Salazar's a somewhat unique figure in the history of 20th Europe. He was originally an economics professor by training, although he was educated by priests and nuns and considered becoming a priest at one point. The first Portuguese Republic was tremendously unstable, it say 9 presidents and 44 prime ministers in about 16 years. Salazar stayed on as finance minister for many of the governments. When Salazar took power his ability to balance the budget, expand education, and get the economy on track was his main selling point for the Portuguese public.In some cases it didn't actually need out-and-out fascism to replace liberalism. Salazar's Catholic Corporate State, for example.
He supported the Spanish nationalists due to his fears of a communist invasion of Portugal if the republicans won, to the point where Lisbon was known as the nationalists' port and he received an award from Franco's government. However Salazar received massive positive coverage from Anglo-American journalists and diplomats for his decision to reaffirm the Anglo-Portuguese alliance, keep Iberia neutral, and provide transit and shelter for as many as a million war refugees.
Salazar was one of the only European leaders to predict that Germany would eventually lose as early as 1939, and he was also deeply perturbed by nazism's neopagan and anti-christian tendencies for ideological reasons as an observant Catholic. The Estado Novo was a relatively enlightened authoritarian regime in the 1930s, but it's stubborn refusal to even admit it was a colonial empire made it seem like a dinosaur by the '60s and '70s.
Last edited: