In Duane C. S. Stoltzfus's Pacifists in Chains: The Persecution of Hutterites during the Great War, we hear the compelling story of four members of the Hutterite sect of Anabaptists and their imprisonment as conscientious objectors during the First World War. Few people in America today are aware of the pacifist tradition of those of the Anabaptist Christian faith and their struggle to receive consideration for their faith-based refusal of military service. In Stoltzfus's account of the Hutterite way of life he calls attention to the “modest” appearance of the members of Rockport colony and juxtaposes that appearance against their neighbors' fears of them (2). To the residents of South Dakota, Hutterites were suspect primarily for their German language and their separatist ways. These two characteristics defined the Hutterite colony as dangerous outsiders; when linked to their communal farming and landownership practices, many feared the Hutterites were dangerous enemy agents.

Stoltzfus does an exemplary job detailing the complex movements of conscientious objectors Jacob Wipf and Joseph and Michael Hofer as they moved from the draft board in South Dakota, to Camp Lewis, Alcatraz, and Fort Leavenworth. Caught in the changing whims of a country going through its own identity crisis, these men defended their firmly held conviction that God did not condone violence toward one's enemies, at the expense of their lives and their freedom. The story of these men, and of the Hutterites themselves, reveals a complicated intersection in the identity of America. Is this a nation dedicated to the freedom of religious expression, or one where conformity is held in higher esteem? Stoltzfus addresses these issues through the lens of the struggles of the Hofers and the Hutterites themselves, by juxtaposing the immigration story of the Hutterites in opposition to military service in Russia with their continued push for service exemptions in the Unites States. Stoltzfus shows the developing conflict between the Hutterites and their neighbors. The German-speaking Hutterites were devout seperatists in a time when most Americans equated conformity with patriotism and nonconformity with subversion.

Many of the hardships the Hofer brothers and Wipf suffered differed from those of others of Anabaptist faith who also found themselves before draft boards. Stoltzfus rightly shows the wide variance in approach to military service from conscientious objectors who were commonly from pacifist religious groups. One of the strongest sections of Stoltzfus's analysis of the hardships faced by the Hofers and Wipf is his description of the provision that required conscientious objectors to “serve in any capacity that the President shall declare to be noncombatant” (58). The definition of noncombatant service varied widely. The Hofers and Wipf were some of the few who objected to any service that would aid the war effort. It was this strong stance that led to their court-martial and imprisonment.

The sources used to re-create the movements of the Hofer brothers come from the community in which they lived and from the military accounts of the arrest and trial of the Hutterites. They show the ambivalence of the military and the shifting attitudes regarding both pacifism and duty. It is a compelling story of how three men's commitment to their faith compelled them to nonresistance and how that commitment challenged the goals of a nation at war.

While much of the book is dedicated to a detailed retelling of the movements of the Hutterites during their imprisonment, it does not place the story of the Hofer brothers and their cousin Wipf in the broader context of challenges and changes in the fabric of American society. Hutterites were not just immigrants. They were immigrants who practiced communal living, disavowed military service, and spoke German in a time when all three of those practices marked them as outsiders. The trials of the Hofer brothers and their cousin were enmeshed in the struggle of America to define itself in the context of war. The Hutterites' commitment to nonresistance placed them in opposition to the culture of America in the grip of a mobilization for war just as surely as their primary language of German marked them as suspected traitors.

While Stoltzfus does not claim to address the larger context of the Hutterites during the Great War, the story of the Hofer brothers and their cousin gives a window into the larger struggle of immigrants to develop their own identity within their new nation, as both suspects and citizens. The persecutions that Hutterites faced from their neighbors while simultaneously negotiating the spaces between becoming American and holding fast to their religious commitment defined their experience as Americans. It is this delicate balance that is missing from Stoltzfus's retelling. The story of the Hofer brothers and Wipf is compelling on its own, but this larger context would help explain why the brothers held fast to their beliefs in the face of persecutions within the military. Hutterite conscientious objectors' experience with the United States military and the perception of Hutterites as dangerous neighbors is rooted in the struggle for a cohesive identity as both suspect and citizen.