Brazil
The Fortunes of War
World War II and the Making of Modern Brazil
Neill Lochery
a member of the perseus books group new york
For Emma, Benjamin, and Hélèna
Contents
Introduction
Prologue: The Good Neighbor
Part One: Prelude to War
1 The Key
2 The Left Eye of Vargas
Part Two: Brazilian Neutrality
3 Dangerous Games
4 A Shot Across the Bow
5 Discordant Allies
6 Escape from Rio
7 Deepening Ties and Widening Divides
Part Three: Slipping Toward War
8 Right Behind You
9 Welles Checks Out and Welles Checks In
10 A Question of Succession
Part Four: Brazil Goes to War
11 The Decision
12 Lights Out Over Rio
13 The Dinner Party
Part Five: Brazil’s Active Participation
14 Late Arrivals
15 The Promise
16 A Farewell to Aranha
17 The Challenge
Part Six: Postwar Blues
18 The Exit
19 The Final Act
Epilogue: The Legacy
Acknowledgments
Photo Credits
Bibliography
Notes
Index
Photo Insert
Introduction
Nestled in the foothills of the Serra do Mar mountains and fronted by the brilliant strip of Copacabana Beach and the glassy expanse of Guanabara Bay sits Rio de Janeiro, known to its inhabitants as Cidade Maravilhosa, or “Marvelous City.” Founded in the sixteenth century in a dimple in Brazil’s southeastern Atlantic coastline, Rio de Janeiro today has more than earned its nickname. The city’s waterfront districts bristle with skyscrapers, museums, monasteries, and luxury apartment buildings interlaced with parks, shopping centers, and pedestrian malls. Rio’s famed Carnaval annually draws millions of Brazilians and tourists to comingle in the city’s streets. During the rest of the year, tourists and locals dance to the rhythms of samba in Rio’s ample array of bars and nightclubs, soak up the sun on its magnificent beaches, inspect its colonial architecture, or rotate through its historic neighborhoods on its many subway, bus, and rail lines.
In Rio, the vibrant economic energy that has come to characterize Brazil thrums loudest. At the dawn of the twenty-first century, Rio is the second largest city in Brazil, and the sixth largest in the Americas. And while Rio’s domestic political importance may no longer match its economic might, for much of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries Rio was the federal capital of Brazil and thus the locus of Brazilian power, fully defined: first during the country’s colonial period, then during its brief elevation as a kingdom within Portugal’s transcontinental monarchy, and finally in the first one hundred and forty-odd years of Brazil’s existence as an independent state.
By the time Brasília—the newly minted federal capital—supplanted Rio in 1960, the Marvelous City had left an indelible mark on the rest of the country. In the decades before that switch, the federal leaders who reigned from Rio presided over Brazil’s transition from a lush but neglected tropical backwater to one of the most dynamic nations in South America, and indeed in the entire world. Brazil today ranks among the top ten countries in the world by gross domestic product (GDP), and with its growth rate remaining reliably high, the nation is poised to rise even further in the decades ahead. The story of how this economic miracle occurred, however, has never been fully told.
At the outbreak of World War II, Brazil was a completely different place than it is today. In 1938, the year before the war began, Brazil was the fourth largest nation on the planet and covered nearly half of the total area of South America.1 At 3,275,510 square miles it was larger than the continental United States, but its population at the start of the 1940s was roughly forty-three million people—about a third of the US population at the time, and less than a quarter of Brazil’s current size of two hundred million.2 The country was largely divided between its developed areas, which included the cities of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, and the hugely underdeveloped interior of the country. Good-quality infrastructure was almost totally absent, with substandard road and rail links between even the most populated parts of the country.3
Links to the outside world were equally inadequate. Air service to the United States took days, and connections to Europe were not fully developed. Rio de Janeiro was a frequent port of call for ocean liners, but only very rich Brazilians could afford to travel abroad. Most Brazilians only read about cities such as London, Paris, and New York in the local newspapers; they never saw them. Partly as a result of its geographic isolation and also due to its language (Brazil was the only Portuguese-speaking country in South America), Brazil remained largely cut off from the outside world.
During the course of World War II, this was all to change. Thanks in large part to an alliance with the United States, in the 1940s Brazil’s industry, transportation infrastructure, and political position in South America and the world underwent a radical transformation. The war led to the birth of modern Brazil and its emergence as one of the economic powerhouses of the world. And Rio de Janeiro was, and indeed still is, the linchpin of the Brazilian dynamo.
Astute observers may have detected in prewar Rio something of the restless energy that would give the city such a pathbreaking role in Brazil’s future. Prior to the outbreak of World War II, Rio de Janeiro was a beautiful, exotic, and slightly chaotic off-the-beaten-track location for wealthy locals and superrich international playboys seeking fun and adventure. The lack of top-quality port facilities and a decent international airport made it more difficult for international businessmen and all but the hardiest tourists to reach Rio. Once they arrived, however, these intrepid men and women found themselves in a city that clearly aspired to a level of cosmopolitanism all but unknown in South America.
Rio in the late 1930s was a hub for sophisticates, powerbrokers, and intellectuals who, whether by birth, choice, or necessity, found themselves in the southern hemisphere of the Americas. Central to the city’s vibrant social scene were the five-star Copacabana Palace Hotel, located in front of Rio’s most famous beach, and the Jockey Club, built on land reclaimed from the city’s large lagoon. The Copacabana Palace, which opened in 1923, was one of the best examples of art deco buildings in the city, and was the place to been seen for international revelers and members of Rio’s high society. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers danced in its magnificent ballroom. The Jewish writer Stefan Zweig, who fled Nazi persecution in Europe, stayed at the hotel before he and his wife committed suicide in 1942 in the city of Petrópolis, some forty-five miles from central Rio. During World War II the likes of Clark Gable, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and Walt Disney were in residence in the Copacabana Palace Hotel, all on special wartime missions for the American government.
Across the city, the Jockey Club was where the elite of Brazilian society met and did business during the long horse racing season. The racing took place on balmy evenings from spring through autumn as the sunset cast its shadows over the skyscrapers in the city. Chairs next to the racetrack were arranged in strict social order, with society ladies—decked out in fur coats and designer dresses from the top fashion houses in Europe—taking their place in the front row. Male members of the Jockey Club were carefully turned out wit
h slicked-back hair and wore loosely cut white linen and cotton suits, white shirts, and colorful kipper ties, all rounded off with shiny two-tone correspondent shoes.
A frequent patron of the Jockey Club was Brazil’s charismatic president, Getúlio Dornelles Vargas. Physically, he was not a memorable man; short and portly, he had a waistline that ballooned during his later years. While sensitive to the allegations of vanity leveled at him by political opponents, Vargas did nothing to dispel them. He was known to color his hair and was always well dressed; in winter, he often wore his favorite blue-gray suit, and in summer, he was seen in white cotton suits and club striped ties. Despite his lack of physical presence, however, there was an aura around Vargas. He projected an air of calmness and contentment, and his legal background—Vargas had been trained as a lawyer before entering politics—gave him a deliberative and circumspect quality. He was often found gently puffing on a Brazilian cigar or hosting intimate card games; poker was his personal favorite.
Vargas’s arrival in power at the start of the 1930s had represented a major power shift in Brazilian politics, and initially led to a great deal of political instability within the country. In the years prior to 1930, Brazil had been dominated by a powerful group of Paulistas—politicians, industrialists, and coffee producers from the São Paulo area. The Paulistas ran Brazil in alliance with the leaders of Minas Geraes, a landlocked state immediately inland from the much smaller coastal state of Rio de Janeiro. Together the two groups took turns controlling the presidency and the parliament.
In the 1930 presidential election, however, a political group known as the Gaúchos challenged the Paulista-Minas Geraes junta. The new contenders hailed from Rio Grande do Sul, known in Brazil as “gaúcho country” because of its large ranches, many of which stretched for hundreds of miles. Vargas was a native of this region and its governor at the time and, thus, one of the most prominent members of the opposition. Chosen as the Gaúcho party candidate, he ran a highly impressive campaign but ultimately lost the presidential election to Júlio Prestes, governor of the state of São Paulo. Claiming electoral fraud, Vargas refused to concede, and with the support of a wide range of Brazilian military officers and middle-class urbanites, launched a bloodless coup that succeeded in toppling the Paulistas and installing the Gaúchos in Rio de Janeiro with Vargas at their head. In July 1932, São Paulo tried to take its revenge by mounting a counterrevolution, but after three months of fighting, Vargas and his supporters succeeded in putting down the plot.
Having seized control of Brazil through a combination of political subterfuge and sheer force, Vargas rushed to consolidate his power in the face of new threats. In 1934, he introduced a new constitution that created a constituent assembly and enabled his formal election as president. In the following year, there was another serious challenge to Vargas’s rule, this time from the communists. The government took swift action against the revolt, arresting and imprisoning thousands of communists. Several leaders of the revolt were given lengthy prison sentences by the courts. The communists did not disappear from the political map of Brazil after this failed putsch, but Vargas’s government had greatly weakened them.
Like 1930, the year 1937 also witnessed great political drama in Brazil. A presidential election was held that year, under the terms of the 1934 constitution; the winning candidate was to serve a four-year term beginning in 1938. The constitution prohibited President Vargas from running for reelection, yet he found a way around this problem by refusing to support any of the declared candidates and working in secret with members of his regime to draw up a new constitution. In November 1937, Vargas made his move, declaring martial law, canceling the elections, and dissolving parliament, where, on arrival, deputies found its doors locked shut. It was a bloodless coup. President Vargas remained in power, but he was now effectively a dictator empowered by a new authoritarian constitution known as the Estado Novo, or “New State.” Crucially, for Vargas, the United States continued to develop ties with Brazil as if nothing had happened.
President Vargas understood that Brazil was a weak economic and military power and that, as its leader, he had not been dealt an especially strong hand. Yet his ambitions for Brazil—and for his own political career—remained undimmed. Central to his policies were the goals of entrenching his own regime and consolidating new power structures in Brazil, so as to develop the country into a major player in regional economics and politics. Even before the war, Vargas was keenly aware of the economic tools that he might use to achieve both goals. And the issue of trade and its potential to enhance Brazil’s economy dominated the cables and papers that reached his desk in Rio during the war itself.
At the outbreak of World War II, Brazil enjoyed a reasonably strong—and immensely profitable—relationship with Germany. Trade was organized in a manner that suited the Brazilians, with Berlin agreeing to special terms of payment for the Brazilians. Central to this trade was the desire of the Brazilian military to buy German arms, and the willingness of Berlin to sell weapons to Brazil. Indeed, even during the German invasion of Poland at the start of the war in the autumn of 1939, and its rapid advances into Western Europe in the spring and summer of 1940, Berlin possessed enough additional weapons to sell arms to Brazil.
Meanwhile, the United States edged toward war with Germany, and plotted to win Brazil over to the Allied camp. The United States believed Brazil was the most reliable local partner in their mission to check growing Nazi influence in the region—particularly in Argentina, which had a pro-Nazi government that made the country an attractive outpost for Hitler’s agents. US intelligence warned President Roosevelt that the Germans wanted to establish a strong permanent political and military presence in Latin America. This was unacceptable to the Americans, who were willing to invest heavily—granting trade concessions—in order to prevent the Germans from gaining a foothold so close to the United States.
President Vargas understood the US position very clearly, and carefully tried to maximize Brazil’s gains from the war. Indeed, this aim was at the heart of every Brazilian negotiation with the Americans. President Vargas also understood that in order to gain significantly from World War II, Brazil had to alter its initial position of neutrality. In short, Brazil needed to first formally end its extensive and extremely lucrative trade ties with the Germans, and then, eventually, formally join the war against the Axis powers.
Vargas did eventually pivot toward the Allies, going so far as to send Brazilian troops to the European theater to participate in Germany’s defeat in the final months of the war. As he had anticipated, his relationship with Washington ultimately improved the economic situation in Brazil, but it was at the expense of his own power. His coziness with the United States deepened internal tensions and jeopardized both his leadership and the continuation of the Estado Novo when the war ended. Yet Brazil itself thrived. Following World War II, Brazil joined the very small list of countries that benefited hugely from the conflict; the European neutral powers make up the rest of this select club.
A famous list of Brazilian war aims prepared by the country’s pro-American foreign minister Osvaldo Aranha (who later became the first president of the General Assembly of the United Nations) underscores its tremendous gains during World War II. Aranha prepared this wonderfully ambitious list for President Vargas’s secret meeting with President Roosevelt, which took place in Brazil in January 1943, and the document can be used as something of a scorecard for evaluating what Brazil achieved during the war.
According to Aranha, the eleven objectives that Brazil should pursue were:
1. A better position in world politics.
2. A consolidation of its superiority in South America.
3. More secure and closer relations with the United States.
4. Developing greater influence over Portugal and the Portuguese colonies.
5. Development of Brazilian maritime power (Navy).
6. Development
of air power (Air Force).
7. Development of Brazilian heavy industries.
8. Creation of a Brazilian military industrial complex.
9. Creation of industries—such as agricultural, extractive, and mineral enterprises—to complement those in the United States, which were essential for postwar world reconstruction.
10. Expansion of Brazil’s railways and roads for economic and strategic purposes.
11. Exploration for essential combustible fuels.4
Taken together, the items on Aranha’s list constituted a bold assertion of Brazil’s rightful place in the international order. They represented a concerted attempt to transform the nation and move it into the twentieth century. These aims were all the more ambitious given that at the outset of World War II Brazil was still a tremendously underdeveloped country. In 1940, two-thirds of Brazilians were illiterate, nearly 70 percent of the population lived in rural areas, and the nation’s exceedingly basic communications and transport systems left large parts of the country hugely isolated. Furthermore, unlike the majority of developed nations, whose main economic engines were manufacturing industries, Brazil’s major industry was agriculture, with coffee still the dominant export.
Vargas changed all of this and led Brazil firmly onto the world stage. Under his leadership Brazil was modernized—a new national steel mill was built, new roads and railways were constructed, and improvements were made in its agriculture sector. Most of all, however, its military forces were transformed into the most powerful in the region. Brazil became a regional military, political, and economic superpower.
Prologue: The Good Neighbor
It was Saturday, March 4, 1933, a cloudy late-winter day in Washington, DC, when Franklin D. Roosevelt took the oath of office from Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes. Following his swearing-in ceremony, the newly minted president of the United States delivered a twenty-minute inaugural address that was broadcast to a radio audience of tens of millions across the United States. The speech, best known today for Roosevelt’s assertion “the only thing we have to fear is . . . fear itself,” concentrated almost entirely on the new president’s domestic policy objectives, which had dominated the campaign and had helped Roosevelt to his landslide victory over the Republican incumbent, Herbert Hoover. And for good reason: with the United States in the depths of the worst economic depression in the nation’s history, Roosevelt’s domestic agenda could not have been more pressing.
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