Martin Luther And The State
We have seen how contradictory was Luther’s character, how differently he often acted from what he taught. But nowhere is contradiction stronger, or at least does it appear more marked than in Luther’s political teachings. The reason for this seems to me obvious. For all we usually look at is the young Luther, the Luther who fought so bravely the Church of Rome, the Luther who acted (even if the words are merely a legend) according to the principle, “Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise, God help me, Amen.”
The later Luther is so often ignored. The change which took place once he had achieved his aim, once he was a national hero, a dictator of morals, politics, and religion, is rarely taken into account. And yet it is the later Luther who had (anyhow in my interpretation) so much greater an influence on Germany than the young rebellious monk.
In no sphere is this so clear as in Luther’s attitude towards the State, as in his commands governing relations between the ruling class and the working classes. The line of demarcation is clearly the year 1525. And before we attempt a more theoretical interpretation of Luther’s political teachings, let us look for a short while at the historical facts.
We are always inclined to interpret present-day history as something new. We are always tempted to see the sufferings of our own times as something unheard of, as something more modern and more important than any other period in history. To me it seems that the problems are, at least to a certain degree, always the same. One of these great problems which we are facing at the moment is the relationship between the “capitalists” or “upper class”, and the “working classes”, or proletariat. But this struggle, this conflict of interests is nothing very new. Indeed, as long as there has been human history, there has been class-struggle. The only difference is that the various classes appear at different periods under different names. Thus, in the Germany of Luther, the upper classes were “the princes”, the working classes were “the peasants”. This ought to be remembered, for I shall refer quite often to “the princes” and “the peasants”—a traditional but not quite correct terminology.
The suppression which the “princes” imposed upon the “peasants” early in the sixteenth century is something almost unbelievable. Taxes, rents, rates, work, and so forth were unbearable. The working classes were treated in a loathsome way and there was much, very much justifiable grumbling and discontent. But these poor oppressed creatures, whose life was less than worth living, could not see a way out of their tragedy; they lacked leadership, they lacked ideas; nobody seemed to be able or willing to help them, nobody seemed to possess the necessary courage and conviction to oppose the cruel treatment which they received from the princes.
Then there came Martin Luther. He acted like a great and courageous man. He showed no signs of fright. He said what he thought. He brought the true idea of Christianity back to the oppressed masses. His preachings of “Christian Freedom” were eagerly read and learnt by those thousands of “peasants” who had merely been waiting for a man of Luther’s greatness, honesty, fearlessness, true Christianity.
Luther encouraged these exploited creatures as much as he could. “Among Christians”, he told them, “no authority can or ought to exist, but everyone should be subject to all.” Moreover, Luther was fearless enough to tell the oppressing princes what he thought of them, what would happen to them. “God Almighty,” he wrote, “has struck our princes with madness so that they imagine they may treat and command their subjects just as they please; and the subjects too are crazy enough to think that it is their duty to obey all that is commanded them.” “God has delivered the princes up to a perverted mind, and means to make an end to them. . . . All the princes could do was to rob and oppress the people, heaving tax upon tax, and rate upon rate.”” He warned the princes that they would soon be destroyed. “The princes”” he continued, “are the greatest fools and the worst scoundrels on earth. The people cannot, will not any longer, endure your tyranny and your presumption.
It is thus not surprising that the peasants in Germany looked to Luther, to Christian teaching, to the Bible, as their one and only hope. “All the peasants of Germany were soon united in the immense hope to reconstruct society on Christian ideas.” Revolt was in the air; it was unavoidable. And Luther was not merely the born leader of this great movement of liberation, but he had purposely put the common hatred of the princes into words and had threatened action. The revolution which was about to break out in 1525 is known in history as “the Peasants’ War”, and on its eve Luther was the avowed champion of the most oppressed class in Germany. “Luther was the creator and leader of the whole movement”—no historian has ever doubted this fact.
The term “Peasants’ War” is, as I have indicated already, somewhat misleading. “It is difficult to generalise a movement so widespread as this. We might call it a social revolution based on the ‘divine justice’ as revealed in the Bible,” says Professor MacKinnon, Luther’s most recent, most complete biographer and apologist. And he continues: “The phrase ‘rising of the peasants’ is strictly speaking insufficient as a designation of the insurrection of 1525, in view of the wider discontent which coalesced with the movement.”
The discontented peasants published their grievances in a memorandum consisting of twelve articles. It is a very calm and moderate document. They state their claims and express their discontent. Michelet, the great French historian, calls it “a model of courageous moderation”. Professor MacKinnon says: “The moderate persuasive tone of these articles is surprising. The peasants will not use force except in the last resort and against glaring abuses, which were really indefensible from the Christian standpoint. . . . Brotherly love and the Gospel are to decide in all contentious matters.” “The Christian liberty which proclaimed was applied directly to temporal questions.”
What now was Luther’s attitude in these crucial hours? The peasants looked at him as their leader. They felt confident that he, the great lover of Christian freedom and brotherhood, could be relied upon. But Luther’s reply to the twelve articles was somewhat ambiguous. He gave to this reply the title “Exhortation to Peace regarding the Twelve Articles”. “Brother Martin here showed the greatest circumspection. His reply to the overlords as well as to the peasants, in its fundamentals at all events is neither fish nor fowl. The peasants were certainly wrong, but the overlords were not right” (Funck-Brentano).
Luther calls the peasants “dear brothers” and the princes “dear masters”. And while he urges the peasants not to revolt, explaining that “never did rebellion end in good” (Friend Martin was forgetting his own rebellion”), he continues to state the injustice of the princes. “Since it is certain that you govern tyrannically and savagely, fleecing and oppressing the common people, there is no comfort or hope for you but to perish as those like you have perished.”
Obviously, the peasants took these hints much more seriously than Luther’s demand to them “to suffer in a Christian manner, and to be ready to endure persecution and even oppression willingly.” In any case, matters had gone too far, and Luther’s exhortation meant nothing either to princes or peasants. “He states the case for the peasants and then runs away from it,” as MacKinnon expresses it. But the revolution was in full swing. The more extreme elements were no longer prepared to submit quietly to the princes. It is at this very moment that Luther decides to support the princes. “When it came to civil war, Luther did not prove to be a Cato. He went over to the victorious side after he had tried as long as possible to please both parties.”
“Peasants”, Luther declared, “are no better than straw. They will not hear the Word and they are without sense; therefore they must be compelled to hear the crack of the whip and the whizz of bullets, and it is only what they deserve. We must pray for them that they may become obedient; but if they do not, pity is of no avail here; we must let the cannon-balls whistle among them, or they will only make things a thousand times worse.”
A strange way to talk about his most faithful followers! But once Luther had made up his mind which side he was going to back, which side it was more profitable to back, his violence knew no limits. On May 6 of this fatal year Luther published his pamphlet, “Against the Peasant Bands of Robbers and Murderers”, which Funck-Brentano has described as a “horrible document which it is impossible to read, not only without disapproval but without disgust. The Reformer, who always had the Gospel on his lips, now talked of nothing but killing, torturing, burning and murdering the very people whom his work had driven to rebel.” Let us listen to the Reformer, the so-called champion of Christian freedom.
To kill a peasant is not murder; it is helping to extinguish the conflagration. Let there be no half measures! Crush them! Cut their throats! Transfix them! Leave no stone unturned! To kill a peasant is to destroy a mad dog!. . . Our princes must in the circumstances regard themselves as the officers of the divine wrath which bids them chastise such scoundrels. A prince who failed to do so would be sinning against God very badly. He would be failing in his mission. A prince who in such circumstances avoided bloodshed would become responsible for the murders and all the further crimes which these low swine might commit. It is no longer a question of tolerance, patience, pity. It is the hour of wrath and for the sword; the hour for mercy is past.”
Luther is full of similar advice. “It is a trifle for God to massacre a lot of peasants, when He drowned the whole world with a flood and wiped out Sodom with fire. He is an almighty and frightful God.” “If there are innocent men amongst the peasants, God will certainly prepare and keep them, as He did with Lot and Jeremiah.”” ““ will not forbid such rulers as are able, to chastise and slay the peasants without previously them offering terms, even though the Gospel does not permit it.”” Once more, the Devil is brought into it. ““he peasants serve the Devil. . . . I believe that there are no devils left in hell, but all of them have entered into peasants.”” And Luther surpasses himself when he exclaims: ““hat strange times are these when a prince can enter heaven by the shedding of blood more certainly than others by means of prayer!”” And he ends with the peroration: “Come, dearly-beloved lords and nobles, strike them, transfix them, and cut their throats with might and main. Should you find death in so doing, you could not wish for one more divine, for you would fall in obedience to God and in defending your like against the hordes of Satan.”” I know of no example in history (with the exception of Hitler” famous, or rather infamous, June 30, 1934) where a man turned in such an inhuman, brutal, low way against his own followers—merely in order to establish his own position, without any reason. Treason of any kind is, in my opinion, honourable compared to Luther’s change of colours.
The effect of Luther’s pamphlet was terrible. It was exactly what the princes had hoped for. “It was due to Luther’s pamphlet against the peasants, so said the Strasburg preacher Capito, that the country had passed from the turmoil of insurrection to the horrors of retaliation and revenge.” The princes translated the Reformer’s inhuman orders into practice with a terrifying speed.
Even Luther’s own followers got frightened. They reproached him, they tried to explain that the irrational, quick-tempered Luther had acted on the spur of the moment, that he did not mean what he said. In cold blood Luther replied: “An insurgent is not worthy of being answered with reason, for he cannot understand it; such mouths must be stopped with fisticuffs till their noses bleed. The peasants would not hear, would not listen to reason, therefore it was necessary to startle their ears with bullets, and send their heads flying in the air. . . . If they say I am very hard and merciless, mercy be damned. Let whoever can stab, strangle, and kill them like made dogs” (E24, 294). “The intention of the Devil was to lay Germany waste, because he was unable in any other way to prevent the spread of the Evangel.”
He would have no criticism—Luther, who is reported to be the great champion of tolerance. “Those who thus blame my little book (against the peasants) must be warned to hold their tongues and to take care what they say; for most certainly they are insurgents at heart, therefore the authorities must keep an eye on such people and let them see that they are in earnest.” Indeed, Luther “attributed his pamphlet against the peasants to Divine inspiration.”
No, Luther would not retract a single word of his pamphlet or apologise for it as the offspring of momentary passion. Instead, he began to elaborate his new political theory, a theory which was so readily accepted in Germany. “Scripture speaking figuratively”, wrote Luther in 1526, “calls rulers drovers, taskmasters, and scourgers. Like the drivers of donkeys, who have to belabour the donkeys incessantly with rods and whips, or they will not obey, so must the ruler do with the people; they must drive, beat, throttle, hang, burn, behead and torture, so as to make themselves feared and to keep the people in check” (E15, 276).
The princes obeyed. A “brutal revenge” took place. Typical is the assertion of one of the princes: “I hope we are now going to play with heads as the boys play with marbles.”
The lot of the poor peasants was worse than horrible. “Captains and overlords vied with each other in the ferocity of the punishments inflicted on the inhabitants of the conquered districts. The mildest way for the victims was to have their heads chopped off with an axe. Many, both men and women, had their tongues torn out; others had their fingers chopped off. The executions took place in public squares, the wives and children of the condemned being forced to witness the horrible spectacle at sight.” Some of the princes made all their subjects who had taken part in the revolt kneel in groups, and then mowed them down with artillery. Others crowded them into the cellars under their castles, where they died of suffocation in the most terrible stench. “Historians have estimated the number of poor wretches put to death in this way at about 100,000. The victorious landowners used to amuse themselves by playing bowls with their heads” (Funck-Brentano).
The whole of Germany seemed to collapse. But Luther did not care. “What I teach and write remains true though the whole world should fall to pieces over it” (W18, 401).
Nor did the Reformer feel any sympathy of any kind for the victims of the atrocities committed by his orders. “’Why treat the peasants so cruelly?’ I am asked,”, wrote Luther in May, 1525; “let them all be killed. In such circumstances is it not God Himself who by our hands, hangs, breaks on the wheel, blows to bits and decapitates.”
The immediate results were obvious. “The peasants sank back into their servile conditions.” “The practical outcome of the great popular movement was deplorable. The condition of the common people became even worse than before.” “A general and rapid decay of intellectual life was the natural result.”
Perhaps the one and greatest chance in Germany’s history to have a revolution of the people, to force the Junkers to give in, to have a democracy based on Christian principles—was squashed, by Martin Luther. The common people sank back into a pitiful state—at least those poor wretches who survived. Germany was a battlefield, disunited, more oppressed than ever by the ruling classes. At this moment the Reformer thought it appropriate to exclaim with pride: “It was I, Martin Luther, who slew all the peasants in the insurrection, for I commanded them to be slaughtered. All their blood is upon my shoulders. But I cast it on our Lord God who commanded me to speak in this way” (E59, 284).
So much for the facts, and for Luther’s change of attitude. What interests us here is not his personal psychology in this dark affair, but the change in his political theories. For the Reformer had become from the defender of liberty, freedom, and tolerance the preacher of “the new doctrine of the unlimited authority of secular rulers over their subjects”—a theory to which he consistently adhered, which was to become for over four centuries the new Gospel of the Reich, to the everlasting tragedy of mankind.
If we look at Luther until just before the Peasants’ War, i.e. 1525, then it might be true to say, as so many of his biographers have done, that “The roots of religious freedom are to be found in Lutheranism.” “Luther repelled the use of violence in religion; he protested against propagating reforms by persecution, and with a wise moderation he maintained the sublime doctrine of freedom of conscience.”
Luther himself had said: “The secular authorities are not to hinder anyone from teaching and believing what he pleases.” “I cannot admit that false teachers are to be put to death. It is enough to banish them.” We might be justified in concluding, if we look only at the first part of his life, that “Luther’s service to mankind was nothing less than the successful declaration of individual freedom of conscience from the dictates of any human authority.” “Luther is a beacon light of history, for he is the founder of modern liberty.” Over and over again the Reformer pleaded: “Everyone ought to be allowed what he will.”
But then came his sudden change. This terrible attitude towards the peasants, this desire to seek their blood and life, this unparalleled intolerance. Many, too many, historians do not look at it, ignore it. And yet it is here that the true Luther reveals himself. Ever since the Peasants’ War the Reformer maintained the same brutal attitude. Take, to quote merely another case (but there are many more), the way in which he treated the Anabaptists.
Against this was a sect which had come into being through Luther himself. “Whatever may have been their historical origin, Anabaptist ideas were undoubtedly stirred to vigorous life by Luther’s revolutionary writings.” The Anabaptists were “left-wing Lutherans”; they preached “Socialism in the 16th century”. It was a “very moderate movement”. They aimed at the “establishment of a democratic socialist republic,” and demanded “abolition of all class distinctions, freedom and equality.” It was a purely religious movement—as compared with that of the peasants—and they had no political aim. The Cambridge Modern History says (vol. II, p. 223) that some of the Anabaptists “were anticipating the Quakers,” and that they denounced the dependence of the Lutheran Church upon the State, and denied the right of the secular magistrate to interfere in religious matters.
Surely here was a movement which the Luther of 1520, the traditional Luther, should have welcomed and hailed. But in 1535 Luther was at the peak of his power and tolerated no other belief, no other religion, no other leadership, but his own. So he recommended the same treatment for the Anabaptists as he had previously urged should be applied to the peasants. “The principal thing”, he said, “required to protect the people against the devils who were teaching through the mouths of the Anabaptist prophets was in the case of the common people compulsion by the sword and by the law . . . the law with its penalties rules over them in the same way that wild beasts are held in check by chains and bars, in order that outward peace may prevail amongst the people; for this purpose the temporal authorities are ordained and it is God’s will that they be honoured and feared.”
Once more Luther encouraged the secular authorities to commit the worst atrocities. “Many Anabaptists were beheaded with the express approbation of Luther, who regarded their heroism in the face of death as proof of diabolic possession.”
Is there any possibility of explaining this change in attitude in Luther? The man who denounced the State and the princes, who fought them gallantly and with heroism, turning suddenly into a supreme upholder of complete dictatorship, being more intolerant, more brutal, more bloodthirsty than any of his own opponents had ever thought of being?
Many historians have abandoned the hope of explaining the strange phenomenon. “A curious changeableness and want of logic are apparent, not merely in Luther’s way of expressing himself, but also in his views,” says Professor Grisar. “This was due in part to the fact that his mental abilities lent themselves less to the statement and defence of general theories than to controversy on individual points; but still more to the influence on his doctrine exercised by the changes proceeding in the outer world.”
Another typical comment is that “Luther’s lack of system is nowhere more apparent than in his views concerning the authorities and their duty towards religion. The attempt to sum up in a logical system the ideas which he expressed on this subject under varying circumstances and at different times, and to bring these ideas into harmony with his practice will ever prove a failure. It will never be possible to set aside the contradictions of his theory, and between his theory and his practice.”
Nevertheless I do believe that a psychological explanation is possible. Luther, as I have tried to show, was an extremely self-centred man, obsessed by the idea of being inspired by Heaven. While he was fighting for his own ideas, he preached that it was unchristian to restrain him; he demanded absolute and complete liberty of thought and word, action, and deed. But once he had been successful, he believed himself to be the one and only authority on all matters of faith and religion—and woe to those who dared to argue with him! It is then that he called the secular power to his assistance, that he gave rights and tasks, absolute authority and dictatorial powers to the princes such as they had never known before.
Of course, Luther was too clever not to see that he contradicted himself—that he called his former enemies to his assistance against those whom he had most influenced, who had believed in him, but who refused to see in him, and in him alone, a new Jesus Christ. It is then that he elaborates his fateful theory of two moralities, two lives, two authorities.
I have already drawn attention to the fact that Luther separated action and behaviour from thought and belief. Ever since the Peasants’ War, he expanded this strange and somewhat muddle-headed theory, as an apology for his contradictions. “The kingdom of Christ,” he wrote, “wholly belongs to the order of Grace, but the kingdom of the world and worldly life belong to the order of the law. The two kingdoms are of a different species and belong to different worlds. To the one you belong as a Christian to the other as a man or a ruler. Christ has nothing to do with the regulations of worldly life but leaves them to the world; earthly life stands in no need of being outwardly hallowed by the Church.”
“A great distinction,” Luther said, “must be made between a worldling and a Christian, i.e. between a Christian and a worldly man. For a Christian is neither man nor woman . . . he must know nothing and possess nothing in the world. . . A prince may indeed by a Christian, but he must not rule as a Christian, and when he rules, he does so not as a Christian but as a prince. As an individual he is indeed a Christian, but his office or princedom is no business of his Christianity.”
An ideal solution to save his own skin. Whenever he acted, protested, fought—he was doing so as a true Christian, and the authorities had no right whatsoever to interfere with him. But whenever any of his opponents dared to say something or to act—they were not Christians, and it was the duty of the prince to stop them, kill them, hang them. “Hitherto,” Luther explained, “I have foolishly hoped for something superhuman from men, that they might be led by the Gospel. But experience has taught me that in contempt of the Gospel they need to be contained by laws and the sword.”
And he comes to the logical conclusion: “Every Christian leads a double life: One faithful and spiritual, the other as a citizen or a worldly one.” The two have nothing to do with each other. “Civilian life does not regard God.” “God does not need our works, if we praise him and thank Him, that is all He wants.” This idea that our life as a citizen does in no way whatsoever concern God and that we need not be guided in it by Christian standards, is to be found throughout Luther’s writings. “We must make a great distinction”, Luther teaches us, “between justice on earth and the justice of God.” “As far as earthly justice is concerned, we need not be guided by the Scripture.”
Over and over again he returns to this favoured subject, that there are two moralities; the one in which we are faithful Christians and which regards merely our spiritual life, and the other which we adopt as citizens and where we owe obedience to the secular power.
The secular power has to be blindly obeyed by the citizens. It is God’s will that there are rulers and princes in order to see that these secular laws are obeyed. The princes are the gods upon earth. “Wherever the princes take their power from, it does not regard us. It is the will of God, irrespective whether they have stolen their power or assumed it by robbery” (W30,1). “If anybody has the might, he obtained it from God. Therefore he has also the right.” It is strange to notice that more than once Luther—not Bismarck!—uses the term “Might is Right”.
Nobody has a right ever to oppose this secular power. “Even if the authorities are wicked and unjust, nobody is entitled to oppose them, or to riot against them.” The people, the mass of the people have no rights whatsoever. “The ass must have blows and the people must be ruled by force. God knew this well, for it was not a fox’s brush He gave to rulers, but a sword.” “Even though the authorities act unjustly, God wills that they should be obeyed without deceit . . . for to suffer unjustly harms no man’s soul; indeed it is profitable to it.”
We have seen, and it is only the logical conclusion of these theories, how Luther ordered the peasants and Anabaptists to be treated. It was also Luther, that so-called champion of freedom, who re-introduced censorship and concentration camps. “The princes and estates will not henceforth allow nor tolerate the printing of any book which has not been diligently examined to see whether, not in the substance only, butalso in the style and form of the language, it coincides with the Augsburg Confession.”
“Carlstadt has set up printing works at Jena”, Luther wrote in 1534, “but the Elector of Saxony and our Academy have promised, in conformity with the Imperial edict, to tolerate no publication that has not been submitted to the ‘commissions,’ that is to say, the censorship.” Funck-Brentano very justifiably comments here: “Thus we find Luther invoking the edicts of the Roman Catholic Emperor and the censorship of a commission of control, against votaries of the reformed religion who did not feel called upon to adhere strictly to its doctrines. What cries, what protestations would he not have raised against anybody who had dared to treat him in a similar fashion!” Funck-Brentano continues: “Luther persuaded the Elector of Saxony to have a prison built and reserved for pastors and preachers whose conduct or utterances he regarded as reprehensible. He himself mentions a certain John Sturm ‘who insisted on believing that Christ died only to set an example’. And he was taken to Schweinitz, where he was shut up in a tower to the day of his death.”
Christian ethics and Christian principles—it cannot be too often repeated—according to Luther did not regard the prince and his conduct. “If you are a prince, judge, man, woman, etc., and if you have people under your authority, and if you want to know how to act, then you must not ask Christianity, but ask the Emperor, local laws or customs about it. This will tell you how to behave towards your inferiors.”
These teachings of Luther had two very natural results. In the first place, the people were taught that they had no right to rebel or protest against even the most unjust ruler. I have never believed that the herd-instinct of the Germans, this blind obedience to Kaiser or Fuehrer, Chancellor or General, is an inborn, inhuman instinct. On the contrary, I have always believed that it is part of the German Lutheran tradition. Those who write about a “German revolution”, those who hope that the Germans will one day protest against the Nazis or militarism know nothing of either German history (for since the peasants’ War and Martin Luther there has never been in Germany even the attempt of a real revolution), but they know less still about the basic German belief and spiritual background—the teachings of Luther about strict and absolute obedience.
The other result, closely connected with the former, is that Luther strengthened to the highest degree the power of the princes, or whoever their successors were. “Since the times of the Apostles, no doctor or scribe, no theologian or jurist, has confirmed, instructed, and comforted the consciences of the secular estates so well and lucidly as I have done.” “Even had I, Dr. Martin, taught or done no other good, save to enlighten and instruct the secular government and authorities, yet for this cause alone they ought to be thankful and well-disposed towards me,” the Reformer exclaims with pride.
“Luther”, says Janssen, “began to proclaim the political doctrine—altogether unknown in the history of German law—of the unlimited power of rulers over their subjects; insisted on unconditional obedience to the commands of those in authority, preached and taught slavery and despotism. From the Peasants’ War, so he said, the ruling powers should learn in future to govern with firmness and severity. The common people must be kept down with ‘heavy weights’ or they would become insolent.”
A slavishly obedient people, without any desire or spiritual power to fight for their freedom, and omnipotent secular rulers, without any regard for the teachings of Christianity—these were the fundamental views of Martin Luther on the State and the citizen. They provided a foundation without which no Frederick or Bismarck, William II or Hitler, could have built.
“The spirit of tolerance which had been increasing with the Renaissance had left Germany for centuries as a result of Luther’s reformation” (Paulsen). “Luther was instrumental in destroying not merely the fact, but even the principle of liberty throughout Germany” (Figgis). And let me again quote the great Protestant scholar Troeltsch: “Lutheranism provided a most favourable setting for the development of the territorial state. It smoothed the way for territorial absolutism. . . . Its only service to the actual modern state has been to encourage the spirit of modern absolutism.”
Naturally I fully realise that this absolute power of the ruler and this complete, slavish obedience of the masses is only one of many ingredients which make up that strange and perverted political outlook of modern Germany. There are at least three other major factors which have to be taken into account: the modern Germans’ love and veneration for war, their inhuman Jew-baiting, and their exaggerated nationalism, their doctrine of Deutschland, Deutschland Über Alles. It is therefore appropriate if we look in turn at these three factors and investigate Luther’s attitude towards them.
Martin Luther And War
Once again, the traditional picture of Luther makes him out to be a man opposed to warfare of any kind. Did he not prohibit any armed resistance even to unjust tyrants? Are there not many truly Christian passages in his writings such as “Armed resistance can in no way be reconciled with Scripture”?
But he did that only, once more, as long as it suited his purpose. In his later years he took a completely different attitude, and again his chief argument, in order to explain his contradictions, was the double-life theory. “A Christian is neither prince nor commoner nor anything whatever in the personal world. Hence whether resistance is permissible to a ruler as a ruler, let them settle according to their own judgment and conscience.” And again” “As a Christian, man has to suffer everything and not resist anybody. As a member of the State, the same man has to rob, murder, and fight with joy, as long as he lives.” Not frightfully logical—but then logic was never a strong point with Dr. Martin.
There is a very marked development in his attitude towards war. First of all he recommends what is nowadays called “armaments.” “It is necessary to be ready to encounter a power which might suddenly arise.”
Then he declares himself in favour of a defensive war. Next he explains that in a defensive war “the prince has not to wait until the other side attacks him”. Indeed, “it is the duty (of the prince) to strike before the opponent does.” He goes even further. “Defensive wars are not merely just as self-defence, but they are also a revenge.” “A war declared out of revenge, is a just and orderly work” (“Table Talk”, 3478). As one of his most recent commentators explains: “Indeed by this elaboration and enlargement of the conception of ‘defensive war’ Luther allows in the end any war, which has to be started as a necessity of state. The Christian narrowing down which Luther attempted at first, he himself declared as no longer valid.”
For instance, he advocates a war against the Turks. “We shall not prevail against the Turks unless we slay them in time, together with the priests, and even hurl them to death.” Professor Grisar comments on this passage, “Neither in this nor in similar passages is there any question of defence against force, but rather advocacy of bloody aggression.”
As usual, the prince acts by the will of God. “God the Almighty can order the prince at any time to begin a war.” “The sword and the power are in the service of God.” “The prince, who knows that God wants him to start a war, must do so without any external appearance of justification. He then acts rightly and obeys the will of God.”
Luther is at great pains to prove that “Christ himself and John the Baptist praised war,” and he comes to the conclusion that “wars are right and divine”. “According to Scripture, it has been ordained by God to make war and to strangle.”
Here we might find a spiritual explanation of the German atrocities. “It is Christian and a work of love not to go slowly in a war. One must cut the throats of one’s enemies, pillage them, burn them, do everything that may do them harm until one has beaten them” (W11, 277). “Only a simpleton argues that it is not Christian to strangle and to rob and that it is no work of love. But in truth it is a work of love” (W19, 625). Why, I ask myself so often, are these passages in Luther—which are so much more frequent than his earlier peaceful declarations—never mentioned, never quoted? Is one afraid of speaking the truth, of quoting the Reformer’s own words? Can one explain them away?
“A war,” Luther says repeatedly, “is only a very small misfortune”. “For what else is war than to punish wrongdoers and to keep peace? If one punishes a thief, murderer, or bigamist one punishes one single criminal. But if one goes to war one punishes a whole bunch of wrongdoers.” “What else is a war but to punish injustice and wrong? Why does one go to war unless it is to produce peace and obedience?”
So much for the justification of war. As soon as the prince decides to go to war, his slaves—i.e., the people—have to follow him. “If the authorities order war, then the people have to fight and obey, not as Christians but as members and obedient people of the secular power” (W19, 629). “It is the duty of the people to follow their leaders in war; to sacrifice body and belongings.” “The general duty of obedience towards the State includes the special duty to do military service.” “The authorities can force the people—as long as they are physically fit—to give their military service.”
Luther knows no longer any horrors of war. “One should not look at war how it strangles, burns and fights. This way to look at it is narrow and childish. Children behave like that. They only see how a doctor amputates a hand or a leg; they do not see that the doctor does so in order to save the whole body. One has to take the same view about war; one has to look at it with manly eyes . . ; then it will be proved that it is a holy and necessary task, as necessary as eating, drinking, or anything of that kind” (W19, 626).
Brother Martin admonishes “the Christians as faithful and obedient servants and with great joy to go to wars, to beat, murder, rob, and to commit any kind of damage as long as they can. Then they are certain to be true Christians.” “No one must think that the world is governed without blood. The worldly sword must be red and blood rusty.” “I myself, Martin Luther, do my best by prayer and if needs be, with the fist.”
“As soon as Luther talks of war,” comments Deutelmoeser, “one notices everywhere how he enjoys fighting.” “These warrior-virtues, which every Christian ought to possess, have nothing whatsoever to do with the peaceful morality of the Sermon on the Mount.” “The old warrior spirit is alive in Luther which since the days of the Cherusci and the Migration has been the characteristic of the people of the Reich.”
Towards his end, Luther was even prepared to glorify an unjust war. “What is undertaken in real confidence in God, ends well, even though it should be mistaken and sinful.” Gott mit uns was the war-cry of the Germans ever since Luther, too well remembered in this generation when peaceful countries such as the Netherlands and Belgium have been invaded. “Luther allowed himself again and again to clamour for war,” says Grisar. “With the glorification of war, soldiers, and weapons, Luther countenances all consequent victories of the Reich—from Gustavus Adolphus until the World War”—this is a recent statement with which everybody who has read Luther, and not merely believed in some unreal legend, has unfortunately to agree. Interpretations are difficult and might be contradicted. The Reformer’s own words cannot be denied or turned about. The Germans are not born with a love for war, but ever since Luther’s day the beauty of war has been preached to them from all the pulpits of Protestant Germany.
Let us see next what Luther has to say about the Jews.
Martin Luther And The Jews
Shortly after the outbreak of war in 1939 I was asked by the “Political Society of another very big English Public School to talk to them on “France,” which I did indeed with very great pleasure. This was on a Sunday night; and with the proverbial kindness of headmasters, I had been asked to come on Saturday and spend the night in a most congenial atmosphere. As it happened, the visiting preacher to the school on Sunday morning was a fairly well-known German refugee Lutheran pastor (it is kinder not to mention his name). To be quite honest, I have to admit that I felt little inclined to attend the service, but I went all the same.
The Herr Pastor spoke on antisemitism. I was wholeheartedly with him, of course, when he denounced it as not merely unchristian but antichristian. I was equally pleased when he explained to the boys that the violent antisemitism of the Nazis is not an isolated factor, to be considered as something quite apart from Nazism, but is an integral and most important part of the whole doctrine of Fascism.
I was, however, more than surprised when he suddenly called upon Luther. He roundly declared that “Luther, the founder of modern freedom, was the first to turn against antisemitism. He wanted the Jews to be treated in a Christian and charitable way.” And he quoted some of Luther’s fine sayings which I knew very well. “The Jews are our blood-friends, cousins and brothers of our Lord. No people has been so distinguished by God.” “We must exercise toward the Jews,” he quoted the Reformer again, “The law of Christian love and show them a friendly spirit; allow them liberty to work and to earn, and to leave them scope to live with and among us, and hear and see our Christian teaching and life.” “What good can we do the Jews when we constrain them, malign them, and treat them as dogs? When we deny them work and force them to usury, how can that help? We should use toward them Christ’s law of love. If some are stiff necked, what does it matter? We are not all good Christians.” Noble and true words indeed. The preacher went on to explain that one of the reasons why Luther fought the Catholic Church was that “the Catholics” (in Luther’s own words), “have treated the Jews as if they were dogs and not men, and have done nothing except vilify them and rob them of their property.”
The pastor went on to explain in his sermon that this was just one example of how Luther stood for the decent Germany; the Nazis are opposed to Lutheran doctrines, he declared, and he ended his sermon with the words: “As I have tried to show you with regard to the treatment of the Jews—the great and urgent task before us is to bring the German people away from Hitler, back to Luther.”
I felt almost sick, and I had first of all to think of a remark Dean Inge once made to me. “When I examined priests for their ordination, I did not expect much from them. But I insisted that they should have read the Bible—which quite a few of them had not.” In the case just mentioned, I thought that a Lutheran priest should at least have read Luther.
It is quite true that when Luther fought the pope, he wanted allies and friends. Thus the Jews were welcome, and he made the truly wonderful remarks just quoted. But as so often before, once he had achieved his purpose he showed his true face. For the greater part of his life Luther was an antisemite of the worst calibre. He knew no compromise; and in this particular instance he did not even attempt to explain or excuse his complete change of colour.
“There can be no doubt that the radical change in Luther’s attitude on the Jewish question was an outcome of his increasing depression,” is rather a meaningless explanation attempted by A. Hausrath, one of Luther’s most famous apologists. I shall try to show what the true Luther thought of the Jews and how he proposed to deal with them.
Like all his enemies, the Jews in Luther’s eyes were devils. “Whenever you encounter a real Jew, you may in good faith make the sign of the cross and openly and fearlessly pronounce the words ‘This is a veritable devilʼ”. “Therefore,” the Reformer told his followers, “do not doubt and never forget, beloved Christians, that apart from Satan himself, you possess no more deadly poisonous, and dreadful enemy than a real Jew. I know that. They poison wells, kidnap and maltreat children.”
“Even with no further evidence than the Old Testament, I would maintain, and no person on earth could alter my opinion, that the Jews as they are today are veritably a mixture of all the depraved and malevolent knaves of the whole world over, who have been dispersed in all countries, similarly to the Tartars and gypsies and such folk, to afflict the different nations with their usury, to spy upon others and to betray, to poison wells, to deceive and kidnap children, in short to practice all kinds of dishonesty and injury.”
There was, according to Luther, no good or human quality about the Jews. “What is good in us Christians, they ignore; what is wrong in us Christians the Jews take advantage of.” “The breath of the Jews reeks.” “Their rabbis teach them that theft and robbery is no sin” (W53, 489).
“The Jews professing to be surgeons or doctors deprive the Christians who make use of their medicaments of health and prosperity for such Jewish doctors believe they find especial favour with their God if they torment and furtively kill Christians. And we, fools that we are, even turn for succour to our enemies and their evil ways in the times when our lives are in danger, which is indeed sorely trying God’s patience.”
I do not believe that even the notorious “Der Sturmer” of Dr. Streicher surpassed the sayings of Brother Martin. “It is impossible to teach or re-educate the Jews”. “A more bloodthirsty and vindictive race has never seen the light of day.” So the Reformer goes on and on.
As so often before, Luther’s worst utterances are not fit for quotation or reproduction. “Many of the obscenities occurring in his sermons and writings on the Jews are suggested by proverbs which themselves reek too much of the stable, but which he sometimes still further embellishes” (Grisar). “In his books (on Jews) Luther’s peculiar talent for indelicate language reached its climax. He wrote with unchecked ferocity, and indulged freely in his quaint practice of befouling the objects of his hate with imaginary animal excreta” (Lipsky).
“Were God to promise me no other Messiah than him for whom the Jews hope, I would much rather be a pig than a man,” is one of his mildest sayings. “Were a rabbi to ease himself into a vessel under your nose, both thick and thin, and say ‘Here you have a delicious conserve’, you would have to say you had never tasted a better dish in your life. Risk your neck and say differently! For if a man has the power to say like the rabbis that right is left and left is right, regardless of God and all His creatures, he can just as well say that his anus is his mouth, that his belly is a pudding-dish, and that a pudding-dish is his belly””(E32, 285).
“Whenever you see or think of a Jew, say to yourself ‘Look, that mouth that I see before me has every Saturday cursed, execrated, and spat upon my dear Lord Jesus Christ Who redeemed me with His precious blood, and has also invoked maledictions on my wife and child and all Christians that they might be murdered and perish miserably. He himself would gladly do it if he could, if only in order to get hold of our goods; maybe he has already today many times spat on the ground, as it is their custom to do when the name of Jesus is mentioned, so that his venomous spittle still hangs about his mouth and beard and leaves scarcely room to spit again. Were I to eat, drink, or speak with such a devilish mouth, I might as well eat and drink out of a can or vessel brimful with devils, and thus become partaker with the devils who dwell in the Jews and spit at the Precious Blood of Christ. From which God may preserve us” (E32, 141).
So the Reformer continues throughout his writings. “The Jews are malignant snakes and imps”. “Whoever would like to cherish such adders and puny devils—who are the worst enemies of Christ and us all—to befriend them and to do them honour simply in order to be cheated, plundered, robbed, disgraced, and forced to howl and curse and suffer every kind of evil, to him I would commend the Jews. And if this be not enough, let him tell the Jews to use his mouth as a privy, or else crawl into the Jew’s hind parts, and there worship the holy thing, so as afterwards to be able to boast of having been merciful, and of having helped the Devil and his progeny to blaspheme our dear Lord.”
These few samples taken at random must be sufficient to give you a true idea of what the Reformer saw in the Jews. I could continue for many pages to cite much worse passages. I think, however, that I have already spent too much space on the subject, but I thought it necessary to let the Reformer speak again for himself, and to prove that I have not chosen some isolated cases, but that, as far as the Jews are concerned, he stuck to his views for the greater part of his life. To comment on such exclamations and sayings is really not necessary. It seems to me a much more impressive method if I leave the reader to draw his own conclusions.
Of course, Luther proposed in detail how his followers should treat the “damned Jews.” “Never ought a Christian to eat or drink with a Jew”. “On being asked whether it would be right to box the ears of a Jew, Luther replied ‘Certainly. I for one would smack him on the jaw. Were I able, I would knock him down and stab him in my anger. It is lawful, according to both the human and the divine law, to kill a robber; then it is even more permissible to slay a blasphemer.ʼ” Not a very Christian attitude; but worse is still to come. 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 Abrahamʼ” (Detailed references given in Grisar, “Luther”, vol. v, p. 413)
“We ought to take revenge on the Jews and kill them” is his charitable advice. At other times he is in favour of “forcing them to work and treating them with every severity as Moses did in the desert when he slew 3,000 of them.”
Occasionally, he feels that he oversteps the limit, and then he reaches the climax of his hypocrisy. “Oh my Lord,” he whines, “my beloved Creator and Father. Do Thou graciously take into account my unwillingness to have to speak so shamefully of Thine accursed enemies. Thou knowest I do so out of the ardour of my faith and to the glory of Thy Divine Majesty.”
After such solemn prayers, he returns to his foul and abusive language. “It is our own fault that we have not avenged the sacred blood of our Saviour and the innocent blood of countless Christians and children, spoiled since the demolition of Jerusalem until now; it is our own fault that we have not annihilated the Jews but placidly let them stay where they are in spite of all their murders, their curses, blasphemies, lies, violations, and that we even protect their schools, their dwellings, their persons and property.” Nowhere in the history of civilised mankind have the masses been so incited to persecution and murder as by this “Christian Reformer.”
Indeed, four centuries before the world ever heard of the inhuman “Nuremberg Laws” Brother Martin compiled an anti-Jewish cod of his own. Luther’s antisemitic laws consist of seven paragraphs only. Here they are:
1) Set fire to their synagogues and schools; and what will not burn, heap earth over it so that no man may see a stone or relic of them forever.
2) Pull down and destroy their houses since they perpetrate the same nefarious things in them as in their schools. Pack them all under one roof or stable, like the gypsies, that they may know that they are not lords and masters in our land as they boast.
3) Deprive them of all their prayer-books.
4) Forbid their rabbis henceforth to teach.
5) Deprive them of the right to move about the country.
6) Forbid them the business of usury, and take from them all their belongings.
7) Hand the strong young Jews of both sexes flail, axe, mattock, spade, distaff, and spindle; and make them work for their bread in the sweat of their brow, like all the children of Adam. Confiscate their property and drive them out of the country. (W53, 525 abridged).
It will be found, at close inspection, that Luther’s laws are much more strict, or at least as severe, as those of Hitler. Very often he repeated his order, “The Jews have to be expelled from our country.” Or he gave the Christian advice. “The Jews deserve to be hanged on gallows seven times higher than ordinary thieves” (W53, 502).
When some of his friends reproached him for the anti-Christian attitude which his followers had to adopt toward the Jews, he replied smilingly: “Maybe mild-hearted and gentle Christians will believe I am too rigorous and drastic against the poor afflicted Jews, believing that I ridicule them and treat them with much sarcasm. By my word, I am far too weak.”
Up to the last day of his life, the Reformer remained obsessed by his antisemitism. Shortly before he died he wrote to his wife that he was ill. He blamed the Jews for his bad state of health! In his very last sermon, he urged his listeners: “You ought not to tolerate the Jews.” He ordered the princes to commit atrocities. “I pray to all rulers in whose territories there are also Jewish subjects, to practise severe justice in regard to this despicable race.” And if the rulers should refuse then it was the duty of the preachers to preach hatred. “If the authorities refuse to follow this drastic advice, the pastors and preachers are at all events to proclaim it to the people.” “Let us admonish you gentlemen and colleagues,” Luther told the preachers, “you clergymen and priests, in the name of the office you hold, that it is also your duty to admonish your congregation to beware of the Jews and to shun them.” He planned an even more powerful and violent attack against the Jews than any yet delivered; but before he had time to finish it, Luther had died.
What are the facts and the results? “Luther claims that his antisemitic writings were the first real work of instruction of Judaism which might teach us Germans from history what a Jew is and warn our Christians against them as against veriest devils” (For a fuller analysis see Dr. R. Lewin’s “Luther’s Stellung zu den Juden”, especially p. 77; also Grisar’s “Luther”, vol. v, p. 416). Nobody can deny the truth of this statement, although decency makes it impossible to mention his worst utterances, although “it is impossible even in a most detailed analysis to reproduce the excitement which trembles through every page, the mad fanaticism” which we find in the German original.
In the Reformer’s own times, the results of his teaching were tragic. “All his counsels were, of course, of such a nature that they provoked the people to an unchristian persecution of their Jewish citizens.” It is typical that in towns like Strasbourg, Lutheran in religion but French and Latin in culture and tradition, “the magistrates decided to prohibit Luther’s antisemitic pamphlets being printed in the city.”
But there were, in Luther’s time, some courageous Protestant leaders who complained bitterly. One of them, Bullinger of Zurich, protests against the “lewd and houndish eloquence” of the Reformer. “Everyone must be astonished at the hard and presumptuous spirit of the man (Luther). The opinion of posterity will be that Luther was not only a man, but a man ruled by criminal passion.” “Were it written not by a famous pastor of souls, but by a swineherd, it would still be hard to excuse.”
“Official reports go to prove that the cruel persecution of the Jews was no mere paper measure.” In the same way as Luther had treated the peasants and the Anabaptists, the Jews got their due now. But much worse still were the historical consequences. “The seed of the hatred against the Jews which Luther sows, does not get lost, however, but continues to have its reaction through the centuries. Whoever wants to write against the Jews out of any motive, always believes to have the right to refer triumphantly to the writings of Luther.” (All future “antisimitic decrees had their origin in Luther” (Lewin, op. cit).)
It is curious to notice how Luther’s biographers, or rather his apologists, treat this dark episode. Few are so hypocritical as the Lutheran pastor referred to above to make out Luther as a Jew-loving Christian. Most of them ignore his antisemitism completely. Only a very few are honest enough to admit that Luther’s behaviour is unparalleled among people who call themselves Christian. Professor MacKinnon in his great work—usually so full of admiration for Luther—frankly admits that in his antisemitic writings “vitriolic fury boils over in this wild polemic.” But then comes a sentence so typical of the way Luther is portrayed by English scholars: “It is difficult to believe that he (Luther) soberly contemplated the literal application of such monstrous proposals.”
Why? One would like to ask Professor MacKinnon. He does not say so. Why make allowances and mental reservations for a man who said repeatedly “I am not cruel enough,” who could in cold blood watch and command that hundreds of thousands of his opponents—papists, peasants, Anabaptists, and Jews should be and were slaughtered tortured, and otherwise persecuted. Why on earth is this difficult to believe? Merely in order to maintain a myth, a legend?
I again find it much more dignified to say with Professor Grisar, “After all that has been said, it would be very rash to apply to Luther’s attitude towards the Jews the words which St. Paul wrote of himself when considering humanity as a whole—i.e., of the power of God by which he had striven with endless patience and charity to bring home the Gospel to both Jew and Greek. ‘To the Greeks and to the Barbarians, to the wise and to the foolish, I am a debtor.’ ‘I have become all things to all men in order to save all.ʼ”
A contemporary American scholar already quoted—Lipsky—sums up Luther’s teaching on the Jews in the following appropriate manner: “It is only necessary for an antisemitic agitator to quote Luther in order to arouse a destructive rage against alien inhabitants of the Fatherland. Luther’s unbridled tongue tossed off phrases that still are a godsend to antisemitic ranters, and as long as the prophet’s words are cherished so long, no doubt, will the stream of invective and abuse flow from the hallowed spring.”
And another, more recent, commentator states boldly that “As far as the treatment and solution of the Jewish question is concerned, Adolf Hitler has continued and achieved the work of Luther.”
This seems to me a more correct interpretation of Luther than that of the German Lutheran pastor at the Public School, or of most of his English biographers.
Sir Thomas More said once with regard to Luther: “The gentle reader must forgive me if much that occurs offends his feelings. Nothing has been more painful to me than to be compelled to pour such things into decent ears. The only other alternative would, however, have been to leave the unclean book untouched.” That is exactly what I feel. I do not like saying what I have to say; but shyness, fear, tradition, prejudice, ignorance, hypocrisy, and various interests have too long prevented us from showing a side of a man who is usually in English-speaking countries hailed as representative of “the other, the better, the decent German.” On the contrary, in Luther I see one of the darkest figures history has yet produced.
Martin Luther And Germany
Many attempts have been made to explain the exaggerated, destructive nationalism of the Germans and the Nazis. Again, I think that to a great extent Martin Luther is at the bottom of it. Not only was he the first true nationalist of this kind of modern times, but through him German nationalism was preached to the people, a new religion was founded, a German god created. Here is one of the main distinctions—already mentioned above—between the evil results of Luther’s teachings and the democratic consequences of reformers such as Calvin.
“In Luther,” says Funck-Brentano, “the dominating factors were his German soul and his German outlook. He was German through and through. It has very justly been observed that while a Calvin and a Zwingli aimed at spreading their reforms throughout the whole world, Luther’s one thought was for his beloved Germans. His message was not for Christendom, but only for the German people.” Luther was not a Christian in its broadest and best sense; “he was first and foremost a German.”
“I seek the welfare and salvation of you Germans,” the Reformer cried. “As I am the Prophet of the Germans, I will act as a faithful teacher and warn my staunch Germans of the days in which they stand.” “I have been born for my beloved Germans, for them will I die!”
Those who disagreed with him, he refused the right of calling themselves Germans. “By thus coming forward as the divinely-commissioned spokesman of the Germans, as the representative and prophet of the nation, he implicitly denied to those who did not follow his banner the right of being styled German.”
He rarely, if ever, addresses himself to Christians as a whole, he always refers merely to “his dear Germans”. In everything he does, he only wants to serve “his beloved Germans.”
“Luther’s power as a popular orator was based on an accurate knowledge and appreciation of the foibles of the German character.” “He stirred up national feelings by means of delusive watchwords such as ‘Germany against Italian tyrannyʼ.” “We Germans must remain Germans,” he used to tell his congregation., “Remember that you are Germans,” he was constantly reminding his beloved countrymen;’ and this, as Funck Brentano comments so justly, is “a cry that Hitler would heartily endorse!”
The Germans were, of course, the best nation in the world. They were the Herrenvolk. “The Germans are conspicuous for their nobility of character, their constancy, and fidelity.” “Germany has always been the best country, the best nation.”
Luther would instill hatred for all other nations. No Nation could be compared to Germany. “The Romans have always abused our simplicity by their wantonness and tyranny; they call us mad Germans.” He is the sworn enemy of everything French and Italian. “As a good German he resented and revolted against the Italian contempt for Germany and German civilsation” (MacKinnon). “Luther considers himself the representative of Germany against Italy and France.” “We know well,” he would say, “that the French do not consider us as human beings.”
The great Reformer did not compare the Christian virtues of the nations; no, his standard of ethics was a very German one—militarism. “While the Germans are brave and daring in a battle, the French are impertinent after victory.” Again and again he draws a picture of German virtues as compared with the vices of all foreigners. He tells the Germans how they are exploited by foreigners, how all aliens laugh about them, and how superior the Germans really are. Indeed, German culture and German virtues are not only higher than those of the French and Italians, but even the Greeks cannot compare themselves to the Germans.
Particularly interesting it becomes when he turns his patriotic ferocity against England—whom naturally he does not forget in his abuse of every foreign nation. Originally, so he explains the English were Germans. Particularly are the Scottish people hateful to him. They are “the most evil, most proud, and most impertinent of all nations”. The English king is “a liar. People who are loyal to the king, have no conscience. Gold and money make him so impertinent, that he thinks even God could not live without him.” It might just be denoted, en passant, that Luther’s anti-British utterances have come as a godsend to anglophobe propagandists ever since, especially during the World Wars.
It is very strange to notice how often he praises German militarism, German ways of warfare, German soldiers, as compared with those of other nations.
In order to rid Germany of foreigners and to be independent of foreign countries, he advocates the Germany should be self-contained. “Germans, buy German goods!” and similar battle cries were first shouted by Luther.
Naturally, the German language is the most perfect in the world, much superior to French, Spanish, English, and Italian. “I thank God,” he would say, “that I can hear God now in my German tongue. Neither in Latin, nor Greek, nor Hebrew language would He be the same. ”For Luther ‘true’ and ‘German’ were synonymous” (Funck-Brentano). He ardently prayed that “scholasticism would soon disappear, and all Germans become the children of God”. He was the first to demand a “national writing of history.” He was the man who first clamoured for a united Germany; the words “the whole Germany”, “the whole of the German land” are permanently on his lips. He tells the Germans of the “unity of all German-speaking people.”
The only thing Germany needed to be really perfect was—a Fuehrer! “Germany is like a beautiful horse that has everything it needs. But it needs a horseman. In the same way as a good horse runs occasionally astray without a good horseman who governs it, so Germany has enough strength and people, but it lacks a good leader.” “If Germany had only a real leader, then no enemy could ever be victorious.”
“And now, dear Germans”, Luther would say, “I have told you enough; you have heard your prophet; God grant we may obey his words.” It took four centuries for his words to be fully obeyed. “The heart of Luther,” said Canon Barry in London in the fourth centenary of Luther during the last war, “German to its last fibre, is beating still in those armies which are attempting to ruin our Western civilisation, are attacking our faith.”