West Germany and the Portuguese Dictatorship, 1968–1974: Between Cold War and Colonialism

Abstract

Reviews 251 Rui Lopes, West Germany and the Portuguese Dictatorship, 1968–1974: Between Cold War and Colonialism (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). xi + 269 pages. Index. Print and e-book. Reviewed by Paulo de Medeiros (University of Warwick) In spite of enormous challenges still facing most sectors, Portugal appears to have snapped out of the spiralling destructive race to the bottom that threatened to reverse many of the gains of thirty years of democracy as forced regimes of austerity held it in an asphyxiating grip. The strangeness of Portugal’s current situation is captured in the editorial article of the most recent issue of the New Left Review (106, July–August 2017). Under the title of ‘Luso-Anomalies’ Daniel Finn sets out a sharp and succinct analysis of just how anomalous the Portuguese situation is in light of the non-abating malaise of European affairs. He writes: Since the end of 2015, Portugal has been the scene of an unusual political drama. After failing to win a majority in parliament, the country’s longestablished centre-left machine rejected the offer of a ‘grand coalition’ with its conservative rival to implement the demands of Brussels and Frankfurt. Straying from the beaten path of European social democracy, the Portuguese Socialist Party came to an arrangement instead with radical-left forces of the kind ostracized everywhere else in the EU. [...] Dismissed by hostile critics as a rickety geringonça (‘contraption’), the alliance between the Socialists and Portugal’s radical left has confounded predictions that it would collapse in a matter of months. [The Prime Minister António] Costa’s own approval ratings have soared, along with those for his party, in pointed contrast with the fiasco of Hollande, the bubble of Renzi and the capitulation of Tsipras. (p. 5) Not since 1974 and the Carnation Revolution that ushered in a return to democratic rule and decolonization has such analytical attention and (guarded) optimism been lavished on Portugal by academics who do not specialize in Portuguese affairs. Cautious (and realist) as Finn is, his branding of the Portuguese present situation as ‘Luso-Anomalies’ is radically different from what would have been understood by such an epithet before 1974, as Portugal endured one of the longest periods of oppression in Europe under the regime headed initially by Salazar and then passed on to Marcello Caetano. When the army finally put an end to that long night of fascism that lasted for almost fifty years, Portugal had become an almost intolerable anomaly in Western Europe. Rui Lopes’s clear and painstakingly documented study takes us back to that time as it examines in detail the troubled relationship between Portugal and West Germany (the FRG) in the last phase of Portugal’s desperate attempt to hold on to its African colonies and what remained of its deluded and dangerous imperial fantasies. Central to its argument is the ambivalent and ambiguous position Bonn took towards Portugal. While Portugal was a key NATO ally, whose strategic position — and especially its concession of the Reviews 252 Lajes airbase in the Azores — guaranteed its support from other Western European countries, its intransigent, anachronistic, and destructive decision to hold on to the colonies was a serious problem for countries whose own views on colonialism were, at least publicly, sharply different. The period analysed by Lopes is especially important, as the succession of Salazar by Caetano had signalled a promised liberalization of the regime that in effect never came to pass, as Portugal only expanded its war efforts in Africa. Lopes does take into account nuances and differences in the foreign policy of the several nations that were crucial for sustaining Portugal at the time, besides West Germany: France, the United Kingdom, and the USA. His focus on West Germany, however, is crucial: not only was West Germany then still just one generation removed from the horrors of WWII, Hitler, and the Holocaust, it was a polity that had to deal with its other half, the GDR, both as a threat and as the object of a desire for eventual reunification. Indeed, some of the finest work done by Lopes concerns the careful unravelling of the subtle shifts in the relation between the two...