Posted on 12/17/2005 5:37:00 PM PST by blam
Chinese memorial to 'the good Nazi' opens war wounds
By Peter Goff in Beijing
(Filed: 18/12/2005)
A plan by China to honour "the good Nazi", a German who helped to save hundreds of thousands of civilians from Japanese troops, has reopened a dispute with Tokyo over its lack of atonement for the Second World War.
The Chinese authorities are drawing up plans for a museum dedicated to the memory of John Rabe, who defied the "Rape of Nanking" - a six-week massacre during which an estimated 300,000 Chinese were slaughtered by Japanese soldiers.
Honouring Mr Rabe gives China the chance to draw international attention to Japan's wartime atrocities at a point when relations between the two Asian giants are fraught.
A card-carrying Nazi, Rabe was a China-based Siemens employee in 1937 when the Japanese stormed Nanking, or Nanjing as it is now known. His superiors ordered him to return home, but instead he sent his family back and established a "safety zone" in the city where he offered shelter to terrified Chinese. Using his Nazi credentials, he and a small group of other foreigners kept the Japanese at bay, at considerable risk to themselves, and saved an estimated 250,000 lives.
Rabe wrote a 1,200-page diary that documented the killings and rapes in the city, information that was later used as evidence of war crimes.
The Japanese soldiers "went about raping the women and girls and killing everything and everyone that offered any resistance, attempted to run away from them, or simply happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time," he wrote. "There were girls under the age of eight and women over the age of 70 who were raped and then, in the most brutal way possible, knocked down and beaten up. We found corpses of women on beer glasses and others who had been lanced by bamboo shoots."
Chinese historians estimate that 80,000 girls and women were raped at the time.
"One was powerless against these monsters who were armed to the teeth and who shot down anyone who tried to defend themselves," Rabe wrote. "They only had respect for us foreigners - but nearly every one of us was close to being killed dozens of times. We asked ourselves mutually, 'How much longer can we maintain this bluff?' "
Beijing believes that Japan has never properly atoned for its atrocities. Chinese anger is further fuelled by repeated visits by the Japanese prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, to the Yasukuni shrine, which honours Japan's war dead including some "Class A" war criminals held responsible for the massacre in Nanjing.
Last week, China's premier, Wen Jiabao, cancelled a summit with Mr Koizumi because "Japan won't own up correctly to its history". The shrine visits "seriously hurt the feelings of the Chinese people", he said.
When the pair did finally meet at a signing ceremony of a regional meeting on Wednesday, Mr Wen snubbed the Japanese leader by ignoring his request to borrow his pen.
Several awkward seconds elapsed in front of television cameras before the request was loudly repeated and the Chinese premier pasted on a smile and handed over the implement.
There were mass protests in March outside the Japanese embassy and consulates in China after Japan published a history textbook that glossed over the wartime atrocities. Tensions between the neighbours are exacerbated by other thorny issues, including a territorial dispute over resource-rich islands in the East China Sea and Japan's desire to become a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. China also fears what it sees as a growing nationalistic militarism in Japan.
"Part of the reason to honour John Rabe now is a response to Japan's bad attitude," Jiang Liangqin, a historian at Nanjing University, said. "For example, they honour the war criminals and have never properly said sorry. Some Japanese even deny the massacre took place. We know that Japanese often look down on Chinese and don't believe what we say. Well here is a European who told exactly what happened. We want to bring the world's attention to that."
While the killings were going on, Rabe wrote to Hitler several times begging him to intervene but never got a response. He said later that being based in China meant he was unaware of his leader's heinous plans in Europe.
After the massacre Rabe lectured in wartime Germany about what he had seen and submitted footage of the atrocities to Hitler, but the Fuhrer did not want to hear about Japan's actions. Rabe was detained by the Gestapo for a short period, denounced by the Nazis and barred from giving lectures.
In post-war Germany he was again denounced - this time be being a Nazi Party member - and was arrested first by the Russians and then by the British, but was ultimately exonerated following an investigation. He and his family lived in abject poverty, surviving on occasional care packages posted to him by the grateful people of Nanjing. He died of a stroke in 1950 at the age of 68.
"The people of China will never forget the good German John Rabe, and the other foreigners who helped him," said Ma Guoliang, an 89-year-old woman whose parents were killed by the Japanese. "He saved so many people and yet at any time he could easily have been killed himself. He could have left, but he stayed with us. We called him the living Buddha of Nanking."
Oh, yeah, the United States military took over the country and changed things. Funny how that only worked one time. Too bad it would never apply to the Middle East.
Okay, so did I sound like a liberal on a talk show?
" Even the Germans have done a better job in that respect."
One could argue that the Germans did "too well." Being aware of past mistakes to the point where one loses the ability to defend oneself is taking therapy too far.
"Funny, that's what the young Nazi would say too. Of course, there really was no holocaust, you know."
I am a Jew, you fool.
"But I do recall pretty clearly reading an article about the Navy's planned next-generation of ship's having an amazingly small number of sailors on board."
I don't doubt it a bit. However, I do doubt that the architects of these pie-in-the-sky plans have ever stood a midwatch, or have donned an OBA, opened a hot door, and started down the ladder into a boiler room to extinguish an oil spray fire with foam and PKP.
Ivory-tower intellectuals goon up the military just the same as they goon up everything else they touch.
"Gee, if the Japanese were such terrible people, how did they ever have such a major conversion in 1945?"
There was kind of a "bubble" of conversion among a certain segment of the possibility, while other segments paid lip service and ensured that the educational system would not bring about lasting and universal conversion.
The pacifism of the Japanese people is about a micron deep. The powers that be could have them howling for war inside a week.
"among a certain segment of the possibility"
Good Lord, is this Alzheimer's?
That should be, "...among a certain segment of the population..."
Sorry, but you clearly have not been beyond the coastal cities and into the interior of China, where over half the population lives.
What do they mean by "multipolar world"?
His "anti-China tirade", eh?
You make some excellent points, but my jist is that China (and Chiang Kai'shek in particular) were rotten allies, hardly shouldering their share of the burden of war when they received direct aid. It's has been recorded, time and again, that the Japanese in their rationale for war, complained often to Russian, British and American diplomats about the economic and military aid being sent to China prior to the outbreak of actual hostilities with the west (c. 1938-40). The Japanese occupation of Indo-China and invasion of Burma were partially predicated upon capturing and closing the few roads and railroads from coastal Asian ports to the Chinese interior, and thus, stopping this flow of materiel.
To the Japanese, the main object of the War was always to maintain control over China. The widening of the Pacific war, however odd we might find the concept, was an attempt to keep the West from interfering with Japanese war aims in China proper. Japan went to war to secure the resources required to complete the war in China in their favor. It was (to the Japanese Imperial Command) just inconvenient that those resources belonged to the Allies. Once Japan had seized those resources and constructed an impenetrable ring of bases to protect it's lines of supply, the Western allies were supposed to just give up like good decadent westerners and the Japanese could then return to their main consideration: prosecuting the war in CHINA.
Considering the fact that China was invaded and occupied, you'd think they would have fought harder against the Japanese, much like the Russians, Free French and Poles did against the Germans. Perhaps there's some Chinese cultural peculiarity I'm missing, but it's not as if the Chinese army actually made any kind of an effort that is readily apparent, especially when you consider that they should have been fighting for national survival.
Pot, meet kettle...
You're so ignorant you have no idea what you're talking about. Japan on China?
Have you heard of the human experimentation? They did much worse to teh Chinese than the Germans did to the Jews.
You're a truly sorry person.
And the CCP were worse than Japan.
It's not a poker game and the game played by you chicoms to use this as fodder for further suppression and maltreatment of Chinese people at the hands of the Chinese communist party is what is truly sick.
You dance on the grave of all the dead of Nanjing and are truly the lowest of the low.
And you know it in your bones communist freak.
I think you misunderstood the point of the war.
The point of the war is to preven the Korean peninsula be controlled by the US (from China's view point). To that end, they were successful.
Yes, the casualties are huge for China, but you have to remember the state of THEIR technology versus the US technology at that time. They were using humans as a compensation for the tech differences (i.e. using human waves as a counter for far more advanced weapons on US side).
In the end, China got what it wanted at a great human cost, and also, because US lacked the resolve to continue the war further, probably because US is also worried about the Soviet Union and didn't want to waste further resources on the KOrean penisula.
The point is, the Chinese PEOPLE chose the communist leaders over Chiang. Remember, Mao had more popular support than Chiang and that's why the civil war was won by the Communists. You can't win over a country unless YOU have more popular support, whether you're in a totalitarian regime or not.
And you can also blame that on the Japs who invaded China. If the Japanese didn't invade China, Mao would have been easily defeated. Mao strength grows because of how savage the Japanese were on the CHinese population (i.e. the whole country went extremely poor and poor countries supports communism far more than wealthier countries).
You're clueless in your beliefs. Communists are brutal, but nowhere near the intensity as the Jap soldiers. We're talking about orders to execute, rape, bayonet BABIES out of pregnant women from top of the echelon, not some soldiers getting out of wack, but the LEADERS in Japan.
I t'ink we should be vewy qwiet, and encourage the PRC to collapse from corruption, cronyism and social unrest. After all, they're givin' us a lotta help is this direction.
"Considering the fact that China was invaded and occupied, you'd think they would have fought harder against the Japanese, much like the Russians, Free French and Poles did against the Germans."
you can make the argument that Russians only won by luck -- if the Nazi's had not miscalculated the Russian winter, the war would have been different.
Poles? Poles lost it within 1 week.
France? 3 weeks.
Let's not forget that Japan's army when WWII started is one more the most technologically advanced army around. US military was ranked as number 35 if I recalled (it rose to #1 after the war). The population in China was literally resisting the Japanese with sticks and stones.
The Japs bolst they could take China in 3 months, 3 YEARS later they still couldn't take Shanghai. Japanese forces suffered huge losses in Shanghai after Chiang puts up a fight (which is more or less the reason why Nanjing got massacred, as Chiang retreated to Chongqing and did not defend Nanjing).
The facts is, without Russians or Chinese or the British or even the Canadians, the US wouldn't be able to win against the Nazis or the Japanese. If Japan had successfully taken China in 3 months, WWII would have been a lot different. WIth China's enormous resources, Japan would have all the natural resources it need to take the fight to mainland USA. They know in order to control the world, they'll have to control Asia, and the key to Asia is China.
"They are predictable when one keeps in mind Sun Tzu's advice to act strongest when weak and weakest when strong. China's most belligerent public statements have always come out when they have been least prepared to offer a fight. "
So what do you think about all the less sabre rattling in the last 2-3 years versus in the 90's with regards to Taiwan? There is definitely LESS belligerent comments in the last 2-3 years versus the years before that.
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