Jehovah's Witnesses in Nazi Germany

The Nazis’ effort to transform Germany to fit their ideas of race and national unity excluded many groups of people. These sources show how the Nazi regime persecuted Jehovah’s Witnesses. Although Nazi authorities would have identified most Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany as racially acceptable “Aryans,” they targeted this group as a supposed threat to the unity of the Nazis’ “national community.”

Why Did the Nazi Regime Target Jehovah's Witnesses?

First founded in the United States in the 1800s, Jehovah's Witnesses had gained¹ at least 25,000 members in Germany by 1933.² Many Jehovah’s Witnesses went door-to-door to try converting other people to their faith, and they were often highly critical of other Christian groups. They were also pacifists who did not believe in war or military service, and their religious beliefs often led them to challenge the authority of state and national governments."³ These factors all contributed to the Nazis' persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses as "outsiders" whose nonconformity threatened the regime's efforts to reshape Germany into one "national community” (“Volksgemeinschaft”).

Nazi Persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses Begins

Shortly after the Nazi Party rose to power in 1933, authorities began persecuting Jehovah’s Witnesses. Police closed the organizational headquarters of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany and seized the group’s published materials.⁴ In June 1933, the Nazi regime banned Jehovah’s Witnesses from meeting, preaching, or distributing their publications. At first, the leadership of the Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany hoped to convince the Nazi regime that they were a politically neutral Christian group, and they urged their followers to obey the new laws. A letter published in a Jehovah’s Witness journal shows how authorities in Nazi Germany continued to target Jehovah’s Witnesses. In fall 1934, the leadership of the Jehovah’s Witnesses encouraged followers in Germany to openly defy the Nazi ban on meeting and preaching.

Pressures to Conform

Party authorities placed intense pressure on Jehovah’s Witnesses to participate in Nazi activities and demonstrate loyalty to Hitler. But the religious teachings of Jehovah’s Witnesses led members to be politically neutral and only pledge their loyalties to God. They typically refused to vote in elections, display the Nazi swastika flag, sing the German national anthem, say “heil Hitler,” or perform the Nazi salute.⁵

Witnesses of all ages and genders faced discrimination from employers, teachers, neighbors, and police. An oral history with Robert Wagemann shows that children also faced pressure to perform Nazi salutes in violation of their religious beliefs. The decision in the case of Franz Josef Seitz shows how young Jehovah’s Witnesses could be removed from their parents’ custody by Nazi courts because of their refusal to show loyalty to the regime.⁶

Arrests of Jehovah’s Witnesses

The Gestapo arrested many adult Jehovah’s Witnesses for their supposed refusal to meet the Nazis demands for social and political unity in the “national community.” The German Order Police also arrested Witnesses accused of violating the Nazi ban on Jehovah’s Witnesses preaching or distributing religious reading materials. Roughly 10,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses were imprisoned in jails, prisons, and concentration camps.⁷ They were sometimes promised their freedom if they would sign statements pledging to cooperate with police and have nothing more to do with other Jehovah’s Witnesses. Later versions of these declarations also stated that the religious beliefs of the Jehovah’s Witnesses were “false teachings.” This copy of a form promising to renounce Jehovah’s Witnesses was used at the Dachau concentration camp. Signing such statements was difficult to imagine for many devout Witnesses, because it would mean turning away from their close-knit communities even if they continued to hold their religious beliefs.

Jehovah’s Witnesses in Concentration Camps

Roughly 2,000 German Jehovah’s Witnesses were imprisoned in concentration camps during the years of Nazi rule. Around 1,000 non-German Witnesses were also imprisoned in Nazi camps. Nazi authorities used symbols with differently colored triangles to categorize prisoners.⁸ Jehovah’s Witnesses were identified with prisoner badges with purple triangles.⁹ Imprisoned Witnesses developed a reputation for being well-behaved prisoners who still stubbornly refused to conform to certain demands. Many accepted their persecution and treated their suffering as a test of faith. The punishment card of Johann Ludwig Rachuba shows how imprisoned Jehovah’s Witnesses were often mistreated and abused by camp guards.

Some Witnesses were selected for forced labor in the homes of SS guards outside of the camps because they were known for being nonviolent prisoners who did not try to escape. A memo from Ernst Kaltenbrunner shows that many female Jehovah’s Witnesses were assigned forced labor as domestic workers in SS homes. The paint roller and stencil used by Franz Wohlfahrt shows how working in guards’ homes often helped Witnesses increase their chances of survival.

Many imprisoned Witnesses managed to find ways to continue practicing their religion within the Nazi camp system. A Jehovah’s Witness song composed in Sachsenhausen concentration camp shows how imprisoned Witnesses secretly performed religious songs. Bible study materials smuggled into Dachau reveal how Jehovah’s Witnesses outside of the camps helped prisoners sustain their faith and continue their religious practices. The tightly knit communities formed by Jehovah’s Witnesses in concentration camps helped give many of these prisoners the strength to endure their confinement and abuse.

Pacifism and World War II

Jehovah’s Witnesses’ commitment to pacifism brought them into conflict with authorities over the issue of military service. Men who refused to serve in the German military could be sentenced to death. In this oral history, two sisters recall the torture and execution of their family members. As World War II continued and the tide of war turned against Germany and its allies, Nazi leaders became more concerned with pacifist elements of society undermining public support for the war. Female Jehovah’s Witnesses were sometimes executed on charges of helping drafted men escape military service or undermining military strength. In the final years of the war, Nazi leaders became concerned that Jehovah’s Witnesses were spreading religious prophecies that predicted Germany would soon be defeated.

Postwar Experiences

In the decades after World War II, the Nazi persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses became an important element of Witnesses’ self-identification as true believers and martyrs. Thousands of Witnesses continued to face forms of official persecution after the war. A ban in the German Democratic Republic (GDR, or East Germany) criminalized Jehovah’s Witnesses in 1950.¹⁰ The Constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, or West Germany), however, guaranteed religious freedom and recognized the right of conscientious objectors not to serve in the military. In 2023, Germany’s parliament voted to erect a memorial in Berlin to Jehovah’s Witnesses who were persecuted and murdered under Nazi rule.

A Supposed Threat to the "National Community"

Jehovah’s Witnesses were not a numerically large group in Nazi Germany, but many of its members experienced Nazi persecution.¹¹ Most Jehovah’s Witnesses in Germany would have been considered racially “Aryan” according to Nazi ideology, but authorities targeted Witnesses because they refused to conform to Nazi expectations for members of the “national community”—and because their pacifism was seen as a threat to the German war effort. Many Witnesses saw their persecution as a test of their faith and likened their experiences to those of early Christians and Biblical martyrs. Theoretically, Witnesses could leave their tightly knit communities of faith and rejoin the Nazis’ “national community”—if they agreed to conform to Nazi demands. But Nazi authorities determined that Jehovah’s Witnesses could never fully belong to the “new Germany” as long as their beliefs and behaviors were seen to threaten the national unity of the Nazi state.

The name Jehovah's Witnesses was first adopted by members of the organization in 1931. Until then, the movement and its followers were known as Bible Students, or International Bible Students. German authorities often used these names interchangeably.

Jehovah's Witnesses believed that much of mainstream society was not in harmony with the teachings of the Bible. Witnesses often formed extremely close-knit communities among themselves. They were a relatively small group, but their organized publishing operations and their practice of sharing their religious teachings door-to-door made them a highly visible minority.

The Nazis were deeply suspicious of the international roots of the Jehovah's Witnesses—Nazi propaganda falsely claimed that the group was an international Communist organization funded and controlled by wealthy Jewish Americans.

The Nazi regime targeted the buildings and publications of many so-called "enemies of the state" shortly after the Nazi rise to power in 1933. Nazi leaders, German police, and Nazi activists and sympathizers seized and destroyed property at the Institute of Sexual Science, the El Dorado nightclub, and the headquarters of the Communist Party. To learn more, see the related Experiencing History items, Photo of the Eldorado Club and Film of Germans Burning Books.

Because the Jehovah’s Witnesses were based in the United States, the US State Department protested the seizure of an American group’s property. In response, the government of Nazi Germany returned the property—but banned Jehovah’s Witnesses from meeting, preaching, or distributing their publications.

Jehovah's Witnesses also refused to participate in the pledge of allegiance in the United States. Their right to refuse to salute the flag in the US was taken to the courts in the 1930s. To learn more, see Merlin Owen Newton, Armed with the Constitution: Jehovah's Witnesses in Alabama and the U.S. Supreme Court, 1939-1946 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1995); and M. James Penton, Jehovah's Witnesses and the Third Reich: Sectarian Politics under Persecution (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), 120–130.

Authorities also pressured adult Witnesses to join Nazi organizations and pushed them out of their jobs. Jehovah's Witnesses often struggled to find work in Nazi Germany once they had been identified as "outsiders" who refused to conform. Many families were driven into poverty, and Jehovah's Witnesses were frequently forced to rely on their own tightly knit communities to support one another.

Of the 10,000 arrested in total, roughly 2,000 German Witnesses were sent to concentration camps along with about 1,000 non-German Witnesses. To learn more, see Detlef Garbe, Between Resistance & Martyrdom: Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Third Reich, translated by Dagmar G. Grimm (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2008), 481, 484.

To learn more, see the related Experiencing History collection, Concentration Camp Prisoners.

For another example of a concentration camp prisoner badge, see the Experiencing History item, Prisoner Badge of Josef Kohout.

The Allies occupied German territory following the war, and in 1949, the Soviet Union established the Communist German Democratic Republic (East Germany) in its occupation zone of Germany. The Western Allies declared the foundation of the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) in their occupation zones. To learn more about the shifting forms of persecution experienced by Jehovah's Witnesses in East Germany over the decades, see Mike Dennis, "Surviving the Stasi: Jehovah's Witnesses in Communist East Germany, 1965 to 1989," Religion, State and Society 34, no. 2 (August 2006): 145-68; and Johannes S. Wrobel, "Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany: Prisoners during the Communist Era," Religion, State and Society 34, no. 2 (August 2006): 169–190.

More than 25,000 Witnesses lived in Germany when the Nazis rose to power, and roughly 10,000 were imprisoned during the years of Nazi rule. About 2,000 German Witnesses were imprisoned in concentration camps, and scholars estimate that roughly 1,200 died under Nazi rule. Around 250 Jehovah’s Witnesses were executed, mostly for refusing military service. To learn more, see Detlef Garbe, Between Resistance & Martyrdom: Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Third Reich, translated by Dagmar G. Grimm (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2008), 484.

All 11 Items in the Jehovah's Witnesses in Nazi Germany Collection