With Brazil at war with the fascist Axis powers from 1942 onwards, integralism became a small and powerless movement. Germany's defeat in 1945 reduced integralism to very little importance. João Cândido Felisberto said in 1968 that he was proud to be an integralist. After living in ostracism in the Brazilian city of São João de Meriti and being persecuted by the Brazilian Navy, he died of cancer in 1969 in Rio de Janeiro, at the age of 89.