I came to this conclusion after grossly simplifying some shit I read in Wikipedia studying some history.
For those clutching their pearls and saying “how could you compare such a monstrous man to the Führer Luther?” Well, they do have some striking similarities.
They were both German nationalists: we all know Hitler was, but yes Luther was a German nationalist. He considered the Spaniards and Italians to be inferior (just like Hitler did) and referred to them and other Catholics as ‘romans’. That’s why both rejected the idea of a church ruled from outside of Germany.
They were both ardent anti-Semites: again we know Hitler was one. Well I haven't really read the book but I guess in "On The Jews and Their Lies" by Luther it's pretty well explained why he is also anti-Semitic.
Their rhetoric was severely inflammatory: here is an example of Hitler’s. Luther was "famous for being ruthless when debating his contradictors". (MacGregor, 2016)
The inflammatory divisions they created in Europe led to terrible conflicts. On this Luther actually out performances Hitler. Hitler caused one war. The protestant reform sparked countless conflicts in Europe most famously the thirty years war and the German peasant’s war. Both filled with atrocities. (MacGregor, 2016)
Both ended up betraying their followers: Hitler, in the end, blamed the German people for his failure and refused to give up Berlin instead making the army fight for it house by house. Remarkably he ordered to flood the subway system of the city without warning causing the death of many wounded and civilians who were sheltering in it (Dollinger and Pomerans, 1982). On the other hand in 1524 the peasants of Wurttemberg (in Germany) went on a strike and revolted against their sires forming the ’12 articles’ which were very in line with Luther’s theses. What was his response? He sided with the nobles and advocated for the revolts to be suffocated with the utmost brutality. In his own words, the peasants should be “killed like mad dogs”.(Liebelt, 2008)
So yeah both remarkable fellows funny that one is revered so much in present Germany (you can’t walk into a bookstore without seeing his autistic face) and the other well… you could get arrested for looking like the guy.
Oh and one last thing we all know how utterly destroyed Germany was at the end of world war two right?
Well, this thirty years war was so terrible that in May 1945 Albert Speer (Hitler’s architect and armaments minister) said “the destruction that has been inflicted on Germany can only be compared to that of the Thirty Years War. The decimation of our people through hunger and deprivation must not be allowed to reach the proportion of that epoch.” And also German authors assert that ‘never before and also never since, not even during the horrors of the bombing during the Second World War, was the land so devastated and the people so tortured as between 1618 and 1648’.(Wilson, 2011)
Well, looks like fucking up this continent every couple hundred of years is a thing for these guys... it's worth the tasty beer in my opinion...
Sources:
- MacGregor, N. (2016). Germany: Memories of a Nation. London: Penguin, pp.224-225.
- Dollinger, H. and Pomerans, A. (1982). The decline and fall of Nazi Germany and imperial Japan. New York: Bonanza Books, pp.231-233.
- Liebelt, D. (2008). Das religiöse Herrschaftsverständnis bei Martin Luther. München: GRIN Verlag GmbH, p.23.
- Wilson, P. (2011). The thirty years war: Europe's tragedy. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, p.6.
Enough writing...
Thanks for reading folks!
yours truly
Rick Fischer