BOOK REVIEW Between Resistance and Martyrdom. The Jehovah's Witnesses in the 'Third Reich

Zwischen Widerstand und Martyrium. Die Zeugen Jehovas im 'Dritten Reich', [Between Resistance and Martyrdom. The Jehovah's Witnesses in the 'Third Reich'] by DETLEF GARBE. Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 1993, 577 pp. DM 98.- (paper).

(Review in Sociology of Religion, Vol 56, nr 3, pp 342-344, 1995)

This thorough Ph.D-dissertation can be considered the first comprehensive historiography of the fate of the Jehovah's Witnesses (hereafter JW's) in Germany during the Nazi-regime. Based on war records and complemented by interviews with JW survivors of concentration camps, the author presents an exhaustive study of a harrowing episode of religious persecution.

The book consists of six parts. The first introductory section portrays origins and early development of the Watchtower Society in Germany. Part two begins in 1933, the year Hitler took power, and ends in 1935. This period, characterized by the organization's futile attempts to accommodate to the regime's ideological demands, is the precursor for the ruthless efforts to crush the movement from 1935 onwards. The escalation of the conflict during the period 1935-'39 is described in parts three and four. The introduction of compulsory, military service in 1935 resulted in the JW's imprisonments in concentra­tion camps, while their refusal to participate in the array of Nazi institutions and manifes­tations meant the beginning of their economic destruction: the boycott of their businesses, obstruction of employment, confiscation of properties, and withholding of welfare and pension claims. In several cases the state penetrated into family life by separating children from their parents and to place them under Nazi-tutelage. Part five concentrates on the wartime period. Special attention is paid to the JW-conscientious objectors, and the gruelling fate of them and their female fellow-believers in the concentration camps, to be followed by a remarkable improvement of their conditions (and even preferential treat­ment) during the final phase of the war. In the last section the author sheds light on the hitherto published vastly diverging estimates of casualties among the JW's. According to his calculations approx. 1,600 JW's, including 400 from Nazi-occupied territories, died because of executions or miserable conditions in the camps.

Though the Nazi system dealt the JW's and their organization several heavy blows, it never succeeded to paralyse them completely. Garbe presents many examples of the ingenuity by which the believers continued their underground religious activities, and their methods to avoid compromising their principles. (To elude the Hitler salute, for example, some carried two, ostensibly heavy, shopping bags in each hand). Surely, sincere adher­ence to doctrine played an important role in the JW's indomitable attitude, all the more since in most cases a signed declaration in which the follower renounced his or her belief was sufficient for release from the camps and safeguard against further persecution. Relatively few of the 10,000 detainees accepted this tempting offer. However, based on information from his interviewees, Garbe indicates that, rather than the voice of con­science, the proverbial social control in the JW's community may have inspired this refusal. Since, in the eyes of the believers, signing the document, motivated by either physical of economic survival, meant to be in league with the enemy. On pain of tangible ostracism from the religious community and future supernatural sanctions, the cohesive group of fellow-inmates continuously impressed any despairing individual believer with the importance of divine allegiance. After all, hardship, whether or not resulting in death, was only a transient phase on the path that ultimately led to eternal blessing.

In spite of Garbe's laudable and painstaking research, which at some points poignantly demythologizes the Watchtower Society's own official historiography, some parts of his analysis are debatable. Firstly, he disputes, what I will call, the 'totalitarian similarity' thesis as explanation for the confrontation. Advanced in previous studies, this interpreta­tion departs from the incompatibility of the authoritarian Nazi system and the correspon­ding structure of the Watchtower Society, causing the sharp conflict. Garbe argues that irrespective of these social structural characteristics, the Watchtower Society's doctrines per se collided with the Nazi-ideology in a context of gradual escalation. In other words, would the Nazi's have responded differently if the JW's refusal to discontinue their proselytizing activities or their unwillingness to let their children join the Hitler Youth were not based on legalistic doctrine and authoritarian leadership, but rather on other ideological premises? (p. 518) Obviously, in regard of his reasoning, his answer is nega­tive. In my opinion it is rather naïve, though, to suppose that the social fabric of a relig­ious movement with a non-legalistic doctrine and non-authoritarian leadership - at least, that's my understanding of Garbe's postulated 'other ideological premises' - would sustain even a fraction of the atrocities that fell to the JW's organization. The writer seems to miss the point that the totalitarian structure of the Watchtower Society guaranteed the social cohesion which in its turn was a prerequisite enabling the JW's to collectively oppose.

My second criticism concerns Garbe's analysis of the alleged anti-Semitism of the Watchtower Society in the period 1933-'35. Because the regime was under the impression that the movement had links with Judaism, the German branch, in close cooperation with its American based highest echelon, issued a public statement which made clear that such association was absolutely out of the question. (Ten years earlier, similar stories were going around in Germany, causing the organization's national leadership to challenge anyone to present solid evidence of such affiliation. The reward would be 1,000 marks.) As a clear sign of the movement's inclination to placate the Nazi state in order to prevent any further harassment, this manifest not only showed unmistakable support for the new government but also a paragraph with a plain anti-Semitic tenor. For example: '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'. Though Garbe acknowledges the statement's "polemic and verbal overplay", he takes the view that this and similar remarks are not to be subsumed under the definition of anti-Semitism because "among the JW's hostility towards the Jews was absent". (p.100, fn 69). Granted, but these assertions ignore Rutherford's, the then president of the JW's organization, bigotry towards the Jews in his speeches and writings since the 20s. Though outright and virulent anti-Judaism was never a hallmark of the Watchtower Society, the early prejudice towards the Jews appears to be in accordance with the often observed relationship between anti-Semitism and premillennialism as shown, for instance, in Boyer's When Time Shall Be No More. Garbe's implication that the declaration's anti-Semitism served as an attempt to appease the Nazi's is partly accurate, though his rejec­tion of its 'religiously motivated' character trivializes an occasional feature of the Watchtower Society's doctrinal system in the prewar period. Instead of dismissing this highly sensitive and controversial issue in a footnote, a more sophisticated elaboration should have been appropriate, particularly in view of the American millennial climate of the 20s.

In spite of these analytic shortcomings - and the book's extraordinarily high price - this study deserves the status of standard work of a still conspicuously visible religious move­ment.

© Richard Singelenberg. May not be reprinted without permission.

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