Ambitions of Germany and Japan

Autarky: Germany

Lebensraum - a 1936 speech on the "rich forests" of Siberia and "incalculable farmlands" in Ukraine; the 1940 invasion of Norway protected iron shipments from neutral Sweden; the Hossbach Memorandum (1937) was a secret military meeting dictating that autarky needed to go hand in hand with military expansion to support population growth

Autarky: Japan

The 1931 invasion of Manchuria took Fushun, the 'capital of coal', used in the Manchukuo state's Showa Steelworks; Hirohito needed to secure oil, rubber and metals from China in 1937

Social subjugation: Germany

Generalplan Ost - the eradication of the untermensch (Jews, Roma, Sinti) via genocide or extreme labour, plus laws on Jews (e.g. the civil service law of 7 April 1933)

Social subjugation: Japan

The Rape of Nanking - 20-80,000 women raped; subjugation under the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere with invasions of the Dutch East Indies, Burma and the Philippines; the Sook Ching massacre in 1942 killed 25,000-50,000 ethnic Chinese

Restoring political dominance: Germany

Article 2 NSDAP, via Anschluss and the annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938

Restoring political dominance: Japan

Revanchism against Australia's denial of racial equality and its control of German overseas territories (e.g. New Guinea under a Class C mandate), and against the US and China (shown by the 1937 invasion of KMT-controlled China, a US ally)

Asian Monroe Doctrine

Foreign Office spokesman Eiji Amau claimed Japan's special responsibility for peace and order in East Asia, demanding Western powers stop financial and military assistance to China

Militarism: Germany

Remilitarisation by leaving the World Disarmament Conference in October 1933 and the League of Nations (against its Article 8) to gain "land and territory" (Article 3); Article 2 was fulfilled via rearmament and the 1935 establishment of the Luftwaffe; Goring's 1936 slogan: "guns before butter"

Militarism: Japan

The 1938 General Mobilisation Law let the government assign workers to specific industries to boost war production and allocate up to 75% of government spending to military-related industries; the Kokutai no Hongi (1937) textbook taught self-sacrifice and emperor-worship

HOWEVER: Germany's absorption of peoples

Germany had ambitions for reunification and absorption: the Sudetenland; the Saarland where 90% voted for reunion; Anschluss; and the establishment of Grossdeutschland (Article 1 of the NSDAP)

HOWEVER: Japan's ethnic exclusivity

Japan focused solely on its own people - a self-contained ethnic empire (from the Meiji restoration) shown by Yamato nationalism, preventing Koreans living in Japan from gaining citizenship even post-1945; 1939 Ordinance No. 19 required Koreans to have a Japanese last name