Ernst Röhm, The Hight-Rankg Gay Nazi - JSTOR Daily

Contents:

• ERNST RöHM, THE HIGHT-RANKG GAY NAZI
• THE NAZI DOCTOR WHO EXPERIMENTED ON GAY PEOPLE – AND BRA HELPED TO PE JTICE
• TOP SOCIAL CONSERVATIVE: HLER USED GAY SOLDIERS BEE THEY HAD ‘NO LIMS’
• GAY MEN UNR THE NAZI REGIME
• THE NAZIS TOLERATED GAYS. THEN EVERYTHG CHANGED

ERNST RöHM, THE HIGHT-RANKG GAY NAZI

But the strangt choice might have been Otto Rahn, an open homosexual who spised the Nazi party. Dpe his ntempt for the Nazis and the policy of the SS that all homosexuals should be sent to ncentratn mps, Otto Rahn was one of the most mted rearchers to the story of the Holy Grail. This was a ser crime the German Reich, and homosexuals were a equent target of the Gtapo, or German secret police, who sent thoands of people to ncentratn mps on the grounds of their sexualy.

A man  make-up and pearls nmng transgenr people may seem untertuive, but Milo Yiannopoulos is hardly the first gay reactnary. The se of Ernst Röhm, the hight-rankg gay Nazi, prents an tertg study the nstctn and ntament of masculy by the right.

Röhm opposed his party’s stand on Paragraph 175 of the German penal , which ma male homosexual acts illegal. This ma some German homosexuals thk he might ultimately tone down the Nazi stance.

THE NAZI DOCTOR WHO EXPERIMENTED ON GAY PEOPLE – AND BRA HELPED TO PE JTICE

(Earlier, the Social Democrats, one of the few parti to mpaign for the repeal of Paragraph 175, showed self willg to gay-ba Röhm. As Eleanor Hanck explas, Röhm, his face srred om war wounds, strsed a hyper-masculy to unteract ntemporary views of homosexualy as feme. Röhm suggted that the le between homosocial and homosexual, however, was potentially fluid.

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

Hanck says that Röhm “challenged the privilegg of heterosexual over homosexual masculi. His open homosexualy may have threatened the psychologil secury of some other Natnal Socialists, creatg a form of ‘male homosexual panic. '” She go further, wonrg if “the purge of the SA and the killg of Röhm reprented the leral objective rrelative for the supprsn and reprsn of the homosexual sir their own Nazism?

Even before Ernst Röhm was murred, the Nazis had begun crackg down on homosexualy, banng anizatns, burng books, and arrtg the first of some 100, 000.

Around 15, 000 gay people were sent to ncentratn mps, where some were experimented upon bizarre efforts to fd a “cure” for sexual orientatn, a forhadowg of Amerin psychologil and later fundamentalist efforts to try the same thg. A Danish Nazi, SS Dr Carl Vær, nducted medil experiments on gay ncentratn mp prisoners. Instead, wh Danish and Brish lln, he was able to pe to Argenta, where he lived openly and ntued his rearch to methods for the eraditn of homosexualy.

GAY MEN UNR THE NAZI REGIME

Vær was a Copenhagen doctor who, realisg the opportuni offered by the homophobic polici of the Third Reich, joed the Nazi party and enlisted the SS to pursue his rearch to “cure” gay rearch was nducted on the personal thory of Herich Himmler.

THE NAZIS TOLERATED GAYS. THEN EVERYTHG CHANGED

The Gtapo chief mand the “extermatn of abnormal existence … the homosexual mt be entirely elimated” mpaign to expose Vær only took off 1998, when I wrote to the then Danish prime mister, Poul Rasmsen, llg for an quiry to Vær’s wartime activi. This prompted him to approach the Nazis, who were well known for their hatred of gay people and their bid to “elimate the perverted world of the homosexual”.

Vær met the chief Nazi doctor, Reichsarzt-SS Ernst Grawz, who proposed that he rearch the treatment of homosexualy on behalf of the led to Vær operatg on gay prisoners Buchenwald ncentratn mp, sertg artificial hormone glands their gros.

Dpe this predictn, Vær appears to have nvced the Brish and Danish thori that his hormone treatments to turn gay men heterosexual were important, worthy scientific November 1945, rponse to Vær’s claim that he was sufferg om a ser heart ndn, Hemgway thorised his transfer to a Copenhagen hospal. They ma no attempt to prosecute him for war crim, possibly bee they regard his rearch to “cure” homosexualy as legimate, even Danish thori have still not explaed why Vær and his Danish protectors were shield om prosecutn and why took my public challenge to force them to open the Vær fil.

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