Martin Luther (diplomat)

For other people named Martin Luther see: Martin Luther (disambiguation).

Martin Franz Julius Luther (German: [ˈmaɐ̯tiːn ˈlʊtɐ]; 16 December 1895 – 13 May 1945) was an early member of the Nazi Party. He served as an advisor to Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, first in the Dienststelle Ribbentrop ("Ribbentrop Bureau"), and later in the Auswärtiges Amt ("Foreign Office") as a diplomat when von Ribbentrop replaced Konstantin von Neurath. He participated in the Wannsee Conference, at which the Final Solution was planned; it was the 1947 discovery of his copy of the minutes that first made the Allied powers aware that the conference had taken place and what its purpose was.

Luther ran a furniture removal and interior decorating business. He joined the Nazi Party and SA on 1 March 1933. He helped Ribbentrop to obtain a low party membership number, and when Ribbentrop was sent to London as Ambassador in 1936, he hired Luther to move his furniture from Berlin and do the interior decorating of the new German Embassy in London. Ribbentrop later offered him a position in his own foreign policy organisation, the Ribbentrop Bureau. Luther accepted, and henceforward became one of Ribbentrop's favourite hatchet men. Two years later he took over the 'Deutschland' department and moved it to its own building.

Luther was extremely loyal to Himmler. In May 1940, he was appointed to the position of Foreign Ministry liaison to the SS. By July 1941 he had advanced to the position of Ministerialdirektor with the rank of Unterstaatssekretär; his effective power exceeded that suggested by his title and rank, since he was the liaison between the party and the ministry. In addition he had become an SA Brigadeführer.

Luther attended the Wannsee Conference on 20 January 1942 as the representative of the Foreign Ministry, and after that his principal task was to persuade or pressure German satellites and allies to hand over their Jewish populations for deportation to the death camps. During this period, he also continued to work as an interior decorator for Ribbentrop's wife, helping her with the design of her various houses as well as her clothes. He resented this, stating that she treated him like one of her household servants.

She found him boorish, and Ribbentrop was dissatisfied with his not advancing the Foreign Office's interests in the internecine struggle with Himmler and the SS and tired of his mismanagement of office funds. Ribbentrop had also received complaints that Luther was blackmailing people.

In 1943, with the aid of Franz Rademacher, he tried to supplant von Ribbentrop as Foreign Minister but was thwarted and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp in 1944; Hitler had wanted him hanged, but Himmler ensured that he merely had to work in the camp herb garden. After failed suicide attempts he was freed by Soviet troops in spring 1945, but died shortly after of heart failure.

The copy of the Wannsee minutes sent to Luther by Heydrich was discovered in the ministry archives in 1947 and has played an important role in documenting the conference although Luther was among those who already knew that policy with regard to the "Jewish question" had changed.

Luther's copy of the minutes is the only record of the conference that survived the war, and its discovery was the first time the Allies became aware of the meeting and a follow up meeting on 6 March 1942. At the conference, he voiced concern about the large-scale "resettlement" required throughout occupied Europe, which seemed to indicate that he did not fully understand what was being planned. In addition, he had a memorandum prepared for his use at the conference, which speaks only of expulsions; it has been used by Holocaust denialists to argue that the conference did not present a policy of genocide, but is not inconsistent with a change in policy.

• Luther is shortly portrayed in Daniel Silva's book The Confessor which is part of Silva's Gabriel Allon series.
• Luther played an integral part in Robert Harris's alternate history novel, Fatherland.
• In the 2001 HBO film Conspiracy Luther was played by Kevin McNally.