Ireland, Germany and the Nazis: Politics and diplomacy, 1919-1939

This book offers a sustained study of Ireland’s relations with Germany from the early 1920s to the outbreak of the Second World War, treating them as a lens on the maturation of Irish diplomacy and small‑state strategy in a turbulent European system. It reconstructs Irish perceptions of Weimar Germany, the rise of Nazism and the appeasement crisis, and shows how Versailles, reparations, disarmament and collective security debates were filtered through the priorities of a state still preoccupied with consolidating independence from Britain. Using Irish, British and German archives, the study distinguishes carefully between inter‑state relations and formal diplomacy, and evaluates the performance of Ireland’s representatives in Berlin – Binchy and Bewley – as they navigated ideological polarisation, anti‑communism, anti‑Semitism and the constraints of neutrality. The book argues that Irish–German relations were more complex than later myths of “pro‑fascist” Ireland suggest, revealing instead a cautious, often ambiguous small‑state response to the emergence of Hitler’s Reich and to the collapse of the League of Nations order.