Each of these groups drew inspiration from its characteristic sources.
In particular, the writings of Martin Luther motivated a variety of Lutherans as they formed secret resistance groups: academic theologians, pastors of local churches, and the ordinary everyday members of those churches — members who came from all walks of life and from all social classes.
These people risked their lives — the National Socialists murdered many of them for speaking out against Hitler — patterning their work after Luther’s “ceaseless admonitions to speak up in the face of governmental evil,” in the words of historian Uwe Siemon-Netto.
The Nazis had tried to use Luther’s reputation for their own purposes: in Nazi propaganda, they hoped to make people believe that Martin Luther, along with a long list of other great thinkers and writers, were the historical foundation on which Naziism was built. The Nazis wanted readers to think that Martin Luther, who lived from 1483 to 1546, would have supported the National Socialist movement if he’d still been alive in 1933.
But most Lutherans weren’t fooled by this ruse. Anyone familiar with Luther’s writings knew about “his unequivocal opposition to all wars of aggression — and his advice to soldiers to disobey orders that violate God’s commandments.”
Not only in Germany, but in other countries as well, he inspired anti-Nazi resistance movements: “More uniformly Lutheran countries, such as Norway, based their resistance to tyranny on Luther’s theology.”
The leaders of the National Socialist Party were cynical in their use of Luther’s persona in their propaganda. They did not believe that Luther would have supported them, even while they publicly claimed Luther’s support. The Nazis firmly rejected both Lutheranism and Roman Catholicism, as Uwe Siemon-Netto explains:
The ex-Catholics in the top Nazi leadership rejected the Catholic faith of their childhood in favor of forms of religiosity that would not pass doctrinal review by theologians of any Christian denomination, with many, such as SS leader Heinrich Himmler, embracing a rabidly anti-Christian variety of neo-paganism.
Luther himself had articulated clearly that “God takes no pleasure in murdering or killing.”
Therefore, as Uwe Siemon-Netto writes, Luther’s ideas entailed a firm rejection of any “submission to the ideology of race and blood” — a firm rejection of National Socialism.
