Hitler's Secret War In South America, 1939–1945: German Military Espionage and Allied Counterespionage in Brazil

1) Target: Brazil

«1» Target:Brazil "AMID THE TORRENT of violent events, one anxiety reigned supreme ," wrote Winston Churchill, reflecting on the grim years 1940—41. What was this "mortal danger" that "gnawed" at the indomitable British leader during those somber times? What was the only thing, including the RAF's desperate battle against the Luftwaffe in the skies over Great Britain, that "ever really frightened " Churchill during the war? That "awe-striking problem" that claimed his thoughts "day and night" was the German submarine threat to shipping to the British Isles. "Battles might be won or lost, enterprises might succeed or miscarry, territories might be gained or quitted," he recalled, "but dominating all our power to carry on the war, or even keep ourselves alive, lay our mastery of the ocean routes and the free approach and entry to our ports."' British dependency upon the Empire and the Western Hemisphere for vital raw materials, foodstuffs, and equipment was indeed the weak link in Great Britain's military posture; and Churchill 's enemies were well aware of that fact. Grossadmiral Erich Raeder, head of the Kriegsmarine until 1943, impressed upon Adolf Hitler during the winter of 1938-39 that, short of building a fleet comparable in strength to the Royal Navy, the Reich should emphasize the construction of submarines and medium battleships with the aim of hammering away at British commerce, "the very lifeblood of the island kingdom." When a badly outnumbered Kriegsmarine found itself unwillingly and prematurely at war in 1939 with the world's greatest maritime power, there was no doubt TARGET: BRAZIL (13 among German naval planners about the immediate task: "Seaborne imports were England's one vulnerable spot, and that was where we had to strike," Raeder recalled. Admiral Karl Donitz, then chief of the U-boat arm and future commander-in-chief of the German navy, vigorously argued the point in ensuing months. Germany 's best hope of defeating England lay not in Operation Sea Lion—Hitler's chimerical plan for the invasion and occupation of Great Britain—but in disrupting Britain's maritime communications . "On them directly depended the very life of the British nation ," he ceaselessly pointed out. "On them, immediately, depended Britain's whole conduct of the war, . . . and if they were really threatened British policy would be bound to react."2 The damage inflicted on Allied shipping by U-boats and surface raiders was severe. From the outbreak of war until March, 1940, when Donitz was ordered to withdraw his units from the Atlantic and focus on preparations for the imminent Norwegian campaign, the Kriegsmarine sank 199 ships representing over 700,000 tons. During the last eight months of the year, nearly 750 additional Allied and neutral ships were destroyed with a loss of almost 3.1 million tons. "North Atlantic transport remains the prime anxiety," a distraught Churchill wrote to Franklin Roosevelt in December, 1940. The extraordinary feature of the German maritime onslaught was that it was conducted by a surprisingly small number of submarines . Indeed, Donitz never had at his disposal sufficient units for the maximum exploitation of his effective fighting arm. Total Uboat strength in September, 1940, was only thirty-nine vessels, exactly what it had been a year earlier at the onset of hostilities, but the actual number of units available for operations against the British had declined since more submarines had been diverted to training purposes. And over the next half year that number dropped still further, reaching only twenty-two. New submarines had been delivered at the rate of only two a month during the first six months of 1940, and during the second semester it was still a meager six boats a month—a far cry from the figure of twenty-nine envisaged in the naval construction plan defined at the beginning of the war. Furthermore , only one-third of the number of submarines available 14) HITLER'S SECRET WAR IN SOUTHAMERICA could actually be engaged in operations against the enemy at one time, since typically one-third of the force was in port and the remainder was on the way to the attack areas.3 Given the strategic importance of the Battle of the Atlantic and the relative lack of submarines, it was vital to German naval planners to have the best possible intelligenceon ship movements to the British Isles. As Donitz explained, the major impediment to effective deployment of the U-boats was...