EIRE during WWII

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Originally posted by Agelastus
To the best of my knowledge, conscription was never introduced into Ireland in WWI, as it was considered to be too politically sensitive. The Irish who died from both sides of the sectarian divide were volunteers (or at least had been "volunteered" by their leaders from the pre-war para-military formations.)

You're correct, no conscription in Ireland.

Volunteers from the Protestant community was much larger than from among Catholics. The Catholic volunteers were not just paramilitaries, but "Redmond's men."

Briefly, for those unfamiliar, John Redmond was leader of the Home Rule party in Ireland. The Liberals under Lloyd George depended on Redmond's party by 1912 for their majority in Parliament, and The Home Rule Bill was the price of Redmond's support. Cue WW1 and Redmond made one of the most misguided decisions in Irish history in urging the volunteering of Catholics to fight for Britain. He condemned 10,000's to die in Gallipoli and The Somme, and for the survivors, many were treated as outcasts upon returning as the political situation in 1919 Ireland was very different than before.

Those who fought for Britain, and did not subsequently fight for Ireland faced a great deal of hatred over the coming decades.

The discontent leading to the Free State had grown throughout the nineteenth century.

You could probably trace it back to the 16th century and the English split from Rome. There has not AFAIK been a generation since then which has not fought against England, and later Britain.

Despite this, the initial response of the general populace to the Easter Rising in Ireland was almost universally hostile (innapropriate with so many Irishmen fighting and dying away from home, the country they were still at that point part of fighting one of the greatest wars in its' history.)

That's very debateable, and perhaps too much has been placed on a few dozen Dublin women throwing fruit at the surrendering IRA men emerging from the Four Courts. Republicanism was a movement which had slowly been gaining momentum, especially in rural Ireland. While the executions in 1916 might have accelerated the movement, it would have exploded over the following years.

It was the crass stupidity and sheer brutality of the British response that really cemented the path which led to the "Free State". Personally, I see 1916 as one of the great "lost opportunities" of history with regard to the Irish "Troubles".

Unfortunately, I think we'd have found a method to kill each other if those men had been pardoned in 1916. As soon as the war was over, either the Catholics, or Protestants were going to go to war over the suspended Home Rule Act. De Valera was the consumate politician, and the political achievements of Sienn Fein within Ireland by 1918 match, or outstrip the military achievements of the War of Independence.

 

[Agelastus]

Originally posted by sean9898
You could probably trace it back to the 16th century and the English split from Rome. There has not AFAIK been a generation since then which has not fought against England, and later Britain.

I tend to date it from the "betrayal" following the 1800 Act of Union. The quid pro quo as it were had been the repeal of the laws forbidding Catholics in Parliament etc. This was conveniently "forgotten" for a number of decades. Wrecking yet another opportunity to salvage anything from the Irish situation, and greatly increasing the bitterness felt by the Catholic Irish.........and then we run into the famine