Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants’ War

This year is the 500th anniversary of the German Peasants’ War (1524–25), the largest popular uprising in Western Europe before the French Revolution. The Peasants’ War broke out a few years after Martin Luther published his Ninety-Five Theses (1517) that launched the Reformation and inspired the peasants’ demands, although Luther soon distanced himself from their cause. Tom Hamilton from The Historian met with Lyndal Roper – Regius Professor of History at the University of Oxford, where she is the first woman and the first Australian to hold this role – to discuss her new book on the uprising, Summer of Fire and Blood, and why the Peasants’ War matters for Germany today...