9 Welles Checks Out and Welles Checks In

The foreign ministers’ conference had ended, and Sumner Welles’s work in Rio was nearly complete. On January 29, Welles and Ambassador Jefferson Caffery joined President Vargas and Alzira for breakfast at the Guanabara Palace. All three men were acutely aware of the need for the United States to deliver on its promises of armaments for the Brazilian army—and to do so in a speedy fashion.1 If the Brazilian military perceived that the United States was delaying, or suspected that it might renege on the deal entirely, all of the hard work Vargas and the Americans had done to bring Brazil into the Allied camp would be for naught.

As always, Alzira listened to the conversation intently and said very little. She understood that Brazil’s relations with the United States were entering uncharted territory, and that the dangers to her father’s regime from both inside and outside Brazil were all the more acute.

Characteristically, too, President Vargas was still hedging on the question of an American force being stationed in northeastern Brazil. It was the last card he had to play and he was not about to give it up easily, especially in light of the country’s internal political environment. The maneuverings of the military leadership on the morning of the cabinet meeting two days earlier had unnerved the president. If the military had been so vocal about its objections to Brazil’s breaking of relations with the Axis powers, could it now be relied on to back that decision—and the government behind it—completely?

Vargas used his breakfast with Welles and Caffery to shore up his position as much as possible by reminding the United States that he would not be taken for granted. The meeting also served the purpose of a handover to Caffery, with Welles informing the president that he was ready to depart for the United States as soon as the Pan Am clipper service arrived in Rio.

Sumner Welles was intent on enjoying his last few days in Rio before returning to freezing cold Washington and his equally frosty boss, Cordell Hull, who had still not come to terms with the fact that his deputy had allowed Argentina to maintain its diplomatic relations with the Axis powers. For recreation, Welles took long brisk morning walks along the wide promenade of Copacabana Beach. He could often be seen strolling, lost in thought, always wearing his trusty panama hat, which just days earlier he had waved in the air to acknowledge the crowds outside the foreign ministers’ conference. Now it surely weighed heavily on his worried brow.

Rio’s beachfront was in a state of transformation. As he walked along it, Welles would have been able to see old ramshackle buildings in the process of being knocked down and replaced with new modern developments, most comprised of at least six or seven stories. This was the holiday season of January and February, and so nearly all the construction work along the beachfront had stopped. Cranes stood idle, and half-completed building projects were eerily silent, without the normal din of banging metal and whistling workmen. Many of the shutters on the buildings that were already completed were closed tightly, their occupants having already decamped up to the cooler air in the mountains.

The noise on the other side of the road, however, would have more than compensated for the silence of Rio’s construction sites. As Welles strolled along the beach, he would have been treated to a view of a long strip of sand packed with Europeans and Cariocas of all colors, lying next to one another as they basked in the tropical sun. Welles was broadminded, born in New York City and educated at Harvard, and he could not have helped but favorably contrast the unsegregated Rio beaches with the “white only” public spaces back in the United States. On occasion, the Louisiana-born Jefferson Caffery joined Welles on his walks, and the ambassador would comment on the integrated nature of the races in Rio and Brazil as a modern marvel of progress and hope. Welles, no doubt, agreed.

Welles liked Rio, and Rio very much liked Welles. Osvaldo Aranha organized a series of glittering diplomatic events to entertain the undersecretary of state before his return to Washington. Those who knew him well noted, however, that Welles appeared distracted in his final days in Rio. The heat, the never-ending rounds of meetings, and the high-stakes diplomacy with President Vargas and Aranha had taken their toll. Welles suddenly looked old. He understood all too well, too, that the war for the United States was only just beginning, and that the battle for Brazil had not even commenced. Perhaps it was the sea air, but Welles felt tired, and he must have wondered how the human ball of energy that was Osvaldo Aranha kept going without seeming to burn out.

Sumner Welles was not the only man leaving Rio for Washington at the start of February 1942. President Vargas had decided to send his minister of finance, Artur de Souza Costa, to the United States. Souza Costa’s main reason for going to Washington was to try to secure American arms, as well as to help conclude a series of deals for US aid for Brazil’s iron mines, rubber factories, and other natural industries that might prove useful to the Allied war effort. In case the Roosevelt administration missed the point, however, Souza Costa called on Caffery on January 31, the eve of his departure for Washington, to tell him, “The principal object of my visit to Washington is the procurement of necessary armament.”2 Caffery promised to pass the message along to the State Department, and duly did so the same day.3

Souza Costa’s mission got off to a bad start. Welles and Hull had sent a list of armaments that the United States was currently in a position to furnish to Brazil to Caffery back in Rio. When he showed the list to Aranha in the hope that the minister of foreign affairs would endorse it before showing it to Vargas, Aranha had something of a moment with the ambassador. Barely able to control his temper and the level of his voice, Aranha barked at Caffery:

This is just the old run around. You can’t show that to President Vargas. Welles told him that you would give us equal treatment with England, Russia, China—you are doing nothing of the kind; you are dumping a lot of trucks on us; giving us nothing we need for the defense of the northeast: anti-aircraft guns, artillery, combat planes. Tell Welles that he had better just file this away and forget it. Our military people are going to raise hell with many “I told you sos.” President Vargas will never believe the State Department again.4

Aranha was suggesting that this list of arms might not only damage relations between the Brazilian president and the US government, but also turn the Brazilian military even further against Vargas. On this latter point, however, Caffery and his superiors had their doubts.

Privately, Welles suspected that Aranha’s standing with the Brazilian military had been greatly damaged by the breaking of relations with the Axis powers. Caffery had heard that the armed forces held Aranha much more to account than President Vargas for what they saw as a policy disaster for Brazil. Dutra—as well as the British—had noted that after Aranha’s speech breaking relations with the Axis, no other document or presidential decree was issued to officially confirm the rupture. Therefore, as the British outlined, “A change in the minister of foreign affairs would make the rupture null and void.”5 Dutra no doubt figured this out as well. Soon political, diplomatic, and military circles were all awash with rumors of plots being hatched against Aranha by his old nemesis, the minister of war Dutra, and his allies.

Welles decided to have Caffery take the list to President Vargas regardless of Aranha’s opinion. Accompanied by Aranha, the US ambassador traveled by car to Petrópolis, where the president was taking his annual break from the summer heat of Rio. During the journey, Caffery looked out the window at the changing scenery as the car made its way up the winding mountain road, and silently pined, no doubt, for a summer retreat like one the British ambassador had. The usually talkative Aranha, meanwhile, was also almost completely silent for the entire journey. Caffery felt that his guest appeared distracted by the intrigues and internal plots of recent months. The burden of his office weighed heavily on Aranha’s shoulders, and appeared to be pushing down on him all the harder since the foreign ministers’ conference. Aranha was too much the optimist to think that he was done for, politically, but he understood that his enemies were getting more powerful and were circling, waiting for the moment to strike.

Perhaps it was the cooler mountain air or the relaxed nature of the town, but Vargas struck Caffery as being in much better fettle than the minister of foreign affairs. Dressed in casual attire and with only Alzira with him to serve as an aide, Vargas studied the document carefully before offering his verdict:

My offhand opinion is very good indeed (of course I will consult my technicians). Welles is carrying out his promises to me. This is not all we need, but the fact that he is getting it to us before the first of next month demonstrates his good faith, which I have never doubted. Thank him from me and thank also President Roosevelt for his cooperation. Tell Welles that we shall be expecting this material as fast as he can send it. I have full confidence that he appreciates our other urgent needs, especially how badly we need artillery and anti-aircraft guns at Fernando de Noronha, Natal, etc., and that without combat planes we will be hopeless in the northeast.6

The president had noticed the same shortcomings in the Americans’ list as had Aranha, but—just as Welles and Caffery had predicted—he was not nearly as troubled by the idea of not receiving all of the supplies at once. As Caffery was taking his leave Vargas repeated to him, “Tell Welles of my high appreciation and of my full confidence in him.”

Aranha was waiting outside the room for Caffery, who told him of the conversation he had just had with Vargas. Aranha harrumphed, “I hope that he keeps to that opinion.”7

Back in Washington, Cordell Hull attempted to assuage the foreign minister’s concerns, writing to Caffery, “Please tell Aranha from me that for once his uncanny intuition has been in error. This is no ‘run around’ and there is not going to be any ‘run around.’”8

Yet Aranha was not so easily reassured. Vargas, Aranha, Welles, and Hull all understood perfectly well that the US list could be seen as a glass half full or half empty. Aranha, with his political troubles, needed the bulk of the armaments to arrive quickly so as to appease Dutra and the military, and chose to concentrate on what was missing. President Vargas, on the other hand, sought to please Welles and President Roosevelt at a time when Souza Costa was trying to obtain important concessions from the United States on key economic and natural resource development deals, and opted to focus on what the Americans had included, not what they had left out.

Whether or not Vargas’s positive response to the list of military supplies helped to grease the wheels in Washington, Souza Costa’s mission went much more smoothly thereafter. Souza Costa succeeded in accomplishing almost all of the economic objectives Vargas had assigned him. The United States offered funds of up to $100 million to help develop raw materials in Brazil, while agreeing that the price of Brazilian rubber would be increased and production would also expand in the Amazon region of Brazil. The United States also provided assurances that Brazil would still be paid for the export of its coffee and cacao, even if these commodities could not be shipped. Furthermore, the Americans would provide research and development money, as well as expertise, to help the Brazilians produce aircraft engines.9

These agreements, which were collectively known as the Washington Accords, were signed on March 3, 1942, and represented every bit as significant a gain for Brazil’s economy as the armaments deal had been for the country’s military. The accords did advance the two countries’ military relationship, as well; the United States also went some way to providing Brazil with more of the armaments that it needed for the defense of northeastern Brazil. The new lend-lease agreement was also raised to $200 million, granting Brazil additional credit with which to pay for the increased shipments of armaments.10

In Rio the following morning, with Alzira busy transcribing Souza Costa’s long and detailed encrypted telegrams, President Vargas declared himself satisfied with the final details of the accords.11 In return for the American concessions, and after first consulting with Dutra, Vargas agreed to the stationing of US personnel in northeastern Brazil, with the understanding that their main task was to transform the region’s airfields into modern, fully functioning airports in order to allow the unrestricted use of the airspace by the United States.12 He also finished dealing with the problem of Brazil’s pro-Axis aviation industry, an issue that had long concerned the Americans and British. By 1942, the Italian airline LATI no longer flew routes to Brazil, and the Brazilian airline Condor—which previously had strong German links—was being taken over by the Brazilian government.13 The process of taking control of local airlines had been a complex one, but Vargas had been determined to succeed.14

The Brazilian press warmly welcomed the Washington Accords of March 3, 1942. One American in particular was singled out for his work in Latin America: Nelson Rockefeller. Central to Rockefeller’s vision was the development of cultural and media ties between the two countries—ties that were aimed at countering Nazi efforts to covertly export its brand of racial culture into Brazil. The tightening of a British naval blockade in the region had already made direct German attempts to do this all the more difficult. So too, for that matter, had a recent turn of events in the Atlantic.

In February and March 1942, the German navy sank four Brazilian vessels off the coast of the United States.15 Germany, while wishing to punish Brazil for the breaking of relations, also had geostrategic motives for attacking Brazilian shipping. The Germans believed that Brazil remained highly dependent on supplies from the United States to keep its economy going. The most vulnerable area was fuel, which was already in short supply in Brazil and for which Brazil was almost totally dependent on the United States. Fuel was brought to Brazil in large Brazilian tankers, and the Germans believed that the more Brazilian shipping its submarines sank, the more likely it was that the United States would have to organize an escort convoy, which would distract the US navy from maintaining the South Atlantic route from the United States to Great Britain. Some fifty-three Brazilian seamen were lost in one incident alone when, on March 10, 1942, seven days after the signing of the Washington Accords, a German U-boat torpedoed the SS Cairu between Norfolk and New York.16

When news of the sinking of the Cairu reached Brazil, serious rioting took place in Rio and the country’s south. In the capital, rioters stampeded through the streets, attacking German-owned businesses. The local police were slow to restore order, and chose to intervene only as a last resort. German shopkeepers attempted to save their businesses by dropping their metal shutters and putting up signs that read “closed until further notice.” The wave of anti-German feeling took many Brazilian leaders by surprise, but in the American and British embassies in Rio, it was viewed as confirmation that Brazilians were very much on the side of the Allied cause. Certainly, it would be difficult for Vargas to switch sides now that so much of the Brazilian populace had turned decisively against the Axis.

Rockefeller’s main goal, however, was even more ambitious than preventing German ideology from infecting America’s southerly neighbor. He aimed both to lay the groundwork in Rio for Brazilian participation in the war, and to illustrate to America that Brazil was a trusted ally. Rockefeller understood that in order to succeed in the latter effort, he would need to demystify Brazil for the American public and attempt to build Rio’s credibility. He was busily waging a charm offensive in the American press; in April 1942, Life magazine, the periodical with the largest circulation of the era, put Rockefeller on its cover and the New Yorker published a detailed feature on the youthful American. Rockefeller proclaimed in the New Yorker, “I am optimistic about South America, but you have to qualify that by saying that I am optimistic about everything.”17 The articles in both magazines were full of praise for Rockefeller and the work of the office of the coordinator of inter-American affairs. He was seen as a man who could cut through Washington’s red tape, a man who could get things done. Rockefeller’s profile was growing in Rio, as well, with many Brazilians curious as to why this superwealthy, young, handsome man did not simply become a playboy.

During the first part of 1942, Rockefeller was keen to increase the pace and scale of his cultural program in Brazil. He regarded the success of Walt Disney’s visit to Rio the previous year and the good reception Brazilian artists were enjoying in America as indications that the time was right for him to plan a project on a far greater scale. Naturally, such lofty aims did not come without due risk.

Without knowing it, Rockefeller would unleash a force on Rio de Janeiro that, for better or worse, would come to play a leading role in the American Good Neighbor Program. Even as Rockefeller’s nominal boss, Sumner Welles, was preparing to depart Rio, thousands of miles away another Mr. Welles was getting ready to board the very same aircraft that was earmarked to bring the undersecretary of state back to the United States. The acclaimed actor-director Orson Welles was in Hollywood at the time, frantically trying to wrap up his latest film in order to catch the Pan Am clipper down to Rio. As Sumner Welles spent his last few days in Rio taking meetings in the Copacabana Palace Hotel and gently unwinding from two weeks of frantic diplomatic activity, he had no idea of the difficulties that lay ahead when this other Mr. Welles—and his film crew—arrived in Rio.

The project Rockefeller had in mind for Welles was sure to be hugely expensive. But Hollywood executives remained keen to participate in the Good Neighbor Program; they understood that there was a lot of money to be made in producing wartime propaganda movies, which drew large audiences across the United States. These executives’ eagerness—and the fact that Nelson Rockefeller was a shareholder in RKO Pictures—made it relatively easy for him to find the necessary funding for a full-scale Hollywood film to be shot in Rio de Janeiro during the first part of 1942.

Rockefeller’s selection of Orson Welles to make the film was not a universally popular decision. The twenty-six-year-old filmmaker was flush from the success of his landmark work Citizen Kane, which had been released the previous year to tremendous acclaim, having been nominated for nine Academy Awards. Welles’s genius was widely acknowledged by film critics, and also by fellow filmmakers in Hollywood. The trouble was that Welles’s genius was fueled by alcohol and, as Welles put it, “skirt chasing.”18 He was not, perhaps, the best man to unleash in a city where both vices were widely available. By 1942, Welles was also starting to reveal something of a persecution complex. He claimed that he was an outsider, that Hollywood didn’t understand him, and that the big studio bosses were out to ruin his career. On top of all this, he was hopelessly overworked, not only making films but also acting in them.

Much was at stake, and in retrospect, Rockefeller might have been wise to take more caution in choosing a filmmaker. Certainly there were other leading directors who would have been able to make the film he had in mind. Caution, however, was not Rockefeller’s style. He wanted genius, and so he dispatched Orson Welles to Rio to shoot a big-budget film that was supposed to be the icing on the newly baked cake of US-Brazilian relations.

Orson Welles had his own doubts about taking on the project. He resented being dragged out of the edit suite (where he was working on another film, The Magnificent Ambersons, which he felt was going to be even better than Citizen Kane) and dispatched without salary to Rio.19 Welles simply could not turn the Brazil film down, however. As he put it later:

You know why I went? I went because it was put to me in the very strongest terms by Jock Whitney and Nelson Rockefeller that this would represent a sorely needed contribution to inter-American affairs. This sounds today quite unbelievably silly, but in the first year of the war the defense of the hemisphere seemed crucially important. I was told that the value of this project would lie not in the film itself but in the fact of making it. It was put to me that my contribution as a kind of ambassador extraordinaire would be truly meaningful. Normally, I had doubts about this, but Roosevelt himself helped to persuade me that I really had no choice.20

With the president himself imploring Welles to use his creative genius to help shore up ties between the United States and Brazil, the filmmaker could not very well have said no. And whether or not the legendarily festive city beckoned to Welles, as well, it would soon have him in its grip.

Welles had been told that he and his crew were to be on the Pan Am clipper service to Rio at the start of February. “Rio: at the end of civilization as we know it,” claimed Welles on newsreel footage as he set out for the Brazilian capital. The timing of his departure was dictated by the end of the conference of foreign ministers in Rio, since the Brazilian government did not feel it could receive Welles properly with so many other foreign dignitaries in town.21

During the flight down to Rio, Welles went over the initial, vague plans for the movie. The Brazilian department of press and propaganda (DIP) had decided that the film’s subject was to be Carnaval in Rio. From the outset, Welles suspected that the Brazilian government wanted a film that would be of use to it both during wartime and in the postwar era:

They were a little drunk with the potency of the motion picture medium. It is not too hard to see how their DIP would conceive luring one of the world’s most creative filmmakers to make a fantastic tourist come-on (effective after hostilities ended, to be sure) centered upon their fabulous Carnaval. So they beckoned the gullible Yankees. I suggest that the rec­ord is made even clearer when it is noted that the Brazilian official put in charge of working with us on the film was the head of the department of tourism.22

Welles argued that the real trouble with the film, however, was that neither he nor his crew knew anything about Carnaval. Welles claimed not to even like the yearly events. “I associated them with fancy dress, which bores me silly, and the tourist banalities of the New Orleans Mardi Gras.”23

What interested Welles much more than Carnaval itself was the samba music that accompanied the festival. In 1942, samba music was not well known outside of Brazil, and Welles wanted to bring the music to the masses back in the United States by making a film centered on the samba clubs in the poor areas of Rio known as the favelas.24 This intention was not entirely realistic, given how dangerous the favelas were, and a cinematic tour of the city’s slums was certainly not what the Brazilian government was expecting Welles and his team to produce for the war effort.

President Vargas and the Brazilian government were initially extremely flattered that a director of Welles’s stature was in Rio to make a film about Brazil. Vargas was impressed by Welles’s energy and his seemingly strong commitment to Brazilian culture. Osvaldo Aranha, too, was quickly won over by Welles. Aranha shepherded Welles around at official functions, making sure he was meeting the right people.

The sheer scale of Welles’s movie project, moreover, staggered the Brazilians. Welles wanted to re-create the vast processions and samba parties of Carnaval, even though many of these rituals had recently been done away with. Praça Onze, the historic square in downtown Rio and traditionally the focus of Carnaval, had been knocked down in 1940 by the Vargas government as part of their attempt to exert more government control over the parade and to build a new boulevard. This was no problem for Welles, who rebuilt an exact replica of the praça in a movie studio, where he also re-created the dancing and music of the samba parade. It was on this film stage that photographers from Life captured the famous pictures of Welles dressed in a white tuxedo, brandishing a handheld camera—a filming technique that was little used at the time—and looking slightly crazed.

Early on, it was clear that Welles and his film, which he gave the working title It’s All True, were in deep trouble. Studio executives, worried about the spiraling costs, threatened to withhold payment for Welles’s expenses. One man drowned during the filming of a scene depicting Brazilian revolutionaries arriving in Rio by raft.25 Compounding these problems was the fact that Welles was drinking too much and chasing skirts all over Rio. He was not content to remain in “white” Rio, the areas by the coastline, and instead traveled further afield. His one attempt to go to one of the city’s favelas, however, ended when men throwing beer bottles attacked his party. Even a country as diverse as Brazil had racial strictures in the 1940s, and Rockefeller had to smooth things over with Vargas, who was increasingly worried about the “black” nature of Welles’s film.

Dealing with Hollywood movie bosses proved to be a much more difficult task, even for Rockefeller, and eventually Welles was forced to abandon the film. The executives had become fed up with Welles’s antics, and had taken issue with the project’s producers, finally deciding to cut off Welles’s funds. While a “finished”—or at least viewable—version of the film would surface in the 1980s, Rockefeller’s grand ambitions for the project were never realized.

The great project had ended in failure and ruin for Welles, who would never work for a major Hollywood studio again. His usefulness to Rockefeller, however, did not end with the film. Welles, who had already gained infamy as a radio personality for his 1938 narration of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, enjoyed something of a second career as a radio broadcaster while in Brazil, hosting joint radio programs with Brazilian broadcasters and even speaking some broken Portuguese during the shows.

Welles took part in two important radio broadcasts while in Rio, one to mark Pan-American Day on April 15, 1942, and the other one to mark Brazilian President’s Day on April 19, 1942. Welles’s joint radio address with Osvaldo Aranha on April 15 was an important event in helping to introduce Aranha to a wider audience in the United States. When the two men came together to conduct the broadcast, the differences between them could not have been more striking. Welles looked like a trendy but slightly mad professor, dressed in a crumpled double-breasted pin-striped suit with a white shirt and no tie. Aranha, by contrast, appeared more conservative, in a crisp suit and tie with perfectly combed hair. Prior to the broadcast the minister of foreign affairs had an attack of nerves, wondering if his heavily accented English would be understood by an American audience. Welles reassured him, suggesting that many Americans struggled to follow Welles’s own lyrical style of English. Indeed, prior to, during, and after the joint broadcast, it was clear that—despite all the difficulties surrounding It’s All True—Aranha and Welles remained on excellent terms.

During the program, which was broadcast on NBC, Aranha made the pitch that Brazil was a reliable ally and could be trusted:

I know well that the heart of Brazil is all with the United States. Our interests have been mutual always, our affections mutually profound. Today, as history itself enters upon a new epoch, our very aims are so identical that I feel justified in speaking now for the people of both our countries, for your people as well as mine, when I say that in all that family of nations of which you have made mention, we are the closest, the United States and Brazil—we are each other’s favorite . . . The products of our industry, the great wealth of our natural resources, are yours—all yours, for your fight against our common enemies. Brazilian ships give first preference to your war needs. They carry little else. Our effort is more than just a supplement to yours. I need a stronger word than cooperation.26

True to form, the foreign minister came off as strongly pro-American, and while his assurance—“the heart of Brazil is all with the United States”—may have not been entirely grounded in reality—ignoring, for instance, the military’s ongoing frustration with America’s conduct toward Brazil—it did convey exactly the sort of resolute camaraderie that had become the policy of the Vargas administration, while also making clear that the war was still America’s to fight, and not Brazil’s.

The conversation then moved to the serious topic of the first attacks against Brazilian shipping by German U-boats, which at the time of the broadcast in April 1942 were starting to increase in frequency. Here Welles revealed his true professionalism. It would be easy to dismiss Welles simply as a drunk, perspiring party animal, whose interest in Rio was purely to stroke his own ego and pursue the thrill of sexual conquest. He had another side, however, which shone through whenever the fog of booze lifted long enough. Welles was capable of being a first-rate diplomat, and although he would have regarded the labels themselves as insulting, he was also something of a good politician and statesman who took his responsibilities seriously.

Welles had been instructed to ask about the German attacks on merchant Brazilian shipping during the course of his interview with Aranha, and the filmmaker approached the subject diplomatically:

Another delicate subject, Mr. Aranha. The sinking of Brazilian ships, especially in North American waters. It would seem needless to say that their loss was no more avoidable than the loss of our own merchant ships, and that Brazilian ships are no easier for our navy to protect than American ships. Still, some of us here have feared that certain sections of Brazilian opinion might find in those disasters a source of resentment and perhaps even some loss of confidence in our defensive powers.27

Welles’s comments were exceedingly careful—a fact attested to by the original script for the interview, on which he had scrawled copious notes. Welles had gone through draft after draft to craft the tone and the meaning of the segment in a way that would reflect exactly what he wished to convey to the audience—namely, that the attacks on Brazilian shipping would not alter its position on the war.

Welles’s second radio appearance came on Brazilian President’s Day, April 19, 1942, and was broadcast live from a glittering event during which Rio’s political and social elites were treated to a musical show. Welles acted as the host, along with the very wooden and droll Jefferson Caffery, who could hardly hide his discomfort at being outshone by Welles. After the musical performance there was dancing, and everybody wanted a dance with the star attraction from America. Welles danced with Alzira under the watchful eye of her husband. Charming, cultured, and with manners perfectly tailored to the black-tie event, Welles worked the room as if he were the president and Caffery a mere junior aide.

Just as Brazil had taken to his predecessor, Sumner Welles, so it fell in love with Orson Welles. Later, he would confess that he couldn’t remember a more appreciative audience than the Cariocas. Welles’s part in Brazil’s story may have been only a brief walk-on amid the greater drama of the first attacks on Brazilian shipping, but the warmth that much of Rio and Brazil felt for the crazy Yankee gave him a unique opportunity to play ambassador—a role he had, in reality, craved.

Despite Welles’s failure to finish his film, he played a meaningful role in helping to keep Brazilian relations with the United States on an even keel in the months of February and March 1942, crucial months that saw the first Brazilian casualties of World War II. When Welles could keep himself together long enough, and keep his demons at bay, he was capable of doing the most brilliant things for his country and for Brazil. He was, however, on borrowed time; the booze, the amphetamines (which he took because he thought they made him lose weight), the heat of Rio, and the punishing work schedule were all taking their toll.

Welles didn’t exactly leave Rio a broken man, but when he finally departed, his career in Hollywood was effectively over. Welles’s reputation as a filmmaker would take years to recover, and even when it did, the films he directed and starred in would not win nearly the same acclaim as his earlier works.

Yet while Brazil may not have done wonders for Welles’s career, he had given a great lift to his host nation. The time he spent there as an ambassador, showman, radio presenter, and lover of all things Brazilian endeared him to the country, which needed just such a distraction—indeed, just such a friend—at a time when it was having to adjust to life during the war, with all the losses and fears that such dramatic times brought. Later in the year, months after Welles had left, Osvaldo Aranha wrote warmly to his radio costar, thanking him for his work in Brazil and for the good impression he had left in the country.28

One man had been conspicuously absent from most of the festivities and parties for the Welles entourage: President Vargas. During February and March 1942 he continued to remain in Petrópolis and came to Rio only when the occasion demanded it. The president had much to ponder as he went for his regular morning walk around the town. As German attacks on Brazilian shipping increased, President Vargas was coming under more and more pressure to act against Axis assets in Brazil. Initially, he did so to release some steam from the boiling kettle of anti-Axis feeling in Brazil, which the local police reported to him was getting out of control. On March 12, 1942, Vargas signed a decree authorizing the seizure of 30 percent of the total funds of Axis subjects living in the country. Estimates varied as to how much this amounted to in reality, but a figure of half a billion dollars was the most widely accepted.29

The early days of the Axis naval campaign against Brazilian shipping proved to be very difficult for Vargas, who quickly realized that Dutra and Góes Monteiro’s earlier warnings that Brazil was not ready for war were actually close to the mark. Vargas called for the support of the United States in establishing naval convoys to protect Brazilian merchant seamen and in providing arms that would help Brazil defend its shipping. But this aid had not yet arrived, despite the fact that by March 1942, nearly the entire Brazilian merchant navy was running between the United States and Brazil. Although they were carrying essential war materials to the United States, the ships remained completely vulnerable to the German U-boats prowling the Atlantic.

On March 11, the day after the sinking of the SS Cairu, Caffery wrote to Hull with the news that the secretary of state had feared: no more Brazilian ships would be coming to the United States. “Aranha tells me that the government has ordered all Brazilian boats to take refuge in the nearest ports,” Caffery reported.30 The day before, Vargas had written in his diary that he was determined to suspend all shipping to the United States until he got the guarantees he wanted from Washington.31 In addition to their requests for convoy assistance, the Brazilians now also requested US help arming the Brazilian boats that were in US ports. Brazil itself would take responsibility for arming Brazilian ships in Brazilian ports.32

Brazilians felt the impact of the Axis campaign against their country’s merchant shipping almost immediately. Shortages of some basic materials became routine. Soon, fuel was scarce, and petrol rationing commenced. Fuel shortages only became more pronounced when, on April 18, President Vargas canceled tanker sailings from the eastern coast of the United States to South America. This measure, which was introduced to protect the slow-moving tanker fleet from Axis attacks, was set to last between four to six weeks.33

Newsprint soon became hard to find as well.34 This shortage threatened to stop production of several of Brazil’s major daily newspapers, and caused a great deal of bad feeling toward the two principal suppliers of newsprint, the United States and Great Britain.35 To be sure, the Allies appreciated the importance of keeping Brazilian newspapers in circulation. Not only were the state-controlled papers full of pro-Allied articles, but they also took an increasingly hostile line against the Axis powers.

The United States offered what resources it could spare and US naval officers offered advice on the routing of Brazilian shipping, but these were mere stopgap measures, and fell short of the assistance Vargas requested.36 Meanwhile, the political situation within Brazil was growing dire. Just as Aranha suspected, the Brazilian army was full of “told you sos” about the shortages. Dutra demanded to know how the army was meant to repel any southerly Argentine attack without fuel. When Vargas reminded his minister of war that Argentina was equally short of fuel, Dutra argued that he suspected Washington would go soft on Argentina and supply it with petrol in order to try to entice it into breaking relations with the Axis powers.

In late April 1942, a worried President Vargas came down from his retreat in Petrópolis to meet with an American naval delegation in Rio.37 Following a long discussion, President Vargas made the unprecedented decision to open all ports and airfields to the American navy and its air forces. After resisting the idea of allowing an American military presence in Brazil for so long, Vargas was finally forced to bow to this American demand in order to salvage the worsening situation in the Atlantic. Once the United States had established a military presence along the Brazilian coast, he hoped, it would drive off the wolf packs of U-boats that were hunting Brazilian shipping, and reopen the trade link between North and South America.

The man most responsible for this American coup was Vice Admiral Jonas H. Ingram. Vargas was so impressed with the US officer that he ordered Brazilian naval forces to follow Ingram’s orders, whatever they may be.38 Vargas and Ingram only grew closer during the course of the war, to the point that the US admiral would unofficially advise the Brazilian president on naval issues. Ingram eventually assumed all responsibility for the training and equipping of Brazilian naval forces and worked closely with Vargas in the battle for the South Atlantic.39 In April 1942, however, Ingram’s major contribution was to organize greater protection for Brazilian shipping against German U-boats operating out of French ports.

By the end of April 1942 it appeared that Brazil—while officially remaining a neutral country—would not retain this status for much longer. It was widely expected that the German attacks against Brazilian shipping would intensify over the summer of 1942, and would eventually draw Brazil into the war despite its best efforts to stay out of it. The Brazilian army, however, was plotting to stop this from happening.