Before the first world war, there was in Germany no talk of refusing to serve in war. True, we heard that in England and America there were a few sects that refused war services or military service even during peace time. But they were considered strange people; mentally and morally not quite sound!

During the four years of the first world war, we became more thoughtful. Afterwards there was an upsurge of the anti-war movement, but it was suppressed by the Nazis. The second world war, stretching over five years, was so horrible that probably the majority of all Germans came to appreciate the point ot Conscientious Objection. Indeed, an interior objection, a protest of the moral sense, gripped them. But exteriorly they did not dare to come forward. In fact, their political and military though, the legacy of centuries, held that there were moral objections against open resistance to directives issued by legitimate authority.

As a result, the Germans as a whole not only did not refuse their services in the war unleashed by Hitler, but most of them, even most of the Christians, expressed serious religious doubts, whenever this or that individual consistently and bravely answered ‘no’ to his draft call.