Background
Nazi ideology called for the complete dominance of an Aryan master race
through the promotion of procreation between young, Aryan germans. As far as senior Nazis were concerned, therefore, all non-aryan
races, and undesirable or "sexually useless" individuals were to be condemned to
subjugation by the master race; indeed, Mein Kampf is littered with
statements about the enslavement of lower races.
Against this background it was clear to the Nazi leadership that
homosexuality would serve no use in their grand plan for world dominance;
after all, how could a man possibly help if he refused to have sex with women?
To some, in particular Heinrich Himmler (the leader of the SS), this was, to
an extent, purely a mathematical issue. In a speech given before a conference of
SS officers at Bad Tolz on 17 Feb 1937, he said:
"If you further take into account the facts I have not yet mentioned, namely
that with a static number of women, we have two million men too few on account
of those who fell in the war [of 1914-1918], then you can well imagine
how this imbalance of two million homosexuals and two million war dead, or
in other words a lack of about four million people having sex, has upset the
sexual balance sheet of Germany, and will result in a catastrophe.
"I would like to develop a couple of ideas for you on the question of
homosexuality. There are those homosexuals who take the view: 'what I do is
my business, a purely private matter'. However, all things that take place in
the sexual sphere are not the private affair of the individual, but signify the
life and death of the nation, signify world power or 'Swissification'. The
people which has many children has the candidature for world power and world
domination. A people of good race which has too few children has a one-way
ticket to the grave, for insignificance in fifty or a hundred years, for burial
in two hundred and fifty years...
"Therefore we must be absolutely clear that if we continue to have this burden
in Germany, without being able to fight it, then that is the end of Germany,
and the end of the Germanic world."1
Nazism seemed, however, to attract homosexuals, many of them guilty of some
of the worst of all Nazi excesses, in particular prior to 1939. Indeed, it has
been postulated recently that Hitler himself was secretly homosexual, and
compelling evidence exists to indicate this fact. One of Hitler's earliest and
closest friends, August Kubizeck, became an object of Hitler's secret
affections early on. After Hitler moved to Vienna, failing tests to join the
Art Academy twice, Kubizeck joined him and the two lived together for four
months. Hitler once wrote to Kubizeck, "I
cannot endure it when you consort and converse with other young people."2
During Hitler's time in Vienna it is well-documented that extensive
German and Austrian police records existed alluding to his sexuality (it is not clear whether he
was on any of the notorious "pink lists" compiled by German police forces since
1900). Following Hitler's meteoric rise to power in 1933 a huge effort was
undertaken by the Nazi party to erase all evidence of Hitler's time in
Vienna and his subsequent move to the "El Dorado for homosexuals",
Munich.2
At Munich in September 1919 Hitler was asked by the Army to investigate
the fledgling, tiny German Workers' Party, which would later evolve into the
German National Socialist Workers' Party (NSDAP, the Nazi party). A party
member, Anton Drexler, thrust a copy of his pamphlet, "My Political
Awakening", into the young Corporal Hitler's hands as he left the meeting.
Later the next morning, Hitler remembered about the pamphlet and read it,
finding that it met with many of his own political opinions. He was invited to
join the Party, and swiftly became an influential member due to his skills as an
organiser and orator.3
One of the two most important members of the Party at the time was
Captain Ernst Roehm, who was serving on the staff of the Army's District
Command VII Headquarters in Munich. A charismatic, bull-necked thug, Roehm
was to become the leader of the infamous SA, the brownshirts who were so
instrumental in intimidating Hitler's opponents throughout the regime's rise to power
and until the SS and Gestapo replaced it as the main instrument of
terror. Roehm was also a homosexual. Without his help, and that of the
"spiritual founder of National Socialism", Dietrich Eckart, Hitler would
almost certainly never have come to power.3
To his fury, following his sweep to power in 1933, Hitler was
lampooned in opposition press as an effeminate man;2 this proved to him the need
for a separate, state-approved newspaper, and his Voelkischer Beobachter
became Nazi Germany's main instrument for news and propaganda. In this
newspaper, Hitler was portrayed as a strong, virile, masculine man,
the Father of the Nation. It may never be known for certain whether Hitler was
actually homosexual, but if the supposed evidence is to be believed he hated his
sexuality and was driven both by ideology and personal emotions to eradicate
homosexuals throughout the Reich.
Nazi Elimination of Homosexuality
In 1934 the Gestapo set up a special commission on
homosexuality, the first action of which was to order every rosa List
(pink list) throughout Germany. Compiled by local police since 1900, these
lists contained details of all suspected homosexuals, and were to prove
essential to the Gestapo and the wider Nazy Party in the eradication of
the "social aberration" of homosexuality.
The Nazi party set about enshrining the ideological ideal of an
Aryan master race in German law through the introduction of the infamous
Blood Laws. Passed at a meeting of the Party Congress at
Nuremberg on 15 Sep 1935 these guarded the racial purity of German people by
prohibiting relationships between Jews and racially pure Germans.
This came after Hitler had dealt with the question of homosexuality,
which had not been persecuted with much vigour under the constitution of the
Weimar Republic. On 1 Sep 1935 an amendment to Paragraph 175 of the
Criminal Code, originally dating from 1871, went into effect. The entire text
of this oppressive law (which remained in place in West Germany until 1969) is
as follows:
175. A male who commits lewd and lascivious acts with another male
or permits himself to be so abused for lewd and lascivious acts, shall be punished by imprisonment.
In a case of a participant under 21 years of age at the time of the commission of the act, the
court may, in especially slight cases, refrain from punishment.
175a. Confinement in a penitentiary not to exceed ten
years
and, under extenuating circumstances, imprisonment for not
less than three months shall be imposed:
1. Upon a male who, with force or
with threat of imminent danger to life and limb, compels another
male to commit lewd and lascivious acts with him or compels
the other party to submit to abuse for lewd and lascivious acts;
2. Upon a male who, by abuse of a
relationship of dependence upon him, in consequence of service,
employment, or subordination, induces another male to commit lewd
and lascivious acts with him or to submit to being abused
for such acts;
3. Upon a male who being over 21
years of age induces another male under 21 years of age to commit
lewd and lascivious acts with him or to submit to being abused
for such acts;
4. Upon a male who professionally
engages in lewd and lascivious acts with other men, or submits to
such abuse by other men, or offers himself for lewd and
lascivious acts with other men.
175b. Lewd and lascivious acts contrary to nature between human beings and animals shall be punished by imprisonment; loss of civil rights may also be imposed.1
To uphold this law Himmler created the Reich Central Office for
the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion: Special Office (II S), a subdepartment of Executive Department II of the
Gestapo. Abortion was equally abhorrent to Nazi ideology as it prevented
the birth both of the master race and of social underclasses for enslavement by the Aryans.
Homosexuality was abhorrent because homosexual men, by definition, would not
copulate; additionally, even if they were forced to have sex with women the
children would be of tainted blood and, therefore, unacceptable. For this reason
bisexual men were not persecuted as vigorously by the regime, as they could
still copulate. Lesbians were only arrested in very small numbers because they
could still bear children (notably Paragraph 175 only outlawed male
homosexuality). Those lesbians who were arrested were usually accused of being
prostitutes or "asocials".
Paragraph 175 became a political tool for Hitler to use to
oppress his enemies. One of the highest-profile victims of Paragraph 175 was Roehm.
In 1934 Hitler's grip on power was still subject to the will of the ageing
President Hindenburg, who, along with the Army, was furious about the calls
from the SA for a total revolution under which Hitler would become President as well as
Chancellor. It became necessary for the SA's
power to be curtailed, which suited the purposes of both Himmler and Hermann
Goering, who were both jealous of Roehm's closeness to Hitler. On 30 June
1934 Roehm and some of his colleagues were sleeping in barracks as Weissee.
One of his chief lieutenants was Edmund Heines, the Obergruppenfuehrer of
Silesia, a homosexual, who happened to be sleeping with a young man at the
time that an hysterically furious Hitler and a party of supporters entered the
barracks at dawn. Heines and his lover were taken outside and summarily executed
under Paragraph 175 at Hitler's orders. Roehm, known already to be
homosexual was then confronted by Hitler and offered the opportunity to
commit suicide. When he refused he was executed in his cell, on Hitler's
personal orders, under Paragraph 175 (Hitler apparently saw this as an act
of mercy - he would rather execute his old friend for his sexuality than
for being a traitor).
Between 1933 and 1945 over 100,000 homosexuals were arrested,
many of them subjected to horrific experiments to "cure" them through castration,
electric shocks, and the use of testosterone - none of these experiments
yielded any useful scientific knowledge. Of these 100,000 "175ers" it is not
certain how many were arrested under Paragraph 175 purely as an excuse to
arrest them. What is known is that up to 15,000 of them were incarcerated in
concentration camps.
The Pink Triangle
Life in concentration camps, as we know, was utterly horrific for those unfortunate
enough to be an enemy of the state through birth, association, or sexuality.
Nazi Identification of Prisoners was, like so many other elements of the
regime, ruthlessly efficient, and was based upon a series of coloured triangular
patches and other symbols sewn on to the uniforms of prisoners. The worst of all
of these patches to be worn was the rosa Winkel pink triangle, or the
number "175", worn on the back of the uniform. Homosexuals were
usually the worst-treated in concentration camps, even by normal Nazi
standards. They were picked out for torture, some of the most degrading jobs,
and were bullied and attacked even by fellow inmates due to prevailing biases against homosexuality.
It was of course possible for a prisoner to combine two undesirable
characteristics, for example, a gay jew. All possibilities were
covered, however, and any prisoner combining two or more "undesirable"
characteristics would wear as many triangles as necessary to pick him out.
Under this system, gay jews would wear a pink triangle and, on top of this, a
yellow triangle in a star of David shape. The use of the star of David, an
important Jewish symbol, as a means of insult and punishment was deliberately
exercised by the Nazis in order to offend the Jewish community.
Nazism portrayed itself as a "fair" ideology by offering a few homosexuals
the opportunity to avoid concentration camps by submitting to castration,
and operation that few survived, and which would often result in them being
interred in any case (because a eunuch be of no use to the regime, being
unable to join the army, procreate or do hard work).
After the War
The horrors discovered in Nazi concentration camps by the Allied forces
following the capitulation of Germany need not be documented here. What needs
to be pointed out is that homosexuals were relatively poorly-treated even by
the liberating forces. Although released from incarceration in concentration
camps they were often simply displaced to other prisons, albeit prisons where
they were treated as prisoners, not as subhumans. Most were forced to serve out
their sentences this way. For those found in concentration camps in the
Soviet sector, incarceration continued in Gulags under Soviet
sexual ideology, where the abuse could be even worse than in the Nazi
camps.
Following the Nuremburg trials the various purely Nazi laws were repealed
or amended according to the English common law model in the West or the
Soviet model in the East. Paragraph 175 of the Criminal Code remained,
however, and was not repealed until 1969. Despite being a law virtually dictated
personally by Hitler it was still considered reasonable by the Allies and the
Government of West Germany.
Due to the ongoing biases against homosexuals the story of the 15,000
"175ers" and the 85,000 others arrested for their sexuality was hidden until as
late as the early 1990s. Homosexuality continued to be illegal in West Germany
and the Allied nations until, in most cases, the mid-to-late 1960s, so it was
impossible to speak up about the abuse offered to those unfortunate enough to
wear the pink triangle. The first 175er to achieve recognition was
Friedrich-Paul von Groszheim.
Groszheim was first arrested in Lubeck along with 230 other men in a single
day in 1937. He was arrested again a year later, interrogated and tortured. He
was one of the few offered the chance to be castrated or incarcerated; he chose
the former, and survived. In 1992 he broke his 54-year silence to speak about
his experiences. He told his story in a film, We were Marked with a Big 'A',
which is available in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.1
Only after he spoke up did others start to come forward and the scale of Nazi
persecution of homosexuals became apparent. Only then were homosexuals
counted by some as victims of the Holocaust, whereas previously they had
simply been viewed as criminals under the laws of the time.
Following the recognition of homosexual victims of Nazism several memorials
were built to their memory, most notably at Pink Triangle Park in San
Francisco. The pink triangle became one of the most popular symbols of the
gay community, which many have seen as an affront to the fact that the symbol
caused utter misery and torture for those forced to wear it in concentration
camps. To some people it is as wrong as the notion that the Jewish community
might wear yellow stars of David. The gay community counters by saying that they
have subverted the Nazi meaning of the triangle by adopting it - this way
no-one could use it as a symbol of oppression again.
Whether homosexuals were true victims of the Holocaust remains a
contentious issue. Many people, in particular the Jewish and Christian
Right, still believe that homosexuals merely fell short of the tough laws of
the time, and were no more unusual than those arrested for being "asocial".
Others believe that, due to the especially harsh treatment meted out to wearers
of the pink triangle, homosexuals were true Holocaust victims. More
militant elements of the gay community do not help the issue, some of them
making wild claims that 50,000 homosexuals died in concentration camps, or
were bussed to death camps (Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Dachau, etc) - no
evidence exists to substantiate either claim. In 1990 an organisation known as
"Lesbian and Gay Veterans" attempted to place 25,000 pink triangles on 10% of
the graves in Arlington National Cemetary, and a company started producing
cheque books with pink triangles emblazoned on each cheque as a symbol of the
pride and "financial strength" of the gay community.4
Homosexuals will never be considered to be more victimised than the
Jewish prisoners. This is accepted by all sides. Jews were ritually and
sadistically abused, used for horrific experiments, and only Jews could be
almost certain of ending their lives in a Zyklon B gas chamber at a death
camp. Nothing can demonstrate Nazi abuse of the Jews more than the fact
that six million died at the hands of the regime as a direct consequence
of Hitler's personal hatred.
It is clear though that homosexuals suffered at the hands of Nazism in some of
its most brutal excesses. Whether you believe that there was a "Homosexual
Holocaust" or not, it is vitally important that the story of Paragraph 175,
the pink triangle and the pink lists is told. With each year that passes
more evidence becomes available about the horrors perpetrated by Nazism, and no
story should be hidden.
Sources/bibliography:
1.
http://www.ushmm.org/education/resource/hms/homosbklt.pdf, United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum pamphlet on homosexual victims of Nazism (pdf
format).
2. Machtan, Lothar (trans. by Brownjohn, J), The Hidden
Hitler (Basic Books, 2002)
3. Shirer, William L, The Rise and Fall of the Third
Reich (Pan Books, London, 1960)
4. Marco, T, The "Homosexual Holocaust
(Leadership University pamphlet) -
http://www.leaderu.com/marco/special/spc16.html
Thanks to whichever small-minded individual softlinked wank wank wank. Oh, you're so clever. I wish I was a witty as you.