Gay Nazis Myth

There is a widespread and long-lasting myth alleging that homosexuals were numerous and prominent as a group in the Nazi Party or the identification of Nazism with homosexuality more generally. It has been promoted by various individuals and groups from before World War II through the present, especially by left-wing Germans during the Nazi era and the Christian right in the United States more recently. Although gay men joined the Nazi Party, there is no evidence that they were overrepresented. The Nazis harshly criticized homosexuality and severely persecuted gay men, going as far as murdering them en masse. Therefore, some historians regard the myth as having no merit.

Background

Nazi propaganda asserted that "homosexual emancipation was a Jewish conspiracy to undermine the German Volk's morality". In 1928, the Nazi Party responded to a question about their position on Paragraph 175, the German law criminalizing homosexuality, writing that "Anyone who even thinks of homosexual love is our enemy." According to Laurie Marhoefer, a small number of gay men belonged to a covert faction within the Nazi party that favored gay emancipation while denigrating feminists, Jews, and leftists.

After the Nazis took power in Germany, homosexuals were persecuted. About 100,000 men were arrested, 50,000 convicted and some 5,000 to 15,000 interned in Nazi concentration camps, where they were forced to wear pink triangle badges. Some underwent castration or other Nazi human experimentation aimed at curing homosexuality. Adolf Hitler signed an edict that SS and police personnel would be subject to capital punishment if caught engaging in homosexual activity.

History

Origins

The myth is nearly as old as the Nazi Party itself. The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) and Communist Party of Germany (KPD) were the primary supporters of repealing Paragraph 175, the German law criminalizing homosexuality, but they also opportunistically used accusations of homosexuality against political opponents. Contemporaries noted the hypocrisy of this approach. Historian Christopher Dillon comments, "While far from German Social Democracy's finest hour morally... it was a shrewd tactic politically". Confronted with the rise of Nazism, they exploited a stereotype associating homosexuality with militarism that had been established during the Eulenburg affair and exploited the homosexuality of a few Nazis, especially Ernst Röhm, for propaganda. For example, in 1927, SPD deputies heckled Nazi deputy Wilhelm Frick, shouting "Hitler, heil, heil, heil. Heil Eulenburg!" after Frick called for harsh penalties for homosexuality. Leftist paramilitaries taunted the SA with shouts of ("Hot Röhm!"), ''Schwul Heil ("''Heil Gay") or ''SA, Hose Runter!'' ("SA, Trousers Down!"). In 1931, the SPD revealed Röhm's homosexuality in an effort to prevent or delay the Nazi seizure of power at a time when the defenders of Weimar democracy sensed that they were running out of options.

The worldwide bestseller ''The Brown Book of the Reichstag Fire and Hitler Terror'' (1933)—a brainchild of KPD politician Willi Münzenberg—claimed that Röhm's assistant Georg Bell, who was murdered in early 1933 in Austria, had been his pimp and had procured Reichstag arsonist Marinus van der Lubbe for Röhm. The book claimed that a clique of homosexual stormtroopers led by Edmund Heines set the Reichstag fire; van der Lubbe remained behind and agreed to accept the sole blame because of his desperation for affection; Bell was killed to cover it up. There was no evidence for these claims, and in fact Heines was several hundred kilometers away at the time. Nevertheless, the matter was so politically explosive that it was aired at van der Lubbe's trial in Leipzig. Wackerfuss states that Reichstag conspiracy appealed to antifascists because of their preexisting belief that "the heart of the Nazis' militant nationalist politics lay in the sinister schemes of decadent homosexual criminals".

Speculation on the supposed homosexuality of various Nazi leaders, especially Rudolf Hess, Baldur von Schirach, and Hitler himself, was popular in the media of the exiled German opposition. In the Soviet Union, writer Maxim Gorky claimed that "eradicating homosexuals ill makefascism disappear". Leftists, even those who were themselves gay, continued to hold an aversion to all non-monogamous or non-heterosexual sex. Gay antifascists had to stay in the closet in order to avoid rejection by their movement.

Hitler exaggerated the homosexuality in the SA in order to justify the 1934 purge of the SA leadership (the Night of Long Knives). According to British historian Daniel Siemens, it was the Nazis, not the left, who were most responsible for the lasting impression of the SA as homosexual.

Other anti-Nazis, such as Kurt Tucholsky writing in the left-liberal in 1932, rejected the idea of attacking opponents for their personal lives. Regarding the Röhm scandal, he commented, "We fight the scandalous §175, everywhere we can, therefore we must not join the choir of those among us who want to banish a man from society because he is homosexual." German writer Klaus Mann (himself homosexual) wrote in a polemical essay, "'Vice' and the Left" (1934), that homosexuals had become the "Jews of the antifascists". He also denounced the equation of the fascist and homosexuality. Mann concluded:

Although Mann was one of the most prominent intellectuals among exiled Germans, his essay was ignored.

''Germany's National Vice''

In 1945, Samuel Igra, a German Jew who had spent the war in England, published a book, ''Germany's National Vice'', claiming that "there is a causal connection between mass sexual perversion" and German war crimes during both world wars. This was a new element not present in the 1930s antifascist discourse. Igra approvingly quoted British diplomat Robert Smallbones, who wrote in 1938 that "The explanation for this outbreak of sadistic cruelty may be that sexual perversion, in particular homo-sexuality, are very prevalent in Germany." He argued that since both Judaism and Christianity have traditionally condemned homosexuality, "the Jews were the natural enemies of homosexual Nazi leaders such as Hitler and Röhm". Igra wrote:

British scholar Gregory Woods describes Igra's book as "a sustained and obsessive pursuit of the myth of Fascistic homosexuality". Igra's argument is undermined by his failure to explain the Nazi persecution of homosexuals or to justify his claim that homosexuality increases antisemitism. According to Woods, Igra's claims have "reappeared at regular intervals ever since the war".

Postwar literature and film

Historian and sociologist Harry Oosterhuis identified the movies '' The Damned'' by Luchino Visconti (1969), ''The Conformist'' by Bernardo Bertolucci (1971), ''Salò or the 120 Days of Sodom'' by Pier Paolo Pasolini (1975), and ''The Tin Drum'' by Volker Schlöndorff (1978) as repeating the trope of a connection between homosexuality and Nazism. He also identifies Theodor W. Adorno, Maria Antonietta Macciocchi, and Reimut Reiche as writers who employ this trope. Susan Sontag also claimed that "there is a natural link" between fascism and sadomasochism between men.

Anti-LGBT activism

Pat Robertson also promoted the idea of gay Nazis, claiming that "Many of those people involved with Adolf Hitler were satanists. Many of them were homosexuals. The two seem to go together". The idea was promoted in the 1995 book '' The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party'' by Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams. The alleged connection between homosexuality and Nazism has attained some popularity on the American right, being promoted by such groups as the American Family Association

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