HISTORY IGCSE CONTENT - 20TH CENTURY OPTION - THE ROAD TO WW2: MILITARISM AND THE ANTI-COMINTERN PACT. The Anti-Comintern Pact was an agreement between Germany, Italy and Japan, that they would work together to stop the spread of Communism around the globe. This was aimed squarely at the USSR. Germany and Italy had worked well during the Spanish Civil War and had brought about a fascist victory over communism.

1. CONTENT
ROAD TO WAR
HITLER’S THIRD MOVE
ANTI-COMINTERN PACT
1936-1937
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2. CAMBRIDGE IGCSE – ROAD TO WW2 – MR. D
AXIS ALLIANCE
Mussolini was also heavily involved in the Spanish Civil War.
He was convinced that Italy, Germany and Japan had much in common.
In 1936, Germany and Japan signed the Anti-Comintern Pact.
In 1937, Italy signed the pact too.
Anti-Comintern means “Anti-Communist International”.
The aim of the pact was to limit Communist influence around the world
and it was aimed at the Soviet Union.
The new alliance was called the Axis Alliance.

3. CAMBRIDGE IGCSE – ROAD TO WW2 – MR. D
THE TREATIES
The treaties were sought by Adolf Hitler, who at the time was publicly
against Bolshevism and who was interested in Japan’s successes in the
opening war against China.
The Japanese were angered by a Soviet-Chinese nonaggression treaty
of August 1936 and by the subsequent sale of Soviet military aircraft
and munitions to China.
For propaganda purposes, Hitler and Benito Mussolini were able to
present themselves as defenders of Western values against the threat
of Soviet Communism.

4. CAMBRIDGE IGCSE – ROAD TO WW2 – MR. D
JAPAN OUT
On Aug. 23, 1939, Japan, outraged by the German-Soviet
Nonaggression Pact, renounced the Anti-Comintern Pact but later
acceded to the Tripartite Pact (Sept. 27, 1940), which pledged Germany,
Italy, and Japan “to assist one another with all political, economic and
military means” when any one of them was attacked by “a Power at
present not involved in the European War or in the Sino-Japanese
Conflict” (i.e., the Soviet Union or the United States).

5. CAMBRIDGE IGCSE – ROAD TO WW2 – MR. D