Jehova’s Witnesses

Jehovah’s Witnesses are conscientious objectors by principle. Hence, in any country that goes to war and becomes intolerant toward individuals refusing to serve in their armed forces, Jehovah’s Witnesses will get in trouble. In Canada, for example, male Jehovah’s Witnesses refusing to serve in the military were incarcerated in camps during World War II, sometimes together with their entire family. In the U.S., a 1940 Supreme Court decision against the Jehovah’s Witnesses about their refusal to salute the U.S. flag resulted in lynch-mob attacks against some 1,500 Witnesses across the USA by the end of 1940, some of whom were killed or castrated.

In the Third Reich, Jehovah’s Witnesses were sentenced to prison terms due to their refusal to serve. Some of them served their time in concentration camps, where some of them died due to the prevailing unfavorable conditions.

While there were occasional claims of the Third Reich having pursued a policy of physically exterminating Jehovah’s Witnesses, these claims neither stood up to scrutiny, nor were they backed by their own organizations. They are, for the most part, honest and truthful Christians who are uninterested in public attention and financial extortion schemes against the German government and people.

Whatever their flaws, they have one real virtue: If all men and women had the same attitude toward war as the Jehovah’s Witnesses, wars would no longer be possible.