ON THIS DAY

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May 22, 1939

Hitler and Mussolini sign the "Pact of Steel"

Mussolini and Hitler

The Pact of Steel, formally known as the Pact of Friendship and Alliance between Germany and Italy, was a military and political alliance between Germany and Italy, signed on May 22, 1939.

The pact was initially drafted as a tripartite military alliance between Japan, Italy and Germany. While Japan wanted the focus of the pact to be aimed at the Soviet Union, Italy and Germany wanted the focus of it to be aimed at the British Empire and France. Due to that disagreement, the pact was signed without Japan and, as a result, it became an agreement which only existed between Italy and Germany.

Together with the Anti-Comintern Pact and the Tripartite Pact, the Pact of Steel was one of the three agreements forming the main basis of the Axis alliance, the military coalition which initiated World War 11.

BTW:

The term "axis" was first applied to the Italo-German relationship by the Italian prime minister Benito Mussolini in September 1923, when he wrote in the preface to Roberto Suster's La Germania Repubblicana that "there is no doubt that in this moment the axis of European history passes through Berlin".

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