17. (a) According to one book, how were Jehovah’s Witnesses treated by the Nazis? (b) In meeting the challenge, how did Jehovah’s Witnesses contrast with others?

¹⁷ A recent book entitled Of Gods and Men stated that during Hitler’s Third Reich, Jehovah’s Witnesses were the religious group that suffered “the most extreme opposition.”

The above-mentioned study states: “Only the Jehovah’s Witnesses resisted the regime. They fought tooth and nail and as a result one-half of their number was imprisoned and one-quarter executed. . . . They, in contrast to [other religions], are nonworldly in the sense that they do not seek the approbation or the rewards of the material world and do not consider themselves to be members of it. They are political ‘neutrals’ since they belong already to another world​—God’s. . . . They do not seek or offer compromises. . . . To serve in the army, to vote, or to give the Hitler salute would have meant a recognition of the claims of this world as dominant over the claims of God.”