Irish Republican Army and Sinn Féin , 1922 In 1917, O'Duffy joined the
Irish Volunteers and took an active part in the
Irish War of Independence, after that organisation became the
Irish Republican Army (IRA). He rose rapidly through the ranks. He started as the Section Commander of the
Clones Company, then
Captain, then
Commandant and finally appointed
Brigadier in 1919. One year later, Collins described O'Duffy as "the best man in Ulster". O'Duffy's senior involvement in the GAA and knowledge of Monaghan from his job as a surveyor proved invaluable for organisation and recruitment. In 1918 O'Duffy became secretary of Sinn Féin's north Monaghan area council. On 14 September 1918 he and
Daniel Hogan were arrested after a GAA match and charged with "illegal assembly". He was imprisoned in
Belfast Prison and released on 19 November 1918. On 15 February 1920, he (along with
Ernie O'Malley) was involved in the first capture of a
Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC) barracks by the IRA in Ballytrain, in his native Monaghan. The raid boosted local IRA recruitment, shook RIC morale and resulted in the closure of many barracks in rural Monaghan. O'Duffy was once again arrested and imprisoned in Belfast Prison, where he went on hunger strike. He was released in June and arranged which Sinn Féin candidates would stand in Monaghan during the
1920 Irish local elections. O'Duffy's brigade started raiding the homes of Protestants for arms, increasing sectarian tensions. The raids were not necessarily targeting Protestants but unionists as
Fearghal McGarry writes "the raids were also motivated by sectarian tensions and the Volunteers’ resentment of Protestant support for the authorities: ‘They gave information concerning the IRA to Crown forces and maintained a most hostile attitude to everything republican.’" The raids were immensely unpopular even amongst the volunteers and "Local Protestants, many of them isolated in rural nationalist areas, were outraged....In contrast, one Protestant, whose ‘dog was very friendly with the raiders’ received a polite apology for the disturbance, while another paid ‘tribute to the pleasant way that the raiders visited him. They came and parted on the happiest terms.’" Armed Orangemen began parading the roads of Unionist areas and tit-for-tat killings occurred in reprisal for IRA casualties incurred during raids. He supported the Belfast Boycott and his brigade began harassing of Protestant stores, burning delivery vans from Belfast, raiding trains carrying northern goods and sabotaging rail tracks. O'Duffy became more ruthless in 1921, intensifying attacks on British forces and executions of suspected informers and other opponents of the IRA. When a Protestant trader named George Lester held up and searched two boys he suspected of being dispatch carriers for the IRA in February 1921, O'Duffy ordered his death. Lester was shot but survived his injury. In retaliation, the
B Specials invaded
Rosslea on 23 February and sacked the Catholic part of the town. One month later the IRA, commanded by O'Duffy, raided the town in reprisal, burning fourteen houses and killing three Protestants, two of them B Specials. In March 1921, he was made commander of the IRA's 2nd Northern Division but was unpopular with the ordinary
Volunteers due to his "...high handed attitude, self-promotion, frequent complaints of local incompetence and general lack of camaraderie." . On 5 April 1921 O'Duffy ordered that all armed patrols were to be attacked. IRA units across Tyrone carried out attacks to include Carrickmore (two Constables were severely wounded),
Mountfield (a six-hour attack of the barracks),
Pomeroy, Coalisland and
Dromore (which led to reprisals). The RIC suffered a total of 10 members wounded in that nights operations. In April and May 1921 three raids on barracks and 13 ambushes were reported.
Charlie Daly took command of the 2nd Northern Division in May 1921. Following the Truce with the British in July 1921, he was sent to
Belfast. After the rioting known as
Belfast's Bloody Sunday, he was given the task of liaising with the British to try to maintain the Truce and defend Catholic areas against attack. During this time he gained the nickname "Give 'em the lead" after delivering a belligerent speech in South
Armagh threatening that if unionists "decided they were against Ireland and against their fellow countrymen" the IRA would "have to use the lead against them". He was Director of Organisation in
Ulster and Chief
Liaison officer for Ulster at the time the treaty was signed. See
The Troubles in Ulster (1920–1922) He became director of the army in 1921. In May 1921 he was returned as a
Sinn Féin TD for the
Monaghan constituency to the
Second Dáil. He was re-elected at the
1922 general election. In January 1922 he became
IRA Chief of Staff, replacing
Richard Mulcahy. O'Duffy was the youngest general in Europe until Spanish general
Francisco Franco was promoted to that rank.
Civil War General and Garda Síochána , In 1921 he supported the
Anglo-Irish Treaty, being pessimistic about the IRA's chances should the war resume and seeing the treaty as a stepping stone to a republic.
Frank Aiken, a future military and political opponent, stated that from the signing of the treaty to the attack on the Four Courts in June 1922, O'Duffy did Herculean work for the pro-treaty cause. Further, Aiken felt that without those endeavours, aided by Mulcahy and
Eoin MacNeill, the Civil War would not have taken place. On 14 January, Dan Hogan was arrested in
Derry by the B Specials. In response, O'Duffy proposed the kidnapping of a hundred prominent Orangemen in
Fermanagh and
Tyrone to Collins. The raid was executed on 7 February. On 22 April, O'Duffy accused
Liam Lynch's 1st Southern Division of retaining arms intended for the Northern IRA. Lynch in turn blamed O'Duffy for the arms not reaching the north. He served as a general in the
National Army and was given control of the South-Western Command. He was also a vocal opponent of alcohol in the force, instructing Gardaí to avoid it in his first public address as Garda Commissioner. He encouraged Garda members to join the
Pioneer Total Abstinence Association of the Sacred Heart. Although Garda were not allowed to wear pins on their uniform, O'Duffy made an exception for the Pioneer pin. In 1924 during the
Irish Army Mutiny he was appointed as General Officer Commanding of the
Irish Army, holding both roles until 1925. O'Duffy refused the offer of another position of equivalent rank in the public service.
Ernest Blythe said many years later that Cosgrave had become so alarmed by O'Duffy's conduct that had he returned to power he would have also sacked O'Duffy as De Valera had done. However O'Duffy's dismissal was criticised in the Dáil at the time by Cumann na nGaedheal politicians.
Leader of the Blueshirts In July 1933 O'Duffy, urged by Blythe and
Thomas F. O'Higgins, became leader of the
Army Comrades Association, an organisation set up to protect
Cumann na nGaedheal public meetings, which had been disrupted under the slogan "No Free Speech for Traitors" by
Irish Republican Army members newly confident after the elections. O'Duffy and many other conservative elements within the
Irish Free State began to embrace fascist ideology, which was in vogue at that time and O'Duffy was seen to be an ideal choice to lead the Blueshirts as he was considered charismatic, skilled in organising and also untainted by association with the failures of the previous
Cumann na nGaedheal government. O'Duffy was approved as leader of the ACA on 20 July. He soon changed the name of this new movement to the National Guard. An admirer of the Italian leader
Benito Mussolini, O'Duffy and his organisation adopted outward symbols of European fascism such as the straight-arm
Roman salute and a distinctive blue uniform. It was not long before they became known as the
Blueshirts, similar to the Italian Blackshirts and the German Brownshirts. O'Duffy established a weekly newspaper, the Blueshirt, and published a new constitution that promoted corporatism, Irish unification and opposition to "alien" control and influence. In July 1933, O'Duffy announced plans for a parade by the Blueshirts in Dublin to commemorate Michael Collins,
Arthur Griffith, and Kevin O'Higgins. An annual march to Leinster Lawn to commemorate the three pro-Treaty nationalists had been held until Fianna Fáil came to power in 1932. On 11 August, de Valera reinstated the
Constitution (Amendment No. 17) Act 1931, banned the parade and placed Gardaí outside of key locations. 48 hours before the planned march, 200 men were recruited into an auxiliary special branch of the police soon nicknamed the Broy Harriers. To circumvent this ban the movement once again adopted a new name, this time styling itself the League of Youth. In 1933 a group of Irish republicans, one member of which was
Dan Keating, planned to assassinate O'Duffy in
Ballyseedy,
County Kerry, while he would be on his way to a meeting. A man was sent to Limerick to find out which car O'Duffy would be travelling in but the man purposely gave false information and O'Duffy escaped. During the early stages of the
Second Italo-Ethiopian War in 1935, O'Duffy offered
Benito Mussolini the service of 1000 Blueshirts because he believed the war represented the struggle between civilisation and barbarism. On 18 September, in an interview he said that the Blueshirts were volunteering to fight "not for Italy or against Abyssinia, but for the principle of the
corporate system" against which "the forces of both
Marxism and of
capitalism" were ranged. O'Duffy and some of his men also made an appearance at the
1934 International Fascist conference in
Montreux where he argued against antisemitism, telling the conference that they had "no Jewish problem in Ireland" and that he "could not subscribe to the principle of the persecution of any race". Upon his return to Ireland, he indicated his preference for Italian fascism over German Nazism, stating: "the Nazi policy is not compatible with the corporative system." O'Duffy, though not a
TD, became the first leader, with W. T. Cosgrave serving as vice president and parliamentary leader. The National Guard, now rechristened the Young Ireland Association, was transformed from an illegal paramilitary group into the militant wing of a political party. The new party's policy document, published in mid-November 1933, sought the reunification of Ireland within the
British Commonwealth but made no mention of a corporatist parliament and committed itself to democracy. As a result, O'Duffy was forced to tone down his anti-democratic rhetoric though many of his Blueshirt colleagues continued to advocate authoritarianism. Fine Gael meetings were often attacked by IRA members and O'Duffy's touring of rural towns resulted in tensions and violence. On 6 October 1933 O'Duffy was involved in disturbances in
Tralee during which he was hit with a hammer on the head and had his car torched as he attempted to attend a Fine Gael convention. O'Duffy responded with a speech in
Ballyshannon where referred to himself as a republican and declared that "whenever Mr de Valera runs away from the Republic and arrests you Republicans, and puts you on board beds in Mountjoy, he is entitled to the fate he gave Mick Collins and Kevin O’Higgins". O'Duffy was arrested by the Gardaí several days later. He was initially released on appeal but was summoned to appear before the Military Tribunal two days later and charged with membership of an illegal organisation and incitement to murder the president of the executive council, however, they were unable to convict him of either charge. O'Duffy proved an unsuitable leader: he was a soldier rather than a politician and was temperamental. He resented Cumann na nGaedheal's drift from republicanism following Collins' death in 1922, and insisted that Fine Gael would not "play second fiddle to anybody in the matter of Nationality". O'Duffy's nationalistic views alienated ex-Unionists who had supported Cumann na nGaedheal since the civil war, alarmed pro-Commonwealth moderates in Fine Gael, and resulted in O'Duffy being made the subject of an exclusion order in
Northern Ireland. O'Duffy also clashed with his party on economic matters. Whereas Fine Gael favoured a return to
pasture farming and
free trade, O'Duffy was supportive of the experiments in
tillage and
protectionism implemented by his Fianna Fáil rivals, and was forced to attempt to compromise between the two. His Fine Gael colleagues who regarded themselves as defenders of law-and-order were embarrassed by the Blueshirts' use of violence and attacks on the Gardaí, in addition to O'Duffy's connections with foreign fascist organisations and his view of the IRA as a communist group. The cost of Blueshirt activism also began to strain the party financially. O'Duffy's approval of illegal agitation against the collection of land annuities by the government, declaration of his support for a republic and the revelation of his connections with the
British Union of Fascists and the
Fedrelandslaget were the last straws for moderates in Fine Gael. On 5 and 7 September 1934 Cosgrave,
Ned Cronin and
James Dillon met O'Duffy resulting in an agreement that O'Duffy could "deliver only carefully prepared and concise speeches from manuscripts" and give interviews "only after consultation and in writing". In response, O'Duffy resigned from the party on 18 September. After his resignation, O'Duffy denounced Fine Gael as "the pan-British party of the Free State" and claimed he resigned "because he was not prepared to lead the League of Youth with the Union Jack tied to his neck".
Spanish Civil War At first, O'Duffy announced to the press that "he was glad to be out of politics", but in October 1934 he announced his intentions to lead the Blueshirts as an independent movement. The Blueshirts split into two factions, one supporting O'Duffy and the other supporting Ned Cronin's leadership. O'Duffy and Cronin toured the country attempting to win the support of local Blueshirt branches. By 1935, the Blueshirts had disintegrated. Seeking to regain his former political influence, O'Duffy attempted to court the IRA, encouraging his followers to wear
Easter lilies and desist from informing on republicans. In June 1935, O'Duffy launched the
National Corporate Party, a fascist political party inspired by Italy's Mussolini. The following year, he organised an
Irish Brigade to fight for the
Nationalists in the
Spanish Civil War. He was motivated to do so by
Ireland's historic link with Spain, his devout anti-communism and a will to defend
Catholicism, stating "It is not a conflict between fascism and anti-fascism but between Christ and antichrist". In London in September 1936, O'Duffy met
Juan de la Cierva and
Emilio Mola, promising he would recruit an Irish contingent to fight against the Republicans. Despite the Irish Government advising against participation in the war, 700 of O'Duffy's followers went to Spain to fight on the Nationalist side. He later stated he had received over 7,000 applications but several complications meant only 700 of these made it to Spain. O'Duffy's men saw little fighting and were sent home by Nationalist leader
Francisco Franco, returning in June 1937. Franco had not been impressed by the Brigade's lack of military expertise and there were bitter arguments among O'Duffy and his officers about the direction of the Brigade. ==Later life and death==