Chile and the Nazis: From Hitler to Pinochet

J.L. Granatstein, Distinguished Research Professor of History Emeritus,
York University, served as Director of the Canadian War Museum from 1998
to 2000. He is the author of Who Killed Canadian History? and coauthor
of The Canadian 100: The 100 Most Influ

Chile and the Nazis is the most grotesquely mistitled book of the year.
Chile is likely not a hot subject for most Canadian readers, but if
Nazis can be combined with the hated General Pinochet, perhaps it might
sell. It clearly didn’t matter to the publisher that this is a book
that stops in 1945 with the defeat of Hitler; a paragraph or two on
Pinochet can “justify” the title. This deliberate deception might
have been barely tolerable in a well-produced, well-edited book, but
this volume is neither. There are actually two sections of
acknowledgments and descriptions of research travel, for example.

What emerges from Mount’s research into little-used archives in
Canada, the United States, Chile, Australia, Spain, Britain, and Germany
is that the German colony in Chile was active in proselytizing before
and during World War II. Venal Chilean politicians and governments
foolishly colluded with Nazi elements, resisted American pressure to
work for the victory of the democracies, and occasionally stirred alarm
among Allied governments. But Chile didn’t matter very much in the
global power struggle and, for all Mount’s efforts to find
significance in this story, he fails. The research might have made a
good article, but there is simply not enough of interest for a book.