Irish Defences Against Green
See also: Plan WIt was anticipated that Irish forces would resist the initial invasion. Landing craft and vessels transporting the German troops were to be equipped with forward-facing guns, and invading troops were instructed to assume defensive positions as soon as they came under fire, considering retreat only in the most dire emergency.
There were gaps in the German planning; for instance the plans for the proposed incursion of Cobh (as a possible beach-head area in Green) is not accompanied by details of the 9.2 inch and 6 inch artillery defences located there. This weaponry had formed part of the defences of the Treaty Ports, which the British had handed over to Irish forces in 1938.
Green dealt only with the plan for invasion, as no details on any subjugation of the population and eventual conquest of the entire island were included. Among the Irish population, however, there was a small element of support for the Third Reich due to resentment of British rule. Sketchiness with regards to the plan has contributed to an assessment that it was more a diversionary attack than actual attempt to take over the island, although once committed it may have been hard for the German forces to withdraw.
Read more about this topic: Operation Green (Ireland)
Famous quotes containing the words irish and/or green:
“The difference of the English and Irish character is nowhere more plainly discerned than in their respective kitchens. With the former, this apartment is probably the cleanest, and certainly the most orderly, in the house.... An Irish kitchen ... is usually a temple dedicated to the goddess of disorder; and, too often, joined with her, is the potent deity of dirt.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)
“But we still remember ... above all, the cool, free aspect of the wild apple trees, generously proffering their fruit to us, though still green and crude,—the hard, round, glossy fruit, which, if not ripe, still was not poison, but New English too, brought hither, its ancestors, by ours once. These gentler trees imparted a half-civilized and twilight aspect to the otherwise barbarian land.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)