Tripartite Pact
The Tripartite Pact was a treaty concluded on September 27, 1940 on the initiative of Adolf Hitler between the German Empire , the Empire of Japan and the Kingdom of Italy . It was also referred to as the Berlin-Rome-Tokyo axis by the contracting parties .
background
The pact, which was initially valid for ten years, expanded the Anti-Comintern Pact to include extensive military cooperation.
The alliance with Japan was intended to prevent the USA from entering the war on the British side with the threat in Article III of opening up a further theater of war in addition to the Atlantic theater of war in the Pacific Ocean . However, Japan reserved the right to decide autonomously in the event of an alliance whether it would declare war on the USA or not.
After France's defeat in the western campaign , Hitler hoped to bring Britain to an armistice. The US was already indirectly supporting the UK. The pact also gave the Soviet Union an opportunity to join.
In addition to military cooperation, the pact also ensured the division of the world into three areas of interest: while Japan was granted the East Asian area as an area of influence, the Mediterranean was declared as Italy's original sphere of influence, and the German Reich was to regard the Eastern European area as an area of influence. The Soviet Union, which did not join the pact, would have been excluded as a leading power from East Asia and Europe and would have had to focus south on Persia , Afghanistan and India . Japan also claimed India as a domain in the long term, but if a four-power pact or a large continental bloc had been implemented it would have accepted that India would have fallen into the Soviet sphere of interest.
Due to different political, economic and military interests, there were frequent coordination problems between the signatory states.
Extensions of the Tripartite Pact
Berlin and Rome tried in the autumn of 1940 to include the Balkan countries in the three-power pact. They were important suppliers of raw materials and food before the war and should now be politically tied to the axis. Until then, Yugoslavia and Greece had pursued policies that were friendly to Britain and France.
Kingdom of Hungary
Hungary signed the Tripartite Pact on November 20, 1940. As part of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy, it was allied with the German Empire during World War I. Through the Treaty of Trianon , Hungary had lost most of its pre-war territory to Czechoslovakia , Yugoslavia and Romania . The aim of the policy of the authoritarian ruling Regent Admiral Miklós Horthy was the revision of the post-war order. To this end, Hungary initially sought proximity to Italy, and after 1935 more and more that of Germany. Hungary played its part in the smashing of the multiethnic state of Czechoslovakia, from which it received back the areas mainly inhabited by Hungarians (parts of southern Slovakia, Carpathian Ukraine ) in the First Vienna Arbitration . In 1940, in the Second Vienna Arbitration Award, Hungary also got back parts of Transylvania and other border areas that had to be ceded to Romania after the First World War. After the Second World War it lost these areas, which were mainly inhabited by Hungarians.
Hungary participated in the defeat of Yugoslavia in April 1941 and, from 1941, in the German-Soviet War . After the annihilation of the 2nd Hungarian Army in the Battle of Voronezh in 1943, Horthy secretly sought a separate peace with the Western Allies. The German Reich then occupied the country on March 19, 1944 ( Enterprise Margarethe ) and set up a pro-German government under Döme Sztójay , with Horthy remaining in office. After Horthy had dismissed the Sztójay government on August 29 and indirectly terminated the three-power pact, the fascist Arrow Cross members supported by Germany deposed him in October 1944; Ferenc Szálasi became the "leader of the nation". On December 31, 1944, a counter-government formed by the Soviet Union from Hungarian prisoners of war declared war on the German Reich.
Kingdom of Romania
Originally a traditional ally of France and Great Britain, Romania joined the Tripartite Pact on November 23, 1940 in order to protect itself from both Soviet and German aggression. On June 28, the Soviet Union occupied and annexed the Romanian provinces of Bessarabia , the Herza region and northern Bukovina . On August 30, 1940, Romania was forced by Germany to cede northern Transylvania to Hungary in the Second Vienna Arbitration . The southern Dobruja region, which Bulgaria had won in 1913, was also forced to give back to Romania in 1940 under German pressure. In 1941 the German Wehrmacht moved into Romania to use the country as a deployment area for the Barbarossa company and as a raw material supplier for oil and grain. Romanian forces fought alongside the Germans against the Soviet Union and recaptured the territories occupied by the Soviets in 1940, as well as Transnistria and continued to accompany the German troops on the southern eastern front as far as Stalingrad and the Caucasus . With over 300,000 dead, Romania suffered the highest losses of the Axis powers in Europe after Germany . After Romania joined the Allies on August 23, 1944 , Transylvania, which had been ceded to Hungary, was regained, but the USSR retained the Herza region, Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, and southern Dobruja remained with Bulgaria. In addition, Romania had to cede Snake Island to the Soviet Union in 1948 .
Slovak Republic
The Slovakia declared in 1939 by Czechoslovakia independent and closed then immediately on 23 March 1939 a protection contract with Germany. This gave the German Reich far-reaching opportunities to influence Slovak economic and foreign policy . On November 24, 1940, the three-power pact was officially signed.
Slovak armed forces took part in the German invasion of Poland and in the Russian campaign from 1941 to 1945 . Slovakia even declared war on Britain and the US. Until the Slovak National Uprising on August 29, 1944, Slovakia was spared from being occupied by the Wehrmacht. After the German suppression of the uprising, partisan units continued to offer strong resistance until the country was liberated by Soviet and Czechoslovak troops in 1945. The Czechoslovak Republic was restored in the liberated areas and Slovakia was reintegrated.
Kingdom of Bulgaria
Bulgaria , an ally of Germany in World War I, joined the Axis Powers on March 1, 1941. Tsar Boris III. decided to ally with the German Reich after Hitler had assured him of all areas affected by the peace treaty of San Stefano , u. a. the cities of Niš , Thessaloníki and Skopje . Hitler also promised a reunification with the Macedonian "brothers". As a result, Bulgaria's entry into the war had an independent ethnic-national component. Bulgaria left the "Axis" when the Red Army approached in the north and on September 9, 1944 the Bulgarian Communist Party overthrew the government of Bulgaria. Bulgaria continued to fight on the side of the Allies, but did not receive any territorial gains after the end of the war. Only the return of the southern Dobruja, forced by Romania in 1940, was confirmed in the peace treaty of 1947.
Kingdom of Yugoslavia
The Kingdom of Yugoslavia joined the Axis powers on March 25, 1941, but just two days later a British-backed coup d'état made Yugoslavia's allegiance to the "Axis" appear questionable. Although King Peter II of Yugoslavia swore loyalty to the alliance, the capital Belgrade was bombed on April 6 and the country was occupied by the German Wehrmacht . The Yugoslav alliance with the Axis powers lasted a full twelve days.
Yugoslavia was smashed and disappeared from the map: the German Empire annexed Slovenia , Italy annexed Dalmatia , Bulgaria annexed Macedonia and the Italian satellite state Albania annexed Montenegro . Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina became the fascist independent state of Croatia , which then also acceded to the three-power pact. A puppet government was set up in Serbia under the leadership of the Axis-friendly Serb general Milan Nedić .
The Bulgarian annexation of Macedonia in 1941 was welcomed by Ivan Mihailov's Inner Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (IMRO). Bulgaria described Macedonia as a historically Bulgarian country. When the Bulgarian government left the "Axis" at the beginning of September 1944 and declared war on the German Reich, Berlin offered Mihailov support for Macedonia's possible independence efforts, which Mihailov refused.
Fierce resistance formed against the fascist occupiers of Yugoslavia. The partisans under Josip Broz Tito represented the largest resistance group. At times they succeeded in liberating entire parts of the country from Nazi occupation and proclaiming the Republic of Užice within the Serbian national borders. Serbian nationalist-monarchist Chetnik dressings also fought the Croatian Ustasha regime and the Nazis. Chetniks and partisans fought each other during the war due to irreconcilable political objectives. Yugoslavia was liberated from fascism by Yugoslav resistance fighters and the Red Army in 1944 and a people's republic based on the model of the Soviet Union was declared without prior democratic vote.
Independent state of Croatia
On April 10, 1941, the fascist Ustasha proclaimed the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) on parts of the occupied Yugoslav territory . Ante Pavelić became the ruler of the new state. He joined the Tripartite Pact on June 15, 1941. The state was established primarily for nationalist motives, in response to the pro-Serbian royal Yugoslav government policy. Hundreds of thousands of Serbs were by the Nazis in concentration camps ( Jasenovac and Stara Gradiska ) deported , where most died.
Negotiations with the Soviet Union
The Foreign Office and the German Embassy in Moscow were considering expanding the three-power pact into a “four-power pact” by joining the Soviet Union, with which the German Reich was linked by a friendship treaty . This ten-year alliance followed the line of Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop's Continental Bloc . Like the German-Soviet non-aggression pact of August 1939, it was to contain a secret supplementary agreement. In addition to the division of the spheres of interest, a revision of the Treaty of Montreux in favor of the Red Fleet was planned, so that this would have free access to the British-dominated Mediterranean.
When the Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov made a state visit to Berlin on November 12, 1940, Ribbentrop suggested that the Soviet Union should join the three-power pact. Josef Stalin did not want the Soviet Union to be drawn into the war against Great Britain and in a note dated November 25th set conditions for accession that were unacceptable to Hitler. Hitler did not answer.
Whether the considerations for the four-power pact "a meaningful alternative to a German attack" represented on the Soviet Union or fixed due to Hitler's program , Lebensraum in the East to conquer, just a "sham alternative" and a "tactical diplomatic interlude" represented, is controversial in research . What is certain, however, is that the diplomatic activities to include the Soviet Union in the Tripartite Pact did not lead to a change in the urgency with which the General Staff of the Army and the High Command of the Wehrmacht advanced the plans for Operation Barbarossa , the campaign against the Soviet Union .
See also
Web links
- Three Power Pact (PDF; 448 kB)
Individual evidence
- ^ Richard J. Evans : The Third Reich, Vol. III: War. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Munich 2009, p. 198 ff.
- ↑ Ingeborg Fleischhauer , Diplomatic Resistance against "Operation Barbarossa": The peace efforts of the German Embassy Moscow 1939-1941 . Ullstein, Berlin / Frankfurt am Main 1991, pp. 224–229, here quotation p. 229.
- ^ Wolfgang Michalka , Ribbentrop and German world politics. Foreign policy concepts and decision-making processes in the Third Reich , Fink, Munich 1980, p. 296 f.
- ↑ Ingeborg Fleischhauer , Diplomatic Resistance against "Operation Barbarossa": The peace efforts of the German Embassy Moscow 1939–1941 , Ullstein, Berlin / Frankfurt am Main 1991, pp. 230–248.
- ^ So Sven Allard, Stalin and Hitler. Soviet foreign policy 1930–1941 , Bern and Munich 1974, p. 232.
- ↑ Ingeborg Fleischhauer, Diplomatic Resistance against "Operation Barbarossa": The peace efforts of the German Embassy Moscow 1939-1941 . Ullstein, Berlin, Frankfurt am Main 1991, p. 225.