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

Nazis and Good Neighbors: The United States Campaign against the Germans of Latin America in Worm War II. By Max Paul Friedman. (Cambridge and other cities: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xii, 359. $30.00, ISBN 0-521-82246-7.)

This impressively researched and compelling study by Max Paul Friedman of Washington's campaign to eliminate German influence in Latin America is based on interviews, postwar investigations, and exhaustive research in German, U.S., Swiss, and Latin American archives. Friedman concentrates on Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Guatemala because these four countries provided the largest number of Germans interned in U.S. camps in Texas. He excludes from his examination Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico since these countries refused to turn over their German nationals to the United States.

Echoing Reiner Pommerin's conclusions in Das Dritte Reich und Latein-amerika (Dusseldorf, 1977), Friedman argues that Hitler had little interest in the region and that there were no serious German plans either for military actions or political coups in Latin America. Germany did, however, have economic interests in the area. Friedman admits that many of the 1.5 million ethnic Germans there maintained "a strong cultural identification" with Germany. However, only some eight thousand of them joined the Nazi Party, and most of these resided in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile (p. 16). Nevertheless, the activities of the Nazi Party's organization devoted to Germans abroad (Auslandsorganisation) did corrupt "the culture of organized German social life" and certainly contributed to the "fifth column" hysteria (p. 29).

Friedman notes that U.S. policy in the region was based on a condescending belief that Latin Americans could not manage the region's security by themselves. Moreover, leaders in Washington credited numerous exaggerated reports of "fifth column" activities in Latin America generated by British disinformation, unreliable informers, U.S. news reporters, and inept U.S. intelligence agents. The FBI, which gained control over the United States' Latin American intelligence operations in June 1940, provided "some of the most poorly informed U.S. officials working in Latin America" (p. 64). Friedman also emphasizes U.S. economic interests by arguing that the deportations of some four thousand ethnic Germans "evolved... into a long-term project of permanently weakening German economic competition" in Latin America (p. 168).

American officials in Latin America used the State Department's "Proclaimed List," issued in July 1941, to draw up a register for German deportees. This blacklist, which was resented by Latin American governments, was based on "hearsay, denunciation, and inadequate intelligence work..." (p. 101). Friedman convincingly demonstrates that interning Germans from Latin American did little to increase the security of the United States, although it did benefit several Latin American dictators who used the property of deported Germans "to balance national budgets and enrich the ruling clique..." (p. 170). As the behavior of German deportees in U.S. camps and postwar government reviews reveal, only a minority represented "dangerous enemy aliens," and just eight were involved in espionage (p. 158). Significantly, many Nazi Party members were never deported from Latin America, while a number of German Jews who had fled Nazi Germany ended up in U.S. camps. Sadly, objections from the British government and U.S. intelligence officials prevented the possible repatriation of detainees (and willing German nationals still in Latin America) in exchange for Jews with Latin American documents assembled at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Lastly, Friedman argues that because of the imperious U.S. campaign against Germans in Latin America, the Good Neighbor policy ended long before the Cold War. The dictators of the region "easily switched from denouncing their rivals as 'Nazis' to labeling all opposition 'Communist' ..." (p. 228).

Mississippi State University 

JOHNPETER HORST GRILL