(A.N. Sorry I didn't update yesterday! Blame my Physics teacher for giving us a test AND homework due for the same day... :P Anyway, I'm going to have the chapter about the British-American Non-Intercourse Act up by tomorrow. These chapters will probably end up deleted from here and put into their own fic, but for the time being...)
The Effects of WW1 on Postwar Germany and the Tripartite Pact
Standard Disclaimers Apply

So, what's with Germany and his cuckoo clocks? Well, the First World War ended with the Treaty of Versailles. All the Allied nations were there (except America, who was busy with the League of Nations). The absence of America allowed England and France do what they really wanted to do, which was to punish Germany. Industrial output had fallen by over 40% between 1914 and 1918. 35% of all trade was on the Black Market and England and France didn't help much. Basically what they said was: any type of military industry-stopping that; any type of military expansion-stopping that; unification with any other German-speaking peoples-doesn't need to happen; no need for any kind of national self-determination; and by the way, that war was all your fault and you have to pay us back. Not much, just somewhere around 132 billion marks (about 442 bil. US dollars or 284 bil. English pounds today). So not too bad, right? Wrong. Germany had just finished fighting (and losing) a major war, and now they have quite a bit of debt to pay back. Are you surprised that they went into a bit of a depression? This depression turned into hyperinflation when they decided to make more money to solve their problems without having any kind of industry to back that up. People would literally go from their jobs to the market with a wheelbarrow full of money but would have to run as fast as they could because their money was actively devaluing as they ran. And then Adolf Hitler came to power. So to sum up, they were financially f*ked by the end of the war, got the thing they did best taken away, and before you know it you've already been to Bad and Worse is five miles down the road.
End the intermission! It's time for World War 2!
In the anime (episode 4, 0:59-1:02), Japan and Germany sign a document at a heated kotatsu table while Italy sleeps with an orange on his head. It wasn't that cheerful and cute, unfortunately. The document was called the Tripartite Pact, the Tripartite Treaty, the Axis Pact, or the Three-Way Pact (seriously!). It was signed on September 27th, 1940 by representatives of Nazi Germany (Adolf Hitler), Fascist Italy (foreign minister Galeazzo Ciano), and Imperial Japan (Japanese ambassador to Germany Saburo Kurusu) in the hope that it would discourage America (neutral at the time) from coming into World War 2. Instead of making the US think twice after Pearl Harbor (Dec. 7, 1941-Japan bombed the American port on one of the Hawaiian islands) they just declared war on all three countries. Nice going, Axis. Of course, they still beat the crap out of Europe for about half of the war, but (as we know) the Allies pulled out in the end. As Eddie Izzard puts it, "We came in first in the Second World War, but we were financially fucked by the end of it. 'Cause there was a period of time when it was just us (England, France, China, Canada, and Russia) and the Nazis; and they'd been making weapons for ages. They had a head start and we were saying 'Get the tanks out! Get the-we haven't got any tanks! Get that ice cream out there! Get it out! Kill! All right-oh, fuck it. Throw everything! Just throw anything! Fuck off, you bastards! Pots and Pans! Get the pots-just throw the pots and pans at them!' "

(A.N. How eloquent :D I love Eddie Izzard...)