Portugal during World War II
Upon the start of World War II in 1939, the Portuguese Government announced on 1 September that the 600-year-old Anglo-Portuguese Alliance remained intact, but that since the British did not seek Portuguese assistance, Portugal was free to remain neutral in the war and would do so. In an aide-mémoire of 5 September 1939, the British Government confirmed the understanding. As Hitler's occupation swept across Europe, neutral Portugal became one of the Continent's last escape routes. Portugal managed to remain neutral throughout the war despite extraordinary pressures from both sides, notably over the strategically located Azores islands and over the wolfram (tungsten) trade.
Portugal during World War II
Historian Carlton Hayes, American Ambassador in Spain during the war, writes of a "prodigious number of refugees", who began pouring into Spain in November and December 1942. Most were Frenchmen, half starved, without money or clothes, and Hayes writes of the decisive intervention of the Ambassador Pedro Teotónio Pereira in favour of 16,000 refugees of French military refugees who were trying in 1943 to get from Spain to North Africa in order there to join the Allied forces. In that group were also included Polish, Dutch and Belgians, most of whom were soldiers or would-be soldiers. According to Hayes the Poles in particular were destined to perform brilliant feats in the later Italian campaign.