Neill Lochery
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 Europeâ€™s 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 Lisbonâ€™s 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Portuguese contacts, access to records recently uncovered from Portuguese secret police and banking archives, and other unpublished documents to offer a revelatory portrait of the Warâ€™s back stage.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 countryâ€™s emergence as a prosperous European Union nation would be financed in part, it turns out, by a cache of Nazi gold.
History,Nonfiction,Cultural,Portugal,War,World War II,War,Politics,History,European History,Spy Thriller,Espionage,Literature,20th Century,Military,Military History
Lisbon: War in the Shadows of the City of Light, 1939-1945