In 1928,Rahn joined the German Foreign Office as an attaché,in 1931 was posted to the German Embassy in Ankara,where three years later he was appointed Secretary of the Legation. In 1938 he was posted to the embassy in Lisbon and in August 1940,to the German embassy in Paris. In May 1941,he became political officer in Syria under the Italian Armistice Commission and from November 1941 to May 1943 held the same appointment under the commanding officer of German forces in Tunisia.[1][2]
German military operational zones (OZAV/OZAK) under direct German administration
After a brief return to his old post at the German embassy in Paris, in August 1943 Rahn was sent as German Ambassador to Rome, where he was at the centre of efforts to discourage King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy and the Grand Fascist Council from making a separate peace with the Allies. In the closing stages of the Second World War, after the Germans had installed the Italian Social Republic under Benito Mussolini as a puppet regime in northern Italy, Rahn was German Plenipotentiary to the new republic, wielding real power,[1] having been appointed in September 1943 by a specific order of Adolf Hitler.[3] According to one history of the war,
Mussolini had no control over the affairs of the italian social Republic, a police state run with Italian collaborators by the Nazi proconsul, Rudolf Rahn, and the army commander, General Wolff."[4]
There is uncertainty about Rahn's role in the deportation of the 8,000 Jews of Rome in October 1943. On 6 October Friedrich Möllhausen sent a message to Ribbentrop, reporting that ObersturmbannführerHerbert Kappler of the SS had been ordered to arrest the Jews of the city and take them to Upper Italy, "where they are to be liquidated", and that the commandant of Rome, General Stahel, was opposed to this. Ribbentrop visited Hitler at the Wolf's Lair and later ordered that Rahn and Möllhausen be informed "that by a Führer Directive the 8,000 Jews living in Rome are to be taken to Mauthausen, Upper Danube, as hostages". Whatever Hitler's intention, the 8,000 Jews were sent north and killed by the SS. This episode has been used several times by David Irving to suggest that Hitler himself was more moderate than others with regard to the killing of Jews.[5]
Because of his final role in Italy, Rahn was arrested and faced the possibility of standing accused of war crimes at the Nuremberg Trials at the end of the war. While in prison for four years, he wrote on Talleyrand, supplementing earlier work in the 1920s, and also drafted his memoirs. In the preparation of the Wilhelmstrasse Trial, in which his colleagues Ernst von Weizsäcker and Gustav Adolf Steengracht von Moyland were convicted, Rahn was at first listed as one of the German diplomats who should be prosecuted. On 31 October 1945, a report on Rahn was filed which resulted in his being held for further investigations. Between 27 May and 4 December 1947 he was interrogated eight times. On 7 June 1949 he was classified as denazified in Class V (exonerated), especially in view of his argument that through diplomatic channels he had saved about 1,800 people who had been taken prisoner by the Gestapo in North Africa.[1][2]
Pope Pius XII, whose proposed abduction Rahn said he had opposed
Das Reich in der Verfassungsidee von 1848 und 1919 ["The Reich in the Constitutional Idea of 1848 and 1919"] (Heidelberg: 1924, thesis)
Ruheloses Leben: Aufzeichnungen und Erinnerungen ["A Restless Life: notes and recollections"] (Düsseldorf: Diederichs Verlag, 1949)
Talleyrand. Portrait und Dokumente ["Talleyrand: a portrait and documents"] (Tübingen: H. Laupp'sche Buchhandlung, 1949)
Ambasciatore di Hitler a Vichy e a Saló ["Hitler's Ambassador to Vichy and to Salo"] (Milan: Garzanti, 1950)
Anker im Bosporus und spätere Gedichte ["Anchor in the Bosphorus and later poems"] (Düsseldorf: 1973)
Further reading
Eckart Conze, Norbert Frei, Peter Hayes, Moshe Zimmermann: Das Amt und die Vergangenheit. Deutsche Diplomaten im Dritten Reich und in der Bundesrepublik (Munich: Karl Blessing, 2010, ISBN978-3-89667-430-2)
Ernst Klee, Das Personenlexikon zum Dritten Reich. Wer war was vor und nach 1945? (Frankfurt: S. Fischer, 2003, ISBN3-596-16048-0)
Bernd Philipp Schröder, Deutschland und der Mittlere Osten im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Reihe: Studien und Dokumente zur Geschichte des 2. WK #16 (Göttingen: Arbeitskreis für Wehrforschung, 1975, ISBN3-7881-1416-9)
Martin Seckendorf, Die Okkupationspolitik des deutschen Faschismus in Jugoslawien, Griechenland, Albanien, Italien und Ungarn: (1941–1945) (Bundesarchiv, Europa unterm Hakenkreuz vol. 6) (Berlin & Heidelberg: Hüthig, 1992, ISBN3-8226-1892-6)
1 2 Maria Keipert, ed., Biographisches Handbuch des deutschen Auswärtigen Dienstes 1871–1945, vol. 3 L–R (in German) (Auswärtigen Amt, Historischer Dienst, 2008, ISBN978-3-506-71842-6), pp. 557–559
↑ Akten zur deutschen Auswärtigen Politik, Serie E: 1941-45, vol. VI for 1 May – 30 September 1943 (Göttingen, 1979), pp. 533-534: A Führer Order dated 10 September 1943 appointed Rahn, Wolff, and Kesselring to their new posts.
↑ Tim Cooke, Adrian Gilbert, Robert Stewart, et al., History of World War II' (Marshall Cavendish Corporation, 2004, ISBN076147482X), p. 560
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