00:00A Nazi saved a quarter million lives, and the world punished him for it.
00:05When Japanese forces swept into Nanjing in December 1937, the killing was immediate.
00:10Soldiers dragged people from their homes. Bodies filled the streets.
00:15John Rabe was there, a seaman's executive, a committed member of the Nazi party.
00:20And he did something extraordinary.
00:22He planted his swastika flag over a civilian safety zone
00:25and physically stepped between Japanese soldiers and the people they were murdering.
00:30Japanese commanders, not wanting to provoke Germany, pulled back.
00:34250,000 people survived because of that flag.
00:38Because of that man.
00:39After the war, the Allies stripped everything he owned and put him on trial.
00:43He ended up starving in the ruins of Berlin.
00:46Then something happened that history rarely produces.
00:49The Chinese survivors he had protected organized food shipments from Nanjing to keep him alive.
00:54The people he saved fed him.
00:56The people he fought for kept him breathing.
00:58His own government never did.
01:01History has no clean category for John Rabe.
01:03It never will.
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