Anti-Comintern pact

Anti-Comintern pact, an agreement between Germany and Japan, signed in November 1936, to exchange information on the activities of Soviet-backed international communist parties (see Comintern). Hitler wanted a stronger anti-Soviet commitment from Japan, which was traditionally opposed to Russian expansion in Asia. But Japan had no desire to be drawn into a European war and was only encouraged to sign after the USSR had made a treaty of mutual assistance with Outer Mongolia the previous April which Japan saw as threatening its interests. A secret protocol pledged the signatories to neutrality if one of them was at war with the USSR, but the pact was not a military alliance and the protocol did not apply to Italy when it joined in November 1937—by which time the pact appeared more anti-British than anti-Soviet. Two years later Hungary, Manchukuo, and Spain joined, and in November 1941 Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Romania, Wang Ching-wei's government in Nanking (see China, 3(b)), and Slovakia also signed. See also diplomacy.