Editor's Introduction

The Eve of the Second World War : International Relations in Summer, 1939

Abstract

The study of international relations leading to the outbreak of the Second World War may have found the most favour with researchers of European diplomatic history in post—War Japan. In the 1950's, when the Cold War propaganda prevailed both in the East and West, Japanese researchers discussed the Munich Agreement and/or Soviet-German Non-Aggression Pact through examining West European, American and Soviet theses on the basis of published diplomatic documents. The Japan Association of International Relations published in 1959 a special edition (No. 8 of Kokusai Seiji) under the title of Gendai Kokusai Seijishi (A Contemporary History of International Relations), in which several researchers treated the foreign policies of the great powers in the 1930's. Once the period of the Cold War was over, historians began to look back more objectively on the Second World War and events preceding it. Archives of Germany, Great Britain and the United States were opened. Japanese scholars have since produced works reflecting these more favourable research conditions.
The Japan Association of International Relations organized a symposium on “Summer 1939: International Relations on the Eve of the Second World War” at the, Autumn Congress of 1980, the purpose of which was to bring together separate research projects which had been carried out by members of the Assochation. The oral reporters were later requested to develop discussion, and to contribute articles to the present special edition, “The Eve of the Second World War: International Relations in Summer, 1939.”
This collection contains seven articles and one research note, the contents of which may be outlined as follows. To begin with, Masanori Tsunagawa discusses the role of German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop in the conclusion of the Pact with the Soviet Union, with an observation that Hitler's design for the world was consistent, and that he only happened to use as a means what appeared to be a different line of policy. Yuta Sasaki examines background to the British guarantee to Poland at the end of March, 1939, pointing out that Great Britain still hoped for the avoidance of war particularly in view of British lack of military preparation for the defence of its global Empire. Hirotaka Watanabe approaches the French foreign policy of 1939 in terms of France's international position, which was largely defined by the Italian threat and the Mediterranean situation. Osamu Nakanishi presents an hypothesis that the Soviet Union had already determined to change its policy of forming an alliance against Hitler at the time of the 18th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party in March, 1939, and that the Nomonhan incident only gave the finishing touch to the Soviet decision to form an agreement with Nazi Germany. Katsuhiko Matsukawa deals with Polish Foreign Minister Beck's policy to “balance” Germany and the Soviet Union, and coucludes that Poland was actually a passive beneficiary of the existing balance. Besides the above articles dealing with European powers, two more articles shed light on the European political situation from outside Europe. The article by Shigeo Fukuda and Hiroshi Yoshii discusses F. D. R.'s European policy by examining conventionalists' and revisionists' theories, and by developing some of them. Masaki Miyake discusses mutual interconnections among Japanese-German, Japanese-British and Japanese-Soviet relations, closing the chapter with the comment that the “stratified structure” of the Nazi foreign policy deluded the Japanese political and military leaders in summer, 1939. The research note by Kyozo Sato presents a detailed account corresponding to Sasaki's contention through a study of British military strategies in the Far East.
While these articles treat respective problems raised rather independently, taken together they supplement each other to present a panorama of the whole European