A short thread since I have read a lot about Germans in Latin America (will post a few reading recs at the bottom):

Part of the reason the “Nazis in Argentina” trope has so firmly embedded itself in numbskull normie US culture is that fears (largely exaggerated) of German “subversion” in Latin America stretch back to the late 19th c., when Imperial Germany challenged our commercial and political dominance over the region. By 1900, Germany was among the greatest commercial powers in Latin America, in some cases beating the US and Britain. German firms were fiercely competitive in industries like mining, coffee, and engineering. This was encouraged by Berlin but happened largely organically.