Changes

Indeed, The line of "anti-semitic descent" from Luther to Hitler is "easy to draw."The line of "anti-semitic descent" from Luther to Hitler is "easy to draw."<ref>Dawidowicz, L. S. (1986). ''The War Against the Jews: 1933-1945''. United Kingdom: Random House Publishing Group, p. 23</ref>

Indeed, The line of "anti-semitic descent" from Luther to Hitler is "easy to draw."<ref>Dawidowicz, L. S. (1986). ''The War Against the Jews: 1933-1945''. United Kingdom: Random House Publishing Group, p. 23</ref>

German Thomas Kaufmann notes:<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=Bd3XDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT1 Kaufmann, T. (2016). ''Luther's Jews: A Journey Into Anti-Semitism''. United Kingdom: OUP Oxford].</ref>

German Thomas Kaufmann notes:<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=Bd3XDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT1 Kaufmann, T. (2016). ''Luther's Jews: A Journey Into Anti-Semitism''. United Kingdom: OUP Oxford].</ref>

"Church leaders such as provincial bishop Martin Sasse of Thuringia referred to Luther's hostility towards the Jews to justify their enthusiasm for the burning of Jewish synagogues during the Reich 'Night of Broken Glass' [Kristallnacht] on 9/10 November 1938; his polemical pamphlet Martin Luther on the Jews: Away with Them!, which was published in a print run of 100,000 copies, contained amongst other things a compilation of quotations from On the Jews and their Lies and may well have been one of the most effective vehicles for the dissemination of the image of Luther as an 'anti-Semite for our time'. By drawing on Luther, leading voices from the Church and theological circles were demonstrating that Protestant Christianity could be adapted to fit in with the ideological Zeitgeist that was remaking politics and society and moulding them to an ideology based on race and German ethnicity and could make its own contribution to the 'anti-Semitism required today for the good of our nation', as the Church historian Erich Vogelsang put it."

 

"Church leaders such as provincial bishop Martin Sasse of Thuringia referred to Luther's hostility towards the Jews to justify their enthusiasm for the burning of Jewish synagogues during the Reich 'Night of Broken Glass' [[Kristallnacht]] on 9/10 November 1938; his polemical pamphlet Martin Luther on the Jews: Away with Them!, which was published in a print run of 100,000 copies, contained amongst other things a compilation of quotations from On the Jews and their Lies and may well have been one of the most effective vehicles for the dissemination of the image of Luther as an 'anti-Semite for our time'. By drawing on Luther, leading voices from the Church and theological circles were demonstrating that Protestant Christianity could be adapted to fit in with the ideological Zeitgeist that was remaking politics and society and moulding them to an ideology based on race and German ethnicity and could make its own contribution to the 'anti-Semitism required today for the good of our nation', as the Church historian Erich Vogelsang put it."

"What is evident is that Protestant theologians with Nazi sympathies or 'lay people' with a Lutheran background were not only among those who made the reformer out to be complicit in the most gruesome crimes in human history but were primarily responsible for doing so. Admittedly, the really 'tragic' aspect of this is precisely that Luther's own writings, his repellent, hate - filled tirades against the Jews, made the task easy. Luther is no more a simple 'victim' in this process than he deserved to be in the dock at Nuremberg. Luther's hatred of the Jews."

"What is evident is that Protestant theologians with Nazi sympathies or 'lay people' with a Lutheran background were not only among those who made the reformer out to be complicit in the most gruesome crimes in human history but were primarily responsible for doing so. Admittedly, the really 'tragic' aspect of this is precisely that Luther's own writings, his repellent, hate-filled tirades against the Jews, made the task easy. Luther is no more a simple 'victim' in this process than he deserved to be in the dock at Nuremberg."

==Legacy==

==Legacy==