Published: 6 November 08
Air & Space Power Journal

The Chaco War-Bolivia and Paraguay, 1932-1935 by Bruce Farcau. Praeger Publishers, 88 Post Road West, Westport, Connecticut 06881-5007, 1996, 272 pages, $59.95.

The Chaco War is about the lessons of warfare (air, biological, frontal-assault, crew-served weapon, armored, combined-arms, etc.) that many military forces should have learned before they ventured into World War II. It is the first complete English- language account of one of the bloodiest conflicts ever fought in South America. Nearly 100,000 men died during the course of the three-year war, fought during the height of the worldwide depression, between two of the world's poorest nations-Bolivia and Paraguay.

The cause of the war was the unsettled question of sovereignty over the Chaco Boreal, an uninviting, sparsely populated wilderness of scrubland, dense forests, venomous snakes, and forbidding swamps. When the war began, Bolivia had the advantage of a population three times greater than Paraguay's but was severely disadvantaged by the general apathy of its army and people, who had no appetite for war. Paraguay, however, had the support of its citizens, able leadership, and logistics lines of communications one-fifth the length of Bolivia's. Unfortunately, both armies greatly suffered for having siege and attrition mentalities straight out of the nineteenth century.

Conducting a senseless war of attrition, engaging in mindless slaughter, and rotating commanders quickly for sake of promotion and getting their "combat ticket" proved the undoing of the Bolivian armed forces. After three debilitating years, Paraguay gradually gained enough ground and declared victory. But the real winner was Argentina, which had supported Paraguay to protect its foreign investment in oil exploration, cattle, and ranching.

Farcau, a US foreign service officer for 20 years, dedicated the book to his father-in-law, whose personal experience and suffering in the Chaco War inspired Farcau's research. Although we do not know which nation his father-in-law fought for, the stories Farcau heard may have been the author's only primary source materials. Other sources include translations of Bolivian and Paraguayan histories, but no other personal interviews. (Of course, since the war concluded over 60 years ago, all of the participants may be dead by now.)

Some of the more interesting chapters of the book address the use of fighter aircraft to strafe and bomb troop formations and supply columns. The Bolivians had airpower assets and made good use of them in the opening days of the war. However, as the war moved toward a stalemate, airpower came to be used only for reconnaissance and message drops to commanders. Supplies and ammunition were also dropped to besieged defenders on occasion but without benefit of parachutes, which usually damaged the ammunition, rendering it useless. The Bolivian air force could have used airpower to conduct a strategic bombing campaign but chose not to. When that air force did conduct a strategic bombing campaign against Puerto Casado, an important resupply and troop-holding area, the government of Argentina, a regional power, threatened Bolivia with retaliation if any Argentine citizen living there was killed. Bolivia could not afford to provoke Argentina's wrath, so strategic bombing ceased.

So the Bolivian air force engaged in reconnaissance work, vital in a trackless, perfectly flat land covered with four-meter-high brush. Evidently, using airplanes as navigation aids for troop formations impressed the German attachés and observers, since it found its way into Rommel's desert war in less than a decade.

The issue of biological warfare surfaced during the Chaco War. Bolivian troops were inoculated against cholera before going to war, while the Paraguayans apparently were not. During one retreat by the Bolivian army, the ranking medical corps officer, Dr Albelardo Ibanez Benavente, received approval to put live cholera cultures into wells in the path of the advancing Paraguayan army. Although the experiment failed, the Bolivians fully admitted to it with both a sense of pride and bit of frustration, insofar as the experiment did not produce the desired results.

Unheeded lessons from World War I included the distribution of heavy machine guns to battalions and divisions. For example, using one heavy machine gun per battalion, an obviously forgotten lesson from the slaughter of World War I, was relearned during the Chaco War. As always, teaching the lessons of logistics came at enormous cost. Truck transport to resupply fast-moving columns of troops and artillery was Bolivia's Achilles' heel. To solve the problem, the Bolivians implemented a convoy system similar to what the American "Red Ball Express" became during World War II.

Should an airman buy this book? Probably not. Should a political-military officer and/or an attaché doing duty in Latin America or a military historian specializing in the region buy it? Probably yes. Understanding the roots of conflict between nations is important, and the Chaco War is just as fresh in the minds of Bolivians and Paraguayans today as are America's wars in the minds of Americans. The book makes a very small contribution to airpower studies by relating the use and misuse of fledgling air forces and by reinforcing the importance of studying logistics and terrain. One criticism of the book is its poor editing: at least one misspelled word appears on every third or fourth page. Further, the book includes only one map to show three years' worth of battles and maneuvers-and it is so small and poorly coded that it is absolutely worthless. The Chaco War requires vegetational, topographical, and geographical maps so the reader can understand the terrain/location considered so important to these two poorly equipped armies that they fought to the death to control it. Then the $60.00 price would be easier to justify.

Lt Col D. G. Bradford, USAF
Maxwell AFB, Alabama

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.