The complete diaries of German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels have only become available to historians in recent years, and major works on German policies before and during the Sino-Japanese conflict had to be written without access to this potentially valuable source. This paper seeks to probe in a preliminary fashion the extent to which the history of German involvement in the Far Eastern crisis will have to be reevaluated in the light of the new materials included in the diaries. In particular, it focuses on Adolf Hitler’s role in policy-making in the year 1937 and describes evidence to suggest that the German dictator may actually have shifted to a more pro-Japanese stance at an earlier date than assumed so far.