A MERCIFUL SEVERITY: HOW MARTIN LUTHER INFLUENCED ADOLF HITLER’S PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS.

LIBERTY BAPTIST THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

A MERCIFUL SEVERITY: HOW MARTIN LUTHER INFLUENCED ADOLF HITLER’S PERSECUTION OF THE JEWS.

BY

MICHAEL MOEN

ORLANDO, FLORIDA

14 DECEMBER, 2012

RESEARCH PAPER

Introduction

The study of history has many applications; to the modern era history can display the weaknesses of the past or highlight innovations that look to the future. History has a good side and a bad side in all accounts. All civilizations, organizations, and cultures are influenced by history. As we look at history it is clear that religious organizations have had an impact in the development of society and culture. Despite their overwhelming positive influences on the world, organizations like the Catholic and Protestant Churches also have a past that at many times has kept sensitive details from public knowledge. What we find through studying the history of organizations such as Catholicism and Protestantism is the capability to correct mistakes, build on ideas that serve great purposes, or learn how to avoid repeating the past. Out of the many events in Church history, one set of circumstances stands out clearly as an act human beings hope to never repeat. The early twentieth century marks one of the most horrific events ever to take place, the Holocaust. The Holocaust is described as the deliberate genocide of six million European Jews during World War II; the systematic state-sponsored murders by Nazi Germany, led by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party, throughout German-occupied territory.[1] The Holocaust brought a new understanding of Jewish relations to other cultures, including cultures whose identity depended on a Christian foundation. Because of the enormity of this atrocity (nearly two-thirds of the Jewish nation living in Europe were murdered), historians have continuously researched the events leading up to the Holocaust during WWII in an effort to distinguish what led to such evil. The reason why this horrific event should be examined within the framework of Church history is because of the figures such as Martin Luther and organizations such as the Catholic and Protestant Church’s in Germany who contributed to Nazi policy and ideology. The Church’s influence of these events will be discussed in the following paper in reference to Martin Luther, perhaps the most famous figure in the separation of Protestantism from Catholicism, who is known as the “father” of the Reformation. Luther’s theology became the groundwork for many protestant denominations. This essay will attempt to argue that Martin Luther’s anti-Judaic and anti-Semitic perspective influenced Adolf Hitler’s systematic persecution and annihilation of the Jews through Nazi policy. Before we begin to discuss the influences of Martin Luther on German Nazi policy, we must define the influence that Martin Luther had during his lifetime on church doctrine and society.

Martin Luther’s Anti-Judaism

            Throughout the history of Christianity, few men have the stature of the leader of the Protestant Reformation like Martin Luther.  Gonzalez suggests that some describe Martin Luther as the professor of Scripture who destroyed the unity of the church, but for others he is the great Augustinian monk whose preaching and insights restored the true gospel. Many different views of this famous church figure exist. Even today some find it surprising to know that Catholic perceptions of Martin Luther are not consistently negative. According to The Story of Christianity by Justo L. Gonzalez, “Now few doubt Luther’s sincerity, and many Catholic historians affirm that his protest was amply justified, and that he was right on many points of doctrine. On the other hand, few Protestant historians continue to view Luther as the gigantic hero who almost single-handedly reformed Christianity.”[2] Nevertheless, it is quite clear that his impact was important to Christianity as a whole. With the invention of the movable type printing press, which dramatically increased Luther’s ability to spread his works throughout the European world, Luther published three popular works in quick succession in 1520, including The Appeal to the Nobility of the German Nation, The Babylonian Captivity of the Church, and The Freedom of a Christian.[3] As Luther’s works quickly grew in popularity so did his influence over the lay people. This increased the potential threat he posed against the established Catholic Church. Luther originally intended to reform the church from within, but, as history shows us, this was not the net result.[4] Luther went on to publish many other works that established his interpretation and beliefs. These include his Ninety-Five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences.[5] Martin Luther’s works did more then just influence the eventual separation of Protestantism from Catholicism. As a careful examination clearly shows, Luther laid clear indications of his anti-Judaic perspective and promoted the same anti-Semitism found in the early Church fathers.

In defense of Luther’s anti-Semitic errors, it must be understood that this was not unique to his time, or unique to Christian theologians throughout Church history. According to Walk in the Light by Todd Bennett, “most Christians would be shocked at some of the anti-Semitic statements and attitudes of early church leaders, Bishops, and Popes including among others St. John Chrysostom, St. Augustine, Peter the Venerable up through Protestant reformation leaders such as Martin Luther and John Calvin, as well as modern Christian preachers and writers who, among other things, are promoting Replacement Theology.”[6] Martin Luther’s perspective is also a product of his own history.  Unfortunately, it is a history that Luther chose not to correct.  This history led directly to the ideology found in Nazi policy.

Luther’s first error is found in his wholesale acceptance of what is now called “replacement theology,” which is the idea that the Jewish nation no longer is under the covenant of God’s grace tracing back to the tie of Abraham.  According to this doctrine, the Church and the New covenant, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, have replaced Israel.  The Church supersedes Israel. According to Oberman in The Roots of Anti-Semitism, “The basis of Luther’s anti-Judaism was the conviction that ever since Christ’s appearance on earth, the Jews have had no more future as Jews.”[7] Augustine and other figures throughout the early church centuries used replacement theology as a basis for arguing against Judaism. As an Augustinian monk, Luther was influenced by Augustine’s view of the Jews. According to Martin Luther, The Bible, and the Jewish People: A Reader edited by Brooks Schramm, “If the Jew is the archetypal of the human condition vis-à-vis God, then it follows that the ultimate human problem that Christ and the gospel have to remedy is the Jew inside us all. Thus for Luther, and this is the case throughout his career, the Jew—and Judaism—represent the negative religious standards against which all other negative religious phenomenon are finally measured.”[8] Some would argue that Luther was simply a bigot or that his hatred for the Jews was the result of the general European distrust of Jews common in the paradigms of the Middle Ages. But these excuses are insufficient. They do not explain how a man with an apparently vital experience of forgiveness and redemption could develop such hostility. The problem with Luther is not psychological. It is theological. Luther’s view of the Old Testament eventually results in the call for clear anti-Semitism. It might have been emotionally charged but it was not emotionally motivated. Luther was simply advocating the logical conclusions from a serious misreading of the Old Testament, which results in Hitler simply carrying out Luther’s theology. The problem begins with Luther’s separation of Torah obedience from its vital link to salvation. Dr. Cheryl Durham’s conclusions about the transition from outward community norms of spiritual awareness to inward personal affirmation helps us realize that this view of sin and the historical reality of replacement theology follow the thinking of the Reformation.[9] Durham notes that the idea that inner spiritual awareness is the true character of relationship with God assumes certain epistemological conditions.[10] Durham states,

“Many Gentile Christians believe that being “in Christ” is also about exemption from formal education because, in their minds, “the Law” is already written on their hearts. This is a “Gnostic” view of faith as it sees the Holy Spirit as a personal spirit guide who transmits individual messages similar to a channel or medium in occultist practices. This type of believer has only to perceive or feel within him/herself what he/she believes is the Holy Spirit’s presence. This person’s perception is often self-confirmed by an internal feeling of calm or peace. The peaceful feeling is an affirmation that whatever the receiving person is thinking is the will of God. Taking this rationale to its logical end, the ability to discern the will of God internally and individually removes the necessity of Torah teachers for those “in Christ”; neither do they need a contextual understanding of the Bible. I have often heard people claim, “The Holy Spirit tells me everything I need to know.”[11]

“Proof texts, written in one’s native language, confirm that the person’s “feeling” is in fact the Holy Spirit telling them what to do. To this type of Christian, the historical account of God with Israel is irrelevant because individuals “in Christ” have an ever-new progressive and personal revelation that the history with Israel does not provide. The Christian who has individual personal revelation from God will not feel the need to be accountable to Israel as he sees Israel as the old people of God and Christians as the new people, prophets and apostles.”[12] Compare this Christian position with Dozier’s remarks about the perpetual authority of Torah in Judaism. “The Torah’s perpetuity is described by Yeshua in Matt. 5:18: ‘For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished.’ But the warning follows in verse 19: ‘Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.’  This concept is repeated in Luke 16:17.  In content and intention, many Jews considered the Law universal, and even Gentiles who obey its commandments share its promises and a place in the ‘olam ha-ba, the world to come. R. Meir contended that even a Gentile who occupies himself with the law is ‘like the high priest’ because of Lev. 18:5 ‘Ye shall therefore keep my statues and my ordinances, which if a man do, he shall live by them.’  The term ‘a man’ includes any man, even a Gentile. R. Jeremiah in Sifra on Lev. 18:5 further expands this view to, ‘even a Gentile who obeys the law is like the high priest.’ The Sadducees were common sense literalists and denied the authority of the Oral Torah or unwritten law. The bitter disputes between the Pharisees and Sadducees often centered on this difference of doctrine. After the destruction of the Temple, the Sadducees dwindled and virtually disappeared while the Pharisees dominated Judaism uncontested. Of all the multiplicity of Judaism, none questioned the Torah – only the varied interpretations of the Torah.”[13]

Oberman notes that theologians other than Luther, such as John Calvin, living in the same time period as Luther, had strikingly similar negative perceptions of Judaism. John Calvin states,

“Their rotten and unbending stiffneckedness deserves that they be oppressed unendingly and without measure or end and that they die in their misery without pity of anyone.”[14]

The fact that there were theologians who had hatred for Jews before Luther, and theologians during Luther’s time period who had anti-Semitic ideology, suggests that many different social and political factors contributed to Luther’s already existent replacement theology and its concomitant anti-Semitism. Another aspect of Luther’s life that should be mentioned is the amount of contact Luther actually had with Jews during his lifetime. According to Martin Luther, The Bible, and the Jewish People: A Reader, “He [Luther] had neither Jewish conversation partners nor Jewish friends. His knowledge of Judaism was primarily dependent on what he read, and those readings were dominated by overtly anti-Jewish treatise, some of which were written by Christians and some by Jewish converts.”[15] What this suggests is that Martin Luther’s actual understanding of Jews is based on a narrow-minded perspective, shaped by traditional Christian interpretation and previous theological bitterness from past theologians, not actual personal experience. Can one truly speak of something or someone without ever coming into legitimate contact with it? In many of Luther’s works including his famous On the Jews and Their Lies the language that he uses portrays Luther as if he is speaking from personal experience, but because we know he had almost no contact with Jews, the passion that is found in Luther’s works suggests something other then personally-based anti-Semitism. Even though Luther had no genuine contact with Jews, his social and political environment contained such deep-rooted stereotypes of the Jews that it became virtually impossible for Luther not to follow the societal trend. According to Martin Luther, The Bible, and the Jewish People: A Reader, “Widely circulating stories employed stereotypes prevalent in medieval vernacular writing and accused Jews of being enemies of Christian society, blasphemous, blind “Christ killers” who engaged in host desecration and ritual murder.”[16] Fraenkal-Goldschmidt states, “the entire society believed in the wickedness of Jews and that they were children or tools of Satan, just as they believed in the evil and Satanity of witches.”[17] These statements clearly suggest that not only did this societal norm exist prior to Martin Luther; it clearly existed during his lifetime.

What we can also derive from Oberman’s previous statement, that Martin Luther’s impact on Christianity merely heightened the current anti-Judaic perspective of Jewish culture through his theological positions and anti-Judaic arguments, is demonstrated throughout the development of his works. The societal norms suggest a level of societal identification through a developing hatred for a particular set of people, the Jews. McGrath’s analysis of Protestantism helps us understand why this particular hatred continued to exist. In Christianity’s Dangerous Idea, McGrath argues that Protestantism’s identity requires a contrast to an external threat or opposition.[18] Protestantism must always distinguish itself through opposition. In this sense, Protestantism is a reactive religion rather than a proactive religion. What we find in McGrath’s book is that the oppositions to the Protestants have changed over time based on the rising threats of multiple movements. Thus, Protestantism is directly related to the most current and direct threat of the cultural, political, and economic circumstances. According to McGrath, “In the first phase of Protestant history, the justification for the breach with the medieval church was of paramount importance. Congregations needed to be reassured that this schism was justified as that the salvation of their souls was not imperiled by the breach with Rome. Although the essence of Protestantism was arguably the recovery of Christian authenticity (both in life and thought), the ideological agendas of its first period led early Protestant preachers to portray Catholicism as “the other,” or “the enemy.”[19] Luther’s thought was one of the key pieces to the reformation, but it is not exempt from McGrath’s description of Protestant identification.  We find the necessity of opposing identification not only with the Catholic Church but also when Luther identifies the Jewish culture as an opponent. We may conclude that Martin Luther, despite his innovations and detachment from the religious norms of the organized church, still became a product of his culture and time period.  In this way, Luther is no different than Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, as we will now discuss.

Adolf Hitler and German Nazi Policy

Now that we have discussed in detail Martin Luther’s effect on the church and his acceptance of theological positions that lead directly to ethnic hatred, it is time to discuss the development in Germany that resulted in Nazi Policy, which will lead us then to the Nazi connection with the works of Martin Luther. Before we draw the correlations between Luther and Hitler, or Luther and Nazi policy, it is important that we discuss the development of Nazi policy in general. As mentioned in the beginning of this paper, the Holocaust claimed the lives of over six million European-Jews during the early twentieth century. The developments of what inevitably led to the massacre of Jewish citizens contain many variables, as an event that took such extreme measures can never truly be understood in one complete picture. However, as we begin to describe the development that took place leading up to the Holocaust, it will be clear that particular explanations can be drawn in relation to Luther’s influence of this horrific event.

Just a Jewish ethnic hatred stereotyped the Jews in the middle ages, it is clear that German culture of the 1930’s had an overall view of Jewish citizens that seemed to depict Jews with hostility. According to Fraenkal-Goldschmidt, “the entire society believed in the wickedness of Jews and that they were children or tools of Satan, just as they believed in the evil and Satanity of witches.”[20] This statement suggests that long before the Nazi parties’ elevation of Jewish persecution to a political mantra, there was a cultural underlying level of hate and bitterness for the Jewish nation as a whole. According to Daniel Goldhagen in Hitler’s Willing Executioners, “in the middle ages and the early modern period, without question until the Enlightenment, German society was thoroughly anti-Semitic.”[21] The events leading up to the Nazi extermination of the Jews are well documented through German propaganda and polices acted out by the government. According to Sarah Newman, “Some see Nazism as the direct expression and implementation of a racism that developed 1870-1900, built on ideas circulating in Germany in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.”[22] Many argue that Jews in Germany leading up to the twentieth century atrocities had been completely assimilated into German culture. However, the ideas circulating throughout Germany came to the forefront for the justification of harsher treatment and government regulations of races deemed inferior, due to the German national difficulties felt prior to WWI. According to Newman, “Germany’s defeat in 1918 was regarded by the Right in Germany as a stab in the back, disloyalty at home, much of the blame was heaped on the Jews…A Resolution of the German Workers’ Party, 30 January 1919, read, ‘The Jews and their helpers are responsible for the loss of the war’.”[23] According to Newman, “Richard Evans believes that ‘in 1933 military dictatorship…would certainly have imposed severe restrictions on the Jews. But it is unlikely, on balance, that a military dictatorship in Germany would have launched the kind of program that found its culmination in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and Treblinka.’ Geoffrey Eley suggests Nazism, ‘was more extreme in every way’ than the traditional German political rightwing.”[24] Nazi’s elected into power the dictatorship that is mentioned above. This election clearly stemmed from the evolving anti-Semitism throughout Germany. According to Jeffrey Murray, “The transition from the existing anti-Semitism of 1918—the year of Hitler’s entrance into politics—to the initiative to exterminate all European Jews in 1941 was accomplished through a rhetorical dialectic which involved the systematic use of: (1) anti-Semitic propaganda, which appeared in oratory, newspapers and films; (2) the validation of developing anti-Semitic sentiment through legislative action, such as the anti-Jewish boycott of 1933 and the Nuremberg Laws of 1935; and (3) the public performance of the developing anti-Semitic Nazi ideology, largely through a sustained reign of terror against the Jews, such as the anti-Jewish pogrom of 1938 known as Kristallnacht (Crystal Night).”[25] What this suggests is that the culture’s ideology evolved from previously kept anti-Semitic notions held under the rug, to the form of Nazism under Hitler’s influence. According to McGrath, “The serious consequences of Protestantism’s ambivalent relationship with power are best seen in German church crisis of the 1930s. Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933 and promptly set about the “Nazification” of German culture. This was relatively easily presented in terms of renewal of German culture, an effort welcomed by some liberal Protestantism, which assumed a close link between culture and religion. Nazi rule was at first welcomed by many German churchmen, partly because it offered a bulwark against the ominous state atheism sponsored by the Soviet Union, and partly because it seemed to offer a new cultural role for religion.”[26] To Nazi’s and Hitler, Germans were the highest stratums of the Nordic-Aryan race, while Jews were considered to be at the bottom of the racial divide. What this suggests is that the ideology of Hitler and the influence that led to the uprising of Jewish persecution, was the culmination of developing ideology that was circulating throughout Germany for some time.

How is it Hitler was able to justify the genocide of millions of Jews, while the German population stood idly by and either watched or participated in these murders? What lies beneath the ideological development of the Nazi party, along with polices Nazi’s followed during the Holocaust? Now we will turn to the paper’s argument: Martin Luther’s influence on Hitler and Nazism.

Martin Luther’s Influence on Nazi Anti-Semitism

            We will now link these two parties together, the development of Martin Luther’s anti-Judaic perspective and the development of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi anti-Semitism, by highlighting many of the points made throughout the first two chapters and also introducing new information that will support the argument presented by this paper. Adolf Hitler’s attempt to exterminate the Jews stands as one of the world’s greatest evils. Volumes have been written about Hitler’s anti-Semitism, detailing the horrors of his death camps. When General Eisenhower realized the enormity of Hitler’s evil, he ordered photographic documentation of every element of Hitler’s genocide so that the world would never forget this madman’s acts of inhumanity. But there is one facet of Hitler’s program of death that has been swept aside the surface. That facet is the contribution that the great protestant reformer, Martin Luther, made to the ethos of Europe and the thought of Hitler which allowed the theological justification of Jewish extermination. In fact, one might argue that Hitler only put into action what Luther advocated.

To start this section it is important that we clarify the direct influence the Church had on Adolf Hitler. According to John Patrick, “Hitler was a Roman Catholic, baptized into that religion-political institution as an infant in Austria. He became a communicant and an altar boy in his youth and was confirmed as a “soldier of Christ” in that church.”[27] According to Norman Baynes in The Speeches of Adolph Hitler,

“My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God’s truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter. In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was His fight for the world against the Jewish poison. To day, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed His blood upon the Cross. As a Christian I have no duty to allow myself to be cheated, but I have the duty to be a fighter for truth and justice… And if there is anything which could demonstrate that we are acting rightly it is the distress that daily grows. For as a Christian I have also a duty to my own people. Despite many attempts to denounce Hitler as having been any way shape of form a man of God, it is clear that his relationship to the Church was strong even throughout his implemented extermination of the Jews.”[28]

Newman states, “Jews were the enemy, their murder among the aims for which the ‘war’ was waged. The central political will for mass extermination developed in Hitler’s Germany. Nazism is often called Hitlerism: he exemplified Austrian anti-Semitism. Hitler built on Christian and ethnic anti-Semitism.[29] Hitler thus became an extreme product of Church persecution towards Jews that has been happening for hundreds of years. According to Peter Marendy, “The consequences of the anti-Semitic teachings of various church leaders and scholars, otherwise known as Adversus Judeos tradition, were highly damaging to Jewish-Christian relations in Europe.”[30] It is astounding to learn that even during the full-fledged onslaught of murders taking place in the Holocaust, Hitler and Nazism was never denounced by many divisions of the Church. According to Christopher Probst, “The German Protestant legend of a church that valiantly resisted Nazism—propagated after the war mainly by pastors and theologians bent on casting events in the most sympathetic light—has long been demythologized. Many of the churches in fact cooperated with Hitler, in effect (and in many cases explicitly) promulgating Nazi anti-Semitism.”[31] If the Church played such a dynamic role in Hitler’s justification for Nazi extremes, then it is not too far afield to suggest that famous figures throughout the Church could have played a key role in Hitler’s ideology. This happens to be the case in the famous reformer Martin Luther. On several occasions, Hitler quoted Luther for being a great man of God, a great leader to admire and adhere too.

“I do insist on the certainty that sooner or later—once we hold power—Christianity will be overcome and the German church, without a Pope and without the Bible, and Luther, if he could be with us, would give us his blessing.”[32]

How is it possible for Hitler to consider Martin Luther to be one of the greatest examples of what was taking place during Hitler’s massacre of the Jews? Hitler in his personal writings in Mein Kampf quotes Luther again as an example in his life,

“To them belong, not only the truly great statesmen, but all other great reformers as well. Beside Frederick the Great stands Martin Luther as well as Richard Wagner.”[33]

What these examples suggest is that Hitler was well aware of Luther’s works. He refers to Luther on several occasions as a champion among Germans. According to Hans Mast, “Luther was the most widely read author of his generation, and he acquired the status of a prophet within Germany. According to the prevailing view among historians, his anti-Jewish rhetoric contributed significantly to the development of anti-Semitism in Germany, and in the 1930’s and 1940’s provided an ideal underpinning for the National Socialists’ attack on Jews. Reinhold Lewin writes that ‘whoever wrote against the Jews for whatever reason believed he had the right to justify himself by triumphantly referring to Luther.”[34] If Hitler was well studied on Luther and his works, then some aspects of Luther’s works must have stood out to Hitler as having justified his anti-Semitic cause. As this paper mentioned earlier, the Anti-Judaic perspective Luther was known for throughout his lifetime is important. Hitler simply took Luther’s hatred to its ideological extreme.

If we pay close attention to the development of Luther’s works from his early career to the end, we find that his anti-Judaic language becomes progressively worse, culminating in his perspective is found in his famous anti-Semitic piece On The Jews and Their Lies. According to Peter Marendy, “The Jews and Their Lies of 1543, cannot be solely blamed on a religious prejudice against Jews. His advice to Christians is particularly baneful and it is difficult not to see parallels between it and future Nazi anti-Semitic rhetoric.”[35] For most believers, Luther is seen as the great defender of the faith, the man who was willing to break free from the dominance of the Catholic Church, the one who provided the theological basis of individual salvation through God’s grace. To read Luther’s own words of anti-Semitic vitriol is to read something that appears to come from an entirely different person. The depth of Luther’s hatred is shocking.

In the beginning of Luther’s battle against the Jews, his position was solely theological and exegetically based, a replacement theology as described previously. What we find later, however, is that because the Jewish community did not respond to his work, as he believed it should, his frustration with the Jewish community progressively elevates, causing him to use more racially discriminative language and widely false accusations of the Jews. Luther writes concerning the Jews,

“They are the ones who twist the Scriptures to their own understanding and by their own fixed meditation compel the scriptures t enter it and agree with it, when it ought to be the other way around. In this way, then, the law of the Lord is in their meditation, and not their mediation on the law of the Lord. They do not want to agree with their adversary on the way, but they want the adversary to agree with them. They do not want to be holy with the holy, but they want the holy to be profane with them. Such were the heretics. Such are all who seek to approve their own empty opinion by that authority of Scripture, Judaizing with Jewish treachery.”[36]

Luther’s view of Judaism, Jews and the Jewish culture becomes a tool to express his position. This happens to be a theme throughout the rest of his works as he identifies his Christian position in opposition to Judaism. According to McGrath, “It is a simple fact of history that Protestantism has defined itself against this significant “other”…lack of significant Catholic presences in many parts of North America during the colonial era led many Protestants to search, not entirely successfully, for alternative others.”[37] McGrath continues to develop this issue saying, “The Other is being redefined. No longer is Catholicism the enemy for conservative Protestants.”[38] McGrath goes on to list many other opponents that have been defined by Protestantism, clearly indicating that the need for opposition is a vital aspect of the identification in Protestantism as a whole.[39] Luther developed an opposition that clearly fit era, strengthening his position against the Jews in more severe language, as his position grew more intolerant. According to Martin Luther, the Bible, and the Jewish People: A Reader, “The empathetic tone that Luther strikes here was misunderstood already by his contemporaries, who quickly labeled him a Jew friend. Luther did not want that label any more than the accusation of being a heretic who denied Mary’s virginity.”[40] In response to the Christian community, Luther clearly demonstrates his position against the Jews by intensifying the focus and language in his position. In Luther’s lectures on Genesis he states,

“For whatever secret plans the Jews are able to fish out from all courts of Christian princes, they immediately betray to the Turk. Great is not only the folly but also the ungodliness of some princes, that they have Jews as such close friends. But if you consider the actual situation, the Jews are prey for the Turks themselves.. Therefore let the miserable Jews confess that they are not the true seed of Abraham, that is, that they are in error and are under God’s wrath because they oppose the true religion; or we ourselves shall drive them to the blasphemy of maintaining that God is a liar. But consider this too: whether those who bless the Jews and intimately associate with them are blessed. There are obvious examples, not only of private individuals but also of great princes, who can bear witness concerning this blessing that they experience because of heir intimacy with Jews, namely that they are being ruined with respect to fortune, body, and soul.”[41]

Luther clearly begins to introduce harsher dialect in his attacks on the Jews by claiming that those who engage with Jews intimately will receive negative consequences physically, materially and spiritually. Luther moved away from his original optimism of the Jews and their conversion.  Now he portrays the Jews as incompetent, abandoning all hope of conversion of the Jewish people, thus taking a position of hatred and pessimism. Consistently throughout the rest of Luther’s works prior to his lectures on the Genesis accounts, Luther refers to the Jews as having been products of the Devil himself. The language and portrayals of this association with the devil creates an utter hopelessness about the Jewish community, referring to them as Christ killers. This finds its culmination in the later works of Luther, which are highly reflective of the later policies and stereotypes found in Germany during the Nazi genocide. Luther states in his famous anti-Semitic piece On The Jews and Their Lies,

“Should the evil not laugh and dance if he can enjoy such a fine paradise at the expense of us Christians? He devours what is ours through his saints, the Jews, and repays us by insulting us, in addition to mocking and cursing both God and man.”[42]

In On the Ineffable Name and on The Lineage of Christ, Luther develops a follow-up piece of work with similar bitterness towards the Jews found in On The Jews and Their Lies. Luther states,

“Therefore I did not call that book Against the Jews, but rather On the Jews and Their Lies, so that we Germans might know from history what a Jew is, and thus warn our Christians about them, as one would warn about the devil himself, and also to strengthen and honor our faith. I do not write to convert the Jews, for that is about as possible as converting the Devil…In sum they are Devil’s children damned to hell. If there is anything human left in them, for that one this treatise might be useful. One can hope for the whole bunch but I have no hope.”[43]

We should note some important details. The first is that Luther admits to loss of hope for the Jewish people, thus allowing him to completely adopt his hatred for their race. This allows him to move from an anti-Judaic perspective to one of anti-Semitism. The second is Luther refers to the German people, indicating that his writing on the Jews had an objective behind it, suggesting that is was his hopes that all the German laity would come to embrace his own position. Since German Jews did not convert, they could be dismissed as abandoned by God. Finally, Luther’s language against the Jews reaches considerable extremes. Anyone without knowledge of this time period, not understanding this is the same culture that spawned the Salem witch trials, would look at these writings and be motivated to adopt considerably inhumane outlooks toward a people who had done little to deserve such hatred.

Having clearly demonstrated through Luther’s own words his perspective on Jews; we must now show how these works provide significant influence over Hitler’s policies through Nazi Germany. One particular piece of work developed by Luther seals the deal with relation to Nazi’s use of Luther’s theology. This piece from Luther acts as the groundwork for justifying the genocide of the Jewish population in Eastern Europe. As mentioned previously the most infamous anti-Semitic work created by Luther is known as On The Jews and Their Lies. This work contains rhetoric for dealing with the Jews in communities during his lifetime, but upon examination we see that it contains procedures that underscore the actual policies enacted by Nazi Germany. In On the Jews and Their Lies, Luther offers seven key points in a program for dealing with the Jews.  Each of these points is later implemented by Nazi Germany.

“First, their synagogues or churches should be set on fire, and whatever does not burn up should be covered or spread over with dirt so that no one may ever be able to see a cinder or stone of it…Second, their homes should likewise be broken down and destroyed, for they perpetrate the same things there that they do in synagogues. For this reason they ought to be put under one roof or stable, like gypsies, in order that they may realize that they are not masters in our land…Third, they should be deprived of their prayer books and Talmud’s in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy is taught… Forth, their rabbis must be forbidden, under threat of death to teach…Fifth, passport and traveling privileges should be absolutely forbidden to the Jews…Sixth, they ought to be stopped from usury. All their cash and valuables of silver and gold ought to be taken from them and put aside for safekeeping…Seventh, let the young and strong Jews and Jewesses be given flail, the ax, the hoe, the spade, the distaff and spindle, and let them earn their bread by the sweat of their brow.”[44]

Clearly Luther developed a program for dealing with the Jewish question, and the similarities to what was actually implemented by Nazi Germany in the early twentieth century cannot be denied. In October 1938 passports held by Jews were invalidated.[45]  The same year the night of Broken Glass, November 9-10, saw SS gangs destroy many synagogues and much Jewish property.[46] 7,500 Jewish shops were looted, 20,000 Jews were arrested, and 10,000 sent to consentration camps, 91 killed immediately.[47] The events of Crystal Night clearly demonstrate similarity to that of the reformer’s policy. Even the Church Council of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America on April 18, 1994 adopted the following document as a statement on Lutheran- Jewish relations stating in the Declaration of ELCA to the Jewish Community,

“In the long history of Christianity there exists no more tragic development than the treatment accorded the Jewish people on the part of Christian believers. Very few Christian communities of faith were able to escape the contagion of anti-Judaism and its modern successor, anti-Semitism. Lutherans belonging to the Lutheran World Federation and the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America feel a special burden in this regard because of certain elements in the legacy of the reformer Martin Luther and the catastrophes, including the Holocaust, suffered by Jews in places where the Lutheran churches were strongly represented…As did many of Luther’s own companions in the sixteenth century, we reject this violent invective, and yet more do we express our deep and abiding sorrow over its tragic effects on subsequent generations.”[48]

It is remarkable to consider the difficulty it must have been for the figures of the modern era that represent Lutheran churches to openly acknowledge the impact that Luther had on the “subsequent generation.” Admission by the Lutheran church demonstrates that there is no longer any debate about the issue.  Luther is in some ways responsible for the Holocaust.

Conclusion

            Many factors played into the culmination of anti-Semitic hostility found in the events of the Holocaust. Martin Luther’s theology is clearly one of the factors behind the German extermination of Eastern European Jews. However, we see that Luther was simply a product of theoretical positions that were advocated by church figures well before Luther’s time period. The concept of replacement theology eventually led into the varying degrees of anti-Semitism. Luther simply expanded the idea in order to fit the German societal hostility that was taking place during his time. This contributed to deeper hostility within the German population, which slowly evolved into what we find in the early 1900’s. Hitler and Nazism thus became a product of what had been developing during Luther’s age, which were concepts and theoretical positions that created hostility toward the Jewish race long before Luther developed them in his own works. We have learned a great lesson from this tragic alliance between ethnic hatred and theological blindness. We conclude that even today we are influenced by the past, influenced by ideas and positions that we may pay little attention to. If we chose to ignore the development of our own understanding, we don’t study how we have come to be where we are today, we may yet again repeat history. We still find that many cultures hold to the ideology of the past, crippling them from moving forward with openness to ideas and innovations that serve great purposes. However, we must recognize that holding on to past theology has its benefits as well, as we look to the great nation of America and its Puritan theological heritage. What we learn from studying the impact that Martin Luther had on Nazi policy is that by embracing our past, we may better learn from our mistakes, and learn from the development what makes us who we are now, in order that we may clearly understand how to better ourselves and serve the God of grace, compassion, and mercy.

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