Some Backstory to A Life on Water

by Timothy Paleczny

Prior to 1939, the world had to contend with the Great War, the Spanish Flu, the advance of Communism, and the Great Depression . . . before plunging back into the Second Great War. Just imagine the tumult of this time.

During this inter-war period, Portugal avoided bankruptcy and the perils of Communism, and managed to stay out of the Second Great War. These “evasions” were the work of Prime Minister António de Oliveira Salazar, the defacto dictator of the Estado Novo (New State) of Portugal.

Salazar’s efforts on two files, Wolfram and Fatima, are pertinent to A Life on Water.

Wolfram

Also known as tungsten or wolframite, wolfram is a metal extracted from rock. The Nazi war machine needed Portugal’s wolfram to strengthen steel to make artillery, tanks, and ships. Refuse Hitler access to wolfram and he would walk in and take it.

The Portuguese did not have a standing army to speak of, and the British, allied with Portugal for more than 600 years, could not open another front. To discourage Hitler from invading, Salazar and General Franco of Spain established the Iberian Pact, a treaty of non-aggression and mutual support.

Portugal had long teetered on the brink of insolvency. Salazar, who had been an Economics professor at Coimbra University, accepted an invitation to lead the government. Pragmatic, Salazar allowed the sale of wolfram to the highest bidder and invariably welcomed payments of gold bullion stamped with swastikas. Wolfram was a godsend.

Fatima

Fatima is the site of a Marian shrine, where, Catholics believe, the Virgin Mary appeared to three Portuguese children in 1917. One of her messages to the children was a warning of the dangers of Communism that had consumed Russia.

It so happened that Salazar and the Bishop of Lisbon, Cardinal Manuel Gonçalves Cerejeira, had been housemates while attending Coimbra University and remained best of friends. Between them, they controlled Church and State and worked together to resolve their common challenges. For example, they agreed on a concordat that enabled the state to avoid censure from church pulpits across the predominantly Catholic nation in exchange for funding of primary education.

Salazar and Cerejeira viewed Communism as a serious threat to both the Estado Novo and the Catholic Church. But was the Lady of Fatima’s warning of the dangers of Communism really a miracle? One character in A Life on Water, a Jew, believes it most certainly was not a miracle but a hoax.

A principal source for this backstory was
Lisbon: War in the Shadows of the City of Light, 1939-1945
by Neill Lochery, New York: Public Affairs, 2011.