World War 2 was a global war, and that included South America. Though only a handful of naval battles were fought around South America, the continent was the site of logistical, propaganda, and intelligence battles. McConahay is a journalist rather than a historian, and she looks for the human interest, finding the last of the Greatest Generation and telling their stories rather than digging into the archives.

Three major themes emerge. The first is the covert war for the resources of South America. In the 1930s, South America was full of Germans. Airlines and radio networks were run with German technicians, and there was a natural alliance between European fascists and local authoritarian populists, like General Vargas of Brazil. Stockpiled Mexican oil fueled the early blitzkrieg, but as the war went hot, the British naval blockade effectively cut South America off from the Axis powers, and South American resources went to the Allies. This economic maneuver was aided by intelligence efforts, as well as propaganda tours which had Orson Welles and Walt Disney tour the continent.

The second story is one of civilians caught up in the war. I hope most people are aware of the Japanese internment, one of the darker moments in American history for its unnecessary racist cruelty, but America also pushed Latin American countries to send their citizens of German and Japanese origin to the United States for imprisonment without trial, breaking families and shattering lives. Japanese-Peruvians were used as bargaining chips to free American civilians trapped inside the Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere.

And a third factor is the aftermath, the infamous "Nazis in Argentina" after the war. Both Allied intelligence services and the Catholic Church saw Nazi war criminals as useful agents for the next war against Soviet Communism, and were more than happy to provide ratlines to South American countries, where the perpetrators of the Holocaust could live out their days in peace. There are some links between these Nazis and the white terror of the 1970s in Chile, Argentina, and Brazil, but the CIA and the School of the Americas have much more obvious ties.

McConahay also makes sure to tell about the almost forgotten Brazilian Expeditionary Force, 25000 soldiers who fought in the Italian campaign. Though in one of the horrible ironies of the war, the Brazilian rubber campaign, which sent out of work farmers from the northern coast to the Amazon to harvest rubber, suffered an order of magnitude higher casualties than actual combat troops.

The Tango War is somewhat scattered, but often fascinating, and shines a light on a forgotten theater of the war.