Between Resistance and Martyrdom: Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Third Reich. By Detlef Garbe. Translated by Dagmar G. Grimm. Madison:University of Wisconsin Press. 2008. Pp. 856. Cloth $95.00.

摘要

In his incredibly rich and exhaustive study, Detlef Garbe, the director of thenNeuengamme concentration camp memorial, investigates the courageous andnbold resistance of the International Bible Students’ Association or Jehovah’snWitnesses under National Socialist rule. Originally completed as a dissertationnin 1989 and published in 1993, this translation was made from an earliernrevised fourth edition published in 1998. Garbe identifies the Jehovah’snWitnesses as “largely ‘forgotten victims’” of the Nazi regime, and his study isnwritten to rectify this situation. According to Garbe, after the Jews, the Jehovah’snWitnesses were the “most severely persecuted religious denomination duringnthe National Socialist regime” (p. 484). Not motivated by political ends to over-nthrow the Hitler state, but acting on a strictly theological worldview that limitednthe allegiance of members to Jehovah God only, theWitnesses refused to partakenin most external displays of allegiance to Nazism, i.e., taking oaths, offering thenHitler salute while saying “Heil Hitler,” voting in elections, and later serving innthe military. Throughout the book, Garbe meticulously records the history ofnthe Witnesses’ “fundamental opposition” as they refused to participate in thenpolitical exercises of the Nazi state.