Joseph Walshe

Irish civil servant

Joseph (Joe) Walshe (2 October 1886 – 6 February 1956) was an Irish civil servant and diplomat. As Secretary of the Department of External Affairs of the Irish Free State from 1923 to 1946, he was the department's most senior official.

Walshe was born in the largely agricultural and coal mining region of Killenaule, County Tipperary in 1886. In 1893 he joined the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) as a novice. Two years later he was sent by them to study in the Netherlands with exiled French members of the order. Walshe returned to Ireland where he studied at Mungret College, County Limerick, and began teaching at the prestigious Jesuit run boarding school of Clongowes Wood. He left the order in 1916 due to illness, before studying for a general law degree at University College Dublin. He went on to obtain a master's degree in French.

Having completed his studies, Walshe went on holidays to France where he met with Seán T. Ó Ceallaigh, whom he had known at the University.</blockquote>

On 21 June 1940, Walshe sent Éamon de Valera a memo entitled 'Britain's Inevitable Defeat'. He argued that 'Neither time nor gold can beat Germany' and that Britain would swiftly be forced to submit by German bombing. On 2 May 1945, he and Taoiseach Éamon de Valera visited Hempel at home in Dún Laoghaire to express the Irish Government's official condolences on the suicide of Adolf Hitler. However, Walshe strongly advised De Valera not to sign the book of condolences. He served as Ambassador to the Holy See from 1946 to 1954.