Posted by At the outbreak of World War II, Germany sent its bombers to hit Ireland, but Hitler’s motives remain unclear.
This article appears in: Spring 2018
By James Bilder
The south of Ireland, officially known as Eire and often referred to by many residing there as the “Free State,” declared its neutrality when World War II erupted suddenly in September 1939. The Irish would remain neutral throughout the war but were universally viewed as far more sympathetic and helpful to the Allies than the Axis. Despite their formal neutrality, the Irish experienced a number of aerial bomb attacks from German planes in 1940 and 1941. The Germans insisted that any damage to Irish property or casualties among the Irish populace could not have been the result of German ordnance since there simply were not any German military planes flying in Ireland’s airspace. They blamed British skullduggery for these attacks. According to the Nazis, it was Churchill and not Hitler who wanted to drag Ireland into war.
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