recall that KIBBMTROP spent his Christmas Holidays at his villa and my recollection is that I called upon him around the New Year, and I recall passing on the general story of this meeting to General Staff Head¬quarters in Tokyo. In the same year in June I received a communication from the Division concerned, SHONINBU, of the General Staff Headquarters, informing me that only in so far as the Division was concerned and not speaking for the General Staff as a whole they approved the furtherance of German-Japanese cooperation. Although I do not remember the details of this communication, I remember that the main point was that in this cooperative movement the thing to be kept uppermost in mind should be an agreement to act in accord in dealing with Soviet Russia. At the beginning of July sometime RIBBENTROP was preparing to go to Sonnenburg again for the summer and before he left I saw him at his request and we talked over various matters. At this time without referring to the matter of the communication from Japan - which had come by courier - I asked him what he thought of an agree¬ment of some sort promising to consult with each other before any action was taken in case of an attack by the U.S.S.R. RIBBENTROP asked me to let him have time to think it over - and we parted for the moment. As the next step in these talks I recall that a few days later RIBBENTROP returned from Sonnenburg for the express purpose