Nazis on the State Payroll in 1930s Ireland

• Authors: O´Donoghue David

Title variants

CS

Nacisté v irských státních službách ve třicátých letech

• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The Austro-German population of Ireland in 1936 was 529. Approximately 25% of the adult male cohort were, or became, members of Hitler’s Nazi Party (NSDAP). A small cadre of senior figures in the party were active in recruiting new members as Nazi Germany’s fortunes rose from 1933 to 1939. Some 32 Germans and Austrians resident in pre-war Ireland have been identified as Nazi Party members, although a small number of these were exchange students rather than full-time residents. This paper examines the six NSDAP members who held senior positions in the Irish public service. As Irish state employees they were in a contradictory position: swearing loyalty to Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich while attempting to hold down important jobs on the Irish state payroll. Dr. David O’Donoghue’s article scrutinises the activities of these six men, as well as explaining how they tried, by varying degrees, to serve two masters. The paper also examines their wartime and post-war lives.

Keywords

EN

Germany; Third Reich; Ireland; Nazi party; public service

Discipline

• HISTORY: HISTORY
• SOCIOLOGY: SOCIOLOGY

• Publisher: Charles University in Prague, Karolinum Press, Czech Republic
• Journal: Historická sociologie (Historical Sociology)
• Year: 2015
• Volume: 2
• Pages: 97-106

Dates

published

2015-12

Contributors

author

O´Donoghue David

• Department of Historical Sociology, Faculty of Humanities, Charles University in Prague

Identifiers

DOI

10.14712/23363525.2015.14