October 25, 1936

Italo-German protocol of 23 October 1936

Germany and Italy sign the secret nine-point protocol that precedes the Rome–Berlin Axis

The document that lent its name to a vast wartime coalition was confidential, only nine points long, and signed two days before the date the listing gives.

23 October, not the 25th

The protocol carries its own date, and it is 23 October 1936 — the listing's 25 October is wrong. German foreign minister Konstantin von Neurath and his Italian counterpart Galeazzo Ciano signed it in Berlin after two days of talks.

It was Ciano's first foreign trip since taking the office. Hitler met him at Berchtesgaden after the protocol was concluded.

Nine points of coordinated policy

The two governments agreed to coordinate policy on a proposed Western Pact, the League of Nations, communist propaganda, Austria, Spain, international economic conferences, colonies, raw materials, the Danube region and occupied Ethiopia.

On Spain, they agreed to recognize the Nationalist government de facto as soon as possible and to coordinate any later de jure recognition.

One provision traded German recognition of Italy's annexation of Ethiopia for an economic arrangement giving German business access to the occupied colony.

Where the word 'axis' actually came from

Nothing called the Axis powers was created that night. The protocol imposed no mutual military-defense obligation, and scholars stress it was not a military alliance.

Mussolini supplied the metaphor nine days later, on 1 November in Milan, presenting an axis around which willing states could collaborate. The formal German-Italian alliance waited for the Pact of Steel in 1939, and the three-power grouping for the Tripartite Pact in 1940.

A separate German-Japanese Anti-Comintern agreement was initialled in Berlin the same day and signed on 25 November — an easy source of the mistaken claim that a three-power Axis already existed.

Sources

Researched 24 Aug 2026 5 sources not yet audited Date corrected

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet and rewritten from that sheet. This article has not yet had an independent model audit. How the pipeline works →

Date corrected. The research places this at 1936-10-23.

What the sources leave uncertain

The listed date, 25 October, is wrong. The protocol itself is dated and was signed on 23 October 1936.
“Creation of the Axis” is an interpretive shorthand. Scholars emphasize that the protocol was not a military alliance; the Pact of Steel formalized the German-Italian alliance in 1939, and the Tripartite Pact brought Germany, Italy and Japan together in 1940.