N ATIONS, LIKE INDIVIDUALS, have obsessions and compulsions which may give rise to patriotic causes or political crusades. The aggressive drives men expressed in the past in religious conflict often work themselves out today in secular ideological struggle. Masses of men are mobilized for great causes more often by appeals to their emotions than to their reason, and patriotic fervor may take punitive and cruel forms, sweeping aside all opposition. For almost a quarter of a century Americans have been in a fluctuating state of apprehension about international Communism. During that time fear of the Soviet Union and China has, perhaps, shaped U.S. policy toward faraway Latin America more than any other single factor. The United States has sometimes seemed more zealous in resisting Russians in its relations with Guatemala, Cuba, and Santo Domingo than in its relations with the Soviet Union itself. Irresistible political pressures, partly the product of the nation's emotional state, have caused all kinds of distortions in U.S. policy. The intensity of the anti-Communist crusade in postwar U.S. policy in Latin America should come as no surprise to those who followed U.S. policy there during World War II. In this earlier period Nazis and Fascists bore the brunt of the nation's zeal. Much of the U.S. diplomatic and intelligence effort against Nazis in Latin America was directed at Axis sympathizers in Argentina. Some United States officials also believed that there was a dangerous Nazi-Fascist movement in Bolivia, fomented and controlled from Berlin and Buenos Aires. The United States never established this latter point conclusively, as we shall see below, but this did not prevent U.S. officials from a relentless pursuit of the perceived enemy. The U.S. campaign against Nazi Fascism in Bolivia involved three interrelated episodes, each having far-reaching implications for