer’, The Irish Times, 13 January 1947 (ITDA).

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the basis of personal sacrifice by every individual in the country giving either money, clothing or other goods.’21 De Valera seemed to have the model of the Don Suisse in mind. A collective effort by government and people alike would make Ireland’s contribution even more outstanding and noticeable on the world stage. But considering the way the people were responding, the Taoiseach could not be unsatisfied. Lalive was invited to make an appeal for aid on Radio Éireann. Several days later the IRCS informed him that since his broadcast it had received £1,095, including a cheque of £1,000, ‘a pound note from a poor woman who could not afford to give it, but would do without something else’, and ‘15 [shillings] from a “chômeur” [French for unemployed person]—the amount of relief he had drawn that morning!’22

More and more urgency Meanwhile, the Allied authorities were becoming increasingly conscious of the humanitarian catastrophe that was waiting to happen. In February 1946, President Truman spoke of the ‘worst food crisis in modern times’, presented a relief programme and warned that mass starvation might lie ahead, worse than during the war years. His words were reported by the Irish Times.23 Two months later, as seen in chapter five, former US President Herbert Hoover described the dreadful situation during a food conference in London attended by Seán Lemass and James Ryan. Fiorello La Guardia, the director-general of UNRRA, appealed to Britain to spare some of its grain for the continent. In Austria, the Trades Union Council asked the government ‘to impose the death sentence on persons who “sabotage food supplies” by black market activities or withholding supplies. The unions have volunteered to set up an auxiliary police organisation to fight the black market’. An UNRRA loan of £19,000,000 to Austria was agreed upon. Two thirds of it would be used to buy food. General Joseph T. McNarney, the US commander in Germany, stated: ‘There is not enough food within the borders of the American Zone procurable from German sources to sustain life, even at starvation levels. Therefore, food must be imported into the American Zone, as into the other western occupation zones in Germany’.24 The sense of urgency in McNarney’s statement was very real. Even though Ireland was not a member of UNRRA, the Irish Independent wrote that the government had donated 300 tons of bacon to the organisation which, in turn, 21 ACICR, O CMS C-017, ‘Notes on Mr Lalive’s meeting with members of the executive committee [of the IRCS], 23/10/45’, 25 October 1945. 22 ACICR, O CMS C-017, M. Carroll, IRCS, to J. F. Lalive, JRC, London, 27 October 1945. 23 ‘Truman on “Worst food crisis in modern times”’, The Irish Times, 7 February 1946 (ITDA). 24 ‘UNRRA chief asks Britain for grain’, The Irish Times, 15 April 1946 (ITDA).

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would distribute it in equal shares in Poland, Austria, and Ukraine. The director of UNRRA’s Procurement Division told journalists at Rineanna (Shannon) Airport: ‘You may believe me … it will be very much appreciated.’25 There is no doubt that Irish supplies were appreciated but sending them to Central and Eastern Europe was not without difficulties. As had been agreed, the JRC sent updated reports on the situation to Dublin. In February 1946, Walshe was informed that many problems of ‘a political and technical character’ had to be overcome. Owing to transport and storage difficulties, the JRC was obliged to rapidly dispose of perishable goods like butter. For that reason, areas within immediate reach near the Swiss border were selected, in other words, essentially southern Germany, western Austria and northern Yugoslavia—if transport was available of course. Regarding Berlin and the Allied-occupied zones in Germany negotiations had to be undertaken with the Allies. For the supply train to Berlin, carrying Irish and Swiss supplies as will be seen in chapter ten, the military authorities had provided twelve armed guards to avoid robbery. It was stated in one report that ‘all the supplies forwarded are furnished with labels indicating that they are a gift from Ireland’ and specimens of the labels were included in the JRC’s report to the secretary for external affairs. About Hungary, the JRC wrote: ‘…two trains carrying together 330 tons of supplies left Switzerland on January 30 and February 13 [1946]. One of the senior responsible members of the staff of the Joint Relief Commission of the International Red Cross, M. Imfeld, who was due to leave for Budapest in view of important negotiations, dealt personally with the matter of transport through the Russian zone. He was able to secure all the necessary guarantees, and distribution is now carried out in Budapest. According to the first reports received, everything is working smoothly’. The JRC had also information on Poland: ‘The first train … conveying six tons left on February 16 [1946]. It was accompanied by a member of our staff, Dr Schnieper, head of the scientific bureau of our Pharmaceutical Department and who is specialized in Polish questions.’26

Psychological benefits of Irish aid In March, Olivier Long was in Dublin again. He was invited to attend a meeting of the Interdepartmental Relief Committee during which he praised Ireland’s generous relief supplies. But there was more. He said that they were psychologically most important and explained that ‘these unfortunate people felt entirely abandoned 25 ‘Irish gift to UNRRA’, Irish Independent, 21 June 1946 (INA). 26 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/1, Dr J. F. Lalive (secretary of the JRC Council) and Dr R. Boehringer (chairman of the executive committee) to Walshe, 22 February 1946.

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and it was remarkable to see how they began to take a new interest in life when they saw that someone at least had thought of them’. Asked if the Irish supplies were good for the International Red Cross, Long replied that they were ‘ideal’ and that most of them were distributed to young children, expectant mothers, and old people. He then described the appalling situation in Central and Eastern Europe, notably in Poland and Albania, and gave other shocking details: ‘New-born infants in many countries had to be wrapped in paper because there was absolutely no clothing of any description. Gangs of children were wandering over the face of Europe begging and stealing. The problem was colossal and no-one could help to solve it in full; but it would be a great mistake to think that the Irish supplies were too small to have any effect—they were a very substantial help in the solution of the problem.’ Walshe informed Long of the good news that his government had decided to continue with its relief programme. Asked if old army clothing could be used, Long answered that ‘they could use clothing of every description’. Blankets were also urgently required, even if ‘slightly moth-eaten’, but foodstuffs remained a top priority.27 What Long had stated about the psychological importance of Irish supplies was not to be underestimated. In the words of Anita Grossmann, ‘… food crucially defined people’s sense of how fully they were recognised and valued as human beings rather as, as [displaced persons] were frequently labelled, the miserable and unwelcome “human debris” of war and genocide’.28 The positive effects of Irish supplies have been shown in France, the Netherlands, and Italy’s case and it was not different in countries in Central and Eastern Europe as will be seen. During his stay, Long had the opportunity to meet important persons privately and, as he wrote in his subsequent report, these meetings were maybe more decisive ‘as the Irish are quick people, who prefer a significant anecdote to a long exposé’. Whatever the truth of this ethnological observation, Walshe told him that the people were preoccupied with the distribution of supplies in countries ‘encircled by Russia’ and said that he had reports detailing persecution against the Catholic Church in Yugoslavia and Albania, maybe in Poland too, and that Ireland, a Catholic country, wanted to be sure that Catholics, and others, in those countries received their fair share. Yet again, Walshe had brought up the issue of religion in relation to the Soviet Union, his old nemesis. Long answered that their representatives on the spot made sure that this was the case and that if discrimination did occur then the JRC would prefer to stop altogether. Walshe was satisfied with this answer and informed the cabinet. In describing distribution operations in areas 27 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4AA, meeting of the Interdepartmental Relief Committee, 22 March 1946. 28 Anita Grossmann, ‘Grams, Calories, and Food: Languages of Victimization, Entitlement, and Human Rights in Occupied Germany, 1945–49’, Central European History 44 (2011): 139.

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that had been ravaged by the war, Long emphasised that the arrival of supplies, even in small quantities, was uplifting for the locals and that the psychological impact should not be underestimated. He wrote: ‘The Irish civil servants are, indeed, quite aware that their donations are only a drop in the ocean of needs and they appeared to be very interested to know that even small quantities had a considerable moral value.’ He told the same to de Valera who regretted that no larger quantities of supplies could be sent.29 Long explained that the JRC was not able to transport supplies quicker throughout Europe and in larger quantities. He also broached the issue of transport costs and inquired if the Irish government would be willing to pay all the bills or part of them. He indicated in his report that the moment was favourable to ask this as Ireland had not managed to spend all the £3,000,000 as there were not enough supplies available. Therefore, the government had at its disposal ‘considerable amounts of money’.30 Long must have borne in mind the International Red Cross’s current financial difficulties when he wrote this. His suggestion was acted upon as the JRC would later present Frederick Boland, the new secretary for external affairs, with a bill of £33,467 for transport and handling costs.31 On the eve of Long’s departure, de Valera told him that it had been decided that the totality of the new relief budget would be entrusted to the JRC for distribution in Central and Eastern Europe and Italy.32 Italy’s situation was very preoccupying, and continuing to distribute Irish supplies in that country was certainly justified. But it was also a good way to be noticed by the Vatican. Long had also meetings with the IRCS, which he made sure not to neglect, and these were positive. On his arrival in Dublin on 18 March, he met Maguire and asked him to accompany him during all his meetings and negotiations as he had sensed ‘a certain frustration’ amidst the IRCS as it believed that the government was managing all the relief operations. Yet, he personally thought that the government was ‘well disposed towards the Irish Red Cross’. As previously explained, there had indeed been some frictions between the two. Long mentioned the great success of the Hôpital Irlandais in Saint-Lô and asked if the Irish would like to repeat the experience elsewhere and suggested Poland or Yugoslavia. De Valera, Walshe, and Maguire were smitten with the idea of Poland and Long was asked to enquire with the Polish Red Cross, but another hospital project would never materialise. He then visited the IRCS packaging centre for clothes in Dublin and was much impressed. To conclude, Long found that the Irish government and the IRCS 29 ACICR, O CMS C-017, report, Olivier Long on his stay in Ireland, March 1946, 18 April 1946. 30 ACICR, O CMS C-017, report, Olivier Long on his stay in Ireland, March 1946, 18 April 1946. 31 ACICR, O CMS C-026, J. F. Lalive, sec gen, JRC, and P. Bigar, executive committee, JRC, to Boland, 16 July 1946. 32 ACICR, O CMS C-017, report, Olivier Long on his stay in Ireland, March 1946, 18 April 1946.

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were ‘extremely well-disposed towards us’. They were happy that they could reach out to countries through the JRC. Walshe hoped that ‘this collaboration would last for several years more as the Irish government is determined to pursue its action for as long as it needs’.33 This collaboration was, however, about to end and there was a strong Catholic whiff to its ending.

The Catholic end of the affair In July 1946, it was decided to terminate the activities of the JRC during a meeting in Oxford as seen. Many wondered what would happen next. IRCS member John B. Hamill, who had recently attended an International Red Cross conference in Geneva, confided to his chairman that he regretted its dissolution as it was a welloiled machine and might now be replaced by an inexperienced organisation. The only criticism he had was the JRC’s excessive transport charges.34 Those costs could indeed be high, but transport companies were trying to resume normal economic activities. Irish Press reporter Alan Bestic, who was on the spot in the Switzerland, wrote that numerous relief workers had been taken aback by the decision to dissolve the JRC and feared that ‘considerable disorganisation’ would be the result.35 There had indeed been some disorganisation. When Walshe, now ambassador to the Holy See, learnt that a consignment of clothes sent by Archbishop McQuaid of Dublin had still not left Geneva for Rome after more than two months, he wrote to him with a touch of sycophantism that he was ‘horrified’ to have learnt about it from the Vatican and reassured him that he had immediately contacted the DEA to ask the IRCS to take action.36 In November, Dr Lalive returned to Dublin to explain the significance of the Oxford meeting. ‘There would be no central organisation to undertake the distribution of relief supplies from non-Red Cross sources’, he said, but a new body, the ICRCP (International Centre for Relief to Civilian Populations) would take over ‘to deal with relief supplies from other than Red Cross sources’. It would be the ‘direct heir’ of the JRC, employing the same staff at the same office. Lalive wanted to know if the Irish government would now entrust their supplies to the ICRCP. As far as he was personally concerned, he would simply transfer his job of secretarygeneral of the JRC to the ICRCP. Answering a query from the Interdepartmental Relief Committee, he replied that ‘the scale of charges to cover administration costs will be the same as those applied by the Joint Relief Commission, i.e. [that is to say] 33 34 35 36

ACICR, O CMS C-017, report, Olivier Long on his stay in Ireland, March 1946, 18 April 1946. NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, Hamill to Shanley, 16 August 1946. ‘Joint Relief Commission to be ended’, Irish Press, 17 August 1946 (INA). DDA, XVIII/relief, Walshe to McQuaid, 25 March 1947.

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1% of the value of all goods entrusted to it for distribution and 2% of the value of all goods which are to be purchased as well as distributed by the Centre’. Lalive stressed that the situation in Europe was still ‘very bad’ and that it would be desirable that Ireland continue with its relief operations for another year. The committee told him that it would take a decision soon.37 The government’s lack of immediate commitment indicated that it might have second thoughts about continuing cooperation with the JRC/ICRCP. Its question about administrative costs showed that there might have been some dissatisfaction. The reality was that behind the scenes a Catholic network was pressuring the IRCS and the Irish government to abandon cooperation with the International Red Cross. In August 1946, Fr Ermin E. Klaus of the National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC) led by the American hierarchy contacted Cardinal John D’Alton, the Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland. Klaus was based in Munich ‘to insure delivery of relief goods to the Catholic charities (Caritasverband) in the American Zone’. He explained to D’Alton that a variety of supplies had been distributed except sugar. This was the object of his letter, but there was much more. He wrote: … I notice sizable shipments of Irish sugar, consigned by the Irish Red Cross to the International Red Cross at Geneva and which have now arrived here for distribution by various indigenous agencies. These sacks of sugar must come from Eire, for they bear a Celtic label. Would it not be more in keeping with our policy to have gifts from Irish Catholics consigned directly to the Caritasverband, official sole Catholic charities in Germany, than to have these distributed by non-Catholic organizations? Ireland could do much to help the Church here feed the hungry, regardless of race or religion, during the next critical winter by shipping sugar and fats (whether it be lard or smoked meats or bacon) directly to Caritasverband via the port of Bremen.38

At the bottom of the letter, Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber of Munich had written in Latin that he confirmed what Klaus had stated and that he ‘earnestly commend[ed]’ this course of action. Klaus’s letter was striking. What he wrote in between the lines was that Ireland, a Catholic country, should cooperate with Catholic institutions and not with the International Red Cross. His use of the word ‘our’ spoke volumes. His sentence that ‘Ireland could do much to help the Church here feed the hungry …’ implied that the Church would benefit from relief operations by getting much publicity from it. 37 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, note by Cornelius Cremin, DEA, 19 November 1946. 38 IRCS, unreferenced grey box, Klaus to D’Alton, 2 August 1946.

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D’Alton got the message and contacted IRCS chairman John P. Shanley in Dublin. This presented Shanley with a serious dilemma as the International Red Cross, and by extension the IRCS, was supposed to be strictly neutral and free of any political or religious interference. And yet, he replied to D’Alton that ‘gifts of the Irish Red Cross will be consigned largely to the [Catholic] Caritasverband of Germany’.39 This visibly meant that he had given in to Klaus’s demand, or at least that he agreed with him. In October, Klaus wrote to Shanley that he was ‘most grateful’ for the new arrangement and explained that Catholic institutions in Bavaria were at a distinct disadvantage when supplies were being distributed: As I mentioned in a letter to His Excellency [D’Alton] this morning, I was present at the monthly meeting of the welfare leaders of the American Zone last Thursday at the Laenderrat [provincial council] building in Stuttgart. At that time, for example, when allocations were made, one hundred tons of Irish R[ed] C[ross] sugar and nine hundred blankets were consigned to the Bavarian Red Cross. None of these will find their way to any Catholic institution, I am quite certain. When the Bav[arian] R[ed] C[ross] representative [was] asked how much he was willing to devote to public child feeding in schools, he stated that as high as forty percent of their Irish sugar went to such purposes. Naturally, I would like to get support for Catholic institutions, which are far more numerous than any conducted by the Red Cross organizations. Eire is in the unique position to send sugar and fats (bacon, smoked meats, lard, etc.) whereas our [W]ar [R]elief [S]ervices in the USA is prohibited from doing so by presidential embargo.40

Klaus’s explanations need to be qualified. It might well be that Irish supplies would not ‘find their way to any Catholic institution’ as he had stated. But that was normal as Red Cross supplies were distributed by Red Cross organisations, in this particular case the Bavarian Red Cross as he himself wrote. But this did not mean that Bavarian Catholics would be excluded or discriminated against. Quite the contrary. The fact was that in Bavaria in 1946, 6,271,648 people (71.3%) were Catholic, 2,325,663 (26.4%) Protestant, 22,770 (0.3%) Jewish and 169,569 (2%) were from other denominations.41 In other words, mostly Catholics would receive the supplies anyway. Plainly put, what mattered to Klaus and the NCWC was that 39 IRCS, unreferenced grey box, Klaus to Shanley, 11 October 1946. The beginning of the letter reads: ‘His Excellency, Archbishop D’Alton, sent me your letter of 25th Sept. 46 in which you mention that gifts of the Irish Red Cross will be consigned largely to Caritasverband of Germany’. 40 IRCS, unreferenced grey box, Klaus to Shanley, 11 October 1946. 41 ‘Konfessionsstruktur (19./20. Jahrhundert)’, Historisches Lexikon Bayerns, in https://www.historisches-lexi kon-bayerns.de/Lexi kon/Konfessionsstruktur_%2819./20._ Ja hrhundert%29 #Prozentuale_Anteile_der_Konfessionen (accessed on 23 March 2016).

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people at the receiving end of Irish generosity had to see that the feeding hand was Catholic. It is to be noted that three months later Klaus was in Dublin where he met de Valera to discuss relief operations. As shown in chapter five, the Taoiseach subsequently phoned Cornelius Cremin in the DEA to enquire into the tinplate situation. Cremin replied that there was at least enough tin to can 7,000,000 pounds. De Valera appeared to have been satisfied and later let Cremin know that a Mgr Patrick O’Boyle in New York could be of help in the quest for more tinplate.42 The Catholic network was networking. On 2 December, Secretary for External Affairs Frederick Boland sent a very revealing letter to Walshe in Rome: Actually, we have had a good deal of criticism about the manner in which our relief supplies have been allocated and distributed. I wonder whether we were wise ever to rely so much upon the International Red Cross at all. Although we went out of our way this year to tell them in the clearest terms that we wished that 50% of the Irish relief supplies destined for Hungary should go to the Actio Catholica [Hungarian Catholic Action] in Budapest, the responsibility seems to have been shuffled on to the Hungarian Red Cross, with the result that the Actio Catholica got nothing like the proportion we had indicated. We sent the International Red Cross a very sharp message about this. I get the impression that the International Red Cross is a bit too concerned to preserve its own reputation for undenominationalism, and that requests such as we made to them in connection with the Hungarian supplies rather embarrassed them. It is not as if the International Red Cross were doing the work for us for nothing. They put in a bill for 569,000 Swiss francs for their services in connection with our 1945–1946 relief supplies (of which, you may remember, they were responsible for only 20%), and we had no option but to pay it.43

Boland explained that if the government was to continue with relief operations, the method and means of distribution might have to be changed. But there was an impression that the continuation of relief was not certain: ‘The feeling seems to be gaining ground here, particularly in the Dáil, that we have already done enough and that, with the supply position in respect of some of the principal foods worse here at the moment than at any time during the war, no one could reasonably criticize us if we were unable to do more. The feeling is particularly strong at the moment, because the prospect that we may be left without sugar for the next twelve months, 42 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4C, note written by Cremin, 15 January 1947. 43 NAI, DFA, emb. series, Holy See, 24/74, Boland to Walshe, 2 December 1946.

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owing to the strikes at the sugar factories, places our action in having sent 10,000 tons of sugar to Europe within the last six or eight months in a bad light’.44 De Valera’s government could not easily ignore public opinion and at the same time it could not suddenly pull out altogether of relief activities, a gesture that would have been noticed in Europe and the United States. More supplies might well be needed at home but the situation on the continent remained extremely preoccupying. On 23 December, the Irish Times published an article entitled ‘Eire’s £3,000,000 welcomed by distressed Europe’, which gave a description of an IRCS delegation’s travels on the continent.45 So did the Nenagh Guardian: ‘There were very definite signs of starvation in the larger towns, particularly Hanover, and in Hamburg, where over 80,000 people were suffering from active tuberculosis.’46 But the tenor of these articles was counterbalanced by other articles that claimed that Irish help to Central and Eastern European countries was being hijacked by communist regimes. On 22 February 1947, the Irish Independent had an eye-catching title: ‘Irish gifts to Europe may aid tyranny in Europe bishop warns’.47 In Rome, Irish-born Fr John Collins, the assistant general of the Society of African Missions, told the Irish minister that ‘any support or supplies sent to [Eastern] Europe at present … would be used as propaganda to prolong the Bolshevik régime’.48 As will be seen in chapter eleven, Collins also tried to dissuade the IRCS from transferring the Irish hospital in Saint-Lô to Warsaw for the same reason. On 9 March, the Interdepartmental Relief Committee met. Just before welcoming Frank Wheeler of the ICRCP and Olivier Long of the ICRC, it was agreed that both men should be informed that ‘while there was no definite information as to the Government’s intentions in regard to Relief Supplies for Europe for the coming year, it was most unlikely, in view of the shortages at home, that it would be possible to make further supplies available’. With the onset of the Big Freeze, that was understandable. But the government would eventually decide to continue with its relief actions, as previously shown. During the meeting, financial matters were discussed, like disbursements for transport, paying salaries and other such matters, and the Irish were willing to cover some of the costs. Then, Wheeler and Long asked if Ireland would continue to send supplies. UNRRA was about to cease operations and the harvest would be bad like last year. Both men got the reply that due to a ‘considerable deterioration in the supply position for domestic consumption’ it 44 45 46 47

NAI, DFA, emb. series, Holy See, 24/74, Boland to Walshe, 2 December 1946. ‘Eire’s £3,000,000 welcomed by distressed Europe’, The Irish Times, 23 December 1946 (ITDA). ‘Thurles priest’s impressions of Europe to-day’, Nenagh Guardian, 28 December 1946 (INA). ‘Irish gifts to Europe may aid tyranny in Europe bishop warns’, Irish Independent, 22 February 1947 (INA). 48 NAI, DFA, 6/419/7, minute written by Michael MacWhite, Irish minister to Italy, 28 January 1947.

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was unlikely that the country would participate further. Wheeler suggested that if Ireland could not send supplies, then it could buy supplies abroad for relief. He was told that this could not be done under the rules of the existing Relief Vote. But the government had not made up its mind yet. Wheeler and Long then gave the committee a selection of letters of thanks, a way to stress the urgent need to carry on with relief and show that Ireland’s aid was making a real difference.49 The decision-making process to abandon cooperation with the JRC and its successor was now gathering momentum. In March, Boland wrote that he was preoccupied with ‘the criticisms that have been made of the distribution of our relief goods to Europe’, in particular the unsatisfactory amount of Irish supplies that had reached Actio Catholica in Hungary, which will be detailed in chapter twelve. Boland had been informed on the situation in Hungary by a representative of the American War Relief Services (Catholic and cooperating with the NCWC) and believed that the idea of an alternative organisation for distributing Irish supplies to the International Red Cross should be explored.50 Two days later, in a letter marked ‘secret’, Walshe informed Boland that the Pope, through Montini and Prince Pacelli, had asked de Valera to think again of continuing to use the International Red Cross. Walshe had enclosed two letters written in German that claimed that there was a general distrust of the International Red Cross. He commented: ‘The Holy See is profoundly suspicious of the whole organisation and would much prefer that we had nothing to do with Geneva which for them is incurably anti-Catholic’. The first enclosed letter was from Dr Richter from Caritas in Frankfurt to Pius XII, dated 5 February 1947. It was claimed that supplies sent by the IRCS from Catholic Ireland and its clergy reached them anonymously. In the second letter, Franz Müller, a canon in Köln-Hohenlind (Cologne), wrote to the Pope on the same day: ‘Us, Catholics in the British zone, are very depressed that no help comes from neighbouring Catholic Ireland for Catholic Caritas while the Evangelisches Hilfswerk [Protestant relief organisation] can massively distribute aid coming from Protestant countries like Sweden, Norway and Denmark.’ According to Müller, Ireland was sending supplies to the International Red Cross which was against Catholics. The Caritas leader in Aachen and several American priests had notified de Valera and the Archbishop of Dublin. But so far there had been no results and only the Pope could do something about it.51 Was there a case that the International Red Cross was anti-Catholic and that ordinary Germans did not know that the supplies they got came from Ireland, 49 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, meeting of the Interdepartmental Relief Committee, 9 March 1947. 50 NAI, DFA, 5/372/4A, note, Boland to assistant secretary, 18 March 1947. 51 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4, Walshe to Boland, 20 March 1947.

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a Catholic country? It would appear unlikely. The International Red Cross had been founded in the nineteenth century in Calvinist Geneva, sometimes referred to as ‘la Rome protestante’. It was true that only Protestants were in the ICRC committee until 1923 when the first Catholic was admitted.52 But the sole fact that the International Red Cross had been founded in staunchly Protestant territory would have been enough to raise some eyebrows in the Vatican. Already back in September 1946, as seen in chapter eight, Walshe had written to Boland that the Vatican preferred Ireland to send its supplies directly to the Pontificia Commissione di Assistenza (Pontifical Commission of Relief) and not through the International Red Cross. Walshe and Boland were ardent Catholics and might not have been impartial observers. As to the allegations that German Catholics did not know that some of the gifts they got came from Catholic Ireland, they are implausible. After all, Cork had adopted Cologne, a fact that Müller and the local population could only have been aware of. Cities like Freiburg im Breisgau in southern Germany had received plenty of Irish supplies as early as December 1945 and had thanked Ireland profusely. Therefore, denominational rivalry appears to be a much more likely motive to terminate cooperation with the International Red Cross. Catholic and Protestant Churches wanted to play a main role in the reconstruction of society. They saw the postwar period as a golden opportunity to bring back Europe to the Christian fold. The Vatican wanted Christian reconciliation to oppose the influence of communism and it wanted to be helped by western states.53 Yet, it visibly made an exception regarding the International Red Cross and let Catholic Ireland know that it wanted a different approach to relief operations. On 28 April, Boland wrote to Walshe that it would be proposed to de Valera to stop collaborating with the JRC, which had been officially replaced by the ICRCP by now. According to him, ‘both bodies are commercial concerns, and, in view of incidents which have come to our notice in the last six or nine months, we have come to feel that neither body was a reliable instrument for the distribution of our relief supplies. They cannot be relied upon to resist the temptation of using our supplies to buy goodwill in Soviet-controlled areas in their own commercial interests’. Boland hoped that the Taoiseach would agree that from now on Ireland would use the American War Relief Service, which in effect meant the NCWC. It remained to be seen for how long Ireland would continue with relief operations. Boland concluded: ‘Although the distribution in the past has been unsatisfactory in the sense 52 David P. Forsythe, The Humanitarians: The International Committee of the Red Cross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 41, 203. 53 Dianne Kirby, ‘The Roots of the Religious Cold War: Pre-Cold War Factors’, Social Sciences, 2018, 7, 56, 9.

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that too many of our supplies were allowed to be used by communist, Leftist, and similar organisations as a means of enhancing their own prestige, I think that most of the people who got the supplies realised that they came to them as a gift from Ireland.’54 It is impossible to agree with Boland here. In the Soviet-Occupied Zone of Germany and the eastern sector of Berlin, for example, the relevant authorities made absolutely sure that the people knew the gifts came from Ireland, including publishing articles in newspapers from different political persuasions —and some of these articles were transmitted to Dublin. Also, had Boland forgotten that a voluminous number of letters of thanks had reached Dublin from the SovietOccupied Zone in Germany, Hungary, and Yugoslavia? The local authorities had not censored these but could easily have done so.55 In the end, the Irish government took the decision to continue with its relief scheme and opted to work with the NCWC, a Catholic welfare organisation much tougher on the emerging communist governments in Central and Eastern Europe. In March 1949, the Irish Times informed its readers that the NCWC ‘has withdrawn £75,000 worth of relief supplies from Hungary because of a disagreement’.56 The same month, the DEA told Mary Hackett of the IRCS that the government preferred the NCWC to the ICRCP as it was not entirely satisfied with the ICRCP’s work and that ‘some of their officers in the field appeared not to be well disposed towards Catholic organisations’. To her credit, Hackett displayed a sense of independence and answered that their experience with the ICRCP had been ‘very satisfactory especially since Dr Wheeler’s place in that body was taken by Mr McDermott, formerly of the Irish Red Cross’. She added, however, that ‘they would be very glad to consider sending stuff through the NCWC in future… ’57 The NCWC was more compatible with Ireland’s Catholic temperament, or its government’s, and there could now be no more accusations that the delivery of Irish supplies to countries behind the Iron Curtain played right into the hands of the communists. UNRRA had been wound up in 1947. The International Refugee Organization (IRO, United Nations), of which Ireland did not become a member, became operational in 1948. In Rome, some IRO members wanted to travel to Dublin to ask Ireland to join. Walshe discouraged them from doing so by saying that the Irish government ‘found it very difficult, if not impossible to envisage undertaking new commitments involving so much money’.58

54 55 56 57 58

NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4, Boland to Walshe, 28 April 1947. See chapters ten, twelve, fourteen and fifteen. ‘News in brief ’, The Irish Times, 4 March 1949 (ITDA). NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/6, DEA note, 4 March 1949. NAI, DFA, emb. series, Holy See, 24/75, Walshe to DEA, 13 June 1949.

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De Valera had agreed to switch over to the NCWC. Irish humanitarian aid to communist-controlled Eastern Europe was a burning political issue and the next general election could not be that far off now. Ireland might not have had any permanent or even roving diplomatic representative behind the Iron Curtain, but de Valera was kept informed on the evolving situation by the Irish envoys in Paris, Berne, Rome, and the Holy See. But there were also individuals like the Hungarian-born Lady Judith Listowel (Listowel in southwest Ireland), residing in London, and who bombarded the Taoiseach with the bulletin she edited called East Europe, reporting on the latest breaches of human rights and democracy by the communist regimes; de Valera even agreed to meet her when she was on a visit to Dublin.59 As to Louis Ivandić, a Croatian Franciscan priest who had sought refuge in Ireland and was living in a Franciscan friary in Dublin, he had also met the Taoiseach and supplied him with literature on the latest atrocities in Croatia committed by Tito and his followers. In The Tragedy of a Nation by the AmericanCroatian priest Theodore Benkovic, readers were not spared some of the finer details of those atrocities. Included were three photographs of a killed priest, a massacred group of civilians, and a destroyed church. The caption concerning the priest read: ‘Picture of Rev. Ilija Tomas on whose body is seen 22 knife-wounds inflicted by the cetniks [Chetniks, royalist fighters]. Like fate suffered nearly 300 Catholic priests in Croatia from communists and cetniks’. It was alleged that the young Josip Broz, future Tito, had plundered a church. De Valera could also read Memorandum from the American-Croatian Congress to the Assembly of the United Nations or Martyrium Croatiae published in Rome in 1946 if he was fluent in Latin (there was no mention, however, of the involvement of Franciscan friars in massacres in Bosnia in these documents as will be shown in chapter fourteen on Yugoslavia).60 It remains difficult to assess to what extent such information influenced de Valera vis-à-vis the situation in Central and Eastern Europe, but the sole fact that he agreed to meet Lady Listowel and Fr Ivandić shows that he took them seriously. As to the DEA and the ICRCP, they engaged in acrimonious correspondence. The DEA accused it and its predecessor, the JRC, of having failed to respect its distribution wishes, notably in Hungary where more should have been distributed to the Catholic population specifically. It also complained of a lack of reports concerning Central and South-Eastern Europe and that it had been left in the dark. The ICRCP defended itself by saying that ‘conditions in Europe were absolutely chaotic’ and that the situation was rendered even more difficult because of the 59 NAI, DT, T6, Private Office Files, 97/9/610, correspondence with Lady Judith Listowel. 60 NAI, DT, T6, Private Office Files, TAOIS, 97/9/778, correspondence with Fr Louis Ivandić.

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Soviet presence. As to documentation, the ICRCP stressed that everything was available for consultation in Geneva and that the Irish chargé d’affaires in Berne could come to read it.61 Certainly, there are today more than enough documents in the archives of the ICRC and the League (nowadays International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies) in Geneva that amply show that Irish supplies had been widely and fairly distributed beyond the Iron Curtain unlike what Boland and others claimed. The same holds true for the National Archives of Ireland where detailed JRC reports can be found. The truth was that certain Irish ministers and civil servants were inclined to interpret the Vatican’s wishes as marching orders.

Concluding remarks Like the International Red Cross, Ireland had a universalist approach to humanitarianism, which made no difference between victorious or vanquished populations in need. Since the International Red Cross did not figure prominently in the Allies’ plans to reconstruct Europe and care for its population, it was logical that it saw in Ireland a significant humanitarian partner, one that was eager to get out of the isolation that neutrality had engendered and whose young IRCS was eager to participate in relief operations. For both Ireland and the IRCS, postwar Europe was the first large-scale test in humanitarianism. The International Red Cross representatives had noticed some coordination issues between the government and the IRCS but not of a nature to seriously hinder Ireland’s efficiency in organising aid. It was obvious that Irish help was much appreciated in Europe. From its dealings with the International Red Cross, Ireland’s Catholic identity emerged as a strong component in the formulation of its foreign policy. This was abundantly clear in the situation in Central and Eastern Europe during the unfolding Cold War which accentuated this Catholic identity. John A. Costello’s Inter-Party Government showed much deference to the Catholic Church after it had taken over from de Valera’s government in February 1948.62 While this is true, it cannot be stated that de Valera’s was much different, at least not when it came down to the international relief question. In high places in Dublin, people paid attention to what the Vatican and Archbishop McQuaid had to say on this issue. The coming chapters will detail Ireland’s humanitarian aid to individual countries in Central, Eastern, and SouthEastern Europe. The young Irish state did not have diplomatic relations with most of them, and it would also be hard to imagine Irish relations with them. But the 61 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4E, Andrée Morier, ICRCP, to Boland, 18 May 1949. 62 Keogh, ‘Ireland, the Vatican and the Cold War’, 933–4.

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postwar crisis created links, links that were however ephemeral owing to the Cold War and that have been long forgotten since. One country that benefitted from substantial Irish humanitarian aid was the former Reich, reduced to rubble, west and east of the Iron Curtain.

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Chapter Nine

The Western Allied-Occupied Zones in Germany

Ireland’s historic relations with Germany were far closer than with the rest of Central and Eastern European countries. In the eleventh century, Irish monks began to found monasteries across the Rhine and a cult of Saint Patrick existed. During the nineteenth century, educated classes in Germany took an interest in the nationality question in Ireland, and Catholics, mainly from Bavaria, collected money for the Irish during the Great Famine between 1845 and 1850. German travellers in Ireland were shocked by the rampant poverty. Yet, there was generally much ignorance about each other.1 During the First World War, Imperial Germany made half-hearted attempts to help Irish republicans against the British during the Easter Rising in April 1916. The following year, a group of propagandists in Berlin set up a society, the Deutsch-Irische Gesellschaft (GermanIrish Society), to exploit Irish nationalism and antagonism towards Britain but it had little effect.2 Formal diplomatic relations between the Irish Free State and Weimar Germany were established during 1929–1930. Some solid trade relations developed but Ireland’s main trading partner remained Britain by extremely far. The Nazis initially viewed Ireland’s hostile nationalistic attitudes towards Britain as a threat to another fellow Aryan nation.3 However, when an Anglo-German rapprochement did not materialise and the Second World War began in 1939, they set out to help the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in its struggle against the British. Yet, their efforts in sending agents to Ireland were not successful, some missions being downright amateurish with very poor agents. They also overestimated the IRA’s abilities.4 1 O’Driscoll, ‘West Germany’, 10–20. 2 Jérôme aan de Wiel, The Irish Factor, 1899–1919: Ireland’s strategic and diplomatic importance for foreign powers (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2008). See Chapter Five, ‘France, Germany and Ireland, August 1914–April 1916’, 157–209 & Chapter Eight, ‘“Emma Krank”! 1917–1918’, 294–350. 3 O’Driscoll, ‘West Germany’, 20–1. 4 See Hull, Irish Secrets, for a comprehensive and detailed account of Nazi involvement with Irish republicans, 271–2.

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To stress the importance of Ireland’s aid to postwar Germany, a destroyed country in the middle of an environment of hatred which it had been responsible for creating, it is relevant to briefly remind how Germany went through the war, focusing on issues that are relevant for this study. Briefly, when Hitler took power in 1933 and later dominated Europe, he implemented his racialist agenda by killing people he deemed inferior. It was the Endlösung, the Final Solution. Jews, Roma, Sinti, and mentally handicapped people were bestially exterminated. In Poland, the Germans set up six extermination camps or death factories: Chełmno, Bełzec, Sobibór, Treblinka, Majdanek, and Auschwitz. In April 1945, the British army liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Present was Robert Collis, a doctor from County Dublin, who was trying to take in what he saw: ‘In one of the huts half the floor was six inches [15 centimetres] deep in faeces in which were lying huddled together rows of naked women.’ Understandably, Collis now hated the Germans and felt no pity for them, not even when he saw the small town of Emmerich near the Dutch border, shelled to pieces, or Hamburg, devastated by the RAF.5 His feelings towards them would change over time. The Nazis and their allies murdered around 5.4 million Jews and between 100,000 and 300,000 Roma and Sinti. As to the western Allies and the Soviets, they remained rather inactive in the Jewish tragedy even though significant information about Nazi extermination operations had come their way.6 The war took on a different dimension when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, without declaration of war, on 22 June 1941. At first, the German armies appeared to be successful and were progressing rapidly. Over three million Soviet prisoners of war were either shot, starved to death or died because of mistreatment (they were Slavs, so inferior human beings according to Nazi ideology).7 One Irish witness to their mistreatment was Peter Tyrrell, a soldier in the British army detained in a German prisoner-of-war camp. When a French cook threw away bones and potato peelings, the Soviets scrambled for them. Tyrrell ‘saw a man lying face downwards grasping a large bone and being savaged by other hungry men. One man was biting his ear. The man on the ground never let go the bone’.8 However, the German leadership had grossly underestimated the capacity of the Red Army and the Soviet war effort to reorganise. The Germans were militarily and industrially outclassed.9 After the victorious Battle of Stalingrad in 1943, the Red Army pushed 5 Collis and Hogerzeil, Straight On, 8, 53–4, 26, 92–3. 6 Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe between Hitler and Stalin (London: Vintage Books, 2011), 290–2, 253, 276, 239. 7 Snyder, Bloodlands, 175, 179, 184, 159–61. 8 Peter Tyrell, Founded on Fear: Letterfrack Industrial School, War and Exile, edited and introduced by Diarmuid Whelan (London: Transworld Ireland, 2008), 306. 9 Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction: The Making & Breaking of the Nazi Economy (London: Penguin Books, 2007), 487–9, 584–9.

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back the Wehrmacht. In the meantime, the United States had entered the war after the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941. The formidable American industry was now fully working for the Allied war effort. By 1944, the German war industries were simply dwarfed by the Allies.10 Hitler and his staff devised a plan to waste the population in the western part of the Soviet Union with hunger. The so-called Hunger Plan envisaged the starving to death of at least 30 million people to make sure Aryans would get their Lebensraum (living space) and that the German Reich would not get hungry. Germany’s hunger experience of the First World War should not be repeated. The Wehrmacht was going to live off the land. Yet, the elimination of the Soviet urban population did not go according to plan as it was too complex to implement and as the Germans suffered military reverses.11 But food remained a preoccupying issue for the German leadership, some experts predicting that the continuation of war would mean serious supply problems. The harvests of 1940 and 1941 had been below average and grain stocks were declining.12 The Nazis applied a different food policy in Eastern and Western Europe. In Poland, farmers were ordered to work harder and those who failed to deliver the quotas set by the occupiers were shot. Since less grain was imported into the Reich from Romania and Hungary, two allied countries, pressure piled up on Polish and Czech farmers. In the west, production had decreased as many Allied soldiers were prisoners of war and could not participate in the harvest. Moreover, the Wehrmacht was requisitioning a great deal of livestock.13 During the spring of 1942, it became clear that food rations would have to be cut. This in turn could lead to serious political unrest in the streets.14 It was decided to increase grain deliveries from Eastern Europe. Rations in the GeneralGovernment (German-occupied area in Poland) were already low but would become even lower in order to feed the Germans. During a meeting with German administrators in conquered territories in August, Hermann Göring explained the new food policy: ‘For God’s sake, you haven’t been sent there to work for the wellbeing of the people entrusted to you, but to get hold of as much as you can so that the German people can live.’ He ordered the administrators in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Norway to increase their food deliveries to the Reich.15 The Nazis got away with it. The harvests throughout Europe in 1942 were excellent and grain 10 11 12 13 14 15

Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, 446–7, 639. Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, 461–3, 538–9, 468–9, 469–70, 473, 476–80, 479 & 483–5. Tooze, The Wages of Destruction, 538–40. Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, 276–7. Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, 284–6. Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, 284–6.

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deliveries to Germany increased from 2 million tons to over 5 million. The country would feel the pinch of hunger during the last phase of the war and especially in the postwar years.16 Séan Murphy, the Irish envoy in Vichy, noticed this change in Germany’s food policy in France and reported to Dublin: ‘The food situation is bad and according to official statements may be even tragic in the months of March, April and May [1943]. The Germans and the Italians are taking all they can lay their hands on, of any sort or kind. They have requisitioned engines, carriages, trucks and even railway lines in large quantities. Apart from the dislocation of transport services, it makes the task of food distribution almost impossible’.17 But crises kept accumulating for the Germans, and a lethal one came from the air. Winston Churchill was fully in favour of bombing Germany. British leaders calculated that full-scale air raids were needed to kill those who were involved in the war effort, the working classes. Entire working-class districts in cities were thus earmarked for incineration. The same leaders also believed that bombing would speed up the end of the war and thus also save the lives of Allied soldiers. The Royal Air Force (RAF) would be assisted by the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF), although the Americans were not convinced by the merits of eradicating cities from the air.18 The bombing of German cities and towns was systematic and repetitive. In July 1943, Hamburg was destroyed by a firestorm that reached a temperature of above 800 degrees Celsius (1472 Fahrenheit). It is currently estimated that its obliteration caused around 37,000 deaths. 900,000 inhabitants left the city and 61% of housing was destroyed or damaged.19 Other cities and inhabitants met that horrendous fate, the most notorious one being the bombing of Dresden in February 1945. RAF air gunner Irishman Sean Drumm had visions of ‘Armageddon’ when he saw the Ruhrgebiet, the great industrial area in western Germany, in flames at night.20 After the war, it was revealed that 2.7 million tons of bombs had been dropped on Germany; 3.6 million homes had been destroyed; at least 305,000 civilians had died (probably closer to 500,000); 800,000 had been injured; and 7.5 million were now homeless.21 But unlike what Allied leaders had predicted or expected, Germany kept fighting on and the population did not revolt against Hitler’s government. In fact, the opposite happened as ‘perseverance developed under the bombs and the Nazis were able to pose as emergency helpers and bound the people to the regime’.22 Much had 16 Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, 287–8. 17 Dr Niall Keogh, Con Cremin: Ireland’s Wartime Diplomat (Cork: Mercier Press, 2006), 52. 18 Overy, The Bombing War, 254, 257–9, 287–8, 310–11. 19 Overy, The Bombing War, 327–8. 20 Doherty, Irish Men and Women in the Second World War, 120–1. 21 Hitchcock, Liberation, 187–8. 22 Hans Mommsen, ‘Wie die Bomber Hitler halfen’, in Stephan Burgdorff and Christian Habbe, eds., Als

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also to do with the structure of Nazi power in the country as Hitler was surrounded by courtiers and grandees who swore loyalty to him. Despite the cliques in the government, there was no unified opposition against the Führer. The Nazis could also rely on an effective and ferocious repression apparatus.23 The end came nonetheless on 8 May 1945. By then, between 4.4 and 5.3 million German soldiers and between 1.5 and 3 million civilians had been killed, although the figures remain disputed. After the war, an inquiry made by German municipalities revealed that there was an estimated 400 million cubic meters of rubble in the country.24 Postwar reconstruction took on a different meaning. The Germans were lucky to find Ireland (and others), a country that did not hate them despite the hatred that they had provoked with their racialist and occupation policies. They would yet again receive food and other vital supplies from abroad, but this time to keep them above starvation level. In 1946, the International Red Cross published a report entitled Irish Gift 1946, numbering 157 pages. It gave a detailed summary of the distribution of Irish supplies for each country in Central and Eastern Europe and it was stated: ‘There is almost endless documentation available on Germany.’25 This statement was by no means an exaggeration as the situation in the former Reich threatened to degenerate into an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe. In addition to the important number of primary sources available in Geneva and Dublin, many German archivists in federal, regional, local, and ecclesiastical archives generously undertook research for this book and unearthed a wealth of supplementary documents and information. The mass of material presents thus an organisational and space challenge. Therefore, the most important, revealing, or striking documents have been used here and two chapters have been devoted to the German situation, the western Allied-Occupied Zones and the Soviet-Occupied Zone and Berlin. Germany occupied a central political position in the postwar years as it rapidly became the focus of East-West confrontation in the unfolding Cold War. This chapter examines how Irish supplies were distributed in the French, American, and BritishOccupied Zones, what were the issues encountered, what were the benefits of Irish aid, and how locals reacted. It details in particular the relief operations in Freiburg im Breisgau in the French-Occupied Zone as it was in that city that Irish supplies were first distributed in western Germany and as the case study of Freiburg helps to explain how the country eventually survived. It will become clear that Irish supplies Feuer vom Himmel fiel: Der Bombenkrieg in Deutschland (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2004), 115. 23 Kershaw, The End, 10–14. 24 Leonie Treber, Mythos Trümmerfrauen; Von der Trümmerbeseitigung in der Kriegs- und Nachkriegszeit und der Entstehung eines deutschen Erinnerungsortes (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2015), 8–9 & footnote 6 and 15 & footnote 13. 25 IFRC, box 19691, report entitled Irish Gift 1946, 14.

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were politically important in the early Cold War. Also, the experience and motivations of Irish relief volunteers who were on the spot are assessed.

Abandoning the Germans to their fate? At first, in their plans for a defeated Germany, the Americans wanted to make sure that it would never again pose a threat to world peace. In September 1944, Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau proposed to turn Germany into a vast demilitarised and agrarian country. President Roosevelt agreed with this. According to General Lucius Clay, the president did not like Germans after his experience in a school there. However, the Morgenthau Plan was not accepted by State Secretary Cordell Hull and War Secretary Henry L. Stimson. After Roosevelt’s death in April 1945, Morgenthau became less and less influential and in the end his plan was never implemented. The Americans now wanted to change the Germans for the better notably through re-education, denazification, and democratisation.26 There was no need to keep them in a prolonged state of distress which might lead to events comparable to those that happened after the Wall Street Crash in 1929, in other words, the rise of political extremism. History was there to draw lessons from as Hull and Stimson had thankfully realised. Nonetheless, an initial tough approach set the tone for things to come in the early months of Allied occupation. The Allies were profoundly shocked by the evil and barbaric nature of the Nazi regime and there was naturally much resentment against Germans. General Eisenhower had gone as far as to impose a ban of ‘frat’, fraternisation between GIs and locals. The British followed suit but not the Soviets.27 Field Marshal Montgomery believed it was simply ridiculous: ‘We cannot re-educate twenty million people [in the British-Occupied Zone] if we are never to speak to them’.28 That made sense and the ban on ‘frat’ was totally lifted in October. Soldiers and civilians were now officially free to discuss Germany’s future or have sex. Many women—and not only in Germany—fell for the GIs. After all, their men were either killed or in captivity, and getting to know Allied soldiers on the mattress was also a way to get much needed food and other supplies. A former young Nazi, upset by their behaviour, exclaimed: ‘Have the German people no honour left? … One can lose a war, one can be humiliated, but one need not dirty one’s honour oneself!’29 And what if one wanted to survive in the hunger-ridden ruins or look after cold children and sick relatives? GI Leonard Linton threw away the leftovers 26 27 28 29

Bessel, Germany 1945, 282–5. Buruma, Year Zero, 42. Stafford, Endgame 1945, 483. Buruma, Year Zero, 23, 27, 45–6.

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of his meal, steak and mashed potatoes, into a bin only to see children running to grab them. He made sure they did not get them: ‘I hated their looks only because they were German and somehow responsible for the … misery we saw.’ It was only after several months that he did no longer experience that kind of reaction. Many others reacted the same way.30 The utter scorn and resentment initially felt by Allied soldiers was not helped by a lack of responsibility for the war and its horrors expressed by many Germans. Linton often heard the phrase ‘Ich war immer dagegen’ (I was always against the Nazis) or people claiming that they had protected Jews.31 The Germans were very much aware of the relentless pounding they took in the closing stages of the war. This made them focus on their own misery and forget what they had done to others.32 Count Folke Bernadotte of the Swedish Red Cross took in the large-scale destruction and concentration camps, and thought: ‘The German people as a whole never made a serious attempt to cast off the [Nazi] yoke. They never seriously protested against the antisemitic policy, against conditions in the occupied countries, or against cruelties in the concentration camps. They have failed. They have allowed themselves to be led by ruthless scoundrels. They must drain the cup of suffering.’ But Bernadotte still believed that the people had to be helped.33 German suffering was indeed very real and plain to see. Air raids had turned cities, towns, and inhabitants into ashes, families had been dislocated, and millions of people had been expelled from Central and Eastern Europe in dreadful conditions. Yet, these Allied atrocities and excesses cannot be compared to the crimes the Germans had committed.34 It would have been easy for the Allies to exterminate the Germans or at least drastically reduce their number, but there was no such intention. At the beginning, the fate of Germans was therefore not a main preoccupation in the Allied occupied zones. During the Potsdam Conference held between 17 July and 2 August 1945, the American, British, and Soviet governments agreed in principle on a series of political aims for Germany. The demilitarisation, denazification, decentralisation, and democratisation of the country was to be undertaken. Germany, Austria, and their respective capitals were to be divided into American, British, Soviet, and French occupation zones. Nazi war criminals were to be put on trial. Germany’s eastern border with Poland was to be shifted along the Oder-Neisse line. Ethnic Germans living in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary were to be expelled to Germany. The Soviet Union was to receive war reparations not only from its zone of occupation but 30 31 32 33 34

Stafford, Endgame 1945, 132–3. Stafford, Endgame 1945, 132–3. Bessel, Germany 1945, 388–9, 396–7. Stafford, Endgame 1945, 505–506. Buruma, Year Zero, 157–8.

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also from the western zones. The American, British, and Soviet governments were to ask experts to coordinate efforts in reaching these aims. For the time being, the Big Three seemed to get along but that would not last long. During the conference, it was also decided that ‘measures shall be taken promptly to maximise agricultural output’. Feeding the population was a concern, but it became soon clear that the occupying powers would individually organise their agrarian sectors.35 Farmers had stocks of food available, and food supplies were also for the taking in former Wehrmacht stores that were plundered by civilians. When the fighting stopped, many Germans were rather well fed. However, as the winter of 1945– 1946 was approaching, the food crisis began to quickly take shape. The loss of the eastern regions to Poland, essentially agricultural ones, constituted a main problem. The harvest of 1945 was not sufficient and there was a lack of agricultural machinery, cattle, and men to look after it, not to mention transport to distribute the food where needed. Furthermore, the black market was thriving, and farmers did not always respect the quotas of compulsory deliveries that had been imposed. In short, there was money to be made. In the closing months of 1945, food was running out. As a reminder, a normal diet is around 2,500 calories a day for a man and 2,000 for a woman. In the American-Occupied Zone, it became less than 1,000. In the French-Occupied Zone, it was officially 1,350 by December 1945 but the corresponding amount of food was not always available. In November 1945, the inhabitants of Trier had to make do with 893 calories and by January 1946, it had decreased to 616. In the Soviet-Occupied Zone, it was the eastern refugees who suffered most as, at first, they had been excluded from the ration-card system and were forced to get food in the black market. In October 1945, they did get ration cards but received child rations which stood at about 1,200 calories in Berlin and 1,040 in surrounding Brandenburg.36 Grim living conditions produced a grim kind of humour but not devoid of realism. The people nicknamed the lowest category ration card a ‘Himmelsfahrtkarte’ (ticket to heaven).37 The food situation in the British-Occupied Zone was not better as 70% of supplies needed to be imported, which cost the British exchequer £80,000,000 annually.38 It was expenditure that the British could not afford as the war had emptied their coffers. Chancellor of the Exchequer Hugh Dalton remarked ironically that the cost of occupying the Germans was in fact like paying reparations to them.39 35 John E. Farquharson, The Western Allies and the Politics of Food: Agrarian Management in Postwar Germany (Leamington Spa: Berg Publishers Ltd, 1985), 30–2. 36 Bessel, Germany 1945, 344–53. 37 Grossmann, ‘Grams, Calories, and Food’, 123. 38 Shephard, The Long Road Home, 249. 39 MacDonogh, After the Reich, 363.

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But the Allies could simply not let the Germans starve. There were obvious moral reasons for this and to do so would be tantamount to using Nazi methods. George Clare, a Viennese Jew serving in the British army in Germany and whose father had a business in Dublin, met a little girl who asked him: ‘Hast du was für mich?’ (Do you have something for me?). Clare thought: ‘What would [her father] have had for the ghetto children but a smack with his rifle butt! And yet what had all this to do with her? … I could not condemn all Germans, I could not hate all Germans, as the Nazis had condemned and hated all Jews. No, I neither hated Germans nor—with the exception of these children—did I pity them.’40 Allied soldiers began to feel more compassion for civilians. But there were also reasons of a more political nature to look after them. In October 1945, the British Daily Mail summed it up well in an article with an eye-catching title: ‘Feed the Brutes?’ It argued that it was not a matter of compassion but a necessity: ‘The longer Europe is allowed to sink into the bog, the longer it will take to raise up—the longer the occupation will have to go on.’41 Moreover, there were the risks of adverse political repercussions. In the American-Occupied Zone, some Germans were complaining bitterly: ‘Yes, Hitler was bad, our war was wrong, but now they are doing the same wrong to us; … now we are the Jews; … they take away all our sources of income and let us die slowly, the gas chambers worked quicker …’42 These were outrageous remarks but reflected a growing sentiment against the occupation policies of the Allies. Many Germans were now using their experience of hunger to present themselves as victims, but some were also playing a political card which is best summed up by this rhyme: ‘Geben Sie uns genug zu essen, sonst können wir Hitler nicht vergessen’ (our food needs must be met, otherwise Hitler we cannot forget).43 Also, the Cold War was becoming an obvious reality. What if hungry Germans switched sides? This was a danger to which General Clay, the American Deputy Military Governor, alerted Washington as early as March 1946: ‘There is no choice between becoming a communist on 1500 calories and a believer in democracy on 1000 calories. It is my sincere belief that our proposed ration allowance in Germany will not only defeat our objectives in middle Europe but will pave the way to a communist Europe.’44 The Americans would step up their efforts to help their former enemies and eventually would implement the Marshall Plan in 1948 to save Europe. Due to a combination of factors the Germans would not be abandoned to their fate after all. 40 41 42 43 44

Clare, Berlin Days 1946–1947, 18–19. Buruma, Year Zero, 64–5. MacDonogh, After the Reich, 365. Grossmann, ‘Grams, Calories, and Food’, 130, 126. David W. Ellwood, Rebuilding Europe: Western Europe, America and Postwar Reconstruction (Abingdon: Routledge, 2013), 54.

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Ireland’s attitude was different than that of the Allies. As seen, on 18 May 1945, the Dáil rejected any vengeful spirit. The Protestant Irish Times preferred to stress the Pope’s plea ‘to the victorious nations not to abuse their triumph, but rather to join forces in a campaign against human hatred …’ and it pointed out that ‘during the past few months even the most violent advocates of a Carthaginian peace have begun to realise that an impoverished Germany must involve a poverty-stricken Europe’.45 Pius XII did not believe in Germany’s collective guilt and was even of the opinion that many German Catholics had remained faithful to the Church when the Nazis were in power and that they had been victims even.46 How come they had not rebelled en masse against the Führer then, or made Nazi rules harder to implement? In fact, the postwar situation offered a comeback to the Church as it could help the western Allies in their day-to-day economic management of their respective occupation zones and restore its moral authority which had been tarnished by some of its accommodations with the Nazis.47 Soon, Irish newspapers reported on the dreadful expulsions of Germans from the newly formed Poland.48 At the beginning of October, the Journal for the Medical Association of Ireland stated that food supplies should be sent to places where they were most needed and that political considerations should not come into play: ‘Apparently the food situation of Germany in certain parts is extremely bad. Let us do all we can to prevent this being the worst European winter since the Thirty Years’ War’. The Irish Times reported the journal’s words under the title ‘Medical journal urges Irish aid for Germans’.49 That was now about to begin.

First Irish stop: Freiburg im Breisgau There are two main reasons why space should be devoted to this local case study. Firstly, what happened there was reflective of what happened elsewhere in Germany. The postwar period in Freiburg has been the object of an outstanding study by Robert Neisen. He explains how they were in the end able to survive—like other German cities— because Irish and other foreign aid alone would simply not have sufficed to keep the population alive. Secondly, as it so happens, Freiburg was the first German city and area that received supplies from the Don Irlandais as it had been visited by representatives of the Irish Red Cross Society (IRCS), and most 45 ‘The Pope’s plea’, The Irish Times, 31 August 1945 (ITDA). 46 Paul Weindling, ‘“For the love of Christ”: Strategies of international Catholic relief and the Allied occupation of Germany, 1945–1948’, Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 43, no. 3 (July 2008): 484. 47 Weindling, ‘“For the love of Christ”’, 477. 48 ‘Expulsions of Germans from Poland’, The Irish Times, 11 October 1945 (ITDA) & ‘Populations under Russian lash; Germany & Poland’, Irish Independent, 20 October 1945 (INA). 49 ‘Medical journal urges Irish aid for Germans’, The Irish Times, 3 October 1945 (ITDA).

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importantly as it was located just across the Swiss border; in other words, it was within immediate reach of relief operations as opposed to other cities and areas.50 On 27 November 1944, the RAF destroyed Freiburg in about twenty minutes by dropping 1,700 tons of bombs. In Neisen’s words, ‘it was the day when terror, which Nazi Germany had spread over almost all of Europe, was let loose over Freiburg’. There were scenes worthy of Dante’s Inferno. In the streets on fire an inhabitant met a soldier whose ‘eyeball was hanging 5 or 10 centimetres out of the eye socket, on his cheek, rolling from one side to the other’. About 45% of dwellings had been destroyed. Seven schools had been flattened which meant that about 4,000 pupils were taught in a single building during the years to come. Many lived in ruins and makeshift dwellings and it was common to find entire families living in a single room. General despair was plaguing the mood of those who had survived. Then on 21 April 1945, the French army moved in and imposed a harsh occupation. Much was confiscated and sent to France to contribute to the reconstruction of the country. This meant that Freiburg’s reconstruction was seriously delayed and that the material condition of the people seriously worsened. The French lived off the land and commandeered whatever standing houses there were to billet their soldiers. However, they did introduce some very positive re-education policies, but these did not feed and clothe the population.51 French occupation policy was noticed by the Irish Press. It described how the local population but also the Americans and British were annoyed with the French. But it understood that while the Americans and the British invested much money into their zones of occupation, it would not be realistic to expect French taxpayers to feed the Germans considering the current state of France. The newspaper had certainly made a pertinent point here. Besides, it could not be expected either that the French would suddenly forget the four years of German occupation. The Irish Press then made another pertinent point, one that might not necessarily preoccupy the other two western Allies as much: ‘The fear of the future resurgent Germany may seem groundless to their Allies, but it is a very real fear to the French, and is reflected throughout their zone. In their personal contacts with the Germans it is apparent that they have a philosophy of occupation. The Americans are inconsistent, stiffness alternating with leniency, and even sympathy. The French are always strict, but correct’. The Irish Press had in fact reminded its readers of a French fear 50 Neisen, however, devotes far more attention to aid from Switzerland, the United States and Norway than Ireland. See Robert Neisen, Und wir leben immer noch! Eine Chronik der Freiburger Nachkriegsnot (Freiburg: Stadt Freiburg im Breisgau/Promo Verlag, 2004), see Switzerland, 118–29, the United States, 129– 44, Norway, 144–58 and Ireland, 158–9. As Neisen notes, ‘there were, however, donations from other states that are less known’. 51 Neisen, Und wir leben immer noch!, 27–30, 35, 47–54, 57–8, 63.

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that had existed since the end of the First World War, and that the Second World War had confirmed. According to the newspaper: ‘One word of French and the Germans jump. The French are on top and they know it. The Germans know it too and, while the Germans complain as much as they do elsewhere, still you feel that it is with less conviction than under the British or Americans for they see that the French are themselves short of many things’.52 This was an interesting remark, although it remained difficult to generalise German attitudes towards the occupiers. However, some French in their occupation zone were definitely guilty of excessively enjoying life in contrast to the French in France. General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny behaved as an ‘imperial viceroy’ and had requisitioned luxury villas for himself and his officers around Lake Constance, something that was deeply resented not only by the Germans but also by the French in France.53 Many inhabitants had lost everything and not only their homes. In 1947, about 30,000 people had no spare clothes. By April 1948, their situation had hardly improved. In a family of eleven children, the mother washed the clothes every night so that by next morning they would be dry and clean again. Many schoolchildren lacked underwear. Another very serious issue was the lack of footwear. Out of 1,000 schoolchildren, about 30% had unusable shoes and about 12% could not attend school as they had none. Sandals were used during wintertime and socalled Klepperle, wooden shoes with straps. Often, children borrowed their parents or grandparents’ shoes for the day. Another technique consisted in cutting the top of shoes that were too small to make room for the toes. In August 1947, the Badische Zeitung reported that thousands of children walked on Klepperle and were ruining their feet just as their parents did after the First World War. Hunger and disease were other pestilences that lingered on. As the French army lived off the land and as the American and British forces held on to their own supplies in their respective occupation zones, this meant that in Freiburg and within the French-Occupied Zone generally the daily calorie intake was about a third less. It was recorded that children under ten years of age were about seven to eight kilos underweight and were also anaemic. By April 1948, about 14% of boys and 13% of girls were tuberculin positive.54 Given these conditions, just how did Freiburg’s inhabitants survive? There are several explanatory factors. Many went to the countryside to try to get some extra food. This phenomenon became known as hamstern, it was self-help. If people were skilful—and disposed of the necessary money or goods to barter—hamstern 52 ‘French on top of their zone’, Irish Press, 2 October 1947 (INA). 53 Jessica Reinisch, The Perils of Peace: The Public Health Crisis in Occupied Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 266–7. 54 Neisen, Und wir leben immer noch!, 64–7, 68–78.

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could represent a supplementary calorie intake of up to 500 per person. Some farmers did good business and others were rather mean towards those who had nothing or very little to offer. The black market was thriving and represented a way to get extra food. Bartering was also done between people themselves. For example, shoes were exchanged for butter. Services were paid with goods like three eggs to have a shoe mended. Money was pretty much useless, and goods were much preferred. Another very noticeable form of self-help was the Trümmerfrauen (rubble women) be it in Freiburg, Berlin or elsewhere. Their task was to clear up the rubble in the streets and to make some houses inhabitable again with material that could be re-used,55 although it has recently been shown that the number of Trümmerfrauen involved in reconstruction efforts was very limited, that not sheer altruism but rather social pressure was the main explanation of their participation, and that they belonged to the founding myths of German reconstruction, West and East.56 Also, civil associations were constituted whose members would pledge to help each other out.57 The welfare associations played a prominent part. Caritas, for instance, provided some limited accommodation for the homeless. It was the same for the Badische Rote Kreuz (Baden Red Cross) which the French had renamed Badisches Hilfswerk (Baden Aid Agency). The City Council ordered the construction of emergency accommodation but was hampered by a lack of building material. Living space was rationed and the dwellings of former Nazis were commandeered. Emergency kitchens were set up as many inhabitants had lost their cooking equipment. Restaurants were to provide meals to those who worked and who had ration cards. In September 1945, the Freiburger Nothilfe (Freiburg Emergency Aid) was created and coordinated the efforts of city officials and volunteers of welfare organisations. Information was centralised and aid thus became coordinated and focused. The Bahnhofsmission (Railway Mission) looked after persons arriving at the railway station and there were many. The Jugendhilfswerk (Youth Aid Agency) was another good example of what could be done. It took care of young people who were in difficult circumstances and prevented them from becoming hardened criminals by providing them with jobs, for instance.58 Yet, there were obvious limits to self-help. There was a crying lack of adequate material and the French, and indeed other occupation forces, were indulging in the dismantling of factories as shown. In October 1946, the City Council made it compulsory for men aged 16–60 to spend one day on reconstruction every two 55 56 57 58

Neisen, Und wir leben immer noch!, 91–2, 93–100. Treber, Mythos Trümmerfrauen, 8, 15, 45, 58–61. Neisen, Und wir leben immer noch!, 97. Neisen, Und wir leben immer noch!, 100–11.

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months, but people who were weak could not participate in these activities for too long. Others spent their time on hamstern, but in the long run it became less of an option as people had simply nothing left to barter or had spent all their money. It was also a form of social injustice as those who had nothing were excluded, generally the weak and the elderly. The same applied to black market activities. Officials began to target black marketeers and important hamsterer. It was obvious that selfhelp was crucial but that it would not be sufficient. That was why the local authorities on the ground had to always undertake more and more.59 Foreign aid would complement their relief efforts. The Potsdam Agreement stipulated that the whole German population should do penance for their country’s war crimes. Foreign aid should first be distributed to foreign displaced persons (DPs) in the country. There was therefore some kind of an indirect interdiction to supplies being distributed to the locals. At the beginning, this was enforced but soon abandoned and obstacles to foreign aid were removed. Aid for Freiburg came from Switzerland, the United States, Norway, Ireland, the Vatican, Brazil, and Argentina. As Neisen puts it: ‘That within a short time after the war so many people around the world were willing to help those responsible for the war and the holocaust is remarkable’. To summarise, what in the end saved the inhabitants of Freiburg was a combination of self-help, foreign aid, the network of Churches, the Red Cross—the Churches and the Red Cross being prestigious bodies able to persuade the Allies that something drastic and urgent needed to be done—welfare associations, and good cooperation between city officials and welfare organisations. Then, in the second half of 1948, the Marshall Plan and currency reforms began and led to a gradual improvement of the situation.60 It had been the same elsewhere in Germany (except for the Marshall Plan, not implemented in the Soviet-Occupied Zone). What had Ireland’s aid contribution to Freiburg been? On 6 December 1945, M. F. Lalive of the Joint Relief Commission of the International Red Cross (JRC), arrived in Freiburg with Mary Hackett of the IRCS. It was an important visit as Ireland had the intention of sending 10 tons of butter to the city and Hackett needed to have a clear visual impression of the destruction. The idea was presumably that the more destruction she saw the more Ireland might give. Over the course of their visit both women met with local notables, including Clemens von Brentano in charge of relief operations in the region, ICRC delegate Herr Rinderspacher, Mayor Wolfgang Hoffmann, and Dr Noeggerath. The dreadful living conditions were discussed in detail as were plans for the distribution 59 Neisen, Und wir leben immer noch!, 97–100. 60 Neisen, Und wir leben immer noch!, 114–5, Switzerland (118), the United States (129), Norway (144), Ireland (158), the Vatican (159), Brazil (160), Argentina (161), 161–2, 162–6.

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of supplies. The next day, Hackett was introduced to Archbishop Conrad Gröber who received them in his destroyed palace, his bedroom now also being his office. Gröber was extremely pleased with the Irish gift. On the last day of their visit, the two women went to a working-class district where workers had built small wooden huts in which up to twelve people lived in appalling conditions. Some mothers had taken extra children whose parents had been killed.61 Hackett’s impressions of life in Freiburg were later published by the Irish Independent.62 In mid-December, the 10 tons of Irish butter arrived. It was decided that children up to eighteen years would receive 250 grams each, which represented about 24,000 individuals in total. 2 tons were earmarked for the elderly and public institutions and one ton for soup kitchens. Another ton would be kept in reserve. The local firms Dom, Holzhauer, Reinhardt, and Vierlinger and also dairy shops would look after the distribution. The French military authorities had no objections.63 The Freiburger Nachrichten wrote that after all there was a surprise for the young and elderly: ‘The butter came to Freiburg direct from Ireland in exemplary condition, wrapped in 400 boxes of 25 kg each. These boxes had a conical shape, a packing method as good as totally unknown in Germany, the practically of which really makes sense as it allows a handy and easy emptying’.64 Soon, messages of gratitude were sent to Ireland via Geneva. A brother and a sister sent a small card to the IRCS: ‘Many thanks for the butter you have sent us. Every time we are hungry. Otmar Siegel 16 years old. Anita Siegel 11 years old…’65 But among the letters, one stood out as it came from a prestigious family in the world of historians, one with Irish roots. Alexandra Saemisch wrote in English to the IRCS: Allow me, please, to extend to you my most heartfelt thanks for the wonderful gift I received from you. My boy has not seen such a slice of beautiful butter on his bread for a long time. It adds to my happiness to think this first white dove which has reached our sorely battered town of Freiburg after the deluge, has come from the home country of my grandmother, Clarissa Percival-Graves, daughter of John Cosbie-Graves, barrister in law, Dublin (born April 8th, 1808), who grew up in Ireland and later was married to the German historian, Leopold von Ranke.66 61 ACICR, O CMS C-028, ‘Rapport sur mon voyage à Fribourg-en-Brisgau [Freiburg im Breisgau] avec Mrs Hackett de la Croix-Rouge irlandaise du jeudi 6 au samedi 8 décembre 1945’, by M. F. Lalive, 14 December 1945. 62 ‘Life in a German city; Harrowing account by Irishwoman’, Irish Independent, 8 January 1946 (INA). 63 SAF, C5/2516, report of Wolfgang Hoffmann, mayor, 14 December 1945 & Commandant Monteux to Hoffmann, 17 December 1945. 64 SAF, C5/2516, ‘Wir danken Irland’, Freiburger Nachrichten, 22 December 1945. 65 ACICR, O CMS C-019, Otmar and Anita Siegel to IRCS (letter in English), 21 December 1945. 66 ACICR., O CMS C-023, Saemisch to IRCS, 27 December 1945.

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Von Brentano reported that 40% of the population had been included in the distribution, including Jews. He wrote that ‘the quality of the butter was excellent’. In a letter to the French military authorities, he explained that it had had very positive effects, especially since Freiburg disposed of less fat supplies than other cities, but also that it contributed to the uplifting of the general mood of the population.67 That was important. The sending of relief supplies showed that some people did care about Germans, even in faraway Ireland. It was a fine display of human solidarity. More was on the way. On 14 January 1946, Hoffmann informed von Brentano that a second shipment of 10 tons of Irish butter had reached Freiburg. The mayor commented that it had arrived at a point when undernourishment was bordering on starvation in the opinion of the local doctors and, of course, a general improvement could only take place if the food supply situation was permanently improved.68 Hoffmann was right and the sending of Irish and indeed other foreign supplies was a big step in the right direction and, as von Brentano had pointed out, it was uplifting. Reconstruction with weak and depressed people would take far longer to achieve. It is to be noted that not only Freiburg got Irish butter. The International Red Cross had decided to ship quantities to different areas in southern Germany as it had to be consumed quickly, which necessarily excluded more remote destinations: Schwenningen got 10,000 kilos, Saarbrucken 25,000, Lörrach 15,325 and Stuttgart 25,000.69 The proximity of the Swiss border proved to be some kind of a dairy blessing for the southerners. But not all were lucky enough to get Irish butter. A woman vented her spleen to the mayor in a bitter letter and complained that, yet again, large families were being privileged. ‘Has one forgotten that quickly’, she remarked, ‘that is was precisely Nazi women who for the sake of getting favours and impressing Nazis “offered the Führer children”, often in really irresponsible and degrading ways…?’ ‘On behalf of many’, she wanted the elderly and former prisoners of war to be included in the distribution or a more equitable distribution anyway. Hoffmann immediately replied that he could not do much as he was obliged to respect the distribution wishes of the donors, the IRCS in this case. However, on a personal note he added that ‘her comments on Nazi girls and Nazi women were unfortunately very true’.70 Survival instincts and competition were at large in the hungry streets of Freiburg. But supplies kept coming. 67 SAF, C5/2516, von Brentano to Rinderspacher, ICRC, Freiburg, 12 January 1946. 68 SAF, Hoffmann to von Brentano, 14 January 1946. 69 ACICR, O CMS C-020, report (draft) by Dr Oliver Long for the economic section of the International Red Cross, 22 January 1946. 70 Harald Münzner, ‘Irische Liebesgaben’, irland journal, 4/97, in http://www.gaeltacht.de/download/pdf/ Artikel_all.pdf (accessed on 25 September 2015).

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In February, Hoffmann wrote a note: ‘Say thanks to the Irish Red Cross for: 20 tons of bacon, about 10 tons of sugar, and about 3 tons of cheese’.71 The arrival of bacon, perhaps not that much of a luxury in normal times, was nothing short of sensational. The Badische Zeitung published a mouth-watering article, stating: ‘Was it possible, it smelt of bacon!’ Its reappearance had become all the talk in Freiburg, ‘even the pessimists in everyday life looked on the bright side for a few hours; there had been bacon for dinner’. ‘This time, the housewives could not wash the dishes under cold water without any problem as the plates were greasy’, the newspaper continued. Everybody talked about the Red Cross and Ireland, and ‘people opened their atlas to be sure where Ireland was, that country that had been providing butter and bacon for several weeks past to enliven the meagre fare’.72 The chocolate firm Suchard in Lörrach planned to use part of the Irish sugar and milk powder to produce foodstuffs for children. Another part would be used for jam.73 On 5 April, the Badische Zeitung announced that an Irish meal for children had been organised in the university refectory and parents were reminded to bring plates and spoons. The event had been organised by the Badisches Hilfswerk.74 It was successful as 1,537 undernourished children got something to eat. The first day, each child got 1/2 a litre of soup, made with nutritious porridge, and 50 grams of cheese. The second day, each child got 1/2 a litre of mush with 100 grams of jam. As the Freiburg Food Office was not able to supply much bread, the children were urged to bring two slices with them every second day. There was also a weekly ration of 480 grams of porridge or mush with 150 grams of cheese and 300 grams of jam per child. According to the calculations of the Badisches Hilfswerk, meals could be provided over a period of eight weeks.75 Nuns helped the ladies of the Badisches Hilfswerk in the preparation of the food and its distribution while schoolmasters came to supervise.76 Archbishop Gröber was deeply touched and asked the French occupation authorities to transmit a letter of thanks to the Irish people: ‘May God bless the Emerald Isle and its merciful inhabitants! This prayer I repeat for the day, this is my exhortation to the Catholics of my town and diocese that they never may forget Ireland, whose missionaries in times of old also brought us the doctrine of the Cross and our Saviour. Thus past time with its spiritual needs and present time with

71 72 73 74 75 76

SAF, C5/2516, note by Hoffmann, 6 February 1946. SAF, C5/2516, ‘Der irische Speck’, Badische Zeitung, 12 February 1946. SAF, C5/2516, note by the City Council, 26 February 1946. SAF, C5/2516, ‘Irische Kinderspeisung beginnt’, 5 April 1946. SAF, C5/2516, report by the Badisches Hilfswerk on the Irish meal for children, 10 April 1946. ACICR, O CMS C-020, report by Rinderspacher, ICRC delegate in Freiburg, 23 April 1946.

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its physical and spiritual needs join hands.’77 The local ICRC delegate was equally praiseworthy: ‘It was a joyful and touching moment when 400 children, the boys loudly and quick, the girls hesitatingly and quiet, were rushing down the broad staircase into the hall and taking place around the tables arranging their cups and spoons. After a short prayer, the meal was distributed, and the clattering and licking began. Soon afterwards the cups were clean and the band [sic, group] had to make place for the next group.’78 Yet, two months later there was some petty complaint, probably by parents, that the schoolmasters had been given food and that some slices of cheese were thicker than others despite the fact that the weight of children had increased by two kilos as doctors had established.79 Others, who might have reason to complain although they were not in a position to do so, were Nazi detainees in the nearby Freiburg-Betzenhausen internment camp where 1,500 of them were kept.80 During a meeting of the City Council at which members of all political parties were present it was deemed impossible to give part of the Irish sugar to the detainees as it could not be justified to the Irish people. Instead, it was decided to send sugar to baby homes.81 Freiburg received other Irish supplies in November 1946 and in March 1947.82 The latter gave rise to some criticisms by the Badische Zeitung, Das Volk, and Unser Tag which pointed out deficiencies in the distribution as the police had had to restore order in the ‘gigantic queues’ in front of the single office assigned to issue the necessary ration cards. The sick, young, and old got bacon but the factory workers did not.83 The reality was that not everybody could get food supplies and that tough choices had to be made. Also, Freiburg could not expect to get aid on a regular basis from Ireland. Towards the end of 1947, the local press announced that Ireland had yet again made a magnificent and large-scale donation that would be distributed in Germany and Austria by the National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC).84 But the supplies did not come to the city this

77 EAF, Nachlass Conrad Gröber, Korrespondenz mit den Besatzungsmächten, letter to the Irish people by Gröber, 23 April 1946. 78 ACICR, O CMS C-020, report by Rinderspacher, ICRC delegate in Freiburg, 23 April 1946. 79 SAF, C5/2516, Badisches Hilfswerk to Mayor of Freiburg, 28 June 1946. 80 Neisen, Und wir leben immer noch!, 196. 81 SAF, C5/2516, note by the Mayor of Freiburg for Commandant Riesterer, detention camp for NSDAP members, 1 February 1947. 82 SAF, C5/2516, Hoffmann to Rinderspacher, 27 November 1946 & ‘Irischer Speck für Kranke’, Badische Zeitung, 4 March 1947. 83 SAF, C5/2516, ‘Die Ausgabe der irischen Spende’, Badische Zeitung, 7 March 1946; ‘Zur Speckspende!’, Das Volk, 8 March 1946 & ‘Der irische Speck’, Unser Tag, 15 March 1947. 84 SAF, C5/2516, ‘Spende des irischen Volkes’, Das Volk, 26 November 1947; ‘Eine irische Spende’, Badische Zeitung, 12 December 1947 & ‘Ein Weinachtsgeschenk der Bevölkerung Irlands’, Das Neue Baden, 12 December 1947.

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time. About a year later, the director of the Freiburg Welfare Office informed the mayor that the NCWC would distribute Irish supplies but would focus on Berlin. Caritas in the diocese of Freiburg and the rectories would be in charge of the distribution but Caritas stressed that the supplies for the region of Baden would be limited.85 Not the whole of Germany could be looked after and local circumstances were often of paramount importance. As the Cold War was rapidly developing and as Stalin had ordered the blockade of western Berlin, it was to be expected that the NCWC had prioritised the German capital. But Freiburg had received a fair share of supplies from the Don Irlandais and the IRCS. Bacon, butter, sugar, and clothes had helped the inhabitants in their struggle for survival. What about other areas in the western occupation zones?

Irish aid in the French-Occupied Zone France had only been asked to participate in the occupation of Germany in February 1945 by the British. It therefore faced a very difficult task as it was just emerging from several years of German occupation and had very little time to prepare for becoming an occupier itself. The French, authorities and public opinion alike, were not prepared to finance the reconstruction of their occupation zone.86 Their occupation policy was predictably harsh to begin with as they were fuelled by feelings of revenge after the defeat of 1940 and the ensuing German occupation. During the Nuremberg Trials, one French official claimed that at least 150,000 Frenchmen and women died from undernourishment caused by the Germans. The main aim of the French was to render the German population less Prussian-minded, in other words, to lessen its militaristic spirit. Germans should be educated to think differently and made to espouse the democratic values of Western Europe. France’s security at its eastern borders had to be assured once and for all.87 By the autumn of 1945, there were 330,000 French in the zone, which was proportionally far higher than the number of Americans and British in their respective zones.88 There was a lack of discipline among some French troops, and French administration developed slowly because of a lack of clear political directives from Paris. It was also the case that many German officials had fled, and this posed administrative problems

85 SAF, C5/2516, director of Freiburg Welfare Office to Mayor’s Office, 20 December 1948. 86 Laure Humbert, ‘French Politics of Relief and International Aid; France, UNRRA and the Rescue of Displaced Persons in Postwar Germany, 1945–47’, Journal of Contemporary History, 2016, Vol. 51(3): 608–609. 87 Reinisch, The Perils of Peace, 285, 255–6. 88 Karen H. Adler, ‘Selling France to the French: The French Zone of Occupation in Western Germany, 1945–c.1955’, Contemporary European History, vol. 21, no. 4 (November 2012): 577–8.

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at first. Moreover, the French army was to be supplied with resources from the zone and this in turn created problems for the feeding and housing of the German population. In Baden-Baden alone, there were 17,000 French who needed to be fed with rations that were higher than those of the locals.89 Hunger was rampant in the streets of cities, towns, and villages. The FrenchOccupied Zone was most important for the JRC as it was on the border with Switzerland and all supplies had to transit there. On 7 December 1945, an agreement was signed between the French military authorities and the ICRC guaranteeing distribution of aid to the civilian population. The JRC was to tell the ICRC delegate in Baden-Baden beforehand that supplies were ready to leave Swiss territory. The ICRC delegate then was to warn the French. Clearance of customs duties could be obtained only after the French gave their authorisation. The ICRC delegation in the zone did not carry out distribution operations itself but only supervised them. Distribution was done by Hilfsausschüße, local aid committees, which had replaced the German Red Cross (DRK). Others like Caritas, Protestant Churches, and Quakers also helped. The Don Suisse sent its own teams on occasion. The Don Irlandais provided essentially condensed milk, tinned meat, and blankets notably to Freiburg im Breisgau, Koblenz, Ludwigshafen, Saarbrücken, Trier, Schwenningen, Neustadt, and Lörrach.90 Besides Freiburg and its vicinity, a first arrival of Irish supplies took place in Saarbrücken in Saarland, just on the border with France. 25,000 kilos of butter reached the city on 20 December 1945. As the French had temporarily abolished the DRK in their zone—it had been tainted with Nazi ideology91—the chairman of the Saar government set up a new organisation called Central Relief and Assistance Committee for the Saar District which was entrusted with the distribution. All ‘necessitous children and nursing mothers of the Saar District’ would get butter. It was immediately transported to the municipal dairy of Saarbrücken and eventually divided into packs of 250 grams and distributed in four schools on 24 December, Christmas Eve.92 In April 1946 in the not too distant ancient Roman city of Trier, Gotthard Drumm, a local trade-unionist, had sensed the moral significance of the Irish and Swiss supplies and wrote to the mayor: ‘The magnanimity of the gesture can be only measured by those who are able to understand the enmity brought about by the disastrous war provoked by Germany. We trade unions as democratic 89 Reinisch, The Perils of Peace, 265–6, 268–9, 271, 284–5. 90 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 426–8. 91 Stafford, Endgame 1945, 456. 92 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/1, ‘Donation of the Irish Government to the Civilian Population of Central and Eastern Europe; Distribution of 200 tons of butter in Austria and Germany, report no 3’, by JRC.

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institutions know how the world has suffered from German terror. We are therefore all the more grateful for this generous donation’.93 During Easter 1946, Valentin Bauer, the Mayor of Ludwigshafen, a city which had been targeted 121 times by Allied bombers, wrote to the ICRC delegation in Freiburg to notify that 40 tons of Irish sugar and 21 tons of Irish bacon had safely arrived. About 8,000 seriously undernourished children received one kilo of sugar each and a further 12,000 received a pound each.94 Dr Jaecki wrote that ‘the sugar was not only a valuable enrichment of the food for our older children, but also was nearly a life-saver for our babies who occasionally had to be fed almost without any carbohydrates’. Lotte Müller, a teacher, described what she witnessed in her school: ‘Many children were allowed to manage the supplies themselves. They nibbled slowly and carefully at their bacon and butter, or licked a spoon of sugar’.95 The Rheinpfalz reported that ‘Irish Easter bunnies’ brought sugar and bacon instead of Easter eggs, and deemed that it was a display of ‘genuine Christian solidarity’.96 These references to Christianity in letters and articles indicated that the Germans were suddenly re-experiencing religious feelings. It was true that many now turned towards the Churches for spiritual and moral guidance and regeneration in these troubled postwar years and the construction of a new society was going to be based on Christian principles.97 Another city in the French-Occupied Zone which benefitted from Irish aid was Koblenz, where the Rhine and Mosel met. It received sugar which was divided between Koblenz and communes in the vicinity. The Mayor of Lieser, a small town surrounded by steep vineyards on the slopes of the Mosel Valley, acknowledged receipt of 128.8 kilos of Irish sugar and 21.25 kilos of Swiss chocolate. A leftover of one kilo of sugar was put at the disposal of the local aid committee. In his letter to the District Welfare Office, the mayor had included a list of 259 names of young people aged between four and fourteen who got sugar and chocolate. The children, or in some cases their parents, were required to sign the document below:

93 94 95 96 97

ACICR, O CMS C-020, Drumm to Mayor of Trier, 2 April 1946. ACICR, O CMS C-020, Bauer to ICRC delegation, 4 April 1946. ACICR, O CMS C-020, Jaecki to Mayor of Ludwigshafen, 24 July 1946 & Müller to IRCS, 24 July 1946. NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2, ‘Irländische Osterhasen in Ludwigshafen’, 6 April 1946. Bessel, Germany 1945, 312–3.

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284 · Chapter Nine Table 9.1. Evidence of receipt [of Irish sugar and Swiss chocolate] by youths aged 4–14 [extract, Lieser] 98 Number ... 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 …

Name … W., Marlene W., Josef W., Günther Wolff, Christine L., Sybilla W., Klaus W., Erwin P., Hildegard P., Helmut P., Hugo …

Date of birth … ../../32 ../../33 ../../36 ../../39 ../../35 ../../42 ../../41 ../../37 ../../38 ../../41 …

Number … 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 …

Name … S., Gudrun T., Anni B., Hedwig J., Gertrud K., Peter K., Renate K., Erwin K., Marianne K., Theodor F., Martha …

Date of birth … ../../41 ../../33 ../../39 ../../39 ../../36 ../../37 ../../34 ../../37 ../../38 ../../35 …

Establishing such lists allowed the authorities to avoid abuse and fraud and showed that relief supplies reached those for whom they were meant. Occasionally, the local authorities had to improvise and take executive decisions on the spot. In Schramberg (Baden-Württemberg), a ‘committee of irreproachable citizens’ had been set up. When it received Irish foodstuffs, it asked a doctor to select those children who needed food most. However, the doctor found out that almost all the children were undernourished. The committee was therefore presented with a dilemma: ‘…if we had excluded the few other children, sadness would have been the result’. As the meaning of the IRCS’s gift was ‘to create joy and not tears among children’, the committee decided to add to the Irish supplies ‘a certain amount of oat flakes to increase even more the nutritional value of the foodstuffs but also with the aim of being able to distribute meals for a longer period’. The result was that meals could be provided to over 2,000 children for a period of several weeks.99 Eventually, the French-Occupied Zone was economically merged with Bizonia (American and British zones) to form Trizonia in 1949, laying the economic foundations of the Federal Republic of Germany, or West Germany. France participated in the Marshall Plan. The living conditions for Germans in the zone and in the French sector in Berlin improved.100

98 LHAK, B655,212 Nr 1642, Mayor of Lieser to District Welfare Office, 8 February 1947 [names and dates of birth have been anonymised]. 99 ACICR, O CMS C-020, Mayor of Schramberg to IRCS, through the International Red Cross, 17 April 1946. 100 Reinisch, The Perils of Peace, 287.

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92 tons 70 tons 20 tons 9 tons 100 tons 1500 pairs 600

2nd Irish gift, 1946 & 1947 Foodstuffs 677.84 tons Textiles 6.29 tons

Irish aid in the American-Occupied Zone Of all the occupied zones, the American one was the least affected by destruction although there were many problems with displaced persons (DPs). Usually, the Americans considered the Germans law-abiding people and harboured no feelings of hatred towards them. Many had sympathy for the plight of the locals. US soldiers had generally little interest in politics and history, and also felt some cultural affinities with the country. The Germans, in turn, got on well with the occupiers who seemed to have endless supplies at their disposal. They also felt that their zone was the best one to live in and that the Americans would treat them fairly. The US military administration never experienced the serious food issues that the British had in their zone. They were also convinced that if democratisation was to succeed, it was imperative to build up a solid economic infrastructure. Democratisation was one of the arguments that explained why Washington agreed to increase food exports to the zone.102 Daily calorie intake oscillated between 1,200 and 1,400 thanks to food imports from the United States. Medicines were sent from Switzerland and several national Red Cross societies of the British Empire. First, the JRC had to inform the ICRC in Berlin of a next shipment of supplies. Then, the ICRC informed the Office of the Military Government of the United States (OMGUS) which gave the authorisation to import. The Americans had set up local aid committees ran by German civilians for the distribution of supplies. In Stuttgart, there was a central office, the Zentralkomitee der freien Wohlfahrtsverbände (Central Committee of Free Welfare Associations) which determined where the supplies should go and who should be entitled to them, taking into account the wishes of the donors. Like in the other zones, different organisations were involved such as Caritas, the Evangelisches 101 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 174, 183. 102 Reinisch, The Perils of Peace, 192, 192–3, 196–7, 211–2, 212, 213.

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Hilfswerk (Protestant Welfare Organisation), the Arbeiter Wohlfahrt (Workers’ Welfare Service), and regional branches of the DRK (unlike the French and the Soviets, the Americans had not suppressed the German Red Cross). However, even though the situation was generally better, it did not mean that there were no problems in the American-Occupied Zone. The JRC was only allowed to operate there in March 1946 whereas it had been operating in the other two western zones for several months already. Moreover, many refugees and expellees kept arriving and the situation in camps soon reached breaking point. In April 1946, the first supplies from the Don Irlandais were distributed to refugee children in the camps of Hof, Fürth, and Schedding (Passau) and in the cities of Munich, Nuremberg, Stuttgart, Mannheim, Kassel, and Frankfurt am Main. In Hof, Irish sugar and condensed milk were entrusted to local religious institutions. The sugar was frequently used in school canteens ran by the Don Suisse to complement and improve the meals.103 It was clear that the JRC and the Americans were not on the best of terms in the early postwar period. When, in December 1945, the Union internationale de Secours aux Enfants (UISE, International Save the Children Union) contacted the JRC to send help to Hungarian children in Bavaria, the JRC replied that it was willing to send a small quantity of Irish sugar but that there could be a major difficulty as ‘… the Americans are opposed to relief operations in their occupying zone in Germany. We were even informed that supplies sent by the Swedes would have been confiscated by the American army’. But the JRC pointed out that an exception might be made in this particular case as it was about ‘Hungarian children’,104 in other words, not German. Yet, it was clear that the Americans had to condone breaches of the rules they sought to impose in the interest of the general situation. Shortly afterwards, the Stuttgart Welfare Office submitted for approval a distribution plan of 3,000 kilos of Irish butter to the Württemberg Red Cross. It was only partly approved. The Württemberg Red Cross noticed that refugees had been excluded and as the wishes of the donor stipulated that they had to be included, it replied that it would receive only 2,000 kilos and that it would find other ways to distribute the remaining 1,000 kilos to refugees. Eventually, the Stuttgart Welfare Office distributed 500 kilos to children’s hospitals and homes, 750 kilos to the Internal Mission of the Evangelical Church, 250 kilos to Caritas Stuttgart, 150 kilos to the Württemberg Welfare Union and 350 kilos to the children’s day nurseries of the Stuttgart Welfare Office.105 In September 1946, Stuttgart received 505 kilos of Irish 103 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 431–2. 104 ACICR, O CMS C-025, JRC to Mrs G. Morier-Pictet, 12 December 1945. 105 SAS, B201/1, Nr 3025, Red Cross Württemberg to Stuttgart Welfare Office, 18 December 1945 & Stuttgart Welfare Office to Red Cross Württemberg, 21 December 1945.

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sugar which, as Mayor Arnulf Klett described, was ‘so rare for us and so desired by young and old people’.106 Sometimes those in charge faced heartbreaking decisions. In the Bavarian village of Grabenstätt am Chiemsee between Munich and Salzburg, the principal of the local elementary school got a pound of Irish sugar for twenty-five undernourished children. His school had 300 pupils, mainly refugees and evacuees. He asked a doctor to examine them and distribute the sugar to the neediest ones. ‘The choice was therefore very difficult; it was however done to the best of our knowledge and ability’, the principal wrote to the Bavarian Red Cross.107 Unlike what had happened in Schramberg in the French-Occupied Zone where in the end all the children got something, it was not feasible in Grabenstätt as dividing 500 grams of sugar between 300 pupils would have been nonsensical. If insufficient supplies could constitute a problem, theft could be another. In February 1947, a train left Stuttgart for Bremen in northern Germany, which was an American enclave in the British-Occupied Zone. Inside were 3,306 kilos of Irish bacon. It took four weeks to reach its destination (approximately 630 kilometres) and when it arrived, only 790 kilos remained as the wagon had been robbed. The Bremen Regional Committee for the Distribution of Foreign Donations was now obliged to revise its distribution plan for 6,000 children and elderly over the age of seventy who initially were meant to get 500 grams each. The decision was eventually taken to distribute what was left to the elderly only. However, the German Central Committee in Stuttgart contacted other regional committees for assistance and Württemberg/Nordbaden and Hessen, located in the American-Occupied Zone, respectively gave 400 and 350 kilos to Bremen in compensation. Éamon de Valera was personally informed of this situation.108 It was a good display of inter-regional committee solidarity. Yet, such solidarity should not always be taken for granted in times of hunger. In September 1950, the Bavarian Red Cross acknowledged receipt of certain quantities of meat sent by the IRCS but was not satisfied with the sharing, especially where Berlin was concerned. It informed the general-secretariat of the DRK in Berlin that it would have preferred to see the sixteen boxes of Irish meat distributed as follows: ‘5 boxes for Bavaria; 5 boxes for Lower Saxony; 3 boxes for Schleswig-Holstein; 3 boxes for Berlin’ and added that ‘your preferential treatment for Berlin is at the expense of the British Zone’. The Bavarians could not understand why Berlin was being privileged and got more meat,

106 SAS, B201/1, Nr 3025, Red Cross Württemberg to Klett, 19 September 1946 & Klett to Red Cross Württemberg, 25 September 1946. 107 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/18, manager elementary school, Grabenstätt, to Head District Bavarian Red Cross, Traunstein, 7 December 1946. 108 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/7, Bremen Regional Committee to de Valera, 30 June 1947.

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a criticism that was rejected by the general-secretariat as unfounded.109 Perhaps there was some old Bavarian-Prussian antagonism in the air. In November 1947, Brigadier-General Walter J. Muller wrote to de Valera to thank Ireland for an ‘unusually large shipment of relief gifts from the Irish people’ due to arrive in Munich via Switzerland and of which he had been informed by the local NCWC representative: Before I relinquish shortly my duties as Director of Military Government for Bavaria and return home, I feel impelled to express my heartfelt gratitude to you and your people for this most generous gift. I am fully aware that such a large shipment was made possible only by a noble spirit of sacrifice on the part of the Irish people, which could only spring out of their deep-rooted Christian charity. Your gifts are of invaluable assistance to us in caring for the universally destitute population of our zone and land in Germany, and we gratefully recognize this fact. Through them, we can hasten the day when the German people can enjoy a normal, secure life.110

Muller’s letter was perfectly in line with the Americans’ new policy in their occupation zone. There was no more talk of punishing the Germans. A few months earlier, the announcement of the Marshall Plan had been a clear indication that Washington would protect the Germans under their care against Soviet influence. The rehabilitation of western Germany was becoming a definite aim in US foreign policy, and the Americans were in a position to look after the food and medical needs of the local population.111 Irish supplies played their part in this rehabilitation. Table 9.3. Don Irlandais in the American-Occupied Zone 112 1st Irish gift, 1946 Stuttgart, sugar Stuttgart, underwear Hof, sugar Hof, condensed milk

168 tons 15 bales 30 tons 4 tons

2nd Irish gift, 1946–1947 Foodstuffs 260.281 tons Textiles 5.022 tons

109 DRK, DRK-GS-Berlin-DRK-1587, Bavarian Red Cross to General Secretariat, Berlin, 9 September 1950 & General Secretariat, Berlin, to Bavarian Red Cross, 16 October 1950. 110 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/6, Muller to de Valera, 3 November 1947. 111 Reinisch, The Perils of Peace, 218–9. 112 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 174–5, 182.

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Irish aid in the British-Occupied Zone The British faced many problems in their zone of occupation located in northern and western Germany. In March 1945, Hitler had ordered a scorched earth policy which obliterated much of the agricultural sector. In the North-Rhine area, about 10,000 farms were thus destroyed. Of a total of about 13,000 kilometres of railroad tracks, about one thousand had survived the incessant Allied bombing raids. This would hamper the transport of relief supplies. Bands of plundering DPs in the area were a preoccupying security issue. Many civilians who had sought refuge in the countryside were now returning to their devasted cities and towns. In the Ruhrgebiet, the heartland of Germany’s industry, about 40,000 people were heading home, or what was left of home, daily. The British were certainly not helped by the fact that their occupation zone was overpopulated with the arrival of numerous refugees. As seen, the Potsdam conference had agreed to ‘maximise agricultural output’, but this proved difficult and the Allies did not coordinate their efforts. The Soviets did send 260,000 tons of grain, sugar and potatoes to the British and American zones and agreed to send 13,400 tons of grain each month to the British zone although that never materialised.113 The British did not have enough staff to oversee agreed production quotas, and some German farmers and local committees in charge of food distribution did not play fair. The British imposed fines but inconsistently so, and fines proved to have no dissuasive effect. The result was that no equitable distribution of food was guaranteed. John Hynd, the first head of the Control Office for Germany and Austria (COGA), replaced in March 1947 by Lord Pakenham who had roots in Ireland, was not considered to be a good administrator. In February 1946, Field Marshal Montgomery wanted more cereals and did not mince his words in a telegram to Hynd: ‘If we do not [get more food] we shall produce death and misery to an extent which will disgrace our administration in history and completely stultify every effort which we are making to produce a democratic Germany.’ There were tensions between the Americans and the British regarding the supplying of food but eventually in May 1946, the Americans agreed to send important quantities of wheat to the British-Occupied Zone.114 The agreement with the Americans was urgently needed as there had been food riots. Under these conditions, it was not surprising that infant mortality rates were high in the Ruhr area. A study conducted by Allied scientists in 1946 revealed that child malnutrition was pronounced in Wuppertal as babies born in 1937 were on

113 Farquharson, The Western Allies and the Politics of Food, 24–26, 30–2, 33, 43. 114 Farquharson, The Western Allies and the Politics of Food, 67, 71, 76, 238–9, 247, 85, 118–19, 126.

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average 185 grams heavier than those born in 1945.115 German doctors expressed serious concern about the deteriorating health of the people. In June 1947, the Chamber of Physicians met and declared that ‘the conscience of the world could not tolerate any longer the alarming decline of the German people’s health’.116 It was strongly and eloquently put. But had the Chamber used similar words for the Jewish population during the war? It has been established that almost half of the German doctors had adhered to the Nazi Party.117 How much food the Germans were getting was hotly disputed. Some British officials claimed that the locals were falsifying facts and were actually better fed than others in Central and Southern Europe.118 However, what was very clear was that their situation was not enviable. After successful negotiations with the head of the Civilian Relief Units of the British Red Cross on 30 October 1945, subsequently confirmed by the military authorities, the ICRC was authorised to distribute supplies in the zone. The Ruhr area, the Rhineland, and Hamburg were particularly badly off. Irish supplies first went to Düsseldorf where they were taken care of by the local aid committee and other welfare organisations, and to nearby München-Gladbach (nowadays Mönchengladbach) where the mayor took charge. The ICRC made sure that supplies were distributed in accordance with the wishes of the donors. Medical supplies of the Don Irlandais in Düsseldorf were distributed to hospitals by the local health office. School canteens in the two cities were provided with Irish foodstuffs. For six days a week, 20,000 children aged 3–6 in Düsseldorf and 5,905 in München-Gladbach were served a meal made of flour, biscuits, sugar, and condensed milk, which represented a supplementary daily diet of about 350 calories per child. These canteens operated from April until July 1946. Lübeck, Hamburg, and Hanover in northern Germany and Essen in the Ruhr area also received Irish supplies. The Don Suisse, the Association suisse des Samaritains (Swiss Association of Samaritans) and the German community in South Africa were equally active in the area.119 In February 1946, Fred Schwab, the ICRC delegate in the British-Occupied Zone, travelled in the North-Rhine province to ascertain the situation and make a detailed plan for the use and distribution of Irish supplies. Two cities especially came to his attention, Düsseldorf and München-Gladbach (Mönchengladbach) 115 Filip Slaveski, The Soviet Occupation of Germany. Hunger, Mass Violence, and the Struggle for Peace, 1945– 1947 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 92–5. 116 Reinisch, The Perils of Peace, 179. 117 Bruno Halioua, ‘Comment peut-on expliquer les crimes des médecins nazis à Auschwitz?’, La Presse Médicale, vol. 47, no. 5 (May 2018) : 491. 118 Reinisch, The Perils of Peace, 183–4. 119 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 428–30, 174.

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where no relief had been sent so far. The food supplies sent by the Irish could not make up an entire meal but could serve as supplements. It was expected that the critical period would not occur before March. Masses of people were returning to cities and towns, augmented by the ever-increasing influx of eastern refugees and expellees. In Düsseldorf, Schwab continued, many lived in former airraid shelters which could house anything between 700 to 2,000 people. The living conditions were appalling as entire families lived in cramped and damp spaces and got very little sunshine. As many children had no shoes, few went to school. Schwab remarked: ‘Much useful work could be done here in these shelters with the help of the supplies furnished by the Irish Donation [Gift]; the children could receive, under supervision, the additional food they vitally require’.120 The suffocating atmosphere in these air-raid shelters turned into makeshift habitations had also been noticed by Deputy Brian Brady during his tour on the continent on behalf of the IRCS. He wrote about ‘very little ventilation or light’ and ‘undernourished’ children.121 Shortly afterwards, Schwab made a striking comment to the JRC. He heaped tons of praise on the Don Irlandais and the prime quality of its supplies. But he claimed that ‘. . . the Don Suisse would be far less appreciated; the sending of teams with Swiss goods makes things far more complicated (authorisations, visas etc.), alienates the occupying authorities and slows down the distribution. The shipments of the Don Irlandais take place rapidly with no representative of the Irish government; it is composed of urgently needed and first rate goods’.122 Did Schwab have a point? It remains difficult to compare Irish with Swiss supplies, although judging by the reactions of the people who got bacon, sugar, and blankets, Irish supplies were very much appreciated indeed. Then again, everything would have been most welcome in such dire circumstances. But there is a hint regarding the positive side of the absence of Irish supervising teams. The military authorities generally resented the presence of civilians in relief operations, people who told them what to do. The US army had a nickname for a special category of them: ‘welfare queens’. They were women who had built up social welfare experience during Roosevelt’s New Deal era and who, according to the army, thought they knew it all. Many were in UNRRA.123 Therefore, the absence of Irish personnel might well have had its advantages in some cases. 120 ACICR, O CMS C-023, ‘Report on a journey to the North-Rhine Province (Germany)’ by Fred Schwab, ICRC (in English), 14 February 1946. 121 NAI, DFA, 400 series part 2, 419/1/7, letter (unknown) to Department of the Taoiseach, 11 February 1947 containing ‘Report on visit to Germany, Austria and Hungary’, by Brady, 7 January 1947. 122 ACICR, O CMS 0-26, note, talk with Fred Schwab, by M. F. Lalive (meeting took place on 28 February 1946), 1 March 1946. 123 Shephard, The Long Road Home, p, 156.

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At the beginning of March, the Freiheit announced the arrival of 70 tons of foodstuffs which had been transported from Basel to Düsseldorf by truck. There had been many difficulties along the way owing to bad roads and inclement weather. The supplies were provided by the Irish government and by German prisoners of war in the United States. Their distribution would be carried out by the Welfare and Health Office together with the Military Government.124 In May, the Düsseldorfer Nothilfe, or Düsseldorf Benevolent Society as it styled itself in English, stated that since 15 April 1946, 20,000 children between three and six years of age had been receiving Irish food which had been handed over by Schwab. As there was no large central kitchen available in the city, twenty smaller kitchens were preparing the meals: ‘The daily soup-ration is 1/2 ltr. per head and contains: biscuit flour: 45 gr.; sugar: 35 gr; [and] condensed milk: 20 gr., which equals 350 calories’.125 The British paid much attention to the feeding of children and early in their occupation they introduced feeding programs specially designed for them.126 350 calories were not sufficient for these children but as Schwab had written it constituted ‘additional food they vitally require’. Every little bit helped. But these little bits could be seriously contended for. Bonn was taken in March 1945 by the US army and left to the British in May. The city was not located in a favourable transport network and this had repercussions during the very harsh winter of 1946–1947. Daily calorie intake went as low as 814. In March 1947, it became known that Irish bacon would be available to the students of the University of Bonn. During that semester, it was estimated that 3,532 out of about 4,000 students were underweight. The bacon would be added to the foodstuffs supplied by the Don Suisse and would not be distributed in portions lest it should be sold in the black market. But a conflict soon emerged between the student union, university authorities, and the DRK (German Red Cross) about who should be eligible to get some. The British military authorities also became involved. Initially, the union wanted all the students to get bacon. But, as that was found to be impossible, it was decided that only the neediest ones would be eligible after a medical examination. However, the examination took a long time as by mid-May only 50% of the students had turned up. Moreover, doctors complained about the behaviour of the students.127 In June, the union decided that professors and lecturers could also be included in the distribution, but like the students they too would have to undergo a medical 124 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22, ‘Lebensmittel für die notleitende Bevölkerung’, Freiheit, 5 March 1946. 125 ACICR, O CMS C-023, report of the Düsseldorfer Nothilfe (Düsseldorf Benevolent Society) on Irish donation for city [in English], 8 May 1946. 126 Farquharson, The Western Allies and the Politics of Food, 230–1. 127 Johannes J. Arens, ‘Die irische Speckspende von 1947’, Bonner Universitäts Blätter (Unversitäts­ gesellschaft Bonn, 2008), 37–47. The author is grateful to the Archive of the University of Bonn for having sent him the article.

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examination. Those who had been selected would receive 50 grams of bacon each. But the union now wanted to have the bacon smoked to keep it longer. A slaughterhouse was contacted, and the butchers set out to do the job but then claimed one kilo each to carry on with the smoking. Eventually, the bacon was used but 500 kilos, or perhaps 1,400 kilos according to another source, were left over. The editor of the university’s newspaper asked for 16 kilos to be distributed among his thirtytwo employees, but it would seem that they did not get it. It was a fine mess of conflicts and misunderstandings. Up to 70% of the students in the region of North Rhineland-Westphalia suffered from undernourishment.128 At the end of the day, everyone was hungry and thought of their interests first. Fortunately for the students, more foreign relief came notably from the Swedish Red Cross which organised a large-scale soup distribution during the winter semester of 1947–1948.129 It is to be noted that in cities something of a victim competition was occurring. In Bonn, many resented the massive arrivals of destitute eastern expellees and believed that they should tone down their demands. Consequently, the victims of air raids set up a Bund der Fliegergeschädigten (Association of Air Raid Victims) in October 1947, hoping to get preferential treatment in the distribution of supplies.130 Essen had been bombed more than 270 times. The Krupp factory had made it an obvious target for the Allies. In the ruins, survival was a daily battle. Those who disposed of a small garden allotment were lucky as it meant a source of extra food. In the city, about two fifths of the inhabitants were lucky in this respect,131 but food problems persisted. When the Swedish Red Cross’s feeding operation for small children ended, the Don Irlandais took over on 26 August 1946. The Irish had donated a ‘considerable amount of sugar’ to the city, but it was found impossible to distribute it to all the inhabitants. Instead, the Essener Nothilfe (Essen Emergency Agency) in agreement with the British Salvation Army managed to exchange the sugar for biscuits, milk powder, and other sugar and make a meal. This meal could be distributed to children aged three to six. Certainly, the Don Irlandais was on equal terms with the Don Suisse in Essen. It provided 19,500 children with four meals a week for a total of forty-three days while the Swiss provided 20,000 children with three meals a week for a total of thirty days.132 Twenty-four years later, when the new Irish ambassador to West Germany presented his letters of credence to Federal President Gustav Heinemann, the latter discussed Ireland’s help to Germany after the war. 128 Arens, ‘Die irische Speckspende von 1947’. 129 Christian George, Studieren in Ruinen: Die Studenten der Universität Bonn in der Nachkriegs­ zeit,1945–1955 (Göttingen: V&R unipress/Veröffentlichungen der Bonn University Press 2010), 216. 130 Kossert, Kalte Heimat, 12, 71. 131 Farquharson, The Western Allies and the Politics of Food, 229–30. 132 SAE, 834/1200, Sprechende Zahlen: Ein Tatigkeitsbericht der Essener Nothilfe für die Zeit von der Gründung bis zum 31. Dezember 1947, by Essener Nothilfe, 14–15.

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At the time, he had been the Mayor of Essen and he remembered well how useful Irish and Swedish help had been.133 When the Allied Council of Foreign Ministers met in November and December 1947 in London, it could not agree on a peace treaty for Germany and Austria. The Cold War was becoming more pronounced. It was increasingly certain that Germany would remain divided. This meant that for the western Allies it was imperative that their zones would become stable and viable. The British and the Americans had made the decision to economically integrate their respective zones at the beginning of that year. It became known as Bizonia, later as Trizonia when the French joined in 1948. Food shipments to Bizonia increased during the spring of 1948. This, in turn, helped the recovery to take place in the western zones. As well, the important ongoing food crisis in the critically needed industrial Ruhrgebiet for reconstruction, reaching new hights in 1948, had to be solved at all costs, but luckily the Marshall Plan began to be implemented in March. It cannot be said that the Germans in the western occupation zones were deliberately starved or received a normal ration of food. In the words of John E. Farquharson, ‘The truth was that Germans were in the main neither starving nor adequately fed: it was a diet that kept them alive, but hardly in a state to maintain a proper work-schedule. Not until mid-1948 was a proper standard attained in that respect [and] … Germans began to turn out the goods when food began to be in decent supply’.134 Unlike the other three occupying forces, the British appeared not to have a clear sense of mission in their zone. According to Jessica Reinisch, ‘Weighed down by concerns about occupation costs, the British found Germany disconcertingly dissimilar from the colonies they were used to administering, and the Germans themselves confusing and disturbing’.135 There is, perhaps, a hint of irony that Ireland, which used to be their oldest colony, gave them a helping hand in their occupation zone. Table 9.4. Don Irlandais in the British-Occupied Zone136 1st Irish gift, 1945 & 1946 Condensed milk 100 tons Sugar 100 tons

2nd Irish gift, June 1946–April 1947 Total amount of supplies 1461.785 tons

133 NAI, DFA, 2001/43/202, Paul Keating, Irish ambassador to the FRG, to Hugh James McCann, secretary for external affairs, 9 October 1970. 134 Farquharson, The Western Allies and the Politics of Food, 177, 241–2. 135 Reinisch, The Perils of Peace, 187. 136 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 174, 183.

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Irish helpers, DPs, and expellees Before focusing on Irish supplies in the Soviet-Occupied Zone and Berlin, how was support for displaced persons (DPs) and German expellees being organised? As seen in chapter three, an unknown number of Irishmen and women joined UNRRA and other relief organisations and were actively involved in helping the millions of DPs and expellees who were roaming on the roads of Europe and ended up in provisional camps. The creation of UNRRA was a major event in the setting up of the United Nations (UN) system. It meant that the UN would play the leading role in humanitarianism and no longer other private voluntary agencies, including the International Red Cross. UNRRA would be at the forefront of dealing with DPs.137 Immediately after the war, there were some 11 million DPs. Most of them were quickly repatriated, but there was a sizeable minority that refused to be sent back home, and many came from Central and Eastern Europe. By the end of 1946, there were still about 660,000 DPs in the western occupation zones of Germany. They were afraid of communism and the Soviets. US intelligence reported that many had also gotten a taste of American values and contrasted it with the Soviet regime. The anti-communist sentiments expressed by these people varied from one ethnic group to another. Polish-Ukrainians, for example, were vehemently anti-Soviet and many feared forced labour and being sent to Siberia. When Soviet officers appeared in their camps, DPs became very nervous.138 UNRRA employees were supposed to become international humanitarians, although two-thirds of them had an English-speaking background. The newly born organisation had laudable intentions, but its aims in relief and rehabilitation remained rather ill-defined. Yet, it was clear that it would be majorly involved in dealing with DPs. The training of its workers was uneven, and it was not clear what kind of skills they should possess.139 One such worker, Marvin Klemme, did not like what he perceived were attempts at indoctrination during his training by ‘instructors belonging to the extreme left wing of economic and political thought’.140 The consequence was that UNRRA’s performance was not always consistent. Many of its members had stereotypical images of DPs. They saw themselves as the generous rescuers while, in the words of Silvia Salvatici, the ‘“recipients” were intrinsically passive and apathetic’. UNRRA really overshadowed all other 137 G. Daniel Cohen, ‘Between relief and politics: Refugee humanitarianism in occupied Germany 1945– 1946’, Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 43, no. 3 (July 2008): 439. 138 Anna Holian, ‘Anticommunism in the Streets: Refugee Politics in Cold War Germany’, Journal of Contemporary History, 2010, vol. 45 (1): 139–40, 140–1. 139 Salvatici, ‘“Help the People to Help Themselves”’, 429. 140 Cohen, ‘Between Relief and Politics’, 441.

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relief agencies, but it was obvious that its workers bore in mind the experience of previous humanitarian agencies.141 Certain politicians distrusted UNRRA, ironically on both sides of the Iron Curtain. In the United States, some were convinced it was pro-Left while the Soviet ambassador in London, Ivan Maisky, believed it could be used by western agents in Eastern Europe.142 The American ambassador in Warsaw thought that UNRRA workers were not too critical of the local regime and that the communists used the organisation’s goods to their own political advantage. This was vehemently rejected by UNRRA workers who said that American and British propaganda was spreading lies and that stories in newspapers about the Polish authorities abusing UNRRA were either exaggerated or not true. It was evident that the internationalist humanitarian body that was UNRRA was caught in the crossfire that was the emerging Cold War.143 It was a similar story with Irish supplies distributed in Hungary and Yugoslavia as will be seen. Many facts and ideas about UNRRA expressed here are found back in the following impressions left by some of its Irish members. Pauline MacGuire was from a farming background in County Roscommon near Northern Ireland. During the war, she had organised the local branch of the IRCS. While on a holiday in Belfast, she heard of Lady Antrim’s Catholic Committee for Relief Abroad (CCRA) and decided to join. She and her team first went to the Netherlands and worked in Utrecht before heading to Maastricht where she worked in a school that had been turned into a hospital. They had brought with them medical supplies, clothes, and food, mostly provided by the English Catholic Women’s League. In Maastricht, she mainly looked after Jews who had survived the horror of Bergen-Belsen: It was night when they came, the crunch of ambulance wheels announcing their arrival. Some could walk. Others had to be carried, carefully, lest weakened bones and flesh should, in diabolic irony, disintegrate in this moment of rescue.144

In September 1945, they were transferred to Kiel in northern Germany where they worked with DPs in a camp which had been used by the Nazis previously. The gas chamber and a mass grave made a deep impression on MacGuire. The camp had to be made suitable for DPs who were in poor physical condition, and the former headquarters of the Gestapo was ‘raided for chairs and other available furniture’. 141 Salvatici, ‘“Help the People to Help Themselves”’, 429–30. 142 Crossland, Britain and the International Committee of the Red Cross, 183. 143 Reinisch, ‘Auntie UNRRA at the Crossroads’, 88, 92–3. 144 ‘Rooskey, but not Roscommon’, Irish Independent, 20 October 1956 (INA). The author contacted the local archives in Paderborn but unfortunately no trace was found of the ‘Irische Damen’.

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In June 1946, UNRRA took over the management of the camp and MacGuire and her team were sent to badly bombed Paderborn in the British-Occupied Zone where they quickly became known as the ‘Irische Damen’ (the Irish ladies). She organised ‘feeding schemes’ and no doubt her previous organisational experience with the IRCS was of great use. It was in Paderborn where she liaised with Mary Hackett of the IRCS to send 100 German children to Ireland for recuperation stays (in all about 500 German children would go to Ireland145). Many expellees from Germany’s former eastern provinces (now Poland) arrived in that area, and MacGuire and her colleagues had to be on standby: Warning of a train’s arrival might come at any hour of the day or night. Miss MacGuire drove a 15-ton truck. Her friend, Miss Addie McKenna, drove another. Off one train, they brought 100 nuns. There were old people, men and women. There were children of all ages. One bewildered old man had four umbrellas as his only luggage. He had gathered them up confusedly in his hasty flight. Some of the refugees had travelled for eight days, thirty to a carriage.146

MacGuire stayed in Germany for several years and became the representative of the NCWC in the North Rhineland-Westphalia area where she had a supervisory role and worked with local Catholic relief organisations. It seems fair to conclude that, besides her purely humanitarian instincts and compassion, relief work was a unique opportunity for her to break through the parish boundaries at home and get a professional experience that she would otherwise never have had, and it was also participating in an epoch-making period in history. Maureen Kelly was from Cork and had joined UNRRA. She was first sent to Duderstadt in the British-Occupied Zone where she and her colleagues had to look after some 4,000 people divided into three camps. These DPs had been used as slave labour by the Germans. She dealt mainly with Poles and Ukrainians. ‘Some would be repatriated. Others, whose country had been liberated from one occupation only to pass to another [Soviet] equally dreaded, would join the ranks of the refugees and the permanently displaced’, said Kelly. Many of them ‘fretted the hours away in their camps’ and eventually lived their family lives there with ‘the wives [having] their babies [and] the children [having] their usual childish complaints’.147 Kelly’s remarks were pertinent. There were about 200,000 Polish DPs in the American-Occupied Zone and about 400,000 in the British-Occupied Zone. 145 See Molohan, Germany and Ireland 1945–1955, Chapter Three, ‘Humanitarian aid after the war’, 39–66. 146 ‘Rooskey, but not Roscommon’, Irish Independent, 20 October 1956 (INA). 147 ‘Westward home!’, Irish Independent, 28 May 1955 (INA).

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Many did not want to return home where the communists were taking over. The Free Polish Army incited them to stay in Germany. However, the American military authorities believed that life for these Polish DPs had to be made harsher to incite them to leave. There was in fact no coherent UNRRA policy on this issue.148 Kelly ended up in the Hanover sector where she had ‘five area supervisors in her “command” [which in turn] had each mobile staffs of eighty to one hundred nurses’ to look after 200,000 DPs in the area.149 Like MacGuire, she got important responsibilities which she probably would not have had in Ireland. Dr Michael P. Flynn also joined UNRRA. In October 1945, he learnt that he would go to a DP camp in Verden in the British-Occupied Zone. It was populated mainly by Eastern Europeans. Like Kelly, Flynn noticed that many of them, including Russians, dreaded to be repatriated to their respective countries where the Red Army was now in charge. The Soviets visited the camp to determine the nationality of the DPs as it had been agreed between the Allies that all DPs of Soviet nationality should be sent back home. In Flynn’s words: ‘…I never witnessed such terror as engulfed the Stateless group on those occasions’. He learnt that in another camp Soviet soldiers had shot at DPs who protested against their repatriation, killing three.150 Generally, UNRRA workers did not take part in the forcible repatriation of Soviet citizens but tried to convince DPs to return home voluntarily all the more since they were considered to be a burden for the Allies and the German economy.151 That was not going to be an easy task. According to Flynn, ‘camp occupants were encouraged to engage in whatever work suited them and also in arts and crafts’. Ukrainian women were ‘expert needlewomen’ and he brought them some linen as there was a shortage of textiles.152 However, attempts to nurse back DPs into normal social activities were difficult. Surprisingly at first sight, they often vented their spleens towards those who had just liberated them. But their aggressive behaviour became less surprising when it was taken into account that they had just gone through traumatic experiences at the hands of the Nazis and felt useless and unworthy as human beings. To many helpers, it looked as if adult DPs had become like children again, being greedy, insatiable, sometimes incapable of focusing, restless, and apathetic. Also, understandably after their experiences, there was a strong distrust of authority among them, even Allied authority.153 In the beginning, Flynn did not see much of the locals: 148 Shephard, The Long Road Home, 202–204. 149 ‘Westward home!’, Irish Independent, 28 May 1955 (INA). 150 Flynn, Medical Doctor of Many Parts, 31, 32–4, 35–7, 37–40, 41 & 46. 151 Cohen, ‘Between relief and politics’, 444. 152 Flynn, Medical Doctor of Many Parts, 46–7. 153 Hitchcock, Liberation, 252–3.

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‘Apart from “business” dealings we had no social contact with the German population and fraternisation was disapproved of and discouraged. Of course, there was a major change from 1948 onwards when the “Iron Curtain” came down and the “Cold War” commenced.’154 Dr P. J. Smith from Drimoleague in County Cork joined UNRRA through the IRCS in 1946. He went to Muhldorf in the American-Occupied Zone where he organised a hospital for DPs. Smith noticed that DPs of different nationalities did not always get along with each other despite their shared misery and experiences and their being far away from home: ‘Language, national customs, religious practices were cultivated and cherished by each community, sometimes to a ridiculous extent’. He explained that ‘an Estonian resents being treated by a Latvian doctor [and that] a Lithuanian will object to residing in the same billets as an Estonian’.155 In fact, to avoid problems of lawlessness and revenge, the Allied military authorities preferred to organise the camps by nationality and keep families together. That way also their eventual repatriation could be done more rapidly it was believed.156 It appears that similar problems between refugees can still occur in Europe.157 Margaret McNeill was a Quaker from Belfast who volunteered to work with DPs. She ended up in Goslar in the British-Occupied Zone quite close to the Soviet demarcation line. In the camp, she dealt with numerous nationalities and like Smith she soon found out that some did not get on with others. Estonians and Latvians tended to think that Lithuanians were not as civilised as themselves. As to the Soviets, many refused point blank to be repatriated. Ukrainians appeared to be scared, believing that the Soviet-Occupied Zone was too close for comfort. There was also little evidence of Christian unity between Catholics, Orthodox, and Lutherans except to condemn the Soviet Union as the Antichrist. A DP culture club was set up and was lauded by a British general as a crucial initiative to lift the spirits of the camp inhabitants. Although it did some very good work, soon nationality conflicts emerged with the Balts leaving and the Poles and Ukrainians staying to confront each other. In McNeill’s words: ‘[It is] all depressing and stupefying for us as we had yet to learn that love of culture did not necessarily draw people together when goodwill is lacking’.158 Like Flynn, she did not have much contact 154 Hitchcock, Liberation, 62. 155 ‘Gives his impressions; Interesting story’, Southern Star, 5 July 1947 (INA). 156 Hitchcock, Liberation, 253. 157 ‘Christian and Muslim refugees should be housed separately, says German police chief ’, The Telegraph, 28 September 2015, in http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/11896855/Christian-and-Muslim-refugees-should-be-housed-separately-says-German-police-chief.html (accessed on 11 November 2015). The article reports several clashes between Muslim and Christian Middle Eastern refugees and also between Syrian and Afghan refugees in asylum centres in Germany. 158 Margaret McNeill, An den Wassern von Babylon: Erfahrungen mit Displaced Persons in Goslar zwischen

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with the local Germans but did notice that ‘there was much bad blood between the town inhabitants and the refugees’.159 McNeill was right as many locals believed that DPs and even their fellow Germans expelled from the east constituted an extra burden for their communities and were even culturally and religiously too different to be fully integrated as will be explained in more detail in chapter ten. Stella Webb was a Quaker from Dublin who worked with UNRRA. She first went to Greece and then to Austria in the spring of 1947, where she was assigned as a welfare officer to a DP camp in Auhof west of Vienna. It had been a former Luftwaffe base and was now housing Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans) who had been expelled mostly from Yugoslavia. In a nearby holiday camp for DP children, she saw that Irish food was being distributed, which the camp had obtained through the International Red Cross.160 Auhof camp had a population of 990 DPs. There was a crying need for clothing and footwear and two cobblers were making shoes with what material was available and girls were taught how to make ‘rope soled shoes’ in the ‘Bastelstube’ (DIY shed). As the winter was settling in, many DPs had ‘to sit at home in overcrowded barracks, where real privacy is unobtainable’. Children were trained in trades and schooled. In many cases the disruption of war had caused them to lag far behind in routine education. Webb remarked: ‘We hear a good deal of the successes of the school; but really to appreciate its work it must be realised that many of the older children have never been to school and cannot even write their own names.’161 In June 1948, she was in a camp called Kappenberg in Leibnitz in southern Austria, close to the Yugoslav border, where she dealt not only with Volksdeutsche but also with Russians and Ukrainians. There too schools were set up, but communication was problematic as ‘the Russian teacher & I can usually only smile, but we get along’, she wrote. Interpreters avoided the camp being turned into a Babel’s Tower.162 In 1947, the Society of Friends received the Nobel Peace Prize for its work in favour of refugees and war victims.163 It is not within the scope of this book to give an assessment of UNRRA’s work in Europe. But briefly certain historians and many contemporaries believe it to have been a failure. Their judgement seems to be rather harsh, however, considering that it distributed food and other supplies for a total value of about $4 billion and that 1945 und 1948 (Bielefeld: Verlag für Regionalgeschichte, 1995), 260–2, 254–5, 58–9, 67, 70, 110–11, 156–7 and 161–70. This book was originally published in English: By the Rivers of Babylon: A Story of Relief Work among the Displaced Persons of Europe (London: Bannisdale Press, 1950). 159 McNeill, An den Wassern von Babylon, 86, 91, 94–6, 185–6, 187–203. 160 QAD, folder 5, box 79, Webb, Vienna, to parents, Dublin, 19 June 1947 & 29 June 1947. 161 QAD, folder 6, box 79, report, Webb, Auhof camp, Hadersdorf, Vienna XIII, to CBSRA (Council of British Societies for Relief Abroad) supervisor, report January 1948. 162 QAD, folder 5, box 79, Webb, Kappenberg, to parents, Dublin, 20 June 1948. 163 Wigham, The Irish Quakers, 129.

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UNRRA teams were working on a destroyed continent. The real problem was that it was largely funded with American dollars and that Washington resented having to share power with others in this international organisation. UNRRA’s aims were simply to engage in humanitarian work and bring back a notion of brotherhood between men and women of different nationality and ethnicity.164 It had not been perfect, waste occurred, the wrong people were sometimes employed, and red tape was a plague. These facts were recognised regarding the situation in Greece, for example, in the official history of the organisation written by a former UNRRA member and published in 1950.165 But there can be no doubt that it did good. Dr Smith summed it up pertinently in an interview for the regional Irish newspaper the Southern Star in July 1947: ‘No fair minded person could present UNRRA as an unqualified success. Neither could it be called a failure. It suffered from the beginning from a redundancy of personnel…. Black marketing was rife in the camps and many UNRRA members participated…. On the credit side the balance is well weighed down. Homeless people were given protection, well housed, fed, given occupations, taught trades and given medical care and treatment. The danger of nomadic bands wandering through war-torn Europe was avoided.’166

Concluding remarks The diet of the German population became proper again from mid-1948 onwards. Ration cards were abandoned in West Germany in 1950.167 Progressively, but in the end rapidly, the western occupation zones were rehabilitated and reintegrated in Western Europe and the developing Cold War was the prime mover in doing this. There were not only purely humanitarian considerations in helping these zones, but also political calculations. This had been understood by the Irish government and by leading individuals involved in relief, while the Irish people were purely motivated by compassion. Ireland had played its part in the saving and rehabilitation of the western zones in Germany. There is no use in comparing its efforts to those of the western Allies, mainly the Americans and the British, as their means were hugely superior. But Irish aid, no matter how modest by comparison, had an important psychological effect in that it showed that there were people who did care about the defeated Germans, thus lifting their morale and their will to carry on with life. 164 Hitchcock, Liberation, 247–8. 165 Katerina Gardikas, ‘Relief work and malaria in Greece, 1943–1947’, Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 43, no. 3 (July 2008): 493. 166 ‘Gives his impressions; Interesting story’ (the second part of Smith’s interview is called ‘With UNRRA in Germany’), Southern Star, 5 July 1947 (INA). 167 ‘Lebensmittelkarte’, Haus der Geschichte, in https://www.hdg.de/lemo/bestand/objekt/druckgutlebensmittelkarte.html (accessed on 2 May 2020).

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First, that aid came with food and clothes and contributed to the normalisation process of the emerging West German state. But shortly afterwards, it took on a different form, namely sport. In July 1951, the West German consulate-general in Dublin reported to Bonn that an athletics contest had taken place in Dublin between Ireland and West Germany, which the West German team won. But the real victory did not take place in the stadium. The consulate-general wrote that the West Germans had been warmly welcomed and the Irish, unlike others, had stopped seeing the Germans as purely war criminals. Several months later in October, a football match between Ireland and West Germany took place in Dublin, which the Irish team won 3-2. It had been attended by the President of Ireland, Seán T. O’Kelly, and several ministers. The consulate-general reported on that occasion that sport could bring nations together and that the head of the Irish Football Association (IFA) had said the Germans had much changed for the better.168 The fact that West Germany played some of its first sports contests against Ireland cannot have been a mere coincidence. The following year, a return football game was played appropriately in Cologne, a city the Irish had much helped and adopted even. The Sportpresse-Verlag, which published the Sport-Beobachter, asked Mayor Dr Ernst Schwering if he could write a welcoming message which would be published in a ‘special edition’ available in ‘all of West Germany’ and which would be handed out free of charge to the spectators before the kick-off. Schwering agreed and emphasised the organisational efforts of the city for this game. He also mentioned: ‘It is a friendly, not an international competition, stress the organisers. It is not about points or trophies. It is a game of friendship, which makes us meet the friends of the Green Isle who will show us a masterly display of the art of football’.169 The mayor then went on to wrongly describe Ireland as the ‘motherland of football’, an evident amalgamation with Britain. Perhaps he could have reminded the spectators of Ireland’s recent aid. But it might well have been that he had now set his eyes firmly on the future, the war being a memory best not revived at a time when West Germany was about to enter its Wirtschaftswunder, economic miracle. On 4 May 1952, West Germany won 3-0. Legend has it that the colour green of the West German national team’s away jersey was chosen in honour of Ireland. However, such friendly relations did not develop between Ireland and the Soviet-Occupied Zone of Germany, although Irish food and clothes were widely distributed there too, from the eastern sector of Berlin to the Ore Mountains. 168 AA-PA, B31, Bd. 63, Achilles, consulate-general, Dublin, to Foreign Office, Bonn, 6 July 1951 & Katzenberger, consulate-general, Dublin, to Foreign Office, Bonn, 19 October 1951. 169 HASK, Acc. 2 (Oberbürgermeister) nr 1130, Film 5052, Sportpresse-Verlag to Schwering, 25 April 1952 & Büro des Oberbürgermeisters to Sportpresse-Verlag, including Schwering’s message, 28 April 1952.

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Chapter Ten

Berlin, the Soviet-Occupied Zone, and Eastern Expellees

When the war ended, the American and British armies had penetrated Germany far beyond the occupation boundaries agreed between them and the Soviets. Areas in Mecklenburg, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and especially Thuringia were in the hands of the western Allies while Berlin and other areas in eastern Germany were controlled by the Red Army. In July 1945, the armies repositioned themselves and Mecklenburg, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Thuringia were transferred to Soviet authority while the western Allies took possession of their respective sectors in western Berlin. The Soviet-Occupied Zone would eventually become the German Democratic Republic (GDR), or East Germany, in 1949. Like its counterparts in the west, the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD, German acronym) was aware of the deteriorating humanitarian situation and knew that something had to be done urgently. It was aggravated by the millions of expellees from former German territories in the east, who had to leave everything behind and were being driven out in dreadful conditions. Some of them settled in the SovietOccupied Zone or transited through it and Berlin to the western zones in accordance with the agreements reached between the Allies. Initially, the Soviets, like the Americans, were reluctant to allow foreign supplies to be handed out in their zone. This chapter reveals that it was supplies from Ireland that were the first non-Allied foreign supplies to be distributed in the four Allied sectors in Berlin and then in the Soviet-Occupied Zone. During the Berlin Blockade (1948–1949) by the Soviets, Irish canned meat reached the western sectors of the city. Irish supplies were handed out to desperate refugees and expellees and to remaining German communities in Poland. In the rubble and camps, the mood was uplifted. Letters of thanks sent to Ireland shed light on the plight of German expellees from Central and Eastern Europe.

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The situation in eastern Germany The arrival of the Red Army in eastern Germany was very brutal. On 12 January 1945, the Soviets unleashed a ferocious offensive. They were rapidly progressing towards Germany through western Poland. In East Prussia, masses of civilians fled. By the end of that month, between 40,000 and 50,000 refugees were arriving in Berlin every day, but the locals were not pleased to see them because of food shortages, which implied more and more sharing.1 The Wehrmacht high command paid scant attention to the fate of civilians. Everything was done to prioritise army matters and it contributed to the death of hundreds of thousands.2 Two million fled from East Prussia, 800,000 from East Pomerania, 300,000 from Brandenburg, three million from Silesia, 200,000 from Danzig, and one million from Poland.3 The Irish minister in Berlin, later to play an important role in Ireland’s postwar aid operations, was Con Cremin. He saw the eastern Germans pouring into the city and reported to Dublin that they were ‘travelling in conditions of great hardship often in open goods wagons and by temperature continuously below zero and there are accounts of many small children dying en-route—most Germans are terrified of what [the] Russians will do if they get here’.4 Indeed, refugees spread horror stories and the Nazis were quick to use them for propaganda to stiffen resistance among soldiers and civilians. The Soviets were being described as ‘Asiatic hordes’ or ‘Bolshevik beasts’. In Prague, a German soldier knew better and reflecting on what the Nazi regime had perpetrated wrote in his diary: ‘This people [Germans] will have nothing to complain of in its own fate’.5 Payback time had come, as could have been easily predicted. The German occupation of the western Soviet Union had been bestial. Many in the Red Army entered Germany with disturbing images in their minds, and hatred was more than palpable. Lieutenant Gerassimov thought of ‘villages razed to the ground, hundreds of women, children and old folks shot, mutilated corpses of Red Army prisoners, women and girls, some only children, raped and then most brutally done to death’. The Wehrmacht had also been guilty of widespread sexual crimes in the east.6 The war correspondent Vasily Grossman was forced to admit that the behaviour of Soviet soldiers, the men he had so admired

Ian Kershaw, The End; Hitler’s Germany, 1944–45 (London: Penguin Books, 2012), 167–80, 184, 190. Bessel, Germany 1945, 35–6 Hitchcock, Liberation, 167. Michael Kennedy, ‘“Plato’s Cave”? Ireland’s wartime neutrality reassessed’, History Ireland, Jan./Feb. 2011, Issue 1, Volume 19, in https://www.historyireland.com/20th-century-contemporary-history/platos-caveirelands-wartime-neutrality-reassessed/ (accessed on 2 July 2020). 5 Kershaw, The End, 316–17, 188, 195, 312. 6 Burds, ‘Sexual Violence in Europe in World War II, 1939–1945’, 47. 1 2 3 4

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in Stalingrad and elsewhere, changed the moment they were abroad.7 As Geoffrey Roberts has remarked: ‘Red Army soldiers needed little or no encouragement to wreak their own vengeance. They were witnesses to the murderous occupation policies of the Germans that had resulted in the death of millions of Soviet citizens.’8 On their way to Berlin the Soviets looted hospitals, robbed patients of their watches, and raped nurses. Many women contracted venereal diseases and between 150,000 and 200,000 ‘Russian babies’ were born in Berlin.9 During the invasion and the immediate postwar years very likely hundreds of thousands of women were raped, and even a figure as high as two million has been advanced, but an exact number will probably never be known.10 90% of those who became pregnant were able to have abortions.11 Some officers openly executed soldiers for rape, but since there were large-scale problems of insubordination executions were not frequent.12 After the war, British officials had meetings with the Irish Red Cross Society (IRCS) and explained that German women did not want to have ‘children who are of Mongolian [i.e. Asian regions of the USSR] type’ and that the Soviets had no interest in them either. They asked the IRCS if it could be arranged ‘to have any of them adopted in Ireland’.13 The result of this query is not known. But considering the puritanical ethos prevailing in the country where sexuality was repressed and women who gave birth outside wedlock were sent to institutions and their babies given for adoption, it seems most unlikely that ‘Mongolian type’ children were ever sent to Ireland. Yet, there was another side to Soviet soldiers. Many gave food to women and they were especially fond of children. In the words of a woman in Berlin: ‘They love to play Father Christmas.’14 Many Germans, and others, were struck by their unpredictability. An official from Breslau (nowadays Wrocław in Poland) wrote: ‘One has to have experienced how a Russian soldier could give his last piece of bread to German children… One also has to have experienced how these same people could lie in ambush … waiting to attack unaccompanied women or girls to rob them and then rape them’.15 7 Beevor, Anthony & Vinogradova, Luba, eds., A Writer at War: Vasily Grossman with the Red Army, 1941– 1945 (London: Pimlico, 2006), 320–1. 8 Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin’s General: The Life of Georgy Zhukov (London: Icon Books, 2013), 239–43. 9 MacDonogh, After the Reich, 47–8, 166, 102. 10 Naimark, The Russians in Germany, 132–3. 11 Stafford, Endgame 1945, 315. 12 Slaveski, The Soviet Occupation of Germany, 8. 13 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/7, Letter & report, Roland I. Gallagher (IRCS Waterford) to Dr J. P. Shanley (chairman IRCS), 14 December 1946. The report is entitled: ‘Report of Irish Red Cross Society Delegation, Dr M. J. O’Connor and Mr R. I. Gallagher to London and Germany (British-Occupied Zone) in connection with the reception of German Children in Ireland’. 14 MacDonogh, After the Reich, 52, 102, 74. 15 Naimark, The Russians in Germany, 75.

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On 30 April, Hitler shot himself in his bunker. He was followed shortly afterwards by Goebbels and his family. Mankind would not be able to judge those who had ordered unprecedented heinous crimes. Some would later claim that the systematic destruction of German cities by the RAF and USAAF and the raping of German women by the Soviets evened out the atrocities committed on both sides. Such arguments must be strongly refuted. Although the German population suffered very badly, the Allies did not set up death factories and concentration camps and did not starve to death millions of prisoners of war and civilians. But clearly, they did not have a clean record. On 2 May at 06.00, General Helmuth Weidling surrendered and ordered the defenders of Berlin to capitulate.16 In the city, a woman named Margarethe Kopen was pleasantly surprised that the Red Army was distributing food to the population.17 There was visibly no Soviet equivalent of the Nazi Hunger Plan. Seventeen-year old Helmut Altner was caught by a Soviet patrol as he tried to flee from the city with a group of refugees. He thought they were going to be shot but instead one of the soldiers gave him a cigarette and told him: ‘War over! All go home!’18 There was some humanity left after all. In his memoirs, Marshal Georgy Zhukov wrote that very early on he took measures to make sure that the population of Berlin would not starve to death: ‘As first aid from the Soviet Government, 96,000 tons of grain, 60,000 tons of potatoes and up to 50,000 head of cattle, as well as sugar, fats and other foodstuffs were sent to Berlin. As a result of these measures the threat of famine among the German population was quickly eliminated’. Zhukov claimed that property such as ‘lorries . . . seed for planting . . . horses . . . and agricultural machinery captured on the estates of the German barons were handed over to the agricultural labourers who organised cooperatives’. He also met German women in the streets who told him how grateful they were for Soviet assistance.19 Zhukov was indeed rather magnanimous and favoured a constructive occupation of Germany. Thanks to his efforts, essential services and agriculture were restored in the Soviet-Occupied Zone. He also genuinely wanted to restore law and order and was ready to shoot many of his soldiers if need be, but he differed with Stalin on the issue of discipline. Stalin eventually recalled the very popular marshal to the Soviet Union in March 1946. In the end, Zhukov’s main problem was that he had to face an inconsistent occupation policy conceived by the Kremlin.20 Beevor, Berlin, 386. Moorhouse, Berlin at War, 383–4. Moorhouse, Berlin at War, 383–4. Georgii Kostantinovich Zhukov, The Memoirs of Marshal Zhukov (London: Jonathan Cape, 1971), 634–6. 20 Slaveski, The Soviet Occupation of Germany, 37–41, 147–8, 43. 16 17 18 19

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Berlin, the Soviet-Occupied Zone, and Eastern Expellees · 307

It is not one of the aims of this book to give a detailed analysis of Soviet occupation policy, but it was riddled with contradictions. Briefly, indiscipline in the Red Army was one serious problem, but rivalry between the Soviet Military Administration in Germany (SMAD) led by Zhukov and different groups from Moscow was another. It meant that no coherent policy was implemented at first. The Soviets kept dismantling factories and sending all sorts of equipment home. It has been estimated that their removals from their occupation zone totalled anything between $10 to 19 billion, which included the dismantling of factories, the exploitation of raw materials and the keep of the Red Army.21 Under these conditions, the Soviet-Occupied Zone could simply not become a viable economic entity. In March 1946, Marshal Vasily Sokolovsky took over the SMAD and eventually persuaded Moscow that this was the wrong approach. Dismantling teams ceased operating in January 1947. By mid1947, the number of Soviet troops had been massively reduced. In turn, violence decreased, and the food situation and industrial production improved. But in the minds of people, the Soviets and their German communist allies were now associated with violence and the overall very bad situation.22 Concerning food, the Soviets were faced with a huge task considering they had to feed a population of about twenty million, including displaced persons (DPs), refugees, expellees, and also an army of about one million men. In August 1945, Zhukov had said that the Germans would have to feed his army, but that proved soon to be problematic. Moreover, the Soviet grain harvest of 1945 was only about half the one of 1940, so significant supplies of extra food from home could not be expected.23 Unfortunately for the Soviets, a drought happened in their country during the summer of 1946, leading to a disastrous harvest followed by a very severe winter. Estimations of the number of deaths due to famine are difficult to establish and range from 1 up to 5 million.24 But the Soviets were able to avoid famine conditions in their occupation zone as they successfully organised a rationing system and imposed their agricultural system. They were better in this respect than the British in their zone. By and large, Soviet officers had a better understanding of food management in difficult circumstances, an experience they had been building up since 1917. As seen, the British had encountered 21 Békés, Borhi, Ruggenthaler & Traşcă, eds., Soviet Occupation of Romania, Hungary and Austria, 1944/45– 1948/49, 24. 22 Slaveski, The Soviet Occupation of Germany, xii & 142, 144–5, 43. 23 Slaveski, The Soviet Occupation of Germany, 87. 24 Geoffrey Roberts has given an estimation of 1 up to 1.5 million deaths in Geoffrey Roberts, Stalin’s Wars; From World War to Cold War (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2006), 327–8, whereas Filip Slaveski, while acknowledging the difficulty of giving precise figures, has written that ‘it probably resulted in almost 5 million deaths’, including those who died from ‘related diseases’, in Slaveski, The Soviet Occupation of Germany, 115 & footnote 42.

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difficulties with some local farmers and managers, which meant that urban areas were not well supplied, and that they had to rely on important food imports. The Soviets, by contrast, were clever in inciting farmers and managers to produce more and also could be heavy-handed with those who proved to be recalcitrant. They carried out regular inspections in farms and severe punishments were meted out to farmers who did not comply or cheated in their production figures. One was condemned to death by a military tribunal, and news of the sentence was widely circulated locally.25 ‘Pour encourager les autres’, as Voltaire put it famously. There were some food protests in the Soviet-Occupied Zone, but unlike those in the BritishOccupied Zone they never degenerated into violence. Fear of Soviet heavy-handedness is definitely one explanatory factor, but a successful Soviet rationing system is definitely another. Many women were involved in these protest actions. While rape was taboo, German women had no hesitation in discussing hunger with the Soviets.26 In October 1945, Zhukov had formally approved of the creation of Women Committees whose task it was to be involved in health, education, clothing, and feeding issues, the SMAD providing some goods. During the very severe winter of 1945–1946, the Women Committees participated in a campaign called ‘Save the Children’ by distributing clothes and food.27 Famine was avoided, but the situation was far from being ideal. That was why Irish supplies were welcome, eventually.

Historic moment, first Irish supplies on train to Berlin The destruction of Berlin is best expressed in the number of cubic metres of rubble: 55 million.28 What the Royal Air Force (RAF) had left standing was shelled by the Red Army, which used its artillery against buildings occupied by German defenders.29 The situation was disastrous. Allied bombing raids had killed about 52,000 inhabitants and another 100,000 died when the Red Army stormed the city. It was a heap of ruins where diseases like tuberculosis were rampant and people were seriously underfed. Clothing and shoes were in high demand in Greater Berlin. ICRC delegates reported that during the winter of 1945–1946, up to 74% of children did not have shoes for bad weather conditions, which explained why between 10% and 20% did not attend school when the weather was not clement. The city was also overcome by a tidal wave of refugees and expellees from Poland. According to an 25 26 27 28 29

Slaveski, The Soviet Occupation of Germany, see Chapter Seven, ‘The struggle to feed Germany’, 87–102. Slaveski, The Soviet Occupation of Germany, 106–10, 102. Naimark, The Russians in Germany, 131–2. Overy The Bombing War, 638. Roberts, Stalin’s General, 229.

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ICRC delegate in December 1945, ‘between 3,000 and 5,000 refugees arrive here every day’.30 The Soviets distributed food to the population. Two young sisters of the Linstedt family were sent to them and got soup and especially a very good smelling loaf of bread. However, as Hildegard and Elisabeth said: ‘… it didn’t last for long because we were six in the family and we hadn’t eaten for days and were starving’. Luckily for them, a sympathetic Soviet officer adopted the Linstedt family and brought army rations to the children.31 But not all the inhabitants were so lucky, and the Soviets could only provide a limited amount food. The situation did not improve when the Americans, British, and French arrived to take possession of their sectors in the western half of the city. At the end of 1945, the Americans felt the food situation in Berlin was under control with an average of 1,600 calories a day for each inhabitant. Local newspapers, however, begged to differ and pointed out in 1946 that 65% of the city’s children could face starvation. US Colonel Frank Howley, commanding the American Sector, dismissed these claims as ‘bushwah’ and believed it was reflective of the Germans’ inclination to indulge in an aggressive form of self-pity after their defeat.32 Howley’s analysis of the German mood might well be correct, but the situation on the ground was greatly preoccupying. As the Americans pertinently remarked, the Germans had been very well fed by the Nazi regime with about 3,000 calories daily per individual before the war and as much as 2,000 calories daily on average in 1944. To make sure no rebellion occurred, Germans got food from elsewhere in Europe. It was now very difficult for them to adapt to about twice less the number of calories they had been used to.33 On 8 September 1945, the ICRC sent a telegram to the four occupying Allied powers in Germany, offering to help. The Allies did not reply. Despite this rebuff, it sent Dr August R. Lindt to Berlin in October to negotiate with the Allies the sending of supplies to civilians.34 Lindt, of the family of the famous chocolate manufacturers, was exactly the required man for the job. In the interwar period, he had been a well-travelled and seasoned journalist and during the war he had ended up in the intelligence department of the Swiss army. He had been a resolute opponent of Nazi Germany.35 The Soviets distrusted Switzerland and the ICRC, which they suspected had been in league with the Germans. They also took it for granted that ICRC delegates were spying on behalf of the western Allies. Shortly after the war, 30 31 32 33 34 35

Rey-Schyrr, De Yalta à Dien Bien Phu, 208–14, 217–18. Hildegard Cohn & Elisabeth Dörffel, ‘Heißhunger’, in Kleindienst, ed., Gegessen wird immer, 71–7. Grossmann, ‘Grams, Calories, and Food’, 123–4. Grossmann, ‘Grams, Calories, and Food’, 124. Rey-Schyrr, De Yalta à Dien Bien Phu, 201–204. Marc Perrenoud, ‘Lindt, August R.’, Historisches Lexikon der Schweiz, in http://www.hls-dhs-dss.ch/ textes/d/D14864.php (accessed on 30 September 2015).

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they had arrested six ICRC workers in Berlin, sent them near Moscow and released them only in October.36 On 3 December, the Allies accepted at last the ICRC’s offer of aid, not that they had much choice as the situation went from bad to worse. Soviet officers, like their western colleagues and others, were preoccupied with the danger of public health disasters.37 Lindt established good working contacts with the Soviets, and the chief medical officer of the SMAD persuaded his American, British, and French counterparts to accept ICRC aid. In accordance with the agreement reached, the distribution of supplies in Greater Berlin would take place simultaneously in all four Allied sectors. The number of inhabitants in each sector was taken into account in the sharing of supplies. It came down to 36% for the Soviets, 30% for the Americans, 20% for the British, and 14% for the French. 38 In Switzerland, the International Red Cross was packing the first supply train for Berlin full of goods of the Don Irlandais and the Don Suisse. Two Swiss escorts, Dr A. Vaudaux and W. A. Hartmann, accompanied the thirty-five-wagon train on this epic journey, which left Basel on 27 January 1946 at 07.25. It then crossed the border and the German railway company took over the organisation. Vaudaux had to make sure that the wagons were in perpetual motion, especially at night and in railway stations as this made it more difficult for looters to get on board. When they reached Mannheim, he noticed a steaming locomotive on a side-track in the railway station. Although it was broad daylight, the steam made it very difficult to see the rest of his train. Suspicious, he got off and when he had a look at the wagons standing directly next to the steaming locomotive, he noticed that one of them had been half-opened.39 The further north the train went, the more Vaudaux and Hartmann felt the need for protection. The crossing of the FrenchOccupied Zone had been without any problem but the same could not be said about the American and British-Occupied Zones. Bands of DPs, deserters, and Eastern Europeans who did not want to return home were looting away. Between Bebra and Göttingen, shots were even fired at the train, probably from people inside a camp of Czechoslovaks close to the track. When it was in a curve, Vaudaux and Hartmann were not able to see all the wagons. Both men asked for a German police escort which was provided from Fulda onwards until Berlin. But these policemen were unarmed so that there was only so much they could do. When waiting for a signal, it was necessary to have two men patrol the entire length of the train. This was even more needed when it was in a railway station like in 36 37 38 39

Crossland, Britain and the International Committee of the Red Cross, 194, 181. Reinisch, The Perils of Peace, 227. Rey-Schyrr, De Yalta à Dien Bien Phu, 208–14. ACICR, O CMS D-015, report entitled ‘Convoyeurbericht von Dr. A Vaudaux über den 1. Blockzug der CMS zur Versorgung von Gross-Berlin (Januar/Februar 1946)’, February 1946.

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Bebra where many refugees and returning German prisoners of war lived in wagons parked on side-tracks or even in the waiting rooms.40 In Braunschweig, the train stopped and was guarded by British soldiers. Vaudaux and Hartmann were advised to cross the Soviet-Occupied Zone in broad daylight. All trains going to Berlin from the American and British-Occupied Zones were accompanied by an armed escort. In Helmstedt, three wagons with American soldiers were provided: one at the beginning, one in the middle and one at the end. At the demarcation line, the Soviets made no problems and let them pass. As a single-track system was in operation in the Soviet-Occupied Zone, the trip was very long. ‘The insecurity in this zone is particularly high, especially at night as people can jump aboard the trains and soldiers on guard duties can no longer spot them’, wrote Vaudaux in his subsequent report. Bands were well organised and tried to plunder Allied and UNRRA trains to sell the supplies in the black market. In Potsdam, they came near the train despite the presence of the soldiers, but no major incident occurred. Entering Berlin proved to be very difficult as it took nine hours to go from nearby Potsdam to the Anhalterbahnhof (30 km.), one of the main railway stations in the city, where it eventually arrived on 30 January at 03.05. The Anhalterbahnhof was in the American sector and the train could be guarded by soldiers. Mr Mariotti, an ICRC delegate in Berlin, greeted Vaudaux and Hartmann at 08.00. After inspection, it was found that only about 1% or 2% of the supplies were missing.41 In the Anhalterbahnhof, the supplies had to be unloaded and then transported to a warehouse as quickly as possible so that room would be made for other arrivals. As the train had not been expected that soon, not everything was organised and the ICRC had to improvise. There was a lack of transport and workers. The workers who participated in the unloading were essentially elderly and undernourished men who came to increase their rations. Mariotti was eventually successful in getting two 10-ton US trucks to move the supplies. The transport and storing operations lasted five full days, from 30 January until 3 February. It was necessary to keep a continuous eye on the workers. The Food Office of Berlin sent representatives and the German police also came to accompany the supplies from the railway station to the warehouse. But thefts did happen. The US military police arrested no less than fifty-two workers in total, who were sent to a military tribunal where Hartmann gave a witness testimony.42 But the great news was that non-Allied foreign supplies had become available in Berlin for the first time. Mariotti spoke of 40 ACICR, O CMS D-015, report entitled ‘Convoyeurbericht von Dr. A Vaudaux über den 1. Blockzug der CMS zur Versorgung von Gross-Berlin (Januar/Februar 1946)’, February 1946. 41 ACICR, O CMS D-015, report entitled ‘Convoyeurbericht von Dr. A Vaudaux’. 42 ACICR, O CMS D-015, report entitled ‘Convoyeurbericht von Dr. A Vaudaux’.

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‘very significant’ Irish supplies. It came down to about 281,800 kilos of sugar, 2,257 kilos of gruel, 33,600 tins of condensed milk, 22,092 kilos of cheese, and an important quantity (not specified in report) of powder milk. Those who would receive these supplies were babies, sick children and adults in hospitals, persons in old people’s homes, and children in refugee camps. Mariotti was satisfied with the distribution.43 Lindt went to old people’s homes and asylums to personally distribute some of the Irish supplies. What he experienced he would not easily forget: As we entered, the old people were sitting and lying on their beds, apathetic. Only occasionally were our greetings returned. But, when the socks were distributed, suddenly there was movement. It seemed incomprehensible to them that they suddenly were getting gifts. All agreed that that gift in particular was most needed. Only an elderly woman remarked that she preferred blue socks.

Sugar was also distributed. Lindt then noticed a complete change of mood: When we said goodbye, the atmosphere in the dormitory, which also serves as a living room, was totally changed. Groups had formed who enthusiastically discussed with each other. A sick person sat up and said: ‘Please, promise me to let the Irish people know how grateful we are to them.’

A report on Lindt’s activities in Berlin was sent to the Department of External Affairs (DEA) in Dublin, including the last statement.44 The Youth Office of Wedding, a working-class district also known as ‘Red Wedding’ in the French sector, reported that the children were overjoyed with the sugar and it became ‘a real feast’. During the first few days, some very sensitive children developed minor unpleasant conditions like indigestion, but they quickly went away. Cooperation with the Women’s Committee went very well. The parents’ attitude was generally good: ‘Many are delighted and grateful, but others believe they are in a position to “demand” and have to be reminded that it is a “gift”’.45 Berlin newspapers from all political persuasions unanimously praised Irish aid. The Berliner Zeitung published an article entitled ‘The world helps Berlin children!’ and stated: ‘Large supplies of sugar from Ireland are available. They 43 ACICR, O CMS C-020, ‘Rapport final sur les vivres du Don Irlandais arrivés à Berlin par le 1er train-bloc [January 1946]’, by C. Mariotti, 5 September 1946. 44 ACICR, O CMS C-023, report of Dr August Lindt to JRC, Geneva, 9 February 1946 & NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22, report entitled Donation of the Irish Government to the Civilian Populations of Central and Eastern Europe; Preliminary report on the first consignment sent to Berlin, by JRC, undated but probably 1946. 45 ACICR, O CMS C-020, Youth Office, Wedding, to Main Youth Office, Berlin, 30 April 1946.

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would represent supplementary food for 30,000 sick adults and 8,000 sick children in orphanages. In addition, 20,000 Berlin children in all-day care centres will get an extra 60 grams of sugar every day. Every day? Yes—and this for 100 days’.46 The Kurier announced that 2,000 Irish woollen blankets would be distributed to hospitals, maternities, and refugee camps.47 The Berliner informed its readers that Ireland had sent 53.5 tons of sugar.48 After the first historic shipment by train, other supplies were sent from the International Red Cross. In December 1946, Neues Deutschland, the mouthpiece of the communists and later of Walter Ulbricht’s East German communist party (SED), wrote about children suffering from tuberculosis being looked after in the children’s hospital of Wedding. It explained that doctors brought food from the Don Suisse and the Don Irlandais on a weekly basis.49 Back in May, shortly after its creation, Neues Deutschland had already reported that children born between 1 March 1944 and 30 April 1946 would get a pound of sugar each from the Irish people.50 As detailed in chapter six, there are unfortunately no photographs of the arrival and unloading of the first Irish supplies in Berlin, but there are some of the Swiss supplies.

Quietly breaking the Soviet blockade of western Berlin The western Allies and the Soviets were increasingly at loggerheads concerning Germany’s future and their confrontation focalised in Berlin, half of the city being a western enclave deep inside the Soviet-Occupied Zone. Stalin was convinced that the Marshall Plan was an American ploy to isolate the Soviet Union and that the plan would not leave Germany neutral. In fact, the western Allies had begun to organise a west German state during meetings in London between December 1947 and February 1948 without the participation of the Soviets. In March, Stalin decided on a blockade of the western sectors of Berlin with the aim of forcing the western Allies to abandon the city. He also disapproved of the introduction of a new currency in the western zones and western Berlin, the Deutsche Mark. The blockade began on 24 June. However, his policy did not pay off as the Americans and the British organised a gigantic airlift which consisted in flying supplies to western Berlin day and night. The western Allies were determined to stay and support the local population, and their determination considerably improved their relations with the western Germans. This episode had dramatic consequences as 46 47 48 49 50

‘Die Welt Hilft den Berliner Kindern!’, Berliner Zeitung, 8 February 1946 (ZEFYS). NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22, ‘Neue Spenden für Kinder’, Der Kurier, 25 March 1946. NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22, ‘Internationaler Spenden; Hilfe als Anregung’, Der Berliner, 26 March 1946. ‘Kampf gegen die Tuberkulose’, Neues Deutschland, 11 December 1946 (ZEFYS). ‘Letzte Berliner Neuigkeiten’, Neues Deutschland, 5 May 1946 (ZEFYS).

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the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) was signed on 4 April 1949. The West was now strongly united against a possible Soviet onslaught. On 12 May, the Soviets ended their blockade as their strategy had obviously failed. Finally, on 23 May, the Federal Republic of Germany, commonly known as West Germany, was established.51 Ireland had played a small and discreet role in the Berlin crisis. On 28 October 1948 in Dublin, DEA Assistant Secretary Leo T. McCauley welcomed Ernst W. Meyer, chief of delegation of the ICRC in Germany. Meyer said that they wanted to have ‘a gift from Ireland of 100 tons of meat’ for the relief programme of Berlin. He explained that Ireland was the only source from which they could hope to get meat and that the Soviets still allowed the ICRC to send supplies by rail to the city. The ICRC was not making use of the airlift for two reasons, he said: ‘(1) Their supplies would only displace other goods for which there is equal need; and (2) the Russians would regard the use of the air-lift as a political blockade-breaking action. If the meat is given by the Irish Government, it must not be associated with any propaganda against the Russians. Any suggestion that the gift was being sent as relief from the blockade would ruin the whole project’. The ICRC had now only one relief operation going in the eastern zone outside Berlin, Meyer continued, the ‘feeding of medically selected children’ and they were getting mainly ‘milk and oatmeal’. But the Irish meat would be given to elderly people in all four sectors in Berlin. The children were now well cared for but sometimes at the expense of the elderly. The ICRC was expecting to finish work in the city by March 1949. Therefore, this winter’s programme would round it off. If Ireland accepted to be involved, it would also have to pay for the freight charges. The best way to transport the meat would be through Sweden. Once inside Germany, the transport would be free. McCauley did not commit himself and forwarded his note on the conversation to the Department of Agriculture.52 It was a clever move to bring relief to Berlin without endangering Ireland’s neutrality since the meat would be distributed in all four sectors. Several days later, McCauley wrote a note for Secretary for External Affairs Frederick Boland in which he explained that Meyer had recently contacted the DEA and the Department of Agriculture for the sending of 100 tons of meat to Berlin: Mr [J. C.] Nagle has informed me that the Minister for Agriculture is willing that the gift should be made provided that it is in the form of 100 tons of canned meat taken from the balance accruing from the kosher meat project [see chapter 51 Zubok, Failed Empire, 73–7. 52 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/7A, note by McCauley, 28 October 1948.

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five]. This means that a corresponding amount would be diverted from the allocation to the National Catholic Welfare Conference [NCWC]. I understand from Mr Nagle that the kosher butchers are rejecting a higher percentage of the meat than had originally been anticipated so that the balance available for the NCWC is likely to be larger than originally estimated.53

Nagle, the secretary for agriculture, was in favour of the ICRC’s request and so was the Department of Finance. McCauley put forward to Boland that he should consult with the minister for external affairs, Seán MacBride, ‘especially as 20% of the gift would go to the Soviet Zone outside Berlin. Of the 80% to be distributed in Berlin, about one-third would go to the Soviet Sector and two-thirds to the western sectors of the city’. Personally, McCauley felt ‘inclined to recommend the gift’.54 Ways were found to get the meat but MacBride needed to be consulted as Ireland was no friend of the Soviet Union and the government’s relations with the International Red Cross had cooled considerably as previously shown. That soon became very clear. Boland opposed the idea and replied to McCauley: ‘When Mr Norris and Mr McCloskey of the NCWC were here recently they told us confidentially that they had received permission from General Clay [US military governor of occupied Germany] to send 50 tons of our canned meat into Berlin by the air lift. They hope to get permission for further similar quantities at a later date’. As Ireland was already distributing meat in Germany through the offices of the NCWC and as the Irish government was pleased with the work done by that organisation, Boland believed that it would be a mistake to shift back to the ICRC. Moreover, uneasiness had been expressed by deputies about sending supplies to communist countries through the International Red Cross. He wrote: ‘We have been completely free of these complaints since we started distributing through the NCWC’. It would be difficult to explain to the people at home why supplies were again being distributed by the International Red Cross, especially if some of them were meant for the Soviet-Occupied Zone and sector of Berlin, Boland argued. He believed that the ICRC should be told that Ireland had firm commitments with the NCWC which was already sending Irish meat to Berlin. If non-kosher meat was available, then it should be sent to the NCWC.55 And so it was that Ireland was quietly playing its part in the Allied airlift to relieve western Berlin. Did it constitute a breach of neutrality? It was crystal clear that Ireland’s sympathy was for the western Allies in the 53 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/7A, note by McCauley for Boland, 4 November 1948. 54 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/7A, note by McCauley for Boland, 4 November 1948. 55 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/7A, note by Boland for McCauley, 13 November 1948.

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developing Cold War. Technically it could be argued that the country did not take sides since it had donated the meat to the NCWC which, in turn, distributed it. But the NCWC was an American body and not neutral unlike the International Red Cross in Geneva. It had a tough approach to communist-dominated countries. Once the DEA knew that the NCWC was sending Irish meat to western Berlin during the Soviet blockade and approved it—or at the very least did not object to it—it was obvious that Ireland was taking sides, just as it took sides in Italy as shown in chapter seven. But was it not in effect the mere continuation of secret support for the western Allies begun during the Second World War? This would not be the last time that the Irish government opted to secretly help the West during the Cold War, notably by establishing links with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of which Boland, then Irish ambassador in London, was fully aware since he participated in the setting up of the contacts with the CIA.56 Table 10.1. Don Irlandais in Berlin 57 1st Irish gift, 1946 Milky flour Cheese Condensed milk Powder milk Sugar Tights Blankets Gloves

2 tons 20 tons 14 tons 3 tons 345 tons 5580 pairs 4200 1 bale

2nd Irish gift, 1946–April 1947 Foodstuffs 1200.065 tons Textiles 62.961 tons

Irish aid in the Soviet-Occupied Zone In Berlin, August Lindt was negotiating with the Soviets. The ICRC envoy’s talks with the western Allies had gone smoothly enough but there were more delays with the Soviets. However, he knew that eventually they would have to agree to do 56 The Irish security services had contacts with the CIA (and also MI5) of which relevant Irish ministers were aware. The CIA contact for Ireland between 1955 and 1967 commented: ‘[The Irish] knew what they were doing’, in O’Halpin, Defending Ireland, 280–2. In 2007, this CIA link was publicised by the Irish Times after the release of new archives, confirming the CIA link and Boland’s full knowledge of it, see ‘Ex Trinity student was CIA’s Irish link, records show’, Irish Times, 28 December 2007, in https://www.irishtimes.com/ news/ex-trinity-student-was-cia-s-irish-link-records-show-1.816633 (accessed on 6 February 2021). The Irish authorities also helped the Americans during the Cuban Missile Crisis and its aftermath when they accepted to search Czechoslovak planes heading for Cuba and landing in Shannon Airport for stopovers for arms, in Skelly, Irish Diplomacy at the United Nations, 1945–1965, 244. 57 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 175, 183–4.

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something because the situation in the Soviet-Occupied Zone (outside Berlin) was getting out of control. Not only had the fighting ravaged that area but hundreds of thousands of German refugees and then expellees from Poland and Czechoslovakia kept pouring in. Lindt therefore actively pursued his talks and it paid off. On 13 April 1946, Lieutenant-General Mikhail Dratvin, the deputy head of the SMAD, communicated to him that he was prepared to receive supplies from the Joint Relief Commission of the International Red Cross (JRC). Subsequently, a central distribution commission for the Soviet-Occupied Zone was established on 18 May with the SMAD’s approval. It was ‘affiliated to the Central Administration for Transferred Populations and is composed by the President of this Administration, as well as by representatives of each of the three anti-fascist parties, one representative of the Feminist organization and one of the Youth Movement’. Supplies from Ireland would be the first non-Allied foreign supplies to be distributed in the Soviet-Occupied Zone.58 The momentous news even reached the tiny principality of Liechtenstein where the Liechtensteiner Vaterland commented that the Soviet and American-Occupied Zones would receive supplies ‘mainly originating from Ireland’.59 During the negotiations between the ICRC and the Soviets, the JRC had cleverly decided to send supplies intended for the population in the Soviet-Occupied Zone to Berlin where they were stored in warehouses, ready for rapid distribution when agreement would eventually be reached. The agreement between the ICRC and the Soviets stipulated that all institutions, like children’s homes, would receive supplies regardless whether they were financed by the state or private organisations and that the wishes of the donors would be respected provided supplies sent to a particular group of people did not exceed their needs. The idea behind the last point was to avoid too many supplies for one group at the expense of another, which made obvious sense. Children were to be looked after especially and the beneficiaries were to be informed about the identity of the donors. The ICRC delegate was authorised to supervise the distribution of supplies and their use.60 By the end of May 1946, 353 tons of supplies from the Don Irlandais and some from German and Austrian prisoners of war detained in the United States were ready for distribution in the Soviet-Occupied Zone. They were essentially sugar, biscuits, condensed milk, tinned meat, stoves, and cooking pots for schools. This first 58 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/1, JRC report entitled Donation of the Irish Government to the Civilian Populations of Central and Eastern Europe: Final report on the distribution of the donation 1945, 4. 59 ‘Oeffnung der amerikanischen und russischen Zone in Deutschland für Hilfsaktionen’, Liechtensteiner Vaterland, 15 May 1946 (eLiechtensteinensia). 60 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 434–7, 143.

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relief operation concerned 12,000 children who each got an extra daily 500-calorie meal for about a month. Brandenburg, Mecklenburg, and Saxony were the neediest regions. In Saxony, 2,000 refugee children had recently arrived. 500 of them who were threatened with tuberculosis got an extra meal for a period of one hundred days. The local ICRC delegate was perfectly satisfied that the distribution was done well and equitably. Other organisations and people who donated supplies for the Soviet-Occupied Zone were Germans living in South Africa, national Red Cross societies from the British Empire, the Don Suisse, and the American Lutheran Church, among others. Meals for schoolchildren from the Don Suisse were supplemented with sugar, condensed milk, and biscuits from the Don Irlandais. Reports on distribution in Germany generally took about three months to reach Geneva after the date of the reception of the supplies.61 But why had the Soviets decided to allow the JRC to distribute supplies at that moment in time? Besides purely humanitarian considerations, local politics might well have played a role. They were trying to bolster the position and electoral chances of their allies in the zone, namely the communist Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED, Socialist Unity Party of Germany), led by Walter Ulbricht, and success in doing so was hardly a foregone conclusion. The general idea was to make more food supplies available in areas under control by the SED, and less so in areas which they did not control hoping that the people would reject other parties and vote for the SED at the local elections planned in September and October 1946. It would seem that this strategy had some positive effects for the Soviets and the SED. Interestingly, in mid-1946, the Political Department responsible for the region of Brandenburg (around Berlin) led by Colonel F. G. Filinov orchestrated a campaign to discredit political opponents in the town of Eberswalde by accusing them of being former Nazis but especially by pointing out that they had shady dealings in the food supply issue. The SED eventually won the local election in Eberswalde with 64% of the votes and 60% in Brandenburg.62 These were satisfying results. As shown in chapter six, Irish food had been distributed by the local branch of the Volkssolidarität (People’s Solidarity) in Eberswalde and all the necessary publicity had been done to inform the people that it was a gift of the IRCS and the Irish people, including printing the origin of the food on the ration cards. Equally of note was the fact that an important donation of cod liver oil and malt extract from the Irish Save the Children Fund (ISCF) had been distributed in Brandenburg in four maternity 61 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 434–7, 143. 62 Slaveski, The Soviet Occupation of Germany, 111–12.

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hospitals and also children’s homes during the summer of 1946.63 Is there a case that Irish supplies in that particular area had been manipulated for political reasons? It can be safely stated that the provenance of the supplies was never hidden from the public in Brandenburg. In that sense, there was clearly no manipulation. However, it cannot be excluded that they were used in the electoral strategy of the SED and the Soviets. But, as will be detailed below, the Volkssolidarität was not yet totally dominated by the communists and therefore still possessed some room for independent manoeuvring. As well, it seems rather unlikely that both the Soviets and the SED controlled every area where Irish supplies were distributed in the Soviet-Occupied Zone, and the geographical spread of the distribution of these supplies was wide from major urban areas to remote places in the countryside. In any case, no documents that show or even hint at manipulation of Irish supplies in one way or the other were found. Also, as will be seen, many letters of thanks from eastern Germans to the Irish authorities or the International Red Cross amply testify that there had been no attempt at dissimulating the origin of the supplies. With hindsight, the Soviet decision to allow JRC supplies into their zone arrived at the right moment. In July 1946, after initial pressure exerted by the SED, the SMAD had announced publicly that rations would be increased but it was unable to do so. Also, the SMAD was unable to deliver more food to SED supporters specifically. It was not its fault as it became clear during the summer that the ongoing drought in the western Soviet Union would mean famine. In November, just after the local elections, the Soviets actually took the decision to export grain surpluses in the zone to the Soviet Union in order to deal with the famine. However, they calculated that the eastern German population’s rations would not be reduced by this decision, but it also meant that they would not be increased. The popularity of the SED was seriously dented after the local elections and the exported surpluses were not sufficient to alleviate distress in the western Soviet Union at the end of 1946.64 Under these circumstances, the arrival of Irish supplies could only contribute to the stability of the zone. As seen, the main organisation in charge of foreign supplies in the SovietOccupied Zone was the Volkssolidarität (People’s Solidarity). It had been founded on 17 October 1945 and included representatives of all the political parties and the Protestant and Catholic Churches. On 20 May 1946, it was endowed with a central committee to make organisation more efficient. The Volkssolidarität’s task was 63 AEG, Archives Privées, 92.22.2 (2), D. Steinman, secretary of the Union Internationale de Protection de l’Enfance, to Nora Finn, Irish Save the Children Fund, 14 October 1946. 64 Slaveski, The Soviet Occupation of Germany, 114–15.

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to look after people in need: children, elderly, sick, refugees, expellees, and prisoners of war. In 1947, there were 177 district committees and 11,019 local committees. The distribution of foreign goods supplied by the International Red Cross was entrusted to the independent Kommission zur Verteilung der Ausländischen Spenden innerhalb der sowj. Besatzungszone (Commission for the Distribution of Foreign Donations within the Soviet-Occupied Zone). It managed the supplies and in turn entrusted them to the Volkssolidarität for distribution. By the end of 1947, the Volkssolidarität had shared out 2,777,000 kilos of supplies. Among its main donors were the ‘Irish People, the Irish Save the Children Fund, the Irish Red Cross Society [and] the Don Irlandais’.65 The Commission for the Distribution of Foreign Donations laid down strict guidelines to make sure that the identity of the donors was known to the recipients. In its list of regulations, point 4) stipulated: ‘All donations must be made public by regional and provincial administrations and the Volkssolidarität through publications in the press. These publications must again contain the name of the donors (for example, donation of the Irish people, transmitted by the International Red Cross and the Volkssolidarität) and the nature and volume of the donation and the concerned recipients’.66 Besides an obvious desire to show genuine gratitude to the donor, there was also a more calculating aspect: the more the donors were pleased and convinced of the usefulness of what they did, the more they might send. In some cases, Irish foodstuffs were submitted to tests to check their edibility. The Chemical Research Office of Görlitz reported to the City Council that the tinned meat and condensed sweet milk were perfectly edible but that some of the biscuit packs were infested with cockroaches while others were found to be rancid. The office recommended that the biscuits should be carefully checked before being distributed to children.67 This was duly done. Their quality had probably deteriorated because they had been stored in warehouses for several months. Irish biscuits were distributed in different areas and there were only a few minor issues. In the towns of Wildau, Senzig, and Ludwigsfelde, women belonging to the Freie Deutsche Jugend (FDJ, Free German Youth, young communists) and the local Volkssolidarität reported that ‘everywhere, small shortages of sugar and mouldy or inedible (maggots) biscuits were noticed but in small quantities’. These women worked long hours and did an extraordinary job. Everywhere the people were full 65 ACICR, D EUR DE1 1-100, Leistungsbericht der Volkssolidarität 1947 by central committee of the Volkssolidarität. 66 SAL, StVuR 7574, Richtlinien für die Entgegennahme und Verteilung von ausländischen Spenden (Guidelines for the reception and distribution of foreign donations), Kommission zur Verteilung der Ausländischen Spenden innerhalb der sowj. Besatzungszone, 19 October 1946. 67 ACICR, O CMS C-020, Chemical Research Office to Görlitz City Council, 8 June 1946.

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of praise of and grateful to the Don Irlandais. It was very pleasing to see the children queuing up ‘with eyes full of joy and expectation to the gorgeous-smelling and full cauldron’.68 Not only major urban centres received Irish supplies, but also remote towns and villages. In July 1946, trucks of the Volkssolidarität transporting Irish sugar travelled all the way to Usedom, a Baltic island just off the Pomeranian coast (now divided between Germany and Poland). They brought it for the children’s meals. The Volkssolidarität had prepared a statement meant for publication in the press. It was explained that the gift would be distributed in the coming days. The children’s home in Wiek on the island of Rügen would receive 640 kilos of condensed milk. It would be used to make a nutritious soup. Also, ‘for the districts of Randow and Usedom, sugar, condensed milk, canned meat and biscuits will be distributed. 1000 children in each of these districts will have an extra hot soup for 3 to 4 weeks’.69 In Ludwigsfelde in the region of Brandenburg, the Women’s Committee reported that the children were very happy with the meals and some even licked their plates. There were occasions when those in charge had to be very firm with mothers who wanted their children to bring the food home, which was only allowed when a child could not come to the distribution location. Often there were ‘heated arguments’ with mothers who wanted to stay with the children during the meals.70 From Seelow, where Zhukov’s army had smashed through the German defences on his way to Berlin, Volkssolidarität member Gerda Bauer wrote that 2,040 children had been receiving Irish food, including 130 from Seelow itself. There had been delays in the distribution of the meals as there were difficulties with blending the additional food with the few existing supplies. Members of the Women’s Committees were taking over the preparation and distribution of the meals. The district doctors and nurses selected the children who received ration cards on which daily meals were ticked off. The children were also weighed before each meal.71 In the district of Altenburg in Thuringia, 580 tuberculosis patients received two kilos of Irish sugar each.72 The Commission for the Distribution of Foreign Donations had decided that all pregnant women in Saxony, over 30,000, would receive one kilo each. The Volkssolidarität had been entrusted with the 68 ACICR, O CMS C-020, report on the distribution of Irish food supplies in Wildau, Senzig and Ludwigsfelde, by FDJ, 20 July 1946. 69 LHAS, 10.34-1-SED-Landesleitung Mecklenburg, Nr 164, Volkssolidarität Fol. 8 & Fol. 11/12, report, Volkssolidarität Schwerin, 19 July 1946. 70 ACICR, O CMS C-020, leader of Women’s Committee, Ludwigsfelde, to Frau Weidner, Women’s Committee, Mahlow, 20 July 1946. 71 ACICR, O CMS C-020, report of Gerda Bauer, Märkisches Volkssolidarität, Seelow, undated but probably July 1946. 72 TSAA, Nr 279, Bl 65, information bulletin, Ein Jahr Volkssolidarität Thüringen, 15 November 1946

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operation and 250 grams would be distributed to each expectant mother every two weeks.73 In Leipzig, about 5,000 expectant mothers were also given Irish sugar.74 In October 1947 in Plauen near Chemnitz (soon to be re-baptised Karl-MarxStadt in the future East Germany) 90 kilos of Irish bacon were distributed: 38 to tuberculosis patients in Plauen’s general hospital and 52 to a tuberculosis hospital in Waldschule. Everybody was entitled to one kilo, and 50 grams were distributed daily to each patient.75 Unsurprisingly, the press in the Soviet-Occupied Zone reacted very positively. The Märkische Volksstimme published a letter sent by the Volkssolidarität to the Osthavelland District Council. It stated that all children from infant up to fourteen years of age included would receive 250 grams of sugar, which represented a total of 37,540 children: ‘The population thanks the Irish people from the bottom of their hearts for their energetic help’.76 The Neue Zeit wrote that thanks to gifts from Ireland and the permission of the SMAD, 6,000 children in the area of Mark Brandenburg were being provided with quality foodstuffs.77 This was good publicity for the Soviets. The eastern German press’s reporting had come to the attention of Jean-Flavien Lalive in Geneva. He informed Boland in Dublin of the first shipment of Irish supplies into the Soviet-Occupied Zone and enclosed two press articles of the Märkische Volksstimme and the Tägliche Rundschau, ‘(the latter being the official organ of the Russian Military Government in Berlin)’, he added. Lalive commented: ‘It is noteworthy that this is the first mention in any newspaper of the Russian occupation zone of relief shipments from abroad’. He sent the same letter the same day to John P. Shanley, the IRCS chairman.78 In November 1946, Neues Deutschland (SED) announced the arrival of more Irish food supplies and remarked that all these gifts showed that the former enemies were not possessed by feelings of revenge towards Germany and that it was useless to cause more victims, especially among the innocent elderly and young people.79 Irish and other foreign supplies did make a difference in the Soviet-Occupied Zone to those who were lucky to get them. Sigrid Schubert, who attended 6th class at the Volksschule (People’s School) in Eibenstock in the Erzgebirge (Ore 73 SAL, StVuR 7574, Head Office of Hygiene, Leipzig, to Health Office employees, Leipzig, 19 December 1946. 74 SAL, StVuR 7574, City Council Leipzig (City Health Office) to Volkssolidarität (District Committee Leipzig) for the Commission for the Distribution of Foreign Donations within the Soviet-Occupied Zone, 13 May 1947. 75 SAC, B30409, Kreistag-Kreisrat Plauen, Nr 101, report of Volkssolidarität, Plauen, 2 October 1947. 76 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/7, ‘Kreis Osthavelland erhält Spende des irischen Volkes’, Märkische Volksstimme, 15 July 1946. 77 ‘Märkische Streiflichter’, Neue Zeit, 16 July 1946 (ZEFYS). 78 ACICR, O CMS C-023, Lalive, JRC, Geneva, to Boland (and Shanley), Dublin, 30 July 1946. 79 ‘Für unsere Kinder und Alten’, Neues Deutschland, 13 November 1946 (ZEFYS).

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Mountains) on the border with Czechoslovakia, was one of those. In her letter to the ‘kind donors’, she explained what foreign food meant to her: On Monday 5 April [1948], I went happily to school. On the way I met my granny. She said: ‘You look very happy today. What’s happened to you?’ I quickly opened my satchel and showed her the bowl, the spoon, and the number. ‘I’m allowed to take part in the food distribution for children! Because I’ve got health number three, I’ve been selected like many other children for the food distribution. Daddy and mummy went yesterday to the small castle for the opening celebration. They were told there in great detail how the distribution would take place and what nice things would be eaten. Today there will be sweet soup. I can’t wait to have the full bowl in front of me’. ‘Well, enjoy it’, said granny. I quickly walked to school. Many children were just as excited. But others that were not selected had sad faces. At last the time had come. We quickly went to the eating room. There, after we gave our numbers, we got out our 1/2 litre of soup which tasted great. We, the big girls, had to keep an eye on the small kids as they had to eat it all up and clean their bowls. The following days, we got peas with meat, gruel, and semolina. We were looked after that way for 78 days. After 10–14 days already we didn’t need as much lunch at home as before. We were now a little bit more filled up. All this nutritious food was sent to us from good people in Ireland, Switzerland, America, and Africa. All the children that participated in the meals and their parents thank you from the bottom of their hearts for this donation which was a great help to us in these times of need. With sadness we saw the end of the good days approaching. But the meals will remain forever a nice memory.80

Officials had noticed that children had put on weight, which was the objective. The FDJ (Communist youth) reported after the distribution of Irish supplies in Wildau, Senzig, and Ludwigsfelde near Berlin that ‘from all three distribution locations we received news that the children put on at least two up to five pounds in weight in four weeks’ time’.81 The Volkssolidarität in Reichenbach/Oberlausitz in Saxony had noticed the same phenomenon after twenty-seven children had benefitted from Irish food:

80 ACICR, D EUR DE1 1-103, Schubert to ‘kind donors’ through the ICRC, 23 July 1948 (as translated from the German) 81 ACICR, O CMS C-020, report on the distribution of Irish food supplies in Wildau, Senzig and Ludwigsfelde, by FDJ, 20 July 1946.

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324 · Chapter Ten Table 10.2. Meals provided to children in Reichenbach/Oberlausitz (Soviet-Occupied Zone) over 28 days, 1946 82 Child’s name Gisela G. Sabine S. Heidelore G. Anneliese S. Siegfried S. Margitta R. Margit H. Herbert L. Siegfried H. Günther S. Renate B. Eleonore M. Erika K. (…)

Old weight 24.8 kg 23 24.1 22.7 18.2 19.4 32.3 22.6 26.6 23.5 27.8 20 21.3

New weight 24.9 kg 23.3 25.3 22.8 18.5 20.8 33.2 23.3 27.1 25.5 29.3 20.3 21.3

August Lindt had been right to persevere in his negotiations with the Soviets as the physical and mental health of German children and adults was improving. There is also another fact worth stressing. Unlike what some in Ireland—and indeed elsewhere—were claiming, the communists in the Soviet-Occupied Zone of Germany and the eastern sector of Berlin had not hijacked Irish supplies for their own political benefit although manipulation for electoral gains in certain areas cannot be excluded. There was at least no attempt made to dissimulate the provenance of the supplies. Table 10.3. Don Irlandais in the Soviet-Occupied Zone83 1st Irish gift, 1946 Sugar

302 tons

Condensed milk Stoves

8 tons 100

2nd Irish gift Part of supplies for Berlin also used for Soviet-Occupied Zone not available (n/a) n/a n/a n/a

82 ACICR, O CMS C-020, report Volkssolidarität Reichenbach/Oberlausitz to district Committee, Görlitz, 12 July 1946 (names anonymised). 83 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 175–6.

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Irish aid to German refugees and expellees In the summer of 1945, hundreds of thousands of Germans from the eastern provinces of East Prussia and Silesia arrived in the railway stations of Berlin. Osmar White, an Australian war correspondent, described the infernal chaos: ‘They died in hundreds, lying on platforms awash with filth. I walked through sidings where trucks were piled with corpses, and where women stewed dog meat and turnips in blackened cans beside heaps of human dung. One of them plucked at my jacket sleeve, pointed to her mouth and hissed: ‘essen, essen’ [eat, eat]. I wondered if she, simply because she was German, deserved less pity than the live skeletons down the hill at Buchenwald. I realised then that the war had not ended with the execution and dismemberment of Hitler’s Germany. There were other beasts in other lairs’.84 White’s graphic description summed up the situation well, and it would last longer than the summer of 1945. Article XIII of the Potsdam Agreement signed by the Allies sanctioned the expulsion of the German populations from Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary. The Polish authorities estimated that some 3,500,000 people should gather some belongings and leave. Germans from Lower Silesia and Pomerania were mainly sent to the British-Occupied Zone while those from East Prussia and Posen were mainly sent to the Soviet-Occupied Zone. The new regions acquired by Poland had to be de-Germanised. Names of places and streets got Polish names and so on. In many places, Germans were obliged to wear a white armband, often with the black letter ‘N’ standing for ‘Niemiec’ (German). Some were interned in camps where they were very badly treated, sometimes in sadistic ways, notably at Lamsdorf.85 The expulsions were brutal. Germans were regularly robbed and humiliated by the Soviets and Poles. One woman said that she was ‘six times searched in my vagina for jewellery’. Another one was beaten to extract the gold crowns from her teeth.86 In reality the expulsions were badly organised and began in January 1946 during the winter. One train transport, carrying 4,000 persons in sixty wagons, was stuck for three weeks in no man’s land just before the Soviet-Occupied Zone. Food supplies quickly ran out and the Germans tried to survive by begging in the surrounding area. It is believed that several hundreds of people starved to death. The Polish militia was composed of half-criminal and anti-social elements and indulged in plundering the trains and robbing the expellees. After the dreadful German occupation of Poland, revenge was in the air. Yet, as Andreas Hofmann has put 84 Stafford, Endgame 1945, 503. 85 Andreas R. Hofmann, Die Nachkriegszeit in Schlesien; Gesellschafts- und Bevölkerungspolitik in den polnischen Siedlungsgebieten 1945–1948 (Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 2000), 199, 201, 206–209, 211, 217, 231–2. 86 Shephard, The Long Road Home, 121.

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it, ‘unlike Nazi policy, there was no desire though in the Polish government’s policy to subject the foreign population [Germans] to an extermination policy. It was far more the case that very often acts of violence were spontaneous acts of vengeance which were further inflamed by propaganda and generally condoned by the government’.87 But the expulsions had international consequences. A Polish liaison officer with the British reported back to Warsaw that the behaviour of the militia and security units was endangering Poland’s prestige abroad.88 He was right. As early as the autumn of 1945, several British newspapers and relief organisations began to stress the dreadful plight of Germany and its expellees.89 It was the same in Ireland.90 The question of how many died during the expulsions remains controversial and was (and is still) hotly debated, especially during the Cold War, some disingenuously claiming that it was a ‘German Holocaust’. Certain historians have claimed that about 2,000,000 people lost their lives while others have revised that figure and lowered it to 600,000. The issue is complex and involves questions such as how and where they died.91 Whatever the answer about numbers, there is no doubt at all that their expulsion was most traumatic. A few words must also be said on how these eastern expellees were welcomed by their fellow Germans in the four occupation zones. In an outstanding study most appropriately named Kalte Heimat (cold motherland), Andreas Kossert has depicted how the easterners were shunned and feared by the locals. As they arrived in large numbers, they were deemed to be a threat to the local culture, religion, and situation. Those who lost everything might want to take anything from those who were lucky to still have something. Some locals did their best for the refugees and expellees, but most did not. Despite the graphic details about the expulsions that Germans could read in the press, easterners were frequently described as ‘Polacks’ or ‘refugee scum’. In short, there was much xenophobia between Germans themselves and solidarity could not be taken for granted. In some cases, hostility expressed towards expellees was more than unpalatable. In the Wiesbaden area, a local man said that they should be sent to Auschwitz and was subsequently condemned by a court to pay a fine. In other cases, though, anti-eastern feelings could be freely expressed during carnival season without any court threatening to intervene. This happened, for instance, in areas in Baden and Cologne.92 The Allied Hofmann, Die Nachkriegszeit in Schlesien, 188, 227 & 228. Hofmann, Die Nachkriegszeit in Schlesien, 188, 227 & 228. Shephard, The Long Road Home, 124. ‘Expulsion of Germans from Poland’, 11 October 1945 & ‘Allies moving Germans from Poland’, 8  December 1945 in The Irish Times, (ITDA). 91 Shephard, The Long Road Home, 424–5, endnote 9. 92 Kossert, Kalte Heimat. See Chapter entitled ‘“Die Polacken kommen”; Deutsche Vertriebene nach 1945’ (The Polacks are coming; German expellees after 1945), 43–86. 87 88 89 90

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authorities were aware of what was going on. The British military governor in Germany wrote to Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin: ‘The misery of the immigrants brings out all the latent impulses of the German character to persecute the underdog, and though the treatment of refugees is not everywhere uniform, they remain in most places, and particularly in the areas of closest concentration, a class apart bearing a stigma which only the passage of time combined with a marked improvement in their physical condition can hope to efface’. An American officer noted: ‘In Bavaria or perhaps the whole of Germany there is no difference between a Nazi and Antinazi, Black and Red, Catholic or Protestant. The only difference is between natives and refugees’.93 However, many of those who rejected the arrival of the refugees and DPs in dire need were eager to get foreign supplies, including in Baden and Cologne where Irish aid was welcomed with open hands and empty stomachs as seen. Primitive survival instincts engendering selfishness had come to the fore. In refugee and expellee camps in Greater Berlin after the first arrival of Irish supplies in January 1946, the ICRC could use 33,600 tins of condensed milk to provide children each with half a litre of milk daily while the stocks lasted.94 August Lindt visited two camps and described what he saw. Mothers and children were grouped together, and city officials made a short speech in which they thanked the Irish people. To make the children realise what it was about, tins of condensed milk had been displayed on a table. The mothers fully understood the value of the gift. They, who felt abandoned, suddenly got gifts from a foreign people who thought of them. It was a new and uplifting experience, wrote Lindt. It was ‘impossible to depict the joy that was produced by the sight of the Irish woollen blankets. In most of the refugee camps, cut-out sacks serve as blankets … The distribution of these woollen blankets made also possible at long last to disinfect those materials that had served as blankets until now. It means the reduction of the spreading of typhus’.95 One man who was convinced that Irish supplies should be distributed to expellees was Fred Schwab, the ICRC delegate in the British-Occupied Zone. In a report to Geneva, he began by saying: ‘I consider the Irish Donation [Don Irlandais] as the best means of helping the child population among the East German refugees.’ Firstly, he believed that the supplies were ‘extremely suitable’ for additional food. Secondly, as shown in the previous chapter, he stressed that the Don Irlandais had no team on the spot and was therefore completely apolitical, thus making problems with the Allied military authorities less likely. Thirdly, the relief schemes operated by the JRC and the Don Irlandais were simple and straightforward, therefore 93 Kossert, Kalte Heimat, 84–5, 70–1. 94 ACICR, O CMS C-020, ‘Rapport final sur les vivres du Don Irlandais arrivés à Berlin par le 1er train-bloc [January 1946]’, by C. Mariotti, 5 September 1946. 95 ACICR, O CMS C-023, Lindt, ICRC, Berlin, to JRC, Geneva, 9 February 1946.

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effective. This was what would be needed when the 1,500,000 refugees from the east would arrive in the British-Occupied Zone. Fourthly, from a propaganda point of view, the JRC and the Don Irlandais appeared ‘thoroughly suitable [and] for the present, at any rate, the Irish Donation, acting through the Joint Commission, will constitute the first and only assistance given to the refugees’.96 Schwab had approached the British authorities and they would be happy to participate and provide support. The Irish donors could point out which categories of people should benefit from their aid: children, invalids and so on. The ICRC delegate then argued against the distribution of Irish supplies in reception camps for refugees (where they first arrived to be subsequently re-settled elsewhere in Germany) on the following grounds: ‘a) On their arrival, after days and nights spent on the road, the starving refugees are practically unable to eat anything; they are in a condition of total apathy. Moreover, their stay in the reception camps does not exceed eight to twenty-four hours. b) Such relief activities would be practically impossible to carry out, owing to the scarcity of supplies. The number of daily arrivals is too high, and no distinction could be drawn in these camps between children and adults. Supervision in such cases is out of the question’.97 According to Schwab, the British agencies were doing their very best to assist the DRK (German Red Cross) to help the expellees. Hanover would be an ideal place to work from as it was centrally located, had warehouses, and had the necessary transport infrastructure to bring supplies to expellee camps and homes. He wrote: ‘The proposed help of the Irish Donation [Don Irlandais] to German Eastern refugees could be planned either for a limited, or an unlimited period. The most important point is, however, that such activities should be set on foot immediately’. All supplies would be most welcome, but especially ‘sugar, condensed and dried milk, grape sugar, special foods of every kind’.98 Schwab had visited reception camps in the British-Occupied Zone. The largest ones were Friedland and Marienthal where about 10,000 expellees arrived every day. They had first to undergo medical screening and delousing before being sent to transit camps elsewhere in the British-Occupied Zone. He gave an account of what he saw in Friedland: ‘Many walked barefoot, their boots and everything else having been taken from them by the Russians or the Poles … I often saw old women carrying their husbands, reduced to mere skeletons; sometimes it was the other way round … I saw another young 96 ACICR, O CMS C-023, ‘Proposal to the Joint Commission for Relief Activities on behalf of East German Refugees, with the help of the Irish Donation’, no author mentioned but in all likelihood Schwab, and no date. 97 ACICR, O CMS C-023, ‘Proposal to the Joint Commission for Relief Activities on behalf of East German Refugees, with the help of the Irish Donation’. 98 ACICR, O CMS C-023, ‘Proposal to the Joint Commission for Relief Activities on behalf of East German Refugees, with the help of the Irish Donation’.

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woman silently weeping in the nursery hutment. She told me that on the previous day, she had been ill-treated and assaulted by the Russians’.99 In agreement with what had been decided at Potsdam, the Allies prepared to receive expellees in their respective zones. The British had organised ‘Operation Swallow’ and from February 1946 onwards hundreds of thousands arrived in their zone, most of them by train, others by sea disembarking in the old Hanseatic City of Lübeck. By the end of 1949, more than 4 million had to be resettled. The Americans welcomed about 3.5 million people while the authorities in East Germany later calculated that their population increased by 25%. The French by contrast received far fewer expellees. Living conditions for these people were dreadful as there was an obvious lack of housing after the devastating Allied bombing raids. Many were ill and thousands died. As seen, arrival in the western zones was absolutely no guarantee for a new and better life. Expellees were uprooted and had difficulties adapting to their new environment. Some historians have estimated that in the end about 12 million people were expelled,100 but others have put the figure as high as 14 million.101 The Central Committee for the Distribution of Foreign Supplies in Stuttgart in the American-Occupied Zone wrote to de Valera that Germany was facing ‘monstrous problems’.102 Irish supplies soon reached the expellees. In June 1946, the Red Cross in Lower Saxony in the British-Occupied Zone profusely thanked the JRC for the Irish mobile canteen which would be used in the camps. It was also a morale booster: ‘The [expellees] will learn from your relief that the welfare-organizations of foreign countries are interested in their fate and practice their blessed work of charity without any difference of nationality’. The JRC later transmitted the Lower Saxon Red Cross’s letter to the DEA in Dublin.103 Another document transmitted to the ‘Irish Nation’ by the DRK in Kiel in northern Germany was ‘an illustrated booklet of the great need of refugees in Schleswig-Holstein, in pursuance of our note in which we thanked you for your sugar-gift’. The booklet contained photographs of expellees during ‘Operation Swallow’. Some individuals were in shocking physical condition and had almost only skin and bones left. One child, ‘Hedwig K.’, eleven years of age, weighed only 14 kilos, instead of a normal weight of about 32. A ‘Mr E. H.’, seventy-one years of age, was lying on a bed, his ribs very visibly protruding. Since 1945 he had not eaten meat and 99 ACICR, O CMS C-023, ‘Report for the Irish Donation on a visit to the camps of German Eastern refugees’, no author mentioned but in all likelihood Fred Schwab. 6 March 1946. 100 Lowe, Savage Continent, 242–5. 101 Kossert, Kalte Heimat, 9. 102 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/7, Central Committee to de Valera, 26 September 1947. 103 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/6, Red Cross, Lower Saxony, to JRC, Geneva, 17 June 1946.

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fatty food. Other photographs showed expellees with their bundles on their backs, waiting at a railway station, or disembarking from a boat. Others went to a wooden hut on which ‘Auskunft’ (information) was written, hoping to get news from relatives and friends. The front of the hut was covered with small bits of paper (messages) containing possibly relevant information.104 By mid-November 1946, the following Irish supplies had reached the British-Occupied Zone: Table 10.4. Allocation of Irish supplies to the British-Occupied Zone, mid-November 1946 105 Commodity Sugar Canned meat Condensed milk Baby food Cheese Civilian clothing Blankets Pillows Mattresses Towels Kitchen utensils Jute canvas Draw sheets

Quantity 1,162.3 tons 145 tons 10 tons 3 tons 8 tons 3,600 items 7,560 items 2,300 items 6,000 items 4,600 items 87,444 items 6,000 yards 91 yards

% of Total Relief Supplies 11.62% 3,6% 4% 6% 3.2% 20% 4% 26.5% 27% 27% 67% 100% 100%

Also, about 400 tons of frozen meat, the equivalent of 2,000 head of cattle, was on its way to the zone. Some of these supplies would be distributed among the expellees. Deputy Brian Brady, who toured Germany on behalf of the IRCS, described in his subsequent report the plight of the expellees, which considerably added to the already catastrophic situation. He wrote that ‘conditions are such that the people seem quite apathetic and have no hope in the future’. He urged Ireland to keep sending more supplies: ‘The warmth and sincerity of the gratitude to the Irish people for what they have already done on the part of the German people has to be witnessed to be appreciated’.106 It is interesting to notice that the Jewish Palestine Post reported Ireland’s relief efforts for sick German children and expellees: ‘Several hundred tons of various goods, mostly from Ireland, were at once 104 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2, booklet entitled ‘Schwalbe-Flüchtlinge/Swallow-Expellees’, containing photographs and a letter from the DRK, Schleswig-Holstein, to the ‘Irish Nation’, 18 July 1947. 105 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/7, note by Cornelius Cremin, DEA, 7 December 1946. 106 NAI, DFA, 400 series part 2, 419/1/7, letter to Miss O’Connell, Department of the Taoiseach, including Brady’s report, 11 February 1947.

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forwarded to the two occupation zones [American and Soviet] by the Red Cross Joint Relief Commission. Relief work in the British and French zones by the Red Cross is already in progress’.107 Remarkably, there was no trace of hostility in the Palestine Post’s article. Germans who were still living in Poland were also looked after. Two wagons of Irish supplies were due to be sent to the ‘needy German population’ in Katowice and Glatz (nowadays Kłodzko) after agreement between the JRC and the Polish Red Cross in Geneva.108 Each wagon would contain ‘5 tons of sugar, 3 tons of biscuits, 2 tons of condensed milk, 200 blankets [and] 3 tons of bacon’.109 A document issued by the Polish Red Cross in Warsaw confirms that the Germans got the supplies ‘in accordance with the wishes of the donor’.110

German expellees leave witness accounts for Irish authorities After what the Nazi regime had perpetrated, vengeance was unavoidably on top of local agendas. Hitler and Stalin had been responsible for moving about 30 million people between 1939 and 1943.111 These forced migrations were now set to continue after agreements during the Potsdam Conference. In Poland, several millions of Germans were squeezed into cattle trucks and expelled. Along the way, many froze or starved to death. They were also robbed and sometimes murdered by Poles who raided and plundered the trains. Some officials participated in these attacks. In certain cases, Soviet soldiers protected Germans. One Red Army officer told a group of expellees: ‘Poles bad. Very, very bad. But Russians good. Just ask Russians. Russians always help against Poles.’112 That Russians and Poles did not get along was well-known and therefore Russian objectivity when commenting on Poles should not be taken at face value. But these expellees had been lucky to find decent Soviet soldiers as rape, robbery and murder could easily have been the alternative.113 Yet, it was a fact that the Soviets protected German expellees in the new border area between Germany and Poland (Poland’s borders were pushed west at the expense of Germany). They were still in charge of the area before leaving it to the Polish authorities and were taking everything they needed for the reconstruction 107 ‘Red Cross for German Relief ’, The Palestine Post, 26 June 1946 (NLI). 108 ACICR, O CMS C-025, Jean-Flavien Lalive, JRC, Geneva, to Polish Red Cross, Warsaw, 18 February 1946. 109 ACICR, O CMS C-025, note regarding supplies for Silesia, Katowice and Glatz (nowadays Kłodzko), 3 January 1946. 110 PRC, Syg. Akt. 4/86, ‘Gifts of the Social Institutions from several countries sent through the Mixte Commission of Relief of the International Red Cross, from 1 April 1945 to 1 June 1946. 11268 colis. Gross weight 259,925 kg.’, by Polish Red Cross, Warsaw. 111 Judt, Postwar, 23. 112 MacDonogh, After the Reich, 190–3. 113 MacDonogh, After the Reich, 190–3.

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of the Soviet Union. Therefore, they viewed Polish plunderers, including those who attacked Germans, as a threat to their authority and interests.114 The lawlessness in the former German provinces of Pomerania and Silesia was such that Polish officials had nicknamed them the ‘Wild West’.115 People in Ireland were informed of the evolving situation. In December 1945, the Irish Times explained that ‘more than 6,000,000 Germans will be moved from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Austria to various zones in Germany by August 1946’.116 The suffering of Germans in Silesia was known: ‘Reasons given for the terrible plight of the people, apart from the war, are the policy of the Red Army in removing quantities of cattle, machinery and stocks of food, and the depredations of Polish bands which invest these districts, carrying off most of what the Russians left, and even turning the peasants off their land to make way for Polish settlers’.117 The expulsions of Germans sanctioned by the Allies during their conference in Potsdam were anything but ‘orderly and humane’. As R.M. Douglas has stated: ‘For citizens of the Allied countries, and especially those of the United States and Britain, it invites scrutiny of the complicity of their leaders and peoples in one of the largest episodes of mass human rights abuse in modern history, which bore a disturbing resemblance in some respects at least to Nazi Germany’s wartime effort to reconfigure the demographic contours of the continent by similar means’.118 While this remark is thoughtprovoking, the unprecedented horrors perpetrated by the Nazi regime and largely condoned, unopposed or approved by the masses of the German population should always be borne in mind. Revenge did not simply come out of thin air and the Allies were not like the Nazis despite some of their undeniable excesses. In the striking words of Federal President Richard von Weizsäcker, uttered in the West German parliament on the 40th anniversary of the end of the Second World War: ‘We must not see the cause of flight, expulsion, and unfreedom at the end of the war. Rather, it is in its beginning and in the beginning of the tyranny which led to the war’.119 Today in the National Archives of Ireland there are several boxes that contain letters of expellees who wrote to the ‘noble donors from Ireland’ —a recurrent expression—to show their gratitude.120 Most of their letters were written in German, 114 Slaveski, The Soviet Occupation of Germany, 41–2. 115 Lowe, Savage Continent, 45. 116 ‘Allies moving Germans from Poland’, The Irish Times, 8 December 1945 (ITDA). 117 ‘Hunger and disease in Silesia’, The Irish Times, 2 January 1946 (ITDA). 118 R.M. Douglas, Orderly and Humane: The Expulsion of the Germans after the Second World War (New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 2012), 3. 119 Richard von Weizsäcker in Peter Bender, Deutschlands Wiederkehr: Eine ungeteilte Nachkriegsgeschichte 1945–1990 (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2008), 14. 120 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2A, Alois and Margarete Graba, Remels, East Friesland, to ‘the noble donors from Ireland’, 21 March 1948.

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occasionally in good or broken English. Reading them, it becomes rapidly evident what the Irish supplies had meant for these uprooted and hungry people forced to head west on roads, paths, and rail tracks: they lifted morale and made them feel human again because other humans, even though far away, did care about their fate. Many also took the opportunity to write what they experienced when they were driven out of East Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia, and the Sudetenland. Therefore, their letters constitute important witness accounts for the students of history and definitely fit with the picture that emerged from other such accounts and academic studies. Norbert Claeser wrote to Éamon de Valera that ‘on 28 June 1945, we were driven out of Landsberg an der Warthe [nowadays Gorzów Wielkopolski] in ten minutes’ time by the Poles. We lost all our furniture, clothes etc and reached Berlin on foot desperately poor. In Berlin-Friedenau we survive just about … My father is not able to buy something in the black market because he has no money … Because of these reasons, I beg you to be so kind as to send us a donation parcel’.121 Friedrich Erben in Stahnsdorf near Potsdam in the Soviet-Occupied Zone also wrote to de Valera personally as he knew the Taoiseach was a ‘good Catholic’. He explained that he had been recently released from captivity because he had tuberculosis and that in the meantime his wife, his four young children aged four to seven and his seventyfive-year old mother-in-law had been expelled from the east in dreadful conditions. Germans were robbed by ‘inhuman elements’. His wife lost so much weight that she looked like a ‘skeleton’. They received very few rations and the children did not get ‘a drop of milk’. Erben asked de Valera if he could send a parcel with food, shoes, and clothes.122 The begging aspect in some of these letters was not to Neues Deutschland’s taste and it poured scorn over them: ‘For sure the German is poor, so poor even that crumbs on the table have become a real treat for him’. As a result, Berliners wrote ‘begging letters’ to foreign committees and strangers abroad. This practice was degrading for the country, the intention being to provoke tears in the hope of getting parcels, it continued. In the United States, such practice was common as millionaires and film stars got loads of them, but not in Germany. Neues Deutschland claimed that the ultimate aim was to get supplies that were lacking and then sell them in the black market. Berliners got foreign addresses in the black market in the same way they got butter, silk stockings, and other commodities.123 The communist newspaper was showing a singular lack of compassion and understanding here. Moreover, the chances were that Walter Ulbricht and the SED party cadres were not living on around 800–1,000 calories a day. 121 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2, Claeser, Berlin-Friedenau, to de Valera, 13 March 1947. 122 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4, Erben to de Valera, 18 March 1947. 123 ‘Bettelbriefe’, Neues Deutschland, 15 June 1947 (ZEFYS).

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Another aspect which permeates the letters is Polish brutality, which seems to have been worse than Soviet brutality. Hermann Reinsch wrote that ‘when the Russians arrived in our village, we were really scared’, but it was worse when the Poles took over: Then a terrible life began for us. A Polish family arrived in every farm. We had to leave everything. Often the whole house was searched, and they took what they liked. When we did not do as we were told, they called the commandant and beat us up. Indeed, they even detained my father in the toilet of their headquarters for three days and beat him senseless. And one day that happened too to my eldest sister, Eva. One day four thugs arrived with truncheons and beat her senseless. It nearly happened to my mother also. Dear noble donors, I had to witness this as a ten-year old boy. We got to know the Poles only too well. I will never forget it in my life.124

Franz Alscher wrote: ‘Repeated lootings by the Russians, Poles, and Ukrainians began. Not one hour, be it day or night, were we safe from thefts, beatings, and illtreatment. We were especially belittled by the Poles’.125 Gertrud Zeidler agreed: What the Russians had left us for everyday life, the Poles took. The Russians did not handle us with kid gloves, but the Poles’ humanity left much to be desired . . . Beatings were part of everyday life, no matter if it was an innocent child or an old man . . . My father-in-law was so badly beaten up that he died shortly afterwards. On 12 December 1946, when it was minus 23 degrees outside, we were expelled. What we took from the rubble was taken from us by the Poles during the loading. After fourteen days of travelling in a freight wagon, we arrived in the British zone. Because of the bitter cold, we numbered 73 dead.126

These accounts confirm what Ian Buruma has written namely that ‘as long as the Red Army was in control, the Poles more or less held themselves back’. Some Germans felt protected by Soviet soldiers despite their brutal excesses.127 But what is strikingly lacking in the expellees’ letters was self-examination of their consciences and an attempt to answer the central question: why did the Poles and Russians do that to us? In reality, the appalling suffering of the Polish population 124 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2A, Reinsch and his family, Groß-Sander, East Friesland, to ‘dear noble donors’, 21 March 1948. 125 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2A, Franz Alscher and wife, Buchholz, Lower Saxony, to Caritas, 24 February 1949. 126 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2A, Gertrud Zeidler, Buchholz, Lower Saxony, to Caritas, 24 February 1949. 127 Buruma, Year Zero, 91.

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(Jews and non-Jews) during the war was conveniently ignored by Germans living there. A woman named Irene K. put it well: ‘…we forgot all Jews and Poles …’. When Poles were being thrown out of their homes to make room for new German settlers, almost no German protested but expressions of ‘Schadenfreude’ (malicious glee) were common. In the words of the same Irene K.: ‘[The Poles] watched us with fear in their eyes as we walked critically through their rooms’. The treatment of Jews and non-Jews was widely known by Germans. Another German woman remarked: ‘The Poles are numerically predominant almost everywhere but one doesn’t notice much of them any more’.128 When the Wehrmacht and the SS were defeated by the Red Army, the Poles made sure that they became visible again. The Nazi occupation of Poland went beyond the atrocious and resulted in about 6 million deaths, that is to say about one fifth of the population. But now these German expellees, who had shown no compassion to Jews, Poles, and others, received Irish bacon, sugar, and blankets from people who did show compassion—people who had not been occupied during the war, it was true, and who might not always have been aware of what exactly had happened in Central and Eastern Europe. In their letters to Ireland, expellees sometimes mentioned cases of rape explicitly like Joseph Klose, a former prisoner of war, who used the actual word: ‘After the collapse the Russians first occupied the home country. When, in September 1945, the Russians left to make room for the Poles, the suffering for the population began. I do not want to depict what sort of repression, rape and brutalities were inflicted upon our women’.129 Others used euphemisms like Kurt Knoller: ‘As a result of illtreatment by the Russians my wife is ill and under medical care’.130 Lena Wissmann preferred to avoid any explicit statement although what she implicitly meant was very clear: ‘My depressions lead me back to the great upheaval when I experienced the arrival of the Russians on 27 March 1945. I had not known before that communism could be so terrible and so merciless. I don’t want to go into detail here’.131 The dreadful suffering of the expellees was plain to see. But again it is important here not to amalgamate Allied and Nazi crimes and bear in mind the words of Andreas Hofmann: ‘While German deportations were part of a racial extermination policy, the transports of German expellees did not lead to extermination camps though.’132 However, this experience and memory of violence created a community of 128 Elizabeth Harvey, ‘“We forgot all Jews and Poles”; German women and the “ethnic struggle” in Nazioccupied Poland’, Contemporary European History, vol. 10, no. 3 (Nov. 2001): 447–61. 129 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2A, Joseph Klose, Leer, East Friesland, to ‘the noble donors from Ireland’, 20 March 1948. 130 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/7, Kurt Knoller and his wife, Münster, to the Irish government, 1 December 1952. 131 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2A, Wissmann, Leer, East Friesland, to ‘the generous donors of Ireland’, 26 March 1948. 132 Hofmann, Die Nachkriegszeit in Schlesien, 239

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fellow-sufferers among German expellees in which many equated the crimes committed by the communists to those committed by the Nazis.133 As previously stated, the integration of eastern expellees in the Allied occupation zones was problematic and it was reflected in letters sent from expellee camps and resettlement areas. In 1948, Hanna Papert in Remels in East Friesland (northern Germany) in the British-Occupied Zone, thanked Catholic Ireland profusely: It is hard to believe that there are still good and noble-minded souls in this world, because fate has sent us to a cold and heartless area that brings us Catholic people and children but little luck as the Protestant people here have no heart and feeling for us homeless . . .134

The same year, Hermann Reinsch, also in East Friesland, mentioned this religious aspect too: We hope and rely on God that He will give us back our home country. Now, it is almost Easter and we must celebrate for the third time in a purely Protestant area. We are only two Catholic families in the village and that is really difficult for us.135

There can be little doubt that Papert and Reinsch felt deeply uprooted in their new environment, and there is probably also an attempt to play the Catholic card in trying to get more from Catholic Ireland. Yet, it is relevant to make the following comments which cast light on this religious aspect found in several of the letters. When more than 12 million eastern expellees arrived in the Allied occupation zones, the denominational landscape of Germany, which had not changed since the Reformation days and the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), was suddenly deeply altered. Protestant areas where there were hardly any Catholics saw the massive arrival of Catholics from Silesia and Catholic areas saw the arrival of Protestants from East Prussia, for example. The locals were not at ease with the religion of the expellees, which they perceived was a threat to their own and their way of life. Insults like ‘Lutheran heretics’ or ‘Lutheran scum’ could be heard. Sometimes, there was also antagonism between different Protestant denominations, Calvinists against Lutherans. The situation between western and eastern Catholics was strained too. Bavarian clergy believed that Catholic expellees from neighbouring Sudetenland might spread ‘religious Bolshevism’ in conservative 133 Holian, ‘Anticommunism in the Streets’, 136. 134 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2A, Paper to ‘unknown donors’, 20 March 1948. 135 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2A, Reinsch, Groß-Sander, Eastern Friesland, to ‘dear generous donors’, 21 March 1948.

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Bavaria because of their desperate living conditions and frame of mind. That such ‘religious Bolshevism’ and general radicalisation eventually never materialised was, as Andreas Kossert explains, because the expellees ‘denied their pain and surrendered their own cultural identity’ and knew that in the end they had to adapt to their new western surroundings.136 In northern Germany, Protestant expellees felt more at home in a different Protestant environment as they could still identify with the local Church. This was not the case for Catholic expellees in that region, who went through many adaptation problems. Many expellees felt ‘denominational homelessness’.137 This is precisely what Papert and Reinsch experienced and wrote in their letters. It is to be stressed that hostility towards refugees and expellees was not a new phenomenon and one associated with Germany exclusively. During the First World War, French locals had initially welcomed refugees from northern and eastern France and Belgium, all fleeing the German advance. However, by the end of 1914, tens of thousands of refugees had become about 3 million and tensions developed, locals seeing refugees as additional burdens if not downright locusts.138 Lena Wissmann depicted the situation with much homesickness: I wish to thank you from the bottom of my heart, also on behalf of my husband, for the tin of meat which we received by way of Caritas branch in Leer. This magnanimous gift has pleased us very much particularly as the distribution of food in our so impoverished Germany is very limited and as we are often not able to eat our fill. We are homeless expellees from the east (Danzig) and for the past three years we have been through much misery and want. Two years ago, we were sent here in Leer in East Friesland. All we think of is our dear lost home country.139

But the expellees would not return to the home country and problems of integration lingered on in a Germany that was being rebuilt. On 24 February 1949, three months before the foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany, Gertud Zeidler wrote from Buchholz in Lower-Saxony (British-Occupied Zone): ‘I, my husband and my ten-year old daughter find ourselves in a very small room which is now our new home country. Hopefully, our Lord will bring us back our old home country. With this I do not want to forget our magnanimous donors from Ireland, and also Caritas, for all the gifts that were given to us.’140 The same day from the 136 Kossert, Kalte Heimat. See Chapter entitled ‘“Mit den Vertriebenen kam Kirche”: Kirchen und Frömmigkeit’ (With the expellees came the Church; Churches and piousness), 229–68, 16. 137 Kossert, Kalte Heimat. For Kossert’s quote see 230. 138 Max Hastings, Catastrophe; Europe goes to War 1914 (London: William Collins, 2014), 559. 139 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2A, Wissmann to ‘the generous donors of Ireland’, 26 March 1948. 140 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2A, Gertrud Zeidler, Buchholz, Lower Saxony, to Caritas, 24 February 1949.

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same location Franz Alscher and his wife wrote: ‘On the night of 8 to 9 August [1946] we arrived in Buchholz and stayed for 14 days in the camp. Then we were given a room that serves us as a living room, bedroom, and kitchen. Of the 8 windowpanes, 6 were covered with paper. In the cold winter of 46, the temperature inside was 1 degree above zero by ten o’clock and 6 to 7 degrees above [sic, under?] zero by the evening’.141 After the foundation of the new West German state, Emil Schöniger, who had been expelled from Czechoslovakia in April 1946, received for the second time a gift from Ireland and wrote in his letter of thanks: ‘We have been [in Wolfhagen, west of Kassel] for four years already and have been waiting and waiting, probably for death. The locals have no understanding for our precarious situation. We hope and wait until at last salvation comes, if we survive at all. The Czechs have taken my belongings and here we have become beggars’.142 Kurt Knoller and his wife had been in Münster (British-Occupied Zone) for several years and their life was not easy. In December 1952, he wrote to the Irish government to ask if foodstuffs and clothes could be sent to them, explaining that he was unemployed and that they were both ill. Living conditions were appalling: ‘We are living here in a bunker and pay 5,500 DM [Deutsche Mark] rent a month for 1 room. We doubt that we shall ever get any other accommodation from the housing office. We have been for years now in the bunker.’ Knoller had even included a medical certificate in his letter.143 Life was harsh for the 7.6 million expellees who had settled in the westernoccupied zones. Their fate would begin to improve during the 1950s when the West German Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle) generated much employment and when financial compensation was offered.144 All these letters are of great historic importance. Unfortunately, few have survived.

Looking after German prisoners of war Maurice Butt, a RAF prisoner of war detained in Germany, said that food was ‘a dominant thought in most minds’. Not only did quantity matter, but as well quality. In the words of James Crossland, the ICRC was ‘the primary external provider of food and medical relief for the prisoners’, and the arrival of ICRC delegates in prisoner-of-war camps was a morale booster.145 During the war, the IRCS had formed a Prisoner-of-War Committee. Gifts were sent to wounded soldiers 141 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2A, Franz Alscher and his wife to Caritas, 24 February 1949. 142 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2A, Schöniger to Irish government and people, undated but probably 1950. 143 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/7, Knoller to Irish government, 1 December 1952. 144 Marie-Luise Recker, Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (Munich: Verlag C.H. Beck, 2009), 30, 35. 145 Crossland, Britain and the International Committee of the Red Cross, 1939–1945, 68–9.

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in British hospitals, Italian prisoners in Britain, and prisoners in Ireland. Food parcels were sent to Serbian and Polish prisoners of war on the continent. At the demand of the British Red Cross’s Prisoner-of-War Department, the IRCS participated in so-called ‘next-of-kin parcels’. Unlike ordinary food parcels which were stored in a central location in a prisoner-of-war camp, next-of-kin parcels were sent to individual prisoners. Sometimes families found it hard to put together a worthwhile parcel. In that case, extra support was organised as prisoners were then ‘adopted by [their] Regimental Comforts Fund, or by some private friend’. In the spring of 1943, the British Red Cross asked the IRCS to inquire into the situation of certain prisoners (not stated in the text but presumably British or Axis prisoners detained in Ireland or Irish prisoners of the British army detained by Axis powers) and to make sure that they did receive something. The IRCS ‘adopted a number of cases and sent them parcels to a value of £2 each parcel, paid for by contributions and by grants from the Executive Committee’. The IRCS’s Prisoner-ofWar Committee met and worked in the Emergency Hospital’s Supply Depot in Dublin. Despite evident goodwill, all was not plain-sailing. The Irish Red Cross Monthly Bulletin stated: We must, however, admit that many parcels went astray, and their non-arrival caused much disappointment both to the prisoners and to the families who had, in many cases, paid a fair share of the cost. These are the hazards of war. The capitulation of Italy, the bombing of communications on the Continent, the moving of prisoners from camp to camp in the last terrible weeks [of the war], put the greatest difficulties in the way of the mails.146

In all, 1,027 prisoners of war were in the IRCS card-index system and parcels were sent to 242 of them. In July 1945, the Irish Red Cross Monthly Bulletin reported that ‘the work of the Prisoners of War Committee is now practically at an end’.147 It ought not to have been as the situation of German prisoners gave reason to worry. In September 1947, Eberhard Lohrmann, the executive secretary of the German Central Committee for the Distribution of Foreign Relief Supplies, wrote to de Valera about the extremely bad physical condition of prisoners who were being progressively released from Soviet camps: Many of them go barefoot as they cannot stand any shoes, their feet are covered with blisters. The rags which they wear as wrapping round their feet must also 146 IRCS, Irish Red Cross Monthly Bulletin, vol. 5, no 7 (July 1945) 195–7. 147 IRCS, Irish Red Cross Monthly Bulletin, vol. 5, no 7 (July 1945) 195–7.

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serve as socks and dressing for their wounds. Their clothing mostly consists of old homespun trousers and a jacket of similar cloth, their hair is cut short. The long captivity and the hard work in Russian coal mines or in the vast forests of Siberia has made these men entirely apathetic. Their hollow eyes are staring motionless at some fictitious point.148

About one-third of German prisoners of war in Soviet captivity died because of lack of food, physical exhaustion during long marches to the detention camps, exposure to the Siberian climate, and general disinterest in their fate. Soviet hatred was also evident.149 That is not to say that the western Allies’ treatment of German prisoners of war was above reproach by comparison. The Americans crammed tens of thousands of them in what became known as ‘Rheinwiesenlager’ (Rhine meadow camps) where they were in fields, surrounded by barbed wire. In Remagen, one such camp housed more than 134,000 men. There was a lack of clothes, food, medicine, and hygiene. It seems that the western Allies were taken aback by the sudden massive scale of the German surrender. The issue of how many prisoners died in American captivity in the Rhine area remains controversial and disputed, figures ranging from 4,500 up to between 50,000 and 60,000.150 Also noteworthy was that the Allies leased prisoners of war between themselves. For example, the British and the Americans handed over to the French about 1 million prisoners who would help in the reconstruction process. The Belgians were given about 64,000.151 There are not many documents available that show that Irish supplies reached German prisoners although they undoubtedly did. In May 1947, the Vatican Mission in Brussels asked the IRCS for supplies for prisoners in Belgium, generally working in coalmines. The IRCS was willing to send £60 worth of dried milk with the DEA’s agreement.152 It also sent musical instruments to other prisoners.153 Caritas distributed eighteen bales of Irish clothes and eighty-four cartons of Irish meat tins, which the diocese of Osnabrück had received. The clothes were given to former prisoners of war, many of whom had ‘tears in their eyes’.154

148 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/7, Lohrmann to de Valera, 26 September 1947. 149 Lowe, Savage Continent, see Chapter 11, ‘German Prisoners of War’, 111–24. 150 Lowe, Savage Continent, 111–24. 151 MacDonogh, After the Reich, 394. 152 NAI, DFA, 6/419/26, Vatican Mission, Brussels, to IRCS, 2 May 1947; IRCS to DEA, 27 May 1947; note by Cremin for McCauley, DEA, 2 June 1947; note by McCauley for Cremin, 3 June 1947 & McCauley to IRCS, 3 June 1947. 153 ‘Response to Irish Red Cross Appeal disappoints’, The Irish Times, 14 July 1945 (ITDA). 154 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2A, Caritas Hamburg to Irish donors, 20 March 1948.

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Concluding remarks Several years after the war, the DRK (German Red Cross) issued a document which mentioned foreign aid in the postwar years. It was stated that the four countries that stood out in providing supplies to Germany were Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States. According to available figures, the number of people that received foreign goods, excluding meals and stays abroad, was exactly 7,818,916 for 1946–1949 and 1,503,702 for 1949–1952.155 Ireland had played a prominent role in relief for Germany, on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Astonishingly, that fact would take several decades to be fully brought to light. In the end, although unspectacular, the Soviets’ efficient planning led to a stable improvement of the living conditions in their zone of occupation. More food and especially more goods like textile, knitwear, and clothes became available.156 In a report written in May 1948, the police forces in the Soviet-Occupied Zone noticed a very clear improvement in the food situation during the winter of 1948,157 although the use of ration cards would be abandoned in East Germany only in 1958 (in West Germany in 1950).158 It was obvious that the arrival of Irish supplies in all occupation zones in Germany and sectors in Berlin was an important psychological morale booster for the population. Equally obvious was that Irish supplies got caught in the unfolding Cold War. The letters of German expellees imply that the Irish authorities, although their country was at the western edge of Europe, had a good idea of what was going on in Central and Eastern Europe. Ireland’s aid to the Soviet-Occupied Zone did not last as long as its aid to the western zones. In subsequent years, Ireland followed the western policy of non-recognition of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), the former SovietOccupied Zone. For example, it rejected the GDR’s application for membership of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) in 1954.159 It was only in 1980 that official diplomatic relations between Ireland and the GDR were established.160 As will be seen in the coming chapters, the story of Irish supplies beyond the line between Berlin and Rome was not devoid of political interference.

155 DRK, 1946–54, DRK-GS-Berlin, DRK, 3482, document entitled ‘Aus einem Bericht über die DRK-Arbeit’, paragraph ‘IV Auslandshilfe (1946–März 1953)’, undated but after March 1953. 156 Jan Foitzik, ed., Sowjetische Kommandanturen und deutsche Verwaltung in der SBZ und frühen DDR (Berlin/Munich/Boston: Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2015), 374. 157 Naimark, The Russians in Germany, 559, endnote 136. 158 ‘Lebensmittelkarte’, Haus der Geschichte, in https://www.hdg.de/lemo/bestand/objekt/druckgutlebensmittelkarte.html (accessed on 2 May 1950). 159 Paula L. Wylie, Ireland and the Cold War: Diplomacy and Recognition 1949–63 (Dublin: Irish Academic Press, 2006), 129. 160 Jérôme aan de Wiel, East German Intelligence and Ireland, 1949–90 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015), 44.

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Chapter Eleven

Ireland’s Aid to Central Europe: Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland

Before the Second World War relations between Ireland and countries along the Danube and the Vistula were few and far between. Irish diplomatic representation extended as far as Berlin and Rome. Past that line it became difficult to find links although there had been intermittent encounters between Irish and Central Europeans, essentially at cultural level.1 There was some shared history, though. Austria sent money to Ireland during the Great Famine. The nationality question was a burning issue in the polyglot and multi-ethnic Dual Monarchy that was Austria-Hungary and in Britain’s oldest colony, Ireland. Politicians and nationalists took an interest in each other’s country, hoping to learn something by making comparisons.2 There had always been feelings of empathy between Catholic Poland, dismembered between Austria (-Hungary), Germany, and Russia, and Catholic Ireland, occupied by Britain, although important differences remained.3 During the First World War, the Irish Catholic Church had organised money collections for Poland and the population had donated generously.4 During the nineteenth century, the Irish question was discussed in the ‘Czech cultural milieu’ (the Czechs wanting to break away from the Austro-Hungarian empire). The Irish were much interested in the Czech language revival movement (Irish nationalists wanting to revive the use of the Irish language). After the First World War, Czechs 1 See Aidan O’Malley and Even Patten, eds., Ireland, West to East: Irish Cultural Connections with Central and Eastern Europe (Oxford: Peter Lang). 2 aan de Wiel, The Irish Factor, 1899–1919, see Chapter Three ‘Austria-Hungary: Baron von Francken­stein goes touring in Ireland’, 87–112. 3 Róisín Healy, ‘Religion and Rebellion: The Catholic Church in Ireland and Poland from 1848 to 1867’, in Sabine Egger and John McDonagh, eds., Polish-Irish Encounters in the Old and New Europe (Bern: Peter Lang, 2011), 19–35. 4 aan de Wiel, The Catholic Church in Ireland, 1914–1918, 27.

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and Irish followed each other’s struggle for independence and self-determination. Czechoslovakia opened a consulate in Dublin in 1929. Although there were many literary contacts between the two countries, the first Czechoslovak consul, Major Pavel Růžička, found it difficult to promote stronger commercial ties. During the Eucharistic Congress in Dublin in 1932, Czechoslovak participants were struck by the Irish people’s strong Catholic faith and respect for the clergy.5 Organising the distribution of Irish supplies after the Second World War in Czechoslovakia and Poland was problematic. Besides logistical issues, both countries were undergoing a gradual communist takeover which made the political situation complex and tense. Yet, the new regimes acknowledged Ireland’s aid. Some supplies reached ethnic Germans who were going through a rough time. Austria and Vienna, like Germany and Berlin, were divided into four zones and sectors of occupation, which constituted something of a red tape nightmare for those in charge of relief. Nonetheless, all countries benefitted from Irish largesse and everything was done to make sure that Ireland’s role was appreciated and acknowledged, although some confusions with the Don Suisse happened.

Austria When the fighting in Europe ended, Austria found itself in an ambiguous position. Back in 1938, it had welcomed the German Anschluss and tens of thousands greeted Hitler’s triumphal entry into Vienna. When the war broke out, the Austrians fought in the German army. Many also served in the SS or became high-ranking Nazi officials. Arthur Seyss-Inquart was Reichskommissar in the Netherlands while Franz Stangl oversaw the running of Sobibór and then Treblinka extermination camps. The Austrians’ servility to the Germans was noticed but some opposition developed.6 On 1 November 1943, it was publicly stated in Moscow by the Soviets, British, and Americans that Austria had been the first free country to be invaded by Hitler. It should therefore be liberated from German occupation and it was the wish of the Allies that an independent and democratic Austria should be restored. Yet, it was also stated that it did bear some responsibility for waging war alongside Germany. Historians have different interpretations of the Moscow Declaration but one of its main aims was psychological warfare, inciting Austrians to put up more resistance to the Germans.7 This meant that Austria acquired a 5 Semek, Czech-Irish Cultural Relations 1900–1950, 31–7, 37–41, 43–4. 6 Stafford, Endgame 1945, 61. 7 Gerald Stourzh, Um Einheit und Freiheit; Staatsvertrag, Neutralität und das Ende der Ost-West Besetzung Österreichs 1945–1955 (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 1998), 11–28.

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victim and a victimiser status at the same time. The ambiguity was reflected in the immediate postwar years as the country was occupied by the Soviet, American, British, and French armies.8 After the fighting, the Soviets, then fully in charge of Vienna, appointed mayors in each district of the city in charge of food distribution. The Austrian Provisional Government quickly established the Staatsamt für Volksernährung (State Office for Public Nutrition) to deal with the pressing food issue. Soon, the food supply chain from the countryside was not functioning anymore. By the end of April, no less than two million kilos of flour had been stolen from the city’s major bakery, Anker. Also, the Soviets had difficulties in feeding their troops. At the beginning of May, the official ration stood at a very meagre 350 calories a day. Surviving on those rations was not possible. Women went to the outskirts of Vienna in search of food, hoping to barter items with local farmers.9 They played a critical role in making sure that their families would survive. This was acknowledged by the City Council, but the same council also denounced their involvement in black market activities. Some women were ready to have sex with Allied soldiers in return for supplies and became known as ‘chocolate girls’,10 a situation seen elsewhere in Europe. Another supplementary source of food was vegetable plots. The Viennese had managed to create about 50,000 of them.11 Self-help was a crucial quality for survival. The Soviets fed the population. They handed out important quantities of dried peas that needed to be soaked and then boiled, but often they were infested with worms. This led the Viennese to nickname them with a sense of gallows humour ‘“peas with added meat” (Erbsen mit Fleischbeilage)’. In May, the first postwar chancellor, Social-Democrat Karl Renner, wrote to Stalin to ask for more food supplies. Stalin was ready to oblige but in return demanded that Austria sent more reparations. And this was precisely the problem. The more industrial equipment left the country, the more it would take time to economically recover.12 It is estimated that the Soviets removed equipment for a total value of $1.4 billion.13 The popularity of 8 Jill Lewis, ‘Dancing on a Tight-rope: The Beginning of the Marshall Plan and the Cold War in Austria’, in Günter Bischof, Anton Pelinka and Dieter Stiefel, eds., The Marshall Plan in Austria, vol. 8 Contemporary Austrian Studies (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2000), 140. 9 Jill Lewis, Workers and Politics in Occupied Austria, 1945–55 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015), 65–6. 10 Irene Bandhauer-Schöffmann, ‘Women’s Fight for Food; A Gendered View of Hunger, Hoarding and Black Marketeering in Vienna after World War Two’, in Duchen and Bandhauer-Schöffmann, eds., When the War Was Over; Women, 76–7. 11 Bandhauer-Schöffmann, ‘Women’s Fight for Food’, 72. 12 Lewis, Workers and Politics in Occupied Austria, 1945–55, 65 & 66–7. 13 Békés, Borhi, Ruggenthaler & Traşcă, eds., Soviet Occupation of Romania, Hungary and Austria, 1944/45– 1948/49, 24.

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the Soviets hit rock bottom and the widespread raping in Vienna added to the population’s resentment. Although the number is difficult to establish, between 70,000 and 100,000 women were raped in 1945 in the city, but unlike in Germany it seems that the Soviet command acted much more sternly and effectively against rapists. But all this caused long-term damage to Austro-Soviet relations.14 Owing to organisational disagreements between the members of the Allied Control Council, the summer of 1945 was a very frugal one for the Viennese. In August, they did not even get the planned daily ration of 850 calories. In September, it was increased to 1,550. However, at the beginning of 1946, official daily rations in some parts of Austria were as low as 700 calories. At the end of the year, it was indicated in an American report that ‘for over 18 months the Austrian peoples [sic] have been subsisting on a near-starvation diet. Malnutrition has resulted in a serious reduction of workers’ productive capacity. This too has caused a substantial delay in the previously anticipated industrial recovery’.15 The Americans had outlined a logical chain of causes and consequences. Equally logical but also worrying for the western Allies were increasing food protests and strikes, supported by the local communists. It was clear that Austria urgently needed foreign aid to survive, but that there were urgent political considerations too. Foreign aid first came with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA), ‘which provided 64% of Austrian basic ration requirements between March 1946 and June 1947’.16 Among other international helpers were the International Red Cross and Ireland. The delegations of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) were based in Vienna and Linz. In July 1945, the Joint Relief Commission of the International Red Cross (JRC) issued its first report on the country. The situation was critical in the regions of Tyrol, Vorarlberg, and especially Upper Austria (Soviet-Occupied Zone) where 950,000 people had lived before the war but where there were now an extra 500,000 refugees of different nationalities. Reserves of food were non-existent and diseases like typhus and dysentery were rapidly spreading. In the summer of 1946, the general situation in all four occupation zones worsened and UNRRA was unable to provide all the necessary food. Austria did not manage to import the required foodstuffs and did not export sufficiently. Things were at a deadend.17 The JRC had to organise funds and find donors fast. 14 15 16 17

Lewis, Workers and Politics in Occupied Austria, 1945–55, 67–71. Lewis, Workers and Politics in Occupied Austria, 1945–55, 73–4, 115, 94. Lewis, Workers and Politics in Occupied Austria, 1945–55, 110, 115–16, 93–95. Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 395–404, 176, 184, 143.

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International aid was mobilising slowly but surely, and the first relief shipments came from Switzerland. There were also the Don Norvégien (Norwegian Gift), several national Churches, Quakers, the principality of Liechtenstein, national Red Cross societies, and others. The transport system was chaotic as much of the railway network had been destroyed. The ICRC organised truck convoys to Vienna as it was the only way to reach the city until November 1945. However, the western regions of Tyrol and Vorarlberg were still accessible by train. If the military authorities were not informed in time, long delays could be the result.18 The quality of rolling stock was not always the best and frequently needed repairs during the journey. It was not unusual for trains to be stuck in small railway stations for hours, if not entire nights, and this made them more vulnerable to looters despite the presence of soldiers. Crossing demarcation lines was only permitted at certain hours. Those who accompanied the supply trains needed to have diplomatic skills and be resourceful. At first, ICRC delegates had to obtain visas to move from one occupation zone into another one. But a common visa was later agreed upon. By the end of 1945, the transport system had improved in all four zones. The JRC received reports on the distribution of supplies in Austria after a period of about three months.19 A letter from the police of Wiener-Neustadt to the Garda Síochána (Irish police) in Waterford, sent as late as March 1947, was evidence that the critical food situation was continuing. The Austrian policemen explained that their town had been heavily bombed and asked their Irish colleagues if they could send them parcels.20 It was also evidence that Ireland’s name as a donor was circulating. In 1945, the JRC was busy storing Irish and other foreign supplies into its warehouses in Geneva, waiting for the opportunity to send them to Austria. That opportunity came in December. According to a confidential JRC report, the arrival of the first two freight cars transporting Irish butter caused ‘overwhelming joy’ in Vienna. In the provinces, the situation had improved except ‘in Vienna and Lower Austria [which] are suffering seriously from famine and cold’. It was particularly bad in Wiener-Neustadt, Neunkirchen, and St. Pölten where people got only between 800 and 900 calories a day. The authorities had no means to increase it to at least 1,200. It was stated that ‘the 70 tons of butter, gift of the Irish, came as a Godsend [sic]’. They would be distributed in forty-six hospitals and seventeen children’s 18 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946. 19 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946. 20 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/6, Police of Wiener-Neustadt to ‘Association of Police’, Waterford, 25 March 1947.

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homes in Vienna while 20,000 kilos would be shared out to sixteen hospitals in Lower Austria.21 The Amts-Blatt der Stadt St. Pölten in the Soviet-Occupied Zone informed its readers with a front-page article entitled ‘Dank an Irland’ (Thank you Ireland) that the capital and Lower Austria had received a ‘considerable butter donation’.22 Theodor Körner, the Mayor of Vienna and soon to be the first democratically elected Federal President of Austria in 1951, lost little time in sending a letter of thanks to the International Red Cross in Geneva. But that was precisely the problem, the International Red Cross, not Ireland. The JRC member who read his letter pencilled in big letters in French in the margin ‘Et l’Irlande?!’ (and what about Ireland?!).23 The JRC was determined that Ireland got its deserved share of thanks and publicity. The danger also was that if the Irish government was dissatisfied, it might terminate its humanitarian cooperation. But the Austrians would make sure that the name of Ireland reached many eyes and ears. ICRC delegate Eric de Montmollin reported that as the amount of butter for Linz was far more than initially announced, he had taken the decision to send 4 tons to Steyr. Steyr was of some significance to Irish history. It was where the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) had acquired rifles to fight against home rule in 1914.24 This time though, the Irish returned with butter, not cash for rifles. Most of it would be distributed to children, women, and hospital patients. The convoy reached Linz on the night of 23 to 24 December 1945 and the precious supplies were then stored in cold storage units belonging to the former Wehrmacht. De Montmollin mentioned that one of the wagons had been forced open and five boxes of butter were missing.25 Unfortunately, it was not the last time that theft would be reported. Desperation and survival instinct drove many to stealing. In March 1946, the Provincial Government of Salzburg reported to the ICRC delegation that 3,980 kilos of Irish bacon would be distributed. 2,000 labourers in ten industrial areas in the province of Salzburg would receive 2,000 kilos and 4,000 schoolchildren aged 10–18 would receive 1,980 kilos. It commented that the foodstuffs constituted yet other ample evidence that the Irish people were well disposed towards Austria and that their help would cause widespread feelings of gratitude.26 The same month, the Public Welfare Office of Linz informed de Montmollin that it had received very precisely 18,028 kilos of Irish butter and that it had been 21 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/1, Confidential report from JE Schwarzenherez [Johannes E. Schwarzenberg], JRC, Geneva, to Dr R Boehringer (JRC, Geneva), 26 December 1945. 22 ACICR, O CMS C-024, ‘Dank an Irland’, Amts-Blatt der Stadt St. Pölten, 15 February 1946. 23 ACICR, O CMS C-024, Körner to JRC, 16 January 1946. 24 aan de Wiel, The Irish Factor, 1899–1919, 69–72, 102–103. 25 ACICR, O CMS C-021, de Montmollin to JRC, Geneva, 17 January 1946. 26 ACICR, O CMS C-021, Provincial Government, Salzburg, to ICRC delegation, Salzburg, 2 March 1946.

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handed out to, among others, 39,969 factory workers who received 250 grams each.27 The inclusion of workers bore the hallmarks of a strategic decision. Indeed, distributing relief supplies exclusively to the elderly, the young, and the sick would not be good for the economy. If workers were to work efficiently, they had to be reasonably well fed. As seen, this had been underlined in an American report. At the end of the month, the Department of External Affairs (DEA) received a series of photographs showing the distribution of the supplies in Linz. The local authorities had sent them to the International Red Cross which forwarded them to Dublin.28 Another noteworthy relief operation took place in Vienna where there were still about 59,000 refugees living, many being German expellees from the Sudetenland. It had been decided to distribute half a kilo of Irish sugar to each camp internee without ration card and one kilo to each child between zero and sixteen years of age. The news was reported in the Caritas der Erzdiözese Wien (Caritas Bulletin of the Archbishopric of Vienna).29 The situation of these German expellees from the Sudetenland was precarious. To the north of Vienna, towns and villages had experienced their massive arrivals when the Czechoslovak government began to expel them. Locals were apparently not pleased to see them.30 UNRRA had also been given 100 tons of Irish bacon for distribution in Austria.31 But Austria was far away from Ireland and this presented a problem for the transport of certain supplies. Cattle was a case in point, but a practical solution with the cooperation of the British was eventually found. As the country had practically none left, the Austrian government was very happy with Ireland’s offer to send 2,000 head of cattle. In September 1946, however, Vienna informed Dublin that it had difficulties to finance the transport but came up with a clever way out, namely that the Irish sent the cattle to the British instead and that they in turn sent the equivalent in meat to Austria and ‘make some compensatory arrangement in respect of offal and hides…’ The Irish agreed ‘subject to information being obtained as to what is meant by processed meat (so as to ensure for instance that the equivalent of 2,000 head of cattle would not be given in the form of corned beef) and on the understanding that it would be made quite clear that the source of the supplies made available as a result of this transaction is Ireland’.32 In February 1947, the 27 ACICR, O CMS C-024, Public Welfare Office, Linz, to de Montmollin, 4 March 1946. 28 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/5, City of Linz to International Red Cross, Geneva, 22 March 1946. There are ten photographs. 29 DAW, Caritaszeitschriften (1), Caritas der Erzdiözese Wien, nr 12, November 1946. 30 Lewis, Workers and politics in occupied Austria, 1945–55, 73. 31 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/6, Frederick H. Boland, DEA, to Martin McNamara, IRCS, 7 December 1946. The bacon was provided after an appeal made by UNRRA in May 1946. 32 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4A, meeting of Interdepartmental Relief Committee, 27 September 1946.

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Irish Times reported that the government had offered ‘14,000 head of prime fat cattle’ for the continent but that the Austrian and Hungarian governments and also the Control Commission for the British-Occupied Zone in Germany had difficulties in arranging transport and that it had been decided that the British were going keep the Irish cattle and send the equivalent in frozen beef to these destinations.33 Several months later Cardinal Innitzer, the Archbishop of Vienna, sent a deeply appreciative telegram to Éamon de Valera.34 What was the situation in Austria at the end of 1946? Deputy Brian Brady had just returned from a trip to the country between 15 and 18 December on behalf of the IRCS. On 7 January 1947, he handed in his report which was subsequently forwarded to de Valera in February. What he had seen was not exactly uplifting: ‘Food, medicines and medical equipment are the chief needs. In Vienna, where a large proportion of the population reside, it is estimated that 80% of school children are suffering from malnutrition. This figure does not take into account those children who are too weak or too poorly clad to go to school’. He had found out that ‘Caritas is the recognised distributing agency and there are no complaints of any discrimination’. The Austrian government and Caritas were ‘very appreciative of the Irish Gift’. Brady had met several personalities like Chancellor Leopold Figl, a survivor of concentration camps and who had been put in charge of supplies in Vienna by the Soviets in 1945, and Innitzer to discuss Irish aid. He had also visited places where supplies were being distributed, given interviews and gone on Radio Vienna to talk about ‘Ireland’s contribution to the relief of Austria’.35 In fact, only UNRRA supplies had prevented the country from starving in 1946.36 There was clearly need for a second Irish gift. On 6 March 1947, Salzburg received 5,000 kilos of bacon, which Albert Hochleitner, the head of the Provincial Government, described as a ‘magnanimous donation’. The following month, he wrote to the ICRC delegate to thank the ICRC and Ireland and to inform him that the tins of meat would be distributed to tuberculosis patients. He had instructed his employees ‘to make sure that each recipient will be informed that he owes this worthy aid for patients to a voluntary donation of the Irish people’.37 Linz received 23,500 kilos of bacon. The Public Health Office stated that it was a ‘first rate commodity’. However, due to the long transport and necessary storage, the meat had ‘considerably acidified’ and had 33 ‘Ireland’s gift of fat cattle’, The Irish Times, 10 February 1947 (ITDA). 34 ‘Cardinal Innitzer thanks Ireland’, Irish Press, 17 December 1947 (NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/6). 35 NAI, DFA, 400 series part 2, 419/1/7, letter to Miss O’Connell, Department of the Taoiseach, including Brady’s report, 11 February 1947. 36 Judt, Postwar, 86. 37 SLA, 1947 33-4/10-1362, Hochleitner to ICRC, Vienna, 7 March 1947 & PRÄ 1947/08.1, Hochleitner to ICRC, Vienna, 26 April 1947.

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developed an unpleasant taste. To prevent any ‘unfair criticism’ it was now being reconditioned. Tuberculosis patients should receive about 1.2 kilos each. Braunau am Inn, Hitler’s hometown, was earmarked for distribution but also Freistadt in the Soviet-Occupied Zone, about 150 kilometres away, where 392.7 kilos would be divided between 374 tuberculosis patients. The butcher in Freistadt who would prepare the meat was a Josef Hitler.38 In the Soviet-Occupied Zone, the Provincial Government of Burgenland had also decided to spend 1,500 kilos of Irish bacon on tuberculosis patients.39 An extra 3,068 kilos of tinned meat had been distributed in the industrial areas of Pinkafeld, Neufeld, and Neudörfl, and also in Eisenstadt. Dr Lorenz Karall, the head of the Provincial Government, commented: ‘On its own, Burgenland would not have been able to distribute such an Easter present to the workers in the industries. It is even more a reason for the province to appreciate the energetic help provided by the Free State of Ireland’.40 In March 1948, the Ministry of Food and Supplies in Vienna reminded the Provincial Government of Burgenland that it had still not received its report regarding the distribution of 1,500 kilos of Irish bacon back in May 1947. It asked for it immediately so that it could thank all those concerned.41 Vienna kept a very close eye on its bookkeeping, and it was imperative that suppliers needed to be kept informed and happy. But there is an additional explanation. In February 1947, the government had expressed its strong displeasure with the fact that provincial governments were intentionally not delivering the agreed meat quotas—and other goods—to Vienna. There was an issue of federal power, the system of government in Austria, at stake here.42 It looked as if Vienna was trying to stamp its authority on the federal states in this period of crisis. The Provincial Government complied and wrote in its report: ‘The gift means a real help which is to be appreciated all the more since postwar times with their inevitable negative economic and social effects present the Provincial Government with tasks that it can often no longer accomplish with the means at its disposal’.43 Finally, in January 1947, a severe winter gripped Austria with temperatures as low as minus 30 degrees, badly affecting food supplies. UNRRA’s aid was delayed 38 OOLA, Best. Amt der Landesregierung seit 1945/ Fürsorge 1327/1947, Minister for Food to Provincial Government, Linz, 28 April 1947; Public Health Office, Linz, to Provincial Government, 19 May 1947 & Provincial Government to Cooperative of Butchers, Linz, 6 June 1947. The name ‘Josef Hitler’ is also mentioned in a document dated 14 May 1947 in the same file. 39 LAB, VIII-755-1948, report by Herr Perschy, Provincial Government, Burgenland, 7 July 1947. 40 LAB, V-LEA-426-1947, Karall to International-Red-Cross delegation, Vienna, 4 August 1947. 41 LAB, VIII-755-1948, Ministry for Food and Supplies, Vienna, to Provincial Government, Burgenland, 18 March 1948. 42 Lewis, Workers and politics in occupied Austria, 1945–55, 117–18. 43 LAB, VIII-755-1948, report, by Herr Perschy Provincial Government, Eisenstadt, Burgenland, 5 April 1948.

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but officials in Washington announced that Austria would receive an extra $20 million worth of foodstuffs through UNRRA’s new emergency plan for countries that were in a dire situation. The subsequent harvest was very poor and the economy underperforming. UNRRA’s last food shipments were scheduled for June and it remained unsure how the population would be fed. But in June the Marshall Plan was announced, and Austria ended up being the largest recipient of American financial aid in relative terms in 1948–1949. The same month, President Truman, conscious that the food crisis could destabilise Austria and play right into the Soviets’ hands, asked for immediate financial support for the country which Congress granted. By September 1948, the economic situation had much improved and Austria was doing better than its neighbours in Central and Eastern Europe.44 After the Irish government terminated its cooperation with the JRC’s successor, the International Centre for Relief to Civilian Populations (ICRCP), it continued to send supplies to Austria through the National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC). In July 1950, 45,000 pounds of Irish meat were distributed by the Austrian Caritas which liaised with the NCWC.45 However, meat consumption in Austria would reach its pre-war level only during 1956–1957.46 Table 11.1. Don Irlandais in Austria47 1st Irish gift, December 1945–May 1946 Bacon 68 tons Butter 105 tons Milky flour 0.5 tons Cheese 10 tons Condensed milk 55 tons Powder milk 3 tons Sugar 127 tons Tights 1200 pairs Blankets 500 Underwear 19 bales

2nd Irish gift, June 1946–June 1947 Foodstuffs 1581.805 tons Textiles 56.731 tons Other 10 kg

44 Lewis, Workers and politics in occupied Austria, 1945–55, 95–6, 97–8, 117–18 & 129. 45 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4, John B. McCloskey, NCWC delegate in Paris, to Mr Nagle, Department of Agriculture, 30 July 1950. 46 Bandhauer-Schöffmann, ‘Women’s Fight for Food’, 72. 47 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 176, 184.

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Czechoslovakia The JRC’s aid programme in Czechoslovakia remains somewhat unclear. There are no traces of relief operations in a report entitled Irish Gift 1946 published in Geneva and a map of Europe shows that Irish supplies were sent to all neighbouring countries but not to Czechoslovakia.48 Other foreign relief operations are not specifically indicated in the very detailed Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, published in 1948 by the ICRC and the League.49 A reason might have been that relations between the ICRC and the Czechoslovak authorities had hit rock-bottom as the latter accused the former of not having done too much for Czechoslovakia during the German occupation.50 Another reason might have been that the country suffered far less destruction than its neighbours,51 so that it was not considered a top priority in Geneva. Prague and other cities and towns had indeed been largely spared from bombing raids and house-to-house fighting. The Germans had not perpetrated large-scale atrocities with the notable exception of the erasing of the village of Lidice and the extermination of its inhabitants after the killing of Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi leader in Bohemia and Moravia and one of the brains behind the Final Solution.52 It has been estimated that 70,000 Czechoslovaks died during the occupation out of a total of approximately 250,000 during the war, the latter figure including about 70,000 Jews.53 The Germans had set up a protectorate in Bohemia and Moravia at the head of which was Heydrich between 1941 and 1942. Not enough food was being produced in it and already between 1939 and 1941 there were shortages. This situation was worrying for the Germans as many armament factories were located in the protectorate. The decision was then taken to set up so-called factory canteens to make sure to feed the workers and keep the crucial production going. Yet, the food situation kept deteriorating.54 The population had strongly resented the Germans and their plan to make the country more German. It was considered inferior as compared with the Aryan 48 IFRC, box 19691, Irish Gift 1946, report. 49 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946. 50 Rey-Schyrr, De Yalta à Dien Bien Phu, 223. 51 Judt, Postwar, 84–5. 52 MacDonogh, After the Reich, 125–31. 53 Karl Cordell & Stefan Wolff, Germany’s Foreign Policy Towards Poland and the Czech Republic; Ostpolitik revisited (Abingdon: Routledge, 2005), 31. 54 Jaromír Balcar, ‘Dem tschechischen Arbeiter das Fressen geben’: Factory Canteens in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia’, in Tönsmeyer, Haslinger and Laba, eds., Coping with Hunger and Shortage under German Occupation in World War II, 167–181.

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race. In certain areas, like the Sudetenland, Czechs and Germans had co-existed for centuries and Czech resentment against the more powerful Germans was building up. When the war ended in May 1945, there was a unique opportunity to exact revenge and to get rid of the Germans once and for all. That opportunity was gladly taken and repressive measures and atrocities against the German population were not without reminding of certain Nazi methods.55 Ethnic cleansing and expulsions began in earnest. It has been estimated that about 30,000 Germans died during these expulsions and that in 1945 over 5,500 of them committed suicide. In a prisoner-of-war camp in Czechoslovakia, a young Günter Grass—considered by many to be postwar Germany’s moral conscience and who would receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999—was not too sure if the American soldiers were keeping an eye on them or were there to guarantee their safety against Czech brutality.56 Irish doctor Robert Collis, who had been in Bergen-Belsen with the British army, noticed in Czechoslovakia: ‘The people looked strained and unhappy. Many wore yellow-coloured armlets, indicating that the wearers were Sudeten Germans. They looked sullen. Even the children were frightened’.57 Despite the raping and looting orgies perpetrated by the advancing Red Army, often Germans found Soviet soldiers easier to deal with.58 But as Prague-born German actress Margarete Schell stated: ‘When I hear this [Czech] man’s description of spending seven months in a German concentration camp, we really shouldn’t be surprised by the way we are treated.’59 The postwar expulsions are still an issue in German-Czech relations today.60 Despite this lack of clarity about JRC operations, there are documents that show that Irish supplies did reach Czechoslovakia. It is relevant to see how they were used in the wider context of the brutal expulsion of the Germans that began well before the official date of January 1946 set by the Potsdam Agreement. ‘Wild’ expulsions started the moment the Wehrmacht was beaten. During his long exile, President Edvard Beneš sought to convince the Allies on numerous occasions that ethnic Germans should be expelled. Now, the moment had come. On 12 May 1945 in Brno, he declared on the radio that ‘we must liquidate the German problem 55 56 57 58 59 60

MacDonogh, After the Reich, 125–31. Snyder, Bloodlands, 320. Collis and Hogerzeil, Straight On, 127. Shephard, The Long Road Home, 120. Buruma, Year Zero, 95–7. Hans Henning Hahn, ‘“Wo ist Ihre Heimat?”’, 116–25 & ‘“Tief in jedem Hinterkopf ”’, interview of former Czech ambassador to Germany František Černý by Christian Habbe and Hans-Ulrich Stoldt, 126–32, in Stefan Aust and Stephan Burgdorff, eds., Die Flucht; Über die Vertreibung der Deutschen aus dem Osten (Bonn: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2003).

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definitively’. The Czechs got the message and rioting in the city began. Over 20,000 Germans were forced over the Austrian border, several hundreds of them dying in the process.61 At the end of the month, ICRC delegate Georges Dunand met with the Czechoslovak leaders, including Beneš, who assured him that the transfer of German minorities would be done as humanely as possible. The ICRC was allowed to visit camps where Germans were interned. The first visit took place in Bratislava in June and subsequently in Slovakia. The dreadful detention conditions were plain to see. The ICRC was free to visit camps in Slovakia, but it was far more complicated in Bohemia and Moravia probably because most of the violence occurred in these regions bordering with Germany and Austria. The ICRC was receiving many appeals in favour of the Germans and many witness accounts describing what was happening. In December, the ICRC delegate in Bavaria saw the arrival of a train loaded with 650 expellees while the temperature was minus 16 degrees. Hunger and cold had killed ninety-four of them, including twenty-two children.62 Many believed that the Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans) living across Central and Eastern Europe were responsible for their own misery as they had constituted ‘a vast cohesive fifth column’ for Hitler’s Reich. It was one of the arguments used to justify that they should not receive any assistance from UNRRA and the International Refugee Organization (IRO).63 The reality was much more complex. Many Volksdeutsche were Czechs, Hungarians, and Poles and had German names, but not all spoke German or had ever been to Germany. When the Nazis came, many accepted to be registered as such but their motives varied from genuine ethnic pride to fear of having trouble if they did not register.64 As to the ICRC, it did not want to interfere in the matter as it considered the expulsion of Germans to be a question of each government concerned. Yet, ICRC delegations on the spot did report their plight to these same governments. They gave Volksdeutsche what they had at their disposal, but it was not much and was restricted to the supplies offered to the International Red Cross by the three neutral countries: Sweden, Switzerland, and Ireland. According to R.M. Douglas, ‘Valuable though their assistance had been, even more from the psychological than the physical standpoint, it did not come close to meeting the need: in 1949, the World Council of Churches noted that religious charities in Germany itself had provided more material aid to the expellees than all other agencies, domestic and foreign, put together’.65 61 62 63 64 65

Applebaum, Iron Curtain, 128–9. Rey-Schyrr, De Yalta à Dien Bien Phu, 220–8. Douglas, Orderly and Humane, 296–7. Applebaum, Iron Curtain, 131. Douglas, Orderly and Humane, 296–7.

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In July 1946, P. W. Mock, the ICRC delegate in Bratislava, was in Geneva where he gave an account of the situation. He explained that the fate of German civilians interned in Slovakia was ‘critical’. 9,600 kilos (480 cases) of Irish condensed milk had been sent to them. The supplies had left Switzerland on 2 March and arrived safely eighteen days later. The Slovakian Red Cross had agreed to store them free of charge. Together with the Land Settlement authorities, the ICRC conceived a distribution plan. The transit camps of Novaky, Poprad and PetrzalkaKopcani would receive 160 cases each. The supplies were then distributed as follows: ‘Children up to 14, per week 2 tins; Children from 4 to 14, per week 1 tin; Sick people of both sexes, per week 1 tin; Pregnant women, per week 1 tin; Nursing mothers (up to two months after the childbirth), per week 2 tins’. The milk was distributed directly to the internees, not through the camp kitchen, and Mock was satisfied that it had been done correctly and ‘was asked by the German internees to transmit to the Irish Government the expression of their deep gratitude for this gift which was most appreciated’. A report was subsequently transmitted to the DEA in Dublin.66 As to the JRC, it was delighted to know that the ICRC delegation was ably assisted in the organisation and distribution by the Slovakian Red Cross and the Ministry of the Interior.67 However, it should be emphasised that this successful cooperation should not be taken for granted elsewhere, nor should the improvement of the detention conditions for Germans as a result. In April, in a camp in Prosecnice in Bohemia, conditions actually worsened for the Germans as soon as the ICRC delegates had left.68 In December, IRCS delegate Patrick Power reported from Prague that 50,000 kilos of condensed milk, 32,120 kilos of biscuits and 20 bales of clothes were being distributed mainly to ‘children’s hospitals, general hospitals and prisoner-of-war camps’. The ICRC delegation had put forward to send the remainder of the Irish supplies to Austria, notably 20 tons of condensed milk. But Czechoslovak officials and charities did not agree as they favoured ‘slow distribution of the entire quantity here, as this means ensures that the needy receive their fair share’. Power had initially believed that the distribution was ‘somewhat slowly’ indeed but having been to Moravia he could well appreciate the difficulties and now believed that it was the best approach.69 On 12 January 1947, he was back in Dublin and lost no time 66 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/1, report of the JRC entitled ‘Donation of the Irish Government to the Civilian Populations of Central and Eastern Europe; Report concerning a consignment of milk sent to German civilian internees in Slovakia’, 11 July 1946. 67 ACICR, O CMS C-025, Lalive, JRC, to ICRC delegation, Bratislava, 8 July 1946. 68 MacDonogh, After the Reich, 138. 69 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/14, McNamara, IRCS, to Cremin, DEA, containing Power’s letter to IRCS, 16 December 1946.

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in giving an interview, published the following day by the Irish Times and the Irish Independent. He said that in Bohemia ‘things are returning to normal’ but some people, especially women (mothers) looked very pale and children were ‘gaunt and look overgrown’. Yet, he had seen ‘few signs … of the usual mal-nutrition diseases’. In Moravia, what had struck him was ‘an area of ghost towns and deserted villages’. The Germans had been put in camps and ‘in one camp for the old and sick he found nearly a thousand people, most of them confined to bed’. The inmates particularly appreciated ‘our gift of Irish milk’, he added. Power would make a broadcast on Radio Éireann.70 He had used accurate words in describing these Moravian towns and villages. Since the Germans had been expelled, houses and farms became vacant waiting for the arrival of the new Czechoslovak occupants. It was the same situation in Poland’s new western territories taken from Germany.71 On 13 January, Power met Cornelius Cremin in the DEA to give a first-hand account of his trip. He explained that the distribution of Irish supplies had taken place while he had been on the spot and that he had been able to solve a problem regarding 20 tons of condensed milk which ‘it was proposed at one stage to have diverted to Austria’. Cremin’s subsequent note of the meeting is not entirely clear but it would appear that the condensed milk was eventually distributed in Czechoslovakia. But more unsettling from an Irish point of view was that Power had found out that most of the receipts that had been submitted to him wrongly mentioned ‘Don Suisse’. He had brought back some of these receipts and had also notified the International Red Cross in Geneva which undertook to have this changed. Power told Cremin that ‘the difficulty is that the recipients did not know when the supplies were delivered to them that they came from Ireland’. He also found ‘conditions in Czechoslovakia good’ and did not believe that it was ‘in serious need of any further relief supplies’. He had been welcomed ‘in a very friendly manner’.72 There would seem to be no reason to believe that the error regarding ‘Don Suisse’ was deliberate, although it was frustrating for the Irish authorities and there had been several precedents. When the Marshall Plan was announced in June 1947, the Czechoslovak government expressed interest, but Stalin would have none of it and ordered Prime Minister Klement Gottwald and Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk then in Moscow not to participate. Back in Prague, Masaryk said: ‘I went to Moscow as the Foreign Minister of an independent sovereign state; I returned as a lackey of the Soviet 70 ‘Red Cross officials’ report; Thousands of Poles live in cellars’, Irish Independent, 13 January 1947 (INA) & ‘Plight of distressed described by Irish Red Cross officer’, The Irish Times, 13 January 1947 (ITDA). 71 Douglas, Orderly and Humane, 261–3. 72 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/14, note by Cremin, 16 January 1947.

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government’.73 Soviet pressure on Czechoslovakia was building up. Under the relief scheme, Ireland had offered Czechoslovakia 2,000 head of cattle.74 After the summer of 1947, Dr Karel Koštál, the chargé d’affaires in the Czechoslovak legation in Dublin, accompanied by Dr H. Freund, who worked in the Relief and Rehabilitation Department of the Czechoslovak embassy in London, arrived at the Department of Agriculture for talks concerning the shipment of the animals. Both men explained that it would be very difficult to transport them alive to Czechoslovakia and put forward to have them slaughtered in Ireland and have the meat shipped over instead. The department readily agreed as the same had been done for Poland (and Austria). The diplomats were invited to renew their application later in the year when cattle would become available. In September, the legation informed the DEA that the Department of Agriculture was fully cooperating. The government in Prague much appreciated ‘this valuable gift and have chartered a large first rate ship at considerable expense to ensure that the meat should reach the port of discharge in perfect condition, for subsequent transport in special refrigeration wagons to Czechoslovakia’. But all did not run smoothly as there was a lack of cold storage space in the ports of Cork, Waterford, and Dublin from where the ship would collect the frozen meat. Much butter was presently stored there, and storage space was much in demand. The legation put forward that in case the 2,000 carcasses could not be stored, ‘tinned meat might be provided to load the ship to full capacity’. The Department of Agriculture informed the DEA that no more than 1,600 carcasses could be prepared and proposed ‘to make up the deficit with 95 tons of canned stewed steak’ supplied by Roscrea Meat Products Ltd in County Tipperary. The Czechoslovak legation agreed and said that the cans and the beef would be labelled ‘Dar Irska’ (Irish gift). Eventually, the shipment arrived safely.75 On 2 March 1948, the Czechoslovak minister in Dublin transmitted a message to the DEA: ‘The Government of the Czechoslovak Republic in their 122nd Plenary Session, noted with gratitude and pleasure that the shipment of 2,000 head of cattle [meat] representing the gift of the Government of Ireland, reached its destination in perfect condition and was duly stored for distribution’.76 The government 73 Lewis, Workers and politics in occupied Austria, 1945–55, 96. 74 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, note by Cremin, 11 June 1947. 75 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4B, Czechoslovak legation in Dublin to DEA, 11 September 1947; Department of Agriculture to DEA, 10 October 1947; DEA to Czechoslovak legation in Dublin, 21 October 1947 & Interdepartmental Relief Committee, meeting of 25 November 1947 (there is some evident confusion between Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia in the meeting’s report). 76 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/14, Pavel Růžička, Czechoslovak minister, Dublin, to Seán MacBride, minister for external affairs, 2 March 1948. Added in the margin is a note, referring to another note dated 28/01/55, stating: ‘From a note to the Czech Legation of 21st October 1947 on file 419/4B, the 2,000 head of cattle were shipped late in 1947 in the form of 1600 carcasses (including offal, hides and horns) and 95 tons of canned stewed steak’.

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that had just sent its thanks was communist-dominated and pro-Moscow, led by Gottwald, which had just taken power after a successful coup on 25 February. As to Masaryk, he was found dead below his bathroom window located on the third floor. Suicide or suicided? In June, a committee was established in Ireland to look after Czechoslovak refugees who were fleeing the country. It included the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Josephine McNeill, who would be appointed minister to the Netherlands in 1950, and Senator James Crosbie. The Quakers were also taking initiatives and had set up the Czechoslovak Refugee Committee to which gifts could be sent.77 The Czechoslovak consulate-general in Dublin had been elevated to embassy in May 1947. Koštál resigned and Pavel Růžička took over again. But after the communist coup, relations between Prague and Dublin tensed, and Růžička was not a friend of the communists. In the end, the Czechoslovak government closed down the embassy in Dublin in 1950, and no close bilateral relations developed between the two countries, the Iron Curtain almost hermetically separating them.78

Poland 79 ‘Warsaw in January 1946 was no longer a city. It was a grave marker at the boundary of the two very different worlds that had destroyed the armies of the Third Reich. Unlike cities in Western Europe, it had not been levelled by Allied bombardments or street-to-street battles. Instead, it had been torched and blown up, block by block, week after week, during the final retreat of Hitler’s defeated army’.80 So wrote Belfast-born and UNRRA volunteer Brian Moore, later to become a famous novelist. The Second World War had devastated Poland. When the war ended, apart from the district of Praga on the right bank of the Vistula, Warsaw was a heap of rubble. There was no electricity and water. Białystok and Kielce had also been badly hit, so had Gdynia’s seaport. Kraków, however, survived almost intact.81 The Polish armies had courageously defended their country but stood little chance when the Wehrmacht invaded from the west and shortly later the Red Army from the east in September 1939. Subsequently, the Germans invaded the rest 77 ‘Help needed for Czech refugees’, The Irish Times, 14 June 1948 (ITDA). 78 Semek, Czech-Irish Cultural Relations 1900–1950, 56, 58–9. 79 Unfortunately, the amount of material available for Poland is rather scarce in either Irish or Polish archives. The Polish Red Cross informed the author in an e-mail on 9 May 2014 that apart from three short notes, nothing was found. It very kindly provided a translation of the found documents. Also, very few Polish archives replied to the author in his quest for primary sources. The DFA files 6/419/1/21 & 6/419/19 concerning Poland located in the National Archives of Ireland (NAI) are not particularly informative. 80 Vachon, ed., Poland, 1946, xiii. 81 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 296–307, 177–8, 186.

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of the country in 1941 during Operation Barbarossa. Their occupation was horrendous. In those territories annexed by the Nazis, Polish farmers were ordered to clear out their farms and to make room for German settlers. Thousands of Poles were put on trains and deported to the General Government (German-Occupied Poland as distinct from annexed territories).82 Life for Poles became intolerable. Upsetting the occupiers for trifle things like entering the wrong railway carriage could lead to death. Poles were heavily discriminated against. Their shopping times were limited, and they got less food rations too. German children were given milk, but Polish ones could deem themselves lucky if they got some since ‘a lower race needs less food’ as Robert Ley, the head of the German Labour Front, put it. The Nazis had an obsession with feeding their own population. Therefore, Polish farmers were made to produce more for the Reich: the production of grain increased from 383,000 tons in 1940–1941 to over one million tons in 1943. Poles could also be arrested for compulsory labour service while their country was being plundered. In certain areas, they wore a violet letter ‘P’ to distinguish them from Germans.83 Black market activities were widespread and diverse in the General Government. For Poles, living on official rations was simply impossible. For example, a person who was not employed in Kraków would get rations equivalent to 736 calories a day in 1941 and 909 by 1944 while a person in employment in a public institution received 1,233 and 909 respectively. The reality was that people had to eat illegally in order to survive. The Wehrmacht and other German officials were massively involved in the black market and grasped the opportunity to fill their pockets.84 It was also in Poland where the Germans set up their extermination camps like Auschwitz and Treblinka for Jews and other undesirables. But there was resistance. In April 1943, the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw rose but was eventually crushed by the SS. In August 1944, the resistance began an uprising in Warsaw, but the Germans fought back viciously although it took them two months to end the uprising. The Red Army, which was close, never intervened leading to many controversies. Although estimations vary and have been disputed, approximately 6 million Polish civilians were killed during the war (including about 3 million Polish Jews), representing around 17% of the population. During the war, the IRCS made several money collections for Poland. In 1940, it donated £500 for Polish refugees who had fled to Hungary. In 1942, it forwarded £50 to the Polish Red Cross in favour 82 Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, 82, 84–5, 192. 83 Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, 90–4, 277, 295. 84 Jerzy Kochanowski, ‘Black Market in the General Government 1939–1945: Survival Strategy or (Un) Official Economy?’, in Tönsmeyer, Haslinger and Laba, eds., Coping with Hunger and Shortage under German Occupation in World War II, 27–47.

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of Polish prisoners of war and the following year it forwarded £600 for the same purpose. In 1944, the IRCS made its largest donation to the Polish Red Cross, £10,000.85 Early in the war, the Irish Save the Children Fund (ISCF) donated £29 to help Polish children.86 After the war, 610,000 cases of tuberculosis were recorded in the country. 1,300,000 children, many of them being ill, lived in institutional homes or with people who had adopted them. Babies were seriously underweight, about a third lighter than before the war. If in 1939 there had been about 12,000 doctors in the country, by 1945 there were only 6,000 left and medical equipment was seriously lacking. International aid began to mobilise as Poland’s very survival was at stake. The JRC had supplies from the Don Irlandais. Important quantities of clothes, shoes, blankets, and several tons of condensed milk were sent and distributed in hospitals and children’s homes. The IRCS donated foodstuffs and medicines through the JRC. The Don Suisse sent 17 tons of clothes to Warsaw and founded a hospital there. The South African Red Cross sent £10,000. The British Fund for Warsaw, the Canadian Red Cross, and the American Polish War Relief to name but several others were also very active.87 Between 1944 and 1945, it was extremely difficult to reach Poland from Switzerland. In September 1945, the JRC organised a truck convoy but many bureaucratic hurdles needed to be overcome to cross national boundaries and occupation zones. Slowly, railway connections were being re-established. Yet, delays in sending supplies to Warsaw were unavoidable as the rolling stock was scarce. At the beginning of 1946, a first train transporting goods from the Don Irlandais left Switzerland for the city of Metz in eastern France. There, the goods remained in a warehouse for more than a month. It became then possible to attach the supply wagons to a hospital train which was going to Warsaw through Germany. The second and third shipments of Irish supplies took place in March and April. This time, it was possible to attach wagons to trains that were repatriating Polish soldiers and civilians who had been interned in Switzerland during the war. A fourth shipment took place at the end of April when Irish supplies were loaded aboard a train carrying goods from the Don Suisse. The distribution of Irish supplies was entrusted to the Polish Red Cross or the ICRC delegate in Warsaw who handed them over to the intended beneficiaries.88 85 Lehane, A History of the Irish Red Cross, 279–80. 86 AEG, Archives Privées, 92.22.2, Katherine Monahan (ISCF) to J. de Morsier, Union Internationale de Secours aux Enfants (UISE), 28 February 1940. 87 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 296–307, 177–8, 186. 88 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 296–307, 177–8, 186.

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According to Jessica Reinisch: ‘In dollar value, the Polish programme was UNRRA’s single largest European country programme: the administration spent over 478 million dollars in the course of three years, and shipped close to 2.3 million tons of food and supplies, including heavy machinery, tools, tractors, spare parts, livestock, seeds and fertilisers … If shipping costs and the cost of the administrative services are added, the total value of the UNRRA programme was close to 610 million dollars.’ Unsurprisingly, it has been estimated that UNRRA’s impact on Poland’s recovery was most significant. An American economist wrote in 1955 that ‘the food, clothing and health supplies invested in the Polish population were undoubtedly manifested in increased productive capacity of human labor’.89 Of course, pitted against these figures Irish relief looked minuscule, but everything was going to help. The mood of the people needed to be uplifted and foreign supplies would provide physical and also much needed psychological support. But now that the Germans were gone from Poland, the Soviets were there and had no intention of leaving. The arrival of the Red Army was greeted with mixed feelings. On the one hand, it had liberated the country from barbarous German occupation, and many were happy to see it. Polish could be publicly spoken again in parts of western Poland where it had been forbidden by the Nazis. On the other hand, its violence scared many, and some spoke of a ‘new Mongol invasion’.90 And liberation came at a price. In August 1945, the Soviet-Polish Frontier and Reparations Agreement was signed and obliged Poland to deliver 13 million tons of coal every year between 1946 and 1950 to the Soviet Union for a derisory amount of money. This was bad news for a country that had lost 60% of its industrial capacity during the war.91 The Soviets and their Polish supporters introduced collectivisation, but it remained a slow process and was incomplete. In this Stalinist climate, xenophobia took hold of the people and foreigners were quickly suspected of being spies.92 Poland—and other Central and Eastern European countries—was a dangerous place to be after the war. Besides ethnic and political violence, ordinary crime was rampant with criminal gangs, including soldiers, murdering and looting.93 A so-called Provisional Government of National Unity was set up in June 1945, which included communist and non-communist ministers. In reality, the communists of the Polish Workers’ Party led by Władislaw Gomułka and Bolesław 89 Jessica Reinisch, ‘“We shall rebuild anew a powerful nation”: UNRRA, Internationalism and National Reconstruction in Poland’, Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 43, No. 3 (July 2008): 462. 90 Applebaum, Iron Curtain, 25–6. 91 Norman Davies, Heart of Europe; The Past in Poland’s Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 70–1. 92 Davies, Heart of Europe, 7–8. 93 Applebaum, Iron Curtain, 15–6.

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Bierut would make sure their political opponents were not too much of a nuisance. They controlled the security apparatus and soon the deportation of undesirables to the Soviet Union began or their physical elimination even. Elections were rigged and in 1948 the Stalinist takeover was completed. The traditionally strong Catholic Church fared no better. Priests who voiced their opposition could expect a knock on the door from the secret police. Catechism was forbidden in schools and Catholic hospitals were closed down.94 Yet, the Church was not purely and simply suppressed. Poland was 96% Catholic and its Church leaders were formidable opponents. Therefore, the Workers’ Party decided on a compromise: the Church and the (communist) State would refrain from attacking each other. In the words of Norman Davies, ‘It was the sole, truly independent Church in the whole Soviet Bloc’.95 These events had not gone unnoticed in Ireland. Historically, Irish and Irish-American Catholic prelates stressed links between Catholic Ireland and Catholic Poland before the First World War, both countries being then controlled by foreign powers. During the First World War the Irish hierarchy collected £11,600 for Poland.96 During the inter-war period, the relations ‘had been friendly, if necessarily intermittent . . . when the two states had differing foreign policy agendas, and when limited resources and the concomitant small size of Ireland’s diplomatic corps precluded the establishment of formal diplomatic ties’. As Gabriel Doherty has written, ‘a close sense of empathy [existed], even if human and other forms of direct contacts between the two peoples had been limited enough’97 As early as June 1945, the Irish hierarchy issued a very strong condemnation of the injustice done to Poland and reminded the faithful that Ireland’s ‘history is in so many ways like that of the Poles’. The Irish bishops urged the ‘Western nations’ to act firmly in Poland’s favour.98 They did not. The United States, Britain, and France recognised the Provisional Government, which had been agreed upon during the Yalta Conference with Stalin. Predictably, the Vatican did not recognise it. Then, the Americans and the British ceased their recognition of the non-communist Polish Government-in-Exile, which had been set up in London. Ireland begged to differ and would continue to recognise it until 1963.99 In September, the Irish Press wrote that the derelict streets of Warsaw were very far from being safe,

Applebaum, Iron Curtain, 278–9. Davies, Heart of Europe, 10–11. aan de Wiel, The Irish Factor, 1899–1919, 141; aan de Wiel, The Catholic Church in Ireland, 1914–1918, 27. Gabriel Doherty, ‘Ireland, Europe and the Provision of Food Aid to Poland 1980–81’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, vol. 24 (2013), 293–4. 98 ‘Irish hierarchy deplores “injustice to Poland”’, The Irish Times, 20 June 1945 (ITDA). 99 Doherty, ‘Ireland, Europe and the Provision of Food Aid to Poland 1980–81’, 4. 94 95 96 97

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especially during night time.100 In October, the Irish Independent reported a US congressman as saying that Poland had become ‘a Soviet province’.101 In January 1946, a meeting took place between the JRC and a delegation of the Polish Red Cross (PRC) led by Dr Stanisław Jurkiewicz. The Poles were told that 130 to 140 tons of supplies from the Don Irlandais were at their country’s disposal and that, if possible, they should be shipped by train. Georges Sotiroff, a Bulgarian member of the JRC who dealt with Irish supplies, explained that the transport would be free of charge in Switzerland but once outside that country costs might have to be paid to the relevant local authorities. It would be up to the PRC to inquire. The PRC had at its disposal warehouses but did not know how much could be stored there. It was especially in Warsaw and Gdynia in ‘close collaboration’ with the American and Swedish missions that the PRC could undertake activities. Warsaw numbered 600,000 inhabitants. 5% to 10% of them lived in houses, ‘the rest in cellars and ruins’. Only 7% to 8% of the houses were intact and 20% inhabitable. It was put forward to transport the supplies until Amsterdam and from there by boat to Gdynia. But the Polish delegation did not agree and explained that the damages and losses during loading and unloading were ‘very considerable’. The PRC was not in a position to load supplies in Istanbul either. Olivier Long (JRC) insisted that Irish supplies should not be mixed up with supplies from other donors and that the Poles had to make sure that the right provenance of the supplies was indicated. The PRC delegation assured that ‘detailed reports’ would be furnished, and that the distribution would be ‘proper’.102 On 16 February, the first train containing Irish supplies left for Poland. Many problems of a ‘political and technical character’ had to be overcome as was the case elsewhere in Central Europe. But 125,000 kilos of condensed milk, 3,050 blankets, 550 dozens of woollen socks and 3.2 tons of knitting yarn eventually reached Warsaw.103 In May, the North Down left Belfast for Gdynia with 270 Irish working horses aboard acquired by UNRRA. The shipment would help to restock farms.104 The PRC established a list of supplies that countries had donated through the JRC between 1 April 1945 and 1 June 1946. The Irish government appeared to be the main donor during that period with a total of 215,000 kilos out of 259,925. These supplies consisted of 233 bales of clothing and 9,582 sacks of condensed milk and sugar. They were distributed in the fourteen districts of the PRC, in a sanatorium 100 ‘Terror reigns in Warsaw’, Irish Press, 22 September 1945 (INA). 101 ‘Populations under Russian lash; Germany & Poland’, Irish Independent, 20 October 1945 (INA). 102 ACICR, O CMS C-025, report on meeting between JRC and Polish Red Cross delegation, 14 January 1946. 103 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/1, J. F. Lalive and R. Boehringer, JRC, to Joseph Walshe, DEA, 22 February 1946. 104 ‘Irish horses for Poland’, The Irish Times, 30 May 1946 (ITDA).

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in Rudka, a sanatorium and dispensary for children in Zakopane, an institute in Bielany, and to the German population in Kłodzko (formerly Glatz) and Katowice.105 The economic and food situation kept degenerating in Poland. During the spring of 1946, the United States limited its credits, and this led to an increase in inflation. As to UNRRA, it decided to reduce its grain deliveries by one third. Urban populations were badly affected. As if this was not enough, the harvest of 1946 was not the best one, 29% lower than anticipated. The authorities in charge had difficulties in organising supplies and workers faced starvation. A miner from Wałbrzych in Lower Silesia summed it up well: ‘It is true that miners have special food ration cards, but the issuing of food for these cards always occurs with great delay . . . Even bread is sometimes not distributed for two weeks, and then they dole out a couple of loaves, often baked from musty flour’.106 The unavoidable result was strikes, which was an embarrassing blow to the prestige of the communist party meant to protect the workers’ interests. It is estimated that over 130 strikes happened in 1946. There was serious urgency, and the country could not do without international aid. After successful talks, Dublin donated 100 tons of bacon to UNRRA for distribution in Poland.107 The Polish Ministries of Education and Social Welfare would distribute 50 tons to school children and another 50 tons to old people and war orphans in fourteen cities across the country. The Minister for Social Welfare, Adam Kuryłowicz (Polish Socialist Party), told UNRRA to convey Poland’s gratitude to the Irish government and said that the bacon ‘has arrived in a perfect state, and constitutes an enormous help’.108 In October, JRC executive Jean-Flavien Lalive wrote to Bronisław Kostkiewicz, the chairman of the PRC, and gave him a list of all the Irish supplies that had been sent to Poland so far. He stressed that it was most important for the donors to get a list of those people who had received their supplies. The JRC wanted to send a final report to the Irish government soon and would like to get the relevant documents as quickly as possible. Also, Lalive announced that four IRCS delegates would arrive in Geneva in the near future. They hoped to go to Poland to report on the distribution of the supplies. The issue of setting up an Irish hospital in Warsaw would also be examined as Mr McKinney and Mr Scott already did during their trip to Warsaw.109 105 PRC, Syg. Akt. 4/86, ‘Gifts of the Social Institutions from several countries sent through the Mixte Commission of Relief of the International Red Cross, from 1 April 1945 to 1 June 1946. 11268 colis. Gross weight 259,925 kg.’, by Polish Red Cross, Warsaw. 106 Krystyna Kersten, The Establishment of Communist Rule in Poland, 1943–1948 (Berkeley: University of California, 1991), 249–250. 107 ‘Irish gift to UNRRA’, Irish Independent, 21 June 1946 (INA). 108 ‘Polish thanks for gift of bacon’, Irish Press, 22 October 1946 (INA). 109 ACICR, O CMS C-025, Lalive to Kostkiewicz, 2 October 1946.

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Back in April 1946, Olivier Long had travelled to Dublin to inform de Valera’s government on the distribution of Irish supplies and the gratitude expressed by numerous people, to outline the general situation in Central and Eastern Europe, and to study possibilities of sending more supplies. But that was not all. Long had also spoken of the great success of the Irish hospital in Saint-Lô in Normandy and had asked if his government was willing to repeat the experience elsewhere and suggested Poland or Yugoslavia. De Valera, Walshe and the IRCS chairman had been enthused with the idea of Poland and Long had been asked to enquire with the PRC.110 Unfortunately, Long did not mention in his report why the Irish were so keen on Poland but inter-Catholic solidarity and historic relations might well have been the main reasons. Prestige and peer pressure might have been other ones. The Irish government knew that the Swedes had provided much medical and ambulance equipment to Poland and that they were about to set up an institution for children at Otwock near Warsaw.111 The other neutral, the Don Suisse, had also set up a hospital in Warsaw as seen. The Irish might therefore have felt that not doing the same would have been noticed for the wrong reasons. On 16 August during an International Red Cross meeting in Geneva, a PRC delegate thanked his Irish counterpart for all his country’s aid and hoped that a hospital could be set up.112 The next day, the Irish Press informed its readers that it was the JRC which had begun preliminary discussions with the Polish government to build the hospital. Colonel T. J. McKinney and Michael Scott, accompanied by members of the JRC, had travelled to Warsaw to meet representatives of the Polish government and Red Cross. As the JRC was about to cease its operations it might well be that direct negotiations between Ireland and Poland would have to begin instead.113 But things were dragging. On 11 January 1947, the Irish Independent announced that work in Saint-Lô was about to end and that the Irish medical staff would first travel to Switzerland for a vacation and then head for Warsaw.114 This news was not to everyone’s liking, least of all among higher Catholic circles in Rome it would seem. The Irish minister in the city reported a conversation he had had with Fr John Collins, assistant general of the Society of African Missions. According to Collins, ‘by this move the Irish Red Cross was playing into the hands of Bolshevik propagandists [as] the staff will naturally

110 ACICR, O CMS C-017, ‘Rapport sur mon voyage à Dublin (18–28 mars 1946)’ by Long, 18 April 1946. 111 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4, Report entitled ‘Sweden and post-war humanitarian relief ’ by Henrik Baer, Secretarygeneral of the Swedish Committee for International Relief, undated but probably 1945. 112 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, John B. Hamill, IRCS, to J. P. Shanley, IRCS chairman, 16 August 1946. 113 ‘Irish hospital offer’, Irish Press, 17 August 1946 (INA). 114 ‘Work at Saint-Lô ends; Irish hospital staff for Warsaw’, Irish Independent, 11 January 1947 (INA).

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be warmly welcomed and be allowed to see what suits the purpose of the Polish Government [and as the staff] will be used as a proof in Europe and America that the Polish authorities are not hostile to the Catholic Church’.115 Clerical influence was being exercised on Ireland. The problem here for de Valera’s government was that the International Red Cross was a strictly neutral organisation and that the IRCS was part of it. But, as shown in chapter eight, a Catholic network was trying to influence the IRCS and its chairman John P. Shanley, who, at least on one occasion, gave in to their demands in October 1946. In any case, the Irish Independent had made a premature announcement. On 15 February 1947, Irish Press reporter Alan Bestic, who was in Poland, learnt from PRC chairman Alfred Lewandowski that a last-minute change of plan from his organisation meant that there would not be an Irish hospital in Warsaw for another year. It had been the intention to build ‘a temporary wooden building on the outskirts of the city, beside the site of what will be Warsaw’s first post-war permanent hospital’. Visibly, it was a re-make of Saint-Lô. However, Polish architects objected that wooden huts were dangerous, expensive, and ‘would occupy too much space’. Therefore, the PRC had decided to rebuild a destroyed building in the city to house the new hospital as had been its original plan. Bestic also stressed an additional difficulty, namely that the PRC was short of funds and ‘whether financial aid can be afforded by outside societies is difficult to say’.116 This was the crux of the matter. Three days later, IRCS secretary Martin McNamara wrote to Lewandowski that IRCS representative Patrick Power had formed the impression during his stay in Poland that the authorities were not in favour of an Irish hospital but rather preferred ‘a) a factory to make drugs and medical supplies or b) a community feeding centre or c) twelve mobile canteens’. McNamara asked for clarification and emphasised that his society was making no commitment to these three options.117 In the end, no Irish hospital was set up in Warsaw. The onset of the Cold War would not have incited Dublin to persevere in this plan as the East-West confrontation was intensifying. On 19 July, the Irish Press wrote that as Poland and Hungary had refused to attend a conference on the Marshall Plan in Paris, an American Congress committee had stated that both countries might lose Washington’s financial support.118 The Iron Curtain and Iron Curtain mentality were taking shape. Yet, Poland desperately needed assistance. In January 1947, Power returned to Dublin. He had been cordially welcomed by the PRC and toured Warsaw where 115 NAI, DFA, 6/419/7, minute written by Michael MacWhite, Irish minister in Italy, 28 January 1947. 116 ‘Poles plan the hospital’, Irish Press, 15 February 1947 (INA). 117 NAI, DFA, 6/419/19, McNamara to Lewandowski, 18 February 1947. 118 ‘Hungary and Poland may be refused American aid’, Irish Press, 19 July 1947 (INA).

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he saw people trying to survive in dug-out dwellings in sub-zero temperatures. Inhabitants appreciated Irish condensed milk and bacon especially. Power publicly pleaded for more help: ‘Want and hunger are everywhere in Poland. It is up to the people of more fortunate countries to see they got help. Poland cannot wait’.119 However, he had also something else to say which he expressed privately to Cornelius Cremin in the DEA. He felt that ‘the Poles are not very aware of the fact that the supplies sent to them from this country came from Ireland’ and he did not see ‘any receipts in respect of distribution which appears to have been carried out mainly through the intermediary of the Polish Red Cross Society’. But was Ireland not at fault here? Indeed, Power explained to Cremin that ‘there are at the moment twenty-three different foreign relief agencies of American, British, Danish and other nationalities functioning in the country but the supplies distributed by these agencies are handled directly by nationals of the concerned countries’. This was not Ireland’s case. He added that if UNRRA stopped its activities, Poland would be ‘very badly off’. Power had also paid attention to the political evolution and warned Cremin that the elections scheduled for 19 January ‘will be the reverse of free’. Ministers were already appointed before the results of the election.120 Only the month before, the Irish Times had reported that murders of a political nature were being committed as election day approached.121 In Washington in June 1947, the Polish ambassador informed the American administration of the very preoccupying situation in his country and sought more credits to buy the required supplies. However, the incongruity was that at the same time anti-American propaganda was rife in Poland, leading the American ambassador in Warsaw to protest. Understandably, the Americans were not too eager to help the Poles more. Yet, they did send a mission to Warsaw in July to figure out what the situation was exactly, and it reached the conclusion that Poland had the capacity to produce the minimum of food required without American help. In August, the Polish ambassador met George Marshall in Washington to obtain more aid, but his efforts were in vain.122 The Marshall Plan, announced two months before, clearly signalled a new departure in US foreign policy during increasing East-West tensions. The evolving political situation and the Irish government’s decision to cease cooperation with the JRC and its successor, the ICRCP, meant that fewer supplies were 119 Thousands of Poles live in cellars’, 13 January 1947 and ‘Tragic condition of Polish people’, 14 January 1947, in Irish Independent (INA) & ‘Plight of distressed described by Irish Red Cross Officer’, The Irish Times, 13 January 1947 (ITDA). 120 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/14, note by Cremin, 16 January 1947. 121 ‘Many murders in Poland’, The Irish Times, 28 December 1946 (ITDA). 122 Kersten, The Establishment of Communist Rule in Poland, 1943–1948, 394.

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sent to Poland. The IRCS did its best to send more but high politics stood in the way. In December 1948, Mary Hackett applied to the Department of Agriculture for an export licence to ship goods to Gdynia. They would first be sent to Geneva through the ICRCP and then distributed in Poland by the Catholic welfare organisation Caritas. The DEA learnt that Caritas had been suggested by the Polish consulgeneral in Dublin, Wacław Tadeusz Dobrzyński. Hackett had told the DEA that it was the safest way to send supplies beyond the Iron Curtain. However, the issue was that the Irish government had decided to cooperate with the NCWC. Yet, the DEA remarked that only the transit of the supplies would be looked after by the ICRCP, not the distribution which would be entrusted to Caritas. As the American NCWC would probably not be allowed to operate in communist countries, the DEA argued that in this case an exception should be made for the ICRCP. Minister for External Affairs Seán MacBride agreed.123 Humanitarianism was more and more influenced by Cold-War politics. In 1950, the Polish communists, by now firmly in power, attacked Caritas which looked after orphans, ran soup kitchens, and distributed foreign supplies. They resented its prestige and accused it of being run by aristocrats and Nazi sympathisers. Then, they simply moved in to control it.124 Yet, Irish aid was not forgotten. In 1959, after the Stalinist period, a book on the PRC was published, acknowledging that the IRCS had been one of the main providers of aid to Poland.125 By 1971, the Department of Foreign Affairs (change of name from DEA to DFA) envisaged opening official diplomatic relations with Warsaw as it deemed that Poland was a ‘special case’ in Eastern Europe ‘in view of its affinities, historical and religious, with this country [Ireland]’. The election of a Polish Pope, Karol Józef Wojtyla, in 1978 increased awareness among the Irish people of the developing political situation in Poland in the 1980s when the independent trade union Solidarność (Solidarity) protested against the deteriorating living conditions.126 After decades of communism in a country that had among the most fertile lands in Europe, food was in very short supply.127 The Irish government, together with other governments of the member-states of the European Economic Community (EEC), was involved in sending once again food aid, notably beef, to Poland during 1980–1981, but not for free this time.128 123 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/21, Mary Hackett (IRCS) to Secretary of Agriculture, 17 December 1948; note by Brian O’Gallagher (DEA), 11 January 1949; note by Leo T. McCauley (DEA) to Seán MacBride, 12 January 1949 & note, McCauley to O’Gallagher, 14 January 1949. 124 Applebaum, Iron Curtain, 278–9. 125 S. Uhma & R. Bliźniewski, Polski Czerwony Krzyż 1919–1959 (PZWL, 1959), 84. 126 Doherty, ‘Ireland, Europe and the Provision of Food Aid to Poland 1980–81’, 294–5. 127 Davies, Heart of Europe; 11–12. 128 Doherty, ‘Ireland, Europe and the Provision of Food Aid to Poland 1980–81’, 291–309.

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370 · Chapter Eleven Table 11.2. Don Irlandais in Poland129 1st Irish gift, Jan. 1946–April 1946 Condensed milk 184 tons Tights 6600 pairs Blankets 6100 Knitting wool Underwear

2nd Irish gift, 1946–February 1947 Foodstuffs 401 tons Textiles 196.136 tons Other (35,000 blankets, 10.727 tons cooking utensils…)

3.2 tons 18 bales

Concluding remarks Despite the fact that Irish supplies were distributed deeply inside Central and Eastern Europe, including in camps where Germans were detained before being expelled, Ireland developed no close relations with Czechoslovakia and Poland owing to the Cold War. It was evident that the country aligned itself with the western countries as far as the combination of international politics and humanitarian aid was concerned. Increasingly evident was the importance of religion for the Irish in the deteriorating East-West relations. Deputy Brian Brady, who toured Germany, Austria, and Hungary on behalf of the IRCS to report on the distribution of Irish supplies, declared to the Irish Press in December 1946 that in Austria no attempt was made ‘to interfere with the many very beautiful wayside shrines to Our Lady, the Sacred Heart and various saints’. But he said the same about Hungary,130 which was rather surprising. Brady’s words raised a couple of issues. As a representative of the IRCS, he was not supposed to make such statements as they contravened the spirit of neutrality as promoted by the International Red Cross. In addition, his statement definitely underlined the importance of Catholicism to Ireland’s aid efforts. But perhaps he had sensed that Dublin was having second thoughts about continuing with sending supplies East and wished to reassure the government and public opinion alike by presenting a rather positive picture meant to encourage further aid. In any case, the importance of Catholicism in Irish relief efforts during the onset of the Cold War was certainly highlighted in neighbouring Hungary where a politico-religious confrontation was taking place unlike what Brady appeared to have implied.

129 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 177–8, 186. 130 ‘Red Cross Relief Delegates’ Report’, Irish Press, 23 December 1946 (INA).

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Chapter Twelve

Hungary

A few years before the Great Famine in 1845, Baron József Eötvös, a Hungarian novelist and politician greatly concerned by humanitarian issues, travelled in Ireland, and was deeply disturbed by the rampant poverty and British mismanagement he saw. He published his impressions in a book called Poverty in Ireland, 1837—A Hungarian’s View and wrote: ‘Everywhere people are in rags, and wearing the traces of hunger and disease on their pale faces.’1 A few decades later Ireland’s struggle for freedom (1912–1922) was the object of several books by Hungarian authors and was commented upon in the national press during the first half of the twentieth century.2 They could see some political similarities between the two countries. After the First World War, Irish newspapers and journals reported on Hungary’s nationalist struggle and also paid attention to the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic led by the anticleric Béla Kun in 1919. They also criticised decisions taken by the victorious great powers during the Paris Peace Conference regarding small nations, Ireland and Hungary in particular. They singled out the new arbitrary borders recently drawn in Central Europe just as Ireland was partitioned in 1920. During the interwar period, many in Ireland and Hungary were preoccupied with the communist threat.3 Some of these themes in the Irish press would resurface just before and after the Second World War. Irish newspapers also related the growing antisemitism in Hungary, although Gertrude Gaffney, the correspondent of the Irish Independent, remarked in 1936 that the Hungarians were ‘too good-hearted and easy going a people to emulate Germany’s fanaticism and cruelty’.4 That remained to be seen. 1 Baron József Eötvös, Poverty in Ireland, 1837 –A Hungarian’s View- Szegénység Irlandban (Dublin: ­Phaeton Publishing Ltd, 2015), 5. 2 Thomas Kabdebo, Ireland and Hungary; A study in parallels With an Arthur Griffith bibliography (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001), 62–72. 3 Lili Zách, ‘Catholicism and anti-communism: the reactions of Irish intellectuals to revolutionary changes in Hungary (1918–1939)’, Diacronie, Studie di Storia Contemporanea, 33, 1/2018, 6–7, 9–10, 10–11, 21. 4 Zách, ‘Catholicism and anti-communism’, 20.

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In 1925, Dubliner Hubert Briscoe was appointed honorary consul of Hungary in Dublin but his relations with the Department of External Affairs (DEA) were not always the best. Shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, an attempt was made to set up an Irish honorary consulate in Budapest but the DEA was not interested. Yet, the Hungarians elevated their honorary consulate in Dublin to consulate-general in December 1939, Briscoe becoming consul-general.5 It was mainly during two major international religious events that the Irish and Hungarians met in the interwar period. In June 1932, the 31st International Eucharistic Congress took place in Dublin and was attended by Hungarian participants. One of them, Canon Tauber, said during a lecture entitled ‘Hungary and Ireland in relation to the Eucharist’ in University College Dublin (UCD) that Hungarian-born St Martin was ‘the teacher of St Patrick’. Other Hungarian Catholic dignitaries and personalities were present.6 Six years later, in 1938, Budapest organised the 34th International Eucharistic Congress. Éamon de Valera sent a special message to the organisers and so did William Norton, the leader of the Irish Labour Party. Tánaiste (deputy head of the Irish government) Seán T. O’Kelly and several Irish bishops travelled to Hungary. The Irish-born Archbishop of Manila spoke ‘on the importance of Catholic Action’ in the world. Interestingly, Irish pilgrims went to Esztergom on the border with Czechoslovakia, the home of the Prince-Primate of Hungary, Cardinal Jusztinián Serédi, and laid a wreath on the local Great War memorial while a priest from Northern Ireland said prayers in Irish.7 This was a conscious display of inter small-country identification, showing their common national grievances. During the congress, Baron Zsigmond Perényi, a member of the Privy Council, sent a message to the Irish people on behalf of Hungary, saying that both nations had suffered for their Catholic faith for centuries and that there were Irish soldiers, the ‘Wild Geese’, who had defended Buda against the Ottomans in 1686. He added that after the First World War, the Hungarians had had to fight against even worse enemies than the Ottomans, the Bolsheviks.8 Perényi could have had no idea how soon this fight would resume, but that before it a war would bring devastation to and unleash horrors in his country. Pope Pius XI spoke to the participants through Vatican Radio and mentioned ‘disturbed international relations’,9 while 5 Lili Zách, ‘“Like Ireland, Hungary had her struggles for freedom”: Cultural and diplomatic links between interwar Ireland and Hungary’, Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica, 12, 1 (2020): 87, 87–8, 94–5. 6 ‘Link with Ireland; Teacher of St. Patrick born in Hungary’, Irish Press, 26 June 1932 (INA). 7 ‘The Tánaiste leaves for Budapest, Irish Press, 24 May 1938 (INA); ‘Several Irish bishops to attend Eucharistic Congress’, Irish Independent, 5 April 1938 (INA) & ‘Priests fly home from the Congress’, Irish Press, 2 June 1938 (INA). 8 ‘The Pope’s address to congress’, Irish Press, 30 May 1938 (INA). 9 ‘The Pope’s address to congress’, Irish Press, 30 May 1938 (INA).

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the papal legate, Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli (future Pius XII in 1939), was obliged to cut short the blessed sacrament and benediction because of sudden torrential rain over Budapest.10 Was it a bad omen? After the Second World War in 1945, Ireland was aware of Hungary’s postwar misery and offered generous help as archives in Dublin, Geneva, and Budapest reveal. Many recipients of Irish aid, from all walks of life and every faith, Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish, profusely thanked Ireland. Archbishop McQuaid of Dublin played a central role in the collection of goods for the distant Central European country. However, the arrival of sugar produced in refineries in Carlow, Mallow, Thurles, and Tuam and distributed in the streets of Budapest was not without political controversy. Accusations of misappropriation and hijacking surfaced in which the Irish Red Cross Society (IRCS), Cardinal József Mindszenty, Actio Catholica (Hungarian Catholic Action), and the Hungarian government became embroiled against the backdrop of the unfolding Cold War. Kaposvár-born Countess Judith of Listowel (south-west of Ireland) wrote to de Valera in September 1945: ‘Similar experiences, though at the hand of different oppressors, have enabled [Ireland and Hungary] to grasp the achievements and sufferings of each other. History will record that your readiness to help those who are once more hunted in their own country will further strengthen the links between these two countries, so far from each other in a geographical sense’.11 History will record it now, three quarters of a century later.

Liberation and occupation, 1944–1945 Hungary emerged from the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy after the First World War. It was led by the authoritarian, anti-communist, and antisemitic regime of Admiral Miklós Horthy. However, shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, Horthy and his government were increasingly under pressure from an extremist fascist group called the Arrow Cross led by Ferenc Szálasi who had much admiration for Nazi Germany. Despite Horthy’s friendship with several rich Jewish industrialists, antisemitic laws were passed by parliament between 1938 and 1942.12 The Hungarian army participated in the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, but the losses were so heavy that the regime eventually put out peace feelers with the Allies. As Hitler was informed of this, he ordered the 10 ‘Rain mars procession’, Irish Press, 30 May 1938 (INA). 11 NAI, DFA, 5/372/4, Judith of Listowel, née de Márffy-Mantuano, to de Valera, 14 September 1945. 12 Krisztián Ungváry, Battle for Budapest: 100 Days in World War II (London & New York: I.B. Tauris, 2017), xx-xxi.

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invasion of Hungary in March 1944. 700,000 Hungarian Jews, who until then had been spared deportation and extermination in the heart of Europe, were now suddenly targeted by the Nazis. Adolf Eichmann organised the deportation of 437,000 of them to Auschwitz, with the massive support of the Hungarian administration. But as the international community protested, including the Vatican and neutral states, personalities like President Roosevelt and King George VI, and the local Churches, Horthy managed to stop the deportations. On 15 October, he announced that he would seek a separate peace treaty with the Allies, but Szálasi and the Arrow Cross deposed him. Horthy was sent into captivity in Germany and the Arrow Cross began to viciously target the surviving Jewish community.13 In December, the Irish minister to the Holy See informed the Hungarian government that Ireland supported the Vatican in its efforts to save the Jews. But in the words of Dermot Keogh, ‘Ireland took the lead from the Holy See. It could have taken a more vigorously independent line. It did not choose to do so’.14 The RAF and USAAF began to bomb industrial infrastructure in Hungary and killed over 20,000 civilians. As the Red Army beat the Germans back, the country became a major battlefield. On 24 December, people standing in the Széchenyihegy terminus waiting for their train suddenly noticed Soviet soldiers among them.15 The dreadful siege of Budapest had begun and would last until February 1945, leaving the city devastated after ferocious house-to-house fighting. It had one million inhabitants and neither the Hungarian government nor the Germans took the decision to evacuate them although about 100,000 managed to leave before the fighting began and escaped the inferno. Szálasi informed the Germans that the inhabitants were facing starvation. Yet, he rejected food aid by the International Red Cross as one of the conditions stipulated that the Jews in the ghetto were to be fed as well. After Christmas 1944, many people survived on horse meat as 30,000 horses belonging to the Hungarian and German cavalry were in the city. On 6 January 1945, the International Red Cross put forward to the Soviets and the Germans to evacuate the inhabitants, but it was in vain. Looting of houses was widespread. Hundreds of thousands of civilians sought shelter in the basements of the apartment blocks. Water was scarce, the stench of excrements unbearable, rubbish was piling up and as a result the risks of epidemics spreading. The conditions in improvised sick bays was beyond appalling. Klára Ney witnessed horror scenes: ‘… human wrecks, with only one arm or one leg, disfigured by wounds, are 13 Ungváry, Battle for Budapest, xxii–xxiii. 14 Keogh, Ireland and the Vatican, 188–91. 15 Ungváry, Battle for Budapest, xxiii, 45.

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lying literally one on top of each other on makeshift pallets contrived from planks, doors and stretchers … In addition, everything is positively crawling with millions of lice’.16 Soviet soldiers were unpredictable and capable of extreme reactions. On the one hand, they could be violent and brutal but on the other hand, they did feed the population and were generally good with children and entire families. It is estimated that about 10% of the population in Budapest was raped. Venereal diseases spread quickly. Local communists warned the Soviets against the behaviour of their troops. Although the Soviet command did punish some soldiers severely, it generally underestimated rape. It did much to damage the Soviet Union and communism in Hungary. Another consequence was that many Hungarians refused to examine their consciences regarding their country’s role during the war and especially the treatment meted out to Jews, equating Soviet crimes to Nazi/Fascist ones.17 And what happened to the Jewish population during the siege, the last stages of the war for them, is almost impossible to put into words. Szálasi’s Arrow Cross men indulged in last-minute sadistic slaughtering of Jews while the Red Army was progressing in the streets. A mere 4,000 of them terrorised a city of one million inhabitants, the police and the army doing nothing against them. According to Krisztián Ungváry: ‘This could not have happened without a deep and far-reaching moral crisis among the population’. Jews were usually led to the embankments of the Danube where they were shot. The river was full of floating bodies. Piles of bodies were also seen in parks and streets. Bizarre individuals like Fr András Kun, a Franciscan priest, led Arrow Cross death squads. The order he used was: ‘In the name of Christ-fire!’ Over 105,000 Jews died. Others were cramped into the large ghetto where 60,000 of them tried to live in 4,513 apartments, meaning about up to 14 individuals in one room. Soup kitchens were able to provide each inhabitant with about 719 calories a day. Back in 1942, the Catholic, Reformed, and Evangelical Churches in Hungary had approved of anti-Jewish laws but two years later the same Churches were appalled by what was happening to Jews. Many Church organisations now focused on saving them although it often concerned only specific groups, notably converts to Christianity. The international community in the city helped too like Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, Swiss diplomat Carl Lutz, Portuguese diplomat Carlos Branquinho, and Papal Nuncio Angelo Rotta. Miksa Domonkos, one of the leaders of the Jewish Council and a man who exuded authority, courageously protected his fellow Jews.18 As to the Hungarian 16 Ungváry, Battle for Budapest, 216–36, see 231 for quotation. 17 Ungváry, Battle for Budapest, 285–95. 18 Ungváry, Battle for Budapest, 236–52, 238 and 241 for quotations.

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Red Cross (HRC), it did not do anything for them. The Swiss Friedrich Born was the provisional delegate of the International Red Cross in Budapest and he avoided any cooperation with the HRC. His office considered it to be ‘passive and intimidated’ adding that ‘they don’t care about the detainees, they are only waiting for the instructions of the authorities’. After the siege had ended, the HRC actually laid off its Jewish members and volunteers.19 The Jewish author György Konrád, who went through the siege, wrote how he experienced the end: ‘The historic event that I call “liberation”, but others call “defeat”, I witnessed … with my own eyes in the early morning of 18 January [1945]’.20 He was right. The arrival of the Red Army meant liberation for the Jews and occupation for the non-Jews, although the Jews would rapidly suffer too under the new Stalinist regime.

Catastrophic situation in politically volatile Hungary Marshal Kliment Voroshilov, one of Stalin’s close right-hand men, said about Hungary: ‘This is our territory and we shall determine who can enter.’21 That set the tone of things to come. Like elsewhere, the Soviets dismantled factories and so on to help in the reconstruction of their devasted country. Their removals from Hungary in the postwar years totalled about $1.5 billion.22 This would not increase their popularity and not lead to rapid national economic recovery. Moreover, around 40% of local economic infrastructure was destroyed towards the end phase of the war and when the Germans retreated, they took many of the locomotives, wagons, and carriages with them. On top of that, the Hungarians were supposed to feed and house the Red Army. Officials complained about the ‘complete emptying of the food stores’. Delegations of the western Allies also expected to be well looked after by the locals.23 The harvest of 1945 was not good mainly because many fields had been mined, especially those located between the Danube and the Tisza, which were among the most fertile ones. Food became a rare commodity. At the beginning of 1946, the daily calorie intake for an individual in Budapest was around 556 and in the 19 Kinga Frojimovics, Géza Komoróczy, Viktória Pusztai and Andrea Strbik, Jewish Budapest. Monuments, Rites, History (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1999), 394. 20 György Konrád, Geluk (Amsterdam: De Bezige Bij, 2002), original title in Hungarian Elutazás és hazatérés, 101. 21 Békés, Borhi, Ruggenthaler & Traşcă, eds., Soviet Occupation of Romania, Hungary and Austria, 1944/45– 1948/49, 7. 22 Békés, Borhi, Ruggenthaler & Traşcă, eds., Soviet Occupation of Romania, Hungary and Austria, 1944/45– 1948/49, 24. 23 Applebaum, Iron Curtain, 11 & 38–9.

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country 858 on average. Foodstuffs were available in the city but only to those who had much money. Schools remained closed until 15 March 1946. Hospitals and ministries had no heating. Clothes were extremely scarce. About 40,000 children living in orphanages had no footwear and no winter clothes. The situation of the lower classes was especially preoccupying. In the summer of 1945, there was an infant mortality rate of 30%. But by April 1946, the rate had reached 40%. At the beginning of 1949, it was estimated that half the population suffered from health problems related to nutrition. The black market was flourishing and an unheard-of inflation was running wild.24 According to Tony Judt: ‘The inflation in … Hungary, the worst in recorded history and far exceeding that of 1923 Germany, peaked at 5 quintillion (530) paper pengős to the dollar—meaning that by the time the pengő was replaced by the forint in August 1946 the dollar value of all Hungarian banknotes in circulation was just one-thousandth of one cent’.25 The Joint Relief Commission of the International Red Cross (JRC) was soon flooded with appeals for immediate aid but transport to Hungary was a major obstacle. At first, only transport by air was possible. Truck convoys had been organised in the summer of 1945, but that approach was abandoned as there were too many administrative hurdles. Railroads were being repaired but it remained most difficult to get wagons: on the Austrian side, because very few were available and on the Hungarian side, because it required much paperwork. As visas were a complicating factor, it was decided that Hungarian escorts in Budapest would travel to Hegyeshalom on the border with Austria and take over the supply trains from there. Trains were guarded by forwarding agents and former employees of the Hungarian railway in agreement with the authorities. The delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was due to leave the country, but in June 1945 he informed Geneva that he had finally been allowed to continue with his job. Supervising the distribution of supplies was anything but easy in chaotic Budapest.26 It was depressing to live in the city. The writer Sándor Márai wrote bitterly that ‘dishonesty spread like the bubonic plague [and law and justice] did not exist anymore, but People’s Tribunals were already operating, and political executions afforded daily entertainment to the unemployed rabble, as in the time of Caligula in Rome’.27 His bitterness was understandable 24 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 185, 176–7 & 405–15. 25 Judt, Postwar, 87. 26 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 185, 176–7 & 405–15. 27 Sándor Márai quoted in Buruma, Year Zero, 205.

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but people were trying to survive in desperate times and in a very palpable tense political climate as Mátyás Rákosi’s communists were eliminating their opponents one after the other. International aid began to get active in the United States but also in South and Central America and Iran. Money was being collected by various committees like, for example, the Hungarian-American Relief Inc. The JRC was able to use this money in 1946 only when the transport situation improved.28 It noted in one of its reports that ‘difficulties encountered in transporting relief goods to Budapest … were … overcome and a train organized by the Joint Relief Commission left on January 30th [1946] carrying an important quantity of Irish goods and was the first to reach the Hungarian capital from Western Europe’.29 In July, Radio Budapest informed its listeners that the Irish government would send 2,000 head of cattle.30 The story of these supplies was uplifting but not above controversy as will be seen. In January 1946, Fr Janofi, a Hungarian Jesuit, met T. J. Kiernan, the Irish envoy to the Vatican. His mission was to get help for Hungary, and he was trusted by Cardinal József Mindszenty, the Archbishop of Esztergom.31 This meeting set in motion a chain of events. At the beginning of February, JRC delegate Carlo Imfeld wrote to József Kővágó, the Mayor of Budapest, that 170,481 kilos of Irish sugar had arrived at Ferencváros railway station. It was a gift from the Irish government to the needy people. Imfeld asked him to observe the wishes of the donor, namely that the sugar should be distributed freely and given to those who needed it to supplement their usual rations, that every precaution should be taken that the beneficiaries did not re-sell the sugar, and that the distribution should take place in accordance with the agreed established plan. Kővágó should sign the receipts and the reports on the distribution operations would then be sent to the donors. Everything had to be recorded, and Imfeld specified: ‘These reports aim to inform the donors and to incite them to donate again’. He thanked the mayor for his efficient help in the transport of the sugar to Hungary.32 No specific groups had been singled out for distribution. Kővágó was anti-Nazi and anti-communist. After the war, he tried to rebuild the city with western aid. When the communists began to take over, he resigned his post. During a secret trial in 1948, he was condemned to life

28 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 185, 176–7 & 405–15. 29 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/1, Donation of the Irish Government to the Civilian Populations of Central and Eastern Europe; Final report on the distribution of the donation 1945, by JRC, 4. 30 ‘2,000 Irish cattle for Hungary’, The Irish Times, 25 July 1946 (ITDA). 31 NAI, DFA, emb. series, Holy See, 24/74, Kiernan to Walshe, 11 January 1946. 32 ACICR, O CMS C-021, Imfeld to Kővágó, 8 February 1946.

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imprisonment but was freed in 1956 during the Hungarian Uprising and reappointed mayor. After the crushing of the uprising by the Soviets, he fled the country and led Hungarian opposition abroad.33 The political situation was indeed becoming increasingly volatile. In November 1945, a coalition government composed of anti-Fascist parties ruled, the communists controlling key ministries such as the Interior and setting up the feared secret police, the ÁVO. In February 1947, the arrest of political opponents accelerated and in October the communist takeover was completed by the Stalinist Mátyás Rákosi. In August 1949, the country was officially called the People’s Republic of Hungary. Thus, directly after the war, cooperation between the parties in power was taking place, or appeared to be taking place. But behind the scenes, it was like what Walter Ulbricht had stated for the Soviet-Occupied Zone of Germany: ‘It’s got to look democratic, but we must have everything in our control’.34 When the communists were in the coalition government, they assured everybody that they had nothing against religion. They remembered their mistakes of 1919 during the short-lived Hungarian Soviet Republic and knew that a general onslaught on the Catholic Church would be counter-productive. So it was that extraordinary scenes took place. They were helping in the rebuilding of destroyed churches and were even thanked by priests.35 Of course, they were biding their time. In November 1945, during a meeting of the Central Committee of the communist party devoted to Church affairs, Rákosi said: ‘We have to work carefully, we have to see how and in which form we attack’. However, the party did not hesitate to attack Church leaders in newspapers, depicting them as ‘reactionaries’.36 The communists knew it was essential to control social organisations which, in turn, would form an ideal conduit to control the population. Many women’s associations became their target. There were 243 such associations in 150 towns and villages, and many of them were involved in vital charity and voluntary work after the war. The communists branded them as backward if they were not under their control, or simply dissolved them like the National Alliance of Catholic Working Women and Girls. One excuse was to state that the aims of such or such a women’s association were already being fulfilled by the Magyar Nők Demokratikus Szövetsége (Democratic Association of 33 ‘Joseph Kővágó, 83, Hungarian Freedom Fighter’, in http://www.nytimes.com/1996/12/14/world/josephkovago-83-hungarian-freedom-fighter.html (accessed 13 April 2015). 34 Lowe, Savage Continent, 331. 35 Peter Kenez, ‘The Hungarian Communist Party and the Catholic Church, 1945–1948’, The Journal of Modern History, vol. 75, no. 4 (December 2003): 878–9. 36 Applebaum, Iron Curtain, 273–5.

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Hungarian Women, MNDSZ), which the communists increasingly controlled,37 the idea being to make them appear superfluous. Several homes under the supervision of the Catholic Working Women received Irish sugar supplies, and so did several day care centres and canteens run by the MNDSZ.38 On his return to Dublin in December 1946, Deputy and IRCS representative Brian Brady publicly said that ‘so far as [I] could see there was no active interference with religion and no attempt had been made to remove the numerous wayside shrines’ in Hungary although he added that Cardinal Mindszenty was ‘the only free voice in the country’.39 His statement was rather thought-provoking. Had he fallen into the trap of believing that Rákosi and his followers respected religion? That would seem rather unlikely as Brady had had a long meeting with Mindszenty who frankly told him about the escalating tension between the Church and the party as will be seen. It was in fact more likely that Brady was aware that some in Ireland questioned the wisdom of sending supplies across the Iron Curtain and that assuaging their fears was the best way to make sure they would continue to make donations as outlined in the previous chapter. This would also explain why Brady added: ‘Generally, I got the impression that the people in these different countries [Austria, Hungary and Germany] greatly appreciated the gift, and were very sincere in their gratitude to the Irish people for their efforts on their behalf ’.40 But religion was a main bone of contention in these early postwar Irish-Hungarian encounters. In February 1946, Erik Molnár, the communist minister for welfare, together with the American minister to Hungary, attended the unloading of thirty-seven trucks full of clothes for the Jewish community. The clothes had been sent by the American Joint Jewish Distribution Committee. The Jews were grateful to the government for having provided the trucks.41 Even though Molnár and the communists were pretending to put up a cooperative face it was very obvious that the population needed to be urgently looked after, and they could only appreciate 37 Andrea Pető, ‘Women’s Associations in Hungary: Demobilization and Remobilization, 1945–1951’, in Duchen and Bandhauer-Schöffmann, eds., When the War Was Over, 132–3, 134–5, 138–9. 38 Budapest Főváros Levéltára (Budapest City Archives, hereafter BFL), HU_BFL_IV_1409_c_1947_ IX_11549, Magyar Népjóléti Minisztérium, VI/3 osztály, ‘Az Ir vöröskereszt által adományozott cukor elosztása. Budapest Székesfőváros’, undated (Hungarian Welfare Ministry, VI/3 Department, document entitled ‘The distribution of the sugar given by the Irish Red Cross; Budapest Capital City’), see p. 6 for Catholic Working Women’s homes and p. 14 and p. 17 for day care homes and canteens of the MNDSZ. 39 ‘Red Cross Relief Delegates’ Report’, Irish Press, 23 December 1946 (INA). 40 ‘Red Cross Relief Delegates’ Report’. 41 US minister in Hungary attends distribution of JDC clothing among Jews’, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 21 February 1946, in http://www.jta.org/1946/02/21/archive/u-s-minister-in-hungary-attends-distribution-of-j-d-c-clothing-among-jews (accessed on 9 October 2015).

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foreign help. The JRC was satisfied with the relief operations as ‘according to the first reports received, everything is working smoothly’.42 But this might not last. Before his return to Geneva, Imfeld had met Molnár who had assured him that the JRC would be free to dispose of the supplies as it saw fit. Yet, the new ICRC delegate, Mr Schmidlin, felt that this freedom and room for manoeuvre would soon be removed just as it had been the case in Yugoslavia. Imfeld told him to remain firm and threaten the Hungarian government that a reduction in supplies would be the result if there was political interference.43 His warning was not to be taken lightly.

Distribution of Irish sugar in Budapest On 10 February 1946, Népszava, the mouthpiece of the Hungarian SocialDemocratic Party, announced and praised the arrival of 170 tons of Irish sugar. The impressive consignment had left Dublin nearly six weeks before. It first reached the harbour of Bayonne in France and then Hungary through Switzerland and Austria by train. From the border onwards, Soviet and Hungarian troops escorted the train until Budapest where Hans Weyermann of the ICRC handed it over to Mayor Kővágó and a representative of the communist party.44 During the coming months, Irish sugar and other supplies were distributed to all sections of the population of Budapest. This is proven by the numerous letters of thanks for de Valera’s government. In March 1946, Professor Nándor Ratkóczy from the Clinical Committee Pázmány Péter University Budapest wrote that 700 kilos of Irish sugar were distributed to the patients.45 Zsigmond Mihalovics, the head of Actio Catholica (Hungarian Catholic Action), deeply thanked the ‘President of the Irish Republic’ for the sugar and stressed that Actio Catholica was able ‘to help our 67½% Catholic majority through its own reorganisation’.46 Kővágó wrote his appreciation to de Valera for ‘the 130 tons of sugar, the 2,850 cases of condensed milk and the 600 blankets sent to us …’47 On behalf of the Pester Jewish Community, Max (Miksa) Domonkos and Ludwig Stöckler expressed their gratitude for the 1,500

42 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/1, report from the JRC by Dr Jean-Flavien Lalive and Dr R. Boehringer for Joseph Walshe, DEA, 22 February 1946. 43 ACICR, O CMS C-021, ‘Rapport final sur ma mission à Budapest du 28 janvier au 20 mars 1946’, no author but very likely Carlo Imfeld. 44 NAI, DFA, 5/372/4, Népszava, 10 February 1946. 45 ACICR, O CMS C-018, Ratkóczy to ICRC, Budapest, 11 March 1946. 46 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/1, Mihalovics to ‘President of the Irish Republic’, 14 March 1946. 47 ACICR, O CMS C-025, Kővágó to de Valera, 14 March 1946.

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kilos of sugar.48 As seen, Domonkos had been a brave leader of the Jewish ghetto and would die in 1954 at the hands of the communists during interrogation to prepare a show trial against Zionists, being absurdly accused of involvement in the murder of Raoul Wallenberg.49 The latter was in all likelihood assassinated by the Soviets.50 The National Theatre of Budapest distributed small quantities of sugar to some of its members and asked for more. Among them was the Jewish author Teréz Rudnóy,51 who had survived Auschwitz, unlike her husband and two sons, and would accidentally drown in the Danube two years later. The Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs reported that every teacher above fifty-five years of age received 500 grams of sugar.52 In June, the commandant of the hospital of the Honvéd (Hungarian army) garrison acknowledged the receipt of 400 kilos of sugar and explained that each patient got 10 grams per day. He hoped that more would be sent.53 So did the Free Union of Hungarian Doctors who received 1,000 kilos and divided it between the 4,762 doctors in Budapest. In accordance with the wishes of the donor, the union distributed the supplies free of charge and it was most grateful.54 Examples abound. The Budapest City Archive contains a remarkably detailed list showing that some 542 institutions, schools, associations, and other groups received Irish sugar. Not only does it indicate who got it, where in the city and how much was distributed, but it also reveals the very broad range of lucky recipients: carpenters, apprentices, bankers, single mothers, teachers, pupils, members of the political police and many others. As far as can be ascertained, at least 110 Catholic, 16 Protestant and 11 Jewish groups and associations were concerned. The table below is a selection of some of the names on the list which had been compiled by Molnár’s Ministry of Welfare.

48 ACICR, O CMS C-018, Domonkos and Stöckler to ICRC, Budapest, 25 March 1946. 49 Ungváry, Battle for Budapest, 282. 50 ‘Is the Mystery of Raoul Wallenberg’s Death Finally Solved?’, Haaretz, in https://www.haaretz.com/ israel-news/is-the-mystery-of-raoul-wallenbergs-death-finally-solved-1.5421686 (accessed on 7 June 2020). 51 ACICR, O CMS C-021, Clare Mathé, ICRC delegation, Budapest, to Carlo Imfeld, Geneva, 11 April 1946. 52 ACICR, O CMS C-021, report by the Hungarian Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs, Budapest, 3 May 1946. 53 ACICR, O CMS C-018, commandant to ICRC, 17 June 1946. 54 ACICR, O CMS C-018, Free Union of Hungarian Doctors to ICRC, Budapest, 25 June 1946.

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Hungary · 383 Table 12.1. ‘Distribution of sugar given by the Irish Red Cross, Budapest capital city’, Hungarian Ministry of Welfare’ 55 Name of institution

Number of residents

2nd Women’s Clinic, 8th district, Üllői Street 78a Hebrew Association Hospital in Buda, 1st district. Maros Street 16 Russian Thermal Bath Hospital, 10th district, Kozma Street Juvenile Convicts Prison “Rural Pest”, 2nd district, Gyorskocsis Street Protestant Countrywide Orphanage, 7th district, Rózsák Square 1 Saint Antal Boy’s Orphanage, 12th district, Hidegkuti Street Children’s Home of the Carmelite Sisters, 10th district, Maglódi Street 125 State Home for War Crippled, 12th district, Németvölgyi Street Home of Ethics Police [vice squad], 10th district, Villám Street 25 Women’s Protection Home, 7th district, Vörösmarthy Street Franz Josef Statewide Education for Rabbis, 8th district, Rökk Szilárd Street Kindergarten, 1st district, Koronaőr Street 1 Hungarian National Bank, 5th district, Szabadság Square 8-9 Political Police, 7th district, Andrássy Street 91 Ceramic Factory, 10th district, Gyömrői Street 63 Széchenyi Bathhouse, 13th district, Városliget (City Park) Anti-alcohol Restaurant, 4th district, Irányi Street 20 College of Drama, 8th district, Rákóczi Street 35

113

50 decagrams [500 gr.] monthly for a period of 3 months 169.5 kg.

50

75 kg.

100

150 kg.

80

120 kg.

85

127.5 kg

5

7.5 kg.

120

180 kg.

150

225 kg.

35

52.5 kg.

100

150 kg.

65

97.5 kg.

Number of nonresidents but entitled to share

20 decagrams [200 gr.] monthly for a period of 3 months

50 60

30 kg. 36 kg.

15

9 kg.

40

24 kg.

50

30 kg.

1275

765 kg.

60

36 kg.

55 Budapest City Archive, HU-BFL-IV-1409-C-1947-IX-11549, report by Hungarian Ministry of Welfare, Department VI/3, undated but very likely 1946. The author is most grateful to Dr Szilvia Lengl’s (Berlin) translation.

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The list reveals that Irish sugar was distributed to Jewish groups and to those institutions that had courageously sheltered Jews during the bestial Arrow Cross onslaught. In January 1945, Fr András Kun had led a group of Arrow Cross men to the Jewish hospital Budai Chevra Kadisa located on Maros Street. 90 patients were dragged out, forced to undress, robbed, and executed. What Kun did to some Jewish nurses according to accounts, is too repugnant and obscene to be described here (he would later be hanged).56 After the war, fifty patients in Budai Chevra Kadisa got 500 grams of Irish sugar each month over a period of three months.57 The monks of the Champagnat Institute of the Order of Mary (a French school) had protected about 100 Jewish pupils and fifty parents. The Josephinum (Society of the Virgin Mary), closely located to the Arrow Cross headquarters, had hidden sixty Jewish children and two adults. Twenty Jews had found refuge in the small hospital of the Sisters of the Eucharistic Union. Unfortunately, they were discovered by the Arrow Cross men who also tortured the prioress. She managed to escape and continued to help Jews.58 All these institutions got Irish sugar.59 Many institutions and associations looking after children figured on the list. There were official ones like Saint Laurence Children’s Home on 45 Donáti Street, Elisabeth Military Orphanage on 3 Váci Street or the Protestant Countrywide Orphanage on 1 Rózsák Square. But there were also temporary children’s homes like on 9 Kavics Street or on 11–13 Szél Street.60 The situation for children was appalling, and many were either orphans or had been abandoned by their parents shortly after the siege. In January 1946, the Minister for Welfare said: ‘As an effect of the front and the chaos following it there were a lot of children born whose families did not want to take care of them … I ask hereby the bureau of orphanages … to qualify all babies as abandoned whose date of birth is from 9 to 18 months 56 ‘Maros utca 16: zsidó kórház, 1945. január 12.’ (Maros Street 16: Jewish hospital, January 12, 1945), Társadalmi kórház konfliktusok (Social Conflicts Research Centre), in http://konfliktuskutato.hu/index. php?option=com_maps&view=map&event_id=681&tmpl=dka&Itemid=195 (accessed on 6 June 2019). 57 BFL, HU_BFL_IV_1409_c_1947_IX_11549, Magyar Népjóléti Minisztérium, VI/3 ostály, ‘Az Ir vöröskereszt által adományozott cukor elosztása. Budapest Székesfőváros’, undated (Hungarian Welfare Ministry, VI/3 Department, document entitled ‘The distribution of the sugar given by the Irish Red Cross; Budapest Capital City’), 1. In the document on the same page, there are two mentions of a Jewish hospital. The first one is the ‘Hebrew Association Hospital’, located on 16 Maros Street. The second one is Chevra Kadisa and the address is not legible. In fact, Chevra Kadisa is the Hebrew Association Hospital. This is also established by the document found on the website of the Social Conflicts Research Centre (see previous footnote). 58 Martin Gilbert, The Righteous; The Unsung Heroes of the Holocaust (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2003), 391–3. 59 BFL, HU_BFL_IV_1409_c_1947_IX_11549, Magyar Népjóléti Minisztérium, VI/3 ostály, ‘Az Ir vöröskereszt által adományozott cukor elosztása. Budapest Székesfőváros’, undated, 8 & 3. 60 BFL, HU_BFL_IV_1409_c_1947_IX_11549, Magyar Népjóléti Minisztérium, VI/3 ostály, ‘Az Ir vöröskereszt által adományozott cukor elosztása. Budapest Székesfőváros’, 4

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after the liberation.’61 He had been diplomatic enough not to mention the word ‘rape’. Lutheran Pastor Gábor Sztehlo, who worked for the Good Shephard organisation, placed 905 Jewish children and 635 adults in thirty homes across the city, all under his authority. Originally, the organisation’s aim had been the conversion of Jewish children to Lutheranism but in 1944, Sztehlo made it clear that the aim was now to save Jewish children and no longer to convert them.62 After the war, he founded the Pax organisation and Gaudiopolis, a children’s republic managed by the children themselves, the aim being to educate them into becoming critical citizens respecting each other. In 1946, the International Red Cross sent food supplies to Gaudiopolis. At the beginning of the 1950s, Rákosi, deeming the concept of the educational project to be too individualistic, announced that he would nationalise it. Gaudiopolis was abandoned.63 The Pax organisation and the Good Shephard organisation got Irish sugar too.64 Almost ironically, the Mátyás Rákosi Children’s Home also figures on the list, but it does not seem to have benefitted from preferential treatment when comparing institutions, number of people, and quantity of sugar involved.65 The Rákosi home originally looked after orphans of communist party members, and later functioned as a kindergarten for the party.66 In 1946, the Irish Save the Children Fund (ISCF) sent 1,000 kilos of Forsanose to Budapest (Forsanose was a powder preparation composed of vitamins A, B1 & D, made in Switzerland). In March 1947, the Budapest office of the Union Internationale de Protection de l’Enfance (International Union of Child Welfare) received 500 kilos of powder milk from the ISCF, which was distributed to ‘the more necessitous children of factory workers’.67 Other Hungarian children could have received Irish aid was it not for political interference. Back in September 1945, Countess Judith of Listowel had travelled to Dublin to ask Ireland to help her native Hungary. De Valera had left ‘a profound impression’ on Judith and had asked her ‘to write a memorandum for him as 61 Applebaum, Iron Curtain, 32–3. 62 Gilbert, The Righteous, 396–7. 63 ‘Budapest, Kinder an der Macht’, by Mohamed Amjahid, Zeitmagazin, Nr. 38/2016, 7 Oktober 2016, in https://www.zeit.de/zeit-magazin/2016/38/budapest-staatsgruendung-gaudiopolis-kinder/komplettansicht (accessed on 7 June 2020). 64 BFL, HU_BFL_IV_1409_c_1947_IX_11549, Magyar Népjóléti Minisztérium, VI/3 ostály, ‘Az Ir vöröskereszt által adományozott cukor elosztása. Budapest Székesfőváros’, undated, 8 & 5. 65 BFL, HU_BFL_IV_1409_c_1947_IX_11549, Magyar Népjóléti Minisztérium, VI/3 ostály, ‘Az Ir vöröskereszt által adományozott cukor elosztása. Budapest Székesfőváros’, undated, 5. 66 Enikő Sváby, ‘A pártvezetők gyermekeinek óvodai ellátása, avagy élet a Rákosi Mátyás Gyermekotthonokban’, Múltunk, 2013/1., 218–36, in http://epa.oszk.hu/00900/00995/00033/pdf/EPA00995_multunk_13_1_218-236.pdf (accessed on 7 June 2020). 67 AEG, Archives Privées, 92.22.2, F. Boissier to Nora Finn (ISCF), 15 January 1947 & Boissier to Finn, 8 May 1947.

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to how Hungarians could be helped by this country’. The countess set to the task and in a letter to the secretary for external affairs, she wrote that ‘there is just NO sugar in the country’ and that only a little bit was available in the black market and was ‘fabulously expensive’. Children were suffering and ‘the Swedish Red Cross has sent medicines for children which have been duly distributed’. The Danish Red Cross was also very active.68 Judith’s visit set in motion a scheme to welcome needy Hungarian children to Ireland. In January 1946, Fr Janofi, told Kiernan in Rome that he had been entrusted by Cardinal Mindszenty with finding aid for their country, including assistance to children. He had been in touch with Judith. Kiernan cautiously replied that in this matter ‘there is a good deal of “heart ruling head” suggestion and that the only way to achieve anything is to put the matter to the established Irish organisation, the Irish Red Cross, and first to see the [Irish] High Commissioner [in London]’. Janofi agreed.69 The impetuous countess and journalist, née Judith de Márffy-Mantuano and married to an Anglo-Irish peer, was certainly no lover of communists.70 In February, de Valera replied to a telegram sent by Mindszenty, assuring him that ‘we shall be very glad to receive Hungarian children in Ireland if the authorities concerned in Hungary and in the intermediate countries will allow them to come’.71 On 2 March, Kiernan met Mindszenty at the Vatican where he was also introduced to Dr Imre de Kosinsky of Actio Catholica. Both men began by explaining to Kiernan that the communists were making sure that relief supplies sent to Budapest were distributed to their supporters only (the list discussed above shows that this is not correct, or else the alleged communist attempt was not successful). Then the children’s issue was broached. According to Kiernan, ‘with regard to the reception of children the Cardinal was very vague and helpless. He asked if we could take them from Budapest. Finally, I got him down to the conclusion that on his return to Budapest about the 9th of March he would take up the matter with the Burgomaster so that exit permits could be obtained’. De Kosinsky feared, however, that the Swiss authorities might refuse transit visas as they did not want to offend the Soviets.72 Mindszenty then remarked that his task would be made considerably easier if de Valera sent him a letter, stating that Ireland was prepared to welcome 200 Hungarian children, stressing that ‘Catholic children 68 NAI, DFA, 5/372/4, Judith of Listowel to Walshe, 14 September 1945 & 20 November 1945. 69 NAI, DFA, 5/372/4, emb. series, Holy See, 24/74, Kiernan to Walshe, 11 January 1946. 70 ‘Judith, Countess of Listowel’, obituary, The Telegraph, 22 July 2003, in http://www.telegraph.co.uk/ news/obituaries/1436725/Judith-Countess-of-Listowel.html (accessed on 13 July 2015). 71 NAI, DFA, emb. series, Holy See, 24/74, de Valera to Mindszenty, 23 February 1946. 72 NAI, DFA, emb. series, Holy See, 24/74, Kiernan to Walshe, 2 March 1946.

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should be specified as otherwise [Ireland] will get 200 Jews’. Generally, Kiernan was impressed by Mindszenty but for the wrong reasons: ‘The Cardinal seems much an uncertain person and so weak and difficult to get down to the realities of solving difficulties—he just throws up his hands—that I doubt very much if this endeavour to give refuge to Hungarian children will come to anything’. Before the meeting ended, Kiernan assured him that ‘we are anxious to extend the hand of Catholic fellowship’ and emphasised again that it was essential that he approached the local authorities to organise the sending of the children.73 Kiernan’s assessment of Mindszenty was largely correct, and shared by others. The French ambassador explained to Mgr Giovanni Montini all his admiration for Mindszenty, but he got a reply he perhaps had not expected. Montini answered that they would have preferred the cardinal to be less confrontational and that more circumspection would have been appreciated, adding, though, that the communists would probably not arrest him lest he should become a martyr.74 Regarding the last point, the future pope was mistaken. But the children’s plan unravelled quickly. In May, the Department of External Affairs (DEA) in Dublin summarised the issue, noting that ‘nothing further has since been heard from [Mindszenty]. He told Dr Kiernan that he would not be able to communicate direct with the Taoiseach from Budapest and that he would have to correspond through the Vatican. Dr de Kosinsky was apprehensive that the Swiss authorities would refuse transit visas for the children for fear of offending the Russians. This seems hardly credible and we feel sure that Swiss visas will be forthcoming once Hungarian exit permits and Irish entry visas can be guaranteed’.75 Although this can only be surmised, it was very likely that Mindszenty had his hands full with the evolving political situation in Hungary, and it was not going in his favour. The communists were slowly tightening their grip on power and about to eliminate their opponents in what would become internationally known as szalámitaktika, salami tactics or the elimination of opponents one after the other or slice after slice. In June, de Kosinsky was in London from where he sent a letter to Secretary for External Affairs Frederick Boland, explaining that ’we have not yet found a solution for the transport of children out of Hungary. Now we are trying together with the Protestants to establish a common action, hoping to reach some common result …’76 His letter was forwarded to Archbishop John Charles McQuaid 73 NAI, DFA, emb. series, Holy See, 24/74, Kiernan to Walshe, 2 March 1946. 74 Eric Roman, Hungary and the Victor Powers, 1945–1950 (London: Macmillan, 1996), 240. 75 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/1, DEA report entitled ‘Irish Relief for Hungary; Dr Imre de Kosinsky’, 27 May 1946. 76 DDA, XXX/7, de Kosinsky to Boland, 6 June 1946.

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who was right in the middle of organising a clothes collection for Hungary. In September, Countess Catherine Károlyi, chairwoman of the Hungarian Relief Committee in Great Britain, met Cornelius Cremin in the DEA in Dublin. She had come to convince the Irish government to welcome children and said that the IRCS had agreed to take 200 of them. Cremin replied that if the IRCS had agreed then there would probably not be any difficulty in bringing them over although he cautiously pointed out that ‘when Lady Listowel wanted to get her children here last year the Hungarian Authorities refused to let them out’.77 And there it stayed. The politically outspoken Countess Judith of Listowel might well have been the stumbling block for the Hungarian communist party. But the reality was probably more straightforward. For the increasingly powerful Rákosi, self-styled ‘Stalin’s best pupil’, and his followers, the idea of sending the country’s children to the western archenemy was anathema. What had just happened in Ireland happened in the Netherlands too. In 1947, the Dutch government agreed to welcome some 500 Hungarian children, but the Hungarian government put an end to the plan in 1948.78 In May 1947, Stephan Pallay, the representative of the HRC in Britain, asked Cremin if Ireland could still welcome 500 children and support a crippled children’s home in Budapest. Cremin replied that Ireland had been prepared to welcome them, but that they had not been allowed to leave Hungary. As far as the crippled children’s home was concerned, his answer was that ‘it was not clear to what extent any assistance could be given from Ireland at this stage’.79 Cold War politics had come into play. Irish aid to Hungary extended beyond Budapest. In Bátaszék close to the Yugoslav border, the local Social Relief Committee wished the HRC to convey the gratitude of the entire village to the IRCS. The ‘poorly-fed children’ (until 12 years of age), got Irish sugar. Over 2,000 packs were made by ‘social lady-workers’, ‘organised by the parson and local alimentation officer’. The distribution took place in the local school. A banner was hung up, on which people could read in Hungarian and English: ‘Distribution of Eire’s sugar-gift’. Photos of the event were included in the letters of thanks to ‘the friendly Irish people’ from the inhabitants of Bátaszék and were also published in the illustrated news magazine Kis-Képes in its issue of 17 November 1946. The letter and extract of the magazine reached Dublin.80 Equally of note, is the question of Irish cattle. It was crucially lacking in Europe after 77 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/41, note by Cremin & document left by Countess Catherine Károlyi chairwoman of the Hungarian Relief Committee in Great Britain, 4 September 1946. 78 Sintemaartensdijk, De Bleekneusjes van 1945, 275 & 282–5. 79 NAI, DFA, 5/372/4A, note by Cremin, 29 May 1947. 80 NAI, DFA, 5/372/4, Red Cross of Bátaszék to IRCS, 28 November 1946.

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the war. As previously mentioned, in July 1946, Radio Budapest announced that Ireland would export 2,000 head of cattle to Hungary. In September, the Irish high commissioner in London was told by Hungarian representatives that they were ‘extremely grateful’ for the offer but that there were some difficulties as the journey was far too long for the animals. Instead, they suggested that they should be slaughtered, and the frozen meat sent.81 It took some time to organise the logistics but one year after Radio Budapest had made the announcement, 570 tons of meat, the equivalent of 2,000 head of cattle, reached Hungary. 556 tons were ‘in excellent condition and 60% went to workers engaged in heavy industries and mines, and 40% to various social institutions in the city of Budapest’. 2,000 hides of ‘the very best quality’ also arrived safely. The Hungarian ambassador in London wrote to the Irish high commissioner: ‘I should like to avail myself of this opportunity to express, in the name of the Hungarian Government, deep appreciation of the repeated generosity of the Irish Government whose valuable gift has made it possible to supply many thousand people with meat, and has also provided Hungarian industry with one of the most vital raw materials’.82

Rumours of Catholic and communist misappropriation But as elsewhere on the continent, despite this display of European solidarity there were some people who believed that they had good reason for complaining. In March, Népszava wrote that the Catholic Church wanted to control the Irish sugar supplies and claimed that Actio Catholica, thanks to its ‘mystical machinations’, was in possession of 40 tons. As a result, the city and the poor who needed it most, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, had now less sugar.83 However, from the Vatican came other information. Mindszenty believed that the supplies were falling into the wrong hands. Montini relayed the information to the Irish envoy at the Vatican, who, in turn, notified Secretary for External Affairs Joseph Walshe. Montini personally believed that if the International Red Cross sent the supplies to an address indicated by Mindszenty, there should be no problem.84 The abovementioned list and the numerous letters of gratitude which reached Ireland either directly or indirectly through Geneva show that both Népszava and Mindszenty 81 NAI, DFA, 5/372/4, note by Cremin, 16 September 1946. 82 NAI, DFA, 5/372/4A, Hungarian embassy, London, to J.W. Dulanty, High Commissioner for Ireland, London, 7 July 1947. 83 ACICR, O CMS C-021, J. Schmidlin, ICRC delegate, Budapest, to ICRC, Geneva, 10 April 1946, including extract of Népszava, 31 March 1946. 84 NAI, DFA, emb. series, Holy See, 24/74, Kiernan to Walshe, 22 March 1946.

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had in fact little reason for complaining. It probably all came down to traditional antagonism between the Left and the Church. In Dublin, the DEA had reached the same conclusion and had noticed inconsistencies in Mindszenty and Actio Catholica’s claims. In May 1946, it issued a report entitled ‘Irish relief for Hungary; Dr Imre de Kosinsky’ (as will be seen, de Kosinsky would meet Archbishop McQuaid in Dublin in 1946 to enlist his help). The DEA wrote that he was a member of Actio Catholica and represented the cardinal in his efforts to obtain supplies from Switzerland, Italy, Britain, and Ireland. In February 1946, Kiernan had met de Kosinsky and Mindszenty in Rome and both men had told him that ‘supplies sent to Hungary through the International Red Cross reached only Communist sympathisers’.85 The cardinal’s claim was manifestly not correct. Mindszenty then asked that Irish supplies be sent to him through the Pontifical Commission of Relief. According to the report, Kiernan had subsequently met Montini who told him that the International Red Cross should in fact be able to send Mindszenty the supplies directly. In light of the Vatican’s disapproval of the International Red Cross, Montini’s remark is rather striking. But he had perhaps at that point in time a very good reason for saying so. It is indeed stated in the DEA’s report that there had been ‘recently a public scandal in Rome about suspected misappropriation of supplies by high officials of the Pontifical Relief Commission’.86 No further details about this scandal are known, however. Similar allegations against the International Red Cross in Hungary were made by an Irishwoman named Patricia Reay-Coffey, the DEA continued. Reay-Coffey was probably the only Irish person who had gone through the siege of Budapest. She was originally from Mitchellstown and had gone to the city in 1939 on a holiday when the war broke out. As a result, she became trapped and spent the entire war in Budapest. She had no problems with the Hungarian authorities and later with the Germans. When the Red Army came, it was a different story. Like so many others, she found refuge in a basement and was lucky to escape unmolested. She described the Soviets as being ‘very primitive’. They kept bouncing up and down on armchairs and couches. Some of them ‘wore about 20 wrist watches on their arms, none of them going’. In the subsequent interview she gave to the Irish Press once back home, she said nothing about the dreadful plight of the Jews. Yet, she stressed that she was going ‘to devote all her time and energies to helping the Catholics of Hungary, who were so kind to her’ and added that ‘while the practice of religion was not

85 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/1, ‘Irish Relief for Hungary; Dr Imre de Kosinsky’ 27 May 1946. 86 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/1, ‘Irish Relief for Hungary; Dr Imre de Kosinsky’ 27 May 1946.

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prevented, it was a choice between bread and religion’.87 Reay-Coffey’s account as reported by the Irish Press in 1946 was one-sided. She might not have been bothered by German soldiers and Arrow Cross men, but she could hardly have failed to notice the horrendous fate of the Jews of which she had said nothing. To the Irish readers in the emerging Cold War, her account confirmed that the depraved beasts were the Soviets although they had led nobody to the embankments of the Danube. Reay-Coffey had returned to Ireland with a letter from Zsigmond Mihalovics, the director of Actio Catholica, for de Valera, supporting Mindszenty’s plea for Irish supplies. Yet, the very next day ‘a warm letter of thanks’ was received from Mihalovics for 46 tons of Irish sugar. The DEA wrote: ‘Further proof that our supplies are reaching the Catholic populations of the Central European countries is afforded by the letters received by the Taoiseach from Cardinal Innitzer and the Bishop of St. Pölten [Soviet-Occupied Zone] in Austria and from many Catholic organisations in Germany. We have found the International Red Cross most satisfactory and efficient and neither this Department nor the Department of Industry and Commerce would be disposed to recommend any change in this channel of distribution’.88 As if to confirm the DEA in its correct analysis, shortly afterwards Ákos Györgyfy, director of the Budapest State Deaf and Dumb Institute,89 and Emil Hajós and Reverend Joseph Eliás, both from the ‘Good Shepherd’ Foundation for the Jewish Mission of the Protestant Churches of Hungary, wrote to Geneva to express their gratitude for the supplies of Irish sugar they received for their respective institutions.90 Nevertheless, the JRC was aware that rumours were circulating that the Hungarian communists were hijacking foreign supplies for their supporters. Georges Sotiroff, a Bulgarian JRC delegate who had travelled to Central and South-East Europe to supervise the distribution of Irish supplies during the spring of 1946 as seen, reported what he had personally learnt in Budapest: . . . a lady said that she had heard that the Irish Government had stopped all relief for Hungary because ‘the communist Government was diverting the goods to the benefit of communists only’; I asked the lady who had told her that and she replied that it was a rumour. Immediately afterwards she admitted that the Catholic organisation ‘Stephania’ had been distributing Irish sugar at the rate of 1/2 lb [pound] a month to children below 6 during three consecutive months, and that she had received the respective quantities for each one of her four children. When 87 88 89 90

NAI, DFA, 5/372/4, ‘Story of a Siege and After’, Irish Press, 15 April 1946. NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/1, ‘Irish Relief for Hungary; Dr Imre de Kosinsky’ 27 May 1946 ACICR, O CMS C-018, Györgyfy to ICRC in Hungary, 14 June 1946. ACICR, O CMS, C-021, Hájos and Eliás to IRCS, 17 June 1946.

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I observed that it seemed to me to exist some contradiction between the latter fact and the alleged abuse on the part of the Government officials, she agreed smiling and said that her information was probably wrong.91

Again, that these rumours were unfounded is proven by the numerous letters of thanks sent by people from all walks of life and religious denominations. Yet, there could be no doubt that life was getting tougher for non-communists in Hungary. On 22 June, the Irish Times wrote that Prime Minister Ferenc Nagy (Smallholders’ Party) said during a stopover at Shannon Airport in the southwest of Ireland that he was very grateful for the 170 tons of Irish sugar sent to his country. He explained, however, that the main difficulty of his government was to maintain friendly relations with the Soviets.92 The Swiss newspaper La Suisse had reported that Minister of the Interior László Rajk, a Stalinist who had organised the ÁVO (secret police) and who would be subsequently eliminated by Rákosi, had recently demanded that the University Catholic Association be forbidden as their Soviet allies believed it had supported Hungary against the Soviet Union during the war.93 There could be no doubt either that Hungary still very badly needed foreign supplies. In July, the Irish Times published an article entitled ‘Budapest a city of extremes’. It was stated that luxury and misery lived side by side. There were high quality restaurants and a thriving black market for those who could afford it, but most of the population was ‘literally starving’.94 The Limerick Leader revealed that the Bishop of Limerick had received a letter from a Julius Palas in Budapest who wrote about his family’s living conditions. He asked for Christian solidarity and begged that a food parcel be sent to him.95 The call for international Christian solidarity was heard, but generated controversy.

The mysterious Dr Imre de Kosinsky Who was Dr Imre de Kosinsky and who did he really represent? This was a question that preoccupied those in Dublin who were involved in sending relief to Hungary as they were dealing directly with him. In the mass of documents available, it appears that de Kosinsky arrived in Ireland for the first time at the end of May 1946 and 91 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, ‘Impressions from the distribution of the Irish supplies in the Balkans’, by Sotiroff, J. F. Lalive, JRC, to Cornelius Cremin, DEA (received on 16 November 1946). 92 ‘Premier of Hungary at Shannon Airport’, The Irish Times, 22 June 1946 (ITDA). 93 DDA, XXX/7, ‘Une organisation catholique interdite en Hongrie’, La Suisse, 6 July 1946. 94 ‘Budapest a city of extremes’, The Irish Times, 25 July 1946 (ITDA). 95 ‘Pathetic story of want’, Limerick Leader, 3 August 1946 (INA).

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was able to meet de Valera, Boland, and McQuaid in the briefest of delays. His mission was to incite Catholic Ireland to continue sending supplies to Catholic Hungary under siege from the local communists and their Soviet allies. But by midJuly, McQuaid, always very well informed, reported to the DEA that ‘Dr Kosinsky might not be altogether trustworthy’ and that he was personally ‘rather worried’. Although the origin of his information is unknown, international Catholic circles, probably in Rome, appears to be a likely answer. McQuaid went as far as to tell the DEA to deny de Kosinsky a visa for Ireland, but the instructions to that effect were botched up. Boland thought it was ‘very regrettable’ and was afraid McQuaid would have a ‘very poor impression of the efficiency of our departmental services’. The archbishop seemed to possess some sort of diplomatic sword of Damocles over the DEA. De Kosinsky claimed that he was Mindszenty’s representative, that he worked for Actio Catholica, and that the Hungarian Red Cross (HRC) could not be trusted. According to him, supplies sent by Swiss Catholics to the Catholics of Budapest through the HRC ended up in the communists’ hands. During a series of meetings with de Valera, Boland, and McQuaid, he explained that he wanted no more than 50% of the Irish supplies to be handed over to Actio Catholica lest the Hungarian government might oppose it. Suggestions were made that the percentage should be even less in order to avoid any antagonising. In the end, Boland said that IRCS chairman Martin McNamara, about to go to an International Red Cross meeting in Geneva in July, was instructed that at least 50% of the supplies should got to Actio Catholica but added the important caveat that if political problems stood in the way, then as high a percentage as possible.96 During that July meeting in Geneva, McNamara and John B. Hamill met de Kosinsky and also József Antall, the HRC chairman, who managed to make it to the conference on the very last day. They had a ‘frank discussion’ and the Irish said that they were ‘satisfied that the distribution made by the Commission Mixte [JRC] was a fair and proper distribution and that every section of the Hungarian people, as far as possible, received our supplies’. The Hungarians explained that their Red Cross was running a hospital in Budapest but that it was urgently in need of supplies. Lorries and ambulances were lacking all the more since the HRC ‘had a farm in the country and that if they had lorries, they could bring supplies of vegetables from that farm to the city of Buda-Pest for delivery to the necessitous 96 NAI, DFA, 5/372/4. This voluminous file concerns the sending of Hungarian children to Ireland after the war, but it also contains much detailed information on de Kosinsky’s negotiations with the Irish government. Not everything can be mentioned here, and the general gist of the file has been summed up. Note by Boland, 1 June 1946; note by Boland, 12 July 1946; note by Boland, 18 October 1946; T. J. Kiernan, Irish envoy to the Holy See, to Walshe, 2 March 1946; & de Kosinsky to Boland, 25 October 1946.

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persons’.97 As instructed, McNamara said that it was the wish of the Irish government ‘that, if possible, Actio Catholica, should receive 50% of the supplies; if that was not possible, as large a proportion as possible should be given, but on the understanding that such action would not provoke hostility, or prejudice the whole question of relief imports to Hungary vis-à-vis the Russian Authorities’.98 In a letter to Boland, de Kosinsky wrote that Mindszenty, who he had codenamed ‘Paul’, did not like the idea of Hungarian government and HRC officials distributing Irish sugar as he believed that ‘the administration belongs to the Marxists’. And yet, he wrote to Boland that he travelled ‘for the Catholic cause’ and represented the HRC, and even told McNamara that he was authorised ‘to act on behalf of the Hungarian Red Cross’. However, McNamara had this investigated. The secretary-general of the HRC wrote to him in October 1946 that de Kosinsky was ‘not a delegate of the Hungarian Red Cross’. It also transpired that he had wrongly represented the IRCS’s position regarding the situation in Hungary during the meeting in Geneva in July. Everyone present had then agreed on Ireland’s next seven distributions of aid to Hungary and that no ‘political or religious distinction should be made’. McNamara later informed Boland: ‘I may add that both Dr Antall and Dr Kosinsky stated privately subsequently that they were in agreement that the distribution was fair’.99 In the DEA, Boland and Cremin were on their guard. Like McNamara, they had noticed inconsistencies in de Kosinsky’s claims and these were pointed out to him. He ended up advising that Irish supplies should be transported to Hungary by the American War Relief Service (National Catholic Welfare Conference/ NCWC), which was also the wish of ‘Paul’ (Mindszenty). The NCWC was against social and religious discrimination and was now very active, he said. It was authorised to transport relief into Hungary, while Actio Catholica could distribute it. According to him, the prime minister agreed. This was the situation since 1 September. But it became all rather confusing. During a conversation with Cremin, de Kosinsky eventually said that he wanted everything to be kept secret as he feared ‘reprisals’ if complaints became known in Hungary, ‘not only for himself but also for the members of his family’. The fact that Actio Catholica did not get 50% of the Irish supplies, a possibility that had been envisaged as 97 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, Hamill to J. P. Shanley, IRCS, 16 August 1946. 98 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4E, Andrée Morier, chairwoman ICRCP, to Boland, containing attachments of correspondence, 18 May 1949. 99 NAI, DFA, 5/372/4, de Kosinsky to Boland, 25 October 1946; note by chairman (presumably IRCS chairman Martin McNamara), 16 October 1946; de Kosinsky to Boland, 25 October 1946; G. Kellner, secretary-general of HRC, to McNamara, 30 October 1946; & McNamara to Boland, 24 October 1946.

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seen, was embarrassing for his personal reputation and politically dangerous if it became known. Cremin wrote: ‘[De Kosinsky] fears that if a detailed reply is sent [to Mindszenty] it might seem either that he misinterpreted the wishes of the Cardinal or else he was not sufficiently firm or consistent in his representation of the position of Catholics in Hungary’. He wanted the Irish to inform Mindszenty that they had wanted to send 50% of their supplies to Actio Catholica and why that figure ended being far lower. They had to explain that it was all a misunderstanding. Cremin rightly noted: ‘De Kosinsky is obviously worried about his own future’.100 On 23 September, Mindszenty had sent a letter to de Valera, stating that only 20 tons of sugar out of 600 had been given to Actio Catholica (it is not known where he got these figures from). Two months later, the DEA replied that it had been a ‘misunderstanding’ and that ‘steps have been taken to ensure that Actio Catholica will receive a correspondingly greater proportion of the undistributed supplies so as to redress the position’.101 Clearly, Irish Catholic prestige had been dented here and the blame might be easily shifted onto de Kosinsky. But was it not a fact that the DEA had clearly instructed that 50% of the supplies should go to Actio Catholica if it was politically feasible only? And as will be seen shortly, even Archbishop McQuaid had advised to give less to the Actionists. At the end of the day, was de Kosinsky an opportunist, an impostor, or some kind of communist agent-provocateur? He was none of these. The truth transpired during a meeting in Budapest on 13 December 1946 between HRC Chairman Gyula (Julius) Vállay, ICRC delegate Max Moser, and IRCS delegate Brian Brady. Vállay told Brady about the ‘invaluable help of the Irish state’. Brady then inquired about ‘a certain Mr Koscinzky [sic]’, the alleged delegate of the HRC. Vállay answered that de Kosinsky had left Hungary when the Germans marched in and ‘under no circumstances can be considered a fascist’, and then settled in Geneva. Vállay explained that Actio Catholica wanted to send him as its delegate to Ireland, but it was only possible to do so if the HRC gave him an authorisation to act on its behalf. Since the HRC was composed of people from different political parties, it was not convenient to send a member of Actio Catholica publicly and that was why Minister Antall and Vállay wrote an authorisation in secret that would allow de Kosinsky to reach Ireland. When he subsequently met Countess Károlyi in London, the latter got suspicious and asked the Hungarian government and the HRC who he was. The communists then said that he was ‘a 100 NAI, DFA, 5/372/4, de Kosinsky to Boland, 25 October 1946 & note by Cremin, 31 October 1946. 101 NAI, DFA, 5/372/4, note by Cremin, 29 October 1946 & DEA (unsigned) to Mindszenty, 6 November 1946.

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fascist, and in reality a Polish refugee who under no circumstances could act on behalf of the HRC’. Vállay emphatically asked Brady not to mention the name de Kosinsky while he was in Hungary.102 Fear was gripping Budapest. De Kosinsky’s file in the International Centre on Nazi Persecution in Bad Arolsen indicates that the Swiss authorities described him as an ‘apatride’, a stateless person, and what he had told the Swiss authorities was consistent with what he had told Cremin.103 But his contradictory or unclear statements had understandably made the Irish very cautious. This seemed to have had knock-on effects. In May 1947, Cremin met Stephan Pallay, the representative of the HRC in Britain, who had come to Dublin to thank de Valera and inquire if Ireland could do something about the plight of Hungarian children. But prior to the meeting, Cremin was informed by McNamara that he had received a letter from the HRC, warning the IRCS that it ‘should be on its guard against an unnamed person who would probably come to Ireland as representing the Hungarian Red Cross. Mr McNamara was inclined to think that the unnamed person is Dr Pallay’.104 Fear had incited de Kosinsky’s to behave the way he did, and that was understandable. Fear in Budapest has been brilliantly described by the author Sándor Márai who experienced the arrival of the Soviets in 1944 and the gradual communist takeover. As he wrote, the new people in power and walking around in different uniforms were the same ones who had worked with the Nazis, ‘except that the colour of their uniforms had changed. But the ones who wore the uniforms were the same ones and did the same: operating terror with craftmanship’. For now, terror was discreet, but ‘an invisible frontline in Budapest developed when it became known that the Terror Monster was active again in the city’. At the beginning of 1947, the communists were busy arresting many people and throwing them in the jails of the security police. It was at that moment that many realised that there would be no ‘pink democracy’ in the country. The communists under orders from Moscow had been preparing the ground for the past two years. Hungarian society was to be ‘completely Bolshevised’. Fear had to be instilled into the people on a permanent basis to make sure the new system could be implemented. In the words of Márai: ‘The communists knew that this System could only function in

102 NAI, DFA, 5/372/4A, letter send to DEA by the Centre d’Entr’Aide internationale aux Populations Civiles (successor of JRC) to DEA, 18 May 1949, containing report entitled ‘Report re visit of Mr Brian Brady, delegate of the Irish Red Cross, to Mr Julius Vállay, director of the Hungarian Red Cross”, 13 December 1946. 103 ‘De Kosinsky, Imre’, Arolsen Archives, International Center on Nazi Persecution, in https://digitalcollections.its-arolsen.org/03020104/name/view/6149928 (accessed on 11 June 2020). 104 NAI, DFA, 5/372/4A, note of Cremin re meeting with Stephan Pallay, 29 May 1947.

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an atmosphere of permanent fear…’105 It has been estimated that between 140,000 and 200,000 Hungarians, many with German-sounding names, were deported by the Soviets after the war, the majority ending up in the gulags.106 Fear and distrust had disrupted Irish plans to send supplies to Hungary; it was not like operating in Western Europe.

Archbishop McQuaid helps Hungary Collection of clothes for Hungary was a relief operation in which John Charles McQuaid, the Archbishop of Dublin, was heavily involved and it was not devoid of political interference. As shown, the leading figure against the Hungarian communists and their Soviet masters was Cardinal József Mindszenty. His anti-totalitarian and anti-fascist credentials were impeccable. He was a monarchist in favour of the Habsburgs, opposed Szálasi’s Arrow Cross party, was thrown into jail by the Nazis when he told them not to turn western Hungary into a battlefield, and deeply abhorred communism. He was courageous and outspoken but lacked political tactical sophistication and was inflexible. His rabid opposition to communism pleased Pius XII who rather unexpectedly gave him the red hat in 1945 although he was not that well-known at the time. Other bishops were not always willing to follow him.107 Very soon after the war, the cardinal clashed with the government as he had obtained relief supplies from the Americans during a visit to the Vatican. This angered the communists who even tried to prevent these supplies from entering the country. Mindszenty publicly denounced their move: ‘These American donations were a sign of the all-embracing solidarity of the world Church. World Bolshevism did not like them at all’. He also denounced violent acts and arbitrary arrests by the police. In the autumn of 1948, the communist press tackled him head-on: ‘We will annihilate Mindszentyism!’ Monasteries were closed and about 800 nuns were forbidden to work in hospitals.108 As outlined above, Imre de Kosinsky, representing Mindszenty, arrived in Dublin during the spring of 1946. On 30 May, he had a meeting with McQuaid and Boland to whom he depicted the political situation in Hungary and discussed how best Ireland could send supplies. The sole fact that McQuaid had been 105 Sándor Márai, Land, land!... (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, 2002), original title in Hungarian Föld, föld!... 174, 174–5, 244–5, 256. 106 Applebaum, Iron Curtain, 117–18. 107 Kenez, ‘The Hungarian Communist Party and the Catholic Church, 1945–1948’, 864–889 (see throughout). 108 Applebaum, Iron Curtain, 281–5 & 277–8.

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included confirmed his importance in the ongoing Irish relief operations. When de Kosinsky explained that only 50% of the supplies should be put at the disposal of Actio Catholica, fearing a possible communist backlash, McQuaid remarked that even less should be given ‘rather than run the risk of supplies not reaching Hungary at all’. Bearing in mind the uproar that Mindszenty had caused with the American supplies, McQuaid was being very realistic. De Kosinsky said that the cardinal needed £1,500 to keep certain Catholic activities going and two cars ‘to enable himself and his bishops to visit the parishes and administer confirmation’. Money for typewriters was also needed to help a Catholic newspaper. Boland remarked that the DEA had no ‘official fund’ for this type of support, but he later learnt that the archbishop ‘had been able to provide it’.109 McQuaid’s eagerness to help Hungary is explainable by his desire to participate in international Catholic solidarity. He had a strong interest in the continent and the meetings between Irish and Hungarian Catholics during the International Eucharistic Congresses of Dublin and Budapest in the 1930s were fresh in people’s memories. Moreover, the red threat was very palpable to his mind. McQuaid immediately set to the task and organised a clothes collection. Soon, offers of help flowed in. Sister Marie-Madeleine Sophie from the Convent of Mercy in Blackrock (Dublin Southside) wrote that ‘we will gladly give every help in this matter’.110 James Duff, the vice-president of St Patrick’s College in Maynooth, hoped ‘to get from the students soutanes [cassocks] and coats which they would be discarding at the end of the term’.111 Christian Brothers Provincial J. M. Quinlan of St Helen’s in Booterstown informed the archbishop that he had ‘communicated the contents of your letter to the Superiors of our secondary schools in the Diocese of Dublin. They will co-operate most readily with Your Grace’s efforts to obtain used clothing for the very destitute young people of Europe, especially the Catholics of Hungary’. The pupils would be informed.112 Once the clothes had been collected, the question arose how they would safely reach Hungary and those for whom they were intended. Boland explained to Cremin that the bales of clothes would have ‘special markings’ so that they could be easily identified, ‘but they will not be addressed specifically to the Actio Catholica in Budapest’. The bales would indicate that the clothes were a gift from the Catholic Social Action Service Conference (that is to say the Catholic Social Service Conference, CSSC, led by McQuaid) in Dublin. The Department of Industry and Commerce would 109 NAI, DFA, 5/372/4, note by Boland, 1 June 1946. 110 DDA, XXX/3, Sophie to McQuaid, 6 June 1946. 111 DDA, XXX/3, Duff to McQuaid, 6 June 1946. 112 DDA, XXX/3, Quinlan to McQuaid, 6 June 1946.

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look after the labelling.113 Eventually, there were 110 bales for Actio Catholica, each coded H1, H2 until H110. They were to be loaded on the Edenvale and shipped to the continent in September.114 While all this was taking place, politics came into play. From London, de Kosinsky informed Boland that a ‘confidential letter’ in his possession stated that the Soviets were opposed to foreign goods being sent to Actio Catholica or to any other Catholic organisation or indeed Mindszenty. According to a source in Budapest, it could not be guaranteed that relief supplies would fall into the right hands and it was suggested that they should first be sent to the Pazmanium, the Hungarian Catholic Institute located in the British sector in Vienna. The issue was to control the supplies safely. But de Kosinsky’s letter then became somewhat confusing. His idea was that Irish supplies should be sent through the International Red Cross to István Jankovich of the HRC on condition that 50% be given to Actio Catholica, even though, as detailed above, there were misgivings about the HRC and that McQuaid had deemed that 50% might be too high a percentage. But the problem now was Soviet opposition. And yet, he also wrote that he had just received a telegram from the same Jankovich in Budapest, informing him that the supplies for Actio Catholica had safely arrived. This was contradictory. De Kosinsky put forward to negotiate on behalf of the Irish government and the IRCS a fifty/fifty deal, meaning 50% of the supplies to be handed over to Actio Catholica. He would meet Dr József Antall, a non-communist member of the coalition government, in Berne together with the Irish minister to make the deal. Antall was also the chairman of the HRC.115 Was it an attempt by de Kosinsky to control the Irish supplies or at least to have an important say in their management? Unsurprisingly, Boland informed McQuaid that de Kosinsky would not be allowed to negotiate on behalf of the Irish authorities. Boland added that according to research done by the DEA, the problem was not as complex as depicted by de Kosinsky and the International Red Cross should be able to proceed normally with the distribution.116 As seen, numerous documents clearly show that the DEA was right in its analysis. But Mindszenty and de Kosinsky were under increasing pressure. The Churches became prime targets for the communists in Central and Eastern Europe because they had contacts with the western countries, had prestige, were independent, and possessed moral authority. The communists were most suspicious of the 113 NAI, DFA, 5/372/4, note by Boland, 12 July 1946. 114 NAI, DFA, 5/372/4, note by Cremin, 18 September 1946. 115 DDA, XXX/7, de Kosinsky to Boland, 6 June 1946. 116 DDA, XVIII/relief, Boland to McQuaid, 21 June 1946.

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Catholic Church because of its international network and its links to the Vatican. International Catholic charities were also much distrusted.117 As to McQuaid, he kept himself up to date with the situation in Hungary by reading the national and international press.118 De Kosinsky wrote to him that Antall had been forced to resign as minister for reconstruction and would probably also have to resign from his position as chairman of the HRC. He was extremely grateful for the clothes collection and hoped that ‘the clothes will arrive by [sic] the International Red Cross really for the Catholics’. He was pessimistic for the country’s future and added that he had recently been described by a communist newspaper as a representative of the ‘fascist cardinal’.119 In the Vatican, Montini was extremely satisfied with McQuaid’s relief initiatives for Hungary. McQuaid had also sent a letter to Mindszenty, presumably of support, through Ireland’s ambassador to the Holy See, Joseph Walshe.120 McQuaid was determined to help as much as he could but there were limits to what he could do, and this was only Hungary. Strains began to appear in his correspondence. In October 1946, he advised de Kosinsky to carefully think about what kind of relief Ireland could provide and asked him to send a letter of suggestions through the Irish legation in Berne so that he could discuss it with Boland. Yet, he warned that he would not be drawn into the vortex of Hungarian domestic politics: ‘Any relief I have hitherto been able to arrange for, has been for the Catholics and the Cardinal, purely as an act of charity, and if I shall be able to assist further, it must be on the same basis of charity, quite apart from any political considerations’.121 De Kosinsky lost no time in replying and reiterated his plan to send all supplies to Budapest through the International Red Cross. The HRC would then equally divide them between the government and Actio Catholica. ‘Besides this’, he wrote, ‘the Irish Red Cross would send 2 lorries, and a special quantity of drugs for VD [venereal disease] as well as vitamins, and especially a large quantity of clothes exclusively to Actio Catholica . . .’ and great care should be taken that the lorries remained under the control of Actio Catholica. McQuaid was irritated by these demands and forwarded de Kosinsky’s report to Boland with the telling comment: ‘It is not a modest estimate. At the moment, having sent over 20 tons of clothing I feel that I have done enough for one nation, and that, as I have promised, I ought to help the Italians, through the Holy Father’.122 117 Applebaum, Iron Curtain, 272–3. 118 DDA, XXX/7, ‘Une organisation catholique interdite en Hongrie’, La Suisse, 6 July 1946. 119 DDA, XXX/7, de Kosinsky to McQuaid, 3 August 1946. 120 DDA, XVIII/relief, Walshe to McQuaid, 23 August 1946 & McQuaid to Walshe, 3 September 1946. 121 DDA, XXX/7, McQuaid to de Kosinsky, 1 October 1946. 122 DDA, XXX/7, McQuaid to Boland, 15 October 1946.

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But the Hungarians kept asking for more. In May 1947, Zsigmond Mihalovics, the general-director of Actio Catholica, sent McQuaid a long report, outlining the latest developments and the crying needs of the young and elderly especially. He claimed that official aid was almost exclusively distributed to supporters of the communist party so that Catholics had to rely on his organisation, and ended his letter with a solemn appeal: ‘This nation, fighting for its faith, being the last bulwark of Christianity in the East, really deserves the aid of all Catholic brethren on earth in [its] hard struggles and needs,’123 No doubt, the Poles would also have claimed to be that last bulwark. As to de Kosinsky, he kept McQuaid informed on the political battle between good and evil and the heroic role played by Mindszenty during 1948.124 It was true that 1948 was the year in Eastern Europe when the local communist parties simply made no more effort to try to come to power democratically. All pretence was abandoned, and opposition forces were massively targeted.125 Persecution of the Catholic Church differed from one country to another. But certain members of the hierarchy resisted and became known as ‘martyr cardinals’. They were József Mindszenty from Hungary, Stefan Wyszyński from Poland, Alojzije Stepinac from Croatia, Josef Beran from Czechoslovakia, and Jósyf Slipyj from Ukraine.126 However, McQuaid decided that he had done enough for the Hungarians. When Dr Stephan Pallay, based in Geneva, appealed to him to organise a collection of secondhand clothes for refugees arriving ‘from the hell of communist Hungary’, McQuaid instructed his secretary to answer: ‘[His Grace the Archbishop] received your letter and regrets that he does not see at the moment a favourable opportunity of making such a collection. I would remind you that His Grace already sent 20 tons of clothing to Hungary and the response from Hungary would not tempt anyone to repeat the very [unreadable] experiment’.127 Did McQuaid feel his help had been abused? Had there been a lack of gratitude on the Hungarian side? It was true that Mihalovics had carefully pointed out to IRCS representative Brian Brady that the quality of the Irish underwear for children was very poor and that it would be difficult to use.128 Had this news reached McQuaid? Or was it the avalanche of demands that had made him react in such a way? Perhaps it was a combination of all these factors. 123 DDA, XXX/7, Mihalovics to McQuaid, 17 May 1947. 124 DDA, XXX/7, de Kosinsky to McQuaid, 20 March 1948, 12 June 1948 & 20 October 1948. 125 Applebaum, Iron Curtain, 271. 126 Weigel, The Final Revolution, 64–5. 127 DDA, XXX/7, Pallay to McQuaid, 23 April 1949 & Pallay to Fr Christopher Mangan, 2 May 1949. 128 NAI, DFA, 5/372/4A, ‘Enclosures to letter of 18th May 1949, Distribution of the Irish Gift 1946, in Hungary’, written by Centre d’Entr’Aide Internationale aux Populations Civiles, attachment entitled ‘Report on the visit to Actio Catholica by the delegate of the Irish Red Cross, Mr Brian Brady’, 14 December 1946.

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High politics and supplies do not mix well In September, the Irish Times announced that the IRCS would send to Hungary supplies worth £2,000. Included were among others a Dodge motor lorry and ‘500,000 vitamin A and D capsules and 110 bales of used clothing’ (organised by McQuaid).129 The same newspaper reported two days later that the American government had denounced the ‘removals of property’ by the Soviets in Hungary.130 Moscow had ordered the dismantling of factories located on the territory of former enemies as compensation for losses during the war. This would obviously not help Hungary in its reconstruction efforts which, in turn, were supposed to help its population. It would not help the communist cause either as Rákosi and his men would be held responsible. As US Secretary of State Dean Acheson succinctly put it: ‘We were fortunate in our opponents’.131 These exorbitant reparations and their consequences on Hungary’s economic and food situation were pointed out in an anonymous report written in December 1945 and handed over to T. J. Kieran, the Irish envoy to the Holy See, by Fr Janofi in Rome in January 1946.132 But now events that would lead to the break between the Irish government and the International Red Cross were gathering momentum. In November, JeanFlavien Lalive (JRC) and Henri Cuchet (ICRC) met with DEA and IRCS representatives in Dublin. The Irish had picked up rumours that Hungarian Catholics might be at a disadvantage during the distribution of supplies as compared to other sections of the population which were more inclined to support the communists. The JRC rightly denied this. However, Lalive and Cuchet explained that they could rely on Dr Max Moser who came from ‘a strongly Catholic family’ and who was acceptable to the Hungarians and the Soviets.133 The JRC felt it was advantageous to emphasise Moser’s Catholicity in their negotiations with the Irish, but as it would turn out he was not entirely reliable. In December 1946, Boland expressed his relief to Walshe in Rome that the Italian communists’ attempt to hijack Irish supplies had failed (see chapter seven). But he also complained that Actio Catholica had not received 50% of the relief supplies destined for Hungary although the Irish 129 ‘Red Cross supplies for Europe’, The Irish Times, 23 September 1946 (ITDA). 130 ‘Soviets “draining” Hungary’, The Irish Times, 25 September 1946 (ITDA). 131 Judt, Postwar, 123, 127–8. 132 NAI, DFA, 5/372/4, Kiernan to Walshe, 11 January 1946. Janofi gave Kiernan three reports: ‘The food situation of Budapest in the beginning of December and during the winter months’ by the Supply Department of the City of Budapest; ‘Report on the Public Health in the city of Budapest in Nov. 1945’, by Dr Elemér Csordás, 2 December 1945; and ‘The Reparation, the other obligations of the Surrender Agreement and the foreign debts’, anonymous, December 1945. 133 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, note by Cornelius Cremin, DEA, 19 November 1946.

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government had clearly indicated that this should be the case. He was dissatisfied with the HRC in particular and with the International Red Cross in general.134 Boland seemed to have had a selective memory on this occasion. As shown, Actio Catholica had asked that 50% of all Irish supplies should be distributed to Catholics, but the DEA, in consultation with McQuaid, had deemed that if that percentage might cause political problems, then as high a percentage as possible and Boland had instructed IRCS Chairman McNamara in that sense. It appeared that Boland was increasingly looking for convenient excuses to get rid of cooperation with the International Red Cross and terminate Irish relief in communist-dominated Central and Eastern Europe, which was increasingly being criticised at home and embarrassing de Valera’s government. During his meeting with de Kosinsky in Dublin in October, McNamara had informed him that the IRCS would send its own delegate to Hungary to meet members of Actio Catholica before the actual distribution of Irish supplies in order to avoid any misunderstandings.135 On 13 December, IRCS representative Brian Brady met Gyula Vállay, the chairman of the HRC, who told him that Actio Catholica’s request was not reasonable ‘since the gift was sent to the people of Hungary as a whole while Actio Catholica dealt only with the needs of Catholics’. Furthermore, he pointed out that if it persisted it ‘could lead to an intensification of differences between the individual Churches and the political parties and in view of the Russian occupation of the country, the results for Actio Catholica could only be regrettable’.136 This was a pertinent remark considering that the communists were now beginning to accelerate their takeover. The same point had also been made by McNamara during his visit to the International Red Cross in Geneva, and even McQuaid had made this point. Thus, it came down to a confusion between what was a request or an instruction by the Irish authorities, as relayed by the IRCS in Geneva. After his meeting with Vállay, Brady met Zsigmond Mihalovics, the leader of Actio Catholica. Before the war, the movement had focused on the plight of Hungarians living in rural areas and had also been involved in adult education and working with the youth. However, it had clashed with the hierarchy on the issue of land reform, and the bishops undermined its efforts regarding land redistribution. Also, Actio Catholica had been controversially accused of having pro-Nazi sympathies, admiring the way Hitler was dealing with the Left and the Jews. But 134 NAI, DFA, emb. series, Holy See, 24/74, Boland to Walshe, 2 December 1946. 135 NAI, DFA, 5/372/4, note of meeting with the chairman [presumably McNamara of the IRCS] and de Kosinsky, 16 October 1946. 136 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4E, Andrée Morier, chairwoman ICRCP, to Boland, containing attachments of correspondence, 18 May 1949.

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Mihalovics had vehemently denied this in a letter he sent to Cardinal Jusztinián Serédi, Mindszenty’s predecessor, writing that it stood ‘under the supervision of the highly esteemed Episcopal bench and under the highest leadership of Your Eminence’.137 In other words, tensions between the hierarchy and Actio Catholica had existed and the former had reminded the latter of its power in the past. Brady asked Mihalovics ‘whether Actio Catholica was satisfied with the quota allotted to it from the Irish Gift by the “Committee of Five” or if it claimed a larger amount’. The Committee of Five was composed of representatives of the Ministry of Food, the Ministry of Welfare, the City of Budapest, the chairman of the HRC, and the President of the Council. Mihalovics answered that ‘as far as he was concerned, he made no further claim in this matter, but he would very much like Mr Brady to have an exchange of opinion on the subject with Cardinal Mindszenty’.138 Mihalovics remained very cautious and in effect deflected the final answer to that question to Mindszenty. At the same time in Dublin, Lalive was explaining to the Interdepartmental Relief Committee that it was ‘difficult sometimes, by western standards, to understand the mentality of Hungarians or Balkan peoples and that the Joint Relief Commission, from their experience over the past six years, find that Hungarians are prone to outbid each other in stating their needs’.139 Lalive hoped that Brady might be able to get a better picture of the situation. Whatever the merit of Lalive’s remark, Actio Catholica might not be relishing a new confrontation with the hierarchy and certainly not on the ‘invisible frontline’ that Budapest was becoming with its ‘Terror Monster’ at large as described by Sándor Márai. On 15 December, Brady met Mindszenty in Esztergom. Both men had a long talk. As reported by Brady, ‘the distribution [of Irish supplies] is made through Government agencies and Cardinal Mindszenty alleges that the Government, which is communist-controlled, is using Irish relief in their own interests. There is a fight being waged in Hungary between the forces of Christianity and communism, and in the circumstances food plays a large part in it’. Brady was determined to get the full picture and also met Erik Molnár and officials of the Ministry of Welfare who gave him their files on relief operations: ‘I saw names of institutions, feeding centres etc., which apparently embraced all sections of the population. However, Catholics are 68% of the entire population and I am convinced from my 137 Paul A. Hanebrink, In Defence of Catholic Hungary: Religion, Nationalism and Antisemitism, 1890–1944 (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2006), 156. 138 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4E, Andrée Morier, chairwoman ICRCP, to Boland, containing attachments of correspondence, 18 May 1949. 139 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4A, ‘Relief supplies to Europe’, meeting of the Interdepartmental Relief Committee, 19 November 1946.

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investigations that Actio Catholica would be allowed to receive any relief supplies donated to it.’ Brady discovered more. He found out that a governmental decree, ‘No 2 320/1946 M.E.’, stipulated that foreign donors were free to entrust their gifts to a Hungarian welfare association of their choice and could also ‘prescribe the group of persons to whom such distribution shall be made’. He wrote that therefore the Irish government ‘should insist on Actio Catholica receiving direct whatever percentage of relief they decide to allocate to them’. However, the International Red Cross in Geneva did not know of this decree and he concluded that ‘it is quite possible that their representative [in Budapest], Mr. Moser, was not aware of it and was not in a position to insist on the Irish Government’s wishes being carried out’. Brady mentioned that Actio Catholica got the Dodge lorry and the other supplies sent by the IRCS back in September.140 In a subsequent report written in May 1949 and sent to Boland, the International Centre for Relief to Civilian Populations (ICRCP) in Geneva analysed the origins of the misunderstanding between the Irish government and the JRC, involving Actio Catholica, Mindszenty, the HRC, and the Hungarian authorities. It had furnished relevant documentation (outlined above) and reached the following conclusion: If the above extracts are accurate, they seem to show clearly enough that Actio Catholica wished to pursue a more moderate course than the Cardinal. The fate which has befallen a number of the people involved shows what good grounds there were for apprehension; in our opinion, it was the imperative duty of a neutral relief organisation to avoid compromising itself, and thereby compromising also the people it was set up to serve e.g. the recipients of relief. Both Actio Catholica and the Hungarian Red Cross have spoken with very different voices on different occasions, and the delegate on the spot had no rigid instructions. We would again recall the conditions under which the Irish authorities requested that 50% be given to Actio Catholica, and ask that they be considered objectively in the light of what is set out above.141

It is hard not to agree with the ICRCP here. By May 1949, the communists were fully in control and their salami tactics had paid off. Vállay was now a refugee, so was Nagy, the prime minister.142 As to Mindszenty, he remained staunchly opposed 140 NAI, DFA, 400 series part 2, 419/1/7, letter (unknown) to Department of the Taoiseach, 11 February 1947 containing ‘Report on visit to Germany, Austria and Hungary’, by Brady, 7 January 1947. 141 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4E, Andrée Morier, chairwoman ICRCP, to Boland, containing attachments of correspondence, 18 May 1949. 142 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4E, Andrée Morier, chairwoman ICRCP, to Boland, containing attachments of correspondence, 18 May 1949.

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to any compromise with the communists, unlike other prelates of the Hungarian Catholic Church.143 Mihalovics was also in trouble. In the end, the problem for the Irish government was that it had no diplomatic representative in Budapest. That made it most difficult for Boland to appreciate the evolving situation and the challenging decisions that those who were in charge of distributing Irish supplies had to take on the spot. But there was another problem that considerably cooled down relations between the Irish government, the HRC, and the International Red Cross. The financial situation was catastrophic in Hungary with inflation rates that defied the best of fertile imaginations. In September 1946, Max Moser, the ICRC delegate in Budapest, requested authorisation from Geneva to sell a part of the Irish sugar supplies to cover their distribution costs.144 The HRC had run out of money and could no longer pay bills. In October, the JRC informed the DEA through the Irish legation in Berne of the HRC’s current financial circumstances. Institutions were no longer able to pay their expenses and their personnel. The HRC and the Ministry of Food were badly affected, and they played a crucial role in the distribution of supplies. The JRC wrote that ‘the Hungarian Red Cross can no longer use telegraphic or telephonic communications, the tariffs being too high for its budget’. Foreseeing distribution difficulties, both the Ministry of Food and the HRC ‘asked for the authorisation to sell a very small part of the thousand odd tons of [Irish] sugar earmarked for their country, i.e. [that is to say] some 40 tons at the most’. The idea was that ‘the profits of this sale would be used to cover the expenses of the distribution in course of execution as well as those of forthcoming ones’.145 It was a suggestion driven by pure desperation but it ultimately defeated the purpose of relief. But good news from Dublin for the Hungarians was on the way. In November, the Interdepartmental Relief Committee met with the IRCS and Lalive and Cuchet who had come from Switzerland to organise and negotiate the sending of more supplies. ‘On the question of the payment of the distribution expenses of the Hungarian Red Cross’, John E. Hanna of the Department of Finance informed them that ‘there should be no difficulty about our providing the necessary funds’.146 On 4 December, the ICRCP, which had been created on 1 November and had taken over from the JRC, informed Moser in Vienna of the Irish government’s 143 Jonathan Luxmoore and Jolanta Babiuch, The Vatican and the Red Flag: The Struggle for the Soul of Eastern Europe (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 2000), 43–4. 144 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4E, Andrée Morier, chairwoman ICRCP, to Boland, containing attachments of correspondence, 18 May 1949. 145 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4A, Irish legation in Berne to DEA, 15 October 1946. 146 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4A, ‘Relief supplies to Europe’, meeting of the Interdepartmental Relief Committee, 19 November 1946.

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decision. Moser was in fact working between Vienna and Budapest as goods meant for Central and Eastern Europe transited through the Austrian capital. The ICRCP took it for granted that he had conveyed its message to the Hungarian government even more since the Irish offer was a generous one.147 However, in Budapest, Moser found out that 30 tons of sugar had already been sold. He protested and informed the ICRCP about it, asking if authorisation for selling the sugar could be obtained though. If not, he believed that the relevant Hungarian ministry could replace the sold sugar by local supplies. That way, everything would be evened out. But it then also became known that the HRC used supplies of serge to make uniforms for its personnel, which the ICRCP described as being ‘scandalous’. Apparently, it was Moser who had given the authorisation to do so, but he denied this. Things went from bad to worse as he allowed the funds resulting from the sale of Irish sugar ‘to be used to defray the expenses of other Gifts, and even for personal expenses’. Moser was invited to give his version of events but never did so. The ICRCP only got wind of the affair in April 1947 when a new ICRC delegate had been appointed to Vienna. It thought that Moser’s behaviour might be explained by the fact that he believed that ‘the whole matter might be liquidated by having the [Hungarian] Food Ministry replace the sugar sold from stocks available locally’. When the Irish government was informed, it took the decision to suspend all relief shipments to Hungary. Vienna was notified on 2 May. The Irish also demanded that ‘Mr Moser should not have anything further to do with the Irish Gift in Hungary or in any other country’. This demand was immediately acted upon.148 The ICRCP went on to produce a very detailed report on what the Irish had given to Hungary: sugar, dried milk, condensed milk, baby food, cheese, blankets, mattresses, serge, woollen overcoating, army shirting, knitting yarn, utensils, pillows, towels, and first aid outfits. The figures were impressive and Actio Catholica figured prominently among the receiving organisations. In February 1947, the Hungarian Ministry of Food had issued a report stating that it distributed to a total of 3,200,000 people (2,000,000 children aged 0–12 years, 200,000 nursing and expectant mothers, and 1,000,000 persons over the age of 60) an average of 200 grams of Irish sugar each; this excluded the figures of the Ministry of Social Welfare, the HRC, and the Swiss Red Cross to which sugar had also been given for distribution or other purposes. The Ministry of Food stressed that 3,200,000 out of

147 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4E, Andrée Morier, chairwoman ICRCP, to Boland, containing attachments of correspondence, 18 May 1949. 148 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4E, Andrée Morier, chairwoman ICRCP, to Boland, containing attachments of correspondence, 18 May 1949.

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a total population of 9,200,000 (just fewer than 35%) tasted sugar.149 Ironically, its report was issued at a time when some in Ireland were seriously questioning the wisdom of sending supplies to Central and Eastern Europe as they believed that tyrannical governments benefitted from them. The Irish government, based on information it obtained that Hungarian Catholics were not receiving their allotted share of supplies—wrongly as can be ascertained now—and incited by the Vatican to cease cooperation with the International Red Cross and also believing—rightly—that political opponents and the Catholic Church were being persecuted by the communists, became very hesitant in continuing to send supplies across the Iron Curtain. In October 1948, the Mayor of Budapest reported to the Ministry of Welfare that the remainder of the Irish sugar had been distributed to 5,000 kindergarten children, 15,000 school children, and 3,000 infants in the care of the Mother and Infant Protection institution. However, as there was not enough Irish sugar left, the mayor explained that he ‘had to add some sugar from the market’. That way he could provide quality food for the children.150 In all likelihood, he had used Irish sugar for the last time. Although Moser had not acted by the book and that his initiatives were not above approach, it would seem that the Irish government saw in his behaviour a convenient excuse to terminate its involvement with the ICRCP and its donations for countries beyond the Iron Curtain, all the more since opposition to its involvement in communist-dominated countries was developing at home. As seen, for some time Boland had been preoccupied by criticisms levelled at Ireland’s relief operations in Central and Eastern Europe and remarked that he had ‘reluctantly come to the conclusion that we should not entrust any further goods for distribution to the International Red Cross without considering what alternative methods of distribution are open to us’. Regarding Moser, Boland was satisfied with the comments made about him by Mr Fox of the NCWC,151 the American organisation with which Ireland chose to continue its humanitarian operations. Neutral Ireland was aligning itself with the western countries. In December, the Irish Times wrote that it was expected that Mindszenty would eventually be arrested but that he was ‘a man of exceptionally strong character’.152 The cardinal was humiliated, tortured, and put on a public show trial. He was made to confess, among other pseudo-revelations, that he had been in league with Otto

149 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/9, Irish Gift 1946, Report No. VII, Hungary, International Centre for Relief to Civilian Populations, Geneva, June 1948. 150 BFL, HU-BFL-IV-1409-c-1947-IX-11549, Mayor of Budapest to Ministry of Welfare, 7 October 1948. 151 NAI, DFA, 5/372/4A, note by Boland, 18 March 1947 152 ‘A great example’, The Irish Times, 29 December 1948 (ITDA).

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von Habsburg to restore the monarchy in Hungary.153 The charges against him were ridiculous. In January 1949, the Irish hierarchy energetically protested against his arrest.154 Archbishop McQuaid received many letters from Irish government officials, county councils, and ordinary people denouncing the cardinal’s detention and show trial.155 Mindszenty and Yugoslav Archbishop Stepinac’s fate provoked widespread outrage in the western countries and in Ireland in particular. On Easter Monday 1949, Ireland officially became a republic. But the Irish people’s attention was far more focused on the Hungarian cardinal’s fate. McQuaid managed to turn May Day into a Mindszenty day by convincing the Irish Labour Party and several trade unions to join Catholic organisations in demonstrating in favour of the ‘martyr for the Faith’. No less than 140,000 men and women turned up in Dublin. He proudly informed Montini that ‘the Papal flag flew, alone, on the headquarters of the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union … This manifestation is but a continuation of the spirit that was roused at the time of the Italian elections’.156 McQuaid had made a valid point with his comparison with Italy in 1948, as seen. The Irish people saw in Mindszenty a symbol of resistance to communism and Walshe kept the Vatican informed of Ireland’s stance. The Irish government lobbied Washington to intervene in favour of the cardinal. The Vatican believed that Ireland played a main part in giving the case international attention and thanked its government. Walshe saw it as a ‘splendid chance of building up our prestige with the H[oly] S[ee] …’157 The former secretary for external affairs never missed a chance to stress Ireland’s deep attachment to the Catholic faith, even in foreign affairs. He informed McQuaid that the Vatican was extremely pleased with his initiatives in the Mindszenty case: ‘Naturally, this enormously increases our prestige in Rome and disposes the Holy See most favourably in our regard.’158 The IRCS sent a telegram to the HRC: ‘In view of our happy past associations, earnestly request you use your good offices with Hungarian Government, that a representative designated by Irish Government be allowed visit His Eminence Cardinal Mindszenty.’159 In an anti-communist élan, the IRCS forgot about its neutrality. In February 1949, the government decided that at the next meeting of the Dáil, Taoiseach John A. Costello, ‘should move a motion for a Resolution disapproving the recent measures taken by the Government of Hungary against His Eminence 153 Applebaum, Iron Curtain, 283. 154 ‘Arrest of Hungary’s patriot primate; Irish bishops’ stern protest’, Irish Press, 1 January 1949 (INA). 155 DDA, XXX/7, see letters numbered 037-052. 156 Cooney, John Charles McQuaid, 227. 157 Keogh, Ireland and the Vatican, 248–9. 158 Cooney, John Charles McQuaid, 226. 159 ‘Red Cross plea on seized cardinal’, Irish Press, 19 January 1949 (INA).

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Cardinal Joseph Mindszenty, Primate of Hungary, and other representatives of Christian Churches in Hungary’.160 All these measures and protests were to no avail. Mindszenty remained in prison until 1956 when he was liberated during the Hungarian Uprising. When the Soviet tanks returned, he sought refuge in the American embassy where he would languish until 1971 when it was arranged that he could leave for Vienna. As to Zsigmond Mihalovics, he fled abroad to avoid arrest and ended up in the United States. He was deprived of his citizenship and was sentenced to imprisonment in absentia for crimes committed against the Hungarian People’s Republic.161 In March 1949, the Irish Times informed its readers that the NCWC had withdrawn its aid from Hungary.162 Table 12.2. Don Irlandais in Hungary163 1st Irish gift, January 1946–April 1946 Milky flour 1 ton Condensed milk 65 tons Sugar 275 tons

Tights Blankets

2nd Irish gift, July 1946–February 1947 Foodstuffs 1149.941 tons Textiles 81.048 tons Other (3000 mattresses, 10.908 tons 10,000 blankets, cooking utensils…)

1,800 pairs 1,800

Concluding remarks Ireland’s aid for Hungary had been generous and tumultuous. In the nascent Cold War, Hungary had been the country beyond the Iron Curtain with which Ireland had the most interacted or focused on because of the extent of its humanitarian aid and the Mindszenty case. It is also in these bilateral relations that Ireland’s catholicity came most to the fore be it at governmental level in the conduct of foreign policy in humanitarianism, or at popular level in the people and IRCS’s mobilisation for relief operations. It has been said that the ‘West’s religious strategies intentionally provoked Stalin’s known paranoia and fear of religion … [and] that the West made religion its ideological justification for abandoning not simply co-operation,

160 NAI, CAB 2.10, meeting of the cabinet, 11 February 1949 161 ‘Mihalovics, Zsigmond’, Magyar Katolikus Lexikon, in http://lexikon.katolikus.hu/M/Mihalovics. html (accessed on 16 June 2020). 162 ‘News in brief ’, The Irish Times, 4 March 1949 (ITDA). 163 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 176–7, 185.

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but the very modes of diplomacy and discourse that might have helped avoid the worst excesses, costs and consequences of the cold war’.164 Whether these ‘religious strategies’ were indeed meant to provoke Stalin might well be. But it is also clear that Stalin and people like Rákosi had not much time for religion anyway—especially Catholicism, whose centre of power was in Rome, well beyond their reach— and that they were preparing its liquidation or at the very least its neutralisation or subservience. The situation between Church and state was not identical in every country in Central and Eastern Europe, though. However, there can be no doubt that in Ireland’s case religion was used to terminate humanitarian cooperation with Hungary in the emerging ideological conflict. Irish sugar in Budapest had a very Catholic taste. And yet, Irish aid did a lot of good in Hungary at different levels and it was regrettable that it was terminated because of Cold War politics. In November 1945, Countess Judith of Listowel wrote to Éamon de Valera that ‘at a moment when Budapest and the other towns of Hungary are starving, when not even a mercy parcel has arrived from the Hungarians of America, your kindness has convinced them that they are not completely deserted’.165 That was food for the mind. In September 1946, the JRC issued a report entitled Donation of the Irish Government to the Civilian Populations of Central and Eastern Europe, which contained the following passage: ‘The Irish relief arrived in Hungary at a time where the situation in the country was very serious and the infantile mortality very high. All evidence shows that the results obtained with these distributions were very significant: infantile mortality diminished and the number of live-born babies increased (in February this number was 696 and in March, after the first distributions, 1,036). The enclosed letters of thanks clearly show the gratitude of the Hungarian people’.166 That was food for the body. To the south of Hungary lay the Balkans. It was the farthest region in Europe to which Irish supplies were sent, and they were distributed in the streets of Tirana and on several Greeks islands. But there too religion and politics clashed, notably in Yugoslavia.

164 Kirby, ‘From Bridge to Divide’, 740. 165 NAI, DFA, 5/372/4, Judith of Listowel to de Valera, 2 November 1945. 166 NAI, DFA, 5/372/4, JRC report, Donation of the Irish Government to the Civilian Populations of Central and Eastern Europe, 8/9/194 (presumably 1946).

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Chapter Thirteen

Ireland’s Aid to the Balkans: Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, and Romania

The Balkans were almost like a terra incognita for Ireland, and the converse was equally true. But there are historical links. Cork-born Richard Church commanded the Greek forces after 1827, who fought against the Ottomans during the Greek War of Independence. He and other Irish were part of the Philhellenes, foreigners who took up Greece’s cause.1 The First World War brought Irish soldiers to the area. After a disastrous campaign in Gallipoli in Turkey, the 10th (Irish) division arrived in Greece in October 1915 to assist Serbia against Bulgaria which was an ally of the Central Powers. Fighting took place in southern Macedonia. The Irishmen were evolving in a totally different cultural environment, especially in cosmopolitan Salonika.2 In Ireland, those nationalists who opposed the presence of Irishmen in the British army composed a ballad in which the Greek city figured: ‘Oh me husband’s in Salonika, I wonder if he’s dead; I wonder if he knows he has a kid with a foxy head …’3 Perhaps a literary link constitutes one of the strongest connections between Ireland and the Balkans. Dublin-born Bram Stoker published Dracula in 1897, the vampirecount of Transylvania probably inspired by the Romanian Prince Vlad the Impaler. In 1945, owing to the disastrous situation in postwar Europe, meetings between Irish, Albanian, Bulgarian, Greek, and Romanian Red Cross officials took place. The first 1 Patrick Comerford, ‘An Irishman’s Diary’, Irish Times, 25 February 1997, in https://www.irishtimes. com/opinion/an-irishman-s-diary-1.46402 (accessed on 29 March 2021), and Patrick Comerford, An online journal on Anglicanism, theology, spiritualism, history, architecture, travel, poetry, beach walks… and more, ‘Sir Richard Church and the Irish Philhellenes in the Greek War of Independence’, in http:// www.patrickcomerford.com/2018/03/sir-richard-church-and-irish.html (accessed on 29 March 2021). The author is grateful to Angie Smalis, Limerick, for pointing out this Irish-Greek link. 2 Philip Orr, ‘The road to Belgrade: the experiences of the 10th (Irish) Division in the Balkans, 1915–17’, in Adrian Gregory and Senia Pašeta, eds., Ireland and the Great War: ‘A war to unite us all’? (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), 171–189. 3 Pat Walsh, Forgotten Aspects of Ireland’s Great War on Turkey (Belfast: Athol Books, 2009), 166.

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ones to initiate contacts with the Irish in Geneva were the Albanians. Yet, the sending of Irish supplies to the Balkans would be difficult not only because of the long distance and logistical issues but also because of the unpredictable East-West confrontation and a not always efficient local administration. Nonetheless, supplies were widely distributed, from urban centres like Tirana to remote Greeks islands to the sincere appreciation of the population and officials alike.

Albania In April 1939, Mussolini’s armies invaded Albania in a matter of days. King Zog I fled abroad, and the country was made an Italian protectorate. Fearing increasing German influence in the Balkans, the Duce decided to invade Greece. The invasion was launched in October 1940 but was a disaster. The Greek army fought tenaciously and pushed the Italians back into Albania. This situation forced Hitler to assist his Fascist ally and the Wehrmacht invaded Greece from Bulgaria in April 1941.4 During the fighting between the Italians and the Greeks, southern Albania was ravaged. The ensuing occupation of the country saw not only villages and houses destroyed but also harvests. Fruit trees were cut down and cattle killed. In 1944, undernourishment caused increase in tuberculosis and malaria rates. Infant mortality varied between 25% and 40%. 50% of mothers could not breastfeed their babies. 300,000 out of a population of about one million lived in destroyed areas. There were also about 100,000 refugees. During the war, support came from different national Red Cross societies and from the Albanian community in Australia. But aid was hampered by many transport difficulties.5 In 1944, the Irish Red Cross Society (IRCS) made a financial donation of £5,000 to be shared between Albania, Greece, and Croatia.6 After the fighting, ships sailing to Albania were few. For instance, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration’s (UNRRA) important activities in the port of Bari in southern Italy made available ships for Durazzo difficult to find and supplies were kept in warehouses for a long time. It took eight months to transport supplies unloaded in Split in Yugoslavia to Durazzo. Trains brought goods from Geneva to Belgrade. They were then transferred onto trains bound for Bitolj (Bitola) in south-west Macedonia. From there, trucks, when available, headed west to Tirana, some three hundred kilometres away, skirting the Prespa 4 Mark Mazower, Inside Hitler’s Greece; The Experience of Occupation, 1941–44 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2001), 15–16. 5 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 391–2. 6 Lehane, A History of the Irish Red Cross, 280.

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and Ohrid lakes and going across the rugged Central Mountain Region. Information about reception and distribution of supplies in Albania was very incomplete and it was thus impossible for the Joint Relief Commission of the International Red Cross (JRC) to write full reports for the donors, Don Irlandais included.7 This situation was not helped by the fact that Enver Hoxha and the communists had taken power in November 1944. Hoxha was fiercely xenophobic and constantly feared foreign invasions or machinations. The leader found a source of inspiration in the words of the poet Pashko Vasa Shkodrani: ‘The religion of the Albanian is Albanianism’.8 As to the Catholic and Orthodox minorities (the majority of the population was Muslim), they were badly persecuted by the communists. Some Catholic bishops were sent to camps or even shot, while churches were demolished or turned into cinemas, museums, and cafés.9 UNRRA’s relations with local administrations were not good and apparently the government could adopt ‘a relative cooperative attitude’ or ‘downright obstructionism’. Its approach to Hoxha to make him respect his agreements with the organisation or else contemplate its leaving Albania was not particularly successful. In 1947, UNRRA workers and their humanitarian internationalist outlook conflicted with Washington’s new departure in foreign policy. Many had become disillusioned by what they saw around them. Hoxha’s regime was discouraging as it was only interested in UNRRA supplies and not in its international personnel and postwar international humanitarian cooperation.10 Irish supplies offered an advantage to the regime in the sense that they were not accompanied by Irish delegates thus avoiding any possible foreign interference, although the JRC sent two delegations to Albania in 1945 and 1946 to check distribution operations and ask local officials how supplies would be used.11 As seen in chapter nine, Fred Schwab, the ICRC delegate in the BritishOccupied Zone in Germany, made a similar point regarding the advantages of the absence of Irish delegates. Hoxha and his followers would have found it easier to control personnel of the Albanian Red Cross (ARC) than foreign UNRRA workers. But from the International Red Cross and UNRRA’s point of view, checking was an all-important activity. In any case, the Albanians had no hesitation in asking the Irish for more supplies and also publicly thanked them for it. 7 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 391–4, 173, 182 & 143. 8 Glenny, Misha, The Balkans 1804–1999: Nationalism, War and the Great Powers (London: Granta Books, 2000), 560. 9 Pollard, The Papacy in the Age of Totalitarianism, 1914–1958, 373. 10 Reinisch, ‘“Auntie UNRRA at the crossroads”’, 82, 90. 11 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 394.

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The first contacts between Irish and Albanians took place in Geneva in the autumn of 1945. Dr Elmas Konjari from the ARC met IRCS delegates T. J. McKinney and Martin McNamara with whom he discussed how Ireland could provide help. He was extremely satisfied with the offer of Irish supplies and explained that 34,500 children, 70,000 women and elderly, and 125,000 poor people needed immediate assistance. Moreover, 18,500 Albanians had been expelled from Greece and their situation was ‘lamentable’. Konjari asked for clothes, food and especially medicine. The ‘Hitlerites’ and the ‘fascists’ [Italians] destroyed and ransacked the country, he continued. As soon as Tirana was liberated, the government organised soup kitchens but, ‘everybody lacks shoes and clothes. Albanians are dressed in dirty rags and old worn-down slippers. They have no blankets, no beds and often no houses to take shelter’. Orphanages had been set up but lacked everything. There was no milk and many newborns died. Tuberculosis was spreading like wildfire. 6,500 children had lost their parents. Konjari made a moving appeal in French: ‘Il faut aider l’Albanie qui a déjà tant souffert!’ (Albania that has suffered so much already, must be helped!).12 The same year, the IRCS forwarded £500 to Geneva to buy drugs for the country.13 But Irish aid for Albania got off to a bad start. In November, the JRC sent Konjari a telegram, explaining that it could not cover the transport costs of Irish supplies transiting through Italy by train. It asked brashly: ‘Do you have the necessary Swiss francs?’14 Understandably, the Albanians were livid with rage all the more since they believed the issue had already been settled. Olivier Long from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) phoned Geneva to say that the telegram had a ‘disastrous effect’ and that the Yugoslav, Irish, and South African Red Cross societies were surprised by this unexpected development. He warned that if a satisfying solution was not found, it would compromise the support given to the JRC by these three societies. He asked therefore that a corrective telegram should be sent to the Albanians.15 A solution was found to transport the supplies free of charge. On 28 December, the JRC notified the ICRC delegation in Belgrade that 20,443 kilos of sugar, 450 kilos of blankets, 1,321 kilos of socks, 1,155 kilos of biscuits, and 5,000 kilos of sugar, all from the Don Irlandais, would be transported by train from Chiasso to Ljubljana by way of Trieste. Vita Kondi, the ARC delegate in Belgrade, would then take over the supplies and organise 12 13 14 15

NAI, DFA, 6/419/4, Albanian Red Cross to IRCS, 31 October 1945. Lehane, A History of the Irish Red Cross, 280. ACICR, O CMS C-023, JRC to Konjari, 23 November 1945. ACICR, O CMS C-023, note by J. F. Lalive regarding telephone conversation with Long, 26 November 1945.

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their transport to Tirana.16 But delays happened again. Eventually, on 13 February 1946, the JRC informed Secretary for External Affairs Joseph Walshe that the supplies had reached Tirana despite ‘great transport difficulties’.17 The distribution operation of Irish sugar in Albania followed this pattern. First, it was handed over to the ARC which looked after storing it in its own warehouses. Then, the ARC itself distributed the sugar ‘to the inhabitants, children’s homes [and] orphanages’. No other organisations like ministries and different charities and voluntary groups were involved.18 In April 1947, Qamil Çela, the chairman of the ARC, sent a report on the distribution of the supplies to his Irish counterpart, John P. Shanley. It was stated that dairy products from Golden Vein (Limerick, south-west Ireland) were used to supply relief centres and would do so for the coming three months. The Ministry of Public Instruction of the Popular Republic of Albania was participating in this relief operation. Three photographs (there are many photographs of Irish aid being distributed in Albania) showed grateful and smiling people, queuing up and receiving Irish supplies. On the walls in the background were inscriptions with Hoxha’s name and one slogan: ‘Vetem ai qe punon eshte i denje te jete antar i frontit demokratik’ (only he who works is worthy to be a member of the Democratic Front).19 It set the tone for the decades to come in Albania. Evidently there was pro-Hoxha propaganda at work here and the inscriptions did not mention the words ‘irlandez’ (Irish) or ‘Irlandë’ (Ireland). Could it then not be argued that the people receiving the supplies thought they came from the Hoxha regime and that the photographs had been taken to keep the Irish sweet and make sure that their supplies kept coming? This argument is unlikely when one knows that Albanian school children sent letters of thanks to the youth of the IRCS.20 In other words, the children from Tirana, Shkodra (also known as Scutari), and Postribe perfectly knew where their condensed milk, sugar, and blankets came from. After 1947, it would seem that Irish aid for Albania ceased.

16 ACICR, O CMS C-023, JRC to ICRC in Belgrade, 28 December 1945. 17 ACICR, O CMS C-025, JRC to Walshe, 13 February 1946. 18 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 134. 19 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/13, Qamil Çela to J. P. Shanley, 10 April 1947. 20 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/8, Enver Dibra, pupil of 4th class of primary school Luigj Gurakuqi, Scutari, to youth of IRCS, 7 June 1947; ‘the pupils of the Primary School K. Kristoforidhi’, Tirana, to youth of IRCS, 11 June 1947; and Zef Doda, president of the Pedagogical Council of Postribe to youth of the IRCS, 12 June 1947.

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418 · Chapter Thirteen Table 13.1. Don Irlandais for Albania21 1st Irish gift, December 1945 & March 1946 Condensed milk 10 tons Sugar 50 tons Tights 450 pairs Blankets 550

2nd Irish gift, July 1946–February 1947 Condensed milk 25.5 tons Sugar 158.8 tons Mattresses 150 Blankets 2040

Bulgaria Bulgaria had a rather complex political course during the war. In 1941, it joined Germany but did not want to participate in the invasion of the Soviet Union. Nor did the Bulgarians persecute their Jewish population owing to domestic opposition and political calculations, although they did participate in the deportation of Greek Jews.22 They occupied a part of northern Greece (Thrace and eastern Macedonia) and their occupation policies were brutal. More than 100,000 Greeks fled.23 The Germans made plans to have Greece supplied with food until June 1942 as famine was decimating the country. But it was not clear where the food was going to come from. It was expected that Bulgarian grain would be made available. However, Tsar Boris III’s government informed Berlin that owing to the country’s own food supply situation, it was not possible.24 There was indeed a serious problem with Sofia’s poor. The city council appealed not only to the state but also to the public for assistance. During the winter of 1942–1943, 12.5 million leva were collected during a fundraising campaign and provided over 13,000 needy families with clothes, shoes, coal, and free meals.25 Eventually, the government sought to negotiate a peace settlement with the Allies but did not succeed. In September 1944, the Red Army invaded the country. It was generally well-behaved and was welcomed by the population. The Soviets believed that the local communists were better organised than in neighbouring Romania.26 Bulgaria joined the Allies and the communists took over gradually. As to the Soviets, they pursued their standard policies and controlled the Bulgarian economy, which made also sure of their political grip as was the case in Romania, Hungary, and elsewhere.27 21 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 173, 182. 22 Glenny, The Balkans 1804–1999, 506–11. 23 Mazower, Inside Hitler’s Greece, 20. 24 Mazower, Inside Hitler’s Greece, 30–2 25 Irina Gigova, ‘The City and the Nation: Sofia’s Trajectory from Glory to Rubble in WWII’, Journal of Urban History (2011) 37(2), 165. 26 Glenny, The Balkans1804–1999, 524–5. 27 Békés, Borhi, Ruggenthaler and Traşcă, eds., Soviet Occupation of Romania, Hungary and Austria, 1944/45–1948/49, 12.

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Ireland’s Aid to the Balkans: Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, and Romania · 419

In 1943 and 1944, several cities and towns had been bombed. In 1945, it was estimated that 20% of houses in Sofia had been destroyed, 95% of windowpanes had been broken, and 70% of roofs had been damaged. Many townspeople went to seek refuge in the countryside. 420,000 inhabitants left Sofia and tried to settle temporarily in smaller towns and villages which were not prepared for this sudden massive arrival. Typhus and malaria were rapidly spreading, and infant mortality stood as high as 14.7% in the spring of 1945. There was a crying need for medical equipment. The Bulgarian Red Cross hospital in Sofia had only two ambulances for 700,000 inhabitants. In the countryside, the situation was generally better. However, the drought of 1945 affected the whole country but thankfully the harvests of 1946 were good, and people could be supplied with bread. In the summer of 1946, it was estimated that the daily individual calorie intake was 1,800, but it was far lower in some areas. Children were seriously underfed because of a lack of sugar and milk. Clothes, footwear, and soap were very hard to find. Soon appeals for international aid were made. The JRC was successful in sending 900 kilos of medicines for the Jewish community in May 1945. The South African Red Cross sent 21 tons of soap. Swiss chemical companies made important medicine donations and the American Red Cross made available substantial amounts of insulin. 50 tons of sugar from the Don Irlandais were distributed to war orphans under ten years of age. Sugar was also given to disabled tuberculosis patients, children in hospitals and Bulgarian refugees from Thrace (Greece). Supplies sent to the country were distributed by the Bulgarian Red Cross (BRC).28 Bulgaria was over 2,600 kilometres from Ireland. But transporting goods by sea and then by train or truck would make it even longer. Distance was not the only problem. Granting visas was too as international politics interfered. Many UNRRA workers had difficulties with visas and travel documents in Central and Eastern Europe.29 In February 1946, the JRC contacted Georges Sotiroff, a Bulgarian national working for the JRC in Geneva, to ask for his opinion on the matter of covering transport costs of Irish supplies bound for Sofia. It was envisaged that the BRC would have to pay for them as the Yugoslavs granted free transport on their territory only for supplies that were meant for them. ‘You couldn’t be more generous!’ wrote the JRC member ironically in his letter to Sotiroff. Transport costs would have to be covered either by the donors, the International Red Cross, or the recipients.30 Telephone calls were made, and telegrams exchanged 28 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 416–21, 176, 184–5. 29 Reinisch, ‘“Auntie UNRRA at the crossroads”’, 90. 30 ACICR, O CMS C-024, very likely JRC, Geneva, to Sotiroff, 18 February 1946.

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between all parties concerned. Eventually the following simple solution was agreed upon. Supplies transported by train and transiting through Italy on their way to Yugoslavia and beyond benefited from free transport only if the beneficiary was the Yugoslav Red Cross. Therefore, a straightforward change of address was required, and the transport companies had to be notified. Concerning Irish supplies for Bulgaria it should be indicated: ‘Yugoslav Red Cross, Ljubljana, for delivery to Bulgarian Red Cross, Sofia’. It was the same for goods bound for Albania.31 If that was all it took to satisfy Tito’s red tape machinery, then it was not much of a problem after all. Sotiroff got a visa to cross Yugoslavia and enter Bulgaria aboard the first train convoy transporting Irish supplies to Sofia.32 It left on 21 March 1946,33 but arrived only at the beginning of April at a time when the city managed to get about 12% of what it would normally use in milk. It was little wonder why the 2,000 boxes of condensed milk were so gladly received. In a report subsequently forwarded to the Department of External Affairs (DEA) in Dublin, Sotiroff wrote: ‘The greatest service I was in a position to render to a personal friend was to give him some aspirin for his wife and 2 cans of Irish condensed milk for his baby. I was present at the distribution of condensed milk to the children of two kindergartens in Sofia and saw how mothers came running to watch the procedure. Very often I was asked: “How did the Irish come to think of us?”’34 Indeed, Ireland was far away and probably quasi unknown to most Bulgarians but suddenly Irish sugar and condensed milk became available and were widely distributed to war orphans in different institutions, orphanages, and shelters throughout the country. A. Izmirlieff from the BRC wrote a very precise report for the International Red Cross. The following tables are examples:

31 ACICR., O CMS C-023, ‘Note au Service Transport; concerne: réexpédition de marchandises du Don Irlandais à la Bulgarie et à l’Albanie’, JRC, 7 March 1946. 32 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/10, extract of a report re Irish supplies sent to Bulgaria, Jean-Flavien Lalive, JRC, to Francis Cremins, Irish chargé d’affaires, Berne, 10 October 1946. 33 ACICR, O CMS C-024, no author, no date, ‘Liste des marchandises destinées à la Bulgarie (parties le 21.3.46)’. 34 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, ‘Impressions from the distribution of the Irish supplies in the Balkans’, by Sotiroff, received in DEA on 16 November 1946.

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Ireland’s Aid to the Balkans: Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, and Romania · 421 Table 13.2. Irish sugar distribution in the county of Plovdiv, Bulgaria35 Cities and towns

Number of children

Plovdiv Asenovgrad Parvomay Devin Karlovo Pazardjik Panagyurishte Peshtera Smolyan Total:

880 80 50 20 35 75 40 50 20 1250

Sugar quantity for each child (in kg.) 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

Total sugar distributed (in kg.) 1760 160 100 40 70 150 80 100 40 2500

Table 13.3. Irish condensed milk distribution in children’s shelters in town districts and factories in different Bulgarian counties36 Counties

Number of shelters

Number of children

Sofia Burgas Varna Vratsa Gorna Djoumaia Pleven Plovdiv Ruse Stara-Zagora Total:

58 14 9 8 3 10 20 9 13

2300 530 430 330 120 650 760 340 540

Number of condensed milk tins for each child 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7 7

Total condensed milk tins distributed 16,100 3,710 3,010 2,310 840 4,550 5,320 2,380 3,780 42,000

16,000 tins were also distributed to children who had fled from Thrace. The BRC was in possession of a total of 100,000 tins. That the Bulgarian government decided to show Ireland’s aid in a newsreel in cinemas in Sofia in May (as seen in chapter six) made perfect sense as it constituted substantial help. As in Albania, it was the local Red Cross that received the Irish supplies, stored them, and distributed them to asylums, sanatoria, anti-tuberculosis dispensaries, and so on, but a substantial part of the supplies was also handed over to the Ministries of Public

35 ACICR, O CMS C-024, ‘Renseignements sur la distribution du sucre (…)’, by A. Izmirlieff, Bulgarian Red Cross, 10 May 1946. 36 ACICR, O CMS C-024, ‘Renseignements sur la distribution du sucre (…)’, by A. Izmirlieff, Bulgarian Red Cross, 10 May 1946.

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Health, Social Assistance, and War which, in turn, distributed them to many children’s homes like ‘asylums for war orphans’.37 In September, the Interdepartmental Relief Committee met and considered the issue of visas. It was not certain if the Bulgarian authorities would grant them to JRC delegates to accompany the Irish supplies. It was decided that the Irish government should enquire and that until then the next supplies earmarked for Sofia were to remain in Switzerland.38 The Soviets’ distrust of the International Red Cross was evident and the countries under their domination were dancing to their tune.39 Yet, the shipment to Bulgaria was eventually allowed to proceed. On 10 October, Dr Lalive of the JRC informed the Irish chargé d’affaires in Berne that no visas had been received and that ‘the goods were therefore without conveying agents according to the terms of your previous letter on the subject’. Visibly, the Irish had decided to go ahead with the transport regardless. The second shipment to Bulgaria amounted to 405 tons of sugar and 9,100 blankets. The BRC took responsibility for their distribution.40 In November, during a meeting in Dublin between DEA, IRCS, and JRC representatives, Lalive explained that the situation in Bulgaria was as satisfactory as in Yugoslavia and that in fact the JRC had encountered fewer problems in that country.41 The same month, Dr J. D. Hourihane and Fr T. J. O’Connor, two IRCS delegates, left for Italy and Yugoslavia and were also hoping to visit Bulgaria. However, they never heard again from their visa applications.42 On 7 April 1947, Professor Luben Rachev, chairman of the BRC, and Georgi Gospodinov (Gospodinoff), director, sent the IRCS chairman a letter in French, informing him that during a meeting in Sofia the BRC had adopted the following resolution: ‘The General Assembly expresses the sincere gratitude of the Bulgarian people to the Irish Red Cross for the valuable supplies that the society was so kind to send us. These supplies help our society to provide support to the civilian population of our country who suffered during the war and allow us to attract more and more people to the humanitarian work of the Red Cross’. Rachev and Gospodinov asked Shanley to convey the message to the IRCS and to ‘all the Irish people’.43 Bulgaria had signed a peace treaty with the Allies two months before 37 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 134. 38 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4A, meeting of the Interdepartmental Relief Committee, 27 September 1946. 39 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, note, undated and no author but very likely 1946. 40 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/10, Lalive to Francis T. Cremins, 10 October 1946. 41 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, note by Cornelius Cremin, DEA, 19 November 1946. 42 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4, ‘Report on European tour from Rev. T. J. O’Connor, Adm. [and] Dr. J. D. Houri­ hane’, 9 January 1947. 43 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/10, Ratcheff and Cospodinoff to Shanley, 7 April 1947.

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in February. Western influences were reduced to nil and the communists were free to eliminate all opposition. In December, the country officially became the People’s Republic of Bulgaria.44 Apart from some minimal import-export exchanges, IrishBulgarian relations never developed during the Cold War. And yet, Bulgaria was the first country in the East Bloc with which Ireland signed a trade agreement, almost twenty-five years later in 1970. It happened when Ireland was seeking membership of the European Economic Community (EEC) for the third time, was willing to open its economy, and was looking for different foreign markets. The East Bloc briefly appeared to be a possibility, but all interest practically disappeared the moment Ireland joined the EEC in 1973.45 Table 13.4. Don Irlandais in Bulgaria46 1st Irish gift, March 1946 Condensed milk Sugar Blankets Tights

40 tons 50 tons 900 900 pairs

2nd Irish gift, 1946–January 1947 Foodstuffs 436.406 tons Textiles 19.39 tons

Greece In April 1941, the Wehrmacht invaded Greece from Bulgaria to support the Italian army whose invasion had miserably failed. The country was then divided into Italian, German, and Bulgarian occupation zones. The Germans lived off the land and little was left for the population. Many Greeks hoarded food and goods. Farmers preferred to sell their produce to the army at a far better price. Rapidly, Athens became a city of destitution and the country a red tape nightmare as German, Italian, Bulgarian, and Greek administrations did not coordinate their efforts.47 As elsewhere in Europe, a flourishing black market developed in Greece. But it did provide food, employment, and income. Many were involved and profiteering from it depended greatly on one’s social class and the local situation.48 The ICRC reported that people were dying in the streets and children and dogs were competing for food leftovers thrown 44 Ulf Brunnbauer, ‘Making Bulgarians Socialist: The Fatherland Front in Communist Bulgaria, 1944– 1989’, East European Politics and Societies, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2008): 53. 45 aan de Wiel, East German Intelligence and Ireland, 1949–90, 25–9, 34–5. 46 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 176, 184–5. 47 Mazower, Inside Hitler’s Greece, 20, 23, 24–5, 26–30, 18–19, 65–6. 48 Violetta Hionidou, ‘Black Market, Hyperinflation, and Hunger: Greece, 1941–1944’, Food & Foodways, 12 (2004): 2–3, 93, 94–5, 97.

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into bins of hotels where Germans and Italians were staying.49 There are no entirely reliable statistics to give an exact death toll, but the International Red Cross estimated that between 1941 and 1943, approximately 250,000 people died because of the famine, directly or indirectly.50 In April 1942, the Irish Press reported that ‘in Athens 250 people are dying daily from hunger’. Neighbouring Turkey (neutral) had sent ‘2,000 tons of cereals’ and the Turkish Red Crescent was operating soup kitchens in Athens.51 Bearing in mind the centuries-old hostility between Greece and Turkey, this was certainly a remarkable act of humanitarianism and did much to stress the catastrophic situation, although Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos and President Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) had successfully worked together for a rapprochement back in the 1930s.52 In October 1943, the Irish Independent briefly reported on renewed famine fears and quoted a former cabinet minister who had fled to London as saying that if an ‘appalling famine’ was to be avoided, the Allies would need to send 2,000 tons of fish or meat and 2,000 tons of rice monthly.53 Such figures gave Irish readers a good impression of what was going on. It was predictable that the Greeks would believe that the Germans used starvation as a deliberate strategy. In fact, there was no such strategy. The Wehrmacht plundered the country and sent goods north to help the Reich, but there was no deliberate plan to starve the Greeks to death. The occupiers conveniently blamed the British naval blockade for the desperate situation and suggested that it be lifted to allow supplies from outside Europe into Greece. The British were reluctant to do so as at that point in time they did not have that many effective strategies against the Germans. But public opinion in the democracies that were Britain and the United States applied more and more pressure on their governments to undertake humanitarian action. The Vatican became involved in September 1941 and approached the belligerents. Eventually, in February 1942, the British agreed on condition that the food shipments were supervised by neutrals. In August, at long last, ships loaded with wheat left Canada for Athens and an immediate improvement in the situation was noticed.54 It is also to be noted that the German Red Cross (DRK) did help

49 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 342–51, 185. 50 Mazower, Inside Hitler’s Greece, 37–41. 51 ‘Greece fights famine’, Irish Press, 25 April 1942 (INA). 52 Elçin Macar, ‘The Turkish Contribution to Famine Relief in Greece during the Second World War’, in Richard Clogg, ed., Bearing Gifts to Greeks; Humanitarian Aid to Greece in the 1940s (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 95. 53 ‘Greek famine fears’, Irish Independent, 8 October 1943 (INA). 54 Mazower, Inside Hitler’s Greece, 44–8.

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in the buying of supplies and their transport by train to Greece from Switzerland.55 Neutral Sweden did not send many supplies but initiated vital relief negotiations between all parties concerned and especially provided much of the logistics needed to transport supplies to Greece. Between September 1942 and March 1945, the International Red Cross shipped over 623,000 tons of food, clothes, footwear, and medicine.56 The Greek-American community mobilised its organisations and sent supplies worth over $100 million during the war.57 The IRCS sent £500 to Greece in 1940 and £5,000 in 1944 (including to Croatia and Albania).58 In 1942, the Irish Save the Children Fund (ISCF) wanted to undertake something in favour of Greek children and was advised by the Union internationale de Secours aux Enfants (International Save the Children Union, UISE) in Geneva that a financial donation would be much appreciated although it stressed that communications with Greece were ‘very difficult’.59 The Italian and Bulgarian occupiers totally neglected the local anti-malarial services with the predictable result that the disease spread rapidly. Later when UNRRA arrived in the country, one of its main goals was to combat malaria which it did successfully.60 In 1945, the IRCS forwarded £500 to the League of Red Cross Societies in Geneva in favour of Greek nurses who needed to be hospitalised.61 And healthy nurses would be very much needed in Greece. When the war ended, about 1,700 villages had been razed and the number of houses that had been levelled was deemed at 165,000. 200,000 orphans were trying to survive in desperate conditions.62 The Conference on Reparations held in Paris in 1946 estimated that the total cost of destruction in the country was about $8,500 million. From April 1945 until June 1947, UNRRA spent about $347 million in Greece.63 But there was more money pumped into the country as the American administration invested $353.6 million in military aid in the postwar years.64 Indeed, as if the situation was not desperate enough, the end of the Second World War was followed 55 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 349. 56 Mauzy, ‘Inter Arma Caritas: the Swedish Red Cross in Greece in the 1940s’, Clogg, ed., Bearing Gifts to Greeks, 99, 110. 57 Alexandros, K. Kyrou, ‘The Greek-American Community and the Famine in Axis-occupied Greece’, in Clogg, ed., Bearing Gifts to Greeks, 73–4 58 Lehane, A History of the Irish Red Cross, 279–80. 59 AEG, Archives Privées, 92.22.2, Georges Thélin (UISE) to secretary of ISCF, 30 June 1942. 60 Gardikas, ‘Relief work and malaria in Greece, 1943–1947’, 493–508. 61 Lehane, A History of the Irish Red Cross, 280. 62 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 344. 63 Flora Tsilaga, ‘UNRRA’s Relief Efforts in Late 1944 Greece: Political Impartiality versus Military Exigencies’, in Clogg, ed., Bearing Gifts to Greeks, 194, 204. 64 Glenny, The Balkans 1804–1999, 544.

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by a civil war between 1946 and 1949. In the end, the governmental forces backed by the western Allies defeated the communists supported by Tito’s Yugoslavia. But victory came at a price: at least 50,000 people were killed, 11,000 villages were destroyed, and 700,000 people fled their homes. There were between 40,000 and 50,000 political prisoners (communists, socialists, democrats, and republicans generally accompanied by their families) and many of them were sent to islands in the Aegean Sea.65 In 1946, part of the Don Irlandais was used to supply children’s homes. Among the supplies were clothes, blankets, dairy products, and sugar.66 At the beginning of May 1946, W. E. Ballance of UNRRA was in Dublin where he told a journalist from the Irish Independent that ‘seventy-five per cent of the children in Greece between the ages of 6 and 14 years show definite signs of malnutrition, and the incidence of tuberculosis is rated at about 14 times that in the USA or United Kingdom’.67 Given that the situation on the continent remained very critical, the Dáil decided in June to carry on with the relief scheme. In November, IRCS delegates Dr J. D. Hourihane and Fr T. J. O’Connor travelled to Geneva where they met Adrien Lambert, the ICRC delegate in Greece, who told them that Irish supplies were stored in a warehouse in Athens until next February when UNRRA operations were expected to cease. According to Lambert, ‘only in the island of Corfu was Irish material actually in course of distribution’. He put forward that both men should visit Greece. When in Italy, Hourihane and O’Connor were unable to do so as transport proved to be too complicated.68 Irish foodstuffs and textiles did reach Greece, the country that was the farthest away from Ireland. Among those textiles were clothes and many disused uniforms. Their distribution led to a crisis between the Greek authorities, fighting against the communists, and ICRC delegates Emile Wenger and Adrien Lambert. Wenger was authorised to visit camps where political prisoners were detained and, with the approval of the Ministry of Justice, also prisons in Salonika in northern Greece where there were political prisoners too. Lambert decided that supplies should be distributed in Salonika.69 The first problem encountered was that the government had recently prohibited the wearing of uniforms by civilians. A major delay therefore occurred in the distribution of the Irish clothes until the Ministry of Social Security’s department in Salonika decided to dye the uniforms. The problem was thus in the end 65 Rey-Schyrr, De Yalta à Dien Bien Phu, 589–93, 595. 66 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 185. 67 ‘Tells of plight of Greek children’, Irish Independent, 3 May 1946 (INA). 68 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4, ‘Report on European tour from Rev. T. J. O’Connor, Adm. [and] Dr. J. D. Hourihane’, 9 January 1947. 69 Rey-Schyrr, De Yalta à Dien Bien Phu, 602–603.

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ingeniously solved and in agreement with the same department the clothes were handed out in 1947.70 Wenger transmitted the distribution figures to the ICRC: Table 13.5. Northern Greece, prisons; distribution of clothes-Don Irlandais (extract) 71 Distributed to date: Prisons: Eptapyrgion New prisons New prison branches Cassandra agricultural detention centre Total: To be distributed: Prisons Alexandropolis Drama Cavalla Castoria Cozani Polygiros Serrès Xanthi Total:

Jackets 185 190 148

Trousers 201 244 150

Coats

150 523

595

59 145 40 46 130 12 35 27 494

59 145 40 46 130 12 35 27 494

150

Yet, this particular distribution was not to everyone’s liking in Athens and soon Wenger was declared persona non grata. He claimed that the Hellenic Red Cross had refused to cooperate with him in the prisons of Salonika and that the military authorities would not have been impressed by his initiatives.72 This disapproval was hardly surprising, and UNRRA was having similar problems. The latter was neutral in the ongoing civil war but certain right-wing circles resented its independence and the government wanted to prevent the left-wing forces from having access to its goods.73 It seems that Irish supplies also reached political prisoners on the islands of Icaria (later nicknamed the ‘Red Rock’), Folegandros, Anafi, Kythira, and Anticythère (Potamós) and their inhabitants.74 70 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/16, ‘Note d’information au Comité International de la Croix-Rouge-Genève’ by Lambert, 30 January 1948, including report ‘Distributions de vêtements Don Irlandais’, Salonica, 10 January 1948, by Wenger. 71 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/16, ‘Note d’information au Comité International de la Croix-Rouge-Genève’. 72 Rey-Schyrr, De Yalta à Dien Bien Phu, 603. 73 Gardikas, ‘Relief work and malaria in Greece, 1943–1947’, 506. 74 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/16, ‘Note au Comité International de la Croix-Rouge-Genève’, author unknown, 30 January 1948 or 1947.

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Other problems were piling up. Greece had received 405 tons of Irish sugar in September and 405 tons in November 1946. The last consignment remained stored in warehouses for thirteen months, a sure sign of inefficiency. In December 1947, Lambert cabled the International Centre for Relief to Civilian Populations (ICRCP), which had taken over from the JRC, to say that the situation was seriously degenerating and that more and more refugees were arriving. He put forward to exchange the remaining sugar for oil, dried vegetables, and other foodstuffs to serve hot meals. The ICRCP agreed and would try to convince the Irish government that this exchange was necessary.75 In January 1948, Lambert wrote to the ICRCP that he put an end to the distribution of supplies because of the increasing degeneration of the situation. He wanted the foodstuffs to be eaten by those who needed them and not sold for reasons that had nothing to do with aid. Was he alluding to black market activities here? Yet, Lambert asked if Greece could get more from the Don Irlandais as the needs were most important for the ‘pedopolis’ (children’s centres, orphanages, and children’s hospitals).76 Several of them had already received Irish supplies.77 In February, Frank McDermott, an Irishman working for the ICRCP, asked Cornelius Cremin in the DEA for permission to exchange the Irish sugar for other foodstuffs such as oil and dried fruits and explained that there were excessive amounts of sugar stored in Greece like 230 tons in Epirus and 200 tons in Macedonia and that the civil war made it very difficult to go from one area to another. Cremin in turn informed Assistant Secretary for External Affairs Leo T. McCauley, adding that more than 800 tons of sugar had been sent to Greece in 1946 but that about 55 tons remained ‘unaccounted for on present information’. He remarked that the ICRCP might still have documentation for this unaccounted sugar which it had not yet communicated to Dublin. Another possibility was that Lambert had exchanged it for rice and beans. It was obvious to Cremin that too much sugar had been sent to Greece and that the ICRCP had made an error of judgement. McCauley agreed as there was no use leaving it stored somewhere for an indefinite period ‘in spite of the certainty that the sugar, if bartered, will find its way to the black market’. Seán MacBride, the new minister for external affairs, was personally informed and gave the go-ahead as after all it was in the population’s interest.78 It was understandable 75 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/16, Lambert to ICRCP, 18 December 1947 & ICRCP to Lambert, 23 December 1947. 76 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/16, Lambert to G. Guignard, ICRCP, Geneva, 30 January 1948. 77 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/16, ‘Note d’information au Comité International de la Croix-Rouge’, Geneva, by Lambert, 30 January 1948. 78 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/16, McDermott to Cremin, 10 February 1948; Cremin to McCauley, 17 February 1948; note by McCauley for Boland, 18 February 1948 & Boland to secretaries of Finance, Agriculture, Defence and Industry and Commerce, 11 March 1948.

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that the Irish authorities wanted to keep track of the supplies they sent to the continent and to have the final say on their use. Gifts were made to specific countries or groups of people. What if they fell into the wrong hands and were used or abused for political purposes? In March, McDermott was in Dublin where he had been invited to attend a meeting of the Interdepartmental Relief Committee in order to present the newly set up ICRCP. As seen, he wanted to know if Ireland would continue to send supplies to his organisation but was told that it was unlikely as the government was now thinking of working with the National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC). However, the committee informed him of the good news that his proposed sugar exchange had been accepted. McDermott spoke of ‘the difficulty of complying fully with the requirements that receipts should be produced for every single item of relief distributed’.79 While this was certainly the case, the disappearance of 55 tons of sugar was no small matter. Irish aid for Greece ended on a sour note. McCauley was dissatisfied with the information provided by Lambert, and the ICRC had also some difficulties with him.80 Later the DEA turned down an appeal for supplies from a Greek group because ‘no funds were available’ and the IRCS did the same.81 But in defence of the ICRC delegates on the spot, it is reasonable to point out that in the chaos that was postwar Greece it was simply unrealistic to expect that everything would run smoothly. Table 13.6. Don Irlandais in Greece82 1st Irish gift not available (n/a) n/a

n/a n/a

2nd Irish donation, last sending: October 1946 Foodstuffs 865 tons Textiles 33.255 tons

Romania Before the outbreak of the Second World War, the political situation in Romania was unstable, far-right groups such as the Iron Guard increasing in power and influence. They were extremely nationalistic, antisemitic, and anti-Hungarian. The country itself was very poor and the difference between the haves and the have-nots 79 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/16, interdepartmental meeting with McDermott, 20 March 1948. 80 Rey-Schyrr, De Yalta à Dien Bien Phu, 601, 628. 81 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/16, note by McCauley for Boland, 18 February 1948 & DEA to John Breen, Lord Mayor of Dublin, 31 March 1949. 82 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 185.

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was easily noticeable. Farmers constituted about four fifths of the population and many of them led a miserable existence. Because of their bad diet, pellagra (deficiency in vitamin B3) and skin diseases were very common.83 A RAF pilot whose plane had been shot down over Romania noticed that some ate only ‘bean soup and bread’, and ‘ignorant peasants … [led a] frugal existence’ while ‘the educated rich in Bucharest’ had ‘caviar usually [as] the hors d’oeuvre’ and ‘SUCKLING PIG’ [as] the ‘main course’.84 In September 1940, the authoritarian General, later Marshal, Ion Antonescu took power. His regime indulged in hunting Jews, considered to be a threat to the nation, and communist sympathisers. The Jewish population in Bessarabia, a region claimed by Romania and the Soviet Union, was deported en masse to camps in Transnistria. Others were bestially killed by locals using axes, hues, pitchforks, and scythes. The killers were not forced by the Romanian authorities and their motivations are not always easy to establish, ranging from state indoctrination to money and greed.85 Romania participated with Nazi Germany in the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 and operated in south-western Ukraine. It killed about 300,000 Jews. But the Antonescu regime would stop its extermination policy at the end of 1942 when it felt that Germany would not win the war.86 After the Soviet invasion in 1944, the Romanian government was led by Prime Minister Petru Groza from the left-wing (agrarian) Ploughmen’s Front, but his coalition government was in reality being increasingly controlled by the communists of Ana Pauker and Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej. They began by controlling the key ministries and then eliminated their opponents, a familiar scenario in Central and Eastern Europe. The Soviets signed an economic agreement with the Romanians in May 1945, and removed much material, while 80% of Romania’s exports went to the Soviet Union. Gheorghiu-Dej tried to minimise the negative consequences of the Kremlin’s policy.87 However, an estimated staggering $1.5 billion in infrastructure removals left the country for the Soviet neighbour.88 At the end of 1944 already, the Romanian Red Cross (RRC) had appealed to the Swiss Red Cross and the ICRC for vitamins, medicines, and medical equipment. The same appeals were made to the JRC after the war. In 1945, the situation worsened. Typhus epidemics spread 83 Glenny, The Balkans 1804–1999, 445. 84 Adrian Boda, ‘A Prisoner and Agent in 1944 Romania. A Fragment of the Memoirs of Pilot Officer Bertrand Whitley’, Philobiblon, vol. 19, no. 2 (2014): 469–490. 85 See the remarkable study of Dumitru, The State, Antisemitism, and Collaboration in the Holocaust, 22–3, 53, 76, 77–8, 141–2, 148–52, 153–8, 143–4, 145–8. 86 Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands. Europe between Hitler and Stalin (London: Vintage, 2011), 218–19. 87 Christian Alexandru Groza, ‘The Sovietisation of Romania, 1946–1948. The First Two Years behind the Curtain of Propaganda’, Journal of Education Culture and Society, no. 2 (2016): 366. 88 Békés, Borhi, Ruggenthaler and Traşcă, eds., Soviet Occupation of Romania, Hungary and Austria, 1944/45–1948/49, 24.

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rapidly owing to droughts, the lack of soap and in certain areas the total absence of hygiene. Venereal disease, tuberculosis, malaria, and pellagra were rampant.89 To add to these serious difficulties, the ‘Great Hunger’ took place between 1946 and 1947, when a severe drought but also poor administration of resources by the communists plagued the country. Gheorghiu-Dej and his followers were not particularly active in helping a population in distress and got involved in relief operations only because it was good propaganda. It was often the case that foreign supplies that reached Romania were arbitrarily distributed by the communists. The situation was very tense, with people trying to travel to areas where more food was available. Clashes with the authorities occurred, notably at railway stations.90 The communists blamed the bourgeoise and capitalists for these disastrous conditions, but nothing was said about Soviet interference and economic domination. The United States was becoming reluctant to send supplies to areas under Soviet control, but George Marshall agreed to send 7,000 tons of cereals to Romania as it was estimated that the country would be without food at the end of March 1947. The Romanian government was unable to pay for this food. The International Red Cross was in charge of distribution operations. Sweden was instrumental in getting several South American countries to ship over 27,000 tons of corn. Between March 1946 and April 1947, about 800,000 people got tuberculosis and 38,000 got exanthematic typhus (louse-borne typhus, spreading because of poor sanitary conditions). In March 1947, the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet criticised the government for its handling of the situation, basing itself on the experience of Swedish humanitarian missions. The wife of the Swedish ambassador in Bucharest said that Romania was affected ‘by the worst suffering since the Middle Ages up to our times’.91 There was also an acute shortage of clothing and footwear. Many people, especially in the regions of Bukovina and Moldavia, had no opportunity to acquire new clothes and had spent the war years in rags. Farmers could be seen huddling in holes together with their cattle. As railway connections had been cut off, the ICRC organised a truck convoy to Bucharest in July 1945. At the beginning of 1946, the JRC could use a ship but this method of transport was only used five times as it took a long time, almost a month, to reach Romania and as important thefts occurred during the unloading process in Constanţa. Controlling what was 89 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 380–8, 178, 186–7, 143. 90 Radio Romania International, ‘The 1946–1947 Famine in Romania, 3 February 2007, in http://old.rri. ro/arh-art.shtml?lang=1&sec=9&art=14 (accessed on 6 August 2020). This informative article mentions foreign aid, but Ireland’s aid is not mentioned, however. 91 Groza, ‘The Sovietisation of Romania, 1946–1948’, 368, 369.

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happening in the harbour-town proved to be difficult. Moreover, railway connections had improved in the meantime.92 On 17 December 1945, the Romanian legation in Switzerland informed the JRC that a Romanian ship should sail to Marseille soon and could load supplies meant for the country. Dr R. Boehringer, a JRC executive, believed it was the best solution to transport the Irish supplies.93 Olivier Long phoned Mrs Braescu of the RRC who was currently in Switzerland. She explained that only one ship, the Transylvania, navigating between Marseille and Constanţa, would be available. He asked her if the RRC had French francs in case transport from Geneva to Marseille had to be paid. Braescu answered that it would be easier for them to get Swiss francs. Transport expenses remained an overriding concern for the International Red Cross. She was delighted to know that sugar and condensed milk were part of the supplies as both were badly lacking.94 On 5 March 1946, a Romanian medical mission led by Professor Stefan Nicolau of the University of Bucharest met the JRC in Geneva. Boehringer asked how the Irish supplies should be divided between the Ministry of Public Health, the Ministry of Welfare, and the RRC. Eventually, it was decided that all the supplies should be sent to the Ministry of Public Health which would divide them equally with the Ministry of Welfare and the RRC, each getting one third. The Romanian government would pay all expenses from Marseille to Romania. The supplies consisted in 80 tons of sugar, 400 tons of condensed milk, 2,000 blankets, and 20 bales of underwear. The Romanian delegation said that the captain of the Transylvania had guaranteed that he would be personally responsible for the surveillance of the supplies and it had no objection to the presence of JRC escorts. The required visas would promptly be delivered by the Romanian government.95 Those in power in Bucharest were only too happy to be at the receiving end of Dublin’s generosity, considering the state of the country. As IRCS delegate Patrick Power would later tell Cremin, he did not have the chance to visit Romania but he ‘gathered that conditions there are extremely bad’.96 In fact, IRCS delegates Dr J. D. Hourihane and Fr T. J. O’Connor had applied for the necessary visas when they were travelling in Switzerland, Italy, and Yugoslavia. Unfortunately, it was only when they were on their way back to Ireland that news reached them in Geneva that they had been granted visas by the Romanian 92 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 380–8, 178, 186–7, 143. 93 ACICR, O CMS C-025, note by J. F. Lalive, JRC secretary-general, 20 December 1945. 94 ACICR, O CMS C-026, note by Dr Olivier Long, International Red Cross, 12 January 1946. 95 ACICR, O CMS C-025, minutes of a meeting between the JRC and the Romanian Medical Mission on 5 March 1946, 6 March 1946. 96 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/14, note by Cremin, 16 January 1947.

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authorities.97 But the Irish supplies aboard the Transylvania safely reached Constanţa on the Black Sea. In October 1946, supplies of the second Irish gift were stored in warehouses in Vienna so that they could rapidly be sent to Romania when the circumstances would allow it. In November, two trains left for Bucharest loaded with supplies from the Don Irlandais. The Romanian government granted free transport either by boat or by train on its territory and customs duties were not imposed. Supplies also came from the American Joint Distribution Committee for the surviving Jewish community which had gone through a horrendous time during the Antonescu regime. The Don Suisse, the South African, Australian, and New Zealand Red Cross societies also helped.98 The RRC, the Ministry of Public Health, and the Ministry of Social Affairs oversaw the distribution of supplies but the ICRC delegate in Bucharest supervised the operations. At the end of 1946, when the second Irish gift had to be distributed, a JRC delegate, who had travelled to Bucharest to organise operations, set up a Distribution Committee including representatives of the Ministry of Social Assistance, the Ministry of Public Health, the RRC, the Apararea patriotica (Patriotic Defence Committee), and the ICRC delegation. Its aim was to distribute the Irish supplies more equitably and to control their use more strictly. It was an initiative which was to be expected given the current political climate. But there were distribution difficulties nonetheless and sometimes lists of those who had received supplies were sent to Geneva only after a period of five months. As the JRC explained concerning certain areas in Europe, supplies were distributed in regions that were sometimes cut off from the main centres, which led to ‘important delays’ in getting reports. Additional factors were often a lack of transport and also illiteracy that obliged the JRC in finding new ways of checking if the supplies had been correctly distributed, notably by involving mayors and primary school teachers. Sometimes, the agencies in charge of distribution did not have the required personnel to draw lists of beneficiaries and some of the latter were rather negligent in forwarding the required information.99 Red tape and disorganisation plagued Bucharest. Unlike what had been agreed upon with the Romanian medical mission, all the Irish supplies were sent to the RRC. The JRC wanted to know more about how they had been distributed as it ignored if 97 ACICR, 6/419/1/4, ‘Report on European tour from Rev. T. J. O’Connor, Adm. [and] Dr. J. D. Hourihane’, 9 January 1947. 98 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 380–8, 178, 186–7, 142–3. 99 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 380–8, 178, 186–7, 142–3.

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they had been evenly divided in accordance with the decision taken.100 Information from Bucharest was not forthcoming. But whatever the administrative imbroglios, the precarious situation in the country was not forgotten in Ireland. In March 1947, an ICRCP/ICRC delegation told the Interdepartmental Relief Committee in Dublin that in its opinion Romania was the country most in need now and that there were no administrative difficulties for visas and so on to get there.101 In May, the Irish Save the Children Fund (ISCF) stated that ‘one anonymous subscriber had contributed £500, and this sum had purchased rice for the starving people of Rumania’.102 In August, the Kerryman published on its front page a rather large photograph of Romanians queuing up in the town of Jassy (Iaşi) for ‘a meagre ration of food’.103 The situation was indeed seriously preoccupying in Moldavia and many people suffering from hunger and disease died aboard trains bound for Jassy.104 It was also in that city where, only a few years earlier in 1941, several thousand Jews were massacred in a pogrom.105 Many had also been squeezed into freight wagons where they slowly died of hunger and suffocation. Fortunately for Jassy’s inhabitants, humanitarianism had no memory, at least not on that occasion. In August 1947, the ISCF announced that 505 kilos of sugar and 11 tons of American flour were to be sent to Romania. Four months later, the UISE confirmed that the sugar had arrived safely. It had been decided to distribute 100 kilos to the Indrumarea Institution of the Young Girls’ Friends Association that looked after 120 orphans and abandoned girls; 100 kilos to the Leagan Sf. Ecaterina, which managed foster homes for 1,600 orphans; 150 kilos to the Maternal Society, which took care of 100 infant orphans; 100 kilos to the Cercul Gospodinelor (Housewives Circle), which looked after child welfare centres, particularly in the countryside; and 50 kilos to the Rahovei maternity hospital in Bucharest for poor and confined women.106 The important role played by women in relief was once again evident. The same year, the IRCS donated £500 to the RRC.107 By now, the Stalinists were on their way to absolute power in Bucharest. In 1953, Gerald P. O’Hara, the nuncio in Dublin, received a bundle of letters from Nora Forek, who he had known in Romania. Forek had sent the bundle through the Irish ambassador to the Holy See and wanted it forwarded to the IRCS. The letters came 100 ACICR, O CMS C-025, J. F. Lalive, JRC, to M. de Traz, Hôtel Métropole, Geneva, 3 June 1946. 101 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, meeting of the Interdepartmental Relief Committee, 9 March 1947. 102 ‘Urgent needs of children in Europe’, Irish Independent, 29 May 1947 (INA). 103 ‘Relief for a starving town’, Kerryman, 23 August 1947 (INA). 104 Groza, ‘The Sovietisation of Romania, 1946–1948’, 370. 105 Glenny, The Balkans 1804–1999, 496–7. 106 AEG, Archives Privées, 92.22.2, F. Boissier to Nora Finn (ISCF), 26 August 1947 & Samuel Campiche (UISE) to Finn, 30 December 1947. 107 Lehane, A History of the Irish Red Cross, 281.

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from an Ursuline convent located in Sibiu in Transylvania where many Catholics lived. The sisters expressed their gratitude for the Irish supplies and their letters could only now be smuggled out of the country by Forek. She urged O’Hara no to mention her name ‘“either secretly or publicly” in connection with the enclosed letters’. O’Hara himself remembered ‘quite well seeing in Bucharest at the warehouse of the Roumanian Red Cross a large quantity of food and clothing that had been sent from Ireland at the time of the great famine in the Balkans from 1945 to 1947’.108 Forek’s insistence on anonymity was understandable. In October 1948, an ‘antiCatholic offensive’ was launched by the communists who associated the Vatican with imperialism. The Romanian media spewed its venom and the Greek-Catholic Uniate Church, which recognised the Pope’s authority, was suppressed and forced to merge with the Orthodox Church.109 The Ursuline sisters’ letters, including photographs, were shortly afterwards transmitted to the IRCS.110 Eventually King Michael was forced to abdicate and went into exile, and the People’s Republic of Romania was proclaimed in December 1947. In 1956, the British embassy in Bucharest reported to London that there were still problems with food and housing, and while there were more clothes and household equipment available, their prices were too high for workers.111 In 1971, Romania became the second East Bloc country with which Ireland signed a trade agreement.112 Table 13.7. Don Irlandais in Romania 113 1st Irish gift, April 1946 Condensed milk Sugar Tights Blankets Gloves Underwear

40 tons 80 tons 1200 pairs 2000 2 bales 10 bales

2nd Irish gift, October 1946–February 1947 Foodstuffs 238.002 tons Textiles 35.62 tons

108 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/17, O’Hara to Denis R. McDonald, counsellor, Political Section, DEA, 27 February 1953. 109 Cosmin Cristian Oprea, Tra Roma, Bucarest e Mosca; Cattolici, ortodossi e regime communista in Romania all’ inizio della guerra fredda (1945–1951) (Roma: Aracne, 2013), see Chapter Three: ‘Il 1948; L’anno dei grandi cambiamenti’, 221–323. 110 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/17, Conor Cruise O’Brien (probably), DEA, to A. O’Brien, IRCS secretary, 13 March 1953. Unfortunately, there is no trace of these photographs and letters in the IRCS archive in Dublin. The author was told that a fire might have destroyed most of the IRCS’ archive. 111 Dennis Deletant, Communist Terror in Romania; Gheorghiu-Dej and the Police State, 1948–1965 (London: C. Hurst & Co., 1999), 259. 112 aan de Wiel, East German Intelligence and Ireland, 1949–90, 35. 113 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 178, 186–7.

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Concluding remarks The Balkans were the most problematic region in Europe to which Ireland sent aid. There were not only issues related to distance and logistics but also to a lack of efficient administration and management and/or possible misappropriation of supplies (55 tons of Irish sugar were unaccounted for in Greece). The JRC openly admitted that there were risks of misappropriation or fraud and cited that the most wanted foodstuffs were powder milk in most European countries during the war and sugar in Eastern Europe after the war.114 The situation was made all the more complex against the backdrop of the Cold War, especially in Greece where a civil war had broken out between the government and the communists respectively backed by western countries and Yugoslavia. Yet, owing either to the destruction caused by the Second World War or Soviet domination and control of the economy or both, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania, and Greece were very anxious to receive Irish supplies and thanked Ireland sincerely and publicly. The Bulgarian newsreel on Irish aid was ample evidence of that, so were the letters of thanks from Bulgaria, Romania, and Albania. However, contacts between Ireland and these countries never developed into full bilateral relations because of the Iron Curtain dividing Europe. Rather, these contacts were an ephemeral expression of goodwill and solidarity that normally would have led to good bilateral relations owing to the gratitude of the peoples involved, but the times were still not normal as the Second World War had made way for the Cold War. There was genuine popular interest, involvement, and gratitude, but politics came into play. Ireland signed trade agreements with Bulgaria and Romania only in the early 1970s, and official diplomatic relations with Albania apparently only began in 1995. Not even sustained bilateral relations developed with Greece despite the fact that it belonged to the West. It was true that the country remained politically unstable, and was ruled by a junta of colonels between 1967 and 1974. Ireland and Greece entered diplomatic relations officially in 1975. Moreover, the contacts between these countries and Ireland during postwar relief were only indirect in the sense that they took place through the International Red Cross. There was one exception to this, Yugoslavia. Delegates from the IRCS travelled in person to Belgrade to report on the distribution of Irish supplies. Like in Hungary, the clash between international politics and religion upset Irish aid in Tito’s country. 114 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 134.

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Chapter Fourteen

Yugoslavia

It is difficult to imagine what kind of links connected Ireland to Yugoslavia. During the First World War, Irish soldiers of the 10th (Irish) Division were sent to the Balkan Peninsula to support the Serbs against the Bulgarians, Austro-Hungarians, and Germans. Today, a Celtic cross at Rabrova in North Macedonia reminds passers-by of their sacrifices.1 In 1918, Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia united to form the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, informally known as Yugoslavia (southern Slavs). In 1929, it was renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. During the interwar period, TIGR (Trieste, Istria, Gorizia, Rijeka), a movement which combated the Italianisation of the Slovene and Croat minorities living in north-east Italy imposed by Benito Mussolini, modelled its struggle on that of the Irish Republican Army (IRA).2 In 1946, the country became the Federal People’s Republic of Yugoslavia and comprised the Socialist Republics of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, and Slovenia. When the Second World War ended, the communist Partisans were victorious after four years of vicious fighting. The country was devastated and needed immediate help. The communists were not friends of the Catholic Church and Archbishop Stepinac of Zagreb found himself in the dock for a show trial that shook the world. Irish public opinion was incensed and this in turn had consequences on the country’s aid to Yugoslavia. Rumours had it that Irish supplies were being hijacked by the communists for their own aims although that was not the conclusion reached by an IRCS delegation which deemed that the distribution of supplies was done fairly. But civil servants in the Department of External Affairs (DEA), the Irish ambassador to the Holy See, and the Irish minister to Italy saw it differently. Moreover, positive news from communist Yugoslavia was not necessarily what the Vatican and Irish diplomats wanted to hear. 1 Jeffery, Ireland and the Great War, 59–60. 2 Guido Franzinetti, ‘Irish and Eastern European Questions’, in Sabine Rutar, ed., Beyond the Balkans: Towards an Inclusive History of Southeastern Europe (Zürich & Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2014), 67–96 & footnote 5, 67.

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A complex Yugoslav situation In April 1941, Yugoslavia was invaded by the German, Italian, and Hungarian armies. Soon, Belgrade surrendered. However, Partisans under the command of Tito and royalist Chetniks led by Draža Mihailović carried on the fight. But then things became extremely complex in the multi-ethnic state as Partisans and Chetniks began to fight each other with some Chetniks collaborating with the Germans. In the meantime, a Fascist nationalist independent Croatian state had been set up by Ante Pavelić. His Ustaše (Ustasha) regime carried out an horrendous elimination campaign against Serbs, Jews, and Roma.3 The Germans and Italians were shocked by the Ustaše and their methods that defied ‘all the laws of civilisation’ and believed Croatia was going through lawlessness reminiscent of the Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648).4 Tito and his men got their revenge when they won the war and liquidated several tens of thousands of Croats, including not only Ustaše soldiers, but also women and children.5 There was some Irish connection to this. Just across the Austrian border in Bleiburg, General Thomas Patrick Scott, who commanded the 38th (Irish) Brigade of the British army, was informed that the Croats were trying to cross into Austria. After difficult negotiations, Scott persuaded them that they would not be allowed in the country, and the Partisans guaranteed them that they would be treated properly. The Croats marched back into Yugoslavia to their death. Elsewhere on the Austro-Yugoslav border, the British handed over Russians, notably Cossacks, who had sided with the Germans, to the Soviets. The Cossacks and their families were forcibly put aboard cattle wagons and sent to the Soviet Union where death or the gulag awaited them. General Robert Arbuthnot had entrusted this dreadful task to the men of the Royal Irish Inniskilling Fusiliers as he believed they would be more inclined to accept the order without difficulty than English troops, but the Inniskillings nearly mutinied.6 Was Arbuthnot’s decision to employ Irishmen rather than Englishmen based on an old colonial reflex? Employing the wild natives first for unpleasant jobs? Yugoslavia had been a dreadful battlefield, littered with massacres and atrocities. In the words of Misha Glenny, ‘[During the war], the Balkans faced four years of occupation, resistance, fratricide and genocide.’7 Tito’s forces had managed to liberate almost the entire country, the Soviets having liberated only Belgrade and its environs. Yugoslavia was ravaged, 3 4 5 6 7

Glenny, The Balkans 1804–1999, 498–502. Mazower, Hitler’s Empire, 350–1. Glenny, The Balkans 1804–1999, 530. Buruma, Year Zero, 145–53. Glenny, The Balkans, 477.

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including the important agricultural regions in the south. Before the war, it had imported some of its food supplies, but now relations with foreign countries had to be normalised. There was a total lack of cattle in many areas. The result was that food supplies were low, especially in urban zones already swollen by the arrival of refugees. For example, the number of Zagreb’s inhabitants had almost doubled and stood at 500,000 in 1945. The authorities made strenuous efforts to restore the country to its former health. Tens of thousands of orphans and abandoned children were put into homes.8 In her ground-breaking Children of Europe published only four years after the war, Irish author Dorothy Macardle wrote that there were 280,845 orphans, a figure confirmed by more recent authors who put the figure at 300,000.9 As elsewhere on the continent, transport was the main problem. Train connections between Yugoslavia and Switzerland were interrupted and the Joint Relief Commission of the International Red Cross (JRC) was forced to look for an alternative solution. It decided to ship supplies by train to Marseille. From there, they were loaded aboard ships bound for Bari in southern Italy. Once in Bari, they were unloaded and stored. It was then a question of waiting for the first opportunity to ship them across the Adriatic Sea to Yugoslavia. When railway connections were reestablished, and when wagons were available, the JRC reverted to using trains going through Italy to Ljubljana. Going through Austria was also an option. In Ljubljana, the trains were unloaded, and the supplies stored in warehouses by the Yugoslav Red Cross (YRC) which would look after the distribution. However, sending supply trains to Yugoslavia implied transit costs in Italy which the JRC was eventually successful in ending after negotiations with the Italian government.10 The JRC was satisfied that ‘despite the communication problems and the delays due to unloading and reloading in harbours, aid supplies regularly reached their destination and only normal losses were recorded’. In 1945, the first supplies of the Don Irlandais were sent. The Irish Red Cross Society (IRCS) dispatched medicines, textiles, and condensed milk. Other relief organisations were involved, notably from the United States, Turkey, Egypt, South Africa, Britain, and Switzerland. It is to be noted that during the second Irish gift, Yugoslavia received among others 2,300 mattresses, more than 25,000 blankets, and impressive quantities of clothes, which were used for children’s homes. Documents concerning the reception and distribution of 8 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 352–61, 179, 187 & 143. 9 Macardle, Children of Europe, 107, footnote 1 & Judt, Postwar, 20–1. 10 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, pp. 352–61, p. 179, p. 187 & p. 143.

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supplies from the Don Irlandais took a very long time to reach Geneva, about four to five months for reception reports while distribution reports were rarely sent. The delegates of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) who were on the spot were then asked by Geneva to supply these reports instead of the YRC or the local authorities.11 Despite all this goodwill and genuine humanitarianism, Irish aid for Yugoslavia was going to generate controversy between all concerned. At the origin were tensions between the Yugoslavs and the International Red Cross. Like the Soviets, Tito’s regime was not satisfied with the way the ICRC had operated in its country during the war. The YRC resented the presence of its delegates and demanded their recall. Another problem was the presence of thousands of German and Austrian prisoners of war who were used in reconstruction activities and whose detention conditions left much to be desired. ICRC delegates were not free to move around and to visit them. In April 1947, the ICRC took the decision to pull out altogether from Belgrade as working conditions were not satisfying. The YRC was then left totally in charge of the prisoner-of-war issue.12 This was the political background when Ireland offered assistance. Colonel Nikolić, the YRC delegate in Geneva, reported to Belgrade that the IRCS was willing to help. In turn, on 28 December 1945, Jaroslava Ribnikar, the YRC secretary-general, wrote to the IRCS and put forward the following distribution plan. Concerning sugar and canned meat, ‘Bosnia-Herzegovina [will receive] 23%, Croatia 32%, Serbia 20%, Slovenia 11%, Montenegro 6%, Macedonia 5% [and the] Central Committee [of the Red Cross] 3%’. Concerning all other items, Bosnia-Herzegovina [will receive] 25%, Croatia 27%, Serbia 28%, Slovenia 6%, Montenegro 4%, Macedonia 4% [and the] Central Committee [of the Red Cross] 3%’. It was envisaged that the 3% attributed to the Central Committee would be used for refugees and ‘colonists’ during their passage through Belgrade. ‘Colonists’ in all likelihood referred to these 200,000 Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans) who had helped the Wehrmacht in putting down the Serbs and who were now about to be expelled.13 The YRC guaranteed that the donated supplies would be absolutely free of charge and that the IRCS would not be asked to pay anything. Also, the supplies would ‘be distributed to needy civilians [and] war victims without discrimination of race, creed or political opinion’, records would be kept, and receipts sent to Dublin.14 11 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 352–61, 179, 187 & 143. 12 Rey-Schyrr, De Yalta à Dien Bien Phu, 154–5. 13 Hitchcock, Liberation, 239–43. 14 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/3, Ribnikar to IRCS, 28 December 1945.

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Tensions between the International Red Cross and Belgrade But things did not go entirely to plan. At the beginning of January 1946, a meeting took place in Geneva between Jean-Flavien Lalive and Mr Grandjean of the JRC and Mr Schindler of the ICRC delegation in Belgrade. It had come to their attention that no ICRC representative had been present to supervise the arrival of South African supplies as the ICRC delegation had been advised too late. Another issue was that the Yugoslavs always promised to send reports but never did despite repeated calls. It was probably because the YRC had too much work—a reasonable assumption to make considering the surrounding level of destruction and misery. But it was felt that the YRC employed individuals that were not always competent, and that Yugoslavs were susceptible people who might take offence at being reminded all the time. When the JRC asked to control the supplies or their distribution, the Yugoslavs believed that they were not being trusted.15 That soon became clear. In March, YRC secretary-general Ribnikar wrote to the JRC about the first batch of Irish supplies they had received and asked to thank the Irish on their behalf. She explained that they had sent to the IRCS the necessary documentation detailing the distribution. The JRC executive (Lalive?) who read her letter pencilled in the margin: ‘! The Yugoslavs send to the Irish Red Cross all the documentation that we are asking for! They are trying to eliminate us’.16 It appeared indeed as if the YRC was trying to bypass Geneva and here was the gist of the problem: the Yugoslavs had nothing at all against Ireland or the IRCS but much against the ICRC and the JRC. In August, the Youth Working Units of Serbia sent a letter to the Central Committee of the Serbian Red Cross. They wished to confirm the receipt of five sacks of Irish sugar and added: ‘The received sugar is going to improve our nutrition and to help us [in] our efforts working towards the drying of the Posavina swamps. 2,500 youths are thanking most warmly the Irish Government for the generous gift’. There was also a photograph, showing a man carrying a large sack on which a shamrock and Irish inscriptions were clearly visible.17 It would appear that this letter had been sent to Dublin directly and not forwarded by the JRC. The same month, John B. Hamill of the IRCS reported on his stay in Geneva. He wrote that the YRC delegation had ‘expressed to us their sincere thanks for the help already given and 15 ACICR, O CMS C-025, note written by S. Grandjean on meeting with Schindler, 8 January 1946. 16 ACICR, O CMS C-025, Ribnikar to JRC, Geneva, 12 March 1946. 17 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/3, Youth Working Units of Serbia to Central Committee of Serbian Red Cross, 18 August 1946 & photograph (it remains unclear if the photograph was attached to the letter, or if it showed Irish supplied elsewhere in Yugoslavia).

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the help which they understood was going in the near future’ and also that they were ‘very anxious that an Irish representative should visit their country’. Hamill had been assured that such a representative would obtain a visa promptly and without any difficulty. He personally felt that it was in Ireland’s interest to do as the Yugoslavs suggested and regretted that it was taking such a long time to send out three IRCS representatives, stressing that three was simply not enough for the task of supervising the distribution of the supplies.18

Stepinac trial upsets Irish aid But then an additional problem developed in the triangular relationship between Dublin, Belgrade, and Geneva. The relations between Tito’s government and the Catholic Church were very tense to say the least. During the war, some so-called Ustaše priests, notably Franciscan friars in Bosnia, participated in the massacring of Serbs. But Partisans had also killed clergymen. After the war, a number of priests were involved in anti-communist groups in Croatia. During 1946, there was an increase in attacks against the Church and priests were physically intimidated, several even murdered. When Tito and his Partisans won the war, they no longer felt obliged to make any compromises with non-communists. At first, Tito was willing to make some accommodation with the Church, believing it could be to his regime’s advantage to have an obedient clergy. But his approach was brutal, including arresting and bullying priests. Tito had no issue with the celebrations and rituals of religion but there it stopped. He and his followers were not prepared to tolerate the Catholic Church as a leading or alternative force in society, which was precisely what the Church thought it should be.19 On 18 September 1946, Alojzije Stepinac, the Archbishop of Zagreb, was arrested. The regime accused him of having collaborated with Pavelić’s Ustaše. His role in the war years remains disputed.20 Yet, what was clear was that Tito sought to eliminate Catholic opposition and therefore Stepinac had to be broken.21 Irish newspapers lost little time in denouncing what was going on in Yugoslavia. The Irish Independent published an article entitled ‘Archbishop arrested by Tito’ while the Cork Examiner informed its readers that Catholic priests were fleeing the Venezia Giulia region in Italy, then 18 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, Hamill to Shanley, 16 August 1946. 19 Peter Palmer, The Communists and the Roman Catholic Church in Yugoslavia, 1941–1946, PhD thesis, University of Oxford, United Kingdom, 2000, in https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:ea1c5fb1-ae10-47f59064-f2deb06d653f (accessed on 29 May 2017), abstract two, 39, 49–50, 259–61, 269. 20 Weigel, The Final Revolution, 65. 21 Luxmoore and Babiuch, The Vatican and the Red Flag, 44–5.

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occupied by the Yugoslavs, because of ‘religious persecution’.22 The Cork Examiner then published two other articles, ‘Yugo-Slavia’s anti-Catholic campaign’ and ‘Vatican attacks Tito’. In the latter, it was explained that the Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s mouthpiece, described the arrest ‘on a charge of “crimes against the people of the State” as “completely unsustainable” [and that] “Marshal Tito, his law, his justice, cannot pretend to be a free democratic world”’.23 At the end of 1945, the Vatican had appointed Irish-American Bishop Joseph P. Hurley of St Augustine in Florida to head the apostolic nunciature in Belgrade. President Truman was very satisfied with the appointment. Although there was no official collaboration between the western countries and the Vatican, behind the scenes it was a different matter. In the Vatican, Mgr Montini had instructed Hurley ‘to cooperate to the utmost of his ability with the Allied diplomatic representatives at Belgrade’. The nunciature provided reports on the political situation to the Americans. Yet, Washington and the Vatican’s views on the Stepinac affair were not the same as the US State Department had information that indicated that Stepinac might not have been as innocent as he claimed he was. Eventually, the United States’ foreign policy aims in Yugoslavia diverged totally from the Vatican’s as it sought to use Tito against Stalin after the two men split in June 1948. The Vatican remained implacably opposed to Tito, however.24 This was the Yugoslav political cauldron in which the representatives of the IRCS found themselves when they arrived in the country. Stepinac’s arrest had immediate consequences on Irish aid for Yugoslavia. On 27 September, the Interdepartmental Relief Committee met. Dr Hourihane of the Department of Local Government and Public Health, who had been selected to tour Europe on behalf of the IRCS, attended. It is not quite clear how, but the Irish government learnt that Irish supplies were being distributed by Tito’s government and not by the International Red Cross to which they had been entrusted in the first place. In the context of the Stepinac case, this became a most sensitive issue. The committee decided that the JRC should notify Dublin if any Irish supplies earmarked for Yugoslavia were still in Switzerland and ‘if so the Commission [JRC] should be requested to retain them for the time being.’ It also wanted the JRC ‘to indicate what body in Yugoslavia is responsible for the distribution of supplies which have been sent since it became impossible for the Commission [JRC] to 22 ‘Archbishop arrested by Tito’, Irish Independent, 19 September 1946 (INA) & ‘Priests flee from Yugoslavia Zone’, Cork Examiner, 24 September 1946 (INA). 23 ‘Yugo-Slavia’s anti-Catholic campaign’, Cork Examiner, 28 September 1946 (INA) & ‘Vatican attacks Tito’, Cork Examiner, 28 September 1946 (INA). 24 Charles R. Gallagher, ‘The United States and the Vatican in Yugoslavia, 1945–50’, in Kirby, ed., Religion and the Cold War, 118–44. For quotation see 123.

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have transport and distribution supervised by its own agents.’ Once that information was obtained, the committee would contact the relevant Yugoslav authorities, explain the position of the Irish government, and demand information regarding the distribution and control of the supplies.25 Evidently, the Irish were not aware at that point in time of the tensions between the ICRC/JRC and the Yugoslavs. But a fear of being compromised with Tito’s regime now also came into play. Three days later, Stepinac’s show trial began. It ended on 11 October when he was found guilty of high treason and war crimes. He was condemned to sixteen years’ imprisonment and would eventually die in internal exile. The Pope had no hesitation in excommunicating all Catholics who had taken part in the prosecution. Stepinac’s condemnation provoked outrage in the western countries, and Catholic Ireland was no exception. Archbishop John Charles McQuaid of Dublin organised a day of prayer for Stepinac in his diocese and his letter of protest was published in the Osservatore Romano.26 In the Dáil, Deputy James Dillon spoke of ‘an international communist conspiracy to defame Christianity in general and the Catholic Church in particular’.27 The people’s anger was very palpable and relayed in the national press. The Irish Independent published ‘The new attack on Christianity’ while the Sunday Independent had ‘The footsteps of the martyrs; Career of Archbishop Stepinac’. The regional press was no different. The Connacht Tribune published ‘Case of Archbishop Stepinac; Protest by Galway Corporation’ and the Anglo-Celt had ‘Stepinac trial a mockery’.28 In November, the Dáil passed a resolution, ‘expressing grave concern at the unjust trial and imprisonment of the Archbishop of Zagreb’. The Pope was most satisfied and sent a message of appreciation to de Valera: ‘His Holiness, as a token of his august satisfaction at this gesture, worthy of the noble traditions of Catholic Ireland, wishes from the abundance of his heart to impart his Apostolic Blessing to the head of the Government and to the beloved people of Ireland’.29 Pius XII actively opposed the emerging regimes in Central and Eastern Europe by secretly ordaining bishops and excommunicating communists.30

25 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4A, Interdepartmental Relief Committee meeting, 27 September 1946. 26 Cooney, John Charles McQuaid, 203–204. 27 Dáil Debates, ‘Ceisteanna-Questions. Oral answers – Religious Persecution’, 23 October 1946, vol. 103, no 1, in http://debates.oireachtas.ie/dail/1946/10/23/00004.asp#N15 (accessed on 22 October 2015). 28 Irish Independent, 8 November 1946, Sunday Independent, 13 October 1946, Connacht Tribune, 9 November 1946 & Anglo-Celt, 26 April 1947 (INA). 29 ‘Dr Stepinac Trial; The Pope’s message to the Taoiseach’, Irish Press, 29 January 1947 (INA). 30 Weigel, The Final Revolution, 64–7.

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The issue of sending Irish representatives Information on the unfolding visa situation found its way to the DEA, probably partly emanating from the JRC. The Yugoslav authorities said that they refused to grant visas to JRC representatives to escort and supervise the distribution of Irish supplies. However, the Irish government told the JRC that the distribution could go ahead without its supervision. But the JRC warned that ‘in the circumstances they could not give any guarantee that distribution would be carried out as they think it should’. The DEA then suggested to the other members of the Interdepartmental Relief Committee that the government should send its own representative. Yet, it pointed out that although ‘the presence of an Irish representative might make the source of the supplies better known we did not think that the expenditure would be justified’.31 The DEA’s reasoning made little sense. Was there not here a unique opportunity to send a seasoned diplomat or politician to ascertain the situation independently and report at first hand on what was going on in beyond the Iron Curtain? Surely, that would have put many a governmental mind at ease. Yugoslavia, like the Soviet Union and other Eastern European countries, was not anxious to welcome International Red Cross representatives. Even the Americans were not particularly keen on working with them. When in Geneva, Hamill believed that the Americans and Yugoslavs had actually worked ‘very closely together’ against the International Red Cross, but he and McNamara had been told by the YRC delegation that there would not be any objection to Irish representatives travelling to Yugoslavia, quite the contrary. It had been decided that four IRCS members were about to go to the continent for a maximum period of two months, and the DEA had no objection. But if Irish governmental officials were also to go, they would have to stay longer. It was then suggested that money from the Relief Vote could be used for this purpose.32 Thus, it all came down to a question of finances from the DEA’s viewpoint. Eventually, the government opted not to send its own officials and chose to rely on the IRCS representatives. On 8 November in the DEA, Cornelius Cremin met Dr Hourihane, Fr O’Connor (parish priest, Thurles), and Patrick Power (Drogheda) before their departure. He gave them a list of Irish supplies that were being distributed and explained that generally they should try to ascertain if they were being handed out equitably and if the people knew where they came from. He also gave an outline of the situation in Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Romania, Greece, and Italy, and 31 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, note, undated and no author, but addressed to ‘secretary’ (Boland). 32 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, note, undated and no author, but addressed to ‘secretary’ (Boland).

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suggested that when in Rome, they should meet Joseph Walshe, now Irish ambassador to the Holy See, and Michael MacWhite, the minister to Italy.33 Subsequently, Hourihane and O’Connor met Walshe just as he had apparently averted an Italian communist attempt to hijack Irish supplies as detailed in chapter seven. Walshe believed that their sending was ‘an excellent move’ but complained that he had not been informed beforehand. He would show them distribution operations in progress but warned Secretary for External Affairs Frederick Boland: ‘They are of course completely ignorant of European languages and European conditions, but it is my job and that of my colleague [MacWhite] to keep them right. I don’t know how they will fare at the hands of the Yugoslavs’.34 Walshe sounded a touch condescending but it remained to be seen how both men would perform in an environment that had indeed absolutely nothing to do with their own.

Positive report from Geneva In the meantime, Cremin got a report from the JRC entitled ‘Impressions from the distribution of the Irish supplies in the Balkans’. It had been written by Georges Sotiroff, the Bulgarian representative of the JRC, who had visited the Balkans during the spring. Sotiroff explained that he had arrived unannounced in Belgrade and asked to be taken to various institutions to check on Irish supplies. A car was immediately put at his disposal and he was driven to orphanages and hospitals. He was shown the accounting books to see the quantities of sugar distributed but he asked: ‘How can I know that this was the Irish sugar?’ To that specific question, people everywhere had the same reply: ‘But that was the only sugar we have received since the end of the war!’ In Zagreb, Sotiroff found Irish supplies in Red Cross warehouses, including boxes of condensed milk with the inscription ‘Golden Vein Limerick Co.’ He wrote: ‘In the food store of the transit camp of the Yugoslav Red Cross at the Zagreb Railway station, there was an open bag of Irish sugar, half of which had already been consumed. This camp gives food and shelter to sick peasants coming down to Zagreb in search of some place in a hospital and to the families which are being removed from the distressed areas in Central Yugoslavia to be resettled in the Northern Provinces’.35 On the transport issue, Sotiroff remarked:

33 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, note by Cremin, 15 November 1946 (the meeting took place on 8 November 1946). 34 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4, Walshe to Boland, 15 November 1946. 35 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, ‘Impressions from the distribution of the Irish supplies in the Balkans’, by Sotiroff, undated, transmitted by Jean-Flavien Lalive (JRC) to Cremin on 16 November 1946.

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The following explanations were given to me on the transport of Irish supplies within Yugoslavia: the block trains arriving from the West are received in Ljubljana which is in the North-West corner of Yugoslavia near the Italian and Austrian frontiers. Supplies destined to Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia and Macedonia are sent on to Zagreb, Belgrade and Skopje while those destined to the Dalmatian coast and Montenegro are switched to the port of Susak. Here they are taken aboard ships sailing along the coast and are brought to Sibenik, Split, Dubrovnik and Kotor. From these various centres the supplies are forwarded to their final destination by lorry or by horse cart.36

The report gave a rather favourable impression. During a subsequent meeting with Cremin and McNamara, Lalive stressed that according to Sotiroff, the distribution was ‘equitable’.37 Certainly, Sotiroff’s description of the transport system was accurate, considering that 75% of railway bridges and 60% of roads had been destroyed.38

‘These two innocents’ are an embarrassment to us At the end of December 1946, Hourihane, Brady, and O’Connor were back from their continental trip on the IRCS’s behalf. O’Connor gave an interview on his impressions of Yugoslavia, which was published, among others, in the Nenagh Guardian and the Irish Press. He explained that as a priest he had received a friendly welcome by the local authorities wherever he went. ‘They seemed anxious to impress on us that there was freedom to practice the Catholic religion’ although they were not willing to broach the Stepinac affair, he said. At some point, O’Connor asked them frankly ‘if religion was taught in the schools, and they said: “Oh no; but, of course, it can be taught elsewhere”’. The answer had the merit to be honest, although nobody would have believed a different one after the Stepinac trial. O’Connor said that the Yugoslav officials had been willing to take them wherever they wanted but he remained on his guard: ‘Of course . . . they knew very well what Ireland thinks of them and they were on the defensive. You always have the feeling that in a place like that you are on a conducted tour’. Yet, he was much impressed by the ongoing reconstruction efforts and he and his colleagues were satisfied that Irish supplies were ‘fairly distributed’. He added 36 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, ‘Impressions from the distribution of the Irish supplies in the Balkans’. 37 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, note by Cremin, 19 November 1946. 38 Judt, Postwar, 17.

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that ‘some children, as soon as you mentioned the name “Ireland”, said “sugar”’.39 It was the same in Italy. Although the priest had clearly stated that he had not been duped in any way, his interview was not music to the Vatican’s ears probably because it was not negative enough and simply because it did not denounce the Yugoslav regime outright. Walshe, a man convinced that the Vatican should be strengthened to combat communism and that the Irish Catholic Church had its role to play,40 subsequently sent a letter from Rome, castigating O’Connor and Hourihane: ‘I knew these two innocents would be a cause of embarrassment to us’. He thought that they allowed themselves to be manipulated by the Yugoslavs and the Vatican was very worried about an interview that O’Connor gave. Walshe begged that no more innocents should be sent abroad. ‘I am doing my best to defend O’Connor, but at heart I believe the Vatican is right’.41 As to Cremin, he wrote that ‘the Vatican, apparently, hold it against [O’Connor] that while he said that the people in Yugoslavia seemed anxious to impress on him that there was freedom to practice the Catholic religion all through the country … he did not say that there is not religious freedom in Yugoslavia’.42 O’Connor had involuntarily stepped into the unfolding Cold War. As far as Hourihane was concerned, he called at the DEA on 2 January 1947 and told Cremin about his experiences. He said that the problem regarding Yugoslav visas for Red Cross representatives had to do with one individual only, a Mr Gausi, and that it was not correct to say that all Red Cross representatives were denied visas. The difficulties were removed by the time Hourihane had reached Belgrade. All Irish supplies for Yugoslavia had also left Switzerland, but the Yugoslav authorities had expressed surprise to Hourihane and O’Connor that the International Red Cross had said that an important portion of the supplies was meant for Jews. Once back in Geneva, Hourihane met Lalive to discuss this issue and it appeared that there had been some confusion with supplies from an American-Jewish organisation. The Irish supplies had now been distributed but Lalive undertook to adjust the situation with subsequent deliveries. Another problem was the sending of medical supplies to the Montenegrin Red Cross. Apparently, they were kept in Switzerland for a long time and Montenegrin letters to Geneva remained unanswered. Hourihane said that the Yugoslavs were very 39 ‘Thurles priest’s impressions of Europe to-day’, Nenagh Guardian, 28 December 1946 (INA) & ‘Red Cross relief delegates’ report’, Irish Press, 23 December 1946, in NAI, DT, T6, Private Office Files, TAOIS, 97/9/700. 40 Nolan, Joseph Walshe, 313–14. 41 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, note by Boland for McCauley, 25 January 1947. 42 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, note by Cremin for Sheila Murphy, 22 January 1947.

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eager to receive live Irish cattle and had asked him if the animals could be transported in February 1947. They were ready to have them shipped to Fiume.43 50% of all livestock in Yugoslavia had been killed.44 Hourihane and O’Connor had entered Yugoslavia the day after the Stepinac debate in the Dáil but encountered much admiration for the Taoiseach. The Yugoslavs assured both men that there was religious liberty, although Hourihane and O’Connor were not convinced. Everywhere they went, a portrait of Stalin was hanging next to Tito’s. Cremin wrote in a subsequent note that Hourihane was preparing a report for the IRCS but that the religious issue would not be broached. A copy would be sent to the DEA.45 This was normal procedure. It was not within the International Red Cross or the IRCS’s domain to give a political assessment. The International Red Cross and its national societies were supposed to be strictly neutral. Had the DEA wanted a political report, it should have sent its own representatives.

Hourihane and O’Connor in Yugoslavia On 9 January 1947, Hourihane and O’Connor handed in their eleven-page report. It is worth mentioning in some detail. Both men met Walshe and MacWhite in Rome who arranged for the necessary formalities to enable them to travel to Yugoslavia. François Jaeggy, a Swiss delegate of the JRC (in fact ICRC), welcomed them in Belgrade and explained that the first shipment of Irish supplies had reached the city on 17 September 1946 and that nothing was missing. He gave them figures of various consignments of supplies which ‘coincided exactly with the figures with which we had been supplied in Dublin’. But Jaeggy added that he was astonished that so many supplies were meant for Jews, who numbered only about 60,000 out of a population of 14 million. For example, 207 bales of blankets were for the population in general while 289 bales were for the Jews. Also, out of 881 tons of sugar, 120 tons were given to the ‘Union of Jewish Community’. Included in the foodstuffs for the Jews were ‘139 cases of chocolate [and] 104 cartons of cocoa’, which were not mentioned on the Irishmen’s list. As shown, it transpired that Irish supplies had been mixed up with those sent by an American-Jewish organisation. The JRC undertook to make a full investigation and to make up for it. Hourihane and O’Connor stressed: ‘We made it clear both in Yugoslavia and in 43 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, note by Cremin, erroneously dated 6 January 1946, instead of 1947. 44 Judt, Postwar, 17. 45 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, note by Cremin, erroneously dated 6 January 1946, instead of 1947.

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Geneva that the principle governing distribution of the Irish Gift was to be need only and that no distinction either religious or political was to be made in deciding the recipients.’46 Hourihane and O’Connor formed the impression that Jaeggy was ‘a completely unbiased individual’. Jaeggy said that once the supply trains were in Yugoslavia, there was no longer any need for escorts. He and his colleague Dr Reicher saw to it that the supplies were sent to each federal republic and were distributed by the federal Red Cross societies. The IRCS delegates were supplied with letters of thanks, photographs, receipts, local newspaper articles, all dealing with the distribution of Irish supplies. They met members of the Yugoslav Federal Government to discuss ‘the offer of 2,000 head of cattle’. Tinned meat could be sent instead, but they preferred live cattle as there was very little milk and butter in the country. Fodder was a problem, but they were ready to buy it in Ireland. Transport was another issue. It could be organised but not before February 1947 and the Irish offer stipulated that it had to be taken up by 31 December 1946. The Yugoslavs were eager to go ahead with it and hoped that the offer would still be open after that deadline. Hourihane and O’Connor did not commit themselves but answered that they believed it would probably be the case. The Yugoslavs profusely thanked Ireland for its generous gift, all the more since it came from a small nation.47 Both Irishmen visited orphanages in Belgrade and a home for blind children: ‘One small boy who was feeling a Braille map of Europe was asked by us if he knew where Irska was—he had no doubt and went to it at once’. In Novisad, north of the capital, a Catholic priest expressed all his gratitude. The ongoing reconstruction efforts made a deep impression on them. They also went to a maternity hospital and an orphanage in Zagreb and found that children were generally not afraid of foreigners and ran towards them: ‘It seems clear that they must be treated normally with great kindness to produce such a reaction’. Photographs were taken of Hourihane and O’Connor and published in the local press the next day. It was pretty much the same story in Ljubljana. They concluded their report as follows: ‘To the two questions: (1) do the Irish goods reach those people for whom they were intended and (2) do the recipients know where the goods came from, we are firmly of the opinion that the answer is in both cases “yes”’.48

46 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4, ‘Report from European tour from Rev. T. J. O’Connor, Adm. [and] Dr. J. D. Houri­hane’, 9 January 1947. 47 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4, ‘Report from European tour from Rev. T. J. O’Connor, Adm. [and] Dr. J. D. Houri­hane’, 9 January 1947. 48 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4, ‘Report from European tour from Rev. T. J. O’Connor, Adm. [and] Dr. J. D. Houri­hane’, 9 January 1947.

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Was their report objective and reliable? Jaeggy’s background was open to question. He was a member of the Centrale sanitaire suisse, a Swiss left, if not far-left leaning organisation set up in 1937 to provide medical supplies to the Republicans during the Civil War in Spain. During the Second World War, it had managed to organise four missions to help Tito’s Partisans. It was the YRC that had demanded that Jaeggy be appointed in Yugoslavia.49 His remark that trains transporting Irish supplies did not need JRC escorts sounds a bit odd as hungry people were sometimes driven to desperate measures. But nothing suspicious about him can be detected although a biased attitude towards Tito’s regime could be expected. There were details in Hourihane and O’Connor’s report that were undeniably objective. Their admiration for the reconstruction process in Yugoslavia was not surprising. UNRRA was spending a phenomenal $415,000,000 in the country. 10,000 trucks were provided to Belgrade and UNRRA was a resounding success.50 To many UNRRA workers, Yugoslavia was a different world altogether as compared to Greece or Italy. Sydney Morrell, the director of UNRRA’s public relations department, declared: ‘It will be almost impossible for UNRRA to fail in Yugoslavia. If any people were ready and able to help themselves, it is this one … These people have a bottomless capacity for perseverance’.51 Another revealing detail was Hourihane and O’Connor’s remark on orphaned children who were not afraid of meeting foreigners. Their impression was shared by Dorothy Macardle who established that Tito’s regime made sure to look after them and did so remarkably well.52 Had there been some attempt by the Yugoslav communists to manipulate or hijack Irish supplies one way or the other? Owing to the large-scale destruction the war had caused in Yugoslavia and the deep psychological scars it had left behind, the country needed all the support it could get. Therefore, it would seem rather unlikely that Tito and his followers were going to manipulate or hijack Irish or any other foreign supplies to get some political gain and run the risk of being found out and lose western support. They were firmly in power anyway. A simple and straightforward way to use foreign supplies to Tito’s political advantage would have been to state that it was thanks to his government’s initiatives and contacts that these generous foreign goods flooded the country. There was no need to find elaborate ways to cover up their real provenance or something complicated along those lines. 49 Rey-Schyrr, De Yalta à Dien Bien Phu, 154–5 & footnote 60. See also Andrea Weibel, ‘Centrale sanitaire suisse (CSS)’, Dictionnaire historique de la Suisse, in http://www.hls-dhs-dss.ch/textes/f/F46131. php (accessed on 22 October 2015). 50 Shephard, The Long Road Home, 255–6. 51 Hitchcock, Liberation, 239–43. 52 Macardle, Children of Europe, 106–108.

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Moreover, as was the case in the Soviet-Occupied Zone of Germany, the local press and Red Cross took all the necessary steps to inform the people where the supplies came from, as O’Connor and Hourihane were able to ascertain.

Conveniently altering an IRCS report… On 15 January, Cremin forwarded a copy of Hourihane and O’Connor’s report to DEA Assistant Secretary Leo T. McCauley, commenting that ‘the conclusions … are rather satisfactory’. In his opinion, ‘it might be difficult for the International Red Cross to rectify the mistake made in allocating a disproportionate share of certain of our supplies to Jews in Yugoslavia’, although ‘it now appears … that the IRC [International Red Cross] proposed to adjust the matter by transferring to Irish supplies a suitable proportion of later supplies from the US Jewish body’.53 But that was not the way Boland and Walshe saw it. To their disappointment, no doubt, Hourihane and O’Connor’s report contained nothing whatsoever about religious persecution and the Stepinac case. Boland wrote to McCauley about the shipping error involving Jews. He wanted the International Red Cross to make amendments and did not mince his words: ‘I must say that this report seems to call for some revision of the views we have held up to now with regard to the efficiency and probity of the Mixed Commission [JRC]’.54 It did not seem to have crossed his mind that on such a chaotic continent, errors and confusion were bound to happen. However, to Boland it was above all one more pretext to get rid of cooperation with the JRC and the ICRCP. As seen in chapter eight, in the months to come Walshe would inform him that the Vatican was not too much in favour of Ireland working with the International Red Cross, located in Protestant Geneva. But Boland wanted more. Walshe had informed him in the meantime that the Vatican was displeased with Fr O’Connor’s interview and his rather positive impressions of Yugoslavia. He forwarded an extract of Walshe’s letter to McCauley with the telling comment: ‘In view of this, we should be rather careful, I think, about agreeing to publication of the report made by Father O’Connor and Dr Hourihane’. In the margin, Cremin commented: ‘Mr McNamara [IRCS] is sending me a revised version for publication of the report, for our views thereon’.55 The report was being modified, if not doctored, and would be submitted to the DEA for further comments. It was not for objectivity’s sake but rather to avoid a dent 53 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, note by Cremin for McCauley, 15 January 1947. 54 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, note by Boland for McCauley, 25 January 1947. 55 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, note by Boland for McCauley, 25 January 1947.

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in Catholic Ireland’s reputation. In his capacity of IRCS chairman, McNamara should never have agreed to this. In his letter to Boland, Walshe had also written: ‘Did Con [Cremin] tell you what exactly he said to Hourihane? Whatever it was, Hourihane seemed to think he had a mission from the Department [DEA] and from the Taoiseach himself ’.56 Cremin subsequently wrote a long note in his defence, arguing that Hourihane and O’Connor left for the continent on the IRCS’s behalf and not the government’s although they would inquire mainly about supplies sent by the Don Irlandais, in other words, sent by the government. This was the problem: the line between the IRCS and the government became blurred. Cremin explained: In my two interviews with Dr Hourihane (Father O’Connor was present on the second occasion when they came here to know ‘what they should do’) I took the line that it was for the Red Cross Society to tell them what to do but that if they wished to look into the question of the Government relief supplies they might report their impressions as to the manner in which distribution was carried out and whether the source of the supplies was generally known: these were the two questions which interested us primarily in view of the reports we had had at various times to the effect that our supplies were not being properly distributed and that the gift was not receiving due publicity.57

As if to make Cremin’s life more difficult, Dublin received contradictory information about Yugoslavia. At home, some members of the Catholic hierarchy denounced Irish aid to that country. Bishop Browne of Galway publicly declared that supplies sent by UNRRA and other agencies were helping Tito’s regime at a time of religious persecution. He alleged that the Yugoslav government was only distributing the supplies to its supporters.58 From Rome, MacWhite sent the DEA a chapter from the Reader’s Digest (February 1947) entitled ‘UNRRA Fiasco in Yugoslavia; How Tito exploited the generosity of Western democracies to strengthen his tyranny’. He explained that it might be interesting to read in relation with Hourihane and O’Connor’s recent report. The chapter had been written by Eric L. Pridonoff, former economic analyst for the US embassy in Belgrade. MacWhite commented that it shed light ‘on the methods employed there by the Bolshevik authorities’. Ironically, the word ‘Bolshevik’ also shed light on his own 56 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, note by Boland for McCauley, 25 January 1947. 57 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, note by Cremin for McCauley, 28 January 1947. 58 ‘Bishop opposes aid to Yugoslavia’, The Irish Times, 22 February 1947 (ITDA).

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bias. Pridonoff claimed that Tito had ‘equipped an army of 600,000, plus a huge and efficient secret police’ to remain in power. It was supplies from UNRRA, over which he had gained control, which had helped him to do so. UNRRA, Pridonoff continued, was riddled with communists or communist sympathisers, and had helped to maintain Tito’s army. The 12,000 trucks that UNRRA had sent were used mainly by the army. Officials got important amounts of coal: ‘Next door to me lived the communist minister for Slovenia. I saw him get 30 tons of UNRRA coal (which had been shipped from the United States) delivered in an American-built UNRRA-given truck, powered by American UNRRA-given gasoline’. Medical treatment was only given to the regime’s supporters. He concluded: ‘Through our own blindness, we allowed UNRRA to help build Tito’s totalitarian state’.59 Did Pridonoff have a point? Western countries were not above making crude anti-communist propaganda. 30 tons of UNRRA/American coal looks like a lot to store in one’s backyard unless the communist minister for Slovenia lived in a Versailles-type palace. It was true, though, that some communists or communist sympathisers had joined UNRRA, which had been noticed by Michael P. Flynn, an Irish doctor and UNRRA worker.60 It was equally true that Enver Hoxha, the Albanian communist leader, was utterly shocked by the wealth and opulence Tito was living in and especially by his white marshal’s uniform and his diamond ring.61 As previously explained, UNRRA was indeed not a perfect organisation. Inefficiency occurred and some personnel were not reliable. Nonetheless, it was an important episode in Europe’s road to recovery and it did achieve noteworthy successes, notably where it was massively present and could cooperate with the local authorities like in Yugoslavia, Greece, and Italy.62 But it might well have been that Pridonoff and the Americans were suffering from preconceived prejudice towards Central and Eastern Europe. After the First World War, Herbert Hoover set up the American Relief Administration (ARA) whose mission was to bring relief to that area. Although it claimed to be politically unbiased, ARA was anti-communist. Furthermore, it was biased against Jews, believing them to be feckless and conveniently blaming them for its failures. The locals were deemed to be deeply corrupt. Briefly, ARA’s attitude was that the United States was modern while Central and Eastern Europe was inherently backward,63 and Hoover’s 59 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, MacWhite to DEA, 4 March 1947, including UNRRA Fiasco in Yugoslavia; How Tito exploited the generosity of Western democracies to strengthen his tyranny, by Pridonoff. 60 Flynn, Medical Doctor of Many Parts, 58. 61 Miranda Vickers, The Albanians: A Modern History (London & New York: I.B. Tauris, 2006), 169. 62 Hitchcock, Liberation, 225. 63 Zahra, The Lost Children, 38–42.

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organisation wanted to stop the progression of communism with food as a weapon as previously explained.64 Tito was suspicious of foreigners and it was only after months of talks that UNRRA was eventually allowed into Yugoslavia. It proved to be a resounding success there so much so that by the end of 1946, Tito did not want to see foreign experts leave the country. As shown, no less than $415,000,000 (most of it being American money) was spent by UNRRA and the country was saved from famine. But relations between Washington and Belgrade remained very strained as communism was not to the liking of American public opinion and as it was widely believed that the Yugoslavs used UNRRA supplies to serve their own political purposes. On 6 August 1946, the Yugoslavs shot down an American transport plane and treated its crew including one UNRRA member none too gently.65 The Truman administration did not like this multinational humanitarian agency and subsequently terminated its involvement. It then began to tailor relief operations to meet its foreignpolicy objectives. The question if UNRRA supplies helped Tito to consolidate his power cannot be definitively answered here, but that UNRRA and foreign supplies were utterly exploited seems unlikely. In the Irish case at least, there is enough evidence to show that supplies were being equally distributed to all sections of society and ethnic groups, including Jews, and that there was no foul play. At the end of the day, were Hourihane and O’Connor manipulated during their visit? There is no doubt that they had arrived at a time when Tito’s regime was seriously targeting the Catholic Church. For example, Tito was furious with the Corpus Christi procession in Split (Croatia) in June 1946, believing it was an act of opposition. The French consul in the town had also reached that conclusion and reported to Paris that the procession had been directed against the government’s current religious policy. Shortly afterwards, the government retaliated by disrupting the procession for the Lady of Bistrica north of Zagreb. The list of similar incidents was a long one.66 But the two Irishmen had correctly reported that they were not convinced that there was religious freedom in Yugoslavia. As seen, Fr O’Connor had openly stated to the Nenagh Guardian and the Irish Press that the Yugoslavs were out to convey the impression that there was such freedom. According to Cremin: ‘Everywhere they went they were treated with the greatest kindness and were very much fêted. Father O’Connor wore his clerical garb throughout but was not the object of any unpleasant incidents on that account’.67 64 65 66 67

Cabanes, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918–1924, 285. Shephard, The Long Road, 255–6. Palmer, The Communists and the Roman Catholic Church in Yugoslavia, 1941–1946 (Ph.D), 270–1 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, note by Cremin erroneously dated 6 January 1946, instead of 1947.

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There was an explanation for this great consideration granted to a foreign Catholic priest and the almost royal welcome he and Hourihane got. Just before both men’s arrival, the Stepinac trial had ended on 11 October 1946, condemning the archbishop, and unleashing a storm of indignation and protest in the western countries. Tito’s government urgently needed to show a better face, even more since Yugoslavia needed all the western supplies it could get for reconstruction and taking care of the people. O’Connor and Hourihane were aware of this and had been discreetly told by certain Yugoslavs that the situation was not satisfactory. They noted in their report: Throughout our visit to Belgrade we were treated most hospitably and there were repeated speeches in which grateful references were made to Ireland and the gift she had made to starving Europe . . . The food we received at our hotel was excellent, but our guides frankly told us that this was a Government hotel reserved for foreigners, and that such food would not be obtainable in the ordinary restaurants.68

Yugoslav officials had made sure to put up a political welcoming show for O’Connor and Hourihane after the Stepinac trial. But the two Irishmen did not allow themselves to be duped. Unlike what Walshe had written, they were not that ‘innocent’. Even the Irish government knew this since it had filed the Irish Press’s article containing O’Connor’s interview before both men handed in their official report.69 It seems fair to say that they also got an objective enough image on the supply situation in Yugoslavia, but that image did not satisfy certain circles. In any case, a Jesuit named John Murray set the Irish Catholic record straight in a vitriolic article published in Studies in 1953 by describing Tito as being a ‘tyrant’, ‘dictator’, ‘communist’, and ‘militant atheist, who has pursued and is still pursuing a policy of persecution of religion and, to a particular degree, of the Catholic Church in Yugoslavia’.70 This was the kind of language and tone that had been expected from O’Connor and Hourihane. On 23 April 1947, Dr Olga Milošević of the YRC sent Éamon de Valera a letter, expressing the YRC’s gratitude. It was addressed to the Taoiseach personally 68 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4, ‘Report from European tour from Rev. T. J. O’Connor Adm. [and] Dr. J. D. Hourihane’, 9 January 1947. 69 NAI, DT, T6, Private Office Files, TAOIS, 97/9/700, ‘Red Cross relief delegates’ report’, Irish Press, 23 December 1946. 70 John Murray S.J., ‘Tito and the Catholic Church’, Studies; An Irish Quarterly Review, vol. 42, no. 165 (March 1953), 23.

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and had not transited through Geneva. She had included eight photographs and over 100 letters of thanks from ordinary people. Boland wrote on top of the letter: ‘We shd. [should], of course, send an official acknowledgment’. It sounded as if Boland had but little choice in the matter. One of these letters had been sent by the local Red Cross committee of Pušina, a village in Croatia, which explained that twenty-four people had received 250 grams of Irish sugar each. It was signed off with the delegates’ names and the slogan ‘Death to Fascism. Freedom to the People’.71 A new Yugoslavia was being born. Included was also a list of those who had received the sugar: Table 14.1. List of people who received Irish sugar in Pušina, Croatia72 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Christo Mulakovic Radomir Zukec Srdic Božica Radonic Tomo Zavra Milaković Blagoja Mihalović Luboja Radonic Milaković Krista Grobic Mitar Pavo Rakić Mara Milaković Koja Milaković

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

Vaso Vucić Stevo Radunković Saveta Rakić Milaković Danilo Milaković Mirhet Milaković Persa Kavkoška Vendol Vušinovi Stojan Glišo Nikolić Ivanović Milovan Popović Pavo Savo Bolić

No cattle for Tito In June 1947, news reached the DEA that a Yugoslav representative would come to Dublin to discuss the sending of cattle.73 Cremin was not sure if that offer of 2,000 head of cattle, which was part of the 1946 relief scheme, still stood.74 After further inquiries, he found out that cattle, or its equivalent in meat, had already been shipped to several countries. One condition had been that arrangements for shipment ‘would require to be made between 1st July and 31st December 1946’.

71 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, Milosevic to de Valera, 23 April 1947, including Red Cross committee of Pušina to ‘Irish Government of the Red Cross, Ireland’, 12 February 1947 & list of names, 12 February 1947. 72 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, Milosevic to de Valera, 23 April 1947, including Red Cross committee of Pušina to ‘Irish Government of the Red Cross, Ireland’, 12 February 1947 & list of names, 12 February 1947. The author is most grateful to Mr Valeriy Rekechynskyy (Limerick) for the translation. 73 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, note by McCauley to Secretary (Boland), 13 June 1947. 74 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, note by Cremin for McCauley, 2 June 1947.

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The problem with Yugoslavia was that its embassy in London had told the DEA that it wanted to defer the shipment until March 1947, but the Irish had warned that the animals would not be available then (lean season) and that the next opportunity would be in June. There was, therefore, no firm commitment to make last year’s offer good this year. But Cremin reasoned that if the offer was still open to Czechoslovakia and the American-Occupied Zone of Germany this year, then there was a case for Yugoslavia although it was not certain if supplies should be sent to that country considering the strong criticism Irish aid there had generated at home. The cattle shipment was an offer from the Irish government to other governments on a bilateral basis, not through the Red Cross. Minister for Agriculture Patrick Smith had no objection to it despite criticism published in the press.75 McCauley shared his point of view.76 Yet, on 29 August, John W. Dulanty, the Irish high commissioner in London, was informed that ‘in view of developments in Yugoslavia over the past 10 months and of the criticism to which the despatch of further relief supplies to Yugoslavia was understandably giving rise, it had been decided not to send further supplies to that country for the time being at any rate’. Dulanty got involved since it was the Yugoslav embassy in London that had corresponded with Dublin on the cattle issue.77 On 26 November, the Interdepartmental Relief Committee met and considered the question. De Valera was personally opposed to it because of the political developments in Yugoslavia and public opinion. Moreover, the minister for agriculture had told the Taoiseach that ‘in view of the existing commercial demand for cattle, he would prefer if no further shipment of cattle were made under the 1946 programme’. Another reason that could be invoked for refusing was that the offer stipulated that shipments should be made before 31 December 1946. A ‘definite, final decision’ should be taken, the committee concluded.78 It took some time to take that final decision, though. On 15 December 1947, Boland wrote with determination: ‘It would be difficult if not impossible to justify a gift shipment of 2,000 cattle to public opinion here in present times. A gift which occasioned controversy here would be worse than no gift at all. I am afraid we must give up the idea of sending cattle to Yugoslavia in present times.’79 Boland had become the driving force behind terminating Irish relief in communist-dominated Europe. His advice was 75 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, note by Cremin for McCauley, 11 June 1947. 76 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, note by McCauley for Secretary (Boland), 13 June 1947. 77 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, note entitled ‘Government relief supplies to Yugoslavia, 1946–47’, 4 February 1953. 78 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4B, meeting of the Interdepartmental Relief Committee, 26 November 1947. 79 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, note by Boland, 15 December 1947.

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eventually taken.80 De Valera was not going to upset the people even more since a general election might be on the cards soon (it would take place in February 1948 and he would lose it). In the end, Tito had lost his generous Irish supplier, but many Yugoslavs got a taste of Ireland. A soccer match between Ireland and Yugoslavia was due to take place in Dublin in 1952. Unlike the match against West Germany in 1951, this one generated controversy. The Football Association of Ireland (FAI) phoned Archbishop McQuaid to seek his views on the event. He replied that he was not particularly interested in soccer but added that if the FAI could prevent it, it should do so discreetly. The match was never played. But in 1955, it was the same story again. This time, though, McQuaid firmly demanded the cancellation of the match to show solidarity with Stepinac and disapproval of Tito’s regime. It quickly became what the French call ‘une affaire d’ état’ (a state matter). The archbishop did everything to prevent it from taking place. The army band, which was to play the national anthems, pulled out. President Seán T. O’Kelly eventually chose not to attend when he was informed of McQuaid’s objection. It was the same with Tánaiste (deputy prime minister) William Norton, a Labour Party politician. Croatian exiles in Paris expressed their gratitude to McQuaid. But the match did go ahead, and 21,400 spectators went to the stadium despite the picket lines of the Legion of Mary. The Yugoslav ambassador in London found the whole thing rather hilarious, especially since Italian cardinals watched Italy play against communist countries. The Republic of Ireland was beaten 4-1.81 Yugoslavia was not West Germany and no friendly relations developed between the two countries in the postwar years despite all Ireland’s aid. The Cold War and Ireland’s strong Catholic identity made that impossible. Table 14.2. Don Irlandais in Yugoslavia82 1st Irish gift, January 1946–March 1946 Milky flour 1.5 tons Condensed milk 30 tons Sugar 365 tons Tights 2100 pairs Blankets 3350 Knitting wool 2.3 tons Gloves 2 bales

2nd Irish gift, 1946–March 1947 Foodstuffs 1279.106 tons Textiles 69.035 tons

80 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, note entitled ‘Government relief supplies to Yugoslavia, 1946–47’, 4 February 1953. 81 Cooney, John Charles McQuaid, 310–13. 82 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 179, 187.

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Concluding remarks Ireland’s experience of sending supplies to Yugoslavia had similarities with Hungary. The supplies found themselves on an ideological battleground in which religion was a main issue, although Stepinac was personally not involved in Irish relief operations unlike Mindszenty. But from the Irish government and people’s point of view, Stepinac was identical to Mindszenty’s case and they acted accordingly. Rumours of misappropriation or political manipulation of the Irish supplies were unfounded. It can actually be argued that it was the DEA which was guilty of a certain degree of manipulation when it showed its dissatisfaction with O’Connor and Hourihane’s report on Yugoslavia for the IRCS. IRCS chairman McNamara should never have altered the report to satisfy all parties concerned and especially the Vatican, thus highlighting once again the Irish government’s broad ideological and religious allegiance to the Holy See. The nature of the relations between the Irish government and the IRCS, a voluntary organisation, was also revealed on the occasion as the IRCS was supposed to be politically and religiously impartial in accordance with the statutes of the International Red Cross. But as seen in chapter eight, in October 1946, McNamara’s predecessor, John P. Shanley, had assured Cardinal D’Alton that supplies from the IRCS for Germany would mostly go to Catholic Caritas. There was a continuity in the triangular relationship between the government, Church, and IRCS with the Vatican in the background. The IRCS, a young organisation it was true, did not display a sufficient spirit of independence on certain occasions. However, not everything concerning aid was above criticism in Yugoslavia. Stalin did not actively support the communists in the Greek Civil War, but Tito did and provided many supplies between the second half of 1946 and the second half of 1948. Providing supplies to the Greek comrades was problematic and voluntary local aid committees were set up to collect clothes, food, and money in 1948. Fundraising events were organised, like concerts. By May, ‘1107 tons of corn, 23,383 tons of corn on the cob, 37,532 tons of wheat, 85 tons of beans, 7 tons of lard and 8 tons of bacon’ had been collected for Greece, as were other items like footwear and clothes. This aid was remarkable at a time of hardship in the country, and the figures revealed that some supplies like meat but also clothes and shoes were obviously in short supply. Moreover, farming products were forcibly collected by the authorities, and farmers were being oppressed. After the break between Tito and Stalin in 1948, Yugoslavia gradually ended its support as the Greek communists sided with Moscow.83 This 83 Milan Ristović, ‘“Helping the Good Greeks”: Yugoslav Humanitarian Aid to the Greek Leftist Movement 1945–49’, in Clogg, ed., Bearing Gifts to Greeks, 212, 219–20, 224–5.

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Yugoslav support was rather ironic and defied the purposes of humanitarianism: a battle-scarred Yugoslavia was receiving foreign supplies, including from Ireland, to feed its population while at the same time sending foodstuffs abroad for political reasons. Stalin imposed an economic blockade on Yugoslavia, but the Truman administration concocted a policy to support Tito as he could become an ally against the Soviet Union.84 So Washington knew how to adapt its rules and foreign policy in the rapidly evolving international situation. During his interview for the Irish Press in December 1946, Fr O’Connor declared that he had seen Irish blankets in sanatoria and that the United States, UNRRA, and others had distributed ‘huge quantities of dried milk’ but that the milk was ‘unpalatable until the Irish sugar was mixed with it’.85 His remark goes a long way to stress that Ireland was part of a wider collective effort to save Europe and that it acquitted itself well. He also told a moving story of a blind Yugoslav child who knew where Ireland was on a braille map and mentioned it in his report too. It is on expressions of gratitude for Irish aid—and there were many—that the last chapter will focus.

84 Glenny, The Balkans 1804–1999, 536. 85 NAI, DT, T6, 97/9/700, ‘Red Cross Relief Delegates’ Report’, Irish Press, 23 December 1946.

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Chapter Fifteen

Thanking Ireland

On 24 September 1947, Éamon de Valera was in Paris to attend a ceremony to thank Ireland for what it had done for France. It took place in the Grand Hôtel where the Taoiseach stayed. The Entr’Aide française (French welfare organisation) had organised a reception and invited groups of people, notably the very young and the elderly, who had benefitted from Irish aid. A ‘visibly moved’ Taoiseach declared: ‘Being a small country, we could not expect that what we could give would do much to relieve the general want following the war. We felt, however, that we could do something and are pleased to know that what we did was more valuable than we could have hoped’. Gifts were presented to him. They were books of artistic value. In one of them, a message had been written: ‘The young girls of France who have eaten so much of the good meals from Ireland have asked me to thank you very much. We are very poor and we want many things. We wanted to buy for you this book about the Angels and we wish that they will protect you always as well as small Irish children. We give you a big hug.’ The Irish Press reported that many had thanked Ireland: Asked if other evidence of appreciation of Irish gifts to other European countries had been forthcoming beyond those already announced, [the Taoiseach] said hundreds of thousands of letters of appreciation had come from individuals and groups from the various countries which had received Irish aid. Included in them, he added, were many beautifully signed albums and if a chronicler had an opportunity of examining them all, he felt that a very interesting chapter might be added to the history of Europe in those terrible years. Some of the letters were most moving and told how individuals had suffered and what a terrible thing war was.1 1 ‘French war victims thank Eire’, Irish Independent, 25 September 1947 (INA) & ‘France says “Thanks”’, Irish Press, 25 September 1947 (INA).

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De Valera had not exaggerated when he spoke of ‘hundreds of thousands of letters of appreciation’. Sending such letters was not a new phenomenon as after the First World War many refugees, especially children, had written to Herbert Hoover and the American Relief Administration (ARA) to thank them for what they had received. It sometimes happened that children from Central and Eastern Europe adorned used flour sacks with American flags. Photographs of classes were also sent, and children were being creative in their expressions of gratitude. There are hundreds of letters preserved in the Hoover Institution Archives in Stanford University.2 But today in the National Archives of Ireland in Dublin there is no trace of ‘hundreds of thousands’ of letters. There are certainly several hundreds of them, which express gratitude and sometimes mention the dreadful ordeals the authors had gone through. They therefore constitute precious primary sources for the historian. Why this difference between de Valera’s figure and what can be found in the National Archives? A possible explanation might be that the contents of many dusty old boxes have yet to be emptied and properly recorded. But a more convincing explanation would be that huge numbers of letters were eventually destroyed owing to a lack of storage facilities. Whatever the answer there cannot be any doubt that de Valera had not exaggerated. The following facts must simply be considered. On 23 March 1946, Michael MacWhite, the Irish minister in Italy, wrote to the Department of External Affairs (DEA): ‘I have also enclosed a couple of hundred letters which were addressed to the Legation expressing the gratitude of the beneficiaries to the “Noble Irish Nation”’.3 On 17 May, the Mayor of Schramberg in Baden-Württemberg in southern Germany wrote to the Irish Red Cross Society (IRCS) through the offices of the ICRC in Geneva that he was deeply grateful for the Irish food and that he had asked the schools of the town to write letters of thanks. About 2,000 pupils wrote such letters and he had included some of them and also drawings for the IRCS.4 On 23 April 1947, Dr Olga Milošević of the Yugoslav Red Cross (YRC) sent to de Valera a letter with an additional 110 letters of thanks and eight photographs.5 On 11 June, MacWhite informed Secretary for External Affairs Frederick Boland that ‘I am sending you by this [diplomatic] bag some thousands of letters received from various charitable institutions in Italy thanking the Government and people of Ireland for the sugar etc., of which they have been the recipients . . . Other bundles of similar letters will be forwarded by the next bag.6 It is clear that at this rate, hundreds of thousands 2 3 4 5 6

Cabanes, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918–1924, 16–17, 285. NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/4, MacWhite to Boland, 23 March 1946. ACICR, O CMS C-018, Mayor of Schamberg to IRCS through ICRC, 17 May 1946. NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/8, Milosevic to de Valera, 23 April 1947. NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/4, MacWhite to Boland, 11 June 1947.

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of letters had indeed been sent to Dublin directly or through Geneva. It seems befitting to end this book with a final chapter about thanking Ireland and exploring the generalities and themes that emerge from these letters.

Why send letters of thanks? The first question that must be asked is why letters of thanks were written, either by officials or ordinary citizens. Besides an obvious and sincere urge to thank the donors, writing letters and drawing pictures were ways of establishing that the supplies had reached those for whom they were intended. This was a standard procedure followed by the International Red Cross in conjunction with the local authorities. When possible, photographs were taken.7 Nearly 400 photographs and drawings were found in different archives for this book, but from examining the available evidence it is clear that many have gone missing. As far as can be ascertained, the local authorities were generally very willing to cooperate, not only because it was required, but also because cooperation meant increasing chances to get more supplies. The Mayor of Schramberg wrote to the IRCS: ‘I have instructed teachers to ask their pupils to write something on the food they received and I put forward to send you the best works. Moreover, the teachers have been asked to pay particular attention to your country during geography lessons.’8 This explains why children made drawings of classroom scenes in which teachers were telling about Ireland with a map of the island on the blackboard. The Bavarian Red Cross instructed a primary school principal in Grabbenstätt am Chiemsee: ‘I beg the School Manager to get the children to write a letter of thanks and to forward it here. Perhaps the thanks could be expressed in verse, or a gifted pupil might make a little drawing on the note-paper. The donors, in any case, attach importance to an acknowledgement as proof that the gift has been properly distributed.’9 In Rome, MacWhite remarked on the thousands of letters he received: ‘Should it be possible to check them it would, I think, be found that ENDSI [National Agency for the Distribution of Relief in Italy] has pretty well accounted for the goods that have been donated to Italy and confided to their charge for distribution’.10 It was no different on the other side of the Iron Curtain. In November 1947 at a 7 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 142. 8 ACICR, O CMS C-020, Mayor of Schramberg, Baden-Württemberg, to IRCS through ICRC, 17 April 1946. 9 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/18, Bavarian Red Cross to school manager, Grabbenstätt am Chiemsee, 18 December 1946. 10 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/4, MacWhite to Boland, 11 June 1947.

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time when East-West relations were seriously deteriorating, the Commission for the Distribution of Foreign Gifts in the Soviet-Occupied Zone of Germany issued very precise guidelines. Under heading ‘6) Letters of thanks’ it was explained that everyone and every organisation involved in distributing or receiving supplies, should send letters to the donors: ‘These letters of thanks should express the gratitude and joy for the received donations and drafted in a dignified form’.11 The numerous letters sent from the Soviet-Occupied Zone in Germany and from other countries like Hungary and Yugoslavia amply testify that this was done. Of course, not only Ireland was thanked. Many German children sent letters and beautiful drawings to Switzerland too, for example.12

Letters from officials, clergy, and political parties Generally, those who sent letters can be divided into two broad categories: first, national politicians, religious leaders, and officials and second, the recipients or ordinary people. To begin with the first category, certain recurrent themes emerge in their writings. Some simply wanted to express their gratitude and stress the noble and generous spirit of the Irish people and their government. In November 1945, Prince Umberto of Italy, a country soon to become a republic, wanted ‘to convey to Mr de Valera his personal regards and to assure him that the sacrifices the Irish people are now making to alleviate the sufferings of war victims would not be readily forgotten’.13 In January 1946, Robert Prigent, the French minister for social services, wrote to the Taoiseach that he had ‘the honour to express to you my warmest thanks for the generous gift from the Irish Government to those of our people who have suffered most from the hardships of war’.14 From Vienna, Cardinal Innitzer wrote to the Taoiseach that he could have ‘no idea how great was the joy and gratitude of all the recipients’ when they were given Irish butter. He took the opportunity to ask for more gifts.15 Wilhelm Schöner, the Deputy-Mayor of Schwarzensee in Austria, expressed his gratitude for the ‘unexpected surprise for our needy children’ and added that without the help of the Allies, the town would not be able to cope with the great distress.16 Still from Austria, Chancellor Leopold Figl described the Irish gift for Vienna as 11 SAC, B30409, Kreistag-Kreisrat Plauen, Nr 626, Guidelines for the acceptance and distribution of foreign donations, by the Commission for the Distribution of Foreign Gifts in the Soviet-Occupied Zone, 15 November 1947. 12 Haunfelder, Schweizer Hilfe für Deutschland 1917–1933 und 1944–1957, 148–50. 13 NAI, DT, S13852, MacWhite to Walshe, 10 November 1945. 14 NAI, DT, S13852, Prigent to de Valera, 5 January 1946. 15 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/5, Innitzer to de Valera, 15 January 1946. 16 ACICR, O CMS C-019, Schöner to JRC, Vienna, 26 January 1946.

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‘substantial’ and ‘generous’ and assured that ‘this charitable gesture … will never be forgotten by my country so sorely tried by the grim aftermath of the war’.17 Another illustrious Austrian who contacted the Irish government was the expressionist painter Oscar Kokoschka. His youth in Vienna had not been easy as his family lacked money and kept moving from one apartment to the other. The Nazis branded his art as degenerate. Before the war broke out, he left Austria and eventually settled in London where his art was exhibited and promoted by Victor Waddington, active in the art scene in London and Dublin and who did much for the Irish painter Jack B. Yeats. Kokoschka met John W. Dulanty, the Irish high commissioner, who told him what relief work Ireland had done for Austria. Kokoschka was much impressed, and probably remembering his youth in Vienna, he implored Dulanty to do anything possible for the city’s young people. He subsequently asked Waddington to ‘deliver to de Valera this inscribed poster which he did as a plea for aid for the Viennese children’. Waddington sent it to the Taoiseach, adding that ‘it may interest you to know that it is Kokoschka’s considered opinion … that our Jack B. Yeats is the painter of supreme importance in the world today’. De Valera asked Waddington to convey to him that he ‘can rest assured that the needs of Vienna have been in our minds in allocating supplies to relieve distress abroad’. He added, however, that Ireland was a ‘small country’ and that ‘the best we can do would only be a drop in the ocean of need’. Nonetheless, he provided a detailed list of what supplies and what quantities had been sent to Austria so far.18 From neighbouring Hungary, József Kővágó, the Mayor of Budapest, wrote to de Valera on behalf of the ‘sorely-tried and suffering population’ to express his ‘most sincere gratitude for the relief which the Government of Eire was gracious enough to send to the municipality of Budapest through the Joint Commission of the International Red Cross, Geneva’.19 In February 1947, Qamil Çela, the chairman of the Albanian Red Cross (ARC), sent a letter to the IRCS, stating that ‘we are indeed deeply grateful for your generous gifts with which you come to aid the distressed population of our much-harassed country …’20 Cardinal de Jong of Utrecht in the Netherlands wrote of the Irish people’s ‘exemplary spirit of generosity and charity’ in a letter to Archbishop McQuaid.21 Lowell W. Rooks, the director-general of UNRRA, wrote to Seán T. O’Kelly, President of Ireland, that ‘Eire 17 NAI, DT, S13852, Figl to de Valera, 8 February 1946. 18 NAI, DT, T6, Private Office files, TAOIS, 97/9/736, Waddington to de Valera, 11 January 1947 & de Valera to Waddington, 14 February 1947. 19 ACICR, O CMS C-025, Kővágó to de Valera, 14 March 1946. 20 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/8, Çela to IRCS, 12 February 1947. 21 DDA, XV/E/31/1-7, de Jong to McQuaid, 2 August 1947.

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has not only earned the gratitude of the hungry but lent encouragement to all who have shared the belief that problems international in scope must be met by international effort’.22 In February 1948, Cardinal Konrad von Preysing of Berlin, who had courageously opposed the Nazi regime, wrote to de Valera: ‘The generous Irish people, under your guidance, has once again sent a magnificent Gift to the inhabitants of the German East Zone. Highly valued foodstuffs and sorely needed clothing have been sent to us.’23 The same month, de Valera lost the general election and was replaced by John A. Costello. In December 1950, Dr Jung from the Caritas branch in Dresden in the Soviet-Occupied Zone wrote that ‘under the given circumstances it is difficult to translate into words what the Caritas branch of the diocese of Meissen owes to the Irish Free State’.24 It was aptly expressed despite the error in Ireland’s political appellation since it was now officially a republic. What is also noteworthy in Germany was that certain letters transcended political allegiances. In Schwenningen in the French-Occupied Zone, the Catholic community, Protestant community, Social-Democrats, Democrats, and communists all sent letters to the Irish government in appreciation of the 10,000 kilos of butter and 10,000 kilos of bacon their town received.25 It was the same phenomenon in the SovietOccupied Zone. From Marienberg in the Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains) on the border with Czechoslovakia, a beautifully coloured letter with drawings was sent to the Irish people in thanks for the supplies that were used to feed 12,131 children for a period of seventy-eight days. The letter bore the stamps of the LDP (Liberals), SED (Communists), CDUD (Christian-Democrats), the Volkssolidarität (People’s Solidarity), and the Evangelical Church.26 It was sent to the ICRC in Geneva where it visibly remained. That was also the case with other letters and drawings that were not forwarded to Dublin for unknown reasons. However, with hindsight this turned out to be a blessing in disguise for the historian as the ‘hundreds of thousands of letters’ of which de Valera had spoken met an unknown fate.27 There were also general expressions of thanks of a more formal and administrative nature. On 6 May 1948, the Irish Press reported that the Pope had bestowed on Minister for Industry and Commerce Seán Lemass the Grand Cross of the Order 22 23 24 25

NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/7, undated but probably 1947, Rooks to O’Kelly. NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2A, von Preysing to de Valera, 9 February 1948. NAI, DT, S13852, Jung to ‘President of State’, 18 December 1950. NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2, Protestant community to Irish government, February 1946; local Communist party to Irish government, February 1946; Democrats to Irish government, February 1946; Social-Democrats to Irish government, February 1946 & Catholic community to Irish government, 2 March 1946. 26 ACICR, D EUR DE1 1-106, letter from Marienberg to the Irish people, sent to the ICRC, 10 July 1948. 27 During his research in the archive of the IRCS in Dublin, which contains very little material regarding the period under consideration, the author was told that a fire might have destroyed most of the documents.

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of St Gregory the Great in recognition of his work in favour of relief. Secretary for Industry and Commerce John Leydon and Secretary for External Affairs Frederick H. Boland were also to be knighted. The ceremony would take place in the nunciature in Dublin.28 On 21 May 1951, the bulletin of the DEA announced that the RheinischWestphalian Technical University of Aachen in West Germany had decided to offer a scholarship to an Irish student. In a letter to President O’Kelly, the rector wrote: ‘This offer of a scholarship is a token of our appreciation and gratitude for the kindness of the Irish people in sending a large gift of bacon for distribution among undernourished students and those suspected of tuberculosis during the difficult pre-currency-reform days’ (before the Deutsche Mark was introduced in June 1948).29 On 1 October 1955, Theodor Heuss, the Federal President of West Germany, wrote to President O’Kelly that ‘the most generous gifts sent by the Irish People to Germany have not been forgotten’. He wanted to offer a statue made by Josef Wackerle called ‘The Three Fates’ as a sign of gratitude.30 Today, it can be seen in St Stephen’s Green in central Dublin. However, the statue tends to be associated in people’s minds with the arrival of about 500 German children in Ireland after 1945, not with Ireland’s postwar aid for Germany. In March 1997, an additional plaque was fixed to it with a text by German Federal President Roman Herzog. It reads: ‘With gratitude for the help given to German children by the Irish people after World War II’. But apart from general expression of thanks, more particular themes emerged in some of the letters sent to Dublin by continental national or religious leaders, something which was also apparent in those sent by ordinary citizens. Wolfgang Hoffmann, the Mayor of Freiburg in the French-Occupied Zone of Germany, wrote to the IRCS that ‘everywhere people speak with the highest appreciation and sympathy of your magnanimous donation, ideal for renewing hope which seemed buried in the rubble’.31 This feeling of hope that Irish supplies brought with them was shared by Bishop Michael Memelauer of St. Pölten in the SovietOccupied Zone of Austria who explained to de Valera that ‘your aid has not only helped to still hunger but it also uplifted souls as we feel and now know that there are good people there who reached out a helping hand’.32 Despite their being on the wrong side during the war, the German and Austrian peoples had not been abandoned to their fate. Another Austrian bishop who was grateful was Josef Fliesser of Linz in the American-Occupied Zone. In a letter written in English, 28 29 30 31 32

‘Papal honour for Mr Lemass’, Irish Press, 6 May 1948 (INA). NAI, DT, S13852, extract of Ireland, Weekly Bulletin of the Department of External Affairs, 21 May 1951, no 85. NAI, DT, S13852, Office of the Secretary to the President, PRES 1/P 5026, Heuss to O’Kelly, 1 October 1955. SAF, C5/2516, Hoffmann to ‘Red Cross of the Irish Free State, 22 January 1946. NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/5, Memelauer to de Valera, 14 March 1946.

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Fliesser thanked Archbishop McQuaid for the 30 tons of canned meat Ireland had sent to his diocese. He explained that ‘this gift was distributed by the diocesan charity of the bishop to 50 big parishes and towns: Linz, Wels, Steyr, Gmunden, Bad Ischl, Ebensee and many other poor places of our diocese’ and that the provenance of the meat was clearly indicated. Fliesser wrote that ‘above all, old single poor people and families with many children were donated [sic], whose fathers and husbands have perished at [sic] the war or are still prisoners’.33 He had mentioned Ebensee. This small town was the location of a concentration camp where inmates had been worked to death, digging tunnels in the mountains to hide the building of future intercontinental rockets. Food had been at starvation level. Salomon J. Salat, a Jewish inmate who was very lucky to survive, saw Soviet prisoners eating ‘coagulated horse blood mixed with horse manure’. He commented that ‘it showed to what lengths starvation could drive certain people’.34 It is doubtful that Fliesser knew the exact details of what went on in Ebensee concentration camp. It is ignored, however, if he denounced its existence. As to the town inhabitants, they too might not have known the exact details but the camp was simply too closely located to Ebensee for them to have known nothing.35 In any case, they were now having Irish canned meat for lunch not too bothered by some uncomfortable truths, like elsewhere in Europe. Solidarity between the nations was a strongly recurring theme. The Mayor of Düsseldorf wrote: ‘Your act of charity encourages us to hope that the suffering German people will soon be able to emerge from their loneliness and isolation and become once again a member of the great family of nations’.36 After a second donation to his city, the Mayor of Freiburg im Breisgau stated in a letter to the IRCS: ‘All friends of peace see in these deeds cornerstones for the reconciliation between peoples; they do not give up the hope that the well-intentioned will succeed to master the difficulties’.37 The Health Office of the City Council of Leipzig in the Soviet-Occupied Zone saw in the Irish gift a spirit of reconciliation, an expression of solidarity between the peoples, one that obliged Germans even more to achieve ‘a real and peaceful democracy’.38 It had just anticipated West Germany’s strong 33 DDA, XV/E/25/1-7, Fliesser to McQuaid, 10 April 1948. 34 Witness account by Salomon J. Salat, first published in Betrifft Widerstand, nr 66, February 2004, 23–6, quoted in Zeitgeschichte Museum Ebensee, in http://www.memorial-ebensee.at/de/index. php?view=article&catid=1%3Akz-ebensee&id=27%3Azeitzeugenbericht-die-letzten-wochen-im-lagerebensee-englisch&option=com_content&Itemid=15 (accessed on 12 March 2015). 35 The author visited the town and the site of the former concentration camp in the summer of 2013. 36 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22, unknown, probably DEA, to J.A. Cassidy, Department of Industry and Commerce, 26 June 1946, containing extracts of letters sent to Irish authorities. 37 SAF, C5/2516, Mayor of Freiburg to IRCS, 20 May 1947. 38 SAL, StVuR 7574, Health Office to Volkssolidarität, District Committee Leipzig, for the Commission for

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desire for European unity and integration, but Leipzig would not be part of that. The Volkssolidarität from Weimar in Thuringia sent a letter to de Valera: ‘Full of gratitude, we are happy to see that the Irish people, despite all the obstacles that separated the German people from the community of nations during the last few years, still feel very friendly towards our children’.39 The Volkssolidarität from Mark Brandenburg, an area around Berlin, agreed and commented on the gifts received from Ireland, South Africa, and Switzerland that they did not ‘only have a material value for us, but beyond that they make us happily feel that our reconstruction for a peaceful and democratic Germany finds support also abroad’.40 Christian solidarity was another important theme, especially in letters from Germany. This corresponded, as previously shown, with a renaissance of Christianity in the defeated and destroyed Reich after the bleak years of Nazism. A spiritual and moral vacuum needed to be filled and Catholicism and Protestantism, pretty much eclipsed between 1933 and 1945, were now making a much needed comeback. The Mayor of München-Gladbach (Mönchengladbach) wrote that ‘in a time of darkest distress we consider this proof of Christian charity to be a luminous sign of the world … also thinking of Germany’s distress [for] which we may only expect help, but dare not … claim or ask’.41 A Protestant clergyman from Trier in the FrenchOccupied Zone profoundly thanked Ireland for the 16 tons of food the city had received. Not only would 50,000 inhabitants be fed, he wrote, ‘but what is far more crucial is that they will be strengthened spiritually in their dire need’. To him, the gift was ‘evidence of Christian solidarity connecting the nations’.42 In Munich, Cardinal Michael von Faulhaber wrote about ‘this renewed evidence of the active sympathy in religion and outlook which the people of Ireland have with us’.43 In December 1950, he extended ‘the most heartfelt thanks to the Irish Government and the Irish Catholics for the signs of brotherhood which again reached us over the sea in the year 1950’.44 In the Vatican, Pius XII informed Ambassador Joseph Walshe through Mgr Montini: ‘He would have me assure Your Excellency that such continued aid has been a factor of no small importance in the social and physical rehabilitation of the peoples of the war-shattered countries of Europe’.45 the Distribution of Foreign Donations within the Soviet-Occupied Zone, 13 May 1947. 39 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2, Volkssolidarität Thüringen-Aktion, Weimar, to de Valera, ‘President of the Irish People’, 3 August 1946. 40 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/7, Märkische Volkssolidarität to ICRC, 14 August 1946. 41 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2, Mayor of München-Gladbach to de Valera, 3 April 1946. 42 ACICR, O CMS C-020, Protestant clergyman (name unreadable) to unknown, 2 April 1946. 43 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/6, N.S. O’Sullivan, Department of the Taoiseach, to Boland, DEA, 4 January 1949, containing Faulhaber’s letter to the President of Ireland. 44 NAI, DT, S13852, Faulhaber to Irish government, 15 December 1950. 45 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/4, Montini to Walshe, 14 July 1949.

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Letters from ordinary people Those who had tasted Irish sugar, worn Irish woollen socks or been treated against tuberculosis with Irish medicines naturally felt grateful and took up their pens to express their feelings, being also strongly encouraged to do so by the local authorities. The Samson-Verbiest family in the Netherlands wrote in English: ‘Many, many thanks for all your gifts to our country. We are very pleased with it that you are doing so much for us. I am a member of a large family. We are with [sic] eleven and living in Nijmegen. Lucky our house is safed [sic] for shelling and bombs. With the food it is getting better’.46 Also sending a letter from Nijmegen was Tonny Jansen who explained that his house had been ‘very badly damaged’ and his family had had to hide from the Gestapo. He added: ‘The Dutch cows are still in Germany and maybe we’ll get back some of them. But we don’t get fresh meat, and therefore we are always glad when the “Green Eyre” [sic, Éire] sends some food’.47 Letters from the Nijmegen area were not surprising. In February 1944, the Allies had bombed the city centre, by mistake it would seem, and in September intense fighting developed around the bridge during Operation Market Garden. Much had been levelled. From Austria, the Workers’ Office in Salzburg thanked the Irish government for the frozen meat it received for 2,040 factory workers who got 750 grams each.48 Hildegard Ociepka, who managed a sanatorium in Vienna, wrote to Geneva ‘on behalf of our old poor people to say that God may bless you for the food supplies allocated to us yesterday. It is for us really a very big help as we get very few supplies, being considered average consumers’.49 Still in Vienna, Dr Franz Sobek of the KZ Verband (Victims of Concentration Camp Association) thanked the Irish authorities for the 200 pairs of socks, 2,800 cigarettes, six boxes of tobacco, and five packs of chewing tobacco that had been provided to former inmates.50 From France, the elderly from the ‘Old People’s Home of Orange’ in the south of the country sent to Dublin a beautifully written and decorated letter in the form of a poem praising ‘these brown packets with white labels and the inscription “gift of Ireland”, that revived our hearts and sweetened our drinks’. People from the Tarn area, also in the south, sent a beautifully coloured map of their region with the inscription that ‘the Tarn had received over 4,000 kilograms [of sugar] as its share’. Robert Poyetton, a small boy, wrote in French: ‘Dear Irish, I thank you for the 250 gr. of 46 47 48 49 50

NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/5, Samson-Verbiest to IRCS and the Irish people, 16 December 1945. NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/5, Jansen to IRCS, 20 January 1946. NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/5, Workers’ Office to Irish government, 22 March 1946. ACICR, O CMS C-018, Ociepka to International Red Cross, Geneva, 12 April 1946. ACICR, O CMS C-021, Sobek to ICRC, Vienna, 2 March 1946.

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sugar that you sent me through Entr’Aide française. I am not a good writer but am still a good drawer and will make a small drawing that will please you. Yours sincerely’. He signed off with a drawing of a peaceful landscape consisting of a house surrounded by what seems to be apple trees. It was indicative of his mood and what he longed for after the long war years. There was also a photograph of a smiling boy lying on a bed and receiving a packet of Irish sugar.51 Was it Poyetton? Children in the Biarritzenia sanatorium in Briscous wrote to their ‘dear fellow pupils’ in Ireland to thank them for, probably, the sugar they received: ‘Despite the distance that separates us, we will never forget your magnanimous gesture’.52 Elderly women in a hospice called Camp de Prats in nearby Bayonne received Irish supplies from the Entr’Aide française. ‘On behalf of all my companions’ Félicie Moleton wrote a simple and yet moving letter to thank Entr’Aide française for the ‘present’. ‘I shouted long live Ireland’ and ‘if we behaved, we would have another surprise …’. ‘We will pray for you for God to protect and bless you’ she continued. She signed off with her name, two other names ‘and all the other women, these oldies who cannot write’.53 The director for North African Affairs in Paris informed the chairman of Entr’Aide française that the gift of Irish sugar was much appreciated. The sugar was used to make compotes and ‘this food will improve the usual diet of the North Africans who are very fond of sweet dishes’.54 Another boy who wished to thank Ireland and de Valera personally was Pietro De Rocco from Florence in Italy. He wrote a striking letter, full of wit and pertinence, perhaps the most outstanding one of all the children’s letters that have survived, which shows the effects Irish sugar produced on him: Dear Mr President, When I received that little packet of sugar, I was astonished, first of all because it was sugar and then because it was a present—two things to which we are not at all accustomed. They explained to me that it was a present from Ireland for the children of Italy. So when I got home I got out my atlas to look at your country. I thought that that beautiful green island, free and independent, must be a sweet and happy country and I had a great longing to go there when it would be possible. And as I know that the head of it is a President who I imagine is a kind of a King only

51 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/1, these documents concerning France are undated. 52 CADN, Dublin, 207PO.1, no 129, Biarritzenia sanatorium to ‘Chers camarades d’Irlande’, 21 November 1945. 53 CADN, Dublin, 207PO.1, no 129, Félicie Moleton to ‘Messieurs’, November 1945. 54 CADN, Dublin, 207PO.1, no 129, Director for North African Affairs to Chairman of Entr’Aide française, 26 October 1945.

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more intelligent and more approachable, I thought I could write to him directly. So Mr President, you have had a beautiful idea and I thank you very much and I would have done so sooner only I was ill; indeed the sugar is long finished unfortunately. You must be a very nice man and I would like to know you, but also your wife because I suspect that she had something to do with sending the sugar. If you have any little boys greet them for me. I hope you will let me know if you get this letter because now that the post is functioning again I would like to send you a little present myself. Yours affectionately Pietro De Rocco Italian boy in Florence ... PS: How nice it would be if Italy were also an island; we would have less troubles.55

The letter just showed how important the distribution of foreign supplies was, especially for the children. It had the effect which Pius XII had described, namely that it contributed to the ‘social and physical rehabilitation of the peoples’. De Rocco had written this during the debate on maintaining or abolishing the monarchy in Italy and had probably been influenced by anti-royalist relatives (the Italians voted in favour of abolition in June 1946). His post-scriptum went a long way to prove that Ireland’s remote geographical location had been a blessing between 1939 and 1945. Across the Strait of Otranto, children in Albania expressed their gratitude too. Enver Hoxha and his followers had proclaimed the People’s Republic in 1946 and the same year the British and American missions pulled out of Tirana.56 In June 1947, Enver Dibra, a pupil of the primary school Luigj Gurakuqi in Shkodra, wrote that ‘when the schoolchildren of the New Albania did not have enough food because of the fascist occupation which ravaged our dear fatherland, you, fellow young people, had the generosity to send us food relief like sugar, milk etc. which arrived at the right time. We will not forget your gifts.’57 Some of the terminology the young Dibra used indicated that he was probably helped in writing it by the new rulers. The tenor of the letter that the pupils of the primary school K. Kristoforidhi in Tirana sent to the Junior Irish Red Cross was neutral by contrast: ‘We feel much obliged to thank the Irish youth for having taken care of us, 55 NAI, DT, S13852, De Rocco to de Valera, 30 March 1946. 56 Vickers, The Albanians, 166–9. 57 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/8, Dibra to IRCS youth, 7 June 1946.

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Albanian schoolchildren, in such a friendly manner, by sending us a good quantity of sugar. For this we are grateful’.58 In neighbouring Yugoslavia, the local Red Cross committee of Oštrice in Croatia wished to thank the IRCS ‘on behalf of its 235 regular members and 107 small children for the sugar which was sent as a present and distributed amongst these children’. Its letter included two photographs of the children which were taken on the day it was distributed.59 Very occasionally, the Irish authorities replied to ordinary people, but they could simply not answer hundreds of thousands of letters. A standard reply seems to have been: ‘He [de Valera] appreciated it very much and has asked me to convey his thanks.’60

Letters of thanks from Germany Letters came from all parts of Europe, but a great many came from Germany, be it from the western zones or the Soviet Zone. An explanation would be that as the utterly defeated nation, its inhabitants might not feel that they were in a position to demand food and other supplies from the Allies. Also, the horrors of the regime they had supported or not actively opposed had been exposed by the victors, inculcating in them a sense of guilt although, as seen, many of them believed that the Allies had paid them back in kind and consequently not all examined their consciences. It was the same phenomenon in Austria where many were not too self-critical and preferred to focus on the postwar hardship they had to face, later remembering those harsh moments during and after the war, not what had been done to Jews and other peoples, and retreating into what may be called I-didn’t-know stories.61 Moreover, the initial punitive and restrictive feeding policy adopted by the Allies told them that they could not expect too much and that the victorious powers did not particularly care about their fate. Therefore, when Germans received supplies from distant Ireland it told them that some did care, a comforting thought and one that made them think that it was worth hanging on despite the rampant misery in their destroyed and bleak environment. A young Manfred Thiem from Spremberg in Brandenburg (Soviet-Occupied Zone) wrote: ‘It is the duty of our generation to make sure that Germany won’t be a victim again of a criminal apostle like Hitler who brought tears and blood to 58 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/8, pupils of K. Kristoforidhi to IRCS youth, 11 June 1947. 59 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/3, local committee of Red Cross, Oštrice, to IRCS, 14 April 1946. 60 NAI, DT, S13852, Seamus Mac Ugo, private secretary of the Taoiseach, to Mr Rameijer, Utrecht, the Netherlands, 7 December 1945 & to Sister Rosa de St Joseph, Flers, France, 8 January 1946. 61 Ela Hornung, ‘The Myth of Penelope and Odysseus: An Austrian Married Couple Narrate Their Wartime and Post-war Experiences’, in Duchen and Bandhauer-Schöffmann, eds., When the War Was Over, 49–50.

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the world. We promise to become good democrats and to participate in the building of a peaceful world’.62 An equally young Roald Schreier described Hitler as a ‘criminal’ who ‘repressed good people’.63 Alois and Margarete Graba, expellees from Breslau in Silesia (now Wrocław in Poland), had ended up in Remels in East Friesland in the British-Occupied Zone. They explained to ‘the generous donors from Ireland’ that they were good Catholics, living ‘in a true Christian community’ until ‘unfortunately, a man came to lead Germany’s government, who had no interest in a healthy fatherland, but did not rest until all of Germany was totally destroyed’.64 Maria Freckmann from Freiburg (French-Occupied Zone) had good English and wrote that Ireland would hopefully never experience a war Germany just had, adding: ‘I and my family we were total enemies of Hitler and his regime, as true Catholics mostly are’.65 One major theme is the idea to get Germany out of its isolation and to praise solidarity between the nations. This was prevalent in letters from the SovietOccupied Zone and at first sight it could be argued that it was inspired by communist discourse but in fact it was also quite common in letters from the western zones as seen. The author Gerd Haines, later to become a leading member of the East German Kulturbund, an anti-Fascist mass organisation dealing with culture and whose aim was to revive Germany and work towards its re-acceptance in the community of nations, got a kilo of sugar for which he thanked the IRCS and penned a thought: ‘Today it does not sound particularly convincing when Germans turn towards the world, and we do understand that the world feels a certain reluctance towards us. But we must experience too that there comes a day when we must consider the matter closed, that we must soon bury enmity if the world is to become a true community of all the people … Across borders, countries and seas, I greet you!’66 Darmstadt (American-Occupied Zone) had been the victim of a so-called firestorm bombing-raid in September 1944. The RAF killed between 8,000 to 12,000 inhabitants in a fifty-one-minute raid. Some bodies were sucked into the melting asphalt of the streets.67 Almost three years later, the Catholic Youth of Darmstadt spoke of reconciliation in a letter written in English to the Don Irlandais: ‘Our gratitude shall consist of educating the youth 62 ACICR, D EUR DE1 1-106, Thiem to Irish people, 4 March 1947. 63 ACICR, D EUR DE1 1-106, Roald Schreier (born in 1936), Neuenhagen bei Berlin, Brandenburg, no addressee but letter entitled ‘Was uns die Irenspeisung gibt’ (what the Irish meals give us). 64 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2A, Alois and Margarete Graba to ‘the generous donors from Ireland’, 21 March 1948. 65 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2A, Freckmann to Irish authorities, 25 July 1948. 66 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2, Haines to IRCS, 14 February 1947. 67 Max Hastings, Bomber Command (London: Pan Books, 1999), 303, 311, 313–14.

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Thanking Ireland · 477

in the spirit of a true Christianity which reconciles and connects the nations’.68 A Darmstadt nightmare should not be repeated. Twenty-six-year old tuberculosis sufferer Erica Wilde from Dresden (Soviet-Occupied Zone), another city totally devastated by a firestorm, also got sugar: ‘I was astonished by the Irish charity. It shows me, that the Irish people don’t hate us, that they wish to help us in our need.’69 The Evangelisches Hilfswerk (Evangelical Welfare Organisation) of Nassau-Hessen (American-Occupied Zone) reported on the effects the distribution of Irish bacon had had on the recipients: ‘Many people recognized that international cooperation of Christian brotherhood is a reality to be pondered by all who had lost their faith in Jesus Christ in these years of misery and tribulation’.70 Like Ebensee in Austria, there were unavoidably cases in Germany when those who had done nothing during the war for their suffering fellow human beings because of their so-called race, inferiority, nationality, or political persuasions, were now appreciating the solidarity shown by others. In Edderitz, a rural commune near Bitterfeld (Soviet-Occupied Zone), the inhabitants were astonished when they got a gift of woollen clothes for Christmas. The local authorities wrote to the ‘Irish people’ that ‘nobody would ever have believed that in the world there are still people who can show loving care to those in dire need’.71 Yet, there was a sugar factory in Edderitz which had employed slave labour provided from a Soviet prisoner-ofwar camp in Celle. In October 1941, 120 prisoners had been sent to the factory. It is known that eleven of them died of hunger as they had not been able to survive on ‘slices of sugar beet, frozen tomatoes, gherkins [and] pumpkins’.72 The reality back then was that the inhabitants either did not care or did not dare to care. But now in 1949, only four years after the war, they kissed the Irish hand that clothed them. There was a deep postwar moral quagmire in Germany and Austria, and in other countries as well.

Letters and drawings from German children Many letters of thanks and drawings came from German children. They were innocent victims and as they represented the future of the country—hopefully a new democratic and civilised country—much of international aid was focused on them.

68 69 70 71 72

NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/7, Catholic Youth of Darmstadt to Don Irlandais, 20 June 1947. NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2, Wilde to IRCS, 25 February 1947. NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/7, Evangelisches Hilfswerk Nassau-Hessen to ‘Dear Fellows’, 24 July 1947. NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2A, commune of Edderitz to the ‘Irish people’, 18 January 1949. ‘Die Zuckerfabrik’, website of the commune of Edderitz, Saxony-Anhalt, in http://www.gemeindeedderitz.de/html/chronik_internet_-_zuckerfabri.htm (accessed on 8 March 2015).

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478 · Chapter Fifteen

In the words of such a child, Roald Schreier: ‘But the other peoples are not so inhumane and are collecting things for us children because we cannot be blamed . . . We thank the Irish people much for the good food. When we are big we want to think forever what the world did for us and want to have peace for always’.73 In February 1946, Clemens von Brentano, who was in charge of relief operations in Freiburg, reported on the distribution of 10 tons of Irish butter. Many inhabitants, especially pupils, had written letters of thanks which he asked the ICRC delegate to transmit to the IRCS.74 This was done, but some of these letters remained in Geneva. The British Ministry of Food also forwarded letters and drawings from German children to the Irish authorities. John W. Dulanty, the Irish high commissioner in London, wrote to Boland that he had received from the ministry a number of letters and drawings from pupils in the Weser-Ems region and suggested: ‘The children’s letters describing their feelings on the reception of the meat and the scenes of its arrival at the various centres of distribution are impressive in their simplicity and gratitude. If it isn’t too late a selection of the drawings and the letters, translated and suitably presented, might be arranged for publication in the press’.75 His idea was good but research could not establish if drawings were indeed published in Irish newspapers. The children wrote straightforwardly. The pupils of Rheine in Westphalia (British-Occupied Zone) sent this message in German: Dear Irish, You have sent us nice sausages. We thank you very much. Mother fried them. They tasted nice. Many greetings from Class 3A, Holy-Ghost School.76

For them sausages had become something of an exotic treat which under normal circumstances they would probably not have been. The leader of a Red Cross day nursery in Mörfelden near Frankfurt am Main (American-Occupied Zone) wrote in this sense: ‘As the first bits of bacon were discovered in their lunch, the kiddies exploded with joy. For most of them such a delicacy had not been seen for years. Still every day they look for the bits. Great admiration is bestowed on the big bacon 73 ACICR, D EUR DE1 1-106, Roald Schreier (born in 1936), Neuenhagen bei Berlin, Brandenburg, no addressee but letter entitled ‘Was uns die Irenspeisung gibt’ (what the Irish meals give us). 74 ACICR, O CMS C-019, Clemens von Brentano to P. Rinderspacher, 1 February 1946. 75 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2, Dulanty to Boland, 4 July 1947. 76 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2A, letter from German school child, Rheine, Westphalia, 7 July 1947.

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ship, which came from Ireland straight to us in Mörfelden.’77 Sausages and bacon also showed that things were slowly getting back to normal. The main office of the Evangelisches Hilfswerk in the area of Nassau-Hessen (American-Occupied Zone) sent the Don Irlandais a letter including a series of brief revealing messages from children: ‘I thank you very much for the wonderful bacon’ (Ingeborg Simon); ‘Many thanks for the received dried meat’, (Inge Grau); ‘Many, many thanks for the bacon. It tasted very good’ (Helga Neher); and ‘I was very pleased with the bacon and thank the Evangelisches Hilfswerk. It was a real treat. Best wishes to the donors’ (Christa Förster).78 It was the same in the SovietOccupied Zone. Maria Winkler, Helga Anders, Anika Petzoldt, and Lieselotte Fröger from Plauen in Saxony wrote to the IRCS: ‘On behalf of my school friends and parents, I would like to thank you for the magnanimous donations which, through the Volkssolidarität, provided us with lunches for 78 days’.79 Horst König, who was in a children’s home in Kampehl near Neustadt-Dosse, was most grateful for the Irish toys he had received through the offices of the Swiss Red Cross and the Volkssolidarität of Potsdam.80 Of course, not all children were lucky to get supplies and gifts. As previously explained, in certain cases a medical examination was set up to determine who of them were most in need of sugar or meat. This was often done when gifts were in short supply. Some children felt it was their duty to thank but also demand that more supplies should be sent to those who had been left out. Friedemar Chritz took up his pen: ‘Dear Irish people! We, 9 children, only got sugar. Many thanks. And I ask you at the same time that the other children also get a parcel’. Under his text, he had drawn a picture representing a house with a water pump outside where birds were trying to drink while a boy (himself?) was trying to hit them with a catapult.81 It was getting back to normal times. Perhaps more expressive than letters were drawings that children made. Often the scenes depicted the arrival of food supplies by train or by truck, followed by the distribution in a classroom or in a basement of a school. The drawings could be simple or elaborate and were made with black or colour pencils. Karl-Heinz Wilke, a pupil from Oldeoogschule in Wilhelmshaven (British-Occupied Zone), made a beautiful three-part drawing. One part has an inscription, ‘How the 4,000 kg of beef of the Irish Red Cross came to us’, with a red cross in the background. The other 77 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/7, E. Horn to Irish donors, 15 July 1947. 78 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/7, Hauptbüro Evangelisches Hilfswerk Nassau-Hessen sends a series of small messages from children for the ‘Don Irlandais’, undated but probably 1947. 79 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2A, Maria Winkler et al to IRCS, 14 March 1948. 80 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/7, letter of thanks by Horst König, undated. 81 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2, letter & drawing from Friedemar Chritz, undated.

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two parts show the preparation and cooking of the beef and children queuing up to receive their share. What seems to have struck Wilke was the heat that the cooking generated as clouds of steam are clearly visible in the cauldrons of the kitchen and coming out of the distribution container in a corridor of the school.82 Hot meals were a real treat especially in an environment in which cold and damp had become the norm. Another pupil in a Protestant school also in Wilhelmshaven chose to depict a scene in a classroom. Pupils are seen sitting with a hot bowl of soup or stew in front of them. Once again, the steam is clearly visible. Others are happily queuing up to have their bowls filled up. But what strikes immediately is the large-size map in the background, showing the ‘Irische See’ with the names ‘Irland’ and ‘Dublin, Waterford, Limerick [and] Cork’.83 This was in accordance with decisions taken by some school principals to pay special attention to Ireland during geography lessons as mentioned above. Another beautiful and very expressive drawing was made by D. Krainske. It is unknown from where he or she was. The drawing shows a churn full of hot meat, presumably a stew, in the middle of the classroom. In the background, seven pupils are seated with their eyes riveted on the churn. The pupil who is nearest says: ‘Ob es wohl noch einen Nachschlag gibt?!’ (Is there a second helping I wonder?!). Another says: ‘Oh wie schmeckt das aber gut!’ (Oh, that tastes so good!).84 The ICRC archive in Geneva is in possession of drawings that were not forwarded to Ireland. Interestingly, a series of them shows children dropping their food bowls just after distribution in the school. Were they not forwarded because they showed distress and were deemed to be bad publicity? Most of the time these incidents happen on the staircase or steps where pupils slip in their rush to bring back the food upstairs to eat it.85 Elfriede Trappe wrote a long letter which she illustrated with drawings like a comic strip. Her friend Inge and she looked after the ‘little ones’. Their job was to make sure that the youngest children remained quietly in the queue. But then they heard a voice screaming: ‘Oh, she dropped her food!’ Elfriede chose to illustrate this part of her letter, clearly showing a girl stooping over her dropped bowl. Two small girls went away to get a mop and a bucket. The school teacher made them promise that it would not happen again: ‘Relieved, they utter “Yes!”’.86 Günter Koßmann wrote a similar letter, also with drawings of a small boy who dropped his food and hurt his knee in the process. Some children were gloating 82 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2, drawing by Karl-Heinz Wilke, Wilhelmshaven, undated. 83 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2, drawing made by pupil of ‘Ev. Schule Mitscherlichstraße, Wilhelmshaven, undated. 84 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2, drawing made by D. Krainske, undated and no further details. 85 ACICR, D EUR DE1 1-105, drawings from Klaus Golz, Peter Klopsh, Erhard Triestram & D. Kirchner & unknown, undated. 86 ACICR, D EUR DE1 1-105, letter with drawings from Elfriede Trappe, undated.

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while others regretted that it had been wasted: ‘The small boy cried because he didn’t have food anymore’. He went to the janitor to clean it up.87 It is not mentioned if these children got another bowl of hot soup. Such incidents and the taste or smell of food seemed to have left a deep imprint on children’s memories. Dutch boys and girls who had been sent to British camps to recuperate would remember them years later.88 It was hardly any exaggeration that IRCS delegate Brian Brady wrote in a report: ‘By our efforts during the past two years to relieve distress on the continent the name of Ireland is known and revered in every town in Germany’.89 The Evangelisches Hilfswerk of Württemberg remarked on the distribution of Irish bacon: ‘We often regret that the kind donors of all the food supplies, which relieve so much distress here, cannot take part in the distribution of the soup so that they can receive themselves the gratitude which is expressed by the tearful eyes of our deaconesses.’90 But here, the Irish government had itself to blame for not having sent representatives, which it could have easily done. The table below, published by the JRC, shows Ireland’s aid through the offices of the International Red Cross to postwar Europe in a comparative context between 1945 and 1946 and indicates its wide geographical spread. Its aid reached many people east or west of the Iron Curtain, but the table is obviously not complete as the years from 1947 to 1950 and some countries are missing (bilateral agreements with individual countries are not included). It had been an extraordinary helping hand to Europe from Normandy to Tirana, from a small country with limited economic and financial means. Table 15.1. Don Irlandais in Europe, overall distribution and comparative table91 Beneficiaries Albania Germany, American Zone Germany, British Zone Germany French Zone Berlin & Soviet Zone Austria Bulgaria

Don Irlandais (1st), 1945 61 tons 204 tons 200 tons 292 tons 394 tons 371 tons 92 tons

Don Irlandais (2nd), 1946 189 tons 265 tons 1,461 tons 684 tons 1,263 tons 1,638 tons 455 tons

Total in tons 250 tons 469 tons 1,661 tons 976 tons 1,657 tons 2,009 tons 547 tons

87 ACICR, D EUR DE1 1-105, letter with drawings from Günter Koßmann, undated. 88 Sintemaartensdijk, De Bleekneusjes van 1945, 234–5. 89 NAI, DFA, 400 series part 2, 419/1/7, letter to Miss O’Connell, Department of the Taoiseach, including Brady’s report, 11 February 1947. 90 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/7, report of Evangelisches Hilfswerk Württemberg regarding distribution of Irish bacon, 16 May 1947. 91 Comité International de la Croix-Rouge & Ligue des Sociétés de la Croix-Rouge, Rapport de la Commission Mixte de Secours de la Croix-Rouge Internationale 1941–1946, 187.

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482 · Chapter Fifteen France Greece Hungary Poland Romania Yugoslavia Italy Grand total

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345 tons 206 tons 136 tons 405 tons 15 tons 2,721 tons

17 tons 898 tons 1,242 tons 608 tons 273 tons 1,348 tons 10,341 tons

17 tons 898 tons 1,587 tons 814 tons 409 tons 1,753 tons 15 tons 13,062 tons

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Conclusion

Ireland’s political evolution from the inter-war period to the postwar period had been rather out of the ordinary. Before 1939, it watched the worrying rise of Nazi Germany, expressed concern at the persecution of the Catholic Church, notably in Austria, and of the Jews although it was not pro-active in the Jewish question, some of its officials being antisemitic and having no time for Jewish refugees.1 Ireland was also deeply distrustful of the atheistic Soviet Union. Yet, once the war began, it adopted a two-pronged approach, which made it in effect a crypto ally of the western Allies. At the official level, it was neutral, but some of its ministers and high civil servants cooperated widely with the British and Americans behind the scenes. Also, it exported much needed food to Britain. ‘Between 1940 and 1946 Irish sterling holdings in London increased by £165 million’, stressing the significance of Irish trade for the British in the war.2 At the public level, tens of thousands of Irishmen and women joined the British forces while others participated in the British war effort by working in factories in the United Kingdom. Michael Kennedy has rightly argued that ‘[Neutrality] was a policy that flexed with the international climate to allow Ireland to look after its international interests. Fully conscious of the changing international order, it put Ireland first’.3 Once the war was over, Ireland’s government, people, Red Cross, Churches, voluntary organisations, and charities embarked on an extraordinary relief journey that saw Irish supplies being distributed from Normandy all the way to the streets of Tirana, orphanages in Bulgaria, and prison camps on Greek islands. If the government’s approach to relief was not entirely devoid of political calculations, the people’s was. But the response of both to the humanitarian crisis was 1 For a comprehensive study of German refugees settling in Ireland, see Holfter and Dickel, An Irish Sanctuary. 2 McCullagh, De Valera, Vol. II, 259–60. 3 Michael Kennedy, ‘“Plato’s Cave”? Ireland’s wartime neutrality reassessed’, History Ireland, Jan./Feb. 2011, Issue 1, Volume 19, in https://www.historyireland.com/20th-century-contemporary-history/platos-caveirelands-wartime-neutrality-reassessed/ (accessed on 2 July 2020).

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484 · Conclusion

generous. For the people, and no doubt for individual members of the government and civil service, it was certainly the expression of a tradition of Christian charity, what is called in Catholic theology ‘gratuità’ (act of free-giving or free-gifting). It implies that men and women participating ‘in charitable actions are considered to be directly animated by divine grace’.4 It was even more extraordinary bearing in mind that the country was not rich and had much misery on its very doorstep as Rabbi Isaac Herzog and American Minister David Gray had accurately described. In a letter to Archbishop McQuaid, Archbishop McNicholas of Cincinnati, the leading member of the National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC), loftily praised the Irish people, even describing them as ‘the salt of the earth’.5 It was sincerely meant and there was perhaps a touch of flattery from one archbishop to another. But in essence McNicholas’s statement does not differ from statements made in Tito’s communist Yugoslavia. As the two delegates from the Irish Red Cross Society (IRCS), Dr Hourihane and Fr O’Connor, reported: ‘Several of [the Yugoslav officials] indeed stressed the size of the gift from such a small people . . . In all the speeches made at the various functions at which we were entertained, the note was continually sounded of grateful thanks, emphasis usually being placed on the fact [that] Ireland owed Yugoslavia nothing and asked nothing in return’.6 That such statements were made by actors from the opposite sides of the Cold War speaks volumes of Ireland’s remarkable efforts on the international scene. It was also clear that humanitarianism was a platform on which neutral Ireland’s voice could be heard. Bruno Cabanes has written that in the 1920s ‘a small country like Norway saw the defence of humanitarian rights as a better alternative to traditional diplomacy, because it was one that allowed smaller countries to have an important influence on international relations’.7 The same can be said of Ireland, which made its presence felt in postwar Europe through its humanitarianism. It was part of building the nation-state’s identity. But in a sense, despite the excellent on-the-spot publicity and well-deserved praise it got, Ireland’s aid was relief by proxy as other organisations like the ICRC, JRC, NCWC, ENDSI, or Entr’Aide française oversaw the distribution of its supplies. As Minister for Finance Frank Aiken said in the Dáil, ‘we were not situated 4 Andrea Muehlebach, The Moral Neoliberal: Welfare and Citizenship in Italy (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2012), 57. Free-giving or free-gifting is also an act of living for a goal that is bigger than oneself. The author is grateful to Reverend Paul Ritchie, Baptist Church, Limerick, in 2018 for a very enlightening discussion on religion and humanitarianism. 5 DDA, XV/E/51/1-6, McNicholas to McQuaid, 23 September 1949. 6 NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4, ‘Report on European Tour’ by Dr J. D. Hourihane and Fr T. J. O’Connor (IRCS delegates). 9 January 1947. 7 Cabanes, The Great War and the Origins of Humanitarianism, 1918–1924, 17.

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like Switzerland, in the heart of Europe. We could not deliver food and cattle in our own trucks and trains’.8 Many on the continent deplored that Irish representatives were not there to witness the joy and hope that the country’s supplies provoked. The government, however, could easily have sent such representatives but chose not to do so out of financial considerations. It was a mistake as, perhaps, stronger bilateral ties could have developed as a result or at least put Ireland more firmly on the map of Europe. Then again, the Department of External Affairs (DEA) in Dublin was not the richest of ministries and was not even sure if it would survive at all when the young and independent state was developing. Yet, based on all the primary sources found for this book, all the stories of hope, joy, and genuine appreciation of Irish aid, the sending of official governmental representatives to the continent would have been worth the financial investment, so would have been the investment in a documentary on the Don Irlandais in action as proposed by the International Red Cross but ultimately rejected by Dublin for being too expensive. To try to answer how many people Ireland saved is tempting. As seen, in April 1946, the Irish Times pertinently remarked: ‘Ireland’s surplus may be small enough, but it could mean the difference between life and death to a million people on the Continent’.9 It is impossible to give any estimate regarding the number of people possibly saved but it might be worth reflecting briefly on the newspaper’s statement. In Buchholz in Lower Saxony in the British-Occupied Zone, Franz Alscher and his wife, expellees from the former eastern German provinces, were trying to survive inside a single room in sub-zero temperatures with six window panes broken out of eight.10 That night, Irish blankets, woollen socks, or extra food supplies might have made the difference between life and death. The same applies to a Polish family living in a dugout in what was once Warsaw, or to Hungarian Jews receiving Irish sugar, condensed milk, or medicines or to French patients being operated in the Hôpital Irlandais in Normandy. In Paris, Éamon de Valera had spoken of ‘hundreds of thousands of letters of appreciation’ sent to Ireland. All things considered it would appear reasonable to assume that Ireland might well have saved a million people. But more important than the question of knowing how many lives it saved in the end, is to state that Ireland—and other countries and humanitarian groups—gave energising hope by showing that its people cared for those whose lives had been shattered. During the international food conference in London in April 1946, Herbert Hoover had powerfully stated that if children were not taken care of 8 ‘Vote for relief of Europe halved, but sufficient’, Irish Press, 5 July 1947 (INA). 9 ‘Starving people’, The Irish Times, 3 April 1946 (ITDA). 10 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2A, Franz Alscher and his wife to Caritas, transmitted to DEA, 24 February 1949.

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they would end up by furnishing ‘more malevolents in the world’ and he reminded his audience of a crucial truth namely that ‘the final voice of victory is the guns, but the first voice of peace is food’. Ireland had heard Hoover and its relief efforts, even amounting to ‘a small drop in the ocean’ as de Valera had put it, contributed to the maintenance of stability in Europe. An impression might have developed that Ireland was especially interested in Germany’s fate, possibly reinforcing the notion that it had been in its favour during the war. Nothing could be further from the truth. During the Dáil’s first vote on alleviation of distress, attention was focused on Western Europe as four-fifths of the Irish supplies went to Belgium, France, Italy, and the Netherlands while during the second vote, it was deemed necessary to focus on Central and Eastern Europe owing to the desperate conditions prevailing in these regions as stressed by the Allies, the ICRC, and different relief organisations themselves. It is true that many letters of thanks from ordinary people were sent from Germany. But the explanation is that the defeated Germans, who had fought until the very end on the orders of the atrocious Nazi regime, were desperately thankful that some people did care about them despite everything. Also, subsequent studies by academics, and memoirs and witness accounts by Germans on Ireland’s help, especially in welcoming several hundreds of German children after the war, were published and a monument even erected in St Stephen’s Green in Dublin, again reinforcing the idea of a kind of special link between Ireland and Germany all the more as the same could not be said of other countries where Irish aid fell into a memory gap. But letters of thanks did also come from France, the Netherlands, Italy Albania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Austria, Poland, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia. Let us not forget that many of them were probably destroyed. For example, where are these thousands of letters from Italy, mentioned by the Irish minister in Rome, today? Clearly, it was not only Germany. It could be believed that the sending of supplies to the former Axis powers and their allies was a show of independence by Dublin, but written evidence of such an approach has not been found and appears most unlikely. Those countries whose governments had decided on or cooperated with extermination policies— with the open or tacit approval or else condoning of their populations—were now receiving supplies to survive. They could deem themselves to be extremely lucky after the uniquely dreadful war they had unleashed, fought, or supported. What became apparent during the Irish government’s management of relief was a desire not to upset the Holy See, which explains why it eventually decided not to cooperate any longer with the International Red Cross and switched sides to the NCWC, and why the IRCS was pressured to cooperate with continental Catholic charities and voluntary organisations. Evidently, decision-makers wanted to affirm

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Conclusion · 487

the country’s Catholic identity, and an additional determining factor was that the emerging Cold War appeared to be a Christian struggle for survival against the forces of atheistic Bolshevism. As the Irish chargé d’affaires to the Holy See said to Cardinal Mindszenty in Rome in March 1946: ‘…we are anxious to extend the hand of Catholic fellowship…’11 The Vatican, naturally inclined to become a major player in humanitarian relief efforts, probably saw in the International Red Cross based in Calvinistic Geneva something of a competitor. In May 1947, the Vatican Mission in Brussels wrote to the IRCS that there were still 50,000 German prisoners of war working in Belgium. They were being looked after by the International Red Cross, which visited the camps, the ‘mighty YMCA’ (Protestant) and the Vatican Mission, which helped the priests. The Vatican Mission noted: ‘We sincerely regret that we have little credit amongst the mass of the prisoners. We can’t rivalise with the YMCA. However, we succeeded erecting a sanatorium for POWs who got tuberculosis … This institution has done very much for our Catholic sake.’ The mission used to receive milk supplies from the NCWC but not any longer and was now asking if Ireland could supply some. The Irish authorities agreed to do so.12 The verb ‘rivalise’ and the words ‘our Catholic sake’ were very explicit. There were issues of prestige and competition in the world of relief, and Irish governments showed much deference to the Church. In the postwar years Ireland and the European continent strongly connected through relief. But this connection did not mean that the country had suddenly taken the opportunity to fully embrace the continent and become part of its political developments after years of isolationism. On the one hand, it had some reservations about the European Recovery Plan (Marshall Plan), although it eventually accepted it.13 It was a founding member-state of the Council of Europe in May 1949, although it began by using the council’s assembly, dedicated to European reconstruction, to denounce the evils of partition in Ireland.14 It did not join NATO in 1949 despite the perceived Soviet threat as it deemed that joining would be tantamount to officially recognising Northern Ireland.15 Nor did it join the first efforts at European integration, namely the founding of the European Coal and 11 NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2A, embassy series, Holy See, 24/74, T. J. Kiernan (probably) to Walshe, 2 March 1946. 12 NAI, DFA, 6/419/26, Vatican Mission in Brussels to IRCS, 2 May 1947 & note, Cremin for McCauley, 2 June 1947. 13 See Till Geiger, ‘The Enthusiastic Response of a Reluctant Supporter: Ireland and the Committee for European Economic Cooperation in the Summer of 1947’, in Kennedy and Skelly, eds., Irish Foreign Policy, 1919–1966, 222–46. 14 See Kennedy and O’Halpin, Ireland and the Council of Europe. 15 See McCabe, A Diplomatic History of Ireland.

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Steel Community (ECSC) in 1951. Ireland’s dependence on the British market and economy and the British government’s refusal to participate in the ECSC were crucial factors. On the other hand, it cannot be said either that Ireland wished to remain isolated or impervious to developments around it. It had joined the League of Nations after the First World War and was a very active member, then attempted to join the United Nations after the Second World War but was denied membership by the Soviet Union (until 1955). Also, its deep involvement in humanitarianism at official and popular levels as portrayed in this book definitely shows that the days of isolationism or limited international interaction were over. Irish aid for postwar Europe was not a conscious attempt at building bridges, although there were political calculations to prevent the country’s isolation after the war. It was more of a continuation of a tradition of Christian charity that had existed on the island for quite some time and was now being applied to continental Europe under extraordinary circumstances. Nevertheless, some bridges were built, notably with West Germany and the Netherlands although the intensity of these bilateral relations should not be exaggerated as it came nowhere near that of AngloIrish relations.16 For example, the outstanding help offered by the Irish led to a brief period of rather strong relations between Ireland and the Netherlands. A simultaneous exhibition of Dutch painters in Dublin and Irish painters in Amsterdam was organised in 1949. Unsurprisingly, an Irish diplomat reported from Amsterdam: ‘there is a very great regard for and interest in Ireland amongst the Dutch’.17 The Dutch were very willing to offer advice to the Irish to increase their exports to the Netherlands, but it was in vain. While the Dutch volume of exports to Ireland increased and that the Netherlands became Ireland’s fourth most important import partner, the Irish volume of exports to the Netherlands decreased dramatically, from £1,396,000 in 1949 to £681,000 in 1954. The same could be said about France and Ireland from a political and economic point of view. During his famous visit to Ireland in 1969, Charles de Gaulle even said that ‘there has been, it seems, for some generations past a kind of screen between Ireland and France’.18 Successive Irish governments chose to remain anchored within the English-speaking world, although nothing prevented them from building stronger economic, cultural or political bridges with Western Europe. As to Eastern Europe, no bridges were built as the Iron Curtain hermetically separated democracy and Christianity from communism and official atheism. Ireland was vehemently anti-communist and spared no effort to denounce 16 See O’Driscoll, ‘West Germany’, 9–74 & aan de Wiel ‘The Netherlands’, 190–244. 17 aan de Wiel, ‘The Netherlands’, 219–220. 18 Gillissen, ‘France’, 75–127, for quote see 119.

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the ideology. Although the meetings of the International Red Cross in Geneva and the management of relief provided IRCS and DEA officials with discussion opportunities with Central and Eastern European officials—the Albanian Red Cross contacted the IRCS first, for instance—no official bilateral relations, not even commercial relations worthy of the name, came about. These were contacts, not relations. At the beginning, the Irish government had no qualms in sending supplies across the Soviet demarcation line. But when relations between the western countries and Moscow soured and the persecution of the Catholic Church in Central and Eastern Europe became apparent, Irish officials got cold feet and allegations of communist misappropriation of Irish supplies notably in Hungary and Yugoslavia—unfounded as it turns out—and hostile public opinion at home provided them with arguments to terminate the sending of generous relief, although the Hungarian and Yugoslav populations were not at fault. But a propaganda battle centred on relief was raging and Ireland got caught in it. In fact, neutral Ireland aligned itself with confrontational western countries, fearing imminent communist takeover and invasion. It played a very small part in coming to western Berlin’s rescue during Stalin’s blockade by discreetly not opposing the NCWC’s distribution of Irish food supplies in the western sectors of the city. It was the continuation of its discreet pro-western Allies policy begun during the Second World War. It was only from the early 1970s onwards during détente that Ireland signed trade agreements with East Bloc countries. In 1973, the decision was taken to open formal diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union.19 To argue that Ireland was totally cut off from the continent during and immediately after the war can no longer be sustained. The Irish government and people had not lived in ‘Plato’s cave’ and did not emerge ‘dazzled’ from it in 1945 as was famously asserted by the historian F. S. L. Lyons in 1971.20 This idea has now been rejected by Irish academics,21 and this book confirms their views. The government’s secret cooperation with the western Allies, its wartime attempts at relief, its postwar aid plan, the IRCS’s relief initiatives, and the people’s participation in relief prove otherwise. Censorship had been very strict but did not prevent an awareness that a worldwide conflict was going on. If the Irish were dazzled by the enormity of the carnage in 1945—as many others were—they reacted quickly and massively 19 aan de Wiel, East German Intelligence and Ireland, 1949–90, 34–5, 37 & 44–5. 20 F.S.L. Lyons quoted in J.J. Lee, Ireland, 1912–1985; Politics and Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 258. 21 Eunan O’Halpin, ‘Endword: Ireland Looking Outwards, 1880–2016’ (Chapter 26), in Thomas Bartlett, ed., The Cambridge History of Ireland. Vol IV, 1880 to the Present (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 812.

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to the urgent need for relief in Europe. De Valera’s handling of the war (despite his handshake debacle), his proposal to implement a £3,000,000 relief scheme, and his subsequent determination to see it through despite some opposition at political and popular level notably during the Big Freeze, shows that he was a statesman of the same calibre as Winston Churchill or Charles de Gaulle. The Irish people’s response to relief operations was extraordinary and connotes strong feelings for charity and solidarity which did not suddenly end with the postwar recovery of Europe. In 1953, the dykes broke in the south-west of the Netherlands, resulting in floods, the loss of 1,835 people and 47,000 head of cattle, and the destruction of about 3,000 houses and 300 farms. Even so soon after the end of postwar relief, the Irish government, the IRCS, and Archbishop McQuaid set out to help again by organising collections of materials and money. It came down to £20,000 from the government and £15,000 from the IRCS. Later, the Dutch Foreign Ministry revealed that Ireland’s donations had reached a total of £38,000.22 Irish postwar aid was reactive. But towards the end of the 1960s and mid-1970s, Irish state identity began to incorporate relief and humanitarian work into its foreign policy. Ireland became a member of the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1973, so its government had humanitarian responsibilities and obligations and introduced its first permanent official aid programme in 1974.23 Humanitarian aid became a hallmark of Irish foreign policy, nowadays officially known as Irish Aid. It is very unlikely that the memory of Irish postwar aid for Europe played a role in this development as it was quickly forgotten and never explored by historians and researchers. Interestingly, it was the same phenomenon with Swiss postwar aid to Germany. In the words of Bernd Haunfelder: ‘To leave the past behind as quickly as possible was heard everywhere [in Germany]. Switzerland shared this fate with other countries like Argentina and Chile, Ireland, Sweden and South Africa and with international aid agencies as well…. The involvement of the smaller countries was forgotten so quickly because after two world wars it was overshadowed by the incomparably high sums of money that the United States had made available.’24 This is a pertinent point and applies to Ireland as well. In September 1947 in Paris, de Valera had spoken of the writing of a chronicle on Ireland’s aid, stressing that it would add ‘a very interesting chapter’ to the history of Europe after the dreadful war. It was never done. Instead, the letters of the children of Tirana, 22 aan de Wiel, ‘The Netherlands’, 208–209. 23 O’Sullivan, ‘“Ah, Ireland, the caring nation”’, 476, 479. See also Kevin O’Sullivan, ‘Biafra to Lomé; The evolution of Irish government policy on Official Development Assistance, 1969–75’, Irish Studies in International Affairs, vol. 18 (2007): 91–107. 24 Haunfelder, Schweizer Hilfe für Deutschland 1917–1933 und 1944–1957, 14–15.

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Conclusion · 491

Dutchmen and women, elderly in Berlin, Austrian bishops, French ministers, and Bulgarian Red Cross officials were laid to rest in dusty archive boxes or ended up in smoke. However, it is hoped that this book will contribute to reviving the memory of Ireland’s helping hand to Europe between 1945 and 1950.

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Photos · 493

1. Taoiseach Éamon de Valera during World War Two. Photo: Irish Independent, IND 44216 INM. 2. John Charles McQuaid, Catholic Archbishop of

Dublin. Photo: Dublin Diocesan Archive.

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494 · Photos

3. Joseph Walshe and Pope Pius

XII standing in front of an ENDSI truck. Photo: Bolletino Parochiale, January 1951, found in NAI, embassy series, Holy See.

4.  Dr August Lindt (ICRC), 1968.

Lindt negotiated the arrival of Irish supplies in the Soviet sector of Berlin, 1946. Photo: Jean Zbinden, ICRC (ARR), V-P-PERE-00189.

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Photos · 495

5. Distribution of Irish supplies to Greek children, Priolithos, December 1949. Photo: ICRC, ICRC, (ARR), V-P-HIST-03315-26A. 6.  Ghioura island, penitentiary camp no 4, Greece, 13 June 1948, political detainee receiving clothes.

Disused Irish uniforms were distributed to detainees in several prisons, but only after they had been dyed as wearing uniforms by civilians was forbidden during Greek Civil War. Photo: ICRC (ARR), V-P-HISTE-05830, photo ICRC.

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7.  Unloading of Irish and Swiss supplies, Berlin, US sector, January 1946. The banner reads: ‘Schweizer

Spende’ (Swiss Gift). The photos of the Don Irlandais (Irish Gift), unloaded first, never came out, however. Photo: Landesarchiv Berlin, F Rep. 290-2078 Nr. 0260488.

8.  Transport of Irish and Swiss supplies to warehouse, Berlin, US sector, January 1946. 52 workers were arrested for theft. Photo: Landesarchiv Berlin, F Rep. 290-2078 Nr. 0260495.

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Photos · 497

9.  Soup kitchen distributing Irish food, Berlin, Soviet sector, 1948. Photo: ICRC (ARR), V-P-HIST-03283-36. 10.  Elderly German eating Irish food, Berlin, Soviet sector, 1948. Photo: ICRC (ARR), V-P-HIST-03284-01.

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498 · Photos

11.  Distribution of Irish clothes in Aschendorf/Ems, British Zone of Germany. Photo: Ludwig Bolik, found in

NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2A.

12.  Irish food distribution to German children in Freiburg im Breisgau, French Occupation Zone. Freiburg was the first location in Germany where Irish supplies were distributed. Photo found in ICRC archive, Geneva, ACICR, O CMS C-020.

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Photos · 499

13.  Irish raw wool given to Volkssolidarität (people’s solidarity), Berlin, Soviet sector, 1948.

Photo: Hans Schulz, ICRC (ARR), V-P-HIST-03134-18.

14.  Women making clothes with Irish raw wool given to Volkssolidarität (people’s solidarity), Soviet Zone of

Germany, 1948. Photo: Hans Schulz, ICRC (ARR), V-P-HIST-03283-16.

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15.  Clothes made with Irish raw wool given to Volkssolidarität (people’s solidarity), Soviet Zone of Germany, 1948.

Photo: Hans Schulz, ICRC (ARR), V-P-HIST-03134-25.

16.  Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans) about to be expelled towards the Soviet Zone of Germany, Petrzalka camp, near Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, May 1946. Irish supplies were distributed among expellees in Petrzalka. Photo ICRC (ARR), V-P-HIST-01034-02, photo ICRC.

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Photos · 501

17.  Arrival of Irish supplies in Sofia, 2 April 1946. Dr Georges Sotiroff (JRC) & Mr Georges Gospodinoff

(BRC Secretary) supervising. Photo: ICRC Archives (ARR), V-P-HIST-02592-10A.

18.  Bulgarian women transporting boxes of Irish vitamin tablets, Sofia, 2 April 1946. Photo: ICRC (ARR),

V-P-HIST-03294-01, photo ICRC.

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19.  Distribution of Irish condensed milk tins to poor Bulgarian children, Sofia, 2 April 1946. Photo: ICRC (ARR), V-P-HIST-01187. 20. Irish envoy to France, Seán Murphy, distributing supplies, Parisian region. Photo found in NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/3.

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21.  Elderly Frenchman receiving Irish woollen socks, Parisian region. Photo found in NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/3. 22.  Hôpital Irlandais, Saint-Lô, Normandy, Irish personnel, Samuel Beckett (Nobel Prize Literature, 1969) on right, not facing camera. Photo: Conseil Général de la Manche, Arch-Dép, 47Num-157.

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504 · Photos 23.  Italian girl in Milan receiving Irish sugar. Photo: Publifoto Milan, found in NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/4. 24.  Loading of Irish supplies

aboard Transylvania bound for Romania, Marseille harbour, April 1946. ‘Golden Vein, Limerick’ is written on boxes. Photo: ICRC (ARR), V-P-HIST-03265-13A.

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Photos · 505

25.  Distribution of Irish butter, Salzburg, Austria. Photo found in NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/1. 26.  Distribution of Irish meat tins from Roscrea Meats Products Ltd (Tipperary) by National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC), area of Salzburg, Austria. Photo: Bilderdienst Salzburg, DDA, McQuaid papers, xxx4, NCWC.

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27.  Irish sugar for orphanage, Yugoslavia, 1946. Photo: ICRC (ARR), V-P-HIST-03174-06. 28.  Unloading of Irish sugar in railway station, Budapest (notice guard with submachine-gun). Photo: Mafirt, Budapest, found in NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2.

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Photos · 507 29.  Distribution of Irish sugar to Hungarian Red Cross, 1946. Photo: Photopress Falus Károly, Budapest found in NAI, DFA, 5/372/4A. 30.  Albanians having received Irish supplies. Photo found in NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/13.

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31.  Distribution of Irish supplies in Albania. Slogan on the wall reads: ‘Only he who works is worthy of being a member of the democratic front’. Photo found in NAI, DFA, 6/419/1/1. 32.  Letter of thanks of German child. Ireland became a popular topic in schools, see the map on the wall.

Photo found in NAI, DFA, 6/419/4/22/2.

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List of frequently used abbreviations For the sake of clarity, the number of abbreviations has been intentionally limited. CRF: French Red Cross DEA: Department of External Affairs (Dublin) DFA: Department of Foreign Affairs (since 1971, Dublin) DP: displaced person DRK: German Red Cross ENDSI: National Agency for the Distribution of Relief in Italy HRC: Hungarian Red Cross ICRC: International Committee of the Red Cross (Geneva) ICRCP: International Centre for Relief to Civilian Populations (Geneva) IRCS: Irish Red Cross Society ISCF: Irish Save the Children Fund JRC: Joint Relief Commission of the International Red Cross (Geneva) NCWC: National Catholic Welfare Conference (United States) SGCS: Save the German Children Society (Ireland) SMAD: Soviet Military Administration in Germany UNRRA: United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration

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1004 W 1727; 1310 W 215 10HD_non_cote_001; 10HD_non_cote_002; 10HD_non_cote_003; 47Num_003; 47Num_006; 47Num_006; 47NUM_007; 47NUM_008; 47Num_009; 47Num_010; 47Num_022; 47Num_153; 47Num_155; 47Num_156; 47Num_157; 47Num_160; 47Num_161; 47Num_165 (photographs) Centre des Archives Diplomatiques, La Courneuve (CADC, formerly the Quai d’Orsay, Paris) Europe 1944-Irlande, vol. 9 Centre des Archives Diplomatiques, Nantes (CADN) 207PO.1 no 129 & 207PO.1 no 179 Germany Arolsen Archives, International Center on Nazi Persecution, formerly International Tracing Service (AA), ‘De Kosinsky, Imre’ in https://digitalcollections.its-arolsen. org/03020104/name/view/6149928 (accessed on 5 January 2020) Auswärtiges Amt-Politisches Archiv, Berlin (AA-PA), (Foreign Office-Political Archive, Berlin), B31, Bd. 63 Deutsches Rotes Kreuz, Berlin (DRK), (German Red Cross) DRK-GS-Berlin, DRK, 3482; DRK, Heft 17; DRK-GS-Berlin_DRK_1587; DRK-GSBerlin_DRK_1587_part 1; DRK-GS-Berlin_1587_part 2; DRK-GS-Berlin_DRK_4495_ part 1; DRK-GS-Berlin_DRK_4495_part 2 Erzbischofliches Archiv, Freiburg (EAF), (Archdiocesan Archive of Freiburg) Nachlaß Erzbischof Dr Conrad Gröber (1872-1945), Nb8/67 Fliedner-Kulturstiftung Kaiserswerth, Düsseldorf (FKSK), (Fliedner Cultural Institute, Kaiserswerth) Die Taube von Kaiserswerth, (81) 1947 Historisches Archiv des Erzbistums Köln (HAEK), (Historical Archive of the Archdiocese of Cologne) CRII 25.18,6 CRII 25.18,9 Diözesan-Caritasverband Köln (Depositum), Bestand I, no 258 Historisches Archiv der Stadt Köln (HASK), (Historical Archive of the City of Cologne) Acc. 2 (Oberbürgermeister) Nr 1130, Film 5052 Landesarchiv Berlin (LAB), (Archive of the Province, Berlin) F_Rep_290_0260487; F_Rep_290_0260488; F_Rep_290_0260489; F_Rep_290_0260490; F_Rep_290_0260491; F_Rep_290_0260492; F_Rep_290_0260493; F_Rep_290_0260494; F_Rep_290_0260495; F_Rep_290_0260496; F_Rep_290_0260497; F_Rep_290_0260498; F_Rep_290_0260499; F_Rep_290_0260500; F_Rep_290_0260501 (photographs) Landeshauptarchiv Koblenz (LHAK), (Main Archive of the Province, Koblenz) 655,212, Nr 563; Best. 655.213, Nr 1642; Best. 457, Nr 419 Landeshauptarchiv Schwerin (LHAS), (Main Archive of the Province, Schwerin) Best. 10.34-1, Nr 248; Best. 10.34-1, Nr 614 Staatsarchiv Chemnitz (SAC), (State Archive, Chemnitz), (Federal archive, Chemnitz, Saxony) B30409, no 101; B30409, no 626 Stadtarchiv Bonn (SAB), (City Archive, Bonn) Irische Speckspende von 1947 Stadtarchiv Düsseldorf (SAD), (City Archive, Düsseldorf) 5-8-0-010300.0012; 5-8-0-010300.0022; 5-8-0-010300.0024; 5-8-0-129200.0004 (photographs) Stadtarchiv Essen (SAE), (City Archive, Essen) 834/1200; 1000/23

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Stadtarchiv Freiburg im Breisgau (SAF), (City Archive, Freiburg im Breisgau) C5/2516 Stadtarchiv Leipzig (SAL), (City Archive, Leipzig) StVuR, Nr 7574 Stadtarchiv Stuttgart (SAS), (City Archive, Stuttgart) Best. 201/1-Sozialamt, Nr 3025 Thüringisches Staatsarchiv, Altenburg (ThStA), (Turingian State Archive, Altenburg) Kreisrat Altenburg, Nr 279, Bl. 65 Universität Bonn Archiv (UBA), (Archive of the University of Bonn) Speckspende Irland 1947 (1); Speckspende Irland 1947 2 (1) Johannes J. Arens. ‘Die irische Speckspende von 1947’, Bonner Universitäts Blätter (Bonn: Universitätsgesellschaft, 2008). Zeitungsinformationssystem (ZEFYS), Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz, http://zefys.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/en/ (Newspaper Information System; State Library of Berlin, Prussian Cultural Property) Berliner Zeitung; Neues Deutschland; Neue Zeit Hungary Budapest Főváros Levéltára (BFL), (Budapest City Archive) HU_BFL_IV_1409_c_1947_IX_11549 Ireland Dublin Diocesan Archives (DDA), Archbishop John Charles McQuaid papers XXXI/9A/1-7; XXI/9A/73/7; XV/E/25/1-7; XV/E/31/1-7; XV/E/51/1-6; XVIII; XXX/1; XXX/2; XXX/3; XXX/4; XXX/5; XXX/7; XXX/10; XXX/11; XXX/13; XXX/15; XVIII/241-273, 1948 (file Paschal Robinson) Irish Newspaper Archive (INA), www.irishnewsarchive.com Anglo-Celt; Connacht Sentinel; Connacht Tribune; Cork Examiner (Irish Examiner); Donegal News; Irish Independent; Irish Press; Kerryman; Kilkenny People; Limerick Leader; Meath Chronicle; Munster Express; Nenagh Guardian; Southern Star; Sunday Independent; Tuam Herald; Ulster Herald; Westmeath Examiner Irish Red Cross Society, Dublin (IRCS) Box 2017; Box 2019; Irish Red Cross Album, Hôpital Irlandais, St. Lô Irish Red Cross Monthly Bulletin, vol. 5, no. 7, July 1945 Leather-bound book, St. Lô photographs Livre d’Or (visitors’ book), Saint-Lô, 1996 Unreferenced grey box containing correspondence Irish Times Digital Archive (ITDA) , www.irishtimes.com/archive The Irish Times National Archives of Ireland, Dublin (NAI) Cabinet series CAB 2.7; CAB 2.8; CAB 2.9; CAB 2.10 Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA) series DFA 5/372/4; DFA 5/372/4A; DFA 6/419/1/2; DFA 6/419/1/3; DFA/6/419/1/8; DFA 6/419/1/7A; DFA 6/419/1/6; DFA 6/419/1/1; DFA 6/419/1/4; DFA/6/419/4; 6/419/1/18; DFA 6/419/2; DFA 6/419/1/16; DFA 6/419/1/17; DFA 6/419/1/13; DFA 6/419/1/7; DFA 6/419/1/21; DFA 6/419/1/10; DFA 419/1/14; DFA 6/419/1/9; DFA 6/419/4/1; DFA 6/419/4/20; DFA 6/419/4/41; DFA 6/419/4E; DFA 6/419/4/4; DFA 6/419/4/22/2; DFA 6/419/4/22/1; DFA 419/4/22/8; DFA 6/419/4/22/8; DFA 6/419/4/22/6; DFA 6/419/4/22/3; DFA 419/4/22/5; DFA 6/419/4/22;

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DFA 6/419/4/1; DFA 6/419/4/6; DFA 6/419/4; DFA 6/419/4/10; DFA 6/419/4/7; DFA 6/419/4AA; DFA 6/419/4B; DFA 6/419/4/22/2A; DFA 6/419/4/22/4; DFA 6/419/24; DFA 6/419/44; DFA 6/419/19; DFA 6/419/4A; DFA 6/419/4C; DFA 6/419/5; DFA 6/419/26; DFA 6/419/40 DFA embassy series, Holy See, 20/56; DFA embassy series, Holy See, 24/74; DFA embassy series, Holy See, 24/75 Department of the Taoiseach (DT) series DT S13852; DT T6 Private Office Files TAOIS 97/9/610; DT T6 Private Office Files TAOIS 97/9/700; DT T6 Private Office Files TAOIS 97/9/736, DT T6 Private Office Files TAOIS 97/9/778, DT T6 Private Office Files TAOIS 97/9/814 Department of Industry and Commerce (INDC) series INDC EMR 18/4; INDC EMR 18/5; INDC EMR 18/10; INDC EMR 8/7; INDC EMR 8/22; INDC EMR 7/19 Office of Secretary to the President (PRE) PRE PRESS.1 2006/149/42 National Library of Ireland, Dublin (NLI) MS 42.465, Save the German Children Society Quaker Archive Dublin (QAD), Society of Friends Stella Webb papers Box 79, folder 1; box 79, folder 2; box 79, folder 3; box 79, folder 3A; box 79, folder 4; box 79, folder 5; box 79, folder 6 Israel National Library of Israel (NLI), Historical Jewish Press http://web.nli.org.il/sites/JPress/English/Pages/default.aspx The Palestine Post; The Sentinel Liechtenstein Liechtensteinisches Rotes Kreuz, (Liechtenstein Red Cross) Liechtensteinisches Rotes Kreuz, Jahresbericht des Liechtensteinischen Roten Kreuzes für das Jahr 1945/46 (1946). Claus, Grimm. ‘Internierte Russen in Liechtenstein’. In Jahrbuch des Historischen Vereins für das Fürstentum Liechtensteins, 1971, Bd. 71. Liechtensteinische Landesbibliothek, eLiechtensteinensia, Newspaper archive, http://www.eliechtensteinensia.li/Zeitungen/ (Liechtenstein National Library) Liechtensteiner Vaterland Luxembourg Bibliothèque nationale du Luxembourg (BNL) (National Library of Luxembourg) Newspaper archive www.eluxemburgensia.lu Luxemburger Wort Netherlands Delpher Kranten, Dutch newspapers online, http://www.delpher.nl/nl/kranten/ Amigoe di Curaçao; De Avondster; De Bevrijding; De Gooi –en Eemlander; De Nieuwsbode; De Tijd; De Volksvriend; De Vrije Pers; De Waarheid; Friesch Dagblad; Het Nieuws; Het Vrije Volk; Het Baken; Het Financieele Dagblad; Katinpers; Keesings Historisch Archief; Kroniek van de Week; Leeuwarder Koerier; Libertas; Limburgsch Dagblad; Nieuwe

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Provinciale Groninger Courant; Nieuwsblad van het Noorden; Trouw; Vrije Stemmen; Vrij Nederland Krantenbank Zeeland, http://zoeken.krantenbankzeeland.nl/ (Newspaper Store of the Province of Zeeland) Opbouw; Provinciale Zeeuwsche Courant; Vrije Stemmen; Zeeuwsch Dagblad Historische Kranten, Erfgoed Leiden en Omstreken, http://leiden.courant.nu/ (Historic Newspapers, Patrimony of Leiden and Environs) De Burcht; Leidsch Dagblad; Nieuwe Leidsche Courant De Krant van Toen, http://www.dekrantvantoen.nl/index.do (The Newspaper of Yesteryear) Leeuwarder Courant Poland Polski Czerwony Krzyż, Warszawa , (Polish Red Cross, Warsaw) Syg. akt, 2/41; Syg. akt. 2/42; Syg. akt. 4/86 - Uhma S. & Bliźniewski R., Polski Czerwony Krzyż 1919-1959 (PZWL 1959) Switzerland Archives Comité international de la Croix-Rouge, Genève (ACICR), (Archives of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Geneva) O CMS C-017; O CMS C-018; O CMS C-019; O CMS C-020; O CMS C-021; O CMS C-022; O CMS C-023; O CMS C-024; O CMS C-025; O CMS C-026; O CMS C-027; O CMS D-015; O CMS D-012.08; O CMS C-028; O CMS C-029; D EUR DE1 1-099; D EUR DE1 1-100; D EUR DE1 1-101; D EUR D1 1-103; D EUR DE1 1-104; D EUR DE1 1-105; D EUR DE1 1-106; SG.10 (1221); SG.10-103 (1221) V-P-HIST-03265-08A; V-P-HIST-03265-15A; V-P-HIST-03265-16A; V-P-HIST-0326517A; V-P-HIST-03265-19A (photographs) Archives d’Etat de Genève (AEG) Archives privées 92.22.2, Comité irlandais de Secours aux Enfants, 1940-1948 Archive of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) A0443(1); A0889(3); A1023(3); A0929(1); box 19689; box 19691; box 12858; box 16539 1941-46; box 16539 1947-51; Ireland, periodicals 1947-1955

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Index A Abdulmejid, Khaleefah (Abdülmecid) 64 Acheson, Dean 192, 402 Aiken, Frank 63, 83, 484 Albania 11, 84, 128, 130, 136, 171, 194, 242, 244, 249, 414, 420, 421, 436, 481, 486 Albanian Red Cross (ARC) 415, 416–17, 467, 489 anti-religious policy 415 children 414, 416 gratitude 474 distribution of supplies assessment 417 Durazzo 414 IRCS aid in WW2 414, 425 Postribe 417 postwar situation 414 schools 417 Luigj Gurakuqi, Scutari 474 K. Kristoforidhi, Tirana xv, 474–5 Scutari 417 situation in WW2 414 strained relations with UNRRA 415 Tirana xv, 3, 411, 414, 416–17, 474, 481, 483, 490 transport difficulties 414, 415 Allied Council of Foreign Ministers 294 Allied Military Government for Occupied Territories (AMGOT) 67 Antall, József 393–5, 399–400 Antonescu, Marshal Ion 430, 433 Antrim, Lady 296 Argentina 237, 276 490 Attlee, Clement 62, 96, 190 Arbuthnot, Robert 438 Austria xi, 11, 25, 27, 35, 49, 71, 90, 120, 122, 124, 127, 129, 130, 136, 144, 145, 163, 165,169, 171, 181, 189, 235, 239, 244–6, 247, 248, 269, 280, 294, 300, 332 administration issues 346–7, 351 Allied Control Council 346 Anker Bakery Vienna 345 Anschluss 25–6, 344 bartering 345 black market 345 Braunau am Inn 351 Burgenland 351 Provincial Government of Burgenland 351 children in Ireland 13 cattle (Irish) 349–50

Ireland_book_LS.indb 531

early contacts with Ireland 64, 343 Ebensee 470, 477 Ebensee concentration camp 470 Eisenstadt 351 expellees (German) in 349 food situation after WW2 345–7, 350 foreign help 346–7, 351–2 Freistadt 351 Gmunden 470 I-didn’t-know stories 475 industrial recovery 346, 348–9 KZ Verband (Victims of Concentration Camp Association) 472 Linz 122, 163, 346, 348, 349, 350, 469, 470 Public Welfare Office 348 Lower Austria 347, 348 Moscow Declaration (1943) 344 Nazis 25–6, 344 Neudörfl 351 Neufeld 351 Neunkirchen 347 Provisional Government of Austria 345 Radio Vienna 350 rape 346 Salzburg 26, 120, 124, 166, 287, 348, 350, 472 Provincial Government of Salzburg 166, 348 Salzburger Nachrichten 163 Salzburger Volkszeitung 163 situation in WW2 344–5 Soviets feeding population 345 Staatsamt für Volksernährung (State Office for Public Nutrition) 345 status after WW2 344–5 Steyr 166, 348, 470 St. Pölten 347, 348, 391, 469 Amts-Blatt der Stadt St. Pölten 348 strikes 346 theft of Irish supplies 348 Trades Union Council 247 transport issues 347, 349 tuberculosis 350, 351 Tyrol 346, 347 Upper Austria 166, 346 Vienna 25, 47, 71, 124, 172, 300, 344, 345, 346, 347–8, 349, 350, 351, 399, 406–407, 410, 433, 466, 467, 472 Caritas der Erzdiözese Wien 349 Vorarlberg 346, 347

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532 · Index Wiener-Neustadt 347 Wiener-Neustadt police 347 Workers’ Office Salzburg 472 Australia 21, 414 Australian Red Cross 433

B Badelli, Ferdinando 229 Baliński Jundziłł, Count Jan 113 Balkans 129, 170, 189, 190, 411, 413, 414, 435, 436, 438, 446 Ballance, W. E. 426 Bauer, Gerda 321 Bauer, Valentin 283 Brazil 276 Beckett, Samuel 204 Belgium 2 11, 29, 69, 74, 77, 81, 82, 94, 95, 96, 111, 129, 130, 132, 135, 145, 188, 197, 214, 219, 221, 242, 265, 337, 340, 486, 487 Antwerp 94, 99, 129, 171 food situation in WW2 219–20 Galopin Doctrine 219 Hungarian relief in WW2 219–20 Iranian aid 220 Irish soldiers in liberation of 220 IRCS aid in WW2 214 ISCF and Belgian children 220 postwar recovery 219 Swiss Red Cross in 220 Belton, John A. 244 Benedict XV 54–5, 56 Beneš, Edvard 354–5 Ben-Gurion, David 154 Benkovic, Theodore 259 Beran, Josef 401 Berlin 2, 3, 6, 14, 15, 25, 29, 30, 33, 38, 47, 55, 79, 116, 123, 138, 145, 157, 160, 161–3, 164, 166, 167, 168, 184, 187, 190, 193, 200, 213, 229, 248, 258, 263, 267, 270, 275, 281, 284, 285, 287, 295, 302, 303, 304, 305, 306, 308–313, 317, 318, 321, 322, 323, 324, 325, 327, 333, 341, 343, 344, 418, 468, 471, 481, 491 Allied Control Council 160 American initial scepticism of food issue 309 Anhalterbahnhof 311 blockade (1948–1949) 313–16 airlift 313, 314, 315 breaking blockade (Ireland) 313–16 expellees arriving in 303, 307, 308, 325 Food Office 311 Irish supplies on train to (1946) 308–313 press on Irish supplies 312–13 Berliner 313 Berliner Zeitung 312–13

Ireland_book_LS.indb 532

Kurier 313 Neues Deutschland 313 refugees arriving in 304, 306, 307, 308, 309 situation (1945) 304–306 Soviets feeing population 306, 307–308 theft of Irish supplies 310–11 witnesses Altner, Helmut 306 Kopen, Margarethe 306 Linstedt, Elisabeth 138, 309 Linstedt, Hildegard 138, 309 Youth Office Wedding 312 Bernadotte, Folke 52, 67, 269 Bestic, Alan 251, 367 Bevin, Ernest 327 Bewley, Charles 25 Bidault, Georges 208 Bierut, Bolesław 231, 363 black market 36, 137, 138, 139, 141, 143, 146, 155, 192, 200, 205, 212, 247, 270, 275, 276, 292, 311, 333, 345, 360, 377, 386, 392, 423, 428 Irish supplies in black market 227–9 Blank, Gerd 116–17 Blowick, Joseph 76–7 Blueshirts 23–4, 98 Boehringer, Dr R. 167–8, 432 Boerma, A. H. 217 Boland, Frederick H. 13, 39, 66, 111, 120, 123, 134, 149, 151, 152, 158, 214, 234, 250, 314–15, 322, 387, 393, 394, 397–8, 399, 400, 405, 406, 478 against International Red Cross (IRC, JRC, ICRC) 177–9, 180, 254–5, 256, 257–8, 260, 402– 403, 408, 446, 452, 453, 457, 458, 464 Catholicism 111, 184, 230, 468–9 CIA contacts 316, 316n satisfied with international publicity for Ireland 173 Boland, Gerald 158 Boris III 418 Born, Friedrich 376 Brady, Brian 147–8, 246, 291, 330, 350, 370, 380, 395–6, 401, 403, 403–405, 447, 481 Braescu, Mrs 432 Branquinho, Carlos 375 Breen, Dan 98, 159 Brentano, Clemens von 276, 278, 478 Briscoe, Hubert 372 Briscoe, Robert 98, 117–18, 137, 148–9, 149–52, 154 Britain 1, 2, 3, 5, 12, 19, 20, 21, 22, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 33–4, 35, 36, 44–5, 48, 51, 56, 61, 70, 71, 75, 80, 92, 95, 96, 98, 105, 107, 113, 137–8, 139, 141, 142, 144, 149, 151, 159, 202, 212, 214, 219,

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Index · 533 225, 247, 263, 302, 332, 339, 343, 363, 388, 390, 396, 424, 439, 483 British Red Cross (BRC) xiii, 44, 51, 83, 96, 198, 223, 290, 339 British Salvation Army 293 British Union of Fascists (BUF) 39 Catholic Committee for Relief Abroad (CCRA) 296 Christian Aid 48 English Catholic Women’s League 296 House of Commons (London) 139 Ministry of Food 215, 478 Ministry of Labour and National Service 33 Oxfam 48, 52 Royal Air Force (RAF) 68, 264, 266, 273, 306, 308, 338, 374, 430, 476 The Economist 159 The Times (London) 39, 214 Browne, Michael J. 63–4, 114, 145 foreign aid helps communists 453 Bryan, Dan 30–1 Bulgaria 11, 130, 136, 171, 189, 245, 413, 414, 418–23, 436, 445, 481, 483, 486 Bulgarian Red Cross (BRC) 419, 420, 421, 422, 491 children homes, kindergartens & orphanages 420, 421 first arrival of Irish supplies (1946) 420 newsreel on Irish aid 3, 157, 170, 421, 436 occupation politics in Greece 418 eastern Macedonia 418 Thrace 418 organisation of supply distribution 419–20, 421–2 Plovdiv 421 postwar situation 419 refugees from Thrace (Bulgarians) 419 situation in WW2 418–19 Sofia 3, 157, 170, 419, 420, 421, 422 feeding inhabitants in WW2 418 southern Macedonia (World War One) 413 trade agreement with Ireland (1970) 423 transport costs 419–20 visa issues 419, 422

C Canada 21, 32, 61, 195, 424 Canadian High Commissioner (London, 1945) 45 Canadian Red Cross 361 Canterbury, Archbishop of 63 Caritas 52, 100, 102, 121, 169, 256, 275, 281, 282, 285, 286, 337, 340, 349, 350, 352, 369, 460, 468 Carroll, Agnes M. 70–1, 90

Ireland_book_LS.indb 533

Carroll-Abbing, Mgr 229, 230 Çela, Qamil 417, 467 Centre d’Entr’Aide internationale aux Populations civiles (ICRCP, 1946) 152, 177, 179, 180, 241, 251, 252, 257, 258, 352, 368, 369, 405, 406, 407–408, 408, 428, 429, 434, 452 acrimonious correspondence with DEA 259–60 Chamberlain, Neville 22, 27, 28, 29 Chevan, Maurice 87 China 59, 60, 61 Churchill, Winston 19, 22, 29, 31, 34–5, 36, 40, 45, 50, 189, 190, 193, 214, 222, 266, 490 radio duel with de Valera 44–6 Clare, George 47, 271 Clay, Lucius 139, 268, 271, 315 Clayton, Will 192, 193 Cogan, Patrick 137 Cohalan, Daniel 44 Cold War 4, 6, 8, 10, 11, 14, 15, 41, 57, 122, 155, 181, 189, 190, 194, 197, 239, 261, 267, 268, 271, 281, 294, 296, 299, 301, 316, 326, 341, 367, 370, 373, 388, 391, 410, 411, 423, 436, 484 relief in 187–95, 231, 369 religion in 57, 68, 102, 109, 121–22, 156, 157, 184, 194–5, 195, 237, 260, 370, 448, 459, 487 Collins, John 255, 366–7 Collis, Robert 203, 264, 354 anti-French 203–204 Irish officials distrust Collis 203 Cosgrave, Liam 173, 180 Cosgrave, W. T. 21, 22, 23 Costello, John A. 23, 123–4, 153–4, 157, 181, 184, 234, 235, 409–10, 468 Counihan, J. J. 113 Cremin, Cornelius 150, 151, 152, 168, 169, 254, 304, 357, 368, 388, 394–5, 396, 398, 428, 432, 445–6, 446, 447, 448, 449, 453, 455, 457–8 Cremins, Francis T. 42, 74, 153 Crosbie, James 359 Cuchet, Henri 402, 406 Czechoslovakia 27, 28, 48, 49, 117, 130, 136, 168, 189, 191, 193, 234, 269, 317, 323, 343–4, 353–9, 370, 372, 401, 458, 468, 486 Bohemia 28, 353, 355, 356, 357 Bratislava 355, 356 Brno 354 cattle (Irish) 358 Don Suisse in 357 early contacts with Ireland 343–4 exactions against Germans 353–5 expellees (German) from 317, 325, 332, 338, 349, 356–7 transit camps 356

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534 · Index Novaky 356 Petrzalka-Kopcani 356 Poprad 356 Prosecnice 356 food shortages in WW2 353 Irish reaction to Munich agreement (1938) and German invasion of (1939) 27–8 Lidice 353 Marshall Plan 357–8 Moravia 353, 355, 356, 357 Prague 187, 234, 304, 353, 354, 356, 357, 358, 359 refugees (Czechoslovak, 1948) 120, 359 Czechoslovak Refugee Committee (Irish Quakers) 359 relations with ICRC 353 situation in WW2 353–4 Slovakia 28, 47, 130, 355, 356 Slovakian Red Cross 356

D D’Alton, John 102, 460 contacted for Catholic distribution of Irish supplies 252–3 Dalton, Hugh 270 De Gasperi, Alcide 234 de Gaulle, Charles 127, 198, 202, 488, 490 de Jong, Johannes 115–16, 467 de Kosinsky, Imre 386, 387, 390, 392–7, 393n, 394, 396, 397–8, 399–400, 401, 403 de Lattre de Tassigny, Jean 274 de Montmollin, Eric 348–9 Denmark 52, 77, 169, 246, 256 Copenhagen 187 denominational rivalry in relief 12–13, 56–7, 257, 487 De Rocco, Pietro 473–4 de Twickel, Br Ansgarius 116 de Valera, Éamon 7, 14, 15, 20, 21, 22, 23, 79, 80, 85, 87, 134, 135, 137–38, 140–1, 142, 155, 157, 161, 162, 174, 184, 203, 212, 215, 231, 234, 236, 237, 287, 329, 350, 372, 373, 385, 386, 391, 486 against opponents of relief 127, 146, 147, 148 and anti-communist literature 259 East Europe 259 Memorandum for the American-Croatian Congress to the Assembly of the UnitedNations 259 The Tragedy of a Nation (Croatia) 259 attitude to Nuremberg 158 Catholic distribution of Irish supplies 254, 256, 257, 259, 333 cooperation with NCWC 177, 179

Ireland_book_LS.indb 534

decision on relief for Europe 59–60, 61, 73, 75, 108, 246–7, 250 de Valera forest (Nazareth) 154 friendship with Rabbi Isaac Herzog 24, 149, 152 German civilians and officials writing to 329, 333, 339–40 Grand Hôtel Paris (ceremony, 1947) 148, 463, 490–1 handshake with Eduard Hempel (1945) 1, 19, 38–42, 214, 218 interwar policy 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 29–30, 30, 31, 33, 34–5, 36, 242 Jews during WW2 38 postwar relief for 149, 151, 152, 381–2 letters and tokens of gratitude to 172, 212, 217, 225, 226, 288, 350, 381, 381–2, 411, 444, 456–7, 464, 466, 467, 468, 469, 471, 473–4, 475, 485 questioned by Dillon on IRC efficiency (1947) 179–80 radio duel with Churchill 44–6, 214 relations with Archbishop McQuaid 110, 184 relief for Central and Eastern Europe 15, 136, 242, 250, 259, 366, 393, 395, 396, 458–9 saving of Rome (1944) 222, 229 secret cooperation with western Allies in WW2 19, 29, 30, 31, 32–3, 33–4, 34–5 statement on relief for Europe (18 May 1945) 75–6, 78, 81, 93, 239 Dibra, Enver 417 Dillon, James 77–8, 78, 79, 80, 136–7, 138, 152–3, 155, 179–80, 180, 194, 444 displaced persons (DPs) 10, 48, 49, 55, 105, 124, 139, 240, 249, 276, 285, 289, 295–301, 307, 310, 327 Auhof camp (Austria) 300 clashes between DPs of different nationality 299 Irish helpers 105, 297, 298–9, 299–300 Kappenberg camp (Austria) 300 relations with Germans 300 schooling of DP children 300 Dobrzyński, Wacław Tadeusz 369 Domonkos, Miksa 375, 381–2, 382 Don du Gouvernement irlandais (film project) 171 Dönitz, Karl 38–9 Dratvin, Mikhail 317 drawings 12, 464, 465, 466, 468, 473, 477, 478, 479–80, 480 droughts 134, 147, 190, 307, 319, 419, 431, Drumm, Gotthard 282 Drumm, Seán 266 Dulanty, John W. 85, 458, 467, 478

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Index · 535 Palestine Post 330–1 Polish Red Cross 331 Polonisation of former German territories 325 reception camps 328–9 Schleswig-Holstein 329–30 welcome in western-occupied zones 326–7 Wiesbaden 326

Dunand, Georges 355 Dunant, Henry 49, 56

E East Germany (German Democratic Republic) 47, 184, 194, 303, 322, 329, 341 Eichmann, Adolf 374 Éire (see Ireland) Eisenhower, Dwight D. 49, 50, 187, 207, 245, 268 Eliás, Joseph 391 Eötvös, József 371 Estonia Estonian DPs 299 Europe Irish press on end of war in 42, 43, 59–63 postwar situation in 10, 46–8, 127–8, 187–95 European Economic Community (EEC) 7, 369, 423, 490 European Recovery Program (see Marshall Plan) Evian-les-Bains conference (1938) 24 expectant mothers 112, 161, 163, 249, 322, 407 expellees (German) 10, 116, 123–4, 286, 295, 297, 307, 320, 326, 328, 329, 330–1, 335, 338, 341 expulsion from Czechoslovakia 349, 354–5 expulsion from Poland 297, 308–309, 325–6, 331 Glatz (Kłodzko) 331, 365 Irish supplies for 124, 300, 327–8, 329, 349, 355, 356, 476, 485 Katowice 331, 365 Lamsdorf internment camp 325 letters to Ireland 303, 332 lack of self-examination 334–5, 335–6 Polish brutality 334–5 Alscher, Franz 334 Claeser, Norbert 333 Erben, Friedrich 333 Reinsch, Hermann 334 Zeidler, Gertrud 334 rape 328–9, 305 Klose, Joseph 335 Knoller, Kurt 335 Wissmann, Lena 335 resettlement issues & religious issues 138, 291, 293, 303, 326–7, 329, 336–7 Alscher, Franz 337–8 Knoller, Kurt 338 Papert, Hanna 336 Reinsch, Hermann 336 Schöniger, Emil 338 Wissmann, Lena 337 Zeidler, Gertrud 337 Lower Saxon Red Cross 329 ‘Operation Swallow’ 329–30

Ireland_book_LS.indb 535

F Fahy, Frank 87, 173 farmers 84, 345, 430, 431, 460 attitude to compulsory food production (continent) 199, 265, 270, 289, 307–308, 345 attitude to compulsory food production (Ireland) 36, 63, 79, 113–14, 134, 140, 142, 153, 209 attitude to exchanging food with population (continent) 138, 199, 200, 275, 345, 423 Faulhaber, Michael von 252, 471 Favaro, Arcangelo 230 Fé, Lodi 25–6, 27 Ferguson, Roger Campbell 66, 67 Figl, Leopold 350, 466–7 Filinov, Colonel F. G. 318 Finland 189 Finish children 91 Finish Red Cross 84 First World War 10, 20, 21n, 28, 32, 35, 55, 56, 71, 86, 90, 108, 125, 142, 199, 220, 220n, 263, 265, 274, 337, 343, 363, 371, 372, 373, 413, 437, 454, 464, 488 FitzGerald, Garret 32n, 34 Flanagan, Oliver J. 150, 152–3, 153, 155, 180–1 Fliesser, Joseph 122, 469–70, 470 Flood, Daniel C. 139 Flynn, Fabian 124 Flynn, Michael P. 107, 298, 298–9, 299, 454 Forek, Nora 434–5 Fox, Mr 408 Franco, Francisco 24, 40, 54, 74, 110, 237, France 11, 12, 13, 24, 26, 27, 31, 32, 39, 41, 49, 50, 56, 59, 61, 62, 63, 69, 86, 94, 106, 110, 127, 129, 130, 132, 136, 181, 188, 197, 198–207, 210–12, 214, 220, 231, 235, 242, 243, 249, 273, 281, 282, 337, 363, 482, 486, 488 Bartering 200 Battle of Normandy 9, 201, Bayonne 139, 244, 381 Bordeaux 40, 210 Cherbourg 204 Croix-Rouge française (CRF, French Red Cross) 14, 198, 202, 205, 206, 207 D-Day 3, 14, 31, 46, 199, 201 Don Suisse 74, 165–6

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536 · Index Entr’Aide française 136, 210, 211, 463, 473, 484 food situation in WW2 50, 198–9, 200–201, 265–6 Free Zone in WW2 198 French children in Ireland xiv, 13, 116, 137 French Provisional Government 203, 232 Hôpital Irlandais (see Normandy) impossibility to satisfy everyone 211 IRCS in France 198, 201–8, 211 Irish in France 81, 95–6 Le Havre 47, 187, 200 l’exode 198 Marseille 199, 432, 439 Metz 361 Normandy 3, 7, 9, 46, 49, 68n, 174, 201, 203, 204, 366, 481, 483, 485 Hôpital Irlandais (Irish Hospital, SaintLô) 7, 65, 75, 86, 172, 174, 176, 201– 207, 250, 255, 365, 366, 367, 485 Affaire de l’Hôpital Irlandais 205 Dutch want hospital in Netherlands 202–204 French political analysis of Irish efforts 202 expenses 176–7, 202, 205, 207 Menapia 204 Renseignements généraux 206 Sûreté nationale 206 Normans resent Allied strategy 201 North African population (Paris) receiving Irish foodstuffs 473 Occupied Zone in WW2 198 Vichy regime 50, 198, 200, 266 Old People’s Home, Orange 472 Paris xv, 40, 43, 47, 64, 95, 110, 115, 121, 123, 145, 148, 154, 179, 181, 187, 191, 202–203, 205, 206, 208, 225, 243, 259, 281, 367, 371, 425, 455, 459, 473 ceremony to thank Ireland (1947) 463, 485, 490 Parti communiste français 191, 231–2, 234 postwar situation 128, 138–9, 274 praise for Ireland 463, 472 press on postwar Ireland Combat 209 Courrier Français du Sud-Ouest 208 Franc-Tireur 40, 208–209 Inter 208 L’Etoile du Soir 209 Libres 40, 207–208 Ouest-France xv, 210 Paris-Actualités 209 Paris Matin 39 Sud-Ouest 210

Ireland_book_LS.indb 536

reconstruction efforts 129, 284 Reims (Rheims) 187, 198 Saint-Lô 7, 14, 174, 176, 201–207, 207, 208, 236, 250, 255, 366, 367 Secours catholique 121 SNCF (French state railway) 244 Swiss Red Cross activities 165–6, 200, 201 système D 199–200 Tarn 472 women and supplies in WW2 199 Franks, Alice L. 70–1, 90 Franks, George McKenzie 61–2 Freckmann, Maria 476 Freiburg im Breisgau 165–6, 257, 267–8, 272–81, 281, 282, 283, 469, 470, 476, 478 Badische Zeitung 274, 279, 280 black market 275, 276 Caritas 275, 281 criticism of food distribution 278, 280 Das Volk 280 destruction by RAF (1944) 273 situation for inhabitants 274 farmers 274–5 foreign aid 276 French occupation policy 273–4 Irish Press comments on 273–4 letters of thanks 277, 279, 279–80, 476, 478 self-help 275–6 Unser Tag 280 welfare associations Badisches Rotes Kreuz 275 Badisches Hilfswerk 275 Bahnhofsmission 275 Caritas 275, 281 Freiburg-Betzenhausen internment camp 280 Freiburger Nothilfe 275 Freiburg Food Office 279 Freiburg Welfare Office 281 Jugendhilfswerk 275Freund, Dr H. 358 Friends’ Relief Service (see Quakers) Frings, Josef 97, 99, 99–100, 100, 101, 102, 116

G Gaffney, Gertrude 371 Gallagher, Brian 1, 1–2, 2 Gallagher, Mr (Secretary for Agriculture) 149 Geneva Convention 50, 83, 240 Gerassimov, Lieutenant 304 Germany aid for Easter Rising (1916) 20, 263 Auswärtiges Amt (German Foreign Office) 29 bombing in WW2 47, 97, 98, 116, 130, 159, 266–7, 273, 283, 289, 293, 297, 308, 329, 476

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Index · 537 destruction of Dresden (1945) 9, 158, 266 destruction of Hamburg (1943) 266 Caritas in 100, 102, 256, 275, 281, 282, 285, 286, 337, 340, 460, 468 Caritasverband 252–3 change in Allies’ attitude towards 264, 267, 268–72 children in Ireland 7, 13, 68, 68n, 97–8, 98–9, 100, 101, 102, 137, 146–7, 297, 469, 486 Deutsch-Irische Gesellschaft 263 early Irish-German relations 263, 279–80 Endlösung (Final Solution) & concentration camps 264, 353 Auschwitz 44, 264, 326, 360, 374, 382 Bełzec 264 Bergen-Belsen 42, 44, 99, 147, 148, 203, 214, 264, 296, 354 Buchenwald 214, 325 Chełmno 264 Dachau 43 Ebensee (see Ebensee) Farge 43 Majdanek 264 Neuengamme 43, 52 Sobibór 264, 344 Treblinka 264, 344, 360 food crisis, 1945–1946 47–8, 62–3, 127–8, 128, 244–5, 268–72, 306, 307–308 German Red Cross (DRK) 147n, 282, 286–8, 292, 328, 329, 341, 424–5 Great Irish Famine 63–5, 70, 72–3, Hunger Plan 265, 306 invasion of Soviet Union (1941) 264, 359–60, 418, 430 mistreatment of Soviet prisoners of war 264 Ireland’s different attitude towards 77–8, 194, 244–5 Kristallnacht (1938) 24, 25 Luftwaffe 35, 84, 113, 222, 300 Munich Agreement (1938) 27, 36 Nazis’ attitude towards Irish nationalists 263 Nazis’ grip on population 266–7 Nazis’ obsession with food 265–6 Pius XII against collective guilt 272 policy towards defeated Germany 268–72 postwar reaction to Nazism 116–17, 269, 271, 282–3, 475–6, 476 Potsdam Conference (1945) 190, 269, 276, 325, 329, 331, 332, 354 importance of food production 270, 289 reconstruction efforts 47, 128, 129–30, 193, 272–81 Ruhrgebiet 63, 97, 99, 101, 130, 147, 266, 289, 289–90, 290, 294

Ireland_book_LS.indb 537

SS 33, 37, 43, 44, 52, 159, 213, 335, 344, 360 Sudetenland 27–8, 138, 333, 336, 349, 354 Trümmerfrauen (rubble women) 275 Volksdeutsche (ethnic Germans) 124, 300, 355, 440 Wehrmacht 28, 33, 83, 117, 198, 212, 213, 222, 265, 270, 304, 335, 348, 354, 359, 414, 423, 440 involved in black market in Poland 360 plundering Greece 424 responsibility in fate of German civilians 304 Germany (American-Occupied Zone) 285–8 Arbeiter Wohlfahrt 286 Bavaria 116, 253, 263, 286, 288, 327, 336–7, 355 disagreement with distribution of supplies in Berlin 287–8 Bavarian Red Cross 253, 287–8, 465 Bremen 43, 95, 100, 252, 287 Bremen Regional Committee for the Distribution of Foreign Donations 287 Caritas 285, 286 Darmstadt 476 Catholic Youth of 476–7 displaced persons 285 DRK (German Red Cross) 286, 287 Evangelisches Hilfswerk 285–6 foreign aid 285–6 Frankfurt am Main 256, 286, 478 Grabenstätt am Chiemsee 287 Hungarian children 286 Kassel 286, 338 Mannheim 286, 310 Mörfelden 478–9 Muhldorf 299 Munich 28, 252, 286, 287, 288, 471 Nassau-Hessen 477, 479 Nuremberg 286 Office of the Military Government of the United States (OMGUS) 285 organisation of supplies 285, 286, 287 relations between Americans and JRC 286 Stuttgart 253, 278, 285, 286, 286–7, 287, 288, 329 Stuttgart Welfare Office 286 theft of supplies 287 supplies for refugee camps (Hof, Fürth & Schedding/Passau) 286 Württemberg 116, 284, 287, 464, 481 Württemberg Red Cross 286 Würzburg 116 Zentralkomitee der freien Wohlfahrtsverbände 285

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538 · Index Germany (British-Occupied Zone) 289–94 Aachen 97, 99, 102, 130, 256 Rheinisch-Westphalian Technical University of 469 Anglo-American tensions over food supply 289 Bonn 292, 293, 302 Bund der Fliegergeschädigten 293 student undernourishment 292–3 University of Bonn 292 child mortality 289–90 Cologne 13, 62, 100–101, 116, 256, 302, 326, 327 Cologne City Council 102 Cork to Cologne appeal (see Cork) Legion of Mary (Irish) in 116 Control Office for Germany and Austria (COGA) 289 Duderstadt 297 Düsseldorf 97, 102, 290, 292, 470 Düsseldorfer Nothilfe 292 organisation of food supplies 290, 291 Essen 290, 293, 294 Essener Nothilfe 293 Flensburg 147 food riots 289 Freiheit 292 Goslar 299 Hamburg 255, 264, 266, 290 Hanover 255, 290, 298, 328 Kiel 296, 329 Lübeck 290, 329 München-Gladbach (Mönchengladbach) 290, 471 Osnabrück 340 Paderborn 107, 297 Irische Damen 296n, 297, poor administration 289 problems in British Zone 289 Rheine 478 Rhineland 290, 293, 297 Ruhrgebiet 289, 294 scorched earth policy 289 Verden 298 Weser-Ems 478 Wilhelmshaven 479, 480 Oldeoogschule 479 Wuppertal 289 Germany (French-Occupied Zone) 281–5 Baden-Baden 282 Baden-Württemberg 116, 284, 464 Evangelisches Hilfswerk 481 Freiburg im Breisgau (see Freiburg im Breisgau)

Ireland_book_LS.indb 538

French put in charge (1945) 281 Koblenz 282, 283 Lieser 283–4 Lörrach 278, 279, 282 Ludwigshafen 282, 283 effect of Irish supplies in 283 Neue Saarbrücker Zeitung 160–1 Neustadt 282 organisation of distribution of supplies 282, 284 Rheinpfalz 283 Saarbrücken 160–1, 278, 282 Saarland 160, 160–1, 282 Schramberg 284, 287, 464, 465 Schwenningen 278, 282, 468 Suchard chocolate 279 Trier 163–4, 270, 282, 282–3, 471 Germany (Soviet-Occupied Zone) 316–24 agreement on Irish supplies 316–17 Altenburg 321 anti-Soviet propaganda (Nazi) 304 Berlin (see Berlin) Brandenburg 164, 270, 304, 318, 318–19, 321, 322, 471, 475–6 Breslau (Wrocław) 305, 476 Central Administration for Transferred Populations 317 Chemical Research Office of Görlitz 320 Commission for the Distribution of Foreign Donations within the Soviet-Occupied Zone 320, 321 Dresden 9, 123, 158, 266, 468, 477 eastern refugees (1945) 307, 308–309, 325 numbers of 304 East Prussia 304, 325, 333, 336 Eberswalde (Brandenburg) 164, 318 manipulation of Irish supplies for electoral reasons (1946) 318–19 Edderitz 477 edibility of Irish foodstuffs 320 efficient food management (Soviet) 307–308 Eibenstock 322 Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains) 302, 322, 468 foreign aid 318 Freie Deutsche Jugend (FDJ, German communist youth) 320, 323 Kampehl 479 kindness to children (Soviet soldiers) 305 Kulturbund 476 Leipzig 322, 471 Health Office Leipzig 470 Lower Silesia 325, 365 Ludwigsfelde 320, 321, 323 Marienberg 468

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Index · 539 Mark Brandenburg 322, 471 Mecklenburg 303, 318 organisation of the distribution of Irish supplies 317 Osthavelland District Council 322 Plauen 165, 322, 479 Pomerania 304, 325, 332, 333 Posen 325 Potsdam 311, 333, 479 preparing supplies for 317 press on Irish supplies 322 Märkische Volksstime 322 Neue Zeit 322 Tägliche Rundschau (Soviet military, Berlin) 322 Randow 321 Reichenbach/Oberlausitz 323–4 Rügen 14, 321 Saxony 165, 303, 318, 321, 323, 479 Saxony-Anhalt 303 Seelow 321 Senzig 320, 323 Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED) 318, 319, 333, 468 electoral strategy in relation with Irish supplies 318–19 Soviet brutality during invasion (1945) 304–305 rape of women 304–305, 308, 331, 335 babies to go to Ireland 305 Soviet inconsistent occupation policy 306–307 Soviet Military Administration of Germany (SMAD) 303, 307, 308, 310, 317, 319, 322 Soviets feeding population 306, 307–308 spread of distribution of Irish supplies 321 Spremberg 475 Thuringia 303, 321, 471 Usedom 321 Volkssolidarität 164, 165, 318, 319–20, 320, 321, 321–2, 468, 479 Märkische Volkssolidarität 164 Volkssolidarität Eberswalde 318 Volkssolidarität Plauen 165 Volkssolidarität Reichenbach/Oberlausitz 323–4 Volkssolidarität Weimar 263, 471 Waldschule 322 Weimar 471 Wiek 321 Wildau 320, 323 Women Committees 308 Gheorghiu-Dej, Gheorghe 430, 431 Gigon, Fernand 170–1,

Ireland_book_LS.indb 539

Godard, Justin 210, 212 Goebbels, Joseph 99, 306 Gollancz, Viktor 96, 101 Gomułka, Władislaw 362–3 Göring, Hermann 158, 265 Görtz, Hermann 30–1, 98, 159 funeral in Dublin 159–60 Gospodinoff (Gospodinov) Georgi 422 Gottwald, Klement 357, 359 Gouin, Félix 232 Graba, Alois & Margarete 476 Grandjean, Mr 441 Grass, Günter 354 Gratuità 484 Gray, David 32, 41–2, 209, 484 Greece 11, 15, 94, 124, 136, 171, 423–9 Athens 187, 423, 424, 426, 427, 428 black market 423 children 423–4, 425, 426, 428 pedopolis 428 Civil War (1946–1949) 425–6 clothes (Irish) for political prisoners 426–7 Corfu 426 distribution issues 426–7, 428–9 Drama 14, 427 early Irish-Greek relations 413 Hellenic Red Cross (HRC) 427 malaria 425 postwar situation 425 Salonika 413, 426, 427 Sugar (Irish) crisis 428–9 supplies (Irish) for political prisoners 426–7 Anafi 427 Anticythère (Potamós) 427 Folegandros 427 Icaria, “Red Rock” 427 Kythira 427 World War Two famine 52, 59, 423–5 foreign aid 50, 52, 61, 62 invasion (1941) 423 Irish press reports 60, 424 Irish relief 61, 75, 84, 91 occupation administration 423, 424, 425 Griffith, Arthur 72–3, 78 Gröber, Conrad 277, 279–80 Grossman, Vasily 304–305 Groza, Petru 430 Györgyfy, Ákos 391

H Habsburg, Otto von 408–409 Hackett, Mary 148, 161–2, 168, 175, 258, 276–7, 297, 369

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540 · Index Haines, Gerd 476 Hajós, Emil 391 Hamill, John B. 165–6, 168, 169, 251, 393–4, 441–2, 442, 445 Hamstern 274–5, 276 Hanna, John E. 66, 406 Hartmann, W. A. 310, 311 Hayes, Richard 30–1 Heinemann, Gustav 293–4 Hempel, Eduard 29, 32, 39, 40, 42, 75, 77, 156, 158, 159, 207, 214, 236 Herzog, Isaac 24, 38, 149, 150, 151, 152, 154, 155, 209, 484 Herzog, Roman 469 Heuss, Theodor 469 Heydrich, Reinhard 353 Himmler, Heinrich 37, 44, 52 Hitler, Adolf 19, 24, 25, 32, 35, 38–9, 52, 54, 74, 158, 191, 264, 265, 266–7, 289, 306, 325, 331, 344, 351, 355, 359, 373–4, 403, 414 admiration for Hitler in Ireland 24, 25, 26–7, 98–9, 153 against Catholic Church 25, 26 denunciation of Hitler in Ireland 24–5, 25–6 de Valera’s condolences on death of 1, 39, 42, 46, 54, 75, 154 international press on de Valera’s condolences 39–40, 40, 41, 207–208, 214 Hitler in Ireland 41 outrageous statements on Hitler in postwar Germany 271 repudiation of Hitler in German letters to Ireland 116–17, 475–6 Hitler, Josef 351, 351n Hochleitner, Albert 350, Hoffmann, Wolfgang 276, 278–9, 469 Holland (see Netherlands) Holy See (see Vatican) Hoover, Herbert 71, 125, 134–5, 136, 142, 192, 247, 454–5, 464, 485–6 Horgan, Anne 106–107 Horthy, Miklós 373–4 Hourihane, J. D. 227, 228, 229, 246, 422, 426, 432, 443, 445–6, 447, 448, 448–9, 449–52, 452–3, 455, 456, 460, 484 Hoxha, Enver 415, 417, 454, 474 Huber, Max 241 Hull, Cordell 268 Hungary 6, 11, 15, 35, 47, 55, 129, 130, 136, 145, 171, 189, 194, 245, 254, 256, 258, 259, 265, 296, 343, 360, 367, 370, 371–411, 418, 436, 460, 466, 467, 482, 489 Actio Catholica 373, 381, 386, 390, 393, 394, 395, 403, 404, 405, 407, 410

Ireland_book_LS.indb 540

Irish supplies for 254, 256, 389, 390, 391, 393, 394–5, 395, 398–9, 399, 400, 402, 403, 404, 405 anti-Semitism & Holocaust 371, 373–4, 374–5, 375–6 Archbishop John Charles McQuaid and 120, 398–9, 400, 401 army (Honvéd) 282 Arrow Cross 373, 374, 375, 384, 391, 397 ÁVO (secret police) 379, 392 Bátaszék 388 beef (Irish) 144, 389 Budai Chevra Kadisa 384 Budapest 3, 6, 15, 91, 112, 144, 169, 248, 254, 372–3, 373, 375, 376, 377–8, 381–9, 389, 391, 392, 393, 395, 396–7, 398, 399, 400, 404, 405, 406, 407, 408, 411, 467 Eucharistic Congress in (1938) 372–3, 398 siege of (1944–1945) 245, 374–5, 376 Irish witness 390 Budapest State Deaf and Dumb Institute 391 Catholic Church 370, 372–3, 375, 381, 382, 384, 389–90, 397, 401, 404 tensions with communists 372, 379–80, 397 cattle (Irish) 378, 388–9 Champagnat Institute 384 children 375 after WW2 377, 384–5, 385, 388, 391, 396, 401, 407, 408 to Ireland 385–8, 393n communist takeover 138, 377–8, 379–80, 395–7, 409–10 Szalámitaktika 387 communist threat 398 Democratic Association of Hungarian Women (MNDSZ) 379–80 early contacts with Ireland 371–3 Evangelical & Reformed Churches 375, 382, 385 expellees (German) 269, 325, 332 Ferencváros railway station 378 Free Union of Hungarian Doctors 382 Gaudiopolis 385 Good Shephard organisation 385 harvest 376 Hegyeshalom 377 Hungarian Red Cross (HRC) 376, 388, 393, 394, 395–6, 396, 399, 400, 403, 404, 405, 406, 407, 409 inflation 377 international aid 378 Jews 373, 374, 375–6, 376, 380, 384, 390–1, 403

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Index · 541 Churches and 375 international protests against deportations 374 Irish supplies for 381–2, 382, 384, 384n, 391 Irish press on killings of Hungarian Jews 38 Jewish children 384, 385, 387 Jewish children in Ireland 68 Josephinum 384 Kis-Képes 388 letters of thanks 258, 486 list of recipients of Irish sugar (Budapest) 382–5 Mátyás Rákosi Children’s Home 385 Ministry of Education and Cultural Affairs 382 Ministry of Food 404, 406, 407–408 Ministry of Welfare 382–3, 404, 408 National Alliance of Catholic Working Women and Girls 379 National Theatre of Budapest 382 Népszava 381, 389 Pax 385 Pazmanium 399 postwar situation 376–7, 377–8 Radio Budapest 378, 389 Sisters of the Eucharistic Union 384 sugar (Irish) 50, 373, 378, 380, 381–9, 389, 391, 391–2, 392, 394, 395, 406, 407, 407– 408, 408, 411 supplies (Irish) 179, 378, 380, 386, 389, 390, 391, 392, 397, 398, 399, 400, 407 alleged misappropriation by communists 389, 390, 391, 393, 399, 489 on train to Budapest (1946) 248 Soviet occupation policy 376 reparations 402 University Catholic Association 392 Uprising (1956) 379, 410 World War Two 189, 373–6 Hynd, John 289

I Imfeld, Carlo 248, 378, 381 India 59, 59–60, 60, 182 Bengal 60, 73 Indian Famine Committee 60 Innitzer, Theodor 25, 26, 172, 350, 391, 466 Inskip, Thomas 27 International Centre for Relief to Civilian Populations (ICRCP) 152, 177, 179, 180, 241, 251–2, 255, 257, 258, 352, 368–9, 405, 406–407, 408, 428, 429, 434, 452

Ireland_book_LS.indb 541

disagreement with DEA (1949) 259–60 International Committee of Catholic Charities 115 International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) 12, 14, 48, 49–51, 52, 53, 55, 56, 82, 83, 89, 160, 167, 168, 170n, 180, 240–2, 260, 276, 280, 282, 283, 285, 290, 308–309, 311, 314, 327, 338, 346, 347, 348, 353, 355, 356, 361, 377, 381, 395, 406, 407, 416, 423–4, 426, 427, 429, 430, 431, 433, 434, 440, 441, 449, 464, 468, 478, 480, 484, 486 Nobel Peace Prize (1945) 50 postwar existential crisis 49, 241 postwar financial difficulties 240, 241 reaction to Irish relief offer (1945) 129–30 relations with Ireland 69–70, 73, 78, 80, 82, 83–4, 87, 98, 132, 137, 175, 240, 242, 255, 315, 327–8, 350, 402, 415, 444 relations with Nazi Germany 50–1, 240 relations with Soviet Union 50, 240, 309–10, 316–17, 317, 318 relations with UNRRA 51 relations with Vatican 56–7, 256–7, 260 International Food Conference, London (1946) 133–5 International Red Cross 7, 13, 14, 66, 84, 96, 129, 130, 139, 150, 166, 168–9, 183, 189, 239, 244, 246, 251, 295, 316, 320, 346, 374, 376, 393, 415, 419, 422, 424, 425, 431, 432, 440, 441–2, 443, 445, 465 Ireland’s relations with 155, 157, 162, 164, 165, 175, 176, 179–80, 180, 184, 194, 230, 237, 239, 242–4, 244, 245, 249, 267, 278, 300, 310, 313, 315, 319, 348, 349, 355, 357, 366, 385, 391, 399, 420–1, 436, 448, 449, 452, 481, 485, 489 principles of humanitarian aid 194, 240, 260, 370 triangular relations Ireland, Vatican, International Red Cross 252–5, 256, 256–7, 260, 366–7, 389, 390, 400, 402, 403, 405, 406, 408, 452, 460, 486–7, International Refugee Organization (IRO) 258, 355 Ireland does not join (1948) 258 Iran 15, 220, 378 Iraqi Red Crescent 15, 223 Ireland Aer Lingus 86 aid helps communists 138, 155, 179–80, 181, 192, 194, 195, 230–4, 255, 257–8, 318–19, 431, 451–2, 453–5 Amalgamated Transport and General Workers’ Union 95

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542 · Index anti-tuberculosis campaign 87 Army Medical Services 65 asylum for Germans after WW2 41, 41–2, 158–9 bacon supplies (Irish) 14, 76, 78, 85, 86, 95, 104, 131, 133, 135, 143, 144, 145, 161, 163, 164, 166, 209, 211, 212, 218, 221, 236, 246, 247, 252, 253, 279, 280, 281, 283, 285, 287, 291, 292–3, 322, 331, 335, 348, 349, 350–1, 352, 365, 368, 460, 468, 469, 477, 478–9, 479, 481 Big Freeze 105, 121, 140, 141–2, 143, 144, 145, 148, 152, 153, 155, 179, 181, 184, 227, 255, 490 harvest army 140 biscuits supplies (Irish) 162, 171, 243, 290, 293, 317, 318, 320, 321, 331, 356, 416 Bunreacht na hÉireann 22–3, 110 butter supplies (Irish) 76, 88–9, 131, 143, 163, 171, 200, 211, 212, 218, 221, 226, 236, 246, 248, 275, 276, 277–8, 279, 281, 282, 283, 285, 286, 333, 347–8, 248, 352, 358, 450, 466, 468, 478 Castlebar 3, 85 Castlebar Bacon company Ltd 85 Castlecomer (County Kilkenny) 86 Catholic Church anti-communism 14, 23, 55, 111, 122, 195, 224, 409, 448, 453, 456 children abuse 119, 119n deference to 22–3, 124, 235, 260, 487 involvement in relief 13, 36, 63–4, 88, 94, 109, 113, 114, 145–6, 252, 343 relations with state 4, 119, 460 relations with Vatican 4, 122, 222, 224, 235, 252, 400, 448, 460 Catholic Social Service Conference (CSSC) 112, 114, 120, 398 cattle (Irish) 66, 67, 76, 84, 94–5, 95, 131, 132, 133, 135, 136, 144, 145, 146, 152, 153, 211, 212, 215, 216, 217, 218, 220, 221, 236, 243, 246, 270, 306, 330, 349–50, 358, 378, 388–9, 449, 450, 457–9, 485 censorship 5, 12, 21, 37–8, 43, 62, 79 Charleville 13, 87 Christian Brothers 88, 398 Church of Ireland (Protestant) 70, 88, 90, 103–104 citizens on continent 81, 95–6, 96, 96–7 Civil War (1922–1923) 21, 22, 73, 240 Clann na Talmhan (agrarian party) 76–7, 137 clothes supplies (Irish) 3, 13, 14, 69, 84, 87, 92–3, 95, 96, 100–101, 119, 127, 130, 136, 140, 160, 164, 171, 178, 183, 208, 210–11,

Ireland_book_LS.indb 542

220, 223, 246, 250, 356, 361, 416, 418, 419, 431, 435, 439, 460 collection for destitute Italian children 119–20 collection for Hungarian people 120, 377, 380, 388, 397–401 distribution of clothes to Dutch people 213, 215, 216, 217, 296 distribution of clothes to German people 274, 281, 302, 308, 333, 338, 340, 341, 477 distribution of clothes to Greek people 3, 425, 426 to political prisoners 426–7 dyeing of disused Irish uniforms in Greece 426–7 distribution of clothes to Italian people 223, 227, 228, 230, 251 lack of clothes in Ireland 104, 112, 119–20, 141 compulsory tillage 36, 140 Connacht Tribune 64, 145–6, 444 Cork 3, 35, 95, 106, 144, 297, 358, 413, 480 Cork Famers Union 84 Cork to Cologne appeal 13, 81, 97–103, 257 St Aloysius Past Pupils’ Union 101 Sunbeam Wolsey factory (Cork) 86 Cork Examiner 60, 79, 100, 101, 178, 442–3, 443 County Dublin Beekeepers’ Association 88 criticism of Irish government’s handling of supplies 144–5, 148, 152–3, 179–81, 254 bishops denounce objections to relief (1947) 145–6 debating relief at school (1947) 146–7 de Valera against objections (1947) 147 Independent newspaper group questions relief (1947) 143–4 Cumann na nGaedheal 21 Dáil Éireann 16, 22, 66, 72, 75–9, 87, 110, 123, 125, 147, 150, 152–3, 155, 179, 182–3, 225, 254, 409, 426, 444, 449, 484 Army Vote (relief) 128, 130, 131, 211, 218, 221, 236 alleviation of distress (£3,000,000, 1945) 59–60, 75–9, 80, 81, 93, 128, 194, 272 alleviation of distress (£1,750,000, 1946) 127, 135–9 alleviation of distress (£750,00, 1947) 180–1 decision to distribute supplies in Germany and Austria 244–6 Department of Agriculture 65, 66, 81, 82, 96,

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Index · 543 113, 132, 133, 148, 149, 151, 181, 216, 314, 358, 369 Department of External Affairs (DEA) 4, 13, 22, 39, 65, 66, 74, 82, 84, 85, 95, 96, 109, 110, 115, 134, 149, 150, 157, 158, 164, 166, 168, 170, 172, 179, 181, 184, 203, 212, 214, 234, 239, 245, 251, 254, 258, 259, 312, 314, 316, 329, 349, 356, 357, 358, 364, 368, 369, 372, 387, 388, 390, 391, 393, 394, 395, 398, 399, 402, 403, 406, 420, 422, 428, 429, 437, 445, 448, 449, 452, 453, 457, 458, 460, 464, 469, 485, 489 Iveagh House 110, 149, 171, 245 financial survival 170 Department of Finance 65, 66, 81, 132, 170, 243, 315, 406 Department of Industry and Commerce 65, 66, 81, 85, 96, 129, 134, 162, 175, 175–6, 216, 246, 391, 398 distrust of Soviet Union 23, 24, 31, 41–2, 109, 180, 184, 194, 195, 249, 315, 483, 488, 489 Donegal, County 87, 178 Ballybofey-Stranorlar 87 Lifford 87 Donegal News 103, 178 Don Irlandais 13, 160, 162, 170–3, 200, 241–2, 272, 281, 282, 285, 286, 288, 290, 293, 294, 310, 313, 316, 317, 318, 320, 324, 330, 352, 361, 364, 370, 410, 415, 416, 418, 419, 423, 426, 427, 428, 429, 433, 435, 439, 440, 453, 459, 481, 485 allegations of hijacking supplies in Central and Eastern Europe 318–19, 373, 390, 391–2, 431, 445, 450, 453–7 fear of Catholics not receiving supplies 177, 179, 179–80, 252–3, 254–5, 402, 408 paying for transport costs on continent 82, 94, 246, 250, 251, 255, 364, 416, 419–20, 439 psychological and physical benefits of Irish supplies 248–51, 312, 320–21, 322–4, 327, 329, 420, 479–80 rivalry with Don Suisse 13, 162, 166, 167–8, 168–9, 291 Dublin Ballsbridge 91 Dublin (bombing of, May 1941) 35 Dublin Port and Docks Board 85 Emergency Hospital’s Supply Depot 92, 339 Eucharistic Congress (1932) 344, 372 Hodges and Son Ltd (ironmongers) 84 M. J. Boylan & Co (leather factory) 85

Ireland_book_LS.indb 543

Palgrave Murphy Ltd (shipping) 86 poverty in 103–104, 112, 113, 141, 208– 209, 209, 210 Sheridan Brothers (coal importers and shipbrokers) 85 Dungarvan Co-Operative Society 94 Easter Rising (1916) 20, 173, 263 Connolly, James 20 Pearse, Patrick 20, 173 Éire 22, 28, 29, 33–4, 37, 40–1, 41, 46, 79, 93, 104, 124, 148, 161, 181, 215, 217, 225, 252, 253, 255, 388, 467, 472 Enniscorthy Echo 176 Epworth Choral Society 88 European integration 7, 487 Council of Europe 6, 487 European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) 487–8 European Economic Community (EEC) 7, 369, 423, 490 Evening Herald 79 Fianna Fáil 22, 25, 76, 98, 137, 148, 153, 159, 181, Fine Gael 21, 76, 77, 144, 154, 180, 234 Football Association of Ireland (FAI) 459 foreign children in 7, 13, 68–9, 74, 97–9, 116, 119, 137, 146–7, 297, 486 forgotten help for Europe 10, 10–11, 218–19, 261, 373, 463, 466, 466–7, 469, 490, 490–1 Galway xiv, 3, 63, 87, 145, 177, 453 Galway Corporation in favour of Archbishop Stepinac 444 Labour Exchange Staff 88 school debate about relief for Europe (1947) 146 U-Boat base (WW2) 34 Garda Síochána (or gardaí) 94, 98, 347 general election in (1948) 153, 222, 234, 259, 459, 468 Görtz funeral (1947) 159–60 government abandoning cooperation with JRC & ICRCP 177, 179–80, 254–7 Catholic pressure to abandon cooperation with International Red Cross 252–3 decision to help Europe 65–70 motivations to help Europe 70–5 opting for NCWC 177, 179, 257, 258, 259 Great Irish Famine (1845–1850) 70 foreign aid in Great Irish Famine 63–4, 64 use of theme in postwar relief 63–5 G2 (Irish military intelligence) 27, 30–1, 98, industrial disputes affecting relief 94–5, 147, 254–5

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544 · Index Interdepartmental Relief Committee 59, 65, 65–6, 69, 73, 75, 76, 81–2, 93, 95, 96, 104, 125, 128–9, 148, 149, 151, 171–2, 197, 243, 248–9, 251–2, 255–6, 404, 406, 422, 429, 434, 443, 445, 458 Irish Association 61 Irish Catholic 172, 245 Irish Countrywomen’s Association (ICA) 91, 118, 220 Irish Free State 4, 19, 21, 22, 37, 70, 72, 80, 83, 119n, 161, 170, 210, 216, 263, 351, 468 Irish hospital project in Poland or Yugoslavia 176, 236, 255, 365, 366, 366–7, 367 Irish Independent 26, 37, 44, 65, 70, 72, 73, 79, 88, 106, 110, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 147, 148, 204, 235, 247, 255, 277, 357, 364, 366, 367, 371, 424, 426, 442, 444 Irish Legion of Mary 116, 459 Irish Press 2, 24, 26, 37, 38, 60, 62, 63, 79, 82, 105, 107, 141, 144, 146, 161, 172, 176, 178, 197, 251, 273, 363, 366, 367, 370, 390, 391, 424, 447, 455, 461, 463, 468 Irish Red Cross Society (see Irish Red Cross Society) Irish representatives on continent 137, 167, 246, 272, 443 advantage of 169, 445–6 lack of 165–6, 170, 291, 442, 449, 481, 485 Irish Republican Army (IRA) 20–1, 28–9, 30, 99, 113, 159, 213, 234, 263, 437 Irish Save the Children Fund (ISCF, or Saor an Leanbh) 13, 90–2, 94, 118, 183, 220, 361, 385, 425, 434 campaign in Soviet-Occupied Zone of Germany 318–19, 320 early relief activities 70–1, 72–3, 80 Irish Students’ Society for the Relief of Distressed Children 118–19 Irish supplies better than Swiss 291 Irish Times 24, 38, 39, 42, 43, 44, 59, 62, 71, 79, 92–3, 94, 96, 99, 103, 105, 133, 134, 139–40, 143, 144, 147, 154, 177, 178, 181, 188, 194, 209–10, 210, 247, 255, 258, 272, 316n, 332, 350, 357, 368, 392, 402, 408, 410, 485 Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union (ITGWU) 95, 409 Jews 5–6, 12, 23, 24, 93, 110, 117–18, 154, 483 anti-Semitism 24, 120, 152–3 assistance to Jews in WW2 38, 155–6, 374 Jewish children from Central Europe in 68, 387 Jewish Representative Council of Éire postwar aid to continental Jews

Ireland_book_LS.indb 544

in Hungary 384, 485 in Yugoslavia 448, 449–50, 452, 455 kosher meat 149–52, 154, 155 reporting on killing of Jews in WW2 38 restrictive asylum policy in WW2 24, 25, 54 Zion Schools Dublin 148–9 John Jameson whiskey distillery 91, 101 joins United Nations (1955) 41, 54, 164, 194, 488 Journal for the Medical Association of Ireland 272 Kerryman 25n, 87, 106, 147, 434 Killiney (County Dublin) 90, 91 Labour Party (Irish) 77, 137, 372, 409, 459 Limerick xiii-xiv, 3, 68, 90, 90n, 98, 118, 178, 392, 480 diocese of Limerick 88 Golden Vein Limerick 417, 446 Limerick Condensed Milk Factory (Cleeve’s) 148 Limerick Leader 158, 392 Meath Chronicle 60 moralising 81, 103–105, 144–8 motivations to help (people) 86–90 Muintir na Tíre 114 Mullingar (County Westmeath) 88, 145 Munster Express 87 negative reaction to exporting supplies (1947) 143–8 Nenagh Guardian 64, 79, 143, 255, 447, 455 not only interested in Germany’s fate 486 number of lives saved in postwar Europe 134, 485–6 Nuremberg trials (attitude to) 157, 158–9 official governmental aid programme (1974) 490 Irish Aid 490 Order of Malta Corps 92 partition 21, 22, 28, 29, 36, 122, 142, 371, 487 postwar aid to Netherlands (1953) 178, 490 postwar relations with Eastern Europe 341, 423, 435, 488–9 postwar relations with Western Europe 487–8 protests against imprisonment of clergy in Eastern Europe 408–10 publicity for Irish supplies 12, 59, 67, 73, 157, 160, 160–1, 161–3, 163–5, 165–70, 170–3, 175, 184, 197, 212, 252, 318, 322, 348, 453, 480, 484 Boland satisfied with international publicity (1947) 173 Radio Éireann 44–6, 122, 163, 169, 178, 204, 225, 247, 357

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Index · 545 reactive humanitarian aid 490 relief by proxy 484–5 Roscrea Meat Products 358 Save the German Children Society (SGCS) 13, 30, 207 Archbishop McQuaid negatively impressed 98–9 involvement in Cork-Cologne appeal 97, 99, 100, 101, 102 pro-German 97–9, 102–103 The Bulletin 99 scepticism re concentration camps (initial) 42–4 schools involved in relief 14, 68, 88, 91, 94, 119, 119n, 141 Alexandra College Guild (Dublin) 65, 88 Avoca School, Blackrock (County Dublin) 88 Christian Brothers’ Schools 88, 398 Dominican College (Dublin) 117 Dominican Convent Taylor’s Hill (Galway) 146 Galway Technical School 146 Jesuit Crescent School (Limerick) 68 Villiers School (Limerick) 68, 68n Zion Schools (Dublin) 148 shipping difficulties 67, 82, 89, 94–5, 197, 215–16, 244 Sinn Féin 20, 22, 149 Southern Star 301 St John Ambulance Brigade 87 Studies 456 St Vincent de Paul Society 69, 86, 93, 94, 104, 118, 183, 209 sugar supplies (Irish) 3, 14, 50, 76, 89, 91, 104, 131, 133, 134, 135, 145, 147, 161, 164, 165, 171, 199, 210, 211, 212, 218, 221, 222, 224–7, 228, 232, 236, 252, 253, 254, 255, 279, 280, 281, 283–4, 285, 286–7, 288, 289, 290, 291, 292, 293, 294, 306, 312–13, 316, 317, 318, 320, 321, 322, 324, 328, 329, 330, 331, 335, 349, 352, 364, 373, 378, 380, 381–9, 389, 391, 392, 394, 395, 406, 407, 408, 410, 411, 416, 417, 418, 419, 420, 421, 422, 423, 426, 428–9, 432, 434, 435, 436, 440, 441, 446, 448, 449, 457, 459, 461, 464, 472–4, 474, 475, 476, 477, 479, 485 Sunday Independent 146, 444 theft of supplies 94 The Standard 118, 146, 172 Tralee (County Kerry) 87 Tramore (County Waterford) 87 Treaty Ports 22, 29, 41, 44 Tuam (County Galway) 92, 373

Ireland_book_LS.indb 545

Ulster 20, 22, 28, 110 Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) 348 War of Independence (1919–1921) 4, 20, 71, 98 Waterford 44, 87, 95, 347, 358, 480 Waterford Chamber of Commerce 85 women participating in relief (Ireland) 2–3, 9, 13, 14, 71–2, 74, 81, 86, 89, 91–2, 92, 105–106, 107–108, 117, 118–19, 169, 220, 276–7, 295, 296–8, 299–300, 484 World War Two 1–2, 4–6, 19, 26–7, 28–35, 34–5, 35–8, 38–42 censorship 5, 12, 21, 37–8, 43, 62, 79 economic situation 36–7 Emergency (neutrality, 1939–1945) 28–9, 31–2 fear of British invasion 29, 44–5 Irish workers for Britain 33–4 Potato Appeal 114 recruitment Irish in British army 32–3 relief operations during WW2 61, 61–2, 66–7, 73, 75, 84, 242, 414, 425 secret cooperation with western Allies 29–31, 34 Irish Red Cross Society (IRCS) 2, 7, 14, 49, 56, 65, 68, 83–4, 85, 86, 87, 88, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 105, 118, 125, 129, 168, 169, 170, 172, 173–8, 201, 211, 215, 227, 240, 246, 247, 260, 272, 276–7, 277, 287, 291, 296–7, 305, 318, 320, 322, 350, 356, 367, 369, 370, 373, 380, 388, 395, 396, 401, 402, 405, 406, 409, 416, 417, 422, 426, 429, 432, 434, 434–5, 435n, 436, 437, 439, 440, 441, 442, 443, 445, 449, 464, 449–52, 460, 484, 489, 490 altering report on Yugoslavia 452–3, 460 attacks on leadership 177, 178 Donegal IRCS branch 87 financial issues 87, 157, 173–4, 176–7, 202 foundation (1939) 7, 83–4 Galway IRCS branch 177 Junior Red Cross 88 Hôpital Irlandais (Saint-Lô) 201–207, 366–7 Irish Red Cross Monthly Bulletin 10, 161, 176, 339 pressurised to cooperate with Catholic Church & Catholic relief agencies 251–60, 366–7, 409, 486–7 relations with Irish government 13, 69, 76, 93, 161–2, 175–6, 177–8, 183 JRC notices difficulties 243–4, 250–1 relief during WW2 37–8, 67, 83–4, 113–14, 182, 198, 214, 225, 242, 338–9, 360–1, 361, 366, 414, 425 Roscrea IRCS branch 176

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546 · Index sugar for Hungarian Catholics 393, 399, 402–403 thanking the IRCS 464, 465, 467, 468n, 469, 470, 475, 476, 478, 479, 481, 484 Italy 5, 6, 11, 24, 49, 56, 63, 69, 84, 95, 110, 111, 127, 129, 130, 132, 136, 171, 181, 182, 220, 221–36, 236, 242, 249, 250, 316, 390, 414, 416, 420, 422, 426, 432, 437, 439, 442, 445, 446, 448, 451, 459, 482, 486 Abruzzi 226 Allied Control Commission 222–3 Bari 414, 439 black market 227–9 Black Shirts 23 Catholic Action (Italian) 122, 230, 235 Catholic relief efforts 226–7 Christian-Democrats 122, 222, 235 children 223, 225, 226, 228, 232, 473–4 Ente Nazionale di Soccorso all’Italia (ENDSI) 164, 223, 225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 232, 233, 484 Irish appreciation of 229, 232, 233, 465 Vatican distrust of 229–30 fear of communist takeover 55, 122, 138, 197, 222, 223, 223–4, 229–34, 235 Partito Comunista Italiana 191, 224 foreign aid 189, 193, 223 general election (1948) 122, 234–5, 409 Irish financial aid to Italian Catholics 234–5 geographic spread of Irish aid 222, 224–7 Gorizia 226, 437 Irish aid in WW2 225, 339 Irish sugar 164, 224–7 Italian Red Cross 50, 226 alleged inefficiency 229–30 letters of thanks 464, 466, 473–4, 486 local relief networks 225, 454 malaria 221, 223, 226 Milan 222, 223, 224, 226 Naples 82, 226, 227, 229, 232, 233 Opera Maternità e Infanzia 232 Palermo 222, 224, 225, 228 Pola 226 postwar situation 228 reconstruction efforts 129, 145 Rome 14, 23, 56, 110, 119, 138, 164, 177, 179, 223, 225, 226, 229, 232, 233, 234, 235, 251, 254, 255, 258, 259, 341, 343, 366, 377, 386, 390, 393, 402, 409, 411, 446, 448, 449, 453, 465, 486, 487 Casilina 223 de Valera and saving Rome (1944) 221–2, 222, 236

Ireland_book_LS.indb 546

Sardinia 119, 226 Sicily 119, 221, 225 situation in WW2 221, 227 Allied bombing 222 Tempo 226 Trieste 226, 416, 437 Turin 223 Udine 226, 227 Vatican appreciative of Ireland’s efforts for 14, 55, 172, 225–6, 227, 235, 400, 471 Ivandič, Louis 259 Izmirlieff, A. 420

J Jacquinot, Robert 115 Jaecki, Dr 283 Jaeggy, François Jankovich, István 399 Janofi, Fr 378, 386, 402 Jansen, Tonny 472 Japan 41, 45, 188, 240, 265 Hiroshima 158, 187 Nagasaki 158, 187 Tokyo 187 Jebb, Eglantyne 56, 90, 90n Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (the ‘Joint’) 149–50, 151, 380, 433, 452 Jews (on continent) 12, 23, 24, 33, 38, 52, 53, 117, 120, 139, 155–6, 198, 200, 224–5, 253, 264, 269, 271, 278, 290, 296, 330–1, 335, 353, 360, 418, 419, 430, 433, 434, 454, 470, 475, 483 continental Jewish children in Ireland 13, 68 gratitude for Irish help 154, 373, 381–2 Ireland recognising Israel 154 Irish government’s attitude to refugees 5–6, 19, 24, 25, 38, 54, 483 Jews in Hungary 6, 38, 373–4, 375–6, 380, 381–2, 382, 383, 384, 384n, 385, 387, 390–1, 391, 403, 485 Jews in Yugoslavia 438, 448, 449–50, 452, 455 kosher meat for continental Jews 148–54, 155–6 Joint Relief Commission of the International Red Cross (JRC) 14, 15, 92, 136, 148, 152, 161, 162, 163, 165, 169, 170, 174, 175, 177, 179–80, 221, 229, 241–2, 244, 248, 249, 251–2, 276, 282, 285, 286, 291, 317, 318, 319, 327–8, 329, 331, 346, 347, 348, 354, 356, 361, 364, 365, 366, 368, 377, 378, 381, 391, 393, 402, 404, 405, 406, 411, 415, 416, 417, 419, 422, 428, 430, 431, 432, 433, 436, 439, 443–4, 445, 446, 449, 451, 452, 481, 484 agreement with Irish government 242–4 film on Don Irlandais 170–2

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Index · 547 founding 51, 240–1 Irish government terminates cooperation with 177, 180, 251–2, 252–6, 257–60 issue of transport charges 250, 364, 439, 441–2 located in Protestant Geneva 111–12, 179, 256–7 Oxford meeting (1946) 241, 251 relations with Don Suisse 167–9 tensions with Yugoslavia 441–42 Judges, Arthur V. 33–4 Judith, Lady of Listowel 259, 373, 385–6, 388, 411 East Europe 259 Jung, Dr 468 Jurkiewicz, Dr Stanislas 364

K Kaczyński, Mgr 113 Karall, Lorenz 351 Károlyi, Catherine 388, 395 Katyn Forest 158 Kerney, Leopold 74, Keitel, Wilhelm 187 Kelly, Maureen 297–8 Kemal, Mustafa 424 Kiernan, T. J. 223, 378, 386–7, 390 Killanin, Lord 178 Klaus, Ermin E. 252–4 Klemme, Marvin 295 Klett, Arnulf 287 Koenen, Josef 102 Kondi, Vita 416–17 Konjari, Elmas 416 Konrád, György 376 Kokoschka, Oskar 467 Körner, Theodor 348 kosher meat 6, 148–54 Koštál, Karel 26, 27, 28, 358, 359 Kostkiewicz, Bronisław 365 Kővágó, József 378–9, 381, 467 Kun, András 375, 384 Kun, Béla 371 Kuryłowicz, Adam 365

L La Guardia, Fiorello 247 Lalive, Jean-Flavien 167, 229, 322, 365, 441, 448 in Dublin (1945) 177, 245–7 in Dublin (1946) 251–2, 402, 404, 406, 422, 447 meeting with Rodolfo Olgiati (Don Suisse) re Irish supplies 167–8 Lalive, M. F. 229–30, 276 Lambert, Adrien 426, 428, 429 Latvia 299

Ireland_book_LS.indb 547

Lavalley, Georges 206 Law, Hugh 72 League of Red Cross Societies 12, 51, 176, 180, 240, 425 Leavell, Hugh R. 105 Lehman, Herbert 149 Lemass, Seán 96, 96–7, 133–4, 135, 141, 181, 247, 468–9 Lenin 54, 224, 234 letters asking Ireland for supplies 95, 116 begging 333 repudiating Hitler 116–17 letters of gratitude for Ireland 12, 15, 124, 135–6, 137, 162, 163, 165, 172, 256, 258, 381–2, 388, 389, 391, 392, 411, 417, 434–5, 435n, 436, 450, 456–7, 463–5, 466–71, 472–5 disappearance of 464–5, 468, 468n drawings 479–81 Germany 475–81 transcending political allegiances 468 local authorities on importance of 166, 465, 465–6, 480 reason for sending 465–6 suggestion to publish letters 463, 478 themes charity 467, 477, 478 Christian solidarity 283, 471, 477 general thanks 277, 467, 472–3, 473, 473–4, 474–5 generosity 467, 468, 474, 476 hope 469 joy 478–9, 479, 480 morale booster 466–7, 469 reconciliation 475–6, 476–7 repudiating Hitler 475, 476 solidarity between nations 470–1 Ley, Robert 360 Leydon, John 67, 93, 134, 175–6, 469 Liechtenstein 11, 317, 347 Liechtensteiner Vaterland 317 Lindt, August R. 160, 162, 167, 168, 312, 327 negotiating in Berlin 309–10, 316–17, 324 Linton, Leonard 268–9 Lithuania 299 Liverpool 95, 112 Lohrmann, Eberhard 339–40 Long, Olivier, 174, 243–4, 244, 248–50, 250–1, 255–6, 364, 366, 416, 432 in Dublin (1946) 163, 164, 169, 170 meeting Olgiati (Don Suisse) 167 meeting de Valera (1945) 242 meeting Walshe (1945) 242–3 Lutz, Carl 375 Luxembourg 11, 42, 110

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548 · Index Luxemburger Wort 41 Lynch, Jack 35

M Macardle, Dorothy 72, 439, 451 MacBride, Seán 123, 234, 315, 369, 428 MacCarthy, J. C. B. 246 MacGuire, Pauline 296–7, 298 MacNeice, Louis 35 MacNeely, William 145 MacWhite, Michael 164, 225, 232, 233, 446, 449, 453, 464, 465 McCauley, Leo T. 314, 315, 428, 429, 452, 458 McCloskey, John B. xv, 123, 181, 183, 315 McDermott, Frank 258, 428, 429 McGilligan, Patrick 235 McElligott, James J. 66, 67, 69, McKinney, T. J. 65, 204, 244, 365, 366, 416 McNamara, Martin J. 88–9, 244, 367, 393–4, 396, 403, 416, 445, 447, 452–3, 460 McNarney, Joseph T. 247 McNeill, Josephine 120, 359 McNeill, Margaret 107, 299–300 McNicholas, John 123, 484 McQuaid, John Charles 13, 108, 109–125, 110, 124–5, 141, 183, 467, 470, 484, 490 assessment of Save the German Children Society (SGCS) 98–9 Catholic Social Service Conference (CSSC) 112, 114, 120, 398 Cold War 109, 121–4, 235, 409, 444, 459 German expellees 116, 117, 123–4, 124 Germans writing to McQuaid 116–17 help for Hungary 120, 373, 390, 393, 395, 397–401, 402, 403 influence in Ireland 110–12, 175, 181, 184, 227, 230, 251, 260 submerged by demands for help 119–21 relief for continental children 117–19 welcoming French children 116 work for poor & social activities 112–13 World War Two 113–114 Maffey, John 31, 32, 158 Maisky, Ivan 296 Maguire, Conor 105, 114, 161, 174–7, 246, 250 Mansholt, Sicco 218 Márai, Sándor 377–8, 396–7, 404 Mariotti, C. 311–12 Marshall, George C. 193, 235, 368, 431 Marshall Plan 10, 122, 128, 155, 181, 193, 224, 234, 271, 276, 284, 288, 294, 313, 352, 357, 367, 368, 487 Masaryk, Jan 357–8, 359 Maynooth seminary 115, 398

Ireland_book_LS.indb 548

Meisels, Tzvi Hirsch 148 Memelauer, Michael 469 Meyer, Ernst W. 314 Michael I, King 435 Mihailović, Draža 438 Mihalovics, Zsigmond 381, 391, 401, 403–404, 406, 410 Milosević, Olga 456–7, 464 Mindszenty, József 373, 378, 380, 387, 395, 397, 399, 401, 404, 405, 405–406, 408–409, 409– 10, 410, 460, 487 alleges relief supplies only for communists 386, 389, 389–90, 394, 397, 398, 399, 404 assessment of Mindszenty 387, 390 sending Hungarian children to Ireland 386, 386–7, 387 supported by McQuaid 397–8, 400, 401, 409 Mittler, W. 124, Mock, P. W. 356 Molnár, Erik 380, 381, 404 Molotov, Vyacheslav 190 Montgomery, Bernard 245, 268, 289 Montini, Giovanni 55, 227, 232, 235, 387, 389, 390, 400, 409, 443, 471 believes de Valera saved Rome in 1944 229 Ireland to stop cooperating with International Red Cross 256 wishes Irish supplies for Italians to be sent to Vatican directly 230 Moore, Brian 143, 143n, 359 moral quagmire in postwar Europe (certain recipients of Irish supplies) 470, 477 Morgenthau, Henry 139, 268 Morrell, Sydney 451 Moser, Max 395, 402, 405, 406–407, 407, 408 Mulcahy, Kathleen 97, 99–100, 100 Müller, Franz 256, 257 Muller, Walter J. 288 Müller, Lotte 283 Munich Agreement 27, 36 Murphy, Seán 115, 208, 210, 211 German food policy in France in WW2 198, 266 Murphy, William Martin 144 Murray, Daniel 64 Murray, John 456 Mussolini, Benito 74, 122, 159, 221, 437

N Nagle, J. C. 314–15, 315 Nagy, Ferenc 392, 405 Nenni, Pietro 232, 233 Netherlands 1, 2, 3, 10, 11, 40, 59, 63, 69, 74, 77, 87, 94, 115–16, 118, 120, 129, 130, 132, 134,

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Index · 549 145, 159, 162–3, 188, 197, 199, 212–19, 242, 246, 249, 265, 296, 344, 359, 388, 467, 472, 486, 488 Amsterdam 79, 187, 214, 217, 364, 488 Arnhem 213 Cultural exchange (painters) with Ireland in 1949 488 Dutch children (to Ireland) 68, 203 Dutch delegation in Dublin (1945) Dutch Red Cross 203, 214 exhibition on Irish aid 217 flood catastrophe (1953) 490 food situation in WW2 213, 213–14 Hongerwinter 50, 62, 213, 246 Hook of Holland 212 Ijmuiden 217 invasion of Netherlands condemned by Ireland 2, 29, 212 Irish Guards evacuate Queen Wilhelmina (1940) 212 Irish supplies in WW2 65, 214 letters of gratitude to Ireland 216, 217, 472, 486 Maastricht 296 Operation Market Garden (1944) 212–13, 472 popular reaction to Irish aid 216, 217 postwar commercial relations 488 press on Irish aid 216, 217 press on Irish-German relations 214, 215 press on postwar Ireland Avondster 215 Bevrijding 214 Katinpers 215 Kroniek van de Week 214 Libertas 40 Limburgsch Dagblad 159, 217 Nationale Rotterdamsche Courant 208 Nieuwe Leidsche Courant 216 Opbouw 215 Provinciale Zeeuwsche Courant 41, 216, 217 Trouw 214 Vrije Pers 215 Vrij Nederland 214, 215 Vrije Stemmen 41, 214, 215 Radio Hilversum 217 Reformed Church of the Netherlands 63 Rotterdam 216 Utrecht 115, 296, 467 New Zealand Red Cross 433 Ney, Klára 374–5 Nicolau, Stefan 432 Nikolić, Colonel 440 Noeggerath, Dr 276

Ireland_book_LS.indb 549

Norris, James 123, 315 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) 6, 122, 194, 314, 487 Northern Ireland 6, 19, 20, 22, 25, 27, 28, 29, 30, 32, 44, 61, 105, 113, 296, 372, 487 Belfast 22, 296, 299, 359, 364 Belfast Refugee Fund 113 bombing of (April 1941) 35, 84, 86, 113 Norton, William 77, 79, 137, 372, 459 Norway 33, 52, 77, 94, 118, 256, 265, 273n, 276, 484 Don Norvégien 15, 223, 347

O O’Boyle, Patrick A. 151, 254 Ociepka, Hildegard 472 O’Connor, T. J. 229, 246, 422, 426, 432, 445–6, 447–9, 452, 453, 460, 461 impressions of Yugoslavia 449–52, 455, 456, 484 in Italy 227, 228 Ó Faoláin, Seán 111 Olgiati, Rodolfo 167–8 O’Hara, Gerald P. 434–5, 435 O’Higgins, Thomas 76 O’Kelly, Seán T. 39, 73, 178, 236, 302, 372, 459, 467, 469

P Pacelli, Eugenio (see Pope Pius XII) Pakenham, Lord 289 Palas, Julius 392 Palestine Post 224, 330–1 Pallay, Stephan 388, 396, 401 Pampana, J. E. 176 Paris Peace Conference (1919) 371 Parsons, J. Graham 235 Patton, George S. 190 Pauker, Ana 430 Pavelić, Ante 438, 442 Pearl Harbor (1941) 188, 265 Pearse, Margaret 173 Perényi, Zsigmond 372 Pétain, Philippe 198 Petitpierre, Max 53, 74 Philip, André 128 photographs of Irish aid 12, 124, 146, 162, 162n, 165, 166, 172, 210, 313, 349, 417, 435, 435n, 450, 457, 464, 465, 475 Pius IX, Pope 64 Pius XI, Pope 23, 55, 111, 372 Divini Redemptoris 55, 111 Mit brennender Sorge 111 Pius XII, Pope 37, 88, 100, 117–18, 272, 373

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550 · Index anti-communist 55, 122, 125, 195, 224, 230, 397, 444 to go to Ireland in case of communist takeover 234 appeals for relief 55, 88, 115, 117, 156 Quemadmodum 55 appreciative of Irish aid 14, 79, 88, 118, 172, 225–6, 235, 468, 471, 474 Catholic organisations to distribute Irish supplies 256–7 Irish diplomatic efforts to save Rome (1944) 222 Poland 5, 11, 28, 77, 83, 129, 130, 136, 142, 159, 171, 189, 190, 191, 199, 234, 321, 359–70, 359n, 367, 370, 401, 482, anti-Catholic measures by communists 249, 363, 369 Irish hierarchy protests 363 Białystok 359 Bielany 365 condition of children 249 de Valera and Poland in interwar period 27 displaced persons (Poles) 107, 297–8, 299 early contacts with Ireland 343, 363 foreign aid 169, 191, 231, 366, 368, 369 UNRRA aid to 48–9, 193, 231, 248, 362, 365, 368 Gdynia 359, 364, 369 German expellees 269, 272, 297, 303, 308, 317, 325–31, 331–8 Irish supplies for 303, 330–31, 365, 476 harvest (1946) 365 Irish cattle for 136, 358 Irish hospital in 250, 365, 366, 367 hostility in Rome to 366–7 Irish help (1980–1981) 8, 369 Irish supplies for 169, 248, 361, 364, 364–5, 369 not much aware of provenance 364, 368 opposition to Irish supplies for 180 Irish supplies on train to (1946) 248, 361 Kielce 359 Krákow 359, 360 Lewandowski, Alfred 367 Polish cadets, Royal Air Force, in Ireland 68 Polish Red Cross (PRC) 37, 169, 250, 331, 359n, 360–1, 361, 364, 365, 366, 367, 368, 369 Polish Workers’ Party 362 postwar situation 48, 130, 143, 249, 269, 270, 359, 361, 362, 363–4, 365, 367–8, 368 Provisional Government of National Unity 362–3, 363 recognition of Irish help 369, 486

Ireland_book_LS.indb 550

Rudka 365 situation in WW2 304, 305 black market 360 destruction in 130 extermination camps (German) 264, 360 Free Polish Army 298 General Government (German) 265, 360 IRCS aid 38, 360–1 Irish sympathy for Poland 35, 113 ISCF aid 361 liberation by Red Army 360, 362 occupation politics (German) 360 food policy 265, 360 Polish Government-in-Exile (London) 363 Polish Research Centre (London) 113 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (1943) 37, 360 Warsaw Uprising (1944) 360 reported by Irish newspapers 37–8 Solidarność (Solidarity) 369 Soviet-Polish Frontier and Reparations Agreement 362 transport difficulties 344, 361, 364 Wałbrzych 365 Warsaw 14, 37–8, 47, 48, 68, 78, 99, 142, 143, 187, 229, 236, 255, 296, 326, 331, 359, 360, 361, 363, 364, 365, 366, 367–8, 368, 369, 485 Zakopane 365 Portugal 25, 237 Lisbon (shipping) 243, 244, 375 Potsdam Conference (1945) 190, 269, 276, 289, 325, 329, 331, 332, 354 Power, Patrick 246, 432, 445 in Czechoslovakia 168, 356–7, 357 in Poland 142–3, 169, 367, 367–8 Poyetton, Robert 472–3 Preysing, Konrad von 468 Pridonoff, Eric L. 453–4, 454 Prigent, Robert 466 prisoners of war 49, 50, 50–1, 52, 53, 56, 83, 84, 198, 204, 207, 225, 226, 240, 264, 265, 278, 292, 304, 306, 311, 317, 320, 361, 440, 470, 477, 487 next-of-kin parcels 339 Prisoner-of-War Committee (IRCS) 339–40 German prisoners of war 338–40 treatment by Soviets 339–40 treatment by western Allies 340 Rheinwiesenlager (Rhine meadow camps) 340

Q Quakers 13, 52, 65, 69, 71, 86, 94, 107, 125, 169, 183, 241, 282, 347, 359

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Index · 551 Friends’ Relief Service 65, 107 Nobel Peace Prize (1947) 300 Society of Friends 52, 65, 69, 94, 107, 169, 300

R Rajk, László 392 Rákosi, Mátyás 379, 380, 385, 388, 392, 402, 411 Ranke, Leopold von 277 Rachev, Luben 422 ration cards 164, 165, 270, 275, 280, 301, 318, 321, 341, 365 Ratkóczy, Nándor 381 Reader’s Digest 453 Reay-Coffey, Patricia 390–1, 391 refugees 5, 19, 24, 25, 53, 55, 61, 71, 79, 84, 107, 113, 116, 120, 158, 182, 198, 225, 270, 286, 287, 289, 291, 297, 299, 299n, 300, 303, 304, 306, 307, 308, 309, 311, 317, 320, 325–31, 337, 346, 349, 359, 360, 401, 414, 419, 428, 439, 440, 464, 483 Reicher, Dr 450 Renner, Karl 345 Ribnikar, Jaroslava 440, 441 Richter, Dr 256 Rinderspacher, Herr 276 Rohracher, Andreas 120 Romania 11, 15, 48, 52n, 91, 128, 130, 147, 171, 189, 265, 418, 429–35, 436, 445, 482 Apararea patriotica 433 Bessarabia 430 Bukovina 431 Cercul Gospodinelor 434 Constanţa 431, 432, 433, diseases 430, 430–1 pellagra 48, 430, 431 foreign aid 430, 431 Great Hunger (1946–1947) 431 Indrumarea Institution 434 information re supplies 433, 433–4 Iron Guard 429 Jassy (also Iaşi) 147, 434 Jews in 430, 432, 434 Leagan Sf. Ecaterina 434 Maternal Society 434 Moldavia 128, 147, 431, 434 organisation of distribution of supplies 431, 431–2, 432, 433, 433–4 Ploughmen’s Front 430 poverty 429–30, 431 prewar political situation 429 Rahovei Maternity hospital 434 Romanian medical mission 432, 433 Romania Red Cross (RRC) 430, 432, 433, 434, 435

Ireland_book_LS.indb 551

Sibiu 435 Ursuline convent 435 theft of supplies 431, 432 trade agreement with Ireland (1971) 435 Transnistria 430 transport issues 431–2, 432 Wallachia 128 World War Two 430 Young Girls’ Friends Association 434 Rooks, Lowell W. 467 Roosevelt, Franklin D. 106, 190, 222, 268, 291, 374 Rotta, Fr Angelo 375 Rudnóy, Teréz 382 Russell Forgan, J. 34 Russia 35, 54, 71, 90, 120, 148, 192, 343 Irish aid to 70–1, 72, 90 Russian aid to Ireland 64 Růžička, Pavel 120, 344, 359 Ryan, James 133–4, 135, 152–3, 247

S Saemich, Alexandra 277 Salat, Salomon J. 470 Samson-Verbiest family 472 Saor an Leanbh (see Irish Save the Children Fund) Save the Children Fund (SCF) 56, 71, 73, 90 Schell, Margarete 354 Schindler, Mr 441 Schmidlin, Mr 381 Schnieper, Dr 248 Schöner, Wilhelm 466 schools (continent) xv, 26, 101, 160, 211, 245, 253, 273, 274, 282, 283, 286, 287, 290, 291, 300, 308, 317, 322–3, 350, 363, 365, 377, 382, 384, 388, 408, 417, 417n, 464, 465, 447, 474, 478, 479–80, 480–81 Schreier, Roald 476, 478 Schwab, Fred 290–1, 291, 292, 327–8, 328, 328–9, 415 Schwartz, Joseph 149–50, 150, 150–1, 151 Schwering, Ernst 302 Scott, Michael 365, 366 Scott, Thomas Patrick 438 Second World War 1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 10, 11, 19, 20, 22, 28, 48, 55, 56, 57, 72, 75, 80, 83, 86, 108, 112, 155, 187, 239, 263, 274, 316, 332, 343, 344, 359, 371, 372, 373, 425, 429, 436, 437, 451, 488, 489 Serédi, Justinián 372, 404 Seyss-Inquart, Arthur 158, 213, 344 Shanagher, Denis P. 66, 162, 175 Shanley, John P. 177, 253, 322, 367, 417, 422, 460 Shea, Ted 213 Sheehan, Michael 100, 100–101, 102

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552 · Index ships (Irish supplies) Caterina Gerolomich 82, 224 Edenvale 399 Helfrid 232, 233 Irish Cedar 82, 224 Orestes 217 Rosita 94 Transylvania 432–3 Travemünde 94–5 Willem van Oranje 216 Sicé, Adolphe 202, 207 Skorzeny, Otto 159 Slipyj, Jósyf 401 Smith, P. J. 299, 301 Smith, Patrick 140, 458 Sobek, Franz 472 Society of Friends (see Quakers) Sokolovsky, Vasily 307 Sotiroff, Georges 170, 364, 391, 419, 420, 446, 446–7, 447 South African Red Cross 15, 361, 416, 419, 433, 441 Soviet Union 23, 24, 31, 42, 47, 54, 55, 57, 109, 121, 180, 184, 188, 190, 191, 193, 194, 195, 199, 234, 240, 249, 264, 265, 269, 299, 304, 306, 313, 315, 319, 332, 362, 363, 373, 375, 392, 418, 430, 438, 445, 461, 483, 488, 489 Belarus 49, 191, 193 Minsk 47, 187 displaced persons 298, 299, 300, 307 distrust of ICRC and Switzerland 50, 240, 309, 422, 445 drought (1946) 190, 307, 319 German crimes in 264, 265, 304–305, 430 harvest (1945) 307 Irish soldiers involved in sending Cossacks back to 438 Irish-Soviet diplomatic relations (1973) 489 Kremlin 41, 50, 187, 189, 191, 194, 195, 232, 306 Moscow 41, 50, 189, 194, 224, 231, 232, 234, 240, 307, 310, 344, 357, 359, 396, 402, 460, 489 postwar famine conditions 128, 190, 319, 307, 307n Red Army 37, 195, 234, 264–5, 298, 303, 304–305, 306, 307, 308, 331, 332, 334, 335, 354, 359, 360, 362, 374, 375, 376, 390, 418 rejects Ireland’s bid for UN membership (1946) 54, 194, 488 Russia (see Russia) Stalingrad (1943) 11, 37, 62, 264, 305 Ukraine 49, 128, 180, 191, 193, 401, 430 Irish supplies for 247–8 Volga region 128

Ireland_book_LS.indb 552

Spaak, Paul-Henri 191, 228–9 Spain 20, 24, 40, 52, 54, 61, 67, 74, 75, 84, 110, 174, 237, 451 Spanish Red Cross 66–7 Spender, Stephen 138 Stalin, Joseph 189, 190, 191, 193, 195, 224, 234, 281, 306, 331, 363, 443, 449, 460, 461 delivery of grain for political reasons 231–2, 345 opposition to Marshall Plan 234, 313, 357 policy in Italy 224, 232 reservations towards UNRRA 191 religion 195, 411 Staunton, James 101 Stepinac, Alojzije 401, 437, 447, 452, 456, 459, 460 arrest of 437 consequences on Irish aid 181, 442–4, 443 Dáil Éireann resolution 444, 449 Irish press on arrest and trial of 442–3, 444 Pius XII satisfied with Irish response 444 Stimson, Henry L. 268 Stöckler, Ludwig 381, Stone, Ellerly 223 Streicher, Julius 158 Suilleabhean, Pronsias 98 Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF) 187, 203 Sweden 1, 52, 53, 78, 85, 93, 314 Aftonbladet 431 life in postwar Stockholm neutrality 32, 33, 52, 53, 62, 67 Rädda Barnen 52, 52n, 93 relief efforts forgotten 490 relief policy 12, 15, 20, 52, 52–3, 62, 66, 67, 74, 75, 114, 169, 217, 256, 341, 355, 425, 431 Swedish Red Cross 67, 293 Switzerland 11, 12, 49, 52, 53, 110, 114, 118, 161, 166, 168, 170, 179, 239, 248, 251, 282, 288, 310, 356, 361, 364, 366, 381, 385, 406, 422, 425, 432, 439, 443, 448, 466, 471 Association suisse des Samaritains 290 Basel 162, 292, 310 Berne 42, 53, 74, 153, 259, 260, 399, 400, 406, 422 Caritas Switzerland 121 Centrale sanitaire suisse 451 criticism of sending supplies abroad 153, 184 Don Suisse 15, 53, 153, 160, 161, 162, 200, 220, 241, 247, 282, 290, 310, 318, 361, 366, 433 comparison with Don Irlandais (1944– 1945–1946) 241–2, 291, 293 cooperation with Don Irlandais 167–8, 286, 292, 313, 318 creation of 74

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Index · 553 rivalry with Don Irlandais 12–13, 168–9, 172, 344, 357 foreign children in 68, 74, 101 Geneva 7, 12, 14, 15, 19, 21, 23, 49, 53, 70, 82, 84, 87, 90, 91, 92, 98, 118, 139, 150, 152, 162, 165, 168, 169, 170, 170n, 171, 176, 177, 179, 180, 183, 184, 198, 200, 220, 223, 227, 239–60, 267, 277, 316, 318, 322, 327, 331, 347, 348, 353, 356, 357, 365, 366, 369, 373, 377, 381, 389, 391, 393, 394, 395, 401, 403, 405, 406, 414, 416, 419, 425, 426, 432, 433, 440, 441, 442, 445, 446, 448, 450, 457, 464, 465, 467, 468, 472, 478, 480, 489 Irish authorities and Protestant Geneva 13, 14, 56, 57, 111, 157, 179, 184, 237, 251–60, 452, 487 La Suisse 153, 392 Neue Zürcher Zeitung 161 neutrality 53, 240, 361 relief 20, 52, 53, 66, 69, 74, 75, 78, 108, 157, 177, 183, 217, 245, 246, 273n, 276, 285, 323, 341, 347, 355, 390, 439, 485 relief efforts forgotten 490 Schweizerisches Arbeiterhilfswerk 169 Swiss Red Cross 169, 200, 201, 220, 246, 407, 430, 479 Tribune de Genève 161 Szálasi, Ferenc 373, 374 Sztehlo, Gábor 385

T Tardini, Domenico 55, 229 Tauber, Canon 372 Templer, Gerald 63, 97 Thiem, Manfred 475 Thorez, Maurice 232 Tito 259, 438, 442, 443, 451, 453, 454, 455, 456, 457, 459, 460, 461 Truman, Harry S. 121, 121–2, 124, 174, 190, 192, 195, 247, 352, 443, 455, 461 tuberculosis 48, 87, 124, 141, 146, 166, 173, 200, 205, 223, 226, 255, 308, 313, 318, 321, 322, 333, 350, 351, 361, 414, 419, 421, 426, 431, 469, 472, 477, 487 Turkey 145, 413, 424, 439 Ottoman Empire’s aid to Ireland (Great Famine) 64, 64n Turkish Red Crescent 424 Twomey, Daniel R. 66, 67 Tyrrell, Peter 264,

U Ulbricht, Walter 46–7, 318, 333, 379 Ullrich, Joseph 116

Ireland_book_LS.indb 553

Umberto, Prince of Italy 466 Union internationale de Secours aux Enfants (UISE or SCIU) 15, 70, 90, 220, 286, 385, 425, 434 United Nations (UN) 7, 41, 54, 75, 139, 164, 191, 194, 258, 295, 488 United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) 48–9, 52, 54, 105, 107–108, 143, 180, 188–9, 193, 231, 239, 241, 247, 255, 258, 295, 296, 297, 300–301, 311, 346, 350, 355, 359, 362, 365, 368, 414, 425, 426, 451, 461 distrust of 191, 191–2, 192, 193, 231, 296, 415, 419, 427, 453, 454, 455 Ireland and 66, 69, 73, 78, 194, 241, 453, 467–8 Irish bacon for 144, 247–8, 349, 365 Irish workers in 195, 295, 297–8, 298–9, 299, 300, 301, 454 Irish working horses for 364 questionable training 106, 295 pro-communist 295, 296, 454 recruitment in Ireland 105–106, 106–107 relations with army 49, 67, 291 relations with ICRC 51, 239, 241 United States 5, 10, 12, 21, 32, 54, 57, 95, 106, 121, 122, 128, 142, 159, 191, 192, 193, 233, 235, 255, 265, 292, 317, 332, 333, 363, 365, 410 American Red Cross (ARC) 51, 419 American Relief Administration (ARA) 71, 125, 142, 192, 454, 464 anti-communist groups 57, 190, 454–5 CARE (Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe) 48, 51, 174 Catholic Relief Services 48 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 193, 316, 316n Famine Emergency Committee 134 Great Depression 106 Life 192 National Catholic Welfare Conference (NCWC) xv, 55, 115, 121, 235, 280, 315, 352, 394, 484 Ireland to cooperate with NCWC 13, 14, 111–12, 157, 177, 239, 252–4, 429 New Deal 106, 291 New York Times 48, 139, 152 redefines foreign policy 190, 191–4, 443 relations with ICRC 49, 50, 240 relief for Europe 10, 48, 57, 75, 78, 139, 151, 174, 188, 220, 273n, 276, 285, 341, 378, 424, 431, 439, 454, 461, 490 tensions with UNRRA 49, 191–2, 192, 296, 454

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554 · Index United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) 266, 306, 374 Wall Street Crash (1929) 106, 268 War Relief Services 55, 256 White House 232

V Vachon. John 143, 143n Vállay, Julius 395, 396, 403, 405 van der Lee, Gerrit 215, 216 van Tets, Willem 162, Vatican 4, 26, 35, 55, 110, 117, 172, 229, 236, 372–3, 374, 378, 386, 387, 389, 400, 424, 443 communist threat 54–5, 56, 194–5, 197, 222, 224, 230, 231–2, 233, 234–5, 237, 363, 397, 399–400, 409, 435, 437, 443, 448, 452 distrust of International Red Cross 14, 179, 229–30, 237, 239, 251–8, 389, 390, 408, 452 interdenominational relief rivalry 56–7, 487 knighting Irish ministers and civil servants 111 Osservatore Romano 26, 172, 443, 444 Pontificia Commissione di Assistenza 55, 229, 390 allegations of misappropriation of supplies 390 Ireland to cooperate with 230, 257 postwar relief 20, 52, 54–7, 109, 119, 156, 157, 227, 276, 471, 487 relations with ENDSI 229–31 relations with Ireland 23, 55, 61, 75, 118, 124, 154, 156, 157, 184, 222, 224, 225, 232–3, 234–5, 235, 250, 260, 409, 448, 460, 471 Vatican Mission, Brussels 340, 487 Vaudaux, J. A. 162, 162n, 166, 310–11, 311 venereal diseases 246, 305, 375, 400, 431 Venizelos, Eleftherios 424 Versailles Treaty (1919) 27 Victoria, Queen 64, 174 Vicentini, Signore 232, 233 Voroshilov, Kliment 376

W Wackerle, Josef 469 The Three Fates (statue in Dublin) 469 Waddington, Victor 467 Waitz, Sigismund 26 Wallenberg, Raoul 375, 382 Walshe, Joseph 13, 32, 64, 65, 66–7, 69, 73, 85, 115, 173, 176, 180, 197, 211, 212, 223, 229, 242, 243, 245, 248, 249, 250, 251, 417 ambassador to Holy See 119, 172, 177, 179, 229, 230, 231, 233, 235, 251–8, 389, 400, 402, 409, 446, 449, 471

Ireland_book_LS.indb 554

anti-communist/Soviet 31, 222, 223–4, 224, 230, 231, 232, 233, 234–5, 242, 249, 400, 448, 452, 453, 456 Catholicism 32, 227, 233, 234, 235, 257, 366, 409 relations with McQuaid 110, 115, 119–20, 148, 160, 168, 169, 175, 184, 227 Warsaw Pact (1955) 194 Webb, Stella 107, 300 Weenink, I. R. A. W. 214 Weidling, Helmuth 306 Weizsäcker, Richard von 332 Wenger, Emile 426, 427 Werkman, Gerhard 1–2, 3, 218 Werner, Arthur 162 western Allies 2, 5, 14, 19, 29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 52, 53, 54, 57, 61, 74, 190, 193, 264, 272, 273, 294, 301, 303, 309, 313, 315, 316, 340, 346, 376, 426, 483, 489 West Germany (Federal Republic of Germany) 194, 293, 302, 314, 469, 488 athletics contest with Ireland (1951) 302 Bizonia 284, 294 end of ration cards (1950) 301, 341 soccer matches with Ireland (1951 & 1952) 302, 459 Sport-Beobachter 302 Trizonia 284, 294 Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle) 302, 338 Weyermann, Hans 381 Wheeler, Frank 152, 255–6 White, J. M. 100–101 White, Osmar 325 Wilde, Erica 477 Williams, George 56 Wilson, Edmund 138 Wilson, Francesca 107–108 Wilson, Roger C. 65 women participating in relief (continent) 9, 13, 199, 268, 275, 276–7, 291, 306, 308, 312, 320, 321, 345, 379–80, 434 World Cereals Conference, Paris (1947) 181 Wyszyński, Stefan 401

Y Yalta Conference (1945) 190, 363 Yeats, Jack B. 467 YMCA (Young Men’s Christian Association) 52, 56, 487 Yugoslavia 6, 15, 116, 165, 169, 171, 191, 194, 229, 300, 414, 420, 422, 432, 437–61, 484 aid to Greek communists 426, 436, 460–1 Belgrade 169, 176, 236, 414, 416, 436, 438,

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Index · 555 440, 441, 442, 443, 446, 447, 448, 449, 450, 451, 453, 455, 456 Bosnia-Herzegovina Catholic Church in 55, 194, 249, 411, 437, 442–4, 447, 448, 449, 455–6 Irish press against anti-Catholic campaign 442–3, 444 Irish Catholic Church’s objections to aid in 453, 456 cattle (Irish) for 136, 449, 450, 457–9 Croatia 84, 165, 242, 259, 401, 414, 425, 437, 438, 440, 442, 447, 455, 457 Oštrice 165, 475 Pušina 457 Croatian Red Cross 165 early links with Ireland 437 fear of being compromised with Tito’s regime 180, 458–9, 489 fear of hijacking of supplies by communists 138, 180, 437, 451–2, 460 foreign aid 439, 441 gratitude to Ireland 258, 441–2, 450, 456–7, 466, 475, 484, 486 Irish hospital project in Belgrade 250, 366 Irish representatives (issue of) 442, 443–4, 445–6, 447, 453, 455–6 Irish Republican Army (IRA) 437 Irish supplies in 130, 296, 439, 449, 482 distribution of 440, 443–4, 445, 450, 453, 453–5 fair distribution 447, 447–8, 450 complementing other foreign supplies 461 reports 436, 439–40, 441 altering IRCS report on 449, 452–7, 460 sharing of Irish supplies between federal states 440 sugar 440, 441, 446, 448, 449, 457, 459, 461 Jews in 6, 448, 449–50, 452 Union of Jewish Community 449

Ireland_book_LS.indb 555

Ljubljana 416, 420, 439, 447, 450 Macedonia 414, 437, 440, 447 Montenegro 437, 440, 447 Montenegrin Red Cross 448 Novisad 450 postwar situation 245, 439, 450, 451 children 439, 448, 450, 451, 461 Serbia 11, 413, 437, 440, 441, 447 Serbian Red Cross 441 Youth Working Units of Serbia 441 Slovenia 437, 440, 454 soccer match vs. Ireland (1952 & 1955) 459 Split 414, 447, 455 tensions with ICRC/JRC 381, 422, 441–2, 444, 445, 448 TIGR (Trieste, Istria, Gorizia, Rijeka) 437 transport issues 248, 420, 439, 446 -7, 448, 450, 451 UNRRA in 49, 193, 451, 455, 461 US foreign policy in 443, 461 Ustaše (Ustasha) 438, 442 Ustaše priests 438, 442 World War Two 130, 189, 438–9 Bleiburg (Austria) 438 Chetniks 438 Cossacks 438 Franciscan friars 259, 442 Partisans 438, 442, 451 Royal Irish Inniskilling Fusiliers 438 Serbian prisoners of war 38th (Irish) Brigade 438 Yugoslav Red Cross (YRC) 420, 439, 440, 441, 445, 446, 451, 456–7, 464 Zagreb 446, 447, 450, 455

Z Zhukov, Georgy 187, 306, 307, 308 Zog I 414 Zutter, Philippe 78 Zvavich, I. S. 41

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Ireland_book_LS.indb 556

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