Foreign battalions in the São Paulo Revolt of 1924
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The foreign battalions were three military units in the São Paulo Revolt of 1924 recruited from among immigrant communities by tenentist rebels in the city of São Paulo. 750 foreigners and their descendants, from a wide variety of nationalities, signed up; they were usually workers motivated by hunger and unemployment caused by the conflict. They formed the German, Hungarian and Italian battalions, in which even the commanders and officers were immigrants.
The largest and most active battalion was the German one. A minority of its members were World War I veterans, contributing valuable skills to the rebels' war effort. Some were immediately employed in the fighting across the city, while others worked in the maintenance and creation of ordnance in workshops behind the front lines. Part of the combatants accompanied the rebels after their withdrawal from São Paulo, at the end of July 1924, and some joined the Miguel Costa-Prestes Column in the following years. The recruitment of immigrants outraged government supporters, who called them mercenaries and emphasized the image of immigrant workers as sources of political radicalism.