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

Description

Based on research in seven countries, this international history uncovers an American security program in which Washington reached into fifteen Latin American countries to seize more than 4000 German expatriates and intern them in the Texas desert. The crowd of Nazi Party members, anti-fascist exiles, and even Jewish refugees were lumped together in camps riven by strife. The book examines the evolution of governmental policy, and the ideological assumptions that blinded officials in both Washington and Berlin to Latin American realities. Franklin Roosevelt's vaunted 'Good Neighbor policy' was a victim of this effort to force reluctant Latin American governments to hand over their German residents, while the operation ruined an opportunity to rescue victims of the Holocaust. This study makes a very contemporary argument: that security measures based on group affiliation rather than individual actions are as unjust and ineffective in foreign policy as they are in law enforcement.

Max Paul Friedman is Assistant Professor of History at Florida State University. His work has been published in Diplomatic History, The Americas, and The Oral History Review. Before entering academia he was assistant producer for National Public Radio's All Things Considered and a freelance writer published in the Washington Post, New York Newsday, Atlanta Constitution, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Orlando Sentinel, and other newspapers and magazines.

'Without doubt, Nazis and Good Neighbors is eloquently written, free of jargon and commonplaces, and highly accessible. One has to give Friedman credit for providing a lively and gripping account ...'. Journal of Latin American Studies 'Nazis and Good Neighbors is a valuable contribution to scholarship on the wartime involvement of the smaller Latin American republics. Friedman has written a meticulous study about a long-forgotten aspect of transatlantic history, which has gained new relevance lately ... It adds a fascinating perspective ... this book is brilliantly written and offers many vivid examples, well chosen illustrations and personal recollections ...' Iberoamericana