America First


The slogan America First was not first used by Donald J Trump but by President Woodrow Wilson, and also by Warren G. Harding during the 1920 US Presidential elections.

On September 4th 1940 R. Douglas Stuart Jr., who was a student at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, founded the America First Committee. It would become the foremost United States  pressure group ensuring the US’s neutrality and against the American entry into World War II.

Its spokes person was Charles Lindbergh.


President Franklin Roosevelt wanted to intervene to help the British in the fight against Germany, but Lindbergh championed the isolationist cause.

Although Lindbergh was unashamedly pro-German and an anti-Semite, historians agree that he wasn’t Pro Nazi.

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Two future US Presidents, John F. Kennedy and Gerald Ford initially supported the AFC.

At the outbreak of the war in Europe ,the America First Committee started  a petition with the goal to enforce the 1939 Neutrality Act and reminding and forcing President Franklin D. Roosevelt to maintain his pledge to keep America out of the war. The AFC had very little trust in Roosevelt and argued that he was untrue to the American people.


Although the AFC was reasonably popular and had the backing of several wealthy business men, there were also some who were very cynical about the AFC movement.

Theodor Seuss Geisel aka Dr Seuss was a political cartoonist for the New York tabloid PM at the time. In early October 1941 he drew a series of  cartoons criticizing the nation of America First.

af seuss

December 7,1941 Japan attacked Pearl Harbor which drew the USA into the war therefore heralding the end of the America First Committee. Three days later after the attack on December 10,1941, the AFC was dissolved.








Library of National Congress.


The Bombing of Campile,Co.Wexford-Ireland.







Mary Ellen and Kitty were the daughters of Michael and Ellen Kent from Terrerath. Mary Ellen worked as the manageress in the restaurant, while Kitty worked in the drapery. In a cruel twist of fate Kitty had been delayed in going to her dinner that fateful day and would otherwise not have been in the restaurant when the bombs were dropped. Kathleen Hurley, the daughter of William and Catherine Hurley, also worked in the restaurant and had just returned that morning after two weeks’ of summer holidays.




Four German bombs were dropped on the creamery and restaurant sections of Shelburne Co-op on that day. The railway was also targeted by the bombers. The attack has never been fully explained, although there are numerous theories as to why the bombing occurred.


One was that the German pilots were lost and had mistaken the south-east coast of Wexford for Wales.

It was also suggested that butter boxes emblazoned with the Shelburne Co-op name were discovered by the Nazis a few months earlier following the evacuation of Dunkirk and that the bombing was in retaliation for supplying foodstuffs to the Allied armies.

However, Campile historian John Flynn, who has written a new book to mark the 70th anniversary of the disaster, argues that the bombing was a message from Hitler to Taoiseach Eamon de Valera warning him to keep his promise on Ireland’s neutrality.



After consulting military reports, Mr Flynn said it was clear that Campile was a “definite target” that fateful day.

One theory that has always been battered about is that the co-op was supplying butter to the Allies armies when we were supposed to be neutral.

it was also alleged that the Co-op sold boots to the British Army and these were found by the Germans. Another theory is the RAF were able to put the German bombers, which were targeted by a radar beam, off course and that they were totally reliant on crew judgement in the case of the bombing of Campile.

The 20-minute ordeal terrorised the peaceful village and left behind a trail of devastation, with huge gates ripped off their hinges, slates torn off roofs, railway siding was twisted and sleepers were pulled up.



On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the bombing, a plaque was erected on the co-op walls in memory of the three women that died during the attack.




One thing that always puzzled me is why did de Valera  formally offer his condolences to the German Minister in Dublin on the death of Adolf Hitler in 1945 ?

Under Hitler’s leadership several dozens of Irish citizens were killed, for Campile wasn’t the only town that was bombed. I know under the guise of the neutrality diplomatic protocol, he may have felt compelled to do so.

But neutrality means  2 things “the state of not supporting or helping either side in a conflict, disagreement, etc.; impartiality.” and “absence of decided views, expression, or strong feeling.”




Irish government’s condolences to Germany after Hitler’s death












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Some Irish-Americans also condemned de Valera.










Forgotten History-Liechtenstein during WWII.


Most people outside of Europe probably won’t even know this tiny nation exists,and even some Europeans will never have heard of this small Alpine country with a population of 37,000(only about 11,000 during WWII)




Like it’s bigger neighbor,Switzerland, Liechtenstein stayed neutral during WWII. But like the other neutral nations, the neutrality was relative and open to interpretation.

Liechtenstein, previously closely tied to Austria-Hungary, grew close to Switzerland after WW1. In 1919, Liechtenstein entrusted its diplomacy to Switzerland.In the spring of 1938, just after the annexation of Austria into Greater Germany, eighty-four-year-old Prince Franz I abdicated and was succeeded by his thirty-one-year-old grand nephew, Prince Franz Joseph II.


While Prince Franz I claimed that old age was his reason for abdicating, it is believed that he had no desire to be on the throne if Germany gobbled up its new neighbour, Liechtenstein. His wife, Elisabeth von Gutmanwhom he married in 1929, was a wealthy Jewish woman from Vienna, and local Liechtenstein Nazis had already singled her out as their anti-Semitic “problem”.


A Nazi sympathy movement had been simmering for years within its National Union party and there was a national socialist political party – the German National Movement in Liechtenstein.

The German National Movement in Liechtenstein (German: Volksdeutsche Bewegung in Liechtenstein, VDBL) was a National Socialist party in Liechtenstein that existed between 1938 and 1945.The VDBL formed after the Anschluss of Austria in 1938, and advocated for the integration of Liechtenstein into the Greater German Reich.

The organization disseminated its ideology through its newspaper, Der Umbruch.


A slogan associated with the party was Liechtenstein den Liechtensteinern! (Liechtenstein for the Liechtensteiners!). This implied a radical populism that would threaten the allegiance of the people of Liechtenstein to ruling Prince Franz Josef II.

In March 1939, the VDBL staged an amateurish coup attempt, first trying to provoke a German intervention by burning swastikas, followed by declaring an Anschluß with Germany. The leaders were almost immediately arrested and the hoped-for German invasion failed to materialise.

The inability of the party to participate in the 1939 elections (after a pact between the main parties to keep the election date a secret), combined with the drastic decrease in Nazi sympathies following the outbreak of World War II led to a temporary demise of the party. However, in June 1940 it was reconstituted under the leadership of Dr. Alfons Goop.


During 1941 and 1942, the party was involved in vehement anti-Semitic agitation, urging a solution to the country’s presumed “Jewish Question”, accusing Jewish families in Liechtenstein of spying for the Allies. By early 1943, the VDBL had become an embarrassment to Germany: its recruitment for the Waffen-SS compromised Liechtenstein’s neutrality, disquieting the Swiss. The German ministry of foreign affairs in March 1943 forced the VDBL to hold talks with the Patriotic Union(a Christian democratic political party in Liechtenstein)in Friedrichshafen under auspices of the Waffen-SS, in order to reach a fusion of both parties, which shared an anti-Bolshevik and anti-clerical programme. Severely disappointed, Goop resigned as party leader. In the end the PU only consented to some “cultural cooperation”. When Germany’s war fortunes declined, in July 1943 Der Umbruch was forbidden by the authorities. In 1946, party leaders were prosecuted for the 1939 coup attempt. Goop was in 1947 condemned for high treason, to an imprisonment of thirty months

In May 1945, at the end of the European War, German collaborator Boris Smyslowsky escaped into the country with 461 surviving men of the German 1st Russian National Army (along with 30 women and 2 children).


Some of them would later return to the Soviet Union (and disappear into the Soviet prison system), others received asylum from Argentina, while a small number, including Smyslowsky, remained in Liechtenstein for the rest of their lives. In addition of these 493 Russians, the country also took in about 240 Jewish refugees from other European nations; 144 of them were given citizenship to ease their transition to other countries. In the same period, however, Liechtenstein also rejected entry of several hundred other Jewish refugees. It was noted that the Jews Liechtenstein accepted were generally wealthy or influential

In addition, the principality allowed 144 Jews to become citizens “in return for high fees” during the Nazi era. Most of those new citizens (German: Neubürger) never lived in Liechtenstein but chose another country. The fact of being a Liechtensteiner made it easier for them to establish themselves in a Western country.

However, an unknown number were turned back. Between 1938 and 1939 at least 132 applications for entry visas were refused.

Even though it was sandwiched between neutral Switzerland and Nazi-controlled Austria, Liechtenstein still had some room to manoeuvre. Liechtenstein accepted mainly rich Jews, who were expected to spend their money in the country or who created jobs by establishing companies in the principality. Like most other Western and overseas countries, Liechtenstein tightened its immigration laws in 1938. Liechtenstein’s policy can therefore be compared to that of other countries.

The family of Liechtenstein’s Prince Franz Josef II bought property and art objects taken from Jews in Austria and Czechoslovakia and rented Jewish inmates from a  concentration camp near Vienna(more then likely Mauthausen)  for forced labour on nearby royal estates.






MV Kerlogue-The Neutral ship that got attacked by the Allies and the Germans and survived.


The MV Kerloguehas become the exemplar of neutral Irish ships during World War II. She was very small. She was attacked by both sides and rescued people from both sides. She was almost sunk by a German mine and was attacked by the Royal Air Force, being left for dead. She rescued the Wild Rose of Liverpool and the survivors of the German destroyer Z27  and its escort, the survivors of which, in the latter case, were brought back to Ireland and interned until the end of hostilities.

On the 2nd April 1941, German bombers attacked a British convoy.  A crippled collier, the Wild Rose of Liverpool was left behind.  The Kerlogue at the time was under the command of Captain Samuel Owens of Carrickfergus and was on passage from Wexford to Cardiff.  Seeing distress rockets she immediately altered course went to the aid of the Wild Rose.  Due to the bomb attack, her engines were disabled and her two lifeboats were unable to be launched.  Captain Owens took the English crew of twelve on board.  The Kerlogue took the Wild Rose in tow and beached her on Rosslare strand on the Wexford coast.  When the salvage case was heard in Dublin, Justice Conor Maguire stated that: “The master of the Kerlogue had shown enterprise and courage on the occasion.

On 7 October 1941, while sailing from Swansea to Wexford, the Kerlogue struck a mine in Cardigan Bay.


On 23 October 1943, 130 miles (210 km) south of Ireland, on passage from Port Talbot to Lisbon with a cargo of coal,the Kerlogue was circled by an RAAF Sunderland flying boat.


Three hours later, she was attacked by two initially unidentified aircraft, later found to have been Mosquito fighters of No. 307 Polish Night Fighter Squadron.For twenty minutes they repeatedly dived on the Kerlogue firing their cannons. Another RAAF Sunderland came by at six in the evening. By Aldis lamp, the Kerlogue requested an escort and medical assistance. The Sunderland replied that help could not be given.

The Kerlogue limped back to Cobh. When her cargo of coal was discharged, shell fragments of British origin were found. It was that cargo of coal which saved the Kerlogue; without it, the shells would have penetrated her hull.

The British Naval Attaché in Dublin reported to the Director of Naval Intelligence that it was “unfortunate from a British point of view” that Captain Fortune had been involved in the Kerlogue incident as he was “always ready to pass on any information in his possession”.The RAF would not apportion blame on the Poles, as the Kerlogue was “east of 12 degrees west”. According to an Admiralty report, the RAF had been “warned to expect the Kerlogue”, they “knew she was at sea on the day of the attack”, there was “nothing suspicious” about the ship, “anyone but Polish pilots would have hesitated to attack”. The matter was considered by the War Cabinet which authorised ex gratia payments to the injured crew.

Captain Desmond Fortune, who would never walk unaided again, was succeeded by Captain Thomas Donohue. He had been captain of The Lady Belle of Waterford when she was bombed by the Luftwaffe. Donohue had spent eight hours in a lifeboat mid-Atlantic when the German U-607 torpedoed the SS Irish Oak.



On 29 December 1943, following repairs in Cork, the Kerlogue was 360 miles (580 km) south of Fastnet Rock, on passage from Lisbon to Dublin with a cargo of oranges, when she was circled by a German long range reconnaissance aircraft signalling “SOS” and heading southeast. The Kerlogue altered course to southeast, where she came upon an appalling scene. The German Narvik-class destroyer Z27 and two Elbing class torpedo boats, T25 and T26, had been sunk.

More than 700 men, most of them dead, were in the water. They had intended to escort Alsterufer,a blockade runner. The cruisers HMS Glasgow and Enterprise  as part of Operation Stonewall, with their 6-inch (150 mm) guns sank the German ships while beyond their range of fire (more than ten miles)

The Kerlogue spent ten hours plucking survivors from the water. 168 were rescued. Four died on board. This was remarkable, given that the Kerlogue was only 142 feet (43 m) long. The cargo of oranges saved the rescued from dehydration. Captain Donohue ignored the German request to bring them to Brest or La Rochelle. He also ignored British radio orders from Land’s End to go to Fishguard. He berthed at Cobh on 1 January 1944.

The rescued Germans remained at the Curragh internment camp until the war was over. Two are buried in Glencree German War Cemetery.

The Nazi German minister in Dublin, Dr Eduard Hempel, wrote a letter to Captain Donoghue, applauding him and his crew for their “exemplary deed, worthy of the great tradition of Irish gallantry and humanity,” and he sent a letter of thanks to the hospital matron at the Military Hospital, Cork Barracks.


Crew members of the MV Kerlogue, from left to right, Tom Grannell, Tom O’Neill, Dick Roche, Gary Roche (father of Dick Roche, the former minister and FF TD for Wicklow), Chum Roche


In the post-war period, the rescue of the Germans was rarely mentioned, until 27 April 1994, when then-Senator Dick Roche spoke, in the Senate, of his father’s role:

“… My late father was a seaman with the Wexford Steamship Company. He served the nation, like so many young men, through dangerous times in the war years. In every sense he and his colleagues put their lives on the line day after day, in ships which today would not be licensed to go on the high seas, to bring supplies to this nation. Many of his colleagues and friends and many people from Wexford and around the coast paid the ultimate price in serving this nation by losing their lives. The ships were so rickety, old and derelict that we would not go to sea in them today. Yet, these brave, perhaps foolhardy, men crossed the Atlantic, went to the Mediterranean and North African coast and kept Ireland supplied with vital provisions. My father’s ship, the Kerlogue, was involved in one of the great rescues of the war. One of the proudest possessions I have is a decoration awarded to him and other members of the crew for rescuing German sailors in the Bay of Biscay in December 1943, when they hauled hundreds of young men from the water … … “

The Kerlogue was sold to Norway in 1957 and was wrecked off Tromsø in 1960.

On 27 May 1994 the German Navy expressed its thanks in a ceremony at the National Maritime Museum of Ireland attended by President Mary Robinson. Some sketches of the rescue, (reproduced on this page) drawn while in the Curragh were presented and remain on display with other artefacts.

The rescue by the Kerlogue has been recreated in a novel entitled, The Lonely Sea and Sky by the Irish poet and novelist, Dermot Bolger, whose father sailed during the war on the Kerlogue’s sister ship, the MV Edenvale. Bolger’s novel is part historical fiction and part coming-of-age tale in charting the maiden voyage of a fictional fourteen-year-old Wexford boy, Jack Roche, who gets a job as a cabin boy on the Kerlogue in December 1943, on the eve of this treacherous wartime journey to Portugal. Jack has lost his seafaring father on board the Kyleclare, sunk by a U-boat on this same route, and goes to sea to support his family. His innate decency makes him join in this dangerous rescue of members of a navy whom he passionately hates for having killed his father. He comes to see the terrified German survivors not as part of a vicious murder machine but as shivering, wounded individuals, some little older than him, caught in a war that is not of their own making. The novel is premised around a view that The Kerlogue’s crew obeyed an unwritten code to save any lives they could. In risking their lives, they recognised the drowning Germans not are combatants, but as fellow sailors and honoured what sailors traditionally believe the initials SOS stand for: “Save our Souls”

Forgotten History-Irish WWII Losses

Even though Ireland was a neutral country during WWII it didn’t escape the war completely unscathed.

It was especially it’s mercantile marine which was affected by the German Navy.

Ireland, unlike the majority of more recent independent nations, made no attempt to encourage the development of her own mercantile marine. Each year the fleet declined: from 127 in 1923, until in September 1939 they had only 56 ships flying the Irish flag, none ocean-going, all designed for the short sea trades.


This tiny fleet increased with the formation of Irish Shipping Ltd. in March 1941 when, under great difficulty, 15 ocean-going dry cargo ships were purchased or chartered.

16 Ships were lost in unprovoked actions. I will not be talking  about all 16 but I will focus to the ones which were registered in my hometown of Limerick.

The City of Limerick


City of Limerick was the first Irish ship to be sunk by German aircraft in World War Two. Owned by Palgrave Murphy Ltd. and commanded by Captain Robert Ferguson she departed Cartagena, Spain for Liverpool in early July 1940. At 8 a.m. on 15th July, when 100 miles west of Ushant, she was attacked from astern by an aircraft with machine-gun fire. As the plane roared overhead it dropped a stick of bombs which hit the ship but failed to explode. It returned for another attack and this time two men were killed. The ship was now stopped and disabled and the captain gave the order to abandon her. As the crew pulled away in lifeboats more German planes appeared and following further attacks the ship sank. After a cold night in the boats the survivors were rescued next day by a Belgian trawler and landed at Penzance, Cornwall.



On 4 Sep, 1940, the un-escorted and neutral Luimneach (Master Eric Septimus Jones) was stopped by U-46 with two shots across her bow west-southwest of the Scilly Isles and was sunk at 20.00 hours by gunfire. There are differences in the accounts given by the captains. Endrass claimed that Capt Eric Jones and his crew “lost their heads completely” with one man jumping into the water, at the shot across the bows by his U-boat. But Jones was an experienced captain. The Luimneach had survived twelve aerial attacks during the Spanish Civil War. He took the ship’s papers with him and they are now in the Dublin Public Records Office. Following an inquiry, on 4 March 1941, Dönitz concluded that the U-boat acted correctly in sinking an “abandoned ship”. Endrass did not converse with the Luimneach, who were of the opinion that he was Italian. Endrass said that the flag was “British or Irish”. There were two lifeboats, One was picked up by a Spanish trawler and brought to Spain. The other was picked up by a French trawler. Those landed in France were detained by the Nazis. Two of the crew were British and were imprisoned. The Chief Officer, from Belfast, also had British papers, but because of his advanced age was allowed to live in Paris. The Second Engineer was Dutch and was allowed to go to Antwerp. The remainder returned to Ireland via Portugal.

The Crew

Captain E. Jones, Wales Captain’s Boat Returned
Chief Officer J McKelvey Belfast Mate’s Boat Paris
Second Officer C. Meriditt, Dublin; Captain’s Boat Returned
Chief Engineer R. Spence, Dublin; Captain’s Boat Returned
Second Engineer H. Madsen Antwerp Mate’s Boat Antwerp
Cook S. Tice, London; Captain’s Boat Returned
Steward R. Wilkes, London; Captain’s Boat Returned
Able Seaman A. Robert­son, Limerick; Captain’s Boat Returned
Able Seaman B. Quirk, Kilmore Quay, Captain’s Boat Returned
Able Seaman M. Carrol, Dungarvan Captain’s Boat died
Able Seaman J Moran Tarbet, Kerry Mate’s Boat Returned
Able Seaman M Curran Tarbet, Kerry Mate’s Boat Returned
Fireman M McCarthy Tarbet, Kerry Mate’s Boat Returned
Fireman L O’Neill, Glasgow; Captain’s Boat Returned
Fireman E. Richards Bristol Mate’s Boat imprisoned
Fireman N. Bartello Malta Mate’s Boat imprisoned
Fireman T. Conway Dublin Mate’s Boat Returned
Fireman John. Confrey Dun Laoghaire Mate’s Boat Returned



Notes on event At 23.31 hours on 22 August 1941, U-564 fired a salvo of four torpedoes at the convoy OG-71 west of Aveiro, Portugal and observed four different detonations and three columns of fire, later lifeboats were seen. Suhren thought that he had sunk two ships and damaged two others. However, only two ships were hit and sunk, the Empire Oak and Clonlara.

The Clonlara (Master Joseph Reynolds) had picked up 13 survivors from Alva on 19 August. The master, ten crew members and nine survivors were lost. Eight crew members and five survivors were picked up by HMS Campion(LtCdr A. Johnson, RNVR) and landed at Gibraltar on 24 August.







The crew that perished at sea

Barry, Edward, Wexford Morgan, John, Dublin
Brannock, Patrick, Dublin Mooney, Daniel, Dublin
Brady, Thomas, Galway O’Brien, L., Dublin
deBurca, Diarmuid, Dublin O’Brien, Richard, Dublin
Grimes, Richard, Dublin O’Brien, Daniel, Dublin
Hamilton, A.R., Galway O’Neill, P., Dublin
Larkin, John, Dublin Simms, W.J., Kildare