António de Oliveira Salazar
Despite the authoritarian character of the regime, Portugal did not experience the same levels of international isolation as Spain did following World War II. Unlike Spain, Portugal under Salazar was accepted into the Marshall Plan (1947–1948) in return for the aid it gave to the Allies during the final stages of the war. Furthermore, also unlike Spain, it was one of the 12 founding members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in 1949, a reflection of Portugal's role as an ally against communism during the Cold War in spite of its status as the only non-democratic founder. In 1950, Portugal joined the European Payments Union and participated in the founding of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) in 1960 and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in 1961. It joined the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1962, and finally, Portugal signed a free trade agreement with the European Economic Community in 1972, still under the auspices of the "Estado Novo".
List of World War II films
Before the Second World War explicitly began with the Nazi German, then later Soviet (Russian) invasions of Poland in September 1939, Germany had already absorbed Austria in the Anschluß of 1938, then the Czechoslovakian lands of Bohemia and Moravia. Meanwhile, Italy, Germany and the Soviet Union were involved in the Spanish Civil War, (1936-1939), and Italy had conquered Ethiopia (1935-1936) and Albania (1939).
China had been fighting against Japan since the 1931 invasion of their northeastern province of Manchuria in a war that completely opened in 1937, called the Second Sino-Japanese War, until Japan attacked the U.S.A. at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. then the British Empire and the Dutch East Indies colonial possessions also in December 1941.