The Americans in Suriname

In the last days of November 1941 the United States, still formally neutral, sent troops to the South American continent. Their destination was Suriname, or Dutch Guiana, a colony of the Kingdom of the Netherlands on the north-eastern coast of South America. A joint communiqué of the American government and the Dutch government, which had moved to London with the queen in May 1940, agreed down to the last word a few days earlier, was issued simultaneously in Washington and London on Monday 24 November at 1.45 p.m. Washington time. It opened with a sentence that explained the whole affair: the bauxite mines of Suriname supplied more than 60 per cent of the raw material needed by the American aluminium industry, “which is vital to the defense of the United States, the Western Hemisphere, and the nations actively resisting aggression”.

Chronologies usually place the agreement under 23 November and say that the Americans “occupied” Suriname. Both points need explaining. The agreement was not concluded on a single day but took shape from 1 September onwards in an exchange of letters and telegrams, and it was made public the day after that date. Nor was it an occupation: the American troops came at the invitation of Queen Wilhelmina’s government, were to operate “under the general direction” of the Dutch authorities, were not to interfere in the colony’s administration, and were to leave at the latest at the end of the war.

Aluminium for aircraft

Bauxite is the principal ore of aluminium, and in wartime aluminium was the raw material of aviation. Suriname was one of the largest bauxite producers in the world. The oldest mine had been operating since 1916 at Moengo on the Cottica river and belonged to a subsidiary of the American Alcoa company. In 1941 extraction began at a new centre, Paranam, on the Suriname River. The ore was shipped down the rivers to the sea and carried across the Caribbean to American ports. Roosevelt wrote to Wilhelmina on 1 September 1941 that the United States was receiving two million tons of ore a year from Suriname, or 65 per cent of its entire supply. The joint communiqué more cautiously gave “more than 60 per cent”.

The colony was almost defenceless. In 1940 its defence consisted of a single company of colonial troops numbering about two hundred men and a volunteer militia. The mines and port installations could be destroyed by a saboteur or a German raider, and the flow of ore could be halted by sinking a ship in the narrow channel of the river. To the east Suriname bordered French Guiana, which was subject to the Vichy government. The Dutch colony of Curaçao, with its great refineries, had been defended by British troops since May 1940, but the British had no forces to spare for Suriname.

Letters between the president and the queen

On 1 September 1941 Roosevelt approached Wilhelmina directly. He wrote that according to his information the installations in Suriname were poorly protected and, invoking the procedure agreed at the Havana Conference in 1940, proposed the immediate dispatch of troops: an infantry battalion, an anti-aircraft battery, aircraft and support units, in all no more than three thousand men. He gave assurances that this presence would be temporary. The letter was delivered in London by Anthony Drexel Biddle, minister to the Dutch government-in-exile and at the same time ambassador to the Polish government. Prime Minister Pieter Gerbrandy convened the cabinet, and on 5 September Wilhelmina accepted the proposal. She set conditions: the troops would leave once the danger had passed, and at the latest at the end of the war; they would be subordinate to Dutch command, as the British were on Curaçao; the Netherlands would pay for their upkeep; and they would be employed solely in protecting the mines and the transport of ore. The Dutch government explained that normally it would have reinforced Suriname with troops from the Dutch East Indies, but in view of the threat from Japan it could not withdraw them from there.

Agreement in principle opened a more difficult dispute. On 20 September Roosevelt accepted the Dutch conditions with one change: since the United States was not at war, its soldiers were to operate not under Dutch command but “under the general direction” of the colonial authorities. He also demanded that the Dutch invite Brazil, the only American republic bordering Suriname, to take part. Washington did not want American soldiers to appear on the continent alone. A joint undertaking was meant to deprive of its arguments any propaganda that might portray it as Yankee imperialism, and to tie in with the talks on hemisphere defence that the Americans were conducting with President Getúlio Vargas.

Wilhelmina was opposed. The Dutch did not want Brazilian soldiers in the colony, and feared leaks from the Brazilian war ministry to the Axis powers as well as the reaction of Venezuela, which might ask why it had not been invited to Curaçao. On 1 October the foreign minister, Eelco van Kleffens, proposed a compromise: Brazil would increase its military vigilance on the border and send a liaison mission to Paramaribo, but no troops. Vargas agreed to this on 15 October. Two days later the Dutch backtracked and wanted to drop the mission as well. Roosevelt replied firmly that withdrawing an invitation of which Brazil had already been informed would undermine the credibility of both governments. On 23 October Wilhelmina gave way.

The final weeks were taken up with the timetable. The American units, about a thousand men, mostly air force and anti-aircraft artillery, stood ready on Trinidad. Brazil accepted the invitation at the beginning of November, but the Dutch asked for a delay. German radio was just then spreading rumours that the British were handing Curaçao over to the Americans, and arguing that the queen and her government were no longer masters in their own house. The State Department pressed for action, because word of the plans had begun to spread. On 19 November the final text of the communiqué and the hour of its publication were agreed.

The landing

On 25 November at 1.50 p.m. Washington time, Colonel Parley D. Parkinson, commander of the American forces in Suriname, landed with his staff at Zanderij airfield near Paramaribo. According to the plan passed to the consulate in Paramaribo, the remaining units were to arrive by sea under naval escort at the end of November, and the aircraft were to fly in as soon as the airfield could receive them. The governor of the colony, Johannes Kielstra, was not enthusiastic about the foreign presence. As early as September, when an American staff officer arriving from Trinidad told him that American troops would come if danger threatened, he had replied that he would admit no foreign soldiers without his government’s consent.

On 25 November the German press wrote of “Roosevelt’s military aggression against South America”, of preparations for a coup against French Guiana and of a breach of the Atlantic Charter. In Latin America the news was received calmly. The State Department noted the support of most governments and the silence of a few, among them Mexico and Venezuela. The Argentine foreign minister stated in a note that the step ensured the defence of the continent “in the spirit of American solidarity”, and, according to the Associated Press, called it a normal matter, similar to the American landing in Iceland in July.

Place in the war

After Greenland and Iceland, Suriname became the next territory of a European state whose defence the United States took over before entering the war itself. The American garrison later grew to about two thousand men. From December 1941 the Americans expanded Zanderij airfield, today the country’s main airport, which became one of the largest airfields in South America at the time. The mines were never attacked, but in 1942 U-boats sank many ships carrying ore in the Caribbean.

The war brought the colony money: new bauxite works were opened during the war, and for the first time in decades the budget closed with a surplus. It also brought political tension, when Governor Kielstra, taking advantage of the state of emergency, interned political opponents; after a conflict with the local parliament he had to leave at the end of 1943. French Guiana went over to the Free French in March 1943. In the same year soldiers from the continental United States in Suriname were replaced by Puerto Ricans. Throughout the war bauxite from Suriname flowed to American smelters, and by the end of the war its extraction produced, according to estimates, about a third of the colony’s domestic product.