H-German (H-Net Reviews), “Review of Detlef Garbe, Zwischen Widerstand und Martyrium: Die Zeugen Jehovas im “Dritten Reich””
“In early 1933 rhetorical hostility turned to active repression, and this persisted in various forms for the duration of the Third Reich. Initial measures targeted the IBV as an organization.”
A scholarly review of the standard academic study of Jehovah’s Witnesses under National Socialism, reviewing the German first edition (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1994). The reviewer writes that the book “offers by far the most comprehensive account to date” and is “a monument of assiduous research”, and that Garbe “elects to describe it as a species of Resistenz”.
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Provenance and verification note for H-German (H-Net Reviews), Review of Detlef Garbe, Zwischen Widerstand und Martyrium: Die Zeugen Jehovas im “Dritten Reich”
Confidence note. Opened and read in full on 19 September 2026, and re-read for an independent audit the same day at the H-Net Commons address recorded above, where the review is headed “Reviewed by David J. Diephouse (Calvin College), Published on H-German (November, 1995)”. The sentences quoted here and the phrases in the context note were confirmed word for word. On the day of the audit the older www.h-net.org address did not answer. The review discusses the ban and the movement’s conduct generally; the words “Berlin” and “Declaration” do not appear in it. On a second adversarial audit on 19 September 2026 the review could not be re-opened at all: both www.h-net.org and networks.h-net.org refused the connection. The record is kept because it was opened and read on the access date, but nothing on this page now rests on it beyond the quotation and the reviewer’s phrases recorded here.
Notes. The review is the source here for the standing of Garbe’s book among historians and for the reviewer’s own summary of the 1933 repression. It says nothing about the Declaration of Facts.
Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-de33-hnet-diephouse-garbe