1942–1975

Timeline—1942–1975
1942	Knorr elected president of Watch Tower Society
1950	New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures started (completed 1961)
1966	The year 1975 suggested as possible date for Armageddon
Rutherford was succeeded by Nathan Homer Knorr. Knorr's tenure as president was notable for the transfer from individual to corporate leadership. None of the Society's publications after 1942 acknowledged authorship, and were instead attributed to an anonymous Writing Committee. From about 1944, the term "governing body" began to be used with a measure of frequency, with the term initially applied to the Watch Tower Society's seven-man Board of Directors.
Knorr began a campaign of real estate acquisition in Brooklyn to expand the organisation's world headquarters, expanded printing production throughout the world, and organized a series of international assemblies that dwarfed those of Rutherford in the 1920s. In 1958, more than 253,000 Witnesses gathered at two New York City venues, Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds, for an eight-day convention where more than 7,000 were baptized. Other large conventions were held in the US, Canada and Germany.
He instituted major training programs, including the Watchtower Bible School of Gilead to train missionaries, and the Theocratic Ministry School to give instruction in preaching and public speaking at the congregational level. He commissioned a new translation of the Bible, which was released progressively from 1950. It was published as the complete New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures in 1961. Also produced were a Greek-English New Testament interlinear, The Kingdom Interlinear Translation of the Greek Scriptures, and a Bible encyclopedia, Aid to Bible Understanding. The offices of elder and ministerial servant (deacon) were restored to Witness congregations in 1972, with appointments being made from headquarters.
Knorr's vice-president, Frederick William Franz, became the leading theologian for the group and the pace of doctrinal change slowed. Blood transfusions were prohibited for Witnesses from 1945. In 1961 the eating of blood in meat was prohibited. The Watchtower instructed Witnesses to check with their butcher whether the animals and fowl he sold had been properly drained of their blood. Birthday celebrations were described as "objectionable" in 1951 because of their pagan origins, and other explicit rules regarding acceptable conduct among members were introduced, with a greater emphasis placed on disfellowshipping as a disciplinary measure.
Adult male Witnesses in the US, Britain, and some European countries were jailed for refusal of military service in the post-war years, with particularly harsh treatment meted out in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Greece, East Germany and Romania. Wide-scale persecution of Witnesses in several African nations was launched between 1967 and 1975, with as many as 21,000 fleeing Malawi to refugee camps in Zambia after a series of murders and beatings in 1972. 7,000 Mozambiquean members of the denomination were arrested in 1975 to be sent to communist re-education camps.
During Knorr's presidency, membership of Jehovah's Witnesses grew from 108,000 to more than two million.
=== Predictions for 1975 ===
From 1966, Witness publications heightened anticipation of Christ's thousand-year millennial reign beginning in late 1975. Repeating the 1925 cycle of excitement, anticipation and then disappointment, Witness publications and convention talks intensified focus on 1975 as the "appropriate" time for God to act, with statements that "the immediate future is certain to be filled with climactic events ... within a few years at most the final parts of the Bible prophecy relative to these 'last days' will undergo fulfillment". The September 15, 1971 issue of The Watchtower warned that "all worldly careers are soon to come to an end", and advised youths that they should not "get interested in ‘higher education’ for a future that will never eventuate."
A chart in a 1971 Awake! indicated the "thrilling hope" of a "grand Sabbath of rest and relief" in the mid-1970s at the close of 6000 years of human history. Some Witnesses sold businesses and homes, gave up jobs, deferred medical procedures and set aside plans to start a family in anticipation of Armageddon's arrival. The May 1974 issue of the Watch Tower Society's newsletter, Our Kingdom Ministry, commended Witnesses who had sold homes and property to devote themselves to preaching in the "short time" remaining.
Watch Tower literature did not state dogmatically that 1975 would definitely mark the end, and the buildup was tempered with cautions that there was no certainty that Armageddon would arrive in 1975, but magazines warned that "time is running out rapidly" and that "only a few years, at most" remained before Armageddon. Circuit assemblies in 1970 held a public talk entitled "Who will conquer the world in the 1970s?". In a speech in Australia in 1975, the society's vice-president Frederick Franz went so far as to name a precise date—September 5, 1975—as the "end of the present wicked system".
Witnesses were urged that they should not be "toying with the words of Jesus that 'concerning that day and hour nobody knows' ... to the contrary, one should be keenly aware that the end of this system of things is rapidly coming to its violent end." The number of baptisms soared from about 59,000 in 1966, to more than 297,000 in 1974. Membership declined after expectations for 1975 failed. In 1976 The Watchtower advised those who had been "disappointed" by the failure of the predictions for 1975 to adjust their viewpoint because their understanding had been "based on wrong premises". In 1980, after several proposals by Governing Body members to apologize to Witnesses were voted down, the Watch Tower Society admitted its responsibility in building up hope regarding 1975.