John Rabe - The Good German of Nanking

[Harley Quinn]

This is one of those stories guaranteed to upset most Japanese folk, but the tale will be told...

John Rabe was pretty much like any middle class German of his time. Reasonably educated and a card carrying Nazi, working for the Siemens corp. He'd worked in Africa for some time, and then moved to Nanking in 1908, joining Siemens in 1910

An unremarkable career for an unremarkable German... until the Japanese came.

There is little point in going over the horrors perpetrated by the advancing Japanese army. Sufficed to say, they were brutally efficient and efficiently brutal. To call it the Rape of Nanking is not to overstate what was wrought.

And for an unremarkable German, enough was enough. Under cover of his Nazi membership, he organised the International Committee, a group of foreign nationals who, between them forged the Nanking Safety Zone, utilising the Siemens' Factory grounds and parts of available space in Embassies.

After November 22nd 1937 it was a matter of trying to prevent the Japanese over running them... Armed with only his Nazi Arm band, he often physically intervened to get people out of danger. His appeals to the Japanese Government fell on deaf ears, as did his efforts to get the German Government to intervene. Realising he was on his own, he, and his small team of missionaries, volunteers and just people in the wrong place at the right time, managed to save 250,000 (two hundred amd fifty thousand) people. It was around this time he was hailed by the people of Nanking as a living Buddha.

Embarrassed by his actions, Siemens withdrew him from China in 1938. He showed films and photographs of Japanese atrocities in lecture presentations in Berlin and wrote to Hitler to use his influence to persuade the Japanese to stop any more inhumane violence. Instead, Rabe was detained and interrogated by the Gestapo and his letter to Hitler never sent. Due to the intervention of Siemens AG, he was released. He was allowed to keep evidence of the massacre, excluding the film, but was not allowed to lecture or write on the subject. Rabe would continue working for Siemens, which posted him briefly to the safety of Afghanistan. Until 1945 Rabe worked in the Berlin headquarters of the company.

After the war, Rabe was denounced as a Nazi and was reduced to selling his collection of oriental statuary for food, since no one would employ him. At one point he and his family were partly supported by the monthly food and money parcels sent by the Chinese government for his actions during the Nanking Massacre.

On 5 January 1950, Rabe died of a stroke, probably brought on by the privations suffered after 1945. In 1997 his tombstone was moved from Berlin to Nanjing where it received a place of honour at the massacre memorial site.

John Rabe November 23, 1882 – January 5, 1950
The Nazi Living Buddha

 

[Flitcraft]

Thank you for posting that item!

 

[J. M. Stovall]

Really great story, it's one of the reasons I love this place!

 

[Harley Quinn]

You're very welcome... I wish I had the narrative skills to do that sort of tale justice...[huh]

 

[Twitch]

Found aout about this fellow's role in history when I was researching a 3 part article titled "Getting Away with Murder" which covered the Japanese Army's perversions in Asia. Another hero of the day was John McGee who filmed some of the, documentation, let us call it.

From Part 1-

"Unlikely heroes arise at unlikely times. First there was the Episcopal Reverend John McGee who shot many of the above-described atrocities on 16 mm film. He was in charge of the so-called Nanking International Safety Zone created when Japanese Army captured the city. It was the sole proof of the dastardly crimes.

Even the Germans couldn’t stomach the Japanese perversion. Next angered by the Japanese atrocities was German diplomat George Rosen who sent a copy of Magee's film to Berlin. He also included a long report which claimed that the entire Japanese Army was a "Violent Killing Machine". He requested that the film be shown to Hitler.

In later times when the film couldn’t be located the Japanese countered with the logic that since there was no proof, it never occurred. But by the late 1990s Japanese veterans were coming forth to admit and describe their acts in chilling detail.

When the German Archives in Botsdam were opened in 1990 after the Berlin Wall came down, the Rosen report surfaced, but the film's whereabouts were still unknown. After a long search of the archives four rolls of the film and the diaries came to the light of day. Of course the four rolls captured just a few total minutes of the perversion and evil that unfolded in Nanking for two solid months.

John Rabe was the chairman of that 2.5 square mile International Safety Zone. He recorded the Japanese atrocities in his 2,117 page Diary of War. Like Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist who saved so many Jews, Mr. Rabe and few other western foreigners risked their lives to help save 250,000 Chinese refugees from being killed.

But a different fate of disarmed Chinese soldiers awaited them and led Rabe to regret his persuasion of them to lay down their arms and go to the Safety Zone. He figured they’d be taken prisoner. But “every one of these disarmed troops, and thousands more who later sought refuge in the safety zone, were singled out and immediately taken to be executed. Thousands and thousands were executed by machine gun fire or hand grenades.”

As the leader of local Chinese Nazi Party and Safety Zone Chairman in Nanking, he appealed in a letter to Hitler about the Japanese War Crimes and asked Hitler to persuade Japan to stop the atrocities. His granddaughter from Berlin, Ursula Reinhardt, showed the 8 volumes of diary the very first time to the public in New York on December 12, 1996. They have never been disputed as other than authentic."

 

[dhermann1]

It was because of things like this that the United States started embargoing strategic materials being sent to Japan. It wasn't just Roosevelt being an imperialist. There was a chess game going on between the US and Japan that led up to the war. But Japanese culpability must be recognized.

 

[kampkatz]

Thanks for the history lesson. There are numerous stories of WW2 atrocities that haven't been exposed yet. The Rape of Nanking, sadly was not an anomaly.

 

[Harley Quinn]

From my reading... if it involved the Japanese or the Church of Rome, you'll never get to the bottom of it.

 

[reetpleat]

It was because of things like this that the United States started embargoing strategic materials being sent to Japan. It wasn't just Roosevelt being an imperialist. There was a chess game going on between the US and Japan that led up to the war. But Japanese culpability must be recognized.

That may be true, but I will not take it as a given. The US did not take much action over the German Holocaust, and many other such things. I am not easily convinced that they were embargoing the japanese due to this. I would love to think they were. If there is any evidence to that effect, I would be thrilled to hear it.

 

[reetpleat]

This is one of those stories guaranteed to upset most Japanese folk, but the tale will be told...

John Rabe was pretty much like any middle class German of his time. Reasonably educated and a card carrying Nazi, working for the Siemens corp. He'd worked in Africa for some time, and then moved to Nanking in 1908, joining Siemens in 1910

An unremarkable career for an unremarkable German... until the Japanese came.

There is little point in going over the horrors perpetrated by the advancing Japanese army. Sufficed to say, they were brutally efficient and efficiently brutal. To call it the Rape of Nanking is not to overstate what was wrought.

And for an unremarkable German, enough was enough. Under cover of his Nazi membership, he organised the International Committee, a group of foreign nationals who, between them forged the Nanking Safety Zone, utilising the Siemens' Factory grounds and parts of available space in Embassies.

After November 22nd 1937 it was a matter of trying to prevent the Japanese over running them... Armed with only his Nazi Arm band, he often physically intervened to get people out of danger. His appeals to the Japanese Government fell on deaf ears, as did his efforts to get the German Government to intervene. Realising he was on his own, he, and his small team of missionaries, volunteers and just people in the wrong place at the right time, managed to save 250,000 (two hundred amd fifty thousand) people. It was around this time he was hailed by the people of Nanking as a living Buddha.

Embarrassed by his actions, Siemens withdrew him from China in 1938. He showed films and photographs of Japanese atrocities in lecture presentations in Berlin and wrote to Hitler to use his influence to persuade the Japanese to stop any more inhumane violence. Instead, Rabe was detained and interrogated by the Gestapo and his letter to Hitler never sent. Due to the intervention of Siemens AG, he was released. He was allowed to keep evidence of the massacre, excluding the film, but was not allowed to lecture or write on the subject. Rabe would continue working for Siemens, which posted him briefly to the safety of Afghanistan. Until 1945 Rabe worked in the Berlin headquarters of the company.

After the war, Rabe was denounced as a Nazi and was reduced to selling his collection of oriental statuary for food, since no one would employ him. At one point he and his family were partly supported by the monthly food and money parcels sent by the Chinese government for his actions during the Nanking Massacre.

On 5 January 1950, Rabe died of a stroke, probably brought on by the privations suffered after 1945. In 1997 his tombstone was moved from Berlin to Nanjing where it received a place of honour at the massacre memorial site.

John Rabe November 23, 1882 – January 5, 1950
The Nazi Living Buddha

I am always thrilled to hear of stories of people that took great risk to do the right thing. Ironically, wasn't there a Japanese diplomat that was writing visas for Jewish people to get out of Germany. It is a well known story, but I can't recall the details.

 

[dhermann1]

That may be true, but I will not take it as a given. The US did not take much action over the German Holocaust, and many other such things. I am not easily convinced that they were embargoing the japanese due to this. I would love to think they were. If there is any evidence to that effect, I would be thrilled to hear it.

Good point. Several lifetimes worth of investigation to be done there.

 

[adamjaskie]

I have here a letter written by my great grandfather, Miner Searle Bates, to the Japanese Embassy. He was a missionary in Nanking at the time, teaching at the University of Nanking, and stayed in Nanking until 1941. He wrote a number of similar letters, describing the atrocities to the Japanese Embassy in an attempt to get them to send military police to try to control the soldiers. For a time, he was sending these letters pretty much every day.

(Please excuse any typos; I only have a hard copy, and I'm typing this in...)

Misery and terror continues everywhere because of the violence and robbery of the soldiers. More than 17,000 poor persons, many of them women and children, are now in our buildings hoping for safety. They are still crowding in, because conditions elsewhere are worse than here. Yet I must give you the record of the past twenty-four hours in this relatively good position.

(1) University Middle School, Kan Ho Yen. One frightened child killed by a bayonet; another critically wounded and about to die. Eight women raped. Several of our own staff, who are trying to feed and care for these wretched people, were struck by soldiers for no reason whatever. Soldiers climb over the walls many times day and night. Many persons could not sleep for three days, and there is hysterical fear. If this fear and despair result in resistance against the attack of soldiers upon women, there will be disastrous slaughter for which your authorities will be responsible. American flag scornfully torn down by soldiers.
(2) Sericulture Building, Chin Ying Chieh. Two women raped.
(3) Agricultural Implements Shop, 11 Hu Chia Ts'ai Yuen, two women raped.
(4) Faculty residence, 11 Hankow Road, inhabited by our own staff. Two women raped.
(5) Faculty residence, 23 Hankow Road, inhabited by American member of our staff. One woman raped.
(6)Agricultural Economics Department (Hsiao T'ao Yuan). This place has received terrible treatment so many times that all women have fled. This morning while visiting there, I was approached by six soldiers, one of whom repeatedly pointed a pistol at me with his finger on the trigger, although I did nothing except ask a courteous question as to whether he found any difficulty there.

These plain facts do not tell the misery of ordinary people visited as many as ten times in one day and six times in one night by wandering groups of soldiers looking for women and loot. They do indicate the urgent need for control at once.

Certain of your representatives declared that there would be military police at the gates of several of these buildings last night (as at certain other points where large bodies of refugees are gathered). But not one guard was seen. Since soldiers are everywhere climbing over walls, a few guards will not do much good, anyhow, unless there is a genuine restoration of general discipline.

The presence of the Akiyama Department Headquarters in the residence formerly belonging to Ho Yin-ni'in, constitutes a special peril to this neighborhood until your soldiers are controlled. It could be made a means of security if the generals so desired.

Here and all through the city, people are becoming desperate with hunger, since soldiers have taken their food and money; also many are cold and sick because soldiers have taken their clothing and bedding. How do the Japanese authorities plan to deal with this problem?

It is said on every street with tears and distress that where the Japanese Army is, no person and no house can be safe. Surely this is not what the statesmen of Japan wish to do, and all residents of Nanking expect better things from Japan.

I believe that if you have an opportunity, it would be well for one of you to go with me through some of the places where this terror and suffering continues, so close to your own walls. The writing of this letter has been interrupted in order to deal with sevenn soldiers engaged in their usual business called "inspection", which means looking for women whom they will return to seize at night.

I slept in these buildings last night, and will continue to do so in the hope of giving a little aid to helpless women and children. Other foreign friends and myself in doing such humanitarian work have repeatedly been threatened by your soldiers. If in the course of these efforts we are killed or wounded by drunken and disorderly soldiers, the responsibility will be entirely clear.

This letter is written in a courteous and friendly spirit, but it reflects something of the unhappy despair in which we have lived since the Japanese Army entered the city five days ago. Immediate remedy is greatly needed.

 

[Harley Quinn]

Good point. Several lifetimes worth of investigation to be done there.

This is an interesting view of Roosevelt and WW2... not saying I subscribe to its ideas, but I confess, it does make some sense...

 

[Harley Quinn]

I am always thrilled to hear of stories of people that took great risk to do the right thing. Ironically, wasn't there a Japanese diplomat that was writing visas for Jewish people to get out of Germany. It is a well known story, but I can't recall the details.

I know there was George Foley, the man who came up with Operation Double Cross who risked his life to write passports to England.

Not heard of a Japanese one, and I do collect stories about people who shake my faith in the nature of my fellow man...

 

[Harley Quinn]

God save Wiki!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiune_Sugihara

 

[Twitch]

Reetpleat- right the Japanese were not embargoed because of Nanking but you can't say that the US didn't take much action over the Holocaust at least in the latter stages of the war. Franky without being on the Continent there was nothing the Americans could directly do to any camp facility. We can see how fast they moved once off the D-Day beaches in June 1944.

I will say that throughout the war American newspapers published many articles of violence against Jewish peoples going on in Europe. I can't say that there was any direct action taken concerning any story other than an impetus to crush the Reich's ability to wage war and get to these places as soon as logistically feasible.

We know how Eisenhower had the cameras document the camps becasue he said, "someday someone will say this never happened." He also forced nearby German townspeople to move and bury the bodies so they would never forget either even though they said they knew nothing about the camps adjacent to their towns.

Adamjaskie- thanks for going to the effort to reproduce that document. See these are the kind of things that reinforce the defense of those that say Nanking never took place too, or attempt to play it down in magnitude.

When they used earlier official census records compared to corpse disposal figures there was no lying about it.

What is most disturbing about Nanking is not the fact that those records confirm 369,000 dead. The pure evil is that this was never able to be called a battle; it was a massacre. While atomic destruction ultimately extinguished many lives in an instant, the Nanking debachery went on for weeks! And the fact that it was a depravity perpetrated at a personal level makes it all the more sickening.

The decadence against human flesh that continued day after day is unspeakable. Universal rape, slow death killing games, the use of babies as objects similar to balls in sports is all we can dare describe without being sickened. And like some ardent Nazis the surviving Japanese participants descrcibe their despicable acts rationalizing the perverted nature of them as they relive them with smiling faces and punctuating their tales with that little "ha-ha" ending!!

The fact that almost no one I have ever discussed WW II with has the knowledge of the genocide on the Asian continent. It is all the Nazis and the Holocaust with bands playing and speeches being read. But the sinister deed of the same era was the failure to expose the perversions accomplished by the Japanese Imperial Army. To this day its impact has been minimized.

I specify the Army because the Air Force and Navy for the most part conducted themselves with honor in combat situations. And specifically it was the Manchurian contingent of the Imperial Army that was the most evil. While their Pacific island counterparts fought to the last man the men turned loose on China were perpetrating the most heinous acts imaginable.

And when all the stories of POW abuse are read it comes back to the Army again who tortured and starved them.

Being an island nation it was natural that the finest descendents of the samaurai class would participate in the Navy career-wise. A far greater segment of the Army was made of of ignorant peasants.

And while all the rhetoric about embargoes or tension leading up to Pearl Harbor in 1941 is fine we must put in perspective that the Japanese invaded Asia in 1932!! They were immersed in their genocidal perversion for 9 years before the US fired a shot and continued for 4 more.

From all the research I did I find it it completely possible that the death toll that can be attributed directly to the Imperial Army in Asia could be near the 50 million souls mark.

Before and after Nanking the dozens of bio and chemical units were plying their trade on a daily basis by infecting the population with every plague known to man and spreading poisons into their crops and homes when they weren't performing live vivisections on prisoners to see what their acts had done to the human bodies inside. By the time WW II began in Europe the Japanese had been steeped in unholy perversion for 8 years already.

I am quite convinced that evil deed for evil deed the Japanese Imperial Army in Asia was far more perverse than the Nazis almost clinical attempt to exterminate the Jewish population. From my research I found more than enough material. My articles comprise probably 7000 words and, of course, books have ben written on the subject of Nanking alone. The research reviewing changed my life. Dwelling with that evil crap for a couple weeks affect you.

And next time kiddies we'll tick you all off real good when we till you about how most of the war criminals not only got off but prospered.

 

[Harley Quinn]

A lot of their 'honour' was preserved by deals cut... and they cut a lot better deals than the men my Father escorted at Nuremberg...

FYI, a lot of the medical data we have today about the breaking strains of limbs in live subjects is Japanese in origin, not German.

It is interesting to note, however, that most of the original work on Childhood and Geriatric dementias was done in Germany up to 1944...

Ah, what a paragon of animals...

This is why I like tales about the likes of Rabe, Foley et al... they shake my faith in human nature...

We went as a group to see Schindler's List (I read the book when I was 15 and it was still called Schindler's Ark) and someone said on the way out

"You'd wonder why people would do that"

My reply was 'You know the joke "Why do dogs lick their own testicles?"?"

"Yes"

"Then you have your answer... anyone fancy a beer? I think I need one..."

The Sanford Prison Experiment or the Milgrom Experiment both show what you get if you give people authority with no restraint... seems to be the nature of the beast...

 

[dr greg]

Bob Menzies the bad Aussie

One country that saw fit to deal with Imperial Japan during the Sino-Japanese war was Australia, we were selling them scrap -iron which waterside workers quite rightly deduced would return soon enough via the cannon's mouth, so unions banned loading of the shipments...Menzies, then Attorney-general, forced through legislation to get the cargo loaded., reasoning that anything the unions thought a good idea was communist-influenced. He was forever after known as "Pig Iron Bob" by the left in this country, but his shameful actions didn't prevent him being elected Prime minister after the war and ruling for 23 years.
Such is politics.