An evangelical Christian says... "Please, don't be like all the other dishonest atheists and play the Hitler race card and try to connect the dots to Luther."
Well, the thing is, there is actually a very distinct line from Luther to Hitler...
The origins of anti-Semitism can be traced back to pre-Christian times, but the origins of Christian anti-Semitism are based in the belief that the Jews killed Jesus Christ, the Saviour and Son of God [1]. That is of course a topic worthy of its own debate, but it provides the context for anti-Semites who identify themselves as Christian to interpret the Bible in such a way to justify their anti-Semitism. Two of the most notorious anti-Semites over the last 500 years were the Protestant reformer Martin Luther and Adolf Hitler.
Many Christians are surprised when they discover that Martin Luther wrote violent, anti-Jewish material. Luther’s ambition was convert the Jews to Christianity (so they would be “saved”). Luther took the failure of that ambition personally and consequently became consumed with hatred towards the Jews, detailing why the Jews were evil and what should be done to them. Luther was also extremely nationalistic, with many of his actions designed for the benefit of the German people and their country. These are the obvious similarities between Luther and Hitler.
Luther’s message was “not for Christendom, but for the Germany” [2] Indeed - Luther considered himself the Prophet of the Germans:
“I seek the welfare and salvation of you Germans, as I am the Prophet of the Germans, I will act as a faithful teacher and warn my staunch Germans of the danger in which they stand. I have been born for my beloved Germans, for them will I die!” [3]
Luther would question the patriotism of anyone who challenged him and was the voice of Germanism at the time - a vision that in matters of religion, culture, government, and race, Germany should be the master of mankind. One of Luther's greatest achievements was a German translation of the Bible - a copy could be found in every German household, allowing all Germans to read and understand it - and in the process he created the first standard version of the German language, thereby uniting the German people. [4]
So Luther should be credited with some remarkable achievements but there is no point glossing over his darker and sinister side. Obviously Luther was not the first person to espouse strong anti-Semitic feelings, but he was the first to spread these beliefs across Germany. He spoke against Jews in sermons and wrote three anti-Jewish books, the most infamous being “On the Jews and their Lies”. [5]
Luther argued that action was required to deal with what he saw as the Jewish problem. He wrote, “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.” [6] He requested other pastors to follow his example and issue warnings of their own against the Jews. In 1543 his anti-Jewish texts spelled out exactly what should be done with those Jews that refused to convert to Christianity.
- burn their synagogues
- break into and destroy their houses
- take away their prayer books
- forbid their rabbis to teach
- abolish their escort and ban travel
- prohibit the usury
- force young Jewish girls and boys to work
[7]
and...
- “The Jews deserve to hang on gallows, seven times higher than ordinary thieves.”
- "We ought to take revenge on the Jews and kill them.”
- "Never ought a Christian to eat or drink with a Jew".
- "If I had to baptise a Jew, I would take him to the bridge of the Elbe, hang a stone round his neck and push him over with the words `I baptise thee in the name of Abraham'"
Luther viewed Jews as “a heavy burden to Germans in their country, like a plague, pestilence, and nothing but misfortune.” [8] He preached these views in his sermons right up until his death. And of course this view flourished again in Germany in the early 1900s.
The roots of Hitler’s anti-Semitism can be traced back to his young adulthood in Vienna where after what he describes as “much research” he “recognized the Jew as the leader of the Social Democracy, the Marxists, and that is when the blinders fell from my eyes. Suddenly, a long, spiritual struggle came to an end.” [9]. After this epiphany, Hitler became a fanatical anti-Semite and a few years later his political career gave him the platform he needed to deal with the “Jewish Problem”.
Hitler's charisma and skill as an orator, and his mastery of propaganda, had huge crowds cheering and weeping in a way that is hard to comprehend today. His ambition was to propagate the superiority of the “pure” Aryan race, which included extreme treatment toward Jews and other people he deemed inferior. He blames the Jews as a primary cause for Germany’s downfall in World War I with Communism a close second - Hitler considered Marxists to be Jews because Karl Marx and many writers for the Marxist press were Jewish.
The communist message for members of the working-class to unite regardless of nationality was in direct opposition to Hitler’s nationalism. Hitler believed communism would eventually lead to the collapse of human civilization. He regarded Marxism as “the end of any order conceivable to man. The result of applying such a law could only be chaos” and “the desolation of the world.” [10] In the early 1930s Hitler sent German Communists to concentration camps before launching his campaign against the Jews. [11]
The level of hatred and anti-Jewish ideology shared by Hitler and Luther was virtually the same, despite a four century gap. The similarities shared between Luther and Hitler were not limited to their 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. Everybody ‘knew’ that the Jews were the enemy of German civilisation, because the Germans, like other Europeans, had been taught over the long Christian centuries that the Jews were the enemy of Christian civilisation. [12]
"As the Christian movement became more Gentile during the second century and later, the identification of Satan primarily with the Jewish enemies of Jesus, borne along in Christian tradition over the centuries, would fuel the fires of anti-Semitism." Hitler and Luther shared many common ideas; Luther preached them and Hitler put them into practice. [13]
Hitler followed Luther’s ideas on what should be done with the Jews uncannily accurately:
- During the Kristallnacht of 1938, the Nazis burned thousands of synagogues.
- The creation of ghettos simultaneously allowed the Nazis to break into the houses of the Jews and destroy their property, while restricting their mobility and travel.
- New laws constrained the professions Jews were allowed to possess.
- Concentrations camps forced all Jewish boys and girls, men and women, to work.
Compare with Luther’s suggestions…
- burn their synagogues
- break into and destroy their houses
- take away their prayer books
- forbid their rabbis to teach
- abolish their escort and ban travel
- prohibit the usury
- force young Jewish girls and boys to work
[8]
Hitler then goes further…
- Prohibit Jews from marrying or having relations with Aryans
- Move Jews into designated ghettos
- Sterilize those deemed inferior, including Jews
- Exterminate those unworthy of life, including Jews
So with regard to the Jewish situation, Hitler “continued and achieved the work of Martin Luther.” [14] While German Jews considered themselves Germans, Luther and Hitler viewed them as Jewish, not German. Luther and Hitler viewed the Jewish community not only as a religious group but as a separate race. Jewish therefore meant anti-German. Hitler explains as follows:
“The Jews, although they are a 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 peoples 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 Jew has never had his own territorially 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 [15]
According to Hitler the Jewish people are "parasites" feeding on other cultures because they lack their own territory, surviving only by enslaving the members of other cultures with their "cleverness." Martin Luther’s sentiments are comparable - he also considered Jews as parasitic foreigners:
"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." [16]
Luther didn't just stop at "On the Jews and Their Lies" he also published Vom Schem Hamphoras und vom Geschlecht Christi where he equated Jews with the Devil, stressing that authorities should expel the Jews from their lands if they would not convert to Christianity. [22]
Shortly before his death Luther wrote his "final warning" against the Jews. This included a stream of accusations such as "They are our public enemies. If they could kill us all, they would gladly do it. They do it often, especially those who pose as physicians—though sometimes they help—for the devil helps to finish it in the end. They can also practice medicine as in French Switzerland. They administer poison to someone from which he could die in an hour, a month, a year, ten or twenty years. They are able to practice this art. [23]
And so the "destructive nationalism of the Germans and the Nazis” can be traced back to Martin Luther, “the first true nationalist of this kind of modern times and through him German nationalism was preached to the people, a new religion was founded, a German god created.” [17]
Hitler refers to Martin Luther as one of the "great reformers of history", and as such, one of the “great warriors of this World.” [18]. Hitler’s anti-Jewish sentiment of the 1930s and 1940s mirrors that of Luther’s anti-Semitism of the 1500s and the Nazis themselves acknowledged Martin Luther as their spiritual leader. When on trial in Nuremberg, Germany after World War II, Hitler's main propagandist Julius Streicher stated:
"Anti-Semitic publications have existed in Germany for centuries. A book I had, written by Dr. Martin Luther, was, for instance, confiscated. Dr. Martin Luther would very probably sit in my place in the defendants’ dock today, if this book had been taken into consideration by the prosecution. In the book, “The Jews and Their Lies”, Dr. Martin Luther writes that the Jews are a serpent’s brood and one should burn down their synagogues and destroy them" [18]
Some people in Hitler’s time went so far as to believe that Hitler was the reincarnation of Luther; the Minister of Education in Nazi Germany wrote:
"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... 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." [19]
"The line from Luther to Hitler runs straight; and that one of the main causes which turned Germany into a country of barbarians, was Martin Luther and his German Reformation.” [20]
Both Luther and Hitler felt superior to the current political and religious systems that regulated the population. They each felt they had the right idea for Germany at the time and the both used the argument that their vision was in the best interest of the German people. The end result in each case was hatred towards the Jews. Luther saw the Jews as being under a divine curse from Satan whilst Hitler saw the Jews as the threat to nationalism. To Martin Luther the Jews were the enemy to Jesus, while Hitler saw them as the enemy to Germany. In each case the Jews were the victims and they have been so throughout the last 2000 years culminating with the Holocaust. [21]
Let's hope "culmination" is the right word. The Holocaust did not completely eradicate anti-Semitism. It would be nice to think that extreme anti-Semitism has died with Luther and Hitler, but sadly they still have supporters who apologise or even deny their words and actions.
REFERENCES
1 William Nicholls, Christian Antisemitism: A History of Hate
2, 3, 4 Wiener, Martin Luther: Hitler’s Spiritual Ancestor
5, 6, 7, 8, 16, 17 “On the Jews and their Lies"
9, 10, 18 Hitler, Mein Kampf
11 Rodden, John. “Report Card from East Germany.” Global Society.
12, 21 Nicholls, Christian Antisemitism: A History of Hate
13 Elaine Pagels, The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonize Jews, Pagans, and Heretics
14 Wiener, Martin Luther: Hitler’s Spiritual Ancestor
15 Adolf Hitler, Hitler's Second Book: The Unpublished Sequel to Mein Kampf, Translated by Gerhard L. Weinberg
18, 19, 20 “Martin Luther’s Dirty Little Book: On the Jews and their Lies – a Precursor to Nazism"
24 Hartmann Grisar "Luther" Vol. 5, page 413
"On the Jews and their Lies" Full Text
Useful overview http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_and_antisemitism
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