Lisbon : war in the shadows of the city of light, 1939-1945

Resource Information

The work Lisbon : war in the shadows of the city of light, 1939-1945 represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in San Francisco Public Library. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Audio, Nonmusical, Sounds, Music.

Label

Lisbon : war in the shadows of the city of light, 1939-1945

Title remainder

war in the shadows of the city of light, 1939-1945

Statement of responsibility

Neill Lochery

Creator

• Lochery, Neill

Contributor

• hoopla digital
• Sachs, Robin, 1951-2013

Narrator

• Sachs, Robin, 1951-2013

Subject

• Lisbon (Portugal) -- History -- 20th century
• Neutrality -- Portugal | Lisbon -- History -- 20th century
• World War, 1939-1945 -- Economic aspects -- Portugal
• World War, 1939-1945 -- Military intelligence
• World War, 1939-1945 -- Portugal | Lisbon
• World War, 1939-1945 -- Secret service
• Espionage -- Portugal | Lisbon -- History -- 20th century

Language

eng

Summary

Throughout the Second World War, Lisbon was at the very center of the world's 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. Portugal's 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 Europe's 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 Lisbon's 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 war's backstage

Accompanying matter

technical information on music

Cataloging source

Midwest

Dewey number

946.9/4209044

Form of composition

not applicable

Format of music

not applicable

Literary text for sound recordings

other

PerformerNote

Read by Robin Sachs

Target audience

adult

Transposition and arrangement

not applicable