ABSTRACT
DECEMBER 1941 was for Japan a favourable but not the most favourable l moment to enter the war. If the resources of the Commonwealth alone were at all times unequal to the waging of a major war in the East and in the West simultaneously, the most desperate period of Britain's struggle for survival in the West reached its climax in the spring of 1941. It was then, with the Atlantic lifeline most dangerously threatened by German U-boats and with the German army still uncommitted in Eastern Europe, that Japanese intervention might have had its most devastating effect. Hitler himself sensed the moment and the greatness of the opportunity that lay open before the members of the Tripartite Pact. On 5 March 1941 he issued his Basic Order No. 24, 'regarding collaboration with Japan'.1 Its contents and the reports of the discussions between Hitler and Ribbentrop on the one hand and the Japanese Ambassador and Foreign Minister, Matsuoka, on his visit to Berlin on the other, afford conclusive evidence that Hitler at that time wanted the Japanese to enter the war at the earliest possible moment.2
