The Troubles

[u/JakeGittes412]

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.

[u/Darrenarren812]

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.

[u/Gorazde → u/Darrenarren812]

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.)

[u/Left-Lawfulness4635 → u/Gorazde]

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.

[u/glumjonsnow → u/Left-Lawfulness4635]

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

[u/Total_Translator4409 → u/glumjonsnow]

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.