Anti-Comintern Pact

Anti-Comintern Pact, agreement concluded first between Germany and Japan (Nov. 25, 1936) and then between Italy, Germany, and Japan (Nov. 6, 1937), ostensibly directed against the Communist International (Comintern) but, by implication, specifically against the Soviet Union.

The treaties were sought by Adolf Hitler, who at the time was publicly inveighing against Bolshevism and who was interested in Japan’s successes in the opening war against China. The Japanese were angered by a Soviet-Chinese nonaggression treaty of August 1936 and by the subsequent sale of Soviet military aircraft and munitions to China. For propaganda purposes, Hitler and Benito Mussolini were able to present themselves as defenders of Western values against the threat of Soviet Communism.

On Aug. 23, 1939, Japan, outraged by the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, renounced the Anti-Comintern Pact but later acceded to the Tripartite Pact (Sept. 27, 1940), which pledged Germany, Italy, and Japan “to assist one another with all political, economic and military means” when any one of them was attacked by “a Power at present not involved in the European War or in the Sino-Japanese Conflict” (i.e., the Soviet Union or the United States).