In Italian and German propaganda, the 'axis' was celebrated as the joining of forces between two long suppressed but now re-emerging empires, with shared histories and superior cultures, as well as common foes who sought to prevent them from assuming their rightful place among the world's great powers. Against the background of continuing friction and half-hearted coordination between the three major Axis powers, Germany, Italy and Japan, this chapter discusses what it was that actually held the 'axis' together. All three regimes shared a common belief in the superiority of some kind of authoritarianism over liberal democracy and the desire to create new orders, both at home and abroad, notably through an expansionist foreign policy that would revise the Paris Peace system established in 1919. In all three countries between the later 1930s and 1945, 'empire-building' played a significant role, either as a source of radicalization (as in Japan) or the result of it (as in Germany and Italy).