Martin Luther was a pioneer of the Protestant Reformation and, hence, a Christian critic of the Catholic Church. During his break with Catholicism, he had mixed feelings about contemporary Jews, and believed that if only Catholics treated them better, then they would give up Judaism and convert to Christianity. As he repeatedly saw his Evangelical efforts come to naught, he became extremely frustrated with Jews and in 1543 he published the now infamous polemic titled On the Jews and Their Lies.

Luther’s anti‐Judaism initially had limited impact, but Luther was always a theologist whom other Protestants respected, so antisemites in the Weimar Republic and especially the Third Reich frequently referenced his anti‐Judaism to give their own antisemitism a degree of authority and respectability. The Third Reich’s head of state, despite professing Catholicism, repeatedly praised Luther:

In the chapter entitled “The Beginning of My Political Activity” from Mein Kampf, Hitler’s infamous book, he discussed 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 their end […] to them belong, not only the truly great statesmen, but all other great reformers as well. Beside Frederick the Great stands Martin Luther.¹⁷

Luther’s polemic also gave recommendations on how gentiles should handle Jews, which the Third Reich implemented, though it is worth mentioning that many of his recommendations (e.g. destroying the Talmud, something that a French monarch ordered in 1242) were not innovative either. His recommendations were as follows:

First, Luther told Christians to “set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn.”⁹ This advice was implemented by the [Third Reich] during the anti‐Semitic pogrom known as Kristallnacht, which will be elaborated on later in this paper. Second, he recommended that “their houses also be razed and destroyed.”¹⁰ Third, he advised that “all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing, and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them.”¹¹

Fifth, he urged that “safe‐conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews.”¹³ Sixth, he wrote that “usury should be prohibited to them, and that all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them and put aside for safekeeping.”¹⁴ This recommendation directly contradicted one of Luther’s earlier statements defending Jews in his treatise, That Jesus Christ was Born a Jew, and was also taken by the [German Fascists].

Acting on this advice during the Third Reich, the [Axis] often stole money and valuables from the Jews, especially after they were sent to concentration camps. Seventh, he recommended “putting a flail, an ax, a hoe, a spade, a distaff, or a spindle into the hands […] letting them earn their bread in the sweat of their brow.”¹⁵ The [German Fascists] also took this advice when they implemented concentration camps, where Jews were forced into hard manual labor.

Finally, he wrote that “if we wish to wash our hands of the Jews’ blasphemy and not share in their guilt, we have to part company with them. They must be driven from our country […] like mad dogs.”¹⁶ This also directly contradicted Luther’s earlier statement criticizing the Catholics treatment of the Jews. This advice was taken by the [Fascists] as well, but they took it a step farther when they implemented their “final solution.”

The Fascists consciously popularised a few of Luther’s phrases. Quoting Edwin Black’s The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story of the Secret Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine, pages 171–172:

In their campaigns to recruit support, Brownshirts spoke the familiar phrasing of Germany’s religious patriarch. From the street comers they constantly reminded that Martin Luther was beckoning Germany to expel the Jews.²⁴

In spring 1933, Hitler reflected the weight of Luther’s words upon his own thought. During a newspaper interview, Hitler asked who was “prepared to harbor […] those who have poisoned the wells of Germany, of the whole Christian world. Gladly we would give each and every one of them a railroad pass and a thousand mark note for pocket money to be rid of them.”²⁵

From Luther’s treatise “On the Jews and Their Lies”: “They have been […] murderers of all Christendom for more than fourteen hundred years […] poisoning water and wells. […] The country and the roads are open to them to proceed to their land whenever they wish. If they did so, we would be glad to present gifts to them on the occasion; it would be good riddance.”²⁶

Julius Streicher’s newspaper Der Stürmer bannered the Luther slogan in every issue: “Die Juden sind unser Ungluck!”—The Jews Are Our Misfortune!²⁷ And one of Streicher’s anti-Jewish picture books was titled after the Martin Luther adage “Trust no fox in the field and no Jew under his oath.”²⁸ In Germany, preaching Jew hatred was as good as preaching the gospel.

When Streicher was captured by the Allies in 1945, they confiscated his personal copy of “On the Jews and Their Lies.” At the Nuremb[e]rg War Crimes Trials, Streicher, a philosophical descendant of a centuries-long tradition, explained his actions with these words: “Martin Luther would very probably sit in my place in the defendant’s dock today if this book had been taken into consideration. […] In the book “[On] The Jews and Their Lies” Dr. Martin Luther writes that […] one should burn down their synagogues and destroy them.”²⁹

Pictured: A Fascist seal bearing Luther’s surname.

Martin Luther also helped normalise the thought of killing mentally disabled youths. The archives of the Nuremberg Trials lists a book titled Eugenics and Christianity: Questions of sterilization, northernization, euthanasia, marriage, by Wolfgang Stroothenke. This book was in the possession of Dr. Karl Brandt, the Chancellor’s personal physician. Quote:

Luther also advocated the killing of imbecile children. In his time they were called “Wechselbalg” or “Kielkroof” (both words not translatable). People believed they were exchanged by Satan in the place of robed normal children or were begotten by Satan himself. Luther’s standpoint was prompted by a case in Dressau. There he saw a 12 years old “Wechselbalg” which outwardly looked like a normal child. Its life, however, was limited to reception — and elimination — of food. It only laughed and cried incoherently at everything happening around it. Luther expressed his opinion that — if he had to decide — he would have killed the child by drowning. Such creatures were only a lump of human flesh without a real human soul. The Church in these days also acknowledged euthanasia in some individual cases. (Vid. Meltzer: “The Problem of Shortening Worthless Life”)

As for Martin Luther’s influence in Fascist Italy, it seems to have been really quite minor, probably because of his unfavourable view of Italians. Quoting Aaron Gillette’s Racial Theories in Fascist Italy, page 11:

Modern German–Roman antagonisms were strongly influenced by the Protestant Reformation. Martin Luther, on his trip to Rome in 1510, was disgusted by the sloth and corruption that he encountered there. Later, Luther complained that, after the Germans had conquered the Romans, the crafty Romans had built up the Catholic Church and re-enslaved the Germans, fooling and duping them.⁴ Religious differences would henceforth contribute to the cultural division between the Germanic and Romance worlds.

In his polemic On the Jews and Their Lies, Luther even likens Jews’ alleged superiority complex to those of the Italians (‘Similarly, the Italians fancy themselves the only human beings; they imagine that all other people in the world are nonhumans, mere ducks or mice by comparison’). Consequently, Martin Luther had no direct influence on Fascist Italy (that I was able to find).

While Luther’s anti-Judaism was undeniably important to the Germanic Fascists, one should be careful not to overrate his influence either. For instance, Luther’s writings against ‘Turks’ (Muslims) and his conception of them as Jews’ partners in crime were matters that the Fascists decided to overlook (probably because they wanted to win over the Turkish government along with other upper-class Muslims), and Luther sometimes allowed the possibility, however slim, that a Jew could still become a Christian, something that the Third Reich also chose to disregard. Hence, the line from Luther to Fascism was hardly a straight one; it would be an exaggeration to blame him completely for Fascist antisemitism.

Further reading: Demonizing the Jews: Luther and the Protestant Church in Nazi Germany