On October 3, 1930, the recently-defeated candidate to the presidency of Brazil Getúlio Vargas led an armed rebellion against the government of outgoing president Washington Luís. By the end of the month, the Revolution of 1930 had unseated Washington Luís from power and placed Vargas in the presidency. Over its 15-year duration, the Vargas regime underwent three distinct phases: Provisional Government (1930-34), Constitutional Government (1934-37) and Estado Novo (1937-45). The first period would be marked by the so-called Constitutionalist Revolution (1932), in defense of a new Constitution for the country and against the government's authoritarianism. The second moment, under the new Constitution of 1934, was marked by the indirect election of Getúlio Vargas to the Presidency and by the political radicalization of the country between the Brazilian Integralist Action (Ação Integralista Brasileira in Portuguese or AIB), a fascist movement led by Plínio Salgado, and the National Liberation Alliance (Ação Libertadora Nacional in Portuguese or ANL), a communist movement led by Luís Carlos Prestes. These conflicts justified the declaration of a State of Siege by Getúlio Vargas and the subsequent implementation of the New State (Estado Novo in Portuguese), an authoritarian regime of fascist inspiration that would govern the country until 1945. This new phase of the Vargas regime dissolved all of Brazil's legislative bodies, abolished all political parties, and tightly controlled Brazil's labor unions. Brazil under the Vargas regime achieved significant growth in gross domestic product, expanded its social security system, and made advances in industrialization such as the founding of the Volta Redonda steel mill in 1944.

On November 8, 1932, Frankling Delano Roosevelt was elected to the presidency of the United States. At the time, the country was in the grips of the Great Depression, with banking, agriculture, and industry near collapse and unemployment at historic highs. In his first inaugural address, Roosevelt proposed "to put our national house in order...to put people to work...to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land" and to place "two safeguards against a return of the evils of the old order" which had ruined the economy of the United States. This program, known as the New Deal, set out to expand the federal government in order to increase the social safety net and regulate the economy. In so doing, Roosevelt ran up against several institutional and political barriers which he attempted to avoid through reform measures and appeals to the public using broadcast media. While domestic matters occupied much of the country during the period of 1930 to 1945, the rise of authoritarianism in Europe and the outbreak of war in 1939 impelled the United States to take an increasingly important role on the global stage. By 1945, the United States, along with the Soviet Union, had emerged as the two leading forces of international politics.

The Vargas regime's fierce nationalism placed Brazil's economic and military needs above international loyalties and repressed any political opposition from within. While newspapers and leftist organizations in the United States did not shy away from calling Vargas a fascist with potential sympathies for the Axis Powers, the United States government was more calculating. Though privately concerned by Vargas' authoritarianism and restriction of personal freedoms, on December 6, 1937 Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles addressed George Washington University's Inter-American Center and expressed the United States government's support for the Estado Novo regime. For his part, Vargas appointed Oswaldo Aranha, a pro-US politician, as Minister of Foreign Affairs shortly after the Estado Novo coup. Aranha's diplomatic mission to the United States aimed to guarantee the non-fascist character of the new Brazilian regime and strengthen relations between the two countries. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, also accused of dictatorial tendencies during his unprecedented 12 years as president, recognized a fellowship between his New Deal and the Estado Novo push for social reforms. Government officials in Brazil likewise saw great advantages in the extension of Roosevelt's presidential tenure. Despite disagreements between the two countries and thanks to the mutual efforts of their diplomatic representatives such as Aranha and Jefferson Caffery, many scholars define the period of 1930 to 1945 as the high point in the "special relationship" between Brazil and the United States, when treaties, trade agreements and diplomatic visits between the two countries proliferated. However, such close relations between the two countries did not generate endless goodwill. With the end of the Estado Novo came a cooling of relations between Brazil and the United States. When senior military officials in Brazil forced Vargas to step down from the presidency on October 29, 1945, Vargas would throw blame on many outside actors, including Adolf Berle, the United States ambassador to Brazil.

Key figures

• Aranha, Oswaldo, 1894-1960
• Caffery, Jefferson, 1886-
• Prestes, Luís Carlos, 1898-1990
• Roosevelt, Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1882-1945
• Salgado, Plínio, 1895-1975
• Vargas, Getúlio, 1883-1954

Key groups

• Ação Integralista Brasileira (Political party)
• Aliança Nacional Libertadora (Brazil)

Key places

• Volta Redonda (Brazil)

Key subjects

• Brazil--History--Revolution, 1930
• Brazil--Politics and government--1930-1945