What if: British plan to invade Ireland in 1940 Churchill had many plans during World War II, including a preventive war with the Soviet Union after the fall of Nazi Germany-as did every other leader, but while we now about the German plan to invade Ireland during World War II in Operation Green, it seems that Churchill also had made a plan to invade Ireland as in 1940, he was urged to invade Ireland by Northern Ireland Prime Minister Lord Craigavon, AKA James Craig, a rock ribbed unionist, who believed that Eamon De Valera, the Irish prime minister, had fallen under Nazi sway and a crossborder invasion was needed to remove him and thus he urged Churchill to send British troops composed chiefly of Scottish and Welsh divisions to install a military governor for the whole of Ireland with his HQ in Dublin who would secure the valuable naval bases along the Irish coastline. Craigavon also told Churchill that distributing propaganda leaflets in Gaelic and English should be used to persuade the Irish that the Scottish and Welsh divisions were there to defend them. Churchill did not do much at first with this invasion idea but later prepared detailed plans for an invasion of southern Ireland. Field Marshal Montgomery stated in his memoirs: “I was told to prepare plans for the seizure of Cork and Queenstown in southern Ireland so the harbors could be used as naval bases.” Any invasion of Ireland by Scottish and Welsh divisions would be over quickly with them being able to take control over the country with out much resistance, but for the IRA this would an absolute gift who would have launched waves after wave of guerrilla attacks. “Occupying Ireland would have been an extremely messy and costly undertaking.” Also attempting to “camouflage” a British invasion by using Scottish or Welsh divisions would have backfired as “Many of the Black and Tans, the British auxiliaries sent to suppress Irish independence, were Scots and they had an appalling reputation”. In the end this plan was never implemented, Ireland stayed neutral throughout the war, but Irish prime minister De Valera did offend London by offering his condolences to the German ambassador in Dublin on the death of Hitler.