On the sweltering summer evening of January 28, 1944, a huge crowd gathered in front of the Municipal Theater in downtown Rio. Large posters of the leaders of the nascent United Nations hung from the theater’s balconies: black and white images of President Vargas, President Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and, for first time, Joseph Stalin. As the sun sank behind the neighboring buildings, the shadows lengthened and the temperature cooled. Powerful backlights illuminated the building, throwing into dramatic relief its impressive, European-styled façade. On Praça Floriano square below, a noisy crowd—the local press reported there were one hundred thousand people—contented itself by singing patriotic songs.1 The event in which they were participating had been organized by the Liga de Defesa Nacional, Brazil’s government-sponsored civilian-defense league, to commemorate the second anniversary of Brazil’s breaking of ties with Germany and Italy. These men, women, and children had come out to show their support for the ongoing war effort and for the leaders who were directing it.
The main speaker at the event was Osvaldo Aranha, the man who had made the dramatic announcement about Brazil’s new foreign policy two years earlier. Now, addressing his countrymen, Aranha recalled one of the main reasons for Brazil’s decision to break relations with Germany and Italy, calling on Brazilians to continue its “battle with the fifth column.” He reminded them, too, that “Brazil must strengthen even further its ties with the United Nations, and our friendship with the United States is indestructible.”2 The speech told Cariocas nothing they didn’t already know, but they received it well nonetheless, and sang the national anthem as the event drew to a close.
The popular outpouring of support on the evening of January 28 boded well for Brazil’s next move in the war: its commitment of troops to the ongoing struggle in Europe. On the home front, however, the Brazilian people were finding themselves under more and more stress as the war dragged on. Although Carnaval, the most important party of the year in Brazil, took place as usual at the end of February that year, it was one of the quietest on record.3 The local authorities withheld all funding for popular festivities and the chief of police in Rio warned that “any Axis subjects found on the street or in public places of entertainment will be arrested.”4 Warnings to this effect were also posted in the local press.5
As Cariocas got back to work following Carnaval, many of them grappled with drastic increases in the cost of living. The situation had worsened considerably during the first part of 1944 and now threatened to destabilize the Vargas administration, as the US embassy noted in a report to the secretary of state:
The grumblings and discontent about food shortages and high prices are now so general that unless prompt and effective action is taken to alleviate the condition of the laboring classes, it may assume proportions where dissatisfaction with the government could bring on a grave political crisis for President Vargas. The endless queues, which one sees day after day in front of the butcher’s shops [and] milk distribution depots, are a source of constant irritation. Housewives and servants spend hours daily standing in line, and criticism of President Vargas and the government is so widespread that it is affecting his popularity with the masses.6
The rising cost of living was due to a host of factors. The salary increases that President Vargas announced in November of the previous year had all but been wiped out by inflation. Profiteering and corruption among government officials, as well as structural problems such as the lack of a modern transportation system and shortages of fuel, had all been combining to drive up prices, putting the pinch on ordinary Brazilians and increasing the risk of political unrest within the country.7
At first, President Vargas failed to note the seriousness of the situation. Only in March 1944 did he promise to take measures to counteract the increases. More specific promises were made to root out corruption and punish anyone caught excessively profiteering. With the country at war and so many Brazilians making sacrifices, Vargas warned, such selfishness and criminality would not be tolerated.
After returning to Rio from his summer retreat, Vargas sought other ways to defuse popular discontent. He attempted to improve the civilian food supply, particularly the shortages of meat and milk. He also devised a plan to mollify Brazilians who aspired for political change.
During his summer stay in Petrópolis, after holding meetings with Aranha and other ministers at his retreat, Vargas concluded that the Estado Novo could not survive in the postwar era. Given the populist demands for changes that the war had created, it was clear that the Brazilian political system needed significant reforming. Now, after returning from the mountains to find Rio’s populace seething over the worsening domestic situation, Vargas was prepared to make a far-reaching statement to the Brazilian people about the country’s political future.
The administration warned international journalists and newswire organizations in Rio that the president would make a major speech on Brazil’s future during April 1944. The timing of the speech was important; the first Brazilian soldiers were almost ready to embark for Europe, and President Vargas had publicly proclaimed that he would make his announcement about Brazil’s future before the Força Expedicionária Brasileira left the country’s shores. The FEB’s training had been going smoothly, and the US joint chiefs of staff had identified Italy as the FEB’s final destination, confirming that the force would receive further training and equipment once it arrived in Europe. Given the troops’ progress, May looked like the most likely month for their departure, so Vargas had to hurry.
President Vargas gave his much-anticipated speech on April 15, 1944, at the opening ceremony for a new building for the Brazilian press association. Although his remarks were lengthy, he spoke with passion and authority, increasing the intensity of his rhetoric as he reached his conclusion. Only then did Vargas deliver the lines he knew the media would highlight in the following day’s newspapers:
With reference to our external situation, although there is still much fighting to do, it is not to avoid defeat but to obtain a complete victory and effectively reconstruct the world on a more humane and just basis, respecting the sovereignty of all nations, large or small, militarily weak or strong. Each nation should be able to organize itself according to its own desires, adequately expressed in accordance with its historical traditions and the needs of its autonomous existence. We are now about to enter into the struggle more actively by sending to the battlefront our young and brave soldiers alongside of our glorious fighting allies. This implies added responsibilities, which means the acceptance of additional restrictions in our usual comforts and a courageous disposition to confront new sacrifices. We have maintained exemplary internal conduct, but the hour calls for even greater union among us, putting transitory differences and selfish preoccupations aside. When the future of the country and the national destiny is at stake, we must not be occupied with sterile agitations and questions of form. Any act or word that casts doubt on our major objectives is disguised fifth columism. What is of greatest importance is winning the war, and that is our prime objective. When again we enjoy the benefits of peace, we shall complete the development of our various institutions, which are not as yet functioning. The people will then by means of the most ample and free methods without intimidation of any kind manifest themselves democratically and select their own rulers and representatives in an atmosphere of law and order.8
Informed ahead of time of the speech’s importance, the United States had expected something of a state of the union address, but what Vargas delivered was much more unusual.9 By directly alluding to the possibility of democratic elections in postwar Brazil, he had given the growing number of pro-reform Brazilians a reason to hope, and had signaled a momentous and imminent change in the country’s political structure. While Vargas had given previous indications of a return to democratic politics after the war, this speech represented the most direct commitment he made to such a political transformation.
The British ambassador said, “The speech was listened to with apathy, but the final sentences brought terrific cheering that lasted for at least two minutes.”10 The local press, like Vargas’s audience, were hugely enthusiastic about the address. Front-page headlines included, “President Vargas Promises Elections After the War,” “The Free Vote of the Citizen,” and “Foundation of Democracy in the Thought of President Vargas.”11 The New York Times reported the speech as part of a detailed article on Brazil on July 13, 1944, titled “US Aid to Brazil Spurs Her Advance.” The New York Times correspondent, Foster Hailey, was a little more cautious than the local press in assessing Vargas’s promise, writing, “There is no opposition party, but there is open criticism of the government in every coffee shop. President Vargas, for whose tenure the Brazilians coined the phrase continuismo, meaning an intent to continue in office, has made a qualified promise that after the war free elections will be held.”12
“A qualified promise” turned out to be a relatively accurate assessment of Vargas’s closing remarks in the speech. The president’s local critics suggested that he had little time for democratic politics, and that his promise of free elections at the end of the war was simply a political ploy to distract the public’s attention from—and defuse their dissatisfaction with—increases in the cost of living.13 Indeed, according to the New York Times, the real effect Vargas’s speech had was “taking out whatever wind the sails of his active political opponents may have accumulated lately.”14 As the US embassy in Rio warned, however, “the food situation is not improving to any appreciable level, and here, as elsewhere, when bellies are empty, unrest is always latent.”15
Back in Washington, however, President Vargas’s promise was widely lauded. In an article in the Washington Post, Sumner Welles wrote:
Thus the solemn assurance has now been given to the people of Brazil that they will once more enjoy popular self-government. If one may venture in this uncertain world to make a prediction, I would prophesy that in the years after the end of the present war the two nations that would most swiftly forge ahead because of the capacity of their people, because of their vast natural resources, and because of their entrance upon a period of rapid industrial expansion would be Brazil and the Soviet Union.16
By so favorably comparing Brazil’s economic and geopolitical potential with that of the Soviet Union, Welles was elevating a former tropical backwater to the ranks of the world’s great superpowers. It was, by any measure, a remarkable statement—and one that, if not entirely accurate in the short term, would prove prescient in the long run.
The British were less sanguine than the Americans about the prospects for Brazilian democracy. For some time before and after Sumner Welles’s tribute in the Washington Post, the British argued that the US press had a tendency to “laud all things Brazilian just as it decries all that comes out of Argentina.”17 Welles and the Americans, they felt, were far too easily taken in by President Vargas, whose comments—according to the British, at least—represented little more than an attempt to distract Brazilians from the food shortages and price increases still racking their country.18 As the British embassy in Rio warned Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, “The Brazilians, with all their love for bestowing and receiving flattery, are no fools and in the long run are more likely to be influenced by the circumstances of the day rather than by memories of expressions of praise, however highly placed their authors may be.”19
Whatever their attitude toward Vargas’s speech, however, the British were looking toward the postwar relationship with Brazil for the greater part of 1944, and anticipating the potentially lucrative trade deals they might strike with Brazil after the war. Part of this, they knew, was dependent on a loosening of US-Brazilian ties, but that was beginning to look like a distinct possibility. London sensed that, despite Welles’s warm words, elements of the Vargas regime were getting cold feet about Brazil’s alliance with the United States, and were looking at Great Britain as a counterbalance to US influence in their country.20
Whatever misgivings certain Brazilian officials might have harbored about the United States, one American, at least, continued to enjoy high standing in Rio: Sumner Welles. Although Welles had left Rio at the start of February 1942 and had been forced to resign as secretary of state in the autumn of 1943, his presence was still felt in Latin America. He was, after all, the main architect of the original Good Neighbor Program, and he continued to laud the US policy of developing closer ties with South America. As World War II progressed toward its final phases—and as Brazilian troops prepared to enter the battle—his resounding support of the Vargas administration came to be much missed in Rio.
In June 1944, the same month as the D-Day landings in Normandy, the first squadron of the FEB was ready to leave for Italy. On June 4, the Allies liberated Rome, but German forces were still well dug in across the north of Italy and were proving very difficult to dislodge. The topography of Italy, its mountains and valleys, suited the defenders, who were disciplined and well organized; many of them were battle-tested veterans of the eastern front. Prior to the departure of the first 5,075 Brazilians on board the US troop ship the General Mann, the entire division of twenty-five thousand men who would eventually serve in Italy marched through the streets of central Rio. The soldiers were cheered by the huge number of Cariocas who had turned out for the occasion. It was a simultaneously joyful and somber occasion. The crowd tried its best to lift the spirits of the troops, most of whom were heading overseas for the first time; some of the girls in the crowds threw rice, while the older mothers waved hankies. The sight of the first war-ready troops was slightly unnerving for many Cariocas, and brought the reality of war home in a way that blackouts and shortages of food and fuel had not.
It was, in truth, a less than convincing display of Brazilian military might—the troops were not ready for war. The soldiers appeared poorly equipped. Their uniforms were far from appropriate for the hostile Italian winter: soft hats, thin cotton clothing, and small backpacks barely large enough to carry a packed lunch. The rifles they proudly carried on their left shoulders belonged to the era of the previous world war, and as the division marched, bits of their guns fell off, littering the streets with small fragments of gun butts and even whole barrels. Few armies in World War II had been sent into a war zone so ill equipped and badly trained. The US promise to train and equip the force once it reached its destination was vital.
The choice of Italy as the destination for the FEB had been very last minute. The United States originally planned to send them to North Africa, but the Allies’ rapid victories in that region meant a new front had to be found. There had been some disagreement between senior US and British officers as to where the FEB should be located. The British wanted nothing to do with the FEB, arguing that it would get in the way of combat operations. The British viewed the force as little more than an American ruse, one intended to show that the United States enjoyed widespread support in South America. Nonetheless, the United States had promised President Vargas that the FEB would be involved in combat operations and that its members would receive the best training and equipment that the United States had to offer—and this promise eventually trumped British objections to Brazil’s participation.
The farewell parade through Rio climaxed with an emotional address by President Vargas, who waved two little Brazilian flags as the parade marched past his podium. The address was pure Brazilian theater, soulful and passionate, but eschewing any mention of the difficult realities confronting the nation. Vargas concluded his relatively short speech by saying:
The hour has come for vengeance against those who in 1942 used pirate ships barbarously to massacre Brazilian lives. Our army, which has covered itself with honors in memorable deeds, will demonstrate its new arms and its traditional bravery on the battlefields of Europe. Everything has been done to make sure the FEB lacks for nothing. Your wives, mothers, sweethearts, and children await your return. . . . The [Brazilian] nation is proud of your courage and dedication. May God’s blessings accompany you, as our spirits and hearts accompany you until you return with victory.21
The troops and their families could not have asked for a more dramatic send-off, even if Vargas’s claim that they had everything they might need for the task ahead surely rang hollow for the soldiers whose weapons were literally falling apart in their hands.
On the evening of June 30, 1944, Vargas went aboard the General Mann to address the troops one last time. Using the captain’s radio, the president wished the 5,075 Brazilian troops on the ship the best of luck, while Dutra—who had accompanied Vargas on board—contented himself by shaking the hands of a few of the soldiers.
Two days later, the men finally set off for Europe. At 5:30 a.m. on Sunday, July 2, 1944, the General Mann raised its anchor and, under the cover of darkness, quietly slipped out of the harbor in Rio and headed toward the open ocean. The change of destination from Algiers to Naples had caused some organizational problems, and logistically the Brazilians already seemed in over their heads, as well; US observers aboard the General Mann noted that the first meal on board took five to six hours to serve.22 But far more severe problems lay ahead; although not as infested as it had been during the height of the Battle of the Atlantic, the high seas were still teeming with German U-boats, any one of which would have delighted in sending the General Mann and everyone on board to the bottom of the ocean.
Luckily, the trip progressed smoothly—that is, until the very end. On July 6 the troop ship crossed the equator and, on July 13, 1944, its crew spotted the Strait of Gibraltar. But as the General Mann sailed through the strait, the ship’s radio picked up a broadcast by the BBC that informed listeners of the ship’s dispatch and progress. Needless to say, nobody on board was impressed by Great Britain’s manifest lack of concern for their security.
At long last, on Sunday, July 16, the General Mann reached Naples, where the troops immediately disembarked to the sounds of a US military band. Back in Rio, there was widespread relief that the men had made it safely across the ocean, successfully avoiding the German U-boat menace.
The arrival of the first division of Brazilian troops in Italy represented a triumph for President Vargas. Not only were Brazilian troops securing their country a greater role in the war (and thus in the postwar world), but they were also receiving free training from the United States—experience that would serve Brazil well in its long standoff with its Latin American rival, Argentina. Indeed, as the division started its intensive training program, the Brazilian air force was undergoing training of its own back in Brazil. Part of the air force would shortly follow the FEB to Italy, and at least one of its pilots had the blood of the Estado Novo coursing through his veins. Among the men training with US officers was President Vargas’s oldest son, Lieutenant Lutero Vargas. At the start of October 1944, around four hundred members of the Brazilian air force were scheduled to head to Italy. Around the same time, the second group of Brazilian soldiers were scheduled to land there.
Training for the Brazilian troops, however, did not go according to plan. The equipment the United States had promised was slow to arrive, so the force had to train with their inadequate Brazilian equipment. Moreover, the soldiers found the US army trainers’ methods very different from what they had experienced back in Brazil. The US trainers were tough and unsparing, and intercepted letters from Brazilian soldiers back to their loved ones in Brazil were full of complaints. The US army, for its part, was finding it hard to prepare the Brazilians for battle. The Americans praised the attitudes of both the Brazilian officers and their men, but reported that their enthusiasm often got the better of them. Another problem appeared to be the Brazilians’ inability to launch coordinated attacks using artillery support. Following an exercise in which the Brazilian artillery gunners opened fire late and inaccurately, General Masarenham de Morais was forced to admit to the American trainers, “Punctuality and accuracy are not natural characteristics of the Brazilians.”23
Still, the Brazilian soldiers’ spirits were high as they joined part of the US Fifth Army and prepared for their first taste of combat against the Germans. They even devised a slogan for themselves: a cobra vai fumar, a common Portuguese idiom meaning, literally, “smoking snakes,” but whose English analog might be “when pigs fly.” It had taken so long for the Allies to agree to the participation of the FEB, and then for the men to be recruited and trained, that many Brazilians believed it would never become a reality—hence the FEB’s motto. When the soldiers of the FEB went into the battle, they proudly wore their newly created divisional shoulder patch, which showed a snake smoking a pipe. The irony of the logo may have been lost on the soldiers’ US commanders in Italy, but it was not lost on their countrymen back in Rio.
The Americans were, by this time, far less cheery than the Brazilians. Brazil’s original plan of sending one hundred thousand men to fight in the war had proven overly optimistic; Rio had since reduced its troop commitment to twenty-five thousand. The United States was growing tired of what it viewed as Brazilian posturing and hesitation; privately, US military commanders feared that the Brazilians would prove to be more of a burden than an asset in any active theater of the war, and they became more committed than ever to finding a quiet spot for the Brazilians to wait out the war while the other Allied troops did their work.
In truth, Vargas was not reneging on his commitment as much as the United States thought. He was fully behind the expeditionary force. From the outset, he had wanted the FEB to be drawn from across Brazil. It may not have occurred to him that drawing the FEB from across Brazil would result in such diversity that the officers and soldiers had little in common with one another.
A recruitment drive had failed to dredge up additional volunteers for the FEB, and so Vargas had turned to conscription. This exposed deep divisions within the country, and belied the myth that all Brazilians were proud to participate in the conflict. Of the young men initially called up for service, many managed to avoid the draft by producing medical reports of back trouble, poor vision, and the like. While many Brazilians cheered the departing troops, the truth was that the idea of sending the force had never been wildly popular among the Brazilian people, and especially not among those who had good lives they were leaving behind; in rich downtown Rio de Janeiro, for example, few young men had any appetite for risking their lives in a war on the other side of the ocean. In a sense, Vargas got his wish; the FEB was diverse. Those Brazilians who finally did make the trip to Italy included firemen, electricians, and historians, as well as a group of nurses.
Officials in the huge ministry of war building on Avenida President Vargas carefully tracked the FEB’s progress in Italy, and the early reports were not good. It was immediately clear that US attempts to send the Brazilians to a relatively quiet and pacified front had hugely misfired. The fighting in Italy in late 1944 and early 1945 was some of the most intense of the entire war. Allied attempts to uproot the Germans during the end of autumn 1944 had not fully succeeded; as a result, the FEB found itself taking part in several key battles, including the Battle of Monte Castello, the outcome of which was crucial to securing a German surrender in Italy.
The hardships experienced by the Brazilian troops were myriad. Correspondence from soldiers at the front to their families in Brazil was routinely opened, and it revealed tensions between the Brazilian and US soldiers. To some extent, this was a product of the dissonance between the intensive and rigorous training methods that were a part of the US army manual and US military habits and the Brazilian training methods and protocols; the Brazilians were used to the more laid-back methods that had characterized much of their army service in Brazil. But the experience of being in the field quickly took a toll on the men, as well. Although there was little fighting during the harsh Italian winter, FEB members reported that some soldiers suffered frostbite during patrols. They were all unfamiliar with the snow and cold, which penetrated even their new, US-sponsored winter uniforms.
The Americans, at least, found some cause to stop complaining. US accounts of the fighting involving Brazilian forces during September and October 1944 record that the Brazilians fought with bravery and cooperated well with the US army. There were instances of small advances made by the FEB, and the Brazilian forces even captured some German prisoners of war. In a typical account of the FEB’s operations in September 1944, the US army said, “During the first week of the fighting the FEB showed splendid advances all along the front. The favorable reports of the combat team were in no small part due to the tremendous activity of the Brazilian artillery personnel.”24
In these first weeks of action, the FEB did help to push the Allied lines forward, but their advances were limited due to both the tough resistance of the Germans and the arrival of autumn rains followed by the onset of winter, which brought early snowfall to the region. There were still the familiar problems, along with these new ones. Since the bulk of the Brazilians’ training did not take place until they arrived in Italy, the men who entered the line during the month of September 1944 were not fully ready for battle.
In late September, the Brazilian minister of war, General Dutra, arrived in Italy to inspect the troops and discuss their progress with senior US officers. If Dutra was still sore at President Vargas’s refusal to allow him to personally command the FEB, he did his best not to show it—even though such stoicism was not always easy. On September 26, Dutra and the senior officers of the FEB were the guests of Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark, the commander of the US Fifth Army.25 During the ceremonies, Dutra watched as General Clark presented Legion of Merit medals on behalf of President Roosevelt to the senior Brazilian commanders. Later, Dutra and his party visited the front line to tour Brazilian positions. Finally, Dutra toured those hospitals to which the Brazilian wounded had been evacuated. US officers noted that the visit of Dutra and other senior Brazilians officers had a positive impact on the morale of the FEB. The result was, as one American put it, that “patrol activities all along the FEB front increased as enthusiastic Brazilians harassed the Germans with everything they had.”26
Dutra’s trip was hailed as a great success. When newsreel footage and photos of his visit to the troops arrived back in Rio, Dutra looked to many of his countrymen like a commander in chief. He was starting to receive more publicity, and was slowly coming into his own—and emerging from the shadows behind President Vargas. The general continued to swear loyalty to the president—at least, for the time being—but he had his own reasons to be discontented. The FEB, while holding its own, was not the success anyone in the Estado Novo had hoped. During his meetings with senior US army officers in Italy, Dutra had been informed of continuing problems between the US and Brazilian armies, much of which was put down to communication problems that plagued the two forces’ cooperation, despite the best efforts of their translators. The Americans also warned Dutra that Brazilian casualty figures would sharply rise when the spring offensive got under way in 1945.
For all of the problems with the FEB’s dispatch to Italy, and while its deployment had occurred on a much smaller scale than originally planned, President Vargas continued to believe the force represented Brazil’s best opportunity to secure its position in the postwar order. In reality, however, the army had been sent into the field too late to achieve the lofty political goals Vargas had set for it. And even if the FEB had arrived a year earlier, it might not have made much of a difference on the Italian front. While the Allies were making progress in northern Europe, the Germans were firmly rooted throughout Italy, where the topography favored defenders over attackers. The Germans occupied the high ground, and the Brazilians and their US allies were in the unenviable position of having to dislodge their enemy with frontal assaults, on foot and uphill.
The FEB was engaged in much fiercer fighting than the United States had intended for it. And during the initial stages of its deployment in Italy, the soldiers in the FEB suffered a much higher rate of casualties than their US counterparts. The United States attributed this to the bravery of the Brazilian men but also to their naiveté. Still, the Allies were making good progress in other European theaters, and it was just a matter of time until the German army was crushed—whether in the hills of Italy, or in the heart of the continent.
Back in Rio, attention was shifting to the postwar period—and President Vargas’s political problems were multiplying. During the final months of 1944, he faced growing opposition to his regime from Brazilians who were tired of the economic situation in Brazil; and as news of the Brazilian casualties in Italy trickled back to the country, the pressure for political change only increased. Curiously, at this key juncture, Vargas’s political judgment—usually so sound, but in scarce supply following his accident and the death of his son—deserted him altogether. The decisions he made in the months ahead would effectively open the door to enemies both within and outside his regime. And perhaps Vargas’s most fatal decision of all was his choice to withdraw support for an old friend: Osvaldo Aranha, the minister of foreign affairs.