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Title: Lisbon

Subtitle: War in the Shadows of the City of Light, 19391945

Author: Neill Lochery

Narrator: Robin Sachs

Format: Unabridged

Length: 8 hrs and 35 mins

Language: English

Release date: 11-01-11

Publisher: Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Ratings: 4 of 5 out of 86 votes

Genres: History, 20th Century

Publisher's Summary:

Throughout the Second World War, Lisbon was at the very center of the worlds attention and was the only European city in which both the Allies and the Axis powers openly operated. Portugal was frantically trying to hold on to its self-proclaimed wartime neutrality but in reality was increasingly caught in the middle of the economic, and naval, wars between the Allies and the Nazis. The story is not, however, a conventional tale of World War II in that 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. It is the story of how a relatively poor European country not only survived the war physically intact but came out of it in 1945 much wealthier than it had been when war broke out in 1939. Portugals emergence as a prosperous European Union nation would be financed in part, it turns out, by a cache of Nazi gold.

During the war, Lisbon was a temporary home to much of Europes exiled royalty, over one million refugees seeking passage to the US, and to 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Portuguese contacts, records recently uncovered from Portuguese secret police and banking archives, and other unpublished documents to offer a revelatory portrait of the wars backstage.

Critic Reviews:

As interested as history readers may be in the spying, the economic war over tungsten and Allied demands for an Azores base dominate this history. A productive archival sleuth, Lochery makes original contributions to the literature of neutrality in WWII." (

Booklist)

Members Reviews:

Expostiion of Little Known Story

I didnt know much (well truthfully nothing) about the role that Portugal played in the Second World War when I opened Lisbon: War in the Shadows of the City of Light, 1939-45. I found Neil Locherys book both engaging, informative, and entertaining. In this volume, Lochery (While Blame Israel 2011; View from the Fence 2006) tells the story of how dictator Antonio Salazar kept Portugal neutral in WWII and left his country relatively intact after the conflict. I found insights into how Salazar dealt with day-to-day management of the country intriguing. Anecdotes revealing how Salazar made decisions and implemented policies are particularly interesting. Certainly, Salazar was a gifted leader in this context. I would have appreciated more discussion of fascism in this context and how Salazar fit into that era. Perhaps Lochery has another book which will shed more light. At any rate, I was well rewarded by reading this book.