This website has been created to parallel the launch of ‘Roman imbroglio: Italy and the Irish during World War Two’. The book explores Ireland’s links to Italy in the period 1939-1945—in part using the rich, fascinating material left by the Irish minister to Rome, Michael MacWhite, but also by the Irish minister to the Vatican, TJ Kiernan, and the Italian minister in Dublin, Vincenzo Berardis.

Beyond diplomatic relations, the book relates how the hundreds of Irish citizens in Italy experienced the momentous events of 1939-1945, relying for the most part on primary material sourced in the archives of the main Irish religious orders and institutions in Rome and elsewhere.

Inevitably, there were close links between Ireland and Italy throughout World War Two—if only because of the large Irish religious communities in Rome, but also because Ireland maintained two diplomatic missions there…and Italian fascists operated in neutral Ireland throughout the conflict. 

The full range of these links has been rarely explored. And yet there are fascinating stories to be told. On the one hand, one finds Ireland’s first envoy to Rome, who ended up in an internment camp for fascists; on the other, a Rosminian priest who joined the Italian resistance and had to escape against the mountains into Switzerland. And while Italian fascist diehards continued to organise in Dublin even after the fall of Mussolini’s regime in 1943, a Dubliner joined one of Italy’s most prominent writers to organise Allied propaganda and intelligence efforts in Italy. The story of Stanislaus Joyce (brother of James), who was expelled from Trieste (twice!) by the Fascist authorities contrasts with that of a member of the fascist top brass, who found refuge in Dublin at the end of the war. 

There are other stories to be told too—among them the story of Irish efforts to hide Jews and others during the nine-month German occupation of Rome; of Monsignor Huge O’Flaherty’s escape line (and his difficult relations with the Irish minister to Rome); and of how Irish communities faced relentless Allied bombing and food shortages. Some of these stories will feature later on this web site.