Ireland: Rowdy students clashing in Dublin made for a strange VE Day, writes Joe Carroll.
As a neutral country, Ireland could not officially celebrate the end of the second World War in Europe. Several days earlier, the then taoiseach, Eamon de Valera, expressed neutrality by calling on the German ambassador in Dublin to offer condolences on "the death of Herr Hitler".
This had aroused international opprobrium, although the strict Irish censorship regime had kept the country in the dark about the reaction.
Suddenly all was about to change as the end of the war in Europe was announced.
Some students at Trinity College Dublin threw off the neutral shackles by climbing on the roof, flying the flags of the Allied nations and singing God Save the King, the Marseillaise and It's a Long Way to Tipperary. As crowds gathered in Grafton Street and College Green to watch the spectacle, the mood changed when according to some reports, the students burned the Irish Tricolour and threw it down into the street. Other contemporary reports said there was anger because the Trinity students, many of whom would have been British, flew the Tricolour at the bottom of the mast.
The Department of Justice report said that the students hauled down the Irish flag and hoisted the Union Jack before burning the Tricolour.
As word spread, more nationally minded students from University College on Earlsfort Terrace arrived on the scene.
Prominent among them was a young Charles Haughey.
A mini-riot developed and police baton charges prevented an invasion of the college but windows were broken. Some of the protesters marched to nearby French-owned Jammet's Restaurant and the Wicklow Hotel where more windows were broken. These establishments would have been regarded as frequented by pro-Allied sympathisers.
The protesters continued to Merrion Square where windows were broken at the US legation and at the British representation in Mount Street.
The provost of Trinity subsequently called on the Taoiseach to express regret for the actions of some TCD students. They would have been a small number. Trinity also had a unit of the Local Defence Force ready to repel invasion from either side.
The Government, for its part, had to express regrets for the incidents at the American and British diplomatic buildings.
Meanwhile out at the German legation on Northumberland Road, the German ambassador, Edouard Hempel, was busy burning and shredding secret documents before handing the building over to the authorities.
Axis sympathisers wanted to have Masses said for Hitler and Mussolini, a gesture which disturbed the Department of External Affairs as inappropriate. A Franciscan priest managed to celebrate the Mass for Mussolini but military intelligence found out in time about the Mass "for the repose of the soul of Adolf Hitler and the welfare of the German nation" and Archbishop McQuaid had it stopped.
The strict press censorship was not lifted until May 11th but The Irish Times, which had suffered most from it, fooled the censor when between editions on VE Day, the photographs of the victorious leaders and generals were rearranged on page one as a large "V" sign. The censorship had also prevented the people knowing the extent to which neutral Ireland had helped the Allied war effort through secret military co-operation.
The historian FSL Lyons described the isolation of the neutrality years as if "the people had been condemned to live in Plato's cave with their backs to the fire of life." Now with ending of the war, "they emerged, dazzled, from the cave into the light of day to a new and vastly different world."
Joe Carroll is author of Ireland and the War Years 1939-1945