German-Japanese-Italian Pact

Germany, Japan, and Italy concluded the Axis (Tripartite) Pact in September 1940, among other things in the hope that it would intimidate the United States by the prospect of a two-front war and thereby discourage it from continuing its move away from neutrality and toward the Allies. Instead, the pact drove the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt even closer to partnership with Winston Churchill's Britain. When Japan ended the last pretense of U.S. neutrality at the Battle of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, prompting a U.S. declaration of war the next day, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini reaffirmed the Axis alliance by declaring war on the United States on December 11 and simultaneously concluding the German-Japanese-Italian Pact, an agreement for the joint prosecution of the war. The brief document stated common war goals, namely victory over Great Britain and the United States, to be followed by the "closest cooperation [among Germany, Japan, and Italy] with a view to establishing a new and just order along the lines of the Tripartite Agreement." Most important, the three Axis partners agreed to make no separate peace with the United States and Great Britain. Italy, of course, did just that on September 8, 1943, and Germany surrendered on May 7–8, 1945. Japan did not capitulate until August 15 of that year, formalizing the surrender on September 2.