by Ed Strosser
In addition, Bolivia’s neighbors had blocked most of the arms shipments, so Bolivia’s only option was to ship the arms through the ports of former ally-in-failure Peru, where the sticky-fingered locals helped lessen the Bolivian carrying burden. A trickle of arms flowed through Brazil to the Bolivian town of Puerto Suarez, but the Bolivian transportation system was so primitive there was no way of moving these arms to the fighting troops. Alas, the tricky life of the landlocked and unloved.
The Bolivians went to war without most of the arms they thought would help them win. They had other problems as well, geography being the foremost. Most of the country’s population resided much farther to the west in the Altiplano around the capital of La Paz. To move troops and equipment to the front meant a two-day trip by road or rail, then a long walk on unpaved, dusty roads for days and days. Trucks tried to make the route, but they quickly wore out in the extreme heat and dust. A shortage of spare parts and mechanics forced the Bolivians to abandon them. No bridges were ever built over the rivers, and everything had to cross on pontoon bridges. The politicians talked tough in working up the people for war, but they never put in the hard work necessary to make any attack successful. The army broke down and rusted by the side of the road.
Paraguay went on a similar weapons-buying spree but with greater success. Starting in the early 1920s, the Paraguayans devoted a large chunk of their meager national treasure to arms purchases. They sent agents throughout Europe looking for deals and spread the buying over many countries. This enabled them to force arms companies to compete against each other on price and quality. The buyers even snagged two important and first-rate river gunships. In addition, Argentina, concerned with Bolivian aggression, allowed the arms to flow through the country to Paraguay and provided secret arms shipments themselves. Paraguay also had a significant advantage due to its actual working transportation system. Soldiers and equipment traveled by river to the Chaco and then by train to the front.
Leadership ability varied on the two sides as well. Bolivia lurched from one dictator to another. In the hundred years up to 1930 the country had endured forty governments and 187 attempted coups. That’s almost two a year for a century. When successful, the coups were usually gentlemanly affairs. The competitors lined up support within the military and at coup time compared lists of supporters, like comparing cards in poker. Whoever held the aces and kings walked away with the office; the loser slouched into well-appointed exile in Europe, the inevitable landing spot for former despots.
Complicating the situation, Bolivia’s president Daniel Salamanca led the pro-war party, and his political opponent, Luis Tejada Sorzano, of the antiwar party, held the post of vice president and chief complainer.
Bolivia’s military strategy was daringly brilliant in conception. Given their extremely limited war-fighting capabilities, the best weapon they possessed was the Chaco heat, which would wear down the enemy without firing a shot. The army’s plan, therefore, was to retreat, forcing the Paraguayans to fight through the green hell into Bolivia over lengthening supply lines. Then the Bolivians would overrun the worn-out and weakened enemy. But giving up territory would spark an outcry and, of course, a coup. To forestall the inevitable countercoup as long as possible Salamanca rejected the plan and insisted on aggressive attacks.
By 1932 Bolivia chugged steadily toward war, lacking nothing except arms, a strategy, and the ability to transport its army to the front.
Paraguay, in comparison, was a model of rational planning. In the sixty-one years before the war, the country had forty-one presidents. Bloody coups occurred like the changing seasons. But the people inevitably united behind whoever was presidente in a desperate attempt to stave off elimination from the tournament of countries. They vowed to fight with the grit and determination that had made Paraguayans famous — and in Estigarribia they had a sturdy and knowledgeable military hand. To Bolivia this was a war for a foreign territory; for Paraguay a fight for survival. Paraguay adopted the same rope-a-dope strategy, i.e., stretching enemy supply lines through continuous retreats. But the fear of coups prevented Paraguay from putting the retreat plan into operation. Politics had trumped strategy on both sides.
Finally, for no apparent reason, it became time to decide the champion of the losers’ bracket.
WHAT HAPPENED: OPERATION “DOUBLE ELIMINATION”
In June 1932, the Bolivians felt bold enough to start the festivities. A small group of their elite fighters attacked a cluster of mud huts, optimistically called a fort, and drove off the defenders — all six of them. “Viva Bolivia,” the victors cried.
Hearing of the attack, Estigarribia, who was commanding an army division in the Chaco, ordered a few dozen troops to retake the mud huts. A few days later the troops attacked but were repulsed. Both sides gathered more troops. By mid-July the Paraguayans had obtained the upper hand and attacked. Overwhelmed and scared, the Bolivians retreated.
In Paraguay’s capital, Asunción, a grim determination prevailed. Paraguayans were ready to fight, but not eager. For them it was one more uphill fight against a bigger, richer enemy, with bleak prospects for victory. President José P. Guggiari managed to rally the people to the cause by declaring his people would fight with the bravery of the old days of the Triple Alliance war. “We must repeat history,” he thundered. Irony was not his strength.
In Bolivia’s capital, La Paz, President Salamanca exhorted the crowd into a frenzy. Bolivian honor had been stained. The people wanted blood… and Salamanca promised to deliver. There was also no need to get the country on a war economy. Its vastly superior size and wealth would make this a quick war, the leaders convinced themselves. They agreed to fight it on the cheap.
In a meeting with his army leaders, Salamanca ordered immediate reprisals against the Paraguayans. His officers cautioned patience, however. The army had only 1,400 men in the Chaco, they told him, and it would be wise to call up reserves and organize an effective force before starting a major war. Salamanca would have none of that organizing talk. He wanted action. The troops departed for the front amid a chorus of cheers from the capital’s citizens.
In the Chaco, Bolivian troops took two small Paraguayan forts. By August the Bolivian forces had pushed forward and captured Paraguay’s Fort Boquerón, yet another fort that was little more than a shack on a hill. Then they paused as President Salamanca pondered the next Bolivian move.
Estigarribia didn’t pause. He realized he had to throw all of his country’s resources into the fight early or face certain defeat. Paraguay rushed its military-age men into service and through quick training. Bolivia slowly brought its men into service, unwilling to pay for an army. As a result, by September Estigarribia’s larger forces besieged the Bolivians at Fort Boquerón. Through weeks of hearty fighting, the garrison slowly melted from lack of food, medicine, water, and constant artillery bombardment. In late September the Bolivians, out of ammunition and nearly all dead of dehydration, surrendered. The Paraguayans themselves had barely hung on to win because the lake they were using for water had almost completely dried up. The harsh Chaco life was taking nearly as many lives as the bullets.
After Fort Boquerón, the Paraguayans pushed forward as the Bolivian army reeled from defeat to defeat. By December the Bolivians stiffened as the Paraguayan surge ended.
The war stalled at the end of 1932, and the Bolivians called in General Hans Kundt — “Das Ringer.” Everyone perked up when General Kundt, the former German World War I staff officer, goose-stepped to command of their army. He studied the war during his trip over by reading out-of-date newspaper articles on the fighting, believing this would suffice for a Prussian general to thrash any opponent. Bolivians cheered and greeted the imported Prussian with flowery huzzahs when he entered La Paz. Their hero had returned, and the crowds all agreed he would soon bring the hated Paraguayans to their knees. After all, the enemy only had Paraguayans in charge, hardly a match for a general from
the country that had practically invented modern war. On Christmas Day, Kundt, armed with his half-sketchy knowledge of the fighting and the Chaco terrain, took command of the Bolivian army in the field and began issuing orders as if he were in charge of actual, competent German troops.
But the Bolivians’ problems reached deeper than just poor commanders. To reach the battlefields required long marches through hot, dusty trails. The harsh terrain wore down their soldiers faster than the Paraguayans could. Bolivians came from cool, mountainous regions and were incapable of overturning centuries of logical belief that a quiet life in the hills was better than traipsing around the deadly Chaco. To these mountain dwellers, the heat and humidity turned the trip into sheer agony, and for many it became a death march. To the leathery Paraguayans, however, it was just like home.
Immediately, Das Ringer earned his pay. In a surprise counterstrike he grabbed the initiative and threw his men in a flanking movement against the Paraguayans, standard operating procedure for a Prussian, and it turned the tide against the stunned Paraguayans.
As 1933 began, the war’s toll hit home in Bolivia. President Salamanca initiated a draft to boost the army’s manpower as volunteers dropped to a trickle. Gangs of wounded veterans dragooned young men into the army, and they often arrived at the front fortified with only hours of training. Kundt, in full western front mode, drove against the Paraguayans at yet another meaningless place. He planned a three-pronged attack — left flank, center, and right flank — the classic double-envelopment. But his left hook bogged down in swamps and never got into the fight on the first day, January 20. Unwilling to change his plan, Kundt pressed ahead, and the two other columns fought without any coordination. The Paraguayans decimated the densely attacking Bolivians with deadly machine-gun fire, imparting to the Bolivians a valuable lesson learned by millions of unfortunate soldiers destroyed by machine guns in the trenches of World War I. The stuck column finally attacked the next day, but now the two other wings were too exhausted to take part, and the Paraguayans stopped it cold. Kundt ordered wave after wave of attacks over the next few days, none more successful than those on the first day. On January 26 the reinforced Paraguayans counterattacked, and both sides settled into deadly trench warfare. Indeed, Kundt had imported the western front to the Chaco.
For most of 1933, the imported Prussian suffered the same consequences everywhere he went. He threw his troops into brutal frontal assaults against entrenched machine guns that succeeded only by adding to the piles of bodies. It was World War I all over again, but without the French wine and German mustard gas. As the only person in this war who participated in the Great War, you might think Das Ringer would have learned this lesson.
Now Kundt insisted on holding every inch of the front lines, overstretching his army, solely to control territory without any thought to an overall strategy. Military folly again. Bolivia… had hired the wrong Prussian. Further adding to the Bolivians’ problems was their desire to run the war on the cheap. They had failed to build a larger army than the Paraguayans’ despite a much larger population.
In May 1933, again for no apparent reason, Paraguayan president Eusebio Ayala finally declared war on Bolivia. It was the first declaration of war by any country since the founding of the League of Nations. The noble intentions of the League had met head-on with the reality of South American politics.
During September 1933 Estigarribia pushed forward. He thrust ahead in flanking movements, trapping large numbers of Bolivian troops. Surrounded and waterless, they surrendered rather than die of thirst. The Paraguayans pushed onward again, drilled wells for water, and committed their reserves. Kundt held firm. Too firm, it turns out. He refused to ask for more troops and refused to make any strategic retreats. His subordinates, already upset at being led by a foreigner, could not understand his decision to hold all sectors of the crumbling front. The few planes in the Bolivian air force regularly reported Paraguayan flanking movements. Kundt disregarded them, and this proved his undoing. By December he became the victim of his own dreaded double envelopment. He failed to fully protect his flanks, the first lesson taught in Prussian military kindergarten. Foiled by his own strategy, surrounded, his troops dropping from dehydration, Kundt’s army folded and ran. Those who escaped survived solely because the Paraguayans were too exhausted to complete the rout. When the two sides settled down, the Bolivian army had been reduced to only 7,000 men in the field and one single Prussian muttering in German about double envelopments. The Bolivians were right back where they had started at the war’s outset.
ERNST RÖHM
Hans Kundt was not the only German imported by Bolivia. A key military advisor to the Bolivians during the late 1920s was Ernst Röhm, a violent, scar-faced pal of Adolf Hitler. An early member of the Nazi party and a Munich native, Röhm befriended Hitler and stood by his side during the failed Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. In 1925 he became leader of the SA, the Brownshirts, the Nazi’s military wing of out-of-work-and-angry street brawlers. But Röhm’s soldiers were too aggressive even for Hitler, who wanted to keep a lower street profile while he prepared to take over the world. So that year Hitler drove him away, and Röhm fled to Bolivia where he became a lieutenant colonel. In 1931 Hitler, now on the verge of attaining power in Germany, invited his old buddy back to take the helm of the SA once again. This time around the relationship lasted three years until Hitler, now running Germany, needing to quell the SA and appease the German army, had Röhm arrested and executed. In Bolivia, Röhm left behind one important imprint. His assistant was Germán Busch Becerra, who took control of Bolivia in 1937 and declared himself dictator in 1939. This makes Röhm perhaps the only modern fascist who could claim mentorship to two dictators in two different countries.
The defeat was too much even for the Bolivians. Das Ringer got jackbooted. Auf Wiedersehen to El Aleman. He lingered on in La Paz for a while, then submitted his resignation in February 1934. But the sacking of Kundt did not improve Salamanca’s rocky relationship with the generals.
After such a defeat it would seem logical that Bolivia would listen to the peace talks that were once again floated about. But logic just wasn’t their style. They pressed on. As the deaths mounted, the League of Nations scrambled to justify its existence by negotiating an end to the affair. Politicians made high-minded speeches about the senseless slaughter and how an arms embargo on both countries was necessary. Countries around the world all denied they were selling the combatants arms. “Not us,” they declared. Yet somehow, fresh arms flowed to the front. Despite the casualties neither country was willing to give up the fight. They had yet to score the victory both countries sorely needed and had represented as their sole war aim. Neither could sign a peace treaty that did not recognize one as the clear victor. The fight had to continue.
Another big blow to Bolivia was the taking of the supposedly impregnable Fort Ballivian. It had withstood numerous Paraguayan assaults. As an election in Bolivia neared — yes, they actually held them, but since coups happened with shocking regularity they were more like nonbinding resolutions — President Salamanca wanted to notch victories to rally the country behind his pro-war party. In mid-1934 Salamanca pulled his troops from Fort Ballivian and marched them north to take on Estigarribia, who was poking around up there. He had left the fort empty, believing it folly to have any more than a skeleton crew in his impregnable fort. The strategy worked as the Bolivians scored some battlefield victories, which Salamanca’s Genuine Republican party rode to electoral success that November.
But to the Bolivian’s surprise, Estigarribia popped up in front of Fort Ballivian. His feint to the north had drawn the Bolivians out of the fort, and the Bolivian Verdun fell without a shot. The impregnable was suddenly pregnant with Paraguayans. Paraguay now had an open path to the Bolivian border. Victory was in sight, always a dangerous situation with these two countries.
Outraged, Salamanca sped to the front to fire his commander in
chief. When he arrived the officers instead demanded Salamanca’s resignation. He submitted it meekly while his vice president, Luis Tejada Sorzano, back in La Paz, declared that Salamanca had deserted. Tejada declared himself the new president. Democracy Bolivian style!
Incredibly the Paraguayans kept advancing through the vicious Chaco heat. At the battle of El Carmen in November, they surrounded two Bolivian divisions and captured 4,000 prisoners while almost 3,000 Bolivians perished from thirst. By the end of 1934, the Bolivian retreat had succeeded in reaching the far western end of the Chaco. They were now getting beat on their own turf. President Tejada Sorzano now ditched fighting on the cheap and proclaimed a full mobilization. The ranks of troops swelled. Even as they suffered battlefield defeats, the number of soldiers grew. By April 1935 the grim, leathery Paraguayans, whose thinning ranks had to be bolstered by teenage recruits, had pushed as far forward as their supply lines would allow but much farther than they ever dreamed. They stood at their closest point to victory and, unknown to them, their closest moment to defeat, just like the Germans during the summer of 1918.
Sorzano’s draft swelled the Bolivian army to 45,000 troops. Finally, their numbers paid dividends. They rolled forward with stiffened sinews to defend their homeland. They slashed through the beleaguered Paraguayans, a big chunk of whom were teenagers far from home. The original Bolivian strategy proved correct after all.
LEAGUE OF NATIONS
Formed by Woodrow Wilson during the peace talks that ended World War I, the League of Nations was designed to end war forever by having all its members gang up on any attacking country. Considering that World War II started while the League existed amply demonstrates the success of this little group. But the demise of the League was quickly hastened from its failures to resolve the Chaco war. Time after time, delegates from the League met with leaders from the two combatants… and they struck out each time. In addition, League members tried to impose strict arms embargoes on Bolivia and Paraguay, but to no avail. With the world in turmoil during the 1930s, it became clear to the powerful troublemakers of Japan, Italy, and Germany that if the League couldn’t stop Bolivia and Paraguay, it couldn’t stop them. The notion of collective security failed and was abandoned like a broken-down truck in the harsh lands of the Chaco.