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The Axis was a global alliance, and as such it was supposed to be part of a global history of the twentieth century. But after the Second World War ended, historiography never saw it that way. A characteristic of the literature about the German-Japanese-Italian relationship during the 1930s and early 1940s is its consistently negative assessment of the quality of this alliance. What we have been presented with over the years is a history full of failures, animosities, and treason. What we have forgotten is that it was the combination, collusion, and coordination of the three powers that shattered the world and brought down its existing order. What we are thereby left with is a history of the Second World War in which the world has been left out.
Scholarship has approached the Axis by means of bi-national analyses, mainly by examining the history of German-Italian or German-Japanese relationships, whereas the Japanese-Italian connection has hardly been studied.1To date, not one monograph has been published that discusses the alliance from the perspective of all three powers involved. But the Axis was a trilateral liaison, and it was this 'trinity' from which the alliance derived its strength as well as its global scope. Furthermore, the bi-national approaches to the history of the Axis cause a second bias: the alliance between Tokyo, Berlin, and Rome has primarily been interpreted as an alliance between nation-states. In contrast, this article will argue that the strength and globality of the Axis becomes comprehensible if we understand it first and foremost as an alliance between empires.
By discussing the interwar years from the viewpoint of trans-imperial cooperation and competition, we discover an imperial nexus, which conjoined and strengthened the Axis. This nexus is evident in an episode that took place on 18 August 1935 in Germany: that evening, the autobahn seemed 'majestic', if also deserted, to the elite of the Third Reich who found themselves on a 'drive through the night'.2Following two days full of meetings and an inspection in Nuremberg and Munich, they were indeed exhausted but happy. Everything at home was in order. Enamoured with visions of grandeur, they were now ready to direct their attention outwards, where it was becoming apparent that a very...