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Hello in this episode we're looking at the peculiar situation in the Republic of Ireland

era found itself during the Second World War.

Along with countries such as Sweden, Switzerland and Spain,

Ere trod the difficult path of remaining neutral.

With all that entailed, one question that needed to be dealt with

was what to do with those servicemen from belligerent nations who found themselves

in Ireland by way of crash planes or naval personnel rescued from sunk shipping.

I'm joined by Bernard Kelly. Bernard is an Irish historian whose book

Military Attorneys, Prisoners of War and the Irish state during the Second World War looks at these issues.

Thanks for joining me, Bernard. Let's start with the position of the Republic of Ireland at the outbreak of the war. Well at the time we're talking about the 26 counties of what is now the republic, but in those days it was officially

called ERA after the 1937 Constitution. So when the Second World War broke out in September 1939,

David Valera,

the Ima de Valerians government,

Ms Fina Foll government declared neutrality

and they were the only Commonwealth, I suppose they were the only commonwealth, I suppose, they were technically still a

demean at that point but they were the only dominion to declare neutrality and so

they wanted to stay out of the war which was so much of an anomaly because obviously the six counties then of Northern Ireland

...