There was no book of condolences and it was a legation not an embassy, but the finer details hardly matter at this remove.
Taoiseach Éamon de Valera‘s visit to the German representative in Dublin (not the ambassador as commonly presumed), Dr Eduard Hempel, on May 2nd, 1945, brought worldwide infamy on him and on Ireland.
De Valera addressed the Dáil in the morning and then travelled to No 58 Northumberland Road to express his condolences on the death of Adolf Hitler, who had died by suicide in his Berlin bunker two days previously.
De Valera knew this would be controversial. Both the secretary general of department of external affairs Joseph Walshe, who travelled with him to the fateful meeting, and his deputy Frederick Boland tried to deter de Valera and warned of the consequences to the country‘s reputation, already low because of Irish neutrality during the second World War.
De Valera never deigned to offer a public explanation, instead telling his representative in the United States, Robert Brennan, that he would observe diplomatic protocols to the last irrespective of the consequences.
He justified it on the basis that it would be an “unpardonable discourtesy” to the German nation and to Dr Hempel as his conduct during the war was “irreproachable ... I certainly was not going to add to his humiliation in the hour of defeat”.
Last December the National Archives of Ireland released files covering Ireland’s legation in Washington during the war, much of it surrounding the reaction to de Valera‘s visit.
There was already a great deal of hostility towards Ireland in the US because of Irish neutrality, and some of the greatest criticism of de Valera‘s actions came from Irish Americans.
“I respectfully ask you to close the Irish legation. It is a standing insult to all of us. You stink, you are swine,” James O’Callaghan cabled, adding that he was from Donegal.
“Please give us full facts concerning de Valera‘s actions on the death of Adolf Hitler. Local controversy makes immediate answer imperative,” cabled Jack O’Loan, the secretary of the Gaelic League in Detroit.
“Every man and woman of Irish blood regrets the stupid action of prime minister [sic] Éamon de Valera of Éire,” wrote Irish-American lawyer Frank Hogan.
Walshe and Boland accurately predicted the backlash. What they could not have predicted is how enduring that criticism would be. Eighty years on from that episode, it is still regularly cited as Irish perfidy.
Twenty years ago, during a visit to Auschwitz, then president Mary McAleese was asked if she should apologise for de Valera‘s actions. She declined. Cork City Council this year passed a resolution calling on Taoiseach Micheál Martin to issue an apology. The sponsor of the resolution, Green Party councillor Oliver Moran, stated that the original insult has been compounded by the failure of the State to atone subsequently.
Two years ago, Russian ambassador to Ireland Yuriy Filatov marked International Holocaust Memorial Day by telling Ireland that it was in no position to lecture other countries on morality given its neutrality during the second World War.
He wrongly stated that de Valera had wished Hitler a happy birthday in 1945 when “Soviet and Allied soldiers were still dying in the battle against Nazis”. Ireland had observed neutrality during a war in which 27 million Soviet Union citizens had died, the ambassador pointed out, though he failed to acknowledge that the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of 1939, which dismembered Poland and made the Soviet Union the biggest Nazi collaborators of them all until Hitler invaded in June 1941.
The biggest backlash has come from the Israeli government and supporters of Israel, especially after October 7th where the de Valera incident is cited as an example of Irish anti-Semitism.
“Decades after Éamon de Valera offered Germany his condolences on the death of Adolf Hitler, the country he helped found seemed permanently stuck in time,” one commentator among many noted as Ireland agreed to join the South African case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
In December last year, Israel closed its embassy in Dublin. At the time minister for foreign affairs Gideon Sa’ar cited Winston Churchill’s famous speech at the end of the second World War which was critical of de Valera and was seen as a direct rebuke of de Valera‘s visit to Dr Hempel.
“Winston Churchill, during the war, in his speech on V Day in Europe, noted how Ireland had carried on a love affair with Nazi Germany,” Sa’ar stated in his justification for the closure of the embassy.
It is one thing to criticise de Valera‘s visit to the legation; it is quite another to claim that Ireland carried on a love affair with Nazi Germany. Churchill never said as much and there is overwhelming evidence now that Ireland was neutral on the side of the Allies.
Last December the National Archives released a 1944 letter from the Jewish Representative Council of Éire which, at the time, described allegations that Ireland was an anti-Semitic country as “false, irresponsible and mischievous”.
“The Jewish community live and have always lived on terms of closest friendship with their fellow Irish citizens. Freedom to practice their religion is specifically guaranteed in the Irish Constitution. No Irish government has ever discriminated between Jew and non-Jew,” the letter said.
It has often been forgotten that de Valera was the subject of multiple anti-Semitic slurs throughout his career because of persistent allegations that his father was Jewish. It was first used when de Valera stood in the Clare byelection of 1917 and repeated while he was in the US fundraising during the War of Independence. The Gaelic American newspaper described him as a “half-breed Spanish-American Jew” and a “half-breed Jew from Bruree”.
The slur was picked up by the Nazis themselves in July 1933 after they came to power. One Nazi newspaper described de Valera as a “half-caste Jew”.
De Valera‘s Constitution in 1937 explicitly recognised the Jewish religion. In 1966, a delegation of Irish Jews dedicated a forest near Nazareth to de Valera in recognition of his support for their community. The woodland remains today even while relations between Ireland and Israel remain at a historic low.
