How the Protestant Reformation led to the Holocaust

Happy Christian Nihilist
7 min readAug 7, 2023

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When Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses in 1517, it would set off a chain reaction. Rome’s slow reaction to his actions would allow Luther to spread his ideas far and wide, and any action they did take only hardened him in his views.

The Diet of Worms in 1521 was the one of the first legal efforts to prohibit Luther’s works from being spread, but by then, the ball was already rolling. That same year, Luther fled to Wartburg Castle in Eisenach where he began to translate the New Testament to German.

The many Germans who were caught up in his views were now primed with the ideas he put into their heads which framed their reading of the Scripture to correlate to Luther’s. Rome’s effort to stop Luther’s reforming efforts was completely lost by this point.

While many rulers sided with Rome against Luther, such as Emperor Charles V, some others sided with Luther against Rome, such as Grand Master Albert of the Teutonic Knights. The opposing confessions now opposed each other both among the people and the nations.

Constant fights both on a popular and political level created a new necessity for peace in the form of religious pluralism, laying the groundwork for national identification with secularism.

Religion still had a great place in society, but the intimate connection was now gone.

This coupled with the Renaissance in full swing, moving religious art away from being primarily theological to being primarily sensual, and you end up with a society at large taking religion less seriously than necessary. They made man the measure of all things instead of God.

The European dedication to secularism was confirmed once and for all after the Thirty Years War. No obvious victors, no definite future. Protestantism was here to stay. Now having made the great break with religion, society began to orient more towards philosophy and the senses.

What followed was something more monstrous than could have ever been perceived. The so-called “Age of Reason,” more commonly known as The Enlightenment.

Human rationality and vain reasoning was set at the forefront of European thought. Secular Philosophy undercut religiosity.

What meant value to men was less and less man’s relationship with God, but rather man’s own comfort of conscience. Things like Social Progress, Toleration, Liberty, Political Representation, and Separation of Church and State all increased in value in this new era of Europe.

Instead of houses of God, men preferred houses of Masons, scientific academies, literary salons, and coffeehouses. Protestantism also emboldened men to make their own study of the Bible and come to their own conclusions rather than seek the Apostolic Deposit.

Nations found their unity no longer by Christ, but by national idealism. Political borders were drawn now, not as a means of supporting religious institutions, but of supporting the interests of a national group. National identity superceded all things prior.

As religion was pushed out and philosophical polemics rushed in, along came Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Man who killed God.” He posited morality as being only useful for the masses, while exceptional people should follow the Master Morality of their own inner law.

Nietzsche the Cuck waged a philosophical war against Christianity which he saw as perpetuation slave morality, “morality for all.” As a necessary component of his Master-Slave distinction was the understanding of the Übermensch or the Superman.

The Übermensch was the man who rose above the herd, above the notion of good and evil. The Übermensch needed to be the example and ruler of society for its well being. Violent conflict was the only path to ennobled human life. His thoughts would soon be applied on a racial level.

Adolf Hitler, the Politician, Painter, and Dictator of Germany. He was appointed leader of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party in 1921 and began to influence the Germanic mind in the wake of of the catastrophic German loss of the Great War.

Capitalizing on the total departure from God of the European people, the descent of Germany into hedonism, the philosophical downfall of pretend Christianity, and the rise of nationalism, Hitler had the perfect environment for his political ideals.

Intending to bolster the claims of Nazism for the German people, the Austrian philosopher Alfred Baeumler perceived the writings of Nietzsche in a new light: That the German Volk were the ethnic Übermensch who needed to rise above the slave morality of the common people.

Amongst the claim of the presence of the German Master Race was the necessary claim of racially inferior humans, called the Untermenschen which included Slavs, Romani, Jews, Blacks, gays, and the physically/mentally disabled.

The Untermenschen were seen as necessitating domination and enslavement, or in some cases, total extermination. The world was seen as needing domination by the unduly persecuted superior Germanic Race. It was said they needed to be pushed back to give Germans more living space.

Combined with everything said before and desiring retribution for the German embarrassment during the Great War, Hitler had the entire population of Germany on his side by 1936. By now, he had already enacted laws disenfranchising jews and other untermenschen.

By 1939, Hitler’s plan to unite all Germanics in the world under his Reich was in full swing. He had annexed Austria, the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia, and was now invading Poland to take the Free City of Danzig.

No one could foresee any stopping of Hitler’s plans. He was getting everything he wanted and had industrialized Germany beyond what was thought possible. The German War Machine was “unstoppable.” With no impediment to their intentions, untermensch under German rule were hopeless.

In 1941, the highest levels of the German government began to implement the “Final Solution” to the question of what to do with the Jews.

The Holocaust had begun.

Everything culminated in this event.

The prideful disputations of a vow-breaking monk. The False Enlightenment lit by Hell’s Flames. The death of God in the hearts of Europe. And the racial bloodthirst of men seeking revenge.

And the German philosophical self-annihilation spread its misery in all places of the world. Before Hitler’s rise to power, the German Karl Marx formulated his ideology of Revolutionary Socialism.

During the Great War, the German Empire deported his protégé Vladimir Lenin to Russia to destabilize the once great nation to fall to communism, which would later only fuel Hitler’s hatred of the noble Slavs.

One can imagine what would have happened if Europe’s fall had been prevented.

What if Luther joined the Church that Rome departed? What if Nietzsche healed his disease of nihilism? What if Marx chose Christ instead of materialism? What if Hitler repented of his resentment and hatred?

Hitler and Luther are cut from the same cloth, and they were both utilized by the evil one to pull Europe into international atheism. They chose their vain rationality instead of the eternal salvation of Jesus Christ. They did not repent and Europe felt their cold hands.

They were attackers of Christ, they tugged at the Ark of Salvation but were swept away by the flood of the evil they chose. Thinking themselves wise, they were fools. Thinking themselves heroes, they were villains. Seeking to be saviors, they stabbed the Saviour.

Two Events, One Cause, One Thread, One Connection.

The Protestant Reformation was the genesis of the Holocaust.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on the lost souls of Martin Luther, Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, and Adolf Hitler.

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Happy Christian Nihilist

Poetry. Prose. All the hits so far. Don’t expect too much. Musings on theology. Thoughts on life, death, and the dash betwixt and between.