“Persecuted: Homosexuals in Nazi Germany�
Brittany N. Austin HIST 542 Research Paper American Military University March 18, 2012
From 1933 to 1945, Adolf Hitler and Germany’s Nationalist Socialist Party systemically endeavored to purge Germany of all people who did not fit in their idyllic Germany. These “enemies” of the state overwhelmingly consisted of the Jewish population, whom the average person readily identifies as the main victim of the Holocaust period. This is justifiably so, as the Jewish people of Europe under Nazi rule were stripped of their legal rights, their dignity, their homes, businesses, deported from their cities, and placed in concentration camps where often times they were worked to death, died of starvation or disease, or were murdered and disrespectfully placed in mass graves. Among the millions of Jews that were part of Hitler’s extermination plan, other targets included the physically and mentally handicapped, gypsies, and homosexuals. The latter of these groups have received much more attention lately than in the past. There have been several museum exhibits, articles, and books published regarding Nazi persecution of gypsies and homosexuals in Europe. Though the persecution of these two groups of people do not pale in comparison to the treatment of the European Jews, they are nonetheless important in understanding the scope and intensity of the Holocaust itself. “Compared to the more than 5-million Jews, or the hundreds of thousands of Gypsies and mentally disabled people killed during the Nazi regime, the 5,000 to 15,000 homosexuals sent to concentration camps may seem less significant.”1 The nomadic gypsy lifestyle lent itself to the belief that they were not pure because of racial mixing, and their lack of devotion to anyone government was frowned upon. While the gypsies were targeted because of race, homosexual men were targeted for what was believed to be a mental disorder that caused them to desire the same sex. Nazi scientists
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Rita Farlow, “Nazis Persecuted Gay Too, ” St. Petersburg Times. August 30, 2006.
studied homosexuals and conducted gruesome experiments, convinced there was a scientific answer that would destroy their behavior or desires. Comparatively, in the United States today, organizations such as Abiding Truth Ministries, Concerned Women for America, and Coral Ridge Ministries spread their anti-gay message across the country. Abiding Truth actually propagates that the Nazi party was full of homosexuals, thereby equating the racially charged genocide of the Jewish population with homosexuals. To what extent do these anti-gay groups share the same beliefs as Hitler and the Nazi party? Research of the treatment of homosexuals under the Nazi Regime has been quite limited, due to the social stigmas and fear of persecuted homosexuals to tell their stories. In the post-World War II era, homosexuality was still a criminal offense in many modern countries, including our own. Persecution of homosexuals in Nazi Germany was similar to the persecution many American groups attempt in today’s modern society, until Paragraph 175 became interpreted in the extreme, and the punishments for small offenses became deadly. The goal of this research is to uncover the extent that the Nazi party persecuted the homosexuals in Europe and the study of propaganda of the Third Reich versus propaganda used in America today, discussing the differences and similarities in both the extremist view of Nazism and the extremist conservative right. In order to even attempt to examine the issue fully, several questions must be addressed. First, why target homosexuals, and why specifically homosexual men? Second, did Adolf Hitler and the Nazis intend a “final solution” for the homosexuals in the country as it has been suggested by some historians? Third, to what extent were the homosexuals in Germany persecuted under the Nazi regime? Paragraph 175, the notorious German criminal code regarding homosexuality, was not originated by the Nazi party, but went mostly unenforced under the government of the Weimar
Republic. On September 1, 1935, an amended version went into effect, making the 1871 law much harsher and creating the Reich Special Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion. Below is a copy of the 1935 criminal code, which lent itself to extensive and often confusing interpretation;
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175. A male who commits lewd and lascivious acts with another male or permits himself to be so abused for lewd and lascivious acts, shall be punished by imprisonment. In a case of a participant under 21 years of age at the time of the commission of the act, the court may, in especially slight cases, refrain from punishment. 175a. Confinement in a penitentiary not to exceed ten years and, under extenuating circumstances, imprisonment for not less than three months shall be imposed: Upon a male who, with force or with threat of imminent danger to life and limb, compels another male to commit lewd and lascivious acts with him or compels the other party to submit to abuse for lewd and lascivious acts; Upon a male who, by abuse of a relationship of dependence upon him, in consequence of service, employment, or subordination, induces another male to commit lewd and lascivious acts with him or to submit to being abused for such acts; Upon a male who being over 21 years of age induces another male under 21 years of age to commit lewd and lascivious acts with him or to submit to abuse for lewd and lascivious acts; Upon a male who professionally engages in lewd and lascivious acts with other men, or submits to such abuse by other men, or offers himself for lewd and lascivious acts with other men. 175b. Lewd and lascivious acts contrary to nature between human beings and animals shall be punished by imprisonment; loss of civil rights may also be imposed.2
Some historians have suggested that the revision of Paragraph 175 was an effort to eliminate all homosexuals in Germany, however, Geoffrey Giles states that it was “part
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United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Paragraph 175. http://www.ushmm.org/research/library/ bibliography/en/gays/paragraph175.php.
of a much wider reform of the criminal code that covered a considerable number of other crimes” unrelated to homosexuality, such as disrespecting Nazi symbols. 3 In 1935, fifteen homosexual men were brought under charges of homosexuality under Paragraph 175; known as the Weimar case, the conviction of these men opened the Supreme Court up to a witch hunt for homosexuals in Germany. Himmler rather than Hitler seemed to be at the forefront of desiring the eradication of homosexuals, yet Hitler did not tolerate homosexuality among his military men or Hitler Youth groups. Himmler stated “I have been instructed that the Führer has decreed in his order of 15 November 1941, in order to keep the SS and police clean of all vermin of a homosexual nature, that a member of the SS or police who commits an indecent act with another man, or allows himself to be indecently abused by him, will be put with death without consideration of his age.”4 Giles goes on to discuss that when he began researching the homosexual victims of the Holocaust, that Himmler in fact, seemed to be the biggest villain, not Hitler. Hitler is criticized as a sympathizer of homosexuals due to his tolerance of Ernst Rohm, leader of the SA (Sturmabteilung) or the Brown Shirts. Evidence shows that Hitler only tolerated Rohm for as long as he was needed, and when he became too powerful, and was a threat to Hitler’s authoritarianism, he was eliminated, beginning the “Rohm purges”, which also had a homosexual connection to the victims as well. Historians will argue over whether the Rohm purges for the rest of history, as there is no documentation of whether Rohm’s homosexuality was the main issue or his rise to popularity and increasing desire for power was the real threat,
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Geoffrey Giles, “Legislating Homophobia in the Third Reich: The Radicalization of Prosecution against Homosexuality by the Legal Profession,” Germany History 23, no. 3 (205): 1. 4 Geoffrey Giles, “Why Bother About Homosexuals?: Homophobia and Sexual Politics in Nazi Germany. Washington, D.C.: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2001.
however, it is clear that at a time when Hitler need the support of conservatives in Germany, the homosexual link cannot be denied. Why did Hitler and the Nazi party target homosexuals in Germany at all? According the Giles, though many European nations still had laws on their books regarding homosexuality, tolerance for homosexuality in Germany had increased in the early 1900s, encouraging cities like Berlin to become cultural refuges for homosexuals.5 Many have suggested that Hitler and many of his Nazis were actually homosexual, but that shall be discussed elsewhere. Several theories have developed about the desires behind the stringent persecution of Nazis, including the lack of reproduction that occurs in homosexual relationships to blaming the Jewish homosexuals for trying to destroy the image of Germany. One particular sexologist is often mentioned in the historiography of the issue, Magnus Hirschfield. Hirschfield was a German sexologist, homosexual, and defender of equal rights. In his autobiography, he discusses his persecution by the Nazi party before the war had even begun. He was propagated as an evil man in papers, his research facility, the Institute for Sexology was burned to the ground and his papers destroyed, and he was physically attacked in Munich. Without a job and fearing for his life, he fled the country, never to return. One of his colleagues, a gynecologist named Lenz believed that the reason their Institute became a target was that due to their “knowledge of such intimate secrets regarding members of the Nazi Party…we possessed about forty thousand confessions and biographical letters.” Historian Erwin Haeberle questions the validity of this statement, questioning whether or not if this was the case, is it not possible that the documentation of the perversity of Nazi officers was
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Habib, “Why Bother About Homosexuals?”
actually kept and used by the Gestapo to arrest and rid the party of Rohm and other SA leaders?6 By the fall of 1933, the first homosexual prisoners were already being sent to concentration camps, including those who had been formerly convicted under Paragraph 175. The most obvious and likely true theory of why the Nazis targeted homosexuals were their lack of reproduction. Hitler’s main goal was the produce a glorious Aryan nation, and he encouraged homosexuals to help do so, as reproductive machines. Blame for Jewish homosexuals trying to push Germany down “the slippery slope of increasing infertility” was widely popularized in a book by Hartner, which from Himmler’s journals; historians know he identified his beliefs with those promulgated by Hartner’s book.7 Grau Gunter also reiterates that female homosexuals were not as readily punished because of their usefulness in reproduction, even if it was forced. 8 Secondly, some historians have suggested that the Nazis had plotted a “final solution” for homosexuals as well as Jews. There is no evidence of such desires, while Himmler especially believed that the propagation of the homosexual agenda would essentially be the destruction of mankind, the fact remains that of the total population housed in concentration camps at any point, pink triangle prisoners made up about one percent. One interesting and factually based read on this question was written by Gunter in 1998, which examines multiple viewpoints, statements, and hypotheses regarding whether the impact of Nazi policy in the 1930s and 1940s was the result of the desire for complete eradication. His observations explain that of about 50,000 convicted homosexuals, between five and fifteen thousand were sent to camps. The Nazis did not create Paragraph 175, it had been in effect since 1871, they simply made it more stringent 6
Erwin J.Haeberle, "Swastika, Pink Triangle and Yellow star—the Destruction of Sexology and the Persecution of Homosexuals in Nazi Germany." Journal of Sex Research 17, no. 3 (1981): 270-87. 7 Habib, “Why Bother Homosexuals?” 8 Günter Grau, Hidden Holocaust?: Gay and Lesbian Persecution in Germany, 1933-45. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1995.
and increased the parameters for punishment. Granted, the definitions of such wording as lewd or lascivious acts were left quite open for interpretation. The punishments included imprisonment in a concentration camp, castration, and capital punishments for members of the SS.9 Compared to other prisoners, based on the number incarcerated, the death rate was much higher. Rudiger Lautman’s study of gay prisoners in concentration camps asserts that the death rate for homosexuals was sixty percent, was “one and a half times as high as for political prisoners (41 percent) and Jehovah’s Witnesses (35 percent).10 Another study of his demonstrates that about 26 percent were liberated, 13 percent were released, and only four tenths percent managed to escape.11 While Nazi propaganda and the criminal code provided under Paragraph 175 demonstrates the desire to essentially scare homosexuals back “into the closet”, the numbers show that of an estimated million homosexuals living in Germany, there was no real threat from the Nazis for extinction. Therefore, it can be logically concluded that there was no real “final solution” to rid the country of homosexuality. Thirdly, to what extent were the homosexuals in Germany persecuted under the Nazi regime? Though the numbers were much smaller than the Jewish population, the evidence being uncovered about how homosexuals were treated while imprisoned is ghastly. Labeled with a pink triangle, to represent their lack of masculinity, the social stigma even placed among prisoners
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Gunter Grau. “Final Solution of the Homosexual Question? The Antihomosexual Policies of the Nazis and the Social Consequences for Homosexual Men.” In The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined, 338-344. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. 10 Rudiger Lautmann, “Gay Prisoners in Concentration Camps as Compared with Jehovah’s Witnesses and Political Prisoners.” In A Mosaic of Victims: Non-Jews Persecuted and Murdered by the Nazis, 200-221. New York: New York University Press, 1990. 11 Rudiger Lautmann, “The Pink Triangle: Homosexuals as ‘Enemies of the State.’” In The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined, 345-357. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998.
was surprising. In a place where nobody was safe, homosexuals were still treated as outcasts, and their high percentage of deaths compared to other prisoners cannot be incidental. Under Paragraph 175, anal intercourse was already criminalized, in 1935; it expanded to include any male homosexual contact, which in the court system interpreted as any physical contact. According to Lautmann, not every homosexual convicted in court was sent to a concentration camp, and many in prominent positions were not even charged with the crime, in spite of their known homosexual status. 12 Nazi Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Diseases made the use of eugenics acceptable in many aspects including eliminating the deaf, physically and mentally handicapped, and homosexual behavior. Giles wrote a very interesting article on the castration practices of the Nazis in hopes of curbing the desires of homosexuals, and preventing them from passing on this genetic “defect”. Survivors testify to the treatment of pink triangle prisoners in camps; stating they were treated far worse not only by guards, but also by other inmates. One story of an SS guard who had guarded the homosexual barracks at Sachsenhausen, was himself convicted and sent to the same block he had once guarded. When his fate spread around the camp, his former comrades in the SS beat him, and later a group of prisoners beat him again. At Dachau, the story of Leopold Obermayer is another example of the brutal treatment of homosexual prisoners in the camps. Knowing of his heart problem, he was forced to run around the exercise yard while others walked, and when if his speed did not please the guards, the other prisoners were told to run behind him and “kick the back of his knees and ankles”. Obermayer was later dragged into an ice-cold shower, then taken back to run more. Once they were done, he
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Habib, "Swastika, Pink Triangle and Yellow star—the Destruction of Sexology and the Persecution of Homosexuals in Nazi Germany."
was taken back to his barracks and his wrists and ankles were chained to a single ring on the floor. The guards informed him if he sat down he would be beaten to death. Perhaps this case is due to Obermayer’s status as both Jewish and homosexual, but other information has been brought forward to demonstrate the “deliberate torture and murder of homosexual inmates in Sachsenhausen”. October 1941, five homosexual prisoners were taken to the wash room where their hands were bound behind their backs, and hoses were shoved down their throats. After all had drowned, the five were hung upside down until all the water drained out. Survivors reported that in Spring 1942, homosexuals were selected at the gravel pit, tied to a loaded rail trolley car by a noose around their neck, and told to keep up with the car while it went a slope or be dragged to death. In just over two years, an estimated four hundred homosexual prisoners were killed in ways similar to this.13 By summer 1942, pink triangle prisoners were sent to a special punishment squad, and an even more deliberate method was used to kill them, including shooting those who were accused of trying to escape. On average, from July to September 12, 1942, an average of three or four was killed daily.14 Buchenwald began operating in 1937, and by the end of 1938 has about twenty-eight homosexual prisoners, by 1941 had fifty-one. Their goal was to work them hard enough to cure them of their disease. In January 1944, homosexuals were also being sent to the murder camp known as Dora. L. Adloff, a prisoner sent as a political in 1938 to Buchenwald, formerly worked at the State Library in Berlin as a librarian. He was marked with the pink triangle in October 1938 and was sent to work in the quarry. He suffered a leg injury and was
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Habib, “Why Bother About Homosexuals?” Habib, “Why Bother About Homosexuals?”
sent as an “invalid to Dachau, where he was severely mistreated by Dachau sick bay kap ‘Heathen Joe’.15 Over ninety thousand people were arrested on charges of homosexuality from the years 1937 to 1939. Even those who participated in consensual acts were persecuted under the law. In one case, a man known as T. was sentenced to the Danzig-Matzkau prison camp in May 1943, and before the year was over the SS had forced him to sign his name to permission for castration. Other reports have recorded the “eagerness with which certain doctors in the Third Reich pressed ahead with experiments or the castration of “sex criminals”…even though the effectiveness of the procedure was by no means proven, and the appalling side-effects of the operation were apparent-apart from physical maladies, severe depression sometimes led to suicide attempts. One prison doctor boasted that he could carry out a castration in eight minutes flat, and saw no reason to slow things down by administering a general anesthetic.”16 It seems as from this account, coupled with the accounts of other Nazi doctors, that castration was not just a preventative measure, but also a gratifying form of punishment for the pink triangle prisoners. Unfortunately, due to a lack of record keeping, it is unknown how many of the prisoners were castrated. Auschwitz survivor, Otto G., came forward to tell his story of castration after being held in a cell from July 12-29, 1939, tortured and beaten. He signed an agreement for voluntary castration, not sure of what he was signing. August 16, 1939, he was taken to the sick bay, where he was put under. He woke up later in his bed with an SS officer beside him, who settled his confusion with the fact that he had been castrated. This officer told him to “lie there quietly, because there were others lying there too, who had been overtaken by 15 16
Habib. “Hidden Holocaust?”: 264-267. Habib, “Why Bother About Homosexuals”: 16.
the same fate”. He realized at that point, he was in a room with about eight others. He described a scene where a few days later some SS guards came into the room with their testicles in jars, taunting them and insulting their lack of masculinity.17 Though the number of homosexual prisoners pales in comparison to that of other targets of the Nazi regime, as Giles points out “to minimize or ignore their suffering, as many if not most scholarly historians have largely done till today, is to perpetuate the view upheld after the war by the Allies…and the West German Supreme Court, that former pink triangle prisoners were sex criminals who essentially deserved punishment”.18 To ignore this group because they were not eliminated to the extent of Jewish victims is irresponsible. As historians, we cannot ignore any facet of history, regardless of how uncomfortable or unpopular the topic is. In Frank Rector’s book, The Nazi Extermination of Homosexuals, first published in 1981, when this issue was largely ignored, he blames Western society’s judgment and prejudices against homosexuals for this lack of knowledge about the pink triangle prisoners. He talks about how even in Europe during this time, the “Danish King who allegedly wore the Star of David to show his support for the Jewish victims willingly sent off his homosexuals.”19 Many would agree that Nazism is defined as an extreme form of fascism, which is by itself an extremist form of government. In our own democracy, however, some groups would propagate the same extremist view of homosexuals endorsed by the Nazi party. Several claim that the Nazis, including Adolf Hitler, were themselves homosexuals, further proving that homosexuals are dangerous to society. Indeed these claims are ridiculous and false, as the
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Habib, “Why Bother About Homosexuals”: 17-18. Habib, “Why Bother About Homosexuals”: 17-18. Frank Rector. The Nazi Extermination of Homosexuals. New York: Stein and Day, 1981:
historical record show that the Nazis persecuted homosexuals, in and out of their own party lines, and that Hitler himself had no tolerance for homosexual behavior, though he did feel it was not a choice, but an unfortunate mental defect one was born with. Co-author of The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party, Scott Lively, runs the Abiding Truth Ministries in Springfield, Massachusetts, where he claims that homosexuals were chosen because they are “innately brutal”. He spoke in 2009 in Uganda about the evils of homosexuality, a country where less than a month later, a law was passed that not only criminalized homosexuality, but called for the death penalty as punishment, and provided anyone who refused to give up gays’ identities to be imprisoned. Donald Wildmon began the American Family Association, now led by his son Tim, utilizes their journals and radio broadcasts to spread the message that Nazis were homosexuals, and also attacks the Muslim faith, stating that homosexuals should be forced into “reparative’ therapy and Muslims should be banned from the military.20 American Vision leader Gary DeMar spoke that under his vision of a “reconstructed” government that homosexuals would not all be killed, but that “the occasional execution of sodomites would serve society well…would drive the perversion of homosexuality underground, back into the closet”. Group research director, Joel McDurmon agreed that the Bible calls for killing homosexuals and should be perfectly normal in society. These groups and their leaders are just a few examples of the types of statements being made that homosexuals today in our country should be murdered or forced into therapy.21 Is this not exactly what the Nazi agenda was? Either work them to death, shoot them, or castrate them as “therapy”? The similarities in propaganda are utterly frightening in our supposed democratic society. Pink triangle prisoners
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Evelyn Schlatter, “18 Anti-Gay Groups and Their Propaganda”. Under Attack: Intelligence Report 140, Winter 2010. 21 Habib, “18 Anti-Gay Groups and Their Propaganda”.
and other victims of the Holocaust; have long fought for their place of remembrance in history. We, as historians, have a duty to honor the truth of what really happened in our past, and use it to teach the future that regardless of popular opinion of the time, some actions are not morally permissible.
Bibliography Giles, Geoffrey J. “‘The Most Unkindest Cut of All’: Castration, Homosexuality, and Nazi Justice.”Journal of Contemporary History 27, no. 1 (1992): 41-61. _____. Why Bother About Homosexuals?: Homophobia and Sexual Politics in Nazi Germany. Washington, DC: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2001. http://www.ushmm.org/ research/center/publications/occasional/2002-04/paper.pdf. (Accessed March 12, 2012). _____. “Legislating Homophobia in the Third Reich: The Radicalization of Prosecution against Homosexuality by the Legal Profession.” German History 23, no. 3 (2005): 239-254. http://gh.oxfordjournals.org/content/23/3/339.full.pdf+html. (Accessed March 15, 2012). Grau, Günter. “Final Solution of the Homosexual Question? The Antihomosexual Policies of the Nazis and the Social Consequences for Homosexual Men.” In The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined, edited by Michael Berenbaum and Abraham J. Peck, 338-344. http://books.google.com/books?id=zkZC6bp 3upsC&pg=PA312&dqfinal+solution+of+the+homosexual+question,+grau&hl=en&sa=X&ei=y EhmT52BKJCpsALv49m2Dw&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=final%20solution%20of %20the%20homosexual%20question%2C%20grau&f=false. (Accessed March 13, 2012). _____. Hidden Holocaust?: Gay and Lesbian Persecution in Germany, 1933-45. Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1995. http://books.google.com/books?id=x-1WbWJqP2YC&printsec =frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false. (Accessed March 3, 2012). Haeberle, Erwin J. "Swastika, Pink Triangle and Yellow star—the Destruction of Sexology and the Persecution of Homosexuals in Nazi Germany." Journal of Sex Research 17, no. 3 (1981): 270-87, http://search.proquest.com/docview/616612932?accountid=8289. (Accessed January 6, 2012). Lautmann, Rudiger. “Gay Prisoners in Concentration Camps as Compared with Jehovah’s Witnesses and Political Prisoners.” In A Mosaic of Victims: Non-Jews Persecuted and Murdered by the Nazis, edited by Michael Berenbaum, 200-221. New York: New York University Press, 1990. _____. “The Pink Triangle: Homosexuals as ‘Enemies of the State.’” In The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined, edited by Michael Berenbaum and Abraham J. Peck, 345-357. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. _____. "The Pink Triangle: The Persecution of Homosexual Males in Concentration Camps in Nazi Germany."Journal of Homosexuality 6, no. 1 (Jan 31, 1981): 141-, http://search.proquest.com/docview/205128309?accountid=8289. (Accessed January 5, 2012).
Lautmann, Rudiger, Erhard Vismar, and Jack Nusan Porter. Sexual Politics in the Third Reich: The Persecution of the Homosexuals During the Holocaust. Newton Highlands, MA: The Spencer Press, 1997. Rector, Frank. The Nazi Extermination of Homosexuals. New York: Stein and Day, 1981. Schlatter, Evelyn, “18 Anti-Gay Groups and Their Propaganda”. Under Attack: Intelligence Report, 140, Winter 2010. Southern Poverty Law Center, Montgomery, Alabama.