GSS, this is by a leading authority on Irish History.
The sources are actual Republican publications.
It was published in what Jim acknowledges to be Ireland's leading History journal.
Those who see the IRA through rose tinted glass prepare to be shocked.
Especially on the subject of Jew Cleansing.


Following the fall of France, Russell urged that the German high command make use of the IRA to strike at British forces in Northern Ireland as part of a general attack on Britain. His plans were accepted and incorporated into Operation Sealion (the plan for the invasion of Britain), a mark of the 'respect and esteem' in which Russell was held by the German military leadership. During August Russell was to return to Ireland to oversee the implementation of these plans, but on his journey home by U-boat he became ill and died. His body was buried at sea with full German naval honours.

The above information comes not from one of Russell's many critics, eager to paint him as a collaborator with the Nazis, but from the republican newspaper The United Irishman of October 1951. The article was published to coincide with the unveiling of a monument to Russell in Dublin's Fairview Park and concluded that he was a 'worthy successor to Tone and Casement'. Quite apart from that questionable assessment, what is notable about the article is the utter lack of embarrassment that the leader of the IRA was a guest of the Nazis during a period in which the German armies invaded and forcibly occupied five sovereign nations.



However, in July 1940 the IRA leadership issued a statement outlining its position on the war. The statement made clear that if 'German forces should land in Ireland, they will land . . . as friends and liberators of the Irish people'. The public was assured that Germany desired neither 'territory nor . . . economic penetration' in Ireland but only that it should play its part in the 'reconstruction' of a 'free and progressive Europe'. The Third Reich was also praised as the 'energising force' of European politics and the 'guardian' of national freedom. In response to critics such as George Bernard Shaw, who had drawn attention to Hitler's anti-Catholic policies, the IRA countered that both 'Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini' proved their lack of bias by helping to establish the 'Catholic government' of Franco in Spain.

The IRA's statements drew angry responses from Irish Freedom, published by the Connolly Association, and Irish Workers Weekly, published by the Communist Party of Ireland, who criticised the IRA for inviting 'German soldiers to come and devastate the country they talk of freeing'. These papers also noted how the IRA and their 'strange bedfellow General O'Duffy' were lauding as 'liberators' powers that held 'Abyssinia, Austria, Albania and Czechoslovakia' in subjection.

War News, the IRA's main publication, became increasingly pro-Nazi in tone, even claiming active IRA involvement in the German bombing of British cities. But more chillingly it began to ape anti-Semitic arguments. Satisfaction was expressed that the 'cleansing fire' of the German armies was driving the Jews from Europe.