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. 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, According to one history of the war, 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
Obersturmbannführer Herbert 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. On 9 October 1944,
Admiral Miklós Horthy, Regent of
Hungary, a German ally, announced the conclusion of a separate peace with the Soviets. Veesenmayer and Rahn persuaded
Colonel Ferenc Szálasi to form a new National Assembly at
Esztergom, and together Veesenmayer and Rahn visited Horthy, telling him his son
Miklós was a
Gestapo hostage, having been kidnapped by German commandos led by
Otto Skorzeny. On 15 October Germany launched
Operation Panzerfaust, to remove Horthy from power, and on 17 October Horthy agreed to appoint a new pro-German
Government of National Unity led by the fascist
Arrow Cross Party. 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. In the early 1970s Rahn sent a letter to
Robert A. Graham, one of the editors of the
Acts and Documents of the Holy See related to the Second World War, which was published in 1991 by the Italian magazine
30 Giorni, stating that a
German plot to kidnap Pope Pius XII had existed, but that all documents relating to it had been destroyed or lost. Rahn wrote to Graham Rahn died in
Düsseldorf on 7 January 1975. ==Awards and decorations==