seemslikeadream » Wed Oct 14, 2015 12:21 pm wrote:I wish people here hated the Irish as much as they hate the Jews cause I would just love to have a reason to throw an epic solace meltdown....bring it on all you Irish haters
A disturbing aspect of Ireland's history has been uncovered by research finding that leading Nazis were sheltered and welcomed by the Irish establishment after the war.
A rogues' gallery that included fascists, Nazi collaborators and war criminals came to Ireland, including some who flourished and became respected members of the community.
A documentary to be screened on Irish television tonight illustrates growing willingness amongst mainstream public opinion to face up to Ireland's role in providing a haven for war criminals.
In the past, there has been a tendency to overlook stories of Hitler's henchmen being protected while they made their homes in Ireland or using it as a staging post to escape to America.
"It is very interesting that there is now much more willingness to raise these issues about those sections of the Irish population, who were sympathetic to the Nazi cause," said Paul Bew, Professor of Irish Politics at Queen's University, Belfast.
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"I am glad people are focusing on this now. It has been a repressed theme in Irish history," added Prof Bew, who also deals with the subject in his book The Oxford History of Ireland, which is to be published later this year.
Otto 'Scarface' Skorzeny, once described as Hitler's favourite soldier and the most dangerous man in Europe, was feted by the Dublin social glitterati.
Fourteen years after he had rescued Mussolini from a hilltop fortress in 1943, Skorzeny arrived at a reception in his honour held at Portmarnock Country Club.
The cream of Dublin society attended the event, including a young politician, Charles Haughey, who was later to become Ireland's most controversial Prime Minister.
The two-part television documentary Hidden History on RTE, Ireland's national broadcaster, will tell the story of Skorzeny, who went on to raise prize-wining lambs in Co Kildare.
Skorzeny made his name by raiding an Italian castle where Mussolini was held captive. Descending on the fortress in gliders, Skorzeny's men succeeded in freeing the dictator.
A year later, Skorzeny was involved in rounding up and torturing members of the German resistance after their failed attempt on Hitler's life.
He was acquitted of war crimes by a US court, but remained a prisoner because other countries wanted to prosecute him.
He escaped from prison, fleeing to Spain before buying a farm Martinstown House, near the Curragh, where he lived for a decade.
The programme is presented by Cathal O'Shannon, an Irish RAF veteran who feels that anti-British sentiment in Ireland led to Nazis receiving a warmer welcome than he did when he came home after the war.
He believes between 100 and 200 people with Nazi connections passed through Ireland during the Cold War.
Albert Folens, who died in 2003 at 86 after founding Ireland's leading academic text-book publisher, was involved in the Gestapo and Waffen SS.
The documentary claims he was a volunteer in the Waffen SS Flemish legion, serving on the eastern front until he was wounded.
After treatment in an SS hospital, he joined the Gestapo and claimed to have worked at its Brussels headquarters as a translator.
His name is said to have appeared on the US army's Central Registry of War Criminals and Security Suspects. Folens always denied any involvement in torture or inhumane treatment.
Arrested by the British Army in Germany, he was sentenced to 10 years after a military trial. But he escaped after 30 months and fled to the Republic on a false passport.
The so-called 'Butcher of the Balkans', Andrija Artukovic, was another who sought and found sanctuary in Ireland, spending his time in the Dublin suburb of Rathgar in 1947.
According to the programme, Artukovic, a Croatian Nazi, was given safe passage to Ireland with the help of a Franciscan order.
Artukovic served as interior minister in the Nazi puppet regime in Croatia. He was provided with immigration papers under a false name before arriving in Ireland, where he posed as a history professor before moving to the United States.
Decades later he was extradited to Yugoslavia and was sentenced to death for opening concentration camps and being involved in the genocide of up to one million innocent people. The sentence was not carried out because the authorities deemed him too ill.
Pieter Menten, a Dutch Nazi war criminal, moved to a Co Waterford mansion in 1964 before he was eventually tried and imprisoned. After his prison term, the Irish government would not allow him back.
Helmut Clissmann was a World War II German spy involved in failed missions with the IRA. He later became a successful Dublin businessman.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/ ... chmen.htmlExplains so much.
Posted: Wed Oct 14, 2015 11:13 am