The Azores in Diplomacy and Strategy, 1940-1945

摘要

This paper will examine the small but important part the Azores played in the conduct of World War II. In doing so, it will study the diplomacy surrounding the Anglo-American acquisition of military bases in the islands, their importance in the allied anti-submarine campaign and in the air ferry and transport service between the United States and the various theaters of the war. A less patient and more reckless manner in obtaining the bases would have damaged the military position of Great Britain and the United States in 1941, morally discredited the allied cause in 1943, and embittered relations between Portugal and the United States to the detriment of American postwar policy. The reasons for acquiring bases in the Azores during the war influenced the United States to retain them after the conflict. In the postwar period criticism of the Portuguese colonial empire in Africa was muted because the Pentagon feared the loss of its facilities if the State Department too vigorously protested Portuguese policies there. Thus, political accommodation to Salazar in return for military access to the Azores in the fifties and sixties hampered America's ability to compete with the Soviets for influence in sub-Saharan Africa in the seventies.