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Lisbon: War In The Shadows Of The City Of Light, 1939-45 (2011)

by Neill Lochery(Favorite Author)

3.38 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1586488791 (ISBN13: 9781586488796)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

PublicAffairs

review 1: I enjoyed this book, which gives some insight into parts of Portuguese and WW2 history that is normally not covered in the history books. The book is mostly a portrait of the Portuguese leader/dictator Salazar, and for me this was the most interesting part as I've found it quite hard to get a grasp of how life in Portugal under Salazar really were. In this book, the morally doubtful position of trying to keep Portugal out of the war at any cost (while trying to maximize wartime profits) is studied thoroughly, but at the same time Salazar the person comes out as a real human being and not the cartoon right-wing dictator we would normally assume a WW2 right-wing fascist leader to be. It seems while Salazar certainly shared fascist disdain for liberal democracies, freedom of ... morespeech, capitalism, socialism, etc - he had few tendencies towards persecuting jews and didn't share any appetite for territorial conquest with fellow fascist leaders such as Hitler, Mussolini or Franco. He seemed more intent to just conserve Portugal in time and keep what empire was left - surely a disastrous policy in the long term but at least one that kept Portugal out of the war.the other side of this book which I found make the book more accessible is the lighthearted storytelling about Lisbon during the war. There are a lot of anecdotes about the life of refugees that passed through wartime Lisbon Max Ernst, Arthur Koestler, Peggy Guggenheim etc), the spy war that took place here (Graham Greene and Ian Fleming served here during the war), and local history like the public works in Lisbon during the war, the fair at Belem in 1940, the building of the National Stadium etc, all of which made the book worthwhile for someone like me who spend a lot of time in the city and who try to make sense of it.
review 2: I found this read very interesting as to Salazar, The Prime Minister of Portugal, and his ability to keep Portugal out of WWII. With German forces in France, Spain leaning towards the Axis powers, and an alliance with Britain going back centuries, PM Salazar had many "irons in the fire", and his constant juggling of these "irons" to keep Portugal neutral was a tremendous feat in itself. All in all I thought it was a very good read as to the trouble a country had to endure to remain neutral during WWII, especially a country on continental Europe less

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