Who Has A Better Army Germany Or Ireland

Why did Germany not invade Ireland during the WW2 to use it to springboard into Britain?

Because Ireland (Eire, the bit of Ireland that rules itself and has done since the 1920’s) is further away than the southern coast of England - the bit between France and the Dover Channel is less than 28 miles wide, yet sailing to Ireland, (which if invaded successfully, would then have meant the Germans resourcing this army, which still then had to cross the Irish Sea) would be at least four times this distance from e.g Brest. So, it would have made a hard job more difficult.An invasion of Eire would very probably have provoked elements of the American population with Irish ancestry to demand action, and would have risked bringing America into the war.Ireland under de Valera was sympathetic to anything that made life difficult for Britain. In fact, my mother was evacuated before the Blitz to relatives in Southern Ireland near Tralee. She heard them saying, “We don’t want John Bull to go down, but we won’t mind seeing him have his tail pulled,”, so she came home to London in the middle of the blitz rather than stay there. However, de Valera ensured that Ireland remained neutral, despite helpfully leaving its lights on to help orientate the Luftwaffe. To balance things, there there was sufficient anti Nazi feeling in Eire that some Irish came over here to join up. Paddy Finucane, the RAF ace is such an example.So great was the suspicion in which de Valera’s government was held that Britain maintained a brigade of tanks in Northern Ireland ready to roll south, until the threat of invasion via Ireland was extinguished.A main part of the Home Fleet was stationed in Plymouth, Portsmouth, and further round in the west country. Any invasion fleet would have to go right past these two ports and risk being sunk a long way from land. Germany never had sufficient capital ships to support an invasion. We had lots.The Luftwaffe never had sufficient air superiority over England (which was a lot closer to French airbases than Eire to make operation Sealion viable), so to go further away would have been really foolish.Germany was proposing to cross the English Channel in barges, which would have been exposed to the North Atlantic rollers on any voyage to Ireland, and that also would have been quite risky for the occupants!

Why didn’t the German army supply and help the Easter Rising in Ireland?

It tried to.Given the distance between Germany and Ireland and the fact that the Royal Navy was in the way, sending troops wasn’t an option.Germany did send a shipment of guns that was due to arrive just before the Rising and the that the rebels were depending on.When the Royal Navy intercepted the shipment, the rebels were divided on what to do and one leader issued a Cancel order. Despite that, other rebels went ahead with the Rising, but the confusion meant that fewer people participated than expected.

Did the Irish Republican Army really help Hitler? As in, were they hired to help and they did it for financial reasons, not because they believed in it?

No, the IRA did not really help Hitler. It had long been an axiom of Irish revolutionaries that “England's difficulty is Ireland's opportunity.” Historically, Irish Catholic rebels had sought help from Catholic Spain and France; the republican United Irishmen in the 1790s had looked to revolutionary France; and the Irish Volunteers and IRB in 1916 had turned to Imperial Germany for arms. Thus, when Hitler came to power, it was inevitable that elements in the IRA leadership would propose approaching Nazi Germany.There was not unanimity within the IRA regarding this approach. Some of the IRA leaders leaned to the left and had no love for the Nazis whereas others were more straightforwardly nationalist. That is not to say that the latter were fascist or pro-Nazi; they were simply anti-British Irish nationalists who tried opportunistically to make common cause with Great Britain’s enemy.There was opportunism on the other side as well, as the Abwehr hoped to exploit its new friends in Ireland for purposes of anti-British espionage and sabotage. But the Germans appear to have greatly overestimated the capabilities of the IRA, which by then was in deep decline and riddled with informers. Moreover, the Germans were so poorly informed as to Irish politics that they tried to bring General Eoin O’Duffy, the virulently anti-IRA leader of the Blueshirts, into their schemes with the IRA. (Contrary to stereotypes regarding German efficiency, German espionage efforts in both the UK and Ireland before and during World War II were remarkable for their incompetence.)The De Valera government, while keeping a close eye on both the IRA and Abwehr agents in Ireland, had initially given the IRA a certain amount of free rein. But with the coming of actual war, De Valera was no longer prepared to tolerate any activities that threatened to compromise Ireland's neutrality. Hundreds of IRA activists were rounded up and interned in the Curragh army camp and several were hanged. The IRA’s potential usefulness to Hitler, which has been doubtful to begin with, was now at an end.

Since the Nazi occupation of Ireland would have been certain if Germany had won WWII, didn't neutral Ireland ride on the backs of the Allies without risking any soldiers?

“The desire of the Irish people and the Irish Government is to keep our nation out of war. The aim of Government policy is to maintain and to preserve our neutrality in the event of war. ….We know, of course, that should attack come from a power other than Great Britain, Great Britain in her own interest must help us to repel it.” (De Valera, February 1939).While this might appear to be confirmation of the ‘free ride’ argument, in reality Irish neutrality was equally beneficial to Britain; loss of the Treaty Ports in 1938 made the early stages of the Battle of the North Atlantic more difficult but wasn’t as serious as often made out (the Air Gap was the real problem). Far more serious in the long run was Churchill’s offer to end Partition in return for access, which is still remembered by Northern Ireland’s Protestant community (the origin of the phrase ‘we’ll fight anyone to stay British; including the British’).Ireland provided support in ways more useful than a military alliance. Invasion was never a serious option; yes, the Germans prepared an invasion plan but they also had one for the US. Since de Valera acknowledged Ireland could not defend itself on its own, Neutrality saved Britain the need to provide military support just in case; other benefits included use of the Donegal Air Corridor, ship repair facilities and especially manpower (over 50k Irish citizens served in the British Army, another 250k worked in British war industries).Neutrality suited De Valera’s domestic agenda; Irish politics and society was still deeply divided by the wounds of the 1922–24 Civil War. De Valera first banned his old comrades in 1936; after the IRA’s 1939 Christmas Raid, he then declared a State of Emergency and employed its powers of detention and arbitrary arrest to round up IRA members (the Irish state executed nine of them). This policy also helped Britain, since the IRA had been seeking German support for a campaign in Northern Ireland (a centre of the war industry). Staying out of the war (which would have meant allying with Britain) minimized domestic sympathy for the IRA in both parts of Ireland.