Jehovah's Witnesses, Anti-Semitism and the Third Reich
The Watch Tower Society's Attempted Compromise with Nazism
M. James Penton
Another example of false history is even more serious. That involves the attitudes of Watch Tower leaders towards Nazism and the Jews. Over the years Jehovah's Witnesses have been taught that while the German churches were guilty of compromise with Hitler and the Nazi Party, their German brethren, then commonly known as "Earnest Bible Students," stood solidly against the principles of the Third Reich. Because of the brave stand taken by German Witnesses in the face of a terrible persecution which cost many of them their lives in Hitler's concentration camps, they have rightly been praised by secular historians. For example, The Watchtower of October 1, 1984 (p. 8) reported the findings of Christine E. King and Michael Kater to the effect that the number of Witness imprisonments and deaths brought about by Nazi persecution had been greatly underestimated. Quoting Dr. King, it stated:
"Theological principles were adhered to; Witnesses remained 'neutral,' they were honest and completely trustworthy and as such, ironically, often found themselves employed as servants of the S.S."
What has not generally been known either by most Jehovah's Witnesses or many independent scholars, however, is that while ordinary German Witnesses did quite generally maintain their integrity and commitment to principles, their leaders -- Rutherford, Knorr and high German Watch Tower officials -- did not. Furthermore, Rutherford and his lieutenants tried to save the German arm of their movement by scapegoating the Jews.
During the first half of the Bible Student-Jehovah's Witnesses' history, they were notable for their philo-Judaism. Like certain late nineteenth and twentieth-century American Protestant premillennialists, C.T. Russell was a thoroughgoing supporter of Zionist causes. He refused to attempt the conversion of the Jews, believed in the Jewish resettlement of Palestine, and in 1910 led a New York Jewish audience in singing the Zionist anthem, Hatikva.1 For a time Judge Rutherford followed in his footsteps. In 1926 he wrote a small book entitled Comfort for the Jews which suggested that Jewish migration to the ancient Holy Land was a fulfillment of biblical prophecy. Four years later he produced a similar but larger volume called Life. But suddenly Rutherford repudiated his beliefs respecting the Jews. Life was withdrawn from circulation,2 and in 1932 Rutherford proclaimed that "fleshly Israel" had no specific role to play in salvation history. Perhaps the Judge was simply anxious to assert that Jehovah's Witnesses were the "true Israel of God," but he may have had other reasons for making such a dramatic doctrinal switch. During the late 1920s and early 1930s anti-Semitism was becoming rampant in the United States and Canada with the rise of a variety of movements both religious and political.3
Then, too, with the start of the Depression in 1929, it began to appear possible that the violently anti-Jewish Nazis could come to power in Germany -- something which happened on January 30, 1933. So Rutherford may well have been anxious to dissociate the Witnesses from the Jewish community in any way possible. Yet that can in no way excuse what the Watch Tower president and his aids were shortly to do in the first year of the Third Reich.
Early in April 1933 the Nazis moved against Jehovah's Witnesses. Their branch headquarters at Magdeburg were seized and their religious activities temporarily stopped. But on April 28 the German authorities returned the properties to the Watch Tower Society, and the Witnesses began to meet together once again and to carry on their door-to-door proselytizing. However, Witness leaders and Jehovah's Witnesses in general knew that they were not popular with the Nazis. So, it was at that time, according to standard Witness accounts, that Judge Rutherford and the German Witness community decided to take a bold stand against the Hitler dictatorship. Jehovah's Witnesses in The Divine Purpose states:
"Judge Rutherford had been watching the German situation closely and was well acquainted with its development as it affected the witness work. With this serious turn of events he lost no time in going to Germany, accompanied by N. H. Knorr, to see what could be done. On June 25, 1933, a convention was called in Berlin. There a Declaration of Facts was presented to the 7,000 in attendance in protest against the Hitler government for their highhanded interference with the witness work of the Society, and was unanimously [sic] adopted. The declaration was mailed to every high officer of the government from the president down to the members of the council, and 2,500,000 copies were given public distribution. Retaliation came quickly. Three days later, on June 28, for the second time the Society's property was seized and occupied, and by government decree its printing plant was closed."4
But was the seizure of Watch Tower property and the complete banning of Jehovah's Witnesses at the same time by the German government really because the Declaration of Facts was a bold protest against Nazi actions? No, quite the contrary: it was nothing short of a cowardly, self-serving statement in which Rutherford and his henchmen tried to ingratiate the Witness community with the Nazis by attacking Great Britain, the United States, the League of Nations, and, above all, the Jews. Under a sub-section entitled "Jews," it reads:
«It is falsely charged by our enemies that we have received financial support for our work from the Jews. Nothing is farther from the truth. Up to this moment there never has been the slightest bit of money contributed to our work by Jews. We are the faithful followers of Christ Jesus and believe upon Him as the Savior of the world, whereas the Jews entirely reject Jesus Christ and emphatically deny that he is the Savior of the world sent of God for man's good. This of itself should be sufficient proof to show that we receive no support from Jews and therefore the charges against us are maliciously false and could only proceed from Satan, our great enemy.
The greatest and most oppressive empire on earth is the Anglo-American empire. By this is meant the British Empire, of which the United States of America forms a part. It has been the commercial Jews of the British-American Empire that have built up and carried on Big Business as a means of exploiting and oppressing the peoples of many nations. This fact particularly applies to the cities of London and New York, the stronghold of Big Business. This fact is so manifest in America that there is a proverb concerning the city of New York which says: "the Jews own it, the Irish Catholics rule it, and the Americans pay the bills." We have no fight with any of these persons mentioned but, as witnesses for Jehovah and in obedience to his commandment set forth in the Scriptures, we are compelled to call attention to the truth concerning the same in order that the people may be enlightened concerning God and his purpose.»5
That was not all. Besides damning the League of Nations, the declaration said:
"The present government of Germany has declared against Big Business oppressors and in opposition to the wrongful religious influence in the political affairs of the nation. Such is exactly our position."6
Then it proclaimed:
"Instead of being against the principles advocated by the government of Germany, we stand squarely for such principles, and point out that Jehovah God through Christ Jesus will bring about the full realization of these principles."7
Of course, as the Witnesses were soon to discover, the Nazis were not impressed and unleashed a wave of persecution against them almost immediately. But it was then, and only then, that Rutherford, the Watch Tower Society, and German Witness leaders decided to oppose Nazi policies in an uncompromising fashion. The Watch Tower Society still boasts of the fidelity of German Jehovah's Witnesses to Christian principles under the Third Reich. But it also continues to try to hide its leaders' attempt to compromise with the Nazis in 1933. Although The Watchtower of October 1, 1984 quoted from Christine King's The Nazi State and the New Religions, it failed to note what Dr. King had written about the Society's Declaration of Facts. For example, in a brief evaluation of that document, she makes what, from a Witness standpoint, is a rather damning remark. She states:
"The document is a master of its kind and worthy of the other four sects [the Christian Scientists, the Latter-Day Saints, the Seventh-Day Adventists and members of the New Apostolic Church], all of whom supported, in one way or another, the Nazi state."8
Then, in another paragraph, she says:
"Having attempted to assure the authorities by the Declaration of Facts, of their good citizenship, having interpreted and explained their teachings in a way, which given the preoccupations of the regime, was designed to allay fears and offer a hint of compromise, the Witnesses seemed to have expected little further harassment. Had the Declaration not condemned with the Nazis, the League of Nations, had it not described National Socialism as standing out against the injustices Germans had suffered since 1919 and had it not ended with a personal appeal to the Führer?"9
So it is hardly possible that the present-day leadership of the Society can be ignorant of the Declaration and its compromising, anti-Semitic nature. Yet when confronted with the facts, Watch Tower Society spokesmen deny them categorically, and the June 8, 1985 Awake! (p. 10) -- after damning the clergy of other churches for supporting Nazism -- proclaimed:
"However, there was one group in Germany that courageously championed Christian principles. That group was Jehovah's Witnesses. Unlike the clergy and their followers, the Witnesses refused to compromise with Hitler and the Nazis. They refused to violate God's commandments. They would not break their Christian neutrality in political affairs. (See Isaiah 2:2-4; John 17:16; James 4:4.) They did not attribute Heil, or salvation, to Hitler, as did the overwhelming majority of their flocks."
How the leaders of a religious organization which claims to be God's sole channel of truth on earth can be guilty of such lying and outright hypocricy is hard to image, but they are. The facts speak for themselves. But there is more to the matter than what is discussed above. For because of their outrageous pretentions, the men who have ruled and rule Jehovah's Witnesses have been guilty of far more terrible sins.
Footnotes
1 For a full account of Russell's Zionism, see David Horowitz, Pastor Charles Taze Russell: An Early American Christian Zionist (New York: Philosophical Library, 1986).
2 For a Watch Tower review of Life after Rutherford had changed Watch Tower Society policy toward the Jews, see The Golden Age of October 26, 1932, p. 54.
3 The most important of these movements was the Ku Klux Klan which existed on a widespread scale in both countries. But the Klan -- which was also anti-Caucasian and anti-Catholic -- was only one of such movements. Anti-Semitism was also quite rampant among American and Canadian Catholics, some of whom were openly pro-fascist. This was particularly true in the province of Quebec.
4 P. 130.
5 This quotation is taken from the English language edition of the 1934 Year Book of Jehovah's Witnesses (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, i933), p. 134.
6 ibid., p. 135.
7 ibid., p. 136.
8 Christine Elizabeth King, The Nazi State and the New Religions: Five Case Studies in Non-Conformity (New York & Toronto: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1982), pp. 151, 152.
9 ibid.
