What do you think?
Rate this book
The Fabricated Luther: Refuting Nazi Connections and Other Modern Myths, Third Edition
In the last several decades, many scholars have written on Martin Luther and his connection to Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. Myths have circulated that Luther was the spiritual ancestor of Hitler and was to blame for Hitler’s rise to power. This book debunks those myths.
In actuality, thousands of Germans were put to death for trying to overthrow the National Socialist tyranny—most of them Christian! The 3rd edition of The Fabricated Luther includes new images and added context of prominent figures Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Carl Friedrich Goerdeler. It also features illustrations to help explain Luther’s theology.
This group of men who died to protect their beliefs are examples of Luther’s true theology and prove that Luther would never support Hitler. In addition, they show when it is appropriate to resist secular authority and in what ways.
In actuality, thousands of Germans were put to death for trying to overthrow the National Socialist tyranny—most of them Christian! The 3rd edition of The Fabricated Luther includes new images and added context of prominent figures Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Carl Friedrich Goerdeler. It also features illustrations to help explain Luther’s theology.
This group of men who died to protect their beliefs are examples of Luther’s true theology and prove that Luther would never support Hitler. In addition, they show when it is appropriate to resist secular authority and in what ways.
208 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 17, 2023
About the author
Uwe Siemon-Netto
27 books9 followersUwe Siemon-Netto (born October 25, 1936), the former religion editor of United Press International, is an international columnist and a Lutheran lay (non-ordained) theologian. He is the founder and emeritus director of the Center for Lutheran Theology and Public Life (CLTPL) and League of Faithful Masks, a non-profit religious corporation based in Capistrano Beach, California. CLTPL/LFM champions the Lutheran doctrine of vocation as an antidote against the destructive force of contemporary narcissism.This doctrine holds that Christians have a divine calling to serve their neighbor in all their secular endeavors. CLTPL was formerly located at Concordia Seminary St. Louis, Mo., where Siemon-Netto served as scholar-in-residence until 2009. As a journalist, Siemon-Netto specializes in issues relating to faith and society, and in foreign affairs. He is a correspondent of freepressers.com, an internet publication, and was a contributor of The Atlantic Times, an English-language monthly newspaper produced by leading German journalists for the North American market; he also taught as a visiting professor of journalism at Concordia University Irvine.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 14, 2025
No matter what starting point an author is dogmatically defending, you can only get so much use out of partisan attempts to prove a thesis that's been decided ahead of time. Though the introduction about cliched thinking was genuinely interesting, the cracks showed early. Uwe Siemon-Netto relies far too heavily on ad hominem, block quotation, and cherry picking to be persuasive to any but those who are seeking merely to have their biases confirmed.
This is disappointing, because what should have been the meat of the text, namely delving into Luther's relevant texts and seeing how he fares, only took a few pages. All the rest of the book was cherry-picking/bone-picking centered on specific historical figures. As I've unfortunately noticed in CPH-published books, the editors focused much more on visual style (which ends up being gaudy) instead of content; if they were responsible, they should have challenged Siemon-Netto to refine his thesis and evidence to be more persuasive, and if he couldn't, they shouldn't have published this.
Instead of steel-manning his opponents and addressing all the potential counter-arguments, the author relied on quotes from the most vocal opponents he could find, then showed how things were slightly more nuanced than that. That's of course not difficult to do; the difficult work would be to address a strong antithesis; such a one would be: "even though Luther himself was technically 'not antisemitic' because racial theories hadn't yet been invented, he is still culpable for setting the tone around Christian-Jewish relations for the next few hundred years, especially because of his moral failing to break with certain pernicious stereotypes and cliches about Jewish people and culture."
It's exceptionally ironic that Siemon-Netto didn't address to any degree Luther's own falling into cliche, nor the broader medieval context of Luther's anti-Jewish writings. His treatment of the latter issue was only in passing and he merely dismissed the topic with a weak appeal to Luther's bombast being typical of the time and place. This is as absurd as excusing the Germans for being Nazis because it was popular to be one. Siemon-Netto shied away from the real topic at hand and instead went on his own personal crusade to vindicate and vilify certain historical individuals in Germany and abroad circa WWII. This comprised over half of the book, and it was where the editors inserted most of the unhelpful photographs (each complete with their own caption, which often repeated information from the body text).
I understand that Siemon-Netto was a reporter and had many personal bones to pick (being so close to the Vietnam War and Berlin Wall, especially), but you can't do that in a text ostensibly about the link between Luther and Hitler. The problem is that this whole debate can't effectively be contained in a single book; even if you went through all of Luther's works and showed that he wasn't to blame, you still would have the obvious problem of interpretation, and why your particular interpretation is necessarily correct. This is perhaps the largest blindspot in Lutheran theology: the implicit assumption that scripture is obvious and self-evident to interpret (which is balanced atop an additional assumption, namely that of sola scriptura). In this case, the difficulty would be figuring out how far you'd need to keep arguing outside of Luther's own texts in order to vindicate him. However, the meta-question we should ask ourselves is "do we even need to worry about Luther's culpability in the first place?" If Luther the man is not the end-all be-all for Lutheran theology, politics, and culture, then why even bother?
The problem is that when we frame a highly-nuanced, half-millennia-long issue as a simple debate topic, we're essentially doomed from the start to never reach a meaningful conclusion. Instead, it would have been much more fruitful to explore in an open-ended way the good and the bad of Luther's writings, as well as the various effective and ineffective approaches of the German Church of the 20th century. Instead, because most contemporary conservative Lutheran theologians are more interested in being "right" than being curious, we're left with this.
This is disappointing, because what should have been the meat of the text, namely delving into Luther's relevant texts and seeing how he fares, only took a few pages. All the rest of the book was cherry-picking/bone-picking centered on specific historical figures. As I've unfortunately noticed in CPH-published books, the editors focused much more on visual style (which ends up being gaudy) instead of content; if they were responsible, they should have challenged Siemon-Netto to refine his thesis and evidence to be more persuasive, and if he couldn't, they shouldn't have published this.
Instead of steel-manning his opponents and addressing all the potential counter-arguments, the author relied on quotes from the most vocal opponents he could find, then showed how things were slightly more nuanced than that. That's of course not difficult to do; the difficult work would be to address a strong antithesis; such a one would be: "even though Luther himself was technically 'not antisemitic' because racial theories hadn't yet been invented, he is still culpable for setting the tone around Christian-Jewish relations for the next few hundred years, especially because of his moral failing to break with certain pernicious stereotypes and cliches about Jewish people and culture."
It's exceptionally ironic that Siemon-Netto didn't address to any degree Luther's own falling into cliche, nor the broader medieval context of Luther's anti-Jewish writings. His treatment of the latter issue was only in passing and he merely dismissed the topic with a weak appeal to Luther's bombast being typical of the time and place. This is as absurd as excusing the Germans for being Nazis because it was popular to be one. Siemon-Netto shied away from the real topic at hand and instead went on his own personal crusade to vindicate and vilify certain historical individuals in Germany and abroad circa WWII. This comprised over half of the book, and it was where the editors inserted most of the unhelpful photographs (each complete with their own caption, which often repeated information from the body text).
I understand that Siemon-Netto was a reporter and had many personal bones to pick (being so close to the Vietnam War and Berlin Wall, especially), but you can't do that in a text ostensibly about the link between Luther and Hitler. The problem is that this whole debate can't effectively be contained in a single book; even if you went through all of Luther's works and showed that he wasn't to blame, you still would have the obvious problem of interpretation, and why your particular interpretation is necessarily correct. This is perhaps the largest blindspot in Lutheran theology: the implicit assumption that scripture is obvious and self-evident to interpret (which is balanced atop an additional assumption, namely that of sola scriptura). In this case, the difficulty would be figuring out how far you'd need to keep arguing outside of Luther's own texts in order to vindicate him. However, the meta-question we should ask ourselves is "do we even need to worry about Luther's culpability in the first place?" If Luther the man is not the end-all be-all for Lutheran theology, politics, and culture, then why even bother?
The problem is that when we frame a highly-nuanced, half-millennia-long issue as a simple debate topic, we're essentially doomed from the start to never reach a meaningful conclusion. Instead, it would have been much more fruitful to explore in an open-ended way the good and the bad of Luther's writings, as well as the various effective and ineffective approaches of the German Church of the 20th century. Instead, because most contemporary conservative Lutheran theologians are more interested in being "right" than being curious, we're left with this.
August 16, 2025
It is rare to read a book written with the blood of the martyrs. I found myself moved to tears by the sacrifices of faithful men who did so in vain ignored by the world while trying to stop an evil man.
The writing is heavily academic, much tougher than my regular fare and it reminded me that I never want to spend another day in the classroom. The writer makes some extremely interesting arguments about the modern devotion to the concepts of "cliche" and "Zeitgeist". Both are half truths at best that are treated as full truths and too often are the basis from which thoughts and ideas spring as opposed to the actual reality. I am going to reduce how often I use these words going forward.
The author does an excellent job explaining the Lutheran concepts of government and politics. He also explains how in both principle and reality the confessional lutheran population did a better job resisting the Nazi's than other religious groups. The example of this that stands out the most is when he explains the church attendance issues in his community. When the Nazi-Christian pastor preached - no one showed up. When the confessional lutheran pastor preached the Gospel - the church was full.
The saddest part of the book was detailing how the German resistance to Hitler was denied support from the west. He also explained the issue of asking for unconditional surrender and its affects on 5th columns inside of opposition states.
Another fascinating point it that Lutheran political thought requires you to have a plan before you depose of an unworthy ruler. As such, the Lutheran leader for the resistance had a governing plan ready to implement if Hitler was ever successfully assassinated.
A definite must read for Lutherans who are interested in learning about the history of Lutheran political resistance.
The writing is heavily academic, much tougher than my regular fare and it reminded me that I never want to spend another day in the classroom. The writer makes some extremely interesting arguments about the modern devotion to the concepts of "cliche" and "Zeitgeist". Both are half truths at best that are treated as full truths and too often are the basis from which thoughts and ideas spring as opposed to the actual reality. I am going to reduce how often I use these words going forward.
The author does an excellent job explaining the Lutheran concepts of government and politics. He also explains how in both principle and reality the confessional lutheran population did a better job resisting the Nazi's than other religious groups. The example of this that stands out the most is when he explains the church attendance issues in his community. When the Nazi-Christian pastor preached - no one showed up. When the confessional lutheran pastor preached the Gospel - the church was full.
The saddest part of the book was detailing how the German resistance to Hitler was denied support from the west. He also explained the issue of asking for unconditional surrender and its affects on 5th columns inside of opposition states.
Another fascinating point it that Lutheran political thought requires you to have a plan before you depose of an unworthy ruler. As such, the Lutheran leader for the resistance had a governing plan ready to implement if Hitler was ever successfully assassinated.
A definite must read for Lutherans who are interested in learning about the history of Lutheran political resistance.
February 9, 2024
Clear presentation of the misrepresentation of Martin Luther
This book presents a well written case for studying The Holy Scriptures and Luther in both a historical and contemporary context.
This book presents a well written case for studying The Holy Scriptures and Luther in both a historical and contemporary context.
April 26, 2024
I was surprised how much I learnt and how much I enjoyed this fine book. While not a long read, it is well put together and reasonably easy to read. I knew quite a bit about Bonhoeffer and from an historical point of view, Luther - but I was unfamiliar with Goerdeler. I was also keen to read more about the German Church (especially Lutherans) under Nazism. To my pleasant surprise, this book didn’t stop with the fall of Hitler, but continues with the reign of Communism in East Germany, and the aftermath following reunification.
Rather than just refuting the myths about Luther (and his teaching) that the author starts out to do, he gives a good examination showing how the pre-WWII biases really prevented the pleas from German leadership (with Lutheran backgrounds and others) trying to get support to stop Hitler.
I was very moved as I heard the stories of how so many fellow Lutherans (and fellow Lutheran pastors) kept true to the Gospel regardless of whether it was Nazism or Communism in control.
Plus this has a wonderful categorised biography that encourages further reading.
Highly recommended not only for fellow Lutherans, but for any who want to hear more about Germany under Nazism and Communism.
Rather than just refuting the myths about Luther (and his teaching) that the author starts out to do, he gives a good examination showing how the pre-WWII biases really prevented the pleas from German leadership (with Lutheran backgrounds and others) trying to get support to stop Hitler.
I was very moved as I heard the stories of how so many fellow Lutherans (and fellow Lutheran pastors) kept true to the Gospel regardless of whether it was Nazism or Communism in control.
Plus this has a wonderful categorised biography that encourages further reading.
Highly recommended not only for fellow Lutherans, but for any who want to hear more about Germany under Nazism and Communism.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews