The Neutral Powers were those countries which remained neutral throughout World War II. Some of these countries had significant land holdings abroad or held substantial economic institutions. Spain had just been through its civil war, which ended on 1 April 1939 (five months prior to the Invasion of Poland) - a war involving several countries which would become belligerents of WW II.
During World War II, these countries took no official side during the war in their hopes to avoid being attacked. However, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland all helped the Allied Powers by supplying "voluntary" brigades to Great Britain, while Spain avoided the Allies in favor of the Axis.
The Lateran Treaty signed in 1929 with Italy imposed that "The Pope was pledged to perpetual neutrality in international relations" made the Vatican City a neutral state.
Several other countries were invaded in spite of their efforts to maintain neutrality. These included Nazi Germany invading Denmark and Norway on 9 April 1940, then Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg on 10 May 1940, the same day on which the British invaded Iceland (whose occupying force was subsequently replaced by the then-neutral United States).
See also the histories of Afghanistan, Andorra, Guatemala, Liechtenstein, Saudi Arabia and Yemen during this period.
Read more about Neutral Powers: Conclusion
Famous quotes containing the words neutral and/or powers:
“The seashore is a sort of neutral ground, a most advantageous point from which to contemplate this world. It is even a trivial place. The waves forever rolling to the land are too far-traveled and untamable to be familiar. Creeping along the endless beach amid the sun-squall and the foam, it occurs to us that we, too, are the product of sea-slime.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Exploitation and oppression is not a matter of race. It is the system, the apparatus of world-wide brigandage called imperialism, which made the Powers behave the way they did. I have no illusions on this score, nor do I believe that any Asian nation or African nation, in the same state of dominance, and with the same system of colonial profit-amassing and plunder, would have behaved otherwise.”
—Han Suyin (b. 1917)