1. Hesitant Europeans, Self-Defeating Irredentists and
Security Free-Riders? West German Assessments of Irish
Foreign Policy during the Early Cold War, 1949–59
Mervyn O’Driscoll*
School of History, University College Cork
ABSTRACT
Friendship is a motif often used to portray the state of West German-Irish relations
after 1949. In several ways this characterisation is accurate, but it elides official West
Germany’s adverse estimation of many aspects of post-war Ireland. On closer
examination official West German commentators, particularly in the Auswärtiges
Amt (AA), were decidedly critical of Irish insularity, neutrality, protectionism and
irredentism. Bonn considered that Dublin was wrongheaded and failed to understand
the fundamentals of the Cold War world. In Bonn’s view, Irish state policies should
be impelled by the strategic need for Western economic and military solidarity and
cooperation in the face of the Soviet behemoth rather than parochial national
interests. Thus, the AA’s internal dialogue critiqued key aspects of Ireland in the
1950s even as Bonn valued Ireland’s benevolent attitude to West Germany and the
Irish policy of supporting the reunification of Germany.
INTRODUCTION
It is true that the official Irish policy and the population of Ireland is of a
thoroughly friendly opinion regarding Germany. It should not be forgotten, in my
opinion, that this friendliness is encouraged in part through the fact that Irish
politicians strongly emphasise the tensions between Germany and England…I do
not mean to distract from the friendly attitude of the country to Germany when I
say this. Alongside the political, cultural and economic solidarity with Germany
this motive does however play a certain role in the relations.1
*I am grateful to the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS) for
funding the research for this article as part of a team project, ‘Ireland and European integration in a
comparative international context’, led by Professor Dermot Keogh of UCC. I am also grateful to the
project’s industrious postdoctoral researcher, Dr Jérôme Aan de Wiel, for his assistance and helpful
comments in the preparation of this paper.
1Report from Katzenberger [Dr Hermann Katzenberger, the first ‘minister plenipotentiary’ appointed
by West Germany to Dublin] to the Foreign Ministry, 3 December 1951, AA 211–00/33. Cited in Cathy
Molohan, Germany and Ireland 1945–1955: two nations’ friendship (Dublin, 1999), 88.
Author’s e-mail: mervyn.odriscoll@ucc.ie
Irish Studies in International Affairs, Vol. 21 (2010), 89–104.
doi: 10.3318/ISIA.2010.21.89

2. Debates about Irish foreign policy, and indeed the national foreign policies of most
states, too often ignore the reception of, and reaction to, these policies by other states.
Foreign policies are only successful if they convince other states that they are
legitimate, achievable and in their interests. For instance, the core declaratory
principle underlying Irish foreign policy between the 1920s and the 1960s—ending
partition— was a failure. Undoubtedly, the goal to end partition served as a domestic
political tool and a national unifying tenet, but it undermined Irish efforts to cultivate
better relations with other states that recognised the prevailing regional power
balance favouring Britain. With the onset of the Cold War, Britain was a lynchpin of
Western security, regardless of its negative attitude towards European integration and
its evident imperial decline.
This article investigates the Federal Republic of Germany’s (FRG) views and
interpretations of central aspects of Irish foreign policy during the first ten years of
the FRG, between 1949 and 1959. Thus, it embarks on the relatively unexplored
territory of non-British and non-American diplomatic and political perceptions and
evaluations of Irish foreign policy, by drawing heavily on the official archives of the
FRG to complement the Irish archives.2 It also offers a corrective to the
understandable, but nonetheless excessive, Anglo-American centrism that pervades
Irish historiography. Rather than speculating on the manner of the foreign reception
of Irish foreign policy, this piece methodically reconstructs the assessments of both
West German diplomatic representatives based in Dublin and the Foreign Ministry
(Auswärtiges Amt, or AA) officials in Bonn.3
The FRG (more commonly referred to as West Germany) was established in 1949.
This was also the year that Ireland refused to join NATO and left the British
Commonwealth. In 1959 Seán Lemass replaced Eamon de Valera as taoiseach, and
a re-orientation of both the Irish economy and Irish foreign policy began to take off.
A stark contrast existed between the international trajectories of FRG and Ireland
during this decade (1949–59). The newly created FRG, with its capital in Bonn,
pursued re-unification, international rehabilitation and integration into the Western
democratic fold. The first chancellor of the FRG, Konrad Adenauer, relentlessly
pursued a Western orientation and reconciliation with France and the other Western
wartime allies (the US and the UK). West Germany’s key strategic position in Cold
War Europe, her economic renaissance and the opportunities presented by European
integration facilitated her relative normalisation within little more than a decade after
the end of the Second World War. A decentralised and democratic West Germany
2Extensive use is made in this paper of the Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amts, Berlin. This is
the depository of the files of the FRG Foreign Ministry (AA) and its missions abroad. Diplomatic reports
from German diplomatic representatives based in Ireland and the correspondence of the AA desk tasked
with covering Irish matters were consulted in the preparation of this article. In addition, the Archives of
the Christian Democratic Party at the Konrad Adenauer Foundation at Sankt Augustin, were consulted.
These contain a useful collection of newspaper and periodical articles relating to Ireland that were
published in Irish and FRG print media in the post-1949 period.
3The FRG, rather than France or Spain or Italy, was the primary Western European mainland country
with which Ireland sustained the most substantial and tangible diplomatic and commercial ties in the
decades after Irish independence. The Vatican was also a particular focus of Irish diplomatic activity.
Indeed, there were occasional efforts to cultivate a ‘special relationship’ between Dublin and the Holy
See in the first five decades of Irish independence. These were impelled by confessional loyalties, but
that bilateral relationship was sui generis, reflecting the unique spiritual-cum-religious role of the
Vatican. The scope of ties between Ireland and the Vatican did not encompass traditional inter-state
commercial and economic relations to any great extent. For more on this unique, but nonetheless
important, aspect of Irish diplomatic history, see Dermot Keogh, Ireland and the Vatican: the politics
and diplomacy of church-state relations, 1922–1960 (Cork, 1995). For more on the argument that
Germany has been undeservedly overlooked as a key foreign relations partner of independent Ireland,
see Mervyn O’Driscoll, Ireland, Germany and the Nazis: politics and diplomacy, 1919–1939 (Dublin,
2004).
90 Irish Studies in International Affairs

3. became a founding member of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC),
European Economic Community (EEC) and European Atomic Energy Community
(Euratom), and entered NATO in 1955. In effect, Bonn was transformed into a key
American ally during the 1950s, and the core state in Western European economic
vitality and security. The FRG was converted from an ostracised outsider into a key
insider in Western Europe.
On the other hand, after the Second World War the Irish state failed to recognise or
respond to the new forces in operation in the Free World, including the US-sponsored
liberalisation of world trade. At best, post-World War II Ireland ‘emerged slowly and
hesitantly’4 into ‘a new and vastly different world’.5 In sum, Ireland converted to the
model of regional integration and international liberalisation much later than her
Western European neighbours. The Irish rejection of NATO membership in 1949, on
grounds that signature of the treaty copperfastened partition (by requiring an explicit
Irish affirmation of the territorial integrity of Britain), together with her failure to
modernise economically and to reduce protectionism in a liberalising economic
climate, prolonged Ireland’s virtual seclusion. In a sense, Ireland presented an enigma
to many in the Western world: pro-Western, anti-communist and with a free economy
that was neutralist, non-aligned and economically protected. The local (i.e., Anglo-
Irish) factors animating Irish foreign policy choices were only dimly comprehended
or else were viewed as marginal, if considered at all, by external observers, who
concentrated on operating in the context of the global ideological Cold War. However,
Ireland participated in the Marshall Plan, was a member of the Organisation for
European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) and the Council of Europe, and gained
belated entry into the United Nations in 1955.
This article reveals that the FRG found Irish foreign policy during the period 1949
to 1959 to be fundamentally flawed and self-defeating. This official FRG attitude was
not mitigated by Ireland’s wartime policy of neutrality, its non-demonisation of the
German people after the horrors of the war, the relatively good public reception that
German visitors received in Ireland, or Dublin’s strong declaratory policy of
supporting German reunification. From an official German perspective, Ireland
possessed an unhealthy fixation with the partition question and Anglo-Irish relations,
to the detriment of Ireland’s wider political and strategic responsibilities to the fellow
democracies of the West. Furthermore, from the German perspective, Ireland’s only
feasible means of achieving economic development was to join the mainstream by
taking up aggressive economic liberalisation and contemplating regional economic
cooperation. Personal, diplomatic and cultural relations between the FRG and Ireland
were undoubtedly close and excellent, or ‘friendly’ as Cathy Molohan has
characterised them,6 but on fundamental foreign policy matters there was a dialogue
des sourds for much of the decade. Ordinary German people with some knowledge of
Ireland evinced sympathy and understanding for Ireland’s predicament. Privately,
German officials and members of the government often expressed similar sentiments,
but intellectually and officially they tended to view Ireland’s postures with displeasure.
Ireland, for them, self-defeatingly clung to outdated pre-War notions of the nation-
state, economy and the international system, which were fed by ancient and potentially
self-destructive national animosities. In addition to the necessity for a conceptual
revolution within Ireland, German commentators recognised that an Irish shift towards
regional interdependence and integration was to a large extent reliant on Britain, by
virtue of Ireland’s economic dependence thereon.
4D. Dinan, ‘After the “Emergency”: Ireland in the post-war world, 1945–1950’, Éire-Ireland, vol.
24 (1989), 85–103: 86.
5F.S.L. Lyons, Ireland since the Famine (London, 1973), 558.
6Molohan, Germany and Ireland.
O’DRISCOLL—Hesitant Europeans 91

4. A GOOD START
Normal diplomatic and trade relations with Ireland were not possible in the
immediate post-World War II period. As in the pre-War period, trade and diplomatic
relations went hand-in-glove from an Irish perspective. The Irish revealed a strong
interest in exploiting the German market for agricultural produce as early as 1946.
Allied occupation and general post-War chaos, however, prevented a rapid
resumption of normal trade relations. The regularisation of Irish-German relations
had to wait until the passing of the Basic Law in 1949 and the establishment of the
Federal Republic of Germany.7 By June 1949 Irish and German officials were
negotiating a new Irish-German trade agreement, resuming formal bilateral trade
relations for the first time since the commencement of World War II. The agreement
was duly signed in July 1950 and John Belton was appointed ‘General Consul’ to
West Germany to handle trade relations and to conduct any official relations with
German ministers. In late 1950 the West German government expressed its interest
in establishing a Consulate-General in Dublin.8
The West German government finally received the right to initiate and conduct
normal diplomatic relations. On 13 March 1951 the German Cabinet established a
foreign ministry and decided to pursue formal relations with Dublin. Belton was
immediately called to attend a meeting at the German consular office to be informed,
‘You are now actually sitting in the German Foreign Office and I am very glad to be
able to tell you that you are our first visitor particularly so as you are a friend of ours’.9
West Germany preferred to appoint a minister plenipotentiary rather than a consul-
general if Dublin was agreeable, which it proved to be.10 Full diplomatic legations
were rapidly established in the respective capitals.11 Ireland was the first state to
appoint a minister to the new German state, with the exception of those countries that
had appointed representatives to the Allied High Commission to Germany.
Bonn selected its first minister to Ireland, Dr Hermann Katzenberger,12 and key
members of the new German legation carefully. The establishment of full diplomatic
relations with Ireland was an important symbol of renewed statehood. Genuine
‘friends’ of Germany were lacking in the aftermath of the War, and the
preponderance of evidence points to West German efforts to acknowledge and
reciprocate Irish goodwill and generosity. Bonn realised that Ireland was favourably
disposed to the German people, in spite of the Holocaust and the Nazi interlude. It
had been a noted donor of humanitarian aid to devastated Germany and Central
Europe after the war. Confessional, political and personal affinities were employed
in appointing German diplomats to Ireland in 1951 as a means to enhance German-
Irish relations. Notably, the 60 year old Katzenberger was nearing the end of his
career, but he possessed very distinguished credentials calculated to appeal to his
Irish hosts. His selection appeared to signify that West Germany held Ireland in high
7The Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany (Grundgesetz für die Bundesrepublik
Deutschland) is the constitutional law of Germany. It was formally approved on 8 May 1949 and came
into effect on 23 May that year as the constitution of West Germany. Those who drafted the Basic Law
regarded it as a provisional constitution for the provisional West German state; they were anxious not
to prejudice any decision by a future unified Germany to adopt a constitution for the entire country.
8Molohan, Germany and Ireland, 67–9; ‘New exports pact with W. Germany’, Irish Times, 13 July
1950, 1; ‘Irish trade with West Germany’, Irish Times, 15 June 1949, 1.
9National Archives of Ireland, Dublin (hereafter cited as NAI), Department of Foreign Affairs series
(hereafter cited as DFA), Confidential Reports, P12/3A: Bonn, Belton to Nunan, 12 March 1951.
10NAI DFA, Confidential Reports, P12/3A: Bonn, Belton to Nunan, 12 March 1951.
11‘Mr. Belton’s new post in Germany’, Irish Times, 5 June 1951, 1; ‘Exchange of diplomats’, Irish
Independent, 5 June 1951, 7.
12In 1959, when Irish-German diplomatic relations were upgraded from envoy to full ambassadorial
level. See: ‘Envoy accredited’, Irish Independent, 17 December 1959, 1; ‘President received
ambassador’, Irish Times, 17 December 1959, 6.
92 Irish Studies in International Affairs

5. esteem. He had impeccable anti-Nazi credentials, was a founding and leading
member of the Christian Democratic Party (or CDU) and rose to become
Administrator-Director of the Bundesrat (Federal Upper House) in 1950. Even
though Katzenberger was close to retirement, he cut a high-profile figure in German
democratic politics. The second secretary of the German legation to Dublin, Dr
Albert Kölb, also possessed close affinities with Ireland.13
Ireland also assisted in the ‘normalisation’ of Germany in the post-War world in
other ways. In 1951 Dublin was the venue for several contests involving German
national teams in some of their first international outings since the War. Perhaps
Ireland was viewed as a suitable and safe venue, promising receptive and non-hostile
sporting audiences to re-introduce West German teams to international competition.14
For West Germany, engagement in international sporting competitions was considered
a way back into the civilised world. In July 1951 the German mission reported on the
warm welcome the German national athletics team received from the Irish crowd, and
tellingly observed that it was gratifying to witness that the Irish were starting to
identify Germans not as war criminals but as perfectly ordinary people, in contrast to
the prevailing negative international perception of Germany.15
The West Germany–Ireland soccer match held in Dublin on 17 October 1951 was
very significant for German self-confidence, even if Ireland won by a slim margin.
The match was part of Germany’s return to the world of international sports
(particularly football), through engaging in friendly internationals in the build-up to
participation in international competition. No German team had been allowed to
compete in the FIFA World Cup of 1950. The match against Ireland signified an early
step in the build-up to the FIFA World Cup of 1954, in which the unfancied West
Germany went on to beat the favourites Hungary in the final, in what Germans now
refer to as ‘Das Wunder von Bern’ in Berne, Switzerland. Thus, the fixture against
Ireland in 1951 was of psychological import to West Germany. Katzenberger attached
significance to the attendance of the Irish president, minister for defence and minister
for external affairs at the match, and he was extremely pleased at the positive
reception of the West German team in the Irish press and by Irish spectators.
Notwithstanding the Irish 3–2 victory, Katzenberger stressed the positive post-contest
results, which illustrated that sport could create and re-inforce bonds between
nations. Of course, he contended that a German equaliser should have stood, and
implied that the goal being disallowed was the fault of the British referee!16
Thus, German diplomats and those Germans who came into contact with Ireland
gained a generally favourable impression of Ireland’s predisposition toward
Germany. Katzenberger quickly formed the view that the Irish minister for external
affairs, Frank Aiken, retained a ‘certain liking’ for Germany and the German people,
despite the fact that he had only visited Germany once (in 1928).17 As a former
neutral state not directly involved in the hostilities of the Second World War, the Irish
13Dr Alfred Kölb’s aunt was married to the professor of English at UCC, William Stockley, who was
the nephew of William Smith O’Brien. Kölb had spent 18 months studying in UCC during the inter-war
period. See Irish Times, ‘An Irishman’s Diary’, 24 July 1951, 5.
14‘Irish boxers’ task to-morrow’, Boxing Correspondent, Irish Times, 15 February 1951, 2; ‘Germans
will be a big attraction’, Irish Times, 2 July 1951, 2; ‘German athletes beat crusaders’, Irish Times, 6
July 1951, 2; ‘Ireland beat Germany 3–2’, Irish Independent, 18 October 1951, 10.
15Politisches Archiv des Auswärtigen Amtes, Berlin (hereafter cited as AA-PA), B31, vol. 63, ‘Irisch–
deutscher Sportwettkampf’, Report, Achilles to AA, 6 July 1951.
16AA-PA, B31, vol. 63, ‘Fußball-Länderkampf Deutschland–Irland in Dublin’, Report, Katzenberger
to AA, 19 October 1951; W.P. Murphy, ‘Ireland’s chances are slight but—Not so young Germans may
not last pace’, Irish Independent, 17 October 1951, 10; ‘Ireland will be lucky to avoid defeat’, Irish
Times, 17 October 1951, 2; ‘Ireland’s great win over Germany’, Irish Times, 18 October 1951, 2.
17AA-PA, B31, vol. 60, ‘Charakteristik irischer Persönlichkeiten’, Report, Katzenberger to AA, 21
April 1952.
O’DRISCOLL—Hesitant Europeans 93

6. population as a whole was viewed as even-handed, perhaps even uniquely so in
Western Europe, in its perceptions and reception of Germany.18 The UK remained
the never-ending national enemy from the Irish perspective. The several hundred
Germans living in Ireland were well pleased by the benign Irish official and popular
stance towards Germany.19 However, as the decade progressed, West Germans
detected disturbing aspects of the Irish outlook. Although West German public
diplomacy maintained a constant message of ‘excellent relations’ between the two
countries, and formal diplomatic relations and social relations between the two
countries were of a high order, internal correspondence reveals that the AA held
grave reservations about Ireland’s international posture on grounds of realpolitik and
sentiment/ideology.
IRISH STATE AND NATION
German commentators in the 1950s, both official and unofficial, revealed mixed
views regarding the Irish state and nation. On the one hand, the healthy functioning
of Irish democracy was considered highly positive. Katzenberger noted that the Irish
affinity for democracy would not allow for a ‘Führerkult’, even in the case of a
respected figure such as de Valera.20 Conversely, West German officials and diplomats
tended to view the Irish people and state as conservative, even pre-modern, in
outlook. Successive reports by German diplomats depicted Ireland as irredentist,
nationalist, introspective and exceedingly anti-British. In this respect, German
commentators were quick to detect what seemed, to German eyes at least, to be
incomprehensible, illogical or counter-productive paradoxes in the Irish collective
mentality and in its foreign policy.
For instance, Irish language policy and the position of the Irish language were
viewed as peculiar. Officially, Irish was the national language. To all intents and
purposes official documents and signs suggested a bilingual population, but Irish was
not a living language. In reality the politics of symbolism prevailed, whereby the
language was viewed as part of national identity, but the Irish state and people found
it pragmatic and commercially advantageous to speak English.21 It was also noted
that despite Ireland’s general political aversion to the UK, economic realities ensured
continued Irish dependence on Britain.22 Approximately 93 per cent of Irish exports
were destined for the UK despite efforts at trade diversification.
The official appellation of the Irish state generated comment. The German mission
noted the politics, confusion and acrimonious debate reigning in Irish and
international circles surrounding the uses of the terms ‘Éire’, ‘Ireland’, ‘Republic of
Ireland’ and other designations. Non-Irish nationalist circles in Northern Ireland and
Britain commonly used the terms ‘26 counties’ and ‘Southern Ireland’, although
these terms possessed no constitutional basis. The British state used the term ‘Éire’
in all official correspondence in referring to the Irish state. Thus, any appellation by
any party designated to the state was viewed as an adoption of a political position on
the independent Irish state.23
18AA-PA, B31, vol. 60, ‘Eindrücke aus Irland’, Report, Author unknown (probably a West German
traveller or journalist) to AA, c. 30 July 1953; AA-PA, B31, vol. 61, ‘Zahl der deutschen
Staatsangehörigen’, Report, Katzenberger to AA, 21 April 1952.
19AA-PA, B31, vol. 60, ‘Eindrücke aus Irland’; AA-PA, B31, vol. 61, ‘Zahl der deutschen
Staatsangehörigen’.
20AA-PA, B31, vol. 64, ‘Politischer Bericht’, Report, Katzenberger to AA, 25 January 1954.
21‘Eine “Landessprache“, die kaum jemand spricht’, Mannheimer Morgen, 15 September 1955.
22AA-PA, B31, vol. 64, ‘Politischer Bericht’.
23AA-PA, B31, vol. 60, ‘Amtliche Bezeichnung des Staates Irland’, Report, Von Richthofen to AA,
13 July 1953.
94 Irish Studies in International Affairs

7. In the summer of 1953 the Irish government issued a policy document to correct the
numerous and loaded appellations applied to the Irish state. It directed that ‘Éire’
should be used only in the Irish language, ‘Ireland’ in English, and the corresponding
word in other languages. It cautioned against the use of the term ‘Republic of Ireland’,
as this could be interpreted as accepting the existence of another Ireland, meaning
Northern Ireland, thus tolerating partition and conveying the impression of the
abandonment of Dublin’s claim over Northern Ireland. Dr Oswald Freiherr Von
Richthofen of the German Consulate-General concluded that de Valera was the
architect of this policy. The Irish government wanted to retain the ‘fictitious identity of
the State appellation with the geographical unity of the entire island’.24 Richthofen
recommended that the AA and the German press exclusively use the term ‘Irland’ in
all papers, in line with Dublin’s policy direction.25 The AA, on studying the matter,
concluded that the ‘Republic of Ireland’ was the more correct name.26 This is a telling
finding on the part of the AA, and it indicates a general German-Irish divergence on
key matters relating to the appropriate role and outlook for Ireland in post-War Europe.
Naturally, German officials, politicians and diplomats quickly recognised that
partition and consequently relations with the UK were overriding priorities in the
conduct of Irish foreign policy.27 However, German official and popular
commentators’ comprehension of the Northern Ireland question and Anglo-Irish
relations was inclined to be incomplete and stereotypical. German press coverage was
generally considerate to Irish anti-partititionist arguments, in spite of the fact that most
of the information available on the topic of Northern Ireland originated from press
agencies in London. This led to some concerns on the Irish side that an unfortunate
impression might be generated in the German public that the Dublin government lent
some support to the IRA border campaign.28 German press and official attitudes lacked
a sophisticated understanding of the roots of the Northern Ireland question. German
observers accepted that irredentism was of overriding political importance to the Irish
state and nation.29 They tended to view the dispute as insoluble and expended little
sustained analysis on the complexities of Irish partition.
In the absence of an ability to fully comprehend the dispute, German officials
tended to fall back on the explanation that religion was the root of the problem. The
German minister to Dublin, Dr Felician Prill, suggested in 1958 that in Northern
Ireland the Stormont government played one religion against another to rule, and
exaggerated the Catholicity of the Irish Republic and its anti-Protestantism. ‘One
feels back in Cromwellian times’, Prill observed despairingly.30 German official
commentators regularly noted the religiosity of Irish people, the considerable
presence and power of the Catholic Church in Irish society and, as a result, the
constraints this placed on Irish governments’ freedom of action.31 German newspaper
24AA-PA, B31, vol. 60, ‘Amtliche Bezeichnung des Staates Irland’.
25AA-PA, B31, vol. 60, ‘Amtliche Bezeichnung des Staates Irland’.
26AA-PA, B31, vol. 60, ‘Betr.: Staat Irland’, Internal AA note, 29 July 1953. Whereas the AA may
have formed this view internally, a crisis arose in Irish-Australian relations just a few months later that
cautioned against proceeding against the stated policy of the Irish government. In January 1954 the Irish
rejected the accreditation of the Australian ambassador to the ‘Republic of Ireland’. See AA-PA, B31,
vol. 64, ‘Politischer Bericht’.
27AA-PA, B31, vol. 64, ‘Politischen Jahresbericht’, Report, Katzenberger to AA, 31 January 1955.
28NAI DFA, confidential reports, 313/10C, ‘West German press on IRA raids’, Report, Warnock to
Murphy, 22 January 1957; NAI DFA, confidential reports, 313/10D, ‘German publicity on Irish
Partition’, Holmes to Cremin, 10 April 1958.
29AA-PA, B31, vol. 64, ‘Politischen Jahresbericht’.
30AA-PA, B31, vol. 128, ‘Irland unter der dritten Regierung de Valera’, Report, Dr Felician Prill, to
AA, 5 May 1958.
31AA-PA, B31, vol. 128, Irland unter der dritten Regierung de Valera’; AA-PA, B31, vol. 131, ‘Irland
und die NATO nach der Pariser Konferenz’, Irland 1958/59, Report, Prill to AA, 10 January 1958; AA-
PA, B31, vol. 128, Irland 1958/59, Prill to AA, 15 May 1959. Admittedly, the anti-Communism intrinsic
O’DRISCOLL—Hesitant Europeans 95

8. and broadcast journalists continued to report what they viewed as a stranglehold of
Catholicism on all aspects of Irish society, to the irritation of Irish official observers
as the 1960s progressed.32 German officials repeated variants of this religion
hypothesis from the 1950s onwards. According to German diplomatic assessments
of the problem of Irish partition, German ministers and ambassadors tended to report
to Bonn that the Irish might be tempted to resort to the use of force to achieve
national unification in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The appraisal began to change
with the onset of the IRA border campaign after 1956. Then it began to become clear
to German observers that Irish governments of all hues were distressed by the
violence of the IRA and the disturbance it engendered in Anglo-Irish relations.
Nonetheless, as late as June 1959, Prill voiced his apocalyptic fears that the Irish
situation might spiral out of control, just like Cyprus.33 Only in 1961 did Ambassador
Reifferscheidt inform the AA that the Irish, in his estimation, would never use force
to end partition.34
The German state was embarrassed by the Irish obsession with partition, and
viewed its repeated efforts to draw parallels between Irish partition and German
partition as awkward at minimum. Initial signs of German unease were palpable as
early as 1953. Insistent and repeated Irish anti-partitionist rhetoric and publicity
linked Irish and German partition and threatened to embroil Germany in a sensitive
Anglo-Irish issue, which she poorly comprehended and was loathe to contribute to
for pragmatic and strategic reasons. The AA, with striking regularity, instructed
German diplomats and ambassadors to sustain good German-Irish relations, but not
at the cost of damaging German-British relations. For example, in 1963,
Reifferscheidt was advised not to tolerate any comparisons between Northern Ireland
and the GDR; the UK was an ally and a vital partner in the Atlantic security
community. Furthermore, he was bluntly instructed:
I am asking you however to practice restraint with regard to occasional Irish
comparisons of the partition of the Irish and German peoples. The population of
Middle-Germany is robbed of all liberty and political and personal rights, against
that the population of Northern Ireland had the opportunity in a free election to
express their opinions, and they live in conditions which cannot be compared with
those in the Soviet occupied zone.35
The FRG demonstrated an unwavering continuity in its policy towards the key
Irish national question of partition. All Western governments openly supported the
German demands for reunification against the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact,
even if some privately favoured the division of Germany. By contrast, most Western
European states and members of the Western alliance system clearly viewed Irish
partition as a peripheral and local Anglo-Irish dispute, of no relevance to the
settlement of the life-and-death issues at stake in the Cold War. Rather, the best
interests of the West, including the FRG, were to be served by containing the
Northern Ireland territorial dispute as a specifically Anglo-Irish issue, so as not to
in Catholicism played to the advantage of West Germany: the Irish state and much of its media strongly
supported the FRG and its uncompromising policy on Berlin against the Soviet Union. See: AA-PA,
B31, vol. 256, ‘Einstellung des Erscheinens der Dubliner Sonntagszeitung Sunday Review’, Report, von
Trützschler to AA, 4 December 1963.
32Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, Sankt Augustin, Pressedokumentation, file: Staaten, Irland, 1951–1983,
Press cutting, Der Tagesspiegel, 21 April 1949; NAI DFA, embassy series, Bonn, PP/1/4/B, ‘Iren
wandern nicht mehr aus’, Report, Secretary to McCann, 17 September 1965.
33AA-PA, B31, vol. 128, Irland 1958/59, Prill to AA, 15 May 1959, 14.
34Tara Casserly, ‘Irish-German relations, 1949–1972’, unpublished MA thesis, University College
Cork, 1994, 13–15.
35Casserly, ‘Irish-German relations, 1949–1972’, 10.
96 Irish Studies in International Affairs

9. distract the UK from its role as a key defender of the West. The maintenance of
British troops in the FRG was viewed as a key guarantee to the Western European
states that Britain would act as a stabiliser of the region and protect West Germany
from Soviet penetration, or as a means to ensure that the FRG remained in the
staunchly pro-Western democratic fold. Thus, Northern Ireland was an irritant, but
not a focal problem requiring solution in the interests of the Atlantic Alliance. It was
a structurally unimportant territorial issue and it should be left to the players directly
involved to find a resolution. It might even recede over time. Moreover, the UK was
the only party to the dispute possessing significant, even pivotal international
leverage and influence at various junctures in the early Cold War.
Nonetheless, the Irish government and its organs persisted in seeking during the
1950s to link the partition of Ireland to the division of Germany. No propaganda
opportunity was neglected.36 All German public and press comment on Irish partition
was carefully monitored for indications of a favourable German disposition towards
Dublin’s position.37 German officials heavily resented the problematical parallels
drawn by Dublin. They feared the potential negative repercussions of any official
West German affinity with or signification of approval of the Irish government’s
analogical arguments. Thus, the FRG upheld a studied diplomatic silence in the
interests of friendly relations.38 Notwithstanding this unsupportive policy, the AA still
canvassed for Irish support for German reunification, which it readily received
unconditionally.39 After the Irish accession to the UN in 1955, Ireland possessed
membership of a global forum that the FRG lacked, and any propaganda on behalf
of the injustice of German partition was welcome, as long as it was not linked too
closely with Irish irredentism.40 Ireland refused to recognise the legitimacy of the
GDR throughout the 1950s and 1960s. It did not support its membership of the UN
until the process of East-West détente assured membership of the UN for both the
FRG and the GDR in 1973.41 The FRG was grateful for Irish support of its
international position, but as was normal practice it tactfully held back from
extending a comparable consideration to Dublin’s claims on Northern Ireland.
Irish diplomats understood the German requirement to maintain very good
relations with Britain, as Bonn relied upon Britain’s support for its place in the
existing European and Atlantic framework. However, Irish diplomats and policy-
makers failed to appreciate the degree to which the West Germans sought direction
from their British colleagues on sensitive matters relating to Irish partition and
Anglo-Irish relations, especially during the 1950s.42 Perhaps only Conor Cruise
O’Brien, the head of press information in External Affairs, formed a realistic
assessment of Germany’s stance on Irish partition as a foreign policy issue in the
1950s. Following a trip to West Germany in 1954 he decisively concluded that the
36For a detailed assessment of Irish propaganda activities, see Molohan, Germany and Ireland, 87–
95.
37For example, NAI DFA, confidential reports, 313/10D: Bonn, ‘German publicity on Irish partition’,
Report, Denis Holmes, secretary Irish legation in FRG, to Cornelius Cremin, secretary DEA, 10 April
1958.
38For a development of this argument, see Casserly, ‘Irish-German relations’, 9–11.
39AA-PA, B31, vol. 62, ‘Beitrage der Abteilung 2 für die Instruktion des neuen Gesanten des
Bundesrepublik Deutschland in Dublin’, Report, von Puttkamer to new German consul-general in
Ireland, 25 July 1956.
40NAI DFA, confidential reports, 313/10E: Bonn, ‘German reaction to minister’s speech to UN on
23rd September’, Report, Holmes to Cremin, 28 September 1959; Casserly, ‘Irish-German Relations’,
5.
41AA-PA, B31, vol. 64, Report, Katzenberger to AA, 31 January 1955. For a full account of Irish
non-recognition policy of the GDR see Paula L. Wylie, Ireland and the Cold War: diplomacy and
recognition 1949–1963 (Dublin, 2006), 117–48.
42NAI DFA, confidential reports, 313/10A, Belton to Murphy, 14 June 1955.
O’DRISCOLL—Hesitant Europeans 97

10. FRG was too constrained by its own fragile situation to offer a small, marginal state
such as Ireland any moral or material backing to resolve partition.43
Indeed, by the mid-1950s the afterglow of the honeymoon following the re-
establishment of Irish-German diplomatic relations was fading. German appreciation
of the even-handed Irish acceptance of the FRG as a normal state in the international
‘family of nations’ receded as German confidence was restored. The FRG was
increasingly accepted by its immediate Western neighbours, particularly the
strategically axiomatic France, as a vital part of the economic and defence
infrastructure of the West. By the mid-1950s also, the German economic miracle was
well underway. The FRG was permitted to join NATO. It was allowed to re-arm for
the collective benefit of the ‘Free World’, and it became a central player in the
European integration process. Normal diplomatic bargaining ensued, and divergent
German and Irish perspectives on matters such as trade, Britain, NATO and European
integration became apparent. Meanwhile, Ireland remained relatively isolated in the
West, most notably during Frank Aiken’s stewardship of Irish foreign policy at the
United Nations during de Valera’s final government between May 1957 and June
1959.44 The Irish and German positions during this particular period starkly
contrasted, reflecting very different worldviews and mentalities. Prill and German
official commentators were convinced that Irish foreign policy in terms of its
defence, political and economic orientation were completely at odds with
developments in the Western world and the realities of the Cold War.
ANGLO-IRISH RELATIONS, PARTITION, NEUTRALITY
AND WESTERN SECURITY
Germany understood that all Irish foreign policies tended to flow from the unabashed
Hibernia Irredenta or ‘sore thumb’ stance of Dublin. This was a festering issue in
the Anglo-Irish relationship, and the relationship or the history of relations between
the two peoples had a major effect on Irish foreign relations more generally. The AA
appreciated that the history of Irish nationalist struggle against Britain ensured that
Ireland possessed a prima facie unique and perhaps critical perspective on the
‘Anglo-Saxon’ influenced alliance of the ‘Free World’. In addition, Ireland’s
fortunate off-shore position protected by Britain, Western Europe and NATO made
neutrality feasible. Nonetheless, partition was Ireland’s formally stated reason for
adopting a policy of neutrality, and it was the principal stumbling block to Dublin’s
playing a full role in Western defence.45 It accounted for her regrettable refusal to
accede to NATO.46 Otherwise, Germany considered that Ireland should have been a
member of the Atlantic Alliance as a Western European state with strong democratic
credentials, vigorous Catholic confessionalism and a pronounced anti-Communist
societal ethos. Ireland was an informal member of the West from the West German
perspective.47
In 1954 the eminent and influential German foreign policy journal Aussenpolitik
made a number of telling observations in relation to Irish neutrality:
It is a matter not of a constant foreign policy, and still less of an attempt to build
up a lasting neutrality, but of an aspect of Irish foreign policy towards Great
43Molohan, Germany and Ireland, 96–7.
44See Joseph Morrison Skelly, Irish diplomacy at the United Nations, 1945–1965: national interests
and the international order (Dublin, 1997), 83–5; 145–8.
45AA-PA, B31, vol. 62, Instructions from the German foreign ministry for Prill, 27 October 1956.
46NAI DFA, embassy files, Bonn, 19/3I, Belton to Nunan, 15 June 1954; AA-PA, B31, vol. 64,
‘Politischer Bericht’, Report, Katzenberger to AA, 25 January 1954.
47AA-PA, B31, vol. 64, ‘Politischen Jahresbericht’ , Report, Katzenberger to AA, 31 January 1955.
98 Irish Studies in International Affairs

11. Britain…Ireland has never agreed to the separation of her Six Northern Counties
and makes use of all available means to exert pressure on England, directly or on
the wider political scene, to cause her to satisfy her Ulster policy.48
Aussenpolitik concluded that Irish neutrality was simply a ‘Tauschmünze’ (meaning
‘a coin for bargaining with’) and the Irish government would abandon it if partition
was terminated.49 As Katzenberger noted, Ireland and her minister for external affairs,
Frank Aiken, were not neutral for reasons of conviction comparable to other
longstanding neutral states. Ireland’s policy of neutrality was viewed as quite unlike
that of Sweden and Switzerland, in that Ireland was prepared to abandon neutrality
if partition ended. It was not a principled neutral.50
The FRG was a vital part of the Western defences against Soviet Communism,
which was viewed as the overriding threat to international peace and freedom. This
perspective, as the vulnerable yet strategically important cockpit of the Cold War,
coloured West Germany’s interpretation of Irish neutrality. The AA was particularly
anxious to have its diplomats in Dublin report on any shifts in public opinion in
favour of joining NATO. It worried that Ireland was virtually defenceless by
contemporary standards and it would not be able to resist any major aggressor.51 It
greatly regretted the Irish unwillingness to participate, but reluctantly accepted that
Irish entry into NATO was impossible without a satisfactory solution to the partition
problem. Prill considered that it was in the collective interest of NATO and the
Atlantic Alliance to ensure that the ‘Irish partition question’ did not degenerate into
violence, creating a perilous and diverting weakness behind the Western front as it
faced the Iron Curtain. To German eyes, especially Prill’s, Irish non-membership
created a dangerous gap in NATO’s defences in north-Western Europe, but there was
no easy solution.52
INTERNATIONAL ORIENTATION AND EUROPEAN INTEGRATION
During the early and mid-1950s, internal German assessments of Ireland’s foreign
posture and economic situation were generally good natured, but nonetheless critical.
Katzenberger, the first FRG minister to Ireland, noted that the Irish economy
experienced persistent problems, namely a foreign trade deficit. Despite Ireland’s
political aversion for Britain, 93 per cent of the country’s exports still went to the
British market in 1954. Efforts to gain a foothold in other markets had not proved
successful.53 The electorate was clearly dissatisfied with the poor economic and
financial condition of the country, and this contributed to the defeat of de Valera’s
government in the general election in 1954. Katzenberger opined that the second
inter-party government formed by John A. Costello lacked economic ideas, and
consequently the deleterious economic situation persisted, leading to mass
emigration.54
However, the criticisms and assessments of Ireland by Bonn and the second FRG
representative, Prill, grew more pointed and negative towards the end of the decade.
These were coloured by the fact that when Prill arrived in Dublin in the autumn of
48NAI DFA, embassy files, Bonn, 19/3I, ‘Politischen Jahresbericht’, Report, Belton to Nunan, 15
June 1954.
49NAI DFA, embassy files, Bonn, 19/3I, ‘Politischen Jahresbericht’.
50AA-PA, B31, vol. 64, ‘Politischer Bericht’, Report, Katzenberger to AA, 25 January 1954.
51AA-PA, B31, vol. 62, ‘Beitrage der Abteilung 2 für die Instruktion des neuen Gesanten des
Bundesrepublik Deutschland in Dublin’, Report, von Puttkamer to new German consul-general in
Ireland, 25 July 1956.
52AA-PA, B31, vol. 128, Irland 1958/59, Report, Prill to AA, 15 May 1959.
53AA-PA, B31, vol. 64, ‘Politischer Bericht’, Report, Katzenberger to AA, 25 January 1954.
54AA-PA, B31, Vol. 64, ‘Politischen Jahresbericht’, Report, Katzenberger to AA, 31 January 1955.
O’DRISCOLL—Hesitant Europeans 99

12. 1956 the FRG had transformed into the bedrock of Western European economic
integration and Western European security. Combined with the Atlantic Alliance’s
recognition of the FRG as a key player in the West, the German economic
renaissance ensured a revival in German self-belief. Chancellor Adenauer and many
Germans highly prized these achievements and were determined to consolidate them
by furthering Franco–German reconciliation through the means of European
integration. In January 1956 Adenauer directed that the political dimension of
European economic integration should be recognised and embraced by the FRG.55
European integration, combined with the Atlantic Alliance, became the prism through
which the FRG analysed the whole European situation.
The Irish minister to the FRG, T.J. Kiernan, was fully cognisant of this German
governing concept, or Gesamtkonzept,56 as early as April 1956. He noted that
the official German attitude is based on the strong personal attachment of both the
Chancellor and the Foreign Minister to the ultimate aim of European integration.
(There may be, and probably is, a basic belief that in such a Europe, Germany will
be primus inter pares and that her primacy would be pronounced).57
At this early stage, as the negotiations to establish the EEC and Euratom between the
ECSC Six were underway, a prescient Kiernan advised his superiors:
It may be worth considering whether we cannot aim at reconciling our de facto
position, as governed by economic factors, with a longer-term policy of wider co-
operation, in the interests of European integration, with the broad ideological
purposes of which we must agree. The best way to avoid fragmentation [of
European institutions turning into blocs of countries] (and it is worth noticing that
the Soviet favours the OEEC plan of co-operation on atomic research) is to
broaden co-operation with small successful practical organisations, such as the
ECSC, and not to stand completely apart from them. This issue may arise with
further developments of the ‘Messina’ group towards stages of economic
integration.58
This option was not pursued in the mid-1950s and Ireland belatedly adapted to the
new regional and international framework. It only applied for membership of the
EEC in 1961, in anticipation of a British application.
The AA recognised that Ireland lacked the autonomy to choose a European
destiny, as this route was blocked by the geographic and economic realities,
contributing to a narrow, nationalist mindset. It was une île derrière une île, and any
engagement with European integration would require a fundamental alteration in
the Eurosceptical attitude of the British. The AA noted that Irish membership of the
Sterling Block and traditional trade dependence on Britain was the pivotal
constraining factor in this attitude. This economic dependence on Britain was
politically unpalatable in Irish domestic circles and contradicted its foreign policy
of counter-dependence in political matters. The AA judged that Ireland could only
gain from membership of a European federation. From the German perspective,
Ireland was both poorly developed and starved of the capital required to achieve
economic modernisation. In 1956 the AA instructed the new German envoy to
Ireland that only a more positive British policy toward European integration would
55Hans-Peter Schwarz, Konrad Adenauer, vol. 2, The statesman, 1952–1967 (Oxford, 1997), 231.
56W.R. Smyser, How Germans negotiate: logical goals, practical solutions (Washington, DC, 2003),
60.
57NAI DFA, confidential reports, 313/10B, ‘German attitude to European integration’, Report,
Kiernan, to Murphy, 30 April 1956.
58NAI DFA, confidential reports, 313/10B, ‘German attitude to European integration’.
100 Irish Studies in International Affairs

13. induce Ireland to reconsider its attitude. At this early stage in 1956, the influential
Political-Directorate 2 of the AA held the view that Ireland was important to Europe
from both a strategic and transportation perspective. Thus, the EEC Six would be
willing to provide the necessary capital Ireland urgently required in return for
‘political benefits’.59 The AA, particularly Political-Directorate 2, was anxious that
the German envoy should report any shift in Irish public opinion away from its
negative attitude regarding NATO membership, towards a recognition that the active
safeguarding of Irish independence demanded Irish co-operation with NATO in
view of East-West tensions.60 However, the possibility of Irish identification with
the political position of Western Europe and the Atlantic Alliance was limited, as
Irish members of the Council of Europe repeatedly and overwhelmingly critiqued
and rejected a succession of proposals and efforts to co-ordinate the foreign policy
of the Council of Europe, including those of German members. Irish
parliamentarians were singularly allergic to any suggestions that the Council of
Europe might be subsumed under a broader ‘Atlantic community’.61
Germany revealed its concerns about Ireland’s economic isolationism when
Ireland presented its case for special consideration during the discussions to establish
an OEEC Free Trade Area in mid-1957. The articulation of major Irish reservations
to opening up the Irish economy to free trade occasioned a German response that
deprecated Ireland for possessing an overly protectionist outlook, an excessively
pessimistic mindset and a lack of enthusiasm. The Federal Republic observed in a
formal response to the Irish submission and Irish special pleading that Ireland ‘should
have greater confidence’ in its ‘ability to overcome the difficulties’ entailed in joining
a pan-European Free Trade Area. In order to become a member of the proposed Free
Trade Area, the FRG argued that Ireland had to accept the principles of non-
discrimination and reciprocity.62
After 1956 Prill noted the growing Irish awareness of the potential repercussions
for the country of the prolonged discussions about the economic organisation of
Western Europe. The Irish, however, were hesitant Europeans, who lacked an
ideological attachment to European unity and regional integration. The Irish response
was one of slow and reactive adaptation to the new realities. The Irish mentality still
perceived the European continent as distant and the lay Irish person lacked any
detailed knowledge about Germany, although was knowledgeable about the UK,
France and Spain to some degree. The Irish were ignorant about Eastern European
issues, in Prill’s estimation. In 1958 he reported to his superiors that Ireland could
only survive economically if it opened up to the world and embraced free competition
and European integration.63
By March 1959, after five years of bruising German-Irish bilateral trade
negotiations, he was openly criticising Irish government foreign trade policy. In a
talk to the luncheon of the Dublin Rotary Club, he opined that trade discrimination
was an ‘anachronism in a time in which the nations of the free world should stand
together, facing the same dangers from the unfree world, even in the economic field’.
59AA-PA, B31, vol. 62, ‘Instruktion für den Gesandten der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in Irland’,
AA for Dr Felician Prill, 27 October 1956, 17–18; AA-PA, B31, vol. 62, ‘Beitrage der Abteilung 2 für
die Instruktion des neuen Gesanten des Bundesrepublik Deutschland in Dublin’, by von Puttkamer, 25
July 1956.
60AA-PA, B31, vol. 62, ‘Instruktion für den Gesandten der Bundesrepublik Deutschland in Irland’, 9.
61AA-PA, B31, vol. 64, Report, ‘Irlands Haltung in der UNO und im Europarat’, Prill to AA, 6
November 1957, 2. See also Michael Kennedy and Eunan O’Halpin, Ireland and the Council of Europe:
from isolation towards integration (Strasbourg, 2000), 120–1; 125; 146; 151.
62NAI DT, S15281J, ‘Free trade area–working party no. 23–Consideration of the Irish case’,
McCarthy report, n.d. (c. 28 May 1957). I am grateful to Dr Paul Loftus for bringing this reference to
my attention.
63‘“Mistake” to think all Germans rich’, Irish Times, 9 April 1957, 4.
O’DRISCOLL—Hesitant Europeans 101

14. Additionally, he argued that ‘discrimination would always be to the disadvantage of
the retaliating country’.64 Such public outspokenness by diplomats, even the usually
direct-talking Germans, is rare, normally unwise and frowned upon by fellow
diplomats. However, Prill and the AA were aware that by 1959 the mood of the Irish
government was undergoing a transformation. The recently appointed taoiseach,
Seán Lemass, who was ably assisted by leading civil servant Ken Whitaker, was
stealthily dismantling old Irish shibboleths in the field of economics and trade. Prill’s
exhortation to Irish producers and exporters to compete on the basis of quality
resonated closely with Lemass’s desires to make Irish producers competitive.
Ironically, in 1958 prior to Lemass’s succession of de Valera as taoiseach, Prill
misread Lemass as both ‘doctrinaire’ and a ‘die-hard protectionist’.65 Prill noted that
as long as de Valera remained in charge, a more outward orientation in Irish economic
policy and foreign policy generally was unlikely.66 Contrary to Prill’s expectations,
however, Lemass provided the requisite political leadership to re-orient Irish foreign
policy towards Europe and the West. He countered and blunted the outmoded
nationalist and neutralist policies of Frank Aiken, a devout follower of de Valera, who
remained in power and retained the External Affairs portfolio.67 The FRG
disapproved of the general direction and conduct of Irish foreign policy under Aiken
during this period, not only in terms of Ireland’s refusal to join NATO. The Irish
envoy in Bonn, William Warnock, might dutifully report to his minister that the pro-
SPD Frankfurter Rundshau considered that his initiatives at the UN introduced a
‘fresh wind’ into the ‘stuffy atmosphere’ of the UN.68 In practice, however, the AA,
official Germany and the Christian Democrats were perturbed by the striking
similarity between Ireland’s Cold War policies and those of the neutralist, pacific
German opposition, the SPD.69
De Valera’s Ireland demonstrated a disturbing lack of common cause with the
West in general at the UN. In particular, Aiken failed to identify with the Western
powers on high-profile controversies relating to Cyprus, Algeria and apartheid. It
proposed troop withdrawal from Central Europe, self-determination for Algeria,
Chinese admission to the UN; and it condemned South Africa’s racial politics.70 The
adoption of such a ‘moral’ and neutralist or non-aligned foreign policy by Ireland at
the UN appeared fanciful and ineffective from the point of view of the hard-headed
64‘Trade discrimination “an anachronism”’, Irish Times, 24 March 1959, 4.
65AA-PA, B31, vol. 128, Report, ‘Irland unter der dritten Regierung de Valera’, Prill to AA, 5 May
1958.
66AA-PA, B31, vol. 131, Report, ‘Irland und die NATO nach der Pariser Konferenz’, Prill to AA, 10
January 1958.
67AA-PA, B31, vol. 128, Report, ‘Irland unter der dritten Regierung de Valera’.
68NAI DFA, confidential reports, 313/10C, Warnock to Murphy, 26 October 1957.
69Dennis L. Bark and David R. Gress, A history of West Germany, vol. 1, From shadow to substance
1945–1963 (Oxford, 1993), 303–4; Ronald J. Granieri, ‘Political parties and German-American
relations: politics beyond the water’s edge’, in Detlef Junker (ed.), The United States and Germany in
the era of the Cold War, 1945–1968: a handbook, vol. 1 (Cambridge, UK, 2004), 141–8; Diane
Rosolowsky, West Germany’s foreign policy: the impact of the Social Democrats and the Greens (New
York, 1987), 13–36; L.R. Muray, ‘Adenauer’s Germany–(2) neutrality and NATO’, Irish Times, 9
October 1957.
70AA-PA, B31, vol. 64, Report, ‘Irlands Haltung in der UNO und im Europarat’, Prill to AA, 6
November 1957; AA-PA, B31, vol. 131, Report, ‘Irland und die NATO nach der Pariser Konferenz’.
For an account of Irish policy at the UN, see Joseph Morrison Skelly, Irish diplomacy at the League of
Nations 1945–1965: national interests and the international order (Dublin, 1996), chapters 2 and 3;
Till Geiger, ‘A belated discovery of internationalism? Ireland, the United Nations and the reconstruction
of Western Europe, 1945–60’, Rory Miller, ‘Ireland and the Middle East at the United Nations, 1955–
2005’, and Aoife Bhreatnach, ‘A friend of the colonial powers? Frank Aiken, Ireland’s United Nations
alignment and decolonisation’, in Michael Kennedy and Deirdre McMahon (eds), Obligations and
responsibilities: Ireland and the United Nations 1955–2005 (Dublin, 2005), 25–53; 54–78; 182–200,
respectively.
102 Irish Studies in International Affairs

15. realism that impelled the Federal Republic. German realpolitik believed that these
Irish positions exemplified a complete disregard for its European neighbours, which
lay prostrate before, and divided by, the Red Army.
Professor William G. Grewe, director of the political division of the AA, was not
convinced by Irish explanations that, as a neutral, it was obligated to raise important
international issues at the UN and ‘to speak her mind freely without hesitation’.71
Grewe, an international law professor and an advisor to Adenauer,72 critiqued the
complete lack of realism attaching to Aiken’s search for a comprehensive peace in
the Middle East and Central Europe. Aiken had not consulted with the Federal
Republic before putting forward his proposals. Aiken’s overly ambitious plans,
involving full troop withdrawals and the effective neutralisation of the regions, were
completely impractical and diplomatically unwise. Dublin was to discover that its
failure to consult with the Western affected parties beforehand was deleterious to
Ireland’s relations with these parties, such as the FRG. Grewe straightforwardly told
the Irish envoy that even if the USSR withdrew its army from East Germany and the
US withdrew from the FRG, the Red Army would still occupy most of Eastern
Europe, including the strategically vital Poland and Czechoslovakia. This would
ensure the USSR could hold Germany hostage. The political director at the AA
indicated that Aiken’s proposals ‘stood no chance of being implemented’.73 The
journalist L.R. Muray, who was undertaking an extensive tour of West Germany,
reported in the Irish Times that the German government’s attitude to Aiken’s Central
European plan was ‘distinctly cool’.74 As for Aiken’s proposal that the UN should
intervene and provide an international solution to the Franco-Algerian conflict,
Grewe simply stated that the Federal Republic ‘would steer clear of the controversy
about Algeria’ as it was ‘cautious in all matters concerning relations in France’.75 In
other words, reconciliation with France was a key goal of the FRG, and European
integration was built on the still tender plant of the Franco-German Axis, which
should not be sacrificed under any circumstances. So the FRG was fundamentally
dissatisfied with many of the UN policies of Aiken and considered them to be badly
informed, unwise and potentially disastrous.
CONCLUSION
It was not surprising, therefore, that Prill speculated that the final government that de
Valera led lacked any special affection for the Federal Republic.76 Regardless of
Ireland’s desire and need for greater economic collaboration with the West, Prill
concluded that de Valera’s foreign policy would remain unaltered. It would continue
to avoid any association with the West.77 Even as Prill recognised this paradox, he
nonetheless recommended that the FRG should ameliorate Ireland’s economic
difficulties as far as possible, in an effort to build relations between Ireland and the
West.78 This fitted into the emerging post-War German paradigm of utilising
economic statecraft, particularly economic inducements, to alter the behaviour of
71NAI DFA, confidential reports, 313/10C, Report, ‘Attitude of the Irish delegation at the United
Nations Assembly’, Warnock to Murphy, 3 October 1957.
72Rainer A. Blasius (translated by Sally E. Robertson), ‘The ambassadors of the Federal Republic of
Germany in Washington, 1955–1968’, in Junker, The United States and Germany, 157–64: 158.
73NAI DFA, confidential reports, 313/10C, Report, ‘Attitude of the Irish delegation at the United
Nations Assembly’.
74L.R. Muray, ‘Adenauer’s Germany’.
75NAI DFA, confidential reports, 313/10C, Report, ‘Attitude of the Irish delegation at the United
Nations Assembly’.
76AA-PA, B31, vol. 128, Report, ‘Irland unter der dritten Regierung de Valera’.
77AA-PA, B31, vol. 131, Report, ‘Irland und die NATO nach der Pariser Konferenz’.
78AA-PA, B31, vol. 131, Report, ‘Irland und die NATO nach der Pariser Konferenz’.
O’DRISCOLL—Hesitant Europeans 103

16. other states in a positive direction.79 However, there were signs of hope when Prill
noted in his annual report for 1958 that Aiken’s ‘escapades in foreign policy,
especially in the United Nations’, had made him unpopular domestically.80 Catholic
circles found Aiken’s support for communist China’s admission to the UN disturbing
and incomprehensible. Irish circles also heartily disapproved of Aiken’s general
policy of negotiating with the Soviet Union. The problem from a German perspective
was that Aiken and Lemass were in competition to replace de Valera as taoiseach.
Jack Lynch, the minister for education and a relatively young ‘rising politician’,
appeared more European in outlook and more interested in Germany than either the
doctrinaire and apparently neutralist protectionists Aiken or Lemass.81 Prill was
prescient in identifying a taoiseach in the making (Lynch), but he was fortunately
incorrect in his assessment of Seán Lemass, de Valera’s immediate successor as
taoiseach. In addition, Prill’s pessimistic speculation that the poor economic state of
Ireland combined with irredentism might lead to political radicalisation and a crisis
over partition was not fulfilled.82 Lemass proved to be a forward-looking taoiseach
from the Federal Republic’s perspective, and Irish-German relations drew closer.
Lemass ‘mainstreamed’ Irish foreign policy away from the ‘traditional nationalist
and insular outlook’.83
79See Smyser, How Germans negotiate, 51–2; 55; 179–81.
80AA-PA, B31, vol. 128, Report, ‘Irland 1958/59’, Prill to AA, 15 May 1959.
81AA-PA, B31, vol. 128, Report, ‘Irland 1958/59’.
82AA-PA, B31, vol. 128, Report, ‘Irland 1958/59’.
83Lyndon Johnson Papers, Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library, Austin, Texas, Report, ‘Ireland’,
Vice-Presidential Security File, Box 3, cited in Maurice FitzGerald, ‘The “mainstreaming” of Irish
foreign policy’, in Brian Girvin and Gary Murphy (eds), The Lemass era: politics and society in the
Ireland of Seán Lemass (Dublin, 2005), 82–98: 97. See also: Maurice FitzGerald, Protectionism to
liberalisation: Ireland and the EEC, 1957–1966 (Aldershot, 2000), chapter 1.
104 Irish Studies in International Affairs