‘On the same level as the Nazis’: the film about Germany’s postwar persecutn of gay men | Film | The Guardian

Contents:

• TOP SOCIAL CONSERVATIVE: HLER USED GAY SOLDIERS BEE THEY HAD ‘NO LIMS’
• AN INTERVIEW WH A GAY, RSIAN NEO-NAZI
• ‘ON THE SAME LEVEL AS THE NAZIS’: THE FILM ABOUT GERMANY’S POSTWAR PERSECUTN OF GAY MEN
• "COMG OUT UNR FIRE": THE STORY OF GAY AND LBIAN SERVICEMEMBERS
• RISHI SUNAK APOLOGIS TO LGBT VETERANS FOR PAST ARMED FORC GAY BAN

TOP SOCIAL CONSERVATIVE: HLER USED GAY SOLDIERS BEE THEY HAD ‘NO LIMS’

A top official wh a leadg social nservative group recently laid out the view that Adolf Hler liberately reced gays to be his “enforcers, ” bee they had “no lims” to “the savagery and btaly they were willg to flict. So Hler himself was an active homosexual.

And some people wonr, didn’t the Germans, didn’t the Nazis, persecute homosexuals? And is te they did; they persecuted effemate homosexuals. But Hler reced around him homosexuals to make up his Stormtroopers, they were his enforcers, they were his thugs.

AN INTERVIEW WH A GAY, RSIAN NEO-NAZI

And Hler disvered that he uld not get straight soldiers to be savage and btal and vic enough to rry out his orrs, but that homosexual solrs basilly had no lims and the savagery and btaly they were willg to flict on whomever Hler sent them after. So he surround himself, virtually all of the Stormtroopers, the Brownshirts, were male homosexuals. There is very ltle hard evince that Hler himself was gay — though a bevy of historians has examed the qutn.

The ta of tth behd Fischer’s view is that several lears of the SA — the tightly anized band of street brawlers hat helped Hler rise to power — were gay. The Nazis were known to have plenty of gay officers, and the sexual vlence agast young boys is even more taboo than the known abe of young women.

‘ON THE SAME LEVEL AS THE NAZIS’: THE FILM ABOUT GERMANY’S POSTWAR PERSECUTN OF GAY MEN

The Nazi dictatorship policed, prosecuted, and ultimately murred thoands of gay men durg s 12 years of le.

"COMG OUT UNR FIRE": THE STORY OF GAY AND LBIAN SERVICEMEMBERS

Adolf Hler’s regime overturned all prev attempts Germany to crimalize same-sex acts, to challenge bigoted stereotyp about homosexualy, and to create tablishments where the men uld live and socialize openly. Ernst Röhm, lear of the SA, the Nazi Party’s stormtroopers, had been openly gay, but Hler had only tolerated this until he beme too troublome. In a Febary 1937 speech Bavaria, Reichsführer-SS Herich Himmler spoke of homosexualy as “pravy” and a “plague.

” Eventually, 100, 000 German and Atrian men were arrted on charg of homosexualy.

RISHI SUNAK APOLOGIS TO LGBT VETERANS FOR PAST ARMED FORC GAY BAN

Although the Third Reich was one of the most heartlsly homophobic regim morn history, practilly no first-hand acunts of Nazi vlence agast gay men existed eher Wt or East Germany before the early 1970s.

As early as 1946, Eugen Kogon, the progrsive German Catholic journalist and survivor of Buchenwald, scribed the suatn for gay men the mps. “The fate of homosexuals the ncentratn mps, ” wrote Kogon, “n only be scribed as ghastly.

” That same year, the Soviet zone of occupatn (later the German Democratic Republic), Rudolf Klimmer appealed to the Organizatn of Those Persecuted by the Nazi Regime to offer regnn of gay men as victims of Natnal Socialist terror. Acrdg to Erik Jensen, gays and lbians “not only met silence the postwar perd regardg the Nazi persecutn of homosexuals, but they also faced the pernic myth that homosexuals themselv formed the backbone of the Nazi movement. An attempt by the Hamburg-based Society for Human Rights to w regnn of gay ncentratn mp mat Wt Germany met the same fate as Klimmer’s enavor.