All that Puyi knew of the outside world was what General Yoshioka told him in daily briefings. When Behr asked Prince Pujie how the news of the Rape of Nanking in December 1937 affected Puyi, his brother replied: "We didn't hear about it until much later. At the time, it made no real impact." On 4 February 1938, the strongly pro-Japanese and anti-Chinese Joachim von Ribbentrop became the German foreign minister, and under his influence German foreign policy swung in an anti-Chinese and pro-Japanese direction. On 20 February 1938, Adolf Hitler announced that Germany was recognizing Manchukuo. In one of his last acts, the outgoing German ambassador to Japan Herbert von Dirksen visited Puyi in the Salt Tax Palace to tell him that a German embassy would be established in Hsinking later that year to join the embassies of Japan, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Italy and Nationalist Spain, the only other countries that had recognized Manchukuo. In 1934, Puyi had been excited when he learned that El Salvador had become the first nation other than Japan to recognize Manchukuo, but by 1938 he did not care much about Germany's recognition of Manchukuo.