Office of the Historian

832.796/299a: Telegram

The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Brazil (Caffery)

Washington, April 7, 1941—8 p.m.

178. Personal from the Under Secretary. Interested American oil companies are being asked to withhold further supplies of aviation gasoline and lubricants from Lati.52 Please take this matter up informally with Aranha and endeavor to ascertain whether the Brazilian Government would receive favorably a request for its cooperation in this matter. The oil companies have expressed the view that, in spite of their desire to comply with the Department’s wishes, they might be confronted with contrary instructions from the Brazilian Government. [Welles.]

Hull
  1. For pro-Axis activity of Lati, see Stetson Conn and Byron Fairchild, The Framework of Hemisphere Defense, in the series United States Army in World War II: The Western Hemisphere (Washington, Government Printing Office, 1960), pp. 247–248.↩