How Nazi Regime Targeted Gay Men in the Third Reich JJ
The 30th of January 1933, Germany. Adolf Hitler is appointed chancellor of Germany and the Nazi regime quickly begins to restrict the civil and human rights of the Jews and other individuals deemed to be “enemies of the state,” and opens the first concentration camp – Dachau – situated near Munich. Among those arrested are not only the Jews and political prisoners, but also thousands of homosexual men whom the Nazis track down thanks to denunciations from the public who refer to them as being “perverse”.
Approximately 100,000 men are arrested and more than 53,000 result in convictions. Those sent to concentration camps are among the most abused groups and are often subjected not only to brutal torture and inhuman medical experiments but also sexual abuse. Because of widespread homophobia, these homosexual inmates rarely benefit from solidarity from prejudiced fellow prisoners and are left isolated and powerless within the prisoner hierarchy. During the Nazi era, between 5,000 and 15,000 men are imprisoned in concentration camps as “homosexual” offenders. Out of them,
thousands would die and those who would survive, would remain marked to the end of their lives Despite the fact that homosexuality was illegal, in the mid- to late-nineteenth century, there were indications of nascent and growing gay communities in Germany Political and social conditions even allowed for people to publicly campaign for the decriminalization of sexual relations between men and the repeal of “Paragraph 175” which from 1871 banned sexual relations between men. Before coming into power, Adolf Hitler, the leader of the Nazi Party, and many other Nazi leaders
condemned Weimar culture, which was the emergence of the arts and sciences that happened in Germany between 1918 and 1933, as decadent and degenerate. Part of this condemnation was a rejection of the era’s open expressions of sexuality, including the visibility of gay communities. Some prominent Nazis, including Alfred Rosenberg and Heinrich Himmler, were clearly homophobic. However, Hitler and other Nazi leaders rarely spoke publicly about homosexuality, and they rather focused on such issues as the creation of a Greater German state, the Jews, and the economy.
In terms of legal policy relating to the German criminal code, the Nazi Party opposed efforts to decriminalize sexual relations between men and repeal Paragraph 175. During parliamentary debates, Nazis claimed that sexual relations between men were a destructive vice that would lead to the ruin of German people. The Nazi Party denounced homosexuality as a deviation from normal behavior that was completely antithetical to its fundamental belief in the need to increase the pure, “Aryan” population and proper family life.
The Nazis saw the purpose of sexual relations as reproduction, rather than pleasure, and viewed homosexuality as a threat to the superior “Aryan” race. They asserted these relations should be even more severely punished than current German law allowed. However, there were known gay men even in the Nazi movement, most notably Ernst Röhm who used the word “same-sex oriented”, to describe himself. Röhm was the leader of the SA, which was a paramilitary organization associated with the
Nazi Party, also known as the Storm Troopers and the Brownshirts, for the color of their uniform For Ernst Röhm, his sexuality did not conflict with Nazi ideology or compromise his role as SA leader. In Röhm’s understanding, legalizing sexual relations between men was not about encouraging liberal democratic rights or tolerance. Rather, he believed it was about the overthrow of mainstream morality. Röhm wrote that the “prudery” of some of his fellow Nazis did not seem revolutionary to him.
Röhm’s sexuality was an open secret in the Nazi Party that turned into a public scandal in 1931 when a leftist newspaper outed Röhm as gay. Despite the controversy, Hitler defended his loyal aide and longtime friend who remained in charge of the SA until 1934 when he ordered Röhm’s execution. Hitler, pressured by German army commanders, whose support he would need to become the President, directed the SS, led by Heinrich Himmler, to murder not only Röhm but also 300 of his men, some of whom were also homosexual.
However, Röhm’s position in the Nazi leadership had not tempered the movement’s condemnation of homosexuality and gay communities even before he was murdered. After the Nazis came to power on the 30th of January, 1933, they sought to dismantle the visible gay cultures and networks that had developed during the Weimar Republic which was the government of Germany from 1918 to 1933. One of the Nazis’ first actions against gay communities was to close gay bars and other meeting spots across Germany. However, in cities
like Berlin and Hamburg, some established gay bars were able to remain open until the mid-1930s. Underground gay meeting places remained open even later. Nonetheless, the Nazi closures and increased police surveillance made it far more difficult for gay men to connect with each other. Another early action undertaken by the Nazi regime was the elimination of gay newspapers, journals, and publishing houses. Newspapers had been one of the primary means of communication in Germany’s gay communities. In addition, the Nazi regime also forced gay associations to dissolve.
In a further escalation, the Nazis used new laws and police practices to arrest and detain without trial a limited number of gay men beginning in late 1933 and early 1934. This was part of a larger Nazi effort to reduce criminality. The Nazi regime instructed the police to arrest people with previous convictions for sexual crimes such as public exhibitionism, sexual relations with a minor, and incest. Those arrested included a number of gay men, some of whom were imprisoned in the regime’s early concentration camps.
The Nazi German judicial system also introduced castration into legal practice. As of late 1933, courts could order mandatory castration for certain sexual offenders. However, at least initially, men arrested under Paragraph 175 could not be castrated without their supposed consent but in some cases, men imprisoned under this statute could secure early release if they volunteered to be castrated. One such man was Friedrich-Paul von Groszheim. He was one of 230 homosexual men arrested by the SS in In January 1937. Von Groszheim was held for 10 months in
a cell with no heating, very little food, and no toilet facilities. In 1938 he was re-arrested and tortured. The Nazis finally released him, but only on one condition that he agree to be castrated. Friedrich-Paul submitted to the operation. In 1943 he was arrested a third time and imprisoned as a political prisoner at Neuengamme concentration camp. Von Groszheim survived the war and died in 2006 in Hamburg, Germany at the age of 99. In fall 1934, Reinhard Heydrich ordered the police of all large cities to make a list of
known homosexuals. These lists have come to be known as the “pink lists,” although this is not what the Nazis or the police called them. In late 1934, the Gestapo, which was the official political police, raided gay bars and made mass arrests of homosexual men; most of whom were not involved in politics. Many of the men accused of homosexuality would admit to acts that were not punishable under Paragraph 175, expecting to be released. Instead, they were mistreated and incarcerated in concentration camps such as Lichtenburg or Dachau.
These early measures were just the beginning of the Nazi campaign against homosexuality. Three events in the years 1934–1936 radicalized the Nazi regime’s campaign against homosexuality and led to more systematic oppression of gay men. First was the murder of Ernst Röhm and other SA leaders in June–July 1934. These killings changed how Nazi propaganda talked about homosexuality. Röhm and the other SA leaders were murdered on Hitler’s orders as part of a power struggle at the highest levels of the German government and Nazi Party. But after the purge, Nazi propaganda used
Röhm’s sexuality to help justify the killings. In doing so, they played on much of the German population’s prejudice against same-sex sexuality. Second, in June 1935 the Nazis revised Paragraph 175, the statute of the German criminal code that banned sexual relations between men. Under the new Nazi version of the statute, a wide range of intimate and sexual behaviors could be, and were, punished as criminal. In addition, the Nazi revision stipulated that non-consensual and coercive acts between men could result in a sentence of up to ten years of hard labor
in prison. The revision provided the Nazi regime with the legal tools necessary to prosecute and persecute men engaged in same-sex behavior in much larger numbers than before. Finally, in 1936 SS leader and Chief of the German Police Heinrich Himmler established the Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion. This office was part of the KRIPO, which was a criminal police, and worked closely with the Gestapo. The notoriously homophobic Himmler saw both homosexuality and abortion
as threats to the German birth rate and thus to the fate of the German people. The Nazi campaign against homosexuality intensified in 1935–1936. From this point forward, the regime focused less on shutting down gay meeting places. Instead, the Nazis prioritized the arrest of individual men under Paragraph 175. In the Nazis’ understanding, these men were “homosexual” offenders and thus criminals and enemies of the state. Himmler believed that targeting these men was necessary for the protection, strengthening, and proliferation
of the German people. He directed the KRIPO and Gestapo to diligently carry out a campaign against homosexuality. And they did. These police forces used raids, denunciations, and harsh interrogation and torture methods to track down and arrest men whom they believed violated Paragraph 175. In the mid- to late 1930s, the police raided bars and other meeting places that they believed to be popular with gay men. The police set up cordons around bars or other locations and questioned anyone who seemed suspicious. Some men caught up in raids would be released
if there was no proof against them. Those whom the police deemed guilty would be tried for violations of Paragraph 175 or, in some cases, sent directly to a concentration camp. Police raids were public and high-profile displays in the Nazi campaign against homosexuality. Through raids, the police threatened and intimidated gay communities and individuals. However, raids were not particularly effective. The primary means through which the police tracked down men for alleged violations of Paragraph 175 were tips or denunciations from the public
A neighbor, acquaintance, colleague, friend, or family member could inform the police of their suspicions. Many Germans tended to agree with the Nazi attitude towards homosexuality. Denouncers referred to those they denounced as “effeminate,” “unmanly,” and “perverse.” Unlike raids, denunciations were a very effective tool of repression and resulted in perhaps tens of thousands of arrests and convictions. The Gestapo and KRIPO interrogated men caught up in raids, as well as those denounced. During
these often physically and psychologically brutal interrogations, the police frequently insisted on full confessions. Under the pressure of harsh interrogation and torture methods, men were forced to name their sexual partners. This in turn helped the police to identify other men to arrest and interrogate. In this way, the police caught entire networks of gay men. Gay men responded to Nazi persecution in different ways and not all gay men made the same decisions. Nor did they all have the same choices. Gay men categorized by the Nazi regime as Aryan had far
more options than those categorized as Jews or Roma and Sinti. Jewish and Romani gay men—above all—faced persecution for racial reasons. Some gay men, especially those with financial resources, could try to hide their sexuality and outwardly conform. Some broke off contacts with their circles of friends or withdrew from the public sphere. Others moved to new cities, the countryside, or even to other countries. Some gay men also entered marriages of convenience. There were gay men who took the risk of resisting the Nazi state for political
and personal reasons. Some gay men helped hide Jews or joined underground anti-Nazi resistance groups. Such was a case of Willem Arondeus, a gay member of the Dutch resistance, who on the 27th of March 1943, during the German occupation of the Netherlands, participated in an attack on the Amsterdam Population Registry offices. His group managed to destroy 800,000 identity cards of Jews and others sought by the Nazis, which was 15% of the records. However, soon after the attack his unit was betrayed and on the 1st of April, 1943 the Nazis arrested Arondeus.
He pleaded guilty and took the full blame, which may be the reason why two young doctors were spared from execution and given custodial sentences instead. Before his execution, Arondeus made a point of ensuring the public would be aware that he and two other men in the group were gay, asking either a friend or his lawyer to: “Tell the people that homosexuals can be brave! “. Willem Arondeus was executed on the 1st of July 1943 at the age of 48. Not all of approximately 100,000 men arrested under Paragraph 175 during the Nazi regime shared
the same fate. Typically, an arrest would lead to a trial before a court. The court would either acquit or convict the accused and sentence them to a fixed prison sentence. The conviction rate was approximately 50 percent. Most convicted men were released after serving their prison sentence. In rarer cases, the KRIPO or the Gestapo would send a man directly to a concentration camp as a “homosexual” offender. Typically, but not always, men sent to concentration camps in this way had multiple convictions or other extenuating circumstances.
Between 5,000 and 15,000 men were imprisoned in concentration camps as “homosexual” offenders. This group of prisoners was typically required to wear a pink triangle badge sewn onto their camp uniforms. These badges enabled SS guards to identify the alleged grounds for incarceration. The pink triangle called attention to this prisoner population as a distinct group within the concentration camp system. According to many survivor accounts, pink triangle prisoners were among the most abused groups in the camps.
SS guards murdered homosexual prisoners out of cruelty or during sadistic games. It is recorded that the SS used the pink triangles on the men’s chests as targets to shoot at ‘for practice’ In mid-1942, almost all of the 200 homosexual prisoners at Sachsenhausen were executed. Sometimes pink triangle prisoners were assigned the most grueling and demanding jobs in the camp labor system. At camps like Mauthausen and Flossenbürg, it was standard practice to work homosexual prisoners to death which was then disguised as being of natural causes.
They were often subjected not only to physical abuse but also sexual abuse. Pink triangle prisoners were raped by camp guards as well as fellow inmates. In addition, they were beaten and publicly humiliated. In Buchenwald concentration camp, gay prisoners were also given experimental treatments for typhus or were subject to inhumane medical experiments such as the attempt of changing their sexual orientations by implanting a pellet that released testosterone. Most of the victims died shortly after. Homosexual prisoners were also used for testing opiates
and Pervitin or they were given experimental treatments for phosphorus burns at Sachsenhausen. Beginning in November 1942, concentration camp commandants officially had the power to order the forced castration of pink triangle prisoners. Fearing guilt-by-association, already prejudiced fellow prisoners shunned pink triangle prisoners who were left isolated and powerless within the prisoner hierarchy. Homosexual prisoners rarely benefited from solidarity from other prisoners, which for many camp inmates provided tools of survival, such as access to food and clothing.
Josef Kohout, imprisoned under Paragraph 175, was 24 when he was arrested in March 1939 when his Christmas card to his male lover had been intercepted. After the war he remembered how at Sachsenhausen, where he arrived in January 1940, gay men could have no responsibility. They could not speak to prisoners from other blocks or with other badges, because it was thought they would try to seduce the other prisoners. Their block was only occupied by homosexuals, with about 250 men in each wing. At night, it was so cold that a centimeter of
ice would form on the windowpanes, but even so the Homosexual prisoners were forced to sleep in nightshirts and to hold their hands outside the covers. This was supposed to prevent masturbation. There were several checks each night and anyone caught without underwear or with their hands under the covers, were taken outside and had several buckets of water dumped on them and were made to stand outside for an hour in freezing cold. Only a few people survived this treatment. They were also forbidden to approach nearer than five meters of the other blocks and anyone caught doing
so was whipped on the ‘horse’ and received at least 15 to 20 lashes. Josef Kohout survived the war and in 1946 he met his partner, with whom he stayed until his death in 1994 at the age of 79. In the concentration camps, the fact that these prisoners were German-speakers provided some measure of protection by giving them access to less onerous work details such as administrative positions. Some younger, more attractive men could obtain advantages from a sexual relationship with a kapo or SS guard. Nonetheless,
the typically isolated position of homosexual prisoners made their survival much more difficult. It is believed that at least 3,100 to 3,600 pink triangle prisoners died in the camps. Gay men could be imprisoned and persecuted in concentration camps for reasons other than their sexuality. Some gay men were sent to camps as political opponents, Jews, or as members of other prisoner categories. In these cases, their sexuality was generally secondary to the reason for their imprisonment and they wore the badge that corresponded to their official prisoner category.
The Second World War began on the 1st of September 1939. Even though the number of men arrested under Paragraph 175 continued throughout the war years, it declined as the needs of a total war took precedence over the Nazi campaign against homosexuality. Many men who had Paragraph 175 convictions either joined or were conscripted into the German military. The military needed the manpower and in most cases, they considered a soldier’s sexuality to be of secondary importance. Such was a case of Albrecht Becker, a German production designer, photographer, and actor,
who was imprisoned by the Nazi regime for the charge of homosexuality under Paragraph 175. However, towards the end of the war when the German Army needed more men, Becker was released in order to serve on the Eastern front which he did until 1944. Albrecht Becker belonged to those who survived the war, and he died in 2002 in Hamburg, Germany, at the age of 95. At the end of the war, the Nazis destroyed a great number of records including the archive of the Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and
Abortion. Scholars estimate that there were approximately 100,000 arrests under Paragraph 175 during the Nazi regime. More than 53,000 resulted in convictions. In spring 1945, Allied soldiers liberated concentration camps and freed prisoners, including those wearing the pink triangle. But the end of the war and the defeat of the Nazi regime did not necessarily bring a sense of liberation for gay men who not only remained marginalized in German society but sexual relations between men remained illegal in Germany throughout
much of the twentieth century. Many men serving sentences for allegedly violating Paragraph 175 remained in prison even after the war and tens of thousands more were convicted in the postwar era. Homosexuality was decriminalized in East Germany in 1968 and the same happened in West Germany in 1969. It was only in the 1990s when the German government acknowledged “persecuted homosexuals” as victims of the Nazi regime. When in 2002 the government overturned Nazi-era convictions for Paragraph 175,
gay men who had suffered at the hands of the Nazis became for the first time eligible for monetary compensation from the German government for injustices perpetrated against them. Because of continued prejudice against same-sex sexuality and the ongoing enforcement of Paragraph 175 for much of the twentieth century, many gay men were afraid to share their testimonies or write memoirs. We must never forget these men who either died or survived and remained marked until the end of their lives. Their stories and suffering must forever remind us of the dangers of
discrimination and racism, and hatred towards each other as the history often repeats itself. Thanks for watching the World History Channel please help us to create more videos by clicking on the donation link thank you and see you next time on the channel.