How did the Japanese & Germans plan on getting along? (WWII)

by MtDewey

So lets say the German expansion in WWII was not stopped in Europe and ended up going to Asia eventually meeting with the Japanese front that was expanding Westward. Wouldn't the Japanese not meet what the Germans considered to be ideal/other way around?

I could have all of this wrong and they could have just both been enemies of the Allies, and not exactly allies themselves. Thanks ahead of time for the help!

LBo87

Hey, there! How the Germans and the Japanese got along with each other is actually a pretty frequent question, and I'm surprised that it didn't find its way into our Popular Questions section yet. Some of the answers you're looking for you might be able to find under Axis post war-plans.

I've picked some past threads you might find interesting: About the famous demarcation line splitting Eurasia up between Germany and Japan, and two threads (1 and [2] (http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/15yh9d/how_did_nazi_germany_justify_their_alliance_with/)) about how Japanese, Italians (and many of the other "non-Aryan" allies of Germany) fit into the racist ideology of the National Socialists.

The tl;dr here is basically that racism is not a consistently logical theory but an inherently irrational ideology that changes according to the political needs of racists. That goes as well for other aspects of National Socialism that were bent given the circumstances.

The alliance of Germany and Japan was one of convenience and alignment of interests. (Before the late 1930s Germany was actually closer to China than to Japan, a former enemy in WWI.) If the partnership would have ceased to be beneficial at some future point, it would have been scrapped most likely -- but that's speculation, I don't want to venture out further! (Compare for example Germany breaking her non-aggression pact with the USSR in 1941.)