In the 1920s Germany and Ireland were new European democracies operating in adverse international, political and economic conditions. This book places the bilateral Irish-German relationship in the context of the professionalization of the Irish Foreign Service and the Irish Free State's progressive carving out of an independent foreign policy. It assesses the key Irish personalities involved in Irish-German relations. These include the successive Irish representatives in Berlin, the eminent scholar Dr Daniel A. Binchy, Leo T. McCauley, and the contentious Charles Bewley. Eamon de Valera and Joseph Walshe (Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs) also played a crucial role. Irish responses to the Wall Street Crash, the rise of the Nazis, and Hitler's policies (domestic and foreign) are all analysed. Did Irish officials foresee the fall of Weimar and the rise of Nazism? How did they view the unfolding nature of the Nazi regime? The clashes between Bewley's apologetic justifications of Nazism after 1935 and de Valera's critical attitudes towards domestic Nazi policies are examined. The ineffective efforts to expand Irish-German trade during the Anglo-Irish Economic War shed light on Irish attempts at export market diversification in the emerging protectionist world economic environment. The analysis places Irish-German relations within the maturation of events in Europe in the 1930s, taking account of the League of Nations' failure, the popularity of Fascism, the Blueshirts, the fraught international atmosphere, and Hitler's revisionist foreign policy. De Valera's support of Chamberlain's 'appeasement' of Hitler before March 1939 is located in the framework of de Valera's attitudes towards collective security, neutrality and Hibernia Irredenta.

In the 1930s, Dr Adolf Mahr was head of the National Museum of Ireland, where he earned the title 'the father of Irish archaeology'. He was also the head of the Nazi Party in Ireland, and was dubbed 'Dublin Nazi No. 1'. Under pressure from Irish and British military intelligence, he left for Germany shortly before the outbreak of war in 1939, never to return. To this day, he is considered in some circles to have been a spy who used his position at the museum to help prepare Germany's invasion plan of Ireland. During the war, he became director of Irland-Redaktion, the German propaganda radio service that broadcast into neutral Ireland. He was later arrested and tortured by the British, and upon his release tried to return to Ireland, but to no avail. He remains one of the most controversial figures in twentieth-century Irish history.

Tells for the first time the history of German,Radio's wartime Irish service from 1939-1945. As,well as desrcibing in details the radio station's,on air operations from Nazi Germany, it also,provides in-depth profiles of those involved and,the service and what became of them after the,war. It reveals details long forgotten in both,Ireland and Germany, for example, the involvement,a permanent member of the Irish civil Service who,ran the service whilst on leave of abscence from,the National Museum of Dublin.

During the Second World War, two young Irishmen served in the armed forces of Nazi Germany, swearing the oath of the Waffen-SS and wearing the organisation's uniform and even its distinctive blood group tattoo.Ironically these young men had originally joined an Irish regiment of the British army, and but for a twist of fate would have ended up fighting against the Germans. Instead, the pair were recruited to the German special forces after they were captured on the island of Jersey.Under the command of Otto Skorzeny, the man who rescued Italian dictator Benito Mussolini from a mountain top prison, they were involved in some of the most ferocious fighting of the war in the last days of the Third Reich.This account, which also covers some of the other Irishmen who sided with Nazi Germany, draws heavily on their own accounts and on state papers which have been released in recent years.

During the Second World War, two young Irishmen served in the armed forces of Nazi Germany, swearing the oath of the Waffen-SS and wearing the organisation's uniform and even its distinctive blood group tattoo. This account, which also covers some of the other Irishmen who sided with Nazi Germany, draws on their own accounts.

Where previous histories of Ireland in the war years have focused on high politics, That Neutral Island mines deeper layers of experience. Stories, letters, and diaries illuminate this small country as it suffered rationing, censorship, the threat of invasion, and a strange detachment from the war.