#but what the ira became was an organisation which killed civilians and children

[richkidcityfriends]

the next time i see americans blindly supporting the fucking ira i am going to kill someone 

[whytehartleanne]

In memory of Sergeant Michael Willetts, GC.

A True British Hero:

Michael Willetts of 3 PARA (13 August, 1943 - 25 May, 1971) was one of the first British soldiers to be killed during 'The Troubles' in Northern Ireland, and the recipient of a posthumous George Cross for his heroism in saving lives during the Provisional Irish Republican Army bombing which claimed his own. He is buried at St Mary's Church, Blidworth, Nottinghamshire.

Operation Banner:

Operation Banner was the operational name for the British Armed Forces' operation in Northern Ireland from August 1969 to July 2007, as part of 'The Troubles.' It was the longest, continuous deployment in British Military history. The British Army was initially deployed, at the request of the unionist government of Northern Ireland, in response to the August 1969 riots. Its role was to support the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and to assert the authority of the British government in Northern Ireland.

The main opposition to the British military's deployment came from the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA). It waged a guerrilla campaign against the British military from 1970 to 1997. An internal British Army document released in 2007 stated that, whilst the Army had failed to defeat the IRA, it had made it impossible for the IRA to win through violence, and had also reduced substantially the death toll in the last years of the conflict.

Bio/Death:

Born in 1943 in the Nottinghamshire town of Sutton-in-Ashfield, Michael Willetts entered a local colliery after leaving school, but found that he did not suit the job, and so joined the 3rd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment in the British Army, in March 1962, at the age of 20. He married his wife Sandra in October 1965 and the couple had two children, Dean and Trudy - aged 3 and 5 when their father was murdered.

He was a talented radio operator - particularly good at Morse Code. After serving in Malta, and along with the rest of his regiment, Sergeant Willetts was dispatched to Northern Ireland in 1971 at the outbreak of violence there between Irish nationalists and the unionist Royal Ulster Constabulary.

On 25th May he called his wife at lunchtime and they talked about their little girl who had started school that day.

Just before 8.30pm an IRA man entered the reception hall of Springfield Road RUC Police Station. He was carrying a suitcase out of which a smoking fuse could be seen. Immediately after dumping it on the floor he ran out to a waiting car.

In the reception area of the station were Patrick Gray and his daughter Colette, 4, and Elizabeth Cummings and her son Carl, also 4, along with a number of RUC officers, one of whom spotted the smoking fuse and raised the alarm.

Sergeant Willetts was on duty in the inner hall when he heard the commotion and sent a fellow soldier up to the first floor to warn those working there, while he himself headed to reception. He found the Police Officers ushering the members of public to safety.

Patrick Gray describes what Sergeant Willetts did:

"We all rushed as fast as we could through the enquiry office towards the door at the end of the room. I remember this young Sergeant standing in the door and holding it open for us all. He was very calm and stood there until we had all moved through."

Sergeant Willetts effectively shielded the civilians and Police Officers with his own body until they were safely past him and outside - he then stood in the doorway, shielding those taking cover when the bomb exploded.

It was a full week and after the funeral before his wife could bring herself to sit down and be told the whole story. In the 2012 book "The Paras" she is recorded as saying:

"I wasn't surprised at all because there was no way he would have gone out that door leaving anyone in there. He loved people. His friends and colleagues all spoke highly of him. The presence of the children and their Mother made him do what he had to do, which was get them out of there as soon as possible. My own grief eventually moulded with a sense of pride, but also anger that the bombings continued. He was a good example of a good British soldier. The regiment was very proud of his courage."

One of those serving in the station, Constable Phoenix, made his way back to where the bomb went off after the explosion. Constable Phoenix became a prominent anti-terrorism Detective Superintendent and was killed in the Chinook helicopter crash on the Mull of Kintyre in 1994.

Lost Lives quotes from Constable Phoenix, Policing the Shadows:

"Constable Phoenix made his way to the entrance area where he saw Sergeant Willetts lying with the back of his head gaping open. A metal chunk from a locker hurled across the room by the force of the explosion had struck him. Local people had gathered outside and began to help clear the debris, offering what assistance they could.

Ambulances began ferrying the injured to the nearby Royal Victoria Hospital. Lieutenant Colonel Chiswell was with Sergeant Willetts, who was taken out on a door to the ambulance. A crowd of youths were waiting to greet them. They started to jeer and scream obscenities at the badly wounded soldiers. Lieutenant Colonel Chiswell recalled, "My reaction was one of total disbelief that anyone could be so inhumane."

"Dying to protect little children was just the sort of thing I would have expected him to do," Sergeant Willetts' brother-in-law quoted in a contemporary report which also details the actions of a Republican crowd on the day of the murder.

Sergeant Willetts, who was due to leave Northern Ireland in a few days, died after two hours on the operating table.

Memorial Badge:

George Cross:

In June 1971, Sergeant Michael Willetts' 3-year-old son collected the George Cross posthumously awarded to his father. A news report from the time records that his mother Sandra Willetts said:

"I have no bitterness towards the Irish. But it hurts to hear them complain about the troops. The Army is just trying to stop innocent people being murdered."

George Cross Medal Citation:

"The Queen has been graciously pleased to approve the posthumous award of the George Cross to: 2391067 Sergeant Michael WILLETS, The Parachute Regiment.

At 8.24pm on the evening of 25th May 1971, a terrorist entered the reception hall of the Springfield Road Police Station in Belfast. He carried a suitcase from which a smoking fuse protruded, dumped it quickly on the floor and fled outside. Inside the room were a man and a woman, two children and several police officers. One of the latter saw at once the smoking case and raised the alarm. The Police Officers began to organise the evacuation of the hall past the reception desk, through the reception office and out by a door into the rear passage.

Sergeant Michael Willetts was on duty in the inner hall. Hearing the alarm, he sent an N.C.O up to the first floor to warn those above and hastened himself to the door towards which a Police Officer was thrusting those in the reception hall and office. He held the door open while all passed safely through and then stood in then stood in the doorway, shielding those taking cover. In the next moment, the bomb exploded with terrible force.

Sergeant Willetts was mortally wounded. His duty did not require him to enter the threatened area, his post was elsewhere. He knew well, after 4 months service in Belfast, the peril of going towards a terrorist bomb but he did not hesitate to do so. All those approaching the door from the far side agree that if they had had to check to open the door they would have perished. Even when they had reached the rear passage, Sergeant Willetts waited, placing his body as a screen to shelter them. By this considered act of bravery, he risked - and lost - his life for those of the adults and children. His selflessness, his courage are beyond praise.

22nd June 1971." - London Gazette, 21 June 1971.

Other Honours:

Michael Willetts was also posthumously awarded Man of the Year in 1971 by RADAR, the Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation.

"Soldier" written, recorded and performed by Harvey Andrews:

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In 1972, folk musician Harvey Andrews wrote and recorded "Soldier."

The song was never intended to be an account of what happened to Sergeant Willetts - it was inspired by the actual story.

Whatever may be said about the artist's poetic licence, there's no doubting the power of the song's lyrics, and although Harvey Andrews was an established and well respected artist the song was banned from the airwaves by the BBC for fear that it would upset Nationalists in Northern Ireland.

Harvey Andrews recalls:

"When I wrote it, based on the Sergeant Willetts incident, the protest song movement was well established. I had no idea the song would become so big.

It was banned from broadcasting in Britain and I was not allowed to sing it on "Folk on Two" on BBC radio. Soldiers were not allowed to play it. One has emailed that he was charged and locked up for a few days. It was sold in the streets of Belfast and was basically number one over there but was never printed as such, I think. It has been bootlegged as well as re-recorded by Protestant bands in Scotland and sold illegally in pubs."

He insists that the song was intended to transcend sectarianism - something which seems reasonable when one actually thinks about the lyrics.

Not only that, but they are words which reflect the general attitude of soldiers from Great Britain quite well. They provided a title for not one but two of Ken Wharton's excellent books about Operation Banner.

🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶

"But will the children growing up learn at their mothers' knees

The story of the soldier who bought their liberty

Who used his youthful body as a means towards an end

Who gave his life to those who called him murderer, not friend?"

🎶🎶🎶🎶🎶

[dirjoh-blog]

The Republic of Ireland was and still is a neutral country but during WWII there were many Irish volunteers who fought with the allies against the Axis power.Like The first RAF bomber pilot to be shot down and killed in 1939 was Willie Murphy from Cork. His navigator, Larry Slattery, from Thurles, became the longest-serving ‘British’ POW of the war.(pictured below in a Berlin POW hospital bed)

On the other hand there were a great number of Irish who were sympathetic to Hitler and the Nazi regime.One of the most famous ones was the Irish playwright, critic and polemicist George Bernard Shaw.

He despised democracy, supported Lenin, Stalin and the Soviet purges, and denied the Ukrainian Famine happened. He also supported Hitler, and denied the Holocaust happened.After Hitler’s suicide in May 1945, Shaw approved of the formal condolences offered by the Irish Taoiseach, Éamon de Valera, at the German embassy in Dublin.

Shaw disapproved of the postwar trials of the defeated German leaders, as an act of self-righteousness: “We are all potential criminals”.

Charles Henry Bewley was raised in a famous Dublin Quaker business family (Bewleys Coffee and Cafes)and embraced Irish Republicanism and Roman Catholicism. He was the Irish envoy to Berlin who reportedly thwarted efforts to obtain visas for Jews wanting to leave Nazi Germany in the 1930s and to move to the safety of the Irish Free State.

Inhis reports to Dublin during the 1930s he gave the impression that German Jews were not threatened; that they were involved in pornography, abortion and “the international white slave traffic”. He explained the Nuremberg Laws “As the Chancellor pointed out, it amounts to the making of the Jews into a national minority; and as they themselves claim to be a separate race, they should have nothing to complain of.” He reports that he had no knowledge of any “deliberate cruelty on the part of the [German] Government … towards the Jews”. He criticised Irish refugee policy as “inordinately liberal, and facilitating the entry of the wrong class of people” (meaning Jews). Bewley was dismissed just as World War II was breaking out, and never received a pension. However, Joseph Goebbels gave him a job writing propaganda. For a time he worked for a Swedish news agency, which was part of Goebbels’ propaganda machine.

Dr. Adolf Mahr was an Austrian archaeologist who was Gruppenleiter (group leader) of the Dublin branch of the Nazi Party Auslandsorganisation (NSDP-AO).He arrived in Ireland in 1927 to work as keeper of antiquities in the National Museum of Ireland in Dublin.

In 1934 Éamon de Valera appointed Mahr Director of the Museum.As the Nazi Party rose to power in Germany in the 1930s, Mahr joined in 1933 and became the Local Group Leader (Ortsgruppenleiter) in Ireland. During his spell as Nazi leader he recruited roughly 23 Germans. Mahr’s children were raised in Dublin in the 1930s but ended up in post-war Germany.

The IRA supported the Nazis in WW2 (the real ones, not just rhetorical ones). They ran safe houses for Nazi spies, aided Nazi intelligence, and even helped Nazi bombers. They planned to bring about a Nazi German invasion of Ireland, and would no doubt have been installed as a quisling government had Germany occupied Ireland.Chief-of-Staff of the IRA at this time was Seán McCool.

Hitler would of course have done to Ireland what he did to every other country. In the Wannsee Conference notes of Jan 1942, Ireland’s 4,000 Jews were listed for extermination. No doubt Irish quislings would have helped in this, as quislings helped in every other country.

Luckily, the IRA failed in their plans, and the Jews of Ireland were not exterminated.

Andrija Artuković (19 November 1899 – 16 January 1988) was a Croatian lawyer, politician and senior member of the Croatian nationalist and fascist Ustaše organisation, who held the Interior and Justice portfolios in the Government of the Independent State of Croatia during World War II.

He signed into law a number of racial laws against Serbs, Jews and Romani people, and was responsible for a string of concentration camps in which tens of thousands of civilians were murdered and mistreated. On 18 May 1945, British extradited some Croatian ministers and Prime Minister Nikola Mandić to the Yugoslav authorities. Artuković was not extradited, but he was released soon with remaining ministers. He left the British occupational zone, then went via the American to the French occupational zone, where his family was. With a Swiss passport under the pseudonym of Alois Anich, he traveled to Ireland. In 1948, he left Ireland with his wife and children, and entered the United States on a tourist visa and settled in Seal Beach, California.

Helmut Clissman was a German spy, active in Ireland during World War II.When war broke out in 1939, Mr Clissmann was ordered, along with other Germans living in Ireland, to return to Germany. This was later seen by the German intelligence services as a bad mistake, but they tried to use his expert knowledge to find out the strength of the IRA and whether Germany could use it to launch guerrilla attacks and sabotage in Northern Ireland.

Mr Clissmann also played a role in the release of Frank Ryan from a Spanish jail where he was under sentence of death for fighting on the republican side in the Civil War. Mr Clissmann knew Ryan as an IRA activist when in Ireland.

He died on the 6th of November 1997 in Dublin.

Hermann Görtz (15 November 1890 – 23 May 1947) was a German spy in Britain and Ireland before and during World War II.

In the summer of 1940, Görtz parachuted into Ballivor, County Meath, Ireland (Operation Mainau) in an effort to gather information. He moved in with former IRA leader Jim O’Donovan.

His mission was to act as a liaison officer with the IRA and enlist their assistance during a potential German occupation of Britain. However, he soon decided that the IRA was too unreliable. On landing, he lost the ‘Ufa’ transmitter he had parachuted with. Goertz, attired in a Luftwaffe uniform, then walked to Dublin. He was not apprehended despite calling into a Garda barracks in Co Wicklow, asking for directions to Dublin. Goertz made it to Dublin and a “safe-house” at 245 Templeogue Road, Templeogue. 

In May 1940, the Irish police raided the home of an IRA member of German descent, Stephen Carroll Held, who had been working with Görtz, at his house at Blackheath Park, Clontarf. They confiscated a parachute, papers, Görtz’s World War I medals, and a number of documents about the defence infrastructure of Ireland. The papers they took included files on possible military targets in Ireland, such as airfields and harbours, as well as detailed plans of the so-called “Plan Kathleen”. This was an IRA plan for the invasion of Northern Ireland with the support of the Nazi military. Held had brought this plan to Germany prior to Görtz’s departure but his superiors had dismissed it as unfeasible.

Görtz went into hiding, staying with sympathizers in the Wicklow area and purposefully avoided contact with IRA safehouses. He remained at large for a total of eighteen months. When another IRA member, Pearse Paul Kelly, visited Goertz’s hiding place in Dublin in November 1941, police arrested them both.

Görtz was interned until the end of the war. He was first detained in Mountjoy Prison but later moved to Custume Barracks, Athlone with nine others.

  Hermann Goertz was released from jail in Athlone in August 1946. He went to live in Glenageary and became secretary of a charity called Save The German Children Fund. He was rearrested the following year and served with a deportation order by the Minister for Justice. He claimed to have been in the SS rather than a lieutenant in the Luftwaffe in an attempt to prevent his deportation but this claim was disproved by Irish Military Intelligence (G2) which also “promoted” him to Major when sending him messages allegedly from Germany. On Friday May 23, 1947 he arrived at the Aliens’ Office in Dublin Castle at 9.50am and was told he was being deported to Germany the next day. Although it had been stated to him that the Irish government had specifically requested that he not be handed over to the Soviets, he committed suicide.

The Irish Times reported that he: “Stared disbelievingly at the detective officers. Then suddenly, he took his hand from his trouser pocket, swiftly removed his pipe from between his lips, and slipped a small glass phial into his mouth. One of the police officers sprang at Goertz as he crunched the glass with his teeth. The officer got his hands around Goertz’s neck but failed to prevent most of the poison – believed to be prussic acid – from passing down his throat. Within a few seconds, Goertz collapsed.”He was driven to Mercer’s Hospital and died there shortly after arrival.

Görtz was buried three days later in a Dublin cemetery.

In 1974 his remains were transferred to the German Military Cemetery at Glencree, Co. Wicklow.

Other notable Nazi’s who sought and found refuge in Ireland were Otto Skorzeny and Dutch War Criminal Pieter Menten.

https://dirkdeklein.net/2016/10/17/otto-skorzenyhitlers-scarfaced-henchman-irish-farmer-and-mossad-hitman/

https://dirkdeklein.net/2016/02/18/forgotten-history-war-criminal-pieter-menten/

Controversially,de Valera formally offered his condolences to the German Minister in Dublin on the death of Adolf Hitler in 1945, in accordance with diplomatic protocol.This did some damage to Ireland, particularly in the United States – and soon afterwards de Valera had a bitter exchange of words with Winston Churchill in two famous radio addresses after the end of the war in Europe.

      How Neutral was Ireland during WWII-Ireland and the Third Reich. The Republic of Ireland was and still is a neutral country but during WWII there were many Irish volunteers who fought with the allies against the Axis power.Like The first RAF bomber pilot to be shot down and killed in 1939 was Willie Murphy from Cork.