[12]: 573  Its activities covered a wide range of operations designed to denounce communism in general and the Soviet Union in particular,[12]: 580  push antisemitic propaganda and garner domestic and international support for Nazi policy.

Mushanokōji on 4 July 1935 in an embassy meeting[a] stated his opinion that it would be unwise for Japan to rush into an alliance with Germany, as he (correctly) interpreted the Anglo-German Naval Agreement as a German attempt to ally the UK.

This included an industrial buildup in Manchukuo, the acquisition of resources from North China via subjugation, conquest of the western Pacific and South East Asia, and preparations for a war against the Soviet Union.

[17]: 16  In response to his initial request to recognize Manchukuo, Dirksen was instructed to avoid "any close relations with Japan which might lay [Germany] open to being suspected of wishing to render assistance against Russia".

[36]: 466–467 For their part, the Japanese political and military establishments were by 1934 also less than certain about the usefulness of the new Hitler government in Germany, which Tokyo assumed would attempt to maintain a peaceful relationship with the Soviet Union and avoid any open alignment with Moscow's enemies.

[13]: 53  Ōshima was a staunch anti-communist and veteran of the Japanese intervention in Siberia, and used his good connections within Germany, among others to Wilhelm Canaris of the Abwehr, to, without authorization from ambassador Mushanokōji, further his pro-German and anti-Soviet agenda within the embassy.

[18]: 312 His positive predispositions towards the NSDAP government made him useful in the anti-Soviet designs of the Imperial Japanese Army, which aimed to envelop the Soviet Union through an alliance with Germany, eventually planning to strike into Siberia to secure its natural resources for Japan (Hokushin-ron).

This initial draft signed off on by Hitler appears to be lost to history, as the Japanese ambassador made some changes to it that were intended, according to Shigenori Tōgō's testimony at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, to make it less 'propagandistic' and more 'business-like'.

Prime Minister Hirota had expressed his personal relief upon hearing the treaty draft's conclusion on 23 October 1936, and compared the achievement of the IJA in its advancement of the Anti-Comintern Pact to the IJN's success in forging the 1902 Anglo-Japanese Alliance.

German state media referred to this provision of endangerment by Comintern disruption when, among other examples, the Völkischer Beobachter recounted various communist activities in Hungary and Manchukuo as the reason for the two countries to join the pact in February 1939.

b) The competent authorities of the two High Contracting States will within the framework of the existing laws take severe measures against those who at home or abroad are engaged directly or indirectly in the service of the Communist International or promote its subversive activities.

The two contracting parties also agreed, in the second article, to have their competent authorities "within the framework of the existing law [...] take stringent measures against those who at home or abroad work on direct or indirect duty" of the Comintern.

[63]: 30  This view was not completely unjustified in the context of the Axis Powers' navies, as the naval high commands of Germany, Italy and Japan mainly aimed their common considerations against the United Kingdom, not the Soviet Union.

In a September 1937 report to the Treasury (after the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War), it was argued that the long-term consequence of a Japanese victory in China would result in other "dissatisfied" powers, such as Germany and Italy, seeking the fulfillment of their objectives in military endeavors of their own.

[51]: 34–36 In 1937, American ambassador to Japan Joseph Grew analyzed the Anti-Comintern Pact's anti-communist rhetoric as a mere banner for "have-not" countries to unite under while in truth aiming primarily against the British Empire's global dominance.

[51]: 50  Eventually, the USS Panay incident of 1937 resulted in the President's attempt to break the Anti-Comintern Pact by appeasing Germany and Italy with the goal of isolating Japan from its allies to hinder its progress in China.

[51]: 62 Cordell Hull noted in his memoirs that "[n]othing could have been more logical and natural than an alliance of Berlin and Tokyo", citing shared values of militarism, conquest and disregard for international treaties as the reason for his conclusion.

Although the attempted Hoare–Laval Pact, designed by its British and French drafters to allow Italy to retain most of its war goals and to maintain the Stresa Front, had failed to gain support, the League of Nations had discredited itself.

In May 1939, Ribbentrop instructed Friedrich-Werner Graf von der Schulenburg to initiate a German-Soviet rapprochement on the basis that the newly forged Pact of Steel marked a turn in Germany's foreign policy, away from anti-Soviet towards anti-British and anti-French diplomacy.

[5]: 49 In the run up to the establishment of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia in the rump territories of Czechoslovakia, Czechoslovak accession into the Anti-Comintern Pact was part of the numerous demands Hitler made on the Czechs as a pretext to justify the invasion after the inevitable non-compliance.

Mussolini, although sometimes of the opinion that neutrality was preferable,[67]: 117–119  felt compelled by personal loyalty,[67]: 120  fear of Hitler's disapproval,[67]: 123–124  as well as the prospect of easy war spoils,[67]: 120  that Italy should stand by Germany's side,[67]: 123–124  especially if an Allied act of appeasement in Poland could result in a swift Italian victory in Yugoslavia.

The German foreign minister argued that if Tokyo and Moscow were to form a military coalition together with Berlin and Rome, Japan would be free to turn its attention to the potential acquisition of European colonies in South East Asia.

Ribbentrop's pro-Japanese diplomacy, which he had pursued in spite of the German foreign ministry's initial favorability towards China since 1934, was now met with the largest diplomatic distance between Germany and Japan since the Nazis' rise to power.

With French Indochina and the Dutch East Indies now effectively defenseless, the Tokyo government now felt enticed to once again diplomatically approach Germany, which it had previously distanced itself from after the German quid pro quo with the USSR.

[67]: 411 The extension protocol was signed on 25 November 1941 and bears the signatures of representatives of the six previous signatories: Ribbentrop (Germany), Ōshima (Japan), Ciano (Italy), Bárdossy (Hungary), Lü Yiwen (Manchukuo), and Suñer (Spain).

[f][70]: 671–672 The reaction to the extension in the German state-controlled press, unlike with the previous protocol, was very cold towards Japan and instead emphasized the sacrifices and successes of the European Axis against the Soviet Union in the German-Soviet War.

[60]: 687 Brazilian President Getúlio Vargas had established the new November 1937 constitution of the Estado Novo under the pretext of communist insurgency, and Brazil was thus considered the prime entry point for the Anti-Comintern Pact in South America.

Though it was ostensibly a limited agreement for exchange of information and consultation concerning Communist subversion, it served to give a tangible basis for the belief that Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were very much alike and linked together.

American historian Paul W. Schroeder, professor emeritus of the University of Illinois, interprets the Anti-Comintern Pact in his 1958 book The Axis Alliance and Japanese-American Relations 1941 as a diplomatic statement by Germany and Japan that had no actual military value and was "hardly dangerous in itself".

[21]: 640–642 On 27 November 1936 Hitler approved what became known as the Anti-Comintern Pact (which Italy joined a year later), under whose main provision – in a secret protocol – neither party would assist the Soviet Union in any way in the event of it attacking either Germany or Japan.