[2][6] After completing the course in 1933, he was commissioned as an Aspirant to Officer in January 1934, and was soon assigned to serve in the 2nd Field Artillery Group [pt] in Itu, the historic Deodoro Regiment.
[9][10][11][12][13][14][15] A personal friend of intellectuals such as Graciliano Ramos and Jorge Amado, as well as other literary figures, he joined the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) in the early 1940s.
[19] In 1954, he was dismissed from the General Staff School due to the political positions he took publicly: for taking part in the board of the Military Club [pt], which was committed to fighting for a state monopoly on oil exploration and exploitation in Brazil [pt], and for publishing, under a pseudonym, an article in the Military Club Magazine, clearly identified with the positions held by the PCB at the time, in which he opposed Brazil's participation in the Korean War.
[20][21] Despite his links with the then Minister of War, General Newton Estillac Leal [pt], who had presided over the Military Club during the Oil Campaign, Nelson Werneck Sodré had to settle for minor posts: as an artillery officer in a garrison in Cruz Alta, in the interior of Rio Grande do Sul, and in a Recruiting Circumscription in Rio de Janeiro (a position considered punitive at the time).
[19] During the crisis generated by the resignation of Jânio Quadros, Nelson Werneck Sodré was imprisoned for ten days for opposing the coup attempt to prevent the inauguration of the elected vice-president, João Goulart.
[25][26] With Goulart's inauguration, under a parliamentary regime, his request to join the reserve was rejected, annulled and, once again, Sodré was ordered to serve in the capital of Pará, Belém, now in a military district.
[1] At the beginning of 1954, Sodré was invited by Alberto Guerreiro Ramos to take part in the Brazilian Institute of Economics, Sociology and Politics (IBESP), which offered postgraduate courses in the auditorium of the Ministry of Education and Culture.
[38] In 1959, at the request of Umberto Peregrino, who ran the Army Library [pt], Sodré organized an anthology of Brazilian military episodes, Narrativas Militares.
[44][45] Still, in collaboration with interns from the History Department of the ISEB, who were in charge of the research, Nelson Werneck Sodré wrote the book Who Killed Kennedy in a few days, which was released in December 1963, two weeks after the assassination of the US president.
[46][47] Two weeks after the 1964 coup, Nelson Werneck Sodré had his political rights revoked for ten years by the military junta that took power from the leftist João Goulart.
[58][59][60] In contemporary times, many academic studies have put Sodré's work, his life and his historiographical production back into the Brazilian intellectual debate.