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Chapter One:
The Homosexual Roots of the Nazi Party
It was a quiet night in Munich. The people along the streets in
the heart of the city were grim. They walked heads down, hands
deep in the pockets of their frayed coats. All around, the spirit of
defeat hung like a pall in the evening air; it was etched on the
faces of the out-of-work soldiers on every street corner and in
every cafe. Germany had been defeated in the war, but it had
been crushed by the terms of the Versailles Treaty. Everywhere
the people were still mired in depression and despair, two years
after the humiliating surrender of Kaiser Wilhelm.
{See Comment 1-1}
In this atmosphere the purposeful stride of Captain Ernst
Roehm seemed out of place. But Roehm was accustomed to
being different. A homosexual with a taste for young boys, Roehm
was part of a growing subculture in Germany which fancied itself
a superior form of German manhood. A large, heavy man, Roehm
had been a professional soldier since 1906, and after the war had
temporarily lent his talents to a socialist terrorist organization called
the Iron Fist. On this night Roehm was on his way to meet some
associates who had recently formed a new socialist organization.
*** {start comment 1-1}
This is false information about Ernst Roehm.
Note that in his "Acknowledgments," the Pink
Swastika author lists Konrad Heiden as a great
historian. The time frame of this depiction of
Roehm would be 1920, "two years after the
humiliating surrender." Yet it was not until 1924
that Roehm first realized that he had any
homosexual feelings, so at this time he was hardly
"a homosexual with a taste for young boys." Here's
what Heiden says in Hitler: A Biography (NY: 1936)
on page 205: "In 1924 Roehm became more intimate
with Heines; in 1924, moreover, he first became
conscious of his unfortunate disposition, with
which, for that matter, he himself was very well
pleased. The affair soon became notorious, but
Hitler refused to take notice of it."
So Ernst Roehm wasn't knowingly a homosexual
until 1924 (his homosexuality was latent before
then, and he was unaware of it), and the first
five years of his involvement in the formation of
the Nazi Party had absolutely nothing to do with
homosexuality. (It should be noted that in 1925
Roehm resigned from the party and later went to
South America to advise the Bolivian Army,
returning to Germany only in 1930, at Hitler's
invitation.) Thus, in the early days of the Nazi
Party, Roehm was active less than a year as a
"self-aware" homosexual.
Furthermore, there is the question of Roehm's
involvement with the SA, or Sturmabteilung, the
private, armed militia of the Nazi Party. It was
disbanded after Hitler attempted to overthrow the
government in November, 1923, and reconstituted
only much later. Thus it was founded when Roehm
was not a homosexual, and remained outside his
control until his return in 1930.
*** {end comment 1-1}
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{See Comment 2-1}
At the door of the Bratwurstglockl, a tavern frequented by
homosexual roughnecks and bully-boys, Roehm turned in and
joined the handful of sexual deviants and occultists who had cre-
ated the German Worker's Party, later to be named the
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Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, The National So-
cialist German Worker's Party -- the Nazis.
Yes, the Nazis met in a "gay" bar.
*** {start comment 2-1}
This is a fabrication, and totally false, as
Heiden's quote on Roehm proves. He was not aware
of any homosexual tendencies in himself at this
point. Quite the contrary, he was a trusted member
of the German Army, which had heterosexuality as a
high ideal. (The Pink Swastika author later gives
quotes from the highest German Army officers
complaining about the homosexuality of Roehm and
elements of the SA.) Roehm would hardly have gone
to a "gay bar." First, he had no interest in it,
and second, he would not have risked being caught
by the army, even as a heterosexual, going into a
"gay" bar.
The Bratwurstglockl was a meeting place much
later for some of Roehm's SA associates he came to
know after he became an active homosexual, but
never for Nazi Party leaders or the general
membership. Hitler derided the place, as the Pink
Swastika author notes later.
The following paragraph continues the
fabrication. The Nazi Party wasn't founded by
Roehm or Hitler or any of the others who became
prominent Nazis. The names of the actual founders,
such as Anton Drexler, are unknown to the public
today, because they were pushed aside by Hitler
and his followers. In the first five years of
Ernst Roehm's early participation, he was not a
homosexual, and the statement below that
homosexuals were among those who founded the party
is simply false.
*** {end comment 2-1}
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{See Comment 2-2}
It was no coincidence that homosexuals were among those
who founded the Nazi Party In fact, the party grew out of a
number of groups in Germany which were centers of homosexual
activity and activism. Many of the characteristic rituals, symbols,
activities and philosophies we associate with Nazism came from
these organizations or from contemporary homosexuals. The
extended-arm "Sieg Heil" salute, for example, was a ritual of the
Wandervogel ("Wandering Birds" or "Rovers"), a male youth so-
ciety which became the German equivalent of the Boy Scouts.
The Wandervogel was started in 1901 by a homosexual teacher
named Karl Fischer. Fischer called himself "Der Fuehrer" ("the
Leader") (Koch:29). Hans Blueher, an anti-Semitic German bi-
sexual and early member of the Wandervogel, incited a sensation
in 1912 with publication of The German Wandervogel Movement
as an Erotic Phenomenon, which told how the movement had
become one in which young boys could be introduced into the
homosexual lifestyle (Rector:39f). After the Nazis came to power
in 1933, the Wandervogel became the Hitler Youth, known more
coarsely among the populace as the "Homo Youth" because ho-
mosexuality was by then rampant in the organization (Rector :52).
*** {start comment 2-2}
Koch speaks of Fischer on pages 25 and 26,
not 29. He doesn't mention anything about
homosexuality. The Wandervoegel was started
earlier, by Herman Hoffmann. Koch mentions field
trips the group took in 1897 and 1898. This shows
the incredible sloppiness of the "scholarship" of
the Pink Swastika author.
The above information on the Wandervoegel
contains outright lies. They are lies because the
Pink Swastika author cited the source that refutes
them, and so must have known and deliberately
distorted what the cited author wrote. The author
in question is Frank Rector. His book is The Nazi
Extermination of Homosexuals (NY: Stein and Day
1981), and the information is on pages 36-39.
Since the Pink Swastika author cites (Rector:39f),
he must have known what Rector actually said.
The Hitler Youth was not formed from the
Wandervoegel in 1933. Rector states clearly that
the Hitler Youth organization was founded in 1922
by the Nazis as the "Youth League of the National
Socialist Workers Party." The Wandervoegel
remained a separate group until Hitler achieved
power. In 1933 the Nazi Youth League was renamed
the "Hitler Jugend" ("Hitler Youth") and in time
every other youth group, including all the
elements of the Wandervoegel movement, was forced
to become part of it.
By 1933 then the Wandervogel was really a
thing of the past. In fact, it met its demise
during World War I. Peter D. Stachura, in Nazi
Youth in the Weimar Republic(Santa Barbara, CA:
Clio Books,1975), says of the movement "the fabric
of the Wandervogel had been destroyed by 1918. All
but its most naive admirers then realized that a
radical transformation in both the concept and
practice of the youth movement was necessary....
The original Wandervogel principles were now
generally considered too unrealistic and romantic,
and only a small number of revived Wandervogel
groups continued to cultivate the old tradition."
Stachura further notes that by 1933 there
were "400 large youth associations, plus scores of
smaller ones" in Germany. During 1933 and 1934,
all except the youth groups of the Catholic Church
were brought under the leadership of the Hitler
Youth. The influence of the Wandervoegel was
minuscule, being at most that of a few splinter
groups out of the 400 or more incorporated into
the Hitler Youth.
The Pink Swastika authors have simply lied
about the phantom origin of the Hitler Youth in
the Wandervoegel Movement.
The Rector citation (Rector:52) is a
fabrication. It illustrates a favorite technique
of the Pink Swastika authors, to misuse a citation
in order to deceive the reader as to the intent of
the cited author. What Rector actually says of
Hitler and his youth movement is in the caption
under a picture of Hitler reviewing a youth rally:
"He ordered the youth organization 'cleansed' of
homosexuality so that every German mother could
rest assured that her son would not be
homosexually corrupted in its ranks. The
persecution of homosexuals notwithstanding, the
Hitler Youth was covertly referred to throughout
Germany as the 'Homo Youth.'"
Stachura denies that the Hitler Youth had any
more problem with homosexuality than any other
youth group, and notes that those cases that did
arise were dealt with by expulsion. (See comment
32-1 below.)
*** {end comment 2-2}
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{See Comment 3-1}
Many of the Nazi emblems, such as the swastika, the double
lightning bolt SS symbol, and even the inverted triangle symbol
used to identify classes of prisoners in the concentration camps,
originated among homosexual occultists in Germany. In 1907,
Jog Land Von Liebenfels, a former Cistercian monk whom the
church excommunicated because of his homosexual activities
(Sklar: 19), flew the swastika flag above his castle in Austria
(Goodrick-Clarke: 109). After his expulsion from the church Land
founded the Ordo Novi Templi ("Order of the New Temple") which
merged occultism with violent anti-Semitism A 1958 study of
Land, Der Man der Hitler die Ideen gab ("The Man Who Gave
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Hitler His Ideas"), by Austrian psychologist Wilhelm Daim, called
Land the true "father" of National Socialism.
*** {start comment 3-1}
The Swastika was used by many Voelkisch (of
the people, essentially a racist meaning)
organizations in Germany. It didn't have anything
particular to do with "homoerotic occult" groups,
and the Nazis did not adopt it from those
insignificant groups. As comment 37-1 notes below,
the nazis purportedly copied the swastika from a
Free Corps group.
*** {end comment 3-1}
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{See Comment 3-2}
The "SS" symbol was originally used by Guido von List, a
close associate of Land, who formed the Guido von List Society
in Vienna in 1904. The Guido von List Society was accused of
practicing a form of Hindu Tantrism which featured sexual per-
version in its rituals. This form of sexual perversion was popular-
ized in occult circles by a man named Aleister Crowley who, ac-
cording to Hitler biographer J. Sydney Jones, enjoyed "playing
with black magic and little boys" (J. S. Jones: 123). List was "ac-
cused of being the Aleister Crowley of Vienna (ibid.: 123). Like
Land, List was an occultist; he wrote several books on the magic
principles of rune letters (from which he chose the "SS" symbol).
In 1908 List "was unmasked as the leader of a blood brotherhood
which went in for sexual perversion and substituted the swastika
for the cross" (Sklar:23). The Nazis borrowed heavily from List's
occult theories and research. List also formed an elitist occult
priesthood called the Armanen Orden to which Hitler himself may
have belonged (Waite, 1977:91).
*** {start comment 3-2}
This is another example of the deceptive
technique of citing a source in an attempt to give
credibility to a long passage when the source has,
in fact, spoken of only a small part of the
passage. Waite says nothing about Hitler's
possible membership in List's group, nor does
Waite support the existence of a "priesthood"
called the "Armanen Orden." Waite says "Our
interest is caught by the curious dedication of
the flyleaf, dated 1921 [of a book in Hitler's
private library]. It reads: 'To Adolf Hitler, my
dear brother in Armanen.' Armanen, as we are about
to see, was List's special term for a racially
elite ruling class." Waite really doesn't give
enough information to make sense of this, but List
died in 1919, two years before the inscription was
written. In 1911 List had founded a "Higher
Armanen Order" for a small body of elite within
the larger "Guido von List Society," but there's
absolutely nothing in Waite or other authors to
support the speculation of the Pink Swastika
author that "Hitler himself may have belonged" to
this elite group.
Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke (The Occult Roots of
Nazism, page 197) sheds more light on the book
inscription: "In 1921 Dr. Babette Steininger, an
early Nazi Party member, presented Hitler with
Tagore's essay on nationalism as a birthday
present. On the flyleaf she wrote a personal
dedication: 'To Adolf Hitler my dear Armanen-
brother'. Her use of the esoteric term suggests a
shared interest in the work of List."
The fact that the inscriber of the book was a
woman precludes the fact that she could have been
a member with Hitler in the Armanen Orden's all-
male elite. The book dedication likely indicates
that one vain racist was complimenting another
vain racist on deserving to belong to the future
ruling elite.
Aleister Crowley was not a homosexual. He
engaged in some homosexual acts and in his cult
there were also sex with animals as part of his
"sexual magic," He wrote an autobiography, and
John Symonds issued an annotated edition of it.
Colin Wilson, in his book, The Occult, provides an
entire chapter on Crowley. Crowley was twice
married and had many mistresses in addition.
Wilson mentions at least 6 children Crowley
fathered by these women and also mentions scandals
with other women. At age 38 Crowley "sodomized"
Victor Neuberg as part of his sexual magic
rituals. Neuberg married a few years after the
event and settled down to family life. When
Crowley was near 50 and living in Africa, Wilson
says "He had acquired a small Negro boy, with whom
he performed acts of sex magic. Crowley's
homosexuality began as an act of defiance of
convention rather than of actual preference, but
it seems to have become another habit." In other
words, Crowley's preference was heterosexual. His
homosexual activity seems to have been minimal and
connected with his sexual magic rituals, though an
affair after age 50 with a "boy" might have gone
beyond magic ritual.
*** {end comment 3-2}
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{See Comment 3-3}
The Nazi dream of an Aryan super-race was adopted from an
occult group called the Thule Society, founded in 1917 by follow-
ers of Land and List. The occult doctrine of the Thule Society
held that the survivors of an ancient and highly developed lost
civilization could endow Thule initiates with esoteric powers and
wisdom. The initiates would use these powers to create a new
race of Aryan supermen who would eliminate all "inferior" races.
Hitler dedicated his book, Mein Kampf, to Dietrich Eckart, one
of the Thule Society inner circle and a former head of the German
Worker's Party. (Schwarzwaller :67). The various occult groups
mentioned above were outgrowths of the Theosophical Society,
whose founder, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, is thought by some
to have been a lesbian (Webb:94) and whose "bishop" was a no-
torious pederast named Charles Leadbeater.
** {start comment 3-3}
Schwarzwaller merely says that Eckart was a
member of Thule, and nothing else, so he is not a
reference for the other comments. In any case,
Schwarzwaller has no notes, gives no references,
and can't be regarded as a serious, reliable
author. In many cases his undocumented assertions
conflict with the work of genuine historians.
Eckart was never "a head" of the German
Worker's Party, though he did for a time edit its
newspaper and was an influential participant in
the group.
Major General Abner Doubleday, Civil War hero
and reputed inventor of baseball, was vice-
president of Blavatsky's Theosophical Society, and
bequeathed to it his library of rare books.
Thomas Edison, the famous American inventor
was a member of Blavatsky's society, as was
William James, the famous American philosopher. A
niece of Albert Einstein reported that the famous
scientist kept a copy of Blavatsky's book, The
Secret Doctrine, always on his desk, and another
writer confirmed this.
Sir William Crookes, a leading British
scientist, and Irish poet William Butler Yeats
were also members.
These are mentioned in the preface to Sylvia
Cranston's 1993 biography of Blavatsky.
There's no reason to suspect Blavatsky was a
lesbian. "Thought by some" probably refers to the
Pink Swastika authors only, who so commonly
mislead by deceitfully citing authors that a
possible reference by Webb, or even a mention by
Webb of rumors, can't be inferred here. Her
biographer, Marion Meade, quoted below by the Pink
Swastika author, certainly thinks she was an
entirely heterosexual woman, and nobody has shown
any evidence to indicate otherwise. Leadbeater was
accused of teaching some boys to masturbate. There
was no suggestion that he had had any sexual
contact with them. When this was discovered in
1906, he was pressured into resigning from the
Theosophical Society. Refer to comment 51-2 below.
*** {end comment 3-3}
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{See Comment 3-4}
The dreaded SA Brownshirts or Sturmabteilung ("Storm
Troopers") were the creation of yet another homosexual, Gerhard
Rossbach (Waite, 1969:209). Rossbach formed the Rossbachbund
*** {start comment 3-4}
This is a case of false attribution. Waite
doesn't say that Rossbach formed the SA
Brownshirts. At another point (page 195) Waite
specifically says that Hitler's SA was in
existence before Rossbach joined the NSDAP, and
that Rossbach's own Free Corps was a separate
entity. What Waite does say is that Rossbach was a
homosexual. Waite writes in the original 1952
edition of his book (which will be used throughout
for these comments): "With the exception of
Ehrhardt, Gerhard Rossbach, sadist, murderer, and
homosexual, was the most admired hero of
nationalist German youth." Waite goes on to give a
quote from a 1932 German book saying those two men
have become "the Ideal Man."
See also comment 32-1 below.
*** {end comment 3-4}
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("Rossbach Brotherhood"), a homosexual unit of the Freikorps
("Free Corps"). The Freikorps were independent inactive mili-
tary reserve units which became home to the hundreds of thou-
{See Comment 4-1}
sands of unemployed World War I veterans in Germany. Rossbach
also formed a youth organization under the Rossbachbund, call-
ing it the Schilljugend ("Schill Youth") (ibid.:210). Rossbach's
staff assistant, Lieutenant Edmund Heines, a pederast and mur-
derer, was put in charge of the Schilljugend The Rosshachbund
later changed its name to Storm Troopers in honor of Wotan, the
ancient German god of storms, and became the original military
arm of the Nazi Party (Graber:46).
*** {start comment 4-1}
As published in 1978 by David McKay (NY),
Graber's book has no such reference to Rossbach or
his group on page 46. Graber's book is about the
SS (Schutzstaffel), not the SA (Sturmabteilung).
The only mention of Rossbach or his group in
Graber's index is on page 33, where he speaks of
the group as the "Sturmabteilung Rossbach" (which
had nothing to do with the Nazis, but was a
Freikorps, "sturmabteilung" being a generic term
in German military jargon). Graber states that
Rossbach was an open homosexual and that Heines
was on his staff, but mentions nothing else
asserted by the Pink Swastika author. It is
possible that the Pink Swastika author is
confused.
*** {end comment 4-1}
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Even the enduring image of Nazi book-burning, familiar to us
from newsreels of the 1930's, was directly related to the homo-
sexuality of Nazi leaders. The first such incident occurred four
days after Hitler's Brownshirts broke into Magnus Hirschfeld's
Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin on May 6, 1933. On May
10 the Nazis burned thousands of books and files taken in that
raid. The Institute had extensive records on the sexual perver-
sions of numerous Nazi leaders, many of whom had been under
treatment there prior to the beginning of the Nazi regime. Treat-
ment at the Sex Research Institute was required by the German
courts for persons convicted of sex crimes. Ludwig L. Lenz, who
worked at the Institute at the time of the raid, but managed to
escape with his life, later wrote of the incident:
{See Comment 5-1}
Why was it then, since we were completely non-
party, that our purely scientific Institute was the
first victim which fell to the new regime? The an-
swer to this is simple... We knew too much. It
would be against medical principles to provide a
list of the Nazi leaders and their perversions
[but]...not ten percent of the men who, in 1933,
took the fate of Germany into their hands, were
sexually normal... Our knowledge of such intimate
secrets regarding members of the Nazi Party and
other documentary material -- we possessed about
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forty thousand confessions and biographical let-
ters -- was the cause of the complete and utter
destruction of the Institute of Sexology.
(Haberle:369).
*** {start comment 5-1}
This quotation is not correctly presented.
The absence of substantial material is not
indicated. Among other things left out is "I refer
here especially to a young girl whose abdomen was
covered with pin scratches caused through the
sadism of an eminent Nuremberg Nazi...."
Furthermore, the author of The Pink Swastika left
out the salient fact that Ludwig L. Lenz, who
"worked at the Institute" was a gynecologist !!!
The Pink Swastika author tries to give the false
impression that only homosexuality is involved
here.
*** {end comment 5-1}
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The attack on the Sex Research Institute is often cited as an
example of Nazi oppression of homosexuals. This is partly true,
but as we shall see, the "oppression" fits into a larger context of
internecine rivalry between two major homosexual groups.
Magnus Hirschfeld, who headed the Institute, was a prominent
Jewish homosexual. Hirschfeld also headed a "gay rights" orga-
nization called the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee. The SHC
was dedicated to the repeal of Paragraph 175 of the German legal
code, which criminalized homosexuality. The organization was
also opposed to sadomasochism and pedophilia, two of the favor-
ite practices of the militaristic, Roehm-style homosexuals who
figured so prominently in the early Nazi Party. Hirschfeld had
formed the SHC to carry on the work of the pioneer "gay rights"
activist, Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825-1895). Ulrichs had written
against the concept of "Greek love" (pederasty) advocated by a
number of other homosexuals in Germany.
One such advocate was Adolf Brand, who formed the
Gemeinschaft der Eigenen ("Community of the Special") in 1902.
The Gemeinschaft der Eigenen inspired the formation in 1920 of
the German Friendship League, which changed its name in 1923
to the Society for Human Rights. The leaders of this group were
instrumental in the formation and the rise of the Nazi Party. Adolf
Brand published the world's first homosexual periodical, Der
Eigene ("The Special") (Oosterhuis and Kennedy:cover). Brand
was a pederast, child pornographer and anti-Semite, and, along
with many homosexuals who shared his philosophies, developed
a burning hatred of Magnus Hirschfeld and the SHC. Later, when
Hirschfeld's Sex Research Institute was destroyed, the SA troops
were under the general command of Ernst Roehm, a member of
Brand's spinoff {sic} group, the Society for Human Rights.
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The Divided movement
This was not the last time homosexual leadership of the Nazis
would attack other ideologically dissimilar homosexuals. Later
in this discussion we will examine the so-called "pink triangle"
homosexuals who were interned in concentration camps. The
pink triangle, part of a scheme of variously-colored triangles used
by the Nazis to identify specific classes of prisoners, was applied
to those convicted under Paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code.
Homosexuals were one of these classes, but according to
Johansson,
{See Comment 6-1}
[M]any of those convicted under Paragraph 175
were not homosexual: some were opponents of
the regime such as Catholic priests or leaders of
youth groups who were prosecuted on the basis
of perjured testimony, while others were street
hustlers from Berlin or Hamburg who had been
caught up in a police dragnet (Johansson in
Dynes:997).
*** {start comment 6-1}
"Street hustlers" are male prostitutes who
cater to homosexuals.
*** {end comment 6-1}
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As many as 6,000 of the approximately 10,000 "pink triangles"
died in the work camps, but few, if any, were gassed in the death
camps. Some of those who died met their deaths at the hands of
homosexual Kapos ("trustees") and guards of the SS. At first
glance it is difficult to understand why the homosexual leaders of
the Nazi movement would persecute other homosexuals on the
basis of their sexual behavior. We alluded, in the matter of the
Sex Research Institute, to the fact that the homosexual move-
ment in Germany was divided into two diametrically opposed
camps which some have called the "Femmes" and the "Butches."
These terms are common in the homosexual lexicon today, as is
the disdain "Butches" feel for "Femmes."
{See Comment 7-1}
Historian of the homosexual movement Gordon Westwood
writes that masculine homosexuals "deplore [effeminate] behav-
ior," many considering effeminate homosexuals "repulsive"
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(Westwood:87). Another historian, H. Kimball Jones, reports that
reaction to "Femmes" is often violent in the general homosexual
community. "[They label them 'flaming faggot' or 'degenerate
fag,'" one homosexual exclaiming, "You know, I loathe these
screaming fairies" (H.K.Jones:29). Jay and Young's 1979 exami-
nation of the American homosexual movement, The Gay Report,
contains numerous personal statements by masculine homosexu-
als critical of effeminacy. "Femme behavior can be vicious and
destructive, demeaning to women and gay men," says one." An-
other asserts, "To me someone who is 'femme' is a self-
indulgent... petty, scheming, gossipy gay being whose self-image
has been warped and shaped by unfortunate family situations"
(Jay:294ff.).
*** {start comment 7-1}
Gordon Westwood is hardly an "historian" much
less "historian of the homosexual movement."
Westwood's work was sponsored by the British
Social Biology Council, and consists of an attempt
to characterize the homosexuals of Great Britain
in the 1950s through interviews conducted with 127
gay men. Whether the Pink Swastika author calls
Westwood an historian through ignorance or in an
attempt to be deceptive is hard to discern.
*** {end comment 7-1}
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The most hostile to "Femmes" are precisely those homosexu-
als who deem themselves the most "masculine." Cory and LeRoy,
in their detailed discussion of homosexual culture, describe the
scene in a typical American "leather bar:"
Here, sturdy swaggering males dressed in tight
dungarees, leather jackets or heavy shoes, dark
hued woolen shirts, and sometimes motorcycle
helmets, aspire toward a super-masculine
ideal...Behind the facade of robust exploits, the
uniform of pretentious male prowess, the mask of
toughness, there sometimes lies a dangerous per-
sonality that can express itself physically by sub-
stituting violence for erotic pleasure; capable of
receiving sexual pleasure only by inflicting pain (or
receiving it). The general atmosphere in such
places is restless and brooding, and one can never
be sure when the dynamite of violence will erupt
(Cory and LeRoy: 109).
Reading this description, one can imagine oneself looking into
Munich's Bratwurstglockl Tavern where the Brownshirts congre {sic}
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gated and finding the same cast of characters -- just different cos-
tumes.
The authors do not wish to imply that all homosexuals fall
into one or the other of these two simplistic stereotypes. The
terms "Butch" and "Femme" in this study are used loosely to dif-
ferentiate between two ideological extremes relating to the na-
ture of homosexual identity. Generally in this work the German
"Femmes" are defined as homosexual men who acted like women.
They were pacifists and accomodationists. Their goals were equal-
ity with heterosexuals and the "right to privacy," and generally
they opposed sex with children. Their leaders were Karl Heinrich
Ulrichs and Magnus Hirschfeld.
The "Butches," on the other hand, were masculine homosexu-
als. They were militarists and chauvinists in the Hellenic mold.
Their goal was to revive the pederastic military cults of pre-Chris-
tian pagan cultures, specifically the Greek warrior cult. They were
often vicious misogynists and sadists. Their leaders included Adolf
Brand and Ernst Roehm. The "Butches" reviled all things femi-
nine. Their ideal society was the mannerbund, an all-male "com-
radeship-in-arms" comprised of rugged men and boys (Oosterhuis
and Kennedy:255). In their view, heterosexuals might be toler-
ated for the purpose of continuing the species, but effeminate ho-
mosexuals were considered to be subhuman, and thus, intoler-
able.
Most of the estimated 1.2 to 2 million homosexuals in Ger-
many at the time of the Third Reich undoubtedly fit somewhere
between the two extremes of the movement. This may explain
the fact that less than 2% of this population were victimized by
the Nazis (Cory and LeRoy estimate that "Femmes" make up 5-
15% of male homosexuals. Cory and LeRoy:73). Most of those
who became victims can be shown to have fit the profile of the
"Femmes." Kurt Hiller, a ranking member of the SHC who later
succeeded Hirschfeld "estimated that 75 percent of the male ho-
mosexuals sympathized with the parties of the Right" (Johansson
in Friedlander:233).
In his introduction to The Men with the Pink Triangle, the
***{Below is Page: 9 }***
supposed testimony of a former pink triangle prisoner at the
Flossenburg concentration camp, translator David Fernbach con-
firms that the "Butch/Femme" conflict was at the heart of the
Nazi hatred of the "pink triangles." He writes,
Naturally, in the paramilitary organization of the
SA, Hitler Youth etc., even the elite SS, the forms
of homosexuality that are characteristic of such
all-male bodies were as common as they always
are... it was quite fundamental to Nazi ideology that
men were to be properly "masculine"... when male
homosexuality disguises itself as a cult of manli-
ness" and virility, it is less obnoxious from the fas-
cist standpoint than is the softening of the gender
division that homosexuality invariably involves
when it is allowed to express itself freely
(Heger: l0f.).
This, then, is the explanation for the paradox of the Nazi per-
secution of homosexuals. It is found in the history of two irrec- {sic}
oncilable philosophies linked by a common sexual dysfunction.
The roots of this conflict extend back into the eighteenth century
and span a 70-year period which saw the rise of the homosexual
militancy in the movement that gave Nazism to the world.
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs
The "grandfather" of the world "gay rights" movement was a
homosexual German lawyer named Karl Heinrich Ulrichs (1825-
1895). At the age of 14, Ulrichs was seduced by his riding in-
structor, a homosexual man about 30 years old (Kennedy in Pas-
cal: 15). Observers familiar with the apparently high correlation
between childhood sexual molestation and adult homosexuality
might conclude that this youthful experience caused Ulrichs to
become a homosexual. Ulrichs himself, however, arrived at a
***{Below is Page: 10 }***
hereditary rather than an environmental explanation for his condi-
tion. In the 1860's Ulrichs began advancing a theory that defined
homosexuals as a third sex. He proposed that male homosexual-
ity could be attributed to a psycho-spiritual mix-up in which a
man's body came to be inhabited by a woman's soul (and vice-
versa for females). He called members of this third sex "Urnings"
(male) and "Dailings" (female). Since homosexuality was an in-
born condition, he reasoned, it should not be criminalized.
Although Ulrichs was to be unsuccessful in changing the laws
against homosexuality, his efforts did encourage widespread po-
litical activism. One early follower, a German-Hungarian writer
named Benkert (under the pseudonym, Karoly Maria Kertbeny),
coined the term "homosexual" in an anonymous open letter to the
Prussian Minister of Justice in 1869 (Lauritsen and Thorstad:6).
The first psychiatric study of homosexuality in Germany was pub-
lished in 1869 as the result of Ulrichs' efforts. It advocated the
decriminalization of homosexuality in favor of medical treatment
(Oosterhuis and Kennedy: 13).
Ulrichs' greatest intellectual impact on his own generation
came from his invention of the term "Uranians," which he intro-
duced in 1862 as a new designation for homosexuals (both Urnings
and Dailings). He took the term from Plato's Symposium, in
which homosexual activity was said to fall under the protection of
the ninth muse, Urania. In the late 1800's German homosexuals
frequently called themselves Uranians, and a militant homosexual
slogan, "Uranians of the world, unite!" became popular interna-
tionally (Rutledge:41). In the following quote Ulrichs uses the
term in his explanation of the "third sex" theory, and graphically
illustrates the mentality of the "Femmes"
Apart from the womanly direction of our sexual
desire, we Uranians bear another womanly element
within us which, it appears to me, offers proof
positive that nature developed the male germ within
us physically but the female spiritually. We bear
this other womanly element from our earliest child-
***{Below is Page: 11 }***
hood on. Our character, the way we feel, our en-
tire temperament is not manly, it is decidedly wom-
anly. This inner womanly element is outwardly
recognizable by our outwardly apparent womanly
nature (Fee:37).
Ulrichs was publicly opposed to sadomasochism and pedo-
philia (perhaps because of his own molestation as a child). He
wrote against the concept of "Greek love" and considered "sexual
attraction to the prepubertal to be a sickness." In his attempts to
repeal Paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code, Ulrichs advo-
cated more stringent laws against pedophilia. Ulrichs' condem-
nation of man/boy sex, however, extended only to prepubescent
boys. As the following quote from his publication Furschugen {sic}
Uber das Ratzel der Mannmannlichen Liebe ("Concerning the
Enigma of Homosexual Love") reveals, Ulrichs was not opposed
to sex between men and boys who were "sexually mature."
The Urning is not by a hair's breadth any more
dangerous to immature boys than the genuine man
is to immature girls. For the rest, I gladly leave
the child molester to his deserved punishment by
the law. Let the integrity of a will-less minor be
sacred to every Urning. I have no defense for
whoever touches it. Therefore, let the seduction
of immature boys, I grant it completely, be a pun-
ishable indecent act (Ulrichs: 16).
This distinction between mature and immature boys was lost
on many who followed the rise of the homosexual movement in
Germany. For example, Friedrich Engels, in a letter to Karl Marx
about a book Ulrichs had written, said, "The pederasts start count-
ing their numbers and discover they are a powerful group in our
state. The only thing missing is an organization, but it seems to
{See Comment 12-1}
exist already, though it is hidden" (Plant:38). Engels considers
***{Below is Page: 12 }***
Ulrichs a pederast despite his arbitrary age restriction for sex with
boys.
*** {start comment 12-1}
The Pink Swastika author doesn't understand
the difference between "pederast" and "pedophile."
The "pedophile" desires sex with immature
children, girls and/or boys, who are prepubescent
-- undeveloped sexually. "Pederasty," as practiced
by the Greeks, for example, involved young men
(18-30 years old, usually) paired with "boys"
under the age of 18, but past puberty --
"teenagers" who were developed sexually.
Accordingly, Engels correctly calls Ulrichs a
pederast, and the "age restriction" is not
"arbitrary," but is based on the definitions of
the words. The age of sexual consent in 1996 in
many countries of Europe is lower than it is in
the United States, typically no greater than 16,
in some places 14 years of age.
*** {end comment 12-1}
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Ulrichs' political activities paved the way for a large and pow-
erful homosexual movement which grew both in numbers and in
political and social influence in pre-Nazi Germany. Barely a quar-
ter of a century after his death in 1895, homosexuality would be-
come openly widespread in the Germany of the Weimar Republic
era. Cities such as Munich and Berlin would become international
Meccas for the practitioners of all forms of sexual perversion.
Magnus Hirschfeld and the SHC
Ulrichs' successor was a prominent Jewish physician and ho-
mosexual by the name of Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935). Dr.
Hirschfeld, along with two other homosexuals, Max Spohr and
Erich Oberg, joined together to form the Wissenschaftlich-
Humanitares Komitee ("Scientific-Humanitarian Committee").
The SHC was dedicated to two goals: 1) to carry on Ulrichs'
philosophy and works and 2) to work for toleration of homo-
sexuals by the German public via the repeal of Paragraph 175, the
German law which criminalized homosexuality (Steakley:23f).
Homosexualist historian Richard Plant writes,
It would be hard to overestimate Hirschfeld's
importance... He became the leader of several psy-
chological and medical organizations, the founder
of a unique institute for sexual research... He also
founded the 'Yearbook for Intersexual Variants,'
which he edited until 1923 (Plant: 28-29).
Hirschfeld was originally committed to Ulrichs' "third sex"
theory but he abandoned this idea in 1910. Still, Hirschfeld re-
mained true to many of the rest of Ulrichs' theories, building upon
them through the work of the Scientific-Humanitarian Commit-
tee, whose efforts he directed toward the political goal of de-
***{Below is Page: 13 }***
criminalizing homosexuality. Also in 1910, Hirschfeld coined the
term "transvestite," which has become the accepted label for both
men and women who compulsively costume themselves as mem-
bers of the opposite sex (J. Katz:2l0).
The SHC circulated petitions among German intellectuals and
politicians calling for the abolition of Paragraph 175. Due to
Hirschfeld's groundwork in creating a positive public image, these
petitioning efforts met with increasing success. But for all the
appearance of dignity and scientific impartiality which it displayed
to German society, the SHC offered a far different perspective to
those who saw it from within. Hans Blueher, whose contribution
to the German homosexual movement is chronicled later in this
study, once visited Hirschfeld at the SHC. The meeting was pre-
cipitated by Hirschfeld's offer to write the foreword to Blueher's
book describing homosexuality in the Wandervogel. Blueher
writes,
{See Comment 13-1}
I was led into the study of the "Wise Man of Ber-
lin" (as he was called)... Sitting on a silk-covered
fauteuil, legs tinder him like a Turk, was an indi-
vidual with bloated lips and cunning, dimly covet-
ing eyes who offered me a fleshy hand and intro-
duced himself as Dr. Hirschfeld...[Later in a meet-
ing of the SHC] the first to greet me was a corpo-
ral with a deep bass voice; he was, however, wear-
ing women's clothes... "A so-called transvestite!"
commented Dr. Hirschfeld, whose nickname was
"Aunt Magnesia," and introduced us... Then a most
beautiful youth appeared... "A hermaphrodite!" said
Hirschfeld. "Why don't you come to me during
my office hours tomorrow, you can see him naked
then"...An older gentleman in his sixties...recited
a poem...to a sixteen year old youth, full of
yearning...I [suddenly realized] I was in the middle
of a brothel (Blueher in Mills: 160f.).
*** {start comment 13-1}
The many ellipses will have alerted the
experienced reader to the fact that the Pink
Swastika author has taken words selectively to
make the point he wants to make. The hermaphrodite
was seen at the office. He had male genitals but
fully developed female breasts, and that's why he
was of interest. The older gentleman did indeed
read a poem addressed to a sixteen-year-old youth,
but it was the poem and the older gentleman, not
the youth, that was "full of yearning and
suffering, and broke out in sorrow that this youth
was totally insensible for the physical charms of
the aging gentleman." As for the Brothel remark,
Blueher actually said, "I turned to Laurent, who
was the only kindred spirit in this pack of
lemurs. 'Tell me, haven't you noticed that we're
in a downright brothel here?'" The Pink Swastika
author should not print something so different
from the true reading as if it were a quotation.
It is of interest to note that just after
Mills's article follows one by Ian Young titled
"Gay Resistance: Homosexuals in the Anti-Nazi
Underground." Of course, that wouldn't fit very
well into the false picture of Nazi homosexuals
the Pink Swastika author is trying to paint.
*** {end comment 13-1}
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***{Below is Page: 14 }***
Blueher's disgust with Hirschfeld and the SHC was represen-
tative of the attitude of the masculine homosexual camp. But at
this stage of the conflict, the "Femmes" were fully in control and
enjoyed what support there was in German society for the homo-
sexual political cause. The SHC's "scientific" focus lent an air of
legitimacy to its political goals that the masculine group could not
achieve. Yet it was a strategy that would ultimately backfire on
the "Femmes." Sociologist David Greenburg writes that Ulrichs'
third-sex theory "was a controversial strategy among German ho-
mosexual activists; those in the anti-feminist wing of the move-
ment viewed male homosexuality as an expression of male supe- {sic}
riority and considered the Ulrichs-Hirschfeld position insulting"
(Greenburg: 410).
Hoping "to use the argument that homosexuality is congeni-
tal" to justify its decriminalization, Hirschfeld tried desperately to
legitimize his "third-sex" theory (ibid. :410). With this strategy in
mind he formed the Sex Research Institute of Berlin, which opened
its doors on July 1, 1919. The Sex Research Institute assimilated
the SHC's massive collection of books, photographs and medical
documents and began a campaign to make itself "respectable" in
German society. According to Plant, "attending physicians of-
fered various kinds of sexual counseling... treated people for ve-
nereal diseases... [and gave] advice on abortion procedures." The
fact that many Nazi leaders were treated at the Sex Research In-
stitute led the Institute's Assistant Director, Ludwig L. Lenz, to
conclude that its destruction by the Nazis in 1933 was for the
purpose of destroying evidence of Nazi perversions.
For many years the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee was
the largest and most influential homosexual organization in the
German "gay rights" movement. In 1914, it had one thousand
members (Steakley:60). But homosexuality in Germany was much
more prevalent than the size of the membership of the SHC would
suggest. Not surprisingly, one of the early goals of the SHC was
to find out how many homosexuals there were in the German
population. In what may have been the world's first survey of its
kind, the SHC distributed 6611 questionnaires to Berlin students
***{Below is Page: 15 }***
and factory workers in 1903. The results were published the fol-
lowing year in the Jahrbuch ('Yearbook') and showed that 2.2%
of the German male population admitted to being homosexual
(ibid.:33).
The New Hellenes
At the same time that Ulrichs and Hirschfeld were promulgat-
ing their theories of male homosexuality as an expression of femi-
ninity, a rival group of homosexuals was reaching into antiquity
for its own "masculine" philosophy. As homosexual scholar Hubert
Kennedy writes in Man/Boy Love in the Writings of Karl Heinrich
Ulrichs,
Happily, some boy-lovers were already speaking
out in opposition to Hirschfeld in Berlin at the be-
ginning of this century... [Der Gemeinschaft] Der
Eigene, mostly bisexual and/or boy-lovers, op-
posed the "third sex" view of homosexuality. See-
ing the "love of friends" as a masculine virtue, they
urged a rebirth of the Greek ideal (Kennedy: 17f.).
This "Greek ideal" was a culture of pederastic male supremacy.
Male homosexuality, especially between men and boys, was con-
sidered a virtue by some in Hellenic (Greek) society. Plato and
Socrates were both pederasts, and considered man/boy sex to be
superior to heterosexual relations. As Greenburg notes, "Plato
makes clear in the Symposium that it was perfectly acceptable to
court a lad, and admirable to win him... Pederasty did not lurk in
the shadows of Greek life, it was out in the open (Greenburg: l48,
151). In Bisexuality in the Ancient World, Scholar Eva Cantarella
reviews the literature of the period, including Plato's writings.
She writes that Plato developed a theory "of the existence of two
different types of love: the love inspired by the heavenly Aphro-
dite, and the love inspired by the common Aphrodite." Only "ped-
***{Below is Page: 16 }***
erastic courtship," notes Catarella {sic}, reflected the "heavenly" form
of love (Cantarella:59). In his Symposium, Plato expounds his
theory:
[Homosexual] boys and lads are the best of their
generation, because they are the most manly.
Some people say they are shameless, but they are
wrong. It is not shamelessness which inspires their
behavior, but high spirit and manliness and viril-
ity, which leads them to welcome the society of
their own kind. A striking proof of this is that
such boys alone, when they reach maturity engage
in public life. When they grow to be men, they
become lovers of boys, and it requires the com-
pulsion of convention to overcome their natural
disinclination to marriage and procreation; they
are quite content to live with one another unwed
(ibid. :60).
Cantarella writes that "[t]he gender which attracted and
tempted Socrates was the male sex" as well. She cites another of
Plato's dialogues in which Socrates falls in love with Cydias, a
schoolboy, proclaiming "[I] caught fire, and could possess myself
no longer" (ibid.: 56ff).
Not everyone accepted the spread of homosexuality in Hel-
lenic society. In Athens especially, parents tried to protect their
children from predatory pederasts who had overrun the city. It
became customary for parents to send chaperones with their male
children to and from school (ibid :27) And civil authorities, un-
doubtedly pressured by parents, established strict rules for the
Athenian educational system. Cantarella records this set of guide-
lines from Aeschines' oration Against Timarchus:
{See Comment 17-1}
The teachers of the boys shall open the school
rooms not earlier than sunrise, and they shall close
them before sunset. No person who is older than
***{Below is Page: 17 }***
the boys shall be permitted to enter the room while
they are there, unless he be a son of the teacher, a
brother, or a daughter's husband. !f any one enter
in violation of this prohibition he shall be punished
with death. The superintendents of the gymnasia
shall under no conditions allow any one who has
reached the age of manhood to enter the contests
of Hermes together with the boys. A gymnasiarch
who does permit this and fails to keep such a per-
son out of the gymnasium, shall be liable to the
penalties prescribed for the seduction of free-born
youth (ibid:28).
*** {start comment 17-1}
The Pink Swastika author leaves out the final
sentence of the above quote from Cantarella,
"Every choregus who is appointed by the people
shall be more than forty years of age." That makes
nonsense of the following paragraph about
Socrates, who was seventy at the time of his death
and would not have been considered a "sexual"
threat, for he could have served as a choregus.
Furthermore, after the quoted passage
Cantarella states that "protective legislation (as
in Athens) was not directed to preventing all
pederastic relationships, but only those which
could prove dangerous for the paides {teenager} on
account of the low quality of the lovers
involved."
*** {end comment 17-1}
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{See Comment 17-2}
In light of the preceding passage, the classic story of Socrates'
death takes on new implications. In the standard rendition of the
tale, Socrates, accused of "corrupting the youth of Athens with
his teachings" chose suicide by drinking hemlock rather than ac-
cept banishment (Runes:78). It may have been not only his ideas,
but his actions as well, which condemned the philosopher, for
apparently Athenian society had reached the end of its tolerance
for pederasty.
*** {start comment 17-2}
As indicated in note 17-1 above, this is
utter nonsense that required the Pink Swastika
author to leave out a critical sentence in the
passage he quoted from Cantarella and also
Cantarella's conclusion that only pederasty with
"low quality" lovers was unacceptable.
But there is more nonsense here, which is
evident from Plato's Apology, a record of
Socrates's defense speech. No commentators or
scholars of history suggest that Socrates was
charged with sexual improprieties. His
condemnation was not unanimous, there being 281
votes for "guilty" and 220 votes for "innocent."
The "corruption" is illustrated by various
passages in the Apology such as "Besides this, the
young men, those who have most leisure, sons of
the most wealthy houses, follow me of their own
accord, delighted to hear people being cross-
examined; and they often imitate me, they try
themselves to cross-examine, and then, I think,
they find plenty of people who believe they know
something, when they know little or nothing. So in
consequence those who are cross-examined are angry
with me instead of with themselves, and say that
Socrates is a blackguard and corrupts the young."
There's nothing sexual suggested by "corruption"
in the case of Socrates.
*** {end comment 17-2}
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{See Comment 17-3}
Though some in Athens attempted to uphold what we might
today call pro-family standards, the Greek military establishment
enthusiastically embraced homosexuality. Here we find the model
for the new Hellenes -- an ultramasculine, male supremacist war-
rior cult. The armies of Thebes, Sparta and Crete were each ex-
amples of this phenomenon. Cantarella notes that the ancient
historian, Plutarch of Chaeronea (50-120 A.D.) wrote of "the sa-
cred battalion" of Thebans made up of 150 male homosexual pairs
(Cantarella:72), and the legendary Spartan army, which inducted
all twelve-year-old boys into military service where they were
"entrusted to lovers chosen among the best men of adult age."
Plutarch also reports of a Cretan military induction ritual in which
boys were abducted and sexually enslaved for a period of two
months by adult pederasts before receiving their "military kit"
(ibid. :7). This last perversion undoubtedly inspired or was in-
*** {start comment 17-3}
This is another example of attributing false
statements to a cited author. Cantarella nowhere
says anything about anybody being "sexually
enslaved." What she does say of the Cretan ritual
is that the teenagers were taken out into the
country "for a period of two months (the period of
segregation), during which they conducted
relationships specified in minute detail by the
law, which laid down their mutual duties. At the
end of this period, before returning to the city,
the lover presented his beloved with a military
kit (the sign of his entry into the adult
community)."
It is worth noting here that Aristotle tells
us the Cretan government promoted homosexuality as
a means of population control (Politics II.vii.5).
*** {end comment 17-3}
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***{Below is Page: 18 }***
{See Comment 18-1}
spired by the Greek myth of Ganymede. Historian Jason Berry
sheds some light on this apparent derivation:
Certain gods practiced man-boy love as did the bi-
sexual male aristocracy; the armies of Thebes and
Sparta were charged with homosexuality as a fire
of the male power drive. Pagans in the late [Ro-
man] Empire adulated gods like Zeus, who ab-
ducted and raped Ganymede -- a living myth that
one philosopher denounced for influencing those
men who ran "marketplaces of immorality
and... infamous resorts for the young for every kind
of corrupt pleasure" (Berry:2OOf).
*** {start comment 18-1}
It is absolutely hilarious to call Jason
Berry an "historian." The bibliography of The Pink
Swastika lists Berry's book as Lead Us Not Into
Temptation: Catholic Priests and the Sexual Abuse
of Children. That hardly sounds like a "history"
book.
*** {end comment 18-1}
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It is possible that the term "gay" is derived from this mythical
Greek figure, Ganymede, cup-bearer of the gods, who exempli-
fied the concept of man/boy sex to the masculine homosexuals.
The familiar British term "catamite," meaning the submissive part-
ner in a male homosexual relationship, is derived from the Roman
version of Ganymede, Catamitus. The terms "gay" and "lesbian"
(the latter derived from the name of the Isle of Lesbos in Greece)
eventually replaced the terms Urning and Dailing as the names of
choice for homosexuals.
In ancient Greece, as in the masculine homosexual faction in
Germany, only the masculine form of homosexuality was esteemed
and all things feminine were despised. The form of homosexual-
ity which dominated Greek culture was ultramasculine and mili-
taristic. It can be assumed that women, as well as men who iden-
tified with womanly traits and thinking, were considered naturally
inferior to the elite pederasts. Cantarella writes that Plato, in
Timaues {sic}, went so far as to theorize that women were the reincar-
nations of men who had "lived badly" in a previous life
(Cantarella: 58).
As we will see, the revival of Hellenic paganism became a
fundamental aspect of the Nazi identity. In Nationalism and Sexu-
ality, historian George L. Mosse notes its significance: "The Greek
***{Below is Page: 19 }***
youth, an important national symbol in the past, reigned supreme
during the Third Reich. Hitler's own taste was influenced by the
neo-classical revival...[which often included] pictures of nude
youth... not unlike those of boys bathing" (Mosse: 172). But the
Nazis adopted more than just symbolism from the "boy-lovers"
who reasserted the Greek ideal; their ideas and philosophies are
indelibly stamped on the Nazi regime.
Adolf Brand and the Community of the Special
One of the earliest leaders of the masculine homosexual
counter-movement in Germany was Adolf Brand. in 1896, one
year before Magnus Hirschfeld formed the Scientific-Humanitar-
ian Committee, young Adolf Brand began publishing the world's
first homosexual serial publication; Der Eigene ("The Special").
[The word Eigene, eye'-gen-eh, can be roughly translated "queer" which
may shed some light on the derivation of this term in English. but we have
chosen the translation used most often by historians because it emphasizes
the elitist philosophy of Der Eigene's authors.
Besides being militantly pro-homosexual, Der Eigene was
racist, nationalistic and anti-Semitic. Mosse writes,
The use of racism to gain respectability was con-
stant theme of the first homosexual journal in Ger-
many, Der Eigene... Even before the paper pub-
lished a supplement called Rasse und schonheit {sic}
(Race and Beauty) in 1926, Germanic themes had
informed much of its fiction, as well as images of
naked boys and young men photographed against
a background of Germanic nature. One poem,
written by Brand himself and entitled, "The Su-
perman," praised manliness, condemned feminin-
ity, and toyed with anti-Semitism, apparently be-
cause of the poet's quarrel with Magnus Hirschfeld,
a rival for leadership of the homosexual rights
movement (Mosse:42).
***{Below is Page: 20 }***
Brand's stated market for Der Eigene were men who "thirst
for a revival of Greek times and Hellenic standards of beauty after
centuries of Christian barbarism" (Brand in Oosterhuis and
Kennedy:3). In 1903 Brand was briefly jailed as a child pornog-
rapher for publishing pictures of nude boys in the magazine, but
nevertheless Der Eigene remained in publication until 1931, peak-
ing at over 150,000 subscriptions during the years of the Weimar
Republic [1919-1933] (Mosse :42). In addition to Der Eigene,
Brand published a satirical journal Die Tante ("The Fairy" or "The
Auntie") which often ridiculed Hirschfeld and his assistants
(Oosterhuis and Kennedy: 6).
On May 1, 1902, Brand and two pederasts, Wilhelm Jansen
and Benedict Friedlander, formed the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen
("Community of the Special'). Its leading theorist was Friedlander
(1866-1908), author of Renaissance des Eros Uranios ("Renais-
sance of Uranian Erotica"), a 1904 publication which featured a
picture of a Greek youth on the cover. Friedlander wrote that the
Community wanted to carry out the goals of the lesbian and radi-
cal feminist Dr. Helene Stocker (1809-1943) {sic !!} who wanted Ger-
man society to revert to pagan values. Friedlander writes;
The positive goal... is the revival of Hellenic chiv-
alry and its recognition by society. By chivalric
love we mean in particular close friendships be-
tween youths and even more particularly the bonds
between men of unequal ages (B. Friedlander:259).
According to James Steakley in The Homosexual Emancipation
Movement in Germany,
The Community looked to ancient Greece and
Renaissance Italy as model civilizations and argued
that Christian asceticism was responsible for the
demise of homosexual relations. Friedlander, who
was married, advocated pedophile relations com-
bined with family life, and Brand contrasted his
***{Below is Page: 21 }***
journal with Hirschfeld's Jahrbuch by saying he
wanted to show "more of the Hellenic side of
things" (Steakley:43).
Steakley goes on to show how the Community supported the
work of Elisar von Kupffer {sic}, a "Butch" homosexual and an advo-
cate of "Greek love," who strongly attacked the Scientific-Hu-
manitarian Committee as "pseudo-scientific" (Steakley :46). In
Homosexuality and Male Bonding in Pre-Nazi Germany,
Oosterhuis and Kennedy write that "Kuppfer {sic} stated in a letter of
25 December 1925 to Brand that the word "homosexual" was
repugnant to him, because it reminded him of the "fairies" in
Hirschfeld's Committee, and he requested Brand never to men-
tion his name in such a context" (Oosterhuis and Kennedy:34).
Friedlander described heterosexuals and effeminate homosexu-
als as Kummerlings ("puny beings"). The Ulrichs-Hirschfeld
school believed that both homosexuality and heterosexuality were
equal and legitimate forms of sexual love. However, the Brand-
Friedlander school believed that eros ("sexual love") had a rising
scale of worth, with heterosexuality at the bottom and pederasty
at the top. Steakley writes, "For the Community, however, het-
erosexual relations were relegated to purely procreative ends and
the esthetic superiority of pedophile relations was asserted"
(Steakley:46). In other words, heterosexuals were valued only as
"breeders." Friedlander also quoted from Gustov {sic} Jager who ar-
gued that, in contrast to the "Femmes," masculine homosexuals
were Uebermanner ("supermen"), superior to heterosexuals be-
cause they were even more masculine (Oosterhuis and
Kennedy:87). Some of the pederasts of the Community of the
Special did not consider themselves homosexuals at all, declaring
the "love of friends" and homosexuality two different phenom-
ena" (ibid.: 86).
Friedlander for a time was a member of both the Community
of the Special and the SHC. A review of his articles written for
the SHC reveal {sic} that he endeavored to convince the members of
the group that they were not going far enough: the SHC simply
***{Below is Page: 22 }***
wanted the "right to privacy," but the Community of the Special
wanted a complete transformation of Germany from a Judeo-Chris-
tian society to a Greco-Uranian one. But the leadership of the
SHC was never convinced. The two philosophies were just too
different.
In 1906 Friedlander left the SHC and, hoping to discredit
Hirschfeld, strongly hinted that Hirschfeld and other leaders of
the SHC had mismanaged the Committee's funds. But this was
not the real reason for his departure. Steakley writes,
The membership of the Community realized that
the Committee's petition, which called for the le-
galization of same-sex relations only between those
over the age of sixteen, neglected their interests.
They were also affronted by Hirschfeld's personal
effeminacy and his sweeping classification of all
homosexuals in one category [as "Femmes"]
(Steakley:47f.).
After his falling-out with Hirschfeld and the leaders of the
SHC, Friedlander continued to try to sway its members regarding
pederasty as well as to attract its financial supporters to the Com-
munity of the Special. In 1907, Friedlander published an article in
Der Eigene with a long but revealing title: "Memoirs for the Friends
and Contributors of the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee in the
Name of the Succession of the Scientific-Humanitarian Commit-
tee." In the article, Friedlander said that the Greek "love of youth"
(pederasty) was the cause of Paragraph 175. He said that the law
was not enacted because of men, but rather because of their jeal-
ous wives and mistresses who viewed young boys "as a kind of
unfair competition" (Journal of Homosexuality, Jan-Feb 1991).
In the same article Friedlander writes,
Let us just understand that no one can be a good
educator who does not love his pupils! And let us
not lie to ourselves that in love the so-called "spiri-
***{Below is Page: 23 }***
tual" element can ever be completely detached from
its physiological foundation. It is an eternal ver-
ity: only a good pederast can be a complete peda-
gogue (Friedlander In Oosterhuis and
Kennedy:77ff.).
Benedict Friedlander died in 1908 at the age of 42, but his
influence on the German homosexual movement endured. In 1934,
just one year after Adolf Hitler came to power, a man named Kurt
Hildebrandt echoed Friedlander's views in a book titled Norm
Entartung Verfall ("Ideal - Degeneration - Ruin"). In 1934
Hildebrandt was a leader in the Society for Human Rights (SHR),
a spinoff {sic} of the Community of the Special. He referred to
Friedlander as his "master" and asserted that Greek pederasty had
led to "an enhancement of masculinity" (Steakley:49). In Norm
Entartung Verfall, Hildebrandt presents the Brand-Friedlander
theory that masculine homosexuals are the ideal; a master race of
beings, and that effeminate homosexuals are, in fact, degenera-
tions of the ideal. Hildebrandt declares that the masculine type is
the one that "Nature" intended to rule the world, but that the
effeminate types were freaks of nature who would bring any Hel-
lenic society to destruction. Hildebrandt writes,
It is incomprehensible that these forms should be
confused with that type of homosexuality about
which such a ruckus is made today. The latter
arises contrarily in groups of effeminate men; it
counteracts military and intellectual manliness...and
is certain of ruin (Hildebrandt:207).
In many ways it is Friedlander's theory of homosexuality that
we see implemented in the policies of the Nazis. Although there
were obvious exceptions made for political reasons, there is E.I.-
dense to suggest that only the effeminate homosexuals were mis-
treated under the Nazi regime -- and usually at the hands of mas-
culine homosexuals. Some historians, such as James Steakley,
***{Below is Page: 24 }***
{See Comment 24-1}
see Friedlander's influence in Adolf Hitler's own philosophy of
homosexuality as well. Steakley writes,
Hitler, on the other hand, was the Nazi
visionary... and there is a truly striking affinity be-
tween his views on homosexuality and those of
Friedlander and [Hans] Bluher. These male su-
premacists wanted to create a new Hellas peopled
by strong, naked, but chaste men, inspired by hero-
ism and capable of leadership (Steakley: 119).
*** {start comment 24-1}
This is a rather remarkable quote: "strong,
naked, but chaste men." (Emphasis added.) If
Friedlander, Blueher, and Hitler believed in
chastity, it rather demolishes the argument of the
author of The Pink Swastika that there are here
somehow occult roots of the alleged homosexual
founders of the Nazi Party who held wild sex
orgies, as the author alleges elsewhere.
For Blueher's sexuality, see comment 29-1,
below.
*** {end comment 24-1}
Read the Same Text Again Skip Forward Table of Contents
The Rift Widens
It is clear that Adolf Brand's Community of the Special wanted
nothing to do with Ulrichs' theory of anima muliebris in corpore
virili inclusa ("a female soul confined in a male body"). They
perceived themselves as fully masculine and despised everything
female and effeminate. For many years, Ulrichs' "Femme" fac-
tion had dominated the German homosexual movement. But dur-
ing this time, the rift between the "Butches" and the "Femmes"
grew increasingly wider as the revival of Hellenic pagan values
began to transform German society.
As early as 1908, Hirschfeld wrote that the scandals and divi-
sion of opinion between the "Butches" and "Femmes" was dam-
aging the homosexual cause in Germany. He criticized the Com-
munity of the Special for being anti-feminist. In 1914, reflecting
the increase of tensions, Hirschfeld characterized the Community
of the Special as "exaggerated side-currents" and "fanatics"
(Oosterhuis and Kennedy:24f). At this point Hirschfeld still con-
trolled the movement, but somewhere between 1914 and 1920
the "Butches" became a serious political force themselves. In
1920, they formed the Society for Human Rights. The title seems
to lay claim to what had become the Scientific-Humanitarian
Committee's trademark: political activism under the banner of "gay
***{Below is Page: 25 }***
rights." Two years later the new SHR published the following,
now militant, call to arms:
We no longer want only a few scientists [i.e.,
Hirschfeld et al.] struggling for our cause, we want
to demonstrate our strength ourselves. Here we
stand, demanding that which is our right -- and
who would dare challenge us? For this reason we
must work steadily and everyone must take their
part in our work. No homosexual should be ab-
sent -- rich or poor, worker or scholar, diplomat
or businessman. We cannot deprive ourselves of
any support. Therefore join us, swell our ranks
before it is too late. At Easter we must show
whether we have developed into a Fighting organi-
zation or just a social club. He who does not march
with us is against us (Steakley:76f.).
Here we can see the militaristic tone of the "Butch" faction
and sense its eagerness to wrest control of the movement from
the SHC. Jonathan Katz records, in Gay American History, that
"[the SHR became] the largest of the Gay groups in Germany
during the 1920's, one that aimed at being a 'mass' organization,
and it criticized Hirschfeld's scientific {sic -- the actual word in Katz is "scientistic"} approach" (J. Katz:632)
Bear in mind that these were also the early years of the Nazi Party,
an organization which shared some founding members with the
SHR. Increasingly, the Nazi Party became the vehicle with which
the "Butches" opposed Hirschfeld. In July of 1927, after a Nazi
Party member made a speech attacking the SHC, Hirschfeld wrote
in the SHC newsletter, "We further feel obliged to urgently re-
quest of our numerous members in the National Socialist German
Workers Party...that they vigorously call their delegates [to the
Reichstag] to order" (Steakley:91 ). The rather desperate tone of
Hirschfeld's complaint reflects the reality that his faction had by
this time lost control.
{See Comment 26.1}
To some extent, the homosexuals of the SHC may have brought
***{Below is Page: 26 }***
on themselves the later wrath of the Nazis. In the 1920's the
political enemies of the Nazis used their homosexuality against
them with consistent success, preventing the party from gaining
legitimacy. Stories were printed in the newspapers containing
"inside" information about homosexual activities among the Nazi
leaders. The most noteworthy example of this tactic was in 1925
when documentation of Ernst Roehm's proclivity for young boys,
in the form of hand written letters from Roehm himself, was leaked
to the Social Democrat newspapers. The Nazis fared badly in the
next election and Roehm soon moved to Bolivia where he would
stay until Hitler called him back in 1929 (Plant :60). Upon his
return the press attacks were repeated with similar success
(Oosterhuis and Kennedy:239n.).
*** {start comment 26-1}
This is another example of gross distortion
of what the cited source says. Plant doesn't say
anything about Roehm's "proclivity for young
boys." On the contrary, Plant says that the affair
involved letters being used to blackmail Roehm by
a Berlin prostitute. Plant says the letters were
published in 1932, not 1925, and that Roehm
resigned because of a quarrel with Hitler before
the incident: "In 1925, however, they quarreled --
though not over Roehm's sexual preferences -- and
Roehm resigned from the SA. Roehm soon found
himself embroiled in an embarrassing lawsuit
against Hermann Siegesmund, a Berlin hustler, who
had somehow gotten hold of several incriminating
letters. In the end, the suit was dismissed, but
the damaging letters were to haunt him for the
rest of his life. In 1932 the letters were leaked
to the press and proved to be a boon to his
enemies within the Nazi Party."
*** {end comment 26-1}
Read the Same Text Again Skip Forward Table of Contents
The Social Democrat Party, of course, was the home of many
of the effeminate homosexuals, which the Nazis well knew. It is
likely that they suspected some of the "inside" information against
them had come from Hirschfeld's camp. This was probably an
accurate surmise. Steakley writes that "Hirschfeld was later sorely
discredited within the homosexual Community of Germany when
it was revealed that he at least occasionally leaked' information
on homosexuals to the press" (Steakley:64).
This may help to explain why the Nazis bore such enmity
against the "Femmes," and why they targeted certain of these
homosexuals for persecution. However, the Nazis needed no spe-
cial justification for revenge. Just the fact that the SHC had made
opposition to pederasty an essential tenet of their political strat-
egy was enough. Though not a Nazi, the "Butch" homosexual
poet, Stefan George, summed up the attitude of the anti-Hirschfeld
camp, saying, "It should be apparent that we have nothing to do
with those far from charming people who whimper for the repeal
of certain laws, for the most revolting attacks against us [pederasts]
have issued from precisely these circles" (George in Steakley:49).
As we can see, understanding the "gay rights" movement in
Germany is essential to a complete understanding of the forma-
tion of the Nazi Party and the policies of the Third Reich. In turn,
understanding the German "gay rights" movement requires an
***{Below is Page: 27 }***
appreciation of the rivalry between the two distinct homosexual
factions: the Ulrichs/Hirschfeld "Femmes" and the Brand/
Friedlander/Roehm "Butches." Their contest for domination of
the "gay rights" movement ended when the "Butches" of the Nazi
Party came to power in 1933 and began to construct the Third
Reich. They had realized their dream of a revived Hellenic cul-
ture of ultramasculine militarism, a dream that was to prove a
nightmare for all those who fell short of the Nazi ideal.
The Wandervogel
"In Germany," writes Mosse, "ideas of homosexuality as the
basis of a better society can be found at the turn of the century
within the German Youth Movement" (Mosse:87). Indeed, at the
same time that Brand and Friedlander were beginning to articu-
late their dream of a neo-Hellenic Germany to the masses, a youth-
ful subculture of boys and young men was already beginning to
act out its basic themes under the leadership of men like Karl
Fischer and Wilhelm Jansen. In Sexual Experience Between Men
and Boys homosexualist historian Parker Rossman writes,
In Central Europe... there was another effort to
revive the Greek ideal of pedagogic pederasty, in
the movement of "Wandering Youth"
[Wandervogel}. Modern gay-homosexuality also
can trace some of its roots to that movement of
men and boys who wandered around the country-
side, hiking and singing hand-in-hand, enjoying
nature, life together, and their sexuality. Ultimately
Hitler used and transformed the movement -- much
as the Romans had abused the paiderastia of the
ancient Greeks -- expanding and building upon its
romanticism as a basis for the Nazi Party
(Rossman: 103).
***{Below is Page: 28 }***
{See Comment 28-1}
Another homosexualist, Richard Mills, explains in Gay Roots:
Twenty Years of Gay Sunshine how the Wandervogel movement
traces its roots to an informal hiking and camping society of young
men started in 1890 by a fifteen-year-old student named Hermann
Hoffman. For several years the open-air lifestyle of these boys
grew increasingly popular. They developed their own form of
greeting, the Sieg Heil salute, and "much of the
vocabulary... [which] was later appropriated by the Nazis"
(Mills: 168). Early in its development, the movement attracted
the attention of homosexual men, including the pederasts who
belonged to the Community of the Special. In 1901 a homo-
sexual teacher by the name of Karl Fischer (who, as we have men-
tioned, called himself "der Fuehrer") formalized the movement
under the name Wandervogel (Koch:29, Mills: 153). Hans Blueher,
then just seventeen years old, organized the most ambitious
Wandervogel excursion to that date in 1905. It was on this trip
that Blueher met Wilhelm Jansen, one of the original founders of
the Community of the Special. At this time the Wandervogel num-
bered fewer than one hundred young men, but eventually the num-
ber of youths involved in Wandervoge1-type groups in Europe
reached 60,000.
*** {start comment 28-1}
The reference from page 168 of Mills has been
falsified. Mills says the greeting of the early
Wandervogel was "Heil," not "Sieg Heil," and he
says nothing about the Nazis taking their greeting
from the youth group. "Heil" is a greeting common
in old German folk culture. It can be heard
frequently in Wagnerian operas, for example. Quite
likely that's where the Wandervogel found it.
Page 153 of the Mills article doesn't speak
of the things stated above other than to say of
the leaders, "These men were homosexually
inclined, even when they were not aware of it.
However, the use of the word 'homosexual' in this
context is misleading, because it incorrectly
emphasizes the genital component of their
personalities. For these men, the act of sex was
not of primary importance. Therefore, it is more
accurate to refer to them as 'inverts.' Their
desires and interests are identical to those of
heterosexuals, and differ solely in the choice of
objects.".
Koch speaks of Fischer on pages 25 and 26,
not 29. He says absolutely nothing about Fischer
being a homosexual. The movement was founded by
Herman Hoffmann, who for a time was an associate
of Fischer's. Koch says "it is really Fischer
rather than Hoffmann who was the born leader,
capable also of devising the Wandervogel's
programme."
This information on Jansen is deceptive, and
the Pink Swastika authors know it, for they cite
Rector at just this place. Jansen was hardly "one
of the most influential" leaders. Rector says,
p39, "One, Wilhelm Jansen, was forced to resign
his Wandervoegel leader's post because of his
wildly gay ways. He struck out on his own and
formed a counter-organization. It was constituted
in 1910 as the Jungwandervoegel (Young, or in this
case, New Wandervoegel), which attracted about
1,500 members...." Rector goes on to say that this
group lasted only until the start of World War I -
- about four years. Someone able to attract only
four percent of a movement (1,500 out of 60,000)
can hardly be characterized as "one of the most
influential" of its leaders. (The difference in
these membership figures compared with those from
another source cited in comment 29-1 illustrates
the difficulty encountered in researching this
topic and the need for careful cross-checking,
something the Pink Swastika author never does.)
*** {end comment 28-1}
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{See Comment 29-1}
Wilhelm Jansen became one of the most influential of the lead-
ers of the Wandervogel, but rumors of his homosexuality disturbed
German society. In 1911, Jansen addressed the issue in a circular
to Wandervogel parents. Jansen told them, "As long as they con-
duct themselves properly with your sons, you will have to accus-
tom yourselves to the presence of so-called homosexuals in your
ranks" (Mills: 167). Hans Blueher further substantiated the fact
that the movement had become a vehicle for homosexual recruit-
ment of boys with his publication of The German Wandervogel
Movement as an Erotic Phenomenon in 1912 (Rector:39f). Mills
writes,
...the Wandervogel offered youth the chance to
escape bourgeois German society by retreating
back to nature.. .But how was this accomplished?
***{Below is Page: 29 }***
What made it possible for the lifestyle created
within the Wandervogel to differ significantly from
its bourgeois parent? The answer is simple: the
Wandervogel was founded upon homosexual, as
opposed to heterosexual sentiments... In order to
understand the success of the movement, one must
acknowledge the homosexual component of its
leaders... Just as the leaders were attracted to the
boys, so were the boys attracted to their leaders.
In both cases the attraction was sexually based
(Mills 152-53).
Hans Blueher had married twice and had two children, but he
was an outspoken proponent of the theory that humans are fun-
damentally bisexual and was both a bisexual and a pederast him-
self. Foreshadowing the Nazi regime, Blueher "saw male bond-
ing as crucial to the formation of male elites," writes homosexual-
ist historian Warren Johansson. "The discipline, the comrade-
ship, the willingness of the individual to sacrifice himself for the
nation--all these are determined by the homoerotic infrastructure
of the male society" (Johansson:816). Mills adds that Blueher
"believed that male homosexuality was the foundation upon which
all forms of nation-states are built" (Mills: 152). Blueher called
his hypothetical political figures "heroic males," meaning self-ac-
cepting masculine homosexuals. It is precisely this concept of the
"heroic male" that prompts Steakley to compare Adolf Hitler's
views to those of Blueher and Friedlander.
*** {start comment 29-1}
Mills notes that Jansen was forced out of the
Wandervogel because of his homosexuality, and then
formed his own group, the Young (or "New")
Wandervogel, which grew to 2,300 members by 1913
[the other branches of the movement totaled about
23,000 members]. Mills says, "Similarly, the Young
Wandervogel refused to participate in the anti-
Semitic hysteria that swept through the movement
in 1913 and 1914. Although the question of Jewish
participation had long been a source of internal
debate, the question became pressing in 1913, when
one of the Wandervogel magazines published a
'Jewish issue.' In it, Jews were charged with
exploiting and corrupting Germans, seducing German
virgins, and organizing white-slave traffic. As a
result, many groups voted to exclude Jews from
membership. The Young Wandervogel was one of the
few groups to protest against such discrimination,
and publicly announced its rejection of anti-
Semitism." That directly contradicts the Pink
Swastika author's picture of homosexuals as anti-
Semitic Nazis: on the contrary, they stood up for
the Jews against this heterosexual attack.
Mills notes that Blueher's views on
bisexuality were the same as those of Sigmund
Freud, whose disciple he was. He believed that
homosexuality was perfectly natural, a view Freud
rejected at first, but later adopted. As for his
views on the Wandervogel as being founded upon
homosexual sentiments, Mills says, "In the great
majority of cases, it is quite clear that there
was very little physical sexuality to be found
within the Wandervogel. However, the lack of
direct sexuality did not preclude the existence of
strong homosexual feelings in the organization."
Mills mentions Blueher's two marriages and
two children, but doesn't say anything about his
alleged bisexuality or pederasty. Since Mills
doesn't hesitate to mention homosexuality of other
figures, it's highly likely that he accepted
Blueher as totally heterosexual. He mentions that
Blueher was "a conservative thinker who rejected
liberalism and socialism." Indeed, Blueher says in
his publication on homosexuality that he has no
personal interest in the issue [Mills page 162].
*** {end comment 29-1}
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But this is not the only instance in which the views of Blueher
and Friedlander coincide. Like Friedlander, Blueher believed that
homosexuals were the best teachers of children. "There are five
sexual types of men, ranging from the exclusively heterosexual to
the exclusively homosexual," writes Mills in explaining Blueher's
philosophy. "The exclusive heterosexual is the one least suited to
teach young people... [but exclusive homosexuals} are the focal
point of all youth organizations" (ibid.:l54). Another point of
agreement between Friedlander and Blueher was anti-Semitism.
***{Below is Page: 30 }***
{See Comment 30-1}
In writing about his visit with Magnus Hirschfeld and the SHC,
Blueher denigrated Hirschfeld's egalitarian views, complaining that
"concepts like rank, race, physiognomy.. .things of importance to
me -- were simply not applicable in this circle." Homosexualist
author Frank Rector writes,
Blueher's case further explains why many Nazi
Gays were attracted to Hitler and his shrill anti-
Semitism, for many gentile homosexuals were ra-
bidly anti-Semitic... Gays in the youth movement
who espoused anti-Semitism, chauvinism, and the
Fuehrer Prinzip {sic} (Leader Principle) were not-so-
incipient Fascists. They helped create a fertile
ground for Hitler's movement {sic} and, later, became
one of its main sources of adherents ...A substan-
tial number of those Wandervogel leaders were
known homosexuals, and many others were alleg-
edly gay (or bisexual) (Rector:40).
*** {start comment 30-1}
The above quote, beginning on page 39 of
Rector, has minor inaccuracies in spelling that
indicate the general sloppiness with which The
Pink Swastika was written and "researched."
The major problem is omissions. For example,
in discussing Blueher, Rector says "Incidentally,
Blueher is an example of the paradox of a German
homosexual being anti-Semitic, and Blueher was a
brilliant man. Blueher's case further helps
explain why many Nazi gays were attracted to
Hitler and his shrill anti-Semitism, for many
gentile homosexuals were rabidly anti-Semitic.
Bear in mind, though, that anti-Semitic Nazi gays
saw nothing more amiss with this prejudice than
otherwise decent homophobes see anything amiss in
their attitude toward homosexuals. It merely
illustrates the quirks of prejudice, and the irony
of prejudice's victims so often being prejudice's
spokesmen." (See comment 29-1 above, which casts
Blueher's alleged homosexuality in doubt. Rector
is a journalist, not an historian, and his work is
of lesser reliability than that of bona fide
historians.)
Rector, pages 40-41, gives a summation of the German
youth movement:
"The truth of just how gay was the German
youth movement probably falls somewhere between
the extremes of the ostensibly sexless Boy Scouts'
image on the one hand and homosexual clubbiness on
the other. It was a shade of gray -- not black and
white. The youth movement was not a homosexual
cabal, but there probably was a greater number of
gay sex encounters and love affairs in the youth
movement than there might have been otherwise,
especially in its early days before authoritarian
straight youths and adults clamped down on
Wandervoegel eros."
*** {end comment 30-1}
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{See Comment 30-2}
In the introduction to his book The Pink Triangle, homosexual
author Richard Plant writes of his own experience in the Rovers
(another translation of Wandervogel). "In such brotherhoods,"
writes Plant, "a few adolescents had little affairs, misty and ro-
mantic sessions around a blazing fire... Other boys... talked openly
about "going with friends" and enjoying it. The leaders of these
groups tended to disregard the relationships blossoming around
them -- unless they participated" (Plant:3). Plant's reminiscences
also substantiate that the Wandervogel served as a training ground
for Nazis. He recalls his friend in the Rovers, "Ferdi, who ex-
plained and demonstrated the mysteries of sex to me and my
friends." Plant was later shocked, he says, upon returning to
Germany from abroad "to see Ferdi wearing a brown shirt with a
red, white and black swastika armband" (ibid. :4).
*** {start comment 30-2}
The Pink Swastika author betrays an apparent
misunderstanding of the movement of which he
writes. "Rovers" is not "another translation of
Wandervogel." Plant says the Rovers was "an
association of mostly middle-class Protestants and
Catholic teenagers." He also belonged to a
"similar Zionist brotherhood." He says "After 1933
the Nazis forcibly dissolved all independent youth
organizations, even the Catholic ones, hurled
accusations of 'homosexual degeneracy' against
their leaders, and embarked on a campaign to
enforce strictly heterosexual behavior."
As to Ferdi, Plant says "I had not kept in
touch when he joined the Communist Youth League."
Later, on the brown shirt and swastika, "To Ferdi
the brown uniform meant only that he could get a
better job. He urged me to 'get away from this
mess,' and it was he who provided the useful
channels for obtaining that indispensable
passport."
The Pink Swastika author deliberately
falsifies what Plant is trying to say. The reason
is that the PS author wants to use Ferdi as proof
that homosexuals were rabid anti-Semites and
ardent Nazis. As author Plant's actual words show,
nothing could be further from the truth. Plant, a
Jew, was helped by his friend Ferdi, who was at
heart a Communist, but who donned the Nazi uniform
as a matter of survival.
*** {end comment 30-2}
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E.Y. Hartshorne, in German Youth and the Nazi Dream of
Victory records the recollections of a former Wandervogel mem-
ber who confirms that the organization was the source of impor-
***{Below is Page: 31 }***
{See Comment 31-1}
tant elements of Nazi culture. Our knowledge of the influence of
the Gemeinschaft der Eigenen on the Wandervogel may provide
us insight into the cryptic comment at the end of the testimony:
We little suspected then what power we had in our
hands. We played with the fire that had set a world
in flames, and it made our hearts hot. Mysticism
and everything mystical had dominion over us. It
was in our ranks that the word Fuehrer originated,
with its meaning of blind obedience and devotion.
The word Bund arose with us too, with its myste-
rious undertone of conspiracy. And I shall never
forget how in those early days we pronounced the
word Gemeinschaft ["community"] with a trem-
bling throaty note of excitement, as though it hid a
deep secret (Hartshorne: 12).
*** {start comment 31-1}
The Pink Swastika author seems to suggest
that this sinister, occult group originated
Hitler's title, Fuehrer. But the writer also uses
the word "Bund". It's interesting to note that the
largest Jewish labor organization in Poland called
itself "The Bund."
A comment below on the origin of the Hitler
Youth is false. The Hitler Youth was an
independent organization founded by the Hitler in
1922 under a different name. (See comment 2-1
above.)
*** {end comment 31-1}
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{See Comment 31-2}
Indeed, not only did the grown-up former members of the
Wandervogel become one of Hitler's main sources of supporters
in his rise to power, but the movement itself became a Nazi insti-
tution: the Hitler Jugend ("Hitler Youth"). So rampant had ho-
mosexuality become in the movement by this time that the
Rheinische Zeitung, a prominent German newspaper, warned,
"Parents, protect your sons from 'physical preparation' in the Hitler
Youth," a sarcastic reference to problems of homosexuality in
the organization (Burleigh and Wipperman {sic}: 188). Sadly, the boys
themselves had by this time been completely indoctrinated by their
homosexual masters. Waite writes,
*** {start comment 31-2}
The quote from Burleigh and Wippermann is
misleading. The German newspaper was an organ of
the Socialist Party, strong opponents of the
Nazis, and the quote has to be viewed as political
propaganda of dubious merit.
*** {end comment 31-2}
Read the Same Text Again Skip Forward Table of Contents
{See Comment 32-1}
With the exception of Ehrhardt, Gerhard Rossbach,
sadist, murderer, and homosexual was the most
adored hero of nationalistic German youth. 'In
Ehrhardt, but also in Rossbach,' says a popular
book on the youth movement, "we see the Fuehrer
of our youth. These men have become the Ideal
Man, idolized... and honored as can only happen
***{Below is Page: 32 }***
when the personality of an individual counts for
more than anything else'... the most important
single contributor of the pre-Hitler youth move-
ment [was] Gerhard Rossbach (Waite, 1969:210f).
*** {start comment 32-1}
For a discussion of this, see comment 3-4
above. Waite says on page 210, "[Rossbach] along
with Werner Lass, founded the Schilljugend, which
became one of the largest youth organizations of
the days preceding Baldur von Schirach and the
Hitler Youth." There are no allegations that Lass
was homosexual. Since Waite mentions that Rossbach
was homosexual and uses that as a smear, one would
expect any suspicion about Lass would not be left
out. Thus the collaboration of Lass with Rossbach
suggests that the youth movement was "sexless":
not influenced by sexual considerations. Surely
the Pink Swastika author wouldn't indict
heterosexuals because Lass was a cofounder of the
Schilljugend.
*** {end comment 32-1}
Read the Same Text Again Skip Forward Table of Contents
{See Comment 32-2}
Hans Peter Bleuel, in Sex and Society in Nazi Germany, points
out that most of the adult supervisors of the Hitler Youth were
also SA officers (who were almost exclusively homosexual).
Rector states that Baldur von Schirach, leader of the Hitler Youth
organization, was reportedly bisexual (Rector:56). In Germany's
National Vice, Jewish historian Samuel Igra confirms this, saying
Schirach "was arrested by the police for perverse sexual practices
and liberated on the intervention of Hitler, who soon afterward
made him leader of the Hitler Youth" (Igra:72). Igra further states
that Schirach "was known as 'the baby' among the inner pederast
clique around Hitler" (ibid. :74). Remple {sic} reports that Schirach
"always surrounded himself with a guard of handsome young men
(Remple:88). Psychologist Walter Langer in his 1943 secret war-
time report, The Mind of Adolf Hitler, also writes of Schirach's
reputed homosexuality (Langer: 99).
*** {start comment 32-2}
The alleged statement about Hitler Youth
leadership can't be found in Bleuel, and is
presumably another fabrication of the author of
The Pink Swastika. Perhaps the author was confused
with Bleuel's statement on page 109 about the
leadership of the "Napolas" or "National-Political
Institutes of Education," meant to educate a new
elite for the Nazis. Bleuel says "Instructors from
the Hitler Youth and the SS were responsible for
administering the Napolas' programme…." He
mentions that "Their principals were mostly
veteran members of the SA and SS…." That has
nothing to do with the leadership of the Hitler
Youth. Furthermore, the SA officers were not
"almost exclusively homosexual" and no author
makes such a claim. Only a small clique of SA
officers around Ernst Roehm were homosexual, and
they were purged in 1934.
Let it be noted that the author of The Pink
Swastika has Gerhard Rempel's name wrong, which is
more evidence of his sloppy work.
Samuel Igra was no historian, but a writer of
propaganda, much like the author of The Pink
Swastika, who repeated rumor uncritically as
though it were demonstrated truth. As mentioned
above, Igra was a Jew, and he wrote his book about
Germany in the bombed out London of 1945. What
could one expect from a Jewish author after the
revelations of the death camps at the end of the
war? (And who could blame him?) The very title of
Igra's book Germany's National Vice, gives away
the show. Frank Rector, so often quoted by the
author of The Pink Swastika, says on page 57 of
his book, "Samuel Igra points out in Germany's
National Vice that there exists documentary
evidence that Adolf Hitler had been a male
prostitute in Vienna...." Rector tells us that
Igra claims Hitler also prostituted himself in
Munich before World War I. Rector says "Regardless
of the assumed authenticity of the allegations, in
this case there surely can be no question that the
documents concerning Hitler's homosexual hustling
were false -- if, indeed, such documents ever
really existed." That's a polite way of suggesting
that Igra simply fabricated the assertion about
documents.
Walter C. Langer was an American
psychoanalyst, who might be turning in his grave
after being identified as a mere "psychologist" by
the author of The Pink Swastika.. He's mentioned
in one of Robert G.L. Waite's books, Hitler: The
Psychopathic God, a source used by the Pink
Swastika author, but obviously not used very
carefully or thoroughly. Langer was not an
historian, and his assertion about Schirach has no
more weight than a repetition of rumor.
The Pink Swastika author's reference to
Rector on Schirach is misleading. Rector doesn't
assert that Schirach was bisexual, but simply
mentions the rumor as one of a number of examples
of wild accusations made about prominent Nazis.
(See comment 80-1 below.)
Peter D. Stachura, author of Nazi Youth in
the Weimar Republic, writes that Baldur Schirach
was born of an American father and mother. His
grandfather had been a major in the Union army
during the American Civil War. He became an anti-
Semite after reading Henry Ford's International
Jew. In 1932 he married Henrietta Hoffmann, the
daughter of Hitler's photographer. On 17 June
1933, he was appointed youth leader of the German
Reich. He volunteered for the army in 1939 and
served in the French campaign, rising from
corporal to lieutenant and receiving the Iron
Cross, Class II.
Schirach fell out of Hitler's favor in 1943
"on account of his 'un-German' cultural policies,
and 'liberal' attitudes toward Jews." In 1952 he
fell heir to an American fortune, but served the
rest of his war crimes sentence in Spandau prison
until his release in 1966.
On homosexuality, Stachura says (page 177)
"The accusation has frequently been made of
widespread homosexuality in the HJ {Hitler
Jugend}; indeed von Schirach was suspected by some
of being a homosexual. There are no known cases
before and after 1933 of HJ leaders having been
convicted of homosexual offences (See Biography of
HJ Leadership) and they were usually expelled from
the HJ on this account. Most youth organizations
have at one time of another been confronted by
this problem, but there is no reliable or
conclusive evidence to show that homosexuality was
particularly serious at any time in the HJ."
{Stachura's book contains brief biographies of 197
persons.}
*** {end comment 32-2}
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{See Comment 33-1}
In 1934, the Gestapo reported over forty cases of pederasty
in just one troop of the Hitler Youth. Bleuel writes of the case of
one supervisor, a 21-year-old man who was dismissed from the
Hitler Youth in 1938. Yet he was transferred to the National
Socialist Flying Corps (Civil Air Patrol) and was assigned to "su-
pervise work by members of the Hitler Youth Gliding Association
and eventually detained {sic} to help with physical check-ups -- a griev-
ous temptation." The man was once again caught sodomizing
young men, but "was not dismissed from the NSFK" (Bleuel: 119).
The prevalence of homosexuality in the Hitler Youth is also con-
firmed by historian Gerhard Remple {sic} in his book Hitler's Children:
Hitler Youth and the SS:
Homosexuality, meanwhile, continued on into the
war years when Hitlerjugend boys frequently be-
came victims of molestations at the hands of their
***{Below is Page: 33 }***
SS tutors; Himmler consistently took a hard line
against it publicly but was quite willing to mitigate
his penalties privately and keep every incident as
secret as possible (Remple:51f.).
*** {start comment 33-1}
The material from Bleuel is distorted. He
doesn't say "over forty cases of pederasty" but
"approximately 40 cases of suspected homosexual
relations," as reported by the Gestapo, who at the
time had responsibility for such investigations.
The instructor was twenty years old, not 21, and
Bleuel says nothing about "sodomizing." He would
have been only 17 years old when originally
dismissed from the Hitler Youth for "embezzlement"
and unspecified "indecent conduct." He was finally
brought to court when some youths reported him to
the authorities. It's interesting to note that he
was a member of the NSFK, not the supposedly
homosexual-ridden SA of the Pink Swastika author's
wild imagination.
Genuine historian Peter Stachura (his
research was financed by the Deutsche
Austauchdienst and the Cassel Education Trust, and
he was granted a scholarship to study at the
Institut fuer Europaeische Geschichte) said that
homosexuality was not a serious problem in the
Hitler Youth. (See comment 32-1 above.)
Gerhard Rempel, another source quoted by the
authors of The Pink Swastika, says, on pp50ff:
"Sexual morality was another problem to which
the HJ {Hitler Jugend -- Hitler Youth} was
especially sensitive. Certain segments of the
despised old youth movement, which always shied
away from including girls in their groups, had
been known to have a homosexual problem, and the
early HJ was widely suspected of similar
tendencies. Schirach believed he had cured the
problem by bringing boys and girls into harmless
contact, but his confidence was misplaced."
{Note that the HJ had four sections: HJ =
Hitler Jugend, Hitler Youth, boys ages 14-18; JV =
Jungvolk, Young People, boys ages 10-14; BDM =
Bund Deutsche Maedel, girls 14-18; JM = Junge
Maedel, girls 10-14.}
Rempel continues:
"How serious then was the problem within HJ
ranks? In Aachen, for instance, forty cases of
suspected homosexual activity during the course of
1934 were reported to the Gestapo. Other cases
within the JV came into the open the following
spring. A twelve-year-old girl was disciplined for
passing a song with immoral content around her JM
group. Older HJ and BDM girls established liaisons
that could not be kept under cover and gave
parents the impression that 'a certain
degeneration' existed within the HJ, ascribed
largely to immature leaders not qualified for the
positions they held. In another instance, sixteen
members of the HJ stayed overnight in a remote
public shelter and engaged in collective
masturbation, regarded by the police as a serious
'moral lapse.'"
Rempel leaves the reader to draw his or her
own conclusion on the seriousness of the
situation. It has to be noted, however, that
heterosexual promiscuity was also a problem, and
that much of the homosexual activity was between
the boys (and girls?) themselves, and not all the
"pederasty" the author of The Pink Swastika would
have readers believe.
Rempel says "Teenage pregnancies and
promiscuity in the HJ was {sic} more prevalent
than officials admitted," and he does indeed
remark that Himmler tried to hush up SS cases of
homosexual molestation of the HJ. He also
describes an intense campaign launched by von
Schirach to clean up the HJ after the 1934 Roehm
purge. (Hitler launched a broad crackdown on
homosexuality at that time.) The campaign targeted
juvenile crime, delinquency, and undisciplined
behavior. To assist the police, specially reliable
HJ members were organized into groups and trained
to spy upon and police their HJ fellows. There was
close cooperation with police on two particular
offenses, vagrancy and homosexuality.
Sex was only one problem the HJ had to deal
with, and homosexuality was a relatively small
part of that problem. The major activity there
seems to have been between the boys, with
infrequent incidents involving adults. The
situation Rempel and Stachura describe is
certainly not the rampant pederasty the author of
The Pink Swastika attempts to fabricate.
*** {end comment 33-1}
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{See Comment 33-2}
This last quote from Remple {sic} raises two important points which
will be addressed at greater length later in the book, but deserve
at least some mention here. The first point is that Heinrich
Himmler, who is often cited as being representative of the Nazi
regime's alleged hatred of homosexuals, was obviously not overly
concerned about homosexual occurrences in the ranks of his own
organization. The second point is that this homosexual activity
continued long after Hitler had supposedly purged homosexuals
from the Nazi regime (in 1934) and promoted strict policies against
homosexuality (from 1935 on). As we shall see later, these poli-
cies were primarily for public relations and were largely unen-
forced.
*** {start comment 33-2}
The above misrepresents Himmler. While he
did, during the war, when he was faced with a
critical shortage of personnel, take an easier
line against misbehavior by SS men with Hitler
Youth, he adopted the strictest measures before
the war. As the author of The Pink Swastika knew
very well, Rempel (page 52) says: "Himmler's view
was that Germany had then about twenty million
'sexually capable' men and probably one to two
million homosexuals -- an intolerable situation
that had to be corrected if the nation was to
survive. Within the SS he ordered degradation,
expulsion, legal prosecution, consignment to
concentration camps, and finally 'shooting while
trying to escape,' if all else failed to cure the
offenders."
It's interesting to note that the Nazis thought
10% of the population to be homosexual.
*** {end comment 33-2}
Read the Same Text Again Skip Forward Table of Contents
{See Comment 34-1}
An interesting sideline to the story of the Hitler Youth illus-
trates both the control of the youth movement by pederasts and
the fundamental relationship between homosexuality and Nazism.
In Great Britain, the pro-Nazis formed the Anglo-German Fel-
lowship (AGF). The AGF was headed by British homosexuals
Guy Francis de Money Burgess and Captain John Robert
Macnamara. British Historian John Costello relates how Bur-
gess, Macnamara and J.H. Sharp, the Church of England's Arch-
deacon for Southern Europe, took a trip to Germany to attend a
Hitler Youth camp. Costello writes,
In the spring of 1936, the trio set off for the
Rhineland, accompanied by Macnamara's friend
Tom Wylie, a young official in the War Office.
Ostensibly they were escorting a group of pro-fas-
cist schoolboys to a Hitler Youth camp. But from
Burgess' uproariously bawdy account of how his
companions discovered that the Hitlerjugend sat-
isfied their sexual and political passions, the trip
***{Below is Page: 34 }***
would have shocked their sponsors -- the Foreign
Relations Council of the Church of England
(Costello: 300).
*** {start comment 34-1}
The name of Costello's scholarly historical
tome is Mask of Treachery: Spies, Lies, Buggery
and Betrayal. It would seem that the author of The
Pink Swastika uses "historian" as a code word to
warn the reader that the author so designated is
actually not one. Costello describes Macnamara as
"a newly elected, right-wing Conservative M.P.
[Member of Parliament]." Burgess, of course, was a
secret Communist devoted to destroying Hitler's
Fascism.
*** {end comment 34-1}
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In pre-World War II France, the pro-Nazi faction was repre-
sented by the Radical-Socialist Party (RSP) and the Popular Party
(PP). The Secretary-General of the RAP was Edouard Pfeiffer.
{See Comment 34-2}
Costello writes of Guy Burgess' visit to Pfeiffer in Paris shortly
before the war:
As a connoisseur of homosexual decadence,
Pfeiffer had few equals, even in Paris. As an of-
ficer of the French Boy-Scout movement, his pri-
vate life was devoted to the seduction of youth.
Burgess discovered all this when he visited
Pfeiffer's apartment in Paris and found... [him] with
a naked young man... he explained to Burgess that
the young man was a professional cyclist, who just
happened to be a member of [homosexual] Jacques
Doriot's Popular Party" (ibid. 315).
Once again we see flagrant sexual perversion in the heart of
the Nazi movement long after the Roehm Purge. It appears also
that the correlation between Nazism and homosexuality disre-
garded national boundaries. As we have seen, both Hans Blueher
and Benedict Friedlander observed that youth organizations are
often (in their view, appropriately) led by pederasts. Events in
Europe during the first part of the twentieth century, particularly
those involving the National Socialist movement, strongly sup-
port this theory.
*** {start comment 34-2}
Again, Burgess the homosexual was a secret
Communist dedicated to the destruction of Hitler's
Fascism. That there were homosexual Fascists and
homosexual Communists says nothing more than would
be said by the fact that there were both
heterosexual Fascists and heterosexual Communists.
The simple fact is, that in the end, both the
heterosexual Fascists and the heterosexual
Communists persecuted all homosexuals. Nobody
disputes that. And nobody points to any homosexual
persecution of heterosexuals. That shows any
reasonable person whose hands wielded the power in
the Fascist and Communist movements: heterosexuals
were in control in both cases.
*** {end comment 34-2}
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{See Comment 35-1}
The revival of Hellenic culture in the German homosexual
movement, then, was an integral factor in the rise of Nazism.
Right under the nose of traditional German society, the pederasts
laid the groundwork for the ultramasculine military society of the
Third Reich. The Wandervoge1 was certainly not a "homosexual
organization" per se, but its homosexual leaders molded the youth
***{Below is Page: 35 }***
movement into an expression of their own Hellenic ideology and,
in the process, recruited countless young men into the homosexual
lifestyle. The first members of the Wandervogel grew to man-
hood just in time to provide the Nazi movement with its support
base in the German culture. As Steakley put it, "[the] Free Ger-
man Youth jubilantly marched off to war, singing the old Wander-
vogel songs to which new, chauvinistic verses were added"
(Steakley:58).
*** {start comment 35-1}
It should be remembered that this refers to
World War I. Stachura says "the fabric of the
Wandervogel had been destroyed by 1918.All but its
most naive admirers then realized that a radical
transformation in both concept and practice of the
youth movement was necessary. The Wandervogel was
now out of date and incompatible with the postwar
situation; a different era clearly had to evolve
that would satisfy the needs of youth desperate
for change."
If the authors of The Pink Swastika wish to contend
that Nazi leaders learned homosexuality in the
Wandervogel, they should present evidence that any of
those leaders belonged to the movement.
*** {end comment 35-1}
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Gerhard Rossbach and the Freikorps Movement
The Freikorps movement began during the years immediately
following the close of World War I. After the war and the subse-
quent socialist revolution in Germany in 1918, tens of thousands
of former soldiers of the German army volunteered for quasi-mili-
tary service in a number of independent reserve units called
Freikorps ("Free Corps"), under the command of former junior
officers of the German army. These units were highly nationalis-
tic and became increasingly violent as the social chaos of the
Weimar Republic worsened.
{See Comment 36-1}
Rossbach's organization, originally called the Rossbachbund
("Rossbach Brotherhood") exemplified the German Freikorps. As
Waite records in The Vanguard of Nazism, "the lieutenants and
the captains -- Rohm. ..Ehrhardt, Rossbach, Schultz and the rest
-- formed the backbone of the Free Corps movement. And... it was
they who were the link between the Volunteers [anti-communists]
and National Socialism (Waite, 1969:45). Once again we see the
essential relationship between homosexuality and Nazism, since
all of these "lieutenants and captains" were known or probable
homosexuals, most of whom eventually served in the SA. Ger-
man historian and Hitler contemporary Konrad Heiden writes that
"many sections of this secret army of mercenaries and murder-
ers were breeding places of perversion" (Heiden:30). Historian
G. S. Graber agrees:
***{Below is Page: 36 }***
Many. ... [Freikorps] leaders were homosexual, in-
deed homosexuality appears to have been wide-
spread in several volunteer units. Gerhard
Rossbach... was an open homosexual. On his staff
was Lieutenant Edmund Heines who was later to
become the lover of Ernst Roehm (Graber:33).
*** {start comment 36-1}
In the Waite quotation, the Pink Swastika
author removed the name "Schlageter" from the list
of lieutenants and captains. Waite doesn't tell us
the magnitude of "the rest" in his list. Thus, we
don't know how large is the influence of Roehm and
Rossbach in relation to Schlageter, Ehrhardt,
Schulz, and all "the rest," but Waite gives very
brief biographical comments on another 88
prominent Free Corps figures in his appendix, and
notes that his original doctoral thesis listed
250. Of the 88, only one, Edmund Heines is
identified as homosexual, being listed as
"Homosexual lover of Rossbach and Roehm."
Waite gives nothing to substantiate the Pink
Swastika author's claim that "all" of them (other
than Roehm and Rossbach) were known or suspected
homosexuals, and the "essential relationship"
between homosexuality and the Nazi movement is
another fabrication of the Pink Swastika author.
Of more than 90 free corps figures mentioned by
Waite, only 3 are mentioned as homosexual: Heines,
Roehm, and Rossbach. Since Waite's preface
expresses his antipathy to the Free Corps
movement, and since he mentions the homosexuality
of those three, it seems likely that he would have
mentioned other known or reasonably suspected
homosexuals, yet he doesn't. It seems reasonable
to conclude that the homosexual influence in the
Free Corps movement was negligibly small.
Regarding the Heiden quote, it should be
noted that he was not an historian but a
journalist who fled Hitler's Germany. His three
major books on Hitler and his rise to power are
largely re-hashes of the same material. One was
written in 1934, before any Nazi actions against
the Jews and before Ernst Roehm's death, the
second in 1936, after the Nuremberg laws that
deprived Jews of their rights in Germany, and the
third in 1944. As his work progressed through
these books Heiden became more strident and
sensational in his writing. The author of The Pink
Swastika quotes from the last (1944) book. On the
page before the above quote, Heiden has a short
paragraph in his description of Roehm:
"And this fatherly soldier was a homosexual murderer."
That's not the writing of an historian, but
of a sensationalizing propagandist. (In his first
-- 1934 -- book, Heiden has quite a different,
almost friendly approach to Roehm. )
What is of interest in Graber is how little
he mentions of homosexuality in his book, History
of the SS. There are only five index entries, one
for the passage above (which deals with the
Freikorps, not the SS), one describing Ernst
Roehm, one stating that at Buchenwald
concentration camp homosexuals were assigned mauve
triangles, one stating "Himmler's puritanism made
him particularly averse to accepting known
homosexuals into the SS," and the final passage
"The increasing status and importance of the SS
was undoubtedly aided by public knowledge of the
fact that the SA, under its leader Ernst Roehm,
was administered to a large extent by homosexuals.
An elaborate pimping service had been developed to
satisfy the appetites of Roehm and his cohorts and
some of the details leaked to the non-Nazi press.
As relations between the SA and SS deteriorated,
many Germans began to look upon the SS as
guardians of national morals."
Graber is not averse to mentioning
homosexuality, yet he apparently has nothing to
say about it within the SS. It seems that the
entire SS empire of death camps and gas chambers
was run by strict heterosexuals. As for
homosexuality in the SA, he mentions only the
small clique around Roehm that "administered" the
organization.
*** {end comment 36-1}
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{See Comment 36-2}
Waite's analysis shows that the Freikorps movement was one
intervening phase between the Wandervogel movement and the
Nazi Sturmabteilung -- the SA. "The generation to which the
Freikorpskampfer ["Freikorps warriors"] belonged," writes Waite,
"-- the generation born in the 1890's-- participated in two expe-
riences which were to have tremendous effect on his subsequent
career as a Volunteer [in the Freikorps]. The first of these was
the pre-war Youth Movement; the second, World War I" (Waite,
1969:17). The young men who had been molded by the Hellenic
philosophies of the youth movement had come of age just in time
to fight in the first World War. There, they were further shaped
and seasoned by the hardships and horrors of trench warfare.
*** {start comment 36-2}
This is another false attribution by the Pink
Swastika author. Waite doesn't try to establish
any link between the Wandervogel and the SA.
Waite's index for his 281-page text lists the
Wandervogel only once, on page 17: "The social
factors which produced the phenomena of the
Wandervogel and its allies have titillated the
imaginations of sociologists for years." In any
case, the Wandervogel were only one component of a
large, overwhelmingly heterosexual youth movement.
As Waite says in his conclusion, it is Nazi
propaganda to claim the Free Corps as "'the first
soldiers of the Third Reich,'": "The Nazis have
here committed the original sin of Freshman
history essays and have read back National
Socialist Ideology into Freebooter {Free Corps}
activity. By thus using past history for present
purposes, the Volunteers of 1919 become the
conscious champions of the Nazi creed...."
However, Waite does say the Free Corps
members "played an important role in the formation
of the Third Reich." But that role was not a
cause-and-effect chain between the youth movement
and the SA or the Nazi Party. Waite's conclusion
states that their contribution of first-rate
importance was a parallel role to that of the
Communists in destabilizing the Weimar Republic.
In addition, "hundreds" of Free Corps "graduates"
who survived the blood purge of 1934, in which
Roehm and his few homosexual cohorts were killed,
rose to positions of power in the Nazi regime.
They contributed much of the violence to Nazism.
But Waite says absolutely nothing about
homosexuality as a cause of any of this.
*** {end comment 36-2}
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It was in the trenches of World War I that the concept of
Sturmabteilung ("Storm Troops") was developed -- elite, hard-
hitting units whose task it was to "storm" the enemy lines. The
tactics of the Storm Troopers proved to be so effective that they
were quickly adopted throughout the German army. The Storm
Troop system created a tremendous increase in the number of
young commanders of a certain breed. Waite writes,
Only a very special type of officer could be used.
He must be unmarried, under twenty-five years of
age, in excellent physical health. and above all he
must possess in abundance that quality which Ger-
man military writers call 'ruthlessness.' The re-
sult was that at the time of the Armistice Germany
was flooded with hundreds of capable, arrogant
young commanders who found an excellent outlet
***{Below is Page: 37 }***
for their talents in the Free Corps movement
(ibid. :27).
It is not difficult to recognize that the description of the pre-
ferred Storm Trooper is a model of the Wandervogel hero:
ultramasculine, militaristic, physically conditioned, and largely un-
restrained by Judeo-Christian morality. It is no wonder, then, that
many of these men became youth leaders in their turn (ibid. :210).
In the preceding chapter, we learned that homosexual sadist and
murderer Gerhard Rossbach was "the most important single con-
tributor to the pre-Hitler youth movement" and a "hero to nation-
{See Comment 37-1}
alistic German youth." In the days before Baldur von Schirach
developed the Hitler Youth, Rossbach organized Germany's larg-
est youth organization, named the Schi1ljugend ("Schill Youth")
in honor of a famous Prussian soldier executed by Napoleon
(ibid:210n.).
But Rossbach's contribution to the Nazis was far greater than
the mere shaping of young men into Nazi loyalists. It was Rossbach
who formed the original terrorist organization which eventually
became the Nazi Storm Troopers, also known as "Brown Shirts."
Both the Rossbach Storm Troopers and the Schilljugend "were
notorious for wearing brown shirts which had been prepared for
German colonial troops, acquired from the old imperial army
stores" (Koehl: 19). It is reasonable to suppose that without
Rossbach's Storm Troopers, Adolf Hitler and the Nazis would
never have gained power in Germany. Heiden describes them:
Rossbach's troop, roaring, brawling, carousing,
smashing windows, shedding blood... was espe-
cially proud to be "different from the others."
Heines had belonged to it before joining Hitler;
then Rossbach and Heines had formed a center with
Rohm; it led the SA while Hitler was under arrest
[for leading the Beer Hall Putsch] (Heiden:295).
*** {start comment 37-1}
The Pink Swastika author covers up the fact
that Rossbach was only cofounder of the
Schilljugend with Werner Lass, which is clearly
mentioned by Waite on page 210. Might we dare to
conclude that Lass is ignored because he can't be
smeared as a homosexual? It would be most
inconvenient to have to acknowledge that a
heterosexual played an equally important role.
The above quote does not support the
preceding assertion that Rossbach's group "became
the Nazi Storm Troopers." The Storm Troopers (SA)
had been formed in 1921 by Hitler himself. They
were disbanded after Hitler's arrest in 1923.
Roehm and Rossbach merely formed a clandestine
organization to keep the men together during the
ban. Rossbach's own group, the "Storm Troop
Rossbach," was only a small part of the
organization. Roehm resigned in 1925 and Hitler
expelled Heines in 1927, as Heiden relates in the
same place. When the SA was again legalized
neither Roehm nor Rossbach were leaders.
Konrad Heiden, on page 143 of Der Fuehrer,
contradicts the assertion that Rossbach's group
"became" the SA. A Freikorps brigade begun by a
former naval officer named Ehrhardt actually
formed the nucleus of SA leadership, according to
Heiden. Erhard's brigade disbanded in 1920 after
attempting a coup d'etat in Berlin. The officers
who fled to Munich were steered toward the SA by
Roehm in 1920, but that had nothing to do with
homosexuality. At the time Roehm was not aware
that he had homosexual leanings -- he didn't know
any homosexuals, nor did his own inner drive
awaken until 1924.
Heiden relates a further interesting point
about the Ehrhardt brigade "It was they who
brought the swastika to the National Socialists.
It was originally a spider-like figure with thin
lines; but the printer who made up the National
Socialist leaflets and posters used heavy lines
for better visibility. This new type ultimately
became the official emblem of National Socialist
Germany."
*** {end comment 37-1}
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***{Below is Page: 38 }***
{See Comment 38-1}
Rossbach's Freikorps was formed almost exclusively of ho-
mosexuals. As fascist novelist, Edwin Dwinger, would later de-
clare through one of his characters, Captain Werner, "Freikorps
men aren't almost all bachelors for nothing. Believe me, if there
weren't so many of their kind, our ranks would be pretty damn
thin" (Theweleit, Vol 1:33). Rossbach's adjutant, Edmund Heines,
*** {start comment 38-1}
The above comment on bachelors and the
Freikorps is highly misleading. First, it must be
remembered that Freikorps is a generic term, not
the name of Rossbach's group (actually called
"Sturmabteilung Rossbach"). Second, as the PS
author stated at the bottom of page 36, the first
Storm Troopers had been organized within the
German Army from young, unmarried men. That is why
they were bachelors, not because there was some
sort of homosexual plot.
*** {end comment 38-1}
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was another pederast and a convicted murderer who later became
Ernst Roehm's adjutant in the SA (he was also the sexual partner
{See Comment 38-2}
of both Rossbach and Roehm). During the incident known as
"The night of the Long Knives" in which Hitler killed Roehm and
a number of other SA leaders whom he believed to be planning a
coup, Heines was surprised in bed with a young SA recruit
(Gallo:212). Historian Frank Rector describes Heines:
Distinguished by a girlish face on the body of a
truck driver, Heines was an elegant, suave, and
impeccably groomed killer. He liked to shoot his
victims in the face with his 7.65 Walther automatic
or beat them to death with a club.. In addition to
Heines' value as a first rate adjutant, gifted ad-
mimstrative executive, and aggressive and adroit
SA leader, Heines had a marked talent as a pro-
curer [of boys]..., garnering the fairest lads in the
Fatherland for...sexual amusement (Rector: 89).
*** {start comment 38-2]
Gallo doesn't say that the SA man in bed with
Heines was a "recruit." Others relate that he was
Heines's chauffeur. Nothing is presented to
substantiate "pederasty" involving boys. Youths
aged 18 or under were in the Hitler Youth, not the
SA.
Rector is not an historian, but a journalist,
having been a reporter for the Ft. Meyers News
Press and the New York World-Telegram & Sun. His
writing is often presented in the sensational
language of newspapers and doesn't represent the
thorough research of a genuine historian. Rector
says nothing to justify the allegation that boys
were involved. Whatever young men he recruited
within the SA for Roehm, they would have been men
over the age of 18.
The author of The Pink Swastika continually
distorts the facts to try to reinforce the libel
that homosexuals are after children. Since one of
the Pink Swastika authors is Jewish, he perhaps
got the idea for this pederast libel from the
blood libel that has been spread for centuries
against Jews. The blood libel claims that Jews
kill a Christian child and use its blood to make
matzos for Passover. The pederast libel claims
that homosexuals are after children for sexual
purposes.
*** {end comment 38-2}
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Perhaps because of Edmund Heines' special "talent," Rossbach
assigned him to develop the Schilljugend. Igra tells how he prof-
ited thereby:
Edmond {sic} Heines, the group-leader of the storm
troops at Breslau, was a repulsive brute who turned
the Nazi headquarters of the city into a homosexual
brothel. Having 300,000 storm troopers under his
command he was in a position to terrorize the
neighborhood... One of his favorite ruses was to
have members of the youth organization indulge
***{Below is Page: 39 }***
in unnatural practices with one another and then
threaten their parents that he would denounce these
youths to the police.. unless he received... hush
money. Thus Heines not only indulged in homo-
sexual orgies himself -- he was often Roehm's con-
sort in this -- but he promoted the vice as a lucra-
tive business (Igra:73).
{Picture}
{Hitler, arms crossed loosely and smiling,
Roehm on his left smiling, both watching
something, standing in front of a crowd.}
Adolf Hitler and Ernst Roehm: Masterminds of the Nazi Party
{Picture caption}
Ernst Roehm and the Development of the SA
Next to Adolf Hitler, Ernst Roehm was the man in Germany
most responsible for the rise of Nazism, indeed of Hitler himself
Rector writes that "Hitler was, to a substantial extent, Roehm's
protege" (Rector: 80). A driving force behind the National So-
***{Below is Page: 40 }***
cialist movement, Roehm was one of the early founders of the
Nazi Party. Both Roehm and Hitler had been members of the
socialist terrorist group called the Iron Fist (Heiden:89). It was
at a meeting of the Iron Fist that Roehm reportedly met him and
"saw in Hitler the demagogue he required to mobilize mass sup-
{See Comment 40-1}
port for his secret army" (Hohne:20). With Roehm's backing,
Hitler became the first president of the Nazi Party in 1921
(ibid. :2). During the same period of time Rossbach's Freikorps,
integrated into the Party first under Herman Goering's and then
Roehm's authority, was transformed into the dreaded Nazi SA.
*** {start comment 40-1}
Hitler was not the first leader of the Nazi
Party. The party was founded by Anton Drexler, who
was its first president. (Konrad Heiden, "A
History of National Socialism" p 5) Heiden devotes
5 pages (43-47) to Hitler's take over of the
party, and Ernst Roehm is not mentioned as having
played any part whatever in the process. Hitler
presented Drexler and the governing committee with
an ultimatum: either make him president and give
the office of president dictatorial powers, or he
would quit. Hitler had become a master
propagandist, having built the party to over 3000
members, and rather than lose him, the committee
gave him power.
To say that the SA sprang from Sturmabteilung
Rossbach is a gross fabrication. The Rossbach
group was only a tiny fraction of SA membership,
and was integrated into the original SA at a
fairly late stage. (See comment 37-1 above, that
the Ehrhardt brigade formed the leader nucleus of
the early SA.)
*** {end comment 40-1}
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In his classic Nazi history, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich,
author William Shirer describes Roehm as "a stocky, bull-necked,
piggish-eyed, scar-faced professional soldier... [and] like so many
{See Comment 41-1}
of the early Nazis, a homosexual" (Shirer:64). Interestingly,
Roehm was recruited into homosexuality by Gerhard Rossbach
(Flood: 196). Rector elaborates:
Was not the most outstanding, most notorious, of
all homosexuals the celebrated Nazi leader Ernst
Rohm, the virile and manly chief of the SA, the du
buddy of Adolf Hitler from the beginning of his
political career? [Hitler allowed Roehm the rare
privilege of addressing him with the familiar form
"thou," indicating intimate friendship]. Hitler's rise
had in fact depended upon Rohm and everyone
knew it. Rohm's gay fun and games were cer-
tainly no secret; his amorous forays to gay bars
and gay Turkish baths were riotous. Whatever anti-
homosexual sentiments may have been expressed
by straight Nazis were more than offset by the re-
ality of highly visible, spectacular, gay-loving
Rohm. If there were occasional ominous rumblings
and grumblings about "all those queers" in the SA
and Movement, and some anti-gay flare-ups, ho-
mosexual Nazis felt more-or-less secure in the lap
of the Party After all, the National Socialist Party
***{Below is Page: 41 }***
member who wielded the greatest power aside
from Hitler was Rohm (Rector:50f.).
*** {start comment 41-1}
Flood doesn't say that Rossbach "recruited"
Roehm. He says that Roehm "moved from latent to
overt homosexuality when he was seduced by the
noted Freikorps commander Gerhard Rossbach." The
Pink Swastika author tries to propagate the
fundamentalist myth that homosexuals "must recruit
because they can't reproduce." Flood correctly
states that Roehm's homosexuality was latent,
meaning that he hadn't realized or acted on his
inclinations until his encounter with Rossbach.
The Rector citation is an example of a
technique of leaving out crucial context and thus
distorting the meaning intended by the quoted
author. It is often used by the Pink Swastika
author and other fundamentalist propagandists
among conservative Christians and Jews -- Judith
Reisman, quoted by the PS author, is another
devotee of the technique.
Rector's comment is meant to show the foolish
sense of false security homosexuals within the
Nazi party felt. Rector is not expressing his own
assessment of the situation, but the wishful
thinking of the homosexual minority. The Pink
Swastika author has distorted Rector's intent by
leaving out the crucial first sentence of the
paragraph. Rector actually wrote this:
"Nazi gays up to 1934 seemingly occupied a
congenial situation because Hitler led them into
fooling themselves that his Volksgemeinschaft laid
down the welcome mat for homosexuals. Was not the
most outstanding...."
*** {end comment 41-1}
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Consistent with the elitist philosophies of Benedict Friedlander,
Adolf Brand, and Hans Blueher, Roehm viewed homosexuality as
the basis for a new society. Prominent Nazi historian Louis Snyder
writes that
[Roehm] projected a social order in which homo-
sexuality would be regarded as a human behavior
pattern of high repute...he flaunted his homosexu-
ality in public and insisted that his cronies do the
same. What was needed, Roehm believed, was a
proud and arrogant lot who could brawl, carouse,
smash windows, kill and slaughter for the hell of
it. Straights, in his eyes, were not as adept in such
behavior as practicing homosexuals (Snyder: 55).
{See Comment 41-2}
Under Roehm, the SA became the instrument of Nazi terror-
ism in German society. Historian Thomas Fuchs describes its
purpose: "The principle function of this army-like organization
was beating up anyone who opposed the Nazis, and Hitler be-
lieved this was a job best undertaken by homosexuals" (Fuchs:48f.).
At first serving simply to protect the Nazis' own meetings from
disruptions by rivals and troublemakers, the SA soon expanded
its strong-arm tactics to advance Nazi policies and philosophies.
In a 1921 speech in Munich Hitler set the stage for this activity:
"[the] National Socialist movement will in Future ruthlessly pre-
vent if necessary by force all meetings or lectures that are likely to
distract the minds of our fellow citizens... In Mein Kampf, Hitler
describes an incident which he considered the baptismal act of the
SA:
*** {start comment 41-2}
The Fuchs work is entitled The Hitler Fact
Book -- hardly the work of an historian. The book
has no information on who Fuchs is or what his
credentials are. His notes indicate that he's
uncritically taken items from many of the other
works that appear in the bibliography of The Pink
Swastika; hence Fuchs provides nothing new or
worthwhile, but is just another writer whose title
can fatten the bibliography and make it more
impressive. For example, some of Fuchs's material
at this point is drawn from off-hand comments
gleaned from American interviews of Hitler's
political enemies during World War II. This
material was used by psychologist Walter C. Langer
to invent a "psychological portrait" of Hitler the
allies hoped to exploit in carrying on the war.
While Langer viewed many of the assertions made
about Hitler's sex life by these political enemies
with deserved skepticism, too many other authors
uncritically take Langer's work as a source of
valid information.
There's no evidence from any reliable or even
unreliable author -- not even from Langer -- to
support the assertion that Hitler considered
homosexuals best at beating up Nazi opponents. His
men were brawlers long before any known
homosexuals or homosexuality was involved in the
organization. Roehm didn't get involved with
homosexuality until 1924, and the quote from Mein
Kampf given below refers to a meeting held on
November 4, 1921.
Fuchs provides no substantiation for his
allegation that Hitler thought the SA work best
done by homosexuals. He seems to be falsely
inferring that from a remark on page 82 of Ernst
"Putzi" Hanfstaengl's book Unheard Witness. But
Hanfstaengl's book doesn't support Fuchs's false
inference that Hitler thought homosexuals best at
street fighting. Hitler simply said, according to
Hanfstaengl, "My most enthusiastic followers will
not be married men with wives and children. No one
with family responsibilities is any good for
street fighting."
While Hanfstaengl is indeed talking about
homosexuals in the SA at this point, Hitler would
undoubtedly be thinking of the "Sturmabteilungen"
(SA), or commandos, used by the German Army in
World War I, who had to be unmarried men without
families. That would refer mainly to unmarried
heterosexuals, who were abundantly available for
such duty during the war, but of course would
include any man who happened to be unmarried,
including homosexuals. These unmarried men were
selected for especially dangerous duty.
In the economic chaos that followed World War
I in Germany, there was an abundant supply of
heterosexual men who couldn't afford to marry, and
indeed the SA recruited many of its members by
offering them regular meals and shelter, so
there's no justification for inferring that SA
members were unmarried because they were
homosexuals.
The important part of Hitler's idea is that
the men should be free of family responsibilities,
not that they should have any particular
sexuality. This isn't a novel idea, but is seen in
religious organizations such as the Jesuits and,
indeed, the entire Catholic priesthood. To draw
from Hitler's remark the thought that he
considered homosexuals best fitted for cracking
heads in street brawls is absurd.
*** {end comment 41-2}
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{See Comment 42-1}
"When I entered the lobby of the Hofbrauhaus at
quarter to eight, I no longer had any doubts as to
the question of sabotage...The hall was very
***{Below is Page: 42 }***
crowded... The small assault section was waiting
for me in the lobby... I had the doors to the hall
shut, and ordered my men -- some forty-five or -
six -- to stand at attention... my men from the As-
sault Section -- from that day known as the SA --
launched their attack. Like wolves in packs of eight
or ten, they threw themselves on their adversaries
again and again, overwhelming them with
blows.. In five minutes everyone was covered with
blood. These were real men, whom I learned to
appreciate on that occasion. They were led by my
courageous Maurice. Hess, my private secretary,
and many others who were badly hurt pressed the
attack as long as they were able to stay on their
feet" (Hitler:504f).
*** {start comment 42-1}
This appears on page 279f of the unexpurgated
Mein Kampf published in March of 1939 by Hurst and
Blackett, reprinted recently by Angriff Press, Los
Angeles. What the Pink Swastika author covers up
by selective quoting is that the violence was
initiated by Communist demonstrators who began it
by throwing large numbers of heavy beer steins at
Hitler and his guard. As the Communists left they
apparently fired pistol shots at Hitler and
initiated a brief gun battle. The police then
entered and broke up the meeting. The battle had
lasted about 25 minutes with no police
intervention. Hitler says the blood was on his own
outnumbered men.
It would seem that the Nazis had no monopoly
on violence. Perhaps the author of The Pink
Swastika will write another book "proving" that
the Communists were all violent homosexuals.
*** {end comment 42-1}
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{See Comment 42-2}
In all actions the SA bore Roehm's trademark of unabashed
sadism. Max Gallo describes the organization:
Whatever the SA engage in -- whether they are
torturing a prisoner, cutting the throat of an ad-
versary or pillaging an apartment -- they behave
as if they are within their rights, as artisans of the
Nazi victory... They are the SA, beyond criticism.
As Roehm himself said many times: "The battal-
ions of Brown Shirts were the training school of
National Socialism"' (Gallo:26).
*** {start comment 42-2}
The technique of distortion of the Pink
Swastika author is made obvious by the above
quotes. The first, from Mein Kampf, refers to an
incident in 1921 in which the Nazis were attacked
with beer steins by Communists and severely
wounded in defending themselves, but the Pink
Swastika author leaves that part of the quote out
because it doesn't fit the deceptive picture of
the SA as always having been an extremely violent
organization.
The second quote, from Max Gallo, refers to
events following January 30, 1933, when Hitler
assumed the power of the government and the Nazis
were taking "revenge" on their enemies, and
especially on those who had allegedly burned the
Reichstag, the Communists. Excesses follow all
revolutions. That's not to excuse the SA, but to
point out that there was nothing particularly
"homosexual" in the violence that followed the
Nazi assumption of power.
What Gallo says certainly doesn't support the
Pink Swastika author's contention that the SA used
"unabashed sadism" in all its actions. The actual
situation, as Gallo presents it, refers to a short
period of a few months in which comparatively rare
instances of barbarity occurred. Gallo points out
that at Hitler's behest Roehm issued a
proclamation against the excesses on July 31 which
said, in part:
"These executions are officially ordered by
the Fuehrer; they must be carried out swiftly, and
with military rigor.
"However, I have been informed of incidents -
- rare, it is true -- in which certain members of
SA organizations -- I do not wish to designate
these men by the name SA, which they do not
deserve -- have been guilty of inexcusable
excesses.
"These excesses include the following: the
satisfaction of personal vengeance, inadmissible
cruelty, extortion and pillage."
Roehm threatened with "immediate, exemplary
death any responsible SA leader who, through a
misconceived sense of indulgence, fails to
intervene."
On August 8 Goering removed from the SA the
role as auxiliary police it had held.
*** {end comment 42-2}
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{See Comment 43-1}
The favorite meeting place of the SA was a "gay" bar in Munich
called the Bratwurstglock1 where Roehm kept a reserved table
(Hohne:82). This was the same tavern where some of the earliest
formative meetings of the Nazi Party had been held (Rector:69).
At the Bratwurstglock1, Roehm and associates -- Edmund Heines,
Karl Ernst, Ernst's partner Captain Rohrbein, Captain Petersdorf~
Count Ernst Helldorf and the rest -- would meet to plan and
strategize. These were the men who orchestrated the Nazi cam-
***{Below is Page: 43 }***
paign of intimidation and terror.
(Heiden:371).
*** {start comment 43-1}
The above citation from Rector is a case of
false attribution. While Rector does call the
Bratwurstgloeckl a "gay" bar, he says absolutely
nothing about formative Nazi meetings being held
there. Ernst Roehm wasn't aware of homosexual
feelings until 1924, and the party was formed five
years before that. In his early heterosexual days
he certainly wouldn't have chosen a "gay" bar to
hold meetings, nor would the other heterosexual
leaders and members of the party.
The Heiden reference is pure fabrication.
Heiden says nothing on or near page 371 about the
Bratwurstgloeckl. He doesn't mention any meetings
or "strategizing" or orchestrating of intimidation
and terror. He says: "Roehm provided pretexts for
opposition by filling the S.A. leadership with his
homosexual creatures, Captains von Petersdorff and
Roehrbein, Count Ernst Helldorf, an adventurer and
military profiteer of the worst sort. The beloved
Heines was given command of the S.A. in Silesia."
What's interesting about Heiden's text is
that only five SA leaders are mentioned as being
homosexual. Equally interesting is Heiden's
account of widespread SA opposition to Roehm's
homosexual band. This refutes the Pink Swastika
author's allegation that the entire SA was led by
homosexuals. Heiden says that Berlin party leader
Josef Goebbels and the leaders of the very
important Berlin SA were "embittered at Roehm's
really repulsive 'men's harem.'" Ironically, after
a falling out with the Berlin SA, Goebbels fled to
Munich and worked closely with Roehm against the
heterosexuals in Berlin.
*** {end comment 43-1}
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{Pictures}
{Faces of Heines and Ernst, both in uniform}
SA Leaders Edmund Heines (left) and Karl Ernst
{Picture caption}
{See Comment 43-2}
Indeed, homosexuality was all that qualified many of these
men for their positions in the SA. Heinrich Himmler would later
complain of this: "Does it not constitute a danger to the Nazi
movement if it can be said that Nazi leaders are chosen for sexual
reasons?" (Gallo:57). Himmler was not so much opposed to ho-
mosexuality itself as to the fact that non-qualified people were
given high rank based on their homosexual relations with Roehm
and others. For example, SA Obergruppenfuehrer (Lieutenant Gen-
eral) Karl Ernst, a militant homosexual, had been a hotel doorman
and a waiter before joining the SA. "Karl Ernst is not yet thirty-
five," writes Gallo, "he commands 250,000 men... he is simply a
sadist, a common thug, transformed into a responsible official"
(ibid.:50f.).
*** {start comment 43-2}
According to the edition of Gallo's book
published by Harper & Row, the entire paragraph
above is a fabrication not substantiated by
Gallo's actual text. Since the Harper & Row text
and the Warner text cited by the Pink Swastika
author agree in other places, one must assume they
agree here, and that areas of apparent
disagreement are due to fabrications of the Pink
Swastika author.
Gallo's Himmler quote appears to be a
fantasy. The English translation of Gallo's book
contains no notes that would suggest his source.
The reference is to comments allegedly made at a
meeting between Himmler and Roehm in April 1934,
just two months before the purge that murdered
Roehm and other homosexual SA leaders.
Gallo says "This interview is still shrouded
in mystery, but it may well have been Roehm's
final opportunity to be given a last chance."
Obviously, if the occasion "is still shrouded in
mystery," Gallo must be making up a fictional
sequence of events and conversation at the
meeting.
Here again, the Pink Swastika author distorts
and misleads by leaving out important context. He
represents as a quote from Himmler something that
Gallo probably made up to fill the gaps and make
his book more interesting to the popular
readership for which it was written.
Much of Gallo's book is written in a style
suggesting that it is a mixture of fact and
fiction -- "Roehm doesn't answer; he simply nods
and drinks. Himmler speaks of the rumors current
in Berlin..." -- as though Gallo is in the room,
spying on this meeting "shrouded in mystery," and
telling us what he saw. But this sort of present
tense scene description is just the language one
would use to pose a hypothetical situation for the
reader's consideration, and that is just what
Gallo is doing.
When the context is included, it is easily
seen that Gallo is not representing the words as
an actual quote from Himmler, but is only
speculating about what he might have said at the
meeting. And the same surely applies to much or
most of the rest of Gallo's book.
Gallo says nothing about Himmler's alleged
concern about qualifications rather than
homosexuality in the cited place. This seems to be
another fabrication by the Pink Swastika author to
bolster his false assertion that all the Nazis
favored homosexuals. On pages 57-58 Gallo says the
contrary. Himmler is "furious" on learning that
the very night after his meeting with Roehm --
after Roehm had promised he'd reform -- there was
an orgy at SA headquarters with his male
prostitutes. Himmler then began planning for a
confrontation with Roehm.
The alleged quotation about Karl Ernst
doesn't appear at the cited location, but on page
39. There Gallo says of Ernst "He is also said to
be a homosexual." In other words, Gallo's research
has found only rumor, and nothing very credible to
support Ernst's alleged homosexuality.
*** {end comment 43-2}
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This strange brand of nepotism was a hallmark of the SA. By
1933 the SA had grown far larger than the German army, yet the
***{Below is Page: 44 }***
Vikingkorps, or officers' corps, remained almost exclusively ho-
{See Comment 44-1}
mosexual. "Roehm, as the head of 2,500,000 Storm Troops,"
writes historian H.R. Knickerbocker, "had surrounded himself with
a staff of perverts. His chiefs, men of rank of Gruppenfuhrer or
Obergruppenfuehrer, commanding units of several hundred thou-
sand Storm Troopers, were almost without exception homosexu-
als. Indeed, unless a Storm Troop officer were homosexual he
had no chance of advancement" (Knickerbocker:55).
In the SA, the Hellenic ideal of masculine homosexual su-
premacy and militarism had finally been realized. "Theirs was a
very masculine brand of homosexuality," writes homosexualist
historian Alfred Rowse, "they lived in a male world, without
women, a world of camps and marching, rallies and sports. They
had their own relaxations, and the Munich SA became notorious
on account of them" (Rowse:214). The similarity of the SA to
Freidlander {sic} and Brand's dream of Hellenic revival is not coinci-
dental. In addition to being a founder of the Nazi Party, Ernst
Roehm was a leading member of the Society for Human Rights,
an offshoot of the Community of the Special (J. Katz:632).
*** {start comment 44-1}
Knickerbocker was not an historian, but a
journalist. In his introduction to the book, John
Gunther characterizes Knickerbocker as a "Nazi-
hater" having a "flaming red personality." His
book has to be viewed more as a work of propaganda
than history.
The Katz citation is another case of
falsification. Katz's note on page 632 says
nothing about Roehm or about the Community of the
Special. Katz's index mentions Roehm only once,
and the reference is to an article written about
his murder.
*** {end comment 44-1}
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The "relaxations" to which Rowse refers in the above quote
were, of course, the homosexual activities (many of them
pederastic) for which the SA and the CS were both famous. Holme
writes that
[Roehm] used the SA for ends other than the purely
political. SA contact men kept their Chief of Staff
supplied with suitable partners, and at the first sign
of infidelity on the part of a Roehm favorite, he
would be bludgeoned down by one of the SA mo-
bile squads. The head pimp was a shop assistant
named Peter Granninger, who had been one of
Roehm's partners. and was now given cover in
the SA Intelligence Section. For a monthly salary
of 200 marks he kept Roehm supplied with new
friends, his main hunting ground being Geisela High
School Munich; from this school he recruited no
***{Below is Page: 45 }***
fewer than eleven boys, whom he first tried out
and then took to Roehm (Hohne:82).
{See Comment 45-1}
Roehm and his SA associates were among the minority of
Nazi homosexuals who did not take wives. Whether for conven-
tion, for procreation, or simply for "covering up" their sexual pro-
clivities, most of the Nazi homosexuals were marred. Some, like
Reinhard Heydrich and Baldur von Schirach, married only after
being involved in homosexual scandals, but often these men, who
so hated femininity, maintained a facade of heterosexual respect-
ability throughout their lives. These were empty marriages, how-
ever, epitomized by one wife's comment, "[t]he only part of my
husband I'm familiar with is his back" (Theweleit:3).
*** {start comment 45-1}
There's no evidence that Heydrich was
homosexual. Gerald Reitlinger (The SS: Alibi of a
Nation, p37) says Heydrich resigned his naval
commission in 1931, reputedly at the insistence of
Admiral Raeder, after he refused to marry the
daughter of a shipbuilder whom he had compromised.
*** {end comment 45-1}
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In many respects, the SA was a creation of Germany's homo-
sexual movement, just as the Nazi Party was in many ways a cre-
ation of the SA. Before we take a closer look at the formation
and early years of the Nazi Party, we must examine two other
very important movements which contributed to Nazism. These
two movements are the occult Theosophical-Ariosophical move-
ment, and the intellectual movement which created the National
Socialist philosophy. Both of these movements, which are inte-
gral to our understanding of the Nazi Party and its actions, were
also influenced by homosexuals.
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