World War II Day by Day

Tokyo, Japan • October 13, 1940

On this date in 1940 Japan’s foreign minister Yōsuke Matsuo­ka, who had grown up in Ore­gon and Cal­i­for­nia (1893–1902), invited the United States and other non­aligned nations to join the Tri­par­tite Pact, which Axis powers Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Imperial Japan had initi­aled in Berlin the pre­vious month (Septem­ber 27). The Pact was an out­growth of the “Rome-Berlin Axis” cele­brated by the Italo-German “Pact of Steel,” which Adolf Hitler’s foreign minis­ter Joachim von Rib­ben­trop and Benito Musso­lini’s foreign minis­ter (and son-in-law) Count Galeazzo Ciano had signed in Berlin in late May 1939.

The “new world order” envisioned by Tri­par­tite founding mem­bers, said Matsuo­ka, was one in which eco­no­mic bar­riers would be broken down and the natural geo­graphic divi­sions of the world estab­lished in com­ple­men­tary fash­ion to bring pros­per­ity to all peo­ples. Leading the nations into the new nirvana were the signa­tories them­selves: Article 1 of the Tri­par­tite Pact stip­u­lated that Japan “recog­nizes and respects the leader­ship of Germany and Italy in the estab­lish­ment of a new order in Europe.” Article 2 stip­u­lated that Germany and Italy “recog­nize and respect the leader­ship of Japan in the estab­lish­ment of a new order in Greater East Asia,” which the Japa­nese called the Greater East Asia Co-Pros­perity Sphere. (The Greater East Asia Co-Pros­perity Sphere was a mili­tary-econo­mic asso­ci­a­tion con­sisting of the Japa­nese Empire and vari­ous national organi­za­tions through­out East Asia and the East Indies.) Ten days after Foreign Minis­ter Matsu­oka had floated his invi­ta­tion to the U.S. and other non­aligned nations, the leader of the Pact, Hitler him­self, on a whirl­wind tour of van­quished-foe France, appealed in per­son to Spanish dic­ta­tor Fran­cisco Franco and Vichy presi­dent Marshal Philippe Pétain to join the three signatories. Neither did.

A seldom noted footnote to the above three-part pact was Hitler’s offer to open “pact-hood” to Germany’s his­tori­cal neme­sis, the Soviet Union. When Hitler and Ribben­trop sat down with Soviet Foreign Minis­ter Vyache­slav Molo­tov in Berlin during the latter’s visit on Novem­ber 12–14, 1940, the German duo presented Molo­tov with revi­sions to the orig­inal Septem­ber 17, 1940, treaty that now included the Soviet Union as an equal part­ner. Because the treaty establ­ished each sig­na­tory’s “natural spheres of influ­ence” in the world, Hitler was keen on deflecting Soviet dicta­tor Joseph Stalin’s inter­est away from Fin­land, Roma­nia, Bul­garia, and the Bal­kans to Iran and Iraq, where the British pressed a claim of hege­mony. Stalin’s heavily condi­tional reply on Novem­ber 25 was inter­preted by the German dictator as dead on arrival.

Starting in late November 1940 the Tri­par­tite Pact swiftly expanded: Hun­gary, to which Hitler had gen­er­ously given half of Roma­nia’s Tran­syl­va­nia in late August, signed up on Novem­ber 20; Roma­nia, threatened by Stalin’s Soviet Union on its north­eastern border, joined on the 23rd; and the Slovak Republic, formed from a por­tion of dis­mem­bered Czecho­slo­va­kia, came aboard the next day. By the time Bul­garia, recip­ient of Roma­nia’s southern Dobruja, joined the Tri­par­tite Pact in March 1941, the entire Bal­kans and East­ern Europe were either in treaty relation­ship with the Axis powers or, like Yugo­sla­via was soon to be, under Axis occu­pa­tion. Urged on by Japan, Japa­nese-occu­pied Thai­land and the Chi­nese pup­pet state of Manchu­kuo (Man­churia) and the Japa­nese col­lab­o­ra­tionist “Republic of China” (led by Chi­nese Nation­alist foe Wang Jingwei) became unoffi­cial signa­tories of the Tripartite Pact on February 15, 1942.

Germany and Japan During Axis Heyday, 1940–1941

Left: On September 27, 1940, the Axis Powers (Germany and Italy) grew by one when Japan’s ambas­sador Saburō Kurusu (left in pic­ture), Italy’s foreign minis­ter Galeazzo Ciano (to Kurusu’s left), and Germany’s foreign minis­ter Joachim von Rib­ben­trop (standing at podium at right) signed the three-way Tri­par­tite Pact. Adolf Hitler (slumping in chair) wit­nessed the gala pro­ceedings. Despite signing a ten‑year mili­tary and com­mer­cial con­ven­tion in 1940, Germany, Italy, and Japan for the most part fought sepa­rately during World War II and sur­ren­dered sepa­rately less than five years into the pact: Italy in Septem­ber 1943, Ger­many in May 1945, and Japan in Septem­ber 1945. Amer­i­cans remem­ber Kurusu as one of two Japa­nese envoys who tried to nego­ti­ate peace and under­standing with the Roose­velt adminis­tra­tion in Novem­ber and Decem­ber 1941 while their coun­try was secretly preparing the attack on U.S. military installations at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

Right: En route to Moscow where he signed the five-year Soviet-Japa­nese Neu­trality (or Non­ag­gres­sion) Pact in April 1941, foreign minis­ter Yōsuke Matsu­oka paid a visit to his country’s Axis partner in Berlin in March. In the back­ground between Matsu­oka and Hitler is German foreign minis­ter Rib­ben­trop. Matsu­oka, who in 1933 led Japan’s walk­out of the League of Nations, was a major advo­cate of Japan’s alli­ance with Germany and Italy, whose assis­tance he saw as a perfect balancing force against U.S. and British interests in the Asia Pacific region. (In his March 1941 dis­cus­sions with his German counter­part, Matsu­oka reassured Ribben­trop that Japan was making prep­a­ra­tions to occupy the British strong­hold of Singa­pore on the Malay Penin­sula in reponse to Ribben­trop’s urging Japan to do just that.) Following Japan’s defeat in Asia and the Pacific by the Allies in 1945, Matsu­oka was arrested on the orders of Supreme Com­man­der of the Allied Powers, Gen. Douglas Mac­Arthur, and held at Sugamo Pri­son (near Tokyo), where he died in 1946 prior to his trial on war crimes charges before the Inter­national Military Tribunal for the Far East (Tokyo Trials).

Japan Joins Germany and Italy in Tripartite Pact, September 27, 1940 (Skip first 20 seconds)