Northern Ireland, the United States and the Second World War

Simon Topping

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781350037601
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Irish History
• Index: History

In Northern Ireland, The United States and the Second World War, Simon Topping analyses the American military presence in Northern Ireland during the war, examining the role of the government at Stormont in managing this 'friendly invasion', the diplomatic and military rationales for the deployment, the attitude of Americans to their posting, and the effect of the US presence on local sectarian dynamics. He explores US military planning, the hospitality and entertainment provided for American troops, the renewal and reimagining of historic links between Ulster and the United States, the importation of 'Jim Crow' racism, 'Johnny Doughboys' marrying 'Irish Roses', and how all of this impacted upon internal, transatlantic and cross-border politics. This study also draws attention to influential and understudied individuals such as Northern Ireland's Prime Minister Sir Basil Brooke and offers a reassessment of David Gray, America's minister to Dublin. As a result, it provides a comprehensive examination of largely overlooked aspects of the war and Northern Ireland more generally, and fills important gaps in the history of both. Northern Ireland, The United States and the Second World War is essential for students and scholars interested in the history of Northern Ireland, American-Irish relations, the Second World War on the UK home-front, and wartime transatlantic diplomacy.

1
Céad Míle Fáilte
One hundred thousand welcomes!

At the visitor centre of the Lake Superior Railroad Museum near Duluth, Minnesota, is a fading newspaper clipping from 1998 reporting the death, aged 79, of an unprepossessing man, from an unremarkable town, who subsequently led a life notable largely for its ordinariness.¹ During the Second World War, however, he found momentary fame as the first GI to officially arrive in Europe. On 26 January 1967, Milburn Herman Henke, of Hutchinson, Minnesota, returned to Belfast as the guest of honour on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the moment he, the Belfast Telegraph enthused, ‘marched into the history books’ when American forces arrived in Northern Ireland.² Henke, now a restaurateur, always hoped to return, and Ulster Television (UTV) furnished that opportunity, flying him in for a special edition of its Flashpoint programme.³ Docker Mick Gallagher vividly recalled the precise moment Henke faced the poised flashbulbs of eager pressmen: ‘[s]ure I remember that fellow coming off. The Americans threw cigarettes and chewing gum to us from the ship. They all looked like a bunch of cowboys as they attempted to march down the quay’.⁴ General Dwight D. ‘Ike’ Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during the war and twice a wartime visitor to Northern Ireland, sent greetings to Prime Minister Terence O’Neill, ‘to assure you and the gallant people you lead of the appreciation of every American who was privileged to enjoy the hospitality of Northern Ireland during that conflict. All of us remember that experience with gratitude and affection’.⁵ The arrival of Henke and the Yanks proved a defining moment in the war and eased British gloom of the previous two years, as suddenly the war appeared winnable. It also marked a turning point for Northern Ireland, fleetingly putting it on the world stage, making it absolutely vital to the Allies and marking a rare moment of positivity in its otherwise troubled history.

Churchill and Roosevelt agreed to send US forces soon after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, when they met at the Arcadia conference in Washington, DC, on 23 December. This was, however, hardly unpredictable, nor, indeed, was it even a spontaneous reaction to changed international circumstances. The Americans had been building bases in Northern Ireland throughout 1941 and as early as October, Churchill privately requested Roosevelt send two American divisions, including one armoured, ‘of course at the invitation of that Government as well as of his Majesty’s Government’, to relieve the British garrison. Churchill was forthright about the diplomatic and strategic benefits of such a move: ‘the arrival of American troops in Northern Ireland would exercise a powerful effect on the whole of Éire, with favourable consequences which cannot be measured. It would also be a deterrent upon German invasion schemes’.⁶ Reconciling this with America’s continued neutrality was not explained, but a precedent had been set with the Americans occupying Iceland, replacing the British in June 1941, despite both the United States and Iceland being neutral, which Northern Ireland pointedly was not. On 16 December Churchill repeated his request, stating that American divisions could finish training and deter any lingering German ambition of invading Ireland.⁷

Roosevelt was reputedly wary of sending a large force to the UK, but Churchill arrived in Washington to find the president persuaded of its merits. Churchill credited Roosevelt with the idea, but General George C. Marshall, the American Chief of Staff, and Churchill’s own memoir demonstrate that it originated with Churchill.⁸ Both strategic and political factors prompted the decision. The strategic element was obvious, freeing British troops, allowing American troops to become battle-ready while the symbolism of Americans on European soil would be obvious to the Nazis.⁹ It was, Churchill recalled, ‘an assertion of the United States’ resolve to intervene directly in Europe’, and they wanted the Germans to be fully aware of the deployment, in the hope that the threat of an early invasion of France would tie down German divisions there that could otherwise have gone to the Eastern Front or North Africa.¹⁰ Yet this strategic need was offset by the deteriorating situation in the Pacific, meaning that the two divisions originally assigned went there to shore up American defences. Known as Operation Magnet, four waves, totalling 32,000 men, arrived in Northern Ireland during the first half of 1942.¹¹

Northern Ireland was already heavily militarized. With the fall of France, tens of thousands of British troops poured in to fortify the border amid concerns that Éire could be the backdoor to a German invasion of Britain. By the end of 1940, 70,000 British troops were in Northern Ireland (a number only exceeded by Americans in early 1944) on an active war-footing, blocking border roads, preparing bridges for demolition and making contingency plans to repel a German invasion of Éire. The historic connotations were not lost on nationalists, who predominated in border areas, or the troops, who viewed nationalists (and Éire) as pro-German. This created ‘a state bordering panic’ among local nationalists in June 1940 according to Éire’s police.¹² The changed shade of khaki heralded by the Americans, therefore, relieved one set of tensions by replacing the British garrison but created another, admittedly abstract, by endorsing partition and disrupting traditional American-Irish relations; but crucially, it made an American border incursion potentially more palatable for Éire. Considered in this way, the replacement of British with American troops becomes a strategic, diplomatic and political masterstroke.

On 6 January, Roosevelt announced that American forces would go to the UK, generating speculation all over Ireland that their destination was Northern Ireland.¹³ London simply informed Stormont of the decision, consulting it only about the arrangements; however, far from being insulted at seemingly being taken for granted, the unionist government delightedly welcomed hosting the Americans. Churchill summoned Northern Ireland’s prime minister John M. Andrews to London, with the unionist leader telling only his deputy why.¹⁴ Andrews (and Northern Ireland’s official war historian John Blake) amplified this consultation, portraying a heroic Ulster ready to do its bit and somehow a full partner in the discussions, but despite being suddenly centre stage and indispensable, suspicion about London’s motives and the security of the union lingered.¹⁵

In London, Andrews told the Defence Committee of the War Cabinet that he was ‘most anxious that no impression should be given that we were handing over responsibility for the defence of Northern Ireland to the United States. Irresponsible or wrong-minded people might misinterpret this as the first step to handing Northern Ireland over to Éire’.¹⁶ The Americans were replacing a substantial British garrison, but this irrational fear was probably due to residual bitterness over London’s 1940 offer to end partition if Éire joined the war, accentuating existing unionist paranoia, and particularly Andrews’ own. Yet there was also a concern that Irish republicans might use the situation to stage an armed insurrection, as they had in the Great War, having already committed acts of terrorism in the current conflict. Andrews’ unease also reflected the persistent unionist view that all nationalists were not only disloyal but also a potential fifth column. Alan Brooke (Sir Basil Brooke’s uncle and an Ulsterman), the chief of the Imperial General Staff, implicitly agreed to the retention of some British forces to handle any sectarian violence.¹⁷ Sir Alexander Maxwell, the permanent undersecretary at the Home Office, offered explicit reassurance, declaring that ‘a proportion of British troops’ would stay to respond to ‘civil disturbance’ as ‘it would be preferable if these troops were British’.¹⁸ The last phrase implies calling upon US forces in extremis, an eventuality not discussed with America; the Americans, however, were acutely aware of Northern Ireland’s divisions and had no desire and made no plans to involve themselves. Keeping some British troops, to be deployed as necessary, reassured Andrews, but the Americans’ sole strategic priority remained defending all of Ireland, not policing local enmities.¹⁹ The practicalities of the American presence were agreed by the British and American militaries, the latter in mufti, at the Grand Central Hotel in Belfast from 22–25 January.²⁰

In the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbor, Churchill tempted Éire’s prime minister (Taoiseach) Eamon de Valera with an impetuous, ambiguous (but entirely sober) offer on partition, declaring it ‘now or never’. Rightly suspicious, de Valera tentatively followed up the message, but Churchill denied it suggested ending partition, and nothing came of it.²¹ With American troops en route to territory claimed by Éire, the Allies considered how to tell de Valera. The War Office in London proposed informing de Valera in two ways, either when it was clear that the Germans knew or when the force was no longer in danger of attack, ‘whichever was the earliest’, and he would be told in person. Britain wanted its representative in Dublin (in effect, an ambassador) Sir John Maffey to inform de Valera on behalf of the British and Americans.²² The Allies were sending a clear message to a leader whose attitude towards the war Roosevelt and Churchill viewed as duplicitous, as in public he refused to differentiate between the war aims of the Allies and the Axis, even though his private actions favoured the former. He also used residual Anglophobia and coded sectarianism, usually in relation to partition, within Éire to help maintain his domestic political dominance.²³ According to Davis, sending the troops was intimately linked with existing American-Irish tensions, which Pearl Harbor merely exacerbated.²⁴ The New York Times soon suggested that the Americans were employing ‘a subtle form of pressure, using Irish-American sympathy to get what Éire has thus far been unwilling to grant’ – in other words, Allied access to the so-called Treaty ports, ceded by the British to Éire in 1938.²⁵ The troops became a public source of irritation for de Valera, and his predictable protest was predictably condemned by unionists and equally predictably welcomed by nationalists.

The United States was not wholly blind to Éire’s feelings, naming the force ‘United States Army Forces in the British Isles’ (USAFBI). The New York Times rationalized this, as ‘calling it the American Expeditionary Force would have likely affronted independent Éire’, although this was how the US press referred to it.²⁶ The USAFBI, later the ‘European Theater of Operations, United States Army’ (ETOUSA), was activated on 8 January 1942, commanded by Major General James E. Chaney, with a subordinate force called the United States Army Forces Northern Ireland (USANIF) activated on 24 January under Major General Russell P. ‘Scrappy’ Hartle, pending Major General Edmund L. Daley’s arrival.²⁷ The appointment of Daley, a Catholic of Irish descent, as commander represented another nod to the delicate local sensibilities and the hope of fostering good relations with Éire.²⁸ Daley, however, never arrived. He was eventually relieved of command on 7 May 1942 by Marshall, ‘following a series of reports from a number of directions, all indicating an identical reaction to your method of exercising command and its effect on morale’. Added to this was the insinuation of an alcohol problem. The decision to relieve him was, Marshall explained, based upon ‘a unanimity of opinion that it would be most unwise to continue you in high command’, a damning indictment of any officer.²⁹ Hartle assumed permanent command of USANIF; Chaney was eventually recalled to Washington in June and replaced by Dwight D. Eisenhower as commander in the ETO.³⁰

The recently arrived US consul in Belfast, Parker M. Buhrman, reported rumours of the impending arrival, but initially thought that Andrews’ London visit concerned relations between Northern Ireland, Éire and the United States.³¹ Soon, well-informed sources gave ‘color to the reports that American troops might be expected at any time’ as stories, ‘believed to be accurate’, were circulating that some British forces were leaving their barracks apparently to accommodate them. Buhrman’s tone, talking of their ‘alleged arrival’, suggests a degree of cynicism about the plausibility of these rumours.³² The choice of Northern Ireland, and the Iceland precedent, did not surprise some. Helen Kirkpatrick, of the Chicago Daily News, speculated that the bases built by the American technicians the previous year were to house US forces. She also hoped that ‘Irish-American history is such that the establishment of United States troops in Ulster would have great significance for the Irish and might lead to the solution of the hitherto unsolvable Irish dilemma’.³³ The German minister in Dublin, Edouard Hempel, ascribed rumours of the Americans’ imminent arrival to the fevered imaginations of journalists and, like...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Dedication
• Title
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction: ‘The Ties of Kinship’
• 1 Céad Míle Fáilte: One hundred thousand welcomes!
• 2 ‘Uncle Sam’s Stepping Stone to Berlin’: The US military in Northern Ireland
• 3 ‘Absolute and exclusive jurisdiction’: Policing and managing the Yanks
• 4 ‘If you can’t see the hills’: Occupying the occupiers
• 5 ‘My own country overrun’: Irish nationalism and the American presence
• 6 ‘To clear this territory of such forces’: The IRA and the Americans
• 7 ‘Developments in Northern Ireland’: The Belfast consulate and the war
• 8 ‘Johnny Doughboy Found a Rose in Ireland’: Women and the Americans
• 9 ‘The Dusky Doughboys’: Jim Crow racism in Northern Ireland
• 10 ‘A testy old gentleman’: David Gray, hyphenated-Americans and partition
• 11 ‘Ulster Had a Hand in the First Independence Day’: Ulster-American revivalism and the Second World War
• 12 ‘Letters from Ulster’: Propaganda, memory and the Americans
• Conclusion: ‘Without Northern Ireland’
• Epilogue: ‘Gray’s Great Illusion’
• Notes
• Primary sources
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright