dominated by Masonic ideals like the separation of Church and the State. After years of fighting and many deaths on both sides, these movements were defeated and the Republic consolidated. During World War I, the Brazilian government sent three small military groups to Europe soon after declaring war on the Central Powers in October 1917. The first two units were from the army; one consisted of a medical staff and the other of a sergeants-officers group, and both were attached to the French Army in the Western Front in 1918. From October 1930 to 1945, the army and elites linked to it took control over the country, having the landowner and opposition political leader, Getúlio Vargas, ahead of the movement. In this period, the Army defeated the Constitutionalist Revolt in 1932 and two separate coup d'état attempts: by Communists in November 1935 and by Fascists in May 1938. The Army also helped to formalize the dictatorship in 1937. In August 1942, after German and Italian submarines sank Brazilian merchant ships, popular mobilization forced the Brazilian government to declare war on Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. In July 1944, after almost two years of public pressure and negotiations with US authorities, an expeditionary force was sent to join the Allied forces in the Italian campaign. The army's contribution was composed of a full Infantry Division (about 25,000 men, replacements included), commanded by Major-General (later Marshal) João Baptista Mascarenhas de Morais, which in Italy was attached to the US IV Corps at the US Fifth Army, into the 15th Allied Army Group. With the defeat of totalitarian regimes in World War II, Vargas was removed by the head of the army, General Dutra, who in 1946 won the Election dispute against Air Marshall, Eduardo Gomes. After the Vargas suicide (who succeeded Dutra in 1950) due to an institutional crisis, army sectors led by Marshal Lott ensured the inauguration of Juscelino Kubitschek's term, elected in 1955. Between 1957 and 1967, the Brazilian Army created the Suez Battalion to be part of the UN Peace Forces in the conflict between the State of Israel, Egypt, and its Arab neighbors from 1956 onwards. The first contingent of the battalion, called the Detachment Precursor, made up of about 80 paratroopers, specialists in demining and the bulk of the battalion was transported to Suez aboard the Brazilian Navy ship Custódio de Melo, landed in Port Said on