I just came across an interesting article from the January 1941 Reader's Digest about JWs entitled "Peddlers of Paradise." It's got some factual errors but is a very interesting analysis of them in that era (end of the Depression, mob violence, Nazi persecution, Rutherford, etc.)
Here are the first few paragraphs:
Peddlers of Paradise
By Jerome Beatty
Americans have been hearing of late about that hardy band of religious zealots known as “Jehovah’s witnesses.” In many parts of the country they have been jailed, or attacked by mobs and stoned out of town. Led by 70-year old Judge Joseph F. Rutherford, their militant and mysterious prophet, the witnesses have been denounced as fifth columnists, fascists, saboteurs. They stolidly refuse to salute the American or any other flag. They campaign against military training. Shouting, “Religion is a racket,” they attack bitterly the beliefs of Protestants, Jews and Catholics.
Such bellicose tactics have brought the witnesses into the limelight throughout the world. Germany has interned 6000 witnesses who wouldn’t “heil,” and the first conscientious objector executed by the Nazis was a witness. In Canada, where the organization has been outlawed, a magistrate recently sentenced two witnesses to six months in prison, and recommended that they be interned for the duration. Great Britain, however, exempts them from war duty.
In the United States a mob of 300 men besieged a meeting of 50 witnesses in Mooresville, Ind., shouting, “Salute the flag or you won’t leave the hall.” The mob blocked the exit until morning, when police rescued the terrified witnesses. More than 2000 men set fire to the witnesses’ Kingdom Hall in Kennebunk, Maine, dragged members from their beds and beat them in an effort to instill patriotism. Similar violence has occurred in other widely scattered parts of the country.
I've put it up at:
http://www.catholic-forum.com/members/popestleo/peddlers.html
If anyone can find the original magazine source "The American" of November 1940 I'd like to see that too. It's probably better than this condensed version.