That recording is good evidence for several cases about Rutherford and how the
majority of scrapes his followers got into really happened, which JWs leaders
typically direct the blame for away from themselves.
As generally shown otherwise with all JWs leaders, since Rutherford's cooked
up claim to be the exclusive spokesperson for a tiny group involved repudiated
requirements for salvaton to define his own exclusiveness, he regularly propa-
gandized against people who held the better attested cases. This is a time
when propagandizing against mainstream Christianity notably meant competing with
the Mein Kampf propaganda Hitler wanted German Christians, the majority of his
constituency, to fall for.
- Rutherford claimed Armageddon was imminent and only those who agreed with
Rutherford (a tiny percentage) would survive--he had followers frequently pub-
lically spread the accusation that all others were Satanic. (Compare Paul's
advice on how to gain followers at 1 Cor.10:32 to 11:1.)
- Hitler, for strictly political reasons, wanted the PR to be that he was in
alliance with the Pope. Rutherford made what was basically an exaggerated
Hitler's Pope sort of case to the extent of characterizing the Pope as a fascist
who was Hitler's religious right hand man. A more responsible coverage of some
of that, including the Pope's non-Rutherford concern to rescue Jewish people
(criticized in that it could have been greater but not for being less than
Rutherford's), is at the next links.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler%27s_Pope
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Pius_XII
http://www.randytv.com/Hitler/beyond_revisionism.htm
It's also ironic in that generalizations should refer to what's mostly true--
over 50%--and most Catholics and Protestants saw Rom.13, etc., as calling on
them to fight against Hitler's fascism, but Rutherford's prophet-playing take on
Rom.13, etc., scammed most JWs into trying to talk people out of doing it, a
point not lost on those people.
- Rutherford blamed everyone but himself for getting the followers in scrapes
and thrown in German prison camps. But, like anyone else, especially in turbu-
lent times when people already had too much to worry about, he had to know that
if you scam them into broadcasting what is well known to be prejudice against
groups of people, daring them to belt those followers, through those people's
neighborhoods, eventually they were going to find someone who'd accomodate them.
That's why I say an easy cure for the JWs' troubles would have been to get him
out of the mansion and put him at the front of the door-to-door line. He would
have started thinking of different interpretations, "Paul said to not give
offense," etc.... If the pacifistic approach is debatable, it isn't that he
could have chosen to guide them in a strategically safer way, but his elitism
wouldn't consider such discretion.
And Hitler didn't have the JWs marked for genocide like he did the Jewish peo-
ple--he just wanted them to stay out of his way politically and showed he'd use
force to do it. It wasn't the Pope, etc., it was Rutherford's own bungled pro-
phet-playing in his 2nd biggest marketing group, Germany, at 1st pandering then
threatening Hitler that he'd send unarmed JWs followers into German streets with
Rutherford tracts so critical of Hitler God would destroy Hitler soon, that got
JWs thrown into German prison camps.
http://www.freewebs.com/glenster1/gtjbrooklyn6.htm
