The Lisbon Route: Entry and Escape in Nazi Europe. This item is unavailable.The Lisbon Route: Entry and Escape in Nazi Europe

The Lisbon Route tells of the extraordinary World War II transformation of Portugals tranquil port city into the great escape hatch of Nazi Europe. Royalty, celebrities, diplomats, fleeing troops, and ordinary citizens desperately slogged their way across France and Spain to reach the neutral nation. Here the exiles found peace and plenty, though they often faced excruciating delays and uncertainties before they could book passage on ships or planes to their final destinations. As well as offering freedom from war, Lisbon provided spies, smugglers, relief workers, military figures, and adventurers with an avenue into the conflict and its opportunities. Ronald Weber traces the engaging stories of many of these colorful transients as they took pleasure in the citys charm and benign climate, its ample food and drink, its gambling casino and Atlantic beaches. Yet an ever-present shadow behind the gaiety was the fragile nature of Portuguese neutrality, which at any moment the Axis or Allies might choose to end.

Ronald Weber is professor emeritus of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame. His books include The Lisbon Route, Hired Pens, Hemingway’s Art ofNonfiction, The Literature of Fact, and News of Paris: American Journalists in the City of Light Between the Wars, which sets the stage for Dateline―Liberated Paris. He has held research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Freedom Forum for Media Studies at Columbia University and has been a Fulbright lecturer in Europe. He lives in Valparaiso, Indiana.