Hitler's Skewed Perspective on the Other Axis Powers of WW2 [Did the German Army Agree?]

While Germany made many enemies during the Second World War, it also partnered with a few countries

to form a military coalition known as the Axis Powers. However, Hitler didn’t do this because

he liked these other countries. He merely meant to use them in his fight against the Allies.

In this video, we’ll delve into Germany’s perspective on other Axis nations and rank

them in terms of how much the Nazis respected them as a people and as military allies.

Before forming the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis, German and Japanese relations were rough.

To start off with, German and Japanese relations were strained by the fact they fought against one

another in World War One. Then during the 1920s, the Germans worked on German-Japanese relations,

but they ran into many stumbling blocks along the way. As a result,

the Germans had significant disagreements with the Japanese up until the late 1930s.

The Japanese often did not feel supported by the Germans before World War II, and as Hitler

would claim in his infamous book Mein Kampf, the Germans didn't think much of the Japanese either.

He wrote, "Today we count Japan as a great industrial nation. But all that Japan has,

she has borrowed from the West. If Europe and America suddenly ceased to exist,

the present civilization in Japan might go on for a while. Then the creative spirit would

dry up. The native Japanese spirit would triumph, and Japan would go back to the

dark age from which she was awakened by the first contact with the West."

The main reason the two partnered in World War II was that both Germany and

Japan hated the League of Nations. For Japan, joining forces with Germany meant disbanding

the League and exerting dominance over its Asian neighbors. Hitler did not see Japan’s

ambitions as a threat to his plan to conquer Europe, as Japan’s focus was on the East.

But you might ask why Germany allied with Japan when they wanted a "White Utopian society."

Despite his words in Mein Kampf, Hitler's view on Japan had changed, and evidence shows that

Hitler respected his Asian allies throughout the war, especially Japan's military might and

culture. He even went as far as to call the Japanese "Ehrenarier” (or Honorary

Aryans). But many felt this denomination was for propaganda purposes, especially

since Hitler also called the Hungarians, Finnish, and Chinese people Ehrenarier.

And we might’ve agreed if it wasn’t for what Hitler wrote towards the end of his life: “I have

never regarded the Japanese as being inferior to ourselves. They belong to ancient civilizations,

and I admit freely that their history is superior to our own... I believe the more steadfast the

Japanese remain in their pride of race, the easier I shall find it to get on with them."

Other Nazi leaders were impressed too. Joseph Goebbels, for example,

shared his thoughts on Japan after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941:

"Japan has shown once again the enormous power in a people's national dynamics.

One is deeply moved by the accounts of the heroic deeds of Japan's death-defying naval airmen."

Although German and Japanese relations were strained before the war, there was

a clear shift in perspective as the war went on, and the two worked well together.

The same couldn’t be said for Italy. Before Hitler took power in Germany,

many believed he looked up to Benito Mussolini and that the fascist dictator