World War II

[spitfire]

Been looking into this a bit and Skorzeny, like many high profile Nazi's, was acquitted of war crimes (yes I know), and didn't arrive in Ireland until 1959, He was later refused a visa so had to go to Spain. Not exactly a red carpet from the govt. I see the shitbags that invited him to Portmarnock Golf Club included Charlie Haughey as you mentioned earlier, no great surprise there. Ireland has its fair share of cunts.

How did Hitler's scar-faced henchman become an Irish farmer?

Seventy years on from his exploits at the Battle of the Bulge, a look at Otto Skorzeny's journey from Hitler's top commando to Irish farmer

www.bbc.co.uk

Half of the post war German civil service and military had Nazi pasts, some were always going to slip through the very small net put out by the Allies in the chaos after the war. That's a whole other story.

 

[spitfire]

As for Frank Ryan, looks like he was very pally with Clissmann.

Death of the best informed German on Ireland during war

Mr Helmut Clissmann, who has died in Dublin, was the bestinformed German about Ireland and the IRA during the second World War…

www.irishtimes.com

That is an interesting article as it does cover how an ex Nazi did get citizenship with the help of Irish govt. contacts unlike Skorzeny who didn't so much.

 

[kebabking]

'm not convinced that this is actually justifiable or believable considering that these were high profile Nazis we're talking about and considering the closeness of conservative catholics, including the church itself with fascism and Nazism. When combined with the rest of the picture it really doesn't look good (such as De Valera's controversial comments at the end of the war).

I think it's quite explainable by Dev's psychological need to not be doing anything that might be construed as being what the British would like, regardless of whether he would otherwise do it or not.

There's something a bit schizophrenic about the political attitudes - the IG was locking up the IRA and executing them like it was going out of fashion, with the IRA considered the fundamental threat to the state, and then - at the very least - a blind eye was turned, and in the case of Clissman, the senior government people actively helped him get to Ireland.

There are modern parallels: the Irish body politic, and wider society, fawns over the US and the alleged 'Irishness' of people like Joe Biden and thinks he's going to help Ireland out, but the moment a USAF aircraft makes a technical stop (all cleared by the DFA and ATC) in Dublin they all lose their minds and howl they they're being invaded by the imperialist war mongers...

 

[Pickman's model]

I read the parts of that that were of interest to me at the time, mainly the bit about the U Boats rumour. So what?

no source for your bit about de valera's involvement with nazi war crims coming to ireland i note, i can only conclude you made it up

 

[AmateurAgitator]

I think it's quite explainable by Dev's psychological need to not be doing anything that might be construed as being what the British would like, regardless of whether he would otherwise do it or not.

Any evidence for this?

 

[kebabking]

evidence for this?

History?

I understand the emotions behind it, and I recognise the psychology behind it - but he wasn't paid to indulge his emotions, he was paid to advance the interests of the Irish people to the best of his abilities in the circumstances he found himself in.

 

[spitfire]

Any evidence for this?

The Civil War.

 

[spitfire]

For the record, I'm no fan of DeValera, he was a large part of the calcification of Ireland into the conservative Catholic state it became. Thankfully it has moved on a lot from those times. He was an arsehole but I don't believe he was actively involved in helping Nazi war criminals get farms in Ireland. He's got plenty of other stuff to answer for.

I can't imagine many people on here light a candle for him.

 

[spitfire]

Whilst digging around I found this book, it investigates how many ex-Nazi's made their abode in this sceptered isle. Nazi's ended up everywhere, because there were millions of them.

Justice Delayed: How Britain Became A Refuge For Nazi War Crimina: Amazon.co.uk: Cesarani, David: 9781842121269: Books

Cesarani describes how the immigration policy of Clement Attlee's post-war government actually favoured Eastern Europeans over non-whites and Jewish Holocaust survivors. Despite protests from MPs Dick Crossman and Tom Driberg, former members of the Waffen-SS and Nazi police units made new lives in Britain. British intelligence recruited agents among them and sent many into the Eastern Bloc, where they were betrayed by Kim Philby. Only in 1986 did the Simon Wiesenthal Centre provide evidence that could not be ignored. The House of Lords defied the Commons in a last ditch effort to stop legislation which would permit war crime trials in Britain but on May 10, 1991, the war crimes bill was signed by The Queen. This authoritative book written by a former researcher for the All-Party Parliamentary War Crimes Group, brings together the whole extraordinary story, exposing the use made of Nazi collaborators by British intelligence, the post-war 'cover up' and provides in-depth background to the first war crimes trials in Britain for fifty years.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

Whilst digging around I found this book, it investigates how many ex-Nazi's made their abode in this sceptered isle. Nazi's ended up everywhere, because there were millions of them.

Justice Delayed: How Britain Became A Refuge For Nazi War Crimina: Amazon.co.uk: Cesarani, David: 9781842121269: Books

This is very interesting. Not heard anything about this before. Thankyou for sharing.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

History?

I understand the emotions behind it, and I recognise the psychology behind it - but he wasn't paid to indulge his emotions, he was paid to advance the interests of the Irish people to the best of his abilities in the circumstances he found himself in.

Fair enough

 

[butchersapron]

I'd say that Dan Breen and others views/actions as regards nazism and WW2 were not just driven by englands danger is ireland's opportunity type thinking, they were actuallya translation - note transformation - of their form of traditionalist nationalist thinking under the impress of WW2. People who had violently shut down strikes and occupations, evicted and kidnapped workers representatives, re-imposed the rule of the local landowners and bosses and threatened workers with being shot etc when they had the chance (as Breen etc did in the revolutionary and civil war period) - the same way the first fascists did - could well have been said to have a sort of hard or extreme right wing view of the world. Skorzeny was running an international network of violent hardcore nazis across all of europe in his irish period, setting the foundations for the fascist massacres of the 70s. He wasn't in any sense retired.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

I'd say that Dan Breen and others views/actions as regards nazism and WW2 were not just driven by englands danger is ireland's opportunity type thinking, they were actuallya translation - note transformation - of their form of traditionalist nationalist thinking under the impress of WW2. People who had violently shut down strikes and occupations, evicted and kidnapped workers representatives, re-imposed the rule of the local landowners and bosses and threatened workers with being shot etc when they had the chance (as Breen etc did in the revolutionary and civil war period) - the same way the first fascists did - could well have been said to have a sort of hard or extreme right wing view of the world. Skorzeny was running an international network of violent hardcore nazis across all of europe in his irish period, setting the foundations for the fascist massacres of the 70s. He wasn't in any sense retired.

Interesting that Breen was a Fiana Fail politican can therefore be said to have been close to De Valera and of the same ilk.

 

[scalyboy]

This is fairly dramatically off-topic, so my apologies for derailing the thread.

But the mention of De Valera above has reminded me of a family story my nan used to tell, that her dad, a bricklayer, had - at some point - shared a cell with Dev. This has always puzzled me; as far as I know, although he was from Co.Cork, he spent most of his life in Wales or England, and had settled in Kent with his wife and young children before WW1. And as far as I know he wasn't involved in the war of independence or civil war at all.

I wondered whether Dev had been in Maidstone prison at some point after 1916, and if so, maybe my great-grandad was done for affray, or drunk and disorderly or something?! They lived around Dartford, Sidcup, Bexley way - so would Maidstone have been the destination for convicted men from that area?

 

[not-bono-ever]

I worked in Germany for a while, some of it at a hotel that allowed German ex servicemen or their living spouses a paid for week or two holiday, paid for by the government. I have probably mentioned this before but there were still a couple of old fellas from 2W2 as guests.mostly long gone by then tho

one was talking in north German / Hamburg accent that my truly Shiite German couldn’t understand. So he changed to Russian instead. Found out he didn’t get back to Germany until I think the 50s - had been in a Siberian camp from his capture at Stalingrad

The other only ate lard. Literally a pint of pig fat over his meals and would ask for more If it wasn’t enough. Turns out he had been a paratrooper and was un the Crete airborne assault and suffered a huge head injury. The doctor said that if he clung into life, he had to east as much fat as possiblle to fix his head injury. 50 years plus later , he was still doing it

 

[Hollis]

Think the last German prisoners released were in 1955... lucky to get back at all... vast majority vanished.

 

[Pickman's model]

Interesting that Breen was a Fiana Fail politican can therefore be said to have been close to De Valera and of the same ilk.

What like Keir Starmer was close to Jeremy Corbyn you mean, that two people in the same party can always be expected to be like two peas in a pod politically.

If you can't find any of your actual evidence you'll try to damn someone by association

 

[Artaxerxes]

There does appear to have been a closeness between Irish catholic conservatism and fascism and nazism though. De Valera offered his condolences to the German Minister in Ireland on the news of Hitler's death. This was said to have been in accordance with the diplomatic protocol of a neutral country, but surely it wasn't strictly necessary. De Valera is also said to have attacked reports of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camps as 'anti-national propaganda', apparently this was because the Holocaust undermined the assumptions underlying Irish neutrality: moral equivalence between the Allies and the Axis powers, and the idea that the Irish were the most persecuted people in Europe. It also appears to be true that atleast several Nazi war criminals lived and temporarily stayed in Ireland after the war:

How Hitler’s henchman became an Irish farmer after the war | IrishCentral.com

After the World War II ended, "the most dangerous man in Europe", Otto “Scarface” Skorzeny retired to Ireland where he was welcomed with open arms. He remained unrepentant of his war crimes until the day he died.

www.irishcentral.com

Ireland's Nazis - Tile Films Ltd.

2 x 52 min HD Docu-drama https://vimeo.com/16931469 RAF veteran Cathal O’Shannon uncovers the truth about the war criminals and collaborators who found refuge in Ireland in the years after World War 2. The series won the Globe Gold Award (Documentary section) at the Intermedia World Media...

tilefilms.ie

Also, W T Cosgrave of Cumman Na nGaedhael and later Fine Gael, though not a fascist himself, was at one time part of the same organisation as O'Duffy and the Blueshirts. Though not an actual fascist, he was a catholic conservative authoritarian.

Ofcourse, the British establishment was largely pro-fascist/Nazi before the outbreak of war.

De Valera was a cunt

 

[likesfish]

On a lighter note
Pegasus bridge the first Bridge captured on D-day via a glider assault caught the germans by complete surprise. An officer stormed into a bunker and in his best learned german Demanded the germans surrender to be met with " Piss Off Hans your not funny we are sleeping" . Had one of the Sgts go in and drag the germans out.
The troops captured an AA gun and one of them figured out how to get it to work by using the roof of a big house as a Target!

Years later he had to remain very quiet at a reunion as one of the locals related how beastly the hun was and in a final act of brutality they shot the roof off the local maternity hospital

 

[rubbershoes]

Think the last German prisoners released were in 1955... lucky to get back at all... vast majority vanished.

Some Germans were imprisoned by the Americans and after release ,returned to their homes in ( East) Germany, and where then imprisoned by Russia

 

[scalyboy]

Has this been posted before? Documentary on D-day, using contemporary (and colourised) footage.

 

[Pickman's model]

Been looking into this a bit and Skorzeny, like many high profile Nazi's, was acquitted of war crimes (yes I know), and didn't arrive in Ireland until 1959, He was later refused a visa so had to go to Spain. Not exactly a red carpet from the govt. I see the shitbags that invited him to Portmarnock Golf Club included Charlie Haughey as you mentioned earlier, no great surprise there. Ireland has its fair share of cunts.

How did Hitler's scar-faced henchman become an Irish farmer?

Seventy years on from his exploits at the Battle of the Bulge, a look at Otto Skorzeny's journey from Hitler's top commando to Irish farmer

www.bbc.co.uk

Half of the post war German civil service and military had Nazi pasts, some were always going to slip through the very small net put out by the Allies in the chaos after the war. That's a whole other story.

Brown Book: War and Nazi Criminals in West Germany. State, Economy, Administration, Army, Justice, Science : Albert Norden : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

A 1965 East German work. Scanned by Ismail, sent to him by Vladimir Baklazhan.Any gaps in the pages (e.g. between pages 65 and 67) are because the pages in...

archive.org

 

[Pickman's model]

Been looking into this a bit and Skorzeny, like many high profile Nazi's, was acquitted of war crimes (yes I know), and didn't arrive in Ireland until 1959, He was later refused a visa so had to go to Spain. Not exactly a red carpet from the govt. I see the shitbags that invited him to Portmarnock Golf Club included Charlie Haughey as you mentioned earlier, no great surprise there. Ireland has its fair share of cunts.

How did Hitler's scar-faced henchman become an Irish farmer?

Seventy years on from his exploits at the Battle of the Bulge, a look at Otto Skorzeny's journey from Hitler's top commando to Irish farmer

www.bbc.co.uk

Half of the post war German civil service and military had Nazi pasts, some were always going to slip through the very small net put out by the Allies in the chaos after the war. That's a whole other story.

Lest we forget Hanns Martin Schleyer executed by the RAF, 1977, was ss

 

[scalyboy]

Lest we forget Hanns Martin Schleyer executed by the RAF, 1977, was ss

I seem to recall reading that many State functionaries and bureaucrats in West Germany (judges, businessmen and the like) had been card-carrying Nazis. The Allied occupiers having decided it would be too difficult to find, put in place and train anti-Nazis able to keep the country running after the war's end. And that this was in part what the RAF were reacting against: the knowledge that their parents' generation had been Nazis and many of them were now in positions of power in the 1960s. Of course there's many other elements that may explain the rise of the RAF; Vietnam and US military bases on West German soil, the Shah of Iran's visit etc. But I also think growing awareness of the Holocaust in West Germany (the Auschwitz and Treblinka trials etc) was a contributory factor.

 

[Pickman's model]

I seem to recall reading that many State functionaries and bureaucrats in West Germany (judges, businessmen and the like) had been card-carrying Nazis. The Allied occupiers having decided it would be too difficult to find, put in place and train anti-Nazis able to keep the country running after the war's end. And that this was in part what the RAF were reacting against: the knowledge that their parents' generation had been Nazis and many of them were now in positions of power in the 1960s. Of course there's many other elements that may explain the rise of the RAF; Vietnam and US military bases on West German soil, the Shah of Iran's visit etc. But I also think growing awareness of the Holocaust in West Germany (the Auschwitz and Treblinka trials etc) was a contributory factor.

Businessmen are not state functionaries or bureaucrats

 

[not-bono-ever]

another item - googling it now - - met am old fella years ago who was a camera engineer who was parachuted into Germany towards the end of the war with some random hard nuts - to get the tech stuff for German cameras before they were snarfed by the russians or trashed. This wasnt some pub tale either. Let me rack my brains for more. Utterly nuts but he did survive ( obviously)

 

[spitfire]

Brown Book: War and Nazi Criminals in West Germany. State, Economy, Administration, Army, Justice, Science : Albert Norden : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

A 1965 East German work. Scanned by Ismail, sent to him by Vladimir Baklazhan.Any gaps in the pages (e.g. between pages 65 and 67) are because the pages in...

archive.org

Very interesting, thank you.

Just had a quick look at the first chapter and the numbers of people charged in both DDR and FRG was tiny.







And the ones that got away include:

 

[brogdale]

Very interesting, thank you.

Just had a quick look at the first chapter and the numbers of people charged in both DDR and FRG was tiny.

View attachment 273246

View attachment 273248



And the ones that got away include:


View attachment 273245

Last time I was at the Topography of Terror in Berlin I was struck by how many of the post-war photographs & annotations contained reference to former Nazis who, by then, had assumed positions of power in the West German economy/administration.

Wasn't this one of the RAF's themes, that their parents' generation were all Nazis?

 

[likesfish]

Regimes like the Nazis and the Soviet Union or Iraq etc made being a member of the party obligatory anyone with any skill or knowledge was at least a party member either because they were a true believer did it for advancement or had a skill the state needed. Authoritarian dictatorships don't tolerate dissent those survivors of the Antifascist resistance wouldn't have many useful skills as they'd be barred from any career advancement if they stayed out of the camps.
The US deBaathed Iraq and that went well .
The Nazis played on traditional prejudices they just turned everything up to 11 you can see how well playing on immigrants the workshy those faking disability etc plays with certain sections of the community. Wouldnt take much to push it If urbanites had been born in the 20s we'd either be dead on the eastern front or working for the Nazi state in some form or another.

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

The Nazis played on traditional prejudices they just turned everything up to 11 you can see how well playing on immigrants the workshy those faking disability etc plays with certain sections of the community. Wouldnt take much to push it If urbanites had been born in the 20s we'd either be dead on the eastern front or working for the Nazi state in some form or another.

Not all Germans fell for the Nazi myth. Far from it, they just had limited opportunity to express their opinions without suffering undue consequences. The Edelweiss Pirates were a Youth Movement of sorts, working class, anti-establishment, a bit like a 1940's punk movement. Mainly of an age between school and conscription, they fought the Hitler Youth on their home turf, helped refugees and the like, attacked police stations on occasion and created their own non-Nazi sub culture.