As Aranha passed along it in the mid-evening, the avenue’s tree-lined, mosaic-patterned sidewalks would have been filled with pedestrians, well-dressed but tired and weary, many of them waiting for taxis and buses to take them home from their workplaces in the city center. Tracks for Rio’s open-sided electric trams cut across the avenue’s junctions, the trams full of passengers already on their way out for the night, with others hitching a free ride by hanging precariously to the tram’s back and sides. “Tram cruising,” as it was known, was frowned on by the authorities, but the police turned a blind eye to it, and for each paying passenger there could be as many as twice that number hanging on to the open window frames.
After pushing through the avenue’s traffic, Aranha’s car headed southwest past the official presidential palace, the Catete Palace, and toward the Guanabara Palace where Vargas held his evening meetings. This night, however, was unusual: the world war that Vargas had long anticipated was now, finally, in the offing.
Neither Vargas nor Aranha was surprised by the German attack on Poland. President Roosevelt had warned Brazil of the probability of a major European war for some time, and Aranha and Vargas were also well informed by the Brazilian embassies in Berlin, Rome, Paris, London, and Lisbon about developments in Europe and Hitler’s expansionist agenda. Aranha understood that these were going to be uncertain times for Brazil, as the country’s longtime trading partner, Germany, found new ways to provoke its other allies, Great Britain and the United States. Aranha had outlined the dangers from the Axis countries to Brazil in a personal letter, written on November 8, 1938, which he had sent to the US undersecretary of state, Sumner Welles. Aranha deemed the contents of the letter so sensitive that he did not send it in the usual manner, by means of the Brazilian ambassador in Washington, but instead used US ambassador Jefferson Caffery—even going so far as to make clear that he did not wish for the letter’s contents to be shared with the Brazilian ambassador.3 Caffery warned Welles about the content of the letter in a covering note, explaining that tensions in Europe had only heightened Brazil’s desire to arm itself. “Since the Munich Conference,” Caffery explained from Rio, “the impression has gained ground here that protection is needed in case of European aggression and [Brazil] must, therefore, build up [its] own armies and navies.”4
In his letter to Welles, Aranha succinctly outlined Axis intentions in Brazil and Latin America. Hitler, he warned, envisaged the following:
a. Fomenting disorders, revolutions, and civil wars, in order to justify an intervention similar to that in Spain.
b. Dominating, by means of an Anschluss (political annexation) extending across the Atlantic, regions populated by Germans.
c. If the above were impossible, obtaining at least political concessions such as would permit them to maintain their political parties, as in their own countries, developed around their colonies and interests, thus retarding but not abandoning their future domination.
Aranha’s comparison of Brazil to Spain spoke mountains of his appraisal of the German threat. In Spain, Germans had armed and sent forces to help the cause of General Francisco Franco’s Nationalists in their war against the Republicans.
Surely the Germans’ support for the Integralistas was at the forefront of Aranha’s mind as he stressed that his concerns were based on concrete proof. “The documentary evidence leaves no doubt,” he assured Welles, “as to the organization, activities, and purposes of Germany in Brazil, and as to the participation of German diplomatic agents in Uruguay and the Argentine in this work against the innermost economy and sovereignty of our countries.”5
Aranha’s letter was mostly a pitch for American arms, which had not been forthcoming, and which the minister believed were essential for both Brazil’s defense and the foreign policy orientation of the Brazilian regime. He went on to suggest that the Axis powers were “unsatisfied countries,” which needed colonies, areas of culture, resources, and zones of expansion. It was not possible to further divide Old Europe, nor to further divide Africa to create a German colony there. He concluded, “South America is natural prey because:
1.It is where there exists good and underdeveloped land;
2.Its fabulous mineral wealth is still to be utilized;
3.It is a source of basic raw materials;
4.An invasion is already facilitated by reason of zones of racial influence, and even of economic industrial and commercial predominance;
5.It is a continent of completely unarmed nations;
6.It is the formula most acceptable to European opinion for the solution of the colonial problem, one England wishes to defend before all her own colonies.”6
Brazil’s geography, resources, and heavy concentrations of German nationals put it at risk of a Nazi invasion, Aranha suggested, but the most pointed of his critiques was aimed squarely at Brazil’s relative defenselessness. Without a stronger military equipped with up-to-date weapons, Aranha hinted, his government would have very little means of defending itself against another German-backed putsch.
The plea for American arms was somewhat negated by the plentiful supply of German weaponry to Brazil. The United States was aware that German weapons and war material were flowing into Brazil, and while Roosevelt was not as concerned as his British allies about the prospect of this advanced military hardware being used against Vargas by the allegedly pro-Nazi elements in Brazil’s armed forces, he was enough of a political realist to see that a country already receiving weapons from Germany—with which the United States already had a contentious relationship—did not need his help on this front, as well.
These German arms shipments had been negotiated by Aranha’s local political enemies, war minister Eurico Gaspar Dutra and General Góes Monteiro, the mighty head of the Brazilian armed forces. Góes Monteiro’s admiration for the German war machine had become all the stronger following his extended visit to the country, when he had witnessed firsthand the scale and quality of its military industrial complex. The weapons deal was proof that Góes Monteiro and Dutra’s political sympathies were leaning toward the Axis powers. But while this confirmed Allied suspicions that the Brazilian military was in the pocket of the Germans, it also offered Aranha and other pro-democracy elements in the Vargas administration an opportunity to advance their own foreign policy agenda.
Aranha’s letter to Welles was a call for the Americans to help him realize his dream of a stronger partnership between the two nations. Without tangible American military and economic support, he feared, Dutra and Góes Monteiro’s more pro-Nazi vision for Brazil’s future would prevail. For now, however, he needed to reassure President Vargas that a partnership with the United States was still possible given recent international developments, and to convince him that it was the best way to maximize Brazil’s political and economic gain from the increasingly perilous situation in Europe.
By the time he had left his ministerial car and headed up the steps to the Guanabara Palace on September 1, Aranha had already decided that he would adopt a careful listen-and-watch approach with the president, rather than spelling out his own vision. It was a sound strategy, given Vargas’s state. Inside the palace, Aranha found the president tired, having just finished a lengthy meeting with the minister of farming about the continued exportation of Brazilian coffee during a war.7
While Germany’s invasion of Poland had not yet precipitated a broader conflict, Vargas and Aranha knew it was only a matter of time until the fire spread. Great Britain and France were both allies of the overrun nation, and while they had scrupulously avoided a confrontation with Germany over issues such as its unlawful rearmament following the Versailles Treaty and its annexation of Czechoslovakia and Austria, this latest act of German aggression was a step too far. The French and British simply could not ignore such a brazen attack on one of their client states, and there was a strong likelihood that, once they stepped in to defend Poland, the United States would b
e drawn into the fight as well.
Vargas’s meeting with Aranha was primarily an opportunity for the president to catch up on information about the dramatic, late-breaking international events, as well as a chance to prepare for the full cabinet meeting that Vargas had scheduled for 2 p.m. the following day.8 Both men understood that, at that meeting, Brazil would formally declare its neutrality in the war. Even before hostilities had broken out in Europe, Vargas and Aranha had both made up their minds that Brazil would need to stay out of any conflict involving Nazi Germany; Rio did not have the military strength to participate in heavy fighting overseas, for one thing, but it also could not afford to risk losing its valuable economic relationship with Germany over a fight that—for the time being, at least—did not directly involve Brazil.
Given the lack of any other viable choice, both Vargas and Aranha presumed, correctly, that the rest of the cabinet would go along with their decision to stay out of the onrushing conflict. The more pressing question was how best to align Brazil’s foreign policy so as to maximize its returns. With huge foreign debt problems and with the United States and Germany as its two most important trading partners, Brazil stood to gain substantially from the increased tensions between them, but also had much to lose. The opportunities to continue trading openly with the Axis powers would be greatly reduced in wartime, for instance, not least because Brazil expected the British navy to blockade its ports so as to deny Germany access to Brazilian exports. Vargas and Aranha both knew that Brazil’s prewar “cloak and dagger” strategy of developing closer ties with both the Americans and the Germans for the benefit of the national economy was likely to be unsustainable in the medium to long term.
The Brazilian ambassador to Washington, Mário de Pimentel Brandão, had warned Aranha the previous year, “We have to decide: the United States or Germany.”9 While Aranha clearly favored the United States (and was deeply suspicious of Nazi Germany), he did not want to completely burn his bridges with the Axis powers. Aranha understood that the importance of Brazilian-German trade was so great to Brazil that there would be major economic implications if it ceased. He wanted to avoid having to make the choice of one country over the other, as Brandão advocated, until it was absolutely necessary to do so. Until then, Brazil could effectively stall for time by playing the United States and Germany against one another—a dangerous game, to be sure, but an enormously profitable one as long as it lasted.
For the time being, Aranha advised Vargas that Brazil conduct “business as usual.” Vargas agreed. He, too, wanted to avoid placing all Brazil’s eggs in one basket until he had no choice but to do so.10 Caffery would neatly sum up the rationale for Brazil’s policy, noting that by taking this approach, “it could squeeze the maximum out of the United States on the one hand and the fascist powers on the other.”11 But Caffery could not know what the next stage of Brazil’s strategy might be—or that it hoped to someday throw its lot in with the United States entirely.
Vargas saw that Brazil’s long-term future was more contingent on its relations with the United States than with Germany, but he keenly understood the pitfalls of cozying up to Washington. A strong alliance with the United States made the most sense from a geostrategic perspective; after all, the two countries were much closer than Brazil and Germany, and President Roosevelt had made it clear that he desired a close and supportive relationship with Latin America—unlike Germany, which as far as Vargas could tell was in bed with his domestic enemies. For Vargas, the crux of the problem was how best to move toward the American camp without Brazil—and his regime—becoming vulnerable to heightened levels of US influence. On this point, there was clear blue water between Vargas and Aranha. Brazil’s minister of foreign affairs did not view the issue of growing US influence with the same degree of concern as did Vargas.
The intimate meeting on the evening of September 1 ended earlier than most. Having discussed the international situation and prepared for the next day’s cabinet meeting, both men wanted a relatively early night so as to be ready for the next day. Alzira walked the minister out of the building. Lost in their thoughts and fears, neither spoke much. As they parted, they exchanged the traditional farewell, “até amanhã” (until tomorrow).
At exactly 2 p.m. the next day, September 2, President Vargas banged on the table of the cabinet room in the Catete Palace and called the meeting to order. Being punctual was not a Brazilian trait, but all the ministers had managed to arrive on time for the crucial meeting. As usual, each minister had a pad of paper and an ashtray in front of him. Most ministers smoked both inside the room and outside in the hallway, where they had gathered before the meeting in twos and threes to discuss events. Vargas sat at the head of the table, with Aranha two seats down on his right. The cabinet room was smoky, and there was much clearing of throats and coughing as the meeting started.
There was only one item on the agenda: Brazil’s response to the international crisis. Vargas spoke first, outlining in his quiet bureaucratic manner the impact of the German invasion of Poland and the likelihood of Great Britain and France joining the war. Vargas added at the end, “While the war might appear to be remote, its impact on Brazil will be felt in all sectors of the state.” Aranha’s remarks followed the president’s and went into more detail about the challenges facing the government. “Brazil will need to position itself with care, and we must make sure we are clear in what we need, and want, from the war, which will have no doubt regional and international consequences for the country,” he explained. After these opening remarks, each minister was given an opportunity to address the meeting. It soon became clear that the consensus was to go along with Vargas’s proposal of Brazilian neutrality.12 The meeting finished at 4:30 p.m., and as the ministers filed out, Vargas was already working on a public statement explaining the Brazilian position.
The key to Brazilian neutrality was the position of the United States, and Vargas remained nervous about the potential impact of heightened American political and cultural influence in Brazil. The president worked long into the evening after returning to the Guanabara Palace. Using his colored pencils, he continued to map out Brazil’s future development and what he would be able to get from the war. Vargas also gave careful consideration to how the war might affect Brazil’s major internal problem—the question of what to do with the large foreign immigrant groups that had settled in Brazil. One of the major rationales for the establishment of the Estado Novo in 1937 had been the desire to create a more nationalist and centralized Brazilian state. But a unified Brazil had yet to materialize.
The country’s immigrant populations had not fully integrated into Brazilian society.13 They had brought with them their own political organizations, newspapers, schools, and radio stations. Radio was an especially powerful tool in Brazil during the 1930s. Indeed, Vargas himself used it often and to great effect in getting his message across to the nation. While President Roosevelt did only a couple of radio broadcasts a year, Vargas used it on a weekly basis. But he was not the only person projecting a political message across Brazil’s airwaves. People turning on a Brazilian radio before 1938 would have heard all kinds of languages broadcast on the air: Yiddish, German, Italian, Polish, and even Japanese. These foreign-language radio shows allowed immigrant groups to stay connected, and many were hugely popular among their target groups.
After 1938, the state attempted to curb the insularity of Brazil’s immigrant groups by forcing their assimilation into Brazilian society. Vargas worried about what the perceived “dual loyalty” of these immigrant groups, particularly the large German and Italian communities, might mean for Brazil during wartime. A report from the US embassy in Rio in 1937 confirmed that the Italian and German governments were attempting to stoke the nationalism of their expatriate communities in Brazil. The US embassy outlined in detail the methods the Nazis used to teach fascist ideology in Brazil’s German schools,14 few of which offered lessons in Portuguese, and none of which had a Brazil
ian curriculum. German- and Italian-run businesses, too, were targeted by “both fascist and Nazi agents in the numerous fascist and Nazi societies” in Brazil, the embassy’s report continued:
The local Nazi as well as fascist agents, including the German and Italian consuls, are known to keep black lists of Germans and Italians who are not in sympathy with [the] political creed of Hitler and Mussolini, and that every effort is made to bring these dissenting individuals into line by inducing loyal German and Italian fascists to refrain from doing business with them.15
Brazil, to hear the Americans tell it, was teeming with acolytes of Hitler and Mussolini—a prospect that could not but worry Vargas, who was no doubt still smarting from the role the Germans and Italians had played in the recent Integralista putsch.
The German ambassador, Karl Ritter, who had arrived in Rio the same year as Caffery, was quick to dismiss such accusations against the German colony. In an interview with the Brazilian press in late 1937 he claimed, “As far as the German colony is concerned, it is composed of orderly, industrious men, hard workers, who have contributed much to the prosperity of their adapted country.”16 Despite Ritter’s reassurances, however, both Vargas and Aranha had long feared that Hitler would use the country’s large German colony to undermine Brazilian neutrality in the event of a world war.
From 1938 onward, Vargas tried to preempt any German plot to meddle in Brazilian politics by banning foreign political parties and agents from operating in Brazil, closing down radio stations, and insisting on the use of Portuguese in schools. Decree 383 of April 18, 1938, seemingly spelled this out clearly by stipulating the following: “Foreigners domiciled in the national territory and those temporary established therein shall not be allowed to exercise any activity of a political nature nor intervene directly or indirectly in the public affairs of the country.” Article two, part three, of the decree was aimed primarily at Nazi activities. It stated, “They are specifically forbidden to raise flags, pennants, standards, uniforms, badges, insignia, or any symbols of a foreign political party.”17
Brazil : The Fortunes of War (9780465080700) Page 6