Meph:

My gut response is that it would be pointless to make that kind of distinction practically. The Jewish faith is largely a story of a PEOPLE whose very cultural identity is linked to their Jewish heritage. No one is saying that Luther would have validated the ethnic cleansing element of all this. Not at all. What it being said is that it cannot be denied that Luther's anti-semitism in some real way CONTRIBUTED to the anti-semitism seen later in Germany.

I pretty much agree with what you said here.  The distinction seemed to me to be a bit awkward when I heard it, but interesting nonetheless. (Perhaps awkward because I’d never heard that distinction before.) But it is clear that Hitler quoted a fair amount of Luther’s stuff to support his propaganda.  One thing I’d like to throw out there is the possibility of the surrounding cultural influences on Luther as well since there was already quite a bit of negative religious/cultural discrimination going on in Luther’s time as well.  Does this remedy everything Luther said? No, absolutely not, but I do think it’s still important to keep the historical/cultural influences in mind when considering what Luther wrote.  The question is (and I don’t really have an answer) suppose Luther time-traveled to 1933, would he have retracted what he wrote (while still carrying the cultural influences of the 1500’s/1600’s)? 

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I do think this would be something very interesting to talk about. How about you give us some more information to chew on with this?

I’ll look around for stuff that would help in this.  I made a lot of stops at the library and can’t even remember all the materials I looked at.  But the biggest question I have right now is what the heck led up to the Deutsche Christen?  I’ll have to go back and read up on some of the letters I have.  I have my notes somewhere, but I vaguely recall that there may have been some battle between some sort of “liberal theology” offshoot from Schleiermacher (which, as far as I remember, influenced the Oxford Group Movement), pietism, and a growing call to “unite the churches”.  When I read some of this stuff, I couldn’t help but see some parallels in relation to the church today. 

But I am a bit unclear of what exactly this “liberal theology” was/is.  It has something to do with experience trumps doctrine I think.  I understand it was also some sort of response to Kant in Schleiermacher's time.  It seems similar to the “faith” movements we see today (all heart and no head), the calls for a grand revival, and the "can't we all just get along?" part of it.  The Oxford Group Movement didn't stand up against the Nazi regime, but instead allowed some well-known Nazi officials to join their group.  Anyway, after searching for stuff on the internet, here’s part of an article I just came across that seems somewhat balanced in it’s take of what happened:

http://www.americanthinker.com/articles_print.php?article_id=4370

Once arrived at the Chancellery, Hitler faced an awful lot of opposition to either defeat or co-opt: the two major Churches, the nobility, the army, the Socialists, the Communists, rival corporatists, and so on. After Hindenburg’s death in 1934, he and his party rapidly pursued a policy of Gleichsaltung --- “Coordination.” What this meant was that all of the various interests in the State must be made either to fit into the NSDAP’s program, or else eliminated. In piecemeal fashion, this was achieved.

As for Christianity it was the Protestants, due to their lack of organization, who were a bit easier to tackle --- the more so since, prior to 1918, the Protestant Landeskirchen had functioned more or less as departments of the State, with each Evangelical territorial King, Grand Duke, or Prince functioning as Summus Episcopus --- “Highest Bishop,” of his own Church (the Catholic Kings of Saxony and Bavaria were of course left out of this arrangement; the imminent ascension of a Catholic to the throne of Württemberg was one of the major pre-War questions in 1914). Thus, the creation of an overarching “German Christian” Church under Reichsbischof Mueller was not without precedent. The German Christians who were able to reconcile their faith with the tenets of the party were able to do so quite easily, as it was presented to them as “updating” their religion, bringing it into tune with the spirit of the age: in a word, making it relevant. There was, to be sure, a “Confessing Church” which rejected these efforts. But in most cases these were folk who had held to such notions as the inerrancy of scripture before Hitler’s rise. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was typical of such.

As for the Catholic Church, this was a harder nut to crack. For one thing, the Catholic Center Party had remained a powerful factor when the other parties collapsed at the ballot box (an election map of the elections in 1932 and 1933 shows that while most Socialist, Liberal, Conservative, and even a few Communist districts eventually went NSDAP, the Center’s territory remained almost intact). But Hitler went over their heads, signing a concordat with Pope Pius XI in return for securing the Pontiff’s order to the Catholic Center Party to disband. Mind you, this was not because of any love of Hitler on Pius’ part: rather, he was keen to “get the Church out of politics” whenever possible. Hence he had ordered the Popolari in Italy similarly to dissolve after Mussolini’s promises, and ordered the Cristeros in Mexico to lay down their arms and cease their rebellion against the U.S.-backed PRI government. In all three cases, the result was the same: disaster --- a precedent future peace-minded prelates might take into account. There were of course some Catholic collaborators: Fr. Karl Rahner, S.J., (later to win fame of a more clearly theological sort) was the only Catholic priest granted freedom to travel throughout the War --- all others had to report their movements.

It'll take a couple of days to re-cap what I found (it was a while ago). 

And John, thanks for the info on the book.  I'll look into that as well.