Kaik, I always enjoy your contributions to discussions about WW2 and Germany. I envy your ability to access primary documentation and your proximity to research material. What you share and the information you add often fills in gaps in my own research. Thank you.
TheOldHippie: In stead of reading the summaries some here give - good, but still nothing but summaries - why don't you read Garbe? It's all there. Thick as a brick, but a truly great history of JWs and WWII. The pre-Hitler persecution, early Hitler acts, Rutherford's attempts at coming to terms, Balzereit, conventions, campaigns, internal strife within the camps, factions among the JWs - it's all there. So summaries here are nothing "new", nothing that is "hidden from the JWs", "shocking news" or anything like that. Read Garbe - or a couple of the other good German historians for that matter. Good books. And nothing neither a JW or an ex-JW should be afraid of. Just plain good old-fashioned research with all the pro's and con's, all the successes and setbacks.
Yes, OldHippie, Detlef Garbe is an excellent resource. His book is one, among many others, that has given us much information about the Watchtower activities during the war years. However, in order to get a better sense of what was happening at that time, and how external influences shaped the WT history, there is much to be learned by looking farther afield in historical accounts.
I apologize as you seem to not like summaries, but what follows is a very brief summary of research that goes well beyond WTS literature and Garbe’s historical documentation or authors who have focused on the WTS and WW2. I can provide references for what I am about to say, but for now, I will try to keep this brief. I am leaving lots of detail out.
It is easy to focus on Rutherford and Hitler, but it was Heinrich Himmler, the leader of the SS, who had the most influence on the JWs during WW2.
And it was Heinrich Himmler’s doctor who would also prove to play a pivotal role in the history of the JWs. Garbe, and WT publications, mention Felix Kersten as an influential figure and there are several outside sources that speak of Kersten’s activities during the war, including several editions of the diary that he wrote while attending to Himmler’s health. There is far more to Dr. Kersten than what the WT or Garbe mention. I have read several books about Kersten in addition to one of his diaries. One author called him "The Devil's Doctor".
Among the many things that I discovered about this famed WT legend, Felix Kersten, is that he practiced a special technique on Himmler that ingratiated him to the leader of the SS. Kersten wasn’t a ‘doctor’ that could lay claim to the title legitimately – he was a masseuse. What made him special to Himmler is that Kersten was able to relieve the intense abdominal pain that Himmler suffered frequently. And how Kersten did it was with “deep massage” – a technique that was known in the chiropractic field of the age, as “bloodless surgery”.
And that piece of information points to some things that I find interesting about the JWs and WW2 – how the WTS and the JWs fit, and don’t fit, within the historical narrative of blood medicine.
Many things occurred during World War 2 that would have an impact on the world – technology surges in times of conflict and one area that surged, and never looked back, was blood medicine technology. The group that would feel the impact of those medical advances in a huge negative way was the JWs – the doctrine banning blood transfusions, was introduced right after the end of WW2.
At the very same time that the world was embracing and making large medical gains in blood medicine, the JWs were denied the right to access blood transfusions. It was at the very same time that Eisenhower was releasing the work camp prisoners at the end of the war, that Knorr and Franz were putting the finishing touches on the July, 1945 Watchtower that would set the stage for a huge leap in WT doctrine. The article published in that magazine led to the WTS saying that blood transfusions were no longer permitted, and that ‘Jehovah God’ said so in the Bible.
Advances in blood technology occurred rather rapidly during WW2. Even though blood transfusions had been in medical use for some time, with doctors and patients encountering and overcoming many problems along the way, several things happened during the years leading up to and during WW2 that would have lasting benefits in blood medicine. Firstly, a giant step happened when a Canadian doctor devised a way to transport blood to the wounded during the Spanish Civil War (1936?). And Dr. Cohn, an American doctor, discovered how to fractionate blood. Blood banking became possible, and blood donors were able to donate other than “on the hoof” – which was arm to arm transmission between soldiers and medics at the front.
The one country, though, that lagged way behind in the optimal use of blood technology was Nazi Germany. While the rest of the world was expending energy into utilizing blood as a life saving resource, the Germans were reluctant and superstitious in their use of blood. (a good book to read on blood medicine history is Douglas Starr’s Blood: An Epic History of Medicine and Commerce)
The German doctors used small amounts of blood when resorting to blood transfusions (usually not enough), the medical treatment at the front still relied mostly on the system of “on the hoof” transfusions, and the German’s medical research was more concerned in pursuing ways of stopping the bleeding from happening than discovering how to advance blood transfusion technology. For instance, Nazi doctors tested out anti-clotting formulas on prisoners and did very little to advance the use of blood transfusions. Underlying the Nazis’ focus on blood management and reducing blood transfusions, was their notion of “pure race” and avoiding contaminating their Aryan blood with the blood of those who were “impure”.
By the end of WW2, the WTS had manipulated Biblical interpretation in order to come up with a blood doctrine that fit perfectly into the Nazis’ scientific and ideological aims. And then gave the JWs the ultimate loyalty test – to obey or face eternal death. And just like that, those volunteer prisoners became volunteer medical subjects.
The face of bloodless surgery has changed since the days of it being practised as a deep massage technique by Felix Kersten, but the reasons for it being what it is today, truly is because of what the JWs have contributed to it since the end of WW2 – their lives.
The WTS is blood guilty. And not just for those who died during the war in concentration camps, but also for those who have died in the past 70 years by following the WTS’ directive to refuse blood transfusions. The WTS has deceived the world with the blood doctrine because the roots of the blood transfusion ban aren’t in the Bible – the roots can be found in Nazi Germany during WW2.