It seems that there were prior movements and reformers who shared ideas similar to Luther who the Catholic Church were able to successfully suppress/persecute, yet most general history classes sort of... ignore them in favor of starting the Reformation with Martin Luther. It seems like many reformers had brought up the same issues Luther did with the selling of indulgences, for example. Is this oversimplification on modern teaching's part or was Luther unaware of prior reformers... or something in between? It seems unlikely that Luther would have been totally unaware of Hus and the Bohemian Reformation when those events were not far removed from Luther temporally or spatially.

And why did he succeed where others had failed? Was it simply a greater ability to get his word out because of the invention of the printing press (this seems to be the most common story when reading about Luther)? Or did Luther simply get greater support from political leaders than previous movements did?

I know the later wars of religion in Europe get complicated and are often more about power and control than religious doctrine (for example, the Catholic French crown financing the Protestant Swedish crown to fight the Catholic (and, perhaps more importantly, Hapsburg) German states during the Thirty Years' War). Were these same kinds of political machinations present in authorities taking up Luther's cause (ie they supported Luther because of the chance to get out from under the thumb of the Church more than a real religious zeal about Luther's teachings)?

Can the lack of teaching about those prior movements simply be chalked up to a lack of documents on them because of Catholic successful suppression and persecution? Do we just not know enough about the Waldensians, Lollardy, etc. to speak authoritatively on them because the Church did such a good job of driving them underground or extinct? I know there's been some debate about other heretical movements and what they actually believed versus what the Church says they believed.