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Vargas and the Destruction of the Brazilian Integralista and Nazi Parties

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 December 2015

Frank D. McCann
Frank D. McCann*
Affiliation:
Wisconsin State University, River Falls, Wisconsin
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Extract

After the coup d'etat which established the Estado Nôvo, Brazilian President Getúlio Vargas gradually destroyed two organizations that had helped to create the excited atmosphere in which the events of November 10, 1937 occurred: the Brazilian branch of the German National Socialist Party (NSDAP) and the Ação Integralista Brasileira. Vargas eliminated the first because it was a threat to Brazilian security and sovereignty, the second because it was a danger to his regime. Though apparently Vargas was never serious in his flirtation with the greenshirted Integralistas, he did welcome their support of his government until he consolidated control. Integralista sympathy for and possible connection with Nazi Germany precluded Getúlio's allying himself with the greenshirts but not from using them. He attacked the Nazi Party because it tended to preserve German nationalism among German immigrants and hindered their Brazilianization.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 26 , Issue 1 , July 1969 , pp. 15 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 1969

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References

1 Quoted in Shephardson, Whitney H. and Scroggs, William O., The United States in World Affairs, 1940 (New York, 1941), 325.Google Scholar

2 Simonson, William N., “Nazi Infiltration in South America, 1953–1945” (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, 1964), 74–75.Google Scholar Hereafter cited as Simonson, “Nazi Infiltration.”

3 Ibid., 91. As late as 1965 Protestant missionaries came from the United States to work in these communities knowing only German and English, and with the idea that Portuguese would not be necessary; conversation of author with minister from Michigan en route to Brazil, April 13, 1965. An interesting fictional account of the German problem is found in Clodomir Moog, Vianna, Um Rio Imita O Reno (Pôrto Alegre, 1948).Google Scholar It is the story of a young Brazilian engineer’s isolation and hardships in a German community in southern Brazil.

4 Simonson, “Nazi Infiltration,” 92. Today German ranks second to English as the foreign language most used in business circles in Rio de Janeiro; interview, Fodor, Jorge, Sub-Gerente, Banco Lar Brasileiro (Rio de Janeiro), December 5, 1965.Google Scholar

5 Maack, Reinhard, “The Germans of South Brazil: A German View,” The Quarterly Journal of Inter-American Relations, 1, No. 3 (July 1939), 5–23.Google Scholar Author was a German geographer.

6 Simonson, , “Nazi Infiltration,” 95.Google Scholar

7 Rauschning, Herman, The Voice of Destruction (New York, 1940), 61–67.Google Scholar He broke with Hitler in 1934 and went into exile in England.

8 Simonson, , “Nazi Infiltration,” 144–145.Google Scholar

9 Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918–1945, Series D, V, 860. Hereafter cited as DGFP.

10 Ibid., 860–863.

11 Simonson, , “Nazi Infiltration,” 290–291.Google Scholar

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13 Caffery, Jefferson, Feb. 25, 1938, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1938, 5, 408–409.Google Scholar Hereafter cited as Foreign Relations.

14 Caffery, , Feb. 27, 1938, Foreign Relations, 5, 409.Google Scholar

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17 Scotten, Mar. 14, 1938, /1179.

18 Caffery, Jan. 3, 1938, /1160; Scotteti, Jan. 28, 1938, /1164; Scotten, Mar. 4, 1938, /1170; Scotten, Mar. 11, 1938, /1176; Scotten, Mar. 14, 1938, /1179; Caffery, Mar. 14, 1938, /1466; Caffery, Mar. 18, 1938, /1178; Scotten, Mar. 18, 1938, /1181; Scotten, Mar. 25, 1938, /1182.

19 Pearson, Drew, “Merry-go-round,” Washington Post, Feb. 11, 1939 Google Scholar in Clipping Scrapbook of Aranha Mission, 1939, Oswaldo Aranha Archive (Rio de Janeiro). This archive will hereafter be cited as OAA. Pearson and Aranha became friends during the latter’s ambassadorship in Washington and carried on a lively correspondence until Aranha’s death.

20 Caffery, Mar. 18, 1938, /1178.

21 Ibid.; Caffery, , Mar. 7, 1938, Foreign Relations, 5, 411–412 Google Scholar; Sumner Welles to Caffery, Mar. 21, 1938, /1178; Oswaldo Aranha to Getúlio Vargas, Mar. 29, 1938, OAA.

22 Scotten, Mar. 25, 1938, /1182; Simonson, , “Nazi Infiltration,” 470.Google Scholar

23 Scotten, Apr. 1, 1938, /1186.

24 Ibid.; Aranha to Vargas, Mar. 29, 1938, OAA; Scotten, Apr. 4, 1938, /1187.

25 DGFP, D, V, 833; Scotten, , Apr. 22, 1938, Foreign Relations, 5, 412–413.Google Scholar

26 O Jornal (Rio de Janeiro), May 1, 1938, 1.

27 Quoted in Simonson, , “ Nazi Infiltration,” 472.Google Scholar

28 Ibid.

29 Scotten, Apr. 22, 1938, /1191.

30 Scotten, , Apr. 22, 1938, Foreign Relations, 5, 412–413.Google Scholar

31 DGFP, D, V, 854.

32 Ibid., 852-853. Document dated May 21, 1938.

33 Ibid., 833, note 4.

34 Vargas, Alzira, Getúlio, 115–133 Google Scholar; Coutinho, Lourival, O General Góes Depõe & (Rio de Janeiro, 1956), 348–353 Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Coutinho, General Góes); Caffery, May 16, 1938, Revolutions/607.

35 Caffery, May 12, 1938, Revolutions/604; for an unofficial account see Jay Rice to Evan Young, May 12, 1938, Cauby C. Araujo Papers (Rio de Janeiro). Rice, Young, and Araujo were Pan American Airways executives.

36 Caffery, May 12, 1938, Revolutions/604; Vargas, Alzira, Getúlio, 130–131.Google Scholar

37 DGFP, D, V, 837–839.

38 Vargas, Getúlio, A Nova Política do Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, 1938), 5, 211–213 Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Vargas, Nova Política); Caffery, May 16, 1938, Revolution/607.

39 Vargas, , Nova Politica, 5, 219–221, 233–235Google Scholar (Vila Militar on May 15, 1938 and Escola Naval on June 11, 1938); Caffery, May 19, 1938, Revolutions/610. In view of the circumstances of Vargas’ suicide in 1954, the comment about preferring death to surrender would seem to be more than mere rhetoric.

40 Caffery, June 10, 1938, Revolutions/602.

41 DGFP, D, V, 841.

42 Gilbert, Prentiss B. (Berlin), May 17, 1938, Foreign Relations, 5, 415.Google Scholar

43 Caffery, May 21, 1938, ibid., 417.

44 DGFP, D, V, 861–862.

45 Ibid., 833, note 4.

46 Caffery, , May 13, 1938, Foreign Relations, 5, 414–415.Google Scholar

47 DGFP, D, V, 839–840.

48 Ibid., 840–843.

49 Ibid., 843. For effect of these instructions in Brazil see DOPS, Boletim Informativa: “Frente Alemã do Traballio,” May 9, 1939, OAA.

50 DGFP, D, V, 843–844, 845 note 5.

51 Wilson, Hugh R. (Berlin), May 27, 1938, Foreign Relations, 5, 418–419.Google Scholar

52 Caffery, May 20, 1938, ibid., 416.

53 DGFP, D, V, 853–854.

54 Caffery, May 16, 1938, Revolutions/607.

55 Caffery, June 24, 1938, Revolutions/627. These were Goés Monteiro’s words to Caffery on June 20.

56 Caffery, June 17, 1938/1199.

57 DGFP, D, V, 860–863.

58 Aranha to Vargas, June 26, 1938, OAA. Aranha wrote: “terei que respeitar a reação de minha santa e velha mae. . . .”

59 Vargas to Aranha, July 1, 1938, OAA.

60 Caffery, June 29 to July 15, 1938, Revolutions/621-636. Fournier’s fear of being shot by police may have had some basis. Goés Monteiro claimed that several of the Integralista attackers were taken to the basement of Guanabara Palace and shot; Coutinho, , General Goés, 353–355.Google Scholar Ambassador Ritter mentioned police brutality and suspected that the secretary of the Federação 25 de Julho was murdered by his jailers; DGFP, D, V, 860–863. As a result of the May 11 affair Vargas amended the Constitution of November 10, 1937 to provide the death penalty for crimes of treason, especially for violence against the regime or the president (Law 1, May 16, 1938). But the measure was not made retroactive so it did not apply to the May 11 rebels; Caffery, May 19, 1938, Revolutions/609.

61 DGFP, D, V, 873.

62 Ibid., 868, 872–874.

63 For a study of Oswaldo Aranha’s role in the development of Brazilian foreign policy in the first years of the Estado Nôvo see McCann, F. D., “Brazil and the United States and the Coming of World War II, 1937-1942” (unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, Indiana University, 1967).Google Scholar