From what I understand, the early Church took the canon of the Old Testament from what the Jews had at the time of Christ, which included Maccabees. Later, the Jews removed it (4th Century?) and Luther removed a bit more. Luther even wanted to remove the Book of Revelation, but was prevented from doing so.
Yes, the Jewish bible had these books at the time if Christ. They then removed them.
That is incorrect. The Jewish "canon" never included the Apocryphal books. There were historical writings collected by some but they were NEVER considered as equal to the Divinely-inspired and recognized Old Testament books. Also, Luther didn't remove ANY books from his German translation of the Bible. He included those books in a section between the Old and New Testaments just as had been done centuries before (i.e., by Jerome). You can read about that here Luther and the Canon and The Apocrypha, the Septuagint and the Canon.