Strategy, Security, and Spies: Mexico and the U.S. as Allies in World War II

With Strategy, Security, and Spies, Paz has written an important work that sheds new light on the complex relationship between Mexico and the United States between 1940 and 1945. Her most important achievement is having written the first systematic analysis of two aspects of the cooperation between the United States and Mexico during World War II: the production and supply of raw materials for the Allied war alliance, and the efforts of the Mexican military to induce their country to join the war on the Allied side. Her detailed, in-depth examination chronicles the ups and downs of bilateral negotiations that were carried out by the U.S.-Mexican Military Commission, despite frequently running up against obstructions by políticos and bureaucrats in both Mexico City and Washington. Her outstanding research supercedes work done over 20 years ago by researchers from El Colegio de México, who had to content themselves with newspaper articles as their principal primary source. Paz’s work is the first comprehensive monograph of this unprecedented period in U.S.-Mexican relations. Her solid conclusions are backed up by documentation culled from many U.S. diplomatic, military, and FBI primary sources that had never before been consulted.

Paz’s second achievement is her exploration of the intelligence activities of the Japanese government in Mexico. Hers is the first work that documents how, after 1940, Japan took advantage of Mexico’s geographic location and its weak legal system to set up and operate sustained intelligence operations against the United States. Paz’s examination of Japanese primary sources found in the U.S. National Archives adds important new insights to the now classic The Shadow War: German Espionage and United States Counterespionage in Latin America during World War II (Frederick, Md., 1986) by Leslie B. Rout Jr. and John F. Bratzel.

A third important contribution of Strategy, Security, and Spies, is the author’s resurrection of Lázaro Cárdenas as an important player in the evolution of U.S-Mexican relations even after the end of his presidency in 1940. She shows how Cárdenas, from his post as military commander of the Pacific Zone in Ensenada, continued his principled ideological stance against any form of bilateral U.S.-Mexican military cooperation. His outspoken opposition remained a serious obstacle to U.S.-Mexican military relations until Avila Camacho neutralized his criticism through political means by making Cárdenas minister of defense in 1942.

Two minor points of debate came to mind while I read Paz’s book. The first concerns her discussion of German intelligence operations in Mexico, which needs to be read with caution. Like her examination of their Japanese counterparts, German activities are interpreted with little consideration for the context of German grand strategy or overall Axis war plans. Yet another list of German Nazi organizations is presented without identifying their individual and particular strengths or weaknesses. Consequently, German activities appear to be mere Teutonic tonterías given that, in Paz’s words, they “did nothing to change World War II.” Reality was different. For example, German documents that Paz does not cite show that Germany had designated Mexico to be the center for sabotage against the British in Canada. The German Abwehr (its military intelligence division) had made Mexico the headquarters for operations of the Irish Republican Army against Canada and some parts of the United States. Another German document proves that one German secret operation had established ammunition depots for sabotage operations along the U.S.-Mexican border.

These events have profound implications for our understanding of issues concerning Mexico’s national sovereignty and security during the war period. Whereas the United States did ask, and then instituted, a rational consultation process with Mexico in its efforts to obtain military cooperation, the German government asked neither President Cárdenas nor President Avila Camacho if Mexico could be used as a staging ground for acts of war against the United States. More importantly, German activity put Mexico in grave danger. A discovery of these German efforts by Allied intelligence and their publication in the U.S. popular press would have revived latent memories of the Zimmermann Telegram scandal. It is possible that popular pressure on the United States Congress would have forced Roosevelt to abandon bilateral consultation in favor of preemptive military invasion or to issue a formal declaration of war. In 1942 German foreign minister Ribbentrop argued for blowing up Mexican petroleum installations to weaken the supply line of Allied raw materials. Only Hitler’s and Himmler’s insane priorities of racial war in Eastern Europe protected Mexico from experiencing Axis violence on its own territory, which would have been conducted with the help of intelligence data gathered by the “silly” Germans in Mexico. Certainly, any German violence in the Western Hemisphere would have changed the history of the Pan American movement, as well as the relationship between the United States and Latin America and, in consequence, the course of World War II.

Paz’s way of understanding the inner political workings of the Avila Camacho administration keeps her from drawing deeper insights from her impressive findings. Many Mexican políticos who operated outside the military commission are painted with a broad brush. Tired clichés of corruption and intrigue are given in lieu of more in-depth explanations for high-level Mexican actions. In reality, Mexican elite policymakers of the Avila Camacho government were shrewd and highly successful in exploiting the contradictions of the war to improve Mexico’s international position. Corruption, while practiced by groups in both the United States and Mexico, played a minor role in this chapter of history. Mexicans succeeded because of skill and expertise.

Once again, these remarks are only minor points of observation and discussion to an otherwise excellent book. Paz’s research on bilateral military cooperation between the United States and Mexico is ground-breaking. Her book is a delight to read and serves as an ideal text for undergraduate courses as well as graduate seminars. Along with Stephen Niblo’s War, Diplomacy, and Development: The United States and Mexico, 1938–1954 (Wilmington, Del., 1995) and the already-cited work of Rout and Bratzel, Strategy, Security, and Spies is a must read for any scholar of Mexican domestic and foreign affairs in the 1940s.