Luther attended a Gymnasium until August 1914 when he left school without obtaining his Abitur to enlist in the Imperial German Army.

He participated in the First World War as a member of a railway unit, attained the rank of Leutnant of reserves in 1917 and was awarded the Iron Cross, second class.

His first venture went bankrupt in the poor economic climate of the Weimar Republic but he started another furniture moving and interior decorating business.

In the course of his work, he made the acquaintance of the wealthy wine merchant and Adolf Hitler's foreign policy advisor Joachim von Ribbentrop and his wife.

[4] 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 at Carlton House Terrace.

[3] In November 1938, Luther was appointed as head of the sub-department Referat Partei, which carried out liaison activities between the ministry and the Party.

In addition to his existing functions, the ambitious Luther now was given responsibility for foreign travel, printing and distribution of written materials, liaison with the Schutzstaffel (SS) and, significantly, Jewish policy under Referat D III, which he entrusted to Franz Rademacher.

This was due to the conference organizer, SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, who much preferred dealing with the ambitious and cooperative Luther, rather than the aristocratic Foreign Office traditionalist, State Secretary Ernst von Weizsäcker.

That document committed the ministry to working with other countries to introduce antisemitic restrictions modeled on the Nuremberg Laws, and then to transport their Jews to the east.

During this period, Luther 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.

Though reports vary, he most likely sought assistance in this from SS-Brigadeführer Walter Schellenberg, head of the SS foreign intelligence service, who himself had ambitions of replacing Ribbentrop.

After two suicide attempts, he was freed over two years later when the camp was liberated by the Red Army in April 1945, but was hospitalized and died shortly afterward of heart failure.

[11] Also, beginning in October 1941, the SS had been sending periodic situation reports to the Foreign Office concerning the operations of the Einsatzgruppen in the Soviet Union.

However, he saw no such great difficulties arising for actions in southeast and western Europe, thereby giving the Foreign Office's concurrence with implementing the Final Solution in those areas.