Chapter 3 examines the colonies’ evolving group narratives through three lenses: their interpretations of the Gran Chaco, their actions during the Chaco War (1932–35), and their interactions with indigenous peoples after the war. The Menno colonists arrived in the Chaco with a stable and coherent group narrative. They drew on biblical stories with comic plot progressions to interpret their situation. A comedic plot takes the narrative shape of a U, wherein a period of hardship is followed by a happy resolution. They believed the toils of resettlement were essential tests of their faithfulness to scripture. By contrast, the Fernheim Colony was formed out of a group of disparate refugees and arrived with a tragic understanding of their group narrative. This type of story takes the shape of an inverted U, which rises to a point of crisis before plunging to catastrophe. Fernheim colonists therefore debated how they would give their tragic narrative a happy resolution – whether independently, collectively, or with the aid of outsiders (the Paraguayan government, indigenous people, or Mennonites abroad). This chapter argues that each colony’s collective narrative – as faithful nomads and as displaced victims – led them to make profoundly different choices and kept them separated throughout the 1930s.

Chapter 5 compares the colonies’ opinions about the Nazi Party in Germany and its bid for transnational vösch unity, which I label “(trans)National Socialism.” The Menno Colony’s communal understanding of Germanness made vösch propaganda about Hitler’s “New Germany” unappealing. They rejected all forms of nationalism as worldly attempts to thwart their cultural-religious isolationism. The refugees of Fernheim Colony, by contrast, shared little communal unity owing to their diverse origins and looked to Nazi Germany and its overseas aid organization, Volksbund fä Deutschtum im Ausland (VDA), for inspiration. They believed that the highest goal of vösch unity was promoting communal unity, and created a youth group, called the Jugendbund, and a newspaper called Kämpfende Jugend. Resembling other German–speaking communities in Latin America, the two colonies – which seemed identical to visiting Nazi observers ’ held vastly different interpretations of völkisch nationalism at the height of the Nazi bid to establish transnational German unity in Latin America. Latin America, for its part, presents a unique context for studying the Nazis relationship to Auslandsdeutsche because it held the allure of being the last prospect for German cultural and economic expansion, but was impossible for the German state to invade.

Chapter 6 shows how the Fernheim Colony’s collective narrative reached a point of crisis in 1944 as colonists transitioned from thinking that they should remain in Paraguay, as per the wishes of the MCC, to thinking that they should relocate to Nazi–controlled Eastern Europe. The latter, of course, was not to happen. Yet the stress, rupture, and violence caused by the quick reversal of the colony’s collective narrative – from an anticipated comic outcome to a tragic one – was quickly forgotten as Fernheimers devised a new narrative of continuity after the war. Aiding the creation of a new, centripetal Fernheim narrative, the MCC redoubled its efforts to draw the colonists into its narrative of global Mennonite unity. It dispatched volunteers to improve the colony’s healthcare and infrastructure and monitor colonists – attitudes about Nazism on behalf of the US government, which the MCC fully cooperated with during the war years. Meanwhile, the Menno Colony carried on as it had before the war. It remained free of ideological strife and had zero interest in relocating to Europe. Combined with Chapter 5, Chapter 6 indicates that Latin America ’ German–speaking communities exhibited a wide range of attitudes toward the Nazi state, from political indifference to overwrought anticipation.