Drang nach Osten
The Soviet Union viewed the 1933 accession of fervently anti-Communist Hitler's government to power in Germany with great alarm from the onset, especially since Hitler proclaimed the Drang nach Osten as one of the major objectives in his vision of the German strategy of Lebensraum. The Soviets supported the republicans of Spain who struggled against fascist German and Italian troops in the Spanish Civil War. In 1938–1939, immediately prior to WWII, the Soviet Union successfully fought against Imperial Japan in the Soviet–Japanese border conflicts in the Russian Far East, which led to Soviet-Japanese neutrality and the tense border peace that lasted until August 1945.