Allies | When the Cobra began to smoke

Brazil's President Getúlio Vargas never made a secret of his sympathies for Mussolini and Italian fascism. When he suspended his country's constitution in a coup d'état in September 1937 so that he could remain in the highest office of state for life, and in November 1937 began to create his Estado Novo, the New State, he based himself in many aspects on the Italian model. At the outbreak of World War II, however, he initially maintained a wait-and-see approach and attempted to remain neutral toward the warring parties around the world. Only massive political pressure and economic offers from the USA brought about a gradual correction of this position starting in the summer of 1941.

On October 1, 1941, U.S. and Brazilian government officials signed an agreement granting the U.S. Navy rights to use the Atlantic ports in the Brazilian states of Bahia, Pernambuco, and Rio Grande do Norte, as well as on the island of Fernando de Noronha, off the Brazilian mainland. In addition, several squadrons of U.S. naval aviation were stationed in northeastern Brazil. In return, the U.S. committed to financing and building a metallurgical complex in Volta Redonda, in the state of Rio de Janeiro, which was crucial to Brazilian steel production until its closure in the early 1990s.

In January 1942, Brazil broke off diplomatic relations with Germany and its allies. However, President Getúlio Vargas still refused to agree to a stronger Brazilian involvement in the anti-Hitler coalition. This led to the phrase "A cobra will smoke before Brazilian troops march."

In immediate response to the severance of diplomatic relations, German submarines sank a total of 13 Brazilian cargo ships between January and July 1942. But President Getúlio Vargas continued to hesitate. Only after the loss of five more cargo ships in the South Atlantic and the deaths of more than 650 sailors within just two days did Brazil finally officially declare war on Germany, Italy, and their allies on August 22, 1942. Brazil then began active military action, including participating in the Allied anti-submarine warfare in the South Atlantic. The decision to deploy Brazilian troops to the European theater of war was made in November 1943.

On July 2, 1944, the first units of the Força Expedicionária Brasileira (FEB), the Brazilian Expeditionary Force, as it was officially known, landed in Naples, Italy, which had been occupied by US troops since October 1943. Now, at last, Brazilian troops were marching, the cobra was smoking, and the Brazilian soldiers made this clear with an emblem they wore on the upper left arm of their uniforms: a snake smoking a pipe.

25,334 officers and men of the Brazilian land and air forces under the command of the future Marshal João Baptista Mascarenhas de Morais fought in Italy as part of the 5th U.S. Army until the surrender of Hitler's Germany on May 8, 1945. The soldiers of the FEB experienced their baptism of fire on September 14, 1944, in the valley of the Serchio River, north of the city of Lucca in Tuscany. They celebrated their first major victory a few days later when they liberated the city of Massarosa, with its nearly 20,000 inhabitants. In the following weeks and months, Brazilian troops participated in operations in the Po Valley (September and October 1944), the capture of Monte Castello (November 1944 to February 1945) and Montese (April 1945), and the Battle of Collechio (April 1945). On April 28, 1945, the German 148th Infantry Division surrendered to the troops of the FEB. Two generals, nearly 900 officers, and nearly 20,000 soldiers were taken prisoner of war by the Brazilians.

The Brazilian Expeditionary Force included not only men who would later play an important role in their country's history as high-ranking military officers, such as Humberto de Alencar Castello Branco, President of the Republic during the military dictatorship between 1964 and 1967, or Albuquerque Lima, Minister of the Interior from 1967 to 1969. Among the Brazilian soldiers serving in the European theater of war were Celso Furtado, later considered one of Latin America's most important economists and intellectuals, and Salomão Malina, Chairman of the Brazilian Communist Party from 1987 to 1991.

More than 450 Brazilians lost their lives fighting for the liberation of Italy. Their remains, initially interred in the cemetery of the Italian city of Pistoia, were transferred to Brazil in 1960 and buried in Rio de Janeiro, where a monument to the dead of World War II, not only architecturally remarkable, was erected to mark the occasion in the Flamengo district.

Dr. Ronald Friedmann is a member of the Speakers' Council of the Left Party's Historical Commission, which adopted a declaration on the 80th anniversary of the liberation: A historic opportunity: The Left Party's Historical Commission