ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the relations between Portugal and Nazi Germany, focusing on scientific exchange and knowledge transfer in the field of genetics and adopting a transnational approach to the complex history of German–Portuguese involvement. Portugal had lived under a dictatorship since 1926 when a military coup d’état toppled the First Republic. Fascist Portugal was susceptible to the promises of eugenics or racial biology to “improve” the population. A. Quintanilha’s internship in Germany thus helped to establish genetics in Portugal. This coincided with the introduction of the subject for the first time in the curricula of Portuguese biology course in 1929. The social consequences that the acquired knowledge in this field has given rise to can be perfectly appreciated from the heated controversy that their application in the case of Man has raised. As the Nazis came to power in Germany and Salazar in Portugal, relations between the two countries became more intense economically as well as ideologically.
