in taking over our Intelligence network, that one of our agents in Germany had come upon the trail of secret negotiations between the Japanese military attaché in Berlin, Lieutenant General Hiroshi Oshima, and Baron Joachim von Ribbentrop, then Hitler’s unofficial minister for special foreign relations.
I decided that these negotiations were a matter of such paramount concern to the Soviet government that they required exceptional attention on my part. To watch their progress would be no routine affair. I needed for the task the boldest and best men at our disposal. For this purpose I returned to Moscow to consult headquarters. I came back to Holland armed with all the necessary authority and means to pursue to the bitter end the quest for information on the Oshima-Ribbentrop conversations.
These conversations were carried on outside ordinary diplomatic channels. The Japanese ambassador in Berlin and the German Foreign Office were not involved. Von Ribbentrop, Hitler’s envoy extraordinary, was handling the matter privately with the Japanese general. By the end of 1935, the information in my possession showed beyond a shadow of doubt that the negotiations were progressing toward a definite objective. We knew, of course, that that objective was to checkmate the Soviet Union.
We also knew that the Japanese army had for years been anxious to secure the plans and models of Germany’s special anti-aircraft guns. The Tokyo militarists had shown themselves willing to go to any lengths to obtain from Berlin all the latest technical patents in weapons of warfare. This was the starting point for the German-Japanese negotiations.
Stalin kept in close touch with developments. Apparently Moscow decided to try to spike the negotiations by publicity. Early in January, 1936, reports began to appear in the Western European press that some kind of secret agreement had been concluded between Germany and Japan. On January tenth, Soviet Premier Molotov referred publicly to these reports. Two days later, Berlin and Tokyo denied that there was any substance in the rumors.
The only effect of the publicity was to increase the secrecy of the negotiations and to force the German and Japanese governments to devise some mask for their real treaty.
Throughout 1936, all the world capitals were astir with public and private reports of the German-Japanese deal. Diplomatic circles everywhere buzzed with exciting speculation. Moscow pressed hard for documentary proof of the agreement. My men in Germany were risking their lives, in the face of almost insuperable difficulties. They knew that no expense was too high, no hazard too great.
It was known to us that the Nazi secret service was intercepting, and had in its possession, copies of the coded messages exchanged during the negotiations between General Oshima and Tokyo. Late in July, 1936, I received word that the complete file of this confidential correspondence had at last been secured in photostatic form by our men in Berlin. The channel thus opened would provide us with all future messages from Oshima to his government and back.
The strain of the following days, when I knew that this priceless material was in our hands, but had to await its safe arrival from Germany, was nearly unbearable. No chances could be taken and I had to wait patiently.
On August eighth, word came through that the carrier of the correspondence had crossed the German frontier and was due in Amsterdam. I was in Rotterdam when the message arrived. I got into my automobile, accompanied by an aide, and made a dash for Amsterdam. On the way we met our agent, who was speeding to deliver the material to me. We stopped on the highway.
“Here it is. We’ve got it,” he said, and handed me some rolls of film—the form in which we usually put all our mail.
I went straight to Haarlem, where we had a secret photographic developing room. The Oshima correspondence was in code, but we had in our possession the Japanese code book. I also had, awaiting us in Haarlem, a first-class Japanese-language expert, whom we had scoured Moscow to find. I could not keep Moscow waiting for the arrival of the documents by courier, and I could not send coded messages from Holland. I had one of our men get ready to fly to Paris at a moment’s notice, to send off a long message to Moscow.
I saw, as it was being decoded, that I had before me the entire sheaf of Oshima’s correspondence with Tokyo, reporting step by step all his negotiations with Von Ribbentrop, and also the suggestions conveyed to him by his government. General Oshima reported that his negotiations were being conducted under the personal supervision of Hitler, who frequently conferred with Von Ribbentrop and gave him instructions. His correspondence revealed that the purpose of the negotiations was the conclusion of a secret pact to coordinate all the moves made by Berlin and Tokyo in Western Europe as well as in the Pacific. No reference to the Communist International, and no suggestion of any move against communism, was contained in this correspondence covering more than a year of negotiations.
Under the terms of the secret agreement, Japan and Germany undertook to regulate between themselves all matters relating to the Soviet Union and to China, and to take no action either in Europe or in the Pacific without consulting each other. Berlin also agreed to place its improvements in weapons of war at the disposal of Tokyo and to exchange military missions with Japan.
At five o’clock one afternoon, my courier took off for Paris with my coded message. I returned home and took a rest for several days. From then on, all correspondence between General Oshima and Tokyo flowed regularly through our hands. It revealed finally that a secret pact had been drawn up and initialed by General Oshima and Von Ribbentrop. The pact was so worded as to extend the field of cooperation between Japan and Germany to include interests beyond China and Soviet Russia.
There was but one problem to settle: How to camouflage the secret agreement; Hitler decided to draft the anti-Comintern pact as a device for misleading world opinion.
On November twenty-fifth, in the presence of all the envoys of the foreign powers in Berlin, with the exception of the Soviet Union, the anti-Comintern pact was signed by the official representatives of the governments of Germany and Japan. The pact is a public document consisting of a couple of brief clauses. Behind it lies concealed a secret agreement, the existence of which has never been acknowledged.
Stalin was, of course, in possession of all the proofs of this which I had uncovered. He decided to show Hitler that the Soviet government knew all about it. Foreign Commissar Litvinov was assigned to spring the surprise upon Berlin. On November twenty-eighth addressing an extraordinary session of the Congress of Soviets, Litvinov said:
Well-informed people refuse to believe that in order to draw up the two meager articles which have been published of the German-Japanese agreement, it was necessary to conduct negotiations for fifteen months; that these negotiations should have been entrusted to a Japanese general and a German super-diplomat, and that they should have been conducted in extraordinary secrecy and kept secret even from German and Japanese official diplomacy . . .
As for the German-Japanese agreement which has been published, I would recommend to you not to seek for any meaning in it, since it really has no meaning. It is only a cover for another agreement which was simultaneously discussed and initiated, probably also signed, and which was not published and is not intended for publication.
I assert, realizing the full weight of my words, that it was to the working out of this secret document, in which the word communism is not even mentioned, that fifteen months of negotiations between the Japanese military attaché and the German super-diplomat were devoted . . .
This agreement with Japan will tend to extend any war which breaks out on one continent to at least two, if not more than two, continents.
Needless to say, there was consternation in Berlin.
As for my own share in this affair, Moscow hailed it as a triumph. I was recommended for the Order of Lenin. The recommendation was approved all along the line, but got lost sight of
