Brazilian Expeditionary Force in Europe
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Força Expedicionária Brasileira |
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|---|---|
.svg) Troop badge: "The smoking snake" |
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| active | 1943 to 1945 |
| Country |
 Brazil
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| Armed forces | Forças Armadas do Brasil |
| Armed forces |
Exército Brasileiro Força Aérea Brasileira |
| Type | Expedition corp |
| Strength | 25,000 |
| Installation site | Brazil |
| Nickname | Cobras Fumantes (Smoking Snakes) |
| Second World War | Italian campaign |
| Commanders | |
| general | João Baptista Mascarenhas de Morais |
| insignia | |
| Shoulder badge |
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The Brazilian Expeditionary Corps ( Portuguese : Força Expedicionária Brasileira , FEB ) was a troop unit that fought on the side of the Allies in the Mediterranean against the Axis powers during the Second World War . It consisted of 25,000 soldiers from the Army and Air Force .
Brazil was the only South American country that sent ground troops to Europe in this war . Air and land forces fought in Italy from September 1944 to May 1945 . In the eight months of this campaign , they lost almost 500 soldiers and took 20,573 Italians and Germans prisoner. The Brazilian Navy and the Brazilian Air Force had participated in the fighting in the South Atlantic since mid-1942.
Overview
Although Brazil had already supported the Entente against Germany in World War I , the country's involvement on the side of the Allies in World War II was by no means a given. In 1917 and 1918, Brazil took part in the war, primarily with its navy, but also sent a military mission to the Western Front . As in 1914, Brazil initially remained neutral in 1939 and traded with both the Allies and the Axis powers . However, as the war progressed, trade with the latter became nearly impossible, and the US made diplomatic and economic efforts to get Brazil to side with the Allies.
In early 1942, Brazil allowed US forces to set up military bases in the states of Bahia , Pernambuco and Rio Grande do Norte . Part of the US Navy VP-52 patrol squadron was stationed in the city of Natal . The US Task Force 3 also operated from Brazil: The squadron attacked submarines and merchant ships that were trading with Japan . In return, the United States offered to promote the iron industry (Companhia Siderúrgica Nacional) in Brazil.
The Germans provided the occasion for the declaration of war: In the first half of 1942, German submarines sank 13 Brazilian cargo ships. On August 16 and 17, 1942, the German submarine U 507 torpedoed five unarmed merchant ships flying the national flag off the coast of Brazil within 40 hours. 607 people were killed and 14,822 GRT of ship space was lost. Thereupon Brazil declared war on the German Reich on August 22, 1942 .
Commanders and Composition
The Brazilian First Division of the FEB fought under the command of the IV Corps ( Major General Willis D. Crittenberger), as part of the 5th US Army ( Lieutenant General Mark W. Clark , later Lieutenant General Lucian K. Truscott ), which in turn was part of the Allied 15th Army . Army Group ( Field Marshal Harold Alexander ) was subordinate. Your US liaison officer was Vernon A. Walters , who was Deputy Military Attaché of the US from 1962 to 1967 at the Embassy in Brazil after the war .
The FEB headquarters functioned as the administrative headquarters and liaison with the Brazilian High Command under War Minister General Eurico Gaspar Dutra in Rio de Janeiro. General Mascarenhas de Morais was in command of the FEB, General Zenobio da Costa chief of the 6th Regiment (RCT) - the first FEB unit to land in Italy, and General Cordeiro de Farias was in command of the artillery.
In principle, including the logistics, the FEB was structured like a US infantry division . However, some of these departments , such as the medical service , were poorly organized and had to be supplemented, and in many cases also controlled or administered by the Americans. The combat units were the 1st, 6th and 11th regiments , each about 5,000 men in three battalions (of four companies each ), including supporting units such as artillery , engineers and cavalry .
The Brazilian air force contingent was the XXII. Tactical Air Command is subordinate to the Mediterranean Allied Air Forces (MAAF), the allied command organization of the air force in the Mediterranean region.
The campaign
preparation
After Brazil declared war, it began to set up an expeditionary force to fight in Europe. At the time, Brazil was a country with a traditionally isolationist foreign policy and a largely rural and illiterate population. The economy focused on the export of raw materials, and there was no infrastructure in industry, in the health system or in education that could serve as material and human support for the war effort in a conflict of this dimension. Nor was there a plan of action for this situation (similar to Calogera's plan in World War I). Many Brazilian officers (even those willing to go to war) saw some inevitable internal consequences after a defeat of Nazi Germany, such as that the Brazilian people could make democratic demands. All in all, since 1937, the Brazilians lived under an openly authoritarian military regime that had flirted with Nazi Germany until 1941 . Autonomous action by the Brazilian military government in this conflict was therefore ruled out from the outset.
Confronted with the state's passivity and the lack of readiness for war, the journalist Assis Chateaubriand and US officials stationed in Brazil came up with the idea of setting up a multinational expeditionary army of South American volunteers, which he would have financed and which should be trained by American instructors. This initiative was stopped by the Brazilian government in early 1943.
It took almost two years for the Brazilian government to set up an army unit of 25,000 men. That was very little compared to the initially stated goal of building up an entire army corps of 100,000 soldiers to support the Allies in the Italian campaign.
Arrival in Italy
On July 2, 1944, the first five thousand FEB soldiers (the 6th Regiment) left Brazil aboard the USS General Mann and arrived in Italy on July 16. They landed in Naples , where they were supposed to join forces with US Combat Group 45. They landed with no weapons, and with no one looking at their barracks accommodation, the troops stood around on the docks. This caused a lot of controversy in the Brazilian media. Two more transports with Brazilian troops reached Italy at the end of July, and three more followed in September and November 1944 and February 1945.
In the first few weeks in Italy, the FEB ensured that the right equipment was acquired - the uniforms were not adapted to the Italian winter climate - and for training under American orders. In August the troops moved to Tarquinia , 350 km north of Naples, where they were deployed to Clark's army. In November the FEB Crittenbergers IV US Corps was affiliated.
Struggles
The first operations of the Brazilian troops were reconnaissance missions in late August. The Brazilians were supposed to replace Free French troops who partly took part in Operation Dragoon (the landing in Provence). On September 16, they occupied Camaiore and were then successful in battles at Monte Prano, Monte Acuto and other places. Until then, the Brazilians had relatively few casualties. Towards the end of the year they stood in the Apennines , where they faced the German Goth line during the harsh winter . On November 29, 1944, on the orders of General Mascarenhas de Morais (against the advice of his officers), a frontal attack against the fortified positions was carried out, in which there were 300 casualties and no land gain.
Between late February and early March 1945, in preparation for the spring offensive , the Brazilian Division and the 10th US Mountain Division were able to capture important positions in the northern Apennines with notable Brazilian successes at Monte Castello and Castelnuovo di Vergato . It was possible to eliminate the German artillery positions in the mountains; Their effective bombardment had blocked the Allied route to Bologna since autumn 1944 .
The last offensive on the Italian front began on April 14th. Montese was captured by an attack by the Brazilian division . 129 soldiers died in the Tiradentes regiment alone. After that, the collapse of the German lines in the north before the forces of IV Corps was inevitable. On the right, the Polish Division of the British 8th Army and the 34th US Infantry Division captured Bologna on April 21st.
On April 25, the Italian resistance movement began a general partisan uprising. At the same time the Brazilian troops conquered Parma and the Americans Modena and Genoa . The British 8th Army advanced towards Venice and Trieste .
At the Battle of Collecchio , the Brazilian armed forces met fierce resistance from the German-Italian troop units retreating towards Genoa - La Spezia , which were pursued by the 92nd US Division. The Axis troops were surrounded near Fornovo di Taro and surrendered after some fighting. On April 28, the Brazilians captured more than 13,000 soldiers, including the entire 148th Infantry Division , parts of the 90th Panzer Grenadier Division and the Italian Bersaglieri regiments "Monte Rosa", "San Marco" and "Italia".
The German leadership had planned to unite these troops, together with the German-Italian army in Liguria , in order to counterattack against the 5th US Army. The Axis powers had left intact many bridges throughout the Po Valley to allow an attack. The German army command was already negotiating a ceasefire in Caserta and hoped that a counterattack could improve the conditions for the surrender in their favor. These events, and the news of Hitler's death and the fall of Berlin, left the German leadership in Italy with no choice but to accept unconditional surrender. The Brazilians reached Turin on May 2nd and joined the French at the border in Susa . On the same day the war in Italy ended.
air force
The first flight group was the 1st GAVCA (1st Combat Group / 1º de Grupo de Aviação Caça), it was set up on December 18, 1943. The commandant was Lieutenant Colonel Nero Moura.
The Brazilian season had its own badge. It shows in a green-yellow (the national colors of Brazil) a bouquet with the sky and the southern cross painted on the sign . In the background, anti-aircraft bullets explode , the right hand symbolizes the firepower of the Thunderbolt aircraft, the red fond the spilled blood of the pilots. Including the motto "Senta a Pua" - meaning "Strike decisively and you will destroy the enemy."
The group (350 men, 43 of them pilots) underwent brief training in Panama . On June 22nd, she was posted to the United States and received P-47D Thunderbolt machines. Finally the 1st GAVCA arrived near Livorno on October 6th. It became part of the 350th Fighter Group United States Army Air Forces , which in turn was part of the 62nd Fighter Wing, XXII Tactical Air Command, Twelfth Air Force .
The Brazilian pilots first flew on October 31, 1944, as individual participants in the 350th Fighter Group and gradually took part in more dangerous missions. Less than two weeks later, on November 11th, the group started its first own operations: It began its career as a fighter-bomber unit, followed by armed reconnaissance tasks in support of the American 5th Army, with which the FEB was connected. On April 16, 1945, the US Army began its offensive along the Po Valley. By then, the strength of the group had fallen to 25 pilots, some were killed or shot down and captured. Each pilot flew an average of two missions a day.
On April 22, 1945, the remaining pilots started every 5 minutes to destroy bridges, barges and motorized vehicles in the San Benedetto region from 8.30 a.m. At 10 a.m., a group went on an armed reconnaissance mission south of Mantua . They destroyed more than 80 tanks, trucks and vehicles. By the end of the day, the group had flown 44 individual missions and destroyed hundreds of vehicles and barges. That day the group flew most of the missions in the war; consequently, on April 22, Brazil commemorates its World War II Air Force. All in all, the 1st GAVCA flew a total of 445 missions from November 11, 1944 to May 6, 1945, 2,550 individual missions with 5,465 combat flight hours.
aftermath
463 dead who were buried in the Brazilian military cemetery in Pistoia were buried in a mausoleum in Rio de Janeiro in 1960 . Marshal Mascarenhas de Moraes had proposed this and promoted the construction of the mausoleum. Inaugurated on July 24, 1960, it covers an area of 6,850 square meters.
As a result, FEB officers quickly made careers in the Brazilian Army. Humberto Castelo Branco became general in 1962 and led the 1964 military coup that made him the dictatorial president of Brazil. Golbery do Couto e Silva became head of military intelligence and later, during the dictatorship, successively interior, finance and justice minister. Hugo de Abreu became the president's security advisor during the dictatorship. Afonso Augusto de Albuquerque Lima was the dictatorship's interior minister.
Nickname
Since the Brazilian dictatorship was reluctant to take part in the Allied war effort, a popular saying emerged in early 1943: “A snake is more likely to smoke a pipe than Brazil to take part in the war in Europe.” (“Mais fácil uma cobra fumar cachimbo do que o Brasil participar da guerra na Europa. "). By the time the FEB intervened in the fighting, the phrase "a cobra vai fumar" ("the snake will smoke") became a household word in Brazil. The soldiers of the FEB called themselves Cobras Fumantes (smoking snakes) and wore a badge that showed a pipe smoking snake.
After the war, the meaning was reversed to mean that something had finally happened in an aggressive and angry way. The expression “a cobra vai fumar” has survived in Brazilian Portuguese to this day, although few of the younger generation know the origin of the expression.
literature
- Maximiano, Cesar (with Bonalume, Ricardo N. & Bujeiro, Ramiro): Brazilian Expeditionary Force in World War II . Osprey Publishing Ltd., 2011. ISBN 978-1-849084833 (Print version).
- João Baptista Mascarenhas de Morais : The Brazilian Expeditionary Force, By Its Commander. US Government Printing Office, 1966.
- Edwards, Paul M .: Between the Lines of World War II: Twenty-One Remarkable People and Events. McFarland & Co. Inc. Publishers 2010 ISBN 978-0-786446674 . Chapter 9 "The Smoking Cobras".
Web links
- Hans Michael Kloth: The Revenge of the Smoking Cobras - One Day , December 30, 2009
- Four-part Brazilian television documentary about FEB, approx. 80 min. on YouTube