***{Below is Page: 94 }***
{See Comment 94-1}
Chapter Five
The Persecution of Homosexuals
*** {start comment 94-1}
With this chapter we come to what suggests
itself as a possible motivation for one of the
authors of this book, namely the "misuse" of the
"Holocaust." Some Jews object when abortion
protesters adopt the term "Holocaust of the pre-
born" or when Blacks talk of a "Black Holocaust."
The talk of a "Gay Holocaust" raises tempers far
beyond the use of the word in connection with
abortion or the slave trade, presumably because
the Jewish holy books speak of homosexual acts as
an "abomination" (even though they do so in the
context of idolatrous temple prostitution). Other
Jews, including some writers, feel that a
"Holocaust mentality" is counter-productive -- for
example damaging the future of Israel by hampering
efforts to reconcile differences with its
neighbors.
The Pink Swastika author notes the
disgraceful anti-gay riot that occurred at Yad
Vashem, Israel's Holocaust Memorial in May of
1994, when gay Jews were physically assaulted as
they attempted to hold a remembrance ceremony for
gay Jews who had died in the Holocaust (see page
123 of The Pink Swastika). It seems likely that
the principal motivation of the Pink Swastika
author is anger over the attempt of some gays to
"share" in the Holocaust. Such anger is not
exclusive to Jewish "Holocaust defenders." Some
Blacks have accused gays of "pimping off the Civil
Rights movement," while they have seldom, if ever,
demonstrated anger at Latinos, Asians, American
Indians, or other groups who might have used the
term "civil rights" in their struggles. This
demonstrates that their motivation is homophobia.
It's appropriate to introduce this issue at
the beginning of a discussion of the persecution
of gays. Everything the author of The Pink
Swastika writes should be analyzed while keeping
in mind the outrage that is aroused in some by
linking the "abomination" of homosexuality with
the "Holocaust."
The reader should be alerted to one valuable
book that didn't make the reading list of the Pink
Swastika author. Guenter Grau edited Hidden
Holocaust? Gay and Lesbian Persecution in Germany
1933-45, published by Cassell in 1995 (original
German in 1993). This very interesting book gives
texts of various German documents relating to the
persecution. It is similar to a book written to
refute "Holocaust deniers" which documents the
extermination of Jews. One can't help noticing
that, in apparent deference to "Holocaust"
sensibilities, the title of the book is posed as a
question "Gay Holocaust?" rather than an
established fact.
There is another resource ignored by the Pink
Swastika author. Robert Proctor's Racial Hygiene:
Medicine under the Nazis (Harvard U. Press 1988)
touches on Nazi attitudes toward and measures
against homosexuals.
The Nazis usually grouped Jews and
homosexuals together as menaces to the state, and
some even tried to paint homosexuality as a Jewish
disease, holding Jews responsible for it. Grau's
book notes another interesting coupling, namely
homosexuality and abortion. The Gestapo's "Reich
Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and
Abortion" was headed by Josef Meisinger. In Hidden
Holocaust? Grau notes that after the start of the
war Messenger was transferred to Poland, where he
instituted terrorist measures against Jews and
Polish intellectuals. He was too brutal even for
the Nazis, and was transferred to a post in Tokyo,
where he had no policing duties.
Whether it is justified for gays, Blacks, or
abortion protesters to offend certain Jews by
appropriating the term "Holocaust" is for those
groups to decide, but they should reflect
carefully on it. There's actually very little, if
any, use by gays of the term "Holocaust" -- they
merely want it recognized that Hitler and his
henchmen did carry our a very active program to
eradicate homosexuality.
Gays should avoid using the term "Holocaust,"
for they have nothing to gain by it and only stir
up ill feeling without achieving anything. At the
same time, it has to be pointed out that neither
abortion protesters nor Blacks have evoked so much
venom, even though they have repeatedly and
stridently appropriated the term "Holocaust" for
their cause. That suggests that much of the
objection to the "Gay Holocaust" is due to
homophobia rather than to concern for the
Holocaust, and that in itself is disrespectful to
the memory of 6 million Jews. Their memory should
not be tarnished by perpetuating intolerance of
any minority.
*** {end comment 94-1}
Read the Same Text Again Skip Forward Table of Contents
{See Comment 94-2}
Homosexualist revisionists assert that Hitler's ascension to
the Chancellorship marked the beginning of a homosexual Holo-
caust in Germany. For example, Plant writes, "After years of
frustration.. Hitler's storm troopers now had the opportunity to
smash their enemies: the lame, the mute, the feebleminded, the
epileptic, the homosexual, the Jew, the Gypsy, the communist.
These were the scapegoats singled out for persecution. These
were the 'contragenics' who were to be ruthlessly eliminated to
ensure the purity of the 'Aryan race.'" (Plant:51). Rector, an-
other revisionist, makes a similar statement: "Hitler's homophobia
did not surface until 1933-1934, when gays had come to affect
adversely his New Order designs -- out of which grew the simple
solution of murdering them en masse" (Rector:24).
*** {start comment 94-2}
The term "revisionist" is not at all
appropriate in reference to Rector and Plant. A
"revisionist" attempts to rewrite history by
marshaling evidence to make a case that the
interpretation of events generally accepted by
historians is wrong. Neither Plant nor Rector
tries to revise a generally accepted version of
history. They both merely shed light on aspects of
it that have received little attention in the
past.
The term "revisionist" was perhaps
popularized in reference to the history of
Communism, and before that to "revised" extensions
of Marxist theory. The Soviets revised existing
history to bolster their cause, and Communists
accused each other of "revisionism." More recently
the pejorative connotation of "revisionist" has
been intensified as "Holocaust deniers" have re-
evaluated documentation and presented a case for
denying that the Nazis ever carried out a campaign
to exterminate Jews using poison gas facilities.
The Pink Swastika author fits perfectly the
definition of "revisionist," in that he would set
history on its head by having the homosexual
victims of Nazism become responsible for their own
persecution by allegedly having been responsible
for the founding of the Nazi party. Indeed, he
goes further, claiming that homosexuals bore main
responsibility for the Holocaust and for
brutalizing Jews in the concentration camps. To
lend any credibility to these assertions in the
face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, he
has invented the "butch/femme" dichotomy
introduced earlier in this book. The secret
"butch" (masculine) homosexuals ran the Holocaust
and the Nazi government, and persecuted only the
"femme" (effeminate) homosexuals they allegedly
despised.
One major difference between the persecution
of homosexuals and that of Jews, Gypsies,
Jehovah's Witnesses, and certain other groups, was
that homosexuality runs through all groups
everywhere, and that it was difficult to identify
homosexuals. Jehovah's Witnesses were registered
on membership rolls or could be rounded up when
they gathered in their churches (homosexuals were
rounded up in raids in gay bars and other
gathering places, of course). Jews also appeared
on lists, and had in addition been entered into a
government registry long before anyone dreamt of
the persecution that might ensue. Those Jews not
listed but suspected were rigorously examined for
physical features (circumcision, shape of nose,
etc.) that allegedly indicated Jewish blood.
Homosexuals could be found only on police reports
if they had violated Germany's anti-homosexual
law, or in roundups at gay bars and other venues
where they gathered, or on the basis of rumor and
suspicion. There were Jews who had been lucky
enough not to appear on any list and whose
appearance didn't suggest to the Nazis that they
were Jewish. With appropriate identification
papers they were able to "pass" and survive. Their
number was tiny, while the proportion of
homosexuals who "passed" and survived was large.
Right after the passage cited in The Pink
Swastika, Plant adds: "To the rampaging fascist
gangs, the Jews were money-grubbing subhumans.
Many Germans knew this stereotype to be untrue.
But hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions,
wanted to believe it, or at least did not protest
when the Nuremberg laws of 1935 deprived Germany's
Jews of their citizenship and turned them into
targets for persecution. Homosexuals were less
easy to scapegoat and harass. Unlike the Jews,
they could not be readily identified and
registered -- which enabled many homosexuals to
"pass" undetected during the twelve years of the
Third Reich.
"At first Nazi attacks against homosexuals
were interpreted by many gays solely as prompted
by anti-Semitism, directed at {Magnus} Hirschfeld
and {Kurt} Hiller {Hiller was Hirschfeld's
successor at the Institute of Sex Research}. Just
as many Jews, even after the Nuremberg laws of
1935, still hoped that 'things would quite down,'
that Hitler would not carry out the methodical
oppression he had threatened since 1925, the year
Mein Kampf was published, most homosexuals too did
not read the danger signals correctly. Perhaps
some found reason for optimism in the widely known
fact that one of the most influential Nazi
leaders, Ernst Roehm, was himself a homosexual.
Perhaps it was thought that Roehm would offer
protection. If so, it was an exceedingly dangerous
delusion. For it would not be long before Hitler
would order Roehm's murder and the massacre of the
SA's leadership."
Hitler assumed power on January 30, 1933. On
February 23, pornography and homosexual rights
organizations were banned. On March 23, Kurt
Hiller was arrested and sent to Oranienburg
concentration camp. Hirschfeld escaped because he
was out of the country on a lecture tour at the
time. After nine months Hiller was released and
escaped to Prague, and from there to London.
Steakley (page 103, op cit -- see bibliography)
says that at his release Hiller was "on the verge
of death from brutal treatment."
*** {end comment 94-2}
Read the Same Text Again Skip Forward Table of Contents
The fact is that homosexuals were never murdered "en masse
or "ruthlessly eliminated" by the Nazis. Yet many homosexuals
were persecuted and some did die in Nazi work camps. What is
the truth about Nazi persecution of homosexuals?
There are several incidents in Nazi history which are most
often cited as evidence of their persecution of homosexuals. This
list includes a series of increasingly harsh public pronouncements
and policies against homosexuality by Hitler and Himmler, the
sacking of the Sex Research Institute of Berlin, the Roehm Purge
***{Below is Page: 95 }***
(also known as "The night of the Long Knives"), and the intern-
ment of homosexuals in work camps. We will look at each of
these incidents in turn.
{See Comment 95-1}
Anti-Homosexual Policies
The law against homosexual conduct had existed in Germany
for many years prior to the Nazi regime as Paragraph 175 of the
Reich Criminal Code, to wit: "A male who indulges in criminally
indecent activity with another male, or who allows himself to par-
ticipate in such activity, will be punished with imprisonment
(Burleigh and Wipperman {sic}: 188). When Hitler came to power he
used this law as a means of tracking down and punishing those
homosexuals who, in the words of one victim, "had defended the
Weimar Republic, and who had tried to forestall the Nazi threat"
(ibid.: 183). Later he expanded the law and used it as a conve-
nient tool to detain other enemies of the regime.
In February of 1933, Hitler banned pornography, homosexual
bars and bath-houses, and groups which promoted "gay rights"
(Plant:50). Ostensibly, this decree was a blanket condemnation
of all homosexual activity in Germany, but in practice it served as
just another "reason" to find and destroy anti-Nazi groups and
individuals. "Hitler," admits Oosterhuis and Kennedy, "employed
the charge of homosexuality primarily as a means to eliminate
political opponents, both inside his party and out" (Oosterhuis
and Kennedy:248).
*** {start comment 95-1}
This is simply "revisionism." It's rather
remarkable that Oosterhuis and Kennedy would make
such a statement in a book entitled Homosexuality
and Male-bonding in pre-Nazi Germany, and one
suspects that clarifying context is being
suppressed by the Pink Swastika author.
The Nazis did, in fact, make "sweeps" to try
to round up homosexuals, carrying out raids of
taverns where they heard rumors of gays
congregating after the gay bars had been closed
down. Grau, on page 132, presents a newspaper
story reporting one such raid which is worth
quoting. He calls it "A 'cleansing operation'
against homosexuals in Hamburg." The report is
from the Essen National-Zeitung {National
Newspaper, city of Essen}, 28 August 1936.
"Berlin, 28 August. A special unit of Secret State
Police has started work on a large-scale cleansing
operation against homosexual practices.
"The rise of this type of offence due to the
loosening of morals after the world war meant that
energetic action had to be taken in the summer of
1934, soon after the National Socialists took
power. The tougher sanctions which the law of 28
June 1935 introduced for this type of offence,
together with vigorous action by the police, led
to a sharp decline in such abuses. A special unit
of the Secret State Police {Gestapo} was
established for cleansing operations in Berlin and
many other towns. This unit has now also begun
activity in Hamburg, and in the shortest time a
large number of so-called 'traffic pubs'
[Verkehrslokale {local taverns}] have been raided.
Several hundred people were arrested. And further
arrests are imminent.
"Those arrested so far come from nearly every
occupational group and layer of the population --
which proves how wrong is the widespread idea that
this scourge is mainly an offence committed by so-
called intellectuals. The wide haul from the
Secret State Police searches demands rapid
sentencing of the guilty. In Hamburg a special
department was set up to bring the charges before
the Express Jury Court. The accused were sentenced
to terms ranging from one year to a year and eight
months.
"According to the judicial press agency in
Bonn, 69 charges of homosexual offences and crimes
are pending with the Bonn prosecution office
against people from Bonn and the surrounding area.
Here too proceedings are being taken against
people from all sections of the population. Some
30 individuals have already been dealt with by the
Bonn district Court, which passed jail sentences
of between a year and eighteen months.
{This is a far cry from a "Holocaust," but it must
be remembered that 1936 is long before the
systematic roundup and imprisonment of Jews and
other victims. The infamous Kristallnacht pogrom
didn't occur until the end of 1938. It must also
be remembered that even at that early date there
was severe mistreatment of prisoners at some
concentration camps, and that even less than a
year there might have resulted in death.}
On pages 50-51 Grau quotes from a report by a
member of the 'Adolf Hitler' SS Bodyguard on a
raid carried out on 11 March 1935.
"On 9.3.35 the storm company under my command
provided a detachment of 20 men which was
allocated in support of Gestapo agents for the
round-up of homosexuals. At 21.15 hours the unit
left barracks in two lorries and reported for duty
at 22.00 hours to Police Inspector Kanthack. Apart
from our unit 10-12 police officers had been
assigned for the planned round-up, some of them
having already been deployed to ensure that things
went according to plan. A few of them came back
ahead of our operation. During this time Inspector
K. Told me what was planned.
"At 22.45 hours we left the Gestapo station
and went with several vans to the 'Weinmeister
Kaluse' pub in Weinmeisterstrasse, where many
homosexually inclined people were supposed to be
hanging around. As previously discussed, two of
our men occupied each of the two exits from the
pub with orders to let no one out but to admit
anyone wishing to enter. Eight previously assigned
men cordoned off the area in front of the bar past
the other part of the pub. Two men searched the
toilets. Inspector K. and his officers took away
from the tables everyone who seemed suspicious.
They had to go and stand by the men in front of
the bar, and from there they were loaded into the
vans and taken by our men under guard to the
Gestapo station.
"Among those arrested was s woman who was
supposed to have had Soviet Russian rabble-rousing
leaflets on her. From the Gestapo courtyard the
detainees were taken, again under guard, to the
corridor of the fourth-floor apartments used for
such cases. Here our men sorted them in
alphabetical order and made them wait under guard
with their faces to the wall for questioning; this
was begun immediately by most of the previously
mentioned officers. After questioning and until it
was decided whether they were guilty, these people
went to another part of the corridor where they
were again kept under guard by some of our men.
"After the questioning of the first detainees
had begun, Inspector K. continued the round-up
with some of his people who were not immediately
needed for the interrogation and with the rest of
our men. The second place where homosexuals were
to be arrested was a beer-pub in the Cottbusser
Damm. The cordoning off and searching followed in
the way described before. From here nearly two
van-loads were taken to the Gestapo station and
dealt with in the same way. Immediately afterwards
Inspector K. wanted to raid the halls of residence
on Landsbergerstrasse with six of our men and four
detectives. Nothing came out of this, however,
because -- as he said later -- the action against
people in there had been delayed by eight days. On
the basis of a telephone call, we were supposed to
search another pub en route, where mainly SS and
SA men with homosexual inclinations hung out. This
action also failed to produce results. After we
had returned to the Gestapo station, the
questioning began with vigour and one of the
detectives had to go to police headquarters with
details of all those arrested so far in order to
check whether any of the criminal offences were
involved.
"[....}
"Following this the next action began, again
with four detectives and roughly eight of our men,
who raided the 'Milch Bar' on Augsburgerstrasse
and another bar on the corner of Kantstrasse and
Fasanenstrasse. Here the haul was one van-load.
When we had again taken the people under arrest to
the Gestapo station, Inspector K. would have liked
to arrest a certain figure whose full name he did
not actually know. So he took to the road with two
detectives and three of our men plus myself. First
we searched a big beer-pub on the Schiffbauerdamm,
and after this had proved fruitless we went to
Schoeneberg and drew up in front of the pub 'Die
Insel'. Inspector K. and his officers went in
there alone, while we men in uniform occupied the
entrance. After this search again proved
fruitless, the round-up was brought to an end and
the sorting out of the people under arrest began
at the Gestapo station. On 10.3.35 I conducted the
first transport of the guilty to the Columbiahaus,
with a guard of 8 SS men. After all the
questioning was over, those without any proof
against them were released. For this our unit
formed a line up to the exit and everyone due for
release had to pass through it. By around 10.00
hours everyone had been released, except for the
ones who were immediately guilty. These we took to
the Columbiahaus on our way back to barracks,
where we arrived at about 11.15 hours."
{End of text... the ellipsis above, [....] is
Grau's indication of material he skipped.}
Note that this "witchhunt" was made on
ordinary bars, all gay bars having been closed
down. That is why only "suspicious" men were
picked up, and why none at all were arrested at
some locations. There was no intent to arrest
anti-Nazi groups and individuals using false
charges of homosexuality as an excuse. The only
person detained for any reason besides
homosexuality was a women found accidentally who
happened to be carrying Russian propaganda
leaflets. There was only one person specifically
sought out, and the police didn't even know his
name. This raid was quite clearly a hunt for
homosexuals, and a fairly thorough one, since
people were grilled at Gestapo headquarters and
many released. It was not the use of homosexuality
as an excuse to round up political enemies, and
there was no list of names to be rounded up.
No evidence has been cited by the Pink
Swastika author or his cited source to back the
assertion that the homosexual laws were employed
by Hitler mainly as a cloak for a round-up of
political or other opponents.
*** {end comment 95-1}
Read the Same Text Again Skip Forward Table of Contents
{See Comment 96-1}
The masculine homosexuals in the Nazi leadership selectively
enforced this policy only against their enemies and not against all
homosexuals. Rector lends credence to this notion, citing the
fact that the decree "was not enforced in all cases" (Rector: 66).
Another indication is that the pro-Nazi Society for Human Rights
continued to participate in German society for several years after
the decree. In The Racial State, Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang
Wipperman {sic} remind us that Roehm was a leading member of the
SHR, and we know from Anthony Read and David Fisher that the
***{Below is Page: 96 }***
SHR was still active in Germany as late as 1940 (Read and
Fisher:245). Furthermore, Oosterhuis and Kennedy write that
*** {start comment 96-1}
Burleigh and Wippermann say that Roehm
belonged to the League for Human Rights, not that
he was a "leading" member.
This is certainly no evidence that the SHR
was still operating in Germany.
Read and Fisher talk about the progress in
the French courts of the Herschel Grynszpan case.
Grynszpan was the Jewish youth who had killed
Ernst vom Rath in Paris and given the Nazis an
excuse for the Kristallnacht pogrom against the
Jews in 1938.They write of the time he was being
held in a French prison awaiting trial just after
the Germans began their invasion of France: "By
then, Herschel had been in custody for twenty
months, longer than any juvenile in French legal
history, in spite of continuous efforts by Moro
{his lawyer} and others to get him freed. The last
attempt had been in April 1940, when Victor Basch,
president of the League of Human Rights, had
pleaded for 'liberty or judgment....'" Read and
Fisher don't elaborate on the League, but if it
were a German organization they would likely have
identified it by its German name, just as they use
French for names of French organizations -- and it
hardly seems that a group inside Germany would
dare to or would be allowed to agitate in behalf
of a Jew who had killed a German diplomat in a
country with which Germany was at war. The League
may have been French, or English or American. It
may have had nothing to do with homosexuality at
all, but may have been concerned with the rights
of Herschel as a juvenile, or it may have been one
of a number of groups set up to champion his
cause. And if it were the homosexual group, it's
quite possible it was being run by Germans living
in exile in France. Unfortunately Read and Fischer
don't give adequate detail to allow a positive
identification.
*** {end comment 96-1}
Read the Same Text Again Skip Forward Table of Contents
{See Comment 96-2}
"Although he was well known as a gay-activist, [Adolf] Brand
was not arrested by the Nazis" (Ooosterhuis {sic} and Kennedy: 7).
Some of Brand's files were confiscated by the Nazis in their at-
tempt to gather all potentially incriminating evidence.
*** {start comment 96-2}
Steakley gives Brand's birth date as 1874,
but lists only a question mark for the date of his
death. The truth is that all of Brand's material,
not only files but also the stock-in-trade of his
magazine, was confiscated in five separate raids
from early May to late November of 1933. Brand was
effectively bankrupted, and a letter of his, in
which he despairs being able to earn a living and
support his family, is quoted in Grau, op cit
pages 34-6. As stated above Hiller was surprised
to be released from the concentration camp after
that and escaped from Germany. Brand may well have
done the same, and disappeared from history.
These events happened very early in the Nazi
period, during their first year in power. They
were still in a shaky position in the world and
had to show moderation in many areas where they
became increasingly extreme as their military
power grew. Steakley notes that 853 men were
convicted of homosexual charges under p175 in 1933
and 948 in 1934, but that in 1935 the number rose
to almost 4000, to 5321 in 1936, and to almost
9000 in 1937.
An illustration of Nazi concern for world
opinion dates even as late as the 1936 Olympics.
During the games they forbade outward displays of
anti-Semitism. Grau relates that police were
instructed not to enforce the homosexual laws
against foreigners in any way, no matter what they
did. Himmler issued a decree on July 20, 1936 "For
the coming weeks I forbid the taking of action,
including interrogation or summons, against any
foreigners under 175 without my personal
approval."
*** {end comment 96-2}
Read the Same Text Again Skip Forward Table of Contents
{See Comment 96-3}
In 1935, Paragraph 175 was amended with Paragraph 175a
which criminalized any type of behavior that could be construed
as indicating a homosexual inclination or desire (Burleigh and
Wipperman {sic}: 190). (Interestingly, the new criminal code address-
ing homosexuality deleted the word "unnatural" from the defini-
tion) -- (Reisman, 1994:3). This new law provided the Nazis
with an especially potent legal weapon against their enemies {sic} It
will never be known how many non-homosexuals were charged
under this law but it is indisputable that the Nazis used false accu-
sations of homosexuality to justify the detainment and imprison-
ment of many of their opponents. "The law was so loosely for-
mulated," writes Steakley, "that it could be, and was, applied
against heterosexuals that the Nazis wanted to eliminate...the law
was also used repeatedly against Catholic clergymen"
(Steakley: 111). Kogon writes that "The Gestapo readily had re-
course to the charge of homosexuality if it was unable to find any
pretext for proceeding against Catholic priests or irksome critics"
(Kogon:44).
*** {start comment 96-3}
The Pink Swastika author distorts what
Steakley says by leaving out context. Steakley
adds "But the law was undoubtedly used primarily
against homosexuals, and the court system was
aided in the witchhunt by the entire German
populace, which was encouraged to scrutinize the
behavior of neighbors and to denounce suspects to
the Gestapo. As the numbers in comment 96-2 show,
the number of prosecutions increased tenfold after
the change in the law.
Grau gives the texts of the various versions
of p175 and an explanation. "p" before "175"
indicates the paragraph sign in the following.
Former p175 (Reich Penal Code of 1871):
p175
"An unnatural sex act committed between persons of
male sex or by humans with animals is punishable
by imprisonment; the loss of civil rights may also
be imposed."
New 175 enacted 28 June 1935 and effective from 1
September 1935:
An amendment to the Penal Code, Article 6:
"Sex offence between males
"(1) p175 of the Penal Code is given the following
wording:
"p175
"A male who commits a sex offence with another
male or allows himself to be used by another male
for a sex offence shall be punished with
imprisonment.
"Where a party was not yet twenty-one years of age
at the time of the act, the court may in
especially minor cases refrain from punishment.
"(2) The following rule shall be inserted after
p175 of the Penal Code as p175a:
"p175a
"Penal servitude up to ten years or, where there
are mitigating circumstances, imprisonment of not
less than three months shall apply to:
"1 a male who, with violence or the threat of
present violence to body and soul or life, compels
another male to commit a sex offence with him or
to allow himself to be abused for a sex offence;
"2 a male who, by abusing a relation of dependence
based upon service, employment or subordination,
induces another male to commit a sex offence with
him or to allow himself to be abused for a sex
offence;
"3 a male over 21 years of age who seduces a male
person under twenty-one years to commit a sex
offence with him or to allow himself to be abused
for a sex offence;
"4 a male who publicly commits a sex offence with
males or allows himself to be abused by males for
a sex offence or offers himself for the same.
"(3) The former p175 of the Penal Code shall be
inserted as p175b after deletion of the words
'between persons of male sex or'."
Grau makes the following comments:
"1. The amendment to the old version of p175.
"The concept of 'unnatural sex act' was
replaced with the considerably broader one of 'sex
offence'. The former had applied only to
intercourse-like acts, defined by a ruling of the
supreme court [the Reichsgericht] as anal, oral
and thigh intercourse; self-gratification in the
presence of, against or with another man did not
count. Evidence could seldom be produced (since
the men were usually dealt with together and they
knew the scope for interpretation), so that before
1935 criminal proceedings were initiated in
relatively few cases.
"In the new version, the existence of an
intercourse-like act was no longer required. Nor
was it necessary, therefore, to prove that a
criminal act had taken place -- it became
impossible to stop proceedings by means of the
law. A 'sex offence' between men now designated
not only intercourse-like acts but any kind of
self-gratification in the presence of another man.
An offence was committed when the member of one
male touched the body of another 'with sexual
intent', so that even the snuggling together of
two naked male bodies came under this definition.
Ejaculation was not required to complete a
criminal offence.
"2. The introduction of a new p175a.
"Abuse of a relation of dependence based upon
service or employment, sex acts with young people
under 21 years of age, and homosexual prostitution
were considered 'serious sex offences' and
punished with up to ten years' penal servitude or
not less that three months' imprisonment.
According to Clause 2, the person subjected to
compulsion or dependence was also liable to
punishment -- a rule previously unknown in
criminal law. In minor cases, according to
Paragraph 2, the court might refrain from
punishing people who were not yet 21 years of age
at the time of the act, but this did not apply to
'intercourse-like acts' committed with other
juveniles or persons under age.
"In addition to the extension of criminal
categories and the raising of sentences, the
amendment of 28 June 1935 introduced the
fundamental novelty of a so-called analogy
section, p2. This read: 'Whoever commits an act
which the law defines as an offence, or which
deserves punishment according to the basic
principle of a criminal law or healthy public
feeling, shall be punished. If no definite
criminal law is directly applicable to the act, it
shall be punished in accordance with the law whose
basic principles are most appropriate to it.'
"The legal sources which judges now had to
use in reaching a verdict were no longer just the
written law but equally the 'unwritten source of
law', the 'basic principle of a criminal law' and
'healthy public feeling'. The legal maxim 'no
punishment without a law' was thereby abandoned
and new room created for judges' discretionary
decision.
"After 1935 there was a huge rise in the
number of legal judgements under p175, 175a. The
court practice of judges followed an extreme
interpretation and extension of the new
categories."
{end}
Actually the 1935 Nazi penalties were not
especially severe when compared with laws in the
United States, even as could be found in 1996.
When puritan fundamentalists object to being
compared with the Nazis they have somewhat of a
point: they're not "as bad as" the Nazis, they're
worse.
The penalties did not remain so relatively
light (by American standards)for long. They were
successively strengthened. As Plant notes on page
117, In 1940 Himmler added a "Two Strikes and
you're Out" or "Habitual Sex Offender" directive.
Anyone convicted of having seduced more than one
homosexual partner had to be transferred to a
concentration camp after serving his prison
sentence. Only now is the United States catching
up with that.
The fact that the official legal penalties
were rather light says nothing. The brutality and
extermination were carried out clandestinely in
the concentration camps. There were no laws
setting death or torture penalties for Jews or
Gypsies either, yet everyone knows how they were
treated in the camps.
*** {end comment 96-3}
Read the Same Text Again Skip Forward Table of Contents
{See Comment 96-4}
The charge of homosexuality was convenient for the Nazis to
use against their political enemies because it was so difficult to
defend against and so easy to justify to the populace. Since long
before the Nazis, homosexuals generally lived clandestine lives,
so it was not unusual for revelations of their conduct to come as a
surprise to their communities when it became a police matter.
This is not to say that actual homosexuals were not prosecuted
under the law. Many were. But the law was used selectively
against the "Femmes." And even in this case, many effeminate
homosexuals, especially those in the arts Community, were given
protection by certain Nazi leaders (Oosterhuis and Kennedy:248).
Plant writes,
*** {start comment 96-4}
The Pink Swastika author has no basis for his
revisionist remarks about the Nazis using charges
of criminal homosexuality mainly against political
opponents, or that it was used only "selectively"
against certain types of homosexuals. The most
celebrated cases of using false accusations of
homosexuality against political opponents didn't
involve any legal charges. Before the Nazis
attained power Goebbels used homosexuality to
incite the Berlin SA to mutiny so that Stennes
would be removed as its leader. Hitler used false
charges against General Fritsch (later exonerated)
as an excuse to remove him from Army leadership so
Hitler could install a general more willing to
follow his instructions. But he also used
heterosexual sex charges in the same way: General
Blomberg was disposed at the same time as Fritsch
because of the true charge that his wife had once
been a prostitute.
Shortly after attaining power the Nazis
outlawed all opposition parties and didn't have to
resort to subterfuge to act against their
political enemies. They could act quite directly
against opponents and didn't have to trump up
charges of homosexuality or of anything else. The
effectiveness of false charges of homosexuality is
dubious in any case, given the fact that the vast
majority of the mature male population would be,
as in every country, married with children, making
charges of homosexuality strain public
credibility, and raising fears that any family man
might be the next victim. Their political
opponents in concentration camps were identified
by their own triangular patches, and they were
quite different from the pink triangles given to
homosexuals.
*** {end comment 96-4}
Read the Same Text Again Skip Forward Table of Contents
***{Below is Page: 97 }***
{See Comment 97-1}
The most famous example is that of the actor
Gustaf Grundgens... Despite the fact that his ho-
mosexuaI affairs were as notorious as those of
Roehm's, Goering appointed him director of the
State Theater... [And] On October 29,
1937...Himmler advised that actors and other art-
ists could be arrested for offenses against para-
graph 175 only with his personal consent, unless
the police caught them in flagrante (Plant: 116).
*** {start comment 97-1}
Grau reproduces a request for permission to
arrest an actor.
The allegation that p175 was used selectively
against "femmes" is absurd -- as absurd as the
term "femmes" itself, which is actually a lesbian
term denoting a woman, not one very often used by
gay men.
It's not unusual that exceptions would be
made. One need think only of the famous
"Schindler's list" in the famous 1990s movie of
that name. Even Jews could be exempted from the
rules if they were useful enough. That's hardly
proof that anti-Semitism was a ruse for public
show, or that the Holocaust was an act committed
by "butch" Jews only against "femme" Jews.
*** {end comment 97-1}
Read the Same Text Again Skip Forward Table of Contents
{See Comment 98-1}
The Hitler Youth offers more examples which expose the
meaninglessness of the Nazis harsh rhetoric against homosexual s.
We have already noted Koehl's observation that Himmler "miti-
gated his penalties privately" and tried to keep every incident of
homosexual molestation of the Hitler Youth boys by the SS as
secret as possible" (Koehl:51f.). But Koehl goes on to cite the
records of the RJF, the security division of the Hitler Youth ad-
ministration. "[During the first six months of 1940," writes Koehl.
"[there were] 10,958 crimes committed by Hitler Youths, the most
common were theft (5,985), [and] homosexuality (901)" (ibid.:84).
When he compared the number of homosexual offences to the list
of expulsions from the organization (an absurdly mild punishment
for a supposed capital crime), however, Koehl found a low rate of
expulsions for homosexuality:
Since the RJF Report listed 900 cases of homo-
sexual crimes during a six month period alone, and
only a third of that number were expelled during a
twenty-five month period by court action, it sug-
gests that the RJF was more hesitant to uphold
Article 175 of the Criminal Code than its official
propaganda would have the public believe... [One]
young delinquent with a record of minor thefts,
for which he had spent eight weeks in jail, was not
expelled from the HJ [Hitler Youth]. In Septem-
***{Below is Page: 98 }***
ber 1940... [officials] surprised him and several
prison workers in a wild homosexual orgy in broad
daylight on a roadside. With sensational evidence
like this in hand, the... leader then sought to have
the culprit expelled from the HJ. But it took some
time before this occurred, suggesting that the en-
forcement of Article 175 was lax (Koehl:85ff).
*** {start comment 98-1}
These statements indicate an ignorance of
paragraph 175 (see comment 96-3 above). Paragraph
175 didn't make homosexual acts capital crimes. It
wasn't until 1941 that some types of offenses by
some classes of people were made capital.
Paragraph 175 offenses were punished by jail
sentences and, in some cases, as with multiple
offenses, confinement in concentration camps,
which is where the real brutality occurred.
The Hitler Youth were between the ages of 14
and 18, and the harshest penalties of paragraph
were reserved for men over the age of 21.
Depending on the nature of the activity, paragraph
175 allowed the court to let offenders under the
age of 21 off without punishment. Without details,
the "orgy in broad daylight on a roadside"
suggests nothing more than group masturbation, a
common enough occurrence in youth groups such as
the Boy Scouts. That wouldn't be an "intercourse-
like" activity as Grau says the German court had
defined it, and according to Grau the law didn't
require punishment for youthful culprits. That
being the case, there's no question of paragraph
175 being ignored. It was simply enforced
according to the letter of the law.
The 900 HJ cases would need clarification to
evaluate whether the 33% expulsion rate is
lenient. The Nazis often gave figures of
accusations and charges to show how many offenders
they were catching and how effective they were,
but conviction rates were quite low. For example,
Grau, on page 172, reproduces a report on arrests
and convictions. In 1937, of 32,360 adults
arrested, only 8271, or 26% were convicted, while
in 1938 the conviction rate for 8562 arrests rose
to 30%. If the HJ figure were actually 900
accusations, then the expulsion rate would be
normal.
*** {end comment 98-1}
Read the Same Text Again Skip Forward Table of Contents
{See Comment 98-2}
The increasing indifference of Hitler Youth officials toward
homosexuality was an attitude reflected in the larger society as
well. In 1937 the Reich Minister of the Interior issued a change
of policy regarding Paragraph 175. Under the new ruling only
four-time repeat offenders could be jailed or sent to camps for
homosexual offenses. This was reaffirmed in 1940 by Himmler
(S Katz:146).
*** {start comment 98-2}
There's no evidence of "increasing
indifference." Certainly neither the Pink Swastika
author nor his sources have presented any.
Without further details it is impossible to
evaluate the statement about four-time repeat
offenders. Grau quotes an official report which
says "...from 1940 any homosexual who seduced more
than one partner was handed over to a
concentration camp." Depending on details and
definitions, this would indicate a very severe
worsening of penalties. Concentration camps were
frequently places of severe physical abuse, and
many died there. This raises grave questions on
the assertion that Himmler lightened the
penalties. The writer of the report suggested that
the concentration camp policy was partly
responsible for a drop in the numbers of men
arrested for these offenses. Plant also mentions
this harsh penalty -- see comment 96-3 above.
Grau reproduces two directives from early
1937 re-enforcing the application of p175 and
saying nothing about exemption for those who are
not repeat offenders. On the contrary, the concept
of preventive detention is introduced. These
directives transmitted a secret directive issued
by Himmler, so there is no question of publishing
harsh measures for public consumption while being
lenient in private. Grau reproduces a preventive
detention directive issued in December of 1937
which mentions offenders sentenced at least three
times to either imprisonment or penal servitude as
candidates for preventive detention. Perhaps the
Pink Swastika author has confused preventive
detention with the implementation of paragraph
175.
Grau mentions on page 132 that after the
Nazis took power there was a downward trend "in
the fines handed down by courts. In comparison
with which there was a marked increase in
sentences of imprisonment or penal servitude. Men
with previous convictions were treated with
particular severity...." It may well be that
qualifications in the law allowed for punishment
less than mandatory imprisonment. Furthermore,
what was written in law never mattered to the
Nazis, who often ruled by whim. Himmler might well
have issued some sort of directive, but the author
of The Pink Swastika has proved so unreliable in
so many instances that his assertion, even of
something appearing in a reference, cannot be
taken at face value.
*** {end comment 98-2}
Read the Same Text Again Skip Forward Table of Contents
There is one additional reason why the Nazis arrested homo-
sexuals and raided even the homes of their supporters. They were
looking for incriminating evidence against themselves (the Nazi
leaders). Blackmail of homosexuals by estranged partners and
prostitutes was a simple fact of life in Germany. "[H]omosexuals
were particularly vulnerable to blackmailers, known as Chanteure
on the homosexual scene," write Burleigh and Wippermann.
"Blackmail, and the threat of public exposure, resulted in frequent
suicides or suicide attempts" (Burleigh and Wipperman {sic}: 184). The
Nazi leaders were quite familiar with this phenomenon. Igra re-
ports that Heinrich Hoffman {sic}, the official Nazi photographer, gained
his position by using information about Hitler's perverse abuse of
his (Hoffman's {sic}) daughter, Henny, to blackmail the future Fuehrer
(Igra:74). (Henny Hoffman {sic} was later married to reputed homo-
sexual Baldur von Schirach, probably to quell rumors about his
exploits with Hitler Youth boys). Heiden relates another story in
which Hitler bought an entire collection of rare political writings
to regain possession of a letter to his niece in which he openly
revealed his "masochistic-coprophil inclinations" (Heiden:385).
Once he was in power he had other ways to solve these kinds of
problems.
***{Below is Page: 99 }***
{Picture}
{Officials watching a parade.}
Hitler Youth Chief Baldur von Schirach (saluting)
and Julius Streicher (bald man in center) review a parade
of Hitler Youth in Nuremberg, 1933 YAD VASHEM
{Picture caption}
The Sacking of the Sex Research Institute
The Nazis' hunt for incriminating evidence, as well as the se-
lectivity of the Nazi violence, was obvious in the attack on Magnus
Hirschfeld's Sex Research Institute on May 6th, 1933. As noted
previously, the Sex Research Institute of Berlin had been founded
by Hirschfeld in 1919 as a center for the "study" of homosexual-
ity and other sexual dysfunctions. For all intents and purposes, it
served as the headquarters for the effeminate branch of the Ger-
man "gay rights" movement. For this reason alone, the "Butch"
homosexuals of the Nazi Party might have destroyed the insti-
tute. Indeed, throughout the preceding years the Nazis had
***{Below is Page: 100 }***
{See Comment 100-1}
increasingly harassed Hirschfeld personally. Victor Robinson,
Hirschfeld's biographer, wrote in 1936,
Although the Nazis themselves derived great profit
from Hirschfeld's theories (and called on him per-
sonally for help) they continued his persecution
relentlessly; they terrorized his meetings and closed
his lecture halls, so that for the safety of his audi-
ences and himself, Hirschfeld was no longer able
to make public appearances (Haeberle:368).
Homosexualist James Steakley acknowledges the "Butch/
Femme" aspect of the incident, saying that some German homo-
sexuals "could conceivably have approved of the measure, par-
ticularly if they were Nazi sympathizers or male supremacists"
(Steakley: 105).
*** {start comment 100-1}
The attentive reader expecting a quotation
from Victor Robinson will have been surprised find
a citation from Haeberle. The quotation is
slightly distorted, but not in a material way (the
original says "to make a public appearance"). What
is puzzling is the mysterious appearance of
"Victor Robinson." Haeberle doesn't mention
Robinson as Hirschfeld's "biographer." Haeberle
says the quotation was written by Hirschfeld
himself in his "Autobiographical Sketch." Robinson
was, in fact, not a biographer, but the editor of
Encyclopedia Sexualis, in which Hirschfeld's
autobiographical sketch was published. Another
example of the unbelievably sloppy "scholarship"
of the Pink Swastika authors.
Steakley in no way acknowledges any
"Butch/Femme" conflict of the proportions
fabricated by the Pink Swastika author. The whole
"Butch/Femme" issue has been blown out of
proportion in order to rationalize the persecution
of homosexuals with the Pink Swastika author's
false premise that homosexuals were the guiding
light of the Nazi Party. Steakley's merely
speculating on how Germany's homosexuals reacted
to the persecution of Hirschfeld: "It may be that
many German homosexuals viewed the destruction of
the Berlin Institute as an anti-Semitic act rather
than as an expression of anti-homosexual
sentiment. Some could conceivably have approved of
the measure, particularly if they were Nazi
sympathizers or male supremacists; Hirschfeld's
reform efforts had long been disparaged in some
homosexual circles...."
*** {end comment 100-1}
Read the Same Text Again Skip Forward Table of Contents
However, the attack against the Institute was not motivated
solely by the Nazi enmity against effeminate homosexuals. It was
an attempt to cover up the truth about rampant homosexuality
and other perversions in the Nazi Party. Sklar writes that "Hitler
attempted to bury all his earlier influences and his origins, and he
spent a great deal of energy hiding them... [In this campaign to
erase his past] Hitler ordered the murder of Reinhold Hanish, a
friend who had shared his down and out days in Vienna [where
Hitler is suspected of having been a homosexual prostitute]"
(Sklar:21). Hitler also knew that Hirschfeld's facility had exten-
sive records that could be damaging to himself and his inner circle.
{See Comment 101-1}
This was the reason for the raid, according to Ludwig L. Lenz,
the assistant director of the Sex Research Institute, who was in
charge on the day of the raid. His description of the situation,
part of which was quoted previously, is given in full here.
[O]ur Institute was used by all classes of the popu-
lation and members of every political party.. We
thus had a great many Nazis under treatment at
the Institute. Why was it then, since we were com-
***{Below is Page: 101 }***
pletely non-party, that our purely scientific Insti-
tute was the first victim which fell to the new re-
gime? The answer to this is simple...We knew too
much. It would be against medical principles to
provide a list of the Nazi leaders and their perver-
sions [but].. not ten percent of the men who, in
1933, took the fate of Germany into their hands,
were sexually normal...Many of these personages
were known to us directly through consultations;
we heard about others from their comrades in the
party...and of others we saw the tragic results: I
refer here especially to a young girl whose abdo-
men was covered with pin scratchings through the
sadism of an eminent Nuremberg Nazi; I refer also
to a thirteen year old boy who suffered from a se-
rious lesion of the anal muscle brought about by a
senior party official in Breslau and to a youth from
Berlin with severe rectal gonorrhea, etc., etc....Our
knowledge of such intimate secrets regarding mem-
bers of the Nazi Party and other documentary
material -- we possessed about forty thousand con-
fessions and biographical letters -- was the cause
of the complete and utter destruction of the Insti-
tute of Sexology (Haberle {sic}:369).
Burleigh and Wipperman {sic} report that the ransackers had "lists"
of materials they were looking for (Burleigh and Wipperman {sic} : 189)
and that they carted away two truckloads of books and files. The
materials taken from the Institute were burned in a public cer-
emony, captured on film, on May 10th. The spectacular and oft
replayed newsreel footage of this event has caused the burning of
books to become synonymous with Nazism. What information
went up in smoke on that day will never be known, but we can be
sure that the pile of burning paper contained many Nazi secrets.
According to homosexual sources who were in Germany at the
time, the Nazis destroyed twelve thousand books and thirty-five
*** {start comment 101-1}
Despite the claim of the Pink Swastika
author, the Lenz quote is not given in full. Only
about two-thirds is given, and even that is
selectively quoted. The Pink Swastika author has
deceptively changed it to cover up the omissions
by not preserving the paragraphs or punctuation.
He leaves out an incident with a Nazi woman
patient who wanted to call Hirschfeld "Kirschfeld"
because it sounded "more Aryan." (It isn't wise,
when trying to smear homosexuals, to let readers
know that Hirschfeld's clients were overwhelmingly
heterosexual and largely female.) Also missing is
Lenz's statement that not just files, but
everything "not nailed down," including furniture
and pictures on the wall, was dragged out and
burned, and his lament that even "trade union
buildings of the socialists, the communist clubs
and the synagogues" weren't treated with such
passionate hatred when they were later raided and
closed. Haeberle correctly identifies Lenz's
comments on the Nazis' motive as "speculation" and
then raises an interesting point of his own: would
the Nazis really have burnt such material that
could have been used to destroy enemies and to
blackmail fellow Nazis and keep them in line? "Is
it not rather more likely that they were saved for
use by the Gestapo?"
The Pink Swastika author doesn't address an
obvious conflict of Lenz's "speculation" with
material from Steakley. It's curious that the
conflict should have escaped the author's
attention, for he quotes from the very pages where
the conflicting information appears. Lenz says
"everything" was destroyed. The Pink Swastika
author states that "twelve thousand books and
thirty-five thousand photographs" were destroyed,
and cites Steakley as the source of those numbers.
What he covers up is that Steakley actually says
"More than 12,000 books were removed from the
Institute's library of 20,000 volumes, together
with a large part of its unique collection of
35,000 pictures." In others words, not everything
was destroyed, suggesting that Lenz's speculations
were highly exaggerated.
This is yet another example of the deceptive
"scholarship" of the Pink Swastika author.
Burleigh and Wippermann don't "report" on the
raid but quote an account of a witness. Nothing is
said of "secrets" or personal files, only of books
and manuscripts.
Finally, it's ironic to see the Pink Swastika
author characterizing the burning of books as
"synonymous with Nazism." A phenomenon of the
early 1990s was fundamentalist Protestant
ministers -- surely members of the anti-gay
movement -- staging public burnings of books,
magazines, and even phonograph records they didn't
like.
*** {end comment 101-1}
Read the Same Text Again Skip Forward Table of Contents
***{Below is Page: 102 }***
thousand photographs. The building itself was confiscated from
the SHC and turned over to the Nazi Association of Jurists and
Lawyers (Steakley: 105).
The Roehm Purge
The event in history most frequently cited as evidence of Nazi
persecution of homosexuals is known variously as the Blood Purge,
the night of the Long Knives, and the Roehm Purge. Steakley
writes that "[t]he indisputable beginning of Nazi terror against
homosexuals was marked by the murder of Ernst Rohm on June
28, 1934, 'the night of the long knives'" (Steakley:l08). It was
on this night (actually over an entire weekend), that Adolf Hitler's
closest aides orchestrated the assassinations of hundreds of his
political enemies in one bloody sweep. Included in this purge
were Roehm and several of the top officers of the SA.
We have emphasized that the leadership of the SA was mostly,
if not entirely homosexual. The fact that SA leaders were the
primary targets in the massacre could therefore be construed as a
sort of "moral cleansing" of the Nazi ranks, which, in fact, Hitler
claimed it was. But Hitler lied. The Roehm Purge was driven by
political, not moral concerns. Hitler feigned disgust and outrage
about the homosexuality of the murdered SA leaders to justify
himself to the German people; it was a tactic he had used previ-
ously to allay public suspicions about the sexual deviancy of his
inner circle. The importance of this fact is asserted in many lead-
ing works by both mainstream and homosexualist historians. The
following are excerpts from four different historians who have
examined the issue:
Hitler eliminated his closest friend Roehm and cer-
tain SA leaders as potential rivals. The strictly
political motivation of this ruthless power play was
initially too obvious to be entirely denied, but later
it was conveniently obscured by charges of homo-
***{Below is Page: 103 }***
sexual depravity (Haberle {sic}:369f.).
The formal accusations against Roehm and those
arrested with him centered on their homosexual
activities, which Hitler had of course known about
for fifteen years and shrugged off, it being alleged
that these activities disgraced the party. For those
victims without any homosexual background, "the
Great Blood Purge" continued all over Germany,
as Nazi leaders got rid of all their most hated en-
emies, as well as the inevitable "mistakes"
(Garde:726f.).
Ernst Roehm wasn't shot because the Nazi Party
felt outraged by the abrupt discovery that he was
"having" his storm troopers -- that had been known
for ages; but because his sway over the SA had
become a menace to Hitler. In the Hitler Youth
the "dear love of comrades" was evilly turned into
a political end. And if the Nazi hierarchy was well
larded with homosexuals, so was Wilhelm II's court
and so was the Weimar Republic (Davidson: 152).
{See Comment 103-1}
Hitler himself, of course, had been well aware of
Rohm's sexual orientation from the earliest days
of their long association So strong was Rohm
that the Wehrmacht [German Army High Com-
mand] was concerned that he might seize control
of the army. In 1934, Hitler became fearful that
the Wehrmacht was plotting a coup against him to
prevent such a takeover. To forestall this danger,
Hitler had Rohm and about one thousand other
men murdered one weekend in June 1934, the fa-
mous "night of the Long Knives" (Crompton:79f.).
*** {start comment 103-1}
Crompton goes on to add, "Hitler gave as an
ostensible reason for the killings his 'discovery'
that Rohm and the SA were themselves plotting a
coup against him, though no one has ever taken
this excuse seriously. Later, in justifying his
act, Hitler also used the issue of homosexuality
against Roehm. Shortly after Roehm's death, he
issued an order to the effect that, to preserve
'moral purity,' homosexuals were to be expelled
from the SA and the Nazi Party. He went out of his
way to reassure mothers that he was concerned for
the moral welfare of their sons. Privately, Hitler
was less moralistic. In conversation with Nazi
leaders, he took the position that homosexuality
was undesirable for eugenic reasons, since it was
a contagion that attacked 'the best and most manly
of characters, solely eliminating from the
reproductive process those very men on whose
offspring a nation depended.'"
*** {end comment 103-1}
Read the Same Text Again Skip Forward Table of Contents
***{Below is Page: 104 }***
There is some dispute among historians about whether Roehm
had planned a coup against Hitler after Hitler's refusal to replace
the regular army with Roehm's troops. This takeover of the army
had apparently been part of the Nazis' original plan for the maxi-
mization of their political strength. Upon his appointment as Chan-
cellor, Hitler was confronted with new and different challenges
which required new and different alliances. For some time it ap-
peared that Hitler would remain true to his pact with Roehm.
From the time Hitler assumed control of the German government
in January of 1933, until the spring of 1934, he allowed the SA to
grow from 300,000 to over 3 million members (Plant:54). Dur-
ing this period of rapid growth, Roehm's rivals within the Nazi
inner circle grew increasingly alarmed, as did the powerful indus-
trialists and military leaders.
Tension between the SA and the army increased. General
Walther von Brauchitsch, speaking for the majority of his fellow
officers, said, "[t]hat gang of homosexuals, thugs and drunks
should be allowed no part of [German rearmament]" (Gallo:87).
For their part, the SA taunted the regular army soldiers, singing
"The grey rock will be drowned in a sea of brown" (ibid. :87),
meaning that the grey uniformed army would be swallowed up by
the Brownshirts. Strasser writes,
At a meeting of the Cabinet, to which he belonged,
[Roehm] demanded the incorporation of the Brown
Shirts into the regular army, the Brown Shirt of-
ficers to retain their ranks. In other words he de-
manded supreme command of the Reichswehr, the
S.S., and the S.A.. He confidently believed that
he had Adolf's support...but Hitler remained
silent...Blomberg, the Minister of National De-
fense, suddenly declared that the only course open
to President Hindenberg {sic} would be to refuse out-
right. "The discussion is closed," Hitler then said,
without daring to look his old friend in the face.
Roehm, speechless with fury, walked quickly from
***{Below is Page: 105 }***
the room. After June 30, General von Reichenau
declared in an interview with the Petit Journal that
Roehm's death sentence was virtually signed that
day (Strasser, 1940:178).
As the conflict came to a head, SA conspirators created a "hit
list" of Army officers who were to be killed (ibid.:237) and alleg-
edly selected Standartenfuehrer Julius Uhl to assassinate Hitler
himself ( ibid 237). It may be, however, that these allegations
were invented as part of a fall-back rationale for the purge. It is
well known that Himmler, Goering and Himmler's deputy,
Reinhard Heydrich, worked behind the scenes to limit Roehm's
power; and it has been reported by some sources that they gener-
ated rumors of a Roehm plot to drive a wedge between Roehm
and Hitler. In any case, the Roehm Purge was not motivated by
the homosexuality of its victims. The great majority of victims
were not homosexuals it all. Otto Strasser, whose brother, Gregor,
was murdered that night lists some of the casualties in
Hitler and I:
Klausener and several other Catholic leaders were
executed, as well as [Vice Chancellor] von Papen's
secretaries. At Hirschberg, in Silesia, all the Jews,
all the members of the Stahlhelm, and a few com-
munists were arrested...beaten with rifle butts...and
eight people were murdered...[V] on Kahr, an old
man of sixty three... was taken from his bed, taken
to Dachau, and tortured to death... His crime had
been his failure to support the Munich putsch in
1923. Ballerstaedt...who had been instrumental
in Hitler's being sentenced to three months im-
prisonment, was murdered by a special killer squad.
[And] death was the penalty paid by Father
Staempfle for having edited Mein Kampf, and
therefore being familiar with the author's weak-
nesses (ibid.:200).
***{Below is Page: 106 }***
Igra provides us with a long and detailed account of the power
struggle which led to the purge, beginning with a refutation of the
idea that it represented a policy of extermination of homosexuals
by Hitler:
We shall find that, far from eliminating the sex per-
verts from his party, Hitler retained most of them,
and that he moved against those whom he did elimi-
nate only with the greatest reluctance and after he
had been relentlessly pushed by outside forces and
circumstances. On June 14 and 15 Hitler was in
Venice to see Mussolini It soon became common
knowledge that the German Dictator and his en-
tourage had made an unfavorable impression upon
the Italians...Mussolini was never a stickler for
puritan morality, to say the least, but there was
one vice which the Italians particularly loathe; they
call it il visio tedesco, the German vice. The con-
duct of some members in Hitler's entourage at
Venice disgusted the Italians. Mussolini protested
against the moral character and political
unreliability of the leading personnel in the Nazi
Storm Troops and warned Hitler that he would
have to sacrifice his favorite colleagues if he wished
to save his own personal prestige and that of his
regime. Among those colleagues, Roehm, Heines
and Karl Ernst were mentioned.
What chagrined [Hitler] the most was that he
knew Mussolini had been prompted... by... [Ger-
man] President Hindenberg {sic}... On June 21, Hitler
went to Neudek, Hindenberg's {sic} country seat... [He]
was literally dumbfounded when confronted on the
steps of the Hindenberg {sic} family home by General
Blomberg and Goering, both in uniform. They
informed him that the President would not receive
the Chancellor, and that if the heads of the SA were
***{Below is Page: 107 }***
not dismissed martial law would be declared,
whereupon Goering would take over civilian con-
trol as Chief of Police, and Blomberg, as Minister
of War, would take over military control.
Hitler was still recalcitrant and conceived the
idea of rallying the Storm Troops around him, as a
gesture of defiance against those gentlemen of the
right.. But an event occurred...which led Hitler to
change his plan. ..He was summoned to Krupp's
headquarters and there was received by Goering,
and the heads of the Krupp firm and other
industrialists... [T]hey delivered their ultimatum:
Either Hitler should get rid of his companions or
{See Comment 108-1}
the Goering-Krupp-Blomberg combination would
withdraw their support for the regime. Hitler ac-
cepted the alternative, but in his own way. He
would double-cross Roehm, but he would also
double-cross his taskmasters to the Right. He
would eliminate a few of the elements that had
proved objectionable to the Right, but he would
maintain the bulk of them. Besides, he would take
the opportunity of the general massacre to remove
those against whom he had a grievance -- General
Streicher, General Bredlow, Gregor Strasser,
etc.(Igra:77f.).
The Roehm Purge, then, was not a "moral cleansing" of the
Nazi ranks, but a realignment of power behind the German gov-
ernment which was primarily forced upon Hitler by powerful po-
litical elements whose support he needed to maintain control. Igra
goes on to point out that not only did the majority of the SA
homosexuals survive the purge, but that the massacre was largely
implemented by homosexuals. He cites Strasser that the "Chief
Killers of Munich [were] Wagner, Esser, Maurice, Weber and
Buch." These men "were all known to be sex perverts or sexual
maniacs of one type or another," concludes Igra (ibid. :80). Plant
***{Below is Page: 108 }***
records that the larger campaign of assassinations across Ger-
many was orchestrated by Reinhard Heydrich, also a homosexual
(Plant: 56). Igra addresses Hitler's justification for the purge:
*** {start comment 108-1}
Plant doesn't say that Heydrich was a
homosexual. There's absolutely no evidence to
substantiate such a charge. Heydrich was a
notorious womanizer, whose naval career was ended
because of an affair, and who later, even after
marrying, used to take companions out for nights
of drinking and sex with women.
On the very same page (56), Plant says the
following:
"In Munich, Hitler ordered the SA regulars to
the 'Brown House,' screaming that they were all
'homosexual pigs,' though he well knew that only a
few in Roehm's immediate entourage were
homosexual."
This is an example of the use of selective
quotation by the Pink Swastika author. Plant is
deemed valuable for one item, but what he says in
the very next paragraph, namely that only a few of
the SA leaders in Roehm's immediate entourage were
homosexual, is ignored, because it doesn't fit --
indeed directly contradicts -- the Pink Swastika
author's attempt to "prove" that the SA leadership
was all homosexual.
Igra is thoroughly unreliable. It's difficult
to find his book, just as it is now and always
will be difficult to find The Pink Swastika.
Neither The Pink Swastika nor Igra have even the
most basic scholarly and ethical qualifications to
be selected by most libraries.
Hitler made use of anyone he could in his
climb to power. Roehm provided valuable services
in obtaining secret help from the German Army for
the Nazis in the early days, and in organizing
street gangs to counteract the similar street
gangs formed by the Communists and other movements
in Germany. He was a man of great talent -- a
talent so great that even after a falling out and
separation of five years, Hitler felt impelled to
call him back from South America to reorganize the
faltering SA. By coincidence, Roehm happened to be
homosexual, something we're told he didn't realize
himself until five years after joining the Nazis
and one year before his break with Hitler.
Hitler didn't like homosexuals. He never
liked them. He used those few homosexuals who
provided needed talent and skills he couldn't get
from heterosexuals, and tolerated them as long as
they were useful. He was quick to get rid of
homosexuals whenever their usefulness was at an
end. The final break with Roehm had been building
since Hitler attained power in 1933, but problems
had developed for several years before that. He
used Roehm's homosexuality and that of some of his
companions in the SA as a clever excuse to help
justify the Blood Purge and gain support for it in
public opinion.
As the heterosexual Heinrich Himmler grew in
stature, and as Himmler's heterosexual SS grew,
the need for homosexual Roehm and his heterosexual
SA declined. The atrocities of the heterosexual SS
and its heterosexual leaders, Himmler and
Heydrich, don't have to be repeated here. Their
six million and more victims speak for themselves.
Roehm may have been homosexual, but he was not
anti-Semitic, and the world would be much better
off if he and his small company of homosexuals had
triumphed over his heterosexual rivals in the SS.
A historian cited by the Pink Swastika
author, Charles Bracelen Flood, describes some of
men in the alleged list of homosexuals in Hitler's
close company: (page 188-199) "...Hermann Esser,
the handsome young former left-wing journalist,
now a party speechmaker, who was said to live off
one or more women...Christian Weber...fancied
himself as a lady-killer." These "rumors" are
hardly consistent with homosexuality.
*** {end comment 108-1}
Read the Same Text Again Skip Forward Table of Contents
{See Comment 108-2}
In his defense before the Reichstag a week later
Hitler talked of "traitors." That was his alibi.. In
his speech to the Reichstag he admitted that one
of the motives for ordering the massacre was to
get rid of the moral perverts in his party and that
they were traitors because they practiced
homosexualism. But under the dictatorship it was
not possible for anyone to put Hitler a question.
Nobody asked him to explain how it was that, if
his purpose was to get rid of homosexuals, he re-
ally didn't rid himself of them but used them as the
instruments of his own murder lust and still re-
tailed most of them as members of his personal
entourage, as well as in key positions of the party
organization and the government. Otto Strasser,
in his book, The German St. Bartholemew's {sic} Night
(which has not been published in English), men-
tions sixteen of these highly placed homosexualist
officials who survived the massacres of June 30
and retained their posts (Igra:82).
*** {start comment 108-2}
It's unfortunate that the alleged "sixteen"
"highly placed" homosexual officials aren't named
-- and that they're mentioned in a hard-to-obtain
book in a foreign language. In Der Fuehrer (page
753), Konrad Heiden, a source frequently cited by
the Pink Swastika author, mentions only a single
member of Roehm's clique, Count Helldorf, who
survived. His survival was because he collaborated
with Hitler in plotting against Roehm and acted as
an internal spy in the SA. (And Heiden doesn't
speak of Helldorf's sexuality, though some other
authors say he was homosexual.)
What homosexuals allegedly "highly placed"
elsewhere in the German government might have
survived is not clear. Igra doesn't name names,
and so his allegations can't be checked.
*** {end comment 108-2}
Read the Same Text Again Skip Forward Table of Contents
{See Comment 108-3}
Following the purge, Hitler received a telegram from
Hindenberg {sic} "expressing his 'profoundly felt gratitude.'" "'You
have saved the German people from a grave peril,' the President
wired" (Fest, 1975:470). Likewise, "Defense Minister von
Blomberg congratulated Hitler for the successful completion of
the "purge.' (ibid.: 470). The army, too, was pleased by Hitler's
move. Only a week after the purge an anti-Nazi Reichswehr of-
ficer told the French military attache in Berlin that the army was
25% pro-Nazi before the purge, but 95% pro-Nazi after the purge
(Gallo:289).
*** {start comment 108-3}
The Pink Swastika author either fails to see
the significant point of the homosexual charges in
the Roehm purge, or wishes to divert attention
from it.
No, the Roehm purge wasn't instigated
primarily to "clean house" and get rid of
homosexuals, but to get rid of the political
threats from the Roehm and Strasser factions of
the party. Strasser's insistence on maintaining
the original socialist positions of the party and
Roehm's desire to take over the German Army were
growing liabilities now that Hitler had attained
power. These elements of the party upset German
industrialists, the Army, and the general
population. In addition, Hitler had more than once
had to fight for his own survival as party chief,
and his position was in some jeopardy as long as
these potential rivals retained power.
Cleansing the party of homosexuals was a
secondary function of the purge. As the Pink
Swastika author has himself noted elsewhere, there
was discontent among the Nazis, the Army, and the
general public because of the homosexual activity
of Roehm and his small clique of friends within
the SA. As long as Hitler needed Roehm's
organizing talents, he had to tolerate his
behavior and that of the friends Roehm protected,
covering up as best he could the occasional
scandal that cropped up.
The purge occurred in 1934, but as long as
seven years before that, in 1927, Hitler had
railed against the homosexual elements of the SA,
as the Pink Swastika author earlier noted. In
1934, Hitler removed more than one thorn from his
flesh, just as in 1927 he had expelled from the
Party Roehm's homosexual friend Heines. (Whose re-
admittance in 1930 at Roehm's insistence was the
price Hitler had to pay for getting Roehm's talent
to revitalize the SA.) Roehm was no longer needed
to attain or maintain power in 1934: indeed, he
had become a liability and a threat to Hitler. It
was time to rid the party of the once-tolerated
vermin who were no longer of use.
*** {end comment 108-3}
Read the Same Text Again Skip Forward Table of Contents
***{Below is Page: 109 }***
{Picture}
{Hitler & Mussolini in front of a statue}
No hard feelings. In 1937, three years after the purge, Hitler
hosts Mussolini on a tour of the House of German Art. The
statue behind them is of two muscular naked men holding hands
{Picture caption}
***{Below is Page: 110 }***
After the Purge
While it is certainly true that several of the most prominent
homosexuals in the Nazi regime were killed on the "night of the
Long Knives" the fact of history is that Adolf Hitler did not purge
his regime of homosexuals in this incident or at any subsequent
time. On the contrary, a simple review of the historic record re-
veals that Hitler continued not only to surround himself with ho-
mosexuals, but to place them in key positions in the Third Reich.
{See Comment 110-1}
Judith Reisman notes that "Kaximierz {sic} Mocazarski, a Polish
resistance fighter confirmed that homosexuals "remained party
members... got promotions... were protected by the top [Nazi]
brass' and served on the battlefield and in prisons" (Reisman,
1994:3). Of the thirteen corps commanders of the SA, all homo-
sexuals, only seven were killed in the Roehm Purge (Gallo: 16).
The rest, along with the probable thousands, perhaps tens of thou-
sands of homosexuals remaining in the SA, were quickly reas-
signed by Hitler, who put the entire SA under the authority of
Heinrich Himmler's SS. Many of these sadistic, brutal men had
been useful to Hitler since the beginning, and he made certain that
their talents would remain available to him. It is likely that some
of these SA survivors were among the participants in Geobbels {sic}
dinner-party-turned-orgy in 1936 (Grunberger:70).
*** {start comment 110-1}
How on earth would a "Polish resistance
fighter" know about homosexuals in the Nazi party?
Is there no more credible witness to substantiate
this assertion of the Pink Swastika author? Those
familiar with Reisman's "scholarship" will not be
surprised at this elevation of back-fence gossip
to "scholarly research." Her "credits" include co-
authoring a book slurring Dr. Alfred Kinsey with
the same sort of deceptive writing techniques and
unsubstantiated innuendo that the Pink Swastika
author and Samuel Igra, his favorite "historian"
use. She's also worked with Dr. Paul Cameron --
very fittingly, as he was thrown out of his
professional group, the American Psychological
Association, for just the sort of authorship he
shares with Reisman, Igra, and Abrams and Lively,
the Pink Swastika authors (unfortunately only
Cameron belonged to a respectable organization
capable of throwing such a person out).
On page 6 of Gallo's book, a quote from Baron
Pomoeo Aloisi, Mussolini's private secretary says
seven of thirteen SA corps commanders were shot. A
following quote Gallo attributed to Mussolini says
of the SA "a majority of its leaders were
pederasts, beginning with Roehm." Thus, Gallo does
not support the Pink Swastika author's allegation
that all were homosexuals, though citing Gallo in
this manner confuses the reader into believing
that he gave the information written by the Pink
Swastika author.
*** {end comment 110-1}
Read the Same Text Again Skip Forward Table of Contents
{See Comment 110-2}
Aside from the SA, Hitler retained all of the sexual deviants
of his inner circle, including Goering, Streicher, Frank, Emile and
Weber. Hess was to remain until 1941, when he left of his own
accord on his ill-fated "peace" mission to England. Hitler later
openly rewarded some of these men with top jobs in the govern-
ment. Rector, for example, writes that "Hitler knew about
[Walther] Funk, a 'notorious' homosexual, when he appointed
him Reich Minister of Economics on February 5, 1938" (Rector:
63). SS Lieutenant-General Albert Foerster, the homosexual who
is mentioned in Langer as a possible sexual partner of Hitler
(Langer: 178), and whose "black record of atrocities against the
Poles" earned him a death sentence in later war trials, was ap-
pointed Reich Regent of the Danzig Free State just prior to World
*** {start comment 110-2}
One hates to be repetitious, but repeated
lies require repeated refutations. Note that the
Pink Swastika author glides smoothly from
"homosexuals" to "sexual deviants," hoping the
reader won't notice and trying to paint the above
list of people as all homosexuals. There's no
evidence that Goering was either a homosexual or a
sexual deviant. His two wives and his daughter
certainly didn't find such qualities in him. He
was an extraordinarily vain man who, much like a
modern politician, wore make-up to improve his
appearance. He wore clothing such as caftans that,
though the common dress of some Orthodox Jews,
caused people to make jokes about him as a
transvestite. Streicher and Emile and the
unidentified Weber may well have had some
"deviancy," but it wasn't homosexuality. (In
addition, they never attained "top jobs in the
government.") There's no evidence Hess was
homosexual. He was married and his son worked long
and hard to try to get him released from Spandau
Prison where he was sent after World War II. (One
can't help noting in passing that while
heterosexual Heinrich Himmler was plotting the
death of six million Jews, the allegedly
homosexual Hess flew to England to try to stop the
Nazi insanity.)
Rector does say Funk was homosexual, but
doesn't cite a source. In this passage he's
commenting on a male prostitute and criminal named
Schmidt who made charges against Funk and General
von Fritsch, among many others. The Army didn't
believe Schmidt's charges, and Himmler later had
him executed at Sachsenhausen concentration camp
as an inconvenient embarrassment who knew details
of Himmler's attempt to purge rivals by smearing
them with false charges of homosexuality. A point
Rector makes in his book is that allegations of
homosexuality were flung about recklessly against
enemies to try to damage their reputations, and
that such charges are not to be taken seriously
absent reliable witness. The Pink Swastika author
is all too ready to accept slander and innuendo as
fact, provided only that he can name an author and
cite a page.
It's a gross distortion to say that Walter
Langer mentions Foerster as a possible homosexual
partner of Hitler. Langer says (page 195 of the
1972 Basic Books edition) that Hermann Rauschning
reported that Foerster told him of Hitler's
alleged "impotence as far as heterosexual
relations go without actually implying that he
indulges in homosexuality. It is probably true
that Hitler calls Foerster 'Bubi,' which is a
common nickname employed by homosexuals in
addressing their partners. This alone, however, is
not adequate proof that he has actually indulged
in homosexual practices with Foerster...." The
term "Bubi" is not peculiar to homosexuals, but is
also used by heterosexual men to express an
affectionate relationship to each other.
Wistrich gives a brief biography of Foerster
on page 77, but says nothing about homosexuality.
Wistrich also gives a brief biography of Graf
von Helldorf (see top of page 111 of The Pink
Swastika, immediately below this comment). He
mentions absolutely nothing about homosexuality,
but says Helldorf was a major figure in the 1944
plot to assassinate Hitler.
Strasser merely refers to Helldorf as a
"pervert" without elaboration, leaving his meaning
unclear and not providing any reference or context
to substantiate or clarify the remark, and not
indicating whether homosexuality was involved in
the alleged perversion.
*** {end comment 110-2}
Read the Same Text Again Skip Forward Table of Contents
***{Below is Page: 111 }***
War II (Wistrich: 178{sic}). And Graf von Helldorf, one of Rossbach's
original homosexual Brownshirts (Strasser, 1940:26), was ap-
pointed by Hitler to the post of police president of Berlin in 1935
(Snyder: 145).
Heinrich Himmler and the SS
Heinrich Himmler is an extremely important figure in Nazi
history. He joined the Nazis in the early years of the party and
"participated in the Munich Beer-Hall Putsch of November 1923
as a standard-bearer at the side of Ernst Roehm" (Wistrich: 138).
After holding a number of mid-level positions in the party he was
appointed "head of Hitler's personal bodyguard, the black-shirted
Schulzstaffel {sic} (58), at that time a small body of 200 men
(ibid.: 138). Over the next dozen years Himmler's "astonishing
capacity for work and irrepressible power-lust showed itself in
his accumulation of official posts" (ibid.: 138), eventually winning
him the most powerful position in the Third Reich under Hitler
himself.
The role of Himmler is also critically important to the asser-
tions of homosexual revisionists. "Heinrich Himmler, Reichsfuhrer
SS and head of the Gestapo," writes Steakley, "richly deserves a
reputation as the most fanatically anti-homosexual member of the
Nazi leadership" (Steakley: 111). Indeed, if one were to accept
Himmler's public pronouncements against homosexuality at face
value, he would certainly deserve this distinction. For example,
in a speech in which he commemorated the Roehm Purge, he said:
Two years ago...when it became necessary, we did
not hesitate to strike this plague with death, even
within our own ranks...in our judgment of homo-
sexuality -- a symptom of degeneracy which could
destroy our race -- we must return to the guiding
Nordic principle: extermination of degenerates"
(ibid.:111 f.).
***{Below is Page: 112 }***
{See Comment 112-1}
However, as we have demonstrated, homosexuality was not
the reason for the Roehm Purge. And if we look at other evi-
dence we find that Himmler's practice regarding homosexuals was
far different than his rhetoric would imply. Once again we must
consider the Friedlander distinction between "Butches" and
"Femmes." He, together with the masculine homosexuals of the
Community of the Special, called effeminate homosexuals "de-
generates." Clearly, in this speech, Himmler rhetorically lumped
the masculine Roehm with all homosexuals, but it is probable that
the distinction would have been lost on this particular audience
anyway.
*** {start comment 112-1}
Whatever the main purpose of the Roehm purge,
it was also presented at the time as a purge of
homosexuals -- and indeed it was. The fact is that
the homosexual leaders of the SA were purged, and
that power passed from the SA to the indisputably
heterosexual SS. That is the context of Himmler's
remarks. Whatever temporary use the Nazis might
have made of individual homosexuals who had
talents they needed (Roehm, Funk), the official
Nazi position and the attitude they fostered in
all of Germany's educational and other
institutions was the attitude expressed by
Himmler. The Pink Swastika author knows that his
thesis of homosexual responsibility for Nazi
atrocities falls flat when confronted with
unquestioned heterosexual villains like Heinrich
Himmler, Adolf Eichmann, and Josef Mengele, and he
has to try to defuse this land mine under his feet
by grasping at even the vaguest gossip and
innuendo to try to make a case that, deep down,
these heterosexuals were really either homosexuals
themselves or sympathizers of homosexuals.
*** {end comment 112-1}
Read the Same Text Again Skip Forward Table of Contents
Himmler may have been a homosexual. Filmmaker Walter
Frenz, who worked closely with the Nazi elite including a stint as
Hitler's private filmmaker, is reported to have traveled to the East-
ern front with Himmler "whose pederastic proclivities he cap-
tured on film" (Washington City Paper, April 4, 1995). Himmler,
like Hitler, was closely associated with homosexuals during his
entire adult life. His path to Nazi leadership, however, was not,
like that of so many others, through the German "gay rights"
movement. It was, instead, through the occult movement, and
his Nazi career was defined by his passion for the occult. We
have seen how Himmler was profoundly influenced by Guido von
List and Jorg Lanz von Liebenfels, the homosexual gurus of na-
tionalistic and anti-Semitic occultism. It was List's dream of a
hierarchical male supremacist social order which formed the blue-
print for the SS. And it was from List that Himmler appropriated
{See Comment 112-2}
the "SS" symbol. From Lanz, Himmler adopted other occult
themes. Wistrich writes,
For him, the SS was at one and the same time the
resurrection of the ancient Order of the Teutonic
Knights with himself as Grand Master, the breed-
ing of a new Herrenvolk aristocracy based on tra-
ditional values of obedience, courage and loyalty,
and a vast experiment in modern racial engineer-
ing (Wistrich: 140).
*** {start comment 112-2}
The quote is slightly inaccurate. It should
read ...loyalty, and the instrument of a vast
experiment...."
*** {end comment 112-2}
Read the Same Text Again Skip Forward Table of Contents
***{Below is Page: 113 }***
Lanz originated both the revival of the Teutonic Knights theme
and the plan for German racial engineering. The latter idea mani-
fested itself in Germany in 1936 as the "State-registered human
stud Farm known as Lebensborn [meaning "fount of life"j, where
young girls selected for their perfect Nordic traits could procre-
ate with SS men" (ibid.: 138). By 1945 over 11,000 births had
resulted from the program (Conway:273), which Himmler was
later to claim as his greatest contribution to the Third Reich. But
the plan, down to some of its details, must be attributed to Lanz.
Goodrick-Clarke writes,
The similarity between Lanz's proposals and the
latter practices of Himmler's SS Lebensborn ma-
ternity organization... indicate the survival of these
mental reflexes over a generation. Lanz's advo-
cacy of brood mothers in eugenic convents
(Zuchtkloster), served by pure-blooded Aryan
stud-males (Ehehelfer), was revived in the Third
Reich (Goodrick-Clarke:97).
{See Comment 113-1}
Himmler's opposition to homosexuality was directly proper-
tannate to the attitudes of homosexuals about procreation. For
him, the individual's highest duty to the state was the improve-
men of the race through proper breeding. Himmler was obsessed
with creating a race of "supermen." But in his view, some of the
most perfect specimens of Aryan manhood were being lost to this
effort due to homosexuality. Himmler felt this "loss" more keenly
in light of the fact that Germany had lost two million men in World
War I. He also believed there were two million homosexuals in
the population. "This meant," write Burleigh and Wippermann,
"that Germany's 'sexual balance sheet' had gone into deficit be-
cause 'four million men capable of sex' had either died or had
renounced their duty to procreate' on account of their sexual
proclivities" (Burleigh and Wipperman {sic} :192).
*** {start comment 113-1}
It should be pointed out that Burleigh and
Wippermann are quoting from a speech Himmler
delivered to a conference of SS officers in 1937.
In that speech he announced that homosexuals
uncovered in the SS would be publicly degraded,
imprisoned, and upon release sent to concentration
camps where they would be shot "while attempting
to escape." Himmler added "Thereby, I hope finally
to have done with persons of this type in the SS."
*** {end comment 113-1}
Read the Same Text Again Skip Forward Table of Contents
{See Comment 114-1}
Himmler's solution to this problem was, logically enough, not
the extermination of the delinquent males. Instead he placed great
***{Below is Page: 114 }***
hope in the use of medical "treatments" to "reclaim" homosexu-
als for the race. One experiment involved implanting artificial
glands in homosexual subjects to introduce additional male hor-
mones to the body. Other efforts paired homosexual prisoners
with female prostitutes (ibid.: 195f). while the idea of forced
medical experiments is abhorrent, the fact that Himmler invested
time and resources in such projects shows that he had a very dif-
ferent view of homosexuals than of other prisoners, even of those
effeminate homosexuals who were held in such contempt by the
Nazi "Butches." Himmler was determined to rehabilitate rather
than dispose of them.
*** {start comment 114-1}
The Nazis sought "cures" for all their
undesirables, not just homosexuals. For example,
having Jewish blood could be "cured" by having had
enough exposure to Christianity in one's past. A
Jewish relative, if far enough in the past, was
considered not to have any further tainting
influence. In the general population, the removal
of "Jewish influences" for two prior generations
was deemed adequate, while for higher roles, such
as SS membership, more generations of removal from
Jewish influence in one's family had to be
demonstrated.
The Nazis usually lumped homosexuals together
with Jews in their pantheon of demons. Both groups
were considered enemies of the state, but it was
far more difficult to deal with homosexuals than
with Jews. The Jews could be isolated rather
easily, and were largely without ties outside
their group. Homosexuals, on the other hand, could
crop up anywhere -- even in the best of Nazi
families. Just as public opinion had shut down the
euthanasia program before World War II when
concerned relatives of some of those killed began
to raise questions, so the prosecution of
homosexuals could not be too extreme, as there
were too many heterosexual family members who
would object. The euthanasia program resumed more
quietly after wartime secrecy prevailed, and in
the same way detention and medical experiments on
homosexuals could intensify after the onset of
war. The manpower shortage made treatment
preferable to extermination. In the same way Jews
were sometimes preserved in the early days of the
war if they could provide useful manpower (those
not of use were killed very quickly).
Whatever "softness" Himmler might have
exhibited toward homosexuals, it wasn't because he
had any sort of "soft spot" for them. Faced with a
critical shortage of manpower, and having killed
off Jews who could have provided it, he had to
look where he could for workers.
*** {end comment 114-1}
Read the Same Text Again Skip Forward Table of Contents
{See Comment 114-2}
Himmler began his Nazi career as an aide to Ernst Roehm, a
fact which clearly refutes the idea that he was a priggish anti-
homosexual zealot. On the contrary, Himmler's service to Roehm
was not performed grudgingly. Himmler voluntarily wrote his
own oath of loyalty to Roehm and repeated it ceremoniously each
year in Roehm's presence. Gallo records a portion of a letter
written to Roehm by Himmler: "As a soldier and a friend, I wish
you all you could desire in obedience and loyalty. It has been and
always will be my greatest pride to be counted among your most
faithful followers" (Gallo:45). Obviously, Himmler's attitude had
changed considerably by the time he helped to orchestrate the
Roehm Purge, but for many years he had been pleased to serve
the most brazen and outspoken homosexual in the Nazi Party.
*** {start comment 114-2}
The Pink Swastika author is either being
disingenuous or is hopelessly naive to attribute
to Himmler any sincerity. Nobody else would.
Himmler was an unscrupulous sycophant who would
say anything to ingratiate himself with his
superiors. In plotting behind Roehm's back to take
over his power it was only logical that Himmler
would do whatever he could to try to make Roehm
trust him. It should also be noted that Roehm-the-
open-homosexual-of-the-Nazi-movement didn't exist
before 1924, that he left the party in 1925, and
then the country, returning only in 1930. The idea
that Himmler had faithfully served an "outspoken
homosexual" for "many years" is not supported by
the facts. (Additionally, Hitler's major method of
controlling his subordinates was to divide them
and have them report through multiple, parallel
chains of command, thus setting up conflicts that
only he could resolve. That Himmler nominally
served under Roehm doesn't mean very much when he
took personal orders directly from Hitler without
going through Roehm.)
*** {end comment 114-2}
Read the Same Text Again Skip Forward Table of Contents
As long as a man performed his procreative duties to the state,
Himmler had no problem with his other sexual practices. This
attitude is easily recognized in the case of his second-in-command,
Reinhard Heydrich, whose own contribution to the Third Reich
deserves special attention.
***{Below is Page: 115 }***
Reinhard Heydrich: "The Blonde Beast"
In an organization which exemplified evil, Reinhard Heydrich
was considered the quintessential member. "Tall, slim, blonde-
haired, with slanting, deep set blue eyes," writes Wistrich,
"Heydrich with his military bearing and ice-cool hardness seemed
to epitomize the "Nordic-Aryan type' of Nazi mythology"
(Wistrich: 134). Himmler selected Heydrich as his right hand-man
in 1931, and within a few short years he was feared by everyone
but Hitler himself (Rector:61). Wistrich describes him well:
...ruthless, cold and calculating, without any com-
punction to carrying out the most inhuman mea-
sures, Heydrich made himself indispensable to the
masters of the Third Reich...His cynicism and con-
tempt for human beings led him to exploit the bas-
est instincts...in weaving his gigantic spider's web
of police surveillance in the Third Reich. He filed
extensive dossiers, not only on enemies of the Party
but also his rivals and colleagues. The 'Blonde
Beast,' who controlled the sole intelligence ser-
vice after 1935, specialized in devious methods of
blackmail alongside weapons of open terror and
persecution. His hand was most probably in the
Tukhachevsky Affair -- which led to the purge of
Red Army generals in the Soviet Union - and he
fabricated the scandalous intrigue which brought
down the leading German generals von
Blomberg. . and von Fritsch... [He] masterminded
the mock attack on the Gleiwitz radio transmitter
which provided Hitler's excuse for invading
Poland... [But] The most satanic consequence of
this accumulation of power was revealed in
Heydrich's implementation of the order for the
wholesale extermination of European Jewry
(Wistrich: 134f.).
***{Below is Page: 116 }***
Like so many of the Nazis, Heydrich had been a member of
the Freikorps and "was strongly influenced in his early years by
the racial fanaticism of the volkish circles" (ibid.: 134). Heydrich
also shared the sexual vice that marked Hitler's circle of power.
Heydrich's career was guided and dominated by his relation-
ship with an older homosexual friend, Freidrich {sic} Karl von Eberstein,
son of Count Ernst von Eberstein, Heydrich's godfather. Freidrich {sic}
von Eberstein was Heydrich's senior by ten years and had served
{See Comment 117-1}
in the navy during World War I. More importantly, von Eberstein
was one of the original Nazi leaders in the SA and was a personal
friend of Adolf Hitler (Calic:33). While von Eberstein had been
instrumental in helping Heydrich obtain a commission in the navy,
he was also the reason Heydrich was relieved of his post in 1931
by Admiral Raeder. Raeder had dismissed him for "conduct un-
becoming an officer and a gentleman" (Wistrich: 134) after he
learned of the homosexual relationship between Heydrich and von
Eberstein. Immediately von Eberstein moved to procure Heydrich
a place in the Nazi leadership. Historian Callum MacDonald writes,
While Heydrich was serving on the Naval staff in
Kiel, von Eberstein had been leader of the Nazi
Sturmabteilung or SA, in Munich and upper
Bavaria...In 1931, however, von Eberstein joined
another organization, the Schutzstaffel or SS...On
the recommendation of von Eberstein, now an of-
ficer on Himmler's staff Heydrich became a mem-
ber of the Nazi Party, number 544,916, in June
1931. He joined the SA in Hamburg and was soon
involved in bloody street battles against the com-
munists and other opponents of the Nazis. He took
this step on the understanding that his association
with the beerhall brawlers was to be purely tem-
porary and that von Eberstein would use his influ-
ence to secure a speedy transfer to the SS... [Later,
Hitler] began to look for someone capable of or-
ganizing the SS intelligence service on a profes-
***{Below is Page: 117 }***
sional basis and was handed Heydrich's file by von
Eberstein (MacDonald: l6f.).
*** {start comment 117-1}
Allegations about Eberstein's alleged
homosexuality appear to be pure fabrication. In
four biographies of Heydrich, there is no mention
of it. G. S. Graber mentions homosexuality several
times about other Nazis, such as Ernst Roehm, but
never in regard to Heydrich or Eberstein. Indeed,
after discussing the homosexuality of Roehm and
his inner circle, at whose office Heydrich was to
report for work, Graber says (page 55) "None of
this was then known to Heydrich. When he reported
for duty at the Brown House he must have been
disagreeably surprised." A homosexual would hardly
have been "disagreeably" surprised to join others.
Biographer Guenther Deschner also has no mention
of homosexuality regarding Heydrich or Eberstein.
Edouard Calic is not a source for the
material where he is cited in The Pink Swastika.
Calic says absolutely nothing about homosexuality
in regard to Heydrich and Eberstein. (See comment
118-1.)
Author Callum MacDonald provides a summary of
Heydrich's early career in the work cited by the
Pink Swastika author. Based on what MacDonald
writes, the Pink Swastika's account of Heydrich's
alleged homosexual activity appears to be pure
fabrication.
Heydrich was only 15 years old when, at the
end of World War I, he joined the Maeracker
Freikorps, a notorious one, but not one associated
with homosexuality. He later claimed to have
served as a runner (messenger). He was a member
for only a short time, though he and his father
joined a local volunteer defense force trained by
some of the Freikorps troops.
MacDonald says nothing about Eberstein being
homosexual. What is clear is that Heydrich in no
way was "guided or dominated" by him. There was a
ten year difference in their ages, and they were
located in different parts of the country,
Heydrich in Kiel in the far north, Eberstein in
Munich in the far south. They did correspond by
mail. MacDonald doesn't state whether Eberstein
helped Heydrich join the navy, but in any case
that would certainly have been the older
Eberstein, Heydrich's godfather, not the allegedly
homosexual son.
The influence and guiding light of Heydrich's
naval career was Admiral Canaris, later an anti-
Hitler conspirator, not Eberstein. MacDonald says
(page 13) "Moreover, his mentor, Canaris, had a
long association with naval intelligence and may
have recommended a posting to some form of secret
work." MacDonald says absolutely nothing about any
alleged homosexual relationship between Heydrich
and Eberstein as a cause for Heydrich's dismissal
from the Navy. Heydrich was a notorious womanizer
and had already been brought up before a naval
court of honor on a charge of mistreating another
young lady. A second charge, coming after
Heydrich's engagement was announced, involved a
woman who claimed Heydrich had promised to marry
her. The wronged young lady's family were friends
of Admiral Raeder, head of the German Navy, and
this time Heydrich did not escape. He was thrown
out of the Navy by Raeder. Since MacDonald
supplies this information just a few pages before
the quote of the Pink Swastika author, it's hard
to see how the confusion could arise in any honest
manner.
After his dismissal from the Navy, a
continued career using his military training and
experience was difficult. He, his wife, and her
family were ardent Nazis, and he had a friend in
Hitler's headquarters, the younger Eberstein. He
asked him to look for a job for him. Eberstein did
help him get a job in the SS and brought him to
Himmler's attention as a candidate for the
intelligence job. (It was Himmler, not Hitler, who
"began to look for someone..." -- another error on
the part of the Pink Swastika author.)
It should also be noted that Wistrich
mentions nothing of homosexuality in regard to
Heydrich. At publication of his book, Wistrich was
teaching at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He
mentions Funk's alleged homosexuality, and Funk's
great offense against Jews was to "launder"
currency and gold taken from concentration camp
victims. It would seem that in the case of
Heydrich, architect of the death of millions of
Jews, Wistrich would surely have mentioned
homosexuality had he found the slightest hint of
it.
*** {end comment 117-1}
Read the Same Text Again Skip Forward Table of Contents
In 1931 , when Ernst Roehm was faced with accusations of
homosexuality under Paragraph 175, it was Heydrich who came
to his defense (Lombardi: 12). Despite this action, or perhaps
because of it, Heydrich very soon discovered he had enemies within
the Party. These men, led by Moulin-Eckart, began looking for
information to use against him. They uncovered the truth of
Heydrich's homosexuality and attempted to blackmail him with
it. His enemies, however, would quickly learn that Heydrich was
{See Comment 118-1}
not a man to cross. According to Calic,
Moulin-Eckart condemned himself to death... What
he learned about Heydrich's [Jewish] origins was
unimportant compared with the evidence he gath-
ered concerning relations between Heydrich and
von Eberstein...Heydrich's adversaries underesti-
mated the danger of what they planned to do.
Revealing the true reason for Heydrich's dismissal
from the navy might set off a scandal that would
jeopardize Hitler's efforts to increase his support
in the Reichwehr. {sic} Worried about the effects of
such a revelation, the party leadership finally be-
gan circulating a story to counteract it: Heydrich
had been dismissed from the navy because he re-
fused to marry a woman after having an affair with
her (Calic:64).
Heydrich's mentor in the navy, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, was
also alleged to be homosexual -- by Heydrich's successor in the
position of Chief of the SD-SS, Ernst Kaltenbrunner (Rector:62).
Rector questions this allegation because Kaltenbrunner "once said
that 80% of the Abwehr [German Military Intelligence] were sexu-
ally perverted" and believed it "to be a center of every form of
vice" (ibid.:62). This allegation, however, seems quite consistent
***{Below is Page: 118 }***
with what we have come to know of certain segments of the Ger-
man military, though the specific statements are perhaps exagger-
ated. Heydrich and Canaris were very close during Heydrich's
tenure in the navy (MacDonald: 12), but Canaris later came to
fear the man he had trained in intelligence tactics, and kept a dos-
sier on Heydrich's homosexuality as insurance to protect his own
career (Stevenson: 349). Much later Canaris was discovered to
be a leader in the attempt to assassinate Hitler and was executed
at Flossenberg concentration camp on April 9, 1945.
*** {start comment 118-1}
Once again the Pink Swastika author fails to
see the irony in the gossip he peddles. One
alleged homosexual Nazi flew to England to try to
stop the war. Here another alleged homosexual
plotted to kill Hitler. Even if these men were
homosexuals -- something not at all demonstrated -
- they seem all to be opponents of Hitler rather
than ardent followers.
The source of the Stevenson citation given
above is not immediately apparent from the Pink
Swastika bibliography.
The alleged material from Calic is an
astounding fabrication.
Calic says absolutely nothing about
homosexuality.
Calic's "real reason" for Heydrich's
dismissal from the navy was political reasons, and
that his "relationship" with Eberstein was one of
Nazi politics. He says, on pages 55-56:
"But even if there actually was such a woman
{whom Heydrich wronged and who caused his
dismissal}, and even if Heydrich's refusal to
marry her actually was the basis of charges
brought against him, we cannot exclude the
possibility that his dismissal was politically
motivated. The great confidence shown in him by
Hitler and Himmler as soon as he arrived at the
Brown House {offices of the Munich SA/SS}, the
respectful way he was treated in the headquarters
of the Nazi party -- all this suggested that the
Nazi leadership wanted to reward him for services
rendered to the party.
"If someday it is established by
unquestionable documentary evidence that Heydrich
appeared before a naval court of honor because of
his misconduct toward a woman, that will not
disprove the statement he often repeated during
his years in the Third Reich: that he was
dismissed from the navy for political reasons."
The fact is that Heydrich had become an
admirer of Hitler, and Eberstein served the Nazi
Party in Munich. Calic suggests that while in the
navy, Heydrich was working for the Nazis, spying
on his fellow officers and giving information to
the Nazis. This is made quite evident if the whole
passage from Calic is presented, not the mangled
version in The Pink Swastika. Here is what Calic
actually says on page 64:
...."In doing this, Moulin-Eckart condemned himself to death.
"What he learned about Heydrich's origins was
unimportant compared with the evidence he gathered
concerning relations between Heydrich and Karl von
Eberstein. That was forbidden territory because
Hitler had publicly declared that he would use
only legal means to achieve power. Spying on
officers of the armed forces was severely punished
by the law and regarded as an act incompatible
with the principles of patriotism. Moulin-Eckart,
and others who wanted Heydrich out of the way,
would not have missed a chance to use that
argument in their struggle against him within the
party. According to Hans von Kessel, Heydrich's
adversaries underestimated the danger of what they
planned to do. Revealing the true reason for
Heydrich's dismissal from the navy might set off a
scandal that would jeopardize Hitler's efforts to
increase his support in the Reichswehr. Worried
about the effects of such a revelation, the party
leadership finally began circulating a story to
counteract it: Heydrich had been dismissed from
the navy because he refused to marry a woman after
having an affair with her. That is Kessel's
thesis. Is there documentary proof of it? No. But
logic and common sense speak in its favor."
The Pink Swastika author has deliberately
falsified what Calic writes. Calic says absolutely
nothing about homosexuality. His "real reason" is
that Heydrich may have been spying on naval
officers and relaying the "dirt" to the Nazis in
Munich via his friend Eberstein. That is the
"relationship" with Eberstein. Moreover, Calic
clearly states that this version is unsupported
speculation by Hans von Kessel, a German
journalist whose brother was killed in Heydrich's
"Night of the Long Knives" purge of the SA in
1934.
At this point, it's worthwhile to address
another of the rumors about Heydrich, namely his
alleged Jewish origins. That's an allegation
MacDonald deals with. That rumor had dogged
Heydrich since he was a young boy, as it had
dogged his father and hampered his career.
Heydrich's grandmother had married a man named
Suess after his grandfather's death. The family
name of Heydrich's father was sometimes recorded
as "Heydrich-Suess" combining the names of his
true father and his stepfather. The man Suess was
not Jewish, and in any case wasn't a blood
relative of Heydrich. But the name fostered
rumors.
As for Heydrich's alleged work in the charge
against Roehm, that's something he very obviously
would be involved in as head of intelligence, and
nothing about his personal sexual proclivities can
validly be read into it. Roehm and Himmler both
stood as godparents when Heydrich's first son was
baptized in 1933. Heydrich saw Roehm as the head
of his organization and as a friend of the leader
of his country -- a good person to be on friendly
terms with for a young man looking to advance his
career. As Roehm fell from grace, Heydrich was
quick to drop him, showing that his loyalty was
not to Roehm but to his own career.
*** {end comment 118-1}
Read the Same Text Again Skip Forward Table of Contents
Heydrich's loyalties to Hitler never wavered. Rector writes
that "Hitler considered him the ideal Nazi, and Nazi inner circles
regarded Heydrich as a likely successor to Hitler even though
Hermann Goering was officially slated for the post of Fuehrer"
(Rector:62). Hitler's support gave Heydrich nearly unlimited
power. As Snyder writes, "Heydrich could order immediate ar-
rests and preventative detention, and he could send any persons
to concentration camps at any time. He was the absolute master
of life and liberty in the Third Reich" (Snyder:3 17).
The Grynszpan Affair -- Kristallnacht
Perhaps the single most infamous incident orchestrated by
Heydrich was the November 9, 1938 pogrom known as
Kristallnacht ("Crystal night"), in which hundreds of Jews were
killed and synagogues and businesses were destroyed across Ger-
many. "In fifteen hours," writes Snyder, "101 synagogues were
destroyed by fire, and 76 were demolished. Bands of Nazis sys-
tematically destroyed 7,500 Jewish owned stores. The pillage
and looting went on through the night. Streets were covered with
broken glass, hence the name Kristallnacht" (ibid. :201). Michael
Berenbaum, in The World Must Know, adds that ninety-six Jews
were killed and thirty thousand were arrested and sent to the camps.
Jewish cemeteries, schools and homes were destroyed. As a final
insult, the Jews were held responsible for the damage and collec-
tively fined one billion Reichsmarks (Berenbaum:54).
***{Below is Page: 119 }***
The Nazis characterized this wave of terror as the German
people's spontaneous response to the assassination of German
Embassy Councilor, Ernst vom Rath..{sic: ..} While the "spontaneous"
rioting was actually a calculated act of terrorism, the incident that
{See Comment 119-1}
allegedly sparked it was not planned. Ernst vom Rath's murder
was a legitimately spontaneous occurrence which the Nazis ex-
ploited to justify an attack on the Jews which they had undoubt-
edly been planning for some time. Interestingly, however, the one
common element in the story of the assassination and the story of
Kristallnacht is homosexuality.
Ernst vom Rath was a high-level SA official who had received
a diplomatic posting to the German embassy in Paris. While serv-
ing there he had taken up with a seventeen-year-old male prosti-
tute by the name of Herschel Grynszpan, a Polish Jew (Read and
Fisher: 33). In partial payment for his services, Grynszpan had
extracted a promise from vom Rath that his parents would be
spared the consequences of a recent law that "revoked the citi-
zenship of Polish Jews who had been living abroad for more than
five years and who still retained Polish citizenship" (Rector:57).
But vom Rath apparently failed to keep his promise; Grynszpan's
family, along with thousands of others "were herded into camps
in a no-man's land along the border region of Zbonszyn in freez-
ing weather" (ibid.:58). In retaliation, Grynszpan shot vom Rath
on the night of November 7, 1938. Two days later the Nazis
staged the "night of Broken Glass."
*** {start comment 119-1}
The account of the Grynszpan affair is
astonishing in its inaccuracy and distortion.
It's astonishing because of how greatly it
disagrees with what was actually written by the
sources cited in The Pink Swastika. It's hard to
understand how the Pink Swastika author imagined
he could get away with what he has written.
But more astonishing is what the Pink
Swastika author, himself proudly Jewish and living
in Jerusalem (see his introduction), has done to
tarnish the reputation of Herschel Grynszpan, a
hero of the Jewish people who stood up to the
Nazis when nobody else would. There is absolutely
no evidence that Grynszpan was ever involved in
homosexuality, or that he even knew Ernst vom Rath
before he shot him. Grynszpan was considered a
hero, and Dorothy Thompson of the United States
led a campaign to raise money for his defense.
(She specifically insisted that no Jews
contribute, so that the Nazis could not hold her
efforts against Germany's Jews.)
Rector's is a thinly researched book and a
poor source for anything. He cites no sources in
his information on Grynszpan. While he does say
"Here, however, the charge of homosexuality was
possibly true," he immediately qualifies even that
tentative statement with "At least, no evidence
has been brought forward affirming or refuting
that the Grynszpan case was due to a homosexual
love affair that had a tragic ending...." The Pink
Swastika author had available to him the more
thoroughly researched work of Read and Fisher --
he quotes from them -- yet chose to use a dubious
account from Rector. The reason is simple: Read
and Fisher, rather homophobic in their comments,
completely exonerate Grynszpan of any homosexual
involvement, while Rector, even though something
of a homosexual apologist at times, suggests there
may have been some truth in the allegation. The
obvious thing is for The Pink Swastika to use the
author whose tentative comment can be passed off
as proof that yet another Nazi "high-level" member
of the SA was a homosexual.
Did Grynszpan know vom Rath? When he went to
the German Embassy, he didn't ask for vom Rath,
but for the ambassador, saying he had some
important information to give him. It was pure
coincidence that he was led to vom Rath. Here's
what Read and Fisher say on page 6: "He asked to
see the German ambassador. As he did so, a
casually dressed man in his fifties strolled past
them on his way out of the embassy -- Count
Johannes von Welczeck, the ambassador himself.
Although he overheard Herschel's request, Welczeck
ignored it: There were plenty of staff on duty to
handle such visitors, and in any case, he was off
on his morning constitutional. His silence saved
his life." Another author adds that in addition
vom Rath was filling in for a colleague who would
have been the one to see Grynszpan but was not yet
at work.
How then did the idea of homosexuality arise?
The Read and Fisher account begins on page 231 and
is backed in its main by independent research of
other authors such as Hannah Arendt. The issue of
a homosexual relationship was raised by de Moro-
Giafferi, one of Grynszpan's high-priced lawyers
hired by Dorothy Thompson's defense fund, and
described as "the best lawyer in France."
In recounting Moro's defense of Grynszpan,
Read and Fisher say (page 241f.) "Moro's new
strategy was ingenious and, to say the least,
unconventional. It involved nothing less than a
deliberate defamation of the characters not only
of Ernst vom Rath but also of Herschel himself.
Moro proposed that Herschel should now declare to
the examining magistrate that he and vom Rath had
been lovers and that he had shot him in a jealous
rage because the diplomat had found another lover,
or -- in an alternative scenario -- because vom
Rath had refused to pay Herschel for his services
as a male prostitute....There would be two
immediate and highly desirable consequences of the
new approach. In the first place, the Nazis could
hardly seek to vent their rage upon German Jews
because a Jewish boy prostitute and his Nazi
client had fallen out. And in the second place, it
would make the Reich a laughingstock: Even though
the lawyers acting for the partie civile might be
able to do something to defend the late vom Rath's
name in court, the world's press would have a
field day at Germany's expense....But it was not
to be. In spite of the fact that Moro made it
clear to him that this unhallowing of his crime
would be to his own advantage, Herschel
indignantly refused to cooperate."
In any event, Herschel was never brought to
trial. By July, 1939, when the trial could have
been ready to begin, international tensions were
so high (the war started a month later) that the
French government was in no hurry to rush things.
*** {end comment 119-1}
Read the Same Text Again Skip Forward Table of Contents
{See Comment 120-1}
The Nazis were unable to find Grynszpan until 1940 when he
was finally hunted down and seized by the Gestapo (ibid:58). When
at last they had him in their possession, however, their planned
high-profile courtroom prosecution went up in smoke. "At the
last moment the trial was canceled on Hitler's orders: Grynszpan
had threatened to reveal a homosexual relationship with Rath"
(ibid. :58). The Nazis were furious. "Vom Rath had been sold to
the world as an official martyr, shot down in the service of the
Fuehrer He had even been given a state funeral at which Hitler
himself had been a mourner. Was he now to be portrayed in the
***{Below is Page: 120 }***
world's press as a queer with a taste for seventeen-year-old boys?"
(Read and Fisher:252).
*** {start comment 120-1}
The implication that the Nazis were somehow
searching for Grynszpan, but were unable to find
him for a long time is laughable. He was in French
custody until the German invasion in April 1940.
The Germans began looking for him only after they
occupied Paris, and they located him within a
couple weeks. He was in German hands a couple
weeks after that (Read and Fisher, 248).
The Nazis don't seem to have plans in 1940
for a public trial of Grynszpan. Read and Fisher
say that in their first interrogations of Herschel
he didn't mention anything about homosexuality,
claiming instead that he had gone to the German
Embassy to shoot himself as a protest but had
instead shot vom Rath because he called him a
dirty Jew. Grynszpan was transferred to
Sachsenhausen concentration camp where the Nazis
kept special prisoners such as Pastor Martin
Niemoeller, an outspoken opponent of the Nazis.
Read and Fisher say that the young Grynszpan was
there referred to as "bubi" by the guards. In view
of Langer's quote cited above about "bubi"
allegedly being a term of affection used by
homosexuals, it's thoroughly amazing that the Pink
Swastika author failed to concoct a story about
Grynszpan having homosexual love affairs with his
jailers at Sachsenhausen. (See comment 110-2
above.)
The Nazis could have tried Grynszpan in 1940
without the "homosexual defense" being raised, but
they missed their chance. They drew up a case and
indicted Herschel on October 30, 1941. The German
court raised objections to the case because the
murder had been committed in France, not Germany.
Hitler settled the matter by saying that the
shooting of vom Rath was not a simple murder but
an act of treason against the Reich, and plans for
the trial proceeded. But by that point Herschel,
now 20 years old, had learned a bit more of the
art of survival. He took a cue from Moro, his
French defense lawyer, and raised the "fag
defense" -- that he had been having a homosexual
affair with vom Rath -- and gave a remarkably
detailed account of how vom Rath picked him up off
the street one day and seduced him. The account
was extremely detailed, down to the light-colored
overcoat vom Rath had allegedly worn and the Paris
location at which the seduction had allegedly
occurred.
Of Herschel's claim to have been seduced by
vom Rath, Read and Fisher say "The whole story
was, of course, a total fabrication. Investigation
revealed that Ernst vom Rath was not a homosexual,
had never owned a light-colored overcoat, and
could not have picked Herschel up in the Place de
la Republique when Herschel claimed he had,
because he was known to have been out of Paris at
the time." Grynszpan nonetheless stuck to his
story and told investigating psychologists that
vom Rath had promised that his parents would not
be deported to Poland.
Grynszpan's introduction of the "fag defense"
put an end to any thought of a public show trial
for the moment. Read and Fisher say (p 252)
"Although Herschel's story could easily be
demolished by the prosecution, its potential as an
anti-Nazi smear was enormous. Vom Rath had been
sold to the world as an official martyr, shot down
in service to the fuehrer. He had been given a
state funeral at which Hitler himself had been a
mourner. Was he now to be portrayed in the world's
press as a queer with a taste for seventeen-year-
old boys?" (It would have been particularly bad
that he had violated Germany's racial laws by
having sex with a Jew.)
That last quote from Read and Fisher will be
noted as the same used by the Pink Swastika author
immediately above. With a large measure of tongue
in cheek, one notes with amazement that the Pink
Swastika author found this quote while totally
ignoring the immediately preceding material in
which Read and Fisher expose Grynszpan's story as
a fabrication.
*** {end comment 120-1}
Read the Same Text Again Skip Forward Table of Contents
Of course, the Nazis claimed that the confession was a lie, but
apparently there must have been enough evidence to support the
story, or the prosecutors could have easily refuted it. Instead,
they delayed the trial. Read and Fisher explain:
The delay gave Goebbels the time to create a new
myth about the late Ernst vom Rath, and he set
about it in a highly ingenious manner. He arranged
for the letters of French prisoners of war to be
specially vetted by one of his men, who seized the
more passionate and erotic messages. The letters
were then doctored to make it appear that they
had all been written to vom Rath by various mis-
tresses, with the aim of producing them in court as
written evidence of his heterosexuality. At one
stroke, Goebbels would have created a new Don
Juan, a German womanizer irresistible to
Frenchwomen (ibid:253).
Clearly the Nazis could produce no legitimate evidence that
vom Rath was a heterosexual. But even their falsified evidence
went unused because, in the meantime, the Justice Ministry had
obtained additional information that made a public trial impos-
sible. "[A] story had been circulating in public that Herschel had
in fact been vom Rath's male whore and procurer for some time
in 1938, and that vom Rath had been known in Parisian homo-
sexual circles as 'the ambassadress' and 'Notre Dame de Paris'"
(ibid. :253). Additionally, it was learned that vom Rath's brother
"had been dismissed from the service for homosexual offenses"
(ibid. :253). This was too much for even Hitler's propaganda
machine to overcome, so the trial was again postponed.
Grynszpan's young life began and ended in tragedy associ-
ated with homosexual perversion. His home town of Hanover
***{Below is Page: 121 }***
(perhaps not coincidentally the birthplace of Karl Heinrich Ulrichs)
was a center of homosexuality," according to Read and Fisher:
There were no fewer than 500 male prostitutes on
the police books in 1918, and the chief criminal
inspector put the number of homosexuals in the
city at about 40,000, out of a total population of
450,000. The Grynszpan's {sic} neighborhood earned
particular notoriety during the early year's of
Herschel's childhood through the activities of one
Fritz Haarman, known as 'the Butcher of
Hanover,' who picked up his victims, mostly ado-
lescent boys, in the railway station, and took them
home...when he had finished with them, he
strangled them, butchered their corpses, and sold
the flesh as meat. He was executed in 1925
(ibid.:33).
{See Comment 121-1}
Grynszpan never did go to trial, though he remained in Nazi
custody. Interestingly, the organization which came to his aid
during this time was the Society for Human Rights, the homo-
sexual "rights" group which had once boasted Ernst Roehm as a
member (and obviously was still operating somewhat openly un-
der the Third Reich --ibid. :245). Victor Basch, then head of the
SHR "had pleaded for liberty or judgment'" in an effort to get
him freed, but to no avail (ibid.:245). After 1942 Grynszpan just
disappeared, probably killed secretly by the Gestapo.
*** {start comment 121-1}
The above reference to the SHR is too
astounding to be a simple mistake. It was touched
on in an earlier comment where the Pink Swastika
author first mentioned it, but the facts bear
repeating. There are other misstatements of fact
in addition to the mention of the SHR. The Pink
Swastika author clearly intends the reader to
believe that while Grynszpan was in a Nazi
concentration camp in 1941 and 1942 a homosexual
organization was working openly in Germany for his
release. As a reference he offers Read and Fisher,
page 245. But what Read and Fisher say is quite
different. Read and Fisher are actually talking
about the period in 1940 when Grynszpan was still
in a French prison, which is to say before July of
1940. They say: "By then, Herschel had been in
custody for about twenty months, longer than any
juvenile in French history, in spite of continuous
efforts by Moro and other to get him freed. The
last attempt had been in April 1940, when Victor
Basch, president of the League of Human Rights,
had pleaded for 'liberty or judgment' -- but this,
like all the others, was ignored."
In his attempt to smear homosexuals the Pink
Swastika author has changed the time frame and the
location of the events given in Read and Fisher.
He also confuses the League for Human Rights with
the Society for Human Rights. While Read and
Fisher don't identify the League for Human Rights,
it was likely was a French organization, not a
German one, and had nothing to do with
homosexuality. (See comment 96-1 above.)
*** {end comment 121-1}
Read the Same Text Again Skip Forward Table of Contents
Kristallnacht, the "spontaneous" incident which Grynszpan's
act had supposedly sparked, has also been described as being de-
fined by homosexuality. As all of Europe struggled to understand
the cause for this horror, an answer was offered by British Con-
sul-General, R.T. Smallbones. Smallbones was a "self-confessed
Germanophile" who had served in Germany, from 1932 to 1939
and "had developed great admiration and respect for the sterling
qualities of the people" (ibid.: 127). "His opinion, therefore," writes
***{Below is Page: 122 }***
Igra, "rests on first-hand experience of the German people for a
long period of years" (Igra:7). He continues:
[Smallbones authored] a British White Paper,
'Concerning the treatment of German Nationals
(including the Jews) in Germany," in which the
following statement is made: "The explanation of
this outbreak of sadistic cruelty may be that sexual
perversion, and, in particular, homosexuality, are
very prevalent in Germany. It seems to me that
mass sexual perversion may offer an explanation
of this otherwise inexplicable outbreak"...I am con-
vinced that this explanation is the correct one
[writes Igra]. For, as a matter of fact, the wide-
spread existence of sexual perversion in
Germany...at the time the Hitler movement rose
to power.. is notorious. And authorities on crimi-
nal sociology are agreed that there is a causal con-
nection between mass sexual perversion and the
kind of mass atrocities committed by the Germans
(ibid:7).
{See Comment 122-1}
Heydrich, the man most responsible for this atrocity, met his
death in May, 1942, at the hands of two Czechoslovakian resis-
tance fighters. A bomb was tossed into his car, shattering his
spine. He died on June 4, 1942. In retaliation "the Germans took
savage revenge, after the manner of the old Teutonic rites, for the
death of their hero" (Shirer: 1288f). Over 1,500 people were
immediately executed and thousands more followed, including the
entire population of Lidice (ibid.: 1289). The Lidice massacre was
orchestrated by Heydrich's replacement, Kurt Daluege, formerly
a unit leader in Rossbach's notorious homosexual Freikorps
(Wistrich:43).
*** {start comment 122-1}
Wistrich mentions absolutely nothing about
homosexuality in connection with Daluege. The Pink
Swastika author tries to spread the false rumor
that Rossbach's Free Corps was made up exclusively
of homosexuals, and that therefore anyone
connected with it must have been homosexual.
*** {end comment 122-1}
Read the Same Text Again Skip Forward Table of Contents
Continue to Chapter Six Return to Top of Table of Contents