Chapter Six - Martin Luther’s Other Reformation

CHAPTER SIX

Martin Luther’s Other Reformation

TO MOST PEOPLE, Martin Luther is the man who kickstarted the Protestant Reformation. The rebel priest who nailed 95 Theses to a church door in Wittenberg. The guy who stood up to the Catholic Church and shouted, “Here I stand.”

But there’s another Martin Luther.

The one who wanted Jews dead.

At first, he was weirdly optimistic. In the early 1500s, Luther believed that if Jews only heard the true Gospel, uncorrupted by Catholic idolatry, they’d convert en masse. He blamed the Church for pushing them away.

But when the Jews didn’t convert?

He turned. Hard.

In 1543, Luther published On the Jews and Their Lies, a 65,000-word tirade that reads like pure venom. In it, he calls Jews:
“A base, whoring people.”
“Full of the devil’s feces.”
“Miserable, blind, and senseless.”

And then he gets to the recommendations.

Burn their synagogues.
Destroy their homes.
Confiscate their sacred books.
Forbid their rabbis to teach.
Force them into labor.
Expel them from Christian lands.

It’s all there, long before Hitler. And Luther wasn’t some fringe figure. His writings helped shape German national identity, German language, and German theology for centuries.

So when Nazis quoted Luther, they weren’t reaching.

They were citing canon.

Luther’s hatred outlived him. It became part of the Protestant bloodstream. And as Reformation ideas spread across Europe, so did his antisemitism.

Even those who didn’t go full Luther still kept Jews on the outside.

England expelled all Jews in 1290 and didn’t formally let them back in until 1656.
Spain expelled Jews in 1492, the same year Columbus sailed.
Portugal followed in 1497.
France expelled and re-admitted Jews repeatedly, always with a price.

In every case, the logic was the same: Jews were tolerated when convenient, and blamed when not.

And the religious hatred now had centuries of precedent. Reinforced by popes, priests, poets, painters, and reformers alike.

The old virus was mutating again.

Soon, religion wouldn’t be enough.

It would evolve into something “scientific.” Something “racial.”

Something harder to kill.