Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit FRIDAY, AUGUST 1, 1941. NAZIS IN SOUTH AMERICA.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 61, Issue 248, 1 August 1941, Page 4

Ashburton Guardian Magna est Veritas et Prævalebit FRIDAY, AUGUST 1, 1941. NAZIS IN SOUTH AMERICA.

The statement by Mr Sumner Welles regarding the efforts of the totalitarian Powers to extend their disruptive control of the Latin-Arneri-can Republics is fully justified by re. cent events, for prompt action by the various governments alone prevented serious developments. While Great Britain and the United States slept in the years before ihe war, the Germans and Italians spread their influence alarmingly in every South American republic. Considerable German populations live in Brazil and the Argentine, and many Italians in both of these States and in Peru and Bolivia. Bv choice and sometimes as the result of pressure from the Gestapo, they have become the tools of Axis plans for the control of a great and wealthy continent. Before the outbreak of the present war most of the big air-lines in South America were Axis-controlled. Powerful radio stations blared day and night Nazi and Fascist propaganda. German goods flooded the continent, sold at prices with which honest American and British trade could not hope to compete. Underground activities of a more reprehensible character ,were carried out, and money was spent lavishly in a not unsuccessful attempt to bribe politicians in most of the republics. Notoriously a Pan-American conference held at Lima was a failure because of Axis intrigue. Brazil, where the activities of President Vargas have often caused grave anxiety to the United States, is the first place from which Hitler would attempt the domination of the American continent if he gained control of Europe. Dakar is ominously close to South America. Trouble recently flared 'up in Uruguay, where the . Nazis were suppressed just in time and still later the Government was forced to act in Bolivia. Only in May of this year the Bolivian authorities were forced to dispossess the German air-line. The United States is greatly concerned over the situation, for if any proof were needed of the determination of - Hitler to master the world, it is amply established by the vast network of Nazi intrigue which permeates South America.