jwleaks: ... I did personally know Ilse Hess, wife of Rudolph Hess, Deputy Führer to Adolf Hitler. She died in 1995 in Victoria, Australia, in my home town. She knew my grandmother, Oma, who also came to Australia after WW2. My Oma was the granddaughter of King Leopold II of the Belgians. Ilse's revelations to me about the JWs, aka Bible Students, were in complete contrast to Watchtower's own sanitised historical revisionism.
That is very interesting.Would you be able to expand on those contrasting revelations? Thanks
Rudolph Hess, apart from being Deputy Führer to Hitler, was also the editor of Hitler's Mein Kampf which was written while they were both in prison.
According to Ilsa one the influences on Mein Kampf was a German translation of book in the prison library - Studies in the Scriptures volume 7, The Finished Mystery. At the time the writings of Rutherford and the Watchtower were very critical of jews and blacks.
Also, which is quite ironic, the jehovah's witnesses, or bible students as they were then known, went greatly ignored by the Nazi party during the lead up to and commencement of WW2. They were not singled out for persecution or attack. They were tolerated if not ignored. If you look up the early JW yearbooks you will find that the Watchtower Society courted Hitler and offered public support to the ideologies of the Nazi party prior to WW2 recognising they they shared a common ideology. Things changed when Hitler commenced building and land acquisition, including a watchtower owned building.
Watchtower Society president, JF Rutherford, launched a broadside attack on Hitler by rallying jehovah's witnesses around the world to send telegrams to Hitler threatening him and telling him that their god will destroy him.
When I discussed these events with Ilsa one afternoon she explained that no one in the Nazi party had any real idea who all these telegrams and threats were from or why they were arriving. However, Hess knew who they actually were. Rutherford and the Watchtower were simply a a noisy mosquito in the room waiting to be swatted. Had Rutherford kept his mouth shut and not meddled in the political affairs of this world things might have changed on the world stage.
Ilsa told me that both Rudolph Hess and Adolph Hitler eventually decided that the Watchtower, aka bible students, and Rutherford were trying to cause divisions on behalf of the US government. The irony at the time was that Hess was an avid reader of Rutherford's books. According to Ilsa her husband did not view the bible students as a threat or problem but Hitler did not like to be threatened. The bible students made the black list and eventually suffered, although not to the extent Watchtower has made out.
I asked Ilsa "if the bible students never threatened Hitler and the Nazi party, would that have changed history?" I got an answer. The telegrams were the straw that broke the camel's back and caused a deadly reaction.
In my opinion, Rutherford and the jehovah's witnesses around the world share the blame in stirring up trouble when none existed. I wonder how many lives were lost because the jehovah's witnesses meddled in politics. When Jesus was on earth he threatened no ruler with removal and always said his kingdom was no part of this world. Rutherford set up his kingdom as part of this world and seized the rulership for himself by having those on the board of directors of Watch Tower who did not support him removed. Then he out and secretly commissioned the writing of The Finished Mystery book and attributed it's origin to Christ. Stupid, stupid man.
Rutherford had Hitler threatened with removal, albeit by so-called divine action. Interestingly it was Rutherford himself who was removed first. He beat Hitler to the grave.
