Lisbon: war in the shadows of the city of light, 1939–45

Throughout World War II, Lisbon was at the centre of world attention. The only European city in which both the Allies and the Axis powers openly operated, it was also a temporary home to much of Europe’s exiled royalty; over one million refugees seeking passage to America; 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 Lisbon’s airport as being like the movie Casablanca, times twenty.

The story of Lisbon, therefore, is not a conventional tale of World War II — barely a shot was fired, or a bomb dropped. Instead, it is a gripping tale of intrigue, betrayal, opportunism, and double-dealing, all of which took place in the Cidade da Luz, and along its idyllic Atlantic coastline. Portugal survived the war not only physically intact but also significantly wealthier, and its emergence as a prosperous European Union nation would be financed in part, it turns out, by a cache of Nazi gold.

In this riveting narrative, renowned historian Neill Lochery draws on records recently uncovered from Portuguese secret-police and banking archives, as well as other unpublished documents, to offer a revelatory portrait of the war’s back stage.