Dev had good reason to be nice to Hitler’s envoy until the bitter end

NOT content with President Mary McAleese’s apology for her recent gaffe, people are now looking for an apology to Jewish people for Eamon de Valera’s condolence gesture to the German minister following the death of Hitler.

With the approach of the 60th anniversary, we are likely to hear more of this, and Sinn Féin might even try to justify their fascist tactics on the distorted premise that the Long Fellow was some kind of closet Nazi.

De Valera publicly proclaimed his determination to stay out of World War II long before the first shot was fired. Early in the hostilities he assured the British he would do what he could, short of war, to help them. He believed Britain had right on her side because Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had done "everything a man could do to prevent this tragedy".