Dominican Republic breaks off relations with Germany

The British chronology of the war states that on 11 June 1917 the Dominican Republic broke off diplomatic relations with Germany. It was not, however, a decision of the Dominican government, because there was no such government at the time. For half a year the country had been run by the Americans. The breach consisted in the Department of Foreign Relations in Santo Domingo withdrawing the exequatur of the German consuls and consular agents. Germany had no other representatives in the country, as it had accredited neither a minister nor a chargé d’affaires there. A 1919 memorandum of the Pan American Union says only that this happened in June 1917. The exact day is known only from the British chronology.

American marines had landed in Santo Domingo in May 1916, when fighting broke out in the capital between supporters of President Juan Isidro Jimenes and the war minister Desiderio Arias. Jimenes resigned rather than accept American demands, and within two months the marines controlled the whole country. Jimenes’s successor, elected by Congress, also refused to hand over control of the finances and the army to the Americans. On 29 November 1916 Captain Harry Shepard Knapp therefore proclaimed a military government. In January 1917 he suspended Congress and handed the ministries, which the Dominican officials had abandoned, to American officers. He also suspended the office of the Dominican minister in Washington, which in his view was superfluous under a military government in Santo Domingo. The occupation was part of the so-called Banana Wars, a series of American interventions in the Caribbean and Central America. In the west of the same island the marines had also been occupying Haiti since 1915.

When on 6 April 1917 the United States declared war on Germany, the situation became unusual. The occupier was a belligerent, while the country it ruled remained formally neutral. On 7 April Knapp instructed the commander of the marine brigade to keep Germans and their allies in the Dominican Republic under “the closest observation”. He stressed, however, that they must not be interned. The American–German treaty did not allow it, and besides, the Dominican government was to maintain a neutral attitude “so far as the circumstances of the existence of the military government permit”. German merchants had long played an important part in the country. Since the 19th century merchants from the Hanseatic cities had exported Dominican tobacco, and in Washington fear of German influence was one of the reasons for the intervention.

In his annual report, covering the period to 30 June 1917, Knapp wrote plainly: “I caused the Department of Foreign Relations of the Dominican Government to withdraw the exequatur of the German consuls and consular agents.” The decision was thus taken by the American governor, and the Dominican ministry, headed by an American officer, merely carried it out. In this way the Dominican Republic joined the Latin American states that sided with the United States. Cuba and Panama declared war on Germany, while Brazil, Bolivia, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua broke off relations with it. On 23 June the American ambassador in Buenos Aires reported that Argentina was preparing a congress of neutral states for August. Among the countries that had not joined this initiative he listed, besides the United States, Cuba and Panama, the Dominican Republic too, “which has broken relations with Germany”.

The Dominican Republic went no further. It never declared war on Germany, and the Pan American Union memorandum noted only that sympathy for the Allies prevailed in the country. The military government ruled the Dominican Republic throughout the rest of the war. The last marines did not leave the country until September 1924.