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The Vanished Golden Submarine’s Final Journey and Fate

Khalid Elhassan December 8, 2024 14 min

I-52 - Underwater wreckage of the Golden Submarine — Underwater wreckage of the Golden Submarine. National Geographic

19. The Conundrum of Cooperation

The German and Japanese empires in 1942. Imgur

Axis powers Germany and Japan, while formally allies in WWII, were more like co-belligerents who happened to be fighting separate wars against some of the same opponents at the same time. Vast distances separated the European and the Asia-Pacific theaters of operation, and enemy navies dominated the sea lanes between the Germans and Japanese. Those factors made significant coordination, such as that between the Western Allies and the USSR, let alone that between the US and Britain, impractical. However, there was still some room for cooperation.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.