Anti Comintern Pact

The Anti-Comintern Pact was an agreement between Germany, Italy, and Japan to work together to prevent communism from spreading over the world. The USSR was the target of this. It was signed by Joachim von Ribbentrop, Germany's top diplomat, and Kintomo Mushanokji, Japan's ambassador to Germany. Italy became a member in 1937, but the rules of her admission made her a legitimate original signatory. In 1939, Spain and Hungary became members of the European Community. During World War II, more countries joined.

Anti Comintern Pact: Details

Joachim von Ribbentrop secured an agreement between Germany and Japan in November 1936, declaring the two countries' opposition to international communism. The treaty's text was concise and to the point. It claimed that the Communist International posed a threat to world peace and that the signatories intended to "keep each other informed of the operations" of the Comintern and collaborate in their mutual defence, as well as inviting other countries to join their efforts.

A Supplementary Protocol authorised Germany and Japan to "take strong measures against those who work for the Comintern at home or abroad," enabling repressive measures against Communist Party members in Germany, Japan, and countries under their influence. Finally, both parties agreed that they would not sign a separate agreement with the Soviet Union without first informing the other. The treaty was signed by Viscount Kintomo Mushakoji, the Japanese envoy to Germany, and Joachim von Ribbentrop, the German ambassador to London. It became effective right away and was good for five years.

The Anti-Comintern Pact posed a threat to the Soviet Union and appeared to be another facet of Germany's aggressive stance. Despite the Anti-Comintern Pact, the German and Japanese military staff did not coordinate their efforts, and each country followed its own goals.

While the Soviet army was beating the Japanese military in Manchuria along the Mongolian border in 1939, Ribbentrop came to Moscow and negotiated the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, bypassing the Japanese. Hitler could not be trusted by Japan. Germany invaded the Soviet Union without warning in 1941. Instead of assisting its ally in the Anti-Comintern Pact, Japan chose to fight the US rather than the USSR.

Anti Comintern Pact Agreement: Background

The "Anti-Komintern" in Germany

In 1933, Joseph Goebbels founded the Anti-Komintern, a German intelligence outfit. Its operations included a wide range of initiatives aimed at denouncing communism in general, and the Soviet Union in particular, spreading antisemitic propaganda, and gaining domestic and international support for Nazi policies. Dr Adolf Ehrt [de] was appointed as its leader. The Comintern was labelled 'godless' under Ehrt's leadership because of its atheism. Beginning in July 1936, the Anti-publications Komintern's centred on the Spanish Civil War.

The 1936 international release Der Weltbolschewismus, which united many anti-communist and anti-semitic conspiracy theories for the consumption of an international audience, was one of the Anti-most Komintern's notable achievements. To avoid contradiction between the book's various accounts and German state propaganda, the book was not issued in Germany. 

The Anglo-German Naval Agreement

The United Kingdom and Germany signed the Anglo-German Naval Agreement on June 18, 1935, which surprised the Japanese. This was the start of Adolf Hitler's series of attempts to strengthen relations between the two countries. A positive relationship with the United Kingdom, according to Hitler, would undermine Britain's allies France and Italy while also containing the Soviet Union. During his 1936 - 1938 time as German ambassador to the UK, Hitler would also dispatch Ribbentrop to London with the explicit task of gaining British membership in the Anti-Comintern Pact, stating British membership to be his 'highest wish.'

The treaty was viewed with mistrust in Japan. Mushanokji argued at an embassy meeting on 4 July 1935 that Japan should not hurry into an alliance with Germany because he (right) viewed the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as a German attempt to ally the United Kingdom. Since the Mukden Incident of 1931, the United States and Britain had been antagonistic to Japan, and Mushanokji feared that if Germany chose collaboration with Britain over a friendship with Japan, Japan would be alone.

Authorities and Ideologies at Odds in German Foreign Policy

The execution of German foreign policy was nominally left to the foreign ministry of Konstantin von Neurath, but Joachim von Ribbentrop headed the semi-autonomous Dienststelle Ribbentrop, established in late 1934, where he could carry out Hitler's personal foreign policy requests independently of foreign ministry consent. As a result, the two services developed a rivalry. While Hitler preferred Ribbentrop as his personal foreign policy champion, he initially retained Neurath's staff of career diplomats in order to maximise his government's diplomatic legitimacy abroad.

Hiroshi shima, the Japanese military attaché in Berlin and the single most important individual on the Japanese side of the Anti-Comintern Pact negotiations, saw the German foreign service structure as one in which "it was only Hitler and Ribbentrop who decided foreign policy, and it was therefore of no use to talk to their subordinates." As a result, Shima attempted to get any important step of the negotiations directly to Ribbentrop's or Hitler's desks.

While Ribbentrop was Hitler's personal diplomat of choice, his views on geostrategic diplomacy differed markedly from Hitler's during the late 1930s: Whereas Hitler advocated a friendly policy toward Britain in order to eliminate the Soviet Union, Ribbentrop viewed Germany's main adversary as the western allies and designed much of German foreign policy, including the Anti-Comintern Pact, with the goal of containing the British Empire in mind. 

When it came to Japan, Ribbentrop believed that the Japanese focus on the Soviet Union as its main adversary could be shifted to the United Kingdom, allowing Japan to join Ribbentrop's anti-British coalition. German alliance with Japan began at the end of 1933, against the wishes of the traditional sinophile German foreign service and the German public at large.

Interwar Treaties between Germany and the Soviet Union

During the Weimar Republic, the German government signed major treaties with the USSR, including the Treaty of Rapallo in 1922 and the Treaty of Berlin in 1926. Ribbentrop informed Mushanokji in a note on the day of the signing, November 25, that the German government considered the terms of these treaties to be null and void under the secret additional protocol. 

On the same day, Mushanokji responded, expressing the Japanese government's "sincere satisfaction" with the German stance. This was due to the Japanese government's insistence, most notably in a request on July 24, 1936, on clarifying the treaty's implications for previous bilateral treaties between either party and the Soviet Union.

The Washington Naval Conference of 1922 and the Racial Equality Proposal of 1919

Japan had fought on the side of the victorious Entente Powers during World War I. The United States and the United Kingdom, however, were successful in limiting Japan's naval capabilities by treaty and forcing Japan to renounce its conquests in China earned during World War I as part of the Washington Naval Conference of 1922. 

While Tokyo gained some benefits from the conference, such as parity with the United States and the United Kingdom in the Pacific Ocean and the right to build a navy that could compete with the French and Italian navies, as well as recognition as the world's only non-western colonial power, the treaty was unpopular in Japan. The treaty's restrictive provisions were condemned by Japanese nationalists as well as the Imperial Japanese Navy.

After the Japanese proposals for guaranteed racial equality within the League of Nations were rejected in 1919, the 1922 Washington Treaty was seen as yet another betrayal by the western countries. The economic slump that Japan faced in the 1920s, epitomised by the 1927 financial panic in Japan, also produced political instability and the fall of Reijir Wakatsuki's first ministry, and the 1929 Great Depression, exacerbated this sense of national humiliation. The Washington Naval Conference was termed the "Japanese Versailles" by German historian Bernd Martin.

The other factors that led to the pact are as follows:

• The militarization of Japanese society and the assault against China, 1931–1936

• Negotiations on a fishing treaty between Japan and the Soviet Union, as well as border disputes.

• Army, Navy, and Foreign Ministry are all involved in domestic power battles over Japanese foreign policy.

• Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan’s similarities and contradictions in ideologies.

• Comintern's Seventh World Congress, July 1935

• The role of China in German-Japanese relations

• Involvement of Germany, Italy, and the Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War

• The instability and insecurity in France.

The Text of the Anti Comintern Pact

In both the German and Japanese versions, the complete text was considered in its original form, and the date was indicated as 25 November 1936 in both nations, as well as 25 November in the 11th year of the Shwa era. The agreement is signed by Ribbentrop, the German ambassador-at-large, and Mushanokji, the Japanese envoy to Germany. The treaty's initial duration was set to be five years. This shorter period was one among the concessions made in response to the Japanese foreign ministry's concerns to the original Bayreuth text of the treaty, which called for a ten-year tenure.

Germany and Japan agreed in the treaty's first article to share information regarding Comintern activities and to coordinate their operations in response to such activities. In the second article, the two parties discussed the idea of expanding the pact to include additional countries "whose domestic peace is threatened by the Communist Internationale's disruptive actions." Such invitations to other parties would be made jointly and with both parties' full approval. When, among other things, the Völkischer Beobachter reported various communist actions in Hungary and Manchukuo as the cause for the two countries joining the pact in February 1939, it pointed to this guarantee of peril by Comintern disruption.

The Supplementary Protocol

On the same day as the agreement, 25 November 1936/Shwa 11, a supplementary protocol was signed. It bears the signatures of Ribbentrop and Mushanokji, much like the main accord.

The German and Japanese governments agreed in the first article to have their competent authorities "closely cooperate in the exchange of reports on the operations of [...] and on measures of information and defence against" the Comintern. In the second clause, the two contracting parties also agreed to have their competent authorities "take strong actions against those who labour on direct or indirect duty" for the Comintern "within the scope of existing legislation [...] at home or abroad."

The Additional Secret Protocol

In addition to the main treaty and the public additional protocol ("Protocol Supplement"), on November 25, 1936/Shwa 11, there was another additional protocol, this one kept secret from the public, that dealt specifically with the establishment of Germany's and Japan's military and diplomatic partnership against the Soviet Union. While the Soviet Union was referenced in passing in the public protocol's references to Comintern activity, it is only in the secret supplemental protocol that the USSR is addressed by name. The secret supplementary protocol was signed by Ribbentrop and Mushanokji, much as the main agreement and the public additional protocol.

The secrecy of the latter protocol was agreed upon in a separate document signed by both Ribbentrop and Mushanokji, in which the two states agreed that third parties could be informed about the terms of the secret agreement with mutual approval. Later that day, Ambassador Mushanokji informed Japanese Foreign Minister Hachir Arita of the successful conclusion of the negotiations. The Anti-Comintern Pact's true objective is revealed by the secret extra protocol. It was a concrete defence coalition directed specifically against the Soviet Union as a country, rather than a generic ideological crackdown on alleged communist activist overreach.

The secret extra protocol remained exclusive between Germany and Japan due to its covert character, while other countries merely joined the treaty's two public provisions. The other Anti-Comintern Pact countries, with the exception of Italy, did not sign the secret extra protocol.

Conclusion 

Thus, during the second world war period, it was one of the momentous as well as horrifying conjunctures. The Anti-Comintern Pact played an important role in the Nuremberg trials and was cited directly in the decision that convicted Joachim von Ribbentrop to death.