Ebel’s book is an interesting, useful contribution to the literature on recent Argentine history and a good example of the growing interest of German scholars in the impact of German culture, trade and politics on Latin America. The chronological focus of this workmanlike survey of Argentine-German relations during the inter-war period is broader than the title suggests since it includes a 78-page essay on the period 1914-1933. The emphasis of the study, as the subtitle indicates, is on commerce, which Ebel considers the most important ingredient in relations between the two countries. Argentina, until the mid-1930s, was Germany’s leading trade partner in Latin America. At the start of World War I, Argentina was taking over one-third of Germany’s exports to the region and supplying 41 percent of Latin America’s sales to Germany. During the next two decades those trade relations suffered the consequences of war, depression, strong Anglo-American competition, and Argentine industrialization. The author discusses in great detail the vicissitudes of German-Argentine commerce under the Nazi regime’s New Plan for foreign trade, an integral feature of which was to force markets in South America. Two major stumbling blocks in the path of German-Argentine commerce during the Nazi period were redoubled efforts by Great Britain to bolster its economic position in Argentina, and Brazil’s eagerness to trade on the Reich’s terms.
In the late 1930s the political problems arising from the proselytizing of Nazi agents in Argentina overshadowed trade activities. Ebel carefully assesses the impact of National Socialism on the German community in Argentina, the sharp divergences between the Nazi Party and the German Foreign Office over priorities of policy toward South America, and the diplomatic repercussions of the Party’s political meddling in Argentina—meddling that in the long run proved not too serious. At no time was Argentine sovereignty threatened, Ebel points out, since the strength there of the Party and its supporters was minimal. Argentina’s well-known record during World War II showed that prewar Nazi activity had not substantially affected Argentine-German relations.
Argentine nationalism, directed primarily at Great Britain and the United States, aided German diplomacy, but only as a by-product, says Ebel, since Argentine leaders did not have any special sympathy for the Nazi regime. Indeed, the Argentine Foreign Ministry, particularly when headed by Saavedra Lamas, was imbued with a legalistic, pro-League of Nations sentiment that was by definition anti-Nazi. As for the broader question of Nazi aims in South America, Ebel concludes reasonably that there is little justification for the view that Berlin had special expansionist designs on South America or that efforts to strengthen ties with the region were peculiarly Nazi. Hitler and his top-level advisers did not follow developments there closely; German cultural policy toward South America was not unique compared with policy toward other areas; and key steps taken to reinforce Germany’s diplomatic position in South America, such as the elevation of legations to embassies, had been planned during the Stresemann era.
Ebel’s approach is traditional, his research in German archives was apparently exhaustive, and his book goes a considerable way toward filling a noticeable historiographical gap. But because of his overwhelming relianee on German archival materials, and despite judicious use of the available printed works, the book is unilateral. The diplomatic archives of Great Britain and the United States, Germany’s key competitors for influence in Argentina, would have cast revealing light on the subject, particularly in view of the perhaps unavoidable absence of Argentine records. What Ebel has done is provide us with a picture of Argentine-German relations filtered through a German lens. This is nonetheless a valid undertaking, and in imposing some coherence on a vast array of German records, Ebel has rendered a noteworthy service to students of Argentine and international history.
