good question,
I believe at that time, many were swept up into a mental perspective that seemed right to them despite it being so immoral to the rest of the world. As exJW's we can appreciate that more than most......praying for the destruction of mankind for our little plot of land and good health.
It is comparable also to the invasion of Iraq, or prehaps vietnam. Hitlers acts against the jewish people and alike were atrocious, but neither was napalm or precision bombings of civilians in vietnam/iraq ...moral. Over a million covillians died in the Iraq war, I am sure history will see it as a personal war for bush, a war for oil, for money. How easy was it inn America to say that at the time! How easy to say 'no' as a soldier?
Bradley Manning showed us the horrors of the iraq war and will serve a life in prison for it.
As humankind progresses in morals and wisdom, we can hooe such occurences reduce. But it is far too easy to judge with heindsight, be it germans in WW2 or Americans in Baghdad....
More than likely we would have trumpeted the german politics of the time and joined the army with pride as most did, we all like to think we would be the one that said no, but statistics show that we likely would not have been.
Also as for the JW's the Watchtowers letter to Hitler entitled 'The decleration of facts' makes clear they SUPPORTED what he was doing and did not like the 'commercial jews'. It is a shameful read. The big issue with Watchtower was that they couldnt have their followers taking instruction from someone else, be it hitler or Churchill or Eisenhower. It was about loyalty not ideolagy, Rutherford was a supporter of German Nazi politics.
Snare x
I appreciate they dont all compare exactly and that some will feel I am wrong. I am just saying there are similarities to the mindset of going to war for the wrong reasons.
