Highlights from the letter written by Rutherford (President of Watchtower) to Reichskanzler (Reich Chanceller).
"The Watchtower" and "Bible Student" were the only magazines in America which refused to engage in anti-German propaganda and for that reason were prohibited and suppressed in America during the war.
In the very same manner, in course of the recent months the board of directors of our Society not only refused to engage in propaganda against Germany, but has even taken a position against it. The enclosed declaration underlines this fact and emphasizes that the people leading in such propaganda (Jewish businessmen and catholics) also are the most rigorous persecutors of the work of our Society and ist board of directors.
"We demand the freedom of all religious denominations within the state (Germany), as far as they do not endanger the state itself or violate the moral values of the German race.
The party as such represents the viewpoint of positive Christianity without being attached to any particular denomination. It fights against the Jewish-materialistic spirit inside and outside of us and is convinced that any recovery of the German people can only take place from the inside out."
“First They Came…” by Martin Niemöller
First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the incurably sick, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a incurably sick.
Then they came for the schools and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a school.
Then they came for the press and I did not speak out—
Because I was not the press.
Then they came for the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the people in countries occupied by Nazi Germany, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not in countries occupied by Nazi Germany.
Then they came for me—
and there was no one left to speak for me.
https://remember.org/shoah/timeline.html
https://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/people/jwtimeln.htm
1933 - About 25,000 Jehovah's Witnesses are active in Germany. March, first concentration camp, Dachau, established. April 1, all religious literature printed by Jehovah's Witnesses is banned from circulation in Germany. In June, Prussian State Police ban the work and organization of Jehovah's Witnesses. Some Witnesses sentenced to terms in labor and concentration camps. Watch Tower office in Magdeburg raided and closed. August 16, first mention of existence of concentration camps in the Golden Age magazine (now Awake!), published internationally by Jehovah's Witnesses.
1934 - October 7, telegrams of protest sent to Hitler by Jehovah's Witnesses in 50 countries, including Germany.
1935 - April 1, Jehovah's Witnesses banned from all civil service jobs and arrested throughout Germany. Pension and employment benefits confiscated. Marriage to one of Jehovah's Witnesses becomes legal grounds for divorce. Children of Jehovah's Witnesses banned from attending school. Some children taken from parents to be raised in Nazi homes and reform schools.
1936 - Mass arrests of Jehovah's Witnesses. Several thousand are sent to concentration camps and some remain there until 1945. December 12, Jehovah's Witnesses throughout Germany secretly distribute 200,000 copies of the Lucerne Resolution, a protest of Nazi atrocities, in one hour.
1937 - Buchenwald concentration camp established. Here is first known use of the purple triangle as a symbol for camp inmates who are Jehovah's Witnesses. April 22, Gestapo order directs that all of Jehovah's Witnesses released from prison be taken directly to concentration camps. June 20, Jehovah's Witnesses throughout Germany secretly distribute the "Open Letter," which supplies detailed accounts of Nazi atrocities.
1938 - October 2, Watch Tower Society President J. F. Rutherford, speaking over a network of 60 radio stations, denounces Nazi persecution of the Jews. November 9 and 10, Jews experience a nationwide attack in a pogrom called Krystallnacht (Night of Broken Glass). About 25,000 Jewish men deported to concentration camps. On November 15, all Jewish children expelled from school.
1939 - September 15, August Dickman, one of Jehovah's Witnesses and the first conscientious objector of the war to be executed, dies by firing squad at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
1942 - January 20, Wannsee Conference of Nazi officials formalizes plans for the so-called Final Solution, the extermination of European Jewry.
1945 - May 7, Germany surrenders and the war in Europe ends. The Nuremberg war crimes trials begin in November. September 30, verdicts of the war crimes trials announced in Nuremberg on the same day that Jehovah's Witnesses hold public convention at the Zeppelinwiese, formerly used for Nazi Party rallies.
in the political affairs of the nation. Such is exactly our position;...]
Did you notice that the letter stated what they were referring to?
Funny how opposers try to make it like JW's supported Hitler. If that was true, why did Hitler try to cut off the hand that fed him?
“The record of the Vatican in relationship to the Holocaust is one of the great moral failures in history—one from which the Catholic Church itself has yet to recover,” writes
columnist James Carroll in The Boston Globe. To back up his point, he lists the following historical data: “1929—The Lateran Pacts between Mussolini and Pius XI give the Vatican
freedom and money, and they give needed prestige to Mussolini. [1933]—The Vatican signs a Concordat with Hitler, his first international success. . . . 1935—Mussolini invades
Abyssinia. Catholic bishops bless Italian troops . . . 1939—Mussolini decrees an end to the rights of Jews in Italy. The pope says nothing. . . . 1942—The pope receives reports
from Italian army chaplains about the extermination of the Jews. In his Christmas message, he bemoans the fate of ‘unfortunate people’ killed because of their race, but he does
not mention Hitler, Germany or the death camps. Once again, the word ‘Jew’ is not used. . . . 1943—Germans begin to round up Jews in Italy, even in Rome near the Vatican. The
pope is still silent.”
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/pope-pius-xii-and-the-holocaust
Historians point out that any support the Pope did give the Jews came after 1942, once U.S. officials told him that the allies wanted total victory, and it became likely that they would get it. Furthering the notion that any intervention by Pius XII was based on practical advantage rather than moral inclination is the fact that in late 1942, Pius XII began to advise the German and Hungarian bishops that it would be to their ultimate political advantage to go on record as speaking out against the massacre of the Jews. (27)
It's not by misunderstandings on the part of opposers that identify Christians, but rather their fruits. (Matthew 7:20) Really, then, by their fruits you will recognize those men.
No one can deny the facts that it was the Catholic Church in Germany and other popular Churches that proved to be Hitlers henchmen rather than JW's.
On April 20, 1939, Archbishop Orsenigo celebrated Hitler's birthday. The celebrations, initiated by Pacelli (Pope Pius XII) became a tradition. Each April 20, Cardinal Bertram of Berlin was to send "warmest congratulations to the Fuhrer in the name of the bishops and the dioceses in Germany" and added with "fervent prayers which the Catholics of Germany are sending to heaven on their altars."
(Source: Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII, by John Cornwell)
Reich Bishop Ludwig Müller, Berlin, 1934
(Photo source: Gedenkstätte Deutscher Widerstand)
From 1935 the authorities began sending hundreds of Jehovah's Witnesses to concentration camps, where they were imprisoned with Communists, Socialists, other political prisoners and union members. In May 1938 they accounted for 12 percent of all prisoners at Buchenwald concentration camp near Weimar; by May 1939 they represented 40 percent of all prisoners at Schloss Lichentenburg,
The main camp, to which the Catholic priests were sent, was the Dachau concentration camp. The first clergymen to arrive at Dachau were Polish priests who were sent there in 1939. The Polish priests had been arrested for helping the Polish Resistance after Poland had been conquered in only 28 days.
The Catholic priests were not sent to Dachau just because they were priests. Catholics and Protestants alike were arrested as “enemies of the state” but only if they preached against the Nazi government.
An important policy of the Nazi party in Germany was called Gleichschaltung, a term that was coined in 1933 to mean that all German culture, religious practice, politics, and daily life should conform with Nazi ideology. This policy meant total control of thought, belief, and practice and it was used to systematically eradicate all anti-Nazi elements after Hitler came to power.
There were around 20 million Catholics and 20,000 priests in Nazi Germany. The vast majority of the German clergymen and the German people, including the 40 million Protestants, went along with Hitler’s ideology and were not persecuted by the Nazis.
https://www.csmonitor.com/1996/1106/110696.feat.feat.1.html
Article 16
Before bishops take possession of their dioceses they are to take an oath of loyalty either to the Reich governor of the state (Land) concerned or to the President of the Reich respectively, according to the following formula:
"Before God and on the Holy Gospels I swear and promise, as becomes a bishop, loyalty to the German Reich and to the State (Land) of . . . I swear and promise to honour the legally constituted government and to cause the clergy of my diocese to honour it. With dutiful concern for the welfare and the interests of the German state, in the performance of the ecclesiastical office entrusted to me, I will endeavour to prevent everything injurious which might threaten it."
WM BARR . =ABSOLUTE TRASH 