Has anybody read this book and what did you think? Are there worthwhile pics and documents in it?
Jehovah's Witnesses and the third Reich, anybody read?
by needproof 8 Replies latest jw friends
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needproof
bttt surely somebody has read it
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Jringe01
I haven't but I think I'll wander up to the library and sign out a copy. :-)
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needproof
If only libraries here were that good!
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slimboyfat
The documents are interesting, and there are a couple of interesting cartoons from the golden age but other than that the pictures aren't up to much. I made some comments specifically about how to categorize Penton's work elsewhere I will repeat:
Leolaia,
The author categorizes Penton as "ex-member testimony" rather than as an "academic writer", setting aside Penton's academic credentials as a religious historian and leaving the impression that Penton gave only personal testimony rather than a researched thesis. The author's characterization of academic writers as "neutral" in opposition to both Penton and the Society also constructs Penton's criticism as based on his ex-member status rather than his research.
When I wrote a dissertation on this subject I had trouble in how to categorize Penton and his new book. He was published by an academic press, his writing conforms to academic stylistic conventions, and he is a professor emeritus after all. On the other hand there are clearly reasons why Penton's book does not sit so easily on the shelf alongside the work of historians studying JWs during the Third Reich.
1. Rather than seriously engaging respected historians such as Detlef Garbe and Christine King as fellow academics he seeks to stigmatize them as "Watchtower apologists". This is no more striking than in his sexist comments intended to demean King's contribution to the Stand Firm video as those of a giddy "schoolgirl". This is not the level of argumentation one hopes to find in a balanced academic study of any sort.
2. Penton includes a protracted discussion of why he feels ex-member testimony should not be dismissed, taking on sociologist Bryan Wilson and others who have claimed that such needs to be viewed with extreme caution. So in some sense it may be argued that Penton almost invites the characterisation of presenting "ex-member testimony" and also includes his explanation as to why that is no bad thing in fact. So maybe Chryssides is taking Penton himself as his point of departure on this.
3. By seeking to align himself with the polemicist Norman Finkelstein who speaks out against the 'Holocaust Industry' Penton also sets himself up more as a controversialist in some ways engaging in his own form of sectarian politics rather than purely as a historian documenting sectarian politics during the Third Reich as is claimed on the cover.
4. Whereas academic authors will spell out their methodology very clearly: conscious, frank and explicit about shortcomings and the skills they bring to a particular discussion, polemicists often puff up credentials and obscure deficiencies. What I find alarming about Penton's book is that despite the many German documents in the appendices, he displays little evidence of fluency in German. Does Penton read German at all in fact? Despite the primary sources in the appendices, the enormous secondary literature on JWs during the Third Reich in German is very conspicuous by its almost complete absence in the bibliography apart from a couple of obligatory texts - and even those he very rarely cites. I find this troubling on two levels: 1) if Penton was largely/entirely reliant on help from some German friends in making use of the German primary sources why was he not explicit and frank about his methods and language abilities? 2) more fundamentally you could ask what business does a historian who is not fluent in German have undertaking such a study to start with?
5. Although Penton was published by an academic press he makes it clear that the scope of his book was substantially edited before publication. He presents this as largely a matter of space, but it is not too hard to read between the lines and his expressed wish that he could have dealt more with "historiography" (my goodness the book is largely historiographical as it stands!) to see that there may have been some concern among those called to review the book about its polemical tenor.
6. There is also the matter of misdirection in the development of the book which is not characteristic of an academic approach. The book purports to be a history of JWs during the Third Reich. Actually fewer than 50 pages present a narrative for JWs in Germany during that period, and even those pages are less concerned with JWs in Germany than they are with Penton stating his own personal judgments on J F Rutherford. The book starts with a foreword contributed by Larc in which he states that it is fallacious to try to psychoanalyse the dead, and then proceeds to do just that, finding Rutherford somewhat wanting. But that turns out to be no aberration: as the book thus begins, so it develops. Although it claims to be a history of JWs during the Third Reich, it is clealy more focussed on promoting an apostate agenda as far as reconstruction of Rutherford's character in particular is concerned.
Slim
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mouthy
I have the book - read it awhile ago. !! Found it interesting. Jim is a personal friend of mine- He has been to our support group, Has suffered terribly at the hands of the JW Organization.
He & Marilyn are super folks.I have read SO many books by "apostates" & being old & forgetful.....I forget most of the writings.
I just wish I could forget the WT indoctrination as quickly
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Finally-Free
I read the book and have it at home. It's been a while, so I've forgotten most of what I read in it. I'll have to read it again to refresh my feeble memory.
W
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wonder52
I have known James Penton for over twenty years now; I know of him personally and his acedemic background, writings and teaching credentials. Slim, who "evaluated" Jehovah's Witnesses and the Third Reich, is obviously someone who doesn't know the difference between a review and an ad hominem attack. Penton does know German. He has told me that while he is not fluent in the language, my understanding is that he can read it. But that's not the point; he certainly makes it clear that he did have a good deal of help from many people in both Europe and North America. It doesn't seem that Slim has read carefully what Penton has written. Penton also gives English translations for all or practically all of the documents he included in his book, and those documents speak pretty clearly for themselves. That is especially true of the Declaration which Slim doesn't mention.
Although he is pretty sharp with certain academics, Penton does give credit to both King and Garbe. But he does take them to task for failing to recognize certain things about the JWs. Among other things, he gives Garbe a bad time for saying that the JWs weren't anti-Semetic when after 1931 when they clearly were. Penton documents that fact.
Slim's statement that Penton devotes only about fifty pages to the Witnesses in Germany is simply silly. but where he really gets out of line is when he dismisses Penton's account of Rutherford and his antics. There is now plenty of information that Rutherford was a drunk. He is often called "Booze Rutherford." Besides that, anyone reading Watchtower stuff written by him can see what a goof he was. It is also pretty clear that the Moyle trial and much other informantion that he was a dictator of the worst sort. How Slim can defend Rutherford by saying Penton is simply promoting an apostate agenda is beyond me. It's pretty obvious that Slim is just listening to his mater's voice and coming up with the sort of nasty personal attacks on anyone who doesn't bow down to the "faithful and discreet slave." Too many of us have suffered at the hands of the Society to take anything written by it or its defenders as serious.
wonder52
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ninja
Hey needproof...why do you have a pic of MPH on your avatar?........by the way...did he ever find those lost keys?