Deportation of Germans from Latin America during World War II
During World War II, 4,058 ethnic Germans along with several hundred other Axis-nationals living in Latin America were deported to the United States and their home countries, often at the behest of the US government.
Persons deported even included Jewish refugees who had fled Nazi Germany prior to the German declaration of war against the United States.
While the vast majority of these immigrants integrated into Latin American societies, some still held German citizenship at the time of Germany's declaration of war in 1941.
Subsequently several thousand German, Japanese and Italian nationals were arrested by Latin American governments and many were deported to internment camps in the U.S. for the duration of the conflict.
The Nazi German Government primarily viewed Latin America as a source of raw materials and attempted to deepen commercial relations with the region during the inter-war period.
American influence in the region remained significant during the pre-war period and included the U.S. control over the recently built Panama Canal.
[6] For example, Colonel Carl Strong, the military attaché in Bogota, warned of a German attack on Colombia “via Dakar and Nepal,” demonstrating his ignorance of Latin American geography.
[1] One such example was the FBI’s portrayal of the 12,000 ethnic Germans in Bolivia as an imminent threat, ignoring the fact that 8,500 of them were Jews escaping from German-occupied Europe.
Lieutenant Jules Dubois, chief of the Intelligence Branch of the US Army in Panama declared, “With their sights trained on Latin America, the Axis Powers began to groom puppets and sympathetic groups in every republic to seize the reigns [sic] of their governments’ machinery […] There were approximately three million Axis nationals residing in Latin American then, each of whom could have been made available to form part of a militant striking force capable of implementing the plans of the Axis at the appropriate time”[11] After the US entered the war, neutralizing the perceived threat against Latin America and securing the strategically important Panama Canal was seen by the US government as vital.
The United States elected to use internment and deportation to neutralise the perceived threat posed by ethnic Germans following American entry into war.
[12] On 20 January 1942, the US State Department instructed its embassies in Cuba, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti to obtain an agreement to send “all dangerous aliens” to the US for internment.
Their motivation varied between American influence, promise of military and economic aid, domestic anti-German sentiments, and the opportunity to seize the land and property of the Germans.
Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti all agreed to deport “dangerous enemy aliens” by mid-February 1942, while Cuba compromised with interning selected Germans in the isolated Isle of Pines (now Isla de la Juventud).
[12] 30 of them were Jewish refugees, five of which had spent time in concentration camps before moving to Panama, while 37 members of the local Nazi Party were allowed to stay.
[12] The Justice Department concluded in 1943 that selection of internees and deportations were conducted “without inquiry as to the loyalty or the danger of the particular alien.”[12] Before their forced arrival to the United States, the deportees were deliberately not issued any visas.
[15] Karl-Albrecht Engel, one of the internees from the camp, reported in a letter to the German government: “We grew tan and swelled up like doughnuts from the good meal.
"[15] As the war came to a close, many of the interned Ecuadorians in American detention camps began requesting permission to return home to Ecuador (Becker 317).
The stated rationale was to deny funding to local Nazi sympathizing factions, however the reality was that these American policies made it increasingly difficult for any German detainee to return to their family and home.
Repatriation was particularly difficult for returning deportees who would lose everything through the internment, as with the case of Hugo Droege, whose farm in Guatemala had been seized after he was forcibly taken to America.
Many countries had adopted strict anti-Nazi and anti-German policies, contributing to the governments seizing German holdings across Latin America.
[16] Additionally, upon learning about the mass deportations of Germans from Latin America, the Nazi regime retaliated on the nations cooperating with the United States by scouring German-occupied territory for their citizens and forcibly interning them.
Additionally, these returning Germans found themselves marked and excluded from societies that the once thought of as home, as anti-immigrant and anti-German sentiment dogged many Latin American countries as a result of the deportations.
[18] In 1988, the United States Congress passed the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, which granted a formal apology and reparations to Japanese Americans interned during World War 2, with a $20,000 US payout to all survivors.
