Iceland played an unexpected and crucial role in the Second World War | Hacker News Reader

Iceland played an unexpected and crucial role in the Second World War

hakaimagazine.com

67 pointsThevet31 comments

Good read, although for anyone with a sense of geography it seems hardly "unexpected".

I look forward to reading this. The person who stepped into the place of my grandfather (both died young) was stationed in Iceland and later Burma. I didn't realise this until I was a lot older and I think he would have probably told people he hadn't traveled much.

Admiral Gallery wrote about his time in Iceland during WWII commanding the US base and it's sub hunting PBYs in the book "Clear the Decks". He did focus a bit on the humor so the serious parts sneak up on you. He did write some fiction afterwards.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Iceland

The invasion of Iceland (codenamed Operation Fork) by the Royal Navy and Royal Marines occurred on 10 May 1940, during World War II. The invasion took place because the British government feared that Iceland would be used by the Germans, who had recently overrun Denmark, which was in personal union with Iceland and which had previously been largely responsible for Iceland's foreign policy. The Government of Iceland issued a protest, charging that its neutrality had been "flagrantly violated" and "its independence infringed".[1]*

What about Ireland? How did Ireland's stance during the war, shape its policies post war?

Ireland was officially neutral but unofficially pro-British. Ireland shared military and meteorological intelligence with London and allowed British warplanes to use Irish airspace. German pilots were interned while British ones were returned home.

After the war, and up to the 21st century, Ireland courted foreign investment and was rewarded by being favourably looked upon by Britain and especially the US. Ireland received some limited Marshall Plan aid, but was frozen out of the United Nations for a few years (probably by the Soviets).

I would say Irish foreign policy is still shaped in the same way. The military doesn't participate in foreign wars, outside some UN peacekeeping missions. But US-aligned forces are generally welcome, even on torture missions, and Ireland officially supports the US stance on Israel despite occasionally wringing its hands at the plight of the Palestinians, who the Irish people tend to sympathise with.

My grandfather was a British pilot interned in an Irish camp during WW2. They weren't allowed to return home / escape (they'd be sent back after crossing the sea), but they were given "day passes" to leave the camp pretty much every day. Despite officially being a prisoner he had a motorcycle in a nearby town and there are quite a few photos of him riding around.

Before he died he was consulted by some producers for a (pretty bad) movie based on the subject - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brylcreem_Boys

> They weren't allowed to return home / escape (they'd be sent back after crossing the sea)

Wait I'm sorry, if a British prisoner escaped Ireland and made it to Britain, the British government would send the prisoner back to Ireland? What reason would they have to do that?

https://forthelifeofme-film.com/2019/07/30/the-most-bizarre-...

"Having negligible military power, Ireland was a neutral nation during the war; Prime Minister Éamon de Valera went to great lengths to maintain that neutrality. As part of this policy, he made a deal with both the British and German governments: combatants of either country could be detained if found in Ireland and interned there for the duration of the war."

"Technically, the men were not prisoners of war but “guests of the State,” with an obligation on the state to prevent them from returning to the war."

"The reason was that Ireland’s neutrality was important not only to the Irish but to Great Britain as well. Though Churchill considered Ireland’s refusal to fight a betrayal, he understood that a pro-Nazi Ireland would have allowed the Kriegsmarine to use its Atlantic ports and wreak havoc on vital convoys from America."

But where does that say that the British would send Brits back to Ireland?

Edit: The article mentions a single example of an escapee being sent back from Northern Ireland, not GB.

> He had lunch at a nearby hotel, left without paying and made his way to nearby Dublin, where he boarded the first train to Belfast in Northern Ireland. To his surprise, his superiors were far from pleased when he reported at his base and he was quickly sent back across the border to the internment camp.

It seems like the emphasis was on whether the escape came about from (perceived) Irish apathy or as a "legitimate" escape attempt. The Brits would return a prisoner who violated the terms of their day parole, but not those who legitimately escaped.

My favourite trivia on this topic is an interesting take on neutrality. POWs - generally shipwrecked sailors or downed airmen - were treated pretty well. Which makes sense, they weren't POWs as we'd usually think of them, but just that Ireland wasn't handing combatants back.

As part of being treated pretty well, they were allowed out on day release, and able to cycle in to town. Well, you can cycle to the UK (NI) from the freestate, but you can't cycle to Germany ..

The literary critic Frank Kermode spent a while in Iceland during WW II Royal Navy service. His memoir Not Entitled gives an interesting picture of his time there.

I think there is being unaware the British were coming, and being "unaware". It was pretty inevitable they would be invaded due to the strategic position

I did ask an Icelander about this. We were on one of those walking tours, and the topic came up - and I have to admit I was almost entirely unaware of this. (As a brit who travels, the topic is a familiar unfamiliarity, if that makes sense.) I was aware of the famous greenland-iceland-uk "gap", but less aware that they were technically unwilling participants.

His take on it was that they knew fine well they were going to be invaded by someone, due to their position. This GIUK gap was very strategic in creating a border between the North Sea (which Germany has a coast on) and the Atlantic (which they didn't until Vichy France).

So while we weren't invited, we weren't unexpected, and being invaded by the brits was seen as a least-worst option.

Only half way through and while it's a good read, the author does seem to neglect to mention that Iceland eagerly deported fleeing Jewish refugees back to Nazi occupied countries, and demanded that America stop sending over black servicemen. Icelanders may not have been up to the mythical standards of purity envisaged by the Nazis, but that doesn't mean there wasn't an overlap with their sense of racial superiority.

Usually I'm not that bothered about being downvoted. But for this - seriously hn?

I tend to see posts/comments about racism be flagged/downvoted. Perhaps that is why yours was.

Why is a preference for homogeneity always equated with a sense of superiority? I'm not defending their actions - and perhaps they did indeed feel some misguided sense of superiority - but perhaps just as equally, they did not and simply preferred to be with their own?

If they simply wanted to be 'with their own' they would have rejected American servicemen with equal disdain. An Italian American is no more Nordic than an African American.

I presumed a subtler gradient in whatever confused muddle of thinking went on, literally and figuratively.

Humans are nothing if not highly flawed and somewhat tribal.

A preference for homogeneity is a great euphemism for racism. It sounds almost neutral.

I was specifically trying to be neutral to make a point about the choice of language used in the person I was responding to, yes.

I'm not advocating the thought, I just find it curious how polarised and absolutist such discussions get (as, very quickly, in the responses here) when the shoe is on one foot, versus - say, the shoes worn by tribes and cultures we in the West deem worthy of paternalist protection.

*shrug

The thing about that is that you don’t have an “your” own. The discrimination simply chooses the next target, which is why the faroes islands of Denmark is some of the most homophobic climate in Europe despite Denmark as a whole being one of the least.

It’s cute that you think there is this fantasyland where bigots just get along as long as they are left with their “own” kind, but history shows that they really don’t.

Curious, I was under the impression that the demographics of the Faroe Isands were changing dramatically due to an influx of female partners from Asia, actively 'imported'.

It's 'cute' that you choose to condescend my response with an assumption of my standing in it.

The demographic doesn’t really change with the purchased wives. At least not the way you think it does. It would if it was purchased husbands, but sexism is always going to be a stronger bond than racism.

It still isn’t fun to be a homosexual just because the hopeless bigots have given up finding wives the old fashioned way.

My apologies, I think I entirely misread your response prior and responded uselessly.

I have no response other to say "That's shit". I'm of the mind that a percentage of men who are particularly homophobic are veiling their own uncomfortable position and inability to self-express within the society they find themselves, and - unfortunately - propagate. Small Islands seem susceptible to this.

"A number was burned into every citizen’s brain: six million. Over the course of the Second World War, that’s how many Jews the Nazis had executed. Some had managed to flee, many of them to the British-controlled territory, Mandatory Palestine, and they were now fighting for a Jewish homeland in the Levant."

As per estimates Nazis executed more Slavs than Jews, yet it seemed etched in narratives like this as a Jewish tragedy, whereas in actuality it was a broader holocaust, including massive numbers of Slavs and political opponents like Communists.

Not sure why you are getting downvoted pointing out that there were multiple facets of suffering during the last century. The human-brought famines that swept through Russia/China/etc. claimed more than 100,000,000 lives in the attempt to create a stronger humanity.

> Nazis executed more Slavs than Jews

True if you include Slavs who died on the battlefield, revisionist myth if not, one designed to deflect the culpability of Slavs in countries like Lithuania, Latvia and Poland for the Holocaust. Slavs were despised by the Nazis, but not as much as Jews. Or Roma and Sinti, for that matter, who in proportion to their population size faired even worse. Socialists, Communists, Anarchists, gays, lesbians, prostitutes, autists and people with down's syndrome were also targeted by the Nazi genocide. But there was no Final Solution for the Slavs - not at least until the Nazis were done with the others first.

> True if you include Slavs who died on the battlefield

This isn’t true. Out of six milions Poles who perished during WW2 most were non-combatants. Largest causualties in single battle (Budziszyn) costed Polish c.a. 50 thousand soldiers. And there were not that many battles for Polish armies…

Yes the persecution of Slavs were more random but numbers far larger..

Around 6 million Polish citizens perished during World War II: about one fifth of the pre-war population.[1] Most were civilian victims of the war crimes and crimes against humanity during the occupation by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.[]

[] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_Pol...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_Plan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Slavic_sentiment

„All Poles will disappear from the world,” Heinrich Himmler said, It is essential that the great German people should consider it as its major task to destroy all Poles.” []

[] https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/non-jewish-victims-of-t...

This is just wrong. I would suggest reading any one volume history on WW2 from a reputable source or just auditing a class at any university. Just read one source on the conquest of Poland or a summary of Mein Kampf. The entire justification for Barbarossa was to enslave and exterminate the Slavs to create living space for Germany. It's also flat out wrong if you consider the number of civilian deaths in the USSR during the war.

It's also weird that you don't bring up Romania, the most loyal and enthusiastic Eastern European member of the Axis, when talking about Eastern European collaborators with Nazi occupation. Lithuania and Latvia are teensy. The entire Polish middle class was effectively rounded up and killed as a deliberate policy.

There's no prize in the World War 2 Victim Olympics but that is no reason to repeat extreme distortions. If anything distortions like this contribute to more contemporary Neo-Nazism than the alternative, because a lot of people whom Hitler would have considered to be mongrels or subhuman think that they would have been in the master race because they aren't familiar with what the Nazis actually wanted to achieve and how they perceived non-Aryans (by their definition).

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