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

Abstract

While the story of the internment of the Japanese during World War II is well known, the internment of the Germans is not. Even less well known is that both Japanese and Germans living in Latin America were deported to the United States and interned as well. Max Paul Friedman contextualizes and details the little known or written about internment of Latin American Germans in the United States during World War II. Friedman sets the tone of the work quickly by recounting a development immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He points out that President Franklin D. Roosevelt almost casually announced that there were “secret airlanding fields in Colombia, within easy range of the Panama Canal” (p. 1). Spruille Braden, ambassador to Colombia, tried to supply justification for this outlandish claim but failed. That such a claim was made about Nazi fifth columnists was not unusual. Roosevelt knew that the citizens of the United States were considerably more predisposed to protect Latin America than to defend other parts of the world.