“He became a legend among the ordinary soldiers of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force.”

By Mary Jo McConahay

THEY GREW UP in a part of the world where young men joined Hitler Youth organizations, where the local chapter of the National Socialist German Workers Party held movie nights to screen Third Reich propaganda films, and where the ladies of the Nazi Women’s League gossiped over apfelstreudel and kaffee as their children practiced marching for the Führer’s birthday parade. But this wasn’t Munich, Cologne or even Berlin – it was more than 6,000 miles away in far-off South America.

In 1939, the south of Brazil was home to a million ethnic Germans or teuto-brasileiros. Ironically, one of them would make a name for himself as one of the toughest fighters on the Allied side of World War II.

He was Max Wolf: A tall, blue-eyed son of a coffee-roaster from Vienna and the maternal grandson of a Brazilian army colonel. He became a legend among the ordinary soldiers of the Brazilian Expeditionary Force (BEF) or “Smoking Cobras” as they were known.

On one of his first days in the field, Wolf telegraphed the character that would make him famous. While touring the frontlines with a superior officer, the lowly sergeant broke with protocol and boldly strode out in front of his commander.

“What’s this?” asked Captain Adhemar Rivermar de Almeida, the company operations officer. “So now you’re my protector?”

“Captain, your life is more useful to the country than mine,” Wolf cordially answered, but with a finality that discouraged argument.

Teuto-brasileiros like Max Wolf numbered about 800 out of the 25,000 BEF men who went to war in 1944 as part of Gen. Mark Clark’s Fifth Army. They would be the only Latin American unit to fight on the side of the Allies in Europe.

The Brazilians arrived in July with little training, experience, or even knowledge of American weaponry or tactics. Their first battles proved costly and encouraged few. Eventually, their determination, coupled with solid leadership, paid off and the BEF would go on to smash through the Axis’ forbidding Gothic Line. They ended the war in 1945 as a band of brothers who had captured 14,000 German soldiers and three generals while liberating villages from Tuscany to Emilia-Romagna. Through it all, Max Wolf and his fellow teuto-brasileiros ended up fighting other Germans – possibly even some from Brazil themselves.

Prior to the war, German families in South America often sent their children – especially sons – back to the Fatherland to visit relatives and attend school. Others returned to their ancestral homeland in search of career advancement. Those unlucky enough to be in the Reich at the outbreak of the war were soon conscripted into Hitler’s military. In fact, Berlin considered the children and grandchildren of Germans full citizens of the Third Reich, with all the duties associated with it. To be sure, many Brazilians travelled to Germany specifically to volunteer for the armed forces. In fact, a Sâo Paulo wartime police intelligence report entitled The Nazi Fist in the Heart of Brazil claimed that a number of pro-Nazi doctors in Brazil even conducted medical exams to qualify young men on the eve of departure for military service in Germany.

The exact number of teuto-brazileiros who willingly left to fight for the Third Reich remains a mystery given the reluctance of many survivors to speak up about their wartime service for Hitler. What is clear is that the Smoking Cobras, particularly those of German origin, fought ferociously. Max Wolf was one of them.

Like several of his comrades, Wolf enlisted in the BEF at least partly to follow the charismatic Lieutenant General Euclides Zenóbio da Costa. A vigorous 51-year-old career soldier, Zenobio led Brazilians to their first victory in Italy, at Camaiore. A model for Wolf, it seems, Zenobio “commanded, with bits of recklessness…not worrying about the dangers surrounding him,” wrote Floriano de Lima Brayner, the Brazilian general and army chief-of-staff.

Wolf had long since proven himself under fire, having been severely wounded while fighting alongside Zenobio as part of the government forces in Brazil’s bloody 1932 civil war.  When he reached the snowy Italian frontlines in December, 1944, he and the other new arrivals were immediately thrown into an unsuccessful attempt to take the 3,240-foot high fortified hilltop known as Monte Castello. Many of the raw troops panicked upon their first encounter with the enemy and fired wildly, only to reveal their positions and draw the attention of enemy gunners.

Wolf however was among those who kept his nerve. As smoke cleared from the first firefight, he volunteered to lead a re-supply unit that carried ammunition to forward positions, collecting the dead and wounded on return. It was the first of many special missions Wolf undertook in the coming weeks, and all during one of the worst winters in European history. His men were reportedly always willing to follow him, whether scouting enemy positions or ambushing German patrols.

When Zenobio called for volunteers to recover the body of a fallen officer that was being used as bait by the Germans – enemy snipers shot at anyone trying to claim the remains — Wolf led a small unit under cover of darkness and returned with the dead captain. Soon Wolf had to grin and bear a nickname he was given by fellow soldiers: the “King of the Patrollers.”

In March, 1945, the Smoking Cobras suffered through what was probably their worst moment of the war. During a night operation, a company of Brazilian infantry stumbled into a minefield. As the bombs were triggered, explosions tossed men into the air. After just a few moments, 13 lay dead. The blasts also knocked out the telephone lines that forward troops used to communicate with commanders in the rear. With no one able to recover the fallen or repair the damaged lines, Wolf and three volunteers stepped forward to carry out the grim mission. He and his small squad safely negotiated the minefield and accomplished both tasks. U.S. general Lucien Truscott, who had taken over from Clark as commander of the Fifth Army, presented Wolf with the Silver Star for his bravery.

When Brazilian war correspondents descended onto the Italian front in the final days of the war, the journalists clamoured to photograph Max Wolf. In one picture, he looks calm, if distracted, wearing a steel helmet and battle fatigues.  The men in his new Special Patrol – hand-picked by the young hero – can be seen behind him at ease.

A few hours later, tragedy struck as the patrol cautiously moved into the outskirts of the town of Montese.

Amid an eerie mid-afternoon silence, Wolf fanned his squad out in a skirmish line and moved towards what looked like an abandoned farmhouse. Wolf took the point, advancing in the open with little cover. A sudden burst of machine-gun fire exploded from the building as bullets tore across the field. Wolf was hit. He pitched forward and fell dead instantly.

At least one historian who has written about the BEF suggests that Max Wolf may have had a death wish. After all, he took an almost fool-hardly risk striding across the field ahead of his men with no cover. The official reports however say nothing of his supposed recklessness. In fact, the dispatch commends Wolf for his “unexcelled bravery” in circumstances that “did not defeat his spirit.”

Mary Jo McConahay is the author of The Tango War, The Struggle for the Hearts, Minds and Riches of Latin America during World War II (St. Martin’s Press)