Before 1930, there were two periods of German immigration into Brazil. The first occurred in the nineteenth century, which gave rise to several colonies scattered throughout Brazil but concentrated in the South. At the time of the rise of Nazism in Germany, this community was already largely made up of second and third generation Brazilians. This community maintained diverse German cultural habits, however, the geographic distance and the passage of time brought about perceptible cultural changes. The second migration occurred in the first decades of the twentieth century. During the Weimar Republic, and due to the consequences of World War I, Germany experienced several economic crises. At the same time, Brazil was experiencing industrial development, especially in São Paulo and
Rio de Janeiro. Due to the demand for skilled and technical labor, many Germans immigrated to Brazil during this period. These new immigrants had stronger and more recent bonds with Germany than the German-Brazilians who arrived in the 19th century and their descendants. The newly arrived immigrants from Germany differed from the existing German-Brazilians. The earlier immigrants were called Reichsdeutsche (Germans of the Empire), while the second were the Volksdeutsche (German people). The largest number of Nazis in Brazil lived in São Paulo, since the state was the preferred destination of the second wave of German immigration. By the mid-1930s, there were more than one million Germans and their descendants in Brazil, mostly in Rio Grande do Sul (600,000) and Santa Catarina (220,000). In 1940, Germans and descendants made up 22.34% of the population of Santa Catarina and 19.3% in Rio Grande do Sul. The German community outside the cities preserved its culture and language, understood as a manifestation of Germanism, which was possible through societies, a German-language press, and schools. The 1940 census showed that 640,000 people spoke German as their primary language at home in Brazil. Based on the high proportion of members of the German community who used German at home (more than 70%), it was concluded that there was a low level of cultural assimilation in this community.
Adherence to Nazism Consequences of Estado Novo nationalism The government of the Estado Novo promoted the forced integration of the Germans and their descendants who lived in isolated communities in the south of Brazil. On several occasions, the government acted brutally against ordinary immigrants who had no relationship with
Nazi Germany. In 1940, on a visit to
Blumenau, a city of German colonists in the state of
Santa Catarina, Vargas declared: "O Brasil não é inglês nem alemão. É um país soberano, que faz respeitar as suas leis e defende os seus interesses. O Brasil é brasileiro. (...) Porém, ser brasileiro, não é somente respeitar as leis do Brasil e acatar as autoridades. Ser brasileiro é amar o Brasil. É possuir o sentimento que permite dizer: o Brasil nos deu pão; nós lhe daremos o sangue". (Brazil is not English nor German. It is a sovereign country, that ensures respect to its laws and defends its interests. Brazil is Brazilian. (...) However, being Brazilian isn't just to respect the laws of Brazil and to respect the authorities. To be Brazilian is to love Brazil. It is to possess the feeling that allows one to say: Brazil gave us bread; we will give it our blood".) The
Japanese immigrants and
Italians were also persecuted and forced to "Braziliate". The case of the Teutonic-Brazilians is unique because they formed isolated communities that maintained the traditions and used the
German language exclusively. == Nazis in Brazil after the war ==