The organisation has published two figures for the copies of the Declaration, and they are not stated on the same basis. The 1934 Year Book says the Declaration “was printed and mailed to every high officer of the government from the president down to the members of the council” and that “2,500,000 copies were freely distributed”. The 1974 Year Book says the delegates “took 2,100,000 copies of the ‘declaration’ home with them” from the convention, and the 1998 Awake! says that “following the convention, the Witnesses distributed 2.1 million copies”.

Confidence note. Read on the page image of p. 146 (leaf 142) on 19 September 2026, whose own running head reads “146 Year Book”, and confirmed word for word.

Scan provenance. Scan of the 1934 Year Book of Jehovah’s Witnesses held by the Internet Archive as item “1934-JwYearbook”. The item was uploaded to the Internet Archive in January 2012 by a private account; its “creator” field reads “watchtower”, but the upload is not by the publisher and the Internet Archive is not the publisher. The scanned title page names the corporate publishers as the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, Peoples Pulpit Association and International Bible Students Association, Brooklyn, New York, and carries the notice “Copyright 1933”. The volume is the Year Book for 1934: it carries the branch reports for the 1933 service year, and it is dated here by its edition year, the form in which the organisation’s own publications cite it (“1934 Yearbook, pp. 127-146”, The Watchtower, 1 August 1955, footnote h).

Notes. The 1974 Year Book and the 8 July 1998 Awake! both give the figure as 2,100,000.

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-de33-yb34-copies-distributed

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Confidence note. Opened on the Watchtower Online Library on 19 September 2026 and the wording confirmed; the page was taken from the pageNum marker preceding the passage.

Notes. This is the organisation's own confirmation that a letter accompanied the copy of the Declaration sent to Hitler. No full text of that letter was located in any source that could be opened for this research.

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-de33-yb74-hitler-letter

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Confidence note. Opened on the Watchtower Online Library on 19 September 2026 and read in full; the passage quoted stands on p. 14, the page taken from the pageNum markers. The article runs pp. 10-14, and the organisation’s own index cites this section of it as pp. 12-14.

Corroborated by. src-de33-yb74-convention, src-de33-frus-messersmith-1428

Notes. The article gives the number of copies distributed as 2.1 million, agreeing with the 1974 Year Book and differing from the 2,500,000 printed in the 1934 Year Book.

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-de33-g98-rebuttals

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