Paraguay
This small, landlocked South American republic of 6 million inhabitants has been at the center of a surprisingly large number of historical developments bearing on German American relations.
The dominant Paraguayan political figure of the twentieth century, General Alfredo Stroessner, personified this unique connection. Son of an immigrant German brewer and a Paraguayan woman, Stroessner closely identified the political and diplomatic interests of Paraguay with that of the United States for much of his authoritarian rule (1954—1989), a distinct period commonly referred to as the stronato. German migration and the hegemonic influence of the United States during the cold war form the most salient points of each power’s contact with Paraguay.Immigration has been of singular importance in shaping Paraguayan German relations. Due to the devastating demographic consequences of the War of the Triple Alliance (1864—1870), in which more than one-half of Paraguay’s prewar population of 525,000 perished, the postwar government actively encouraged migration in order to repopulate the countryside. A majority of the 12,000 who entered Paraguay during this initial wave of migration from 1882 to 1907 came from Italy, Germany, France, and Spain, while others hailed from the Middle East, Japan, and Taiwan (Hanratty and Meditz 1990, 81).
Several German-speaking colonies were established in the late 1800s, of which Nueva Germania, San Bernardino, and Hohenau were the largest. The first permanent colony in Paraguay was built by Jacobo Schaerer in 1881 at San Bernardino. This German immigrant colony began as an agricultural settlement and was soon designated a municipality by the Paraguayan government in 1901. Bernard Forster (1843-1889) helped found another German colony at Nueva Germania in 1886. Together with his wife, Elizabeth Nietzsche (sister of Friedrich Nietzsche), Forster attempted to establish a “pure” racial living space for Aryans.
The project ultimately failed, as Forster committed suicide and most of the colonists returned to Germany. Hohenau was another major German agricultural colony that was established in 1900, later becoming noteworthy for its maize exports.A particularly influential subset of German-speaking settlers was the Men- nonites. Between 1928 and 1948 more than 6,000 Mennonites established three major agricultural colonies in the Chaco region to the east of the capital city, Asuncion, relying to a considerable degree on local Guarani Indians as farm laborers. Aided by a government mandate that actively encouraged foreign development of that area, the original Menno Colony was established in 1926; the Fernheim and Neuland colonies were founded, respectively, in 1930 and 1947. The town of Filadelfia served as the commercial hub of the surrounding colonies. By 1980 the number of Mennonites from these and a handful of other Mennonite communities established throughout Paraguay after World War II totaled more than 15,000 (Hanratty and Meditz 1990, 82).
Taken together, the number of German-speaking settlers in Paraguay exceeded 26,000 on the eve of World War II (Grow 1981, 51). While a comparatively small figure—especially measured against the later influx of Brazilian immigrants in the 1970s—the influence of these enclaves was disproportionate to their numbers. German businessmen in Asuncion attained a high degree of prestige among Paraguayans. With considerable encouragement by the Paraguayan government, a vast network of German-centered organizations and social services flourished. Perhaps more so than any other single demographic, German immigrants in Paraguay reshaped the country in fundamental ways.
World War II ushered in a period of intense German American rivalry over economic and strategic predominance in southeastern South America. United States policymakers were eager to safeguard their “own backyard.” After the surprise attack by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the United States moved quickly to forge a common hemispheric defense against the Fascist threat. United States foreign aid, in the form of multilateral Export-Import Bank loans and direct bilateral economic assistance, purchased Paraguayan alignment for the duration of World War II.
President Higinio Morιnigo (1897—1983) acceded to U.S. pressure and cut off formal diplomatic relations with the Axis countries in 1942, though he did not declare war against Germany until 1945. During a brief span of just several years, the United States had displaced Germany as the dominant external influence in the hemisphere.Yet U.S. efforts at weaning Paraguay away from its Axis proclivities faced formidable challenges. Sympathy toward the Axis powers within the Paraguayan elite and military were rampant. Indeed, a proFascist faction of the military (Frente de Guerra) steadfastly opposed efforts by the United States to sever its ties to the Axis powers. A Vichy French military mission was even established in Paraguay, further illustrating the pervasive influence of the Axis presence there.
Partly attributable to the residual effects of long-established German enclaves such as San Bernardino and Hohenau, these sympathies were given institutional form when in 1931 the National Socialist Germans Worker’s Party (NSDAP) opened its first Latin American branch in Paraguay. By disseminating German newspapers and propaganda pamphlets, and through personal contacts with German-language schools, hospitals, youth organizations, and churches, German agents and Nazi Party officials rallied these groups behind the Axis cause. Even Paraguayan police trainees wore swastikas, while the official Paraguayan newspaper, El Pais, took a proGerman attitude toward the war. Nevertheless, the end of World War II effectively reoriented Paraguayan foreign relations toward the United States, a change aided immeasurably by Alfredo Stroessner’s fierce anticommunism and the cold war.
The transition from German predominance to U.S. hegemonic influence in Paraguay was tacitly recognized in 1957 when Karl Leuteritz, economic counselor of the German Embassy in Asuncion, informed a U.S. Embassy official that Paraguay—and by implication all of Latin America—was the “peculiar province” of the United States.
Thereafter the focus of common German American interests in Paraguay shifted primarily to the hunt for Nazi war criminals, Josef Mengele foremost among them. The notorious “Angel of Death” was issued a Paraguayan identification certificate in 1959 and was awarded full citizenship under the thinly disguised pseudonym “Jose Mengele.” His whereabouts remained obscure, as Paraguayan officials were reluctant to candidly discussthe issue or even to admit that Mengele had ever set foot on Paraguayan soil. The mystery persisted until 1985 when a body subsequently identified as Mengele’s washed ashore in Brazil.
Kirk Tyvela
See also Forster, Bernhard; Latin America, Nazi Party in; Latin America, Nazis in; Stroessner, Alfredo
References and Further Reading
Grow, Michael. The Good Neighbor Policy and Authoritarianism in Paraguay: United States Economic Expansion and Great-Power Rivalry in Latin America during World War II.Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1981.
Hanratty, Dennis M., and Sandra W. Meditz, eds. Paraguay: A Country Study, 2nd ed. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1990.
Lambert, Peter, and Andrew Nickson, eds.
The Transition to Democracy in Paraguay. New York: St. Martin’s, 1997.
Lewis, Paul H. Paraguay under Stroessner. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1980.
Miranda, Carlos R. The Stroessner Era: Authoritarian Rule in Paraguay. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1990.
Roett, Riordan, and Richard Scott Sacks. Paraguay: The Personalist Legacy. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1991.