The Last of Africa's Cold War Conflicts: Portuguese Guinea and Its Guerilla Insurgency by Al J. Venter

Author:Al J. Venter [Venter, Al J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 20th Century, Africa, Cold War, Colonialism & Post-Colonialism, Communism & Socialism, History, Insurgency, Military, Political Ideologies, Political Science, Portugal
ISBN: 9781526772992
Google: 3fzsDwAAQBAJ
Amazon: B08BSTWCW2
Publisher: Pen & Sword
Published: 2020-05-30T03:00:00+00:00

General de Spínola’s early life makes for compelling reading because there was much interest, both while he was involved with the Guinea war and after the Carnation Revolution. While not directly where he was involved, it took place very much as a result of the book he wrote.

Paul Montgomery of The New York Times declared immediately after the army mutiny that ‘General Spínola was married in 1922, and is known as a family man. Observers often call him Portugal’s de Gaulle – a man of the right who can effect a disengagement from colonial ties without causing political chaos or beginning a civil war.’

In Lisbon today, curiously, the generations that followed that country’s travails in Africa continue to show interest, not only in the fighting that took place in Angola, Mozambique and Portuguese Guinea, but also in the more prominent participants, on both sides of the fence.

The son of a wealthy family, António de Spínola’s father was Inspector General of Finance and Prime Minister Salazar’s chief of staff in the Ministry of Finance. In 1920, he joined the Military College in Lisbon and enrolled at the Escola Politécnica de Lisboa and soon afterward entered the Colégio Militar, beginning a most successful army career. At the academy, the records declare that he stood out as a young and promising cavalry officer.

The late 1930s and early 1940s offered this young officer a number of opportunities – the first being, with Salazar’s blessing – he fought as a volunteer with Franco’s Fascist forces in the Spanish Civil War and received German training during the Second World War when Portugal remained neutral. It was then that he went into the Soviet Union as an observer with the German Army during the battle for Leningrad. That experience alone must have had an enormous influence in his thinking as a career military officer.

With the start of the war in Angola, he volunteered and organized Cavalry Group 345. His first mission in that territory was in the region of Bessa Monteiro and later in the border region of São Salvador do Congo where he remained on active duty until 1963. It was in Angola that Spínola appeared to have become aware that to in order to win the guerrilla struggle the solution rested largely on political issues, something he communicated to his contacts within government back home. This might have been the reason that he was called by Salazar to serve as governor and commander-in-chief of the armed forces in Portuguese Guinea, positions for which he would later be reappointed in 1972, which he did not accept due to the lack of support from the central government. During this period he continued to practise a range of initiatives in the ongoing conflict, from clandestine meetings – he secretly met with the president of Senegal, Léopold Sédar Senghor at one stage – to armed incursions within neighbouring states which included Operation Green Sea, a hugely successful maritime rescue of Portuguese troops held in the Republic of Guinea.

On 25

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.