When I was in in the 1990s, the doctrine was the there was a special, explicit, specific, causative context of Hitler vs Jehovah, due to Hitler's persecution of JWs. This is to be distinct from an un-special, unspecific, correllated context of Hitler vs Jehovah. This tiny difference in rhetoric has a huge effect. Or in brief, JWs get to name drop Hitler as a level boss they had to face alone, in a way no other group on the planet had to face. Under some circumstances, that can be found persuasive by variously marginal or marginalized persons.
I had NO idea about the letter to Hitler......
by Flg8ter 24 Replies latest watchtower scandals
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AndDontCallMeShirley
Even without these letters and Rutherford's arrogance/stupidity, wouldn't JW persecution have still happened since they refused to go to war?
Possibly. It is beyond dispute, however, that Rutherford's actions certainly magnified Hitler's special targeting of JWs. Rutherford's provocation of Hitler was the catalyst for the famous proclamation, "I will exterminate this brood from Germany!" The Nazi's primary interest was getting a JW to agree to disassociate themselves from a dangerous "sect" (WT) and agree to not promote it in any way.
Without Rutherford's provocation JWs who refused military service may have only gone to prison, not concentration camps.
( jv chap. 29 pp. 659-660 "Objects of Hatred by All the Nations)
"When Adolf Hitler came to power, and the German Catholic Episcopate repeated their request, Hitler said: ‘These so-called Earnest Bible Students [Jehovah’s Witnesses] are troublemakers; . . . I consider them quacks; I do not tolerate that the German Catholics shall be besmirched in such a manner by this American Judge Rutherford; I dissolve [Jehovah’s Witnesses] in Germany.’"
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AndDontCallMeShirley
This is a long article but definitely worth reading:
http://www.seanet.com/~raines/conflicts.html
Opening comments:
"Abstract
A historical analysis of the Jehovah's Witnesses' during World War II concluded that they experienced extreme conflicts with Nazi Germany and probably withstood the attacks against them better than most groups. Their experience has been analyzed by a number of researchers including camp inmates and administrators who have concluded that their strong religious faith, community and social pressure to conform were all critical in helping Witnesses to withstand the Nazi assault against them. A major reason Witnesses endured was because to capitulate to the Nazis meant disfellowshipping and cutting off from what was often their only social support, their fellow Witnesses. Often the Witnesses as people showed exemplary behavior, but the Watchtower administration not uncommonly displayed immoral or deceitful behavior and even denigrated the Jews in an effort to save the German Watchtower branch. Although partly to blame for the tragedy, the Watchtower unscrupulously exploits it today to try to prove their claim of being God's only representatives on earth today."
excerpts:
"Some of the Watchtower-Nazi conflicts occurred partly because they were similar in several major ways. Both were highly authoritarian and totalitarian, convinced that only their beliefs held the solution to the world's troubles."
Much of what the Witnesses did was less due to the voice of conscience than the fear of expulsion from their community.
What has not generally been known either by most Jehovah's Witnesses or many independent scholars, however, is that while ordinary German Witnesses did generally maintain their integrity and commitment to their principles, their leaders--the Watch Tower's second president, Judge Joseph F. Rutherford, and the man who succeeded him in office in 1942, Nathan H. Knorr, plus 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 and attacking Great Britain the United States, and the League of Nations in the harshest terms. [140]
The Watchtower was sympathetic to the Jews, even supporting Zionists movements until about 1932. [141] Then they reversed their stand, and began a campaign critical of Jews that can only be called racist. They also tried to appease the Nazis in other ways:
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rmt1
I could have added that TWS appropriates to itself the cathexis or shock value of Hitler. It claims a power of righteousness, and a magnitude of Godly favor, that is linearly proportional to the unrighteousness of the sum of Nazi atrocities. Discount, leverageable, street credit or war story. Good for building a mythology proportional in height to the length of the shadow of Nazism.
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mP
Prob
Ok so one small tiny little itty bitty defence here. Nobody quite knew the extend of Hitlers derangement when this was sent.
mp;
thats simply not true. He wrote about his madness, hatred for jews and russians in his autobiography which was published before the 1930s. What he actually ended up doing was very much prophetic in that he followed his ideas faithfully. Somehow Stalin also missed this.