Abstract
In Argentina, the educated common wisdom, if there is such a thing, assumes that during the Second World War the country took an increasingly nationalistic attitude, was uncooperative with the Allied powers, showed strong sympathies with Germany, harboured German spies — and towards the end, Nazi refugees and Nazi monies — collided with the USA in a senseless fight, and finally ended up with a vernacular Fascist regime that lasted for the first ten of the post-war years. This version would single out Argentina as one of the countries which, like Austria in Europe, toyed with Nazism, but has scarcely carried out a self-critical introspection of her sorry past. According to this view, Argentina’s relative international ostracism at least until the 1960s, coupled with a strong dislike of her by ‘lovers of freedom’, Allied sympathisers and Americans in particular, has been well deserved. Moreover, in this principled version no substantial difference is seen in the basic attitudes and perceptions of the two major allied countries, which throughout this period had been very similar as far as their policies towards Argentina were concerned. This is the preferred version of the more liberal-minded, USA-oriented, anti-Peronist sectors of the Argentine ‘intelligentsia’. These views have fed back and confirmed those of their counterparts in other parts of the world, particularly in the USA.
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Notes and References
A. Whitaker, Argentina (New Jersey: 1964), T. McGann, Argentina, the United States and the Inter-American System, 1880–1914 (Cambridge, Mass.: 1957) and Argentina, The Divided Land (Princeton: 1964); H. Peterson, Argentina and the United States, 1810–1960 (New York: 1964).
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H.S. Ferns, Argentina (London: 1966); R.A. Humphreys, Latin America and the Second World War, vol. 1, 1939–42; vol. 2, 1942–5 (London: 1981).
Cordell Hull, Memoirs (New York: 1948).
Sir David Kelly, The Ruling Few (London: 1952).
J. Tulchin, World War I and United States Policy Towards Latin America (New York: 1971).
E. May in J. Cotler and R. Fagen (eds), Latin America and the United States, Changing Political Realities (London: 1976).
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J. Fodor and A. O’Connell, ‘La Argentina y la economía atlántica en la primera mitad del siglo XX’, Desarrollo Económico, 1973; J. Fodor, ‘Argentina’s Nationalism, Myth or Reality?’, in G. di Tella and R. Dornbusch (eds), The Political Economy of Argentina, 1946–83 (London: 1989).
A. O’Connell, ‘Argentina into the Depression’, in R. Thorp (ed.), Latin America in the 1930s (London: 1984) and ‘Free Trade in One (Primary Producing) Country’, in G. di Tella and D.C.M. Platt, The Political Economy of Argentina, 1880–1945 (London: 1986). See also S.C. de Astelarra, ‘La Argentina y la rivalidad comercial entre los EEUU e Inglaterra, 1899–1929’, Desarrollo Económico, no. 92, January–March 1984.
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See my own interpretation, G. di Tella, Argentina Under Perón, 1973–76 (London: 1983).
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G. di Tella, ‘Rents, Quasi-Rents, and Normal Profits — The Argentine Case’, in D.C.M. Platt and G. di Tella, Argentina, Australia and Canada (London: 1985).
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See for example, M. Gilbert (ed.), A Century of Conflict (London: 1976), especially Mac Beloff’s contribution, ‘The Myth of the Special Relationship’; also D. Reynolds, The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance 1937–40: A Study in Competitive Cooperation (London: 1981).
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Some place the beginning of the decline of Great Britain in the last decades of the nineteenth century. See, among others, E.J. Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire (London: 1968).
D.C. Watt, Replacing John Bull: America in Britain’s Place, 1900–75 (Cambridge: 1984), chapter 2.
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See A. O’Connell, ‘Free Trade in One (Primary Producing) Country’.
See for example, R. Scalabrini Ortiz, La política británica en el Río de la Plata (Buenos Aires: 1965) where even if the US connection was not entirely exempt from criticism, the emphasis was on the British connection.
See O’Connell, ‘Argentina into the Depression’.
See the paper by Fodor ‘Argentina’s Nationalism’, and the Fodor-O’Connell controversy with P. Alhadeff in Desarrollo Económico, no. 99, October–December 1986.
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The intensity of Argentina’s efforts to export to the USA is indeed the best line of defence of the Roca-Runciman pact, which in this interpretation would have been signed so as to buy time while export diversification took place. For a positive view of Argentina’s efforts to export to the USA, see Tulchin, World War I.
The US and Great Britain exported essentially different kinds of industrial products to Argentina. Britain exported traditional consumer goods such as textiles, while the USA exported new goods, such as automobiles, and capital goods: see de Astelarra, ‘La Argentina’.
S. Hilton, Brazil and the Great Powers (New York: 1978).
R. Newton, ‘The US, the German Argentines and the Fourth Reich’, HAHR, 1984 and Chapter 7 in this book.
R. Potash, The Army and Politics in Argentina, 1928–45 (California: 1969).
A. Rouquié, Poder Militar y Sociedad Política en la Argentina (Buenos Aires: 1981).
See Potash, Army and Politics.
See Fodor, in di Tella and Platt, The Political Economy of Argentina.
G. di Tella, ‘La Argentina económica, 1943–82’, Criterio, December 1982.
Hilton, Brazil and the Great Powers and in Chapter 8 in this book.
See C. Escudé, La Argentina versus las grandes potencias (Buenos Aires: 1986).
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© 1989 Guido di Tella and D. Cameron Watt
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di Tella, G. (1989). Argentina Between the Great Powers, 1939–46: A Revisionist Summing-up. In: di Tella, G., Watt, D.C. (eds) Argentina between the Great Powers, 1939–46. St Antony’s/Macmillan Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10977-7_9
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