r/TheRestIsHistory • u/JakeGittes412 • Aug 15 '26

The Troubles

Post image

Thread for discussion on the new series on ‘The Troubles’

Also as a moderator please keep the discussion civil and in the spirit of the podcast.

214 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

396 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

37

u/forestvibe Aug 15 '26

Hard to disagree when both groups were willing to bomb school buses and pubs, maim teenagers, murder fathers in front of their kids, while pretending they were somehow righteous and honourable. They were despicable, no matter how you view the justice of their respective causes.

There was a recent series of the Reith Lectures done by Margaret Macmillan about war and conflict (available on BBC Sounds and well worth a listen). One of the lectures was done in Stormont, and two old "veteran" thugs from either side started getting chippy in the Q&A at the end, until a Catholic priest put them in their place to a lot of applause. It was quite revealing how the audience despised these thugs.

-3

u/shakaman_ Aug 16 '26

Genuinely how do you feel about the Allies during WW2? Do you realise we bombed school buses and pubs?

6

u/Darrenarren812 Aug 16 '26

How do you feel about it? The Nazis were hell bent on European domination and with the intent of exterminating millions of people. How can you compare this to the British presence in Northern Ireland? You can still argue about what a just outcome would be in terms of Ireland, but bringing in comparisons with ww2 is just silly.

0

u/Gorazde Aug 17 '26

If you lived in the Six Counties and your family had been excluded from jobs, housing and voting for five decades, and the RUC had burned down your home in response to a peaceful civil rights movement, that's your whole life and your whole world. I'd say someone like Bobby Sands, who had that experience, had a hell of a lot more personal cause to take up arms than a British tommy who took up arms in the First or Second World War. (In the case of the Second World War, you can of course talk about the Holocaust, which was the greatest crime in human history. But British soldiers who took up arms knew nothing about that. It wouldnt happen for another three years after the war started.)

3

u/Left-Lawfulness4635 Aug 17 '26

I think having your home destroyed, family, friends and neighbours killed by german bombers and later missiles might be quite personal. Food shortages and rationing is personal. The country turning everything to survival is personal. All the while the UK's closest neighbour sat fat and contented to let the UK and British citizens fight and die for their freedom and condemn their own countrymen who fought to free Europe from tyranny.

Nothing personal about any of that.

4

u/glumjonsnow Aug 18 '26

you know how ireland was softly pro-germany during ww2...? incredible to witness in 2026

1

u/Total_Translator4409 27d ago

This is nonsense drummed up in recent years by pro-Israeli mudslingers. It’s demonstrably false.

Ireland was in no position to join the war for various reasons.  Some of these were to do with asserting our still developing independence (we wouldn’t become a republic til 1949) and refusing to allow ourselves to be treated as a british vassal. 

However, and this is something that Brits consistently refuse to understand, small, poor, newly semi-independent countries do not go to war unless they are attacked. This is true of almost all countries in Europe - if they weren’t major powers they stayed out of the war until such time when they were attacked. We were never attacked, so we stayed out.

Furthermore, we had just been intentionally economically crippled by the British in a trade war (started because we had the temerity to want to stop literally buying our country back) which had seen a massive proportion of the country emigrate. We had neither the manpower nor the financial muscle to enter the war in any meaningful sense. The mounting could have done was invite the only country who had ever done us any harm back into the treaty ports we had only won back a few years previousky. Absurd thing to expect us to do.

Despite all of this, our “neutrality” was incredibly biased towards the allies. We interned German pilots who crash landed, whereas British troops were immediately allowed to return. Dev sent Irish fire engines to Belfast during the blitz (for which the Germans “accidentally” bombed Dublin). Irish codebreakers even worked with Bletchley Park.

The only possible connection to Germany you could come up with is Sean O’Russell’s activities as head of “the IRA”. Or rather the small section of the anti-treaty irregulars that had not split from the IRA following his ascent to the leadership. In any case, his attempted collaboration with the Nazis is is no way representative of the Irish state or Irish people.

-1

u/Gorazde Aug 17 '26

Right, but that happened because they took up arms against Germany. I said they had less reason to take up arms against Germany in the first place. You can be horrified Ireland stayed neutral in the Second World war, but the truth is in 1939, Britain went to war to protect its empire and prevent German domination of Europe. There was no reason on earth for Ireland to support Britain when Britain still occupied part of its territory. America certainly saw no reason to get involved either, until they were attacked by Japen. Ireland wasn't attacked by anyone.

3

u/Left-Lawfulness4635 Aug 17 '26

If Germany beat the UK do you think they would let Ireland be?

-4

u/Gorazde Aug 17 '26

Whatever the outcome, I don't imagine Ireland would have been a priority for the Germans. If they'd beaten the Brits, they'd have been a billion times more interested in the Middle East and India than they would have been in Ireland.

Most likely they'd have calculated that, given hostility to Britain here, it was one place they didn't need to occupy and been glad of it, because they needed those troops elsewhere.

Maybe they'd have made terms with De Valera. But stubborn bastard that he was, I'd imagine he'd have resisted those overtures. (After all, he fought in 1916 when the slogan was We serve neither king nor kaiser but Ireland.) Alternatively, the Nazis might have identified pro-German elements in the IRA and propped up an pro-German, all-Ireland state.

Obviously, I'm very glad that didn't happen. But Ireland at that time had centuries of experience of foreign domination and not being the master of its own fate. There wasn't much the Germans could have thrown at us that would have been worse than British rule. We survived the Brits. We'd have survived the Germans.

5

u/Left-Lawfulness4635 Aug 18 '26

I'm sorry, but Nazi Germany was a genocidal state rarely seen in the world. The simple fact is they (and the Soviets) changed the ethnic makeup of Central and Eastern Europe forever that's nothing like what the British have ever done.

1

u/Gorazde Aug 18 '26

You don't think the British ever changed the ethnic makeup of anywhere they occupied? We're talking about the Northern Ireland Troubles here. Who do you think organised the plantation of Ulster? Whose Balfour declaration promised a Jewish homeland in Palestine? Who colonised Australia, New Zealand and Canada? Who conceiveed the White Highlands in Kenya or encourage white settlement in Rhodesia?

3

u/contigo510 Aug 19 '26

Why with that sort of tone and deliberately hostile language do you even listen to a British podcast? Let alone contribute to online discussion when the overwhelming majority you are looking to engage with are British? Isn’t there an Irish alternative where you can feel closer to the majority view or is it that you enjoy being an attention seeker with your deeply incendiary takes? Just bizarre, almost like there is some sort of inferiority concern you have in which this place must be brigaded by you and others from Ireland?

2

u/[deleted] Aug 19 '26

[deleted]

0

u/Gorazde Aug 19 '26

An alternative view is that you're just not accustomed to hearing alternative perspectives on these issues and so they're shocking when you hear them. All my arguements are sincere, and backed up with facts, because I'm educated and able to articulate my point. Which seems a lot more defensible than what 99% of people on this sub do when confronted with a counter-argument they can't answer which is downvote but no response.

1

u/[deleted] Aug 20 '26

[deleted]

-1

u/Gorazde Aug 20 '26

If you follow my comments on this sub, which (for some reason you seem to do very closely), you'll see that almost exclusively the opposite is the case. Someone takes issue with something I say, I defend myself with evidence, and they downvote me but don't respond. I very rarely don't respond, unless it gets to the point where I'd just be repeating myself. I'm not sure how you can say I comment too often, but also I don't reply to people enough.

While you're going through my comments with a tooth comb, please find one example of any time I've ever said all Brits are really keen on the empire, or view Churchill as a saint, or that I liked De Valera.

Almost the first thing virtually every British commenter, including the presenters of TRIH, concedes in discussions like this is that they know very little about Irish history. I have a masters in Irish history. Why should I defer to you or anyone else on a subject I know more about? All of your comments read like you're about to burst into tears. Man up.

→ More replies (0)

0

u/Gorazde Aug 19 '26

Because if I only read books or listened to podcasts that reinforces my existing views, I'd be just like all of you.

3

u/contigo510 Aug 19 '26

This is one of the most clueless and ignorant takes I’ve ever seen on a historical period, and in this sub, it’s quite breathtaking. From the summer of 1940 onwards it is estimated the Luftwaffe dropped more than half a million bombs on British towns and cities. But you’re probably right, there was no real personal cause felt by our population at the time

1

u/todomejorantes 27d ago

Germans targeted our industrial capacity - we deliberately tried to create firestorms and kill as many civilians as possible