Martin Luther, born November 10th, 1483, was a German priest who changed Christianity with his influence during the Reformation. His criticism of the Catholic Church led to the creation of the Protestant Church and ultimately Lutheranism. “Wanting all Christians in Germany to have access to the gospel, Luther created a translation of the Bible into German, therefore allowing all Germans to read and understand it, and thereby uniting them. In every house one could find a copy of Luther’s Bible, whose teachings became an integral part of German national heritage.” (Ritter,216) Luther’s nationalism went far beyond patriotism as he wholly believed the German people were God’s chosen people and he was the one to lead them. The pride he had in his faith and country made him blind to anyone who was not a true German Christian. He fought for freedoms by taking on the Catholic Church who he believed was keeping his people oppressed. “Martin Luther and German nationalism are inextricably linked. In addition to initiating the Protestant Reformation, Luther accomplished other tasks, all for the benefit of the German people. It has been argued that Luther’s message was ‘not for Christendom, but for the German people - for he was not a Christian, he was first and foremost a German.’ Luther considered himself the Prophet of the Germans.” (Olsen,10) Luther saw that his country was in danger from many outside forces and so his national pride encouraged him to fight for the German people and to rid it of foreigners with their strange ways who did not belong there.
In 1523, Luther still tried to encourage friendly conversations between Jews and Protestants hoping that those might lead to conversion to Christianity. “If I had been a Jew and had seen such dolts and blockheads govern and teach the Christian faith, I would sooner have become a hog than a Christian. They have dealt with the Jews as if they were dogs rather than human beings; they have done little else than deride them and seize their property.” (Luther,200) Since Luther was disenfranchised by the Catholic Church and its corruption he thought he could collaborate with those of the Jewish faith and help them see the truth and light of Protestantism. “The Jews’ special status as the people that both had rejected Jesus’ revelation and had “killed” him, although they, of all people, ought to have recognized and embraced him as their messiah, was the source of the enduring and bitter hatred of Jews by the Church, the Christian clergy, and the people of Europe.” (Goldhagen,52) In 1526, Luther visited with three rabbis and one of the rabbis said to Luther, “We rejoice that you Christians learn our language and our books such as Genesis and the rest. We hope that in the future you will become Jews.” (Lamport,387) Luther replied in return that he hoped they would become Christians. By 1543, Luther had changed his tune as he realized he could not convert the Jews. He started to see them as foreigners in his country with their strange rituals and non-German ways. He started to emphasize their blindness, stubbornness, and love of lies by bringing back all the stereotypes Jews had been accused of for generations. Instead of the beautiful sermons he was known for, he wrote the treatise titled On the Jews and Their Lies which was long and very specific when it came to his new stance on how he viewed these outsiders. His words were so “violent and vulgar that they offended contemporaries and remain offensive to this day.” (Edwards,3) Part four of the treatise is known as the most infamous section of all as Luther provided advice on how to deal with the Jews back in 1543. Emily Paras in her article titled The Darker Side of Martin Luther, wrote that Luther had four reasons as to why he wrote the treatise. According to Paras, he wanted to expose their false boasts of lineage, to debate key biblical passages, to highlight medieval superstitions, and most importantly, he wanted to give recommendations for dealing with the Jews. (Paras) The treatise, On the Jews and Their Lies, in its origional German, is 135 pages long and filled with the ramblings of someone trying to sway good Christians to his point of view. The part that is the most severe and shocking are the seven recommendations that he gave about dealing with the Jews, and while they were powerful and full of hate they only filled 5 of those 135 pages.
“Next to the Devil, you have no more bitter, more poisonous, more vehement an enemy than a real Jew who earnestly desires to be a jew.” (Luther,28) Luther gave his council in the form of warnings to all Christians. He painted the Jews as liars and blasphemers who were disgracing God by what they did inside their buildings. “Moses writes in Deuteronomy that where a city practiced idolatry, it should be entirely destroyed with fire and leave nothing. If he were living today he would be the first to put fire to the Jew schools and houses.” (Luther,40) While this is a pretty straightforward paragraph from Luther he made sure to mention that this destruction should be done to the glory of God and Christendom. Burning synagogues and homes was not a new concept and Luther encouraged Christians to perform that act in the name of God as he believed they were defiling his country with their strange new ways. To be a good German you needed to be Christian and do everything you could for love of country. Luther’s second piece of council was to not let Jews own their own homes. “For they practice the same thing in their houses as they do in their schools. Instead, you might place them under a roof, or stable, like the Gypsies, to let them know that they are not lords in our country as they boast, but in exile as captives.” (Luther,40) Again, Luther warned his fellow Christians that the Jews were foreigners in his country and that they should not have been allowed to feel like they belong. Comparing them to Gypsies made them second class citizens and not worthy of the equality that real Germans received even if some had lived in Germany their entire lives. Third, Luther counciled that all the prayer books of the Jews should be taken away as that is where the lying and blaspheming was being taught from. His translation of the Bible into German was seen as a tremendous gift to the German people so why would these outsiders scoff at that and read from other religious books. (Luther,41) Fourth, Luther counciled that Rabbis should be prohibited from teaching. Being German meant Christian and reading the Bible, if rabbis could not teach anymore and their books were taken away, then maybe the German people stood a chance at getting their country back. (Luther,41) Fifth, Luther counciled that the Jews should no longer be protected and if you did protect them you would be a partner of their abomination. (Luther,41-42) Sixth, all their currency, silver, and gold should be taken away as everything the Jews had was probably something they had stolen. (Luther,42) Luther relied on stereotypes from centuries past as that stigma had followed the Jews through generations. Finally, the last council Luther gave was that Jews were lazy and should be put to work. “That young, strong Jews be given flail, ax, spade, spindle, and let them earn their bread in the sweat of their noses as imposed upon Adam’s children.” (Luther,45) This again was a stereotype that had not changed over centuries and so Luther knew just how he could use it to rile people up. The treatise continued on for many more pages after the council defaming the Jews with more harsh and violent words.
The German people believed in Luther’s nationalism and faith and built on that for years following his death. “If we wish to find a scapegoat on whose shoulders we may lay the miseries which Germany has brought upon the world - I am more and more convinced that the worst evil genius of that country is not Hitler or Bismarck or Frederick the Great, but Martin Luther.” (Paras,1) Only a few months after the Nazi’s seized power in Germany it was the 450th anniversary of Luther’s birth. Gauleiter Erich Koch, a political official governing a district under Nazi rule, testified in 1949: “I held the view that the Nazi idea had to develop from a basic Prussian-Protestant attitude and from Luther’s unfinished Reformation.” (Steigmann-Gall,275) Koch truly believed that the National Socialists were the true inheritors of Luther’s legacy. “Only we can enter into Luther’s spirit [...] Human cults do not set us free from all sin, but faith alone. With us the church shall become a serving member of the state. We struggle for the completion of the highest good of the nation: truth and right, freedom and honor. There is a deep sense that our celebration is not attended by superficiality, but rather by thanks to a man who saved German cultural values.” (Steigmann-Gall,284) There were many other officials in the Nazi party that held on to the religious ideals of Luther and combined them with the national ideals of Hitler. Gauleiter Hans Schemm, head of the National Socialist Teachers League, was known for his slogan: “Our religion is Christ, our politics Fatherland.” (Steigmann-Gall,276) Schemm praised Luther by saying: “Luther’s engagement against the decomposing Jewish spirit is clearly evident not only from his writing against the Jews; his life too was idealistically, philosophically antisemitic. Now we Germans of today have the duty to recognize and acknowledge this. Only in this way will we do justice to Luther’s life.” (Kahl-Furthmann,126) Schemm was an avid follower of Luther but also believed wholehearedly in Hitlers idea of race. “The spiritual for us always remains primary, blood and race secondary. The cause of all things is and remains the Creator [...] Race, Volk and nation represent only instruments which lead to God.” (Kahl-Furthmann,127) Walter Buch was Chairman of the Party’s Investigation and Consilation Commitee and President of the Party’s Supreme Court. He was also an ardent Lutheran and made direct comparisons between Luther and Hitler. “We have all seen how, in our movement and in the work of our fuhrer, the same ideas can live in many people, that the same spirit is produced. Many people confess their amazement that Hitler preaches ideas which they have always held. [...] From the Middle Ages we can look to the same example in Martin Luther. What stirred in the soul and spirit of the German people of that time, finally found expression in his person, in his words and deeds.” (Steigmann-Gall,278) Bernard Rust, the Prussian (and later Reich) Education Minister, was another ardent Luther and Hitler supporter. He believed that Hitler and Luther were one and the same. “Since Martin Luther closed his eyes, no such son of our people has appeared again. It has been decided that we shall be the first to witness his reappearance. The poor orphan from a broken home in Braunau, the worker from the big city of Vienna, the rifleman from the World War, has had to arrive in order for the people once again to raise the flag before their son from its midst and to hear its voice [...] I think the time is past when one may not say the names of Hitler and Luther in the same breath. They belong together; they are of the same old stamp.” (Steigmann-Gall,136-7)
Hitler was a staunch nationalist just as Luther had been in his day. We can see evidence of this just by reading Mein Kampf where Hitler mentioned that “my nationalistic entusiasm was no empty obsession.” (Hitler,47) We can also see that Hitler was a follower of Luther and very familiar with writtings. He called Luther a great warrior in Mein Kampf and said: “Among them must be counted the great warriors in this world who, though not understood by the present, are nevertheless prepared to carry the fight for their ideas and ideals to the end. They are men who some day will be closest to the heart of the people; it almost seems as though every individual feels the duty to compensate in the past for the sins which the present one commited against the great. Their life and work are followed with admiring gratitude and emotion, and especially in days of gloom they have the power to raise up broken hearts and despairing souls.” (Hitler,213) Hitler admired this great warrior and followed Luther’s council from 400 years earlier almost exactly. “Hitler is without a doubt considered the most prominent and most fanatical anti-Semite in the history of the world. He, however, would presumably have given Martin Luther that honor.” (Olsen,27)
In the treatise written by Luther in 1543, Luther counciled that Jewish synagogues and homes should be burned to stop blasphemy. “On November 10, 1938, on Luther’s birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany. The German people ought to heed these words of the greatest antisemite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews.” (Nellessen,265) These were the words of Bishop Martin Sasse of Thuringia as he wrote a short summary after Kristallnacht in which he praised the violence that occured that night. Hitler and the Nazi party followed the first council of Luther’s treatise by burning the synagogues and homes of Jews. The fact that it happened on Luther’s birthday could be a coincidence or planned event to emulate the person that wrote down those exact instructions 400 years earlier. Diarmaid MacCulloch said, “Luther’s writings of 1543 is a blueprint for the Nazi’s Kristallnacht of 1938” in his book titled The Reformation. He continues, “it recommends that in retaliation for Jewish obstinancy, synagogues should be burned, Jewish literature confiscated, Jewish teachings forbidden, and vengeance taken for the killing of Christ.” (MacCulloch,666) Kristallnacht became the shift when anti-Semitism became state-sanctified and outwardly acceptable. It was a coordinated attack on Jews in Hitler’s Reich that left 91 Jews dead, over 30,000 Jewish men arrested, over 1000 synagogues burned and destroyed, and tens of thousands of Jewish businesses and homes damaged or destroyed. (Gilbert,13) During the two days of the 10th and 11th of November, Jewish men between the ages of sixteen and sixty were taken to concentration camps. They ended up in Dachau, Sachsenhausen, and Buchenwald. Henny Prilutzky’s father was one of the men taken to Dachau where conditions were horrific. When he came back from Dachau he told her to never ask about what he had seen inside the concentration camp. Fifty years later Henny asked him, “Can you tell me now?” and again he told her, “No.” (Gilbert,139) Hitler had just talked about peace with Chamberlain and was not at war. “The detailed accounts of the scale and virulance of the attacks on Jews and Jewish property during Kristallnacht created shock waves in all democratic countries and effectively ended whatever attractions Nazism had earlier held for ordinary people and their governments.” (Gilbert,14) Propaganda and centuries of hate had led up to many followers of Hitler accepting an all out war against an entire group of people all because they were not Christian nor Aryan. Ulrich von Hassel, a German diplomat noted in his diary five days after Kristallnacht that “organizers were shameless enough to mobilize school classes (in Feldafing, on the Starbergersee, they even armed the pupils with bricks)”. (Gilbert,38) While the violence was widespread across the entire German Reich, a lot of it took place in Berlin. Hugh Green, the Berlin correspondent of the Daily Telegraph wrote: “I have seen several anti-Jewish outbreaks in Germany during the last five years, but never anything as nauseating as this. Beginning in the early hours of the morning, and continuing far into tonight, the pogrom puts the final seal to the outlawry of German Jewry. German women who remonstrated with children who were running away with toys from a wrecked Jewish shop were spat upon and attacked by the mob” (Gilbert,42) A prominent Nazi official told a correspondent of the British Press: ”We began seizing goods from Jewish shops because sooner or later they would have been nationalized anyways. The goods thus seized, the official added, will be used to compensate us for at least part of the damage which the Jews have been doing for years to the German people.” (Gilbert,59) Years of nationalism and anti-Semitism had turned ordinary civilians into propaganda-believing individuals who believed the Jews were responsible for everything that was going wrong in Germany. They believed the same stereotypes Jews had been labeled with for centuries and blamed them for Germany’s economic woes. Lassar Brueckheimer remembered trying to get help from the police during Kristallnacht. “They told us to go away, the matter had nothing to do with them. This, too, proves that the police had their instructions well beforehand. Probably we were one of the few families who were still innocent enough to believe that the police would be even-handed.” (Gilbert,105)
Hitler followed Luther’s second council as well when Luther mentioned to not let them own their own homes. The Nazi’s created ghettos and rounded up all the Jews and took away their property. “To the largest of those ghettos, that of Warsaw, 10,000 German Jews were deported. In the first six months of 1941, 13,000 Jews died of starvation in the Warsaw ghetto, including many of the deportees from Germany.” (Gilbert,240) They created new laws that restricted what they could own taking away more rights each time. “Hatred as intense as Luther’s and Hitler’s toward the Jews was not only unprecedented and has rarely been duplicated since. While the anti-Jewish sentiments were not unique to Luther and Hitler, the extremes to which both men went to spread their beliefs and call upon others for action was unparalleled. The level of bitter loathing and anti-Jewish ideology was virtually the same, despite a four century gap. The similarities shared between Luther and Hitler were not limited to hatred for anything Jewish, however. Both men were led by a strong sense of German nationalism and a yearning for unity among their fellow Germans.” (Olsen,36) Hitler implemented more restrictions and laws and followed Luther’s council by restricting professions for Jews. He took away all their silver, gold, and other possessions as well. He put every young, strong, Jew to work by placing them all into concentration camps where they slowly starved and withered away. Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Propaganda, wrote in his diary: “We are now definitely pushing the Jews out of Berlin. They were rounded up last Saturday and are to be carted off to the East as quickly as possible. Unfortunately our better circles, especially the intellectuals, once again have failed to understand our policy about the Jews and in some cases have even taken their part. As a result, our plans were disclosed prematurely, and a lot of Jews slipped through our hands. But we will catch them. I certainly won’t rest until the capital of the Reich, at least, has become free of Jews.” (Gilbert,263)
Hitler built on the list that Luther had created and added more items of his own. He prohibited marriage between Aryans and Jews, he forced sterilization of those not part of his master plan, and in the end, when other avenues had failed to rid Germany of the Jews, he turned to extermination. January 20th 1942, a large group of senior German government officials met in Wannsee, just outside Berlin, to discuss the Final Solution of the Jewish question. Hermann Goering, one of the most powerful men in Nazi leadership, had entrusted Reinhard Heydrich, one of the masterminds of Kristallnacht, with the implementation of elimination of Jewish life in Germany. Arresting and deporting all Jews to death camps became a Nazi priority after this meeting as there were still a large number of Jews in Germany and Austria. Those that had survived Kristallnacht and stayed behind in Germany would face greater dangers coming their way. Serem Freier wrote: “My uncle was in the habit of saying that he would leave Germany in the last carriage of the last train. Instead he was in the first train to leave for Buchenwald.” (Gilbert,254) The Jews that had lived in Germany considered themselves to be German. Rita Braumann turned 12 on November 10th 1938, and remembered her father receiving a warning call to get their family out of town. “The synagogue and the Jewish schools have been set on fire. Jewish homes are being wrecked and the men arrested but we did not go. My usually pessimistic father was full of confidence, maintaining that nothing would happen to us because he had fought at the front during the war and had even been decorated.” (Gilbert,78) German Jews had believed they would be safe in their own country since Luther’s time and continued to do so in Hitler’s time. Some had fought bravely for the Fatherland in World War I, spoke German, and believed they had a right to be there even if Hitler never did. “The Jews, although they are a good people whose core is not entirely uniform in terms of race, are nevertheless a people with certain essential particularities that distinguish it from all other people living on earth. Judaism is not a religious community; rather, the religious ties between the Jews are in reality the current national constitution of the Jewish people. The Jews has never had his own terretorially defined state like the Aryan states. Nevertheless, his religious community is a real state because it ensures the preservation, propagation, and future of the Jewish people.” (Hitler,229-230) Hitler never saw those Jews living in Germany as real Germans as they did not belong to the land. He saw them as Gypsies as Luther had and did not see them belonging in his future vision of Germany. He believed that eliminating all Jews from his Reich would finally get him the Aryan country he and Luther had dreamed of. Luther had said something similar 400 years earlier. “They live among us in our homes, under our protection, use land and highways, market and streets. Princes and government sit by, snore and have their mugs open, let the Jews take from their purse and chest, steal and rob whatever they will. That is, they permit themselves and their subjects to be abused and sucked dry and reduced to beggars with their own money, through the usury of the Jews. For the Jews, as foreigners, certainly should have nothing; and what they have certainly must be ours.” (Luther,28) Luther considered the Jews to be foreigners just as Hitler did and both did not want them to be a part of Germany. The strong national pride that both men held can be seen even 400 years apart in the way they talked about Jews and their actions that followed those words. “The positive spirit of nationalism typically brings forth a sense of pride in one’s country; but on the opposite side, a destructve nationalism can create disdain for other cultures.” (Olsen,39)
We can learn several lessons from kristallnacht according to Martin Gilbert. If we let prejudice dictate our actions “a whole people can be demolished; a whole nation can be turned totally and obscenely against a decent, hard-working, creative, loyal and integral part of its own society.” (Gilbert,267) Those who had fought bravely for their country clung to the hope that they would be accepted by their fellow countrymen as equals and not seen as outsiders anymore. After Kristallnacht a lot of those hopes were dashed when even war veterans were treated with disrespect and rounded up to be taken to concentration camps. More than a quarter of a million Jews left their homes and their homeland after Kristallnacht because they no longer felt safe in a country that they had sacrificed much for. Their own government turned their backs on them when they needed it most, and made them feel like foreigners in a country they should have felt they belonged in. Kristallnacht shocked many other governments who were inundated with requests for immigration and only a few countries opened their borders while many others shut out thousands pleading for help. “Kristallnacht taught the Nazi administrators and planners that they must in future act with silence and secrecy, hiding what they were doing to the Jews and the eyes of world indignation. The less the outside world knew or saw, the more efficient would be whatever policy they chose, and the less liable to outside concern or interference.” (Gilbert,268) As the extermination of the Jews escalated after Kristallnacht, the Nazi’s knew to not leave survivors to draw attention to their heinous acts. They perfected many of their ways and were able to accomplish mass killings away from public scrutiny in secrecy. “Kristallnacht taught, in hindsight, a historical lesson, that what begins as something finite in destruction and limited in time can quickly develop into a monster of mass murder; that evil has graduations, but is also a process, and can move smoothly, effortlessly forward to greater evil.” (Gilbert,268-269)
Luther’s blueprint was a starting point for Hitler as he used their combined sense of nationalism as justification and duty to country. “The Third Reich and in its wake the whole Western world capitalized upon Luther, the fierce Jew-baiter.” (Oberman,292) Hitler used Germany’s love for country and faith to elevate himself to a position of power as he promised to take up Luther’s mantle to finish what he had started. Luther was a German hero not only to Hitler but also to many Germans. Nationalism was the driving force behind many to rid Germany of all foreigners. Hitler’s powerful speeches enthralled many and invigorated nationalism to a new level. Violence and villification were justified as patriotism and loyalty. After the dust of World War II settled, and the truly horrifying scenes were laid bare, the world was shocked at how far the Nazi’s had strayed for Hitler. While blaming a singular person for those catstrophic events such as Kristallnacht, many forgot to include the person that influenced Hitler. “Martin Luther’s antisemitism was ferocious and influential enough to have earned him a place in the pantheon of antisemites.” (Goldhagen,53) Hitler built upon ideas that had evolved over centuries even before Luther. He exploited human weaknesses such as fear and envy and turned them into utter hatred and disdain for the Jews who had always been at the center of exploitation. Hitler convinced millions by preying on their faith and love of country that had been rooted in Luther’s rhetoric to justify his racial ideologies. The catastrophic violence that followed was because of deeply entrenched nationalism that over centuries had turned into a pervasive culture of hatred.
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[Paper written for HIST 4130 class UVU Fall 2024]
Amy Brouwer . 2024 . All Right Reserved
