Lisbon: War in the Shadows of the City of Light, 1939-45

Lisbon: War in the Shadows of the City of Light, 1939-45 by Lochery, Neill. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9781586488796.

Lisbon had a pivotal role in the history of World War II, though not a gun was fired there. The only European city in which both the Allies and the Axis power operated openly, it was temporary home to much of Europes exiled royalty, over one million refugees seeking passage to the U.S., and a host of spies, secret police, captains of industry, bankers, prominent Jews, writers and artists, escaped POWs, and black marketeers. An operations officer writing in 1944 described the daily scene at Lisbons airport as being like the movie “Casablanca,” times twenty. In this riveting narrative, renowned historian Neill Lochery draws on his relationships with high-level Portuguese contacts, access to records recently uncovered from Portuguese secret police and banking archives, and other unpublished documents to offer a revelatory portrait of the Wars back stage. And he tells the story of how Portugal, a relatively poor European country trying frantically to remain neutral amidst extraordinary pressures, survived the war not only physically intact but significantly wealthier. The countrys emergence as a prosperous European Union nation would be financed in part, it turns out, by a cache of Nazi gold.