2s. Shepard Jones and Denys P. Myers (eds.), Documents on American Foreign Relations, July 1939-June 1940 (Boston: World Peace Foundation, 1940), II, 116-117; Mecham, op. cit., 183; Samuel Flagg Bemis, The Latin American Policy of the United States (New York: Harcourt Brace and Co., 1943), 365-366. 3Morison, op. cit., I, 15-16. 4For a review of the negotiations with the various Latin American countries, see Appendix B. 191. 5 6 7. Jones and Myers, op. cit., II, 214; Mecham, op. cit., Jones and Myers, op. cit., III, 134-135. Mecham, op. cit., 191. 9Stetson Conn and Byron Fairchild, United States Army in World War II: The Western Hemisphere: The Framework of Hemisphere Defense (Washington: GPO, 1960), 24-25. 10 The countries not visited were Bolivia, Mexico, Panama, and Paraguay. Discussions with Mexico were conducted in Washington in June and July. 11 Conn and Fairchild, op. cit., 177. The quotation is from war plan RAINBOW 4. Pertinent State Department correspondence relating to the negotiations of the U.S. military representatives is found in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1940 (Washington: GPO, 1961), V, 14-179. 12Conn and Fairchild, op. cit., 177-179. 13 Conn 14 Conn and Fairchild, op. cit., 179-183. Conn and Fairchild, op. cit., 215. Conn and Fairchild, op. cit., 251. For a review of the whole period of the negotiations and subsequent construction, see ibid., 249-265. 16Conn and Fairchild, op. cit., 253. 17 By June 1942 This was the original contract figure. new contracts brought the amount to $33,000,000; still later contracts increased the amount to $90,000,000, plus $10,000,000 for maintenance. 18 'Conn and Fairchild, op. cit., 254, 257-258. In 1941 Brazil authorized Pan American to enlarge its existing airfields and to construct new air bases in its northeastern bulge. William L. Langer and S. Everett Gleason, The Undeclared War, 1940-1941 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1953), 600. 19 Conn and Fairchild, op. cit., 254, 257-258. III. UNITED STATES CONTRIBUTIONS TO INTER-AMERICAN DEFENSE United States efforts to arm its Latin American neighbors and thus to strengthen inter-American defense in the last three decades have often been misunderstood both at In home and abroad. For that reason they have been the subject of continuous congressional scrutiny since 19501 and at the same time the object of denunciation by powerful vocal elements among our Western Hemisphere neighbors. spite of determined opposition, both domestic and foreign, our national planners have persisted in their efforts to arm our sister republics and to achieve a uniformity in their weapon systems through the supply of weapons of U.S. manufacture. 1. Lend-Lease Assistance during World War II In the 1936-1939 period, when the United States Government was discouraging the sale of arms to foreign powers, U.S. munitions makers averaged some $10,000,000 a year in sales to the whole of Latin America, with military aircraft and aircraft spare parts constituting the bulk (about 85%) of the total.2 International developments in 1938, however, forced U. S. officials to begin a re-examination of national policy as it related to the supply of munitions to Latin America. The growing power of the Axis 3 nations in Europe, with the possibility that one or more of the partners might soon attempt to exert influence in the Western Hemisphere, caused Washington planners to consider what actions the United States might take to increase the military strength of the Latin American countries in the face of the potential threat. Aware that most of the nations lacked the cash resources to finance any extensive armament program, the U. S. Army proposed that the United States re-examine its legislation and related policies, which over the years had tended to discourage the sale of surplus military equipment to foreign powers. This proposal achieved the desired end two years later in the passage by Congress of the Pittman Act. This legislation, adopted on 15 June 1940, permitted U. S. military agencies to manufacture, procure, and sell munitions and other military matériel to any American republic.4 Subsequent developments, however, revealed that the act was to prove of little value to the intended purchasers. The Latin American governments, when not restricted by a lack of cash, wanted modern equipment, not long-stored, antiquated matériel, which was all that was available in Army and Navy stocks, for the lowering war clouds in Europe compelled the United States to hoard the very items of new matériel so much desired by its hemispheric neighbors. In an effort to remedy the cash-short handicap under which many of the nations labored, the United States set up the previously mentioned procedure for financing their arms and munitions purchases out of the $500,000,000 in credits that Congress authorized the Export-Import Bank to extend to Latin American nations on 26 September 1940. But before final action could be taken to deliver any purchases under this arrangement, the spread of the European War led Congress to pass the Lend-Lease Act of 11 March 1941,5 and the Defense Aid Supplemental Appropriation Act on 27 March 1941, which appropriated $1,300,000,000 to finance the provisions of the act.6 Although the "original hearings and debate of the LendLease Act and the original appropriations included no mention whatsoever of the other American republics," and in spite of the fact that in the hearings on the then-current appropriations bill "the Defense Aid witnesses made much of the fact that no funds had actually been devoted up to now to the other American republics," the Roosevelt administration quickly moved to make defense matériel available to Latin American nations under the provisions of the LendLease Act and supporting legislation. It was able to do |