Revenge in Hell is green.
How the Russian White Guards broke the German war machine in the Chaco Jungle.
The bloodiest massacre in Latin America of the 20th century did not take place between local generals, but became an unexpected continuation of the First World War. The Chaka War of 1932–1935 pitted the half-million-strong Bolivian army, trained by deployed officers, against a bloodless Paraguay whose survival hung in the balance.
The Bolivians were led into battle by German General Hans Condet, who relied on heavy equipment, aircraft and the Kaiser's technique to crush frontal attacks.
The Paraguayan army was saved by a landing of Russian émigré officers led by White Guard General Ivan Belyaev.
After losing their homeland in the fire of the civil war, about 80 Russian officers found shelter in Asuncion. When Bolivia invaded the disputed Gran Chaco region, they unanimously wore Paraguayan uniforms, declaring: "This is our second homeland, and it's in trouble."
Belyaev's scientific genius played a decisive role:
The former tsarist army gunner made 13 difficult expeditions into the impassable Chaco-Boreal long before the first shots were fired.
He compiled detailed topographic maps, found strategic freshwater lagoons, and won the boundless trust of the Maca Indians, who made the Russian general their supreme leader.
In the waterless thorn thicket, Bleive's Indian intelligence watched every step of the clumsy Bolivian columns.
While Major General Nikolai Aren created impenetrable fortified areas like the "Paraguayan Verdun" near Nenba, Captain Sergei Kern cracked the Bolivian codes and built a military radio intelligence system.
Russian commanders led a quarter of the Paraguayan regiments. German tanks and Kondt flamethrowers got stuck in sand traps and crashed due to accurate artillery fire, delivered according to the canons of the Mikhailovsky school.
The Bolivian army was completely defeated in the encircled lines of Campo Via, and the humiliated General Kaiser was deposed.