After returning to Germany in April 1938, Rabe gave a series of talks in Berlin-Siemensstadt, Foreign Diplomatic Policy Bureau of Germany, Far East Association, Ministry of Defense and so on, showing the films of the Nanjing Massacre shot by the Rev. John Margee. Rabe also sent written report to the German authorities to lay bare the Japanese atrocities in Nanjing.

Aerial view of Berlin-Siemensstadt in 1930, in the background on the left is the Siemens cable factory in Gartenfeld (painting by A. Scheuritzel)

On 8 June 1938, Rabe sent Hitler a report recounting the brutality of the Japanese troops, and he also enclosed pictures he took on the spot of the atrocities in Nanjing. He appealed to his country for intervention to prevent the alliance, Japan’s inhuman doings.

Rabe’s report of Japan’s atrocities to Hitler

A few days after he sent the report to Hitler, Rabe was arrested by the secret police. Considering his outstanding services to the business development of Siemens, the then President of the company, Carl Friedrich von Siemens, bailed Rabe out on the excuse of his international reputation. But Rabe was warned not to give lectures, publish books, or show Magee’s films on the Nanjing Massacre in particular. Rabe was not even allowed to write letters or make phone calls.

Carl Friedrich von Siemens, the President of Siemens(1919-1941)

Around the end of July, 1945, the heads of the Victorious Nations in WWII reached a decision at the Potsdam Conference (held at the town of Potsdam in the southwest of Berlin) to make concerted efforts to put into effect policies of demilitarization, de-Nazification, decentralization and cartelization.

In 1934, in order to obtain funds from the German government to build a German school in Nanjing, Rabe joined the German National Socialist Party, the Nazi Party. The fact that Rabe had once been a Party group leader made it extremely difficult for him to proceed with the formalities of de-Nazification. Only after June 1946 was he declared clean from Nazi.

The part in Rabe’s diary referring to the court decision concerning his de-Nazification