Uploaded July 2021 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
With the fall of France in the summer of 1940, the United States was faced with the possibility of French Guiana becoming a Nazi beachhead in the Americas. Vargas, faced with a potentially hostile nation on its border, a disaffected German expatriate community, and a population with ambivalent feelings toward the United States, quietly acceded to President Roosevelt’s overtures and defense guarantees permitting improvement of airfields in case a response to a German escalation was required.
With the fall of France in the summer of 1940, the United States was faced with the possibility of French Guiana becoming a Nazi beachhead in the Americas. Vargas, faced with a potentially hostile nation on its border, a disaffected German expatriate community, and a population with ambivalent feelings toward the United States, quietly acceded to President Roosevelt’s overtures and defense guarantees permitting improvement of airfields in case a response to a German escalation was required.
