The Tripartite Pact

On 27 September 1940, in the New Reich Chancellery in Berlin and in the presence of Adolf Hitler, the German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, the Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano and the Japanese ambassador to Germany, Saburō Kurusu, signed an agreement that went down in history as the Tripartite Pact (also known as the Berlin Pact). The three powers recognised one another’s leadership in building a “new order” in Europe and in Greater East Asia and undertook to assist one another with all political, economic and military means should one of them be attacked by a state not yet involved in the war in Europe or in the Sino-Japanese War. Such a state was, above all, the United States. The pact was concluded for ten years.

It is sometimes added that this was when “the informal name ‘the Axis’ appeared”. That is not so. The word “axis” was used publicly by Benito Mussolini on 1 November 1936 in a speech in Milan, when he spoke of the understanding between Rome and Berlin, and from then on people spoke of the Berlin–Rome Axis and, after Italy joined the Anti-Comintern Pact in 1937, also of the Berlin–Rome–Tokyo Axis. The Tripartite Pact therefore did not give the coalition its name; rather, for the first time it bound the three states that had long borne that name in a formal alliance. From that day the Axis powers were no longer a propaganda slogan but a treaty bloc that other countries could join.

The alliance that failed in 1939

Germany and Japan had drawn closer in 1936, when they concluded the Anti-Comintern Pact, but that agreement was directed against the USSR and promised only benevolent neutrality. In the summer of 1938 Ribbentrop proposed turning it into a tripartite military alliance. The talks dragged on for more than a year and broke down over the question of whom the alliance was to be aimed at. Germany needed it against Britain and France, and as early as 1939 Ribbentrop wrote that what Berlin and Rome wanted above all was for Japan to hold the United States in check. The Japanese army wanted an alliance against the Soviet Union. The navy, led by its minister Mitsumasa Yonai and his deputy Isoroku Yamamoto, and Hachirō Arita’s Foreign Ministry did not want to be bound by an obligation to go to war with the Anglo-Saxon powers. Emperor Hirohito was also opposed to automatic entry into war.

On 22 May 1939, therefore, Germany and Italy concluded the bilateral Pact of Steel on their own. Three months later Ribbentrop signed a pact with the USSR in Moscow, at the very moment when Japanese troops were fighting Soviet forces at Khalkhin Gol. In Tokyo this was regarded as a betrayal of the spirit of the Anti-Comintern Pact. Kiichirō Hiranuma’s government resigned, and its successors announced that Japan would stay out of the war in Europe. For a year talk of an alliance fell silent.

“Not missing the bus”

The Wehrmacht’s victories in the spring of 1940 changed this. The Netherlands and France, owners of rich colonies in South-East Asia, had been defeated, and Britain was fighting for survival. Tokyo concluded that it must draw closer to the victor before he divided up the world without Japan. As early as 19 June Ambassador Kurusu assured officials of the German Foreign Ministry that even former opponents in Japan understood that the country’s future depended on Germany rather than on the Western powers. On 22 July Fumimaro Konoe became prime minister for the second time, and in his government Yōsuke Matsuoka became Foreign Minister and Hideki Tōjō War Minister. The programme the government adopted in July provided for rapidly tightening ties with Germany and Italy and improving relations with the USSR.

Matsuoka had a vision of his own. He believed that after the war the world would be divided into four great blocs: a German-Italian one in Europe and Africa, a Japanese one in East Asia, a Soviet one and an American one. An alliance with Germany and Italy, supplemented by an understanding with Moscow, was to confront the United States with such superiority that it would not dare to intervene. On 1 August he set out these ideas to the German ambassador in Tokyo, General Eugen Ott, and asked what Germany expected of Japan.

In Berlin the answer came from another direction. In July Britain had rejected Hitler’s “appeal to reason”, and in August the Luftwaffe had failed to destroy the RAF. The United States was supporting the British ever more openly: on 2 September, in the destroyers-for-bases deal, it handed over fifty warships. As early as 31 July Hitler had explained to his generals that England was counting on Russia and America, and that the elimination of Russia would greatly increase Japan’s value in East Asia, which in turn would tie America down in the Pacific. For Germany, Japan became an instrument for keeping the United States out of the war in Europe. On 23 August Ribbentrop sent a trusted aide, Heinrich Georg Stahmer, to Tokyo as his special envoy.

Talks in Tokyo

Stahmer arrived in Tokyo on 7 September. A few days earlier, on 4 September, the prime minister, the foreign minister, the war minister and the navy minister had settled the Japanese position: the three states were to cooperate “by all means”, but Japan wished to keep for itself the decision on the use of force against Britain and the United States. At the beginning of September the navy minister, Admiral Zengo Yoshida, a determined opponent of the alliance, resigned, officially on grounds of ill health. He was replaced by Admiral Koshirō Oikawa.

Stahmer and Matsuoka, with Ott taking part, held talks on 9, 10 and 11 September. According to documents presented after the war to the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, Stahmer gave assurances that Germany wanted to end the war in Europe quickly and did not need Japanese military help at that moment. What it wanted was for Japan to restrain the United States. Germany recognised Japan’s leadership in East Asia, where its only interest was economic. It also promised to mediate an improvement in Japanese-Soviet relations. Stahmer made no secret, however, that Berlin regarded Japan as an ally in a long struggle against “the Anglo-Saxon world” and considered a Japanese-American war hard to avoid in the long run. At the third meeting the two agreed on a draft. The Italians were not admitted to the talks.

The most difficult article was the one on mutual assistance. Stahmer wanted the obligation to operate automatically; the Japanese, especially the navy, did not want a war between Japan and America to be decided for them by incidents in the Atlantic. The compromise was recorded outside the treaty: in a secret exchange of letters Ott confirmed that whether one of the parties “had been attacked” within the meaning of Article 3 would be determined jointly by all three states through consultation. In practice each signatory kept the right to decide for itself.

The navy gives way

The change of minister settled the fleet’s attitude. At a meeting of the navy leadership on 15 September the Chief of the Navy General Staff, Prince Hiroyasu Fushimi, is said to have remarked that since matters had gone so far, there was nothing to be done. Oikawa justified his consent by arguing that further opposition from the navy would no longer be tenable in view of the mood in the country. Yamamoto, then commander of the Combined Fleet, warned that the alliance could lead to a clash with America and that naval aviation would have to be doubled. According to Konoe’s memoirs, when asked in the autumn of 1940 about the chances in a war with the United States, Yamamoto replied that he could run wild for the first six months or a year, but had no confidence about the second and third years.

The Emperor asked Konoe whether it would not be worth waiting until German-Soviet relations became clearer, and reminded him that in the navy’s war games a war with America had always ended in defeat. Konoe replied that Germany could be trusted. On 19 September an Imperial Conference (gozen kaigi) approved the pact. At it the President of the Privy Council, Yoshimichi Hara, predicted that the Americans would respond by increasing aid to Chiang Kai-shek and imposing an embargo on oil and iron in order to wear Japan down in the long run. That same day Ribbentrop arrived in Rome and, while still in the car, told Ciano of a “surprise”: a military alliance with Japan, to be signed in Berlin in a few days’ time. According to Ciano’s diary, Ribbentrop argued that the pact would bring a “double advantage”, against Russia and against America, which in the face of the threat of the Japanese fleet would not dare to move. Ciano noted in his diary that the anti-American thrust of the agreement would only bring Washington closer to London.

On 26 September the Privy Council deliberated in the presence of the Emperor from morning until evening. The councillors had doubts. Eigo Fukai asked how the principle that every nation should “have its proper place”, written into the preamble, squared with Hitler’s belief in the right of the stronger. The former foreign minister Kikujirō Ishii recalled that no state that had tied itself to Germany had ever done well out of it, and that Hitler, who had signed the Anti-Comintern Pact with Japan and then immediately concluded an agreement with the USSR, was a dangerous man. In the end the Council unanimously endorsed the pact, calling on the government to improve relations with the USSR and not to provoke the British and the Americans, but to prepare for the worst. According to the findings of the Tokyo tribunal, the Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, Kōichi Kido, did not inform the last genrō, Prince Kinmochi Saionji, an opponent of the alliance, about the preparations. When Saionji learnt of the signing, he was, according to those around him, deeply embittered.

The ceremony in Berlin

On 25 September in Florence Ciano received a telephone call from Ribbentrop saying that the signing would take place on Friday, and he set off at once by train. Because the RAF’s night raids threatened the railways, on Hitler’s orders he was stopped in Munich and flew on from there. The Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, complained in his diary that Ciano had arrived two hours late and spoilt the spectacle that had been prepared.

The ceremony took place in the same hall of the New Reich Chancellery in which the Pact of Steel had been signed in May 1939. Ribbentrop and Ciano appeared in uniform, Kurusu in a diplomatic frock coat. When the three signatories had put their names to the document in front of the cameras, the master of ceremonies struck the floor with his staff, those present rose and Hitler entered the hall. Ribbentrop reported to him that the pact had been concluded, and the Chancellor, without saying a word, went out onto the balcony to receive the ovation of the crowd. According to scholars, the text signed was the English one, not the French, which was still the language of diplomacy – underlining to whom the warning was addressed. In his speech after the signing Ribbentrop announced that any state wishing to contribute to the restoration of peace would be welcomed with gratitude. In the official communiqué of the DNB news agency his words were toned down, since Berlin did not yet envisage enlarging the pact.

That day Ciano noted that the pact had been signed, in much the same way as the Pact of Steel, but in a cooler atmosphere. Even the Berlin crowd, fairly small and made up mostly of schoolchildren, cheered dutifully but without conviction. Japan was far away and its help uncertain; the one sure thing, he wrote, was that the war would be long.

In Tokyo on the same day Matsuoka and Ott exchanged the secret letters, and the Emperor issued a rescript presenting the pact as an instrument of peace, enabling every nation to take its proper place in the world. In a speech Matsuoka said that Japan’s responsibility as the leader of the new order in East Asia had grown and that circumstances might arise that would call for “a momentous decision”.

What was signed

The preamble stated that the precondition of lasting peace was that every nation of the world should be given its proper place, and announced the cooperation of the three governments in building a “new order of things” in Greater East Asia and in Europe.

Article 1: Japan recognises and respects the leadership of Germany and Italy in establishing a new order in Europe. Article 2: Germany and Italy recognise and respect the leadership of Japan in establishing a new order in Greater East Asia. For the first time European powers accepted Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere as a fact in a treaty.

Article 3 was the heart of the pact. The three states undertook to assist one another with all political, economic and military means if one of them were attacked by a power “at present not involved in the European war or in the Japanese-Chinese conflict”. Of the great powers, only the United States and the USSR were taking part in neither of these wars.

Article 4 provided for the setting up of joint technical commissions. Article 5 excluded the USSR: the parties affirmed that the pact in no way affected the political status existing between each of them and the Soviet Union. It followed that the edge of Article 3 was aimed at America. The clause, however, was less sincere than it seemed. On 26 September Kurusu reported to Tokyo that the German press was to stress that the agreement did not mean war with Russia, but that Germany was concentrating troops in the east. Matsuoka assured the Privy Council that, despite the non-aggression pact, Japan would help Germany in the event of a German-Soviet war, and Germany would help Japan. Article 6 stipulated that the pact came into force on the day of signature and would remain in force for ten years.

The secret letters exchanged in Tokyo were attached to the text. Besides the principle of consultation in determining whether an “attack” had occurred, Germany agreed that Japan should keep the former German islands in the Pacific which it had administered since 1920 as a League of Nations mandate, and was ready to discuss ceding to it, for compensation, its other former colonies in the South Seas. Germany promised industrial and technical assistance and its “good offices” in relations with Moscow. Matsuoka recorded that in the event of a war between Britain and Japan, Japan counted on German help by all means. The Americans learnt the content of these letters only after the war, when they interrogated Ott and Stahmer, and throughout 1941 they assumed that Article 3 operated automatically.

Reactions

In Washington the pact came as no surprise. On 27 September the Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, declared that in the view of the United States government the agreement did not substantially alter a situation that had existed for several years, but merely made public relations that had long existed in practice and to which Washington had repeatedly drawn attention. The day before, when after the Japanese entry into northern Indochina it had become clear where Tokyo was heading, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt announced a ban, from 16 October, on exports of scrap iron and steel to all countries outside the Western Hemisphere and Britain, which hit Japan above all. The ambassador in Tokyo, Joseph Grew, who had worked for years for an understanding, wrote that this was “not the Japan that I have known”. Instead of frightening the Americans, the pact confirmed their conviction that Germany and Japan were part of a single threat.

Britain responded in Asia. On 8 October Winston Churchill announced that the Burma Road, closed for three months in July under Japanese pressure, would not be closed again. On 18 October supplies for China began moving along it once more. Chiang Kai-shek wrote in his diary that the pact was a turning point towards China’s final victory and the greatest key to Japan’s defeat, because it would bind Japan to America’s enemies.

Moscow had been forewarned. On the eve of the signing the German ambassador, Friedrich-Werner von der Schulenburg, informed Vyacheslav Molotov of the forthcoming agreement, and Molotov demanded to see its text, including any secret parts. On 13 October Ribbentrop, in a letter to Joseph Stalin, invited Molotov to Berlin and wrote of the “historic mission” of four powers: the USSR, Italy, Japan and Germany. Such a quartet – a Eurasian bloc against the Anglo-Saxons – was also Matsuoka’s dream.

In Germany the reports of the SS Security Service (SD) spoke of surprise, and part of the population saw the pact as proof that victory was near.

Place in the war

The enlargement of the pact, which had not been planned on the day of signing, came quickly. Hungary, grateful for the Second Vienna Award, joined it on 20 November 1940 in Vienna, Romania on 23 November and Slovakia on 24 November. Ciano regarded the accession of these states, “vassals of Germany, or nearly so”, as a useless “substitute for diplomacy”. Bulgaria joined on 1 March 1941 and Yugoslavia on 25 March. Two days later officers in Belgrade overthrew the regent’s government, and Hitler attacked Yugoslavia and Greece. On 15 June 1941 the Independent State of Croatia, created on the ruins of Yugoslavia, joined the pact. Talks on Soviet accession, held with Molotov in Berlin in November 1940, came to nothing: Moscow set conditions to which Hitler never replied, and in December he ordered preparations for the invasion of the Soviet Union.

The pact brought none of its signatories what they had expected of it. Germany attacked the USSR on 22 June 1941 without warning Japan, which two months earlier had concluded a neutrality pact with Moscow. Japan did not strike at Siberia but turned south. The deterrence of America failed: after the Japanese entered southern Indochina in July 1941, Washington froze Japanese assets and stopped oil supplies, and in November it demanded, in effect, that Tokyo withdraw from China and from the pact. On 7 December 1941 Japan struck at Pearl Harbor. Since it was Japan that had attacked, the pact did not oblige Germany and Italy to come to its aid; nevertheless on 11 December both states declared war on the United States and concluded an agreement with Japan not to make a separate peace.

In practice the alliance concluded on 27 September 1940 remained loose. The three states were separated by thousands of kilometres, had no common command or common strategy, and did not inform one another of their most important decisions. Its greatest consequence was that it joined the war in Europe and the war in Asia into a single world conflict. Years later Matsuoka is said to have called the pact “the mistake of his life”.