The Secret History of the Tripartite Alliance
Ribbentrop（Episode７）
Tripartite Treaty
This 7th episode occupies the core of the secret history of the Tripartite Alliance of 10 episodes. Although our research institute is a world history research institute, we dared to choose this alliance as our first subject because the Japanese tend to be easily swayed by moods, easily swayed by fait accompli, and inflexible personnel affairs of lifelong employment and seniority system. Looking at the minutes of meetings held by Japanese leaders around this time, everything was discussed on the premise that Germany would win. In Germany, all information is controlled by the Ministry of Propaganda and the Nazi Party, and if you only look at the official announcements, you will be sending back to your home country something that is completely different from the facts. German civil servants were severely restricted from socializing with foreigners, and anyone who went out even briefly was subject to surveillance. This person was thoroughly entertained, especially the Japanese military personnel, who were the targets of Dernberg, the tallest person who was good at entertaining and became the protocol or diplomatic ceremonies chief of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It seems that the people involved in the army are much more popular than those in the navy, which may have something to do with this. There have been quite a few cases where people who weren't particularly fond of Germany became completely fond of Germany after coming to Germany. As to the books or writings about the Tripartite Alliance of Japan, Germany, and Italy, the word "empty" stands out in the title of the book, such as something of fiction, vanity, emptiness. At the Tokyo Trials after the war, Yosuke Matsuoka, Hiroshi Oshima, and Toshio Shiratori, who were war criminals related to the Tripartite Alliance of Japan, Germany, and Italy, were treated differently from other war criminals. They became lambs for sacrifices and Kaltenbrunner who was No.2 in the SS at the Nuerunberg Trials . Are these three the only villains? Looking at this alliance, it seems that the word "on the same floor different dream" would be appropriate. Each of the three countries intended to use and abuse the other two countries without permission, but they are also being used and abused. Shigeru Yoshida, who was the ambassador to the UK just before the war and would become prime minister after the war, would never listen to the germanophile claims of colleagues around him, to whom he said ,“Such a story should be done at cheap drinking places for university students “. Ambassador to Germany Hiroshi Oshima, who came from Berlin to persuade him into Germanophile , seemed depressed after losing the dispute with Yoshida for two hours in Japanese embassy in London . There were other people, such as Mitsumasa Yonai and Isoroku Yamamoto of the Navy, and Shigenori Togo of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who were not influenced by moods and festivals of the times, but they were too few among the Japanese. Episode 7 deals with Hiroshi Oshima taking responsibility for not predicting the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact and returning home, to the 2600th anniversary of the Imperial Era in 1940, which coincided with the signing ceremony of the Tripartite Alliance between Japan, Germany and Italy. It was signed under the circumstances of feelings of the festival, but Japan would pay a high price for the decision under this mood and festival.
Following the conclusion of the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, Ambassador to Germany Hiroshi Oshima and his wife Toyoko, the daughter of a viscount, returned to Japan by train from the late Anhalter station in the center of Berlin at the end of November 1939. At the station, military attaché Torashiro Kawabe, naval attaché Kiichi Endo, and many other attachés and diplomats stationed in Europe from the German side included Foreign Minister Ribbentrop and Undersecretary Weizsäcker, as well as military leaders and Nazis from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Party officials also came to see him off. Apart from this, Ribbentrop also held a farewell party for General Oshima and regretted saying goodbye. His diplomatic skills aside, Oshima was liked by everyone around him. He is not just an elite military college graduate and the son of the former Minister of Army, Kenichi Oshima, but he is also the best expert for Germany and German language in the Army. He was a big eater particularly eels, a German music lover who liked Richard Wagner in particular, and a drinker who liked German cherry distilled wine Kirschwasser. However, Oshima did not think that this departing would be the last Germany. On the contrary, he told General Hisaichi Terauchi, the son of Field Marshal Masatake Terauchi, who was fascinated by the blitzkrieg in the Battle of Poland, and happened to be visiting Germany, saying, ``We should have formed a military alliance. We failed without it. If this is the case, Britain and France will lose,' and gen.Oshima, “the German ambassador to Germany” was thrilled. Terauchi was also deeply moved when Hitler told him at the Führer's Headquarter in Danzig, ``Shogun, the Germans will never surrender, just like in the Japanese Bushido,'' and after returning to Japan,far from retiring,Oshima negotiated to conclude a military alliance in Tokyo with the aide of the Army or Axis faction of the foreign ministry or German embassy in Japan . The succeeding ambassador to Germany was Saburo Kurusu, who was pro-British and American, so he was almost ignored by Foreign Minister Ribbentrop, so there was almost no useful information. The army attache was the point of contact for information from Ribbentrop. This made Oshima very easy to work with. Negotiations in Tokyo began on the lines of Ribbentrop, Stahmer, Ambassador Otto, Hiroshi Oshima and Yosuke Matsuoka. Yosuke Matsuoka served as an advisor to Fumimaro Konoe from around 1938, and Konoe had decided to appoint Yosuke Matsuoka as Foreign Minister in the coming Cabinet. In addition to strengthening relations with Germany, there was also a calculation that Matsuoka would be able to suppress the army's recklessness. Britain and France declared war on Germany due to the invasion of Poland, but there was no actual fighting, and it was a quiet war, a strange state of war. In the spring of 1940 Churchill, Minister of the Admiralty in the Chamberlain Cabinet, tried to land in Norway to control Swedish iron ore, but Hitler took the initiative and invaded and occupied Denmark and Norway. Even at this point, Japan was still skeptical about the strength of the German army, but in the Western European Blitzkrieg that began on May 10, the strategy of breaking through the forest areas of the Ardennes plateau in Belgium with tanks succeeded, and the British and French defended on quite different line. The bases were completely destroyed. Until then, in addition to numerous lectures, Oshima had given many lectures, including executives of the Minsei Party and the Seiyukai, Seigo Nakano of the Touhoukai, who admired the Nazis, Chief of Staff Kaninnomiya of the Army, General Hideki Tojo, He also had talks with Akira Muto, director of the Military Affairs Bureau, who was thinking of withdrawing troops from China for a long period of time, and was looking for the realization of a military alliance with Germany. Negotiations progressed quickly summer 1940,just after capitulation of France .
The progress of the Sino-Japanese War and the Anglo-German War had a great deal to do with the process leading up to the conclusion of the Tripartite Alliance. As for the former, the occupation of Changsha was successful, but the plan to occupy Chongqing in Sichuan Province had to be abandoned, and Wang Jingwei's escape from Chongqing was disappointing. Emphasis has been placed on blocking. As for the latter, fierce battles between British and German air forces took place in order to secure air superiority over Britain, which was a prerequisite for landing on the British mainland. Spitfire's superior turning performance due to its cruising range and weight reduction, the high morale of British and exiled soldiers who were deprived of their homeland, and the advent of radar gradually pushed Germany into a losing position in the battle between fighters. August 1940 marked a turning point in the Anglo-German War. The German side changed its main objective from attacking military bases to attacking large cities such as London, which turned the entire British population against them. This impatience had a great impact on the Japan-Germany military alliance negotiations in Tokyo. The dispatch of Stahmer,a member of Ribbentrop bureau in August 1940 and the loan of 50 destroyers by the United States to Great Britain almost coincided, but as the United States planned to enter the war on British side, the Mitsumasa Yonai Cabinet resigned and the second Konoe Cabinet was formed. With the appointment of Yosuke Matsuoka as Minister of Foreign Affairs, it was only a matter of time before the conclusion of a military alliance on the premise that Britain would surrender to Germany. Article 3 of the obligation to participate in the war was the biggest problem, but after consideration by the Tripartite Commission of Japan, Germany, and Italy, it was decided that the governments of each country would make their own decisions. After approval by the Cabinet, approval by the Imperial Conference, and examination by the Privy Council, the signing ceremony was held in Berlin on September 27, followed by a toast in Tokyo and Rome at night on the same day. Due to the delay in the arrival of Italian Foreign Minister Chiano in Berlin, the signing ceremony was held one hour late at 13:00 at the new Chancellery with marble walls built by Minister of Armaments Speer. The Foreign Minister and General Jodl were skeptical of the alliance. Germany wanted to use it mainly to prevent the United States from entering the war and to surrender to Britain. The attack was secondary. After the Pacific War, this led to disagreements in the Japanese and German military committees at the height of the Axis powers around February 1942. Although 70 degrees east longitude was set as the boundary between Japan and Germany in charge of operations, operations in the Middle East and India areas were small-scaled due to the fact that Germany and Japan focused respectively on Russia and the Pacific area, resulting in the loss of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Germany's occupation of Moscow in the previous year wasted time with Army Group Center moving south after the early occupation of Smolensk, and it failed due to an unusually cold winter or holodno. The influence of Tokyo bombing by Doolittle using an aircraft carrier was great. It was never "do little". The fact that the military commissioner on the Japanese side was Lieutenant General Naokuni Nomura of the Navy and that the views of Admiral Jodl on the German side differed greatly from Hitler's were also related.
The well-known photograph of Ambassador Saburo Kurusu, Hitler, and Italian Foreign Minister Ciano walking down a long marble corridor at the signing ceremony in Berlin, received congratulations from the representatives of each country after the signing ceremony. When Hitler spoke to Ambassador Saburo Kurusu, he asked him to visit the Japanese embassy on November 15, the anniversary of Kigensetsu. He succeeded in getting Japan's special interest to be recognized. Foreign Minister Ribbentrop was against it, but Hitler's decision was made in one voice from the top. Ambassador Saburo Kurusu was opposed to the alliance from the beginning, but now that it was signed, he decided to make the most of it and appealed directly. However, the occupation of northern French Indochina began five days before the signing of the agreement, and the occupation of southern French Indochina began on July 28, after the outbreak of the war between Germany and the Soviet Union. It was reflected that they were preparing for war with the United States by securing natural resourses in Southeast Asia. If Hitler had insisted that it would be used for Germany because it was Germany that surrendered its colonial powers France and the Netherlands, the subsequent Japan-US negotiations would have proceeded, and the Tripartite Alliance would have cracked from the beginning. Maybe. At 22:00, the Tripartite Pact signing ceremony in Tokyo became a celebration with champagne in hand. The Champagne region of France was under German occupation, and since before the war Ribbentrop had a relationship with Mumm, one of the Champagnes, and was under the protection of the Foreign Minister and Ambassador Abets even during the occupation, so there was no shortage of champagne. At this time, Foreign Minister Matsuoka made an international phone call with Foreign Minister Ribbentrop in Berlin and was invited to visit Germany, which was to be held from March to April of the following year. The Tripartite Alliance reflects the situation of the Anglo-German War, but the surrender of air power and the landing on the British mainland were postponed indefinitely. Foreign Minister Ribbentrop naturally opposed it, as it would bury his greatest achievement, the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact. For Japan, the basic premise of turning the Tripartite Pact into a quadruple alliance that included the Soviet Union and strengthening its restraint on the United States was crumbling. In the first half of November when Molotov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union, visited Germany, the whole of Japan was enveloped in the mood of celebrating the 2600th anniversary of the imperial era, and celebratory events were held in various places. At the Japanese Embassy in Berlin, celebration events were held for five days until November 15, and many distinguished guests were invited. The visit was in response to a direct appeal from Ambassador Saburo. It happened to be the day Molotov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union, returned to Russia. Hitler told Ambassador Saburo Kurusu that he had told Molotov to propose a quadruple alliance and that the Soviet Union should recognize Japan's special interests in Southeast Asia. The ambassador sent this to his home country saying, ``This is an attempt to show the sincerity of the German side regarding the recognition of our special status. Far from the sincerity,Japan would bitterly experience the insincerities of Germany before long at huge sacrifice of her obedient subjects.
Following the conclusion of the German-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact, Ambassador to Germany Hiroshi Oshima and his wife Toyoko, the daughter of a viscount, returned to Japan by train from the late Anhalter station in the center of Berlin at the end of November 1939. At the station, military attaché Torashiro Kawabe, naval attaché Kiichi Endo, and many other attachés and diplomats stationed in Europe from the German side included Foreign Minister Ribbentrop and Undersecretary Weizsäcker, as well as military leaders and Nazis from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Party officials also came to see him off. Apart from this, Ribbentrop also held a farewell party for General Oshima and regretted saying goodbye. His diplomatic skills aside, Oshima was liked by everyone around him. He is not just an elite military college graduate and the son of the former Minister of Army, Kenichi Oshima, but he is also the best expert for Germany and German language in the Army. He was a big eater particularly eels, a German music lover who liked Richard Wagner in particular, and a drinker who liked German cherry distilled wine Kirschwasser. However, Oshima did not think that this departing would be the last Germany. On the contrary, he told General Hisaichi Terauchi, the son of Field Marshal Masatake Terauchi, who was fascinated by the blitzkrieg in the Battle of Poland, and happened to be visiting Germany, saying, ``We should have formed a military alliance. We failed without it. If this is the case, Britain and France will lose,' and gen.Oshima, “the German ambassador to Germany” was thrilled. Terauchi was also deeply moved when Hitler told him at the Führer's Headquarter in Danzig, ``Shogun, the Germans will never surrender, just like in the Japanese Bushido,'' and after returning to Japan,far from retiring,Oshima negotiated to conclude a military alliance in Tokyo with the aide of the Army or Axis faction of the foreign ministry or German embassy in Japan . The succeeding ambassador to Germany was Saburo Kurusu, who was pro-British and American, so he was almost ignored by Foreign Minister Ribbentrop, so there was almost no useful information. The army attache was the point of contact for information from Ribbentrop. This made Oshima very easy to work with. Negotiations in Tokyo began on the lines of Ribbentrop, Stahmer, Ambassador Otto, Hiroshi Oshima and Yosuke Matsuoka. Yosuke Matsuoka served as an advisor to Fumimaro Konoe from around 1938, and Konoe had decided to appoint Yosuke Matsuoka as Foreign Minister in the coming Cabinet. In addition to strengthening relations with Germany, there was also a calculation that Matsuoka would be able to suppress the army's recklessness. Britain and France declared war on Germany due to the invasion of Poland, but there was no actual fighting, and it was a quiet war, a strange state of war. In the spring of 1940 Churchill, Minister of the Admiralty in the Chamberlain Cabinet, tried to land in Norway to control Swedish iron ore, but Hitler took the initiative and invaded and occupied Denmark and Norway. Even at this point, Japan was still skeptical about the strength of the German army, but in the Western European Blitzkrieg that began on May 10, the strategy of breaking through the forest areas of the Ardennes plateau in Belgium with tanks succeeded, and the British and French defended on quite different line. The bases were completely destroyed. Until then, in addition to numerous lectures, Oshima had given many lectures, including executives of the Minsei Party and the Seiyukai, Seigo Nakano of the Touhoukai, who admired the Nazis, Chief of Staff Kaninnomiya of the Army, General Hideki Tojo, He also had talks with Akira Muto, director of the Military Affairs Bureau, who was thinking of withdrawing troops from China for a long period of time, and was looking for the realization of a military alliance with Germany. Negotiations progressed quickly summer 1940,just after capitulation of France .
The progress of the Sino-Japanese War and the Anglo-German War had a great deal to do with the process leading up to the conclusion of the Tripartite Alliance. As for the former, the occupation of Changsha was successful, but the plan to occupy Chongqing in Sichuan Province had to be abandoned, and Wang Jingwei's escape from Chongqing was disappointing. Emphasis has been placed on blocking. As for the latter, fierce battles between British and German air forces took place in order to secure air superiority over Britain, which was a prerequisite for landing on the British mainland. Spitfire's superior turning performance due to its cruising range and weight reduction, the high morale of British and exiled soldiers who were deprived of their homeland, and the advent of radar gradually pushed Germany into a losing position in the battle between fighters. August 1940 marked a turning point in the Anglo-German War. The German side changed its main objective from attacking military bases to attacking large cities such as London, which turned the entire British population against them. This impatience had a great impact on the Japan-Germany military alliance negotiations in Tokyo. The dispatch of Stahmer,a member of Ribbentrop bureau in August 1940 and the loan of 50 destroyers by the United States to Great Britain almost coincided, but as the United States planned to enter the war on British side, the Mitsumasa Yonai Cabinet resigned and the second Konoe Cabinet was formed. With the appointment of Yosuke Matsuoka as Minister of Foreign Affairs, it was only a matter of time before the conclusion of a military alliance on the premise that Britain would surrender to Germany. Article 3 of the obligation to participate in the war was the biggest problem, but after consideration by the Tripartite Commission of Japan, Germany, and Italy, it was decided that the governments of each country would make their own decisions. After approval by the Cabinet, approval by the Imperial Conference, and examination by the Privy Council, the signing ceremony was held in Berlin on September 27, followed by a toast in Tokyo and Rome at night on the same day. Due to the delay in the arrival of Italian Foreign Minister Chiano in Berlin, the signing ceremony was held one hour late at 13:00 at the new Chancellery with marble walls built by Minister of Armaments Speer. The Foreign Minister and General Jodl were skeptical of the alliance. Germany wanted to use it mainly to prevent the United States from entering the war and to surrender to Britain. The attack was secondary. After the Pacific War, this led to disagreements in the Japanese and German military committees at the height of the Axis powers around February 1942. Although 70 degrees east longitude was set as the boundary between Japan and Germany in charge of operations, operations in the Middle East and India areas were small-scaled due to the fact that Germany and Japan focused respectively on Russia and the Pacific area, resulting in the loss of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Germany's occupation of Moscow in the previous year wasted time with Army Group Center moving south after the early occupation of Smolensk, and it failed due to an unusually cold winter or holodno. The influence of Tokyo bombing by Doolittle using an aircraft carrier was great. It was never "do little". The fact that the military commissioner on the Japanese side was Lieutenant General Naokuni Nomura of the Navy and that the views of Admiral Jodl on the German side differed greatly from Hitler's were also related.
The well-known photograph of Ambassador Saburo Kurusu, Hitler, and Italian Foreign Minister Ciano walking down a long marble corridor at the signing ceremony in Berlin, received congratulations from the representatives of each country after the signing ceremony. When Hitler spoke to Ambassador Saburo Kurusu, he asked him to visit the Japanese embassy on November 15, the anniversary of Kigensetsu. He succeeded in getting Japan's special interest to be recognized. Foreign Minister Ribbentrop was against it, but Hitler's decision was made in one voice from the top. Ambassador Saburo Kurusu was opposed to the alliance from the beginning, but now that it was signed, he decided to make the most of it and appealed directly. However, the occupation of northern French Indochina began five days before the signing of the agreement, and the occupation of southern French Indochina began on July 28, after the outbreak of the war between Germany and the Soviet Union. It was reflected that they were preparing for war with the United States by securing natural resourses in Southeast Asia. If Hitler had insisted that it would be used for Germany because it was Germany that surrendered its colonial powers France and the Netherlands, the subsequent Japan-US negotiations would have proceeded, and the Tripartite Alliance would have cracked from the beginning. Maybe. At 22:00, the Tripartite Pact signing ceremony in Tokyo became a celebration with champagne in hand. The Champagne region of France was under German occupation, and since before the war Ribbentrop had a relationship with Mumm, one of the Champagnes, and was under the protection of the Foreign Minister and Ambassador Abets even during the occupation, so there was no shortage of champagne. At this time, Foreign Minister Matsuoka made an international phone call with Foreign Minister Ribbentrop in Berlin and was invited to visit Germany, which was to be held from March to April of the following year. The Tripartite Alliance reflects the situation of the Anglo-German War, but the surrender of air power and the landing on the British mainland were postponed indefinitely. Foreign Minister Ribbentrop naturally opposed it, as it would bury his greatest achievement, the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact. For Japan, the basic premise of turning the Tripartite Pact into a quadruple alliance that included the Soviet Union and strengthening its restraint on the United States was crumbling. In the first half of November when Molotov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union, visited Germany, the whole of Japan was enveloped in the mood of celebrating the 2600th anniversary of the imperial era, and celebratory events were held in various places. At the Japanese Embassy in Berlin, celebration events were held for five days until November 15, and many distinguished guests were invited. The visit was in response to a direct appeal from Ambassador Saburo. It happened to be the day Molotov, Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union, returned to Russia. Hitler told Ambassador Saburo Kurusu that he had told Molotov to propose a quadruple alliance and that the Soviet Union should recognize Japan's special interests in Southeast Asia. The ambassador sent this to his home country saying, ``This is an attempt to show the sincerity of the German side regarding the recognition of our special status. Far from the sincerity,Japan would bitterly experience the insincerities of Germany before long at huge sacrifice of her obedient subjects.
