Buenos Aires, Argentina, 14th of August, 1940
“Senor Presidente.” A voice called out for the President of Argentina, Nicolas Repetto who himself was looking gravely at the news regarding the progress of the war in Europe, weary eyes scanning through the latest reports on his deesk.
“Yes, comrade? Please, speak.” He said, eyes scanning over to the young military aide who offered a small bow of his head and then a nervous gulp.
“It has begun sir. The border command has reported massive movements from the Brazilian army. At least half a million men they say sir.” He said, the mood of the room darkening almost immediately as all eyes fixated on the bearer of bad news.
“Are you certain?”
“The shooting has already begun. The Bolivian government in exile also says their contacts have informed them that the government will seek to redress old grudges with Chile soon. Contreras will likely stay quiet for now while he waits for London to tell him what to do.”
“Is the army ready?”
“Yes senor Presidente, we’ve had a few days to prepare defences; but they are outnumbered. We have three corps facing two armies.” He said solemnly, holding his hat in his hands and sweating terribly despite the cool southern hemisphere winter air.
The radio called his attention again.
“We must apologise for interrupting our coverage of the war in Europe with news much closer to home. The Brazilian Army, in cooperation with Paraguay and Bolivia, have begun to launch attacks on our country in full force minutes before this broadcast. From what we can see, they are moving the entirety of the army on the border into our lands.” That much was obvious at least. But would they have the strength to hold against it?
“Aircraft from the Brazilian border have been seen and are beginning their bombing runs while infantry and artillery commence their attack alongside tanks and armoured cars. This seems to be no mistake, nor an exercise as Brazil has claimed for the past few weeks, but what we have all feared for years has come to pass.” Yes, the great nightmare of his time..and when the Argentine military was still so busy preparing and reforming. Could they survive? Could the weeks of preparation make the difference? It wasn’t in his hands anymore.
“We…yes, we have word that the Brazilian President and Supreme Leader, Plinio Salgado, is making his broadcast. We will play this now.” Ah, so the devil will be explaining himself, Repetto thought, furrowing his brow.
“-Countrymen, sons and daughters of Brazil. Today marks the beginning of a crusade, a holy war to scour the influence of the Bolshevik and the Maximist from this bastion of righteous civilisation that we call our continent. It is a righteous war, fought to send back the tide of godlessness and degeneracy that has sought to encircle us.-” It started, Salgado clearly having put his public speaking lessons to good use, Repetto mused.
”- We fight to preserve the honour, dignity and civilisation that we have created here. We fight so that the barbarism that has consumed Argentina, Peru, Chile, Mexico, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Dominica, Haiti, Honduras, Guatemala, and America spreads no farther in the new world, where Christian civilisation has triumphed over heathenry and savagery. Where morality and order was forged from formless clay!-”
“-God willing, by the end of this war, Christian civilisation will be restored to the whole of the new world, and we will topple the Babylon of D.C and Moscow. And just as Hitler and Mussolini rightfully battle against Bolshevism where it was born, just as the Japanese seek to save ancient China from the communist horde, we too shall do our part in this most necessary of tasks and fight the foe in his den.-” God willing, Salgado would be hanging from a streetlight at the end of this war, Repetto murmured.
“-Remember, Brazilians, ours is an invincible cause. Ours is a righteous effort. Ours is an inevitable victory forged from the unity of our nation under one vision, one purpose. We shall win through the invulnerability of our faith in our victory and the unstoppability of the weight of military tradition that we have inherited from the likes of the unbeatable Caxias, Alrburqurque, Pereira and other heroes of our Lusitanian blood! We shall win, for God has willed it! Failure is not a possibility! Triumph is beyond doubt!-”
“Who stands with us then?” Repetto asked as the speech finally ceased.
“Comrade, no member of INTREV stands alone.” A Mexican delegate said, tipping his cap as he approached, giving Repetto just the slightest additional sensation of ease.
…
The following is taken from the EBC Documentary series “The World at War”, released to the viewing public starting in October of 1973 and concluding in September of 1974, a landmark documentary series of 39 episodes covering every front and theatre of the conflict during the period of relatively warm relations in the 70s allowing for unprecedented access to Red Bloc information.
Title Card: Paradise Falls, Outbreak of war in South America
[Film reel plays, showing Brazilian artillery firing at enemy positions.]
[Cut to: Brazilian soldiers and Guarda Verde charging with bayonets fixed. Brazilian soldiers with Adrien helmets and standard uniforms, the Guarda Verde with steel bibs, face-concealing “hussar” helms, and darker green uniforms.
Cut to: Footage of Argentine machine gun position firing downrange.]
Narrator: Within three months of the start of the war in Europe, the commencement of the war in South America would follow. A timetable was agreed to by the Axis powers at the Rio de Janerio summit earlier in the year 1940 that would see the world partitioned into general spheres of influence before the planned attack on America once its allies were defeated.
[Cut To: Illumination of the planned spheres of influence, with Brazil’s planned hegemony over South America, highlighted in Green before zooming in.]
Narrator: One that would see more than half a million men of the Brazilian first and second armies and the first three divisions of the Guarda Verde; Seraph, Cherub, and Archangel and a pair of corps of the Greenshirt paramilitary force, launch an all-out attack on an Argentine defensive force of less than a quarter of their number, further reinforced by divisions from the Paraguayan military.
[Cut to: Cristiano Boaventura inspecting the Green Guard’s divisions, wearing his distinctive gas mask and gloves while all the Green Guard soldiers are essentially faceless with their face-concealing helms. Salgado is beside him, as is Barroso. Greenshirts in their AIB street fighting period uniforms stand opposite them, there is a clear tension between the Guarda Verde and the Greenshirts.]
Narrator: The Brazilian military was split between its conventional armed forces, the Greenshirts, and the enigmatic Guarda Verde. The first inherited from Vargas’ republic, the second from the streetfighting days of the AIB, and the last absorbed from the “Humble Knights of God” fraternity that had joined the AIB with its own cultish paramilitary forces renown for harsh discipline and impenetrable secrecy.
[Cut to: Brazilian soldiers getting aboard trains to depart to the front. The train is clearly unmarked, and the soldiers are from the Guarda Verde, seemingly far dourer than most soldiers usually are as they prepare to depart.]
Narrator: For Boaventura’s Green Guard, this would be their first great test of his commando theory of warfare where divisions of soldiers whose time and energy is devoted entirely to the practice and perfection of warfare in mind and body can achieve greater things than ordinary men. But for the regular army and the fanatical green shirts, the initial losses would be heavy.
[Cut to: River crossings being raked by Argentine machine gun fire, gunners targeting riverboats as soon as soldiers try to tumble out of them.]
Narrator: At a five to one loss ratio against their favour, the Brazilian army manages to make the crossings at the Iguacu river, facing stiff and wily resistance from Argentine General Vicente Rodriguez* who had risen to his rank in the socialist party’s reshuffling of the military to ensure the army’s loyalty to the government. But Rodriguez telegrams Buenos Aires telling them that he can only delay the advance, not stop it. Even with some weeks of warning, the Argentine army simply lacks the numbers.
[Cut to: Armoured Cars on standby, crews eating their rations while waiting for orders, one smiles at the camera as it passes them by.]
Narrator: In terms of armoured vehicles, the Argentine military enjoys a certain degree of superiority, with their vehicles being newer and their crews having greater training in their usage. This advantage is used to harry the Brazilian advance through the Plata region, but almost immediately the Brazilian army makes its reprisals against the populace.
[Cut to: Film reel of village burning, soldiers throwing torches on structures and Gas Mask clad Guarda Verde Flamethrower troops attacking houses.]
Narrator: Soldiers angry at having to deal with high-speed hit and run raids by the Argentine army take their frustrations out on the local populace, initiating a number of massacres where the infamous “Firebreather brigades” that make heavy usage of flamethrowers filled with Venezuelan oil burn everything in their wake.
[Cut to: Burning fields and houses, Guarda Verde troops walking through areas where the flames are dying down, wearing gas masks to keep out the soot and smoke. ]
Narrator: Within the first days of advance into Argentina proper, thousands are killed in a series of brutal attacks meant to pre-empt partisan aggression, ironically starting many of the very same partisan attacks they had hoped to destroy without a fight while above, aircraft had begun a brutal melee for control over the air.
[Cut to: Gun camera footage of Brazilian Hawker Hurricane strafing an airfield, targets exploding before the Hurricane pulls out of its dive. ]
Narrator: Like Germany, Brazil sought to strike all airfields in range, but with some knowledge of the course of the European war as well as taking the advance warning to prepare anti-aircraft defences, the Argentine air force was more able to evacuate many of its aircraft before the attacks could begin, and the lesser skill and number of the Brazilian air force would dampen the initial force of the blow.
[Cut to: Firefighter crews trying to control the flames of a burning hangar.]
Narrator: However, it would still be a painful loss, with the Argentine air force suffering a loss of a quarter of its initial aircraft inventory within the first month, with the Brazilian air force managing five kills for every loss when counting grounded aircraft kills, rarely giving the Argentines a chance to engage them in the air.
…
Excerpt from Newton Gingrich,The New Triangular Trade: The First Phase of the Battle of the Atlantic** , (Metropolis: Progress Publishers, 1994)**
While Brazil would not declare war until well into the Southern Hemisphere’s spring, the country had been effectively a cobelligerent with the Axis Powers from the start of the war. The Salgado regime had attempted to covertly support the German war effort in May 1940 by giving basing rights to German warships in flagrant violation of the country’s supposed neutrality.
In the early months few U-boats operated in the Southern Atlantic, and those that did could effectively false-flag themselves to limit the chance of detection in a closed society like Integralist Brazil. But this act of war became revealed on 18 June 1940, when the crippled pocket-battleship Admiral Graf Spee entered the harbor of São Paulo for emergency repairs.
Admiral Graf Spee had attacked a Comintern convoy leaving Liberia as part of a periphery convoy raiding strategy implemented by the Kriegsmarine. The convoys bound for the Soviet Union or Europe were far too heavily protected by the WFRN to be attacked directly by surface raiders. But merchant shipping away from the main theaters of military operations were less likely to be convoyed and when they were, were less guarded. Admiral Graf Spee had already sunk seven merchantmen for little cost when she came upon a convoy of fourteen merchantmen escorted by the light cruiser Fields of Athenry 1 and the destroyers Vigilant and Zealous.
Fields of Athenry was armed with twelve 15cm guns, which stood little chance against the heavy cruiser grade armor of the Graf Spee. But nonetheless, the small task force fought a determined delaying action for half an hour. The American light cruiser held the Graf Spee ‘s attention with a rapid fusilade of high explosive shells, tearing up her upper works even as fires started by German 28 cm shells began to gut her.
The Athenry would slip beneath the waves just after 4 pm local time, after the ship’s ranking surviving officer ordered her scuttled. As for the Graf Spee , the gunnery duel had distracted her long enough for the two destroyers to make a torpedo run, scoring two hits on her port amidships. The damage would knock out five of her diesel engines and one of her shafts, forcing her to crawl into São Paulo at 7 knots.
The loss of ship’s stores, fuel, and the desalination plant had further compounded the problem. By the time the ship reached port, she was out of potable water and fresh food. Nonetheless, the dehydrated sailors endured their overly salted preserved food and ship’s biscuit to bring her into the harbor.
Under the Hague Convention of 1907, warships of a belligerent power could only dock in the port of a neutral nation for 72 hours to make repairs and resupply with victuals and fuel to return to the nearest home port or else be interned for the remainder of the war. Graf Spee ‘s extensive damage required much longer than 72 hours, and she would conduct repairs well beyond the limits of making her seaworthy.
The MIB network in São Paulo documented the Graf Spee loading shells from pre-arranged stores, as well as receiving a replacement for her damaged fire control systems delivered to Brazil from Germany on a Brazilian flagged merchant ship.
---
The Kriegsmarine ‘s surface fleet proved disappointing in the early months of the war in the Atlantic. The most valuable assets remained in port, making occasional sorties into the Baltic Sea. The merchant cruisers and the raiding heavy cruisers that were sent on a long commerce raiding sorties arguably failed to justify the expense of constructing them. Even with the illegal aid given by Brazil and non-state actors in the British Empire, they failed to disrupt trade meaningfully.
It had been Karl Dönitz’s small U-boat fleet that proved most troublesome to the WFRN’s Atlantic Fleet. The thirty-five oceangoing Type VII u-boats, able to fuel and rearm clandestinely in neutral ports, had caught the WFRN’s convoy strategy off guard, an outcome predicted by Rear Admiral Charles Lockwood, Chief of Submarine Operations for the Atlantic Fleet, but ultimately unheeded.
The escort strategy not only left gaps in coverage that were exploited by submarines, the merchant ships grouped together could be targeted more efficiently by relatively slow submarines. In-effective air coverage over the South Atlantic gave submarine skippers the ability to maneuver on the surface for longer distances in the daylight.
Though few in number, the U-boats in this period could fight on relatively even terms against a naval colossus that utterly outmatched the Kriegsmarine. This “first happy time” of relatively good hunting for the U-boat “wolf packs” would be interrupted once Brazil entered the war, cutting off the ability to use neutral shipping to support the fleet and drawing greater naval resources into the South Atlantic. But the experience gained, and the prestige the submarine arm garnered would allow the German U-boat to come into its own in the later years of the war.
…
1. “Post revolution cruisers of the WFRN are named after songs or literature of struggle, this class in particular all have their names derived from Irish rebel songs. However, it escaped my notice until years later that the song “Fields of Athenry” was one of those cases of a modern artist pretending their original composition was a traditional folk song to borrow the gravitas, and so would be anachronistic. Nevertheless, I like the song and subject matter (a man sentenced to transportation to Australia for rebelling to save his family during the Great Famine), so we’re going to just pretend that someone else invented it prior to the 1930s.” *[WPA]: Works Progress Administration *[NBI]: National Bureau of Investigation
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