After Fort Boquerón, the Paraguayans pushed forward as the Bolivian army reeled from defeat to defeat. By December the Bolivians stiffened as the Paraguayan surge ended.
The war stalled at the end of 1932, and the Bolivians called in General Hans Kundt — “Das Ringer.” Everyone perked up when General Kundt, the former German World War I staff officer, goose-stepped to command of their army. He studied the war during his trip over by reading out-of-date newspaper articles on the fighting, believing this would suffice for a Prussian general to thrash any opponent. Bolivians cheered and greeted the imported Prussian with flowery huzzahs when he entered La Paz. Their hero had returned, and the crowds all agreed he would soon bring the hated Paraguayans to their knees. After all, the enemy only had Paraguayans in charge, hardly a match for a general from the country that had practically invented modern war. On Christmas Day, Kundt, armed with his half-sketchy knowledge of the fighting and the Chaco terrain, took command of the Bolivian army in the field and began issuing orders as if he were in charge of actual, competent German troops.
But the Bolivians’ problems reached deeper than just poor commanders. To reach the battlefields required long marches through hot, dusty trails. The harsh terrain wore down their soldiers faster than the Paraguayans could. Bolivians came from cool, mountainous regions and were incapable of overturning centuries of logical belief that a quiet life in the hills was better than traipsing around the deadly Chaco. To these mountain dwellers, the heat and humidity turned the trip into sheer agony, and for many it became a death march. To the leathery Paraguayans, however, it was just like home.
Immediately, Das Ringer earned his pay. In a surprise counterstrike he grabbed the initiative and threw his men in a flanking movement against the Paraguayans, standard operating procedure for a Prussian, and it turned the tide against the stunned Paraguayans.
As 1933 began, the war’s toll hit home in Bolivia. President Salamanca initiated a draft to boost the army’s manpower as volunteers dropped to a trickle. Gangs of wounded veterans dragooned young men into the army, and they often arrived at the front fortified with only hours of training. Kundt, in full western front mode, drove against the Paraguayans at yet another meaningless place. He planned a three-pronged attack — left flank, center, and right flank — the classic double-envelopment. But his left hook bogged down in swamps and never got into the fight on the first day, January 20. Unwilling to change his plan, Kundt pressed ahead, and the two other columns fought without any coordination. The Paraguayans decimated the densely attacking Bolivians with deadly machine-gun fire, imparting to the Bolivians a valuable lesson learned by millions of unfortunate soldiers destroyed by machine guns in the trenches of World War I. The stuck column finally attacked the next day, but now the two other wings were too exhausted to take part, and the Paraguayans stopped it cold. Kundt ordered wave after wave of attacks over the next few days, none more successful than those on the first day. On January 26 the reinforced Paraguayans counterattacked, and both sides settled into deadly trench warfare. Indeed, Kundt had imported the western front to the Chaco.
For most of 1933, the imported Prussian suffered the same consequences everywhere he went. He threw his troops into brutal frontal assaults against entrenched machine guns that succeeded only by adding to the piles of bodies. It was World War I all over again, but without the French wine and German mustard gas. As the only person in this war who participated in the Great War, you might think Das Ringer would have learned this lesson.
Now Kundt insisted on holding every inch of the front lines, overstretching his army, solely to control territory without any thought to an overall strategy. Military folly again. Bolivia… had hired the wrong Prussian. Further adding to the Bolivians’ problems was their desire to run the war on the cheap. They had failed to build a larger army than the Paraguayans’ despite a much larger population.
In May 1933, again for no apparent reason, Paraguayan president Eusebio Ayala finally declared war on Bolivia. It was the first declaration of war by any country since the founding of the League of Nations. The noble intentions of the League had met head-on with the reality of South American politics.
During September 1933 Estigarribia pushed forward. He thrust ahead in flanking movements, trapping large numbers of Bolivian troops. Surrounded and waterless, they surrendered rather than die of thirst. The Paraguayans pushed onward again, drilled wells for water, and committed their reserves. Kundt held firm. Too firm, it turns out. He refused to ask for more troops and refused to make any strategic retreats. His subordinates, already upset at being led by a foreigner, could not understand his decision to hold all sectors of the crumbling front. The few planes in the Bolivian air force regularly reported Paraguayan flanking movements. Kundt disregarded them, and this proved his undoing. By December he became the victim of his own dreaded double envelopment. He failed to fully protect his flanks, the first lesson taught in Prussian military kindergarten. Foiled by his own strategy, surrounded, his troops dropping from dehydration, Kundt’s army folded and ran. Those who escaped survived solely because the Paraguayans were too exhausted to complete the rout. When the two sides settled down, the Bolivian army had been reduced to only 7,000 men in the field and one single Prussian muttering in German about double envelopments. The Bolivians were right back where they had started at the war’s outset.
Hans Kundt was not the only German imported by Bolivia. A key military advisor to the Bolivians during the late 1920s was Ernst Röhm, a violent, scar-faced pal of Adolf Hitler. An early member of the Nazi party and a Munich native, Röhm befriended Hitler and stood by his side during the failed Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. In 1925 he became leader of the SA, the Brownshirts, the Nazi’s military wing of out-of-work-and-angry street brawlers. But Röhm’s soldiers were too aggressive even for Hitler, who wanted to keep a lower street profile while he prepared to take over the world. So that year Hitler drove him away, and Röhm fled to Bolivia where he became a lieutenant colonel. In 1931 Hitler, now on the verge of attaining power in Germany, invited his old buddy back to take the helm of the SA once again. This time around the relationship lasted three years until Hitler, now running Germany, needing to quell the SA and appease the German army, had Röhm arrested and executed. In Bolivia, Röhm left behind one important imprint. His assistant was Germán Busch Becerra, who took control of Bolivia in 1937 and declared himself dictator in 1939. This makes Röhm perhaps the only modern fascist who could claim mentorship to two dictators in two different countries.
The defeat was too much even for the Bolivians. Das Ringer got jackbooted. Auf Wiedersehen to El Aleman. He lingered on in La Paz for a while, then submitted his resignation in February 1934. But the sacking of Kundt did not improve Salamanca’s rocky relationship with the generals.
After such a defeat it would seem logical that Bolivia would listen to the peace talks that were once again floated about. But logic just wasn’t their style. They pressed on. As the deaths mounted, the League of Nations scrambled to justify its existence by negotiating an end to the affair. Politicians made high-minded speeches about the senseless slaughter and how an arms embargo on both countries was necessary. Countries around the world all denied they were selling the combatants arms. “Not us,” they declared. Yet somehow, fresh arms flowed to the front. Despite the casualties neither country was willing to give up the fight. They had yet to score the victory both countries sorely needed and had represented as their sole war aim. Neither could sign a peace treaty that did not recognize one as the clear victor. The fight had to continue.