13 November 2025

Among the minorities persecuted by the Nazis were the Jehovah Witnesses. They spectacularly refused to pledge allegiance to Hitler, serve in the military and join Nazi organisations. It is estimated that between 2,500 and 5,000 Jehovah Witnesses were killed in the concentration camps. They were identified by purple triangles.

Paradoxically, the Nazis admired the strength of their faith which enabled them to resist declaring allegiance to Hitler. ‘SS Men must have the same fanatical and unshakeable faith in the National Socialist ideal and in Adolf Hitler that the Witnesses had in Jehovah.’ said Himmler and Eicke.

In ‘The Nazi Mind’, Laurence Rees quotes words which were spoken by Hitler in 1927, ‘Be assured, we too put faith in the first place and not cognition. One has to believe in a cause. Only faith creates a state. What motivates people to go and do battle for religious ideas? Not cognition but blind faith.’

The Jehovah Witnesses illustrated what Hitler wanted for his regime – blind faith not in a supernatural divine figure but in him and the Nazi regime. He knew that logic was not persuasive but emotion was and this was how he engendered faith.

Emotion is a very effective medium for communicating a message. The branches of Christianity which seem to attract people are the denominations which embed their message in emotion – the charismatic Evangelicals and the high church Catholics.

The Kirk has always favoured the cerebral over the emotional. Reason is well grounded unlike emotion which is difficult to pin down. Emotions can be manipulated. They were manipulated by Hitler. But reason can only take us so far. In the end, we need to take a leap of faith and this cannot be pinned down either.