The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and World War II Ë 175
agent.²⁶It is also possible that an Azerbaijani agent used by Japan in Paris in 1937–
38 was also a Soviet double agent.²⁷More generally, the famous Soviet spy Richard
Sorge, having deeply penetrated the German embassy in Tokyo and the Japanese po-
litical establishment, supplied invaluable information to Moscow. (Sorge and Manaki
knew each other in Tokyo.) As a result,Oshima’s and Manaki’s activities were closely ̄
watched by Soviet agents in Berlin. It is therefore likely that some of these “assassins”
sent into Soviet territory were in fact Soviet agents.
If this was the case, then Japan’s attempt at Stalin’s life would have been used by
Soviet counterintelligence to capture and liquidate the most active Caucasian émigré
elements. This would have literally been an exercise in futility and, even worse, self-
destructive. In any event, by 1938–39 Moscow had gained full knowledge of the cipher
codes of Japanese diplomatic correspondence through a Japanese diplomat based in
Prague.²⁸The activities of the Caucasus group supported by Japan were also likely to
have been thwarted eectively by Soviet counterintelligence.7.3 The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and World War II
As the cloud of war hovered, each country was maneuvering furiously. In March 1939
Hitler de ed the Munich Agreement and occupied and destroyed Czechoslovakia. A
week later France and Britain reacted by pledging to guarantee Polish independence.
The following day, on 7 April 1939, Mussolini’s Italy invaded and annexed Albania. In
return, Britain and France extended their guarantee of support to Greece and Roma-
nia. In May and June, in the face of the German threat, Britain and France each con-
cluded a mutual assistance pact with Turkey, which feared Italy’s further advance into
the Balkans. These treaties, in turn, resulted in a more elaborate three-power (Franco-Anglo-Turkish) mutual assistance pact in October 1939.²⁹These moves by Turkey in
turn led Germany to terminate collaboration with Haidar Bammat and his associates,
whom Berlin did not trust, considering them pro-Turkish.³⁰On 22 May 1939, Hitler and
Mussolini further signed the Pact of Steel (a pact of friendship and alliance) aimed
against Britain and France. (Japan did not join them, considering the Soviet Union,
rather than Britain or France, its main enemy.)26 See Jerey Burds, “The Soviet War against ‘Fifth Columnists’: The Case of Chechnya, 1942–4.”Jour-
nal of Contemporary History42, no. 2 (2007), 281.
27 See Takeyasu Tsuchihashi,Gunpuku seikatsu shijunen no omoide ̄ (Tokyo, Keiso shuppan, 1985), ̄
326–27.
28 See Hiroaki Kuromiya and Andrzej Pepłoński, “Koz ̄ ̄o Izumi and the Soviet Breach of Imperial
Japanese Diplomatic Codes.”Intelligence and National Security28, no. 6 (2013), 769–84.
29 Zehra Önder,Die türkische Außenpolitik im Zweiten Weltkrieg(München: Oldenbourg, 1977), 11,
19–20, 33.
30 Mamoulia,Les combats indépendandistes des Caucasiens, 209, 230.