Politics

Axis powers

The alliance of Germany, Italy and Japan, sealed by the Tripartite Pact of 27 September 1940, together with their allies Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Croatia. The name comes from the 1936 Rome–Berlin Axis.

After a German–Italian agreement in October 1936, Mussolini announced in Milan on 1 November the existence of a Rome–Berlin "axis". In November 1936 Germany and Japan concluded the Anti-Comintern Pact, which Italy joined a year later. In May 1939 the Pact of Steel made the axis a military alliance, and on 27 September 1940 the Tripartite Pact joined the three powers. Hungary, Romania and Slovakia (1940) and Bulgaria and Croatia (1941) acceded; Yugoslavia's signature was undone by the coup in Belgrade. Finland fought alongside Germany but never signed the pact.

The Axis powers never had a common strategy. The alliance began to break up in 1943 with Italy's surrender; in 1944 Romania and Bulgaria changed sides, and the war ended with Germany's surrender in May and Japan's in September 1945.