Post D-Day, with the Allies on the newly created 'Second Front' driving
fast eastwards beyond Paris, and the Russians on the 'Eastern Front'
pressing westwards, the fervour of the fanatical Fascist Nazi Regime
remained undiminished. For the Third Reich it was intolerable to believe
that they must now concede. Instead of ending the war and suing for
peace, the levels of hostility, hatred, and horror heightened, and the
brutality, viciousness, and terror increased. The resistance to the
Allied advances across Europe, first towards, then within Germany
intensified, and every inch of the Fatherland was bitterly contested.
With the Allies, in their thousands, were the Irish. A Bloody Victory
unearths these people from the corners of Irish history and transports
them back to the D-Day beaches and the bridge at Arnhem, to the frozen
landscapes at the Battle of the Bulge and the banks of the River Rhine,
to the unimaginable horrors of Bergen-Belsen and Buchenwald
concentration camps, and finally to the ruinous Battle of Berlin. There
was no one individual 'Irish narrative' in the Second World War, but
there was a narrative of Irish Individuals, and in A Bloody Victory,
Dan Harvey pays due tribute to their significant contribution.
