Initially, I want to repeat that I feel these remarks about death figures are tasteless.
1. A few historians say that the JW persecution was worse, most say it was comparable to the Jew's persecution. Also Detlef Garbe quotes three historians that equal JW persecution to that of the Jews: Philip Friedman, Reiner W. Kühl and Friedrich Zipfel. The latter published in 1965 the standard book "Kirchenkampf in Deutschland" (Fight of the Churches in Germany).
Those who say it's worse are in the minority and base their oppinion that the JW could always resign from their being JW. They just had to sign a paper. The JW were tortured to resign or to tell names. That is what these historians feel is worse. But they are the minority.
2.[quote]"figures like 10,000 Witnesses in the camps, and 4,000 dead" as found in many non-JW books and articles talking about the JW's during the World War II has its origen indirectly from WT. [/unquote]
After 1945, the WTS did not care about their persecution because the had to reorganize. For decades, hardly anybody in Germany wanted to hear facts about Nazis and their crimes because all wanted to forget about. The WTS did not care and they did not cooperate with historians with a "So what?" attitude.
So, the first researches were not done in Germany. It was Canadian historian Michael H. Kater that based his researches on the US National Archives. With him originated the big figures. The WTS just copied from him.
In the first edition of his book, Detlef Garbe said that he was sorry that the WTS was of no help. But in the beginning of the 90s the WTS started to do PR and they also build up the "Watchtower History Archives". Those had not been existent before. The collected anything to do with JW history in Germany especially the 30s. With the third edition of Garbe's book there is much use of the archives.
That means that before the 90s the WTS did no and supported no scientific work to present facts about JW in Hitler-Germany.
The first thing they published were the incomplete figures and assumptions they had. Then they quoted Kater and historians which mostly quoted Kater whose assumptions were too high as we know now.
From the beginning of the 90s they quote Garbe who did the first extensive study after Kater and Zipfel. Since then they have done scientific work so that they found new files so that figures are still being corrected.
To me, this is a normal historical work, that figures develop from mere guesses to more accurate ones.
