Date of Award
6-1965
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Department
History
First Advisor
Dr. Edward O. Elsasser
Second Advisor
Dr. Sherwood S. Cordier
Access Setting
Masters Thesis-Open Access
Abstract
I. The Background of the Conflict
In the summer of 1932, while the world's attention was focused upon Japanese aggression in Manchuria, a border skirmish in the upper reaches of the Plata valley ignited a conflict which could not be extinguished by the good offices of the Pan-American Union or the peace-making machinery of the League of Nations. The prize in question, nearly one hundred and fifty thousand square miles of savanna and swamp, would be minuscule in comparison with the territorial acquisitions of the dictators of that era, but to the two politically unstable and highly nationalistic nations contesting possession, it represented strategic or economic advantages well worth gaining. The Chaco War of 1932-1935, pitting the predominantly Indiana republics of Paraguay and Bolivia, was the first international conflict in the Latin American region since the War of the Pacific (1879-1884), and the only one to utilize relatively modern systems of weapons and tactics. In some respects, it represented a "transplanting" of the trench-and-bunker warfare of the Western Front of World War I into a tropical environment, but with a few basic changes.
Recommended Citation
Goodall, Charles John, "The Utilization of Artillery and Mortars as Infantry Support Weapons in the Chaco War" (1965). Masters Theses. 3907.
https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/masters_theses/3907