Declaration of Facts - Historical Assessment

Historical Assessment

German historian Detlef Garbe viewed the Declaration as part of the religion's efforts to adapt at a time of increasing persecution. He said the use of the Zion's Glorious Hope hymn at the opening of the Berlin convention was an effort to make a good impression with the world and not a coincidence that the song shared the same melody as the German national anthem. He said the wording of the document presented the religion as an organization with a positive atttitude towards the German state and with common interests with the new rulers. Garbe said that in repudiating accusations that the Witnesses had received financial support from the Jews, the religion "clearly distanced itself from another group under persecution". He noted the use of "anti-Jewish slogans" in the document, which was written less than three months after the boycott of Jewish stores in Germany, but said the Witnesses were not guilty of antisemitism. Yet Garbe said the Declaration's description of the Anglo-American empire as "the most oppressive empire on earth" did undermine the religion's claims to political neutrality.

Garbe said later publications of the Watch Tower Society had misrepresented the Declaration as a "resolution of protest" and had also falsely claimed that Balzereit had "watered down" the society's publications in his translation of Rutherford's original document. He said the criticism of Balzereit in the Witnesses' 1974 Yearbook was an attempt to place responsibility on the German branch leader for the society's attempts to adapt.

Canadian historian Professor James Penton, a former Jehovah's Witness and critic of the religion, claimed the Declaration was a compromising document that proves "that Watch Tower leaders were attempting to pander to the Nazis, for the Declaration of Facts and the letter to Hitler were in many ways saying exactly what the Nazis themselves were saying". Penton said the Declaration's "antisemitic" statements about Jews mirrored statements made in Hitler's Mein Kampf and Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels' 1927 essay Wir fordern as well as those published by Nazi propagandist Julius Streicher as the Jewish boycott began.

Penton said Balzereit's letter to Hitler accompanying the Declaration was "even more obsequious to the Fuhrer and to Nazi values than the Declaration of Facts":

It noted, quite accurately, that the Watch Tower Society had not joined in the atrocity propaganda over Germany's treatment of the Jews, but then it claimed, falsely, that the Society had actually opposed it. Among other things, it lied blatantly when it claimed that commercialistic Jews in the United States were among the most "eager persecutors" of the Watch Tower's work and leadership ... then, finally and most shockingly, it specifically endorsed Hitler's own policies as stated in Section 24 of the Nazi Party Platform by quoting that section directly.

In a five-page article in its Awake! magazine in 1998, the Watch Tower Society rejected accusations that it had attempted to curry favor with the Hitler regime or endorsed the Nazi's racist ideology. It said the Witnesses had not decorated the convention venue with swastikas or sung the German national anthem. It said:

The singing of a song about Zion could hardly be construed as an effort to placate the Nazis. Under pressure from anti-Semitic Nazis, other churches removed Hebrew terms such as “Judah,” “Jehovah,” and “Zion” from their hymnals and liturgies. Jehovah’s Witnesses did not. The convention organizers, then, certainly did not expect to win favor with the government by singing a song extolling Zion. Possibly, some delegates may have been reluctant to sing “Zion’s Glorious Hope,” since the melody of this composition by Haydn was the same as that of the national anthem.

The Society said the denunciation of "commercial Jews" in the Declaration "clearly did not refer to the Jewish people in general, and it is regrettable if it has been misunderstood and has given cause for any offense." It explained that Jehovah's Witnesses rejected antisemitic views, and that the "high ideals" they shared with the Nazis were those of family values and religious freedom.

Religious scientist Gabriele Yonan, who described the Declaration of Facts as a "petition", an "appeal" and a "sermon", said its text, in the context of the history of Jehovah's Witnesses during the Nazi regime, had nothing to do with antisemitic statements and currying favor with Hitler, adding, "These accusations made by today's church circles are deliberate manipulations and historical misrepresentations." Yonan said the Declaration did not address Hitler as "Fuhrer" and did not conclude with the words "Heil Hitler", as was the case at the time in most official church documents addressed to state authorities. She said the absence of influence by the antisemitic terminology of the period was evident from the Declaration's free use of Old Testament quotations that include the term "Zion".