History Paper on the Good Man of Nanking

Sam Gutzmer

Professor Mann

History 102

The Good Man of Nanking

The Good Man of Nanking was written by John Rabe a German businessman who was in Nanking, China during the Japanese occupation otherwise know as the Rape of Nanking. His detailed account of the occupation and the terrible atrocities committed by the Japanese towards their Chinese captives.

This book begins on September 22, 1937, when John Rabe picked up his pen with the same determination that the Japanese soldiers advancing on Nanking picked up their rifles, and began to record their terrible atrocities. Rabe was a Hamburg businessman posted to the city by Siemens. When Japanese forces advanced on Nanking, he organized a sprawling International Safety Zone, "that eventually saved over 250,000 lives even as reportedly an equal number of people lost theirs".(Rabe) His diary details his activities and what he witnessed during the several weeks of murder, rape and pillage that started in mid-December 1937. As a great man once said "Be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them." He gave several motives, some mundane, others noble, for remaining in the doomed city. First Rabe cited professionalism, or duty to his company. Then he wrote of the power of personal bonds, insisting that, "I cannot bring myself to betray the trust".(Rabe) Speaking of the pressures between loyalty to country, company, and friends and his conscience.

When circumstances stranded him and Nanking's helpless citizens in tough times, Rabe created an oasis of relief and safety. Once a blast shook a bomb shelter crowded with civilians and Rabe reacted by saying that fear could be controlled by "a few cheerful words, a really rotten joke, and grins all around." (Rabe) Even though he was usually good-humored, Rabe demonstrated a capacity for righteous rage when encountering a soldier about to rape. This chubby, bow-tied businessman hollered at, and then shoved away the armed soldier, who then ran off. The diaries credulity seems enhanced by Rabe's obsession with accuracy. He usually recorded the precise time, location, and nature of an atrocity, as he maintained composure, never inflaming emotions. For instance, he wrote plainly that "The older child was bayoneted and the younger split down through the head with a sword."(Rabe) The Chinese calculate that 300,000 people were murdered in Nanking. However, Japanese revisionists claim that either the massacre did not happen or that perhaps only 50,000 people died. Rabe cites no figures. Unlike Iris Chang's exhaustively researched, "The Rape of Nanking", a vivid account of terror