During the Second World War, Adolf Hitler tried to use Luckner for propaganda purposes, although as a Freemason Luckner was not in one of the Nazis' favoured groups of people. Luckner refused to renounce his membership of the Freemasons and the various honorary citizenships granted in the US, and consequently he suffered by having his bank account frozen. In 1943, he saved the life of a Jewish woman, Rose Janson, whom he provided with a passport he found on a bombsite, and who subsequently managed to escape to the United States via a neutral country. At the end of the war, the mayor of Halle, where he was living, asked Luckner to negotiate the town's surrender to the approaching American forces, which he did, although he did not return to the town after hearing that the Nazis had condemned him to death.