Nazis and Good Neighbors: The United States Campaign Against the Germans of Latin America in World War II

Friedman, Max Paul., Nazis and Good Neighbors: The United States Campaign Against the Germans of Latin America in World War II. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 359 pp.

In the years leading up to the outbreak of World War II and well into the war itself, the United States pursued German nationals and descendents throughout Latin America with an unparalleled vengeance. According to Florida State University historian, Max Paul Friedman, the ultimate objective was not just the removal of a perceived Nazi threat from the hemisphere, but also the elimination of German economic interests so that U.S. businesses could fill the vacuum. To support his stinging indictment of U.S. wartime policy, Friedman combed many archives and repositories in the United States, in several Latin American countries and in Germany.

Although Chancellor Adolf Hitler viewed every German expatriate as an extended citizen of Germany and that he expected them to be spokespeople for and supporters of Nazi policies, not all did, a fact Friedman asserts the United States failed to consider. Instead policymakers in Washington, D.C. assumed that every German expatriate in Latin America served as a potential, if not real, Nazi saboteur, spy or propagandist and, any such person of wealth lent financial support to the Third Reich. Because of the alleged linkage, starting in 1942, the United States directed the deportation of many expatriates to Germany and, subsequently to the United States, where they were interned in camps spread across the country. Those who remained Latin America had their properties placed under government control, if not nationalized, and their civil rights drastically curtailed. In essence, Friedman concludes, the policy resulted in a human tragedy of immeasurable proportions.

In the late nineteenth century German communities could be found in several Latin American countries and the number accelerated after World War I when the German economy went into a dizzying tailspin. In Latin America, many of these Germans became successful small farmers and businessmen. For the most part they melded into the local culture, save their German schools and clubs and their continued subscriptions to homeland periodicals and newspapers. Others imitated their German roots in separate communities, such as those found in Chile, Brazil and Guatemala. Well-established German companies, such as I.G. Farben, Bayer and the Hamburg-American Line, established successful operations throughout Central and South America.

None of these entities escaped U.S. scrutiny as World War II approached, but according to Friedman it was a jaundiced scrutiny. From the start military intelligence officers and subsequently FBI agents assigned to each Latin American country assumed that German expatriates and their descendents were sympathetic to the Nazi cause. Local informants on the FBI payroll substantiated the flimsy evidence. Guilt by association became the norm. Although the State Department understood the FBI reports to be largely exaggerated, the deportation and internment programs were not affected. The net result was the persecution of thousands of innocent people.

The majority of the Germans brought to the United States were exchanged for the release of U.S. citizens trapped inside the Nazi occupied European war zone. Others were simply repatriated home. But the United States also had an opportunity to exchange interned Germans for Jews held in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany. Friedman indicts the United States for its failure to act in this instance. Those who remained in the U.S. internment camps for the war's duration were sometimes paroled to work in industries, ironically including defense plants.

Friedman's well-documented work, his provocative thesis and crisp writing style make a persuasive argument. At the same time it demonstrates the need for further examination of the German problem in Latin America during World War II, particularly on a country-by-country basis. In sum, Friedman has added an important work to the field of inter-American relations.

Thomas M. Leonard University of North Florida

Copyright Association of Third World Studies, Inc. Spring 2005
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