The Western Powers and Japan in the Summer of 1939

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

Abstract

This essay examines the relations between the Western Powers and Japan in the summer of 1939. Japanese diplomacy in this period was strongly characterized by the intervention of the military. To review the situation of those days, it is necessary to look back into the situation of 1938.
It is often insisted that one of the first motives on the Japanese side that spurred Japan into negotiations with Germany for the purpose of “strengthening the Anti-Comintern Pact (November 25, 1936)” lay in the Japanese army's desire to check the Soviet Union and Britain from aiding Chiang Kai-shek's China in the Sino-Japanese Conflict. For example, the document “The Army's Hopes Regarding Current Foreign Policies” (Deterrent Diplomacy. Japan, Germany, and the USSR, 1935-1940, edited by James William Morley, New York, 1976, pp. 268-272), which was proposed by the War Minister Itagaki to the Konoe Cabinet on July 3, 1938, shows the army's fear for both the Soviet Union and Britain. On July 19, the Five Ministers Conference adopted a “Draft Policy for Strengthening Political Ties with Germany and Italy” (Ibid., p. 55). It is an interesting fact that both the “Hopes” and “Draft” aimed at concluding a pact with Germany to check the Soviet Union and making a secret agreement with Italy to check Britain respectively. Since the acceptance of Ribbentrop's proposal on August 5, 1938, which was brought to Tokyo by General Yukio Kasahara, the Japanese army changed its view immediately and eagerly followed Ribbentrop's idea to combine these two agreements. The move to the Tripartite Pact thus began in the summer of 1938.
It was very much embarassing for the Japanese army that Germany started in the spring of 1939 to make contact with the Soviet Union which had been thought by the Japanese army to be the common enemy of both Germany and Japan. The Japanese Ambassador to Berlin, General Hiroshi Oshima, cabled the Foreign Minister Arita on April 21, 1939, indicating Ribbentrop's intention to bring about better relations between Moscow and Berlin. On July 19, Uzuhiko Usami, councilor of the Japanese Embassy in Berlin, raised objection against the German access to the Soviet Union which was becoming more and more evident at that time (Akten zur Deutschen Auswärtigen Politik 1918-1945, Serie D, Band VI, Nr. 688).
The Japanese army started a local war with the Soviet Union in Nomonhan in May, 1939. This war turned out to be a total defeat of Japan at the end of August. It is a noteworthy fact that the staff of the Kwantung Army which waged this war were fully conscious of the interrelationship between the outcome of this war and the so-called Arita-Craigie talks which were to begin in Tokyo on July 15. Colonel Masao Terada, Chief of the Operation Section of the Kwantung Army, was hesitant to widen the war because he feared that this war would deter the talks. Major Masanobu Tsuji argued that Japan's coup in the battlefield of Nomonhan would strengthen Japan's position toward Britain in the talks and Tsuji persuaded the whole section in this regard. This operation conference on June 19, 1939, was recorded in the secret diary of the Nomonhan Incident (Gendaishi shiryo or the Source Materials of Contemporary History of Japan, vol. 10, Tokyo: Misuzu-shobo, 1963, pp. 74-75).
Recent studies by Klaus Hildebrand and Wolfgang Michalka show that the foreign policy of the Third Reich possessed a stratified structure consisting of the core, i. e. Hitler's pro-British and anti-Russian policy, and the overstructure represented by Ribbentrop's anti-British and pro-Russian policy which was supported by the German Foreign Ministry, Navy and Big Business. The Japanese army and Japan as a whole was perplexed by this structure of German foreign policy which was regarded as enigmatic.