The shocked international response to de Valera’s May 1945 condolence visit following Hitler’s suicide
For years, historians have tried to make sense of the condolence calls paid by Taoiseach de Valera and President Hyde to the German legation in Dublin after Hitler committed suicide. Did protocol really require the Irish head of State to express condolences on the death of a head of state who had perpetrated genocide and mass murder? Yanky Fachler considers whether Dev, by consistently refusing to make any moral distinction between Nazis and anti-Nazis, was guilty of downplaying the systematic genocidal nature of the Nazi project.