tournament of countries. They vowed to fight with the grit and determination that had made Paraguayans famous — and in Estigarribia they had a sturdy and knowledgeable military hand. To Bolivia this was a war for a foreign territory; for Paraguay a fight for survival. Paraguay adopted the same rope-a-dope strategy, i.e., stretching enemy supply lines through continuous retreats. But the fear of coups prevented Paraguay from putting the retreat plan into operation. Politics had trumped strategy on both sides.
Finally, for no apparent reason, it became time to decide the champion of the losers’ bracket.
WHAT HAPPENED: OPERATION “DOUBLE ELIMINATION”
In June 1932, the Bolivians felt bold enough to start the festivities. A small group of their elite fighters attacked a cluster of mud huts, optimistically called a fort, and drove off the defenders — all six of them. “Viva Bolivia,” the victors cried.
Hearing of the attack, Estigarribia, who was commanding an army division in the Chaco, ordered a few dozen troops to retake the mud huts. A few days later the troops attacked but were repulsed. Both sides gathered more troops. By mid-July the Paraguayans had obtained the upper hand and attacked. Overwhelmed and scared, the Bolivians retreated.
In Paraguay’s capital, Asunción, a grim determination prevailed. Paraguayans were ready to fight, but not eager. For them it was one more uphill fight against a bigger, richer enemy, with bleak prospects for victory. President José P. Guggiari managed to rally the people to the cause by declaring his people would fight with the bravery of the old days of the Triple Alliance war. “We must repeat history,” he thundered. Irony was not his strength.
In Bolivia’s capital, La Paz, President Salamanca exhorted the crowd into a frenzy. Bolivian honor had been stained. The people wanted blood… and Salamanca promised to deliver. There was also no need to get the country on a war economy. Its vastly superior size and wealth would make this a quick war, the leaders convinced themselves. They agreed to fight it on the cheap.
In a meeting with his army leaders, Salamanca ordered immediate reprisals against the Paraguayans. His officers cautioned patience, however. The army had only 1,400 men in the Chaco, they told him, and it would be wise to call up reserves and organize an effective force before starting a major war. Salamanca would have none of that organizing talk. He wanted action. The troops departed for the front amid a chorus of cheers from the capital’s citizens.
In the Chaco, Bolivian troops took two small Paraguayan forts. By August the Bolivian forces had pushed forward and captured Paraguay’s Fort Boquerón, yet another fort that was little more than a shack on a hill. Then they paused as President Salamanca pondered the next Bolivian move.
Estigarribia didn’t pause. He realized he had to throw all of his country’s resources into the fight early or face certain defeat. Paraguay rushed its military-age men into service and through quick training. Bolivia slowly brought its men into service, unwilling to pay for an army. As a result, by September Estigarribia’s larger forces besieged the Bolivians at Fort Boquerón. Through weeks of hearty fighting, the garrison slowly melted from lack of food, medicine, water, and constant artillery bombardment. In late September the Bolivians, out of ammunition and nearly all dead of dehydration, surrendered. The Paraguayans themselves had barely hung on to win because the lake they were using for water had almost completely dried up. The harsh Chaco life was taking nearly as many lives as the bullets.
After Fort Boquerón, the Paraguayans pushed forward as the Bolivian army reeled from defeat to defeat. By December the Bolivians stiffened as the Paraguayan surge ended.
The war stalled at the end of 1932, and the Bolivians called in General Hans Kundt — “Das Ringer.” Everyone perked up when General Kundt, the former German World War I staff officer, goose-stepped to command of their army. He studied the war during his trip over by reading out-of-date newspaper articles on the fighting, believing this would suffice for a Prussian general to thrash any opponent. Bolivians cheered and greeted the imported Prussian with flowery huzzahs when he entered La Paz. Their hero had returned, and the crowds all agreed he would soon bring the hated Paraguayans to their knees. After all, the enemy only had Paraguayans in charge, hardly a match for a general from the country that had practically invented modern war. On Christmas Day, Kundt, armed with his half-sketchy knowledge of the fighting and the Chaco terrain, took command of the Bolivian army in the field and began issuing orders as if he were in charge of actual, competent German troops.
But the Bolivians’ problems reached deeper than just poor commanders. To reach the battlefields required long marches through hot, dusty trails. The harsh terrain wore down their soldiers faster than the Paraguayans could. Bolivians came from cool, mountainous regions and were incapable of overturning centuries of logical belief that a quiet life in the hills was better than traipsing around the deadly Chaco. To these mountain dwellers, the heat and humidity turned the trip into sheer agony, and for many it became a death march. To the leathery Paraguayans, however, it was just like home.
Immediately, Das Ringer earned his pay. In a surprise counterstrike he grabbed the initiative and threw his men in a flanking movement against the Paraguayans, standard operating procedure for a Prussian, and it turned the tide against the stunned Paraguayans.
As 1933 began, the war’s toll hit home in Bolivia. President Salamanca initiated a draft to boost the army’s manpower as volunteers dropped to a trickle. Gangs of wounded veterans dragooned young men into the army, and they often arrived at the front fortified with only hours of training. Kundt, in full western front mode, drove against the Paraguayans at yet another meaningless place. He planned a three-pronged attack — left flank, center, and right flank — the classic double-envelopment. But his left hook bogged down in swamps and never got into the fight on the first day, January 20. Unwilling to change his plan, Kundt pressed ahead, and the two other columns fought without any coordination. The Paraguayans decimated the densely attacking Bolivians with deadly machine- gun fire, imparting to the Bolivians a valuable lesson learned by millions of unfortunate soldiers destroyed by machine guns in the trenches of World War I. The stuck column finally attacked the next day, but now the two other wings were too exhausted to take part, and the Paraguayans stopped it cold. Kundt ordered wave after wave of attacks over the next few days, none more successful than those on the first day. On January 26 the reinforced Paraguayans counterattacked, and both sides settled into deadly trench warfare. Indeed, Kundt had imported the western front to the Chaco.
For most of 1933, the imported Prussian suffered the same consequences everywhere he went. He threw his troops into brutal frontal assaults against entrenched machine guns that succeeded only by adding to the piles of bodies. It was World War I all over again, but without the French wine and German mustard gas. As the only person in this war who participated in the Great War, you might think Das Ringer would have learned this lesson.
Now Kundt insisted on holding every inch of the front lines, overstretching his army, solely to control territory without any thought to an overall strategy. Military folly again. Bolivia… had hired the wrong Prussian. Further adding to the Bolivians’ problems was their desire to run the war on the cheap. They had failed to build a larger army than the Paraguayans’ despite a much larger population.
In May 1933, again for no apparent reason, Paraguayan president Eusebio Ayala finally declared war on Bolivia. It was the first declaration of war by any country since the founding of the League of Nations. The noble intentions of the League had met head-on with the reality of South American politics.
During September 1933 Estigarribia pushed forward. He thrust ahead in flanking movements, trapping large numbers of Bolivian troops. Surrounded and waterless, they surrendered rather than die of thirst. The Paraguayans pushed onward again, drilled wells for water, and committed their reserves. Kundt held firm. Too firm, it turns out. He refused to ask for more troops and refused to make any strategic retreats. His subordinates, already upset at being led by a foreigner, could not understand his decision to hold all sectors of the crumbling front. The few planes in the Bolivian air force regularly reported Paraguayan flanking movements. Kundt disregarded them, and this proved his undoing. By December he became the victim of his own dreaded double envelopment. He failed to fully protect his flanks, the first lesson taught in Prussian military kindergarten. Foiled by his own strategy, surrounded, his troops dropping from dehydration, Kundt’s army folded and ran. Those who escaped survived solely because the Paraguayans were too exhausted to complete the rout. When the two sides settled down, the Bolivian army had been reduced to only 7,000 men in the field and one single Prussian muttering in German about double envelopments. The Bolivians were right back where they had started at the war’s outset.
