Did Nazi Germany plot with Japan the attacks on Pearl Harbor?

by History1944

In finishing up my Bachelor's, I read Robert H. Jackson's "Report to the President on Atrocities and War Crimes, June 7, 1945." At one point he mentions: "They [Nazi leaders, SS, and Gestapo] did not hesitate to instigate the Japanese to treacherous attack on the United States" (Jackson, found in The Holocaust: A Reader by Simone Gigliotti and Berel Lang).

I was under the assumption that, while they were allies, Germany and Japan had little contact between one another. Did Nazi party leaders actively work with Japan to plan and execute the attacks on Pearl Harbor?

Prufrock451

The German leadership knew absolutely nothing about the attack on Pearl Harbor, as examination of Axis archives after the war made plain.

However, relations between the United States and Japan were visibly worsening throughout 1941, and the basic outline of Japan's strategic dilemma (surrender to US wishes and abandon China, or be economically strangled) was obvious to any informed observer.

The German ambassador to Japan, General Eugen Ott, wrote home in early November that war seemed imminent. Ott was at the center of a slow diplomatic discussion following this note. Ribbentrop told Ott to inform Japan's government that, in the event the two nations fought a common enemy, Germany would not make a separate peace. On November 24, Ott notified Berlin that he'd been asked whether Germany would join a war between Japan and the Allies. On November 28, Ribbentrop informed Japan's ambassador to Germany, Baron Hiroshi Oshima, that Germany would join any war between Japan and the United States.

(Of course, Yamamoto was already under steam by this point.)

Hitler confirmed Ribbentrop's proposal on December 4. He was therefore not entirely surprised when he received word of the attack on Pearl Harbor three days later. Germany and Japan hashed out the specifics of their proposed alliance on December 11, and Hitler then went before the Reichstag to declare war on the United States.

As I noted, Japan made its decision before confirming its alliance with Germany - but Germany definitely offered what assurances it could to bring Japan into the war.