The Anti-Comintern Pact Ë 155
links by Caspian boats and setting up radio communication. The plan for the Cauca-
sus for the same year envisaged setting up cells in Baku, Grozny, Tbilisi, Vladikavkaz,
and Batumi as well as along the oil transport lines. In 1940, the goals were carrying out
a detailed study of military objects for air attack, importing weapons for Turkey and
Iran, and preparing for a general uprising for the Caucasus. Finally, for 1941, the plan
envisaged completing military preparations and organizing cadres of the Caucasian
Army in Turkey.¹⁰⁵
The Caucasus group, based in Europe and Turkey with nancial and logistical
support from Germany and Japan, was to be the action group for these operations.
According to a German account, to avoid any con ict between Japan and Germany, it
was agreed that Haidar Bammat, who headed the group, was to be considered a Ger-
man agent, but that Japan retained the right to instruct Bammat directly concerning
his tactical stand.¹⁰⁶
Clearly, Turkey played the central role in the Japanese-German plan for the Cauca-
sus. According to a postwar American investigation, in 1937 Japan sought to establish
a “Turkish-Japanese Intelligence Association for the purpose of gathering information
concerning Russian activities.”¹⁰⁷According to master spy Makoto Onodera, who was
stationed in Riga as Japan’s military attaché, subversive political activities, later to be
“used for fth column purposes,” were planned at the time for Ukraine and the Cau-
casus. The Caucasus operation was “headed by a non-German agent of the Abwehr
[almost certainly Bammat] but was entirely under Japanese control.”¹⁰⁸This Japanese
control was exercised by the afore-mentioned special intelligence/subversion organ
based in Berlin¹⁰⁹.
In view of its 1925 neutrality treaty with the Soviet Union, however, Turkey made
every eort to appear friendly to Moscow. Certainly, Ankara did not o cially work
with Japan’s intelligence. In May 1937, as noted earlier, just before theOshima-Canaris ̄
agreement, Turkey shut down the Turkish edition ofKavkazwhich had just begun
publication in the country, under pressure from the Soviet government. Yet Turkey
appears to have condoned to some extent Japan’s work in Turkey.¹¹⁰Some elements of
theOshima-Canaris agreement were implemented immediately. In June 1937, as noted, ̄
Kavkazbegan publication in Georgian and French and in the autumn in English and
German.
105 Kuromiya and Mamoulia, “Anti-Russian and Anti-Soviet Subversion,” 1,428.
106 Mader,Hitlers Spionagegenerale sagen aus, 197–98.
107 NARA RG263, Entry A1-86, Box 22 (Michael Kedia), 319. We are grateful to Professor Jerey Burds
for supplying this information to us.
108 NARA RG263, 2002/A/10/3 (Makoto Onodera), v. 1, 3.
109 See Yuriko Onodera,Barutokai no hotori nite: Bukan no tsuma no daitoa sens ̄ o ̄(Tokyo: Ky ̄od ̄o
tsushin, 1985), 74. ̄
110 Sotskov,Neizvestnyi separatizm, 100.