The Realignment of Forces Ë 171
to conclude some form of formal agreement with Poland. The Polish representatives
responded to the proposal a few days later. The response was quite instructive. Al-
though Poland’s goal was to isolate the Soviet Union, it was not strong enough to break
the “Soviet-French alliance”; therefore Poland strove to “disturb” Soviet-French and
Soviet-British relations as much as possible. Poland explained that the Promethean
movement was friendly toward Japan, that it was willing to share its most secret opera-
tions with Japan, and that Japan was welcome to utilize it fully. At the present moment,
however, Poland was not willing to formalize its work with Japan; instead it wished to
have “substantive cooperation”. Thedépêchewent on to explain what Poland meant
by operation, but unfortunately this section was erased (whited out), and there is no
way to know what it said.⁷As far as the Caucasus was concerned, Japan’s collaboration
with the Caucasian activists of the Promethean movement appeared to remain rather
limited,⁸although Japan seems to have broadened its contact with émigré activists
from the Caucasus in general.
In contrast, Japanese-German collaboration in the realm of intelligence does not
seem to have gone so smoothly. Although routine exchanges of information did take
place in Berlin, Moscow, and elsewhere,⁹no “annual meeting to exchange and eval-
uate the intelligence shared,” stipulated in the May 1937 agreement between Hiroshi
Oshima and Wilhelm Canaris ever took place. Nor did the two countries work together ̄
at all in the eld of diversion, according toOshima’s testimony after World War II. Fur- ̄
thermore, even though a German intelligence instructor was due to teach at a Japanese
intelligence school, no one went from Germany to Tokyo for this purpose.¹⁰This awk-
ward relationship had in fact to do with the sympathy that many Germans entertained
toward the Chinese against whom Japan was ghting. German diplomat Hans von Her-
warth, stationed in Moscow from 1931 to 1939, recalled the atmosphere of the time: “In
spite of the German-Japanese alliance, my own sympathies and those of practically ev-
eryone in the Embassy were with the Chinese.... Later, during the battle of Shanghai
[in 1937], we all cheered for the Chinese, because their forces had been trained by Ger-
man o cers. Everyone at the Embassy exulted over the sti resistance the Chinese
put up.”¹¹But in the end, Hitler forced the German military advisers to withdraw from
China.
7 Kuromiya and Libera, “Notatka Włodzimierza Bączkowskiego,” 128.
8 Kuromiya and Libera, “Notatka Włodzimierza Bączkowskiego,” 129.
9 In Moscow, for example, a three-day meeting to exchange information about the Soviet Union took
place in 1937 between Japanese and German military intelligence. See a report of 25 May 1943 from
Berlin to Tokyo by Japan’s former assistant military attaché in Moscow Etsuo Komoto, in The National ̄
Archives, Kew, UK (hereafter NA), HW35.10.2 (intercepted and decoded by Allied forces during World
War II).
10 November 1959 interview given to Kenichiro K ̄ ̄omura in “B ̄och ̄o ni kansuru kais ̄oroku ch ̄oshu roku’
[Records of recollections concerning counter-intelligence] in B ̄oeish ̄o B ̄oei Kenkyujo Toshokan (BBKT). ̄
11 Hans von Herwarth (with S. Frederick Starr),Against Two Evils(New York: Rawson, Wade Publish-
ers, 1981), 113.