Ultranationalism in German-japanese Relations: 1930-45 from Wenneker to Sasakawa

This important new study focuses on the ultranationalist regimes in Germany and Japan during the 1930s and 1940s and examines in biographical format the roles played by a number of individuals significantly involved in the drive for global hegemony

Employing a considerable range of new source materials and eyewitness testimony on the German side, it highlights, amongst others, the roles of the Nazi Party `enforcer' and Gestapo representative in East Asia, Josef Albert Meisinger, the officer commanding the German naval forces in the Pacific region, Admiral Paul Werner Wenneker, and agent Richard Sorge whose relations with the Japanese Navy in the 1930s were observed and recalled by Engineer-Commander George C. Ross, the UK assistant naval attache in Japan

On the Japanese side, new evidence is employed which examines the influence on domestic events during the era of `Tenno fascism' of the right-wing business and political figure, Sasagawa Ryoichi, as well as the role of the head of Japanese military intelligence in eastern Europe, General Onodera Makoto

John Chapman taught international relations at the universities of Sussex and Ritsumeikan and was the founding editor of Japan Forum. He has specialized in the development of communications intelligence in the twentieth century and its impact on East Asia, particularly those aspects involving Japan, Britain and Germany. He is the compiler of the war diaries of German naval attaches in Japan, The Price of Admiralty (four volumes), and co-editor (with Inaba Chiharu) of Rethinking the Russo-Japanese War, 1904-5. Volume II: The Nichinan Papers, among numerous publications. He is currently Hon.Senior Research Fellow at the Scottish Centre of War Studies, University of Glasgow