Play as · WW2 1939 · L2 · Allies (1942)

Peru - 1939

Peru in 1939 is governed by Manuel Prado y Ugarteche, elected in 1939 representing the Frente Democrático coalition. The strategic posture is officially neutral but US-aligned through hemispheric defense agreements and trade dependencies. Peru's military is mid-tier; the strategic exports are copper, lead, zinc, and increasingly rubber from the Amazon basin as Japanese conquests in Southeast Asia eliminate the principal global rubber sources. The substantial Japanese-Peruvian community (around 20,000 immigrants and descendants concentrated in Lima and the coastal valleys) becomes the focus of wartime US-Peruvian internment cooperation that ships about 1,800 Japanese-Peruvians to US internment camps.

Starting position

The July 1941 Ecuadorian-Peruvian War over disputed Amazon basin territory - Peru's victory delivers the territorial expansion formalized in the January 1942 Rio Protocol that the Pan-American Conference also produces. Peru breaks relations with the Axis at the same Rio Conference (January 1942), among the early Latin American breaks; the formal declaration of war on Japan and Germany comes in February 1945 to qualify for UN founding-member status. Wartime cooperation includes the rubber-supply cooperation under the US Rubber Reserve Company programs, the copper and lead exports at expanded scales, the Japanese-Peruvian internment program, and basing-rights cooperation including the Talara airfield for hemispheric defense patrols. The Prado government navigates the war without major political crisis, ceding power to José Luis Bustamante in the 1945 election that opens the post-war democratic period.

What turns the campaign

What Peru wants is the territorial gain from Ecuador formalized and stabilized (achieved through the Rio Protocol with US backing as one of the four guarantor powers), the resource-export relationship with the US producing wartime revenues and post-war development capital, the late-war alignment producing UN founding-member status without earlier political-economic costs, and the post-war regional position established as a stable South American partner to the United States. What Peru fears is the Ecuadorian conflict escalating beyond the limited 1941 campaign (it doesn't, the Rio Protocol holds), the wartime resource demand creating dependencies that the post-war demand collapse will leave stranded, and the post-war political settlement producing the Aprista versus military polarization that 1948-1956 will deliver in successive crises.

Signature challenge