Hans Kundt was not the only German imported by Bolivia. A key military advisor to the Bolivians during the late 1920s was Ernst Röhm, a violent, scar-faced pal of Adolf Hitler. An early member of the Nazi party and a Munich native, Röhm befriended Hitler and stood by his side during the failed Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. In 1925 he became leader of the SA, the Brownshirts, the Nazi’s military wing of out-of-work-and-angry street brawlers. But Röhm’s soldiers were too aggressive even for Hitler, who wanted to keep a lower street profile while he prepared to take over the world. So that year Hitler drove him away, and Röhm fled to Bolivia where he became a lieutenant colonel. In 1931 Hitler, now on the verge of attaining power in Germany, invited his old buddy back to take the helm of the SA once again. This time around the relationship lasted three years until Hitler, now running Germany, needing to quell the SA and appease the German army, had Röhm arrested and exe cuted. In Bolivia, Röhm left behind one important imprint. His assistant was Germán Busch Becerra, who took control of Bolivia in 1937 and declared himself dictator in 1939. This makes Röhm perhaps the only modern fascist who could claim mentorship to two dictators in two different countries.
The defeat was too much even for the Bolivians. Das Ringer got jackbooted. Auf Wiedersehen to El Aleman. He lingered on in La Paz for a while, then submitted his resignation in February 1934. But the sacking of Kundt did not improve Salamanca’s rocky relationship with the generals.
After such a defeat it would seem logical that Bolivia would listen to the peace talks that were once again floated about. But logic just wasn’t their style. They pressed on. As the deaths mounted, the League of Nations scrambled to justify its existence by negotiating an end to the affair. Politicians made high-minded speeches about the senseless slaughter and how an arms embargo on both countries was necessary. Countries around the world all denied they were selling the combatants arms. “Not us,” they declared. Yet somehow, fresh arms flowed to the front. Despite the casualties neither country was willing to give up the fight. They had yet to score the victory both countries sorely needed and had represented as their sole war aim. Neither could sign a peace treaty that did not recognize one as the clear victor. The fight had to continue.
Another big blow to Bolivia was the taking of the supposedly impregnable Fort Ballivian. It had withstood numerous Paraguayan assaults. As an election in Bolivia neared — yes, they actually held them, but since coups happened with shocking regularity they were more like nonbinding resolutions — President Salamanca wanted to notch victories to rally the country behind his pro-war party. In mid-1934 Salamanca pulled his troops from Fort Ballivian and marched them north to take on Estigarribia, who was poking around up there. He had left the fort empty, believing it folly to have any more than a skeleton crew in his impregnable fort. The strategy worked as the Bolivians scored some battlefield victories, which Salamanca’s Genuine Republican party rode to electoral success that November.
But to the Bolivian’s surprise, Estigarribia popped up in front of Fort Ballivian. His feint to the north had drawn the Bolivians out of the fort, and the Bolivian Verdun fell without a shot. The impregnable was suddenly pregnant with Paraguayans. Paraguay now had an open path to the Bolivian border. Victory was in sight, always a dangerous situation with these two countries.
Outraged, Salamanca sped to the front to fire his commander in chief. When he arrived the officers instead demanded Salamanca’s resignation. He submitted it meekly while his vice president, Luis Tejada Sorzano, back in La Paz, declared that Salamanca had deserted. Tejada declared himself the new president. Democracy Bolivian style!
Incredibly the Paraguayans kept advancing through the vicious Chaco heat. At the battle of El Carmen in November, they surrounded two Bolivian divisions and captured 4,000 prisoners while almost 3,000 Bolivians perished from thirst. By the end of 1934, the Bolivian retreat had succeeded in reaching the far western end of the Chaco. They were now getting beat on their own turf. President Tejada Sorzano now ditched fighting on the cheap and proclaimed a full mobilization. The ranks of troops swelled. Even as they suffered battlefield defeats, the number of soldiers grew. By April 1935 the grim, leathery Paraguayans, whose thinning ranks had to be bolstered by teenage recruits, had pushed as far forward as their supply lines would allow but much farther than they ever dreamed. They stood at their closest point to victory and, unknown to them, their closest moment to defeat, just like the Germans during the summer of 1918.
Sorzano’s draft swelled the Bolivian army to 45,000 troops. Finally, their numbers paid dividends. They rolled forward with stiffened sinews to defend their homeland. They slashed through the beleaguered Paraguayans, a big chunk of whom were teenagers far from home. The original Bolivian strategy proved correct after all.
Formed by Woodrow Wilson during the peace talks that ended World War I, the League of Nations was designed to end war forever by having all its members gang up on any attacking country. Considering that World War II started while the League existed amply demonstrates the success of this little group. But the demise of the League was quickly hastened from its failures to resolve the Chaco war. Time after time, delegates from the League met with leaders from the two combatants… and they struck out each time. In addition, League members tried to impose strict arms embargoes on Bolivia and Paraguay, but to no avail. With the world in turmoil during the 1930s, it became clear to the powerful troublemakers of Japan, Italy, and Germany that if the League couldn’t stop Bolivia and Paraguay, it couldn’t stop them. The notion of collective security failed and was abandoned like a broken-down truck in the harsh lands of the Chaco.
By June 1935 both sides were willing to at least listen to the latest — the eighteenth — attempt to broker a peace. Paraguay realized it was at the breaking point and agreed to end the war. Diplomats from the five nearby countries — Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Peru — along with the United States, pushed the sides to stop the senseless slaughter. When the meeting was about to break up without a deal, the U.S. representative, Alexander Wilbourne Weddell, ambassador to Argentina, demanded the sides work out their differences. They listened. A truce broke out while a commission from the mediating countries marked out a border across the Chaco to divide the non-spoils of war.
Bolivia and Paraguay agreed to stop the fighting at noon on June 14. All morning the two armies peered at each other from their trenches. With just half an hour before the deadline, for no apparent reason they started firing at each other. The fusillade grew, and soon both armies feverishly unleashed their weapons, blowing through stores of ammunition. The casualties mounted. At noon, whistles blew and the firing stopped. Half crazed from the slaughter and delusional from knowing it was actually over and they had survived, soldiers on both sides cheered and danced with enemies that only minutes earlier they’d tried to kill. It was a bloody, senseless end to a bloody, senseless war.
The war’s only purpose was to prove to any doubters that a meaningless war, fought over a meaningless and barren land, is not enough to spring a country from the losers’ bracket.
WHAT HAPPENED AFTER
Jubilation broke out throughout South America when the war ended. So relieved was the world that the organizer of the peace conference, Carlos Saavedra Lamas, the Argentine foreign minister, received the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. In fact, ending the war propelled him to the presidency of the assembly of the League of Nations. The peace conference met for three years before they settled on the treaty’s final terms on how to divide the Chaco.
Bolivia and Paraguay endured enormous casualties from the fight. Bolivia suffered nearly 50,000 deaths; about 2 percent of its total population, while Paraguay had about 40,000 dead, nearly 3.5 percent of its population. This would translate percentage-wise to about 10 million dead for the United States today.
As for the leaders, Estigarribia was forced into exile after a coup in 1936 but returned from Argentina three years later. On August 15, 1939, he became Paraguay’s president. Unhappy with the temporary nature of the country’s presidents, he promoted himself to dictator, but in 1940 he renounced his position and declared he would hold elections. Since no good deed goes unpunished, a few months later his plane crashed, killing him along with his
