page_title: German Brazilians
section_title: Nazism
hierarchical_section_title: German Brazilians / Forced assimilation / Nazism
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Albrecht,Egon
context_page_description: German Brazilians refers to Brazilians of full or partial German ancestry. German Brazilians live mostly in the country's South Region, with lesser but still significant degree in the Southeast Region. German dialects together make up the second most spoken first language in Brazil after Portuguese. A few Brazilian municipalities have Brazilian Hunsrückisch and Germanic East Pomeranian as co-official with Portuguese. They are located in Southern Brazil and Espírito Santo. In the year 2000 Brazilian census 12 million people in Brazil claimed to be of German descent. According to Born and Dickgiesser the number of Brazilians of German descent in 1986 was 3.6 million.
  Between 1824 and 1972, about 260,000 Germans settled in Brazil, the fifth largest nationality to immigrate after the Portuguese, the Italians, the Spanish, and the Japanese. The rapid increase in numbers is due to a very high birth rate, the highest in Brazil. In the 19th century the average number of births per German-Brazilian woman was 10.
  The vast majority settled in the Southern Brazilian states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, and Paraná, as well as in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
context_section_description: These problems were aggravated with the rise of Nazism in Germany. The Nazi Party soon took to the task of organizing abroad, wherever significant populations of German origin were present. In Brazil, the results were not as the party expected. About 3,000 people joined it, making the Brazilian section the numerically most important foreign branch of the Nazi Party; however, the considerable population of German origin in Brazil may have been more a problem than an asset for the German Nazi Party: if on the one hand it raised the hope of interfering in Brazilian internal politics, on the other hand there was a concern not to alienate the Brazilian government, which Germany at the time hoped could be brought to its side, or at least remain in a benevolent neutrality.
  In addition there was the issue of the local Brazilian traditionalist syncretic party, the Brazilian Integralist Action. In contrast to the Nazi Party, the Integralists favoured miscegenation, and had the rural sertanejo as a noble ideal of representation of the people, which they thought was essential to Brazilian national identity; this directly conflicted with the Nazi ideology of racial purity. This was a problem, since the Integralists were able to attract some membership among Brazilians of German ancestry, thus competing with the Nazi organisation; moreover, until 1937, when Vargas imposed a dictatorship, the Integralists, unlike the Nazi Party, were able to participate in elections, and so there was a natural tendency of informal Nazi support for the Integralists.
  Support for the Nazi regime in Germany was widespread among Brazilians of German descent, which certainly worried the Brazilian authorities. The racial and nationalist views of the Nazis easily blended into the Deutschtum ideology. However, the Nazis weren't able to capitalise this into a really strong membership, and their local actions, such as proposed boycotts, were resisted by most of the population of German ancestry.
  In fact, the fears of the Brazilian authorities regarding the expansion of Nazism in Brazil seem exaggerated in retrospect; however, it should be taken into consideration that in 1938 Germany annexed Austria, and in 1939 it dismembered, then also annexed Czechoslovakia, and that the local sections of the Nazi Party were fully involved in these actions; manipulation of German minorities also played an important role in the internal politics of Poland (Danzig) and Lithuania (Memel). So, while exaggerated, the Brazilian government's worries seem to a certain extent justifiable.
  From Rolf Hoffmann's archive, roll 29, frames 26.600-656, mentioned by Alton Frye in "Nazi Germany and the American Hemisphere, 1933-1941", p. 101-102, the Brazilian diplomat Sérgio Corrêa da Costa, in the book 'The history of a secret war' ('Crônica de uma guerra secreta' in Portuguese), reveals that Hitler had planned to colonize Brazil (which several historians from the English speaking world had already shown, as well as the testimony of Rauschning, who was present when Hitler spoke of plans of colonizing Brazil).
  The plan was not new. In his "Gross Deutschland, die Arbeit des 20. Jahrhunderts", published in Leipzig, 1911, Tannenberg outlines the principle of partition of Central and South American between the great powers, to Germany belonging the subtropical part facing the Atlantic Ocean:
  South America will provide a space of colonization where our immigrants will keep their language and autonomy. We will demand that German be taught in the schools as a second language. Southern Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay will become German culture countries and German will be their national language
  — Otto Tannenberg
  In April 1938, Vargas outlawed the Nazi Party in Brazil (the Brazilian parties themselves were outlawed in December 1937).  However, in December 1937 the Nazi German Ambassador to Rio de Janeiro, Karl Ritter, was already reporting nationalising actions by the Brazilian government. At that moment, conditions were being imposed for the continued functioning of German schools. Ritter had a problem 
caption: Egon Albrecht-Lemke was a German Luftwaffe ace and recipient of the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross during World War II.[55] Albrecht was born in Curitiba, Brazil.[56]
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