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To: xone

Nice try....but no...historians dont agree with you.

Hitler even mentions Luther by name in mein kampf as one of his three main inspirations.

British historian Paul Johnson has called On the Jews and their Lies the “first work of modern anti-Semitism, and a giant step forward on the road to the Holocaust.” (Johnson, A History of the Jews, p. 242.)

While some Lutherans deny the charge, the Nazis did cite Luther’s treatise to justify the Final Solution (Egil Grislis, “Martin Luther and the Jews,” Consensus 27 (2001) No. 1:64.).

The line of “anti-Semitic descent” from Luther to Hitler is “easy to draw,” according to American historian Lucy Dawidowicz. In her “The War Against the Jews, 1933-1945”, she writes that both Luther and Hitler were obsessed by the “demonologized universe” inhabited by Jews, with Hitler asserting that the later Luther, the author of On the Jews and Their Lies was the ‘real Luther’.

Professor Robert Michael, Professor Emeritus of European History at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, has argued that Luther scholars who try to tone down Luther’s views on the Jews ignore the murderous implications of his antisemitism. Michael argues that there is a “strong parallel” between Luther’s ideas and the anti-Semitism of most German Lutherans throughout the Holocaust. Like the Nazis, Luther mythologized the Jews as evil, he writes. They could be saved only if they converted to Christianity, but their hostility to the idea made it inconceivable (Robert Michael, “Luther, Luther Scholars, and the Jews,” Encounter 46:4 (Autumn 1985), pp. 339-56.).

Luther’s sentiments were widely echoed in the Germany of the 1930s, particularly within the Nazi party. Hitler’s Education Minister, Bernhard Rust, was quoted by the Völkischer Beobachter as saying that: “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 [Schrot und Korn]” (Volkischer Beobachter, August 25, 1933 cited in Steigmann-Gall, Richard. The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1991-1945. Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 136-7.).

Hans Hinkel, leader of the Luther League’s magazine Deutsche Kultur-Wacht, and of the Berlin chapter of the Kampfbund, paid tribute to Luther in his acceptance speech as head of both the Jewish section and the film department of Goebbel’s Chamber of Culture and Propaganda Ministry. “Through his acts and his spiritual attitude, he began the fight which we will wage today; with Luther, the revolution of German blood and feeling against alien elements of the Volk was begun. To continue and complete his Protestantism, nationalism must make the picture of Luther, of a German fighter, live as an example above the barriers of confession for all German blood comrades.”
(Steigmann-Gall 2003, p. 137.).

According to Daniel Goldhagen, Bishop Martin Sasse, a leading Protestant churchman, published a compendium Luther’s writings shortly after Kristallnacht in which Sasse “applauded the burning of the synagogues and the coincidence of the day, writing in the introduction, “On November 10, 1938, on Luther’s birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany.” The German people, he urged, ought to heed these words “of the greatest antisemite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews.” (Bernd Nellessen, “Die schweigende Kirche: Katholiken und Judenverfolgung,” in Büttner (ed), Die Deutchschen und die Jugendverfolg im Dritten Reich, p. 265, cited in Daniel Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners (Vintage, 1997)).

William Nichols, Professor of Religious Studies, recounts, “At his trial in Nuremberg after the Second World War, Julius Streicher, the notorious Nazi propagandist, editor of the scurrilous antisemitic weekly, Der Stürmer, argued that if he should be standing there arraigned on such charges, so should Martin Luther. Reading such passages, it is hard not to agree with him. Luther’s proposals read like a program for the Nazis.” (William Nichols, Christian Antisemitism: A History of Hate (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1995), p. 271).

In the course of the Luthertag (Luther Day) festivities, the Nazis emphasized their connection to Luther as being both nationalist revolutionaries and the heirs of the German traditionalist past. An article in the Chemnitzer Tageblatt stated that “[t]he German Volk are united not only in loyalty and love for the Fatherland, but also once more in the old German beliefs of Luther [Lutherglauben]; a new epoch of strong, conscious religious life has dawned in Germany.” Richard Steigmann-Gall wrote in his 2003 book The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945:

The leadership of the Protestant League espoused a similar view. Fahrenhorst, who was on the planning committee of the Luthertag, called Luther “the first German spiritual Führer” who spoke to all Germans regardless of clan or confession. In a letter to Hitler, Fahrenhorst reminded him that his “Old Fighters” were mostly Protestants and that it was precisely in the Protestant regions of our Fatherland” in which Nazism found its greatest strength. Promising that the celebration of Luther’s birthday would not turn into a confessional affair, Fahrenhorst invited Hitler to become the official patron of the Luthertag. In subsequent correspondence, Fahrenhorst again voiced the notion that reverence for Luther could somehow cross confessional boundaries: “Luther is truly not only the founder of a Christian confession; much more, his ideas had a fruitful impact on all Christianity in Germany.” Precisely because of Luther’s political as well as religious significance, the Luthertag would serve as a confession both “to church and Volk.” (Richard Steigmann-Gall, The Holy Reich: Nazi Conceptions of Christianity, 1919-1945, (Cambridge University Press, 2003), p.138.)


697 posted on 03/03/2015 7:36:03 AM PST by Crim (Palin / West '16)
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To: Crim
Nice try....but no...historians dont agree with you.

Nice set of atheist authors you cite as experts, no Nazi Propagandists available? Toss in a few non-biased Catholics, with no reason to soft pedal the Catholic church's history. The other 'historians' that treat JATL as a “first work of modern anti-Semitism". Please, he wasn't even the first in his century. Catholic and state instituted actions against Jews predate Luther by a millenium.

741 posted on 03/03/2015 11:15:18 AM PST by xone
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To: Crim
Hitler even mentions Luther by name in mein kampf as one of his three main inspirations.

OOOOH!

I guess this PROVES that Hitler was a Catholic!

771 posted on 03/03/2015 2:46:25 PM PST by Elsie
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