The Irish Civil War, generally believed to have begun on June 28, 1922, and ending on 23, 1923, offers anomalies which differentiate it in key respects from comparable conflicts of the post-First World War era. These include: the absence of a clear class or urban/rural basis to delineate the divisions that led to civil war, which might explain how activists within the independence movement chose sides in a conflict in which active participation was purely voluntary; the paradox that within nine years of a crushing defeat, the losers won power peacefully under Eamon de Valera, and the Fianna Fáil party which he founded dominated the political system until the twenty-first century; the fact that civilians were very seldom the targets or victims of fatal violence; the small number of deaths overall and the very low number of female fatalities; the speed with which all anti-Treaty prisoners were released; the absence of post-conflict punishment of the losers and the fact that they were not deprived of political rights individually or collectively; the successful introduction of an unarmed national police force; and the reality that central and local administration did not collapse during the conflict.