On September 27, 1940, the Triple Pact was signed in Berlin between Germany, Italy and Japan.

He determined the foundations of cooperation between the participants of the new union and divided the world into spheres of their influence.

Germany and Italy announced their intention to build a new order in Europe, and Japan in East Asia.

The pact was supposed to facilitate joint actions of its participants against the Soviet Union and the United States of America in the future.

Later, the allies of Nazi Germany in Europe and the satellites of official Tokyo in East Asia joined him.

"Take your place in the world"

According to experts, the origins of the creation of the Triple Pact must be sought in the results of the First World War. 

“The post-war world order that suited Great Britain, France, and the United States did not arouse approval from Italy, Japan, and even more so from Germany.

These countries strove to take their place in the world, believing that they deserve more than what they have, ”Stanislav Davydov, head of the scientific department of the Victory Museum, said in an interview with RT.

According to historians, Germany suffered heavy financial and territorial losses as a result of the First World War.

Italy, although it managed to move to the victor's camp in time, received only some of the former possessions of Austria and Turkey as a result of the hostilities, but could not satisfy its territorial claims in the Balkans and did not receive colonies in Africa.

In turn, having experienced an industrial breakthrough, Japan was looking for sources of raw materials and markets for its products in the Asia-Pacific region, which was divided between local sovereign states and the colonial possessions of Western powers.

In the 1920s and 1930s, right-wing regimes oriented towards militarism and expansionism were established in Berlin, Rome and Tokyo.

Japan invaded China and Italy invaded Ethiopia.

Germany annexed Austria and most of Czechoslovakia, and in 1940 captured most of Western Europe.

  • Occupation of Czechoslovakia.

    German troops enter the Sudetenland

  • AFP

Cooperation between Germany and Japan initially developed within the framework of the so-called Anti-Comintern Pact, signed on November 25, 1936 in Berlin and providing for joint actions of the Nazi Reich and the Japanese Empire against the Communist International and its leaders.

Later, Italy, Hungary, Spain and a number of other countries joined this agreement.

“After the outbreak of the Second World War, there was talk about taking relations between Germany, Japan and Italy to a new level.

The potential division of the whole world was on the agenda.

In these conditions, the participants in the anti-Comintern axis, and primarily Berlin and Tokyo, needed a new, broader agreement, "military historian Yuri Knutov said in an interview with RT.

"Collusion of the most reactionary states"

In the summer - fall of 1940, the situation in the main theaters of military operations of the Second World War escalated.

Italy invaded British colonial possessions in Africa, and Japan invaded French Indochina.

According to historians, military successes contributed to rapprochement between the participants in the Anti-Comintern Pact.

The signing of a new pact, known in historical literature as the Triple or Berlin, took place on September 27, 1940.

  • Signing of the Tripartite Pact

  • Gettyimages.ru

  • © DEA PICTURE LIBRARY

“According to the new pact, Germany and Italy assumed responsibility for the reconstruction of the European continent, and Japan - the territories in East Asia and the Pacific coast.

This agreement developed the Anti-Comintern Pact.

Aggressive states agreed on how they would divide the world, ”Mikhail Myagkov, director of the Russian Military Historical Society, said in a conversation with RT.

The parties to the pact indicated that they consider the acquisition of "proper" space for them to be the key to establishing a reliable peace and plan to cooperate to solve this problem.

In this regard, they committed themselves to support each other "by all political, economic and military means in case one of the contracting parties is attacked by a power that is not currently involved in the European war or the Sino-Japanese conflict."

Representatives of Berlin, Tokyo and Rome hoped that the pact would seriously limit the actions of the UK and the United States, experts say.

In addition, Germany saw in the new agreement the basis for a military alliance directed against the USSR.

And in order to disguise the anti-Soviet component of the document, a special Article 5 was included in it, stating that "the above agreements do not in any way affect the political status that currently exists between each of the three contracting parties and Soviet Russia."

Despite reservations, the new pact has caused serious concern and dismay in Moscow.

The German authorities could not clearly explain what kind of new order in the world they were talking about and whether Japan's great "East Asian" claims to Siberia would not be affected - moreover, the Soviet Union had already twice faced aggression from official Tokyo by that time.

  • Japanese intervention in China

  • © Wikimedia commons

To calm the Soviet side, Adolf Hitler initiated negotiations in the fall of 1940 with the chairman of the USSR Council of People's Commissars, Vyacheslav Molotov, at which he indicated that he was ready to discuss the issue of Moscow's cooperation with the Triple Pact and even share British territories.

Molotov avoided discussing this topic, focusing on the protection of Soviet interests in the Black Sea region and the withdrawal of German troops from the borders of the USSR.

Reporting on the negotiations at the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), Molotov called the meeting with Hitler a "showdown" and predicted an increase in Nazi aggression in the near future.

In the hope of postponing the German attack on the USSR, the Soviet leadership tried to enter into negotiations with Berlin on ensuring international security, but this initiative did not have any practical development.

Subsequently, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Japanese satellites in the Far East joined the Berlin Pact.

“It should be noted that virtually all states that joined the pact took part in the aggression against the Soviet Union.

And Bulgaria, although it did not participate in troops, still helped by occupying part of the territory of Yugoslavia, supplying food to Germany, providing its territory for the military needs of Germany, ”Mikhail Myagkov noted.

According to Stanislav Davydov, the war against the USSR led to the collapse of both Germany and the Berlin Pact as a whole.

  • Soviet soldiers are fighting on the Western Front

  • RIA News

  • © Leonid Bat

“It was the Soviet Union that was the force that broke the back of both Hitler's Reich and militaristic Japan.

Numerous facts clearly, vividly and irrefutably testify to this.

In particular, the number of troops and the loss of the Nazi Reich on the Soviet-German front, ”the expert emphasized.

As Yuri Knutov noted, the Berlin Pact was "a conspiracy of the most reactionary states with the most reactionary, misanthropic ideology" with far-reaching plans that endanger the future of the entire planet.

“The pact described the violent division of the world in a diplomatic manner.

Its participants saw the Earth as a "cake", which they could only cut among themselves.

To our common happiness, these plans have failed, ”summed up Yuri Knutov.