Brazil : The Fortunes of War (9780465080700)

by Lochery, Neill

  The blackout’s apparent success on September 6 had come after several false starts and half-hearted attempts by the government to impose it. Initially, regulations issued by the government had called for elimination of only half the lights facing the sea, and only those streetlights that were at right angles to the coast.2 The remaining lights were required to be dimmed along the coastal strip to a distance of one kilometer (six-tenths of a mile) from the coast. Cariocas, however, had not responded well to the dimming of the lights, and many people simply left their lights on full with their curtains wide open. When the local police announced that anybody showing light would be accused of being an Axis sympathizer, several local residents responded by claiming that if they couldn’t see the coastline at night with its lit boulevards, they would start to suffer from depression and other mental ailments. Yet eventually, the local authorities cracked down hard enough that people gave in to the demands of the blackout, and plunged nighttime Rio into a darkness that was nearly complete.

  Each night following the successful imposition of the blackout, Rio was transformed from a vibrant, colorful, and noisy city into a ghost town where all activity, legitimate or otherwise, took place behind drawn blinds and closed curtains. In Rio’s harbor, all navigation lights on ships, buoys, and piers were turned off during the hours of darkness.3 This order was followed all along the Brazilian coast.4 Neon lights on the mountains in Rio and on top of skyscrapers, advertising everything from radios to local beer, were also extinguished, as were the lights on churches and monuments.5

  Yet despite the dramatic changes it wrought in Rio, the blackout—or what Cariocas were more accurately labeling “the dim-out”—was not to last. Over the Christmas and New Year festive season in Rio several of the city’s bars and luxury hotels requested that city authorities lift the ban. These requests were refused, but within a year the beach areas in Rio would slowly return to near normal lighting, as local officials and police officers effectively gave up on trying to enforce the city’s blackout policy.6

  The failure to fully impose the blackout reflected a feeling held by many Brazilians throughout the final quarter of 1942. The joint American-British landings in North Africa had changed the dynamic of the conflict, and—Caffery’s warning notwithstanding—many Brazilians seemed to have adopted the view that with the threat of a German attack or invasion receding, the nation would be able to quietly sit out the war. Needless to say, however, President Vargas was not one of these people.

  On December 31, 1942, Vargas observed his annual New Year’s Eve tradition of lunching with senior officers in the Brazilian military. His message to the armed forces at this year’s lunch was both upbeat and, for many of the officers who were present, very surprising. The president first spoke of the excellent cooperation between Brazil and the Allies and talked of the efficiency of their cooperation, a clear nod to the work of Admiral Ingram. Yet in outlining Brazil’s contribution to the war effort, the president was adamant that Brazil was not merely supplying the Allies with strategically important materials, such as rubber. Rather, he argued, the Allied use of the bases on Brazil’s coastline had allowed them to transport arms and men across the Atlantic and had made possible the landing in North Africa, which Vargas characterized as the first step on the road to victory in Europe. He also praised the work of the Brazilian navy, merchant navy, the air force, and the army in doing their part to defend the country.

  Yet Vargas finished his remarks by suggesting that the Brazilian military had an even larger role to play in the war. At the end of the talk, in a casual manner—as if the thought had just entered his head, which it most certainly had not—he said, “We must consider the responsibilities of action outside the continent and this action should not be restricted to a simple expedition of symbolic contingents.”7 The Brazilian armed forces were intrigued by the president’s closing comment; could Vargas mean that the Brazilian military would soon be given a chance to join the war, with all of the attendant power, equipment, and prestige? For officers who had spent most of their careers scrounging for the means to defend a single border, the idea of joining the winning side in a world war was enormously appealing. They would not have long to wait before they discovered exactly what he meant.

  Two days later, after meeting with Góes Monteiro, Dutra dispatched the general to go to Petrópolis to seek Vargas’s clarification about his comments at the luncheon. Given the heat of the January sun in Rio, the trip offered Góes Monteiro a pleasant escape. His driver picked him up early so as to avoid the post-holiday traffic, and in Petrópolis the general could look forward to cool air that was said to relax even the most agitated of minds.

  But when Góes Monteiro arrived in Petrópolis, the general found Vargas distracted and distant. When Góes Monteiro got to the point of his visit and asked Vargas, “What did you mean about an overseas force?,” the president began enumerating the difficulties the country would face in recruiting, training, arming, and deploying such a force. For a moment, Góes Monteiro thought that Vargas’s comments on December 31 had simply reflected an aspiration or hope rather than a viable policy option. But Vargas went on. “Washington has made it clear that those nations that are involved in the fighting have priority in receiving arms from the United States,” the president told Góes Monteiro. “In view of Dutra’s insistence on arms, I have authorized our military delegation in Washington to tell the United States that Brazil is prepared to send soldiers overseas.”

  The chief of staff was taken aback by Vargas’s reply. The president had informed the United States of his willingness to commit Brazilian forces to the war effort without first discussing it with either the minister of war or the chief of staff. Nonetheless, Góes Monteiro thought that joining the war was a great idea, and one that—if it occurred—would ensure that the Brazilian army would grow in size, strength, and capability to become the most powerful armed force on the South American continent.

  The chief of staff hurried back to Rio to inform Dutra of this development. Vargas, Góes Monteiro noted, had looked tired and drawn, and the chief of staff wondered if the stories circulating in Rio that the president’s youngest son, Getúlio (nicknamed Getúlinho), was deathly ill were really true. The boy was only in his early twenties, and—although not as close to the president as Alzira—he was handsome, talented, and one of the lights of Vargas’s life; if he were to die, it would tear Vargas apart. Yet the president had seemed more hawkish than ever, a contrast that must have unsettled Góes Monteiro even as Vargas’s message excited him.

  Dutra was most intrigued by the news. He gave his officials seventy-two hours in which to draft a plan for mobilizing Brazil’s armed forces for war. On January 5, 1943, Dutra presented this detailed memorandum to Vargas. At its center was an argument that any expeditionary force needed to be large, and that the army would have to recruit more soldiers in order to create it. Brazil’s army had been primarily defensive up until this point, and it certainly was not prepared to join the offensive in a globalized conflict. Yet while pragmatic, Dutra’s recommendation also coincided with an underlying goal: to seize this opportunity to expand the Brazilian military as never before.

  The president did not give an immediate response to Dutra’s memorandum, but he promised to study it in detail. His only comment was that he would not approve any expeditionary force unless it was properly armed by the United States, and that the soldiers who remained in Brazil to defend the country would likewise need to be adequately equipped. Put simply, Brazil would not agree to stick its neck out for the United States unless the Brazilian military first received the weapons that Washington had promised to supply to Allied combatants.

  Unbeknownst to Dutra, at the same time he was baiting the Brazilian military, Vargas was also preparing for a secret meeting that would have ramifications of the highest order for Brazil and the war it had recently joined. In a note to Cordell Hull on Tuesday, January 26, 1943, Jefferson Caffery wrote in a cry
ptic fashion, “I leave in the morning with Osvaldo’s boss [Vargas] to meet you know whom. I should be back on Friday.”8 The next day, Caffery, Admiral Ingram, and a naval attaché boarded a plane along with President Vargas and two of his aides. As soon as all six passengers were on board, the plane took off and headed to Natal. Soon after arriving, the party was transferred to a destroyer, the Jouett, where they dined and spent the night preparing for the next day’s meetings.

  Vargas was in a state of extreme anxiety. He had recently attended the celebrations in São Paulo in connection with the anniversary of the founding of the city. His son, Getúlinho, had come down with infantile paralysis during this time, and it was widely presumed in Rio’s political circles that the president was still in São Paulo with his son.9 President Vargas, however, had decided that duty called, and effectively left the bedside of his dying son to attend the meeting in Natal. Yet his anxiety notwithstanding, Vargas was well prepared for the meetings that lay ahead. Aranha had put together a ten-page advice paper for his boss, outlining the Brazilian priorities. In a sign of the strong spirit of trust between Aranha and Caffery, the Brazilian minister of foreign affairs showed the same paper to the American.

  At 8:00 a.m. on January 28, 1942, a plane carrying President Roosevelt landed in Natal. Roosevelt had just been at the Casablanca Conference in Morocco, where he had met with British prime minister Winston Churchill, and Free French generals Charles de Gaulle and Henri Giraud to discuss tactics and strategy for the remainder of the war. At the conference, these leaders had also formalized their commitment to ending the war through the total defeat of the Axis powers. This policy, which would come to be known as the doctrine of “unconditional surrender,” would mark the Casablanca Conference as one of the most important summits of the war.

  On his arrival in Natal, Roosevelt was immediately transferred to the destroyer USS Humboldt, where he would remain that day and night. Later on the morning of Roosevelt’s arrival, Caffery met with the president and his special assistant, Harry Hopkins. The three men agreed that Roosevelt would “tactfully” bring up the question of Brazil joining the United Nations, which was one of the major American aims of the meeting.10 The United Nations was to be established by the Allies as the central international feature of the postwar order and would replace the League of Nations. Caffery noted that Vargas would in all likelihood agree to such a request—Aranha’s ten-page advice paper had confirmed this point.11

  Roosevelt, Caffery, and Hopkins went on to discuss Brazil’s offer to commit troops overseas. The president explained that American military leaders “are not especially interested in having Brazilian troops sent to North Africa.” Yet the president hoped to convince Vargas that Brazilian troops were needed elsewhere across the Atlantic, specifically in a handful of strategically vital territories with which Brazil shared a colonial ancestry.

  The day after he arrived, President Roosevelt hosted a luncheon in honor of his Brazilian counterpart in the captain’s dining room of the Humboldt. The two presidents conversed in French, just as they had done during their first meeting in Rio de Janeiro in 1936. Vargas was dressed in a white linen suit and cotton shirt with his favorite striped club tie, while Roosevelt wore a slightly shabby, off-white cotton suit and white shirt. Yet the American president’s black tie and black armband, more than any other aspect of his attire, spoke to his inner state. Roosevelt’s son had died in the war and he was in mourning—a fact that no doubt resonated deeply with the Brazilian president, whose own son was at death’s door.

  Roosevelt and Vargas had both aged considerably since their meeting in 1936. While they both looked relaxed in the single published photo of the Rio meeting, in 1943 the two appeared tired. The black circles under Roosevelt’s eyes were all too visible when he took off his glasses; Vargas still walked with a noticeable limp after his accident, and he brought his cane on the trip to Natal. Only Jefferson Caffery—still tan from his leave in the United States the previous year, and from sunbathing on Rio’s summertime beaches earlier in the month—looked remotely healthy.

  The atmosphere of the lunch was workmanlike and slightly subdued. Both presidents regarded this as a one-on-one meeting. Sitting at the head of the table with Vargas on his right, Roosevelt addressed the Brazilian president directly. For the entire duration of the lunch, Roosevelt barely took his eyes off his Brazilian guest, barely acknowledging the presence of anybody else in the room. He spoke quietly, but while his soft tone added to the intimacy of the meeting it was, in reality, the result of a chill he had caught due to the dramatic changes in temperature he’d been exposed to over the previous days’ travel. Vargas listened to the American president intently, and interceded from time to time but only briefly—when Roosevelt asked for a response, for instance, or when he paused to let the Brazilian speak. Caffery, who sat on Roosevelt’s left, said very little. He listened carefully, sometimes leaning forward to make sure he could hear his president’s increasingly hoarse voice.

  Roosevelt started the conversation by filling in for Vargas much of what had happened in Casablanca with Churchill and the French leaders. He went on to outline the progress of the war from an American perspective, telling Vargas how American production was getting along, how Anglo-American relations were faring, what the situation was in the Soviet Union, and what his hopes and plans were for the postwar period.

  Roosevelt then moved on to the subject of Brazil, and talked in a general way about the country’s economic development and its struggles with immigration. He left his first question until the end of his general opening remarks, yet then, as was his wont, Roosevelt came straight to the point. “In light of the developing situation in the war,” he asked Vargas, “is Brazil willing to become a member of the United Nations?”12

  Vargas, who had carefully studied Aranha’s ten-page memorandum on the plane, wasn’t surprised by the question. Looking straight into Roosevelt’s eyes, he replied that—as Caffery later put it in a message to Cordell Hull—“he would take steps to become a member of the United Nations.” Vargas then paused for what seemed like an eternity, but which was only a second or two, before qualifying his answer. “However,” he told Roosevelt, “this might be an opportune moment to say again that we need equipment from you for our military—naval and air force.”13 Vargas left Roosevelt in little doubt that in order to bring Brazil fully into the Allied camp, the United States would need to increase its supply of weapons to Brazil.

  Setting aside the question of additional US weapons shipments to Brazil, Roosevelt turned next to the Portuguese issue. He gave Vargas a brief summary of the importance of the island of Madeira to the Allied cause in the Atlantic, but specifically focused on the Azores, which were vital to Allied operations in the South Atlantic. Roosevelt confessed that he was taking something of a personal interest in the Azores and could remember them from World War I when in 1918, as assistant secretary of the navy, he came to the islands to inspect the American mid-Atlantic naval base that had recently been set up there. Now he confided to Vargas about a recent conversation with Winston Churchill, in which both men had agreed to make the establishment of air bases on the Azores a strategic priority for 1943.14 The security of the South Atlantic trade route to Europe depended on winning the battle against the German U-boats, and a base in the Azores would allow Allied antisubmarine aircraft to operate from the islands. The air base would also be a vital staging point for the Allied invasion of Europe that was expected to take place the following year.

  The one complicating factor was that Portugal controlled the archipelago. In order to gain access to the bases, the British were planning on opening negotiations with António de Oliveira Salazar, Portugal’s dictator, in the springtime of 1943, with the Americans to start talks with Salazar soon after. “Salazar is something of a tricky customer,” Roosevelt suggested to Vargas. The American president had already started trying to reassure Salazar that an Allied presence on the islands would last only f
or the duration of the war, as it had in World War I. Salazar, however, suspected both the British and the United States of plotting to establish a permanent presence on the islands. As it turned out, the wily Portuguese leader foresaw the coming of the Cold War and the ideological clash between democracy and communism, and understood that the islands would be of great use to a power—such as the United States—that wished to establish its dominance over Western Europe. Salazar feared that once the United States gained a foothold on the Azores, they would be loath to let the islands go.

  Yet Roosevelt also knew—or at least suspected—that Salazar was as concerned about German ambitions for his territories as he was about America’s. In his meeting with Vargas, Roosevelt suggested that Salazar feared a German invasion of mainland Portugal and the Azores, or simply an invasion of the islands by themselves. This was something of a smokescreen, however, as the real danger of a German invasion of Portugal had already passed. With Hitler’s forces tied down in the heavy fighting in the Soviet Union and with Allied forces in North Africa, a German attack against Portugal or its Atlantic possessions appeared remote.

  In truth, Hitler had missed his opportunity to take the Azores. At the start of the war, his naval commanders had urged him to invade the Azores before the British did, but Hitler chose to ignore their advice. What worried Roosevelt more than a German invasion of the Azores was the prospect that Salazar might refuse to allow the Allies access to the islands. In private meetings with Sir Ronald Campbell, the British ambassador to Lisbon, Salazar indicated that when the time came, he would do the right thing for the British. Yet he stopped short of promising the Americans a presence on the islands. Both Churchill and the British foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, had promised to try to change Salazar’s mind when Great Britain opened negotiations with the Portuguese leader. Roosevelt and the United States, however, remained unconvinced, and had begun preparations to potentially take the islands by force if the negotiations failed.