The secretary of state’s motorcade made its way up the winding mountain road to Vargas’s summer retreat. Vargas was pleased to have such a high-placed member of the US administration come to visit, but he and the secretary of state had differing agendas for the meeting. Stettinius wanted assurances that in the postwar era, the United States would have access to the bases it had helped to build in Brazil. Vargas, meanwhile, demanded a permanent seat on the world council. Neither man made any promises about either issue.
The two men discussed in some detail the situation in Argentina, and specifically US policy toward the regime in Buenos Aires.13 As Stettinius explained to Vargas, the United States hoped to conclude a deal with Argentina that would have the country enter the war on the side of the Allies in exchange for restored diplomatic ties between Buenos Aires and the capitals of the Allied nations. In addition to declaring war on Germany and Japan, the Allies also demanded that Argentina hold free elections and take action against pro-Nazi elements in the country—of which, by 1945, there were more than ever. As Germany crumbled, Nazis were already beginning to trickle into Argentina, marking the beginning of an exodus that would eventually earn the country notoriety as a safe haven for Hitler’s henchmen.
The Argentine minister of war, Juan Perón, sensing that the Allies were about to win a total victory in the war, feared that Argentina would be isolated in the postwar order unless it met the Allies’ demands. Argentina would eventually declare war on Germany and Japan on March 27, 1945; and on April 10, the United States, Great Britain, and France, along with the Latin American countries, restored full diplomatic relations with Argentina.
During their meeting in late February, the US secretary of state impressed on Vargas America’s strong desire for Argentina to hold free elections at the end of the war, and the implications for the Estado Novo were not lost on the Brazilian president. Stettinius stopped short of making a similar demand for Brazil, but the writing was on the wall: the Estado Novo would need to reform, or it would perish.
The coverage of Stettinius’s visit in the Brazilian press was less than flattering. A number of articles pointed to the fact that, as the British noted, “The visit was designed to put pressure on the president and to increase the United States hold over the country, whether militarily or politically.”14 Yet while Washington appeared to be flexing its muscles in late February, flush with confidence about the direction of the war and its clout in the postwar era, that self-assurance would soon be shaken.
On April 12, 1945, Franklin Roosevelt died of a stroke. His death received enormous coverage in the Brazilian press; Correio de Manhã, for instance, devoted the entire front page of its April 13 edition to the news. Interestingly, the Brazilian press gave greater prominence to, and carried in greater detail, the tribute to President Roosevelt by the opposition candidate, Eduardo Gomes, than it did to the tribute by President Vargas.15 The latter described President Roosevelt as the leader of democracy against Nazi fascism.16
The timing of Roosevelt’s death could not have been worse for Brazil. Two weeks earlier, on March 31, the Brazilian and US militaries had signed a secret document laying out postwar military arrangements between the parties.17 It was a detailed document, one intended to determine the mechanics of postwar military cooperation. But with Roosevelt’s death there was a real risk that these accomplishments would be overturned.18
Despite vague assurances from the new administration in Washington that its policies toward the Americas would be in keeping with Roosevelt’s, there was a feeling in Rio that Brazilians had lost their ally in the White House. Newspapers waxed nostalgic about the key moments in Roosevelt’s dealings with Brazil, naturally focusing on his meetings with President Vargas.19 For Vargas, moreover, Roosevelt’s death would likely deal a blow not only to Brazilian relations with the United States, but also to Vargas’s tenuous hold on power. Roosevelt had been more preoccupied with Brazil’s foreign policy than with its internal political system, but now—as Stettinius’s recent visit had made clear—Washington’s stance seemed to be changing. Vargas could expect internal challenges to his rule to increase accordingly.
At least Vargas still had the FEB. Its ongoing contributions in the Italian theater were perhaps Vargas’s last, best opportunity to recover some internal support and to maximize his military and economic returns from the United States. Fighting in Italy resumed in February 1945, with an Allied offensive that saw the FEB taking part in the Battle of Monte Castello—a fight in which the German forces were dug in on high ground, and put up fierce resistance. But unlike in their previous clashes with battle-hardened veterans of the eastern front, the Brazilians who fought at Monte Castello in 1945 were not facing the elite of the Nazi war machine. Many of the German soldiers based in the area were either young, first-time combatants or older, inexperienced fighters.20 The German officer class, meanwhile, was by this point in the war primarily made up of survivors from the Russian front, many of whom were exhausted and suffering from the mental scars of that brutal campaign.
The Brazilians, for perhaps the first time in the war, found themselves on relatively equal footing with the enemy. The soldiers of the FEB had traveled to the Italian front essentially untrained, and received proper combat training from the US military only after they had arrived in Italy. While still extremely green, the Brazilian troops were also handicapped by inadequate leadership. The Brazilian officer class appeared, at times, overeager to please, and they failed to grasp that warfare rarely went exactly to plan. They, like President Vargas, wanted quick results to illustrate the scale of their contribution to the Allied war effort, and this sometimes manifested itself in overly aggressive battlefield strategy—and high numbers of casualties among Brazilian forces.
Not until February 21, after several failed assaults, did Monte Castello fall to the FEB. The taking of Monte Castello was a key Allied aim of the spring 1945 Italian offensive, but in accomplishing it the FEB had suffered the loss of several hundred men and many more were wounded. In spite of—or perhaps because of—these casualties, the Battle of Monte Castello came to represent the FEB’s contribution in Italy more than any other clash. Much was made of the congratulations offered to the Brazilian forces by General Clark. Back in Rio, the coverage was equally celebratory. The special edition of the Brazilian paper O Cruzeiro do Sul devoted its entire front page to the “conquest of the Castello hill.”21 Correio de Manhã ran the headline, “Big Brazilian Victory in Italy,” and recounted the difficulties that the FEB faced in securing the mountain.22 Tributes to the FEB by US officers in the field were also given extensive coverage.
The battle represented, in a sense, the coming of age of the FEB, but the expeditionary force paid a high price for its success. Brazilian casualties outnumbered German ones at a rate of more than ten to one. During one failed attempt to secure the hill, the FEB incurred nearly 150 casualties to a total German figure of just under twenty dead or wounded.23
Still, it was a heady time for the Brazilian military. In April 1945, General Masarenham de Morais received the first unconditional surrender of a German division in Italy. This was a prelude to the surrender of all German forces in Italy on May 2, 1945, just two days after Adolf Hitler committed suicide in Berlin and five days before all of Germany surrendered to the western Allies, on May 7, 1945. The Germans would hold out for two more days against the Soviets, finally succumbing on May 9, 1945.
The Brazilian army, air force, and navy had collectively earned the respect of their US commanders. Likewise, the initial tension between US and Brazilian soldiers had given way to mutual respect and friendship. Back in Rio, Brazil’s military commanders were quick to seize the success of the FEB as a means to increase their own political power and leverage over the politicians.
The FEB had performed much better than expected, but the importance of its role in the Italian campaign was—and still is—heavily debated. Although the fighting in which Brazilian troops
took part was indeed important, it was never decisive; the campaign in Italy would have been a success with or without the FEB’s contribution. Yet it was a mark of distinction for Brazil’s military that whereas the United States had originally planned to essentially sideline Brazilian troops during the conflict, they had held their own on the battlefield and even scored some hits against the Germans. The major reason for these successes, aside from the bravery of the men who served in the FEB, was the extensive training they received on arriving in Italy. The Brazilians’ initial resentment at the US army’s rigorous methods was eclipsed by their pride at having become a disciplined fighting force—one that had sacrificed for the Allied cause just like any other. Of the 25,300 Brazilian soldiers originally sent to Italy, the majority took part in combat. By the end of the war, 451 Brazilians had been killed and nearly two thousand wounded in the fighting or in training accidents.24
The first squadron of the FEB returned home on July 18, 1945. Thousands of Cariocas gathered in downtown Rio, frantically waving Brazilian flags to greet the returning heroes. President Vargas led this outsized welcoming committee, well aware that the triumphant return of the FEB served to improve his own political fortunes. The victory parade that followed the troops’ debarkation contrasted markedly with the previous year’s farewell parade. The men of the FEB showed off their US equipment and uniforms, which made them look like an alien army in their own country. Modernized, highly trained, and disciplined, the force barely resembled the motley crew that had departed Rio in the winter of 1944.
Yet the soldiers received disappointing news after their initial reception in Rio: the FEB was immediately broken up and its members dispersed back to their original regiments throughout Brazil. The Americans were saddened, as well, for they had hoped that the FEB would remain in Europe and help with the occupation of the liberated territories there. Indeed, President Vargas’s decision to get Brazilian troops out of Europe as quickly as possible would prove to be a huge mistake; by pulling out of Europe before the United States felt the job there was finished, he effectively cut Brazil off from much of the economic spoils of the war—and the political rewards that the Americans were beginning to dole out to their allies.
In the meantime, the wolves were at President Vargas’s door. While he was still looking for a way to remain in office to oversee Brazil’s first steps into peacetime, an orderly transition looked to be a distant prospect.
Part Six: Postwar Blues
18 The Exit
President Vargas sat alone in his small, simply furnished study in the Guanabara Palace on the evening of October 29, 1945. The situation looked hopeless.1 Tanks and small armored personnel carriers were stationed at the front gates of the Guanabara Palace, as well as at strategic junctions around Rio. Soldiers were close enough to his study for Vargas to be able to hear the crackles of their radios and the insults they routinely exchanged with the presidential guards recruited by his younger brother, Benjamin Vargas, to protect the president. There was no escape, and the will of the army was unusually united and steadfast. They aimed to remove him from power, and—having come this far—they were unlikely to back down.
Dutra had arrived earlier to try to find some compromise, but the minister of war had found the president in no mood to back down, either.2 Finally, the chief of staff of the army was dispatched to meet with the president and to formally present him with a message from the military demanding that Vargas resign with immediate effect. In return, the military would offer him and his family safe passage out of the palace back to his farm in Rio Grande do Sul. Later, Dutra would come to rue this offer, wondering why the president was not sent into political exile abroad—but for Vargas, at this moment, the idea of being escorted out of the Guanabara Palace like a common criminal was surely painful enough.
As the president started to write a brief letter of resignation, which was part of the deal to secure his safe passage out of the palace, he could not have but reflected on the past few months and wondered where everything had gone wrong. The end of the war in Europe, and later in Japan, had been heavily celebrated in Rio and in the rest of Brazil; the masses had hoped that the end of the war would alleviate the fuel and food shortages in the country. But as the parties ended and the flags were put away, it became clear that the country was still in a state of political crisis, which would have to be resolved before things in Brazil could truly get back to normal.
The issue of presidential elections was becoming the most divisive issue between the various forces vying for control of Brazil: those loyal to President Vargas, the opposition, and the military. The key questions that remained were whether Vargas would allow presidential elections to take place by the end of the year, as he had promised, and whether he would be a candidate in such an election. In July 1945, in a speech in the São Paulo municipality of Santos, Vargas had promised to see the elections conducted fairly on the chosen date and had also declared once more that he was not interested in running.3
According to those close to the president, Vargas actually meant what he had said in July. He had grown tired, and he wanted to hold elections and hand over the presidency in an orderly fashion to his elected successor.4 The opposition, however, did not take his promise at face value and argued that the regime was managing the country’s internal unrest in order to prevent the elections from taking place. Many figures in the opposition wished to take revenge on Vargas, moreover, by removing him from power prior to any elections.5
Stoking the fears of many in the opposition was the emergence on the Brazilian political scene of the Queremista movement, so called because of its slogan “Queremos Getúlio” (We Want Getúlio). Many members of the movement were associated with the communist party or the labor party, and opposed the military candidates for the presidential election, preferring instead to retain the country’s current leader and allow him to oversee more gradual and limited reforms. The Queremista movement also argued that presidential elections should be postponed and that Brazil should instead be given a constitutional assembly, which would work with President Vargas to enact any necessary changes in the country’s political structure.6 The opposition, meanwhile, charged that associates of the Vargas regime were working with the Queremistas to try to prevent presidential elections from taking place at all. The British embassy, which was closely monitoring internal political developments in Brazil at the time, seemed to share this assessment of the Queremistas:
These people were for the most part hooligans, or at their best entirely ignorant and illiterate workers recruited by Benjamin Vargas and his gang, who began to stage noisy demonstrations first in Rio de Janeiro itself and subsequently in other parts of the country. There is no doubt that the president himself actively encouraged these elements, partly from reasons of vanity and partly to prove that, though there was such a demand for him to remain, like a true democrat, he still proposed to retire and cultivate cabbages in Rio Grande do Sul.7
Faced with such an obvious ploy to prop up the regime, the opposition understandably distrusted the president’s denial that he would run in any presidential election.
If Vargas were to run in a presidential election, moreover, it was looking more and more likely that he would win. As Vargas had expected, Dutra’s campaign appeared to be in serious trouble during the winter of 1945. To make matters worse for Dutra, the president was slowly but surely withdrawing his support for the minister of war. Vargas gave no more speeches lauding Dutra’s personality and political track record. When Dutra, by electoral law, had resigned as minister of war on August 3 in order to become the regime’s official candidate for the presidency, he appeared unaware that Vargas had recently been trying to find an alternative candidate. At one point, the president tried to tempt General Góes Monteiro, Dutra’s successor as minister of war, to accept the nomination, suggesting that he was more charismatic than Dutra and therefore stood a better chance of winning. Góes Monteiro responded by telling the p
resident in no uncertain terms, “If you try to stop Dutra, you will have to find another minister of war.” The implied threat was not only that the general who succeeded Dutra as minister would resign, but also that the military would not tolerate such backsliding.
Góes Monteiro’s comments surely chagrined Vargas. At the heart of all of the president’s recent political maneuvers was an intent to divide the military as much as possible. If he could split the armed forces, Vargas hoped, the military leadership would eventually come to its senses and turn to him as a last-minute candidate, knowing that the alternative would be a sound defeat at the hands of the opposition. A unified military, however, would be able to mount a strong challenge against both Vargas and the opposition—something that Vargas wanted to avoid at all costs.
As the tensions mounted, rupture began to appear inevitable. In the early evening of October 3, more than one hundred thousand Queremistas held a rally in downtown Rio before marching to the Guanabara Palace. This caused a scramble of activity at the palace, where Vargas was scheming to use the unprecedented display of support to heighten his charade. After consulting with Alzira, he decided to announce his resignation, and began working on a short speech. Góes Monteiro and others, however, convinced Vargas that resigning at this moment would lead to a constitutional and political crisis. So instead, Vargas addressed the cheering crowd, whose indiscriminate roars of approval drowned out much of his impromptu speech. One dispassionate onlooker noted, “Vargas is in such a state of excitement that he might precipitate anything.”8
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