12 Feb. 1946 to renounce the Anti-Comintern Pact. Do you deny that? A. That is entirely untrue. What I heard from Ribbentrop later was that this treaty was signed primarily because Italy wished it, and that the plans for the Three Power Pact remained exactly the same as previously. Q. All right, General, let us pick up your story at the point where you left off yesterday. A. I have already spoken to you today about the telephone conversation with Ribbentrop in which he told me of the Non-Aggression Pact. I was intending to speak to you of this in any case. I was very hurt and also felt bad about the way in which it had come about and immediately sent a dispatch to Japan about the matter. So, actually, not only did negotiations regarding the Tripartite Pact cease with the signing of the Non-Aggression Pact by Germany, but actually it broke up the Anti-Comintern Pact also. This, of course, also includes the secret pact which, for all practical reasons, was as dead as the other. Naturally, later when the Tripartite Pact was actually consummated it follows that the Anti-Comintern Pact was resurrected also. One point - there was a provision within the Anti- Comintern Pact, which spoke of a joint commission being set up, but this was also never actually put into effect and I believe personally that Germany wished to have provisions of this sort in order to make a good front and nothing else. I heard later from Luther, an Under-Secretary in the German Foreign Office, that Ribbentrop had great difficulty in consummating the Non-Aggression Pact when the Anti-Comintern Pact was still in effect. Now, in regard to your statement of the other day that the Anti-Comintern Pact helped Germany to rearm - I might say that during the China Incident 1 Germany had been sending a good deal of arms to China, not to mention military advisors. After the signing of the Anti-Comintern Pact we requested Germany to stop sending arms, but this was a period of economic depression in Germany and it was a means for her to get rid of her old arms, so that a stop was not immediately put to this trade. It would seem that the Anti-Comintern Pact was not a popular pact in Germany among a certain group. I particularly wish to ask that you be very careful in your analysis of this pact (the Tripartite Pact) for the following reasons: (1) the negotiations leading up to the pact were going on for a period of about one year, and (2) they were terminated before discussions of small details had come about. For this reason many wild stories and rumors regarding it were current - in other words, people would make surmises without having anything to base their facts upon. I do not think there was any pact that had quite so much talk connected with it as this one. I have tried to tell you as accurately and as honestly as is within my power and recollection of the events relative to the Tripartite Pact, from my standpoint as Ambassador in Germany. However, I do not know of some of the events that might have transpired in Japan, so I suggest that you examine that side of it carefully. I would like to state here that if you wish to question me upon details I will try and dig back into my memory and give you the facts as I know them. Further, if there are any documents upon which you wish to question me I shall do all I can to clear up any matters. Q. General, it was my thought that if you continue with the recital of you story of this Tripartite Pact with as little interruption from me as possible it would be helpful. It is my purpose when we are concluded hearing your story to ask you questions about parts not definitely clear to me. I still think it would be helpful if you would continue on with the story. As a matter of fact, we have now reached the stage where the first series of negotiations ended. The Tripartite Pact in your story has not yet come into existence. 1 Invasion of China 62