ABSTRACT
The year 1936 marks a turning point for both Germany and Japan: the year when both regimes pushed aside their former partners in power and set into motion the process that would plunge the world into war only three years later. The cost of Germany's intervention in Spain was more than 575 million RM. There many reasons for this intervention of Adold Hitler, one of which was the economic motive. By 1938, over 40 percent of Spain's exports were going to Germany. Japan in the late 1930s found itself in much the same position as National Socialist Germany. The preparations for an inevitable war involved the creation of a substantial zone of Japanese control on the Asian continent, and the pursuit of this threatened to embroil the country in war far earlier than policymakers in Tokyo hoped. At the same time, efforts to create a self-sufficient economic bloc had the perverse effect of increasing Japan's dependence on foreign imports.
