Martin Luther was the most outspoken of all “priests” against Jews. He preached hatred and violence towards Jews, and many followers took them to heart and acted upon them, but as far as I am aware he never personally took part in any violence. Like many “demagogues”, why dirty your hands when others freely do it for you?
My thought ... Luther had a bigger ambition. He didn't want to form a separate church, or even to reform the church. He wanted to be the Pope of a new German messianic church, of the End Times of Revelation. And in that context, saw Jews who didn't convert to his new church as Satan's own. Which is to say, Christian anti-Semites say, that had the Jews accepted Jesus in his time, History would have ended. Similarly Luther came to believe that the "stiff necked Jews" were responsible for postponing the Germanic Rapture. Which is to say that Luther was much closer to End Times Protestantism of the early 20th century, than given credit for. It is also covered up, I think, that Emperor Constantine regarded himself as the Second Coming, that initially the Byzantine Church was heretical.
I was kicked out of a Facebook group early on for daring to suggest that the Catholic Church had collaborated with Fascism. The book, Constantine's Sword goes into this failure of church leadership, doesn't simply dump on the Lutherans.
