Madam, - Diarmaid Ferriter (Opinion, February 7th) is right to warn against imposing judgments on the past by reading backwards from contemporary certainties and to raise doubts on the value of retrospective apologies. But his assessment of the Irish contribution to the Allied war effort as "immense" and "vast" is a gross exaggeration.
Of course many individual Irish people fought, worked and died courageously in the Allied war effort, through economic necessity or idealism. But compared with the contribution and losses of the Allies in general, and the Russians in particular, their contribution was tiny and it was made by individuals rather than the State.
As for de Valera's condolences to the German legation, presented at a time when there was adequate knowledge of the nature of Nazism, and of at least some details of the Holocaust, they placed Ireland in the same category as Franco's Spain and Salazar's Portugal, as other historians and contributors to your columns have noted.
There was a political logic in that, given the nature of 1930s Ireland, but it also suggests that the wish to be seen to act independently had become more significant than the action itself. That may not be a cause for apology, but it is a cause for regret. - Yours, etc.,
Prof HUGH GOUGH,
School of History,
University College Dublin,
Dublin 4.
Madam, - It is desperately important that historical events are studied as they happened in their own time. Many contributors to the de Valera - Hitler controversy are clearly much younger than I am. Being in school when the second World War was taking place, I followed events with excitement, read papers and magazines, heard broadcasts from Britain and Germany and met students home from wartime Rome via Lisbon. All at school at the time indulged in like interest, collected wartime stamps and bulletins issued by the American and German Legations.
So what about that time? Apart from the fact that the school yard was divided between schoolboys "up for the Germans" or "up for the British" the atmosphere and discussion amongst adults was conditioned by circumstances which many contributors may have overlooked.
When war broke out in 1939 it was only 16 years since the end of the Civil War of corrosively bitter memory and debate between our adults who had lived through it. It was a mere 17 years since the British Army and its auxiliaries evacuated following the War of Independence. The memories, the accounts, the wish for "payback" strategies, the anger against England particularly still thrived.
My recollection is that anger was directed at England rather than any affection, or indeed understanding, of Nazism or fascism.
Dáil Éireann was a mirror of public debate and sympathies. Independent Ireland was in its infancy. The taunts that I recall mostly in the heated arguments in the street, at breakfast, dinner and tea, as well as in the Dáil, ran, "Ireland is not really a country", "Ireland is red on the map", "The English [ it was always "the English"] could come back in and wipe us out, if they liked".
James Dillon, TD, led the diminishment pack in Dáil Éireann and outside, repeatedly. Ireland's status and freedom of action was being vigorously disputed as pro-English and anti-English rhetoric rang throughout Ireland.
It is my interpretation that Eamon de Valera made his formal gesture on the death of Adolf Hitler to demonstrate to all that we were independent and enjoyed freedom to act independently. - Yours, etc.,
NICHOLAS FURLONG,
Drinagh Lodge,
Wexford.