Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 January 2018
Recent research on U.S. diplomacy in Latin America has indicated the prominent role of the State Department in gaining for American airlines a major share of interamerican aviation in the mid-1920s. The department's campaign to “de-Germanize” commercial aviation in the western hemisphere immediately prior to and during World War II has also drawn the attention of historians (McCann, 1968; Newton, 1965; Conn, 1960; Burden, 1943). Yet little analysis has been directed to U.S. policy in the late 1920s and early 1930s, crucial years for the shift of power away from European-supported commercial airlines in Latin America to Pan American Airways.