馬丁路德（Martin Luther, 1483-1546）生平最被人詬病的兩件大事，大致在於他對農民革命以及猶太人的態度；他對前者的看法，更是左右了一般人對於路德戰爭觀的理解。於是〈反對殺人越貨的農民暴徒〉（Against the Robbing and Murdering Hordes of Peasants, 1525）中激烈的用語，經常成為被引用及批判的段落。特別是路德呼籲統治者，甚至所有人，都該殺滅農民暴徒那段話：「因為叛亂非僅止於普通的謀殺，它乃像一場大火，侵擊並蹂躪全地。…因此，只要能夠，人人都當在明處或暗處，砍、殺、刺，心中記住沒有任何事物比叛徒更惡毒、更傷人、更像惡魔。就像人必須撲殺一頭瘋狗一樣…」

Without understanding Luther’s Doctrine of the Two Kingdoms it would be difficult to appropriately understand Luther’s view on war because the two themes are closely connected in his thought. God has established two realms or kingdoms as well as two governments, with the Temporal Authority as the left-hand government and the Church as the right-hand government, according to Luther. The authority of launching a war belongs only to the left-hand kingdom of God which is the civil government, not the Church. Luther thus by all means denies the medieval view that the Church has the authority to wage a Holy War. In the 1520s, Luther insists that the inferior magistrates are by no means permitted to wage war against their superiors. However, when the Augsburg Confession was rejected by Charles V and the Lutherans under military threat, Luther was persuaded that the Protestant princes were entitled the right of self-defense in cases of “atrocious injury.” Since late 1536, Luther started to endorse Melanchthon’s position based on the natural law that it is legal to defeat forces with forces, and concurred with the idea that Elector John Frederic should fight against the Emperor once under severe threat. Luther’s view on war was definitely shaped during the Peasant War and the imminent danger of Turkish invasion into the Holy Roman Empire. It was specifically during the latter that Luther made his mature statement against the idea of Holy War.