Page 11

Parent Japanese - German - Italian Collaboration
Date
Language English
Collection Tavenner Papers & IMTFE Official Records
Box Box 14
Folder Japan, Germany, Italy Collaboration and Introduction
Repository University of Virginia Law Library
the world, the first step of which was the creation of a new ordej in East Asia. On 9 June 1937 the accused TO JO, Chief of the Kwantung Arny, informed the General Staff of his plans regarding Russia and China. Military preparations against Soviet Russia, he said, required the destruction of the Nanking Regime which constituted a menace at Japan's back. About one month later, the Japanese army engaged in the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, as shown in an earlier phase. The first KONOYE Cabinet which came into power on 6 June 1937 reached a decision on 11 July 1937 to send a larger army to North China.Germany in a protest to the Japanese Government declared iihat the Anti-Comintern Pact did not have the objective of fighting Bolshevism in the territory of third states? that Japanese radio propoganda designed to represent the war against China as a fight against Communism and to force upon Germany the necessity of taking sides was unwelcome, and that the Pact did not obligate Germany to approve or assist morally the 26Exhibit 672, TP 7,336. In a telegram sent on 9 June 1937 to the General Staff, TOJO, Hideki, Chief of the Kwantung Army Headquarters, stated? "Judging the present situation in China from the point of view of military preparations against Soviet Russia, I am convinced that if our mili¬tary power permits it we should deliver a blow first of all upon the Nanking Regime to get rid of the menace at our back." 27TP 2,455.