In this connection, it is baffling that some historical literature actually portrays Portugal’s rôle in World War II in a positive light.
(Not to communists, it isn’t!)
Although the Banco de Portugal, the Portuguese central bank, has not made the task easy for historians trying to get at the truth, one salient fact has already been well established: among those countries that received shipments of looted gold from the Third Reich, Portugal ranked second only to Switzerland.
A look at the figures is sufficient corroboration.
On January 1, 1939, total Portuguese gold reserves amounted to a mere 63.4 tons; over the course of the war, these swelled by nearly 600 percent, reaching an imposing 356.5 tons as of October 31, 1945. During this period Portugal received at least 123.8 tons net in gold directly or indirectly from the Reichsbank, valued at the time at $139.9 million.[2]
[…]
By the spring of 1941, there had been two key changes. One was the Wehrmacht’s occupation of the Balkans. As a result, the Yugoslav state bank, up until then a major recipient of the looted gold, was unable to continue these services.
The second was the mammoth upsurge in the Wehrmacht’s need for finished goods and raw materials vital to the war effort—including textiles, boots, foods, and, of course, the munitions component tungsten—in preparation for the massive Russian campaign.
Since the price of tungsten on the Portuguese open market had skyrocketed by some 1,700 percent within the span of fifteen months, the German Reich was able to cover its requirements only by a huge increase in outlay. The means of payment was the gold it had seized from the central banks of Austria, Czechoslovakia, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Norway.
[…]
If Portugal had surprised observers during the war years by its ingenuity in finding loopholes in order to import [Axis] gold, the country now astounded the Allies by the hair‐splitting obstinacy with which it sought to protect its holdings of looted gold. […] The negotiations between Portugal and the Allies took a different turn. They were to drag on for another five years.
[…]
In November 1947, they gave up the original demand of 44 tons and called for a settlement of 38; soon thereafter they demanded only 21 tons. By May 1948, that figure had been slashed to only 7 tons. So while the Allies had cut their claims by 37 tons, the Portuguese were only prepared to sell some 900 kilograms in addition to the original 4 tons that had been offered.
[…]
During the Cold War Portugal’s membership in NATO and the indispensable strategic role of the Azores Islands in U.S. geopolitical planning weighed far more heavily in Washington’s considerations than the question of compensation for the gold illicitly garnered by the Portuguese.
(Emphasis added.)