The Alfhem was a Swedish flag vessel that became famous when she was used to transport a large quantity of Czechoslovak arms and ammunition to the Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán government of Guatemala in May 1954.
The weapons had been loaded onto the Alfhem in the Baltic port of Szczecin (formerly Stettin),Churchill[›] Poland. The ship then followed a zig-zag course sailing first towards Dakar in French West Africa (currently Senegal), then heading for Curaçao, later being re-directed to Puerto Cortes, Honduras, until finally a radio message to the captain revealed her true destination to be Puerto Barrios in Guatemala. She eventually docked in Guatemala at Puerto Barrios, 297 kilometers northwest of Guatemala City, on 15 May 1954.
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M/S Alfhem, with a gross tonnage (GT) of 4847 tons, had her home port in Uddevalla, Sweden and was owned and operated by Ångbåts Ab Bohusländska kusten. In an attempt to conceal her use for the arms shipment to Guatemala, the Czechoslovak government had paid for a "straw charter" of the vessel via the British firm, E.E. Dean, of London. Indeed, according to a US State Department document, Dean served “as a dummy in the transaction, holding a ‘straw charter’ in order to justify transfer of Czech sterling funds to Sweden.” According to both the British and the USA embassy in London, Dean did not hold control over the charter, but rather an “agent for Czekofracht, the state transport monopoly”.[1] Another deception was the falsification of the ship's Bill of Lading which declared that the cargo was composed entirely of items such as shovels, nails, machine tools, laboratory glass, etc., omitting any mention of the estimated 2,000 tons of weaponry and munitions that were its principal components.[2]
Two thousand tons of arms and ammunition, more than all Central America had received in the previous 30 years, poured out of the holds of the Alfhem.[3] According to the 1954 Time magazine account, the weapons allegedly worth 10 million dollars, were thought to be from Czechoslovakia's famed Skoda munitions works, and were believed to be primarily rifles, automatic arms, mortars and light artillery. Described on the ships manifest as ‘steel rods, optical glass and laboratory supplies,’ the weapons, were concealed in 15,000 cases. Under the supervision of the country’s Defense Minister, the weapons were unloaded from the Alfhem, and then put on to rail cars along the US controlled International Railways of Central America (IRCA) for shipment to the capital 197 miles away. Aided by armed guards, the weapons made their way to their destination, but anti-government forces tried to derail the weapon laden train with dynamite, which lead to a gunfight and the death of an anti-government and a government combatant. In response to the Afhem affair the US “began airlifting arms to Nicaragua and Honduras, to restore the balance of power.”[4]
The plan was to destroy a railway trestle just as the train carrying the weapons roared across. However, the dynamite did not explode as expected given that a rain downpour had drenched the fuses.[5]
Following the docking of the Alfhem the CIA's chief of clandestine operations, Frank Wisner, was annoyed that the U.S. Navy was unsuccessful in intercepting the freighter—that is, “until he realized that the shipment of…weaponry was just the excuse the United States needed to intervene.”[5]
The Alfhem affair sent “shock waves through Washington.” The US Joint Chiefs of Staff held an emergency session to discuss whether or not to deploy US troops to Honduras to assist if the country were attacked by Guatemala. The 21 May 1954 minutes from the Pentagon meeting illustrate how the then US Army chief of staff, Gen. Matthew Ridgeway opposed this plan and recommended instead that Nicaraguan Gen. Anastasio Somoza García's national guard be sent to Guatemala. One state Department official objected, noting that Somoza had told US diplomats that his own armed forces were simply an internal police force and therefore "incompetent." to carry out an armed intervention in another country.[6]
Upon the arrival of the Alfhem, the US led Caribbean Sea Frontier established air-sea patrols in the Gulf of Honduras, ostensibly “to protect Honduras from invasion and to control arms shipments to Guatemala.” By 3 June, the US had airlifted weapons to Honduras. By 18 June, the US called for a complete arms embargo against Guatemala.[7]
^ Churchill: Winston Churchill had put Stettin on the Cold War map in his much-quoted 1946 speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, when he declared: "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an Iron Curtain has descended across the continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia."
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