Abstract
This chapter sets the stage by comparing the histories and national psychologies of the two countries and emphasizing their interactions. They were intimately linked by the African slave trade. The United States rebuffed early Brazilian attempts to form an alliance, yet it intervened to defend the new republic. Comparing population distribution and transportation provides insight into control of territory. Brazil of Vargas was a dictatorship, while Roosevelt’s United States was an elected representative democracy. Although friendly there is a current of tension in their relations. During the war the American air and naval bases in the Northeast of Brazil played major roles in destroying Axis submarines in the South Atlantic and in the Allied victories in Egypt and North Africa. The Brazilian expeditionary force in the Italian campaign was a major feature of their joint war experience. Problems arose from the differing expectations of the two sides. The alliance was an important element in Brazil’s modernization and the development of its armed forces. The popular perception of World War II in Brazil has a curious poisonous undercurrent suggesting that the United States had somehow drawn Brazil into the conflict against the better judgment of Brazilian leaders. At its extreme this undercurrent alleges unbelievably that US Navy submarines sank Brazilian ships to provoke the country to enter the war.
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- 1.
For relations in the decades prior to the 1930s, see Frank D. McCann, “Brazil and the United States: Two Centuries of Relations,” in Sidnei J. Munhoz & Francisco Carlos Teixeira da Silva, Eds. Brazil-U.S. Relations in the 20th and 21st Centuries (Maringá: Editora da Universidade Estadual de Maringá, 2013), pp. 23–51.
- 2.
Leslie Bethell, “Brazil and Latin America” Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 42, No. 3 (August 2010), pp. 457–485. Darcy Ribeiro in his study of the meaning of Brazil projects its destiny as joining “with all Latin Americans in our common opposition to … Anglo-Saxon America ….” See his Brazilian People: The Formation and Meaning of Brazil (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2000), pp. 321–322.
- 3.
Ronald M. Schneider, “Order and Progress”: A Political History of Brazil (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991), pp. 20–21; Belmiro Valverde Jobim Castor, O Brasil Não É Para Amadores: Estado, Governo e Burocracia na Terra do Jeitinho (Curitiba: IBOP-Pr, 2000), pp. 46–50; and not to be missed is Roberto Da Matta, O que faz o brasil, Brasil? (Rio de Janeiro: Rocco, 1989), pp. 29, 41, 66–69.
- 4.
Lívia Barbosa, O Jeitinho Brasileiro: A Arte de ser mais iqual que os outros (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Campos, 1992), Roberto DaMatta, Prefácio, no page number, pp. 125–137.
- 5.
T. Lynn Smith, Brazil: People and Institutions (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1963), p. 490.
- 6.
Gerald Horne, The Deep South: the United States, Brazil, and the African Slave Trade (New York: New York University Press, 2007), pp. 3–4. For race in the two countries see Thomas E. Skidmore, O Brasil Visto de Fora (São Paulo: Editora Paz e Terra, 2001), pp. 101–125. For a study that analysed participation by US-built ships, the financing and organizing of their voyages see Leonardo Marques, “The Contraband Slave Trade to Brasil and the Dynamics of US Participation, 1831–1856”, Journal of Latin American Studies, Vol. 47: part 4 (November 2015), pp. 659–684.
- 7.
Joel Wolfe, Autos and Progress, The Brazilian Search for Modernity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), p. 5.
- 8.
I have described and analyzed the 1930 movement in Soldiers of the Pátria: A History of the Brazilian Army (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), pp. 259–300.
- 9.
Dutra told Hélio Silva this version in 1959; Silva, 1937: Todos os golpes se parecem, pp. 390–391; Luiz Gonzaga Novelli Junior and Mauro Renault Leite eds., Marechal Eurico Gaspar Dutra (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Nova Fronteiro, 1983), pp. 228–229.
- 10.
I have detailed the alliance among Vargas, Dutra, and Góes Monteiro in “The Military and the Dictatorship: Getúlio, Góes, and Dutra” in Jens R. Hentschke, ed. Vargas and Brazil: New Perspectives (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 109–141 and “Compromisso Among Vargas, Góis Monteiro, Dutra and the Establishment of the Estado Novo,” ACERVO, Revista do Arquivo Nacional, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Jul.–Dez. 2017), pp. 19–35. http://revista.arquivonacional.gov.br/index.php/revistaacervo/article/view/814/867.
- 11.
Theodore Roosevelt, Through the Brazilian Wilderness (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1914), p. 333.
- 12.
Eric. C. Wendelin, Memo, Division of American Republics, June 10, 1944, 832.00/5-3144, RG 59, NARA. For discussion see McCann, The Brazilian-American Alliance, 1937–1945 (Princeton University Press, 1973), pp. 327–328.
- 13.
Morris Cooke to Miguel Alvaro Ozorio de Almeida and Samuel Wainer, June 30, 1943, Cooke Papers, 0283, FDRL; for more on Cooke Mission see Cooke, Brazil on the March – A Study in International Cooperation (New York; McGraw-Hill, 1944).
- 14.
Walter N. Walmsley, DAR, December 8, 1942, 832.20/480, RG 59, NARA.
- 15.
The book came out in 1976 and the film followed in 1978.
- 16.
José Silvestre Rebello presented his credentials on May 26, 1824, and stayed in the United States until September 1, 1829. In response to Rebello’s notes of January 28 and April 6, 1825, there was Henry Clay, Secretary of State, to José Silvestre Rebello (Brazilian Charge d’ Affaires in the United States), Washington, April 13, 1825, Document 136, Willian R. Manning, Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States Concerning the Independence of the Latin-American Nations, Vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1925), pp. 233–234. Emperor Pedro I’s instruction to Rebello to seek an alliance was in Luis José Carvalho e Mello to Rebello, Rio de Janeiro, 15 de Setembro 1824, Despachos Ostensivos, 1823–1827 (444/2/28), Arquivo Histórico Itamaraty (Rio). The best study of those early years is Stanley E. Hilton, “The United States and Brazilian Independence,” in A.J. R. Russell-Wood, ed. From Colony to Nation: Essays on the Independence of Brazil (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975), pp. 109–129.
- 17.
Steven C. Topik, Trade and Gunboats: The United States and Brazil in the Age of Empire (Stanford University Press, 1996), pp. 135–177. The Empire of Brazil was overthrown by a military coup on November 15, 1889.
- 18.
E. Bradford Burns, The Unwritten Alliance: Rio-Branco and Brazilian-American Relations (NY: Columbia University Press, 1966).
- 19.
R. D. Layman, “The Brazilian Navy in the Great War,” Relevance: The Quarterly Journal of the Great War Society (Spring 1996), Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 31–33.
- 20.
For the Contestado affair and Brazil during the war, see McCann, Soldiers of the Patria: A History of the Brazilian Army, 1889–1937, pp. 121–190. For Brazil in the war, see Francisco Luiz Teixeira Vinhosa, O Brasil e a Primeira Guerra Mundial (Rio de Janeiro: Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro, 1990), pp. 99–183.
- 21.
The commander of the French army, Marshal Joffre, recommended his former chief of staff, BG Maurice Gustave Gamelin, as chief of mission. He would be best known as commander of the French army in the disastrous defeat by the German invaders in 1940.
- 22.
McCann, Soldiers of the Patria: pp. 250–251, on private and official military interests in Brazilian ties pp. 360–361.
- 23.
Estado-Maior do Exército, Relatório … 1936 … G[eneral] D[ivisão] Arnaldo de Souza Paes de Andrade (Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa do Estado-Maior do Exército, 1937), Arquivo Histórico do Exército (Rio), pp. 4–5.
- 24.
General de Divisão Francisco Ramos de Andrade Neves (Chief of Staff), Rio de Janeiro, Aug. 3, 1934: Estado-Maior do Exército, Exame da Situação Militar doBrasil (Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa do Estado-Maior do Exército, 1934), Arquivo Histórico do Exército (Rio). Quotes are from pp. 5–9.
- 25.
Hélio Silva said that this tale was spread by Axis agents to cast doubt on Brazil’s reasons for joining the conflict. The rumor’s longevity and spread is remarkable, I have been asked about it by students in various parts of Brazil. See Hélio Silva, 1942, Guerra no Continente (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Civilização Brasileira, 1972), p. 394. It is discussed on the internet, usually trying to discredit its validity; see Túlio Vilela, http://educacao.uol.com.br/historia-brasil/brasil-na-segunda-guerra-terror-no-atlantico.jhtm.
A popular magazine, Super, published a piece on Brazil and World War II “Pearl Harbor no Brasil”; some readers’ comments asserted that the United States sank the ships [“na verdade foi os EUA que atacaram o Brasil, e botaram a culpa nos nazistas” (in truth it was the United States that attacked Brazil and put the blame on the Nazis)]; see: http://super.abril.com.br/forum/Revista/Edicao-setembro2010-A-genetica-fracassou/Pearl-Harbor-no-Brasil.
However, the sinking of Brazilian ships was closely documented by the recorded testimony of survivors that the submarines were German. See detailed reports on 14 vessels in Ministério das Relações Exteriores, O Brasil e a Segunda Guerra Mundial (Rio de Janeiro: Imprensa Nacional, 1944), Vol. II, pp. 61–148. Moreover, captured German naval records regarding the attacks on the Brazilian ships are very clear: US Navy, Office of Naval Intelligence, Fuehrer Conferences on Matters Dealing with the German Navy, 1939–1945 (Washington, 1947), pp. 86, 89–90. See the “Report on a Conference between the Commander in Chief, Navy and the Fuehrer at the Berghof the afternoon of 15 June 1942” in which Hitler approved executing the submarine attacks on Brazilian shipping and ports. German sub attacks had started in February and on June 15, 1942; Hitler approved the continuation and increase of submarine attacks on Brazil to begin at the start of August. Considerable correct information is readily available in Brazil; for those who care to search the internet, see, for example, http://www.naufragiosdobrasil.com.br/2guerrasubmarinos.htm. There is an excellent analysis in the well-researched book: Vágner Camilo Alves, O Brasil e a Segunda Guerra Mundial: História de um Envolvimento Forçado (Rio de Janeiro: Editora PUC-Rio, 2002), 164–184. For the rumor, which he called “absurd historical doubt,” see pp. 180–181. The definitive study of the German submarine attacks is Durval Lourenço Pereira, Operação Brasil: O ataque alemão que mudou o curso da Segunda Guerra Mundial (São Paulo: Editora Contexto, 2015).
- 26.
Sometimes this undercurrent bubbles up in publications, for example, a book published by the state of Paraná press: Alfredo Bertoldo Klas, Verdade sobre Abetaio: drama de sangue e dor no 4o ataque da F.E.B. ao Monte Castello (Curitiba: Imprensa Oficial, 2005). The author was a lieutenant in the Brazilian Expeditionary Force’s 11th Infantry Regiment that fought in Italy. He believed that the Brazilian government provoked the German submarine attacks on Brazilian ships by allowing American air and naval bases in Northeast Brazil. He equated the Vargas dictatorial regime with “Nazism.” Throughout there is an undertone that the United States dragged Brazil into the war. In sending the FEB without sufficient training, including with little explanation of what the war was about, against “an alert and brave enemy… they [the Brazilian government] committed a crime in the name of Brazil.” [p. 237]. The importance of books such as Klas’s is that they feed rumor and myth-making in the streets. Such rumors were nourished by reputable writers such as Nelson Werneck Sodré, who in his Memórias de um Soldado (Rio: Editora Civilização Brasileiro, 1967), p. 207, incorrectly asserted that there was no proof in German archives regarding the sinkings. It is unlikely that he bothered to check those archives, which were then held in the National Archives in Washington and the Public Records Office in London. I first heard the mythical tale that the American navy had sunk the Brazilian ships from students at the Universidade Federal de Roraima in August 1998. A study of how the story was maintained for so many years would be useful.
- 27.
Partly because of the paucity of extensive research on Brazil in World War II, inaccuracies have crept into the historical literature. See Boris Fausto, A Concise History of Brazil (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 228.
- 28.
I added the emphasis. Julius H. Amberg (Special Asst. to the Secretary of War) to Hugh Fulton (Chief Counsel, Truman Committee, US Senate), August 13, 1943, OPD 580.82 Brazil (3-30-42), RG165, NARA. There was a congressional investigation into the army’s dealings with Pan American Airways. On the air line’s “Airport Development Program,” see Therese L. Kraus, “The Establishment of United States Army Air Corps Bases in Brazil, 1938–1945” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Maryland, 1986) and my “Aviation Diplomacy: The United States and Brazil, 1939–1941,” Inter-American Economic Affairs, Vol. 21, No. 4 (Spring 1968), pp. 35–50.
- 29.
William L. Langer and S. Everett Gleason, The Undeclared War, 1940–1941 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1953), p. 600.
- 30.
Stetson Conn and Bryon Fairchild, The Framework of Hemisphere Defense (Washington, DC: Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 1960), pp. 325–326.
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McCann, F.D. (2018). A Relationship of Unbalanced Giants. In: Brazil and the United States during World War II and Its Aftermath. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-92910-1_1
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