January 1939 alliance assumptions

In a January 1939 Tsingtao war, would Germany and Italy seek moral superiority because of a close relationship with Japan?

Modern diplomatic language does not map cleanly onto the 1920s and 1930s, and the later Axis relationship cannot be projected back into January 1939.

The answer starts from the diplomatic conditions of January 1939. Claims of moral superiority carried a different place in interwar diplomacy than they do in modern political argument. Japan, Germany, and Italy had not yet formed the close wartime relationship that later makes their alignment seem inevitable. A sound counterfactual therefore has to begin with contemporary interests and relationships instead of working backward from the later Axis coalition.