Was the outbreak of World War 1 truly unexpected to all except Bible Students?
I recently heard a speaker say that World War 1 caught the world completely off guard, no one was expecting it.
“Except Jehovah‘s Witnesses because we knew what was coming.”
And that the time period before 1914 was exceptionally peaceful and wonderful.
This is something we’ve all heard before, as it is commonly promoted in WT literature.
“Yet, people in general were expecting a different sort of future. Many who wrote memoirs about the summer of 1914 described it was one of “exceptional tranquility,” “full of hope and promise”. Some analysts felt that in 1914, conditions were better than ever for achieving world peace. What the Bible Students had been preaching about global anarchy, seemed highly unlikely.”
- Jehovahs Witnesses - Faith in Action, Part 1: Out of Darkness
Minute mark: 42:10
The organization attempts to prove this by quoting from an elderly prime minister who remembered the pre 1914 era with nostalgia as an idyllic time.
They also quote average citizens, George Hannan and Ewart Chitty to support these claims.
What the Awake does not mention is that both of these “average citizens” George Hannan and Ewart Chitty, were also Jehovahs Witnesses. Ewart Chitty, was even a Governing Body member.
It becomes clear that the organization is trying to paint the picture that ww1 came suddenly and without a warning but the Bible Students knew something bad was about to occur ahead of time while the rest of the world was utterly clueless. Thus proving they are Gods one sole channel.
But what were most people saying at the time?
Notice what the organizations own literature said.
“…the daily papers and the weeklies and monthlies, religious and secular, are continually discussing the prospects of war in Europe. They note the grievances and ambitions of the various nations and predict that war is inevitable at no distant day, that it may begin at any moment between some of the great powers, and that the prospects are that it will eventually involve them all.”
- The Watch Tower. January 15. 1892, pp. 19-21. Reprints, p. 1354
Earlier, Zion’s Watch Tower. February 1887, (page 2) states:
“This all looks as though next Summer would see a war on foot which
might engage every nation in Europe.”
After this prediction failed, Russell was more cautious on his views of a war in Europe, “We do not share them," he wrote in 1892, 'That is, we do not think that the prospects of a general European war are so marked as is commonly supposed."
“Even should a war or revolution break out in Europe sooner than 1905, we could not consider it any portion of the severe trouble predicted. At most it could be a forerunner of it, a mere 'skirmish' as compared with what is to come.”
The Watch Tower. January 15, 1892, pp. 19-21. Reprints, p. 1354.
Russell did not place much belief in another war occurring because it would not fit with his prophetic timeline. He believed that the end of the world would occur, not a mere war.
Several historians have spoke about the general climate of fear in war common at the time.
A History of the Modern World Since 1815, historians R. R. Palmer and J. Colton say:
Never had the European states maintained such huge armies in peace-time as at the beginning of the twentieth century. . . . Few people wanted war; all but a few sensational writers preferred peace in Europe, but - all took it for granted that war would come some day. In the last years before 1914 the idea that war was bound to break out sooner or later probably made some statesmen, in some countries, more willing to unleash it.
The time before 1914 is perhaps best summed up by the famous historian, Barbara W. Tuchman, who made a special study of the decades that preceded World War I. In the foreword to her study, which covers the period 1890-1914, she says:
It is not the book I intended to write when I began. Preconceptions dropped off one by one as I investigated. The period was not a Golden Age or Belle Epoque except to a thin crust of the privileged class. . . . We have been misled by the people of the time themselves who, in looking back across the gulf of the War, see that earlier half of their lives misted over by a lovely sunset haze of peace and security. It did not seem so golden when they were in the midst of it. Their memories and their nostalgia have conditioned our view of the pre-war era but I can offer the reader a rule based on adequate research: all statements of how lovely it was in that era made by persons contemporary with it will be found to have been made after 1914.
Barbara W. 'lbchman, The Proud Tower. A Portrait of the World Before the War, **1890-**1914 (New York, 1966 [first printing 1962). pp. xiii, xiv.
After this it is plain to see that later retellings create the misleading impression that the Bible Students alone recognized that the world stood on the brink of upheaval, when in reality concerns about a catastrophic war were already deeply embedded in public consciousness long before 1914 arrived.
Ironically in fact, Bible Students would have been one of the few groups of people who didn’t think a war would soon occur!
Please note that much of this research is contained in Carl Olof Jonssons book Sign of the Last Days - When?
Would definitely recommend for those who have yet to read it.