"In the past, Japan,
through its colonial rule and aggression,
caused tremendous damage and suffering
to the people of many countries,
particularly to those of Asian nations.

"Japan squarely faces these facts
of history in a spirit of humility.

"With feelings of deep remorse
and heartfelt apology always engraved
in mind, Japan has resolutely
maintained . . . its principle of
resolving all matters by peaceful means,
without recourse to use of force."

--Japanese Prime Minister, Junichiro Koizumi

In 1937, the Japanese army invaded the Chinese city of Nanking. Overpowering its defenders with a larger, better-equipped force, the Japanese routed the Chinese army and entered a city left helpless and undefended. Promising good treatment to those who cooperated, Japan had an opportunity to live up to its claims of a "superior civilization." Instead, its actions became known as the Rape of Nanking - that is, everywhere except Japan, which has yet to come to terms with its own history.*

The Rape of Nanking is one of history's darkest chapters. Half the city was looted and burned to the ground. Some 20,000 women were raped. Surrendering Chinese soldiers were rounded up and executed. Innocent civilians were used for bayonet practice. Some were burned with gasoline. In six weeks, the Japanese army killed an estimated 300,000 Chinese.

And yet, in this darkest of chapters, there are surprising moments of individual heroism. Case in point: the odd, unexpected actions of John Rabe, a German national whose extracurricular pursuits included his stint as local representative of the Nazi Party.

The Good Man of Nanking is a mostly unedited, unfiltered journal of the Rape of Nanking, as told by a figure who had little reason to lie. Unlike the Americans and the Chinese who were there, Rabe's interests should have led him to side with the Japanese, since the Germans and the Japanese were partners in crime. But faced with the sheer brutality of the Japanese invasion, Rabe instead sided with humanity. Doing so frequently put him at risk of punishment by the Japanese - and ultimately led to his arrest and maltreatment by the Nazis, themselves.

It's tempting to write this guy off because of his stint with the Nazi party. When I was reading this book, several people asked me about it and turned pale as a ghost when I told them its hero is a little Nazi who saves 20,000 lives. Most of them can't get around the fact that this guy was a Nazi, just like Schwarzenneger's dad, or Oskar Schindler for that matter. And if we're going to assume guilt by association - so is the Pope. Joseph Ratzinger wasn't just a Nazi - he was a member of the Hitler Youth.

My point is that character is defined by action - much more than by association, or even belief. Lots of people voted for Reagan. That doesn't mean they approved of Iran-Contra. Lots of people voted for W. That doesn't mean they were privy to Abu Ghraib. Joseph Ratzinger used his faith to release himself from the grip of the Hitler Youth (they didn't want any future priests any more than the Boy Scouts want any atheists or gays). Ratzinger faked a broken arm to desert the German army. Character, as I said, is revealed through action. Clearly the future Pope Benedict XVI didn't have the heart of a Nazi.

I'd say the same for John Rabe, though Rabe is a more amusing character - both in his bumbling, fumbling and witless belief that Hitler was really an okay guy who was going to do something about the atrocities of Imperial Japan. Think of him as a Nazi version of Charlie Brown - with one exception: This Charlie Brown didn't fake a broken arm to desert his post. He blindly confused Hitler with a human being - and then used his faith to put his own keyster on the line - to the tune of 20,000 Chinese saved by waving the same flag that would exterminate six million innocent Jews.

I'm not kidding. This stuff really happened.

Rabe came to Nanking as a representative of Siemens, a German company doing business in China. Returning to his native Germany only sporadically, Rabe never learned Chinese but came to regard China as his home - spending some thirty years there. When Hitler and the Nazis came to power, Rabe equated membership in the National Socialist Party with German patriotism.

Going through his entries, I looked for signs of obvious antisemitism, but found little of the kind. Rabe clearly thought Hitler was going to save the German nation, put a gigantic Swastika flag in his backyard (to keep the Japanese from bombing his house) and frequently waved his Nazi armband at Japanese soldiers to shoo them away from women they were trying to rape. Indignant about the atrocities, he even wrote to Hitler, naively thinking "der fuhrer" - a man who would poison his own children and put a bullet into the brain of his mistress-turned-wife - cared anything about the plight of the Chinese.

When a colleague of his, Rosen, lost his position as a German ambassador for being "related to Jews," Rabe's comment ("too bad for him") is hard to read, perhaps even flippant or indifferent. But that's the worst I can say for the guy. John Rabe was an odd little character, upset about injustices in China while oblivious to even greater injustices back home.

Then again, most of this diary is written in 1937, before -Kristallnacht, Hitler's infamous Reichstag Speech (expressly threatening Jews), and a host of public atrocities that went beyond ethnic pride to become the wholesale slaughter of six million Jews. His naivete is repugnant, and a warning to future generations, but it's offset by his recognition that the atrocities he could see - by the invading Japanese - should be stopped by any means necessary.

Rabe pretty much used them all.

These diary entries are priceless. They give an almost-daily account of the Rape of Nanking, as seen by someone who originally viewed the Japanese as allies, only to get the reality check of a lifetime. When the Japanese first announce their intent to invade, Rabe seems almost amused. He's a short, balding, bespectacled man with high spirits, practicality and an odd, twisted, sense of humor. He builds a dugout in his backyard, as a place for retreat during the bombings. He builds it big enough for his neighbors, demands that women and children get the safest spots and puts a sign on the outside, calling it his "office." Early on, Rabe treats the invasion as if it were a spectacle. When a Japanese bomber gets hit, he and others come out of the dugout to take a look at the fireworks (with Rabe chiding his neighbors not to gloat over the death of the flight crew).

But as the reality of the invasion sets in, Rabe quickly realizes that things are not going to work out the way they do in a propaganda film. Worried about the fate of the Chinese, he and other "foreigners" organize the Nanking Safety Zone - and Rabe is elected its leader. Watching Chinese officials pull out, Rabe quickly realizes he's going to be the "mayor of Nanking" until order has been restored - and sets out to make sure his people are taken care of. Ignoring calls from the German embassy and Siemens to come home, he and his colleagues stay behind, and make it their business to look after the poorest of the Chinese, the ones who can't flee the city.

What results is a compelling, sometimes chilling, account of a man too naive to realize he's standing at the gates of Hell, appealing to the devil for mercy. He negotiates with the Japanese army, uses his Nazi paraphernalia to drive off soldiers and pushes the boundaries of what he can get away with in order to keep his people alive. In the process, he saves about 20,000 Chinese from certain death.

Eventually, the bubble pops and John Rabe gets a horrific education in what totalitarianism is really all about - not only from the Japanese but from the Nazis themselves. Appealing to Hitler to do something about these Japanese atrocities, Rabe manages to pit himself against the Nazi war machine, which is not pleased that Rabe is stirring up trouble between the Germans and their allies. When Rabe returns to Germany with footage of Japanese atrocities, and gives lectures encouraging the German people to break ties with the Japanese, he is rounded up by the SS and interrogated. It's not clear whether Hitler ever bothered to look at Rabe's footage, or whether he cared, but Rabe becomes a persona non grata in Germany, which, itself falls to the Allies in 1945. In addition to Rabe's Chinese Diaries, the book contains his Berlin Diaries, which show Rabe commenting on another invasion of sorts, the Russian liberation of Nazi Germany. It's odd to hear Rabe discussing yet another dislocation, this one in his own land. And true to form, Rabe is to be found, saying the Russians aren't so bad in one entry, then complaining about all the rapes in another. As he did in China, Rabe finds ways to be useful to the Russian liberators, who are eager to get electrical power restored.

After the war, Rabe is considered a pariah for his membership in the Nazi party, is terminated by Siemens and has to undergo deNazification - but is eventually redeemed, both because his membership in the party was nominal, if misplaced, and because his own actions, in saving 20,000 Chinese, is simply inconsistent with those of a real Nazi.

In the meantime, Rabe's fate was to live out his days, not as a hero, but as a little man, eeking out a meager existence, ashamed of his previous affiliation to a party linked with mass extermination, while going unrecognized for his efforts to stop another extermination halfway across the world. Rabe died from complications linked to malnutrition (he could barely afford to eat) but lived a life that saved the lives of others, while creating a priceless documentation of the Nanking Massacre.

The Good Man of Nanking is compelling reading, probably because each entry betrays the limits of one man's ability to see into the future. It's a series of entries that are alternately humorous, angry, hopeful, grim and blown away by the unbelievability of what can happen in a given day. Rabe is a cross between an action hero and a Paul Giammatti character, a little man with only a limited sense of where the rat race is taking him, but the decency to do his best with the cards he's been dealt. To his credit, Rabe never goes back and hides the foibles of his earlier entries. Except for some issues of privacy, the diaries are presented just as Rabe wrote them down, and the result is something profound.

* Popular reports, such as recent stories in CNN, assert that Japan has "apologized" on as many as "17 different occasions." There is, however, a raging debate over the sincerity and quality of these "apologies." In 1994, Prime Minister Moriichi Murayama offered up a sentiment of regret that, when parsed, was taken by many nations as a personal apology rather than a statement representing the nation as a whole. In fact, the "apology" was so vague and slippery, it ended up offending many who took it as pro forma mumbo-jumbo from a country whose only real regret was not inventing the atomic bomb first.

Recommended: Yes