I aren't particularly familiar with Brazilian history, but I am reasonably familiar with WW2 history.
Brazil declared war (on Germany & Italy only - not Japan) in late August 1942. That was a few months before Churchill's famous "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." speech.
This was well after Pearl Harbour and at a point where it was becoming clearer that the Axis wasn't going to win.
I've never looked into allegations of US sabotage on Brazilian merchant shipping. It's possible, but at the same time it would be very surprising if German U-boats weren't responsible for the majority of the sinkings. There's reasonable evidence that U-507 sunk at least 7 Brazilian ships (the German's were pretty good at keeping records of these things)[1].
It sounds to me like Brazil jumped in on the winning side after being on a wrong side of some bad decisions by some German U-boat commanders.
As an aside, it's fine to criticise the US, but I think it's reasonable to expect some evidence to backup some pretty big allegations. Additionally it's hard to make a moral argument that any country should have joined the Axis Powers during WW2 (with the exception of Finland, who made the best of a bad situation but were pretty much screwed no matter what they did).
Brazil declared war (on Germany & Italy only - not Japan) in late August 1942. That was a few months before Churchill's famous "Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." speech.
This was well after Pearl Harbour and at a point where it was becoming clearer that the Axis wasn't going to win.
I've never looked into allegations of US sabotage on Brazilian merchant shipping. It's possible, but at the same time it would be very surprising if German U-boats weren't responsible for the majority of the sinkings. There's reasonable evidence that U-507 sunk at least 7 Brazilian ships (the German's were pretty good at keeping records of these things)[1].
It sounds to me like Brazil jumped in on the winning side after being on a wrong side of some bad decisions by some German U-boat commanders.
As an aside, it's fine to criticise the US, but I think it's reasonable to expect some evidence to backup some pretty big allegations. Additionally it's hard to make a moral argument that any country should have joined the Axis Powers during WW2 (with the exception of Finland, who made the best of a bad situation but were pretty much screwed no matter what they did).
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-507#3rd_patrol