Hello and welcome to the History of Japan podcast. Episode 67.

An Unnatural Intimacy, Part 5.

On June 22nd, 1941, the game of World War II changed completely.

Hitler, for reasons that have been debated pretty much from the moment itself, abandoned his previous plan for an invasion of Great Britain,

and instead unleashed his armies on the Soviet Union.

Experienced and well-organized German units blew through the inadequate Soviet defenses.

Early in the war, some Western observers were predicting the Soviet Union could collapse within a few weeks.

In Tokyo, the invasion of the Soviet Union created a firestorm.

The previous diplomatic plans of Foreign Minister Matsuooka Yosek to create a four-power alliance

of states opposed to the current international system,

composed of Germany, Japan, Italy, and the Soviet Union, were now dead in the water.

Even worse, Japan's new German allies, whom Matsuoka had touted as the solution to pressure

from the United States, hadn't even considered it worthwhile to tell the Japanese

what they were planning. The Japanese got a few hours advance notice. This little slight,

by the way, would be remembered during the planning for Pearl Harbor. Matsuoka himself did not

even miss a beat. Overnight, he went from advocating working with the Soviet Union

to advocating an invasion of the Soviet Union in support of Germany.

Some army leaders backed him, stuck in the mentality that Russia was and always would be

Japan's ultimate enemy.

However, most of the leadership was furious.

Had not the whole point of the German-Japanese

alliance been to avoid more wars in order to buy time to finish the war in China? Of course,

...