In the 30s of the last century, the only country that exported raw diamonds, whose government was loyal to Hitler, was Brazil. The rest of the important exporters (primarily South Africa) were either part of the British Commonwealth, and De Beers Corporation directly controlled the production and marketing, or control was carried out through agreements with the CSR (for example, Forminière in the Belgian Congo).

In Brazil in the fall of 1930, as a result of a military coup, charismatic dictator Joselio Vargas came to power, professing ideas close to the end of the "corporate state" Benito Mussolini. Vargas did take a number of steps towards rapprochement with Nazi Germany, but at the same time intensively developed ties with the United States, trying to balance between powerful players. This game was relatively short-lived: in 1938 the radical army circles attempted a fascist putsch and Vargas had to make a choice. After suppressing the putsch, it finally took the side of the US and already in 1942 the Brazilian forces fought in Italy on the side of the Allies.

Brazilian placer diamond deposits were worked out by miners, not united in any large companies. Centralized management of such production, and even more so to predict it, was impossible. A number of attempts to organize industrial mining using modern mining equipment failed for both economic reasons and because of the instability of the political situation in the mining areas. In addition, in alluvial deposits, the percentage of crystals of jewelry quality is usually higher than in indigenous, garimpeiros are interested in just such diamonds, they are not enthusiastic about technical diamonds. Therefore, theoretically, Brazil from 1933 to 1938 could be a source of technical diamonds for the Third Reich, but the source is extremely scarce and unreliable.

Between 1939 and 1944, the world mining of technical diamonds amounted to 54.08 million carats. It is believed that the US military-industrial complex spent about 30 million carats during the Second World War. Since the combined capacity of the military-industrial complex of the United States and its allies was comparable to that of the Axis countries (otherwise the war would not have lasted so long), one should admit, guided by considerations of common sense, that the military-industrial complex of Germany, Italy and Japan needed to annually consume millions of carats of technical diamonds. Obviously, the share of Brazil in these supplies at best is calculated in terms of percents.

Nevertheless, a number of modern sources say that in the German metal-working equipment supplied to the USSR in 1936-1941, Brazilian technical diamonds were used. Moreover, it is argued that the Soviet Union received Brazilian diamonds and direct supplies. Thus, the slippery question of supplying totalitarian powers with strategic material receives a seemingly consistent answer - the source was also a dictatorial regime. Extremely convenient point of view, especially since accurate information on the volume and structure of production and distribution channels of Brazilian garimpeiros does not exist in principle.

Two people could give exhaustive explanations on this problem. The Minister of Armaments of Germany, Albert Speer, was obliged to know from his post how, in what quantity and on what terms the Third Reich received diamonds. He freely writes in Memoirs about the supply, for example, of alloying materials from Norway, Finland, Turkey, but Brazil does not mention a word as a source of strategic raw materials. Speer published the "Memoirs" in 1969, after spending more than 20 years in Spandau as one of the main Nazi criminals. There is no doubt that this book bears the imprint of both external and internal censorship. Is it really for Speer and his censors that the bright image of the Brazilian dictator Joselio Vargas, the second person who could accurately answer the question of interest to us, was so important? Hardly,

Most likely Speer did not mention Vargas for the simple reason that the supply of diamonds from Brazil, if they were, did not play any significant role for the German military industry. The only world market that Brazil could really influence in the 30s and 40s is the coffee market. The resource is important, but infinitely far from the sphere of interests of Speer. An attempt to give the Brazilian dictator an image of a super-player supplying strategic raw materials to the opposing sides of the world conflict looks like a "cover-up operation," a successful masking of a real process in which a completely different player really had such capabilities. But Speer could not mention this player, if (in contrast to Rudolf Hess) after suffering ordeals he wanted to quietly die in his own bed.

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