"Cub Driver" wrote in message
...

I'd be interested in any cites you can produce for the claim that the
Irish (presumably the government?) put on extra lights to help German
bombers. It would have been a breach of neutrality which would surprise
me.

It would also have been an astonishing waste of money, in a very lean
time, which would surprise me even more.

I'm sure the British were terribly annoyed that Ireland remained
neutral during WWII. Still, they got hundreds of thousands of Irish
workers and soldiers, not to mention Irish greengoods and beef, and
any British or American airmen who went down over the Republic were
quietly returned across the border to northern Ireland, so it really
worked out quite well in the end.

Irish men and women joined the British Armed Forces in the Second World War
with nearly 2,000 killed. The IRA is known to have helped the Germans by
providing intelligence about Belfast a major shipbuilding city (they built
the Titanic), in the north, still in the UK. The city was almost destroyed
in four Luftwaffe bombing raids in 1941.

There were claims that people living in the Republic close to the border
with Ulster, turned on their house lights at night to guide the German
bombers into Belfast.

Seven Irishmen from the Republic won VCs. During WW2. Irish newspapers were
censored, and not allowed to refer to people from the Republic fighting for
the British. The Irish referred to WW2 as "the emergency".

The British-hating premier de Valera delivered a clear message in 1945. He
signed a book of condolence at the German embassy in Dublin, to mark the
death of Adolf Hitler.



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