Lisbon and World War II
Belgian newspapers of 23 June 1940 reported that the Duke of Windsor, (former King Edward VIII of the United Kingdom) had arrived in Madrid. There he stayed at the Ritz hotel. Later the Duke of Windsor would travel to Lisbon. Lisbon immediately took my interest, because it is one of my favourite cities. Suddenly I wanted to know more about the history of Lisbon during World War II. This turned out into a very interesting history, as you'll read in the next chapters of this blog post. Some history of Portugal In 1939, Portugal was ruled by António de Oliveira Salazar, the man who in 1933 had founded the Estado Novo the New State. When Nazi Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, the Portuguese Government announced that the 550-year old Anglo-Portuguese Alliance remained intact, but since the United Kingdom did not seek for Portuguese assistance, the country was free to remain neutral in the war and it did so. When Hitler and his Nazi's occupied Europ