Armed With Prayer in an Alcatraz Dungeon:

The Wartime Experiences of Four Hutterite C.O.’s in Their

Own Words

DUANE STOLTZFUS*

Abstract: In the spring of 1918, four young Hutterite men from the Rockport
Colony in South Dakota were conscripted into the U.S. army and forced to report to
a military training camp at Camp Lewis. Because they refused to wear a military
uniform or comply with other orders, the men were court martialed and sentenced
to twenty years of hard labor at the infamous federal military prison at Alcatraz.
After enduring abusive prison conditions at Alcatraz for several months, the men
were transferred to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas where, in December of 1918,
Joseph and Michael Hofer died of their mistreatment. Although the basic outline of
this account is relatively well-known, the recent discovery of several significant
caches of letters—exchanged between the men and their families—sheds new light
on this painful story.

On May 25, 1918, four young farmers left their home at the Rockport
Colony in South Dakota, bound for Camp Lewis in Washington. They
were the most reluctant of draftees, these three Hutterite brothers—
David, Joseph, and Michael Hofer—and their fellow colonist, Jacob Wipf.
In keeping with Hutterite convictions born in the sixteenth century and
tested time and again since then, they believed that followers of Jesus
must renounce all violence, including service in the armed forces, at any
cost. While traveling by military train to Camp Lewis, the four received
an ominous introduction to life in the army. A band of rowdy young
soldiers took them away one by one and cut off their beards and
trimmed their hair close to the scalp. On their arrival at Camp Lewis, the
Hutterite men refused to drill or wear a uniform or perform work of any
kind. They were immediately confined to the guardhouse. The men bode
their time, hands manacled but eyes free to peer through small windows
and in that way track the rhythms of camp life. They were court-
martialed on June 10 and subsequently sentenced to twenty years of
hard labor at Alcatraz, the federal military prison in the San Francisco
Bay. Since they would not put on uniforms at Alcatraz, they had only
underwear for clothing in the dank and pitch-black basement, where
*Duane Stoltzfus is a professor of communication at Goshen (Ind.) College. He is
currently completing a book manuscript about conscientious objectors during World War I,
focusing on the story of the Hofer brothers and Jacob Wipf.

259
MQR 85 (April 2011)
260 The Mennonite Quarterly Review

they languished on a diet of water and bread. Since they would not
work, guards strung them up by chains so high that their feet barely
touched the floor.
In November, when the military authorities ordered a transfer, guards
accompanied the men, all four in chains, to Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.
Once they detrained, the Hutterites were herded like cattle to the prison,
guards prodding them along with bayonets. The men, who had been
overheated on the railroad car, caught a chill during the forced march
and later, when they were kept waiting outside of the prison. Within
days, Joseph and Michael Hofer were transferred to the military hospital.
Summoned by telegram, the wives of the men traveled by train; through
an apparent miscommunication with railway officials, they went first to
Fort Riley. By the time the women arrived at Fort Leavenworth, on the
night of November 28, the men were barely able to speak. Joseph died
the following morning. What he would not wear in life he was forced to
wear in death; the authorities dressed his body in military khaki for
transport back home to the colony. Michael died on December 2. David
was released a few days later, free to return to the home colony in
Alexandria, South Dakota, and Jacob Wipf followed the next spring, on
April 13, 1919.
The core of this narrative is well known to attentive readers of
Anabaptist-Mennonite history. Jacob Wipf and the three Hofer brothers
represent arguably the most extreme example of conscientious objector
abuse during the war; for those who sought to indict the government for
its handling of resisters, these four Hutterites became exhibit A.1 Within
the Hutterite community, Joseph and Michael Hofer came to serve as
exemplars of Christian nonresistance. The brothers are well remembered,
to be sure, but not celebrated in a way that would lift the men above any
others in the community. Joseph and Michael were buried at Rockport,
in a hillside cemetery, where their ankle-high metal grave markers are
pinned in the ground, offering a panel large enough to fit their names
and dates of birth and death but little else. The Hofer markers are
indistinguishable from those of their brethren neighbors except for a
single appended word: ‚martyr.‛ When the Hofer brothers died, a
hometown paper, The Freeman Courier, ran a one-sentence notice that
appeared on page 8 as part of a series of dispatches from the Wolf Creek
region: ‚The two sons of Jacob Hofer of Rockport died in a Wash. camp
*sic+ and were buried at home.‛2 The next item in the column read: ‚The

1. When Theodore H. Lunde submitted a list of mistreated conscientious objectors to

Congressman Hubert S. Dent, chairman of the House Committee on Military Affairs, he
placed Jacob Wipf and the Hofer brothers first in line.—‚Examples of Brutalities, Tortures
and Deaths to Political Prisoners Under Military Regime,‛ January 1919.
2. ‚Wolf Creek,‛ The Freeman Courier, Dec. 5, 1918.
 The Wartime Experiences of Four Hutterite C.O.’s 261

Neu Hutterthal church decided to buy a paper cutter for Bartel of

China‛; and below that, ‚Sam K. Hofer is building a kitchen and auto
shed.‛ Six days later, the paper reported on the arrival of David Hofer,
while correcting the earlier error on the place of death: ‚David Hofer,
brother to the two who died at Leavenworth, Kansas, was discharged
and came home. They are from Rockport. They were transferred from
Wash. to Cal. and from there to Kansas.‛ 3 Theirs was the shortest of
obituaries, little more than a mention shared by two brothers who were
summoned to war and never came back.
The story of the Hofer martyrs might have remained quietly
remembered within Hutterite circles had it not been for an unusual
partnership between the owner of a piano hardware company in
Chicago and a Mennonite journalist and professor from Kansas. The
business owner, Theodore H. Lunde, carried the most personal of ties to
the plight of conscientious objectors—his son, Erling, was court-
martialed as an objector in 1918 and was imprisoned at Fort
Leavenworth, where his detention overlapped with that of the
Hutterites.4 Under the name of his business, the American Industrial
Company, Theodore Lunde published several pamphlets related to
events at Fort Leavenworth, including the deaths of Joseph and Michael
Hofer. Meanwhile, the journalist, Jacob G. Ewert, a coeditor of the
Vorwärts monthly newspaper and a professor of comparative philology
at Tabor College in Hillsboro, Kansas, shared Lunde’s interest in the
Hofer story.5 Though left paralyzed and confined to bed because of
rheumatism (he had use of an arm and shoulder), Ewert was a tireless
advocate for conscientious objectors, writing articles and counseling
many draftees. He urged young men to refuse to take up arms at military
training camps. He also called on denominational leaders to be more
forceful in challenging the treatment of conscientious objectors,
especially the kind of prison abuse to which the four Hutterites had been
subjected.
The first published account of the experiences of Jacob Wipf and the
Hofer brothers appears to have been ‚‘Crucifixions’ in the Twentieth

3. ‚Wolf Creek,‛ The Freeman Courier, Dec. 11, 1918.

4. Lunde, an immigrant from Hamar, Norway, established the American Industrial
Company. Because of his refusal to make war materials during World War I, he
subsequently lost his factory.
5. Jacob Ewert often spelled his surname Evert. For example, the Tabor College
letterhead on which he wrote to Newton D. Baker, the secretary of war, on Jan. 8, 1919,
identifies him as J.G. Evert. But his pamphlets in the WorldCat database are attributed to
Jacob G. Ewert; The Mennonite Encyclopedia and Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia
Online (GAMEO) likewise refer to Jacob Ewert. His paternal ancestors used the name
Ewert, and so Evert appears to be an Anglicized version, according to the Mennonite
Library and Archives in North Newton, Kan.
262 The Mennonite Quarterly Review

Century,‛ which was issued by Lunde’s American Industrial Company

in December 1918. The article, about two and a half typewritten pages in
length, conveys a ‚nearly unbelievable tale of religious persecution‛
experienced by the Hutterites at Alcatraz and at Fort Leavenworth. The
account tells of the deaths of Joseph and Michael Hofer and of David
Hofer having been released. The source for the report is Jacob Wipf, who
was confined to a hospital cot at Fort Leavenworth at the time when he
told the story to an army officer.6 The unnamed army officer in turn
shared the account with Lunde. Two months later, in February 1919,
Lunde published ‚Desecration of the Dead by American ‘Huns,’‛ which
was based on information provided by David Hofer after his return to
the colony in South Dakota. A preface to the article states: ‚A narrative
by David Hofer, which corroborates and amplifies ‘‚Crucifixions‛ in the
Twentieth Century,’ though rendered without knowledge of the story
told by Jacob Wipf.‛ This account, of a similar length, adds details from
the assault that took place on the train to Camp Lewis and from their
confinement at the camp.
The second article published by Lunde, ‚Desecration of the Dead,‛
appears to have been based on an article written by Jacob Ewert, ‚Vier
Hutterische Mennoniten im Militärkerker,‛ for Vorwärts.7 ‚Desecration of
the Dead‛ is a close translation of ‚Vier Hutterische Mennoniten im
Militärkerker,‛ or ‚The Hutterite Mennonites in Military Prison.‛ Ewert
apparently translated the German article into English for Lunde, filing
the articles with the postmaster in Hillsboro, as required by federal law,
on February 7, 1919. Before writing the account, Ewert was in contact
with David Hofer and perhaps other family members as well.8 He notes
in the original German-language article that at the request of family
members the surnames of the four men were not included in the account.
In the English-language version published by Lunde, however, the full

6. Lunde chose to conceal the identity of his source, likely to avoid repercussions for the
officer. Military records show that Jacob Wipf was admitted to the hospital on Dec. 13,
1918, with acute tonsillitis, and, in the words of the authorities at Fort Leavenworth, was
‚returned to duty‛ on Dec. 18.
7. The article ‚Desecration of the Dead by American ‘Huns’‛ does not carry a byline or
other notation directly attributing it to Jacob Ewert. But the article closely tracks ‚Vier
Hutterische Mennoniten im Militärkerker,‛ which was written by Ewert and published on
the front page of Vorwärts on Feb. 7, 1919. The Mennonite Bibliography 1631-1961 (Scottdale,
Pa.: Herald Press, 1977), 2:57, also cites an article by Ewert titled ‚Die Hutterischen
Mennoniten im Militärgefängnis,‛ which also translates as ‚The Hutterite Mennonites in
Military Prison.‛ A search failed to turn up a library that had catalogued such an article.
8. Information from David Hofer’s letter to Jonas S. Hartzler, a member of the (Old)
Mennonite Peace Problems Committee, written shortly after his release from Fort
Leavenworth, on Jan. 10, 1919, may also have served as source material. The letter is on file
at the Mennonite Church USA archives in Goshen, Ind.
 The Wartime Experiences of Four Hutterite C.O.’s 263

names have been added. The Ewert article was subsequently republished
on several occasions.9
The accounts published by Jacob Ewert and Theodore Lunde are
confirmed and complemented by several sources, including the memoirs
of men who shared in or witnessed the experiences of the Hofer brothers
and Jacob Wipf. Among these witnesses is Andrew Wurtz, or Andreas
Wurz, a Hutterite draftee and neighbor who joined them on the train to
Camp Lewis and, once there, was soon separated from them; Noah H.
Leatherman, who was imprisoned at Fort Leavenworth and spoke with
the four men when they arrived from Alcatraz; and Howard W. Moore,
an objector who published a memoir of his time at Fort Leavenworth,
which overlapped with that of the Hutterites.10
The story of the faithfulness of these four Hutterites in the midst of
persecution continued to spread. Ewert’s article served as a key source
for a four-page account of the story published in 1947 in Das Klein-
Geschichtsbuch der Hutterischen Bruder [The Chronicle of the Hutterian
Brethren] by A. J. Friedrich Zieglschmid, a professor of Germanic
linguistics at Northwestern University and a Hutterite scholar. 11
Zieglschmid also credits C. Henry Smith’s The Coming of the Russian
Mennonites as well as two articles in The Christian Exponent (excerpts
from Smith’s then forthcoming book).12 Smith, in turn, gives credit to
Theodore Lunde as the source of his information.13

9. The article was reprinted in German in similar form in Mennonitische Blätter 67 (Jan.
1920), 6-8; Gemeindeblatt Mennoniten 51 (Sept. 1 and 15, 1920), 72-72, 76-77; and
Wahrheitsfreund 24 (April 6, 1938), 2, 6-7. The article also appeared in English under the title
‚Christ or Country?‛ in The Plough, no. 4 (May 1984), 8-9. John Horsch's The Hutterian
Brethren: A Story of Martyrdom and Loyalty 1528-1931 (Goshen, Ind.: Mennonite Historical
Society, 1931) briefly mentions the Hofer brothers and cites two sources. One is Smith's
Coming of the Russian Mennonites (Berne, Ind.: Mennonite Book Concern, 1927). Horsch says
that he also draws from a version of the story as ‚reported in Die Hutterischen Brüder im
Militar-Gefängnis, by J.G. Ewert.‛
10. ‚The Memoirs of Reverend Andrew Wurtz,‛ ed. and trans. Karl and Franziska
Peter, Hutterite C.O.s World War I (Hawley, Minn.: Spring Prairie, 1996); Diary Kept by Noah
H. Leatherman (Salisbury, Pa.: Roy S. Kinsinger, 1984); and Howard W. Moore, Plowing My
Own Furrow (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1993).
11. A.J.F. Zieglschmid, Das Klein-Geschichtsbuch der Hutterischen Brüder (Philadelphia:
Carl Shurz Foundation, 1947), 482-486; translated from the German by Franz Wiebe, 1974,
as ‚The Martyrdom of Joseph and Michael Hofer, 1918. ‛ Zieglschmid cites ‚a printed
pamphlet‛ by Ewert as a source for his account of the men in Das Klein-Geschichtsbuch der
Hutterischen Brüder.
12. The Christian Exponent published the excerpts as ‚Keeping the Faith, III‛ (July 3,
1928) and ‚Keeping the Faith, IV‛ (July 17, 1928). Both excerpts were drawn from Smith’s
The Coming of the Russian Mennonites. These excerpts, in turn, credit Theodore H. Lunde, the
president of the American Industrial Company, as the source of information.
13. Smith offers no title for the account attributed to Lunde. The only publishing
information is the place, Chicago, and the date, February 1919. This would correspond with
‚Desecration of the Dead by American ‘Huns.’‛
264 The Mennonite Quarterly Review

Given the limited number of known references from which to draw,

the published accounts of the Hofer brothers and Jacob Wipf have
generally extended only two or three or four typewritten pages. The
telling is invariably chronological, generally beginning with the train
ride to Camp Lewis and ending with the deaths of Joseph and Michael
Hofer at Fort Leavenworth. Some more recent versions draw on
government documents to offer a more complete picture of the
experience of the four men. For example, the record of their court-martial
runs about forty pages, most of which is presented in question-and-
answer form, a verbatim transcript of the testimony of several witnesses
and of the four accused men.14
One of the most authoritative recent accounts is offered by Gerlof D.
Homan in American Mennonites and the Great War: 1914-1918, part of the
Studies in Anabaptist and Mennonite History series under the aegis of
the Mennonite Historical Society.15 His version of the story covers three
pages. After presenting the central facts, including some drawn from
government records, Homan brings a historian’s considered judgment to
bear on the case, offering an interpretive lens that is missing in many
earlier versions. Though the four Hutterites were unusual in refusing to
do any work during detention, even after they had been placed in prison,
Homan said, officials ‚surely lacked the compassion, sensitivity, and
plain decency to make some allowance‛ for their convictions. 16 Joseph
and Michael Hofer were indeed, he concludes, martyrs for their faith,
‚victims of inhuman military and penal systems.‛ 17 Homan draws on
government records, including the court-martial transcript, and two
other works that are frequently cited in writings about the men: Hutterite
Conscientious Objectors and Their Treatment in the U.S. Army During World
War I—a growing collection of stories that was first assembled by Joseph
K. Wipf and John Stahl and translated from the German by Karl and
Franziska Peter—and Das Klein-Geschichtsbuch der Hutterischen Brüder,
edited by Zieglschmid.18

14. ‚Record of the Trial of Recruits David J. Hofer, Michael J. Hofer, Joseph J. Hofer, and
Jacob J. Wipf,‛ Judge Advocate’s Office, 91st Infantry Division, Camp Lewis, U.S. Army,
June 15, 1918.
15. Gerlof D. Homan, American Mennonites and the Great War: 1914-1918 (Scottdale, Pa.:
Herald Press, 1994).
16. Ibid., 155.
17. Ibid.
18. Karl and Franziska Peter, trans. and eds., Hutterite Conscientious Objectors and Their
Treatment in the U.S. Army during World War I (Cranford, Alt.: Lakeside Hutterite Colony,
1982); A.J.F. Zieglschmid, Das Klein-Geschichtsbuch der Hutterischen Brüder (Philadelphia,
1947). The Peters’ book is a compilation of various sources, some of which have been
published elsewhere, including ‚The Memoirs of Reverend Andrew Wurtz‛ and ‚Diary
Kept by Noah H. Leatherman While in Camp During World War I.‛
 The Wartime Experiences of Four Hutterite C.O.’s 265

In the most recent telling, David Laskin includes the story of the Hofer
brothers and Jacob Wipf in The Long Way Home: An American Journey from
Ellis Island to the Great War, a sweeping narrative of a dozen men who
were born in Europe, immigrated to the United States, and served with
American forces in the war.19 The Hutterites represent a counterpoint.
Like Homan, Laskin uses the trial transcript and other government
records to tell the story. Laskin’s account stretches to a dozen pages, as
he includes a primer on Hutterite history, a glimpse of the anti-German
war hysteria that swept the country (turning sauerkraut into liberty
cabbage and banning Beethoven from music halls), and excerpts from
the court-martial at Camp Lewis. He also credits Homan’s American
Mennonites and the Great War as well as Hutterite CO’s in World War One,
an updated and expanded version of the 1982 collection translated by the
Peters.
Though deeply moving, these accounts of the Hofer brothers and
Jacob Wipf offer but a modicum of detail, generally drawn from the
same small set of sources. Now, nearly 100 years after the imprisonment
of the four Hutterite men, a wider window is about to open on their
harrowing encounter with the American military. The recent discovery
of scores of unpublished letters from the Hofer brothers makes possible a
fuller and richer narrative, beginning with the storming of their train
compartment by men armed with shears. Until now, the voices of the
martyrs themselves, Michael and Joseph Hofer, have been largely silent
in each grim retelling of the journey that ended at Leavenworth. Even
David Hofer and Jacob Wipf had left but a few pages of testimony in the
archival records. Grandchildren of each of the Hofer brothers have now
provided copies of letters that the men sent from—and in a few cases
received in—federal prison. The letters are handwritten copies of the
originals, which family members said were likely buried with the men or
their wives after the war. Most of the letters are written in German, with
touches of Hutterisch, a dialect distinct to the Hutterites.20

19. David Laskin, The Long Way Home: An American Journey from Ellis Island to the Great
War (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2010).
20. John D. Roth, editor of The Mennonite Quarterly Review and director of the Mennonite
Historical Library at Goshen College, where he is a history professor, transcribed and
translated the Joseph and Michael Hofer letters. Gerhard J. Reimer, professor emeritus of
German at Goshen College, transcribed and translated the David Hofer letters, and
translated various writings by Jacob Ewert. The author is grateful for their meticulous and
judicious devotion to rendering a challenging German script in English. The author is also
indebted to many others at the Mennonite Historical Library, Goshen, Ind., and the
Mennonite Church USA archives in Goshen; North Newton, Kan.; and Hillsboro, Kan. Joe
Springer, curator of the Mennonite Historical Library, initially noted the research potential
in this wartime story; Daniel Hochstetler provided an introduction to the Michael Hofer
family; Leonard Gross served as a guide to Hutterite history. In his memoir Nightwatch: An
Inquiry Into Solitude (Intercourse, Pa.: Good Books, 2009), Robert Rhodes describes the
266 The Mennonite Quarterly Review

The letters have been closely held by family members, with the
grandchildren of Michael Hofer inheriting the letters of Michael Hofer,
and so forth. Family members did not pursue publication of the letters or
volunteer copies to a historical library. But when a researcher at work on
a book about the four men visited the Miller Colony in Choteau,
Montana, in February 2009, a daughter and several grandchildren of
Michael Hofer shared copies of his letters. Mary Hofer Kleinsasser, age
90 at the time and the daughter of Michael Hofer, and three of her
children—Sarah, Michael, and Joseph Kleinsasser—presented the letters
in the home that Mary and Sarah share. The Kleinsassers, in turn,
provided an introduction to Anna Hofer Wurtz, who lives at the Miller
Colony and is a granddaughter of David Hofer. Anna Wurtz shared
copies of the letters of David Hofer, as saved by members of his family.
At the nearby Rockport Colony in Montana, Katie Jacob Waldner, a
granddaughter of Joseph Hofer, said she did not have copies of any
letters written by her grandfather, but she agreed to contact her cousin,
Joe Hofer, of the Kyle Colony in Saskatchewan. During the author’s visit
at the Kyle Colony in May 2009, Joe Hofer provided copies of his
grandfather’s letters. To date, research inquiries have failed to turn up a
comparable packet of prison letters written by Jacob Wipf.
As a whole collection, including letters written by and received by the
three Hofer brothers during their time under military authority, the
letters number seventy-nine. Of that number, the brothers wrote fifty-
nine and received twenty. The brothers began writing on May 26, 1918,
while they were en route to Camp Lewis. The saved correspondence is
heaviest in the month of June, when the men were locked up in the
guardhouse at Camp Lewis, awaiting court martial and then transfer to
Alcatraz. Though fewer in number, there are letters from every
subsequent month of captivity: July, August, September, October, and
November. Michael and Joseph wrote their last letters in the collection to
their wives, both named Maria, on November 17, 1918, while the men
were traveling from Alcatraz to Leavenworth. In little more than two
weeks, both men were dead. Most of the letters were written by the men
to their spouses, with several letters directed to other family members or
to colony leaders. In turn, the men received letters from their parents,
siblings, and others at the colony. Frequent references to letters that
failed to arrive make clear that, however substantial this saved
collection, the actual body of correspondence was much greater.
References in the letters themselves suggest that military officials
blocked delivery of some of the correspondence, on security or other

Hutterisch language as ‚a veritable road map of all the places the Hutterites have lived
over the centuries, from Austria to Transylvania to Ukraine and North America‛ (p. 78).
 The Wartime Experiences of Four Hutterite C.O.’s 267

grounds. And in the end, family members may not have saved some
letters that were delivered.
The story of the Hofer brothers and Jacob Wipf can now be told with a
greater measure of authority, detail, insight, and empathy. Just as
Melanie Springer Mock used private diaries to recover the voices of four
conscientious objectors in Writing Peace: The Unheard Voices of Great War
Mennonite Objectors, so too these letters lend a kind of personal drama
and poignancy to the historical record.21 In the accounts published before
now, the four Hutterites often blur into one conscientious objector,
largely undergoing the same set of experiences as a singular familial
body up until the death of Joseph and Michael. The letters allow
individual voices to emerge from the moment the men board the train
for Camp Lewis. While the brothers certainly fall back on similar
greetings and phrasings—the letters often open with a variation of ‚the
peace of the Lord be with us and with you‛ and quickly assure family
members that they are holding fast in the faith and staying in reasonably
good health—they also serve as distinct commentators along the journey.
Where one apologizes for poor penmanship because of the hurtling train,
another comments on the towering mountains that speak of God’s
handiwork. Letter by letter, we learn about their hardships, hopes, and
theological struggles, and, as time goes by, their growing sense of
apocalyptic foreboding. Perhaps above all, we can appreciate more
clearly their unwavering devotion to Christ and their conviction that,
whatever their travails on earth, they were heavenbound. Here follows
an expanded account of the wartime experiences of the Hofer brothers
and Jacob Wipf, supplementing the core narrative with excerpts from
their letters.

THE WARTIME EXPERIENCES OF FOUR HUTTERITE C.O.’S:

A NARRATIVE ACCOUNT
Jacob Wipf and the three Hofer brothers—David, Joseph, and
Michael—prepared to leave the Rockport Colony on May 25, 1918,
heavy-hearted recruits bound for Camp Lewis in Washington. For the
trip, they wore homemade clothes familiar in any of the seventeen
colonies in South Dakota: a black jacket, black pants, plain shirt, and
black shoes.22 In their satchels they packed Bibles, the book they
treasured above all others, and spare sets of clothing. If they followed the

21. Melanie Springer Mock, Writing Peace: The Unheard Voices of Great War Mennonite
Objectors (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 2003).
22. Interview with Joe Hofer, a grandson of the draftee Joseph Hofer, June 4, 2009. Joe
Hofer lives at the Kyle Colony, near Kyle, Saskatchewan. As a young man, in his 20s and
30s, he worked alongside Jacob Wipf, who recounted his experiences in the war.
268 The Mennonite Quarterly Review

advice given to Michael A. Stahl, a Hutterite neighbor who left for Camp
Funston in Kansas in September, they took only clothes not worth
saving, anticipating that their personal belongings would be burned or
thrown away once they arrived at camp. The army had directed the men
to take as little as possible; uniforms and supplies would be issued upon
arrival. The people of the colony gathered around the men that
afternoon, no one knowing when they would meet again. The Rockport
Colony consisted of about 25 families, numbering 180 members. The
colony owned 4,000 acres, one field after another of wheat growing and
cattle grazing. In the course of the war, Rockport would send ten men to
military camps, more than would be drafted from any other colony in
the state.
Both those who would leave and those who would stay that day
appeared as if they might have been transported from a European village
in the Old World. Walter G. Kellogg, an army major who interviewed
hundreds of conscientious objectors on behalf of the government during
the war, said it bluntly: ‚They remain now as their forefathers were three
centuries ago. . . . Civilization, apparently, has passed them by.‛ 23 The
Hutterites were rooted in the Protestant Reformation, separated from
their neighbors by large fields and old traditions. When they worshiped,
as they did each day, they used an archaic form of High German, the
language of their sacred hymns and sermons (around the house, they
switched to a German dialect called Hutterisch). During church services,
the minister would not preach a sermon of his own, but would instead
read a text written in Europe centuries earlier. Why share possessions?
Peter Riedemann, a church leader in the 1500s, said it plainly: ‚[At] the
beginning God ordained that people should own nothing individually
but should have all things in common with each other. . . . Therefore,
whoever will adhere unwaveringly to Christ and follow him must give
up acquiring things and holding property.‛24 Why renounce war? Jakob
Hutter, whose influence as an early leader would be known in part
through the legacy of his name, said, ‚We do not want to hurt or wrong
anyone, not even our worst enemy. . . . [W]e want to show by our word
and deed that men should live as true followers of Christ, in peace and
unity and in God’s truth and justice.‛25
The Hofer brothers and Jacob Wipf were anxious over what awaited
them at Camp Lewis, which was closer to the frontlines than they had

23. Walter Kellogg, The Conscientious Objector (New York: Boni and Liverright, 1919), 40-
41.
24. John J. Friesen, ed. and trans., Peter Riedemann’s Hutterite Confession of Faith
(Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1999), 119-120.
25. The Chronicle of the Hutterian Brethren, vol. 1 (Rifton, N.Y.: Plough Publishing, 1987),
139.
 The Wartime Experiences of Four Hutterite C.O.’s 269

ever expected to go. As baptized members of the Hutterite community,

they had pledged never to take up arms, not even in self-defense. It was
a pledge made by Hutterites across generations, as they sojourned from
Europe to Russia to South Dakota. 26 After Russia announced that
Hutterites and Mennonites would have to serve in the armed forces, a
Mosaic delegation of ten Mennonites and two Hutterites (Paul Tschetter
and his uncle, Lohrentz) visited the United States and Canada in 1873, in
search of their own arable promised land and freedom from military
service. The Hutterites secured an audience with President Ulysses S.
Grant, who encouraged them to come to the United States and, through
his secretary of state, Hamilton Fish, assured them that ‚for the next fifty
years we will not be entangled in another war in which military service
will be necessary.‛27 And yet, well short of fifty years, on June 5, 1917,
the Selective Service Act of the federal government of the United States
had required all physically able men between the ages of 21 and 30 to
prepare for duty. Provisions in the act allowed the Hutterites and other
conscientious objectors to avoid combat on the battlefield, but, if drafted,
they still had to report to a military camp to register for noncombatant
service and receive their assignment. Ministers in the colonies had
instructed the drafted men that, once they arrived at training camps,
they should do nothing that might be construed as advancing the war
effort. The local Hanson County draft board enjoyed a great deal of
latitude and could have granted the men exemptions from any military
service because they had wives and children. When asked whether they
had a parent, spouse, or child dependent solely on them for support,
each man honestly answered no, knowing that the community would
care for each member. That gave board members the latitude they
needed to sign up the men for war.
Jacob Wipf and the Hofer brothers had grown up together, attending
grade school at the home colony until they were pulled away to work in
the fields in their early teens. They were literate to be sure, but outside of
the Bible, not very well read; the community put a premium on

26. This doctrine is anchored in the New Testament, particularly Matthew 5:38-44: ‚Ye
have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto
you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him
the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him
have thy cloke also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.
Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.
Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy.
But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that
hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.‛—Biblical
references draw from the King James Version.
27. J. M. Hofer, ed., ‚The Diary of Paul Tschetter, 1873,‛ The Mennonite Quarterly Review
5 (July 1931), 217.
270 The Mennonite Quarterly Review

productivity in the field or in the workshop, and not in book learning.

On their draft cards each described himself as of medium height and
build, with brown hair. As might be expected, given the Hutterites’
directive to marry within the fold, they were also related; Joseph Hofer
was Jacob Wipf’s brother-in-law.28 The Hutterites encouraged large
families, and the men and their wives were well on the way. David, who
was 28, and his wife, Anna, had five children, ages 6, 5, 3, and 2, and a
newborn, 3 months old. Michael, who was 24, had been married for only
a year; his wife, Mary, had given birth to their first child, a daughter
named after her mother, two months earlier. Third in line was Joseph, 23,
who was saying goodbye to his wife, Mary, Jacob’s sister, and their two
children, ages 2 and 1. Mary was pregnant with a third child, who would
be born in eight months. The eldest member of the group, Jacob, 30, and
his wife, Kathrina, had three children, ages 7, 5, and 3. Joseph Hofer’s
wife, Maria, remembered that her son, Joseph, who was nearly 3, ran
along behind the wagon as the men pulled away, their wives, wearing
polka-dot kerchiefs, left standing in tears. The men went by dirt roads
south and west to Parkston, about thirty miles away, to catch the late
afternoon train. At the station they met up with Andrew Wurtz, another
Hutterite, who was from the Old Elm Springs Colony, and together they
boarded the train.29
The men knew that they were targets for harassment, or worse; their
clothing, beards, and accents gave them away as Hutterites. Resentment
against the Hutterites had been mounting throughout the spring as the
war effort intensified. Like all Americans of German ancestry, their
loyalty was suspect. On the very day that the men left for Camp Lewis,
the South Dakota Council of Defense issued the German Language
Order, which prohibited all teaching of German, in public and private
schools. High school students had burned German textbooks in
Faulkton, in the presence of supportive board members. Across the state,
and the nation, efforts to eradicate German reflected a kind of hysteria.
Sauerkrat became ‚liberty cabbage,‛ and hamburger turned into ‚victory
steak.‛ Near the town of Vermillion, South Dakota, Rhine Creek became
‚Marne Creek.‛ Germania Hall in Sioux Falls, which hosted state
constitutional conventions, turned into ‚Columbia Hall.‛
The Hutterites, of course, had additional strikes against them, besides
their use of the German language at home, in school, and in church. As

28. In many versions of the wartime account, Jacob Wipf is mistakenly introduced as a
brother-in-law of the three Hofer brothers. In fact, he is a brother-in-law of only one,
Joseph.
29. In some accounts Andrew Wurtz is referred to as Andreas Wurz, the German
equivalent. This article follows his lead in using Andrew Wurtz: ‚The Memoirs of
Reverend Andrew Wurtz,‛ in Hutterite C.O.’s World War I.
 The Wartime Experiences of Four Hutterite C.O.’s 271

every South Dakotan knew, they refused to bear arms for the country or
to buy Liberty Bonds or otherwise help to finance the war effort. In the
face of that resistance to what most Americans regarded as an
unquestioned patriotic duty, the neighbors were restive. Earlier that
month, the Liberty Loan Committee of nearby Yankton, composed of
prominent professionals and businessmen, decided that $10,000 in bonds
would be a reasonable quota to set for the Jamesville Colony. When the
colony resisted, the committee rounded up 100 head of cattle and 1,000
sheep and drove them to Utica; from there, they shippped the animals to
Yankton, where the cattle and sheep were sold for $16,000 at auction to
benefit the war campaign. The Hutterites said that the animals were
worth more than two times that amount, or about $40,000. The Sioux Falls
Press weighed in on May 10, 1918:
Irregular? Yes, by ordinary peace standards of conduct. But these
infernal ideas that are cropping up here and there in this country
that an American citizen claiming the benefits of this land can
choose for himself whether or not he shall help the nation protect
itself against destruction are somewhat irregular too. If the
Mennonites [and Hutterites] do not like the idea let them pack up
what they can carry away and return to that part of Europe whence
they came. We shall ask them to be so good as to leave behind the
land this nation practically gave them. 30
Once on board the train, the five Hutterite men found themselves
moved from car to car. At first, they were placed in the rearmost car,
where they remained until the evening. The taunting must have begun
early because before nightfall a conductor led them through the train to a
different car. But the recuits here, many of whom were from Canton,
South Dakota, east of the colonies, objected to having to share their space
with Hutterites. The conductor, who was clearly worried about how the
tensions among the men might play out, led the Hutterites to a third car,
saying, ‚I want to give you a place where you can be by yourselves;
they’re supposed to behave.‛31 In this third car, fully aware of the risks
they might face as pacifists on a train full of young men getting stoked
for war, the Hofer brothers and Jacob Wipf took a precautionary
measure. With a 2-by-4 piece of lumber, they barricaded the
compartment door so that no one could enter the room. 32 All was quiet
through the night and into Sunday morning, when the men managed to
have an impromptu worship service, already feeling far from home and
sure in their judgment of the Americans with whom they were

30. The Sioux Falls Press, May 10, 1918.

31. Letter from David Hofer to Anna Hofer, May 26, 1918.
32. Andrew Wurtz, ‚The Memoirs of Reverend Andrew Wurtz.‛
272 The Mennonite Quarterly Review

journeying. As Michael Hofer said, ‚We were able on Sunday until noon
to be edified a little in the fear of the Lord and in the word of God, which
was a special grace of God from the heavenly father. For these poor
people (the world) are to be pitied as they travel along the broad path to
hell.‛
For the Hutterite men, who were born and raised in South Dakota and
likely had never before left the state, there was a sense of awe in
traveling across the country. From South Dakota, the route headed west
through Montana and Idaho before arriving in Washington, a distance of
about 2,000 miles. They were especially impressed by the mountains, a
sign of a world well made. David Hofer wrote to Anna, his wife:
He is our wise Creator, when we see his handiwork, how
everything is so wisely created. We’ve been in the mountains all
day; that’s a wonder to see. Mountains . . . *thousands of+ feet high,
very dangerous to travel. Sometimes [the train] goes right through
the mountain, into one side of the mountain and out on the other
side. It’s up to two miles through the mountain. Some places [we
pass+ under rocks; if they should come down, we’d all be buried,
but our heavenly Father has protected us from encountering any
accident so far. 33
For Michael Hofer, it was a wonder the mountains held fast: ‚Sometimes
it seems as if the car will topple over since the mountains hang . . . over
us as if they are falling down upon us.‛ 34
David, Joseph, and Michael Hofer, as well as Andrew Wurtz,
contribute to the account of what happened next. Michael Hofer wrote:
‚Our savior has indeed said that they will come to us in sheep’s clothing,
but in truth they are ravenous wolves. By their fruit they shall be
known.‛35 When the train arrived in Judith Basin, Montana, southeast of
Great Falls, men knocked on the door of the compartment where the
Hutterites had barricaded themselves. The Hutterites knew two of the
men, William Damfer, a 30-year-old lawyer from Alexandria, and James
Albert Montgomery, a farmer; all of them had registered for the draft on
the same day in Beulah, South Dakota. Damfer said that he wanted to
talk with them and asked that they open the door, if only a little. Wurtz
described their apprehension: ‚Out of fear, we did not respond nor open
the door for a period of time. However, as we all knew him, and as he
said that we should open the door only an inch, we did not anticipate

33. Letter from David Hofer to Anna Hofer, May 27, 1918.
34. Letter from Michael Hofer to Maria Hofer, May 26, 1918.
35. Ibid.
 The Wartime Experiences of Four Hutterite C.O.’s 273

trouble.‛36 They should have known better. ‚They stormed our room,‛
Wurtz continued, ‚and then we were placed in great peril.‛
Before the shears came out, David Hofer recalled, the intruders
wanted to talk: ‚They began to talk about our faith and carrying *on
about the] war. Then it was about our beards and together with our
captain [apparently a reference to Montgomery] they carried on like
hypocrites and led Jacob Wipf into another car and shaved him
completely.‛37 The men came back and grabbed Joseph Hofer this time,
and also cut off a good part of his hair and beard. Michael Hofer
received the rough treatment next, followed by brother David. Only
Andrew Wurtz seemed to have escaped the full treatment; the band of
men—Joseph Hofer described them as ‚a mob‛ 38—apparently cut only a
few locks of his hair before the conductor brought an end to the final
barber assault (Wurtz’s hair and beard would be shorn on arrival at
Camp Lewis). The conductor moved the Hutterites into a small room
several cars ahead, their fourth place on the train, directing them not to
let anyone else come in. As soon as they were settled, Joseph said, the
men bowed their heads: ‚We offered up a prayer to God and asked with
sighs that he would forgive them for *their actions+!‛39
As if to make amends, the supervisors of the train approached the
men at dinner time, inviting them to eat. At first the men refused, but
then agreed to go, when, as Joseph said, the supervisors promised them
that they could eat together. While it is not clear whether the supervisors
joined them at the table, they apparently shared warm words, as Joseph
noted: ‚The conductor asked us whether we spoke German. We said,
‘Yes!’ He said that he can too.‛ With midnight approaching, Michael
Hofer wanted his wife, Maria, to know that all was well: ‚It’s now 11:30
and time to go to sleep. We are going here so fast through the mountains
and beside the mountains. If one thinks back how we have come here
from our dear community, one could cry bitterly. Especially if one
reflects on where we are being taken. It is deplorable. But God has
promised us that he will stand and go before us if we only will trust in
him.‛ 40 Indeed, there was no more trouble during the remainder of the
trip. The train arrived at Camp Lewis in Seattle around 5 in the morning
on Tuesday, May 28.
Stretching across about 70,000 acres, Camp Lewis was the largest of
the army’s cantonments, both in capacity and in the number of states

36. Andrew Wurtz, ‚The Memoirs of Reverend Andrew Wurtz.‛

37. Letter from David Hofer to Anna Hofer, May 26, 1918.
38. Letter from Joseph Hofer to Maria Hofer, May 26, 1918.
39. Ibid.
40. Letter from Michael Hofer to Maria Hofer, May 26, 1918.
274 The Mennonite Quarterly Review

whose soldiers it housed. The recruits from Alaska, California, Idaho,

Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming, and many
more from Minnesota and the Dakotas, all headed to Camp Lewis,
traveling as far as 2,000 miles. During the summer of 1917, work crews
had constructed 1,757 buildings, put down 50 miles of roads, and laid 27
miles of sewers and 37 miles of water pipe. The Tacoma Ledger called it
‚the most stupendous construction project ever attempted in the
northwest.‛41 Recruits began arriving in September 1917; the Hofer
brothers and Jacob Wipf came as part of the final surge of incoming
troops. At the beginning of the week during which they arrived, the
camp had 40,443 men; by the weekend, it grew to more than 52,000, a
city less than a year old that was already half the size of nearby Tacoma
(population, 96,965). Most of the men were being trained for trench
warfare on the frontlines in France.
The day after their arrival Michael Hofer’s opening lines to Maria
about trusting in God’s care soon gave way to deep worries:
Dear spouse, we have now come into a suffering that no one before
has ever imagined. It is indescribable what is happening here in this
world. And as our dear savior says in the New Testament that we
also should come before kings and princes for my namesake, but we
should not fear what we should say, for the Holy Spirit will speak
through you. Dear spouse, they tell us whoever does nothing will
be sent to the guardhouse. That is where we are now. They tell us
that we will be in the guardhouse for a very long time. Today,
someone left who had been here for five years, and we cannot hope
for anything otherwise.42
The sense of foreboding continued: ‚If we should no longer see each
other again, then may God grant us that we see each other again in
heaven.‛ In closing, he reminded her that his letters would pass through
military censors: ‚I cannot seal this letter, since it will be read by others.‛
Even so, he urged Maria to share the letter with a minister at the colony,
David D. Hofer, who in turn ‚should not delay‛ in taking up their case
with the government.
The men landed in Guardhouse No. 54 after they refused to follow
orders and participate in the workings of the camp—after they refused,
in effect, to become soldiers of any status, combatant or otherwise. On
the day of their arrival all of the new recruits lined up alphabetically,
with a typist at the end taking down names, occupations, and
hometowns for the enlistment and assignment card. One of the sergeants

41. The Tacoma Ledger, June 26, 1917.

42. Letter from Michael Hofer to Maria Hofer, May 29, 1918.
 The Wartime Experiences of Four Hutterite C.O.’s 275

approached Robert S. Shertzer, a second lieutenant, with a smile. ‚These

men over here,‛ he said, pointing to the Hutterites, ‚they just came
along, and said, ‘This is as far as we go.’‛43 The officers repeatedly
pressed the men to line up in formation as well as to fill out the
enlistment and assignment cards, which would allow them to leave the
guardhouse, but the men were steadfast in their refusal. The card
required each recruit to list his hometown, age, and basic information.
The men said they could not do so because of three words printed on the
cards: ‚Declaration of Soldier.‛ In their mind, they were not U.S.
soldiers.
While the letters early on hint at the troubles the men were facing at
Camp Lewis, they rarely describe their daily routines or special
hardships in detail. Joseph mentioned that he and his two brothers, Jacob
Wipf, and Andrew Wurtz were led away to separate cells in the
guardhouse. After a day, he had managed to see only Michael, who had
seen only Andrew. What words they exchanged, we never learn. Joseph
also said that at mealtimes the men were accompanied to the dining hall
at all times by guards, some of whom led the way and others of whom
followed behind. They also received vaccinations under the arm, as did
the other recruits. Even though they were locked up as if criminals,
Joseph said that they had met with unexpectedly good care during the
first two days: ‚Until now we have not had to withstand a great deal,
that is, in regards to our bodies. They are good-hearted people. We
cannot thank God enough for this, for such is his great love and
mercy.‛44
David Hofer was less sanguine in a letter to his wife, Anna. He urged
her to use her imagination in picturing their situation: ‚Dearly beloved
Ehtheil,‛ he wrote, using a Hutterite term of endearment, ‚if you think
about where we are, far from home and farm, from wife and children,
then I can’t describe the misery in which we find ourselves.‛ 45 Like
Michael, David reminded his wife that they must be circumspect in what
they write: ‚I must close now with my simple writing and one has to be
careful what we write, and we can’t write very often, not as often as we
would hope. . . . We are not permitted to seal our envelopes. We have to
hand them over to an officer who looks them over.‛46 Joseph, too,
counseled discretion in a letter to his wife: ‚Be careful about what you

43. ‚Record of the Trial of Recruits David J. Hofer, Michael J. Hofer, Joseph J. Hofer, and
Jacob J. Wipf,‛ Judge Advocate’s Office, 91st Infantry Division, Camp Lewis, U.S. Army,
June 15, 1918.
44. Letter from Joseph Hofer to Maria Hofer, May 30, 1918.
45. Letter from David Hofer to Anna Hofer. The letter was apparently written between
May 27 and June 8, 1918, though the exact date is unclear.
46. Ibid.
276 The Mennonite Quarterly Review

write. Every letter is opened and read.‛ 47 He also revealed that the men
found a kindly soul and a way around the directive that they write in
English: ‚For you should know that we have no official permission to
write in German. But it is a good man who is in charge of the prisoners.
So we requested of him that we can write in German.‛
As they awaited their court-martial, the Hofer brothers said that they
had been summoned several times before the camp commander to
explain their unwillingness to work. Michael described the encounters:
‚We have already been ordered frequently to appear before the
commandant; but have testified without fear and with God’s help to our
faith. They say that everything would go just fine for us, but what work
would we be willing to do? But we tell them that we can do nothing.‛ 48
David also emphasized that only through God did they find the words
to speak: ‚We are still in the guardhouse and have been to the
headquarters because of our basis of belief. With the help of God we
have explained the basis of our faith, and with a calm heart.‛ 49 One such
interrogatory session took place on a Sunday, June 2, when the men were
searched and ‚forced to endure many temptations to sign our names,‛
apparently to the enlistment and assignment cards.50 It was not, they
said, much of a Sabbath.
Newton Baker, the secretary of war, believed that all men, including
members of the historic peace churches, might be persuaded to do their
part during the war—if not as soldiers in combat, then as noncombatants
assigned to provide medical care, haul supplies, or build bridges. But
even as noncombatants, men were classified as soldiers in the army. Of
the twenty-four million men who registered for the draft between May
1917 and November 1918, 64,693 men filed claims for conscientious
objector status. Among those objectors, 20,873 were called up for service.
After spending time in camps, nearly 80 percent of these men (about
16,000) agreed to take up arms. In the end, only 3,989 held fast to their
convictions against military combat. Of that number, about 1,300 agreed
to serve in a noncombatant capacity; an equal number, 1,300, were
furloughed to farms or other civilian work when that option became
available in the summer of 1918 (the Hofer brothers and Jacob Wipf did
not have a chance for such a furlough, since they had already been
charged). Those who remained were the so-called absolutists, refusing to
accept either combatant or noncombatant assignments. About two-thirds
of the absolutists, 940, ended up in a kind of segregated purgatory at the

47. Letter from Joseph Hofer to Maria Hofer, June 8, 1918.

48. Letter from Michael Hofer to Maria Hofer, June 8, 1918.
49. Letter from David Hofer to Anna Hofer, June 8, 1918.
50. Letter from Joseph Hofer to Maria Hofer, June 11, 1918.
 The Wartime Experiences of Four Hutterite C.O.’s 277

training camps, where commanders allowed them to bide their time. The
remaining one-third, 450, were court-martialed and sent to military
prisons.51
David, Joseph, and Michael Hofer, along with Jacob Wipf, were tried
jointly on June 10, with six military officials—two lieutenants, two
sergeants, a corporal, and a private—called up as witnesses at the court-
martial. The most common charges thus far in the war were two related
violations of the Articles of War, disobeying a superior officer (No. 64)
and disobeying a noncommissioned officer (No. 65). The four Hutterites
stood accused of doing both, in regards to orders to sign the enlistment
and assignment cards and to fall in with their platoon. After the
witnesses for the prosecution spoke, Jacob Wipf approached the bench
and affirmed (he made a point of not being sworn in) to tell the truth.
The early line of questioning pursued the Hutterites’ possible links to the
enemy, Germany:
Q: Now, what are the principles of your religious organization as
they have existed from the beginning? That is, with regard to
participation in war?
A: I don’t understand that, quite.
Q: Are the members of your church permitted by your church
principles to engage in war?
A: They are strictly against war. That is why we left Russia.
Q: Are you forbidden to be a soldier?
A: Yes.
Q: Are you loyal to Germany?
A: What does that mean?
Q: Are you in favor of Germany?
A: No; no.
Q: Why do you use the German language and the German printing
in your work?
A: Well, they started there in Germany, and they just kept going as
a colony and always kept talking like this. But my father can speak
the Russian language. But, we have never gotten out in the world,
and just kept that language because they started in Germany.

51. Christopher Capozzola, Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the
Modern American Citizen (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 56-60, puts the figure
of those who remained conscientious objectors at 3,989, as does Harlan F. Stone in ‚The
Conscientious Objector,‛ Columbia University Quarterly 21 (Oct. 1919), 253-272. Kellogg, in
The Conscientious Objector, lists 3,900.
278 The Mennonite Quarterly Review

Q: You have no particular liking then, for the ideals or citizenship of

Germany?
A: We have nothing for Germany.
The prosecutor wanted to know exactly why the men would not serve in
the armed forces in any capacity.
Q: Are you willing to take part in any noncombatant branch of the
service of the army?
A: No; we can’t.
Q: What are your reasons?
A: Well, it is all for war. The only thing we can do is work on a farm
for the poor and needy ones of the United States.
Q: What do you mean by poor and needy ones?
A: Well those that can’t help themselves.
Q: Would you include soldiers who are crippled for life?
A: Yes. They are poor and needy ones. . . .
Q: If you were in the service, such as the Medical Corps, where you
would attend the wounded soldiers, would your conscience and the
teachings of the church permit that?
A: We can’t do that, because a soldier, he will go and fight, and that
is helping the war, and we can’t do that.
Q: And if there were wounded soldiers about, you couldn’t help
them? You couldn’t help them because you would be afraid they
might recover and go back to the war; is that it?
A: Well, it would be helping the war.
Q: Would you be willing to be placed on a farm by the government
and grow wheat for soldiers?
A: No.
The prosecutor then wanted to know if the commitment to nonviolence
extended to the home.
Q: Does you religion believe in fighting of any kind?
A: No.
Q: You would not fight with your fists?
A: Well, we ain’t no angels. Little boys will scrap sometimes, and
we are punished; but our religion don’t allow it.
Q: To put the case like this: If a man was attacking or assaulting
your sister, would you fight?
A: No.
 The Wartime Experiences of Four Hutterite C.O.’s 279

Q: Would you kill him?

A: No.
Q: What would you do?
A: Well, in a way, if I could get her away, I might hold him. If I was
man enough, I would do that. If I couldn’t, I would have to let go.
We can’t kill. That is strictly against our religion.
The Hofer brothers also testified, though they received fewer
questions. The court adjourned at 4:20 p.m., less than three hours after
the proceedings had begun. All four men were found guilty and
sentenced to 20 years of hard labor, ‚at such place as the reviewing
authority may direct.‛
David Hofer immediately wrote to share his thoughts with Anna:
That was a difficult test. Dear Ehtheil, that is something our dear
brothers, fathers and patriarchs never had to do, what we young
brothers in faith had to do. We had to defend our beliefs in front of
the twelve sworn-in ones. But God stood at our side, and gave us
voice and wisdom and a calm heart. I had no more fear than I
would have if I were at home. Then they asked us if we could work
on a farm raising wheat for a soldier. We said no, but if you would
send us to the farm of poor suffering people, we could work there.
Maybe we said too much, but it seems to us that we could work in
such a situation, because our brothers had said that if the
government would put us on a farm by ourselves, there we could
work. There our preachers could visit us, perhaps also our families.
Dear Ehtheil, if only our heavenly father could lead us out of this
misery, no matter where, even if into dire poverty.52
For his part, Michael wanted Maria to know that ‚God our Heavenly
Father still cares for us‛:
*The military officials+ also don’t know what they should do with
us. They have told us that everything must go to the president. He
will decide what will be done with us. God the Lord will take care
of his own. He also will not forsake us if we only continue to trust in
him. The prophet said, Lord, when there is affliction, then men
search for you. When you discipline them, then they call out to you
in fear. My dear spouse, we paid too little attention to the
wonderful time of grace. For now one is able to see what he is
missing when the community is taken away—namely, when
evening descends and we could all gather nicely for prayer. We,
however, must accept it with patience, and say with the poet: when

52. Letter from David Hofer to Anna Hofer, June 12, 1918.
280 The Mennonite Quarterly Review

the just person is in pain, God wants to make him joyful, and those
with broken hearts should laugh again. While a Christian is here [on
earth] he must walk through streets of sadness, but I will stand by
him, the highest trust and help in the midst of everything. 53
Joseph, too, wrote to his wife, Maria, a day after the court-martial but
without the apparent heaviness of heart that one finds in the letters from
David and Michael. He even manages what could be taken as a playful
reference with regard to the first letter he had received from Maria:
Now my dear spouse, we are still imprisoned in the guardhouse.
But we were not at home—that is, in the guardhouse—when your
letter arrived. We were before the court being court-martialed. We
do not know, however, how things will turn out. Our case will
come before Newton Diehl Baker, the secretary of war in
Washington. Whatever they make of it we will have to accept. There
is someone here who has been in prison for five years. But this does
not alarm us. God is with us. And if God is with us, who can be
against us?54
In the weeks that followed, the men remained confined in the
guardhouse. Michael Hofer described their glimpses of camp life: ‚We
go from one window to another. There our sorrowful eyes see nothing
more than how the world leads its life.‛55 During the day they continued
to be able to read their Bibles and hold their own worship services,
though they could not sing aloud. (‚But one can also praise our great
God in stillness,‛ Michael wrote).56 Like Michael, David said that he
went from window to window, never seeing anyone that he knew. In
this place, he said, he often thought of his small children at home—and
why God would have them all go through this experience. ‚Sometimes I
think so much about it that I would like to scream, but that is of no use,‛
he wrote. ‚One has to have patience until it seems to God that it is time
to lead us out of this misery.‛57
For Joseph, one of the greatest challenges was the tedium that came
with being locked in a guardhouse:
We are now very well treated, ever since we were court-martialed.
We have not had any temptations. But the ‚sitting around‛ is not
for a person who is used to working. But we must wait with
patience to see what our loving heavenly father allows to happen to

53. Letter from Michael Hofer to Maria Hofer, June 11, 1918.
54. Letter from Joseph Hofer to Maria Hofer, June 11, 1918.
55. Letter from Michael Hofer to Maria Hofer, June 18, 1918.
56. Ibid.
57. Letter from David Hofer to Anna Hofer, June 14, 1918.
 The Wartime Experiences of Four Hutterite C.O.’s 281

us, and must accept it. Who knows to what end? Certainly not for
any harm, but rather for the benefit of our poor souls.58
In these letters God often appears as a stern disciplinarian, which the
men take as a model for their own method of parenting. Of this testing
by God on the grounds of Camp Lewis, Joseph writes: ‚And because we
deserve our punishment, we must accept it with patience, even if it
seems difficult for the flesh. For this is a tough word: take my cross upon
you!‛59 He urges Maria to rear their son in a like manner: ‚And raise up
the dear child in the fear of God, and spare no effort and no discipline.
Spare not the rod. And don’t think: Oh, the poor children! No. Bend the
sapling when it is still small and allows itself to be bent. For when it is
too strong, you have already failed.‛60
On Friday, June 14, just before bedtime, the authorities came and took
away Andrew Wurtz and an unnamed Mennonite detainee. Wurtz
returned on Sunday morning, and that afternoon spent two hours with
the Hofer brothers and Jacob Wipf; he was removed again on Monday
afternoon, this time to the base hospital. On July 1, Michael Hofer
reported that they had no news of the whereabouts of ‚Brother
Andreas.‛ Andrew Wurtz would later detail the efforts to which military
officials went to compel him, isolated from the others, to work under
military command. Once a sergeant ordered him to polish the soft wood
floor of a barracks. Wurtz refused, saying that to do so would advance
the war effort:
[The] sergeant ordered ropes brought which were used to bind each
leg and while I had the polisher handle, they pulled one leg at a
time. Suddenly, they pulled both ropes, causing me to fall
backwards, hurting my back and head and rendering me
unconscious. They pulled me along the floor, up and down the
hallway over the door ledges. I uttered an outcry—the slivers from
the floor had penetrated my entire body. (I had only a light T-shirt
and pyjamas on).
Yet, that was not enough; next, they took me into my room, filled
the bathtub with cold water, told me to remove my clothes (which I
did) and forced me under the water. I tried to hold my breath but
could not; the four men could not hold me under the water. They
cried again; I saw that I was becoming unsuccessful in my attempt
to hold my breath. I said, ‚In Jesus name, I have to give up my life; I
hold my promise that I promised on my knees.‛ They held me

58. Letter from Joseph Hofer to Maria Hofer, June 14, 1918.
59. Ibid.
60. Letter from Joseph Hofer to Maria Hofer, June 11, 1918.
282 The Mennonite Quarterly Review

under the water till they thought that by this time I should be
expired. They lifted me out of the water and all I heard them say
was that they would be back later to do it again. Around twelve
o’clock they took my pulse and I heard them say that I was still
living.61
Eventually, Wurtz agreed to work in the camp garden—but only alone,
not in the company of men in uniform. He was able to visit with the
Hofer brothers and Jacob Wipf on the night before they were transferred
to Alcatraz. Wurtz would later be moved to a dairy farm where he
carried manure compost for three months and then was released.
While nearly all of the surviving letters are those sent by the men to
their wives, several of the letters carried news from home. It is clear that
some of the letters never reached the men, and of those that did, some
are no longer in the families’ possession. Two weeks into their
confinement, David Hofer said that he had not yet heard from his wife,
Anna. But when Anna wrote to David on June 14, she assured him that
she had already written five letters, two of which were returned. She
kept track of the passing time by counting the Sabbaths. ‚Yesterday was
the sixth Sunday already and God knows how many more Sundays it
will be until we see each other with our mortal eyes, perhaps never more
in this world, but we hope to see each other in glory.‛62 In a second letter,
she added, ‚Dear David, it appears that I will have to spend my life with
my children by myself.‛63
Three weeks into their stay, Joseph seemed surprised that he had not
received more letters and that he and the others had not had any visitors
from home:
We are still in good health, both in body and soul. But you can
imagine, dear spouse, how one might be disposed when you are
gone from home for three weeks and have received only three
letters from home and also have not seen anyone, so that it appears
as if everyone is afraid to come here. What should we do here all
alone? However, we also do not need to despair, if it should appear
to us sometimes as if you have forsaken us. . . . You, of course, are
not the only one who can write. I also have brothers and sisters, and
also your brother. Tell them that they should visit us, and not be
satisfied with only offering greetings. 64

61. ‚The Memoirs of Reverend Andrew Wurtz.‛

62. Letter from Anna Hofer to David Hofer, June 14, 1918.
63. Letter from Anna Hofer to David Hofer, June 22, 1918.
64. Letter from Joseph Hofer to Maria Hofer, June 18, 1918.
 The Wartime Experiences of Four Hutterite C.O.’s 283

Early on, Susanna Hofer, mother of the three brothers, urged her boys
to hold fast:
May he continue to be with you and comfort you in your misery, as
he has promised that he will be with us until the end of the world.
Let us only trust him. My dearly beloved children, what dangerous
days are coming upon us, and it is probably as our Savior has said,
that faith will be no more and love will lose its warmth and injustice
will take over. Let’s not give up in the tribulation that has come
upon us. . . . 65
Another minister at Rockport, Joseph J. Wipf, was more frank in his
account of how the Hutterites were faring at home. He noted that three
other young men—likely Joseph Kleinsasser, John Waldner, and Michael
D. Hofer—had shipped out to a military camp. He also reported that
Jacob Wipf’s father was among a group of men who had traveled to
Canada to purchase land for new colonies, ‚because the way it seems we
cannot stay here, for we are not safe on any roads and highways. Today
they attacked our brothers and wanted to shear them; they were twenty-
five and six of ours, but the way it seems, God did not permit them to do
this, for the clippers didn’t cut, and they returned home unscathed.‛ 66
On Saturday, June 22, the Hofer brothers and Jacob Wipf learned that
they would be sent to Alcatraz in the coming weeks. Michael Hofer
spoke as one whose faith was being sorely tested, but had stayed strong:
We are completely yielded to the Lord. Whatever burdens he gives,
he also provides a way out that we can endure it. . . . For God will
also be with us there (that is, Alcatraz). He has promised to his own,
that when they pass through the fire, he will stand beside them so
that the flames do not burn them. And if you go through the water,
I will protect you so that you do not drown in the torrent. 67
Beyond having faith in the Lord’s protection during whatever trials
might befall him on earth, Michael also kept his eye on the promise of an
eternal reward. In perhaps the last letter that he sent from Camp Lewis,
he focused on better days to come: ‚For nothing else is promised to us
except that we must enter the kingdom of God through the cross and
suffering.‛68

65. Letter from Susannah Hofer to David, Michael, and Joseph Hofer, June 17, 1918.
66. Letter from Joseph J. Wipf to David, Joseph, and Michael Hofer and Jacob Wipf,
June 28, 1918. Joseph Kleinsasser, a Hutterite minister from the Milltown Colony in South
Dakota, became a tireless advocate for the men, corresponding with Frederick Keppel, the
assistant secretary of war responsible for conscientious objectors, and other officials.
67. Letter from Michael Hofer to Maria Hofer, June 24, 1918.
68. Letter from Michael Hofer to Maria Hofer, July 1, 1918.
284 The Mennonite Quarterly Review

The day after finding out that they were bound for Alcatraz, Joseph
wrote one of his longest letters home, equivalent to more than two
typewritten pages. Clearly, the weight of the twenty-year term hung
heavy about him as he wrote to Maria, ‚my dear and never-to-be-
forgotten spouse.‛ He saw only suffering ahead, and then a reward:
We, however, must hold firmly to God and plead to him with
prayers for the strength of his holy spirit, so that we might win the
battle and remain firm unto the end, and fight for truth as so many
of our forefathers did who came out of the fight with bloodied
heads. And now they are yonder and have received their reward.
And, dear spouse, if we want to go there where they are now, then
we must also follow in their footsteps and give heed to their faith.
For the children of God are called to nothing else than to affliction,
cross, tribulation, persecution and hatred from the world.69
The weeks that followed continued to test their spirits. He described
the two high fences that surrounded the guardhouse in which they were
locked up, ‚as if we were the worst scoundrels imaginable.‛ 70
Increasingly, there are references to a reunion in heaven: ‚And if it
should be that we do not see each other again in this sorrowful world,
then it will hopefully happen yonder where no one can separate us
again; where there will be no pain, no sorrow, no suffering, and instead
there will be found there pure joy and happiness.‛
The men bid farewell to Camp Lewis on Thursday, July 25. Chained
together in pairs, they spent two days traveling to Alcatraz in the
company of four armed lieutenants. The guards removed the chains
from their feet during the day, but kept their hands manacled at all
times. At night, the men slept on their backs, chained in pairs. As might
be expected, they slept little. On their arrival at Alcatraz, on Saturday,
July 27, they were commanded to put on military uniforms; when the
men refused, guards took them to the basement of the prison, a place of
solitary confinement known as ‚the hole.‛ They were given uniforms
and warned, ‚You’ll die here. We took four out of here dead just
yesterday.‛71 As unwilling to wear a uniform at Alcatraz as they were at
Camp Lewis, the men remained in their underwear. For the first four
and a half days they received half a glass of water each day but no food.
Rats ran wild in the dark of their cells, where each man was held in
isolation. At night they slept without blankets on the cement floor that
was wet from water that oozed through the walls. During the last 36-

69. Letter from Joseph Hofer to Maria Hofer, June 23, 1918.
70. Letter from Joseph Hofer to Maria Hofer, July 10, 1918.
71. Letter from David Hofer to Jonas S. Hartzler, Jan. 10, 1919.
 The Wartime Experiences of Four Hutterite C.O.’s 285

hour period in ‚the hole,‛ each man’s hands were crossed one over the
other and chained to bars in the door, drawn up so high that only their
toes touched the floor. In this position, guards struck their arms with
knotted lashes; Michael Hofer passed out after one of the beatings. Once
David Hofer heard Jacob Wipf cry out, ‚O, Almighty God!‛ When
guards led the men up the narrow steps and into the outside yard after
nearly five days, other prisoners gathered around them in a show of
sympathy. With tears in his eyes, one of the inmates said, ‚It is a shame
to treat human beings that way.‛72 The four men tried without success to
put on their jackets that day in the yard; their arms were too swollen.
When the men wrote home, they shared few details of their traumatic
introduction to life at this forbidding prison. Either they chose to self-
censor their accounts or prison officials sanitized their words for them.
There is no mention in the letters of sleeping on wet concrete in their
underwear, of standing for hours in chains, or of being beaten by guards.
Even so, one finds a greater measure of foreboding and despair in
Michael Hofer’s first letter home, written about two weeks after they had
left Camp Lewis:
My dear wife, I want to write you a few lines regarding my health
and my faith. I was sick for two days, but now I am better. I am also
still strong in my faith in God and in the hope that my letter will
reach you in the same spirit. We arrived in Alcatraz on July 27. We
are now in the military prison of Alcatraz behind iron and locks. We
don’t know what will become of us. Our twenty-year sentence is not
yet firmly established. We wish that God would come and bring an
end to the world, for there is indeed nothing good left in the world.
. . . My dear spouse, if we no longer see each other in this world,
then it is my hope in God that it will happen in the next world
where no one will be able to separate us—where we will remain
forever in joy.73
Joseph, also, says nothing of the conditions at Alcatraz but much
about how fleeting time is on earth: ‚We are here today, and tomorrow
we are no more. It is as Paul says: like the grass that grows today but
tomorrow is thrown into the oven.‛74 He reminds Maria that for the full
accounting of their time as prisoners, the family can hear directly from
the Hofer brothers’ father, who apparently had arrived at Camp Lewis to
see them shortly before they were transferred to Alcatraz. 75

72. Ibid.
73. Letter from Michael Hofer to Maria Hofer, Aug. 7, 1918.
74. Letter from Joseph Hofer to Maria Hofer, Aug. 7, 1918.
75. Family members also visited the four men at both Alcatraz and at Fort Leavenworth.
286 The Mennonite Quarterly Review

The absence of details in their letters home from Alcatraz, and the
brevity of the letters in comparison with those from Camp Lewis, is
striking. More than a month into their stay, Michael Hofer only alluded
to the hardships they were facing. ‚First,‛ he wrote,‛ a heartful greeting
from me in chains. . . . I wish that I could see you with my eyes. The
prospects of that do not seem to be good, but nonetheless I remain in
hope that it will still happen, even if not very soon.‛ 76
David Hofer also spared his family any description of life behind bars
in Alcatraz:
My dear Ehetheil and children, I’m sure you’ll be anxious to hear
how things are going during these dark days. We’re all quite well,
temporally and spiritually, and wish you the same. . . . It seems that
we’re supposed to stay here in this misery. But we have to pray to
God that he will lead us on the right path. We all do not expect to
see each other in this world anymore, the way it seems now, but we
should not despair, with God’s strength we hope to overcome, as
we have promised God, we trust in him. He’s the only one who can
help us, as he did in olden days. 77
The men also faced new limits on how often they could write home.
At Camp Lewis, they were able to write several times a week; here at
Alcatraz, prisoners could write no more than twice a month. From the
letters that arrived back at the colony in South Dakota, the families of the
Hofer brothers and Jacob Wipf would not have known that the men were
locked up in their cells day and night; that only on Sundays were they
allowed out into the courtyard, and then only for one hour, and always
under the watch of guards. Joseph Hofer allowed only this oblique
reference: ‚Here everything is militaristic, as it was in the camp.‛ 78
Their letters, on the other hand, often convey assurance that the men
are in reasonably good health and that God will see them through this
trial. Michael Hofer wrote:
I and the brothers are healthy in body and soul and we wish the
same health to you and to the whole community. If only I could see
our little daughter! But everything is in the hands of God, our
heavenly Father. We cannot thank him enough for the support that
he has shown to us. He only wants to see what his children will
do.79

76. Letter from Michael Hofer to Maria Hofer, Sept. 3, 1918.

77. Letter from David Hofer to Anna Hofer and children, Aug. 18, 1918.
78. Letter from Joseph Hofer to Maria Hofer, Aug. 19, 1918.
79. Letter from Michael Hofer to Maria Hofer, Sept. 16, 1918.
 The Wartime Experiences of Four Hutterite C.O.’s 287

Joseph addresses his wife, Maria, with apocalyptic resignation in a

letter on October 20, nearly three months into their stay at Alcatraz:
As I understand it, you are in good health. I am as well, both in
body and soul. You asked a question: how do I feel? I feel—and this
is true—that the time of our resolution is drawing closer. For what
is now already unfolding in the world is almost a fulfillment of
what the savior in his word has taught us. Therefore the time of his
coming cannot be very far off. Let us therefore watch and pray as he
has commanded us, so that he will find us awake when he comes. 80
On November 14, 1918, the men began the final leg of their journey in
detention.81 This time six guards, all sergeants, accompanied the
Hutterites, who were once again chained in pairs.82 They traveled by
train through Texas, en route to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. The trip
took four days and five nights. Michael Hofer wrote his last letter from
the train, on the fourth day of the trip:
Grace and peace be with you. I want to write to you that we are
now on the way to Fort Leavenworth, . . . Kansas. We don’t know,
however, what will become of us there. Only God the almighty
knows if we will see each other again in this world, for we go from
one affliction to the other. We plead earnestly to God, for he has
promised us that not a single hair falls from our heads without his
will. And if we do not see each other again in this world, then we
will see one another in the next world.
Dear spouse, I have received two letters from you and one from
dear brother Peter. You can imagine that I wept when I read that
you are sick, along with our dear little daughter. Don’t go leave the
house too soon. Keep yourself warm.
I am still healthy in body and soul and wish for you the same, and
for all the brothers and sisters—which is the greatest treasure that a
human could receive here on earth.
Now I will close with a heartfelt greeting to all the brothers and
sisters in the community, but especially to dear Davidvetter. He

80. Letter from Joseph Hofer to Maria Hofer, Oct. 20, 1918.
81. It is not clear why the men were transferred from Alcatraz to Fort Leavenworth at
this time. Fort Leavenworth had long been the central detention place for conscientious
objectors. The transfer may have been linked to the Armistice, which had been announced
several days earlier, on Nov. 11.
82. Some sources show a discrepancy in the date of their arrival at Fort Leavenworth. In
the letter that David Hofer sent to J. S. Hartzler after Hofer’s release, he refers to being
taken to Leavenworth on Nov. 24. But in his letter dated Nov. 17, 1918, Michael Hofer said
they were four days into the trip, putting their date of departure from Alcatraz on Nov. 14
and and their arrival on Nov. 18. Fort Leavenworth authorities officially list the date of
their arrival for processing as Nov. 19.
288 The Mennonite Quarterly Review

should remember us in his prayers. And I remain your sorrowful

husband. Michael Y. Hofer, until death.83
Joseph, likewise, wrote his final letter to Maria while in chains as the
train crossed the Southwest. He lets slip, for the first time, his certainty
that they will not see each other again on this earth, but only in heaven:
My precious, dear wife, Maria Hofer. Since I suddenly have a little
time and paper, I want to let you all know something of my
condition. I am still in good health in body and soul, and on the
way to Fort Leavenworth. I do not know how things will fare with
us there.
We are going as we did to Alcatraz, but the other way around. We
will arrive there on Tuesday. We might not see each other again.
And the only way that you can help us is through prayer to God
who alone can redeem us from all evil, and who gives the strength
to endure the fiery arrows of the evildoers.
My dear wife, since we will no longer see each other in this troubled
world, then we will see each other yonder through the power of
God. With this we must be satisfied with that which God allows to
happen. And he will not lay upon us more than what we, with his
strength, can endure. . . .
And when you look at our scrawling you can well imagine how low
our spirits are, for we are where the waves are roaring and in that
time when the seas throw up the dead—if you can only see this in
the right way.
This is all for this time, my dear wife. For this is not a good letter at
all, since it shakes and bounces so much. Now to close. My best
greetings to you and our dear children, father and mother and all
the brothers and sisters in the faith.84
The men arrived at Fort Leavenworth, on Tuesday, November 19, at
11 at night, fully spent. David Hofer recounted their difficulty in
traveling any further:
We were marched through the streets, up the hill to the barracks,
carrying our suitcases, and other luggage. When we arrived we
were worn out and very sweaty and warm. We were told to
undress. We did so, and were required to stand in the chilly night
air in our sweated underwear for two hours before the warden
came with prison garments. At 5 o’clock the next morning we were
required to appear again and wait for some time in the sharp

83. Letter from Michael Hofer to Maria Hofer, Nov. 17, 1918.
84. Letter from Joseph Hofer to Maria Hofer, Nov. 17, 1918.
 The Wartime Experiences of Four Hutterite C.O.’s 289

morning air. Michael and Joseph complained of sharp pains in their

chest, and were taken to the hospital, sick.85
Jacob Wipf and David Hofer refused to work at Leavenworth, as they
had refused at Alcatraz and Camp Lewis. They were placed in cells, their
hands shackled high up through the bars of the doors; in this way, they
stood for nine hours each day. For the first fourteen days, they would
receive only bread and water. Meanwhile, Michael and Joseph grew
increasingly sick. David Hofer wired home, saying the men were near
death. Their wives, father, and a brother were mistakenly directed by a
railroad agent to Fort Riley; though delayed by a day, they arrived at
Leavenworth in time to see Joseph and Michael; Joseph was barely able
to communicate. He died at 8:30 the following morning, November 29.
The guards said that family members could not see him. But Joseph’s
wife, Maria, pushed past the guards and demanded permission from the
head officer. He relented. With tears in her eyes, she approached the
coffin, and there found Joseph in death dressed in a military uniform
that he had steadfastly refused to wear in life. Michael Hofer died a few
days later, on December 2. The Office of the Surgeon of the Disciplinary
Barracks identified pneumonia as the cause of death for both men. They
may have been victims of the Spanish flu, which was sweeping through
the prison just when the men arrived from Alcatraz. The Fort
Leavenworth annual report for 1918 showed a surge in deaths that fall
and winter, many apparently related to the flu: July, 1; August, 0;
September, 0; October, 59; November, 7; and December, 4. At the
family’s pleading, prison officials did not place Michael in military dress.
Both men were sent home to the Rockport Colony in South Dakota for
burial.
David Hofer recalled standing in his cell with tears streaming down
his face after his brothers had died. With his hands chained fast, he
couldn’t wipe them away. He simply stood and wept. He asked to be
moved to a cell closer to Jacob Wipf. Instead, an official soon told him
that he was being discharged and should gather up his belongings. 86
David unsuccessfully tried to see Jacob before leaving for home, but a
guard promised to pass along a note. David and Jacob would see each
other five months later, in April 1919, when Jacob was finally free to
return to the colony. In January of that year, in a letter to Jonas S.
Hartzler, a Mennonite leader who both counseled draftees and

85. Letter from David Hofer to Jonas S. Hartzler, Jan. 10, 1919. The details that follow
are largely drawn from this letter, which Hofer sent in response to Hartzler’s request for an
accounting of his trials in prison during the war.
86. David Hofer was released on Dec. 4, 1918.
290 The Mennonite Quarterly Review

negotiated with government leaders in Washington, David Hofer

reflected on the months of confinement:
I praise God for my release, but my soul goes out in behalf of the
other prisoners who are confined there in ways that no human
being should ever be asked to endure, much less people who have
never been guilty of any crime, but because of their relation to Jesus
Christ, could not possibly do all that they are asked to do, and
because of that, are made to suffer so severely.87
Considering the historical record a century later, the confinement and
suffering of the Hofer brothers and Jacob Wipf grows perhaps even more
tragic because it was avoidable. So much misfortune lay in the timing.
The treatment of the four Hutterite men appeared to fly in the face of the
military’s own expressed counsel in handling these cases. In one of
several instances of unfortunate timing for the men, this counsel arrived
two weeks after their trial. The War Department issued a statement on
June 25 calling for a sensible compromise with objectors who would not
work—a compromise that would allow the men to avoid imprisonment.
The reasonable alternative lay with farm furloughs, which had been
available on the books for several months and now would be put to use.
The furloughs would allow men who would not lift a hand while in
uniform to still make a valuable contribution:
In short, every effort is being made to respect the sincere scruples of
a small minority of our people, at the same time that their power to
contribute to the nation’s efficiency is turned to good account. There
is unquestionably strong sentiment in many quarters against the
granting of immunity from military service to any group in our
population, however small. But many objectors are not without the
courage of their convictions. They would resist compulsion to the
end. We might imprison or shoot them. Prussian practices such as
these would hardly appeal in a Democracy. On the other hand, a
method which conserves the man-power of the nation, and accords
to furloughed objectors a lot that is endurable and serviceable, but
in no sense pampered, will, it is believed, commend itself to the
common sense and practicability of the American people.88
The War Department’s readiness to grant furloughs came as a relief to
conscientious objectors across the country. But for those objectors whose
cases had been expedited, the generous tone of the department’s
statement would bear little connection to the reality of life behind bars.

87. Letter from David Hofer to Jonas S. Hartzler, Jan. 10, 1919.
88. News release from the War Department, June 25, 1918.
 The Wartime Experiences of Four Hutterite C.O.’s 291

Deciding who would qualify for farm furloughs fell to the three legal
experts who composed the Board of Inquiry. Early in the summer of
1918, the board members began to interview conscientious objectors and,
by gauging their sincerity, place them in combatant or noncombatant
service in the military, or, in cases where the men were judged sincere in
their pacifist convictions and wanted to be as distant as possible from the
military, on a farm selected by the government; in exceptional cases, the
board could also recommend that an objector be assigned to
reconstruction work in Europe under direction of the Society of Friends.
The board was made up of Major Richard C. Stoddard, chairman of the
Judge Advocate’s Office in the army; Judge Julian W. Mack of the
Federal Court; and Dean Harlan F. Stone of Columbia University Law
School, who would later become a chief justice of the U.S. Supreme
Court. In August, Stoddard was sent overseas, replaced by Major Walter
G. Kellogg, who also worked in the Judge Advocate’s Office. Members of
the Board of Inquiry visited Camp Lewis on July 9 to interview the
conscientious objectors there. The Hofer brothers and Jacob Wipf were
locked away in the nearby guardhouse, having been convicted one
month earlier. The board acknowledged the presence of the four
Hutterites but classified them apart from the other objectors. The board
report noted that the Hofer brothers and Jacob Wipf had already been
court-martialed: ‚Therefore no opinion now expressed.‛ 89 The board did
not have authority to reconsider such court-martial cases.
The Hutterites were not alone in refusing orders as they did, but the
charges and court-martial came swiftly, perhaps as an example for
Andrew Wurtz and others. If the four Hutterites had been kept in the
guardhouse but not immediately brought up on charges or tried by
court-martial, it is likely that they would have appeared before the Board
of Inquiry and been successful in their appeal for a furlough. The odds
were highly favorable. The majority of recruits from the peace churches
who refused noncombatant service were found to be sincere and
transferred to farms or to reconstruction work in Europe. In June and
through the rest of the year, the board examined 2,100 men, with only
122 being found insincere. Two other Hutterites from the Rockport
Colony, Joseph Kleinsasser and Michael D. Hofer, point to the path that
the Hofer brothers and Jacob Wipf came so close to being able to take.
Kleinsasser and Hofer left the colony for an army training camp one
month later, on June 28. When they arrived at Camp Funston, they
likewise refused to do any kind of service. But instead of being placed in
a guardhouse and brought up on charges, they had an opportunity to

89. Report on Conscientious Objectors at Camp Lewis, from the Board of Inquiry to the
secretary of war, Newton D. Baker, July 9, 1918.
292 The Mennonite Quarterly Review

appear before the Board of Inquiry, where they were found to be sincere
in their stance. By September, both men were working on farms through
the furlough program, while the Hofer brothers and Jacob Wipf
languished in the steely, dark bowels of Alcatraz. Joseph Kleinsasser and
Michael Hofer would be home in time for Christmas. By then, Joseph
and Michael Hofer were being remembered as martyrs, the only two
Hutterites to die during the war. 90

90. John Horsch, The Hutterian Brethren: A Story of Martyrdom and Loyalty, 1528-1931
(Goshen, Ind.: Mennonite Historical Society, 1931).