Germany–Japan relations Germany–Japan relations The relations between Germany and Japan (, ) were officially established in 1861 with the first ambassadorial visit to Japan from Prussia (which predated the formation of the German Empire in 1866/1870). Japan modernized rapidly after the Meiji Restoration of 1867, often using German models through intense intellectual and cultural exchange. After 1900 Japan aligned itself with Britain, and Germany and Japan were enemies in World War I. Japan declared war on the German Empire in 1914 and seized key German possessions in China and the Pacific. In the 1930s, both countries adopted aggressive militaristic attitudes toward their
War crimes in occupied Poland during World War II with doctors (45%), lawyers (57%), university professors (40%), technicians (30%), clergy (18%) and many journalists. It was not only Polish citizens who died at the hands of the occupying powers but many others. Tadeusz Piotrowski estimates that two million people belonging to fifty different nationalities from 29 countries were exterminated by the Germans in occupied Poland. This includes one million foreign Jews transported from across Europe to die in the Nazi extermination camps on Polish soil, along with 784,000 Soviet POWs and 22,000 Italian POWs. War crimes in occupied Poland during World War II It's estimated that over six million