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

While spared fighting during WWII, few cities saw more intrigue and espionage than Lisbon. Neutral Portugal maintained economic ties to both Axis and Allied powers, and was the world’s largest exporter of wolfram, a metal crucial to producing armaments. The capital, previously a provincial backwater, suddenly bulged with arms dealers, profiteers, opportunists, spies of every nationality, and tens of thousands of refugees, primarily Jews seeking passage to America or Palestine. Lochery, a professor of Middle Eastern studies at University College London, tells the gripping story of the city known as “Casablanca II,” which is largely the history of António de Oliveira Salazar, the tireless prime minister whose first priority was to maintain Portugal’s neutrality to avoid “economic sanctions from the Allied powers, and outright invasion by the Germans.” Lochery’s portrayal of Salazar is broadly sympathetic while not hagiographic, a corrective to the popular image of an authoritarian Franco-lite. While engrossing and rewarding, the book exhibits problems with pacing and structure, introducing characters and concepts in a pointillist fashion; in four pages, Lochery discusses an honorary degree Cambridge University bestowed on Salazar, British efforts to prevent Germany from obtaining wolfram, the prevalence of prostitution and sexually transmitted diseases, and a rally for national unity held by Salazar. (Nov.)