377 Ai 8/</ S46. PO<fcL UNITED STATES LEND-LEASE POLICY IN LATIN AMERICA DISSERTATION Presented to the Graduate Council of the North Texas State University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY By Thomas D. Yeilding, B.A., M.A. Denton, Texas August, 198 3 C"/<- Yeilding, Thomas D., United States Lend-Lease Policy in Latin America. Doctor of Philosophy (History), August, 1983, 308 pp., Appendix, bibliography, 216 titles. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles began trying to make military materiel available to Latin America during the latter 1930s. Little progress was made until passage of the Lend-Lease Act in 1941 enabled Washington to furnish eighteen Latin American nations with about $493,000,000 worth of military assistance during World War II. This study, based primarily on State Department lend- lease decimal files in the National Archives and documents published in Foreign Relations volumes, views the policy's background, development, and implementation in each recipient nation. The conclusion is that the policy produced mixed results for the United States and Latin America. Even so, the president's course was realistically grounded on national interests. Mixed results were evident in the president's not being straightforward with his fellow-countrymen in explaining his major justification for the policy, the Nazi threat to the hemisphere. He exaggerated the menace to maneuver the United States into aiding the allies fighting Hitler. Additionally, he warmly embraced dictators in the hemisphere while the Allied powers fought totalitarian governments abroad. In Latin America, the supply of armaments inflamed jealousies among suspicious neighbors and encouraged military officials to meddle in politics. Numerous recipient nations revealed that they were not prepared to use effectively the weapons Washington sent. Inefficient use of the materiel adversely affected the flow of arms and Washington's opinion of various nations. The policy was grounded on national interests. For the United States this meant aiding the democracies, defending the Panama Canal, confronting the Nazi threat, assisting political stability in Latin America, supporting Brazil's and Mexico's active participation in the war, acquiring military bases and raw strategic materials, seeking to standardize arms, furthering United States economic opportunities, and aligning political support for Washington's positions. For Latin America lend-lease meant receiving arms from the only available supplier to defend the hemisphere and canal, to counter the military power of a neighbor, and to further political ambitions. Copyright by Thomas David Yeilding 1983 TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Chapter I. THE LEND-LEASE ACT AND DEVELOPMENT OF AN ARMS SUPPLY POLICY FOR THE AMERICAN REPUBLICS 1 II. MEXICO 31 III. GUATEMALA, HONDURAS, EL SALVADOR, NICARAGUA, AND COSTA RICA 55 IV. CUBA, DOMINICAN REPUBLIC, AND HAITI 78 V. COLOMBIA 107 VI. VENEZUELA, ECUADOR, AND PERU 127 VII. BOLIVIA AND PARAGUAY 155 VIII. URUGUAY 175 IX. CHILE AND ARGENTINA 193 X. BRAZIL: LEND-LEASE UP TO PEARL HARBOR .... 229 XI. BRAZIL: LEND-LEASE AFTER PEARL HARBOR .... 251 XII. CONCLUSIONS 273 APPENDIX 290 BIBLIOGRAPHY 292 CHAPTER I THE LEND-LEASE ACT AND DEVELOPMENT OF AN ARMS SUPPLY POLICY FOR THE AMERICAN REPUBLICS President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's belief that the Nazi movement threatened the Western Hemisphere caused his administration to pursue a policy of making arms available to the American republics. Although many historians have written about the administration's Latin American policies and have mentioned the Nazi threat, not all agree when the administration became aware of it. Donald M. Dozer, in Are We Good Neighbors: Three Decades of Inter-American Relations, 1930-1960, and J. Lloyd Mecham, in The United States and Inter-American Security, 1889-1960, suggest awareness of the threat by 1936. Gerhard L. Weinberg's The Foreign Policy of Hitler's Germany: Starting World War II, 1937-1939 argues that by 1937 and 1938 Washington was aware of the threat; David Green, The Containment of Latin America: A History of the Good Neighbor Policy, agrees with Weinberg."^ One former member of Roosevelt's administration, Cordell Hull—the Tennessean who had served as Roosevelt's secretary of state from 1933 until 1944—wrote in his Memoirs that he became aware of the menace while attending the 1936 foreign minister's meeting in Buenos Aires. Hull's visit to Lima for the 1938 Pan American Conference revealed that the Nazi threat had become so pervasive that it put the Western Hemisphere in imminent danger. The secretary concluded that although invasion was a possibil- ity, "propaganda, penetration, organizing political parties, buying some adherents, and blackmailing others" were more 2 acute forms of the threat. The Roosevelt administration began efforts to make arms available to the republics to counter the threat as early as 1936 when Assistant Secretary of State Sumner Welles, Roosevelt's fellow New Yorker and close friend, convinced the president that the United States should sell Brazil ten cruisers. Welles believed that the sale— ultimately aborted—would make the Brazilian navy an auxiliary of the United States Navy in the event there was a "confrontation between the Old and New Worlds."^ The unsuccessful 1936 endeavor was only the first effort to supply the republics, and especially Brazil, with armaments in the latter half of the 1930s. In 1937 Welles, who had become undersecretary of state during the year, tried again to find a method of supplying arms to Brazil's navy. This attempt involved a plan to lend six decommis- sioned vessels to Brazil, but the United States discarded 4 the idea when Argentina objected. Unable to discover a method for supplying arms, Roosevelt found it easier to create an administrative organization in Washington charge^ with strengthening military ties and promoting the sal e of munitions and hardware in the American republic s. At the State Department's request, FDR, in 193 8, created the Standing Liaison Committee with Welles as its chairman and with 5 representation from the War and N avy Department.' Late in the same year, Roosevel t told Welles that he wanted legislation to permit sale of surplus military equipment at cost to the American republics. The legisla- tion was thought necessary because , at the time, sales of munitions were strictly commercia 1—not governmental— transactions. Welles drafted a join t resolution early in 1939 that met the president's wis h. Congress altered the resolution by making only defensi ve equipment (coastal defense and anti-aircraft guns) available . In addition, Congress prohibited the United St.ate s from promoting the sale of weapons and required pure hasers to pay cash, although the price of the arms wa,s to be the same as the United States government paid for its purchases. By charging the same price, Washingt.o n hoped the weapons would be within the budgetary limits of the republics. Congress did not pass the resolution (Joir t Resolution 367) until June 1940.^ After introduction of the re:solutio n in Congress and long before its passage, Chile, i n the autumn of 1939, requested arms from the United States . Welles desired to accommodate the Chilean request, but until Congress passed the resolution that Roosevelt wanted, there appeared to be no way to help. Eventually the Roosevelt administration decided that it did have the authority to meet Chile's request based on a 1920 measure authorizing the sale of surplus materiel.^ Once Washington had determined its ability to sell surplus arms, the United States began to inventory its supply to determine what was available. As word leaked out, requests poured in from Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, El Salvador, and the Dominican Republic for lists of available weapons. Panama expressed an interest in buying rifles.® Requests for surplus arms posed questions for the Roosevelt administration. Would the United States sell surplus rifles and machine guns in addition to defense equipment? Which republics would be able to purchase arms? What method of payment would be used? In December 1939 Roosevelt agreed to sell rifles and machine guns to Haiti. The president did not, at the time, determine which republics were eligible for purchasing arms. A problem in this area arose in early January 1940 when Undersecretary Welles told Chief of Staff George C. Marshall that he should refuse a Dominican Republic request to purchase 4,000 rifles even though, in the previous month, Roosevelt had authorized the sale of rifles to Haiti, the Dominicans' neighbor. Welles advised Marshall to tell the Dominicans that their request was under consideration but that the rifles they wanted (Springfields) were unavailable. Marshall, apparently embarrassed because there was a large supply of Enfield rifles available (although not requested), told the undersecretary he wanted advice on how he could 9 tactfully reject the Dominican request. Before the Roosevelt administration could resolve the question of which republics would be able to purchase arms, it had to study the strategic importance of each Latin American nation in relation to the limited supply of materiel in United States arsenals. The administration completed its study, and the president approved the allocation policy in early August 1940. It provided: a. For arming the countries named to the extent indicated, is determined in each case by our estimate of the requirements: (1) (a) Brazil—to insure her ability to defend herself against a major attack from neighboring states, or from overseas, and against internal disorder, until United States armed aid can arrive in sufficient force to insure success. (b) Mexico—to insure her ability to defend herself against internal disorder, until U.S. armed aid can arrive in sufficient force to insure success. (2) Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela—to insure their ability to meet and repel any probable minor attack from overseas, and to insure their internal stability.