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Authority and accountability · Claim record

A letter accompanied the copy of the Declaration sent to Hitler. The organisation's own 1974 Year Book quotes part of it: “The Brooklyn presidency of the Watch Tower Society is and always has been exceedingly friendly to Germany. In 1918 the president of the Society and seven members of the Board of Directors in America were sentenced to 80 years' imprisonment for the reason that the president refused to let two magazines in America, which he edited, be used in war propaganda against Germany.”

Claim ID claim-authority-de33-hitler-letterConcerns June 1933Explicit statement
Explicit statement · June 1933 Verified

A letter accompanied the copy of the Declaration sent to Hitler. The organisation's own 1974 Year Book quotes part of it: “The Brooklyn presidency of the Watch Tower Society is and always has been exceedingly friendly to Germany. In 1918 the president of the Society and seven members of the Board of Directors in America were sentenced to 80 years' imprisonment for the reason that the president refused to let two magazines in America, which he edited, be used in war propaganda against Germany.” Year Book of Jehovah's Witnesses, 1974

Show the evidence (1 source)
Primary JW publication Verified

Year Book of Jehovah's Witnesses, “Part 1—Germany”

1974 · p.111 · Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society

“The copy sent to Hitler was accompanied by a letter that, in part, read: “The Brooklyn presidency of the Watch Tower Society is and always has been exceedingly friendly to Germany. In 1918 the president of the Society and seven members of the Board of Directors in America were sentenced to 80 years' imprisonment for the reason that the president refused to let two magazines in America, which he edited, be used in war propaganda against Germany.””

Immediately after recording that the delegates took 2,100,000 copies of the Declaration home with them for distribution. The 1974 Year Book quotes only this part of the letter and does not say who wrote or signed it.

Official source

Provenance and verification note

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

Claim page Correct or update

A direct link to this claim is https://jwtruth.org/evidence/claim-authority-de33-hitler-letter/. Every source above opens the original document or the best available copy. If you believe the wording, date or context is wrong, report an error.