The Eurasian Triangle. Russia, the Caucasus and Japan, 1904-1945

The Anti-Comintern Pact Ë 153

(a) The competent authorities of both High Contracting States will closely cooperate in the ex-

change of intelligence on the activities of the Communist International and on reconnaissance

and defensive measures against the Communist International.

(b) The competent authorities of both High Contracting States will, within the framework of the

existing law, take stringent measures against those who at home or abroad act in the direct or

indirect employ of the Communist International or assist its subversive work.⁹⁸

Although the public treaty and protocol spoke only of the Communist International,

all those concerned (Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union) understood that the proto-

col was directed against the Soviet Union. The secret supplementary treaty, however,

called things by their names and referred explicitly to the Soviet Union. The follow-

ing year, when the pact was expanded to include Italy, it stated: “Considering that the

Communist International continues constantly to imperil the civilized world in the Oc-

cident and Orient, disturbing and destroying peace and order” and “that only close

collaboration of all states interested in the maintenance of peace and order can limit

and eliminate that peril.”⁹⁹

Virtually unknown in Western historiography is that after the Anti-Comintern Pact

was signed, HiroshiOshima, Japan’s military attaché in Berlin who spearheaded the ̄

pact, further pursued an agreement with Germany to promote much closer collabora-

tion in military intelligence against the Soviet Union. Despite the skepticism in Berlin

and Tokyo,Oshima convinced Wilhelm Canaris, head of the ̄ Abwehr(German mili-

tary intelligence), of the utility of such an agreement. On 11 May 1937,Oshima and Ca- ̄

naris signed in Berlin “An Additional German-Japanese Agreement on the Exchange

of Intelligence concerning Soviet Russia.”¹⁰⁰The agreement stipulated that the two

countries exchange intelligence in Berlin and in Tokyo “to be dispatched immediately

to the home countries.” It covered all important and unevaluated (i.e., raw) intelli-

gence concerning the Soviet army and air force and the military industry as well as

“pure counterintelligence” that each side obtained. In addition to supplying raw intel-

98 Here we have relied, with some changes, on an on-line translation available at the Yale
University Avalon Project: http://avalon.law.yale.edu/wwii/tri2.asp. The original is found in Theo
Sommer,Deutschland und Japan zwischen den Mächten, 1935–1940: Vom Antikominternpakt zum
Dreimächtepakt(Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1962), 494.
99 http://avalon.law.yale.edu/wwii/tri3.asp (translation slightly modied), and the German original
in Sommer,Deutschland und Japan, 499.
100 This is available at BBKT, Miyazaki Sh ̄uichi Bunko, 32: “Japanese-German Military Agreements
concerning Intelligence Exchange and Subversion.” The German text is reproduced below as Appendix
(pp. 203–07). The Japanese version is reprinted in Nobuo Tajima,Nachizumu kyokuto senryaku: nichi- ̄
doku b ̄okyo ky ̄ ̄otei o meguru ch ̄ohosen ̄ (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1997), 197–99, 246–47. We have not examined ̄
the German archive carefully, but see John P. Fox,Germany and the Far Eastern Crisis 1931–1938(Ox-
ford: Clarendon, 1982), 221, 380. The source Fox cites is Oberkommando der Wehrmacht, Ausland,
Nr. 51/37, Chefs, Aus., 8 July 1937, which used to be held in the Foreign and Commonwealth Oce of
the Library and Records Department in London. Some time after Fox used it, it was removed from the
library. Kuromiya’s extensive research in London in 2007 and 2008 failed to locate the document.