This collection of essays is the fourth or fifth of its kind on twentieth-century Argentina edited by Guido Di Tella and several different collaborators. The collections have addressed such issues as comparative economic development, contemporary economic policy making, and now international relations during World War II. The book reflects a recognition by many scholars that the 1940s represent the great transition in Argentina’s modern history, but following the most recent research its emphasis lies no longer on Juan Perón alone but on international relations during the war. The collection examines the accusation, particularly popular in the United States, that successive Argentine governments colluded with the Axis powers during the war. It also analyzes the strongly contrasting attitudes toward Argentina on the part of Britain and the United States.
Three of the contributors, Carlos Escudé, Mario Rapoport, and Callum A. McDonald, present abbreviated versions of books on this subject that appeared during the early 1980s. Three other contributors, Alan Campbell, Warren F. Kimball, and John Major, provide overviews of Anglo-U.S. relations during the period. These pieces suggest that during the war an already declining Britain acknowledged that all Latin America belonged in the U.S. orbit, and that Britain’s interest in Argentina was confined to ensuring vital meat supplies. Joseph S. Tulchin explores the background of wartime U.S.-Argentine conflicts, and Stanley E. Hilton elucidates the Brazilian dimension, showing, for example, that the Brazilians feared a wartime invasion from Argentina as much as the Argentines worried about a U.S.-backed attack from Brazil.
The two most original and interesting chapters are by Ronald C. Newton on the “Nazi menace ” and by Di Tella himself, who submits a “revisionist summing-up.” Newton finally dismisses the charge that Nazi Germany enjoyed a powerful presence in Argentina before and during World War II. He shows, for example, that rumors in 1939 that the Nazis planned to take control of Patagonia represented a “brazen hoax,” perpetrated by “Jewish anti-fascists . . . American newsmen and the British secret service” (p. 117). I agree with much of Di Tella’s “revisionist synthesis but consider it incomplete and in some respects misleading. Di Tella fails to mention, for example, the Pinedo Plan of 1940-41. He correctly rejects the charge that Argentine nationalists sympathized strongly with the Nazis but consistently underplays their significance in other ways. He fails to explore the fall of the Concordancia in June 1943 and is insufficiently revisionist on the specific events leading to the coup d’état. These issues and others create a rather different picture of the origins and components of Peronism from that submitted here. Spruille Braden and his followers were wrong to characterize Perón as a “nazi-fascist”. Nevertheless, in 1943-44 Perón possessed stronger “(Argentine) nationalist-fascist” associations than Di Telia would probably wish to admit.
