Nazis hoped to found empire in Amazonian rainforest

German scientists took an expedition to a remote region of the Brazilian Amazon on the border with French Guyana to see if they could set up a Nazi outpost in the Amazon.

The book, The Guyana Project: A German Adventure on the Amazon, says the Nazis believed they were destined to colonise and settle in parts of the world much like the pioneers of America's west.

On an island on a tributary of the Jari River, author Jens Gluessing found a 9ft-high wooden cross etched with swastikas.

The inscription says: "Joseph Greiner died here on 2.1.1936, a death from fever in the service of German Research Work."

Mr Gluessing discovered photographs of the expedition by exploring German and Brazilian archives.

He found that Greiner was one of three sent by the SS to explore the region bordering French Guyana with a view to populating it on behalf of the Reich.

The team, using the cover story they were collecting specimens of fauna and wildlife, reported back to their boss Heinrich Himmler on how German soldiers could live in Brazil.

It would appear however the explorers were defeated by the Amazon.

Dr Otto Schulz-Kampfhenkel, an SS officer and leader of the expedition, wrote to Himmler and said: "The two largest scantly populated, but rich in resources, areas on earth are in Siberia and South America.

"They alone offer spacious immigration and settlement possibilities for the Nordic peoples."

He added of the Amazon area: "For the more advanced white race it offers outstanding possibilities for exploitation."

It would appear however before the plan was finalised, Himmler lost interest, thus shelving a potential Nazi South American colony.

The Brazilian Expeditionary Force or BEF (Portuguese: Força Expedicionária Brasileira, or FEB) was the 25,300-man force formed by the Brazilian Navy, Army and Air Force that fought alongside the Allied forces in the Italian Campaign of World War II.

If you were to ask the average American today about World War II and the part, if any, Brazil played in it, they would very likely respond, "didn't they hide Nazis?" and, then, further assume that Brazil must have actively sided with Hitler and his Nazi war machine. Nothing could be further from the truth. While another large South American country (we'll let you guess which one), in fact, openly sympathized with Nazi Germany until a mere two months before the end of the war—their goose-stepping army troops emulating their Nazi Fascist heroes as they regularly paraded through the capitol in their German style helmets—Brazil was was actively aiding the Allied cause by providing both critical air and naval bases as well as deploying the only Latin American ground forces to engage, fight and die in combat against the Axis powers.